by Kylie Brant
He stared out the window. The view was dispirited—another equally dilapidated building, across a dingy alley. “You can’t blame me for wanting to protect you.”
“Yes, I can.” He did look at her then, saw the passion light her eyes, the determination tilt her chin. “I can if your protective instincts are going to cost me my dearest friend. I won’t let that happen. It’s your decision whether we continue our relationships as friends, or as—” her voice faltered a little, but her gaze didn’t “—as lovers. But one way or the other, our relationship will continue. So go ahead and choose.”
Her voice held a hint of dare, mixed with vulnerability. He’d never seen her like this before, and it was all too easy to be captivated. Like a miserly man hoarding gold coins, he tucked this memory away in his mental collection of images of her—cheeks flushed, eyes bright, and the tough sound of her words at odds with lips that couldn’t quite fight a quiver.
Swamped with emotion, his voice was low and strained. “My wanting you to find a better place to live doesn’t have anything to do with last night.” That statement, at least, wasn’t quite a lie. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Where you live has never affected us. It won’t now.”
“Liar.” Her hand dropped away. “I know you too well, Sullivan. When someone gets too close, you shut down. You’ll let the physical distance be the start of an emotional one.”
Desperation flared, igniting temper. Because the truth of her words stung, he dismissed them. “That’s bull.”
“No, it isn’t. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll make a deal with you.”
He glared at her, his mind swirling with possible ways to convince her to leave. He couldn’t tell her that being this close to him could be dangerous for her, and he wouldn’t admit that she was partially right. “What kind of deal?”
“I’ll look for another apartment, if you promise that when I move, we’ll still see just as much of each other. Still your choice,” she added hastily, flags of color unfurling in her cheeks, “what direction our...friendship takes. But one way or another, you have to promise.”
He turned away from her and propped his fist on the window jamb, leaning against it. Frustration had tension knotting his shoulders. “You’ve got the wrong man. I don’t make promises.” What were promises, really, but a broken string of words handed to kids too young and gullible to know better? Meaningless phrases that turned to ashes in the light of day. He’d ceased believing in promises, or much else, when he was six. And he’d never uttered one. The thought of doing so now, to this woman, had panic licking up his spine.
Her reflection in the glass folded her arms across her chest. “Then I’m not going anywhere.”
He looked out at the bleak view, but her image mirrored over it in the window. The way she did in his life. He’d always pretended that she was allowed to touch it on no more than the surface, just as her reflection rippled across the top of the glass. Last night had shattered that pretense forever.
There had to be a way out of this mess. Instincts honed from a lifetime of training told him that things with Conrad were about to take a deadly turn. Everything he’d been waiting for was about to break, and if he didn’t get her out of here, there was a possibility that she could be pulled right into the middle of it.
He saw her reflection move closer, get lost behind his. Her touch was light, tentative. Her palm glided up his back to stop at his shoulder. It shouldn’t have been enough to have the need pooling in his gut. He could already feel the heat spreading through his veins. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly for a moment, as the familiar wanting, guilt and desperation warred within him.
“All right.” The words were ripped from his throat. “I already said nothing has to change. Your move isn’t going to affect our friendship.”
Her fingers shifted on his shoulder, gently kneading the skin there. “I think you forgot something.” Her voice was soft, and much too close to his ear when she prompted, “We’ll see each other as often as we do now.”
“Yes.”
The waiting stretched between them; she wasn’t going to provide him with any more cues. The words had to come from him. They shouldn’t have been so difficult, so terrifying to speak.
“I promise.”
Sully pushed open the door stenciled with the words Parole and Community Services. He walked past the desk clerk, who gave him a barely perceptible nod. He wound his way through the tiny cubicles until he reached a hallway. He walked down the hall and stopped before room 121, and knocked once at the door.
It opened immediately, and the man who appeared reached out to shake his hand, observing him closely. “Sullivan. How’s it been going?”
