by Kylie Brant
"They were having some sort of reception for the man at the capitol the night I went there with Shala. I didn't get an introduction. But I heard him speak, and he sounded like he had a German accent."
"Describe him," Sam ordered.
"Tall, over six foot with a stocky build, running to fat. Bald, except for a fringe of brown hair, with gold wire-rimmed glasses. He had a gold tooth, not a cap, but a backing on one of his upper top teeth."
Sam had an arrested look on his face, but Jones was already way ahead of him. "Was he wearing any jewelry?"
"He had this gold insignia ring," she answered. "Kind of a crest, with a dragon twisted on the gold, with rubies for eyes. Creepy looking."
"Oppenheimer," muttered Sam. "Dammit!"
"He'd have the money to bribe Sterling," Jones said grimy.
"And the money to buy his own empire on a faraway island."
"Who is this guy?" Ana asked, clearly impatient at being left out of the loop. "And how do you know him?"
Jones let Sam answer. After all, that wasn't his world anymore. He'd made his choices years before and never looked back. You couldn't get much further away from espionage and cloak-and-dagger intrigue than running a charter service in the tropics.
"He's an international crook posing as a businessman. He's been involved in just about every criminal activity you can name. But right now he's trying to shift world trade agreements to his advantage."
"Which explains his interest in Laconos," Jones couldn't help putting in.
Sam nodded grimly. "Exactly. But I need to verify this information and get it in the right hands. That vote is the day after tomorrow in London."
"You're not going anywhere but home," Ana told her brother bluntly. "That wound needs to heal, and then you'll probably need physical therapy. Besides, don't you need to be debriefed or something?"
Jones and Sam looked at her and then at each other. "She watches way too much TV," Sam said.
"Apparently. But she's right about one thing. You have to get out of here, and I need to get this ship away for a while, too. I'd hate to have someone trace us here from Laconos and plant a nasty little explosive aboard it."
Sam looked torn. "If I go, would you step in for me?"
Jones froze, his gaze battling his friend's. "You know better than to ask. I left that long ago." His idealistic goal of serving his country had been shattered forever by that bullet in the back. He knew that if he could be fooled that easily by a woman, he damn well shouldn't be in a position where lives depended on his judgment.
"I don't know who to trust," Sam said, not letting him off the hook easily. "There's no way to tell for sure how badly the Agency's been corrupted. I can't go to my superiors until I find out. Right now I have to track down Sterling. At this point, every agent he supervised is in danger. We don't have a lot of time to waste."
His palms were damp. Jones resisted the urge to wipe them down the front of his filthy pants. "You've got contacts in the field. You can get this information into the right hands."
"Neither of you have to do it," Ana said calmly. "Because I'm going to."
Her words nearly brought Sam off the bed. "No way in hell! You're getting your butt back to Louisiana where you belong."
"Use your head," she said evenly. She was too logical, Jones thought. His stomach twisted sickly at her offer, equal only to the sensation he experienced at the thought of entering that life again. Even briefly.
"It's not like I haven't done this before. I'm just escorting a piece of paper from one point to another, transferring it to the right person and coming home. How hard can it be?" She misconstrued their stunned silence for agreement. "I'll make some phone calls. See when the flights are."
"If you think I'm letting you go to London, you've lost your mind," Jones said flatly. He didn't register the look Sam threw at him. Not then. His attention was on Ana. She'd fisted her hands on her hips and jutted out her jaw, just itching for a good clip on the chin. "I'll hog-tie you and deliver you home myself before I allow you anywhere near the GTO."
"You'd try," she said, her voice a taunt. "But you'd be lying in the hospital beside Sam when I got done with you."
He almost laughed at her fierce statement. Would have if he hadn't been certain she meant it. "You're not going, Ana." She went through the door, and he started after her. "Ana!"
"Jones." Something in Sam's voice stopped him. He gave an impatient glance back at the other man, who was struggling to get off the bed. As he went to help him, something in his friend's expression alerted him. Here was danger of another sort. Jamming his hands in his pockets he raised a brow.
