by Edie Harris
“Dating tips?”
A soft laugh. “Tobias doesn’t date, so, more like business opportunities. Anyway, he says that every chance he gets, if he’s trying to close a deal, he does it in person. Because it’s much harder to say no to a person after you shake hands.”
Tobias Faraday was a clever bastard. Vick would be wise to remember that. “You think if you, personally, get in front of Yang, she’s more likely to retract the hit.”
“I think it’s worth a shot—no pun intended.” Tension stiffened her limbs, and she hesitated. “Are you mad?”
Sighing, he turned her in his arms, putting them face-to-face on the same pillow. Carefully brushing the tousled hair out of her eyes, he somberly met her worried gaze. “Why would I be mad?” Worried, yes; Lord knew he had much to worry over if she was set on going to his home city.
“Because it would mean no more Paul and Grace Morgan.” She laid a gentle hand on his cheek. “It’s not that I don’t want to run away with you. God, it’s so tempting, you know? To say ‘fuck it all’ and start fresh. See what it’s like to be ourselves together.” A sad smile flitted over her sleep-softened features. “Except we’d be Paul and Grace Morgan, not Raleigh Vick and Beth Faraday. Or even Preston Barnes and Beth Bernard. It would just be another lie, and I’m too goddamn exhausted to lie anymore. Aren’t you?”
Yes. Yes, he bloody well was. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her everything, confess the deception he’d perpetrated, but his mobile chose that moment to buzz from atop the nightstand.
She either didn’t hear the faint noise or chose to ignore it. Nuzzling her nose against his, Beth swung her long legs over the side of the bed and stood, naked as the day she was born. “I’m going to hop in the shower and then find us a flight. That is, if you’re down with option four?”
His gaze trekked from the tender backs of her knees up toned, slender thighs, over an ass that simply would not quit to the shallow indent of her spine. She was all elegant lines, luscious skin, and so real and present and touchable he was forced to shut his eyes against the yearning that was a mortal wound to his soul. “Option four it is.”
With a brilliant smile, she leaned down to kiss him, confident in herself and happy with him. As she pulled back, however, her smile faded, and she once again stroked a hand over his jaw. “I wish I could be the Grace to your Paul,” she murmured hoarsely, and he caught the glimmer of unshed tears gathering on her lashes before she darted into the suite’s well-christened bathroom.
Beth might be happy with him now, but one minute into tonight’s meeting between T-16 and the Faradays, and she would hate him. Of that Vick had no doubt.
As soon as he heard the shower turn on, he snatched up his phone to read the coded message. Instead of McCallister, though, it was Nash who’d texted.
Odd. Nash never texted.
no girl? am disapointed, jolly
Of course, his abysmal spelling might have something to do with it.
But as Vick made to type a response, telling Nash that, yes, the girl was heading to London, he paused. There were only a matter of hours left before Beth discovered what he’d done. And while the same would be true even if she weren’t present at the meeting—once Tobias learned the details, it was all over—any chance Vick had of persuading her to see things his way would go up in smoke.
Beth would look at him.
Vick would look at her.
Yeah. Over was too kind a term for what they’d be after the meet.
Perhaps the last gift he could give her was one of surprise. He smirked before deleting Nash’s text. Beth deserved her chance to shake Yang’s hand while retaining the upper one.
* * *
Several long hours later, thanks to her hacker brother’s online changes to the flight manifest, the private plane Beth had appropriated—”Borrowed!”—began its gradual descent into the United Kingdom. Vick studied her where she sat opposite him, ensconced in a swiveling armchair upholstered in creamy leather.
She’d dressed that morning in skin-tight dark jeans and black cowl-neck sweater, long hair trapped in an artfully messy knot at her nape. With no jewelry and minimal cosmetics, she appeared fresh and young, and in the middle of intense thought. “Are you worried?”
“No. Yes.” She’d toed off her boots early on during the flight and sat with her feet tucked under her. “Mostly no. I mean, I suppose they could shoot me on sight...but you’re not going to let that happen, are you?”
