Another nagging voice took over and asked, What if he wasn’t Hathaway? If she could actually kill a man in cold blood, on no one’s orders but her own, and she got the wrong man, she’d never be able to live with herself. If blaming herself—nearly as much as she blamed him—for Dan’s injury was this hard, killing an innocent man would drive her right over the edge. Not that she hadn’t come close to it on her own in the last three and a half months.
Geri sighed, trying to keep her mind on the business at hand. Him. One look and she’d been fairly certain he was the man she sought, despite the fact that he wasn’t what she’d expected—a dangerously intelligent, selfish, greedy, conscienceless, murdering man. She would have felt better if she’d loathed him on sight, if the evil inside him had resonated throughout his body, like a tangible thing. So often over the years, she’d felt evil in people, recognized it right away. But in him she had not.
Which meant what? That he was simply better at hiding his true self than most of the people she’d encountered?
Geri calmed down and went over what she knew. He used Hathaway’s given name. In all published material, he was the most respectable-sounding “Dr. Alexander Hathaway,” but to friends and family he was simply “Alex.”
The physical characteristics were strikingly similar. The height was dead-on. Weight and build were trickier. Photographs showed him looking quite lean. This man certainly wasn’t heavy, but there was more bulk to him; his arms and shoulders were clearly delineated beneath the T-shirt he wore. She couldn’t help but feel his muscles, plastered against him as she was on the bike.
His hair was longer, enough so that he’d drawn it into a disreputable-looking ponytail at the nape of his neck. His skin was sun-browned all over, his face leaner, harder, and somehow...different.
The surprisingly few photographs available showed Dr. Hathaway in casual snapshots taken by family members, most often with his nieces and nephews, looking young and happy and carefree, as if he didn’t have a sinister bone in his body. She cringed every time she saw him with those smiling children. The man was a murderer, after all.
Walking into the bar, she’d focused on him right away. Hunched over a video game in a pose that showed not much more than his backside in a pair of well-worn jeans, he’d seemed quite boyish to her. It was hard to imagine the man playing theatrical war games with such fervor on a video-game machine wielding the kind of power Dr. Hathaway did. When he’d finally turned around, she’d seen that there was something not quite right about his face, something throwing it off-balance just enough that she wasn’t sure if he was the man whose photographs she’d seen. His nose or his chin, perhaps? She wondered if he’d had plastic surgery, something very subtle to alter his appearance. But then, if he’d had surgery, why would he have been subtle about it?
Then there was his age. Geri would have a hard time believing she and the man calling himself Alex Connor were the same age. She’d always felt older than her age and probably looked it, whereas he seemed impossibly young to her—maybe because Geri had been shooting at people and blowing things up since she was twenty-one, which tended to age people quite rapidly. So her perspective on aging was probably skewed.
Which left only one problem—Alex Connor didn’t seem like an evil person. If anything, he’d been kind to her. Even worse, for a second, back there, when he’d been so close, she’d almost found him...attractive.
Geri gagged a bit.
“You all right?” he called out, turning his head to the side.
“Great,” she lied, wishing above all else that she wasn’t plastered so tightly against him.
He’d had his hands all over her, brushing the glass from her cuts and scrapes, and there’d been a strange heat that seemed to explode between the two of them when he touched her. She simply hadn’t been able to stop it.
When he’d looked at her as if he could devour her right there on the street outside the bar, it had scared her half to death, mostly because for one reckless instant, she’d been blinded by it, her mind erased clean of everything that mattered. She hadn’t been able to think about anything else but letting him do what he’d imagined, what he’d telegraphed to her with nothing but a look.
“God,” Geri muttered softly.
She’d lost it. Totally. She was thinking about killing a man, thinking she could take some pleasure in it. She was also riding on the back of a bike with the same man, her skirt hitched up to her fanny, her body flat against his. The engine was rumbling through her entire body, the noise and the wind blocking out everything in the world but the two of them. She’d discovered, much to her dismay, that he was a living, breathing human being, and that somehow she was both attracted to him and wishing him dead.
