Close Pursuit

by Cindy Dees

  If Alex’s enemies were this aggressive, she probably ought to get Dawn away from him. Problem was, he seemed so capable of protecting her and the baby. Was it better—safer—for them to stay or go? Her head said to go, but her heart shouted at her to stay.

  The BMW pulled up in front of a pretty stone church with a big walled compound beside it. The roofs of buildings were visible inside. That must be the convent. A second three-story structure stood on the other side of the church. That must be the school Alex had gone to.

  They escorted the nun inside, Alex carrying her overnight bag and Katie cradling Dawn, who blissfully slept through it all. They reached the cloistered portion of the convent, and Sister Mary Harris took her bag from Alex.

  “Sister, could you wait for a moment while Katie and I have a private word?”

  “Of course, Alex.”

  He took Dawn out of Katie’s arms and passed her to the nun, then took Katie’s arm and led her off a little ways down the stone hallway.

  “This is the part where you piss me off, right?” When he didn’t reply, she tried, “What’s up?”

  “I planned to have one conversation with you, but in light of that SUV, it now needs to be a different conversation.”

  “You’re scaring me, Alex.”

  “Katie, what do you think of leaving Dawn with Sister Mary Harris, just for a day or two, while we figure out who was chasing us?”

  “We need to hide Dawn?” she squeaked. Crap! Just how dangerous are his enemies? “Why don’t I just take her home to Pennsylvania right now?”

  He exhaled hard. “You and Dawn have been seen with me, which makes you two targets. You will be perceived as soft spots in my armor and exploited as such.”

  “Which is a roundabout way of you saying you don’t think Dawn and I will be safe if we go home,” she said reluctantly.

  “Exactly.”

  “My dad’s a retired cop. I can stay with him and my mom.”

  “He won’t cut it against these guys. They’ll come at you two with a team of hit men or even military operatives.”

  “Who will?”

  “Not here. Not now. Besides, we’re talking about Dawn.”

  “After you send her away, will you do the same to me?”

  Chagrin passed across his face. He was planning to get rid of her!

  “I wish I could. But the truth is you’re probably safer with me than anywhere else. I know my enemy’s tactics and have been thwarting them for a long time.”

  He wishes he could send me away? What the hell was last night, then? Oh, wait. He doesn’t get emotionally involved with anyone, does he? Not even if he has mind-blowing sex with them. He might as well have sunk a dagger in her heart in that moment. She did her best to hide her devastation, but she probably failed miserably.

  “Will this place be any safer for Dawn than your condo? It’s a convent, for crying out loud. It’s not like they have armed guards.”

  “It’s also an orphanage. Where better to hide a baby than among a bunch of other babies? And the convent actually does have pretty decent security. When I was a student here, my father arranged to have a state-of-the-art security system installed. Another wealthy parent updated it a few years ago. She should be fine here.”

  Katie hesitated. The idea of being separated from Dawn felt like having her right arm cut off and her heart torn out of her chest.

  “I’ll miss her, too,” Alex said quietly. “But it’s for her safety. And I swear it’ll only be for a little while.”

  His phone beeped with an incoming text just then, and he fished it out of his pocket, mumbling, “I’m expecting some important news. This may be it.” He glanced at his phone and a look of relief crossed his face. “I had my lawyer file an emergency custody request for Dawn this morning. The judge has agreed to make you and me Dawn’s temporary guardians.”

  Katie’s jaw dropped in both relief and shock. But then she demanded, “You made us her guardians without asking me?”

  “Why?” he asked sharply. “Don’t you want to be her guardian?”

  “I’d adopt her today if I knew how to do it!”

  “Well, there you go. Dawn doesn’t have to go into the foster care system, and we can continue to care for her.”

  “Until we have to hide her in a convent so she doesn’t get kidnapped or killed.”

  Alex argued, “She’d be at much more risk of being kidnapped or killed in a foster home. She has already been linked to me, remember? My enemies will go after her whether she’s near me or not. As her guardians, you and I can take direct action to keep her safe, up to and including hiding her somewhere safe.”

  “You don’t have to talk me into the benefits of being her legal guardian,” Katie snapped. “I’m delighted and relieved that you took this step. I’m just unhappy that you didn’t talk to me about it and that our first act as her guardians is to leave her in a convent all by herself.”

  “She’ll hardly be by herself. Sister Mary Harris will look after her day and night if I ask her to.”

  Katie sighed. She had no doubt the nun would take great care of Dawn. She was just freaked out at the idea of leaving the baby. They’d been together literally since the moment of her birth. “If Dawn has to stay in this place, I want her to be with someone she knows and who cares about her.”

  “The nuns care about all the babies they look after.”

  “You know what I mean,” Katie snapped.

  “I do.” Alex strode down the hall to the nun, and Katie followed in his wake, supremely unhappy. The nun readily agreed to look after the infant while they sorted out whoever had been in that SUV behind them In fact, Sister Mary Harris seemed relieved to do so.

  Katie kissed sleeping baby Dawn goodbye on the forehead and took one last, long breath of her sweet baby smell before passing off the baby bag to the nun. Despondently, she followed Alex back out to the car. She hated this. But what choice did she and Alex have? Responsible parents didn’t endanger their children. Period.

