Diamonds Can Be Deadly by Merline Lovelace Read Free Book Online Page A

player/electronic sweep in hand, she let herself out a side window. She left it open behind her. She’d reenter her bungalow the same way to avoid triggering the iris-recognition system and advertising her late-night expedition.
    Velvet darkness surrounded her, ripe with the scent of tropical vegetation and the salty tang of the sea. Avoiding the crushed-lava pathways, Jordan glided across the lush lawns like a silent shadow. The sniffer allowed her to pick her way through the elaborate security grid. The thermal suit deflected TJ’s new Y-beams. Or so she hoped!
    She reached the business center a few moments later. From her earlier visit, Jordan knew the location of the intrusion-detection devices at the windows. She zapped one with the sniffer, jimmied the lock, got the window up and was through it in thirty seconds flat. Another zap reset the electronicwatchdog. The interruption would appear as a temporary blip on a monitor, if it appeared at all.
    All too aware of the cameras mounted at regular intervals, Jordan kept to the shadows as she worked her way to the conference room where she’d met with Greene and Myers. The moonlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling glass window illuminated the map depicting Greene’s far-flung empire. The emerald marking the headquarters here in Hawaii gleamed like a giant eye, following her stealthy progress across the conference room and into the private offices beyond.
    * * *
    Two hours later, Jordan reentered her bungalow through the open window. She’d accessed the computer in Greene’s office, rummaged through the files in Myers’s sleek little laptop and poked into every corner of the headquarters.
    To her intense disappointment, she’d uncovered nothing. Nada. Zilch-ola. No evidence of offshore bank accounts. No link to the Colombians except through legitimate purchase orders for emeralds. No hidden treasure room containing the Star of the East. She had, however, sweated off at least five pounds.
    Dragging up the thermal suit’s face mask, Jordan stopped only long enough to type a code into her laptop and verify no one had entered the bungalow in her absence before making straight for the bathroom. Every pore in her body screamed with relief when she peeled off the jumpsuit and kicked free of the clinging fabric.
    In her eagerness to shed the artificial skin, Jordan put a little too much oomph into the kick. Her sweat-slick foot slipped on the tiles and went out from under her. She flung out a hand to break her fall, felt it crunch against the marble counter and landed with a thud that sucked the air from her lungs.
    â€œDammit!”
    She flexed her hand a few times. It didn’t feel as though she’d broken any bones, but she’d sport one heck of a bruise in the morning. Rolling to her feet, she stripped off her sweat-drenched panties and bra and wadded them up with the thermal suit for rinsing out later. Her next priority was a long, hot shower.
    Turning the crisscrossing shower jets to full blast, she stepped inside and let the water fog up the glass blocks until a gruff shout shattered her bliss.
    â€œJordan!”
    Cursing, she cut the jets and whipped around. Over the stair-stepping glass blocks, she got a good visual of the male who strode through the door. She swore again, yanked one of the resort’s ultraplush towels from the rack, wrapped it sarong style and rounded the glass block wall.
    â€œSo much for expecting any privacy at the Tranquility Institute,” she snapped. “Can any employee come waltzing into a guest’s bungalow, or have you added breaking and entering to your résumé?”
    He took his time replying. Jordan steamed while his gaze made a slow trip from her neck to her knees and back again. Tipping her chin, she conducted asimilar inspection. He’d traded his duty uniform for a black T-shirt and well-worn jeans that hugged his muscular thighs. A cell phone was clipped to his