"Yeah?"
Sam was standing now, if swaying a bit on his feet. "Mind telling me just what kind of relationship you have with my sister?"
Jones opened his mouth, closed it again. What the hell was he supposed to say? "Yeah," he replied finally. "I do mind."
It's not that he didn't see the fist coming. Sam's right jab had his head snapping back, and for a moment he saw stars. Wiggling his jaw back and forth a couple of times, he ignored the savage throbbing and narrowed his gaze. "I deserve that one, but you only get the one shot."
"You sonofabitch." There was more than fury in Sam's tone. There was a baffled kind of betrayal. Jones was familiar enough with the feeling to identify it. "You're one of my best friends, but you're the last guy I want involved with my sister. What the hell are you intending?"
"I'm intending to keep her far away from London."
Sam's expression turned calculating. "You said yourself, there's no stopping her. Looks like you'll have to accompany her."
Jones tossed the man a fierce look. "You just got done saying I'm the last man you'd want involved with your sister."
"And it's true. But you're the first man I'd want protecting her."
* * *
Chapter 13
«^»
Ana looked up to watch Jones prowl their London motel room, tension riding every movement. He'd been like this since they'd boarded the plane, and the entire trip across the ocean. Dangerously contained. Lethally controlled. It was like waiting for an explosive to detonate.
"Are you going to pace until we meet that guy at three? Because I have to tell you, it's starting to wear on my nerves."
He glanced over to where she was curled up in the center of one of the double beds, meticulously painting her toenails a shocking shade of pink. "Yeah, you look pretty stressed."
She blew across the wet polish before answering. "You let off steam one way, I'll do it my own way. If you're interested, I've got a bottle of Raspberry Rhapsody that I could use on you."
A snort was his only reply. He went to the window, pushed the shade aside to peer out, dropped it again. The man reminded her of the big cats at the zoo, striding back and forth across the cage, barely leashed danger in a seductively ferocious package. The description, she noted silently, fitted Jones to a tee. There was no mistaking the air of latent menace emanating from the man.
"You said yourself it's doubtful anyone from Laconos could have tracked us after the pains you took to disguise our trail. Relax. All we're going to do is hand the sheet and the notes I made over to the contact Sam arranged for us, and come back here to wait to hear about the decision."
"Nothing's ever that simple."
"Some things are exactly that simple." Her dispute was more an effort to distract him than a desire for an argument. Lord knew, he needed the diversion. Without it, he was likely to combust. Something was definitely eating at the man, something other than the task at hand.
"Complications arise when you least expect them. It's better to walk into a situation understanding that, and be prepared."
Something in his tone warned her. Tucking the nail polish brush back into the jar, she surveyed him carefully. "Is that what happened on your last assignment? You weren't prepared?"
"No amount of training prepares you for taking a bullet in the back from someone you trust." It was the total lack
of inflection in his voice that was the most alarming.
"Why did he do it?"
Jones turned to look at her, frowned. "Who?"
"Your partner. Why'd he shoot you? What was he after?"
He gave a twisted smile. "It wasn't a he. Tessa Gardner was working the assignment with me. And she probably did it for the same reason most people betray another. For greed. Money." His shrug was negligible, as if it didn't matter. But Ana knew that it did. Terribly.
Her stomach did a slow roll as another thought formed, one even more awful. "Were you … did you … love her?"
His laugh was sardonic. "Why do women always assume sex means love? The answer is no. But I cared enough for her to lower my guard. It nearly got me killed."
His answer, brief as it was, answered so many things. And it shouldn't be allowed to wound. Wouldn't be allowed to. He couldn't have stated any plainer that what they'd shared at the stream hadn't meant anything to him. Despite her brothers' efforts, she wasn't totally naive. She knew well that sex didn't equate love. It hadn't in her limited experiences. But making love with Jones hadn't been similar in any way to those experiences. At least, it hadn't seemed to be.