It was crazy. She’d been crazy, for months now. Just crazy.
At the moment, she wanted to be anyone but who she was—an agent tracking down a killer, holding his life and probably her own in her hands. If she killed him in cold blood, she might as well kill herself while she was at it. If she didn’t, guilt would probably take care of it for her eventually. Not that it would matter so much—not to the life she’d led up to this point. One utterly unpleasant side effect of the shooting was that she’d learned there wasn’t much to her life at all. That maybe she’d been missing something vital, and she should probably try to fix that, if she could. She honestly didn’t know how, didn’t know where to start, and the whole thing had her scared to death.
Little things, insignificant things she should have been able to put out of her mind, were piling up on top of each other. The cuts on her chest and her palms and her back stung, and she was so tired, her head so heavy. Memories of the night she’d been shot wouldn’t leave her alone, and she was clinging to the back of a sinfully attractive, smiling man she’d actually considered killing the first moment she had a chance.
Life on the edge, she thought cynically. She’d always wanted to be here.
Somehow, it just wasn’t working anymore.
The bike roared on, eating up the distance. There was no other sound, no other sensation but the wickedly enticing warmth of his powerful body and the rush of the wind. She was supposed to hate him, she reminded herself.
But she was so tired of it all, and the ride was somehow hypnotic. It was simply too easy to cling to him, her head turned to the side and resting against his shoulder, the strangely reassuring warmth of his body against hers. Under any other circumstances, it might have been relaxing, even enticing. He could just keep driving, she thought. She wouldn’t have to face any of this if they simply never stopped. Geri caught herself about to fall asleep and jerked herself back to consciousness in what she would have sworn was just a moment later when all sound ceased. So did the motion of the bike and the feel of the wind. Blinking, she tried to clear her vision, to figure out where she was when, from somewhere very close by, a man swore.
“Lady, you need a keeper.”
She felt herself being lifted high off the ground, into someone’s arms, her body sagging against the unyielding muscles of his chest, her head on his shoulder, and she fought back every reflex in her body that would have sent her tearing out of those arms.
“Where are we?” she asked, as the world tilted on its axis.
“My place.”
She choked back an oath. She couldn’t have been nodding off for long—she would have fallen off the bike. And true steep—how unlikely was that? She hadn’t slept soundly since the shooting. Had months of sleepless nights finally taken their toll? Now? At the worst possible time? God, he could have killed her and dumped her body in the desert. She would have been buzzard bait, and no one would have been the wiser.
Equally bad was the fact that she had no idea how they’d gotten here. How the hell was she going to escape if she didn’t know where they were?
Still in his arms and struggling for calm, Geri said, “I can walk.”
“Sure you can,” he muttered, kicking open the door and carrying her inside.
�
�You don’t lock it?” she asked.
“Why would I? The place is about to fall down around me. It’s not like it would be a big challenge to break in. Besides, I don’t keep anything here I can’t afford to lose.”
She swayed a little when he set her on her feet. He kept his hands on her forearms to steady her. She stared down at them for a moment and asked herself how that felt. His hold was easy, firm but gentle, threatening only because she believed he’d shot and killed her friend and because on some level, she liked having his hands on her.
Damn.
When she looked up, he was watching her intently, trying to catalog every nuance of expression on her face. Slowly, deliberately, he took his hands away and said, “Why don’t you sit down for a minute while I get your bag and take care of the bike?”
“Okay.”
Sitting, Geri gave the cabin only the briefest of glances. She was still struck by the fact that she ought to be dead by now. She’d given him ample opportunity. Shaking her head in amazement, she told herself to get it together. She was alive, even if she didn’t deserve to be, and she had work to do.
Then there was the door. He didn’t even lock his own front door, claimed there was nothing here he couldn’t afford to lose. Was that nothing but an offhand remark? Or did he somehow know who she was and what she was looking for? Had he figured he might as well go ahead and tell her it wasn’t here? As if she’d take his word for anything.
