Karen Robards

by Obsession

  Still, his profile was limned against the darkness outsidethe window, and she recognized the curve of his brow, the line of his nose, the jut of his chin. The hair was wrong, long and wavy where always before it had been cut ruthlessly short, but everything else was right: the breadth of his shoulders, the lean, muscular strength of his torso, the powerful length of his legs. His hands were curled around the steering wheel, and she recognizedthe broad palms and long fingers, too.

  Nick. Definitely Nick.

  A wave of relief washed over her that was so strong it made her dizzy. She was safe, finally, with Nick.

  “What took you so long?” she asked shakily, then to her own surprise burst into tears.

  “Shit. Fuck. Damn it to hell and back.” She could feel his gaze on her even though her own eyes were closed as she fought to keep the tears contained. “I know this has been bad for you. Would you please not cry?”

  Her eyes popped open. Uncontained now, more tears rolled down her cheeks. “You’d cry too if you’d just been burned with a cigarette and told somebody was going to peel your face off and …”

  “I know,” he interrupted, real pain for her in his voice. The Blazer was climbing now, emerging from the darkness into a burst of light, and she saw the big halogenexpressway lights at the top of the entrance ramp and realized that they were curving onto the Beltway, heading toward Maryland. “We had eavesdropping deviceson, we heard everything. It nearly killed me listeningto it, but there was no way to get in. It’s a secured Agency site. You’d practically have to have a nuclear bomb. Anyway, with Hendricks and Lutz there, I knew they were going to bring you out. The kind of dirty work they do, they have a specialized facility.”

  “The Plantation.” Katharine drew a deep, gasping breath that wasn’t quite a sob. Tears still spilled down her cheeks, but they were slowing down and she was pretty sure the worst of the onslaught was over. She sucked in more air and tried to will the flow to stop.

  “Yeah. What they do there isn’t—wasn’t—pretty.”

  “You killed them.” The memory of Hendricks’s scalp sailing into the front seat, of Lutz’s blood spraying the windshield, made her shudder.

  “Yeah, well, you gotta do what you gotta do. And sometimes people deserve to die. Those two made a nice living out of torturing people, sometimes to death. The world’s a better place with them gone.”

  “If you hadn’t gotten there in time …” The thought made her dizzy all over again.

  He threw her a quick, frowning glance. “There was no way I wasn’t going to get there in time, so you can just put that thought out of your head. I’ve had somebodywith you every step of the way. Since you left the cabin. Listening, watching, looking out for you. We’re real good at clandestine surveillance, you know? You remember that phone call Barnes got, the night he brought you back to that apartment you were staying at after you’d been to your town house? That was us, telling him that one of his informants had just been picked up by the Kremlin. We knew he’d rush out of there, and figured you’d probably be glad.”

  Katharine’s eyes widened as she remembered.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, in a massive understatement. “I was glad.”

  A rest area was coming up, and she glanced at him in surprise when they pulled off into it. There were trees and big overhead lights and a small brick building with a glass front that housed restrooms. A semi was parked in the first of the two parking areas, and a couple of cars were parked in the second lot, in front of the building. Through the glass, she watched a middle-aged couple disappear into the restrooms inside.

  “Is this is a good time for a pit stop?” Katharine asked doubtfully, wiping the last traces of tears from her cheeks with careful fingers. Her cheeks no longer throbbed, but the salt from the tears still made them sting a little.

  His quick grin made her dizzy. She remembered— she remembered—another day when he had grinned at her like that. They were in a house, she saw in a flash, in a kitchen, and she was yelling at him to go away and she took off her shoe and threw it at him and he ducked and it missed, slamming into some cabinets—and then he grinned at her, just like that. She blinked, trying to make sense of it, trying to put it into some kind of context, but then her head started to hurt so much that she couldn’t think at all and the memory was lost as quickly as it came.

