Payback. Harper Allen

alertness a heartbeat faster than their male counterparts.

      “Nice theory, O’Shaughnessy,” she breathed, gingerly sliding aside a tile. “Guess you’re about to find out if it holds water.”

      According to Carter’s information, Asher had fourteen men and six women under his command—a far cry from the fifty battle-experienced soldiers he would have had in the SAS, she reflected, wondering again just how the man had blotted his copybook badly enough to end up here pulling down guard duty. But Des Asher’s past foul-ups weren’t her main concern at the moment, she reminded herself as she quickly scanned the double row of military-issue iron beds in the room below. Checking out how many of these beds were currently occupied and whether any of the occupants were awake was all she had to worry about right now.

      The tight Dawn Swanson-type bun at the nape of her neck was secured with enough bobby pins to set off a dozen metal detectors. Sliding one free, she stealthily tossed it through the opening she was peering through.

      The bobby pin bounced with a tiny ping! off a steel footlocker at the end of one of the beds. She held her breath.

      Five of the beds were made up with military preciseness and were obviously empty. From the remaining nine came a muted chorus of snores. None of the blanket-covered lumps shot bolt upright, no one’s breathing abruptly changed tempo, no opened eyes suddenly gleamed in the faint glow coming from the red-lit fire-exit sign by the door.

      With an acrobat’s agility, she dropped to the floor, immediately turning her landing into a head-over-heels roll that brought her to the shadowed side of one of the occupied beds.

      At sixteen, she’d been as rebellious as any other teenager, Dawn remembered with a faint smile, although her acting-out against authority had taken a different form from a normal girl’s. Once during a working trip to London that had left her sitting alone, bored and sullen, in a hotel room for too many hours while Uncle Lee had carried out a mission, she’d defiantly presented him with a Polaroid of herself standing in a vault at the Tower of London with a penlight clamped between her teeth and one gloved hand resting on the crown jewels of England. As if to make the point that she wasn’t that different, a furious Lee Craig had punished her like any ordinary teen who’d come home late after a date.

      He’d grounded her for two whole weeks. But after his death and before she’d come in contact with the Cassandras, she’d found he’d secreted the Polaroid as a memento in the hidden safe where he kept his emergency passports and contingency cash.

      Past history, Dawn thought as she jammed the sidearm she’d retrieved from the footlocker—a Beretta M9 pistol, standard issue for a U.S. Ranger as she’d noted Keifer and the American contingent of William London’s guards were—into the waistband at the back of her briefs. All that little trip down memory lane proves is that I could have picked this padlock with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my—

      Two things happened at once to cut off her thoughts. One was the bolt of agony that shot home without warning in her brain…and the other was the mumbled voice of the soldier whose gun she’d just appropriated.

      “Angel?” His query was slurred and thick with sleep. Through the haze of pain that had descended upon her she saw him stir restlessly. “Angel…howzabout…you know, babe…”

      The intensity of the pain eased off a little, but her limbs still felt weak and rubbery. She cast an alarmed glance upward at the telltale opening in the ceiling. Could she trust her legs to make the leap? And even if she could, did her arms have the strength to pull her all the way to safety?

      Her head still throbbed and the nausea that accompanied the migraines made her feel as if she were trying to move through molasses. In a few minutes the symptoms would probably fade, but she didn’t have a few minutes.

      “Wassa matter, babe…don’t you wanna play?”

      Was it her imagination or did his voice sound less slurred, as if he was slowly coming awake? She shot another despairing glance at her unreachable escape route and made up her mind.

      “Of course I do, lover,” she murmured huskily, tiptoeing to the bed.

      All she had to do was bring the edge of her hand sharply down on the precise point at the base of his neck that would insure his lapsing back into unconsciousness, albeit for a few more hours past reveille than he’d likely planned. Not the way most women demonstrate they’re not in the mood, she thought grimly. But I’m running out of time, so here goes.

      She took a deep breath and quickly brought her rigidly held hand down in a chopping arc that—

      He turned his head and opened his eyes at her. A slow, sexy smile lifted one corner of his mouth. She froze, the edge of her hand so close to his neck that she could feel the heat coming off him.

      “You’re gorgeous, angel,” he murmured softly. “One of these nights I’m not going to let you leave just as my dream starts getting interesting…”

      His eyes closed. His breathing deepened and became once again regular.

      Dawn felt a stab of illogical outrage. He was asleep, dammit! The man had actually had the nerve to fall asleep while she was half-naked by his bed!

      Reason rushed back. Thank your lucky stars Lover Boy did, O’Shaughnessy, she thought as she moved with quiet haste to the foot of the bed. She reached for the fifteen-round magazines of ammunition she’d left beside the footlocker, and then paused.

      A short tangle of pitch-black hair brushed his forehead. Thick, spiky lashes fanned against his cheekbones. Whatever his dream was now, it was causing a faint smile to soften his well-cut lips.

      The man was gorgeous. And she’d been living like a nun for the past nine months, Dawn thought in frustration, turning away.

      “Not that my sex life’s ever been red-hot,” she muttered ten minutes later as she hoisted herself out of the air shaft and ran lightly to the edge of the barracks’ roof, the Dawn Swanson sweats tied in a bulky bundle around her waist. She removed the gun from her waistband before securing it and the ammo clips in the padding of clothing tied around her, and jumped. “There was that Roman god of a gardener last year in Milan when I was on the Italian job, and before him there was Alexei what’s-his-name in Moscow, who could toss back vodka all night and still show a girl why he was nicknamed the Russian bear,” she remembered, coming out of her landing roll. “Aside from them, the list is pretty skimpy.”

      But numbers weren’t the point anyway. She made her way through the air shaft, her expression thoughtful. As fun as Alexei and the gardener had been, she had no illusions that they’d wasted any time dreaming about her after she’d disappeared from their lives. What would it be like to experience more than a one- or two-night stand with someone? What would it be like to know you were in his dreams, as the man she’d just left had drowsily asserted she’d been in his?

      Pausing a few feet from the vent leading to her washroom, she shook her head decisively. “Way too much commitment. Still…it was kind of sweet to hear him say it.”

      She was almost sorry she’d chosen Lover Boy’s footlocker to break into, she mused as she lifted the metal grate that overlooked the toilet and shimmied through the opening. She’d noticed a second sidearm in the locker, so hopefully he wouldn’t feel duty-bound to immediately report a weapon missing and would assume its absence was part of a practical joke by a buddy. Balancing on the porcelain tank, she hauled down the bundle of clothing, first removing the Beretta and its ammunition and shoving them out of sight in the vent for retrieval later. She replaced the grate, stepped down from the tank and glanced at her watch.

      The whole excursion had taken twenty minutes. There was time for a brief catnap before she needed to start getting ready to report for her first day of work in Sir William’s lab. Stifling a sudden yawn at the thought, she lifted the unattractive brown robe that was part of her Dawn Swanson wardrobe from the hook where she’d hung it when she’d unpacked, wrapped it around her and unlocked the door to the bedroom. She took a step toward her bed and then stopped in shock.

      The