Looking around the cabin, she had to admit he would be a fool to keep something valuable here. Of course, he could have been counting on no one finding him.
When Alex returned, he carried her leather bag. Geri wondered if he’d searched it in the time he’d been outside. She carried no official ID, no weapon, just some sophisticated electronic equipment, but it was so tiny she doubted he’d find it, no matter how long he looked.
He set the bag down at her feet. “I should have asked you earlier if there was anyone you needed to call. Anyone who’s expecting you who might worry if you don’t show up.”
“No. There’s no one.”
He nodded. “About the motel in Red Rock—”
“Is it just off the interstate?” she interrupted.
“Yes.”
“Going toward El Paso?”
He nodded.
“I can’t go there,” she claimed.
He surprised her by not even asking why. Instead he said, “We need to clean those cuts of yours and make sure all the glass is out.”
“I know.”
She didn’t want to think of what that process would entail—her nearly naked, with his hands all over her. She shivered. With dread, she told herself. She absolutely dreaded having his hands on her.
Alex went to a door to the right and pushed it open. “Why don’t you get in the shower? Maybe that’ll wash most of the glass out.”
Geri accepted. If necessary, she would have begged for a shower. She was hot, tired, sweaty, and eager for a few minutes alone, for cold, bracing water and a chance to pull herself together before she died of sheer stupidity.
The bathroom was tiny but clean, and Geri thought about searching it. She imagined them furtively searching each other’s things in turn—her bag, his bathroom. What next? She knew—her own body.
Geri cursed again and decided the search could wait. The sound of the water would surely cover any noise she made, but she didn’t want to rush. It would be better to wait until he was asleep tonight and do the job right.
Turning, she caught sight of herself in the mirror, still surprised by what she saw. She’d expected to look ridiculous in the leather miniskirt and minuscule top. But all in all, she hadn’t looked bad before the fight in the bar. Showing all this skin made her uncomfortable, but it had been exciting, too, in a strange sort of way. Men had noticed her in this. Not just the red leather, but her. Her legs, her hips, her breasts. It had given her a wicked thrill, a strange sense of power, appearing to be someone she was not.
Two days ago, when she’d realized what Tanner expected of her, when he’d pulled out the tiny skirt and top, her first impulse had been to laugh. Her next had been to insist that he send someone else. Finally she’d wondered how he couldn’t have realized, when looking for a woman to play this part, that she should have been his last choice.
There wasn’t anything feminine about her, except her height—or lack of it. She was a short, plain, no-nonsense woman. Men did not lust after her. They seldom even noticed her, and she was fine with that. It probably helped her in her work in a male-dominated field. The men around her found it easy to accept her simply as a co-worker, with none of that messy, distracting sexual interest to gum things up. Her sexual experiences had been thoroughly uninspiring, thoroughly forgettable, and she was fine with that. Which was why this assignment had thrown her, particularly this outfit.
No slave to fashion, Geri had an extensive wardrobe of camouflage and basic black. She dressed to blend into the jungle or the night, not to call attention to herself. Never had she worn red leather. When other little girls had been putting on their mother’s nightgowns, pilfering pearls and lipstick and high heels, Geri had been traipsing through the woods with her father while he taught her to track an animal through the forest, to shoot a gun without flinching and to defend herself against someone bigger and stronger than herself.
Daddy was on the Joint Chiefs of Staff now, a career army man with a distinguished combat record and a string of medals Geri couldn’t hope to match. But she still hadn’t figured out how to stop wanting to please him.
She’d done a lot of dangerous things for the agency over the years—done them willingly, without complaint or protest. But why, she’d wondered, upon hearing about this mission, couldn’t Alex Hathaway have hidden away in the jungle? The agency would have given her a big knife, some explosives, and a semiautomatic with enough ammunition to blast away a small army. She could have handled whatever problems she encountered along the way—snakes, bugs, wild animals, crazy men who chased her with guns of their own. No problem. But this... Geri sighed. She’d never expected the agency to give her red leather and want her to use her own body to get the attention of a traitor and murderer.