Pushing aside the hurt that threatened to bloom, she asked, "Was she ever brought to justice?"
He jammed his hands in his pockets, crossed to the window again. "Not in the way you're probably thinking of. I killed her before she could finish the job on me."
She swallowed hard. He'd had to have been half-dead himself. It was a wonder he hadn't been paralyzed. She'd seen for herself how close the bullet had come to his spine. And his words, brief as they were, explained so much.
She'd known from the first he wasn't a man who let himself become involved. Not emotionally. She'd never met an individual more in control of his feelings. There'd been several occasions when she would have sworn he didn't own any. But then she had only to remember being held through the night after their grueling descent down the cliff; the stamp of arousal on his face when his control had finally snapped and he'd reached for her, beginning their spiral into passion; and the concern mingled with frustration when he'd tried over and over to thwart her plans when she was trying to discover information on Sam.
"Did they ever find out who she was working for?"
"I never asked. I was in the hospital for six weeks and two surgeries. Then I had three more months of rehab after that. The day I was given a medical release was the day I walked away from the Agency for good." He removed his hands from his pockets, and then, as if unsure of what to do with them, folded his arms. "I had a lot of time to think in the hospital. And I figured out that nothing was worth the kind of price I almost gave. Not my country, and certainly not a woman. Since then I've made it my business not to get involved."
Her eyes widened. He actually looked like he meant it. And he certainly didn't seem in the mood for her to point out the contrast between his words and his actions. Not now.
With exaggerated care she looked away and unscrewed the cap on the polish again. "Okay." She'd meant to keep her tone noncommittal. So there was no reason for that snap to enter his tone.
"Okay? What's that supposed to mean?"
With one stroke she spread the polish smoothly across her nail. "It means … okay. You believe that. Maybe you need to. And that's all right."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
With a sense of déjà vu she was reminded of a conversation they'd had on his ship when she'd tried to convince him, with a notable lack of success, of her scores of lovers. "It means … we all have some illusions about ourselves. To some extent we have to. Maybe it protects us from stuff we're not ready to deal with, I don't know. But eventually it catches up with us, too. Like yours is catching up with you now."
"You've been sniffing the fumes from the polish for too long," he said flatly. "You're babbling."
"Am I?" She did look up then, and caught his gaze with hers. It'd be easier to let it go. Easier to lick her wounds in private. But she'd never sought the easy way in life, not even when it had been presented to her on a silver platter. "Then ask yourself this, Jones. Why are you here? Why would a self-professed loner, one who doesn't care about anything or anybody, fly halfway across the world to deliver a piece of paper? Why would he care so much?" She used the hand holding the brush to gesture. "It's not like any of this affects you personally."
When he merely clenched his jaw and looked away, she pressed further. "Seems to me a man like that would say the hell with it. All I care about is myself and my ship. The rest of the world can sort itself out. But you didn't do that, did you?"
His countenance was thunderous, his voice hard. "I may have left the life behind, but Sam's still my friend."
Pointing the brush at him, she said, "Exactly. And a man who goes to these lengths for friendship isn't quite as cut off as he'd like to believe."
"Think you have it all figured out, don't you?" If she'd thought he'd been dangerous before, he was positively radiating challenge now. "Maybe I felt like I owed him something, did you ever think of that?"
A river of ice shot down her spine. She licked her lips, which had gone suddenly dry. When he looked away from her, something inside her registered his meaning. "You mean because of me. Because of what happened between us." The deceptively calm voice was due to numbness, she knew. Once that emotion wore off, the pain would dart in, like angry little arrows. "Well, that's some warped code you have, Jones. Cut yourself off from feeling a thing, but sleep with a guy's sister and he can ask anything of you."
She returned her attention to the nail polish, grateful to have a center for her focus. She observed distantly that her hand held the slightest tremble. "A word of advice—guilt is a lousy motivator. And adding guilt to sex sounds like an excellent way to end up in therapy."
