by Nina Bruhns
Gregg’s fingers tightened on her thigh. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” She turned to gaze at the passing landscape.
They were traveling south on I-95, making the four-hour trip to Washington, D.C. She could scarcely believe in two short days she had changed her mind so thoroughly about Gregg that she had stood silently by as he called the kid next door to take care of Penny the cat—apparently a standing arrangement between them—and come willingly along on this crazy D.C. expedition. Had offered to help him in his search for a traitor who was starting to seem more phantom than real. She prayed she’d made the right decision to trust him.
“Tell me your plan,” she said, turning back to him.
He glanced at her from checking the rearview mirror. If her question surprised him, he didn’t show it. “I was able to persuade Frank Blair to give me contact information for his Pentagon source. I’ll start there. Meet with the guy. See what he has to say.”
“Blair?” Alarm zinged up her spine. “But it could be a trap!”
“Which is why you’re staying at the hotel. In case something goes wrong.”
“And if it does, what am I supposed to do? Call the D.C. police?”
“Hell, no.” He moved his hand from her thigh to the steering wheel. “You hightail it back up to Haven Oaks Sanatorium and lock yourself in until you hear from me, or until the traitor is exposed.”
She frowned in vague surprise. “But STORM runs Haven Oaks. I thought you didn’t trust them.”
“I don’t trust anyone. But the security at Haven Oaks is good. You’ll be safer there than anywhere else.”
She pondered that for a moment. “But you got inside.”
“Baby, I could get into Fort Knox if I wanted to. But Haven Oaks will do fine to protect you. I’ve decided the man we’re looking for is probably not a professional operator. He’s most likely a damn paper-pusher.”
That seemed a leap. “How do you figure?”
“Because al Sayika is doing all the dirty work. They’re running him, not the other way around. He’s a coward. Just sitting back and reaping the rewards of his treachery.”
“You think he’s doing this for money? The blood diamonds everyone keeps talking about?”
“Let’s hope so. Because if he’s betraying his own country out of some twisted moral conviction, it’s a whole other ball game.”
She thought about that, and about everything she’d suffered at the hands of her captors. If it was all because of simple greed . . .
Emotions she’d kept carefully locked away for months suddenly cracked loose and a bone-deep fury swept through her, bubbling and roiling in her chest. It had been easier when she’d thought Gregg was the villain. She’d been able to focus all her negative energy on him. But now, the rage grew inside her, like an ugly, festering cancer, wanting to explode.
“We’ll get him,” Gregg said, bringing her fingers to his lips. “I swear to you, Gina. We’ll get the bastard.”
“That’s not enough,” she said with a hatred that went deep, to her very soul. “I want him dead.”
“That can be arranged,” he said evenly.
And she knew he would.
Despite her hatred, a chill went up the back of her scalp. “I don’t know how can you do this,” she said. “Be involved in such terrible things, with such brutal people, day after day, year after year.”
He kissed her fingers again, then let them go, his gaze on the road ahead. “Someone has to.”
“But why you? What makes you want to do it?”
He let out a long sigh. “You don’t want to know.”
Except she did. She wanted to know everything about him. What made him tick. Why he could be the way he was and still attract her, inside and out, as no other man ever had.
“Something happened to you,” she said, and watched his handsome face cloud over to a grim blank. “Maybe when you were a child . . .” She remembered his statement about being thrown into a foreign prison. “Or maybe you were imprisoned somewhere awful?”
“Gina, leave it alone.”
“No,” she said. “You’re asking me to trust you. I deserve the same trust from you.” His mouth thinned, but he still didn’t say anything. “I just want to understand you, Gregg.”
He shifted in the driver’s seat, stretching out his arms and gripping the steering wheel rigidly. “There’s nothing to understand,” he said, his voice gritty with long-suppressed anger. “I’m fucked up because my mom made me hide in the closet while my father beat her. I tried helping her once and he put me in the hospital. When I was five she died, and we moved. Dad found another woman, then another. I tried to warn them.” He shrugged, but unconvincingly. “I finally took off.”