  Pressing a hand to her head, she was trying to ignore the pain while fighting to recapture that elusive memorywhen he pulled into a shadowy spot well away from the other cars, turned off the engine, and unfastened his seat belt.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, fishing something from his pocket and then turning toward her with it. It was, she saw, a pocket knife.

  That redirected her focus in a hurry. Her eyes widened as she looked from the knife to his face. A whole jumble of additional memories burst like flash-bulbsin her brain, too fast for her to make sense of any one of them but leaving her pretty sure about the sum of the whole.

  “Are you kidding me, Doctor Dan? No.”

  This time his grin was slower dawning but just as disarming.“Fair enough. You need to do what I tell you anyway.”

  “What?” Her tone was wary. She eyed the knife.

  “Bend over and wrap your arms around your knees and hold on tight.” The grin was gone. His mouth was looking grim again.

  She was, she thought, rightfully wary. “Why?”

  “Because you’ve got a locator device embedded in your back and I need to dig it out before they find us.”

  Her eyes went wide with horror. “Ohmigod.”

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t look any happier about it than she felt, and Katharine quashed the whole litany of protests and questions that ran through her brain in favor of taking a deep breath, unfastening her seat belt, and doing what he said.

  If there was a locator device in her back, it had to come out. If Ed hadn’t yet scrambled an army to look for her, it was only because he didn’t yet know she had escaped. As soon as he did, he would. Anything was betterthan ending up in Ed’s hands again.

  And despite everything, including what she had just said, she found she did trust Nick after all.

  Sort of. Kind of. Maybe. Well, at least about this.

  “It’s tiny,” he said, as she hugged her knees for all she was worth and turned her face away and squinched up her eyes tight. “And it’s right under the surface. They tried to put it where it would be covered by your bra strap, so it wouldn’t show unless somebody did a completestrip search.”

  “Oh, God,” she moaned, her arms tightening around her legs as he pushed up her T-shirt and the back band of her bra.

  “I’ll be as quick as I can.” Pause. “There it is.”

  She felt his finger lightly touch her back on the left side and flinched as if he’d stabbed her.

  “Nick …”

  “Steady.”

  His left arm came down across her shoulders, long and heavy and confining, doing his best to hold her in place.

  “Don’t move,” he warned, bearing down on the arm, and she squinched her eyes shut even tighter and hugged her thighs and gritted her teeth.

  And flinched for real as she felt the sharp blade of the knife touch her flesh before digging in. She cried out, jerking reflexively, heard him say “Don’t move” again in a fierce tone and forced herself to be still, suckingin air, holding her breath, locking all her muscles so she wouldn’t move. The pain was sharp and intense, cold metal jabbing through skin and muscle accompanied by the sensation of welling warm blood. Her warm blood. She went all light-headed as a wave of cold sweat washed over her and her stomach roiled. But she didn’t move again.

  “Got it,” he said just when she thought she might be going to pass out, and the knife lifted away from her. His arm across her shoulders went from pressing her down to giving her a quick, comforting hug. “I’m sorry I had to do that. You okay?”

  Nodding, Katharine stayed where she was, her head resting on her knees, breathing hard.
r />   “Watch your head.”

  She was so dizzy she didn’t really comprehend what he was doing, but she heard him open the glove compartment,then heard other assorted small noises, too, and moments later felt the slight abrasion of what she thought must be a gauze pad sliding over her back, presumablyto wipe away the trickling blood. Then he pressed something—she assumed it was another gauze pad—firmly against the small wound. He was obviously using the contents of the glove compartment’s first-aid kit to treat the injury he had caused her, and she slowly, slowly felt the worst of the dizziness begin to subside.

  “You okay?” he asked again, sounding worried.

  With the dizziness almost gone and the cold sweats and roiling stomach disappearing with it, she was able to take stock. The wound really ached only a little. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as the throbbing burns on her arm and hand.

