by Unknown
“Who blacks out during labor and delivery?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
Neither had she. “Oh Gabe, do you think that’s what happened? They planned it?” She was shaking a little, and each word caught in her throat. “They would do that to me? The CIA? Why?”
A million reasons. “This was a treacherous job, infiltrating your own organization. Like I said, what better way to be sure you didn’t get too close and chatty with someone than to give you pain every time you risked that?”
“I considered giving up my son!” Her voice cracked. “You have to help me, Gabe. You have to help me figure out who did this and why and—”
“Oh, we will. But we have to get it out first.” Relieving the pain was more important than retribution, though he wanted that, too. And bad.
She sat still for a few minutes, thinking. “I can’t go to a doctor.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I have to see someone the CIA has approved, someone who knows my real history, or it won’t take long to figure out I’ve had a lot of…” Her voice faded as she read the look on his face. “That’s exactly what they want, isn’t it?”
“Of course that’s what they want.” Anger ripped through him. “To control you.”
“No, but now we have an advantage, if we’re right about this.” She closed her eyes and wrapped her hands around his neck. “We’re right. I can’t believe I never thought of it.”
“You couldn’t see it.”
“There’s an actual bump there, though. I was an idiot not to figure it out. Every single time I had an intense emotion. It’s like…I don’t even know who I am.”
He frowned, inching her closer. “What do you mean?”
“This isn’t just headaches when some chemical or hormone level spikes. This changed me to the very core of my being, Gabe. Living with the pain, or the fear of the pain, and knowing it was somehow associated with how I feel has completely altered my personality. I told you I have a shell around my heart. They did that to me.”
He eased her closer, kissed her lips, and stroked her hair. “You know what I’m going to do?”
“Kill the person who did this, I hope.”
“Oh yeah. Right after I crack that shell and get my woman back.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Lila woke to see Gabe pacing the room. “Any word from Luke?” she asked.
“Nothing. The resort is quiet.”
She peered toward a window, which was dark enough to let her know it was still the middle of the night. “What time is it?”
“Two thirty. You crashed.”
“You should sleep.” She pushed up and realized he’d covered her. “I’m the one who should be pacing instead of sleeping.”
Gabe checked his phone, then put it down. “I’m just thinking of all the different ways I could actually kill Dexter Crain.”
“I don’t think he’s responsible,” she said. “He’s like a father to me, Gabe.”
He fried her with a look. “Someone knew. Someone high.”
“We’ll talk to him, to the director of the CIA if we have to. We’ll find out.”
“Please tell me you’re not that naïve. They won’t tell you shit, Lila.”
He was right. Even about Dexter, she feared.
“We need a doctor we can trust,” he murmured. “And we need to go through the entire CIA chain of command and get back to what happened when you gave—” Suddenly, he froze and turned to her. “You don’t think some fuckhead planted something in Rafe when he was born, do you?”
Her heart tumbled at the thought. “A chip that made him disobey everything I say?” Her humor fell flat, not even earning the slightest smile. “No, I don’t,” she assured him. “I know every inch of his body, and I have since the day he was born. There’s not a scar on him, except for the usual nicks and bruises of an overactive kid.”
Gabe blew out a breath and paced again, like a trapped man. “Still, I don’t trust anyone anymore.”
“Anymore?” She snorted softly.
He slowed his step and turned to her. “I trusted you.” The low undertone of pain twisted her gut with shame. “I don’t think you know what your leaving did to me.”
“Tell me,” she said. “I really want to know. I need to know.”
“It made me realize…” He puffed out a breath. “It made me know I’d been right all along. No one is really what they seem to be, and the minute you let go and buy into them lock, stock, and big Italian heart, they smash you.”
Oh God. “I wasn’t the first to smash you, was I?”
He didn’t answer.
“What happened to her? Smasher number one?”
He turned, averting his gaze, signaling to her that whatever he was about to say, it was both important and he didn’t like talking about it. She really did speak body language. “Gabe?” she urged when he didn’t say anything.
“I put a bullet in her chest.”
She inched back in shock. “What?”
He stuck his hand in his hair and dragged it back, looking from one place to another, turning a little, avoiding any eye contact at all. “I’m really not at liberty to tell you.”
“Well, as someone I know quite well would say, you better get at liberty in a big damn hurry. I told you my secret assignment and you…” She let the words process some more. “You killed her?”
Finally, he looked at her. “I was a contract operative for the CIA, Lila. You know exactly what that entails. Don’t act shocked that we had to kill people in our jobs. Even people we…like.”
Or love. “So you cared about her?”
He inched closer to the bed, propping himself on the edge as if he needed to sit for this but didn’t want to get too close to her. “I could have. I think the worst part was I trusted her, as an asset and as a person. And then I tried to help her, and by doing so, I nearly got myself killed.”
She studied his profile as he spoke, listening to the words. Each one infused with that undercurrent of passion that seemed to emanate from Gabe’s every pore.
“Who was she? What country? When was this? Can you tell me that much?”
“Russia. Late 2007.”
