The Medusa Proposition Read online

  Did she hate him or want him?

  Paige scanned the crowded ballroom, checking to see if her ice-blue gown was hopelessly out of fashion. She’d spent so long in fatigues crawling around in the mud that it felt weird to be dolled up in satin and heels.

  He would choose that exact moment to look up and catch her ogling him in that fancy tux that made him look like a movie star. Damn him!

  “You’re missing all the fun, Miss Ellis. Dance with me.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “To start rumors and ruin your credibility.”

  “On that insulting note, Mr. Rowe…”

  She turned to storm away and felt him grab her waist. Despite his dashingly lean appearance, the guy was shockingly strong. Heads were turning.

  And she was dancing.

  With Thomas Rowe.

  Playboy. Billionaire. Bastard.

  And all she could think about was how incredible sex with him could be.

  Dear Reader,

  I always look forward to starting a new Medusa book because they’re personal favorites of mine. But I have to say this one was extra special fun, because it marks the beginning of a whole new Medusa team! Never fear, though. All of your favorite original Medusas will still show up from time to time to help save the world and show the boys how it’s done.

  The Medusa Proposition launches the stories of another feisty and talented group of ladies out to kick butt and make the world a better place…oh, and maybe find themselves a smokin’ hot hunk along the way. This set of Medusas brings a broad array of skills to the game that will make the capabilities of the Medusa Project just that much more exciting.

  We begin with Paige Ellis, who’s looking to take her life in a new direction. And boy does she ever when she bumps into Thomas Rowe. These two are gasoline and fire from the moment they meet. So buckle your seat belt and get ready for a wild ride as the Medusas storm back into action bigger and better than ever!

  Happy reading,

  Cindy Dees

  CINDY DEES

  The Medusa Proposition

  Books by Cindy Dees

  Silhouette Romantic Suspense

  *Behind Enemy Lines #1176

  *Line of Fire #1253

  *A Gentleman and a Soldier #1307

  *Her Secret Agent Man #1353

  *Her Enemy Protector #1417

  The Lost Prince #1441

  **The Medusa Affair #1477

  **The Medusa Seduction #1494

  †The Dark Side of Night #1509

  Killer Affair #1524

  †Night Rescuer #1561

  The 9-Month Bodyguard #1564

  †Medusa’s Master #1570

  The Soldier’s Secret Daughter #1588

  **The Medusa Proposition #1608

  Silhouette Bombshell

  Killer Instinct #16

  **The Medusa Project #31

  Target #42

  **Medusa Rising #60

  **The Medusa Game #79

  Haunted Echoes #101

  **The Medusa Prophecy #122

  Silhouette Nocturne

  Time Raiders: The Slayer #71

  CINDY DEES

  started flying airplanes while sitting in her dad’s lap at the age of three and got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. At age fifteen, she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan where she grew up to attend the University of Michigan.

  After earning a degree in Russian and East European Studies, she joined the U.S. Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in its history. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the C-5 Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. She also worked part-time gathering intelligence. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War, met her husband and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories.

  Her hobbies include professional Middle Eastern dancing, Japanese gardening and medieval reenacting. She started writing on a one-dollar bet with her mother and was thrilled to win that bet with the publication of her first book in 2001. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at www.cindydees.com.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 1

  Paige Ellis stared grimly at the gray turmoil of the ocean below. How was it the sea always so accurately reflected her mood? The weathered Adirondack chair beneath her was cold and hard, and somehow that was fitting, too. No comfort for her, no, sir.

  Guilt writhed in her gut like a serpent, eating at her from the inside out. Not many television news journalists could lay claim to having single-handedly gotten their cameraman/best buddy/sometimes lover killed. Oh, sure, she hadn’t technically come right out and asked him to try to track down that extremist group to set up an interview for her. But she’d darn well hinted around that it would mean the world to her if he could pull it off. She might not have killed Jerry outright, but his blood was on her hands, nonetheless.

  Other people had argued that he should’ve known better, that he knew what he’d been getting into, that he was too much of a risk taker, and it had finally caught up with him. But her sense of responsibility was too deeply ingrained for her to let it go that easily.

  She ought to throw herself over the cliff into the icy embrace of the sea and just let it take her. Except the fall was probably only about fifty feet and she doubted it would kill her. And even if it did, a cold, quick death was better than she deserved—

  “Paige! Phone!”

  Her father’s voice jerked her out of her dark thoughts. “I’m not taking any calls!”

  Uh-oh. He was striding across the backyard with that Ellis jaw-jut going full force. “You need to take this one.” He shoved the handset at her.

  “Who is it?” She didn’t reach for the phone. She wasn’t kidding. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not to nosy reporters trying to find out how one of their own died, not to her boss at the TV network, and most certainly not to anyone who would attempt to talk her out of her self-recriminations yet again.

