by Debra Webb
She blinked rapidly, her head doing that side-to-side thing again as if the very idea was blasphemy. “You’re not like David,” she argued.
He pushed off the table and moved toward her, lowering his voice an octave, slowing the cadence of his words as he recalled the numerous taped conversations he’d listened to. “I can do anything it takes to get the job done, Elizabeth.” Her head snapped up at his use of her first name. He said it with emphasis, the same way Maddox used to. “You’d be surprised at just how versatile I am.”
Her pupils flared. She shivered. But it was the little hitch in her breathing that actually got to him, made his pulse skitter and chinked the armor he wore to protect his emotions. He shook his head and looked away. How the hell had he let that happen?
“You expect me to trust anything you say?”
Well, she had him pegged, didn’t she? Apparently she’d accepted every rumor she’d heard as fact. “Bottom line, Doc, I can’t do this without you.” His gaze moved back to hers and he saw the concern and the hurt there. Dammit, he did not want to hurt her. Maddox had done that well enough himself, but she would never know it. “Will you help me or not?”
She tilted up that determined little chin and glared at him, a new flash of anger chasing away the doubt. “And if I refuse, what then?”
“People will die.”
She blinked, but to her credit she didn’t back off. “So I’ve heard. Can you be more specific? I need to know what I’m getting into here.” Her compact little body literally strummed with her building tension.
The question kind of pissed him off. Or maybe it was the glaring fact that he couldn’t keep his mind off her every reaction, couldn’t stay focused. “You know, Doc, according to Director Calder, you generally don’t question his requests. I understand this is personal,” he growled, “but do you really think Maddox would have a problem with me borrowing his face for a little while?”
Her fists clenched and Hennessey had the distinct feeling that it was all she could do not to slap him. Good. He wanted her responses to be real, wanted to clear the air here and now. He didn’t need her hesitation coming back to bite him in the ass down the line.
“David would probably say it’s the right thing to do,” she said tightly. “It’s me who has the problem.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her misplaced loyalty. He couldn’t help wondering if, when he died, anyone would think so highly of him. Not very damned likely. He was far too open to lead anyone that far off track. Well, except for his targets and that was his job.
In his personal life he kept things on the up-and-up. He never lied to anyone, most especially a woman.
He liked women. Before he could put the brakes on the urge, his gaze roamed down the length of her toned body, admiring those feminine curves, before sliding back up to that madder-than-hell expression on her pretty face.
He liked women a lot. They knew what they were getting with him. If he and the doc did the deed there would be no questions or doubts between them.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
Mainly because it would be stupid.
Not to mention the fact that she looked ready to take off his head and spit down his throat.
Fine. If she wanted to play hardball, he was game. “You want to know specifics?” He leaned closer, so close he could see the tiny flecks of gold in those glittering green eyes. “You’ve completed makeovers on fourteen operatives in the past thirty months. Two of those operatives are dead.” One being the man who taught him everything he knew, but he didn’t mention that. He had no intention of giving her any personal ammunition. In addition, holding on to control was far too important for him to let his personal issues with this mission get a grip right now. He kept those feelings tightly compartmentalized for a later time. “If I don’t stop these guys the rest of those operatives will end up dead as well.”
“That’s…that’s impossible,” she stammered, some of the fight going out of her. “How could they know who and where these people are? Who has access to that information?” Her gaze dropped to his lips but quickly jerked back up to his eyes. She looked startled that she had allowed the weakness.
Hennessey laughed softly, allowing his warm breath to feather across those luscious lips. Damn, he was enjoying this far too much. Maybe he should just cut loose and say what was on his mind. That he would do this with or without her help, but that if she had a couple of hours he would show her what she was missing if she really wanted to know how well he lived up to his infamous reputation.
Dumb, Hennessey. Focus. Apparently she was experiencing almost as much trouble as he was.
In answer to her question, he tossed her a response she was not going to like. “You want to know who has access to those names and faces? Directors Calder and Allen, of course, the president, your former boyfriend, me and you.” He said the last with just as much accusation as she’d thrown at him earlier.
She shuddered visibly, inhaled sharply, the sound doing strange things to his gut, making him even angrier or something along those lines. “Could someone else have gained access to the files?” she demanded, hysteria climbing in her voice.
He shook his head slowly and prepared to deliver the final blow. “Not a chance. Since Maddox is dead and, well, the president is the president, I’d say that narrows down the suspect list to the two directors outside that door.” He hitched his thumb in that direction. “And you and me.”
Fury whipped across her face, turning those green eyes to the color of smoldering jade. “If you think this tactic is going to pressure me into a yes, you’re sadly mistaken, Agent Hennessey.”
“Suit yourself.” He straightened, a muscle in his cheek jerking as he clenched his jaw so hard his teeth should have cracked. It took a full minute for him to grab back some semblance of control. “Then consider this, Dr. Cameron.” He glared down at her, his own fury way beyond reining in now. “If you don’t do this most likely my mission will fail, then those operatives will eventually be found and murdered, one by one.”