  “Yes,” she said, opening her eyes and turning her head so that she faced him. She was still bent over, with her head on her knees and her arms around her legs, but she felt as if she might be able to straighten up soon. He was leaning close, so close that all she could see of him was his black-clad middle, as he gently dabbed ointment on her back. She heard paper rip and felt him sticking what she guessed was a Band-Aid to her skin. Then he carefully pulled her clothes back down for her. Surprisingly,even having her bra band on top of the Band-Aid didn’t really hurt.

  “That’s my brave girl,” he said.

  She was still absorbing the possible implications of that when he got out of the Blazer, closed the door, and disappeared. Frowning, she waited for an increasingly restive moment and then began to feel the first stirring of panic. Where had he gone? She was sitting up to look when he slid back into the SUV.

  “Where did you go?” The shrill edge to her voice reflectedher anxiety.

  “See that car over there?” He was looking pleased with himself, she saw. The merest hint of a smile curved his mouth, and his eyes were more relaxed than they had been all night. He fastened his seat belt as he spoke and started the car.

  Looking where he indicated as he reversed out of the parking space, she nodded. It was a sporty white BMW. The driver was, presumably, in the restroom.

  “I taped the locator device to the back bumper. Wherever that car goes, they’ll follow. Until they figure it out. Should take a few hours, anyway.”

  Katharine blinked at him. They were already heading down the curved access ramp that connected with the Beltway.

  “Good idea,” she said. She was working hard to get her body to chill out, to get her breathing and heart rate and pulse under control. But she suspected that there was so much adrenaline in her system now that it would take her a while to get unjuiced. She felt wired and wrung out at the same time.

  “I thought so.” He glanced her way. “Put on your seat belt.”

  She did, glad to discover that her muscles were once again minimally functional. Then, as they pulled out onto the Beltway again, she leaned back—gingerly, testingthe new wound in her back to see how sensitive it was, and was relieved to discover that it was hardly sensitiveat all—and let her head drop down against the top of the seat. She then rolled her head to the side so that she could look at him.

  “Nick,” she said experimentally. The name felt right and familiar on her tongue.

  “Hmm?”

  The Blazer merged into traffic, just one more set of headlights among dozens zooming away into the dark. She felt—almost—relaxed.

  It was because she felt safe with him.

  “You lied to me.” Her tone was severe.

  He shot her a glance. His lips quirked. “No more than I had to.”

  “Doctor Dan,” she said witheringly. Then, frowning as the larger problem occurred to her, she asked, “Why didn’t I recognize you right away? I couldn’t have hit my head that hard.”

  A beat passed.

  “I was under cover,” he said at last. “It was safer for you not to recognize me. I let my hair grow and scrounged up some glasses. Which I kept forgetting to wear, by the way.”

  Katharine thought about the hair and the glasses: When it came right down to it, they hadn’t mattered. He might not look like an FBI agent, but he still looked like Nick. Her eyes widened as she suddenly realized something:Every time a memory of him that predated the moment when she had woken up in the hospital and seen him leaning over her as Doctor Dan popped into her mind, she immediately experienced a pounding headache. And with the onset of the headache, the memory was gone.

  The shoe dropped.

  “You people have done something to me, haven’t you?” There was a note of horror in her voice as she stared at him, aghast. “Haven’t you? To my mind.”

  23

  He shot her a glance. Headlights from oncoming traffic, which was separated from their side of the Beltway by a grassy median, swept through the car, briefly illuminating his face. His expression was guilty. She pursed her lips angrily.

  “No more lies,” she warned.

  He sighed. “Some of your memories were temporarilyblocked. You agreed to it.”

  “What?” She sat bolt upright in the seat, glaring at him, and never mind her exhaustion or the half-dozen assorted pangs and pains that shot through her body. “You blocked my memories? How?”

  “I didn’t. The Bureau has a lot of resources, including people who know how to do things like that.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Calm down,” he said, which had the completely predictable effect of making her want to scream—or clobber him with the nearest solid object. She did neither,clenching her fists and narrowing her eyes at him instead. With the part of her brain that was still capable of noticing such things, she realized that they were preparing to leave the Beltway. Glancing up automatically,she saw that the sign they were getting ready to pass beneath before curving off onto the exit ramp read Silver Spring.