  “Find out for yourself.” Her father dropped the phone in her lap and stalked off.

  Sheesh. What had his knickers in such a twist? She picked up the phone cautiously. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Paige. My name’s Vanessa Blake.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “Not yet. But I’d like to meet you. I have a proposition for you. One you’re going to find very interesting if I haven’t misjudged you.”

  “Is this a sales call?” She was going to kill her father. “I’m so not interested in a time-share, or an overseas investment opportunity or in opening a mutual-fund account.”

  The woman at the other end of the line laughed in what sounded like genuine amusement. “Good. Neither am I. I work for the U.S. government. What I want to talk with you about is classified. Highly classified. Is there somewhere we can meet? I’ll come to Maine if you’d like, or you can come to North Carolina to see me. Or, of course, we can meet halfway, say in Washington, D.C.? Neutral ground for both of us?”

  Interest flared in Paige’s gut. She smelled a juicy story. Particularly when this woman very smoothly wasn’t taking no for an answer. Paige knew the technique well. She used it all the
time herself to wrangle interviews out of people. A little flustered at being on the receiving end of her own bulldozer tactics, she belatedly answered, “I’d rather go to D.C.”

  Her parents’ beach house was sacred. It was her final sanctuary, her last line of retreat from everything and everyone. Besides, if she was going to take control of the meeting with this Blake person, she might as well put the woman at ease. Let her think she was safe, get her to let her guard down.

  Ms. Blake was speaking again. “I’ll have a plane waiting for you in Bangor in four hours. I’ll arrange your hotel in Washington tonight, and we can meet first thing tomorrow morning. Oh, and bring your passport. I’ll take care of everything else.”

  The line went dead.

  Paige stared in disbelief. That woman wasn’t a bulldozer. She was an industrial-size steamroller! And four hours? It was nearly a three-hour drive to Bangor, and she’d still need to pack. Paige jumped to her feet and hurried to the house.

  The plane turned out to be an unmarked Learjet that whisked her down the coast to Dulles International Airport. Dusk was falling on the nation’s capitol as a similarly innocuous SUV met her at the plane and drove her to an understated hotel in Alexandria’s Old Town neighborhood. It was the kind of place high-profile politicians might use to meet their mistresses or maybe meet a journalist on the sly. After all, the fine art of the news leak was alive and well in this city.

  Who was Vanessa Blake?

  In the last few minutes before she’d had to leave for Bangor International Airport, Paige had frantically researched her on the Internet and came up with absolutely nothing. In some ways, that was more telling than finding out the woman’s life history. As far as Paige could tell after Net surfing high and low, nobody anywhere believed a Vanessa Blake in government service in North Carolina existed. Either the name was an alias or this woman worked in the intelligence community. Deep inside the intelligence community.

  Paige’s interest was piqued. How could it not be? To quote Crocodile Dundee, she was a reporter and a woman, and that made her the nosiest person on the planet.

  A call from the hotel phone on the nightstand woke her up the next morning, and no surprise, the caller was Vanessa Blake. “Good morning, Paige. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  “No, of course not.” God, she hoped she didn’t sound half-asleep.

  “I’ll be downstairs in Private Dining Room B in a half hour. How do you like your eggs?”

  “Uh, sunny-side up with a side of bacon. Toast and grapefruit juice while you’re at it, please.”

  “I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”

  In spite of herself, Paige was a little intimidated. She didn’t want to be late and put herself at an even bigger disadvantage. She hustled through a shower, grateful that her strawberry-blond hair needed only a quick hit from the blow-dryer to be wavy and lush around her face. She tossed on a little makeup and leaped into clothes with two minutes to spare. Thankfully, she didn’t have to wait long for an elevator and strolled into the private dining room exactly on time per Vanessa’s phone call, looking as cool and composed as could be.

  Vanessa Blake looked to be in her mid-thirties. She was pretty, but not someone who would turn heads in a crowd. In fact, intuition told Paige that this woman worked to underplay her good looks most of the time. She didn’t carry herself like a law-enforcement type. Not FBI, then. CIA, maybe? Paige’s pulse jumped a little. When news stories came out of Langley, they were usually juicy.

  Her quiet hostess seemed content to let Paige eat in peace, and the meal passed without any stunning revelations. Finally, Vanessa laid down her fork and linen napkin. Showtime. Paige leaned back casually, as if her every sense wasn’t on the high alert that it was.

  “For the record, Paige, I have an electronic jamming device in my purse that will prevent all listening devices from penetrating this room. It also will scramble any recording you try to make of this conversation.”

  That sent Paige’s brows skyward. She replied, “If we’re going to speak strictly off the record, then what is the point of this meeting? I have to be allowed to report the story.”

