Nick Carter
The Defector
CHAPTER ONE
The sun always shines in Acapulco. In a small hotel room overlooking a white-sand beach, Nick Carter, number one Killmaster for AXE, watched the red ball of setting sun splash its color over the sea. He enjoyed the sight and rarely missed it, but he’d been in Acapulco a month now and he felt uneasy restlessness building inside him.
Hawk had insisted he take this time off, and Nick was all for it at first. But a month was too long for the idle life. He needed an assignment.
Killmaster turned from the window, already darkening in dusk, to gaze at the ugly black phone on the nightstand. He almost wished it would ring.
A rustle of bed sheets sounded at his back. Nick completed his turn to face the bed. Laura Best held her long tanned arms out to him.
“Again, darling,” she said in a voice husky with sleep.
Nick went into her arms, his powerful chest crushing her perfectly formed naked breasts. He worked his lips over hers, tasting sleep on her breath. Laura moved her mouth eagerly. With her toes she inched the sheet down from between them. The movement excited them both. Laura Best was an expert at making love. Her legs, like her breasts — indeed like all of her — were perfectly formed. Her face held a childlike beauty containing both innocence and wisdom and, at times, open desire. Nick Carter had never known a more complete woman. She was all things to all men. She had beauty. She was rich, thanks to the oil fortune left to her by her father. She had brains. She was one of the international Beautiful People, or as Nick preferred, Jet-Set leftovers. Making love was her sport, her hobby, her vocation. For the past three weeks she’d been telling her international friends she was madly in love with Arthur Porges, buyer and seller of government surplus goods. Arthur Porges happened to be Nick Carter’s present cover.
Nick Carter also had few equals in the love-making department. Few things satisfied him quite as much as making love to a beautiful woman. Making love to Laura Best satisfied him completely. And yet—
“Oh!” Laura cried. “Now, darling! Now!” She arched against him, raking her fingernails across his tight-muscled back.
And when they had completed their love act together, she went limp and fell away from him, panting.
She opened her large brown eyes, looking up at him. “God, that was good! That was the best yet.” Her eyes swept over his chest. “You never get tired, do you?”
Nick smiled. “I get tired.” He lay beside her, pulled one of his gold-tipped cigarettes from the nightstand, lit it and offered it to her.
Laura raised herself on one elbow to see his face better. She shook her head at the cigarette. “The woman who makes you tired will have to be more woman than I am.”
“There aren’t any,” Nick said. He said it partly because he believed it and partly because he figured she wanted to hear it.
She returned his smile. He’d been right.
“That was clever of you,” she said tracing his nose with her index finger. “You always say the right thing at the right time, don’t you?”
Nick took a deep drag from the cigarette. “You’re a woman who knows men, I’ll give you that” And he was a man who knew women.
Laura Best studied him, a faraway glaze filming her large eyes. Her auburn hair cascaded over her left shoulder, almost covering her breast. The index finger slid lightly over his lips, his throat; she spread the palm of her hand on his massive chest. Finally she said, “You know I love you, don’t you?”
Nick didn’t want the conversation to go in the direction it was heading. When he first met Laura, she told him not to expect too much. Their relationship was going to be strictly for laughs. They’d enjoy each other fully, and when that paled they’d part good friends. No emotional hang-ups, no sticky theatrics. She went for him and he went for her. They’d make love and have fun. Period. It was the philosophy of the Beautiful People. And Nick more than went for the idea. He had a break between assignments. Laura was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. Fun was the name of the game.
But recently she’d become moody. At twenty-two she had already been married and divorced three times. She spoke of her past husbands as a hunter speaks of his trophies. For Laura to love, Laura had to possess. And for Nick, that was the one flaw in her perfection.
“Don’t you?” Laura repeated. Her eyes were searching his.
Nick mashed the cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand. “Feel like a moonlight swim?” he asked.
Laura flopped down on the bed beside him. “Damn it! Can’t you tell when I’m trying to propose to you?”
“Propose what?”
“Marriage, of course. I want you to marry me, to take me away from all this.”
Nick grinned. “Let’s go for a moonlight swim.”
Laura did not return his grin. “Not until I get an answer.”
The phone rang.
With relief, Nick moved toward it. Laura caught his arm, holding it.
“You’re not picking up that phone until I get an answer.”
With his free hand, Nick easily loosened her tight grasp on his arm. He picked up the phone, hoping to hear the voice of Hawk.
“Art, dahling,” a female voice said with a slight German accent. “May I speak to Laura, please?”
Nick recognized the voice as Sonny’s, another Jet-Set leftover. He handed the phone to Laura. “It’s Sonny.”
Angrily, Laura jumped out of bed, stuck her pretty tongue out at Nick, put the phone to her ear. “Damn you, Sonny. You picked a hell of a time to call.”
Nick stood by the window looking at but not seeing whitecaps faintly visible over the dark sea. He knew this would be the last night he would spend with Laura. Whether Hawk called or not, their relationship was over. Nick was slightly angry with himself for allowing it to go as far as it had.
Laura hung up the phone. “We’re taking a boat to Puerta Vallarta in the morning.” She said it easily, naturally. She made the plans. “I guess I should start packing.” She stepped into panties, picked up her bra. Her face had a concentrated look, as though she were thinking hard.
Nick crossed to his cigarettes, lit another one. This time he didn’t offer her one.
“Well?” Laura asked. She was fastening the bra.
“Well what?”
“When do we get married?”
Nick almost choked on the cigarette smoke he’d inhaled.
“Puerta Vallarta would be a good place,” she continued. She was still making the plans.
The phone rang again.
Nick picked it up. “Yes?”
He recognized Hawk’s voice immediately. “Mr. Porges?”
“Yes.”
“This is Thompson. I understand you have forty tons of pig iron for sale.”
“That’s right.”
“If the price is right, I might be interested in buying ten tons of it. You know where my office is?”
“Yes,” Nick answered with a broad smile. Hawk wanted him at ten o’clock. But ten o’clock tonight, or tomorrow morning? “Will tomorrow morning be soon enough?” he asked.
“Well,” Hawk hesitated. “I have several meetings tomorrow.”
Nick didn’t have to be told any more. Whatever the chief had for him, it was urgent. Killmaster stole a glance at Laura. Her lovely face was tense. She watched him anxiously.
“I’ll catch the next plane out of here,” he said.
“That will be fine.”
They hung up together.
Nick turned to Laura. If she had been Georgette, or Swee Ching, or any other of Nick’s girls, she would pout and kick up a small fuss. But they would part friends and promise each other that next time would last longer. It wouldn’t work that way with Laura, though. He had never known anyone quite like her. With her it had to be all or nothing. She was rich and spoiled, and used to having her own way.