by Kylie Brant
But the man wasn’t alone. Dace was right behind him. And with one quick encompassing look at the room’s occupants, he seemed to size up the conversation that had taken place in his absence.
“I hear you’re in a hurry to leave us,” the doctor said in a harried voice, looking at her chart as spoke.
Dace stared at Jolie. “You’re going to do this?”
“My decision. My business.”
He gave a short nod. “Yeah.” His attention switched to the agents, who were rising from their chairs. “The way I figure it, two sacrificial lambs are better than one.”
A chair scraped the floor as Dawson pushed it out of the way. The doctor jockeyed around the trio of men, trying to get to Jolie’s side.
Truman folded his arms across his chest. “What are you saying, Recker?”
But Jolie had followed his meaning all too easily. Irritation rose, mixed with an inexplicable measure of panic. “No, Dace. That’s not necessary.”
He answered Truman as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’m saying Jolie isn’t going to be left hanging out there by herself. If she does this, so do I.”
CHAPTER 6
“Absolutely not.”
Dace ignored the vehemence in Jolie’s tone and addressed the agents. “Why don’t we step outside and give the doctor and patient some privacy?”
“I was just going to suggest that myself,” the doctor said. “Out. Everybody.”
“Dawson, don’t listen to him.” Dace accompanied the feds to the door, Jolie’s words trailing behind him. “We’ve already got a viable plan. We don’t need him.” He pulled the door shut behind them and left Jolie to the doctor’s ministrations. Her words resonated.
Certainly she’d never needed him on any level that mattered. His jaw tightened. He’d thought she did, at one time. He’d believed that circumstances had linked them in a way that couldn’t be denied. But then Sammy had died. What had been between them had withered. She’d walked out without a second glance, proving him dead wrong.
Yet here he was again, voluntarily aligning himself with her, when he knew all he was going to get for his efforts was a kick in the teeth.
Except this time was going to be different. He was different. This had nothing to do with Jolie personally, and everything to do with the job. He wouldn’t hang any of his partners out to dry, and if she was bound and determined to go ahead with this thing, then he had no choice but to stick with her. The feds didn’t inspire a lot of faith. He could recite chapter and verse the times when something like this went to hell. He wasn’t going to leave a fellow officer alone with a target on her forehead, even if that officer was stubborn enough to defy all logic.
Even if that officer was Jolie.
A murmur of voices drifted from the hospital room before he heard Jolie’s voice raised in argument. He knew her well enough to be certain that the encounter wasn’t going to improve her mood. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t spare her any sympathy.
From Agent Dawson’s expression, Dace could tell that the man was inclined to agree with Jolie’s assessment, so he started talking fast. “There’s no way to be sure the bank team will stick around and try again. They’ve failed twice to take out a member of the SWAT unit. Things will be heating up for them as a result of the investigation. What we have to do is present them with an opportunity they can’t resist. Move Jolie in with me.”
He watched the two agents look at each other. “There’s a problem with that suggestion, Recker,” Truman put in. “Conrad doesn’t want you in on this with her.”
There was a burn in his chest at the truth, but Dace didn’t focus on it. Not then. “Well, she’s not calling the shots on this, is she? For whatever reason, she’s up for the assignment. So am I. We’re both sticking around. It makes sense that we be together.”
Although Truman still looked skeptical, Dawson appeared to be considering his words. “Two of the SWAT personnel in one place? They’d smell a trap for sure.”
Dace folded his arms over his chest. “If they bother to do research, they’ll discover Jolie and I…have a history. That would make our living arrangements seem more reasonable. If they don’t…” He lifted a shoulder. “No offense, but these guys have managed to outsmart the FBI on a dozen different bank heists. Even if they smell a trap, why wouldn’t they believe they can outmaneuver you again?”
“Listen, Recker…” Truman took a step toward him.
Dawson put up a hand to halt the other agent. “You could be right. Give me a chance to run this by SAC Fenholt. And Chief Sanders,” he added as an afterthought.