No mention of who she was, Lila noticed. “Russia in 2007?” she asked, spinning through a mental review of the recent history of that organization. “What were you doing in Russia in 2007?”
“The siloviki. The power boys.”
She knew a little about the unofficial circle of influence that had formed after the leaders of the KGB were either fired, reassigned, or forced into less important jobs with the FSB, the security agency that replaced the notorious spies. The siloviki were tight and nearly as brutal as the KGB but quite under the radar and informal.
As informal as anything in Russia could be.
“Were you undercover? Doing what?”
“Trying to get the names of every one of them,” he explained. “To watch them and know what decisions weren’t political per se, but as the chairman of the largest oil company or the head of a company that produces rockets, each and every man wielded incredible political power.”
“And the CIA wanted to know who they were and what they were up to.” She fully understood an assignment like that. “What was your cover?”
“Besides blown?” He looked skyward. “American businessman helping the personnel department of Sevtronics, an electrical components company in Russia. I was allegedly teaching them best practices of US media companies, but I was sucking their personnel and private files dry.”
“And you were creating assets from the employee base.”
“Of course. And one asset? Well, she was my best. The administrative assistant to a power monger by the name of Viktor Solov, the head of Sevtronics. She was giving me memos and files, information and schedules.”
“And you were giving her…” She almost didn’t want to know, except it had been well before he’d met Isadora, so she shouldn’t be jealous.
“A lot of laughs and some pretty decent sex.”
No, she shouldn’t be jealous, but something was burning in her chest. “Laughs and sex. Your specialty.”
But she didn’t get a smile in response. “It was good.”
Damn it. “Did you love her?”
He tipped his head, an angle of uncertainty. An angle of torture. “I knew I shouldn’t.”
Well, that didn’t answer her question.
“But it’s moot, because she fucking betrayed me, and it nearly cost me my life.”
“So you shot her?”
He gave a dry laugh. “Yes. That’s what ‘nearly cost me my life’ leads to when you’re a spy, Lila. She was about to kill me, and I stopped her with my gun. In our line of business, that’s kind of another day at the office.”
“Except, in our line of business you’re supposed to walk away unscathed,” she said. “But it doesn’t sound like you did.”
“Physically unscathed, though I got a pretty severe dressing down when I got back to the US, which is par for the course with the CIA. Risk your life, get them information that can save lives, and receive the middle finger in return.” He added a smile. “I punished them by not giving them everything I had on the company. Decided to save it for a rainy day or a bargaining chip, but I never got to use it because the siloviki lost most of their power when Putin took over.”
“Was it tough for you, that first kill?” she asked.
“I was a pretty young agent,” he said. “I realized I’d been naïve and trusting and that is deadly and stupid. I wasn’t going to get involved ever, at least not emotionally. But a few years later, I walked into this sexy recruit…and broke that vow.” He caressed her cheek with his knuckle. “Until she left me.”
“I had to do what I had to do,” she said simply.
His finger froze. “Funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“I just meant it was funny because those were actually her last words to me.”
She inched back, surprised. “Were they?”
“And they’ve always been a red flag.” He eyed her with that same slightly narrowed eye of suspicion she’d seen so often when she’d first told him who she really was.
“Don’t look at me that way,” she said. “I’m not lying to you.”
“I know, but…what happens when ‘you do what you have to do’?”
She frowned, pushing up. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly what I asked. What happens when duty calls again and you feel you have to honor the memory of your parents instead of someone you love? What will you do?”
She snorted. “I’ll make them eat this freaking implant.”
He just gave her a look, because they both knew how fast you could be sucked back in.
“What about you?” she shot back. “You’re still a man who a woman can’t be sure of anymore. Especially when…” Her voice faded.
“When what?”
“When that woman, the one you loved and trusted is…dead.”
He scowled at her. “Isadora is dead?”
“Isn’t she?” She shrugged. “Look at me. Thin and blond and…crispy.”
He gave a mirthless laugh. “Crispy?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I sure as hell do not. The woman I enjoyed up against the wall was not some kind of dried-up cracker. What the fuck is crispy, anyway?”
“It means I’m cold and protected and…and…” She nearly dented her temples she pressed so hard. “I don’t look like Isadora, and I don’t feel like her, either.”
“That’s what I’m trying to solve,” he insisted, reaching for her. “Get that fucking bug out of your head. Literally and figuratively.”
She backed away. “It might be too late. She’s gone, Gabe. And this…” She gestured toward her face and body. “This is what you get now.”
“And you think that matters to me? You think the color of your hair and the size of your tits are important to me? Who the hell do you think I am?” He took her shoulders in his hands. “I wasn’t in love with Isadora’s hair or body. I was in love with her heart and soul and spirit.”
She blinked, hating that tears burned behind her lids. “What if my heart and soul and spirit are all gone, too?”
“They’re not,” he assured her. “I see them every day. Every minute, they come more and more to the surface. Which is probably why you’re in such pain. We get rid of those headaches, we get you back.”
