Imagine (Black Raven Book 4)

by Stella Barcelona

  ‘Nah. Not for you. As usual, going from 0 to 60 in a matter of seconds. I’ll take my usual.’

  After placing an order at Luigi’s, she sent a text to the agents who were manning the first floor, then put the phone down. At least on text, Ace had seemed perfectly normal, in a good friend sort of way. She hadn’t been alone with him since getting shot. Or, to be more accurate, if she’d been alone with him, she didn’t remember it.

  From Imagine, she’d been airlifted to a hospital in Hong Kong where, in the Ling Wen wing of the hospital, she’d received blood transfusions and surgeons had repaired her arm. Nurses had told her about the good-looking man who’d been at her bedside for hours.

  She’d been drugged and asleep, dead to the world, for the first three days. After that, she’d been well enough to travel home with medical assistance. Ling Wen’s appreciation for Ace and all things Black Raven extended to making sure that she and Agent Scott had top-quality medical attention on their intercontinental flight home, on one of his private jets. Wen also made sure the bodies of the Black Raven agents who had died made it home to their loved ones, without any red tape.

  Lying down, she yawned, and didn’t awaken again until she heard Ace’s soft knock at the door. “Come in. It’s unlocked.”

  Trick leapt off the couch when the door opened. Ace shrugged out of his leather jacket, hung it in the coat closet, then lifted the puppy. While his words were mumbled, sweet nothings for Trick, his gaze was all for Leo.

  The blackness of his turtleneck set off the blue in his eyes. He watched how slowly she sat up, as he walked over to her and sat in the chair next to the couch. The ease with which he kicked off his shoes, lifted one jean-clad leg, crossed it over the other, and settled into a sitting position made her envious. “I never realized how important ribs are.”

  “Hurts that badly?”

  “The arm’s not so bad, but it feels like there are knives in my chest.”

  He shifted the dog to the side, tucking the puppy between his thigh and the arm of the chair. He reached for the remote control that she’d left poised on the arm of the couch. “What are you taking?”

  “Nothing. I threw away the pain pills last night.”

  “Yeah. I can’t stand pain meds either.” He turned up the volume on the television. “Too bad the Giants are already behind.”

  She gasped, turning from him and staring at the television. Wincing from the pain that came from the sudden movement, she realized she’d slept through kick off and… She narrowed her eyes, looking for the score on the bottom of the screen. Zero to zero. She started laughing, then wanted to scream with the pain. She inhaled sharply, which caused her ribs to hurt even more.

  When he started chuckling, she threw a pillow at him, which was definitely the wrong move. She pressed a hand to her aching ribs. “Not fair. You can’t make me laugh for the next four weeks.”

  “Making a friend with broken ribs laugh is something friends are supposed to do. It helps the healing process—”

  “That’s total bullshit—”

  “Nope.” He flashed his beautiful, easy smile, the one that she was sure was going to make him look like a perpetually youthful California surfer, no matter his age. It was the smile guaranteed to steal her heart, every time she ever saw it.

  “Can’t be bullshit,” he added. “I learned that in the Marines. Ask your doctor.”

  The football game grabbed her attention. The quarterback for the Giants fired the ball in the air, straight for the tight end, who was open on the five. Leo held her breath in excitement until the tight end caught it and ran into the end zone. “Score!”

  Capturing her excitement, Trick barked, then jumped off of Ace’s chair, to the floor, and back onto the couch, licking her face. Moving carefully, so that managing the dog’s affection didn’t send ripples of pain down her ribcage, Leo said, “Funny. Before having her here, I never realized how quiet my place was.”

  “I did.” His gaze had turned serious, as serious as she’d ever seen him. “I guess I thought you needed a little noise in your home life. She’s an okay gift? Cause if you don’t want her, I’ll take her. Any one of my sisters would love her. I made sure of that before I risked it. Even Ragno would take her—”

  “She’s one of the best Christmas gifts ever,” Leo said. “And she’s mine. Thank you.”

