Sighing under his breath, he turned to a passing waiter and picked up a glass of champagne. Surreptitiously, he glanced at the mantel clock—only he wasn’t sly enough. Alex, who stood talking to the Greek Ambassador, saw him and winked.
Casting him a wry smile, Nick heard him cut across what the Ambassador was saying. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ambassador, it’s getting late. I have a breakfast meeting tomorrow, so please excuse me,” Alex said, loudly, for other guests to hear.
The other man looked startled, but he nodded and shook the hand Alex held out.
Nick sent his cousin a grateful look when suddenly everyone concurred it was time to leave. Within half an hour, only the wait staff and Belle’s parents remained.
After seeing them off, she joined Nick on the balcony. “I saw you chatting to Liz earlier,” she observed.
“Yes, that friend of yours is a goddamned Rottweiler. Her grilling technique would be most welcome in the Marines. I had to swear my devotion to you on a stack of Bibles before she relented. She also said something about having my guts for garters. Oh, and I found out why she hates those guts so much.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, but I’m not telling you. Suffice it to say, I made a stupid comment that she took to heart. The air’s been cleared.” He made a silent vow never to discuss his wife while her best friend was in the vicinity.
A loud crash in the kitchen drew their attention. Belle answered his question before he voiced it. “There are one or two of the caterers still here.”
“You want me to go check?” he offered.
“No, you don’t want to go in there when Bertrand’s reading them the riot act for breaking his china. Allen should be ringing shortly, yes?” He didn’t miss the anxiety in her voice.
“Yes. Come with me to the study.”
He crossed to his phone the moment they entered his study.
“Anything?” Belle asked.
The answer phone light wasn’t blinking. He checked his cell phone. No missed calls. As a last resort, he fired up his laptop to see if there were any messages to his other accounts. When that drew a blank, anxiety crept through him. “No, there’s nothing. Damn it, we should’ve heard back by now,” he growled.
She slid a soothing hand over his nape. “Let’s give it a few more minutes—”
A second crash from the kitchen made them both look up. “What the hell is going on—” He stopped abruptly when the phone rang.
Belle squeezed his shoulder. “Get the call. I’ll go and make sure everything’s fine in the kitchen.”
He snatched up the phone as she walked away, the seductive sway of her body making his breath catch all over again.
“Andreakos,” he rasped.
“Sir, we have a problem,” Allen said without preamble.
Nick froze. “What kind of problem?”
“The man we have here in Dusseldorf, he’s not Mwana. We’ve interrogated him. He goes by the name of Richard Francis, and he says he’s working with Mwana. I’m sorry, sir, but we think Mwana is—”
“Here,” Nick finished for him, every muscle in his body clenching hard. A millisecond later, he dropped the phone. His chair crashed backward as he launched himself toward the door and hit the hallway in a dead run.
; No! No, no, no!
The apartment was quiet. Too quiet.
The hairs on his nape rose, but he fought the alarm growing inside him as he veered toward the kitchen. Bodyguards were stationed downstairs and all around the building. No one could get in or out without being seen.
It’s nothing. You’re imagining things.
A heartbeat later, he knew he wasn’t.