“No.” Everything in him recoiled at the possibility of T-16’s section chief blowing a hole through Beth’s chest the second they walked through the door, though his expression never changed. “Why such a serious face, then?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Again? You’re developing rotten habits, darling.”
His teasing coaxed a smile from her, as intended. “Says the man who, for ten years, turned up like a bad penny everywhere I went. Speaking of habits.” She toyed with the excess fabric at her neckline. “I’m working on a theory.”
“About?”
“You.”
The back of his neck prickled, but he offered her a lazy grin. “Regale me.” He settled deeper into his seat, the ankle of one leg propped over the knee of the other, and linked his fingers casually over his middle.
“You’re not going to like it.” When he said nothing, she continued to fret the cashmere blend. “How much did T-16 know about us?”
Too much. They knew Vick had witnessed Beth’s first kill. They knew he’d opened and maintained a file on her. They knew he had placed requests for satellite imagery and phone taps, spearheading assignments where he’d determined she was most likely to be sent for a given job. It was Colleen Yang who had put two and two together, deducing that Beth was something more than a professional nemesis. Upon returning from Cyprus, the section chief had called Vick into her office.
“Tell me, Raleigh—who was the Faraday mark this time?” Yang folded her hands on the desk, expression masked in cool confidence.
Vick shifted uncomfortably where he stood. As it turned out, Beth had given him the truth; Nissi Beach had been a celebratory vacation. “There was no mark, ma’am. I misinterpreted the information.” He’d argued long and hard to gain a thorough cover after learning Beth had booked a flight to Cyprus. Now he wondered if Yang hadn’t acquiesced in order to trap him in this very situation.
“Misinterpreted. That is one way of phrasing it.” Yang’s dark gaze never faltered. “You have a problem, Raleigh, and her name is Elisabeth Faraday. We need to discuss how you plan to fix your problem.”
It had taken nearly two years, but Yang had finally landed on a solution. “They know enough,” Vick told Beth, fighting the guilt dogging his every step. “You’re my weakness, love. Always have been.” Always would be.
Color infused her cheeks, lips parting on a surprised breath. “Right. So.” Her hands fell to her lap, and she glanced away, out the rounded window into the clouds covering their descent. “My theory—and it’s a working theory, so bear with me—hinges on that fact. That I’m your...weakness.” Her gaze swung back to his, a clashing of her gray-gold with his blue. “You told me you were supposed to kill me when the call from T-16 came through. You’d been monitoring me all this time, waiting on that call, right? But there’s no way Management could believe you would pull the trigger when the time came. There’s just...there’s no way.”
Smart woman. Still, he said nothing.
“I think...I think it was a test. They set you up to fail. I mean, they had to know you would quit before you’d kill me.” Her fingers twisted together, a show of nerves. “They shot you, Vick. And the sniper at the museum wasn’t for me.”
Fine. He could play devil’s advocate as well as the next bloke. “All right, let’s say MI6 wants me dead.” Except they didn’t. “That st
ill leaves the Russians. Tell me how they fit into all of this.”
“That’s why it’s a working theory—I don’t know.” Frustration shadowed her expression. “I’m just saying there are holes in this story, Vick.” She straightened in her seat as the plane began to circle the airport, fastening her safety belt. “You said from the beginning there were certain things you couldn’t tell us.”
He followed suit and hooked his belt. “I did say that.”
Her chest rose on a shaky sigh, head falling back against the seat as her eyes fluttered closed. “It’s the strangest sensation—trusting you when all logic says I’m an idiot to do so. There’s been this...this niggling in the back of my mind since you told me your real name.” She laughed without humor. “I guess I’ve known you too long and seen you wear too many disguises to believe I’m getting the whole truth from you. But I want to believe you, Vick. I really, really do, so I’m going to ignore the niggling.”
Memories of a night spent tangled in hotel bed sheets—and locked together on the bathroom countertop—raced through his brain. Their interlude was nothing but a testament to her faith in him, her sensual surrender inarguable fact. “You trust me, then.” Dear God, he didn’t deserve her trust, but he clung to it for all he was worth.