“We’re not going to sit around doing nothing.” Dace had already given it some thought. There’s no way he and Jolie could be in the same place together for days on end with nothing to distract them. “If we’re going to have a security detail on us, we won’t be on active duty. Tell Fenholt she may as well use us on the task force.”
“That will be up to SAC Fenholt,” Dawson said noncommittally.
“It’s a condition of our involvement,” Dace corrected, “and it’s nonnegotiable. I can’t believe you have so much manpower you can afford to turn down the offer.”
Truman shuffled his feet. “For two people claiming to want to help, you have lots of conditions. Do you have a mommy we need to be concerned about, too?”
Too? “No.” Dace let the sarcasm roll off him, but the words struck a chord. His mother was safely out of town visiting his sister in Tucson, but she was due back next Tuesday. He’d have to come up with a plausible reason for keeping her in Arizona for a couple more weeks without giving her enough information that would have her racing home to check on him. It would be a balancing act, but he’d figure something out.
The door to Jolie’s room swung open and the doctor stepped out, a look of frustration on his creased face. “That is one very stubborn lady. I’d like to keep her another day for observation. Maybe one of you can convince her.”
The feds looked at Dace. He could have told them they were wasting their time. There had been only one time when he’d had any luck convincing Jolie of anything, and that had ended in tragedy. He didn’t have that kind of power anymore. And he no longer wanted the responsibility for it.
“She’s going to do what she wants,” he said finally. The doctor threw up his hands and walked away, muttering something about the lack of intelligence in law enforcement in general. Dawson slipped his hand in the pocket of his immaculate suit trousers and considered him. Uncomfortable, Dace lifted a shoulder. “The sooner we can get this operation underway, the faster we can draw this guy out. And if you haven’t figured it out by now, you’re wasting your breath trying to talk Jolie out of leaving.”
There was a melodic ringing and Dawson took a pager out of the pocket of his jacket. Checking the display, he said, “It’s SAC Fenholt. I have to update her on all this.” Seeming to make a decision, he looked at Dace. “Both of you need to stay put long enough for us to get a detail in place. Then your home will have to be thoroughly checked out. Once we’re done, whoever gets assigned to your security will accompany you there. Don’t leave the hospital before the agent arrives.”
With a slight inclination of his head, Dace agreed. The man switched his attention to Truman. “You can head over to Conrad’s apartment and check on her mother. Stick close until we decide on a safe house to stash her in for the meantime.”
The man’s words made no sense. “I don’t know where you guys got your information, but there’s no one else living at Jolie’s place. She doesn’t have a mother.” She’d been closemouthed about her childhood but she’d been clear about that. Her parents were dead. She’d been raised by her grandmother. She’d told him that much, and since the memories didn’t seem to be happy ones, he hadn’t pressed. He had often wondered if her status as an orphan accounted for her inability to believe in a family. In her doubting the appearance of anything, anyone good in her life.
Truman gave him a sour grin, clearly not happy with his assignm
ent. “Guess you don’t know as much about Conrad as you thought, Recker. But then, maybe you didn’t spend much time talking when you two were…making that history.”
The agent turned on his heel and walked swiftly away so Dace swung his gaze to Dawson, who was regarding him quizzically. “I’m not sure what the confusion is, but Conrad specifically told us that security for her mother was a condition of her involvement. You must have misunderstood.”
There was a buzzing in his ears. A clenching in his gut. “Yeah.” He gave a grim smile. “That must be it.” The agent walked away, leaving Dace feeling as if he’d taken a hammer in the chest.
He’d misunderstood all right. She’d lied to him, even after they’d gotten closer. After they’d lived together, had a child together, she’d kept right on lying.
She had a mother. The knowledge was a drumbeat in his skull. And the woman lived right here in Metro City.
