Morgan's Son

by Lindsay McKenna

  Quietly, she said, “I know high-risk missions can be life threatening, Craig. I don’t know if this one will be. There’s so much we don’t know yet about Garcia, or where Jason is, or how he might be guarded. I can use your help and experience on this. I—I had a wonderful mentor for five years—Terry Hayes. He was in his forties, and he’d kicked around the world for years as a merc before coming to Perseus. He taught me his craft and he taught me well. I’m not sitting here saying I know it all, because I don’t. Terry taught me a whole new version of teamwork. We talked over every detail of our plans together. He listened to my ideas, and I listened to his. Sometimes—” she spread her hands as Craig slowly raised his chin and pinned her with his gaze “—I knew something from my past in the Mossad that we could use. Sometimes Terry’s past would be of help.”

  “I don’t question your sincerity about enlisting my help or experience in this mission,” Craig said roughly, breaking his long silence.

  Sabra stared at him, puzzled. “Then what’s stopping you from saying yes? I can feel you wrestling with something—something almost insurmountable….” She held his angry, confused stare and watched his generous mouth become a dark slash against his face.

  “My past is none of your business,” he said in a grating tone. “None of it.”

  “I wasn’t trying to pry….”

  Shaken by her insight, Craig felt anger temporarily replace his fear. “Is there flying involved in this mission?”

  Sabra reacted to the unexpected question as if he’d physically struck her in the face. Reeling from his sudden fury, she stammered, “Well—yes, the flight to Hawaii.”

  “What about once we’re there?”

  “I…don’t know. I’ve been on Maui. Kaanopolis is at the west end of the island and Kula is to the east. A rental car should be sufficient.”

  “No helicopter flights?”

  “Why—no…not that I know of. At least not right now.”

  Craig pushed the chair back and stood, glaring down at her. “Good, because I refuse to fly a helicopter. I refuse to even climb in one. You got that?”

  Stunned, Sabra stared up into his tortured, stormy features. “Y-yes, I’ve got that.” Why? Her mind spun. He’d been a helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps. Why would he refuse to even ride in one? And she hadn’t asked him to fly a helicopter—it wasn’t in the plan.

  “Perseus owns a Learjet,” she said, rattled. “That’s all.”

  Craig paced the length of the room, his hands behind his back. “I don’t like being squeezed into this mission. I can’t help it if the kid got nailed by Ramirez and Garcia.” He stopped and twisted to look at her over his shoulder. Sabra’s face was filled with desolation at his statement. “Don’t play on my sympathies about kids, because it won’t work. I don’t like high-risk missions. There’s too much that can go wrong.”

  “Yes,” Sabra said in a strained voice, “there’s no question of that. It will no doubt require a lot of creativity and flexibility on both our parts, but I feel you have that. So do I.”

  “You know what your problem is, Ms. Jacobs?”

  Sabra blinked once, feeling the full force of his intensity, which rattled her as nothing ever had. “Excuse me?”

  He gave her a lethal look. “Your problem is that you’re one of these gung-ho types that goes around saving the world. You’ve got confidence. You’ve got a lot of experience under your belt. There’s one problem though—you’ve never hit bottom. You’ve never paid the price for what you do.”

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded throatily. “I’ve paid plenty of dues working with Perseus! Do you think I see my job as a game? As fun?”

  He shrugged and placed his hands on his hips. “I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. You’re a fresh-faced kid to me. I see the excitement in your eyes over this mission. I hear it in your voice. What worries me most is that you’ll do something foolhardy just because you’re personally close to Jason. Being a merc means being disconnected from everything.” He jammed his thumb into his chest. “I’m about as disconnected as I can get, but you aren’t. And don’t sit there and tell me you can put your feelings for this kid on the back burner and behave rationally when the chips are down. You won’t be able to, and you’ll jeopardize us because of it.”

  Anger surged through Sabra, and she stood suddenly, nearly tipping over the chair. She caught it, set it firmly back on the carpeted floor and whirled toward him. “Who do you think you are? You think you know me so well, but you don’t know me at all! And disconnected? I’ve never been disconnected from any mission I’ve undertaken. You’re dead wrong about how that plays out in me. It makes me careful, and it makes me care.”