  Not that it had stopped or even slowed down Alex’s father from being a spy. She blurted, “Do you blame your father for engaging in something as dangerous as espionage at the same time he was your only caregiver?”

  He was silent for a while before replying. “I never thought of it in those terms before. But I suppose I did. A little.”

  Past tense? “You don’t blame him anymore? Have you forgiven him then?”

  “Not at all,” Alex answered coldly. “I simply choose not to think about him anymore.”

  “Never?” she asked, surprised.

  “Not as a parent. He’s simply the irritating bastard who harasses me from time to time.”

  Wow. The thought of cutting all ties with her family, physically and emotionally, was almost as painful as leaving Dawn behind had been. The mere thought of how lonely a child Alex must have been made her heart weep. Surprised at how upset the idea made her, she wiped a stray tear off her cheek.

  “Don’t cry for me,” Alex said sharply. “Don’t ever do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I prefer that no one care for me. Saves a world of hassles to avoid emotional ties of any kind.”

  She stared across the interior of the car at him. “Are you serious? You don’t ever want any kind of emotional ties to another human being?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then why on God’s green earth did you make yourself one of Dawn’s legal guardians?”

  “Being a guardian has nothing to do with being a parent. It merely means I will provide support and resources to whoever raises her.”

  “Bullshit,” she exploded. “You promised you’d never lie to me, Alex.”

  He all but drove off the road, he was scowling so heavily. And then it hit her. To be honest with her, he first had to be honest with himself. He was already emotionally invested in Dawn whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not.

  “It’s hard, isn’t it?” she asked sympathetically.

  “What i
s?”

  “Giving up your grand isolation and stepping up to being an adult—”

  Something big and fast-moving slammed into her side of the car and the BMW swerved violently. A black SUV had just sideswiped them, hard. Alex stomped on the accelerator. If she thought he’d driven fast before, that was nothing compared to the way he flung the BMW around now. She braced herself grimly in her seat and held on to the bent door for dear life as he tore across the suburbs like a madman.

  It took five of the most nerve-racking minutes of her life for him to lose the big vehicle, but the superior speed and agility of the German sports car finally prevailed over the clumsier SUV. Five minutes didn’t sound like long to her in the context of normal life, but when someone was trying to kill her, every second seemed to last an eternity. She was silent and didn’t disturb Alex’s intense concentration as he drove.

  Eventually, the SUV disappeared behind them and Alex decelerated once more.

  “We’ve got to ditch my car,” he bit out.

  “Because the damage is too obvious?”

  “No. Because whoever’s after us is tracking this vehicle somehow. I checked for bugs, but they’re doing something else. Watching it on satellite or tracking the onboard computers somehow.”

  He pulled into a long-term parking lot next to a Metro stop. And then he did a strange thing. He took the key fob off its chain and left it prominently on the dashboard in the front windshield. “Leave your door unlocked,” he muttered as she jumped out of the car. He did the same and put his window down for good measure.

  “Are you trying to get it stolen?” she asked, confused.

  “Yes. Then our thugs can follow around the thief for a while instead of us.”

  Ahh. A clever misdirection. “You’re good at this spy stuff,” she puffed as they ran for the Metro entrance.

  They slowed down once they were underground. He answered belatedly, “I bloody well ought to be good at it after the way I was raised.”

  “I wish I could go back in time and hug that little boy. He must have been so lost and lonely.”

  “You don’t miss what you never had,” Alex retorted.

  He was right. And he’d just described Alex, the man, in a nutshell. He’d never been loved; therefore, he didn’t know what he was missing out on. Her resolve to show him strengthened once more.

  “Now what?” she asked as they stepped onto a Metro train. They fell into seats as it accelerated into a dark tunnel.

  “We go to ground.”

  We, huh? Guess she wasn’t going home to Pennsylvania anytime soon. Not until people quit trying to kill Alex or get to him through her. Good. It would give her time to teach him what love was. Whether he liked it or not....

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ALEX KNEW THAT spies tended to think in terms of disappearing in the underbellies of cities. Therefore, he chose to hide right out in the open among crowds of tourists. His biggest problem was that he and Katie made a strikingly attractive couple. They would be memorable. Oh, well. They would just have to stay in their hotel room and find a way to occupy themselves for a few days. He could think of worse fates.

  First, he took her to a crowded shopping mall only a few miles from where he lived—another ploy to throw off his pursuers.... Spies never returned to home base or anywhere near it if they got burned. The two of them needed to pick up yet another emergency wardrobe.

  Katie acted startled as he led her into a posh Georgetown mall and handed her a credit card. “Preloaded debit card. Untraceable, of course,” he bit out.

  She looked appropriately surprised, like an amateur nonspy might. Golf claps for her performance. One thing he was growingly impressed with about her act was how consistently she held up the charade. She was flawless. Not even in the throes of sex could he spot a single hint of her true motives.

  “Ill-gotten gambling profits?” she asked.

  “Trust fund.”

  “You have a trust fund, too? Man! Some people have all the luck.”