Had she known about Sammy? Had the woman even been at the funeral? He searched his memory. The day had been a blur but it had been a private service, with only friends and family.
There’d been no family there for her. Just like there had been none at the hospital when Sammy had been born. There had been plenty of Dace’s relatives, enough to fairly suffocate a loner like Jolie. After his mother and three sisters swooped in, he’d recognized the faint panic on Jolie’s face and tried to run interference for her. He’d thought he’d understood the source of the no-trespassing signs clearly marked around the mother of his son. Thought he’d recognized what had turned her into the guarded woman he’d once shared a life with.
The joke was on him. Turned out he hadn’t known her at all.
* * *
At the faint sound of the door pushing open again, Jolie shoved her arms in the sleeves of her shirt, glancing over her shoulder, faintly annoyed. This room had all the privacy of a fishbowl. But if it was a nurse coming with those papers for her to sign, releasing her despite doctor’s orders, it would be a welcome interruption.
Instead, Dace stood in the doorway. “Don’t bother knocking,” she said caustically. “No one else does.” She fastened the garment, finding the bottom two buttons missing. The shirt showed more than a little wear, with a rip nearly halfway up one side, and a stain smeared across the front.
Blood. Hers. She sucked in a breath and bent carefully to the bag someone had placed all her garments in to retrieve her shoes and socks. She’d learned earlier that bending over too fast brought on a wave of dizziness that nearly toppled her. She didn’t think it was wise to show that weakness in front of Dace.
“I heard the doctor out there. If you’re here to convince me to stay another night, save yourself some time.”
He didn’t answer, just lounged against the door, his gaze never leaving her. She sat down, more than a little glad to have an excuse, and propped one ankle over her knee to aid in finishing dressing, moving cautiously. Her pants were ripped, the hole corresponding with a sutured gash on her thigh. The wound throbbed every time she moved.
Dace wasn’t wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday, so somewhere along the line he’d gone home, or someone had dropped fresh clothes off for him. But not a razor. Whiskers a shade darker than his close-cropped chestnut hair shadowed his face. She recognized the faded jeans as his favorites, worn white in the most interesting places. One booted foot was crossed over the other. He looked hard. Unyielding. And more than a little mean.
She slipped one sock on and bent slowly to snag the shoe. “So.” Something in his silence was making her uneasy. “The feds go to arrange things?”
“Yeah.”
He still hadn’t moved, and being fixed by that intense unswerving stare was worsening a headache already approaching migraine status. “We need to talk about what you said earlier. About staying, too. You’ve got to realize it’s unnecessary. We’ve got nothing to gain with two of us sticking around, instead of just one.” She had to uncross her leg to shove her foot into the shoe, and even that small jolt had her skull weeping. Gritting her teeth, she started on the other foot.
“You’ve got Della to think about, too,” she continued. Della was his mother, a friendly open woman who doted on her family. She’d doted on Sammy, those few months. Although Jolie had recognized the reservations Della might have had regarding her and their arrangement, she’d never doubted the woman’s feelings for her grandson.
Dace still said nothing.
“You could take her to one of your sisters. Visit the family for a while until this whole thing is over.”
“I could.”
He moved his shoulders in a not-quite shrug. She was distracted for a moment by the action. Had they always been that broad? That thick? There had been a time when she’d explored every inch of his body, touching, tasting at will. A time when she’d known it better than any other man’s.
To avoid the unbidden memories that chose that moment to appear, she stood, stamping her shoe on and the mental images out. He was just a man. Not so different from any man she’d slept with. More annoying than some. Certainly more stubborn. Circumstances had led them down a path she’d never envisioned for herself but she’d learned the hard way the folly of reaching for something that wasn’t meant to be. Not for her.
“Of course, I could argue that you could send your mother out of harm’s way, too.” A fissure of ice trickled down her spine, freezing her from the inside out. Sudden dreadful comprehension followed. Of course the agents had mentioned something about Trixie. And he would think…It was all too easy to figure out what he thought. It was there in his expression, in the twist of his lips, the derision in his eyes.
