Free Summer Games by Elizabeth Lowell Page B

equestrian areas.
    “I know a lot of people,” Captain Jon said.
    “I just met the man yesterday.”
    “Oh?”
    Raine looked down at her hands and arms, dusty from hours of cleaning Dev’s stall and brushing his healthy red hide.
    Wear anything you like.
    The thought made her smile. It was a slashing, competitor’s smile. Mr. Always-in-Charge Elliot was going to have his wind knocked out for a change.
    But first she needed a long, slow perfumed bath.
    “I won’t be in the mess hall tonight,” she said.
    Captain Jon shrugged. His athletes were older than most Olympic competitors. He didn’t cluck over his riders, unless they had it coming. Then he could mother-hen with a vengeance. But Raine had never given him a bit of trouble, not even when she had fallen for that smooth-talking Frenchman.
    Although he had dumped her just before a big meet, she had kept her concentration, proving she was a world-class competitor. In fact, her performance that day had convinced Captain Jon that Raine was Olympic material. The unhappy affair with another rider had simply confirmed the captain’s original estimate: Raine had that indefinable quality known as class. She rose to meet the professional occasion no matter what her private life was like at the moment.
    “Found a man, eh?” the captain asked, smiling widely.
    She thought of denying it, then shrugged. He would find out. He always did.
    “Right,” she said. “He knocked me off my feet.”
    “Isn’t that ‘swept you off your feet’?”
    “Not this one. Knocked me right out of my shoes.”
    The captain chuckled, assuming it was a joke. “Don’t worry about curfew. You can use the break.”
    Barely a hundred feet from the phone Raine had used, Cord sat in an RV loaded with electronics. Big as a bus—and built with an unusually heavy framework—the bland-looking motor home was really a mobile fort. From it, he could call any place on earth. And any person.
    At the moment he was talking to Virginia. He didn’t know the man’s name; the man didn’t know Cord’s. It didn’t get in the way of their conversation.
    “That’s the best you can do?” Cord asked impatiently. “Lives depend on this.”
    “They always do.”
    “But this time . . .” His voice died.
    It wouldn’t help to say that this time a woman’s life was at risk, a very special woman, the only woman who had ever managed to reach past his defenses and touch the naked yearning beneath.
    “Do better,” Cord said bluntly.
    “Barracuda isn’t an easy target.”
    “Now, there’s a bit of hot intelligence.”
    The man at the other end of the line winced. “Ease up. I’ve had my ass chewed raw on the subject of Barracuda.”
    “You looking for sympathy?” Cord asked.
    “Yes!”
    “You’ll find it in the dictionary between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis.’ I need information.”
    Cord broke the connection and tried another source. Normally he was a patient man, but since Barracuda had disappeared, nothing could be called normal.
    “Yeah,” a bored female voice said.
    “Any hits on that profile I sent you?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “Radio traffic?”
    “No.”
    “Inspiration?”
    “No.”
    “Shit,” he muttered. “Try tea leaves.”
    “I’m thinking of starting a coffee-scum scam. More coffee gets sucked up than tea.”
    Smiling reluctantly, Cord disconnected and looked around with pale eyes that had seen too much but kept on watching anyway. Somebody had to.
    There were no windows in this part of the bus, just television screens showing the outside world in real time, real sound, and full color. Everything appeared to be absolutely normal. The air around the stables shimmered with heat and sun, dust and an unhealthy dose of LA’s infamous smog.
    There weren’t many people hanging around right now. Cord knew the ones who were—a handful of reporters and horse pundits, a dozen equestrian groupies, some competitors walking or exercising or schooling their horses.
    Even though