Frozen Fire Read Online Free Page A

was about, what every emperor and despot had ever dreamed of—the power to make the world change at one person’s command. He was that person.
    He picked up his phone and punched a single number. Less than a minute later, he heard a sleepy female voice, that of Victoria Clark, his secretary of national security and chief paranoiac. The woman whose job it was to keep him safe and happy.
    “Hi, Dennis.”
    “Hi, Vic. I’m on my way to the island. Meet me at my office in half an hour.”
    “Is something wrong? Is everyone with you?”
    The thought of dragging the senior executives of some of the world’s major corporations out of bed and onto a plane before dawn made him smile. “No, I’m alone. I want to get the day going. It’s going to be unforgettable, Vic. Let’s get ’em, tiger. See you in thirty.”
    “Wait. Don’t hang up.”
    Dennis could tell by the soft noises in the background that she was pushing herself to sitting position, getting focused. It rarely took Vic this long to focus on anything, but then, he didn’t usually get her up in the middle of the night.
    Vic was his workhorse, his closest confidante, and the person who knew more of his secrets than anyone. She was the person he trusted the most—at least that’s what he told people. The reality was that Dennis trusted no one but himself.
    He had to let people into his circle, but he knew the closer he let them get, the more they had on him, the more he was worth to them. The market price of betrayal was something that never lost value, and Vic was the one person who could command the highest fee for betraying him.
    Betrayal was a lesson he’d learned the hard way and, as such lessons do, it had altered his thinking in an instant. Since the first time Dennis had been stabbed in the back by someone he trusted, the degree of closeness and his level of real trust in a person had moved along opposing axes. As one went up, the other went down. Treating betrayal as a “when” rather than an “if” made life much easier.
    It was his only gospel, and it worked.
    “Dennis, you need to fly with your guests. You need to be there with them—”
    “I’ve been with them for two days nonstop. I’ll see them when they get in, in a few hours. Look, I want to go straight down to the habitat when I get there, okay? With you.”
    “I—”
    “Not interested in all the many reasons you can’t or won’t go there, Vic,” he interrupted. “You’re going.”
    Dennis disconnected before she could reply and sat back to sip his coffee.
    In less than twenty-four hours, the world would be a different place. Victoria Clark was one of the few people who knew just how different it would be, and she was going to be at his side today. All day. Today of all days the risk was inordinately high.
    4:30 A.M. , Saturday, October 25, Miami, Florida
    Lieutenant Colonel Wendy Watson lay naked on the rough sheets, staring at the shifting patterns of light playing on the cheap popcorn ceiling of anapartment that wasn’t hers. Being there, next to a man she’d only met three months ago, a man who had changed her life and its purpose, was an atypical move for her. And that was a word she’d rarely—make that never—known to be applied to herself. If there was one word that she’d heard used to describe her more than any other, despite all the obstacles she’d overcome in her life, despite everything she’d accomplished, that word was “typical.”
    It wasn’t a fair description nor was it an accurate one. That didn’t matter to the many people who had uttered it, under their breath derisively or more loudly with intimations of expectations met, upon hearing what Wendy Watson had done, was doing, or was intending to do. She’d heard it when she’d graduated at the top of her class from the most prestigious public high school in Connecticut. When she’d graduated at the top of her class from the United States Air Force Academy. When she’d been selected to train