  “I think it was a combination of hypnosis and drugs,” he finished in response to her tell-me-the-truth-or-dielook.

  The resulting moment of silence was electrically charged.

  “Hypnosis and drugs?” she echoed, outraged. A vague memory stirred, making her head hurt—not the debilitating pain she experienced when memories of him before the hospital tried to surface, but still significanttwinges—yet she persevered. The heat of his lips on hers—wince—flashlights bobbing toward them through the woods—wince—utter terror, followed by a strange, almost zombie-like calm. She spluttered with indignation as the picture came into focus for her. “The sheriff’s deputies—in the woods—after you kissed me. They weren’t there about the alarm. They weren’t friggingdeputies. They were your people. And they were there to mess with my head!”

  He grimaced. Seething, she interpreted that to mean he was guilty as charged.

  “I think the word they used was ‘reprogram,’ ” he said, too calmly. “Certain memories were leaking through that were making things difficult for you. You were starting to freak out, remember? You weren’t any good to us like that, and you were a danger to yourself. Once they got you calm and comfortable again, you were okay to be with Barnes.”

  “To … be … with … Barnes.” She spaced the words out dangerously. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You used me to get to Ed.”

  “You agreed to do it,” he said, his voice even. He shot her a look. “Anyway, there’s no point in getting all bent out of shape now. It’s over. You’re out of it.”

  That was so disingenuous that she felt her blood pressure rise.

  “I want my memories back,” she said through her teeth. They were at the bottom of the ramp now, and she got a vague impression of an intersection with gas stationsand convenience stores.

  “You’ll get them back,” he promised, merging right. “It’s completely reversible. The investigation should be wrapped up within the next twelve hours or so, and then we’ll fix it.”

  The look she sent him scorched the air.

  “You mean fix me
, right?” Another thought occurred,and her breath caught. “Ed was right, wasn’t he? I was an FBI plant. I just didn’t know it.”

  “Something like that.” His lips quirked, just barely but enough so that she could see the beginnings of a smile and react badly. “See why not knowing what you were up to was safer?”

  “You’re not laughing,” she said, with a warning note.

  “No.” His tone, and his face, went suddenly totally serious.“I’m not laughing. Too many people have died, or been hurt, because of this. It’s time it was over.”

  “What’s it? What are you investigating?” She sensed him hesitating. “Damn it, I’m part of this. I have a right to know.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you do. Barnes has been blackmailing people. With all the surveillance the Agency conducts, he has dirt on just about everybody in Washington.And he’s using it, too, to manipulate people into giving him what he wants.”

  “What does he want?” she asked, suddenly noticing that they were no longer on a major road, but rather a narrow residential street lined with small leafy trees and boxy apartment buildings.

  “Different things. Sometimes money. Sometimes for other government entities—like us at the Bureau—to back off on certain investigations. Sometimes career advancement.Notice how fast he’s climbed the ladder over there? Blackmail buys a lot of promotions.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yeah. The bottom line is, he wants power. We’ve been investigating him for almost a year now. We probablycould have gone on a little longer, but now that he’s figured out we’re on to him, it’s over. He’ll be under arrestin the next few hours.” He pulled into a small parkinglot beside a four-story brick apartment building, found a parking space near the door, and cut the engine. “There are a few loose ends still left to tie up, but we’ve basically got everything we need to put him away for the rest of his life.”

  The fact that they were parked did not escape her attention.The building in front of them was squat and unpretentious,just like all the other buildings on the block. A few scattered lights shone through the small casement windows that marched in well-ordered rows across the front and sides, but there was no one around. The lot was a little more than half-full of mostly older vehicles of various descriptions, with a Dumpster at the far corner and a single yellowish light on a pole beside it that left most of the parking lot in deep shadow. A niggle of apprehension—just a niggle, because she was with Nick, after all—raised its head. The way things stood, any sort of unknown quantity worried her.