by AJ Quinn
Interminable moments passed before Darien responded. “I have a bad habit of disregarding rules, but even I’d have to say that’s a pretty good one. Although I think we’ve already established this attraction between us is more than an overactive libido. You said there were a couple of other reasons. What else, Jesslyn?”
Jessie hesitated, caught in a moment of indecision before she forced herself to push on. “I don’t believe sex—and more specifically sex with me—is going to solve whatever’s troubling you.”
Darien straightened and pushed a strand of hair from her face with unnecessary force before giving her a granite stare. “I don’t believe I was looking to solve anything by having sex with you.”
“Weren’t you?”
For a moment, it looked as if Darien had more to say. Possibilities pushed in from all directions. But then unexpectedly she stilled, and over the next few seconds the only tell was her expression, which became disquieting. Caught somewhere between anger and confusion.
“What is it?” Jessie asked.
Darien looked away as she slowly shook her head and released an odd laugh. She bit her lip before saying anything. “Bloody hell,” she whispered.
“Talk to me, Darien. What’s going on?”
There was no response. Jessie stared at Darien, uncertain what was going on. But she had pushed her away only minutes before, so why should she be surprised if no answer was forthcoming? “Darien?”
“I hate like hell to say this, but it’s possible you may be right.”
It was not the answer she’d expected. “What do you mean?”
“Earlier. There’s no question I was feeling grateful. For your kindness. For caring enough to stay with me. I also realized I didn’t want to be alone. I’ve spent most of my life alone, and in every part of the world there are shadows. And suddenly you were there.” She turned back to face Jessie. “My intent—I’m not so sure anymore. I just know I didn’t want to think, at least for tonight. I wanted to forget what year it is, what day, what hour. I just wanted to feel…something. Anything. And I thought—well, it doesn’t really matter what I thought. Obviously, I was wrong on all counts.”
Jessie felt her throat close. Darien’s voice, so sad and haunted, cut through her, and she suddenly wasn’t sure whether she should continue with this conversation. Or if she could continue.
She looked at Darien and as the silence lengthened and thickened, she could see her withdraw into herself, could almost see the protective barriers Darien had already started bringing down around herself, slamming them home, slipping the locks in place.
Whatever she had seen on Darien’s face only a short time before disappeared. And then there was nothing left. None of the hunger. None of the longing. None of the humor. Nothing. Any trace of the woman from earlier, the one who’d offered her mouth and her passion, was gone. All that remained was a bruised woman who stared at her with eyes far too dark in a face far too pale.
She could leave it there. She should leave it there. Jessie knew she had struck a nerve, and an intelligent woman, a rational woman, would know better than to push someone like Darien Troy until her back was against a wall. Jessie pushed anyway.
“Maybe you weren’t wrong. Let’s leave it at that for the moment because I happen to think there’s a bigger issue.”
Jessie saw a flash of heat in Darien’s face before it went cold. Watched as Darien slowly fisted her hands again as her chin came up and she asked, “Bigger than my wanting to use you for sex so I could stop myself from thinking? What could that possibly be?”
“We have no trust between us.”
Darien frowned. “Tell me you’re not serious.”
“I am. I need honesty. Trust. We’re supposed to be working together, but you don’t even trust me enough to tell me what’s going on and what you’re doing. We can’t work together effectively without trust. But I’m somehow supposed to put all of that aside and trust you enough to sleep with you? It doesn’t work that way, Darien. At least not for me.”
*
Somehow Darien breathed, even as her throat constricted.
It stunned her how badly she had wanted Jessie. But like a breaking wave, the heat of desire had collapsed, replaced by a sense of regret that left her chilled. And on the heels of regret, the loneliness returned.
It wasn’t, she realized, that she didn’t still want Jessie. She did. So much that she ached. It was more a realization that she was standing at a crossroads. Knowing what happened over the next few minutes, along with the choices she made, would determine how she moved forward—how she and Jessie moved forward—with the job at hand and everything else.
“Just so we’re clear, it’s not you.” Darien winced at how cliché the words sounded. “What I mean is I don’t actually trust anyone.”
“You can trust me.”
Jessie’s words scraped at her still-raw wounds. Without thinking, Darien slipped out of the bed, ignoring the pull of bruised muscles as she walked over to the window. Standing twenty-five floors above the street, she watched the lights of Paris glowing softly in the early morning light and stared out at the awakening city. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“What I want is for you to talk to me,” Jessie said in a calm voice. “I know you think it’s none of my business, and you could be right. But then again, maybe not. It doesn’t really matter anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re not doing this alone anymore. Tell me what’s going on, Darien. Tell me what your nightmares are all about. Help me understand this connection you have with the Guild. I’m good at what I do, but I’m no good to you if you put blinders on me. Let me help you. Trust me.”
It was as if the walls in the hotel room suddenly closed in. “You ask too much. You ask the impossible.”
“I don’t think so. I think you might surprise yourself.”