  “Care—” he spat the word savagely “—is going to be your undoing, Ms. Jacobs. And I’m sure as hell not going to be there to see it happen.”

  Sabra felt the heat rush into her face as she stood, shaking in the aftermath of his attack. “How dare you,” she whispered hoarsely. “How dare you think you know me and my heart, or the kind of care I put into every mission. I didn’t join Perseus because I was running away from something, Talbot. I joined because I knew I had certain talents and skills, and I cared one heck of a lot about people in trouble. I love my job, because it’s about my heart and my concern for others. That’s why I do it.” Her nostrils flared, and she walked to the end of the table, stopping within a foot of him. He was glowering down at her, and she glared back.

  “Your reasons for being a merc are obviously very different from mine,” she continued warningly. “I work from my feelings, my intuition. Evidently, you’re just the opposite. While we’re on the topic of why we’re here, why don’t you tell me why you joined Perseus.”

  “That’s none of your business,” he insisted doggedly.

  “Oh, yes it is. If we’re going on this mission together, I have every right to know.”

  Breathing hard, Craig turned away from her. “It has nothing to do with this mission.”

  Choking back her fury, she whispered, “What are you running from, Talbot?”

  He spun around, eyes blazing. Sabra stood like an avenging angel in front of him. It was the look in her eyes, lustrous with compassion and the need to understand him, that was nearly his undoing. Something deep inside him moved, cried out. He squelched the sudden desire to tell her exactly what he was running from. But the compassion in her eyes was genuine. She was concerned about him. About his ghosts. A bitter bile coated his throat and mouth. “You don’t want to know,” he rasped harshly.

  Without thinking, Sabra reached out, wrapping her fingers around his lower arm. His skin felt chilled, as cold as the look in his eyes, the sound of his voice. “I don’t care what you tell me. It won’t change my mind about you.” She tightened her warm grip on his arm as he tried to pull away. “No! No matter what you say, I know you care about Jason, about this mission! Come with me, Craig. Please. Maybe somehow I can help you with your past—with your fears, whatever they are. A team is only as strong as the trust two people share. You know you can trust me—I see it in your eyes. You know I won’t let you down, and I know you’re the same way. I trust you, even if you don’t trust yourself.”

  With a snarl, Craig wrested his arm from her grasp. “That’s the trouble,” he said in a shaking voice. “You’ve never been hurt in the line of duty, Sabra. It makes you starry-eyed, idealistic and full of hope.” He jabbed his finger at the map of the islands on the wall. “I’m gonna tell you something—this mission could get us both killed. Drug dealers place no value on life. Jason could already be dead, for all we know. You’re waltzing into this situation like Joan of Arc on a charger, thinking you’re going to save the day.” His mouth tightened as he grabbed her arm and gave her a small shake. “The hell with the idealism. Forget wanting to save the world. I won’t go in there with you unless you let me call the shots. You’re a risk taker, and I’m not. I’ve been shot at too much, seen too many men die around me. I don’t want to end up tha
t way, and I don’t want my partner ending up like that, either.”

  He monitored the amount of strength he used on her arm, Sabra noted through reeling senses. Craig’s eyes were wild looking, haunted, the past overlaying the present and their situation. She stood very still, intuitively understanding how deeply shaken he was by whatever nightmare he’d experienced. Sweat stood out on his furrowed brow, his voice trembled with emotion and his hand was damp against her skin.

  “I won’t,” she said in a low, steady tone, “jeopardize you or myself, Craig. I don’t see myself as saving the world. I’ve had one partner for five years on high-risk missions, and neither of us has ever been hurt. I think that says something, don’t you? How many partners have you had since joining Perseus?”

