by Karen Rock
Ryan shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’ve eaten worse.”
“Remember when you dared me to eat fesikh at the Cairo marketplace?”
“Didn’t think you’d actually eat a fish so salty, so smelly the government issues health warnings about it.” Amusement colored his tone.
“I can’t say no to a dare.”
“You threw up for two hours.”
She made a face at the memory. “And you held my hair.”
“It was one hell of a first date,” he drawled.
Silence stretched out, and since she didn’t know what else to say and self-sabotage was pretty much how she rolled, she blurted, “I’d been fantasizing about you, wondering how to get your attention. Who knew food poisoning was the key?”
One side of his gorgeous mouth kicked up, wry, the sight making her head spin. “Can’t resist a damsel in distress.”
“I reeked.”
“Not after you’d showered. When you emerged, you smelled like fresh coconut. Vanilla…” His eyes closed, and the appreciative smile playing on his lips stole her breath. “And you were wearing only a towel.”
Not for long…
The binoculars lowered, and his gaze bored into hers, tripping up her heart. Shit. Had she said that out loud? Her and her big, fat mouth.
Unable to hold his gaze, she flitted hers to Greg, whose foot, crossed over his opposite knee, jittered up and down. “How long is he just going to sit there? He’s got to be meeting someone.”
Ryan studied their target through the binoculars again. “Other than the one phone call, I didn’t find any links to the weapons suppliers…or al-Nusra.”
“And his wife?”
“My team’s investigating her family, extended family…but so far nothing’s jumping out.”
“I wish whoever he’s meeting would get here already. Doesn’t this car come with air-conditioning?” Erica cranked down her window and lifted the hair sticking to the back of her neck. Greg pulled a tissue from his pocket and blew his nose.
The lean muscle of Ryan’s upper arm grazed hers, sparking memories of all that warm strength wrapped around her in nights long past. “That would require getting paid a living wage.”
“Right.” She smacked her palm to her forehead. “What was I thinking?” Her lips flattened against each other. Jesus. Why was she joking around with Ryan?
“You spoiled private-sector people…” Ryan heaved an exaggerated sigh.
She swallowed down a laugh at this rare glimpse of his lighter side. If she could forget their history, which she would not, she’d enjoy hanging out with him today, experiencing their resurging connection. But that level of amnesia required a lobotomy and a fifth of tequila. And a case of Jager. “That’s me, living high on the hog as a bartender.”
“And an aerial silks performer.”
Their eyes clicked briefly, and she felt weak under his sudden, consuming stare. “So.” She cleared her throat. “Are you married? Seeing anyone?”
Ryan shook his head, and her foolish, foolish heart soared. “No wife. No girlfriend.”
“Oh,” she said, struggling to sound neutral. But dammit if she didn’t sound hopeful to her own ears. He didn’t want her around…not to mention she wouldn’t let him sidetrack her from bringing down Jabhat al-Nusra.
Stop it. There’s a good reason you broke up.
In this moment, as her eyes drank him in, she struggled to remind herself of what it was, why she’d stormed from her hearing after losing her career and told him their relationship had been just a fling. Why she’d walked away from the best thing that’d ever happened to her.
“How about you?” He lifted the binoculars and rotated the focusing ring.
“What?” She blinked, peering at Greg, whose body convulsed in a sneeze.
“Is there a Mr. Keely? Any little Ericas running around?”
“Me?” Erica shrugged, desperate to appear casual and unaffected by his sudden interest in her love life…or rather lack thereof. Her movement caused her shoulder to brush his, sending an electric pulse all the way down her arm. “I’m chasing terrorists, not a wedding ring.”
“You’re turning thirty-three. No ticking biological clock?”
Erica took a deep breath, steeling herself. Her fingers clutched her jeans. She could handle these personal questions…his interest. And yet those golden eyes unsettled her in a way nothing else could.
“That’s not your business.” The answer was yes. She did think about kids. Especially since losing her mother five years ago, she was all alone in the world, but she didn’t have to tell him that.
“So, no boyfriend?”
“Not currently. You know me.” She forced a light laugh, trying to sound carefree. “I’m not the kind to settle down.”
“You said you would if you ever met Humphrey Bogart.”
Her pulse quickened. “You remembered.”
He lowered the binoculars and met her gaze with an intensity she felt to her toes. “I remember a lot of things about you.”
The shade of criticism in his voice grabbed her in a stranglehold. She’d hurt him, yes, but she’d been hurt, too. That part he didn’t understand.
“You haven’t changed a bit.” Ryan sat looking at her, his expression a combination of judgment and annoyance and something shuttered she couldn’t name. “Still beautiful and as bold as ever.”
He still found her beautiful?
Not that it should matter.
No. Don’t think about him. Or their feverish past.
Her fingers lifted to smooth her hair on their own accord. “Better than navigating through life with a mental calculator, never taking any chances or investing yourself. You’re like a—a turtle.”
“A turtle?” One eyebrow arched. “How’s that?”
“You duck into your shell at the first threat.”