“Yes.” She opened her eyes to spear him with a stare that was too direct, demanded too much of him. Yet he couldn’t look away. “I may be your weakness, Vick, but you’re mine. What a fucking mess, right?”
He was saved from responding to the pain in her soft voice by the wheels touching down, the pilot announcing their arrival in London over the intercom. Stilted silence fell between them as they donned their coats and gathered their bags, Beth’s purse tucked inside her duffle, leaving her hands free should they be accosted on the tarmac.
They weren’t accosted, per se, but a surprise awaited them at the bottom of the stairs. “Casey!” Beth shouted before launching herself at her oldest brother.
Casey Faraday, ex-Army, ex-CIA, swung his squealing sister around in a gleeful bear hug as Vick moved to shake Tobias’s hand. The winter sun had long since set, and a cold wind whipped across the tarmac to freeze them through their heavy coats. “She wanted to come,” he said by way of explanation.
Tobias gave his usual assessment with unreadable eyes. “And you have trouble saying no to my sister.”
“There are worse problems,” Vick murmured, watching Beth interact with the man who’d once saved his life. Casey Faraday was only a couple of years younger than Vick and built like a brick shithouse, to use the colloquial term. Over six feet tall with a rugby player’s physique and dressed in boots, cargo pants and a quilted North Face jacket, the former soldier and current head of Faraday Industries’ tactical operations division possessed the same dark hair, tan skin and gray eyes that tied the Faraday siblings to one another.
He didn’t, however, have Tobias’s aloofness or Beth’s warmth; Casey practically vibrated with leashed aggression and had all the subtlety of a hammer in most of his interactions. After the Colombia rescue, when Casey had checked up on him, Vick hadn’t been initially inclined to like the obvious alpha male. But there was something about those Faradays, a something Vick seemed particularly vulnerable to, so Vick found himself with a new tally mark in the Friend category.
“Not Wendell Martin.” Arm slung across Beth’s shoulders, Casey sauntered to a halt in front of Vick. “You’ve been keeping secrets, buddy.”
Beth rolled her eyes. “Hello. He’s a spy.”
“Spy or not, it’s good to see you, man.” They shook. Checking his watch, Casey hefted Beth’s bag for her, more Boston evident in his voice than in his siblings’. “We have a couple hours before the meet. Want to freshen up? We’re booked at the Savoy.”
“Under ‘Faraday,’ I presume, since you’re not trying to sneak around.” Vick blew on his bare hands, rubbing for warmth. “MI6 will have bugged your room already and be monitoring your movement through CCTV. Did you rent this vehicle?” He gestured to the black SUV with tinted windows.
Casey scowled. “Yes.”
“Leave it here and take a taxi to my flat—I’ll give you the address, and Beth and I will meet you there.” He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “You want to put Yang off her game. The best means of doing so is to keep Beth’s presence in London a secret until the last possible second.”
It was Beth who spoke. “We can go to the hotel after this is all settled.” Her tight smile might fool her brothers, but it didn’t fool him—she was nervous as hell. “Maybe we can even do a little sightseeing tomorrow.”
“Anything you want, Bethie.” Pressing a brotherly kiss to the top of her head, Casey nodded to Vick and Tobias. “I’ll call someone to pick up the SUV once we’re on the road.” And with that, the subject was closed.
A line of taxis greeted them at the exit. Tobias and Casey—with Beth’s bag, to make it seem as though they’d come to the airport merely to pick up a package—climbed into one while Vick and Beth, avoiding the CCTV cameras as much as possible, chose a cab from the other end of the line.
After giving the cabbie an address near Piccadilly, Vick dropped his bag at his feet and fell back against the seat with a weary sigh, turning his head to study Beth in the shifting lamplight. His left hand lay on the seat between them, close enough that the tips of his fingers picked up some of the gentle warmth from her body heat. Her own hand rested palm-down a few inches away. It wouldn’t take much to bridge the gap and entwine their fingers, but her “theory” from the plane lingered, stinging him, shaming him.
