by Dana Marton
Meaning he couldn’t tell her, which she’d known when she’d asked those questions, but her mind didn’t seem to be working right. “But you never talked to me. How the hell did you evaluate me?” She felt anger gathering inside, growing.
“I looked over your record, what you were doing at work, your research projects back at the university.”
“And you decided I wasn’t good enough?” The implication of what he was saying was just starting to hit her. “I went to prison for ten years because you didn’t think I was good enough for your stupid team?” She came up on her knees and stared down at him.
“You went to prison because you broke into the CIA’s mainframe,” he reminded her mildly.
His reasonable tone got her even more steamed. “What do they want from me, anyway? I’m here right now doing the same thing, breaking into mainframes on their orders. Now I’m good enough?”
He came after her. “Your computer knowledge was never in question. My team is involved in difficult missions.”
She clutched the sheet to her chest as she stared at him, having trouble thinking of anything else but the fact that she could have been spared the past six miserable years. It had been up to Nick and he had sent her to prison. She hated his guts for that just now.
“What else did you lie to me about?” The sense of betrayal was acute. He’d been the first person she had trusted in a very long time.
“I never said I hadn’t seen you before.”
“You could have said you had.” That he would resort to technicalities only fueled her anger.
“Okay, so as long as you’re already mad at me,” he said, and had the decency to look miserable, “I read your diary.”
She could barely compute the words for a moment or two, then came the wave of feeling violated, then the recollection of one of the last entries, her to-do list. Was that why he’d been seducing her? To do her a favor?
She didn’t think she could possibly feel more humiliated. Her throat burned. “I have to go.” She walked through the opening in the back of Nick’s closet, closed the makeshift door behind her without letting him say another word. She didn’t want to hear his excuses. She didn’t want to care about him.
She turned on the light and walked to her dresser to grab a pair of shorts and a clean T-shirt from the top drawer. She had to get out of here. Her life was already in danger every single day. She would have to be really stupid to put her heart at risk as well.
THE AIR HAD COOLED rapidly since the sun had gone down. He moved his legs, looked up and down the deserted street then turned back to her window just as the light came on behind it. He could see her shadow on the curtains as she dressed. Was she going out? He spit the toothpick he’d been chewing to the ground, then allowed a slow smile.
Chapter Ten
Nick paced his room.
He regretted that she’d had to spend the past few years in prison. Hell, she didn’t belong there. But he couldn’t regret not recruiting her back then. At least, this way she was still alive.
Carly Jones was one amazing woman. Not that she was likely to give him another chance. He stopped by the window and stared out blindly. And what would he do if she did? Nothing. He couldn’t do a thing.
When she had jokingly said earlier that she hadn’t expected him to marry her and father her children, the feeling that had spread in his chest had been a lot like pain. Man, he was an idiot. That kind of life wasn’t in his future. He’d known it when he’d chosen his current occupation.
And yet—an insistent little voice whispered in his head—some of the other guys had done it. Rodriguez had a wife and kids, so did Spike and a couple of others. Hank was getting married. They somehow managed to juggle everything.
She lived in creative chaos. How could she ever fit into his orderly, military lifestyle? On the surface it seemed impossible. And yet, every time they were together…no one could deny the fireworks.
No way was he going to think about this now, start to reevaluate what he wanted from life in the middle of a mission.
A door opened and closed in the hallway.
Carly was leaving. He jumped into his shoes and grabbed a T-shirt, ran out the door. The elevator had closed by the time he reached it. He took the stairs, pulling the shirt over his head as he ran.
He beat the elevator by a couple of seconds.
“Go away,” she said as soon as she spotted him.
Even when she was angry, she was gorgeous—energy and emotions swirling.
He followed her out of the building as she walked to her car. The air was thick with moisture, probably from the hurricane the weather service was tracking. “Where are you going?”
“None of your business.”
“Your safety is my business.”
“To the beach. We’ve been here for how long, and I’ve seen nothing but the inside of the office and my apartment.” She opened the car door and sat behind the wheel. “I need to think.”
He put his hand on the door, wouldn’t let her shut it. “Since I’m coming with you, I might as well drive. You’re too upset anyway. Move over.”
“Get away from me.” She yanked at the door. “You make me upset.”
“A couple of days ago you were almost run over. Then someone tried to kidnap you. Do you really think it’s a good idea to be out on the beach in the middle of the night, alone?”
She stared straight ahead then pulled her gun and slapped it on the dashboard. “I can take care of myself.”
The look she had on her face, a man would have to be really stupid to try and mess with her right now, that was for sure. “Your protection is nonnegotiable. You have to let me do my job. I’m not going to say a word. I just want to keep an eye on you from a distance.”
She slid over and tossed the keys on the driver’s seat with a glare. He picked them up and got in, turned on the engine.
