Amber came back with three glasses. “Open the bottle of wine, Brad, and pour us some.” She flipped open her cell phone. “I think Lily’s not going to show. I see a message from her.”
Lily was coming to dinner, too? So this wasn’t a twosome thing? Hawk relaxed a little. She listened intently to the phone as she and Brad exchanged glances, her expression unreadable. Brad turned and filled the glasses, giving one to Hawk.
“Thanks.” He really didn’t want to talk like an adult and eat. Maybe he hadn’t gotten the violence out of his system for the day because he was feeling like beating someone up again. Hawk scowled. That brought his mind back to how he had come here and what he had been doing with Amber. Brad sat down at the table, too, seemingly unperturbed that Amber’s hair appeared a little damp, like Hawk’s. Maybe the man wasn’t as perfect as he looked; he was probably nearsighted.
“Lily has an emergency,” Amber said after she had sat down between them, “but she says she’ll try to make it. If not, she gave me some details to pass along.”
“Do you believe her?” Brad asked. There was something in the tone of his voice that made Hawk study him closely.
“You know how important this project is to her, Brad. She wouldn’t not show up when the interview can help the girls.” When Brad didn’t say anything, Amber turned to Hawk. “This isn’t as complicated as it looks, although your being here does add one complicated factor. Brad and I are seen as an item by some people. Since I deal with information, it’ll be reported to certain ears if he goes home without dinner, or doesn’t stay his usual length of time, or if you were to go down and have dinner with us in our private booth.”
“Okay.” Seen as an item. Her choice of words was peculiar. Hawk drank down his wine. “But Dilaver knows I’m here.”
Brad’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you report your whereabouts to him?”
“He dislikes you,” Hawk said, and looked at both of them, “so anything to do with you interests him.”
“So he must have told you Amber and I are more than friends. Did he set you up to come between us? Are you reporting back to him?”
Hawk stared back at the other man, challenging him silently.
“Brad…” Amber cut in. She put her glass down. “Why don’t I do the talking for now, hmm? This is…awkward.” She turned to Hawk. “Brad and I are just friends, but it helps me to let Dilaver and various other gangs think I’m dating the chief of CIVPOL.”
“I see.” He didn’t have time to wonder about the odd sense of release washing through him at the revelation. For some reason Amber wanted to include him in this secret and he was hoping to find out more. “Then you’re sort of a couple so Mr. Sun can protect your outfit and you can give him information. Very good front.”
“He’s got some brains,” Brad remarked wryly. He looked at Hawk again and added, “Don’t think I won’t check up on you when I get back to my office.”
It was a small warning that he hadn’t earned Brad’s trust yet. Fair enough. He didn’t care, either. As long as Amber wasn’t really going out with the man, who cared what Bradford Sun thought of him? “Dig away.” Hawk shrugged. “Why don’t you spend some time going after Dilaver instead?”
“Brad raids Dilaver’skafenaswhenever he has reliable information from me,” Amber said, “but Dilaver, as you know, is very hard to catch.”
What, the man couldn’t speak for himself? “All you have to do is raid his compounds with a bunch of peacekeepers and shoot a lot of bullets,” Hawk said very politely.
“We’re under NATO and international laws, Mr. McMillan,” Brad said equally politely. “And, if I may also point out, Dragan Dilaver appears to be under the protection of the United States government.”
“Certain sectors of the U.S. government,” Hawk swiftly corrected. Nothis.He had never pretended to understand all the political games played back home, but since going under training with GEM and the COS organizations, he had a better picture of how many covert operations crisscrossed each other. Dilaver was a useful asset for now and that was why he was alive. He didn’t agree with the reasoning behind it, but he was under orders and he would do his best to make sure everything went as planned.
“Nevertheless, he does have his connections,” Brad said. “I arrest his minions, but that’s nothing. Even if I managed to lock him up, he’d be freed too soon.”
“You don’t have a lot of confidence in the justice system around here.”
“Hawk, you know very well there isn’t much of one around Macedonia and the former Yugoslavian states,” Amber said quietly. “There are a hundredkafenashere alone, run by a dozen or so pimps who are under the crime organizations. Human and drug trafficking are businesses around here, and the United Nations turns a blind eye to some of it because they are busy rebuilding nations.” She made imaginary quotation marks to the last two words, then added, “Many UN officials have been eliminated by assassins since the war. The last chief of CIVPOL had a bomb scare before Brad was appointed.”
“You don’t have to make him feel sorry for me, Amber,” Brad said wryly. “I think he doesn’t care, as long as I’m not sleeping with you. Right, McMillan?”
“Right,” Hawk agreed.
Amber’s fair skin betrayed her discomfort. He supposed she had to tell Brad about why he was upstairs, and the chief probably wasn’t too stupid to put two and two together. He had heard about the assassinations in between his own deployments overseas, of course. He supposed being a CIVPOL official would make Brad a big target. Dilaver had expressed his dislike for the new chief, saying that he had been targeting his holdings. If nothing else, Hawk respected Bradford Sun for causing the kingpin some grief.
“You two are determined to have a pissing contest over nothing,” Amber said quietly.
“Nothing?” Hawk asked, raising an eyebrow. Her blue eyes flashed at him in answer.
“I have to make sure he’s worth all the trouble he’s going to cause you,” Brad said, looking from one to the other. “Besides, if Lily were here, I wouldn’t feel as if I were intruding.”
Lily…Hawk remembered the tall, dark-haired woman he had met. So Brad was interested in another woman. Good. One problem eliminated. He could concentrate on more reasonable things now.
“I can talk like an adult and eat,” Hawk said softly to Amber.
