Spies, Lies and Lovers

by Sally Tyler Hayes

  Standing outside in the pleasantly cool night, she wrapped her arms around her waist and stared up at the stars, a brilliant blaze of light. She was exhausted and angry and felt like an absolute failure. There was nothing here, no clue as to where he might have stashed that formula. Unless it was on his computer, hidden somewhere. Maybe he had part of it—the part he was still working on. But he wouldn’t keep the whole thing here. It was too valuable. It left him too vulnerable, as well, if someone could come here, grab him and get the complete formula. So where would he hide it?

  They hadn’t found anything he owned—no house, no boat, no safe deposit box, no rented storage unit—nothing. They’d been watching his entire family ever since he’d disappeared, and he hadn’t sent them anything. They’d been watching his friends. Nothing. So where was it?

  Disgusted, Geri turned to go back inside when she had an odd sense that something wasn’t right. Instincts, honed over the years, led her to turn around slowly, her eyes scanning the area as far as she could see. She caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye, something faroff and indistinguishable at this distance. But something. Something moving, she realized, crouching down instinctively behind the bike.

  What the hell was it? There was nothing out here. No sound. No people. No cars. Nothing close to the cabin at all.

  Geri waited, unmoving, for five full minutes before she saw something moving again. Someone coming toward the cabin.

  Her heart started pounding, adrenaline rushing in. Someone was coming for them? For Alex? She stayed where she was for a minute, staring, needing to be sure.

  This couldn’t be anyone Geri worked with. The mission parameters had been absolutely clear. The plan was for her to be in and out in twenty-four hours, but they’d given her forty-eight, just in case, before anyone would make a move on the cabin. Forty-eight hours with an absolute communications blackout. They weren’t taking any chances on this one. No one would make a move to help her, to get her out, either, until forty-eight hours had passed. Whoever this was, he wasn’t from Division One.

  “Damn,” Geri muttered.

  There were only about a half-dozen other terrorist groups after what Alex had. Just her luck, one of them had finally found him.

  She took one more look into the dark night, crept around the cabin to search from all angles. There were two of them, she decided—moving cautiously, slowly. She didn’t think they’d detected her presence outside.

  Slipping back inside, she thought about simply trying to pick them off as they moved close. But all she had was a 45, and they were sure to have something much more deadly, with greater range. She’d checked earlier—Alex didn’t have a silencer—so she couldn’t count on the element of surprise. She could wait for them to slip into the cabin and try to take them out, one by one, but it was risky. She’d rather pick her time and her place to confront them, not leave everything up to them.

  And loathsome as the thought of protecting Alex Hathaway was, she had to keep him alive, at least until she figured out what he’d done with the formula. Geri swore at the irony of it protecting Alex—when she’d toyed with the idea of coming here and killing him outright.

  She went back to the bedroom, saw him lying there on the bed, unconscious, helpless. She thought about taking the laptop and the gun and leaving him here to face them alone. She might be able to slip away undetected, and there had to be something in that computer to tell them where he’d hidden the formula.

  Do it, she thought. Leave him here, as vulnerable as a baby. Let them kill him, torture him, tear him limb from limb. No one would ever be able to pin his death on her. All she had to do was leave him this way. It was tantamount to signing his death warrant. Disgusted, Geri found that she couldn’t. She didn’t even want to think of the reasons why.

  Cursing even more viciously than before, she looked at the clock. A little more than five hours had passed since she’d slipped him the tranquillizer. Somehow, she had to wake him up, fast. She’d have to deal with whatever happened next. He was likely to be furious, once he could think clearly, and she had to get him to cooperate, to trust her—that was a laugh—at least long enough for them to get out of here.

  Geri went to the bed and shook him firmly by the shoulders. Bleary-eyed, he looked at her, his pupils slowly focusing on her.

  “Alex, get up,” she said firmly, shaking him some more. “What?” His speech was slurred, and his hand reached for his head, as if he weren’t quite sure it was still attached to his body.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Someone’s outside. They’re heading this way, and we’ve got to get out of here. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “What?” He was still out of it.

  She slapped him hard across the face, finding it moderately satisfying. He blinked twice, then seemed a bit more alert.

  “Alex, I mean it. We don’t have much time. They’ll be here soon. They’ll kill us, if we don’t get out of here. Now get up.”

  He propped himself up on his elbows, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and she pulled him up the rest of the way. The sheet fell to his waist, and she realized he was still naked, and she was wearing nothing but a shirt and panties. One more thing they had to take care of quickly.

  “Where are your clothes?” she asked. Then she remembered. She’d searched the entire cabin, after all. She found him a pair of pants and a shirt, some socks and his shoes, and threw them at him. “Get dressed.”

  He was wavering back and forth as he sat there staring at her.

  It was hopeless, she decided, itching to check the progress of the men making their way toward the cabin. She hurried into her own clothes and shoes, collected his gun and ammunition, then grabbed the keys to the motorcycle. If they managed to eliminate the two men closing in on them, they’d need a way to get out of here quickly, in case the two had backup. That done, Geri checked the windows. There they were. Both of them. Still coming closer, but still moving slowly.