As Darien gazed at the reflection in the window, for an instant she thought she saw another woman’s face standing behind her. A loving presence long gone from her life and the only person she had ever fully trusted. In that moment, she wanted to be a child again, safe in her mother’s embrace.
She shook her head, and the vision wavered, then vanished. And she was suddenly afraid that if she dropped her guard she’d lose the fight. But with her next heartbeat, she realized the fight might have already gone out of her.
She turned back to look at the woman on the bed, and tried to bring everything into perspective. Jesslyn Coltrane might be a government operative, but that was where any similarity between them ended. And she was asking for more. Ironically, she was now the one asking for a demonstration of trust.
Darien shifted uncomfortably, tension thrumming through her body. To explain her history with the Guild, to put it in perspective, wasn’t just about trust. She would need to go back to where and when it all began. And she really didn’t want to delve into the past. Revisiting old pain was an exercise in futility, especially when nothing would change. Nothing could change. There would always be too many ghosts waiting there. Too much pain. Too much death.
For a long moment, she said nothing. Pushing her hair from her face, she looked across the room at Jessie once again. And in that one instant, as their eyes met, another wave crested.
Darien stood frozen. Said nothing. Did nothing.
Then slowly she forced herself to speak. “You’re right.” There was a beat of silence as she swallowed against the tightness still in her throat, barely recognizing the rough edge to her own voice.
“I’m right?” Jessie repeated uncertainly.
“Yes. You’re right in thinking what’s happening with me and the Guild is connected to my mother.”
The words were torn from somewhere inside her, the shock of the truthful statement mirrored in her voice. Darien tried to focus on Jessie’s face and not on the memories crowding her as an all too familiar ache settled in her chest. Because she knew if she let herself, she could stil
l see and hear and feel other things. Everything.
“They—my mother was killed in an alley in Prague when I was thirteen. And when it happened, it was like something inside me died too, only it was worse.”
“Because you were still alive?”
Darien nodded stiffly. “Since that day, I’ve had this dream. Over and over again. No matter what I do or don’t do. It just keeps coming back. I close my eyes and I see it happen. Sometimes it’s only flashes, like looking through a kaleidoscope. But then there are other times when it comes back so strong and so real I get so I can barely breathe.”
“Like tonight. That’s what the nightmare was about? Your mother’s death?”
“Yes. Intellectually, I know it’s just a dream. I’m well aware it’s been years since it all happened. But here”—she tapped her chest above her heart—“sometimes in here it feels like it was only yesterday. And then there are times when I’m right back in that damned alley.”
“You were there?” Jessie’s eyes filled with comprehension even as her hands tightened on the light blanket covering the bed. She looked like she wanted to reach out, to touch her, and was doing what she could to prevent herself from acting on her impulse.
“We were supposed to be going to Paris. But at the last minute, my mother received word about a terrorist group her team had been tracking. A group believed responsible for the execution of two Mossad agents. She changed our plans and we went to Prague instead.”
“You told me before your mother was Israeli. Am I correct in assuming she was an intelligence officer?”
Darien sighed. “If you’re asking if she was Mossad, then the answer is yes. But at the time she was killed, she was kidon, and had been for more than a year.”
Jessie sat up straight, one brow rising. “You’re not just talking about your mother being an Israeli intelligence operative,” she said in a quiet voice. “You’re talking about her being part of Mossad’s ultrasecret kidnapping and assassination unit.”
“The unit allegedly responsible for carrying out kidnappings and assassinations,” Darien corrected dryly but without amusement.
“That’s semantics and you know it. The point is your mother took you with her to Prague while she was pursuing terrorists. What in God’s name was she thinking? You were only a child.”
“Actually, no. That’s not correct.” Darien slowly shook her head and a faint humorless smile touched her lips. “I was never a child—at least, not in the way you mean it. And certainly not in any way you would recognize. Even growing up as Grace Lawson and Reid Coltrane’s only child.”
Chapter Fourteen
It all made horrible sense, Jessie realized.
They were both the children of covert operatives. But while she had been protected by her parents, sheltered in academia until she was old enough to decide what she wanted for herself, Darien hadn’t been given a choice and had grown up in a world of black ops, surrounded by spies and assassins. She would have learned and absorbed, becoming more dangerous with each day that passed.
She confirmed Jessie’s assumption a moment later.
“My mother started training me when I was maybe five years old. And over the years, I received training from some of the best, including Ben and both your parents.”
“That’s how you know my parents?”
Darien nodded. “By the time I was thirteen, I excelled in several martial arts disciplines. I could strip down, clean, and reassemble any weapon from an M16 to a backup five-shot revolver. I was an excellent sharpshooter. And I’d been working as a courier for nearly two years.”
Oh, Jesus. It certainly explained a lot. But there was still the question she had to ask. “What happened in Prague?”
Darien’s expression darkened like a cloud occluding the sun, and she turned to look out the window again. Her eyes appeared fixed on some distant point, but Jessie knew she was no longer seeing the familiar vistas. The Louvre, the Seine. The street life. Because she was no longer looking through the eyes of a woman, but rather through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old girl. A girl who’d lost whatever semblance of childhood she’d had in an alley in Prague.