  He released her, fighting the urge to simply throw his arms around her, drag her against him and hold her, as if doing so could keep at bay a world that was closing in on him. Craig looked down, startled by the calm in her husky voice. Just her firm, steady nature was pulling him back from that uncontrolled emotional edge that haunted him, especially in the dark hours of the early morning. Swallowing hard, he honed in on her voice letting it soothe him, tame his frantic fears, release him from the grip of his sordid past and the debilitating shame that accompanied it.

  “I’ve had four partners.” He saw the shock in her eyes. “Look,” he said defensively, “how many partners you have says nothing.” It did, but he wasn’t about to admit it to her. In fact, Craig was surprised and pleased to hear Sabra had had only one partner. It told of a good, reliable, steady relationship. Something he’d never had with any of his partners.

  “Why don’t you have a partner now?” he demanded.

  “Terry had a heart attack in Prague. He’s alive, and he’s going to recover, but he’ll never be able to work again, at least not in our business.”

  “I see….” Craig turned away and took a deep, shaky breath.

  Sabra waited in the silence, feeling the tension, seeing it in every line of Talbot’s body. He stood like a man already beaten. Why? She had so many questions for him, yet she knew she didn’t dare ask. Right now, her only concern was to get him to agree to the mission, though a huge part of her was afraid of him. How could she stay in the same hotel room with him, night after night? Being close to Craig was unleashing every emotion, good and bad, she’d ever experienced, and that was frightening to Sabra. But she knew she had to forsake her own misgivings and put Jason’s life first.

  “Do you have brothers or sisters?” she asked softly.

  “What?” Craig looked at her warily.

  “I just wanted to know about your family, whether you had siblings.”

  “Do you?”

  She accepted his challenge. Okay, if Talbot wanted her to open up first, she didn’t have a problem with it. “I’m an only child. I never had brothers or sisters, though I wanted them. What about you?” she persisted.

  Craig stared down at his leather shoes and shrugged. “I have an older brother and a younger brother.”

  “Oh, you’re the middle child.” She smiled a little, hoping to disarm him. “So were you the mediator?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does your older brother do?”

  “Dan is a captain in the Marine Corps. He’s a legal officer.” Craig pulled out a chair. His knees were shaky, and he felt as if he was going to fall. He sat down heavily.

  Sabra walked to the chair opposite him. She sat down slowly, smoothing the cinnamon silk over her thighs. “An attorney. That’s impressive. What about your younger brother?”

  “Joe runs the family trading post and grocery store on the Navajo reservation,” he said darkly, picking up his now-cold coffee and taking a slug of it.

  “So, two of you went into the Marine Corps?”

  “Yes. So what?”

  “My father is a general in the army, and when I was young, I realized he wanted a son to follow in his footsteps. As I got older, he transferred into the Mossad. Shortly after getting my degree in college, I joined the Mossad, too. My father wasn’t very pleased about me entering the spy business, but I wanted him to be proud of me.” Sabra smiled sadly as Craig lifted his head to stare at her. “I spent three years there, but he kept influencing my assignments, so I quit. I came to Perseus because I liked Morgan’s philosophy that getting the work done was what counted, not the gender of the worker. I’ve been here five years, and I nearly lost my life three different times. Maybe I’m lucky, I don’t know.”

  Craig snorted. “Everyone’s luck runs out eventually in this kind of work,” he muttered, his anger dissolving in spite of himself beneath her soothing voice.

  “Yours did, didn’t it?”

  He nodded, unable to give verbal acknowledgment to the truth. Her eyes were large with sympathy, and he felt as if he wanted to drown in them, to pull her to him and absorb her natural strength and confidence. “Someday,” he said, “you’ll hit bottom. It happens to everyone. It’s inevitable.”

  “I’ve never denied that fact,” Sabra said quietly, holding his tortured gaze. “I know that what I do could kill me.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “Because people need help. Right or wrong, Craig, I feel I have something to offer Perseus as a mercenary. I’m good at what I do, but I’m not arrogant about it, nor do I fool myself into thinking I’m impervious to a bullet, which could take my life at any time.”

  He shook his head tiredly. “This is a crazy world. We’re crazy.”

