Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Evolution - Brian Freeman Page 0,52

She never did. “Are you certain it was him, Carson?”

“Of course I’m sure! You’re the one who gave me the information about him. I thought he was going to kill me!”

She didn’t answer right away. Her silence told him that calculations were going through her mind. “But in fact, he didn’t kill you. How interesting.”

“Interesting? That’s all you have to say? This isn’t how it’s supposed to work! This isn’t our deal! I was just supposed to be a go-between. I wasn’t supposed to deal with people like Cain.”

“Calm down, Carson. If Cain wanted you dead, you’d already have a bullet in your throat.”

“I won’t calm down. Was he telling the truth? Is there a mole inside Medusa who can expose me?”

“No, he was simply trying to rattle you, and obviously he succeeded.”

“But why?”

“That I’m not sure about. It’s a curious puzzle.”

Carson shook his head. “You need to help me. Mole or not, I’m at risk. You need to get me out!”

“Quiet!” the woman insisted, in a voice that didn’t allow for any protest. He knew better than to open his mouth again when she used that tone. In person, it was a tone that brought swift punishment.

Carson waited through an interminable length of silence. He heard nothing on the phone but the smooth, measured sound of her breathing, which he knew well. That sound always aroused him. Her breath was like that when she straddled him, her eyes closed, when she teased him with her interminably slow movements up and down, postponing the aching moment of relief.

They’d met exactly six times. Every meeting was memorable. Every one ended the same way, with depraved, glorious sex in a hotel room and information passed to him on a thumb drive for distribution to a contact in the media or government. Money always showed up in his bank account a few days later, although in truth, he would have paid her for the experience. She was that good.

The very first time had been in Las Vegas. He’d been in town for a meeting with one of his clients, and a taxi had taken him to an upscale casino outside the city. He’d played the blackjack tables and lost big. He’d never had such a losing streak in his life, but he found that he couldn’t stop, not even when the rational part of his brain told him to walk away. The deeper he dug the hole, the more he believed that his luck had to turn, and when it did, everything would go his way. But his luck never changed. He played and lost throughout the night, raising the stakes higher and higher with each hand, until he was down by more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He didn’t have that kind of money.

That was when he met her.

She showed up at his side, incredibly tall, sleek and gorgeous, with black hair and pale eyes that sent a surge of blood between his legs. She wore a barely-there thigh-high black dress that clung to her bony curves, and when she bent over, he could see everything.

“You seem to have a problem, Mr. Gattor.”

How did she know his name?

Carson hadn’t put it together at the time. He was in too much of a fog. It was only later that he realized that he’d been set up, that he’d been chosen and steered to the casino and manipulated and cheated out of his money. No, all he knew at that moment was that he was turned on by this woman and facing a debt he couldn’t pay.

“I have a solution. I have a way for you to satisfy your debt in full and make a great deal more money beyond that.”

“What do I have to do?” he asked, although it didn’t matter. Whatever it was, he was going to do it. He couldn’t say no to her.

“We’ll talk about details soon. For now, I only have one demand.”

“What is it?”

“You must remember at all times when we are together to call me Miss Shirley.”

Then she’d taken him up to a penthouse suite in the hotel that overlooked the mountains and introduced him to a night of pain and pleasure unlike anything he’d ever experienced. In the morning, she’d given him a first-class airline ticket and told him to strike up a conversation with the man in the seat next to him.

That was all. Build a relationship.

That was his first mission for Medusa.

“You did the right thing by calling me, Carson,” Miss Shirley