All she had to do was catch his attention, find out where he was living, search the place, plant her bug and get out. At first, she’d balked at showing up in a way guaranteed to attract so much attention to herself, but as Tanner had explained, the town was so small, any stranger would be noticed. Tanner was betting that if Hathaway was there, he wouldn’t be expecting an agent to show up in what might as well have been a cashing neon sign. Hathaway, they’d learned, had a chivalrous streak where women were concerned; he couldn’t ignore a woman in trouble. Plus, Tanner’s reports indicated Hathaway hadn’t been seen with a woman in the entire three months he’d lived in Texas.
“Believe me, Geri,” Tanner had quipped, “when the man sees you in this outfit, he won’t be thinking about covering his back.”
Standing in front of the mirror in Alex’s bathroom now, she couldn’t help but be surprised at the heat that flared between them. She tried to analyze it in a purely professional way. They were both adults, both had been alone for a long time. They’d been thrown into close physical proximity. He’d had his hands all over her, and she was wearing next to nothing. If she ignored the fact that she was supposed to hate him, it wasn’t surprising that a little sexual tension had reared its ugly head.
And she sensed that he didn’t like it any more than she did. One quick look had told her he didn’t want to want her, but he couldn’t quite help it. Fine. She could handle it. She’d consider it nothing more than an unpleasant complication. She’d deal with it.
A nagging little voice inside said it wouldn’t be that easy. With Dr. Alexander Hathaway, the traitor, the murderer, she could easily hold her own, but with Alex Connor, the sinfully sexy man, she was entirely out of her depth. Geri sagged against the wall, thinking that was a pathetically sad commentary on her life to date—that she
was more comfortable with a homicidal traitor than a smiling, attractive man.
Disgusted with herself, she peeled off the red leather that clung like a second skin. Stepping into the shower, Geri found the water cold. She sucked in a breath as the spray hit her skin for the first time. When the water dug into her injured shoulder, she gasped and turned away.
She’d had far worse injuries on the job. In fact, she still carried bruises from some trouble she’d run into in Mexico a week ago—a bungled dead-end search for Hathaway. She’d been tired in Mexico, too, doubting herself, scared of walking into another disaster, and the combination of things had made her sloppy. She’d started off this mission with even sloppier mistakes—letting things get out of hand at the bar, nearly falling asleep in his presence, feeling something inside her just melt when he touched her.
Deliberately, Geri angled her body toward the cold spray and stood there, letting it sting and burn—her shoulder, her hip and then that long scrape on her chest. She did it because it hurt, because the pain sobered her up and made her think about what was at stake here.
He was a killer and she was an agent on a mission. Nothing else mattered, she told herself. Nothing she felt Nothing she wanted. She could bury it all far beneath her duty, her orders, her training.
“Geri? You okay?”
She tensed. His voice was so clear and so close, he was either in the room with her or had opened the bathroom door, which had no lock. She cleared her throat, but still her voice wasn’t quite steady when she told him, “Fine. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“I brought you a dry towel and an old shirt of mine to put on until we get those cuts covered.”
Geri went hot and cold at the thought of going into the other room and letting him tend her wounds, of having his hands all over her.
Shaking her head to rid it of those treacherous images, Geri finished her shower and dressed.
This was an act, she reminded herself. Nothing she said to Alex, nothing she did, nothing she felt was real. Geri had a gift that served her well in her profession. She studied people, dissected their movements, their expressions, the inflections in their voices. And she stored all the memories inside her, drawing them out when it suited her purpose. The walk she’d used as she’d made her entrance into the bar, the attitude, the play of her hands over her own body, had come from a high-class call girl she’d seen in Monte Carlo years ago.
Spies, Lies and Lovers Page 3
