Alex, she thought, her heart aching, her body stirring to life.
“What?” he asked. “What’s wrong now?”
She shook her head, the words tumbling out. “I was just thinking that everything was so much simpler when I could hate you.”
Heat flared in his eyes. Hope, too. She thought he was going to come charging across the bed to her, that he’d grab her and wouldn’t ever let go, and maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But he must have seen the panic in her eyes. Because he backed up one more step and gave her a wry smile.
“I could work on being annoying again,” he said. “If that would help.”
She smiled, thoroughly aware of the expression unfurling across her face, and that it was ridiculous to be smiling, given the situation they were in. But there it was. A genuine smile.
“You don’t do that very often,” he said, and she remembered how happy he’d been to make her laugh the other night.
No one had ever worried about making her laugh. No one seemed to notice how seldom she smiled.
Suddenly she wasn’t so very tired. She didn’t feel so old, so worn down, so devoid of hope. Life seemed infinitely better, more interesting, more promising, just because he was here and because he made her feel. Even when it was anger and frustration and something very close to hate, he made her feel more than she had in years. Her deadened senses came alive around him, and she found that was so much better than being numb. Scarier, but better.
Before, she had wanted so much to be numb again. That was the last thing she wanted now. She was actually looking forward to what was left of the day—a day spent on the run with a man wanted for murder. It was crazy—truly, unspeakably crazy—but she didn’t mind that part anymore, either.
Alex came to her. He cupped her chin with his hand. Her whole body seemed to tremble anew at his touch.
“You’re a dangerous man,” she said.
He nodded. “Know something else?”
“What?”
“I’d do anything for you.” He kissed her, softly, his lips hardly lingering at all. “Anything I can. Anything you need. I don’t want to see you hurt again.”
Oh, she thought, taking it like a blow, the full impact of his considerable charms coming to bear in the soft, sweet promise.
He was concerned about her, and she sensed that he wanted to protect her, which was silly. She was a highly trained special agent. Even with her head all messed up, mistakes piling around her, she could hold her own with almost anyone. He, on the other hand, was just a man. Very smart, highly skilled, but he spent his life cooking up things in his lab. Although there didn’t appear to be a single geek gene in his altogether-impressive body, he was still a man who worked with his brain, not his body.
And he wanted to take care of her?
So this was sentiment, some odd, inconsequential bit of fluff, she told herself—all to no avail. Inside she was melting, and not just from the considerable sexual heat he generated.
“What is it?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you so reticent about telling me anything as you’ve been today. Go ahead. Let me have it.”
“Nothing,” she insisted. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
Oh, he’d hate it. She knew he would, and she wasn’t above needling him a little, just to change this oddly explosive atmosphere between them.
“I was thinking of what you said. About your wanting to keep me safe. It was sweet, Alex.”
“‘sweet’?” He said it like a dirty word, gave her an odd look, like she’d said the world was flat or something equally ridiculous. “You’re insulting me again, right? I’m just too dense to figure it out anymore?”
“No. I’m not trying to insult you at all.”
Exasperated, he said, “Geri, there’s nothing remotely sweet about my feelings for you.”
And just as deftly, he’d put the ball right back in her court. He liked her. Maybe it was more than that. A lot more. And he wasn’t going to let her ignore it. Petty little half insults weren’t going to dissuade him.
Coward that she was, she said, “I need to get in the shower. I need some help waking up.” She waited until she was inside the bathroom, behind the locked door before she said, “Alex? The other night? When I told you I could be all those different women so easily?”
“Yes.”
“Somewhere along the way, I’ve kind of forgotten how to be myself,” she confessed. “Especially around a man.”
The doorknob rattled. Clearly, he wanted in. “I never imagined you were such a coward, Geri,” he taunted.
“Now you know,” she whispered. She’d told him more about herself than she’d told anyone in years.
Chapter 12
The news was bad. Alex knew by the look on her face when she was on the phone with her partner, a man she cried over in her sleep.
They’d checked out of the motel, ridden for an hour to put more miles between them and anyone who might be tracking them, before she made her call. She stayed on the phone longer than she said she would, ignoring the additional precaution of keeping the conversation brief, no matter how unlikely it was that anyone was tracing the call. She listened, saying little in return, except to ask about the chemical traces and to request that he get a photo of their boss ready to fax to her. Then she asked about her own status with the agency.
She called it “the agency.”
The CIA? Alex wondered. Or something...worse? Something even more dangerous? He knew it was dangerous, but just how dangerous was only now starting to sink in. He still hadn’t gotten the full story about the shooting. Alex feared she had a very good reason to hate him. He wondered if she always would, wondered why that tore at him so.
She finally hung up the phone. They hopped on the bike, tearing off through the back roads, until they stopped in some other little town near the Wyoming border for food and another night in a dingy motel.