  “I don’t think so. I’d like to think that what we do is important, if only to the people we help and to the families waiting for their safe return. We aren’t in the line of killing. Our job is to save.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said flatly, all the life draining out of him. “Nothing matters much anymore.”

  “I know you just lost your partner. I’m very sorry.”

  He grimaced and looked down at his cup. “Yeah, so am I. She was a sweet kid. Idealistic. Like you.”

  Sabra refused to be baited on that point, realizing that he was slowly giving in to the idea of taking the mission. It wasn’t like her to rub salt in anyone’s wounds, and it was obvious Talbot was not only wounded, but hemorrhaging from something that had happened in his past. That was why he felt so disconnected from the world in general. Her father had been the same way after the war.

  “Will you help me?” Sabra asked gently. “Will you come with me on this mission, Craig?”

  His mouth contorted. His hands tightened around the mug. The silence deepened. Finally, he lifted his head and held her warm gaze. “If I had an ounce of sense, I’d tell you no.”

  She managed a grateful look. “Then I’m glad you don’t have that ounce of sense.”

  Sitting up, Craig squared his shoulders, trying to throw off the weight that perpetually saddled them. “Don’t be. If Jennifer was alive, she’d tell you the personal hell I put her through.” His eyes darkened and his voice dropped in warning. “I’m hell on everyone, Sabra. You’d better protect yourself from me, because if we go in together, you’ll come out of this either wounded or dead.”

  Chapter Three

  Badly shaken by the warning, Sabra said nothing as Jake knocked lightly on the door. She saw Talbot pivot, breathing hard, his fists locked at his side. Jake looked at Talbot as he entered, then at her, and halted in the doorway.

  “It sounds like a damn war going on in here,” he muttered. “What have you decided?”

  Talbot glared at Randolph. “I’ll go.”

  “And you can follow Sabra’s orders?”

  “I’ll follow them as far as I think they should be followed.”

  Jake grunted and walked into the room, Killian and Wolf behind him.

  Sabra swallowed hard, wishing her heart would settle down. They had no more than closed the door and sat down when the phone rang. The unexpected sound shattered what was left of her nerves. Talbot was back in his place opposite his shadowed gaze trained on her.
He made her nervous and frightened yet strangely excited at the same time. Why this crazy quilt of feelings. She had no time to seek an answer. Jake answered the phone.

  “Laura? Yes, we’ve got a team in place. No…I don’t think you should meet with them. You’re fragile enough under the circumstances. Yes, Sabra is going—it’s as we discussed.”

  Sabra saw Jake’s scowl deepened. “Laura, I don’t think—” He slowly settled the receiver in its cradle and looked gravely at them. “Laura is coming over. She wants to meet and talk with both of you.”

  “She’s just hurting herself all over again,” Sabra whispered in a strained tone.

  “That’s what I tried to tell her,” Jake said irritably, waving his hand in frustration. “She says she has something Jason will want.”

  Instantly, Sabra realized it was Jason’s favorite stuffed toy, the gray squirrel she had mentioned earlier. “Maybe it’s better this way,” she said.

  “It’s not,” Talbot retorted sharply. “Morgan never allowed his wife into his affairs at Perseus—and with good reason. I don’t want to see her. What are we supposed to say—don’t worry, we’ll get your son back? We can’t promise that, and that’s what she’ll want to hear.”

  Glaring at him, Sabra said, “We can promise we’ll try.”

  “Promising anything is bad news and you know it.”

  “Laura isn’t a client. She’s the owner’s wife. I’d say it’s a little different this time around.” Again, Sabra wanted to slap his insolent face. How could Talbot be such a jerk? The last thing she wanted was him hurting Laura—she’d been hurt more than enough by this tragedy already.

  “It doesn’t make a difference,” Craig muttered, glancing at Jake. “We promise nothing.”

  Jake cleared his throat and moved uncomfortably in his chair. “He’s right, Sabra. When Laura gets here, don’t raise her hopes. The woman’s walking an emotional tightrope that’s ready to shred at any moment. Just let her talk. We can only be sounding boards for her fears.”