She held her ground, refused to look away though he knew just how lethal his glare could be. “You said two are already dead?” she asked. Her voice quavered just a little.
“That’s right,” he ground out, ignoring the twinge of regret that pricked him for pushing the jerk routine this far. “And so are their families.” He fought the emotion that tightened his throat. He would not let her see the weakness. “You see, Doc, these people aren’t happy with just wiping out the list of agents who’ve gone against what they believe in, they play extra dirty. They kill the family first, making the agent watch, and then they kill the agent, slowly, painfully.”
Her eyes grew wider with each word. The pulse fluttered wildly at the base of her throat. She didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to know. Too bad. It was the only way.
“So, it’s your choice,” he went on grimly. “You can either help me stop them or you can try to sleep at night while wondering when the next agent will be located and murdered.”
She did turn away this time. Hennessey took a deep breath and cursed himself for being such an idiot. Saying all that hadn’t been necessary. But, on some level, he’d wanted to rattle her—to hurt her. He wanted to get to her when the truth was she’d already gotten to him. He’d lost control by steady increments from the moment the director ordered him to start watching her weeks ago.
He had to get back on track here, had to keep those damned personal issues out of this. If the director got even a whiff of how he really felt, he would be replaced. Hennessey couldn’t let that happen. He had to do this for a couple of reasons. “I shouldn’t have told you,” he said, regret slipping into his voice. As much as he’d needed her cooperation, he’d gone too far.
When she turned back to him once more, her face had been wiped clean of emotion, and her analytical side was back. The doctor persona was in place. The woman who could go into an operating room and reconstruct a face damaged so badly tha
t the patient’s own family couldn’t identify her. No wonder she walked around as cold as ice most of the time. It took nerves of steel and the ability to set her emotions aside to do what she did.
He should respect that.
He did.
It was his other reactions that disturbed him.
“What do you want from me?”
The request unnerved him at a level that startled him all over again.
He focused on the question, denying the uncharacteristic emotions twisting inside him. “I need you to do your magic, Doc.” His gaze settled heavily onto hers. “And I need you to work with me. You knew Maddox intimately. Help me become him… just for a little while. Long enough to survive this mission. Long enough to do what has to be done.”
For three long beats she said nothing at all. Just when he was certain she would simply walk away, she spoke. “All right.” She rubbed at her forehead as if an ache had begun there, then sighed. “On one condition.” She looked straight at him.
The intensity…the electricity crackled between them like embers in a building fire. She had to feel it. The lure was very nearly irresistible.
“Name it,” he shot back.
“When this is over, I give you back your face. I don’t want you being you with David’s face.”
He wanted to pretend the words didn’t affect him…but they did. He’d be damned if he’d let her see just how much impact her opinion carried. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he insisted.
“Then we have a deal, Agent Hennessey. When do we start?”
Chapter Four
Elizabeth sat in her car as the purple and gray hues of dawn stole across the sky, chasing away the darkness, ushering forth the new day.
She’d managed a few hours sleep last night but just barely. Her mind kept playing moments spent with David, fleeting images of a past that had, at the time, felt like the beginning of the rest of her life.
How could she have been so foolish as to take that risk? She had known that a relationship with a man like David was an emotional gamble, but she’d dived in headfirst. The move had been so unlike her. She’d spent her entire life carefully calculating her every step.
She’d known by age twelve that she wanted to be a doctor, she just hadn’t known what field. As a teenager, pediatrics had appealed to her, in particular helping children with the kind of diseases that robbed them of their youth and dreams. But at nineteen her college roommate had been in a horrifying automobile accident and the weeks and months that followed had brought Elizabeth’s future into keen focus as nothing else could have.
Watching her friend go from a vibrant, happy young woman with a brilliant future ahead of her to a shell of a human being with a face that would never be her own had made Elizabeth yearn to prevent that from ever happening again…to anyone.
She’d worked harder than ever, had thrown herself into her education and eventually into her work. That burning desire to do the impossible, to rebuild the single most individual part of the human body, had driven her like a woman obsessed.
Elizabeth sighed. And maybe she was obsessed. If so, she had no hope of making it right because this was who she was, what she did. She made no excuses.
She dragged the keys from her ignition and dropped them into her purse.
But this was different.
Though she had changed faces for the CIA before, a fact for which she had no regrets, this was so very different.
Elizabeth emerged from her Lexus, closed the door and automatically depressed the lock button on the remote. The headlights flashed, signaling the vehicle was now secure.
She inhaled a deep breath of the thick August air. It wasn’t entirely daylight yet and already she could almost taste the humidity.
“Might as well get this done,” she murmured as she shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose and then trudged across the parking lot.
The CIA had leased, confiscated or borrowed a private clinic for this Saturday morning’s procedure. She noted the other vehicles there and, though she recognized none of them, assumed it was the usual team she worked with on these secret procedures. Of course, she would prefer her own team, but the group provided by the CIA in the past were excellent and, admittedly, a sort of rhythm had developed after more than a dozen surgeries.