Inside the room, Geri turned the heat up full blast. She shrugged out of her jacket and shoes and wrapped herself in a big thermal blanket from the bed, then sat, cross-legged, in the middle of it with her back propped against the headboard. Alex stretched out along the foot of the bed, watching her. When she’d gotten off the phone earlier, she’d simply told him to drive, and he’d done it. The fear in her eyes had been enough to keep him from asking any questions. But that was hours ago, and now he had to know.
“So,” he said, “we’re talking disaster here? Or just a major setback?”
She sighed. “Alex, that night... Nobody helped you get away?”
“No,” he replied.
“Nobody knew what you were doing?”
“I wasn’t doing anything. I was just expecting trouble. Not the kind I got—not somebody on the inside coming after me. But I knew I had to be ready. Why?”
“Do you know a man named Rob Jansen? He’s FBI, a computer expert.”
“No,” he said impatiently. “Why?”
“He was picked up late last night. Apparently a group linked to certain terrorist activities in the Middle East paid him a great deal of money to help get you out of the country. He had a fake passport and a plane ticket waiting for him. He was picked up ready to leave the country.”
“Which means what? Everybody still thinks I’m a traitor? A murderer? Did he tell your people that?”
“He didn’t say much of anything. He was only in custody for a few hours in the middle of last night. There were people searching his apartment overnight, piecing together a case, and when they went back to interrogate him first thing this morning, he was dead in his cell.”
“Dead?” Alex hissed.
“I’m afraid so.”
He laughed. What else could he do. “That’s convenient. He never got a chance to talk? To tell what he knows?”
“No.”
“Did your boss happen to pay Jansen a visit in his cell last night?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We—the agency—didn’t exactly have Jan
sen. It, uh... The military got involved somehow. I couldn’t take the time to ask about everything. But some special-ops people and some of the agency’s people picked him up, and he was in a holding cell at the Marine Corps training center at Quantico, Virginia, when he died.”
“Died?” Alex repeated. This was just getting worse. “Or when he was killed before he could say anything?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. They just found him this morning. He had asthma, and it’s possible he simply had an attack.”
“Or that somebody deliberately brought him into contact with something that triggered an attack. Do you have any idea how easy it is to kill somebody with severe asthma?”
“That easy?” she asked.
He nodded. “And your boss? Was he anywhere near him?”
“He was there where Jansen was being held last night. He would be. It’s Washington. Everybody’s territorial as hell. We’d lost an agent and nearly lost another one. Three of our agents were in on it when the case cracked wideopen, not ten minutes from our headquarters. So Tanner would have been there. It would have been odd if he wasn’t.”
“Tanner?” Alex latched onto the name. “That’s the man who did this to me?”
“I don’t know. God, I don’t know anything, all right? But my boss’s name is Martin Tanner, and he fits the description you gave me. Dan’s with one of the agents who was on duty when you were brought to the safe house that day, and she said Tanner delivered you to them,” Geri said soberly. “I told Dan to try to get his hands on a photo of Tanner—something he could fax us. I want you to look at him. I need you to be certain, Alex. There’s no room for error, here. I’m already out on a limb so far, I could get knocked off at any moment.”
“I know,” he replied. “Believe me, I appreciate it. All of it.”
“For most of my life, my career has meant everything to me,” she said.
“Look,” he said. “If I’m wrong about your boss, you can swear I held you hostage all this time. Tell them I kept you drugged and chained to my bed. It wouldn’t be a big stretch of the truth.”
She laughed then. He’d finally managed to wipe that troubled expression off her face, just for a second, and then it was back, full force.
“We’re going to get out of this,” he promised her. God, he wanted to promise her so much. Everything. “I’m more determined than ever, now, Geri.”
“Me, too,” she said.
They picked up the photo from a little printing company in Wyoming with a public fax, and Alex finally had a name to put with the face of the man who’d betrayed him: Martin Tanner.
They rode for a long time after that, wanting more distance between them and any further communication they had with anyone involved in the case. Late that night, Geri was waiting for another appointed time to call her partner when they stopped at a deserted diner on the edge of a little town just off the interstate near Sundance, Wyoming.
Geri stood rooted to the spot, trying to take in the truth staring her in the face.
“I believe you, Alex,” she said. “I believe that Tanner is the man you saw, that he did it. All of it. It’s just... I’ve known him for years. I’ve trusted him. I’ve put my life into his hands, and I could have sworn he’d never betray me or anyone else at the agency like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “Things happen. People change.”
“I know. But if he set this all up... He made the assignments on this mission. He put Dan and me there. All this. time, I blamed myself for everything that happened, but Tanner did it. He set it up. He set us up.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Geri. This was his doing,” Alex said. “Somehow, we’ll find him. We’ll make him pay for what he’s done.”
“We have to,” she said, more determined than ever now. Revenge was all she had to give the people who’d been hurt by what her boss had done.