“My mother set up a meeting with a contact near our hotel. She told me to give her an hour to take care of business. After that, we would do some sightseeing and have an early dinner.” Her voice grew softer. “I didn’t mind. She’d bought me a new camera. I was eager to try it out, and the concierge had suggested I head toward Charles Bridge. But by the time I realized it was a setup, it was too late.”
Darien fell silent. She didn’t move, didn’t blink. Jessie wasn’t even sure she breathed, and the pain caused by her grief and regret was tangible. You weren’t just there when your mother was killed. In spite of what Ben had said, that her mother had been set up, Darien somehow believed she was responsible for what happened.
Jessie’s thoughts automatically went to Grace. She couldn’t imagine losing her mother, let alone feeling responsible for her death.
In the window’s glass, their gazes met. Sensing what was coming, Jessie prodded gently and prepared for the words to spill. Even knowing it would be dangerous for her to see Darien as a still-grieving child instead of a woman who coolly carried out government-sanctioned hits. “What happened, Darien? Tell me.”
“They had to have watchers. In retrospect, it’s the only thing that’s ever made sense. They knew what I looked like, knew when I was approaching, and they were ready for me. I should have been paying attention, but I wasn’t. I was focused on the camera, checking the light and deciding on apertures and angles, when I was accosted on the street in broad daylight. There were three of them. Heavily armed, well trained. And in the blink of an eye, they pulled me into an alley. I tried to fight them—” She squeezed her eyes tight and clearly battled control back in place.
Jessie almost stopped what she was doing. Almost reached out and offered comfort. But she knew she was close to uncovering something important, something at the heart of what was driving Darien. Forgive me, she thought and pressed on. “What did they do?”
“They had a bit of fun with me, and then at some point, they must have contacted my mother.” Pain flickered in her eyes before she closed them and she shifted her weight from foot to foot, as if preparing to flee. “She should never have come alone. But she wasn’t thinking clearly. She just reacted and came for me. No backup. No plan. Just her. My mother. They grabbed her when she came charging into the alley, then held me down and made me watch as they beat her half to death. And then they put a bullet in her head.”
Goddammit. No wonder she still has nightmares. “Can I ask—do you know—why didn’t they kill you too?”
“Didn’t they? I’m not so sure.” Darien said. She shook her head as if to banish the thought. “After they shot my mother, I waited for my turn. I expected to be next. I’m not sure, but at that point, I think I wanted to be next. But the shot never came, and then they let me know they had other plans for me.”
“What kind of plans?”
“There was a brothel. They owned it.” She paused, swallowed, then went on. “They had some customers with particular appetites. Customers who liked them young. Liked my type.”
Jessie fought past the tightness in her throat as a wash of horror swept over her. “What did you do?”
“I took things one day at a time and did what I had to do to survive until I could get away. And then I went after them.”
*
Jessie blinked and remembered what Ben had said. By the time we caught up to her, she was operating with one simple premise. She wanted revenge, and if someone got in her way, they bled. “You’re talking about seeking retribution. Vengeance. On three cold-blooded killers. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Call it what you want, Jesslyn.”
But Jessie could see the hurt on her face, along with the devastation. “I’m not judging what you did, Darien. I’m just trying to understand.”
“Then try and understand this. I could
n’t walk away. Not then.” Her face and her eyes grew dark. “I would get up every morning and look in the mirror. I would see my face staring back at me, but nothing was the same. And I couldn’t walk away until I knew who it was that murdered my mother. Who it was that destroyed my life. I couldn’t walk away until I made them pay, even if it got me killed. But I was okay with that because I was comfortable with the first rule of revenge.”
“There are rules?”
“Yes. It was something I read. Something from Confucius that said before you embark on a journey of revenge, you should dig two graves.”
“And knowing that, you still went after them. By yourself?”
“By myself? In the beginning, yes. Growing up as I did, it wasn’t like there was anyone I thought I could turn to.” She broke off, wrapped her arms around her waist, and turned back to stare out the window. “It took me almost ten months to get all three, and I really didn’t expect to survive. Didn’t really care and nearly didn’t, as it turned out.”
“What does that mean?”
“The last of the three was a clever bastard and proved to be more of a challenge than I bargained for. By the time Grace and Ben arrived, I’d been ill for a while. I think there’d been too many nights sleeping in doorways and eating whatever scraps I could beg or steal. Grace and Ben saved my life. And then they helped me finish it.”
“And after? After the three men who killed your mother were dead. What was there left to finish?”
“There was still a criminal organization to deal with—a network of human trafficking and prostitution, arms dealers and drug dealers, with the profits feeding terrorist activities. It needed to be shut down. Permanently. It’s what my mother was trying to do when they killed her. I think I just wanted to finish what she’d started.”
Jessie understood. “That’s why you thought it couldn’t be the Guild that brought down those planes. Because you believed you and Ben and my mother destroyed the organization nearly fifteen years ago.”