“And I got these from hiding from threats?” He held out his palms, shiny from the healed burns he’d sustained when pulling victims from the crumbling embassy.
The memory of that deadly night pushed a lump of unshed tears up her throat. In the distance, Pullman pulled what looked like a cell phone from his pocket. “No. Not physically—emotionally. You never risk your heart.”
“I don’t give it lightly.” His eyes darkened a shade as he studied her with electric intensity.
Casually, she slipped her sunglasses on, hiding her eyes behind the barrier of UV lenses and trying her best not to let him see her hands were trembling. Perspiration dewed her upper lip. Not so much from the warm sun as from his unwavering gaze. “If you give it at all. You never opened up to me.”
Ryan leaned forward, his brows furrowing as if he didn’t quite understand what she’d said, and then he sat back. “We had a physical affair. That’s all.”
She sucked in a fast breath. “Was it?”
He cocked his head and stared at her for what felt like forever before returning his attention to Pullman. “You’re the one who called it a fling. Besides, what’s the point in talking about it now? It’s over.”
A chill swept down her spine. Denials formed on the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back. How could a man and woman fit together so perfectly when it came to the physical part of a relationship, yet fail each other so badly on a deeper level? “Right. Way over.”
He thrust his fingers through his hair. “This time we’ll be smarter…not get involved.”
She nodded, the movement jerky. “We learned our lesson.” But had they? The pull of attraction, not just physical, suggested she hadn’t. “We’re not right for each other.”
He sent her a dark, sideways look and remained mute. What felt like ropes circled her chest.
In the sudden, tense quiet, a pair of dogs nearly pulled a teenage boy off his feet when they spied a darting squirrel. Right. The job. The reaso
n they were shoulder to shoulder in this sorry excuse for a car. Greg Pullman stopped scrolling through his phone, glanced briefly at the ruckus, then returned his attention to his cell.
“So what brought you home?” Erica asked.
The faintest twitch pulled down his bottom lip. Interesting.
“Something to do with your father?”
Silence hit like a bomb. The binoculars dropped to Ryan’s lap, and his mouth worked. “How did you…?”
“Your lip—it did that twitchy thing it does whenever you talk about him.”
“I don’t talk about him.”
He never had. “Exactly. What’s going on, Ryan?”
There was stiffness in his shoulders that hadn’t been there before, as if he were suddenly carrying some unseen weight. “He’s dying,” he confided, gruffly, after a heavy beat of silence. “Pancreatic cancer.”
Instinctively, she slid her fingers into his. “Ryan… I’m—”
“What?” Without tearing his gaze off their target, he twisted his hand around and engulfed hers, squeezing so tight she had to muffle an exclamation of pain.
“I’m sorry.” Pleasure mingled with the discomfort, shimmering in her veins.
“Don’t be. He’s not.”
“He doesn’t care that he’s dying?”
“How would I know?” A weariness weighed down his question, making it heavy, rhetorical.
“Have you seen him?”
He withdrew his hand. “Last night.”
“Talked to him?”
“Yes.” A muscle popped in his jaw.
“And?”
Red mottled Ryan’s cheeks. “He only wanted to know if I’d gotten Khalid.”
She threw her hands up. “So make him talk about it.”
“Talk about what?” His gaze slammed into hers. “His feelings?”
Irritation coated her skin. “You say that like it’s worse than dying.”
“For him, it is.”
“And what about you? Is expressing yourself worse than death? Or was it just with me?”
She suddenly found it difficult to breathe or even remember what they were talking about. “My father’s birthday is on Saturday,” Ryan said at last. “He’s turning sixty-eight.”
“Is he having a party?”
“Yes.”
He sounded so morose, her heart went out to him. She’d gotten along with his parents when he’d brought her home for Thanksgiving three years back, had chatted with them while he’d mostly brooded. And afterward he’d made love to her like a drowning man, confiding it was the first holiday he’d gotten through without arguing with his father.
“My mother asked me to invite you.”
“What about you? Are you inviting me?”
He gave the barest of nods.
“So you want me there?”
“Erica…”
“Fine. I’ll go.” From the edge of her vision, she spied movement.
“Look!” Ryan pointed at a couple of approaching men. “The weapons suppliers.”
The sweat of anticipation gathered under her shirt and at the roots of her hair. “I knew he was meeting someone.”
As they watched, the pair sat on Pullman’s bench and stared at the ducks lazily swimming in a small, manmade lake.
Erica grabbed the door handle. “We need to get closer.”
The automatic locks clicked.
A burning picked up in her throat and stomach, like acid. “Let me out, Ryan.”
“They might make you.”
She winced, thinking of her close brush with them at the café, and subsided back in her seat. Grabbing her cell from her pocket, she began video recording the trio. “They’re not having an official meeting about the embassy bombing investigation…. If they were, they’d be at the Speaker’s office.”
“Speculation.”
“Gut instinct,” she gasped in outrage. “You should try following it sometime.”
Ryan’s non-response only irritated her more.
A moment later, Greg Pullman shook the men’s hands and strode away. Erica clicked off her video recorder.