A shadow reared in front of the car and he grabbed for her Makarov—closer to hand than his Beretta in the back of his shorts. But the guy didn’t even look at them, just staggered away, one unsteady lurch at a time. He limped across the road and settled in the doorway of the youth hostel, put his head onto his pulled-up knees and went to sleep. Didn’t look as if he was going to make it up to his room tonight.
Nick pulled away from the curb. At four in the morning, there was barely enough traffic even when they got to the main drag, only two cars behind them on the road—a BMW and a Chevy. He glanced at Carly. She wouldn’t look at him. He turned down Eastern Avenue toward the beach. The BMW took the same turn. He kept a casual eye on it. When he parked, however, the other car kept going. Maybe a couple of lovers, looking for a secluded spot on the beach for themselves.
Carly was out the door before he shut off the engine. The beach was deserted and flat enough so he could see for a mile in each direction in the moonlight. He let her go. She walked rapidly, toward the endless stretch of clubs and resorts, as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. It bothered him more than he cared to admit. A few hundred yards later she sat on the sand cross-legged and stared out at the ocean.
What was she thinking about?
She hadn’t deserved a ten-year sentence, not when others who’d done the same before her had gotten a few months in jail, parole and community service. And yet, he couldn’t regret not bringing her on board with the SDDU back then. She’d been too green. At least, the way things had played out, she was still alive and unharmed. But in danger’s way.
A jogger came into view on the other side of the beach, progressing toward Carly. Nick got out of the car and started to walk in her direction, his gun ready at his back.
The man jogged right by her.
“Hi,” he said when he passed by Nick. He was in his fifties, with hair graying at one temple, in good shape, barely breathing hard.
“Hi.” Nick kept walking as he spotted others coming onto the beach, a young girl with her dog, two guys with fishing poles. He glanced at his watch. 5:00 a.m.
The sky was clear, but there was unmistakable tension in the air, the promise of a violent storm somewhere out over the ocean, on its way.
She was staring straight ahead. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head. She was analyzing him…them. He had to trust her to come up with the right conclusions. She was a smart woman.
He sat in the sand about twenty feet from her. A few minutes passed before he asked, “Are you okay?”
SHE GLANCED AT HIM. “Who the hell do you think you are to decide other people’s fate?”
“It wasn’t like that. I was called in to make an evaluation. I did that to the best of my ability, considering all the information I had at the time.”
“You know what I don’t understand?” she asked, still spitting mad. “How does anyone become a cold-hearted bastard like you are? Is that a job requirement?” Deep down, she knew she wasn’t being fair to him, but at the moment, she didn’t care about being fair. All she could think of was that she could have avoided the last six miserable years. It had been up to him.
“It was the right decision at the time,” he said.
“Right for whom? I bet if I was someone you knew, if I was your sister, your decision would have been different,” she snapped.
“I don’t have a sister,” he said and something in his voice made her glance over.
“Did you ever have one?” What happened to her?
He didn’t respond.
“I hate the wall-of-silence thing. You know everything about us, we don’t know anything about you. Am I supposed to trust my life to that?” She thought of the team-building exercise Anita had had them do back at the office. “Tell me one thing you’ve never told anyone,” she said.
His reply took long in coming. “I was born in Russia. My little sister…My mother was six months pregnant when the secret police came for my father. She was upset. I think she knew we’d never see him again. She tried to hold on to him. They pushed her. I couldn’t help. I was a spindly little kid. They just knocked me down.”
She watched the dark expression on his face and suddenly wished she hadn’t demanded the story from him.
“After they left, she collapsed,” he went on. “At first, I didn’t realize what was happening. She told me to get the doctor who lived on our street. I didn’t want to leave her, but went anyway. There was a bad snowstorm. It took me forever. The doctor wouldn’t come. News of my father’s arrest had spread, and he didn’t want to become involved with my family. I was begging him. He yelled at me and pushed me out the door. He was the only person I knew who had a phone. He wouldn’t even call for an ambulance.”
His face was so hard she thought it might break if she reached out to touch it. She didn’t.
“When I got back home, my mother was lying in bed, white with pain. It went on all night then toward the morning she started to bleed. I couldn’t do anything. When the baby came out I wrapped her up in my best shirt.” He swallowed. “You asked about my sister. She was born dead.”
He was looking straight in front of him at the sand.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing what else she could say. She’d lost a father and a brother when she was eight. She knew all about survivor guilt, how protective she’d always felt toward her little brother, how hard the accident had hit her.
The only sound around them came from the waves hitting the shore a few feet ahead. And for the first time, she noticed how the water looked different and even smelled different than up in Maine, at Harbor Beach where she’d spent a few childhood summers.
She thought about his past and hers, mulled over the insights and ended up considering the future.
A couple strolled by the water’s edge in front of them, hands linked, eyes fixed on the waves that lapped at their feet. They radiated contentment.
When the team had first arrived on the island, Carly had thought that was the kind of relaxed life that would make her happy. She’d realized since that she had been wrong. She wanted what Nick had: the challenges and the excitement, the adrenaline rush of it all, the knowledge that she was making a difference. “The team you wanted to recruit me for, you’re still in it?”