Jesus. “How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“My God, who took care of you? Did you have relatives?”
He just looked at her, then back at the road. “I got by okay,” he said. He uncurled his fingers from the steering wheel and stretched them out. “A couple years later I got hired on as a farmhand up in Indiana. The place was owned by a Vietnam special forces vet. He told me stories, taught me how to hunt, and take care of myself. When he lost the farm, I figured the military was as good a place to be as any. He forged me papers and I joined up.”
“Oh, Gregg, I’m so sorry. No child should have to go through that.”
“Don’t be. I’m fine.”
His advice earlier about not blaming oneself for others’ actions echoed in her mind. He wasn’t fine. Who would be? But now she understood his need for complete control—because he’d had none as a child and awful things had happened as a result. She also understood his need for justice from the dark forces of the world who inflicted evil on the innocent.
Her heart went out to him completely.
At first sight, Gina had fallen in love with Gregg van Halen because of his physical beauty and his sexy demeanor. She’d fallen even harder when she’d experienced his edgy, exciting lovemaking. But it went so much deeper than that. Even back then, she’d sensed a vulnerable soul within the man that he worked hard to keep well hidden from everyone around him. But he had responded to her love with a mirrored need and a loyalty that had taken her breath away. They still did.
She leaned across the center console and placed a tender kiss on his cheek. “You’re a good man, Gregg.”
She wanted to show him there was someone in the world he could always count on being there for him. She would love him, and listen to him, and let him save her.
Then maybe he would stop blaming himself for not being able to save the others.
“I need to talk to you,” Alex told Bobby Lee Quinn as soon as he stepped aboard the Stormy Lady from the small speedboat the STORM commander had arrived on.
Quinn’s eyebrows hiked. “Okay. But I have some pretty important information to relay and I don’t have a lot of time. So make it quick.”
“Not a problem,” Alex said, folding his arms over his chest. “I quit.”
Quinn’s brows shot even higher. At the same time, a soft gasp sounded behind them. Alex turned to see Rebel standing there, her expression bleeding hurt and disbelief. “What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice cracking.
Fuck. She was supposed to be below making coffee. He hadn’t wanted her to hear he was leaving. Not yet.
Cowardly? Yeah, so what else was new?
“You can’t quit,” Quinn said, yanking him back to the conversation. “You’re in the middle of an op.”
“All the more reason,” Alex returned. “I’m having flashbacks. Screaming, black-outing, striking-out-at-anything-that-moves flashbacks. I’m a danger to myself and everyone around me.”
Quinn dropped a duffel bag to the deck. “I’ll be the judge of that, Zane.” He turned and smiled at Rebel. “Special Agent Haywood. Hope my man here has been treating you well. Is that coffee I smell?”
Alex winced as she jerked her gaze away from him. “Yes,” she said to Quinn. “Pleas
e, come below and have some.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Believe I will.”
Down in the small salon, Alex bit his tongue until they’d gathered around the table. It was shaped like a horseshoe booth at a diner. Quinn slid in first, and Alex took the spot opposite while Rebel brought out some sandwiches she’d made and poured mugs of coffee. She then sat down next to Quinn. Her expression told Alex the choice of seats had not been accidental.
“I’m serious about quitting,” he persisted despite the shitstorm coming from the other side of the table, and told Quinn in detail about the diving incident this morning, as well as the episode in the car while on surveillance. “I’m unreliable,” he said. “Hell, I’m just plain dangerous.”
“I hear you,” Quinn said, and turned toward Rebel. “What’s your opinion, Agent Haywood?”
She’d been toying with her sandwich the whole time Alex was speaking. She didn’t look up. “Zane’s right,” she shocked him by saying. “He shouldn’t be allowed in a position where he could hurt someone.”
Inwardly, he sighed. Hell, she was not talking about flashbacks, that was for damn sure. Probably even Quinn knew that, judging by his narrowed eyes as his gaze slashed from one to the other.