  That made him snort in unwilling humor. “That’s me. Daddy’s little financial safe haven.”

  “Don’t put yourself down like that,” she said indignantly. “You’re lovable no matter what you seem to think.”

  “Why would I want to be lovable? Love is for normal people.”

  “Love is for everyone,” she retorted. “And, furthermore, I’m going to prove it to you, tonight.”

  His libido perked up at that. “Really?” he drawled. Still hadn’t given up on the seduction angle, huh? No complaints from him if she wanted to give that her best shot. He was up for the challenge.

  “I’m going to slip in here and pick up a little something to help me prove my point.”

  His mouth curved up sardonically as he realized they were standing in front of a high-end lingerie boutique. Her instructions from the CIA had apparently been to put a full-court press on him. Interesting. Very interesting.

  Bags in hand three hours later—how in the hell did it take women three hours to pick out a few outfits and some new underwear?—he grabbed a cab and had it take them to a hotel near the Capitol that was known for its discretion and privacy. Not only would the staff carry no tales, but he suspected the rooms were heavily soundproofed. It was a favorite rendezvous spot for politicians and their extracurricular constituents.

  They checked in and ordered room service while he eyed the glossy bag from that lingerie store. What had she picked up? She’d been entirely secretive about it and steadfastly refused to give him a sneak preview.

  He was amused when Katie insisted on ordering supper for them and made a big production out of it. It was a strange sensation to have a women fussing over him like this. He’d certainly had women pamper him over the years. Some did it for money, and some did it in pursuit of their own ulterior motives. But none of them had ever done it in the name of demonstrating love.

  What was her agenda, anyway? If she was out to blackmail him, she should have picked out the hotel. Arranged for a bugged and camera-infested room. But instead she’d let him pick the hotel.

  He didn’t see the CIA’s angle, and Lord knew Katie was brilliant at giving nothing away. He had to ride this thing through until she made a slip...or, knowing her, just came out and blurted what she wanted from him.

  Hard to believe that a man of his intellect and education could be so stymied by a supposed kindergarten teacher. But then, very little about her had turned out to be simple.

  “You pick,” Katie announced, handing him the TV remote.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Pick what you want to watch. You spoiled me last night, so tonight, I’m spoiling you.”

  If only. “I usually watch financial channels or news channels.”

  “Go for it,” she declared. “This is your night.”

  He idly surfed through the usual news channels for a while until Katie piped up, “Do you ever watch sports? Or manly shows that involve heavy construction equipment or repossessing stuff? My brothers like to watch cop shows and crime-solving shows or anything involving men and balls.”

  He couldn’t help grinning at the double entendre. “I did develop a fondness for basketball in prison. The inmates played a lot of it.”

  She plopped down on the end of the bed closest to the armchair he sprawled in. “What exactly did you do to end up in jail? You don’t strike me as the felon type.”

  Ahh, here we go. Probing for details about his past. This was more like it. Settling in to the comfortable world of evasion and concealment, he told her exactly what was on the public record. “I drank and drove on the New Jersey Turnpike. In a Porsche. As fast as it would go. And, yes, I know how dumb that was, and, yes, I learned my lesson. I’ll never, ever do it again.”

  “Were you in an accident? Somebody hurt or killed?”

  “No and no.”

  “First offense?”

  “Yup.”

  “Then how on earth did you end up in jail? My brother’s a cop, and that s
eems pretty extreme for a first offense.”

  Crap. Her and her damned family connections again. He shrugged. “I’m no innocent victim, Katie. I’ve done a lot of bad things I didn’t get caught for. Some of them were flatly illegal. I figure my karma’s about even.”

  “Have you ever intentionally harmed another person or taken something from someone that they personally valued?” she demanded.

  “I stole those two cars in Osh.”

  “Those don’t count. You did it to save our lives and without any malicious intent.”

  “I keep telling you. I’m no saint.”

  “There’s a world of difference between an angry, lonely kid venting and a hardened criminal hurting people and wrecking lives.”

  He shook his head, even though he did mentally concede the point to her. “What I don’t understand, Katie, is why you’re trying so hard to convince me of how noble and wonderful a person I am. Why do you care what I think of myself?”

  “In the first place, I think it’s healthy for people to have a positive self-image. In the second place, I’d like you to see yourself as lovable so you won’t fight the idea so damned hard of someone else loving you.”

  Loving him? What the hell was she up to? The only reason she would say something like that was if she planned to be his long-term handler and use sex to control him. No way was he becoming a signed, sealed and delivered CIA asset. His father would kill him within the year.

  He bolted from his seat and paced the spacious room, genuinely agitated. Finally he stopped. Enunciated clearly. “Katie. I do not want love.”

  She stared right back at him and said just as clearly and slowly, “Yes, you do.”

  He stared hard at her. Was she trying to tell him something? Maybe hinting that the CIA would take him out if he didn’t become their asset? Horror rattled through him. If so, he was dead either way.

  He threw up his hands and said, low and urgent, “No, Katie. I don’t!”

  “There’s not a human being alive who doesn’t want to be loved. Period. It’s how we’re wired.”

  “And, yet, here I stand,” he snapped. “Doing just fine without it.”