“Okay,” he said laconically. His gaze went past Ted Baker, his “parole officer,” to Kale, who was slouched in a chair watching them. “What’s he doing here?”
“I’m part of this case, too, Sullivan,” Kale retorted. “Much as you’d like to forget it.”
Ted brushed a nervous hand over his thinning gray hair and quickly shut the door. He motioned Sully to a seat. “Gentlemen, working an interagency investigation is difficult enough without our getting territorial.”
“This is a DEA case,” Sully said flatly. “I had my cover set up eighteen months before customs decided to horn in.”
“Customs has every right to be involved,” Kale interjected. “Smuggling’s our jurisdiction, remember. You guys should have consulted us to begin with.”
“Customs’ job is to cooperate with other federal agencies, Lowrey, not to sabotage them.” The man flushed and looked away. The anger that had been simmering in Sully for days reached the boiling point, and he leaned forward in his chair. “If I hear from one of my runners again that you contradicted my orders, your part in this case will be over.”
Both men ignored Ted’s feeble protests. “You don’t have the authority to make those kinds of decisions, Sullivan,” Lowrey said.
“It’s my ass on the line out there. This job is risky enough without you stirring things up. Forget about being a customs superhero and concentrate on playing the role assigned to you. I’d just as soon make it out of the case alive.”
“Gentlemen, please.” Ted’s lined face was wearing a light sheen of perspiration. He took off his thin goldrimmed glasses and polished them thoroughly. “O’Shea will be here any minute. Let’s try to be professional.”
Not for the first time, Ted’s fussy manner grated on Sully’s nerves. The man was said to be a whiz with technology, but in this investigation he was the detail man, reporting directly to O‘Shea. The thought of Ted’s immediate superior had Sully subsiding. Collin O’Shea was head of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Florida. He’d been brought in five years ago to clean up the state’s DEA office and clear it of the charges of corruption that continued to taint it. He was tough, but he was fair. He’d been a hell of a field agent himself before he’d gone into supervision, and Sully respected him. The man hadn’t forgotten what it was like in the field, and he went to bat for his agents. Because of the scope of this investigation, he’d been personally involved from the beginning, had handpicked Sully to be the operating agent.
He reached for his pack of cigarettes and drew one out, ignoring Kale’s glower. Lighting it, he took a long drag. Because he knew it would annoy Lowrey, he blew a perfect trio of rings and admired them as they hung in the air.
“Do you have to smoke in here?” Kale complained querulously. “My asthma has been giving me fits lately. And secondhand smoke kills, too, you know.”
“Not reliably.” Sully shifted the cigarette to his other hand, so the smoke trailed in a different direction.
Ted spoke up nervously. “This is a public building, Sullivan. There are rules.”
“Where’s a cop when you need one?”
The door opened then, and Collin O‘Shea stepped inside. Sully knew the man had registered the tension in the room with just one quick sweep of his narrowed green gaze. “Gen
tlemen.” He nodded to each of the men, pulled up a chair, shrugged out of his suit jacket and loosened his tie. Sully watched approvingly. That was another thing he liked about O’Shea. He might be a suit now, but he made no bones about finding the apparel confining.
“Talk to me, Sully.” That piercing green gaze was turned in his direction. “What have you got?”
“Lowrey reported my last meeting with Conrad?”
“Of course I did,” Kale interjected. His sarcasm was thinly veiled. “Go-between is my role, remember?”
“He told us. Got the date set yet?”
“Conrad contacted me today. We set a meeting for next week.”
O’Shea regarded him silently for a moment. “Think this is it?”
“I’m pretty sure. That trip to Colombia was just to let the guy take a look at me. This should be the real thing.”
“I want in on this, Mr. O’Shea,” Lowrey said. He looked from Sully to the other man. “I’ve got just as much right to be at this meeting as he does.”
“Not a chance,” Sully replied flatly.