“All right,” the commander said briskly. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I discovered some things this morning about—” Just then his cell phone rang. He plucked it from his pocket. “Quinn.”
Alex waited impatiently for the conversation to end. It didn’t take long. Mostly Quinn just listened and cursed repeatedly under his breath, shooting apologetic glances at Rebel each time. Alex wanted to strangle the man for his fucking good manners. Jesus. Southerners!
Finally Quinn hung up, motioned for Rebel to exit the booth, and scooted after her. He grabbed his sandwich on the way out. “Gibran Allawi Bakreen, your suspect from the yacht? He was just murdered in the D.C. hospital where he was being treated for his gunshot wound. We’re oscar mike, people.”
“Wait!” Alex protested the order. “Damn it, Quinn, I—”
“Murdered how, sir?” Rebel interrupted, passing the commander a Ziploc bag for his sandwich.
“Someone swapped his antibiotic IV drip for a lethal dose of tranquilizers.” Quinn took the stairs up to the deck two at a time. “You can damn well forget about quitting,” he said over his shoulder as Alex followed. “Aside from anything else, you signed a contract and have a legal obligation to STORM Corps. I’ll put you with Darcy on tech if you want out of the field.”
“But—”
“And if you feel unable to fulfill any duties, Mr. Zane, report the hell back to Haven Oaks and let the psychs finish their job.”
“Jesus, that’s not—”
“Fuck, man, there isn’t an operator I know doesn’t have flashbacks. We have options now. Deal with it.” Quinn shot him a backward glare. “And here’s a piece of free, hard-earned advice. Relationship distractions are far more lethal in this business than anything the enemy can throw at us. Get your dick screwed on right, Zane, and do it now.”
Alex’s mouth dropped open. He had no response for that. Jesus. Was it all so freaking obvious?
Rebel made a choking noise.
“Sorry ’bout the French, ma’am,” Quinn said.
She had turned bright red, but soldiered on. “About the evidence we found on the Allah’s Paradise, sir. Should I send it to Quantico for analysis?”
Quinn shook his head. “Because of the time factor, DHS has authorized STORM to process whatever we find.” He paused as he straddled the ladder down to his speedboat. “Since despite everything, y’all were able to conduct a fairly extensive search of Allah’s Paradise today, I’m going to turn the rest of the search over to the Coast Guard. I want you both up in D.C. immediately,” he instructed them. “I’ll send the jet back for you.”
“Me, too?” Rebel asked in surprise.
Alex’s stomach knotted in consternation. Fucking great.
The fucking last place on earth he wanted Rebel anywhere near was fucking Washington, D.C.
“I still need an FBI liaison,” Quinn said, making Alex’s head nearly explode. Shit. “Tara’s setting up our D.C. headquarters as we speak,” Quinn continued. “Pack the collected evidence with care and bring it with you, okay?”
“What about the diamonds we found?”
“Those, too.”
Alex’s mind was too busy planning the untimely and permanent disappearance of Wade Montana to respond, so Rebel said, “All right, sir.”
Quinn grunted, grabbed his duffel bag, and was gone. Seconds later a fantail of water sprayed over them as he gunned the speedboat and headed back toward the distant skyline of Norfolk.
Alex let out an angry, pent-up breath. “Bastard,” he growled, debating inwardly whether he meant Quinn or Montana. It was a toss-up.
Wordlessly, Rebel turned on a toe, stalked back to the ladder, and disappeared below. He darted his gaze after her. And rewound back to their present issue.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Rebel!” he called, hurrying in pursuit. “Hey! My quitting has nothing to do with you . . . with us. I’m worried, is all. I don’t want anything to happen to you because I’m not right in the head.”
“Too late,” she shot back, striding into their small stateroom and yanking her overnight bag out of the mini-closet.
Ouch.