Alex frowned. He’d thought a lot about possible ways out of this mess. “Geri, why don’t you call your boss and tell him you’re with me. Tell him I think you and I are the best of friends and that you’re on my side. Tell him you know where I’ve stashed the formula, and ask him to meet you tomorrow to take me in.”
“Alex—”
“We’ve got to end this,” he insisted.
“And what do you think’s going to happen by ending it this way?”
“I think your boss won’t tell anyone he’s heard from you. He’ll either show up alone to take me in—in which case, I’ll never see the inside of a jail cell—or he’ll show up with some goons like the two who showed up at the cabin the other night.”
“You want to set a trap for him?” she asked in disbelief.
Alex nodded.
“And get yourself killed? After all this?”
“Tanner’s the one. This is the way to make him tip his hand.”
“And how do we go about keeping you alive in the middle of all this?”
“That’s where you come in,” he said. “I trust you, Geri. And you have friends you can trust, don’t you? Friends who will help us?”
“It’s still too dangerous.”
He fought for a wry smile. “I told you—I live for danger.”
“Well, I’ve been trained to minimize all risks, and this is not a good risk, Alex.”
“Neither’s what we’re doing right now. We have to flush the man out. We have to take him down.”
“If you’re right about this, Tanner can’t afford to take you in alive.”
“Then we won’t let him take me in,” Alex said. “Think about it. This is the only thing that will end it, right now. You and I have to stop running. It’s too risky with so many people looking for me. And your boss has to be caught.”
“Tanner will come armed to the teeth.”
“So will you.”
“It only takes a second, Alex. A split second. You could end up dead.”
“Are you a good shot?” he asked.
“Not as good as I used to be before I took a bullet in my right shoulder. There was some nerve damage. Nothing works the way it used to,” she admitted. “And even if I wasn’t injured, this is still too risky.”
“I trust you, Geri.”
“God, don’t do that,” she begged.
“What? Trust you?” he asked, amazed. “How could I not trust you now? After all we’ve come through? After the risk you take every minute you stay with me? After the damage you’ve done to your career by being with me and not taking me in? Of course I trust you.”
“Alex?” She looked stricken..
“What?”
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
Her head dipped low, her hands raked through her hair. When she faced him again, he saw anguish in her eyes. “The last man who put his life into my hands ended up in a wheelchair,” she confessed.
He stared at her, only now beginning to understand. “Dan? You blame yourself? For Dan?”
“Yes,” she whispered:
Alex put his hand over hers, squeezing it. He gave her one of his patented smiles. “I thought that was my fault.”
A quick rush of tears came to her eyes. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t be nice to me right now. Or kind. I couldn’t stand it.”
“So, I should be annoying again?”
“It’s so much easier when you are,” she said.
Alex whistled, despite the pain in his lungs, and shook his head, desperate to remove that look from her eyes.
“That’s a helluva way for a man to treat a woman. I annoy you, and you’re happy. I try to be nice to you, and you beg me to stop. I’ve got to wonder what kind of men you’ve been hanging out with, Geri.”
“Thieves, mostly,” she admitted. “Terrorists. Cowards.”
“I would think I’d look pretty good to a woman after that.”
“Fishing for compliments now?” she responded with a bleak smile.
“Well, you’ve got to admit, my ego’s taken a real bruising with you.”
“Yo
ur ego’s colossal, and I can’t believe it’s possible to hurt it. But it doesn’t matter, Alex. We don’t have time for this—”
“This?” he interrupted. “You mean for us?”
“Yes.”
“Geri, this may be all the time we ever have,” he said.
She paled. “Don’t say that.”
“Okay. I won’t. Let’s talk about you turning me over to your boss.”
“It’s a lousy plan, Alex.”
“It’s a great plan. He’s probably desperate right now because you haven’t checked in, because those two thugs at the cabin are dead. He’s got to be scared that you and I are together, and that we might figure out some things between the two of us. Plus, he’s got that whole mess in D.C. coming to a head. He’s had no time to plan. This is our chance. We need to move. Tomorrow.”
“We have no plan.”
“We’ll make one. Tonight. Call your buddy Dan. See if he’ll help us.”
“I don’t like it,” she insisted.
“Baby, neither do L But there aren’t a lot of ways out of this. I know. I’ve had a long time to think about it, remember?”
Her eyes took on that bleak look, as she softly confessed, “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
He clasped a hand to his heart, as if he’d taken a blow, and grinned. “Careful. That’s about the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. I might start thinking you actually like me a little bit.”
“I do,” she said simply.
No smart comebacks. No denials. No pretense. It was amazingly gratifying and frustrating. They had maybe twelve hours before he walked into all kinds of hell, and finally, he was getting somewhere with her.
Determined not to think about that for every bit of the time remaining, Alex took her chin in his hand, kissed her gently on the lips. “You know, you’re not half-bad yourself, babe. Let’s get out of this mess, okay? We’ve got a lot to figure out between the two of us, as soon as this is over.”
Spies, Lies and Lovers Page 17