“That was short and sweet.” Ryan cocked his head and tapped one finger absently on the wheel.
Erica peered at the departing aide, unsettled. Something was off…. Her lungs expanded with a sudden, burning gulp of air. “Where’s his bag?”
“Did he leave it on the bench?” Ryan leaned over the wheel and craned his neck. “Don’t see it.”
“It’s a handoff.” Adrenaline lifted every tiny hair on Erica’s body. “Told you it wasn’t meatloaf.”
Ryan grunted. “The other men don’t seem to have it either.”
“He could have slipped it into one of their jacket pockets. We need to get a FISA warrant.”
Ryan shook his head. “Pullman’s a private citizen. An American.”
Her insides balled into knots. “An American who might be colluding with Jabhat al-Nusra.”
“We won’t be granted permission to surveil a top government aide unless we’ve got something concrete to tie him to terrorism.” Cool, practical, methodical Ryan was so firmly back in place, she almost believed she’d imagined his earlier vulnerability.
Would the real Ryan Arnell please stand up?
“Why else would he meet with men who’ve associated with, and mentioned, Al Monitor coming to the US?” Her fingers twitched through the ends of her hair, smoothing them over and over. “They’re more than just weapons suppliers. Pull some strings. Call Judge Barone. He’d do anything for you after you rescued his daughter.”
Ryan shrugged. “I located her interviewing refugees for her college thesis.”
“In a camp run by terrorists.”
“Either way, nothing links the traffickers directly to any one group. They have no known allegiance or motivation other than turning a profit. They could be meeting with the aide to provide intel…for a price.”
“You’re dragging your feet again,” she snapped.
“I’m following proper channels. If the Speaker of the House gets wind we’re investigating one of his own, and it turns out to be nothing, it’ll ruffle feathers. This needs to be approached carefully.”
She banged her fist on her knee. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t care about catching them.”
“Say anything you want about me,” he bit out. “But never say I’m not committed to taking down al-Nusra. Ever.”
She blew out a breath, thinking of the older brother he’d lost in an al-Qaeda-led ambush, and touched his tense arm. “I didn’t mean that….”
He nodded stiffly, started up the car and drove her home in terse silence. When they arrived at her condo, she jerked open the door and twisted in her seat. “What’s our next step?”
“I’m going to reach out to my contacts about the Speaker’s investigation.”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“Nothing until Friday.”
“Are you serious right now?” Anger rushed over her skin like static. Did he think she was his dog, eager to obey every order, to sit and stay on the sidelines until she attended the weapons traffickers’ party?
No. Fucking. Way.
“We’ll see about that.”
She hopped out of the car without a backward glance and strode to her duplex.
Once inside, she paced the length of her living room, hot and jittery, frustration balling her hands into fists. Ryan was dragging his feet again, putting protocol ahead of intuition, his commitment to regulations stifling. And his inability to talk about his father’s terminal illness, his desire to have her at a potentially painful birthday party, running interference between him and his father no doubt, proved Ryan was as emotionally unavailable as ever.
A man in a basket crane, working
on phone lines, caught her eye, and an idea formed. One Ryan would very much oppose. But the hell with him. A terrorist plot was afoot, and she wasn’t sitting around and waiting for it to happen again. She grabbed her cell, scrolled through her contacts, and stopped on the name of a retired CIA contractor who’d been willing to bend the rules now and then. Time to take matters into her own hands.
She’d been rogue these past two years…. Stupid her for thinking that might change with Ryan back home. She was better off without him.
Keep telling yourself that, sister.
She needed to get herself together before she went another round with Ryan. A sigh heaved out of her. She’d never had any restraint when it came to Ryan, and their physical chemistry had only grown more potent.
If she wasn’t more careful, she’d be back in his bed in no time...and then out on her ass again, a rogue agent in life and in love.
Chapter 5
A hard knock on Erica’s front door jolted her a couple of evenings later. She lurched upright, tore her eyes from her computer’s live feed, and checked the clock.
Seven p.m.
The weapons traffickers were supposed to pick her up at Dallas Heat in a couple of hours. Fear grew like a weed in her stomach. Had they made her at the café and finally tracked her down? She’d kept a sharp eye out the past few nights as she tended bar, worried that if they came for her before the party it’d mean they’d figured out her CIA connection.
After grabbing her Glock from the holster hanging from her futon’s arm, she chambered the first bullet. Her throat closed off as she crept—slowly, carefully, silently—toward her condo’s’s front door. Her gray tabby cat wove around her bare ankles, nearly tripping her. The rattle and buzz of an old air-conditioning unit thankfully muffled his soft meows. On her gas stove, a thin white stream emerged from a kettle. Once it went off, her visitor would know she was home.
The door vibrated with another powerful knock, causing a chill to skid down her spine. She clasped her gun to her chest, a deadly prayer. To maintain her anonymity, she avoided neighbors and coworkers. Whoever stood outside sure as hell hadn’t stopped by to borrow sugar or binge-watch Outlander.