O’Shea frowned slightly. “I don’t like the idea of you walking into that meeting alone.”
Sully brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply. “These guys aren’t a bunch of dumb dopers. They can’t be, and run an operation this size. Bringing an unknown to a meeting this delicate would be like signing my own death warrant.”
“I insist on being included.”
Everyone’s gaze went to Lowrey. The nervous energy came off the man in waves. “Where’s Kennedy? Why wasn’t he included in this meeting? I’m sure he’d agree with me.” Kennedy was Lowrey’s superior, a suit from customs, who, if he’d ever been out from behind a desk, had developed a highly selective memory about field work. His agency wasn’t exactly immune to corruption, but he’d never be heard to admit it.
“Kennedy couldn’t be here today,” Ted put in.
Sully leaned back in his chair in disgust while the men argued. He’d never be accused of being a team player. He was a loner, solitary by nature, peculiarly suited to the job he did. He’d been paired on several occasions, however, with other sharp DEA agents. He wished heartily, for what seemed the thousandth time, that if he had to be given a partner in this investigation, it had been one of them.
He watched Lowrey unkindly. Instead, he was saddled with an inexperienced kid, still wet behind the ears, who was going to make a mistake because he was too damn ambitious for his own good. A partner he’d never asked for, had never wanted. God save him from interagency politics.
“I’ll take it up with Kennedy myself,” O’Shea said. He turned his attention to Sully. “You’ll wear the transmitter.” It wasn’t a question and Sully didn’t take it as such.
He nodded. He’d begun wearing the compact voice transmitter under his shirt once he’d earned Conrad’s trust. It allowed the agents stationed nearby to hear and document his conversations.
O’Shea spoke to the other men. “Sully’s right. I can’t figure any other way for him. He has to go alone.”
“I demand that you reconsider.” Lowrey’s voice trembled with fury.
O’Shea responded levelly, “I’ll discuss my decision with your supervisor. We’ll debrief again after the meeting.” He nodded a dismissal to his assistant, as well, and Ted picked up a briefcase. He walked silently to the door and held it for Lowrey, who shoved past him without a word. Ted closed the door quietly behind them.
O’Shea turned back to Sully, one brow cocked. “Been busy making friends again?”
Unamused, he leaned toward the desk and stubbed his cigarette out on a glass paperweight. “Kale’s tracking mud on my case.”
The other man grunted. “Be thankful you only have to deal with him. Tiptoeing around the egos of the other agencies involved is enough to give me another bleeding ulcer.”
He was talking about interagency politics, a field agent’s nightmare. The more far-reaching the ramifications of this case got to be, the more other agencies jockeyed for position to get a piece of it. Sully knew the kind of pressure that was being put on O’Shea, but also knew that sometimes an agent got more recognition from his superiors for showing up or embarrassing DEA than for the bust. That fact was enough to keep him wary of Lowrey.
“Do you know where the meeting will be held?”
Sully shook his head. “They’ll pick me up.”
“Cautious little SOBs,” O’Shea muttered. He grinned wolfishly. “I brought a little something that will help, though.” He dug in his pocket and took out what looked like a silver dollar, flipping it through the air to Sully. “For luck. You’re going to need lots of it.”
Turning it over in his fingers, Sully studied it, then raised a questioning gaze to the other man.
Slouching down in his chair, O’Shea crossed one leg over another. “Sweetest little tracking device you’ve ever seen, encased in what appears to be a genuine U.S.-issued silver dollar.”
“Who’ll be covering me?” Sully asked. There was always a team of backup agents lurking quietly in the shadows whenever he and Conrad did business. One of its tasks was to take pictures to be used as evidence when the case was broken; another was to listen to and record the conversations picked up by the transmitter Sully wore. Those agents would also provide his safety net, should the case go bad. He rarely spent time considering the fact that, by the time something went wrong, his backup would probably be too late to do him any good. That was a risk of the business; he’d accepted that in training at the academy in Quantico.