He halted at the door and watched her furiously pack her things, warring with himself over what to do about it. If he had half a brain, he’d just let her go. For her own good. He should let her stay mad at him. Break off this doomed affair right here and now.
How did he ever think he could just sleep with her and not want more? And yet, more was impossible. He knew that as viscerally as he knew his own glaring deficiencies. No woman as vibrant and alive as Rebel would want a man who could only disappoint her. Painful as it was, he should just let her go. That was the honorable thing to do. Even if it hurt her now. In the long run, a clean break was best. For them both.
Swallowing down the need to explain all that, ruthlessly suppressing the need to hold her one last time, he forced himself to turn away from her, and went back up on deck.
Throwing out the buoys to mark the wreck of the Allah’s Paradise felt all too depressingly like marking the abandoned wreck of his own heart. Hell, of his whole damned life.
Christ. Things had been so much easier with Helena. Straightforward. Unemotional. No pain. No indecision.
Of course, he hadn’t been in love with Helena.
Blackness swamped over his mood. Obviously that was a good thing. Maybe he should call Helena and beg her to take him back. Plead with her to reconsider, and solve both their problems for good—as was their original plan. That would put an end to this agony of hurt once and for all.
Along with any chance ever to make things right with Rebel. Which was an even better thing.
It was.
He turned over the engine and started the boat forward with a lurch.
Call Helena. Yeah. That should solve all his problems.
Sure it would.
FIFTEEN
“YOU called Helena?” Rebel could hear the disbelief and pain in her own voice. She’d thought her heart couldn’t hurt any more than when Alex had announced to Quinn this morning he wanted to quit the mission. But, wow. Seriously?
Yeah. She’d seen right through that one. It hadn’t been the mission he’d wanted to quit. It was her. And if there’d been any doubt in her mind before now, this announcement proved it.
And she’d slept with him, the two-faced, deceiving jerk. She’d actually started fantasizing that he really cared for her! That he wanted to be with her—if not forever, then at least for more than a single night.
How could she have been such a fool?
During the whole trip returning the Stormy Lady to the marina, she’d been so angry she hadn’t exchanged more than five words with him. In Norfolk they’d split up, he checking in with t
he Coast Guard detail that was to take over the search of the sunken yacht, and she checking in with her boss to make sure her absence was authorized. Unfortunately, it was. Once they got to D.C., she was supposed to go to the hotel where STORM had set up headquarters, then join Commander Quinn at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to help investigate the murder of Gibran Bakreen, the suspect from Allah’s Paradise. Before going to the airport, she’d also stopped by her apartment for some different clothes to bring along. She was now dressed in a subdued but elegant slate-blue business suit and heels.
She carried an overnight bag, which Alex insisted on taking from her as they stood waiting for the private STORM jet Quinn had sent back to fetch them to taxi up to the gate. That’s when, straight-backed, eyes front, duffel over his shoulder, Alex had calmly sprung it on her that he’d spoken with his ex-fiancée.
The morning after they’d made love for the first time ever.
She wanted to kick him with her pointed shoe. Hard. Where it counted.
“I was just returning her call,” he said, still without looking at her.
Oh. And that made it so much better. “I see.”
Not.
Rebel fumed as they climbed up the steep stairs to the door of the jet when it opened. The wind whipped through her hair and she had to hold her skirt down so she didn’t pull a complete Marilyn Monroe. Naturally, he was five steps below her, looking up. But his sense of self-preservation was well-honed enough at least to pretend not to notice.
She had never been on a private jet before, and for a moment she halted on the threshold in awe. The STORM Hawker eight-seat jet was the epitome of pure masculine luxury. Decorated in the company’s black and silver signature colors against a fuselage of storm-cloud gray, the main cabin seats were full-swivel recliners in soft leather, complete with footrests, an abundance of suede pillows, and warm fur throws. It even smelled masculine; a low note of sandalwood scented the air. She looked longingly as she walked past an oversized sofa that turned into a bed. Not that there was time for a nap. It was a short flight, just over half an hour.
