“Never mind,” she said quietly. “I have no right. Your life is yours.”
She stood. John thought he’d hated pain on her face. He hated the resignation more.
Did you expect her to beg you to stay?
The hell of it was, he had no idea what he expected. Then or now.
“However, you no longer have a right to tell me what to do with my life either.” The words were flatly stated. Cool. Her eyes were none of those things. She stepped back. The distance was far more emotional than physical. He felt both keenly.
He was doing the right thing, he told himself silently. Free agent or not, he had nothing to offer her. Except a past he couldn’t change. And a future he couldn’t predict.
“I’m almost done decrypting the program.” She crossed her arms, studied the backs of her hands as she continued. “I don’t know how long it will take to analyze what Nathan did, determine how dangerous the completed work was or how close he was to finishing it. But I do know that I’m the best one—the only one—to lure the other side in and keep their suspicions to a minimum.” Her increasingly strident tone gentled as he continued to stare at her in silence. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Sure.” He didn’t rein in the harshness. What difference did it make now? “No problem. Out of sight, out of mind.”
His sarcasm surprised her. Her eyes narrowed. “You know your team. They’ll work out all the logistics.”
“Is that what Scottie told you? T. J.? Do you have any idea what little problem you’ve created? Do you realize that three of the four team members that existed when you contacted me are in this town house? That Scottie is in the middle of several other assignments, not to mention rebuilding a team that can’t sustain any further losses?”
“Then how in good conscience can you leave them now?”
“I had no choice. I’m compromised. More liability than help. We’ve taken too many of these hits. I’d only hurt the team worse down the line. It’s not worth the risk.”
“You mean because the other side saw you? They don’t know who you work for.”
“Who told you that?”
She leveled him with a flat look. “No one had to tell me that.” While he was busy being rocked by that dead-on, unequivocal appraisal, she went on. “So work behind the scenes until this is over. Head up a new assignment elsewhere.”
“It’s not that simple. The risk goes beyond this case.”
She threw up her hands, turned, and paced to the front door. She put her hand on the knob then turned to face him. “Then what in the hell are you doing here? You’re all worried about the risk you represent to us. You’ve decided you’re unable to function as an agent. Well then, you’d better leave, since you can no longer associate yourself with this team.”
John couldn’t clamp down on the groan as he heaved himself off the couch. She turned the knob.
“Don’t.” He flattened his palm on the door, smacking it back shut. His face was dangerously close to hers. He pushed it closer. Her expression was defiant, mutinous.
Beautiful.
“I don’t take orders from you.” She kept her hand on the knob. “If you came here on the noble mission to save me once again from myself, then you can leave. I heard what you have to say.”
“You heard, but you didn’t listen.”
She shrugged. “You win some, you lose some. You can’t bully people into doing what you want all of the time.”
“You have no idea what I want, Cali Ellis.” He felt his control careen wildly to the point of no return.
“You claim to love your work. Yet you’re leaving it. You say you’re loyal to your team, yet you’re leaving them. You claim to care what happens to me, yet you’re leaving me too. I don’t think you know what you want, McShane.”
He tugged her hand off the doorknob and pressed it to his chest. “Feel that?” He could feel the thumping beat himself, could hear it drumming inside his ears.
She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, he yanked her hand up, pressed her fingers to his temple. “I know what I want.” He tapped her hand. “In here, I know what’s best. For you. For the team. And, by default, for me.”
He tugged her hand back to his chest. “But in here I’m lost. I have no guidelines for following what I feel. As a rule, I try not to feel anything in here.”
“Is that so wrong?” she asked, her voice a bare rasp. She pressed harder with her fingertips. “Since when is feeling wrong?” She flattened her palm.
“Since I took on a job where ‘feeling’ with your head keeps you alive and feeling with your heart gets you dead. And if you’re lucky, you’re the only one to die.” He covered her hand, pressed it harder. “It has always been a fair trade for me. I like what I do. My work satisfies me. I’m good at thinking with my head.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
He lowered his mouth. A whisper away from her lips, he said, “Because right now I can only think with my heart.”
There was no anger in his kiss, Cali thought. No trace of the hard edge that lined his voice. His lips were warm, soft. Cali opened her lips under his, telling herself she only did so because she didn’t want to hurt his swollen mouth. But she had no handy excuse for why she accepted his gentle entry willingly, why she didn’t struggle when he pulled her hand to his shoulder and slid his around her waist, why she moved fluidly when he tugged her closer, or sighed at the way he fitted too perfectly against her. She told herself that it was fatigue mixed with confusion that made her eyes burn at the way her heart beat directly into his. That she really wasn’t falling in love with John McShane.
How could she when they both knew this kiss was hello and good-bye in one unbearably sweet, heartbreaking package.
She shifted her mouth away when the burn threatened to edge over into real tears. She rested her forehead on his chin, telling herself she needed to get her bearings, regain her control, then she’d step out of his arms. And not think about how that magic circle was the only place she wanted to be. It was where she felt safe. At peace. Complete.
She’d secure her own safety. Make her own peace. Hadn’t losing Nathan and the baby taught her about trusting in magic circles?