She reached for something to say, came up with nothing. Lies always catch up with liars. That little profundity was courtesy of Lila Porter, foster mother number three. What she’d lacked in warmth she’d made up for with such thought-provoking insights. Another of her favorites had been blood will tell. Jolie had spent much of her life hoping that wasn’t true. Fearing it was.
“Nothing to say?” Dace’s voice was caustic. “I’d like to hear about the mother-daughter reunion after her resurrection. Must have been quite touching. Does she know about her untimely demise?”
With her hand on the back of the chair to steady herself, Jolie stood, swaying only slightly. “Knock it off, Dace.”
He slapped his palm sharply against the door in back of him. The crack of sound speared through the hammering in her head. “Why’d you bother lying about her? To me? Because if I know one thing about you, Jolie, it’s that you were closer to me than you let yourself get to anyone else in a long, long time.”
She opened her mouth to answer, but whatever she was about to say was cut short with an abrupt gesture of his hand. “No. Don’t deny it. You know it’s true.”
Of course she knew it was true. And that was what had made their relationship so unlikely. So terrifying. “You wouldn’t understand.”
He gave a curt nod, his eyes still lethal. “Maybe not. But you made that decision for me, didn’t you? Seems like you were making lots of decisions for me back then.”
“Don’t.” Her voice was sharp. “Don’t make this about two years ago. Don’t rehash things that are only going hurt both of us. What does it matter now? She wasn’t in my life. Now she is. There isn’t any more to it than that.”
His expression eased slightly, but she didn’t fool herself into thinking his temper had been defused. “Wrong. There’s always more to it. You dole out pieces of yourself pretty damn sparingly, Jolie. You decide what personal details to share or whether to share them at all. You’re a freakin’ emotional Fort Knox.”
The accusation surprised a bitter laugh from her. “Please. I’m a realist. We come from two totally different places. I knew that, even if you didn’t. Your mother is June Cleaver, okay? Mine is…not. She wasn’t relevant when we were together. But now she’s back and she’s terminally ill. She doesn’t have a damn thing to do with you and me. She never did.”
But
even as she uttered the words, she tasted the lie. Regardless of how little time she’d spent with Trixie, their relationship had inevitably shaped the woman she’d become. And knowing that, accepting it, had influenced every aspect of Jolie’s life.
Even she realized that that was a pretty big impact for a woman who’d been absent during most of her formative years.
“You’re right about one thing.” Dace shoved away from the door, jamming his hands in his jeans pockets. “It doesn’t matter anymore. You and I were over a long time ago. What we need to concentrate on now is staying alive. Given the feds’ handling of this case so far, I have my doubts about our chances.”
She didn’t answer because she was having doubts, too. Not of their survival. She lacked Dace’s pessimism there. But she did question how they were going to get through this thing when they were all but attached at the hip for the duration.
* * *
Metro City Police Chief Carl Sanders sat at the conference table, his piercing gaze trained on Jolie. It was all she could do not to squirm under the assessing look. “You look like hell, Conrad. You sure you’re up for this?”
“Yes, sir. I am.” She still hadn’t gotten a chance to change her clothes, and no doubt her appearance didn’t inspire confidence. Her headache had subsided to a constant dull throb that left her feeling perpetually muzzy. But she imbued her voice with as much strength as she could muster.
Her words didn’t appear to reassure him. He looked at Dace. “I’m not crazy about using two of my detectives as bait. Hell, I’m not crazy about using one. But near as I can see, you’re just icing on the cake, Recker. The rest of your squad has no problem lying low for a while. Seems like a good idea for you to do the same.”
His voice was respectful, but as implacable as the chief’s. “I’m in, sir. It makes sense for the two of us to do this together.”
Sanders gave him a hard look, but said only, “All right then. I assume you both know the chance you’re taking.”