He pushed her down on the bed, hovering over her, then lowering himself on to her. “Then it’ll be like falling in love all over again.” He kissed her mouth, tunneling his fingers in her hair and rocking against her.
“Are you?” she asked as he feathered her neck with more hot kisses and sent shivers down her spine.
“Yes.” He searched her face, looking into her eyes, his smoky blue ones intense as he took slow breaths and hardened against her. “I’m falling for you, Lila. For you, not the memory of you. You.”
She pulled him into a kiss, but the vibration of his phone made him leave her instantly, reaching for his phone.
“Hang on, it’s Luke,” he said, reading the caller ID. “Let me see what’s up.”
While he answered, Lila pushed off the bed and touched her head, which, of course, hurt. But knowing why, or suspecting she did, changed everything.
“Who is it?” At the sharp tone in his question, Lila turned.
“Is Rafe okay?” she asked.
He nodded, reaching for her hand to bring her back next to him on the bed.
“Guy named David Franklin just walked in and took an available villa,” he told her.
A guest registered at this hour?
“No reservation, but he’s in African Daisy, one of the larger villas, and paid cash,” Gabe reported. “His background is blank.” He waited a second, listening to Luke. Then, “The clerk got a Maryland license. Luke ran the number, and it doesn’t exist.”
“Do we have his picture?” she asked.
He nodded. “On the security camera at check-in and the front desk got a photo copy of his ID. Luke, text me that picture and let me know when he makes any move out of that villa.” He hung up and looked at Lila. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
She thought for a moment and shook her head. The phone dinged again, and Gabe tapped it and showed her the screen. “Here he is.”
She squinted at the shot and sucked in a breath. “Yes. That’s David Foster, not Franklin. He’s a low level operative I knew him in the agency, to say hello, but only because…” She swallowed the rest of the sentence as it hit her hard. “He’s a family friend of Dexter Crain’s,” she said softly.
“Big shocker,” Gabe growled.
Her phone, on the dresser, lit up and buzzed.
“Don’t tell me, there’s the Dixter now.”
She grabbed it and blinked at the screen. “Nope, but it is David Foster. He’s texting me.”
Gabe whipped the phone out of her hand. “‘I have the answer you need,’” Gabe read. “What the ever-lovin’—”
“Stop it!” She yanked the phone back, reading the text and instantly writing back. “What is the question?” she said outloud as she typed.
They looked at each other, silent for a second, waiting for the response, which showed up in less than five seconds.
Does your head hurt?
“Shit,” Gabe mumbled, reading it. “I knew it. I fucking knew it.”
“Oh, Gabe, we just figured it out,” she whispered. “It’s like they can read my damn mind.” She choked on the last word.
“Then we’re going to talk to him and find out more.”
She didn’t argue that one, but typed her response. Let’s talk.
He answered immediately. Meet me at the harbor in 15 min. If any of the bodyguards crawling all over this place are there, you’ll never see me.
“Who exactly is this guy?” Gabe demanded.
She
scoured her memory for what she knew about him. Other than the fact that he was close to Dexter. “He was a tech guy, an analyst brought on not long after I was permanently moved to DC. Not a major player in any way.”
“But a friend of Crain’s.”
She shut her eyes and nodded.
Gabe pushed off the bed. “You’re not going.”
She looked up at him. “Of course I’m going.”
“With a team of—”
“Gabe, stop it.” She shot up. “You can back me up, but not one single guy from Luke’s team can be there. He has information I desperately need and who knows…” She touched the back of her head. “What they know about me.”
He flattened her with a look, but she could tell he was thinking the same thing. He knew how spying worked, and he knew better than anyone how to manage an asset.
“Maybe he learned something through his association with Dexter and he wants to share it,” she suggested. “Maybe he was undercover, too, and has the same symptoms. Maybe there are other agents enduring this or being controlled this way.”
“Or maybe he wants to kill you.”
She sighed heavily at the truth of that. “All I know is we won’t find out unless we go and play his game.”
He didn’t answer, thinking and figuring things out the way Gabe did.
“You’ll be there, but you’ll be hiding,” she said quickly. “I have to talk to him. I have to know where to start so you know who to kill.”
“Why not in the light of day with friends around? Ask him that.”
Nodding, she typed on the screen. Why can’t we meet in the daylight, out in the open?
“It’s a fair question,” she said while they waited for a response, which flashed back almost instantly.
Because there are spies among us.
Lila looked at the six words she’d heard Dexter say a hundred times, and her heart dropped. Good God. “We’re going, Gabe,” she said quietly, already looking for the right clothes.
“Fair enough. I’ll tell Luke not to follow him when he leaves. Get dressed, and let’s go. Duty calls.”
“One last time, I hope.”
“At least this time we’re in it together,” he said, texting Luke.
She scooped up a pair of jeans and a dark sweatshirt. “Which means one of us has to live, Gabe. For Rafe.” She pulled the sweatshirt on, flipping her hair and eyeing him as she popped out. “You have to promise me that if one of us has to die, it will be me. You can take care of him.”