  Feeding Trick, walking Trick, Italian food, and the football game provided both of them with perfect excuses not to talk about the elephant in the room. At nine forty-five, when he returned from taking Trick on a second walk around the block, she figured she was off the hook, if she wanted to be. He’d have to leave a little after ten to go to the private airstrip where Wen’s jet would go wheels up at eleven.

  I’m not going to wimp out. Never have, never will.

  Even though the Giants were down by seven, she muted the television. She gingerly twisted herself up, and into a sitting position. Her dad had taught her that doses of medicine went down faster when you were sitting rather than lying down. Standing was actually better, but given the circumstances, there was no need to be too ambitious. He glanced at the television, then gave her a quizzical look as he unhooked Trick’s harness.

  “Ready to talk?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “We’ve been talking.”

  “You’re doing what you told me you always do with your family. Am I right? You’re pretending that everything is fine.”

  He shrugged, but she thought his eyes darkened in an acknowledgment that storm clouds were on their horizon. “Not sure what you mean.”

  “Yeah,” she whispered, making room for Trick to snuggle into the blanket next to her. “You do. You did it after Kat died. After you left the Marines, when you went back to California. Last summer, we talked about a lot of things when we were driving from California to Georgia. You told me that you never really wanted your family to know how hard that first year was for you. So, you hid your true feelings from them.”

  He returned to the chair he’d been sitting in. His eyes lingered on the television for a few seconds, taking in a commercial about fresh ingredients on pizza. He glanced at his watch, then turned his gaze back to the couch. He finally looked into her eyes. “Okay.”

  “Okay? That’s all you’ve got?”

  “Not sure what else to say.” His words were calm and cool, but the glance at his watch had spoken volumes.

  “You’re hiding your feelings now. Acting like everything’s fine.”

  His expression was flat, but in his eyes she saw a simmering brew of hurt, pain, worry, and anger. “I probably should get going.”

  “The airport’s only fifteen minutes away, and you’re flying privately. We’ve got plenty of time. So stop faking that everything’s okay and talk to me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Leo was right. Of course, she was. He’d been faking. He’d actually paced the hallway, giving himself a pep talk, before bracing himself and knocking on the door of the apartment. Truth was, the contradictions were so acute, his emotions so raw, he didn’t know what to feel, except as miserable as he’d ever been.

  And that was saying a lot.

  “I was going to wait till you were better, and—”

  “No way. You warned me you’d be pissed if I got hurt. Go on. Get it off your chest.”

  Her eyes, burning with a fiery light as she focused one hundred percent of her attention on him, looked the same as they’d always looked. The slight flush in her cheeks seemed healthy, yet he couldn’t look at her without remembering what she’d looked like in that off-stage hallway, on the floor, with pale skin and blue lips. “Aw, hell, Leo. Pissed doesn’t quite describe it. I haven’t yet sorted through my feelings or the things I need to say. I don’t want to make the same mistake I made on the ship, when I blurted out half-baked thoughts and persuaded you to fall into bed with me.”

  She gave a short, sarcastic laugh, then winced with pain. He watched her visibly shake it off, then keep her arms folded around h
er chest. “What are you talking about? You might have the power of persuasion, but you’re not that good at it. Do you think I would have had sex—or whatever you want to call what we did—without wanting to?”

  “Good to know.” He stood, wishing he felt more relief over her statement. Then again, he knew, deep inside, that she wouldn’t have gotten into bed with him unless she wanted to. Which only highlighted one aspect of their problem even more. If they were both attracted to one another, how the hell were they going to keep up the charade of being just friends?

  He walked over to the sliding glass door, stared at the snow that had started to fall on the terrace, then turned back to her. She was sitting cross-legged on the couch, the only obvious sign of her injury was the bandage on her arm and the sling. Aside from that, with black leggings, and a black tank top, she looked just like she had on any other evening when they’d watched football together.

