Chapter One
The Naked Trap
Archie Picket shifted his feet, finding no comfort in the thick pile carpet. It was late, and he was tired. Twenty-four hours without sleep was not his first choice, certainly not in the middle of an operation. Alertness was called for, not exhaustion. Unfortunately, they were too close to the end for a nap, regardless of how the comfortable hotel bed called to him.
Instead, he stood at the window of room 246 in the Ottoman Hotel in Palm Beach, staring down at a maroon, Olympic style one-piece bathing suit with a buxom blonde girl in it. She’d been doing steady laps in the hotel pool for nearly half an hour. As he watched, she finished a final lap by the arched steps in the shallow end and climbed, with no visible sign of exertion, up into the warm Florida night air.
God, what a body.
Picket was grateful for the distraction.
The cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and thumbed the screen to life. A one word text message.“Now.” About time, too. He turned his back on the swimmer and left the hotel room, pushing the borrowed service cart out into the hall. The elevator was three rooms down. He pressed the up button, and heard the doors close and then the soft whine as the box rose to the second floor. When the door slid aside, the girl from the pool looked at him briefly. She had a hotel robe over her bathing suit and expensive sandals on bare, well-tended feet. And he’d been right. She was a beauty.
“Good morning,” he said.
She shifted to the side, nodding to him with a faint smile turning up the corners of a beautiful mouth. “Bon jour,” she replied in nearly perfect French, with all of fashionable Paris entwined like wisteria in those two words. Archie heard something else in the inflection, as well. The girl’s French was good, educated, but there was some Eastern Europe in there, too.
Archie was surprised. He had pegged her as an over-the-hill cheerleader, as American as a Missouri corn field. You just don’t get eyes like that in Eastern Europe. Standing just behind and to one side allowed for a leisurely, but unobtrusive inspection.
About thirty, he decided. Intelligence in the pretty blue eyes, pale buttery blonde hair, and a heavy dusting of cinnamon freckles over all the skin he could see. Five seven, and a little on the hefty side, although she wore it well. She was wide in the hips and heavy in the breast, with a steeply indented waist that exaggerated her curves even further. Hundred and forty pounds give or take. Size ten. Maybe a twelve to fit the impressive shelf of breasts. He noticed her earrings, tiny gold handcuffs. An interesting choice, that. A statement? It was hard to tell.
There was something distinctly North American about a body like that, and about what Europeans generally referred to as those perfect fucking American teeth. The accent was out of place as well, although it sounded natural enough. That puzzled him. He wondered about it in the few seconds they were together. Maybe she was an American raised in Europe. Archie wasn’t personally concerned with the girl, but anomalies of any sort drew his interest.
Language was a knack. Earlier in his car