  She went to grab her own bag from the bathroom, wanting the sophisticated tracking device inside it, and when she turned back around, Alex was standing in the doorway, leaning weakly against the frame, a gun in his none-toosteady hand, pointed directly at her.

  Where the hell had he gotten that gun? She still had his tucked into the waistband of her shorts.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  Her chin came up. Of all the times to argue, this was not it. “Does it matter right now? There are some men on their way here. Right now. Look outside if you don’t believe me.”

  “Believe you?” He laughed. “That’s rich.”

  “Okay, so neither one of us is a model of virtue. It doesn’t matter right now, Alex. We’re going to die, and soon, if we don’t find a way out of here.”

  “You drugged me,” he said, like he still couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes, I did,” she admitted. “Could we argue about this later?”

  “Give me my other gun,” he ordered.

  Geri hesitated, knowing she could likely draw her weapon and beat him to the trigger. Much as she’d longed to shoot him earlier, she couldn’t do it now. It would tip off the men outside, and she needed all the advantage she could get.

  “The gun, Geri.”

  “Alex, you don’t want me to do that.”

  “I don’t?” He laughed for a second before his jaw clenched hard with resolve and his finger squeezed back a fraction on the trigger. “Give it to me.”

  Geri did. He’d just about convinced her he’d shoot her.

  “Who do you work for?” he asked.

  “The United States of America. Forgive me, I don’t have my ID on me.”

  “The good old U.S. of A. got me into this damned mess,” he complained.

  “You got yourself into this, you bastard,” she hissed, hating him, absolutely hating him, and finding out too late that she had a burning desire to live a little longer at least. She wanted the satisfaction of seeing him punished.

&
nbsp; They probably would have gone another round or two, but there was a sound from outside the cabin—a tiny, nearly imperceptible sound—from the front porch, she guessed. Damn.

  “I told you. We can’t afford to fight with each other right now, Alex. Later, I promise you, I’d love to have it out with you. But not now.”

  He hesitated, still holding his gun on her.

  “Somebody’s going to come creeping through the front door any minute now. Somebody else is probably standing outside that window behind your head. If you want to die, just keep doing what you’re doing. If you don’t, give the gun back to me.”

  Chapter 8

  Alex couldn’t think. It was as if a thick, blanketing fog had invaded his own head, and he had to think his way through it. He shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it and stared down at the woman who’d so absolutely betrayed him. He could still hardly believe it.

  She’d drugged him. That was why he couldn’t think. Because she’d drugged him. She’d lied to him and used him and now she was probably going to kill him.

  “Give me the gun, Alex,” she whispered.

  “Why the hell would I give you a weapon?”

  “Because I’m not the one on the edge of a drug-induced haze right now, and I’m a damned good shot. From all I’ve read about you, you’re a lousy shot stone-cold sober.”

  He swore, because it was true. All of it.

  “Alex,” she said. “If I wanted you dead, you would be. Believe me, I’ve had plenty of chances.”

  He swore viciously. In this entire mess, no one’s betrayal had hurt the way hers did. He’d fallen asleep holding her in his arms, making love to her, and woken up to the knowledge that everything she’d said to him had been a lie.

  Alex thought he heard something else from outside—a muffled curse, perhaps. He’d strung a crude booby trap around the cabin, thinking that if anyone tried to sneak up on him at night, he might at least hear about it first Evidently it was working. And they had to be close.

  He looked up and saw two blurry images of Geri floating toward each other, blinked to clear his vision, to no avail. “What the hell did you give me?”

  She named a substance he recognized.

  He swore again. “How much?”

  “Maybe four CCs. Alex, give me the damned gun.”

  He handed her one, because he couldn’t even calculate the effect of four CCs of that drug on someone of his body weight and had no idea how long it had been in his system. Because he couldn’t even see straight, and as she’d so sweetly pointed out, if she wanted to kill him, she’d had all night to do it.

  It happened fast after that. They barely picked up the sound of footsteps on the porch, the door creaking open. Geri shoved him behind her, aimed and fired. The intruder’s gun fired as he went down, the bullet zipping past her right ear and Alex’s. Alex swore. She didn’t even blink, just kept her gun trained on the fallen man, cool as could be.

  Evidently he’d hooked up with a real pro.

  Geri made her way over to the intruder, checked for a pulse, then pocketed her own weapon in favor of his, a wicked-looking little submachine gun. She cleaned the body of spare ammunition, as well, her face a carefully blank mask when she turned around.

  He didn’t even know her, he realized. He had no idea who she was. He started to say something, but she held up a hand to stop him and motioned toward the door. They waited for what seemed like forever, crouched in the corner behind cover that was dubious at best. She didn’t even seem to breathe, her gaze never wavering, her patience finally rewarded.

  The door inched open once again, a gunman clad entirely in black slipped inside, and she nailed him, too. He collapsed onto the floor, and Alex watched as she quickly disarmed the man, then searched both bodies thoroughly.