  The problem was all his. He crossed a line somewhere by falling in love with her. On Imagine, in that hallway where the cream-colored swirls in the carpet had absorbed her blood, he’d crossed another line. One from which he wasn’t sure there could be a return. “You were right, of course. A real relationship between us would never work.”

  He thought he saw her flinch. When the coral-pink flush in her cheeks deepened, he realized she wasn’t hurt. When she answered, her angry tone confirmed that she was pissed. “Are you saying that our friendship isn’t real? I sure wish I’d have realized it was a figment of my imagination.”

  “Of course our friendship’s real. But we’re so much more than friends that I don’t see how we can ever unravel all the things that we are. I don’t know how we can salvage anything, once we start tearing it apart. The truth is—,” He drew a breath, not knowing whether he could say it. He didn’t want to admit how afraid he’d been. How the fear…Fuck it. She deserved at least part of the truth. The part that he felt he could articulate. “I was so afraid for your life that I almost screwed up the whole damn job. I couldn’t breathe. I almost didn’t walk away from your side. Almost couldn’t—”

  When the puppy yelped, moved closer to Leo, he realized he was yelling. He didn’t care. He continued, “You never should’ve been on that stage. And you stayed there longer than you should have. I can’t believe you put yourself in harm’s way like that. I’m so damn furious with you that…”

  He let his words trail.

  “That what?” Sarcasm weighed heavy in her tone. “Go on. Finish your thoughts.”

  “Fuck it. Forget about it.”

  “I was doing my job.” There was anger in her voice, and he didn’t blame her.

  Yeah. Bingo. You hit the nail on the head, with a sledgehammer. That’s the problem. The job.

  He clenched his jaw and kept his mouth shut. His gut instinct told him that going down that path, now, wouldn’t be productive. Her tenacity and fearlessness were some of the things he loved most about her. Yelling at her because she’d been doing her job would be pointless. Her fearlessness was part of who she was. The truth was, it had been a brilliant move on her part to get out of the crawl space and drop into the props booth. If he, or any Black Raven agent with a desire to do the job the damn correct way had been in her position, on the stage, they’d have tried for a better shot at Skylar.

  She spoke again, with a simple statement that echoed his thoughts and underscored the true nature of the problem. “I was doing what any agent should have done.”

  “Yeah. I get it. I’m fully aware that I’m faulting you for my own limitations. Blaming you for the fact that I don’t want you to put yourself in situations where you can get killed, when our jobs require us to do just that.” He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair, realized his chest had tightened in a way that couldn’t be healthy.

  For a second, he wished there was a physical reason why he felt so damn miserable. A heart attack, one that was mild, survivable, and of limited duration, would have to be better than the chest-squeezing heartache he was feeling. “The more field jobs you undertake, the higher the probability you’ll be injured again. Or worse.”

  “That applies to any agent. Even, I might add, you.”

  He glanced around her apartment, which, in Black Raven style, was sleek and ultra-modern. A bank of computer equipment was built into the far wall of her living room. In a matter of seconds, she could be in real time with the cyber division and the constant hum of activity that existed there, a few floors below. Next to the computer monitors, a locked gun cabinet contained her private arsenal of weapons.

  Black Raven was more than her home. It was her world. She lived it, breathed it, and thrived in it. He couldn’t imagine that she’d be willing to give it up, for anything or anyone. “I know there’s a part of you that’s always going to be that thirteen-year-old who the NYPD had to hold back from running into the towers to save her dad.”

  The flush in her cheeks deepened. “Is there a point here that’s relevant to today?”

  He drew another breath. He worried, for the thousandth time in the last few days, that the feeling of impending doom that he’d had while sitting in her hospital room, vowing to himself that he was going to pull back from her, was never going to leave him. Not until they resolved their issues. Which meant plenty of talking. About feelings. Something neither of them liked to do. Which was, perhaps, yet another reason they’d pretended to be just friends for so long. “Given your clear enjoyment of fieldwork, the odds are minus zero you’ll ever quit. Which means I have no business being so close to you, because the worry I felt for you on that damn ship taught me a valuable lesson…” And fuck, this was leading to one of the points he didn’t want to get into. At least not now.