A guard waited at the side entrance. His appearance made her think of the Secret Service agents who served as bodyguards for the president.
“Good morning, Dr. Cameron,” he said as she neared. Though she didn’t know him, he obviously knew her. No surprise.
“Morning.”
He opened the door for her and she moved inside. It wasn’t necessary to ask where the others would be, that part was always the same. Most clinics were set up on a similar floor plan. This one, an upscale cosmetic surgery outpost for the socially elite, was no different in that respect. The plush carpeting rather than the utilitarian tile and lavishly framed pieces of art that highlighted the warm, sand-colored walls were a definite step up from the norm but the basic layout was the same.
Agent Dawson stepped into the hall from one of the examination rooms lining the elegant corridor. “The team is ready when you are, Dr. Cameron.”
“Thank you, Agent Dawson.” Elizabeth didn’t bother dredging up a perfunctory smile. He knew she didn’t like this. She sensed that he didn’t either. But they both had a duty to do. An obligation to do their part to keep the world as safe as possible. She had to remember that.
The prep room was quiet and deserted and she was glad. She wanted to do this without exchanging any sort of chitchat with those involved, most especially the patient.
As she unbuttoned and dragged off her blouse in one of the private dressing rooms, glimpses of those no-longer-welcome flickers of memory filtered through her mind once more. The last time she’d undressed for David. The last time they’d kissed or made love.
So long ago. Months. Far more than the two he’d been dead.
Her fingers drifted down to her waist and she unzipped her slacks, stepped out of her flats and tugged them off. The question that had haunted her for months before David had died, nagged at her now.
Had he found someone else?
Was that the reason for the tension she’d felt in him the past few times they were together?
Would she ever know how he’d died? Heart attack? Didn’t seem feasible considering his excellent health, but healthy men dropped dead all the time. Or had he been killed in the line of duty?
She shook off the memories, forced them back into that little rarely visited compartment where they belonged. She did not want to think about David anymore, didn’t want to deconstruct and analyze over and over those final months they had spent together.
None of it mattered now.
After slipping on sterile scrubs, cap and shoe covers and then washing up, she headed to the O.R. where the team would be waiting.
More of those polite and pleasant good-mornings were tossed her way as she entered the well-lit, shiny operating room. One quick sweep told her that the equipment was cutting edge. Nothing but the best. But then it was always that way. The CIA would choose nothing less for their most important assets.
“He refused to allow us to prepare him for anesthesia until you arrived, Doctor,” the anesthesiologist remarked, what she could see of his expression behind the mask reflecting impatience.
“Hey, Doc.”
The insolent voice dragged Elizabeth’s gaze to the patient. “Good morning, Agent Hennessey.” As she spoke, a nurse moved up next to Elizabeth and assisted with sliding her hands into a pair of surgical gloves.
“I think this crew is ready for me to go night-night,” Hennessey said in that same flirtatious, roguish tone. “But I wanted to have a final word with you first.”
With her mask in place, Elizabeth moved over to the table where Agent Hennessey lay, nude, save for the paper surgical gown and blanket. She frowned as she considered that even now he didn’t look vulnerable. This w
as a moment in a person’s life when they generally appeared acutely helpless. But not this man. No, she decided, he possessed far too much ego to feel remotely vulnerable even now as he lay prepared for an elective surgical procedure that could, if any one of a hundred or more things went wrong, kill him.
Those unrepentant blue eyes gleamed as he stared up at her. “Any chance I could have a moment alone with you?” he asked quietly before glancing around at the four other scrub-clad members of her team.
Elizabeth nodded to the anesthesiologist. He, as well as the two physicians and the nurse, stepped to the far side of the room.
“What is it you’d like to say, Agent Hennessey?” she asked, her own impatience making an appearance.
“Look, Doc—” he raised up enough to brace on his elbows “—I know you didn’t really want to do this.” His eyes searched hers a moment. “But I want you to know how much I appreciate your decision in my favor. I feel a hell of a lot better about this with you here.”
She couldn’t say just then what possessed her but Elizabeth did something she hadn’t done in a very long time, she said exactly what she was thinking rather than the proper thing. “Agent Hennessey, my decision had nothing to do with you. I’m doing this for my country…for those agents who might lose their life otherwise. But I’m definitely not doing this for you.”
Looking away, uninterested in his reaction, she motioned for the others to return.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said crisply.
The team, people whose real names she would likely never know, moved into position, slipped into that instinctive rhythm that would guide them through the process of altering a human face. As the anesthesia did its work Agent Hennessey’s eyelids grew heavy, but his gaze never left Elizabeth. He watched her every move.
In that final moment before the blackness sucked him into unconsciousness, his gaze met hers one last time and she saw the faintest glimmer of vulnerability. Elizabeth’s heart skipped at the intensity of what was surely no more than a fraction of a second. And then she knew one tiny truth about Agent Joe Hennessey.