  She tossed Alex a wallet she’d taken from one man. He flipped it open to what seemed to be a government-issued ID. “‘Border Patrol’?”

  She shrugged. “They’re fake, but they might come in handy before the night’s over. You might pass for that one in a pinch. We don’t exactly have a lot of resources to work with, here. We’ll have to take what we can get.”

  “‘We’?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Want to stay alive until morning?”

  “That’s one of the best invitations I’ve had in days,” he quipped.

  “We can’t fight them and fight each other,” she said.

  “‘Them’? You just killed them.”

  “Two of them. We don’t know how many more there might be. We need to get out of here, Dr. Hathaway. Do you want to fight with me or do you want to make a run for it?”

  He glanced down at the dead bodies on the floor, at the submachine gun in her hand, at the blank face of a woman he’d held and kissed and nearly made love to in what seemed another lifetime.

  “God, this has got to be nightmare,” he said. But the effects of the drug were receding, and there was no mistaking the sight of two dead bodies in his cabin or the look on her face.

  “Your choice,” she said. “Stay or go? Live or die?”

  He arched a brow. “And you’re not going to kill me?”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  She hated him, he realized. This sweet, lost, vulnerable woman was one of the best liars he’d ever seen, and she hated him. Or she hated who she thought he was, hated what she’d been told about him. He wondered who she really worked for and where she was going to take him. Months on the run, and he’d never thought somebody like her would be the one to bring him down.

  Of course, it was his own damned fault He’d fallen for her act—every little whimper, every tear, every shudder, every bruise.

  “God, you’re good at this,” he said.

  Her head came up, hatred flaring in her eyes.

  Alex shrugged as easily as he could manage. “Hey, it was a compliment.”

  She brought the nose of the gun to the center of his chest, murder in her eyes. “Don’t.”

  “All right” Alex dared to smile. “I’ve made up my mind. I’ll live for the moment. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  They took a quick look outside at her insistence, but didn’t see anything. He glanced at the time and saw that they had an hour or so before dawn. She checked over the dead men lying on the floor once more, slowly, and pulled something out of one of their pockets that had her staring.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Probably nothing,” she said.

  But she was absolutely still, all color gone from her face. It was the first crack in her composure he’d seen. Maybe the lady was human after all.

  “We need to go,” she said, all starch and polish once again. “Get dressed.”

  He did so hurriedly, and they threw some things into her leather bag—clothes, guns, ammunition, his laptop, his cash and hers, some food, some bottled water. She looked at him questioningly.

  “Believe me,” he said, “I’ve thought a lot about how I’d clear out of here if I had to. We’re going cross-country, where there are no roads. Unless you have a better plan?”

  “I just want out Now.”

  “Give me a second,” he said, going to the propane tank.

  She followed him. “What are you doing?”

  “I told you, I’ve thought a lot about leaving. The bike makes a lot of noise. We’ll just call this a diversion. Plus we’ve got bodies in here. There won’t be much left of them when this thing blows. Let whoever’s out there wonder if the explosion got us. Maybe that’ll slow ’em down long enough for us to get away.”

  He opened a valve, and gas started to hiss from the tank. Geri swore and looked at him suspiciously.

  “Hey,” he said. “You’re great with a gun? I’m fabulous with explosives. Let’s go.”

  They jumped on the bike. She didn’t want to let him drive, but he assured her the gunfire and all the blood had cleared his head like nothing else could have. He might have added one more thing—the betrayal. Hers. But the damned cabin was a
bout to blow. The way he felt about her would keep.

  He gunned the engine. Twenty seconds later, the sky exploded like it was the Fourth of July and the cabin blew up in a thousand pieces. They looked over their shoulders, watching as best they could for a few moments, then settled in for the long haul over the flat, colorless, deserted land, her traitorous little body once again plastered against his.

  Nothing like a motorcycle ride, Alex thought.

  For all the drama of its beginning, the ride was relatively uneventful. They headed north, skirting around Lubbock and Amarillo, then crossing into New Mexico. It had been a long, hot, exhausting flight There were several times when they thought they were being followed, but so far, no one had come too close.

  Finally, around dusk, thinking they’d made good their escape, they agreed to stop for the night. They found a tiredlooking motel near Tucumcari, New Mexico, the kind of place that took cash and didn’t ask for credit cards or ID. They picked up some fast food before they checked in, then faced each other across the room, two tired, hot, hungry, bloodthirsty combatants.

  “What do you say we save the fight for after dinner and after we’ve had a chance to clean up?” Alex suggested.

  Geri, her face still that carefully sculpted mask, eyed him warily.

  “I’m starving,” he said. “I’m tired. I’d kill for a cold shower. You can sit outside the bathroom door with your machine gun, if it makes you feel better.”

  “You think this is funny?” she retorted, glaring at him.

  “No, and I’m too tired to fight with you. If you want to shoot me, do it now. Otherwise, I’m taking a shower.”

  He grabbed the duffel bag.

  She stopped him. “Not the computer.”

  “Fine. Keep it,” he said easily, confident that she hadn’t found what she was looking for in it. If she had, he wouldn’t still be alive.