When she stepped away, felt his hands leave her, looked up into gray eyes that were no longer empty but still hollow, and knew exactly how that felt … that was when she asked herself how she would ever make herself complete. One half of a whole was how she felt.
One half had been good enough for ten years. It would be good enough again.
Somehow.
“McShane, come down here. Please.” Scottie’s husky contralto was more abrupt than usual.
John shifted between her and the door. “You going up to work?”
Other than a slight rasp to his already deep voice, nothing betrayed what he was thinking, feeling.
She nodded. That was her choice, right? Work. Risk her life but not her heart.
“McShane?” This time it was T. J., his voice booming up the stairwell.
John swore under his breath. “Right there.” Then slid around her without touching. Cali ached at how such a tiny span of space could feel like a gaping chasm.
“Still answering to the call.” Cali turned to lean back against the door and crossed her arms as he moved slowly to the top of the stairs.
“I want to talk to you again before I leave.” He barely glanced at her.
Her heart hitched despite the fact that she’d told herself this was good-bye. Tell him that, her little voice said. She shrugged and pushed casually away from the door. “You know where to find me.”
His eyes zeroed in on hers. “Yes. I do. Don’t ever forget that, Cali.”
For a beaten man, he disappeared down the stairs silently and swiftly, leaving her standing there open-mouthed, any hope for composure gone.
There would be no easy good-bye with John McShane.
As she trudged upstairs to her office her mind shifted to familiar patterns, spinning out probab
ilities versus possibilities, figuring angles, calculating risk factors, juggling theories with fact.
The only problem was she wasn’t thinking about Nathan’s program. She was thinking about John McShane.
John was beyond weary. His fatigue was cell-deep. Teetering much too close to the brink of physical and emotional exhaustion, he paused at the base of the stairs. It took less than fifteen seconds to determine that his usual mind-emptying routine wasn’t going to work. Mainly because he realized that the only thing he’d ever had to clear out of it had been work-related in the first place.
He also realized exactly why Delgado had been so adamant about his agents having absolutely no emotional commitment outside the team. It went far deeper than being compromised if an enemy determined the weakness and used it directly against a team member. He’d seen the result of that, had lost another partner because of it.
Of course, Diego Santerra hadn’t died. He’d left the team and gotten married. He’d asked John to be his best man.
“I’m best at only one thing.” John remembered laughing. “And it isn’t weddings.”
Diego had understood, hadn’t pushed. And John hadn’t felt guilty about turning him down. He’d been closer to Diego than to anyone else on the team, but that was a relative thing. Diego was as insular as he was. Whereas John did his job because he was good at it, Santerra fought demons over his. John had been humbled by the request, but neither man was surprised by the intentionally light refusal. Vulnerability didn’t only come in a package marked opposite sex. It was one of the reasons that Dirty Dozen members even shied away from personal involvement with each other outside the job. And that included standing up at a wedding.
John had been truly happy for Santerra. The man was more centered … settled, than he’d ever seen him. He was at peace. John remembered feeling a bit smug at the time, glad that his life was totally under control, his to command. He was at peace because no one owned him and he owed no one.
Two weeks later Cali’s note had arrived.
He thought about how she’d felt in his arms. How she’d tasted under his mouth. How she’d matched his withdrawal, understood the why of it, knowing as he did that nothing good would come out of pursuing what had almost happened. Their lives had intertwined more than once, but not in the way that would form the basis for any kind of real relationship.
He should be grateful to Scottie and T. J. for calling him away, saving him from himself. Saving Cali from him.
The only thing he had left to do was make sure Cali was safe—safe to go back to her own life, to make her own choices, to find what would make her happy. To make her own peace.
But damn it all to hell, he could no longer deny that he wanted to be the cause of her happiness. He already knew he’d felt a peace in her arms he’d never known was possible.
He swore under his breath. He could never return that blessing. He was a man who’d been tangled up in the worst parts of her life, when all he’d ever wanted for her was the best.
“Hey, you ever gonna let her—” T. J. almost mowed John down. A wide grin split his face as he clapped John gently on his good shoulder and urged him down the hall. “Thought for a minute there I was gonna have to rescue you again. Or Cali. Wasn’t sure if all that steam was coming from her ears or your eyes.”
John scowled. “Your job is to walk into hell on a regular basis, Delahaye. Why are you always grinning like a damn fool?”
It had been a rhetorical question but one the large man answered cheerfully. “It’s a proven fact that if you enjoy what you do, it reduces your stress. You’ll live longer. And hey, like you said, our job can be murder. I can use all the help I can get.”
“I’ll help you,” he muttered. John wanted—needed—the soothing familiar pattern of verbal sparring without crossing any real personal line. The solating, self-contained shield that had always naturally surrounded him had eroded somewhere back on Martinique. He wanted his balance back.
He moved into the recently created command center. “Scottie, if I shoot T. J. how long will it take to replace him? I might even consider coming back on the squad if you okay one clean shot.”
Scottie’s attention remained focused on the blue screen perched on her desk. “I usually want to shoot him on a daily basis, McShane, but I’ve managed to restrain myself. So can you.”