  He knew the words he needed to say. One day, hopefully soon, he had to tell her that in order for him to breathe, for him to have any hope of a normal life where he wasn’t crippled with fear for her safety, he needed her to stop fieldwork. He’d do the same for her, if she asked.

  But he also knew her well enough to know that she’d only consider the idea of quitting if she loved him more than she loved fieldwork. At least for now, that wasn’t a question he was prepared to ask.

  Or, rather than her quitting, he’d have to learn to live with his worry over her. Given the last few days of hell, he wasn’t sure it was a possibility. Couldn’t imagine that he could ever do it.

  Amidst all of his uncertainty, the only thing he knew for sure was that they weren’t ready for that discussion. Given the rawness of their feelings over what had happened to her on the Imagine job, they’d both end up really angry.

  So he stayed silent, while in his best friend’s eyes, he saw understanding of the depth of his struggle. Her eyes weren’t simply mirroring his pain, though. He also saw a bit of a struggle of her own. Underlying the compassion, he also saw a firmness that told him she wasn’t going to give him any slack.

  And while he was almost hobbled by emotional pain, she wasn’t hesitating. “Words, Ace. Use them. You said you learned a lesson. What is it?”

  My worry for you will cripple me. It’s going to infect all aspects of my life. When we’re on jobs together, and even when we’re not, as long as you’re throwing yourself into mortal danger, I won’t be able to breathe. And here’s the real problem. I’m not sure that matters enough to you. Not sure I matter enough to you. I’m not sure if you’d be having this sort of pain if I had been the one laying in that damn hallway, bleeding out. Fuck it all, but the real point here is that if I’m going down this road alone, maybe the best thing…is to just let me go.

  “A lesson that I haven’t quite embraced yet,” he said instead of the truth. “It kills me to believe that you were right while we were talking about…the possibility of us being a couple…on Imagine. The truth is I don’t know how we could possibly make anything other than a friendship work. So, let’s be friends. Best friends.” He tried to give her a casual smile. “But no more pedicab rides.”

  And let me take the time that I
need to figure out how to—if I can—separate love from friendship like one sorts precious gold nuggets from river silt. I’m thinking even our silt is better than nothing. Maybe.

  She stood, slowly. Trick jumped off the couch, and sat at her feet, while she straightened herself. Once she was upright, she shot him a look that was pure Leo. Open, honest, mocking, and furious.

  She strode into her bedroom, came out with a box, and shoved it at him. “Here’s your Christmas gift. As much as I love Trick, I think I’m going to win the best-Christmas-gift-ever prize. Go. Fly off to China. While you’re there, think. Because next time we have this conversation, I want one hundred percent honesty. No holding back.”

  ***

  Twenty minutes later, he was on the jet. He settled into a leather seat and snapped his seatbelt. He gave the pilots a thumbs-up.

  The co-captain nodded. “A half hour, sir.”

  Ace reclined and shut his eyes, wishing that sleep would come, but knowing the idea was laughable. Evidently, restful sleep was a thing of his past. Anytime his eyes were closed, like now, he was back in the off-stage hallway. Walls were undulating. Cream swirls in the blue-carpeted floor had wriggled and rippled into cords that were strangling him. Leo’s body was there, but she was gone. The hallucination didn’t stop with her death. In his sleep-deprived world, his mind created a scenario where Howell made it into the helicopter, with Skylar and Raznick and May Wen. The chopper had flown to Follower, and Imagine had been blown to pieces by Follower’s missiles. Innocent people had died a fiery death, and, as the dark ocean became awash with their blood, they sank to the ocean floor with the ship. It was all his fault, all because he’d frozen when Leo was injured and dying, and hadn’t been able to prevent danger that was damn well preventable.

  With a start, he opened his eyes.

  And was damn glad to see that he was on the jet.