“Where are we going to hide the body?” Sawyer asked.
Maybe they could get away with shoving it under a hedge. There was a chance another guard could find it while on patrol, but it was either that or drag the dead man into one of the nearby buildings that was unoccupied.
Caleb snorted and picked up the man’s body without a word, then slung it over the wall. It made a thud as it hit the ground far, far below.
“There. The body has been hidden.” Turning, Caleb headed toward the monastery buildings. “You ready to do this?”
Sawyer glanced at Jake, who shrugged and keyed his mic, telling the rest of the team that they were moving into position.
* * *
Harley moved to the front of the fancy aerial tram, gazing through the spotless glass window as they slowly approached the well-lit monastery atop the mountain. In the glass, she could see her face reflected back at her, the long, flowing black wig; brown contacts; and tan foundation making her unrecognizable.
Misty stood slightly behind her, while Forrest and Erin were on the far side of the crowded tram chatting with some of the other hopeful buyers, all smiles and fake laughs like they were attending an evening social and not an auction were they intended to buy another living, breathing creature.
Out the corner of her eye, Harley could see Misty casually tapping on an iPad, making a show of scanning the currency figures listed under a number of international banks. Every once in a while, she’d move closer to Harley to point at something as if going over the status of available funds so she’d know exactly how much money she had for tonight’s auction. The funny part was that the overflowing bank accounts Misty was busy skimming through were real and so was all the wealth they contained. The not-so-funny part was that the real Abella Herrera, the Spanish socialite Harley was impersonating, would have used that money to purchase a supernatural.
Abella had anchored her yacht off the nearby coastal village of Alexandrini late last night, planning to make the short two-hour drive into Kalambaka for the auction. But the real Abella and her assistant wouldn’t be going anywhere. Thanks to Jake and Jes, both of them—along with the ship’s entire crew—were passed out cold in their staterooms and would remain that way until sometime tomorrow. If Abella called the police, it would seem like they’d all been victims of a small carbon monoxide leak from the yacht’s engine compartment.
As they neared the top of the mountain, Harley heard Caleb saying something over the radio about holding their position because a guard was walking past their part of the cliff face. Her heart clenched in her chest.
Harley hated the entire idea of Sawyer being on the side of the damn mountain with Jake and Caleb from the get-go. The thought of him out there on that smooth rock, risking a fall that could kill or seriously injure him, had nearly given her an anxiety attack. She wanted to say she had no idea why it was making her feel this way, but that’d be a lie.
She had a serious thing for Sawyer.
Since that night they’d kissed in the villa, they’d spent every free minute taking surveillance shifts together, then slipping away for meals on their own, even going for walks around town in the middle of the night.
And in between, they kissed and then kissed some more.
Harley had no idea what was going on, but it was impossible to ignore the chemistry between the two of them. When his lips were on hers, it was like getting zapped by Adriana, but in the best possible way. If they weren’t in the middle of a covert operation, where their entire focus needed to be on stopping this auction, Harley would have jumped him three or four times already. That wasn’t something she’d normally do. While she’d slept with a few guys since becoming a werewolf, and obviously some before, none of them had generated the same intense desire that Sawyer did by simply kissing her. In the darkest hours of the morning, when she was all by herself in bed, Harley could admit she was falling hard for him.
And the reality of their situation scared the hell out of her. If this mission went well tonight, Sawyer would almost certainly go back to the UK with the rest of his MI6 team and they’d probably never see each other again. The thought was enough to make her feel physically ill.
To make matters worse, she was pretty sure Caleb knew there was something going on. She’d caught him eyeing her and Sawyer more than a few times over the past two days. Jumping up and running out of the room during the mission briefing after Sawyer and Jake had overruled her objections to climbing the mountain hadn’t helped. The expression on Caleb’s face made her think he knew exactly what the deal was, which wasn’t only crazy, but also impossible since she didn’t know what the deal was herself.
Harley was still wondering what she was going to do about Sawyer—and Caleb—when she heard Jake urgently saying something on the radio about a guard coming to take a look. Had he said Sawyer fell?
She gripped the railing around the inside of the tram, swaying a little on her feet.
The tram shuddered a bit as they reached the topside station, but Harley ignored it as she strained to hear something that would tell her Sawyer was okay. She didn’t realize her claws had extended and embedded themselves in the polished hardwood of the handrail until Misty reached out and put a gentle hand on her forearm. Her claws weren’t out more than a quarter inch, but considering they hadn’t made an appearance in eight years, she was a little stunned.
On the radio, Caleb was sarcastically asking if someone was done screwing around. That someone had to be Sawyer, which meant he was still around to rag on. But she refused to breathe easier until she heard Jake announcing they’d all made it to the top. Finally prying her claws out of the wooden railing, she turned to see if anyone had noticed. No one was looking at her curiously. Except Misty, of course. Harley nodded, silently letting her teammate know she was okay. Good thing, too, because the door of the tram slid back with a pneumatic hiss.
Showtime.
“This way, please,” a man in an expensive suit said in a slightly accented voice from where he stood outside the door.
Harley almost froze as she recognized Long Hair, the guy who could appear and disappear at will. The one who’d stabbed her. She tried not to flinch when the man’s dark gaze swept the tram, but if he recognized her and Misty, he gave no sign of it.
“If you’ll form a line right out here, we can do a security check and scan your invitations, then get you on your way,” he said.
The first person who stepped out of the tram, a distinguished-looking man in his midsixties with perfectly styled hair and neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, frowned like he’d sucked a lemon. “We already presented our invitation down below.”
“And now you’re showing them to me,” Long Hair said coldly. “Or you can turn and get back on the tram. Your choice.”
The older man reached into an inside jacket pocket for his invitation and held it out with a disdainful expression. “Do you know who I am?”