He nodded.
“And this is what you do? Going after people like Tsernyakov?”
He hesitated. “Similar types of operations, yes.”
“Recruit me now,” she said. She’d never been more scared than in the last few weeks. But also, she’d never felt more exhilarated and alive, tested to the limits of her abilities.
“Recruit me now,” she repeated, even if the thought of belonging somewhere terrified her.
Her efforts had never worked in the past. It had always come down to pretending to be someone else in order to fit in, and after a while she’d just ended up being miserable. But neither Nick, nor the mission, had placed any limitations on her so far. It felt like being able to fill her lungs for the first time after years of always having to breathe shallow, muffled.
“By the time this mission is over you might change your mind.” Whatever emotions held him while he’d told her about his childhood had been once again locked away and he was all soldier again. “Remember the guy who’s doing his best to kill you?”
She was unlikely to forget him. She glanced at Nick. If she became like Nick, she would be in constant danger, risking her life. But it would be a life worth living. She’d already done the stuck-in-a-cubicle-someplace-until-your-brain-cells-die-from-atrophy thing.
But Nick didn’t seem to want her for his team. “You still don’t think I’m good enough.” She hated how the bitterness crept into her voice.
He stood up and walked over, looked down at her as she sat at his feet. “With training, you could be one of the best.” He held his hand out to help her up.
She accepted it after a moment.
“Is that a yes?” Her heart lurched into a sprint, maybe from the possibility of a future worth living.
“It’s a maybe. We’ll talk about this later.” He started back toward the car. “You should get some sleep before you go into to the office. It’s morning.”
She followed him from a dozen or so feet behind. Maybe, he’d said. For now it was enough. The door had opened a crack. She was an expert at getting in through cracks so tiny you couldn’t see them with a magnifying glass.
He got into the car. She stopped and turned toward the ocean one last time to take in the beauty of the sun breaching the horizon, providing breathtaking backlight to the swirled-up clouds, harbinger of the hurricane that was coming. When she turned back to him and started to walk that way, he was waving madly.
What?
He was spilling from the car and dashing across the sand. “Get down!”
Before she could process the words, the force of the explosion smacked her backward into the sand, stole the air out of her lungs. Her arms came over her face on instinct to protect her from burning car parts that rained from above. Then Nick was there, shielding her with his body.
A second later, the debris had all come down and she could lift her head to watch her car burn. Nick was running his left hand down her limbs, saying something she couldn’t hear from the ringing in her ears, but she nodded, assuming he wanted to know if she was injury free.
He wasn’t. She stared at his left thigh, which had been sliced open. He was holding the flesh together with his right hand.
“Let me help.” She reached for the shirt he was shrugging off and tied it around the wound as tightly as she could to keep the bleeding under control.
She tried to push him back when he moved to stand on his feet. “What are you doing? Wait for the ambulance.”
People were running toward them. One of them had to have a cell phone.
“Can’t,” he said and came up on his knee, then stood. “I’m not in the country officially. Cops will be here in minutes.”
He was limping away from her already. “You have to deal with them. You have no idea who did this. You saw nothing.”
He c
ouldn’t be serious. But he limped toward the cabanas at the back of the beach and by the time the first person, a jogger who’d passed her earlier, got there, Nick had disappeared. How badly was he hurt? Her heart pounded in her throat at the thought of anything happening to him.
“Are you all right, miss?” The man had his cell phone in his hand. “I called the police.”
“Thank you. I’m fine,” she said, and willed herself to focus on what she had to do.
The cops would be here soon.
When the man turned toward her burning car, she kicked sand over Nick’s blood on the ground.
SHE WAS MAKING HIM LOOK like an incompetent idiot. And incompetent idiots didn’t get paid, didn’t get new assignments.
Why couldn’t she cooperate and die?
He had planned to do it quick and easy—run her over, end her life before she knew what happened, then when that hadn’t worked out, he’d thought he might take her to the outskirts of town and end this business with a quick bullet to the head. The car bomb, for sure, was supposed to be the end of her.
Now the bitch had pissed him off.
This guy wasn’t just a date. She had protection. What the hell had she done? Hired a bodyguard?
He didn’t need that kind of complication, damn it. His employer wasn’t a patient man. And the old man was especially unpleasant when angry.
If he messed this up, he wouldn’t just get demoted. The boss was likely to take out all his frustrations on him. He was going to have to bust his butt to avoid that.
He needed a better plan. He needed to watch her more closely. He needed to make sure the next time he went for her, she would be alone.
Then he would take his frustrations out on her. And he had plenty of frustrations.
He hadn’t thought much about Carly Jones at the beginning. She was an assignment that needed to be taken care of. But she was quickly getting under his skin. To hell with quick. He’d changed his mind. Before he killed her, he was due some fun. Damned if he was going to let her make a fool of him. She didn’t know who she was up against.