“Constantine and Hansen. They’ll be able to follow you to hell and back when you carry that” He nodded toward the tracking device Sully was slipping into his pocket. His face grew serious as he added, “That’s as safe as I can make it.”
“You’re the one who told me there’s no safe way to do deep cover.”
“That’s right. So don’t be a hero. I don’t want to lose another agent, If this meeting smells bad, make an excuse and try to get the hell out.”
Sully nodded. He’d known the risks when he’d taken this case, had known that few agents would have been willing or able to put their lives on hold for two years and chance a cover as deep as the one he’d taken. The knowledge came without rancor. The surroundings he lived in now weren’t much different than those where he’d been raised. Better actually, then the last few places he’d lived as a kid, when his mother’s age and life-style had taken their toll on the looks and body she’d always cashed in on. This assignment had been his choice; he hadn’t thought twice about accepting it. It had belonged to someone with little other life, and nothing to lose. Which described him perfectly.
Had described him perfectly. A mental vision of Ellie swam across his mind. It would be stupid to believe that their one night together over two weeks ago would change anything between them. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, let it. She hadn’t given him the chance to utter the apologies she deserved, had instead offered to continue a sexual relationship with him in the most innocently erotic way possible.
Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the efforts of the window air conditioner. A true depiction of hell wasn’t scorching flames for all eternity. It was being given one night with the woman he wanted most in the world, but deserved the least. It was the mental reruns of every little detail: how small her body had felt under his; the stunned look on her face as the first orgasm had shuddered through her, the tight inner clenching that had milked his own climax. It was having her offer him everything he’d ever wanted, and never dared hope for.
It was having Ellie within reach, yet knowing that to take what she was offering would shatter the few illusions he still had about himself.
“Sully?”
He shifted his gaze to O’Shea’s. “What?”
“Don’t take any unnecessary risks. This case is getting to be a minefieid.”
O’Shea’s words echoed in his head long after he’d left him. A minefield. One false step, and everything could be bl
own to bits. It was a good description of this investigation.
He lit a cigarette and peered through the smoke at the bus rumbling to a stop at the corner. It was bitterly ironic that the word described his relationship with Ellie even better than it did this case.
Chapter 8
Elizabeth dropped onto the love seat and surveyed her new home through exhausted eyes. Odd that she hadn’t remembered how her puny belongings could take so much time to pack, and could be so troublesome to move. Boxes still littered the hardwood floor, some still taped, and others half-unpacked in an effort to find her set of tools. Sully was sitting cross-legged in the corner, putting her potter’s wheel together.
The sight had a smile of satisfaction crossing her lips. Despite his promise, she’d been in no real hurry to move away from him, and had driven him half-crazy by rejecting a dozen places. Apartment hunting had forced them together. It had been her hope that the time would put Sully more at ease with the situation and with her.
Oh, he’d really hated it, she thought, the way she’d connered him so neatly. She hadn’t even known she was capable of such guile, but the prospect of having him disappear from her life completely had made her desperate. He was too important to her and, darn it, he needed her, too, whether he admitted it or not. She had a feeling that he let down his guard with her, more so than with anyone else. Although she didn’t know what caused those defenses, she was certain that living without relief within the walls he’d erected would gradually consume him.
With anyone else she might doubt the promise he’d made, offered under duress. But she trusted his word implicitly. He might not have any experience with promises, but his word would be gold. Although she didn’t flatter herself that he looked upon their night together as anything more than a mistake, she thought their friendship was important enough for him to want to keep her in his life, as well.
Wistfully her gaze lingered on him, enjoying the opportunity to look her fill. This apartment came with central air, a fact she could almost mourn now, because it meant that there was no reason for him to take off his T-shirt. Quick heat suffused her cheeks at the thought. Her lovemaking with Sully three weeks ago seemed to have eroded some of that prudishness Monica so often teased her about.