I may be your weakness, but you’re mine. He made her weak, vulnerable, and instead of protecting her, he had conspired to send Beth straight into the lion’s den, where her life would be used as a bargaining chip.
She stared out the window, the city rushing past, dark and damp. London wasn’t nearly as cold as Chicago, but February was an unkind month no matter where you went in the Northern Hemisphere. “I’ve never been here before,” she said suddenly, breaking the fraught silence.
“Never?”
“Faraday doesn’t have an active presence in the U.K. There hasn’t been a reason for me to visit.” So subtly he wouldn’t have noticed had he not been attuned to her smallest movement, her littlest finger reached toward his. Not touching, no, but reaching, and his heartbeat accelerated.
“If you’d known I was MI6, would you have traveled here sooner?”
“If I’d known you were MI6, wild horses couldn’t have kept me away.” She lifted her hand from the seat, settling it in her lap, and Vick felt its loss like a stab to the heart.
Their taxi arrived mere seconds behind the Faraday brothers’. Vick paid the driver, offering his hand to Beth to help her out. For a too-brief moment, her fingers rested within his, and then she joined her brothers on the stoop of the generic five-story building wedged between a shipping company’s headquarters and a loading dock. Reaching into the notch he’d fashioned behind the postbox in the foyer, Vick fished out the single key and tossed it to Casey, who caught it with ease. “Second floor, first door on the right.”
Beth entered the studio apartment after her brothers, Vick shutting and dead-bolting the door behind her. “This is where you live?” Her glance took in the bare walls and barren decorating. The bed and bathroom were along the far wall, with the cooking appliances opposite the tiny closet. The living area contained a sofa, coffee table, floor lamp and reclining chair. It had been furnished when he’d moved in four years earlier, and the inclination to update or personalize had never manifested.
“It has everything I need.” Swallowing his defensiveness, Vick stuck his hands in his pockets. “I don’t really ‘live’ anywhere, darling, but this does the trick when I’m not in the field.”
“But it’s where you recuperated after Afghanistan.” She nodded toward the small kitchen. “And where y
ou learned to cook.”
He had the sinking suspicion they had circled back to where they’d started two days ago, before she knew he was alive, when she still thought dating boring what’s-his-name would make her happy—though how so few hours had passed between then and now, Vick had no clue. Years raced by in those two days, but time had reversed again, leaving him standing apart from her. Unable to touch, taste, soothe or seduce.
Somewhere along the line he’d lost ground with her. That “niggling” in the back of her mind...she was right to distrust him, but he mourned the intimacy of their hotel room. Despised the distance her words about where he lived—as though his living here again was a foregone conclusion when he planned on nothing of the sort—placed between them. From waking up wrapped around her naked body to miles of space wedged into a few inches, they’d traveled far in a few hours.
Vick wished it was a journey never made. “When this is over, I want to cook you a meal.”
She unbuttoned her coat, her expression strangely soft. “You already cooked for me.” And evidently that was that, and she walked away from him into the living area.
Tobias closed the blinds over the front windows as Casey flipped on the floor lamp, dropping Beth’s go-bag on the sofa.
Vick moved to set his bag next to hers. “What location did Yang give you?”
The final blind fell, and Tobias removed his overcoat. “30 St. Mary Axe, floor twenty-nine.”
“The Gherkin? Ballsy,” Vick muttered. The iconic skyscraper, with its geometric glass panels and panoramic views, sat at the heart of the City of London and represented the global financial power and reach of their small country. “T-16 is looking to impress or intimidate. Probably both.”
“They’ll strip us of our weapons at the door.” Like a magician, Casey started emptying his pockets. Guns, blades, utility tools, zip-ties, matches and a lighter, fishing line and a garrote soon covered Vick’s coffee table. They watched in silence, unmoving, until he finished. Casey waved an encouraging hand. “Well?”