“Oh wonderful.” T. J. planted his meaty hands on his hips. “I just love peer appreciation. What am I, the Rodney Dangerfield of the team all of a sudden?”
Scottie swiveled her chair away from her desk to face them. Her expression was as smooth and sober as her tone had been. But there was something else in her hazel eyes that both men picked up like radar. The room stilled in the instant it took her to turn the monitor toward them.
“As to your rejoining the team, McShane, name me your price. I have to have you back. Immediately.”
John stepped closer and looked at the screen. T. J. was breathing down his neck. They both swore at the same time.
“How in the hell did that happen?” T. J. asked, all teasing gone from his voice. He may have had more than a healthy exuberance about his work, but no one doubted his commitment was every bit as fierce.
“That’s what I want to know.” Scottie didn’t have to explain to him or T. J. just how destructive the E-mail message on her screen truly was. The main threat was obvious. The message was clear. They wanted the program, all the notes, decrypted, all neat and tidy. Or they’d take Cali, in trade.
But it was much more insidious than that. They’d all been compromised. The note was personal, directed by name to all three of them. The sender’s name, InnerCircle, meant nothing. But there was no doubt who’d sent it.
“Looks like there is more than a passing link to the old Blue Circle group.” She lowered her head and swore, then looked to both of them. “This is us, guys,” she said with more than a trace of disgust. “These guys are feds.”
“They may have started as us, Scottie, but they aren’t us now.” T. J. paced the room, his long stride eating up the short space in several steps. “And I don’t care who they are or what they’re connected to. How in the hell do they plan to make good on that threat?” T. J. all but scoffed. “If they know who we are, know we have the program, then they know we have Cali.”
“Cocky sons-of-bitches,” Scottie agreed.
John heard them but wasn’t listening. Tiny muscles in his jaw were twitching uncontrollably. He was disturbed on levels he hadn’t known he’d possessed. He reread the note. Twice.
“Yeah, well, they haven’t seen cocky.” T. J. straightened. “Bring it on, baby. Bring it on.”
Scottie pushed her fingers through her hair, revealing an unusual display of nerves. “I haven’t got time for this.” She spun back to the computer. “And they know that, dammit.”
“I’ll take care of them.” John’s voice was low and deceptively cool and brought complete silence to the room. He looked to T. J. “You take care of Cali.”
“Don’t you have that backward, pal?”
As the silence spun out, Scottie lifted questioning eyes to his. “We’re all compromised, John. It’s no different for us than it is for you now. T. J.’s better equipped to go after them. I want you to take care of Ms. Ellis. Get her out of here. I’ll work on finding out how they got on the inside, how they found us.”
Grinning, T. J. stood next to John. “I knew you couldn’t leave us.”
John didn’t respond as he held Scottie’s gaze. “I can’t do that.”
Even T. J. stopped smiling.
John hadn’t explained the full extent of his reasons for resigning, and Scottie had taken him at his word. He didn’t know his teammate and temporary leader all that well, knew her more by team reputation than from sharing any sustained field experience with her. But since she was a woman, he’d assumed—hoped, he realized now—that she’d intuited the deeper reasons for his defection.
Scottie whipped her gaze to John’s, revealing the fire
that fed the steady, nerveless temperament that had led to her being chosen temporary leader when Diego Santerra had declined. John knew that he wasn’t alone in expecting her to remain leader. She’d made it clear she considered it temporary, even though the remaining members felt she was perfect for the job.
“You can do it,” she stated flatly. “Or we can’t do our jobs. You may not want yours any longer, McShane, but the fact is, as much as it galls me to admit it, if we don’t round these guys up, ship them off, and plug up the leak, then we may all be out of a job.”
No one mentioned that there were more than jobs on the line. “I appreciate that.” His gaze was just as steady, his tone just as cool. “I’m here, I’ll do my part. But I can’t be responsible for watching Cali.”
“McShane—”
“John, I can watch her,” T. J. broke in, his booming voice unusually soft. He was careful not to look at the temporary commander whose authority he’d overstepped. “But you know we’d have a better chance at success if I go in. We can’t pull Blackstone in on this. He’s holding down a two-man mission as it is.”
John didn’t need to be reminded of how thinly stretched the team was, or that he’d have likely been that second man. He’d picked through that minefield of guilt before turning in his resignation, had been grateful that none of his teammates had castigated him for his poorly timed decision.
He simply didn’t see where he had any other options. He assumed they understood he wouldn’t have made it otherwise. “We don’t need Blackstone. Just do it my way and it will work out. Trust me.”
Scottie stood up, stepped between the two men. “John, I’m not comfortable with having rank, much less pulling it, but Delgado left me in charge, and I take that responsibility seriously. Your strategic-planning history is nearly legendary. You could hide the President of the United States in the White House. Unless you give me a good reason, I can’t see sending you in on roundup duty when I know damn well you’re Ms. Ellis’s best chance at survival.” She waited him out.
He’d accepted his reasons, dealt with them. But thinking it was one thing. Saying it out loud was another commitment altogether. If he was ever to admit that he loved Cali Ellis, then the one he should first admit it to was the woman herself.
Silent Warrior: A Loveswept Classic Romance Page 12