She studied the polish she'd completed on her big toe, deemed it satisfactory. "Now me, I think sex is best without emotion at all. Emotions lead to expectations, and we know how messy they can be." Ana would not, in this lifetime, hint at the turbulent emotions careening inside her from his confession. She couldn't even identify them at this point herself. Although the ache in her heart was pretty self-explanatory.
"You don't believe that."
She froze, refusing to look up, afraid he'd read the truth on her face. "Oh, but I do. As a matter of fact, I think we'd all be better off to be a bit more clear-headed about the act altogether. You take my first time. I chose Billy Ray McIntire only because he had, I thought, a certain reputation. I mean, with a nickname like One-Shot Billy, one would assume, right?"
It was hard to discern if the strangled sound he made was agreement or negation. "My approach couldn't be faulted, but my research was faulty. Had I done more inquiries prior to our … ah … time together, I would have found out that the name was derived from his prowess on the golf course." Although come to think of it, it had ended up describing the boy's sexual technique, or lack thereof, pretty well, too.
Stroking the polish over her last nail, she lifted her head, examined her foot critically. She screwed the cap back on the bottle of polish, reached for the box of Kleenex. "Men just assume women want more from them than sex. Probably an ego thing. But I'm here to tell you, that's just not true. Sometimes it's just a spur-of-the-moment thing. A … release." Pleased with the word, she risked a glance up. He was watching her from beneath hooded lids. There was no guessing at his thoughts. "So you can tuck your guilt away. It's nobody's business but our own if we decide to mate like minks while we're here before going our separate ways. Who would we be hurting?"
"An intriguing proposition." Was that a note of sarcasm in his voice? "But I think we need to focus on the matter at hand."
She finished separating her toes with little rolls of Kleenex, then bent forward and blew lightly on the fresh polish. When he didn't continue, she looked up, caught his gaze on her pursed lips. A crazy little pinwheel whirled in her stomach, only to be doused when he glanced away and continued.
A sliver of amusement struck her. "Like that's an option." He glared at her. She glared back. "Do you want to waste your time with an argument you're going to lose, or do we discuss our plan of action?"
He drew a deep breath, probably to keep from strangling her. She didn't care. Regardless of what else he felt for her, or, more correctly, what he didn't feel for her, he wasn't going to shove her out of the action. Not at this point. She may not be a woman destined to fire any kind of lasting desire in a man, but she could take care of herself. She thought she'd earned the right to do so.
"If you're coming with me, there are going to be a few conditions."
She managed, barely, to avoid rolling her eyes. "I'll bet."
"You do exactly as I say. Stay close beside me, and don't open your mouth unless I tell you to. If something looks like it's going down wrong, you run like hell. We'll set a place to meet if we get split up."
Wiggling her newly polished toes, she said airily, "Relax, Jones. Nothing is going to go wrong." At least not with the assignment. Things had taken a decided turn for the worse the moment they'd started this conversation. And she had no idea how to set it right again.
* * *
After Jones's dire warnings, waiting for the drop-off seemed more than a little anticlimactic. Through the contacts Sam had set up, before he'd been dispatched off to a hospital in New Orleans for a consultation on his leg, they'd arranged to have the assistant to the chairman of GTO pick up the information Jones had taken from Shala's safe.
The steps of St. Paul's Cathedral had been chosen as the meeting point. Ana thought the constant stream of tourists toward the attraction, not to mention the nearby bustle of the city's financial district, should make even Jones feel a bit safer about the transaction. But he didn't appear ready to lower his defenses just yet. His gaze assessing, he constantly scanned the area. He'd insisted on arriving early. Although he hadn't explained himself, Ana figured it was another security precaution. One that threatened to freeze her. Although April, the wind was chilly, heavy with dampness. It bit into the bones and permeated the muscles. It didn't seem possible that only hours ago they'd been sweating on a tropical island.