  Vanessa smiled. “I’m not speaking to you in your capacity as a journalist. I’m interested in you for another purpose altogether.”

  Okay, now she was confused. Where was this woman taking this? Was she being recruited to work for the CIA? Holy cow. Time to take the offensive. Aloud she asked, “Why me?”

  “You fit my criteria…and very, very few women in this country achieve that,” her cryptic companion replied.

  Paige frowned. “I beg your pardon? What criteria?”

  “You’re smart. You’re resourceful. You’re an outside-the-box thinker. You’re reasonably physically fit—although I’ll improve on that quite a bit before it’s all said and done. Your career puts you in a position to be extraordinarily useful to me because you can plausibly go places that most people aren’t allowed to go.”

  Uh-huh. Recruiting me to be a spy.

  Vanessa leaned forward and looked Paige square in the eye. “But most of all, you’re motivated. You have a powerful and personal reason for accepting the offer I’m about to make you.”

  “And what is that reason?” Paige asked, vaguely alarmed now. Did this woman actually think she could blackmail a high-profile journalist into working for her?

  “Jerry Sprague. Your cameraman, and if I don’t miss my guess, significant other.”

  Paige involuntarily lurched back from the table.

  Vanessa’s gaze held hers forcefully, but her quiet voice continued inexorably. “The real story of what happened to Jerry Sprague. Not the sanitized one that was fed to the public, and to his family for that matter.”

  It was Paige’s turn to stare aggressively. “How exactly do you know the real story?”

  Vanessa didn’t answer directly. But what she did say stunned Paige into frozen horror.

  “Please allow me to express my condolences on your loss. Sprague was a good man, and that was an awful way for him to die. If I don’t miss my guess a second time, you’re hauling around a nearly unbearable burden of guilt at the moment.” She paused and then added lightly, “I thought you might be interested in getting a little payback against the forces that did something like that to a friend and lover.”

  How on God’s green Earth did this woman know she and Jerry had been occasional lovers? They’d been extremely discreet about their off-camera relationship. The network didn’t even have any idea of it. Paige blurted, “Who are you to presume to know how I feel about Jerry’s death?”

  An infinite well of sadness and knowing filled Vanessa’s gaze. Paige’s anger dissolved abruptly in the face of this woman’s compassion. Vanessa murmured, “You’re not the only person in the world who’s been touched by evil. Who’s seen death. The only difference between you and me, Paige, is that you point cameras at it and I do something about it. Today, I’m offering you the chance to quit being merely an observer and take action.”

  “Who are you?” Paige demanded. She was startled to register something already unfolding in her gut in response to this woman’s words. Whether it was yearning for redemption or simple hope that it was possible to act against the badness in the world, she couldn’t tell. She just knew that all of a sudden, this woman had her complete, undivided attention.

  “Let me properly introduce myself. I am Major Vanessa Blake of the U.S. Army, Team Leader of the Medusa Project.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Good. If you had, I’d have to shoot you.”

  Paige blinked. From the deadpan way the major said that, she wasn’t entirely sure the woman was kidding.

  “I have a proposition for you, Miss Ellis.”

  Chapter 2

  Two years later

  Breathing deeply, Paige lengthened her stride to a full-out run. Funny how running so often hurt so much, but every now and then it was like this. Exhilarating. Powerful. Free. The beach sand had just the right give beneat
h her bare feet, and the waves crashing beside her were as wild and untamed as she felt. The jungle on her other side was thick and mysterious in the pale light of dawn.

  Maybe it was because she was so wrapped up in her runner’s high that she didn’t spot the dark lump on the shore ahead of her until she was nearly on top of it. Her initial impulse was to swerve and continue around it. But something about the size and shape of the sodden canvas bag set off warning bells in the back of her mind. If she’d learned anything in her long months of Special Forces training with the all-female team of soldiers known as the Medusas, it was to listen to her gut. And her gut said something wasn’t right about that sack.

  She slowed. Walked cautiously the last few paces to the bag. It was big, easily four feet long, and stuffed with something bulky and irregular. The drawstring that held it shut was swollen and stiff with salt water in addition to being heavily knotted. Paige pulled her switchblade out of the concealed sheath sewn into her running shorts and sawed at the tough rope until it popped free. Good thing it was Medusa policy never to go anywhere completely unarmed.

  Her nose twitched. The rotting seaweed smell rising from the bag held another subtle note…something foul that made her gut roil ominously. Carefully, she pulled the neck of the sack open. Peeked inside.

  She spun away as vomit hurled up and out of her throat explosively. She fell to all fours on the sand beside the bag, her back arched like a cat’s, and emptied her gut. Remnants of bile burned like acid in the back of her throat, tasting so terrible that she retched again. But there was nothing left to heave this time. Sonofa—