by Justine Davis, Amy J. Fetzer, Katherine Garbera, Meredith Fletcher, Catherine Mann
One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Not likely.”
“Oh?”
“Running into you is not something I would have forgotten. Ever. Even if I hadn’t spotted you that night at Athena seventeen years ago.”
In that many words he had knocked the breath out of her in a way Emerson had never even come close to. The roughness in his voice sent a shiver racing along her nerves, startling her.
“I see,” she said, suddenly realizing why Emerson had so often taken refuge in the phrase.
“I don’t think you do,” he said, his voice going husky as he added, “yet.”
For a moment she simply stared at him, at a loss for words for one of the few times in her life.
“I’m here with a proposition for you,” he said.
“So it seems,” she muttered.
He grinned. It was devastating. Who would have thought the wild, grim Dark Angel would have such a killer grin?
“Well, that, too, eventually, but that’s not what I’m talking about now.”
She managed not to blush, but it was an effort. “Then what exactly do you mean, Mr. Cohen?”
“Justin, please. I mean, we’ve known each other nearly twenty years.”
“We didn’t even speak.”
“Did we need to?”
Involuntarily Alex sucked in a breath and tried to conceal the movement. Somewhere along the way, the Dark Angel learned to be very, very smooth.
“Would you mind terribly getting to your point, if you have one?”
He lifted one dark brow at her, as if he somehow knew she only brought out the blueblood accent she’d grown up with on occasions when she was feeling personally threatened. Physically, she knew she could handle just about anything. Mentally, she dealt with most challenges with ease.
Emotionally, she had nowhere near that much faith in herself.
But when he answered, to her relief, he dropped the flirtatious bantering.
“I want to work with you.”
“You do,” she said, gesturing at the FBI ID hanging around his neck, knowing full well that wasn’t what he’d meant.
“Okay, maybe I had that coming. But I mean it. We all want the same thing, don’t we?”
“We?”
“You and your friends from Athena Academy. We all want the truth. Don’t we?”
If the implication they might not want to find the truth was supposed to get a rise out of her, she was determined it would not.
“I’m still waiting for that point.”
He stared at her, and slowly a smile curved his mouth. She didn’t know if it was amused or amazed, but she couldn’t doubt it was genuine.
“They grow them tough at Athena,” he said softly.
“Keep it in mind.”
The smile faded. His expression was solemn when he spoke again. “I want us to work together.”
“On?”
“You know what I mean, but if you insist I’ll spell it out. What happened to my sister and what happened to your friend are related. I’d stake my life on it.”
“At a guess, you’ve already staked your career.”
“As,” he said, “have you.”
She couldn’t deny that. “What do you mean by work together?”
“Coordinate. Share information. Not sneak around each other, tripping over each other, with any one of us maybe having the one bit of information or evidence that could break it wide-open if it was combined with the rest, but not realizing it.”
She couldn’t argue with that. And he had a point. A good one.
“Not to mention,” he said, his tone wry, “you and I being able to maybe space out asking for time off so neither one of us ends up on the carpet.”
“There is that,” she said, for the first time unable to resist a smile.
As if sensing he was wearing her down, he reached into an inner pocket in his suit coat. He pulled something out and leaned forward to put it down on her desk. She looked down at it.
It was a photograph. Slightly dog-eared, as if it had been taken out and looked at often. It was of a laughing, beautiful young woman with Justin’s eyes. And in front of her, with her arms around him protectively, was a boy who was unmistakably Justin himself. But this Justin was also laughing, his face free of the tension and grimness it carried now. She’d seen a flash of this boy when he’d grinned just now, but only a flash. And she felt a sudden wish to have known this boy then.
Or to restore that joy to the man he was now.
“I will find out what happened to her. And I will not stop until I do.” She looked up, met his steady gaze. And had no doubt that he would do exactly as he said. “And I believe none of you will stop until you find out what really happened to your friend.”
“No, we won’t.” He had the measure of the Cassandras, all right.
“Then let’s work together. We can do more, cover more ground, save time that might be wasted duplicating effort, and avoid antagonizing people who might get tired of being questioned twice.”
“And avoid alerting those who might let something slip once, but would be suspicious about twice.”
“Precisely.”
Alex leaned back in her chair with her elbows on the worn arms, and steepled her fingers in front of her. He didn’t hammer at her. He’d presented his case, now he waited for her decision. She appreciated that. Too many men would march in and start giving orders. Nothing was more guaranteed to get a Cassandra’s back up than that.
“I can’t speak for the others,” she said.
“But you can speak to them.”
“Yes.”
“And your opinion will carry a lot of weight.”
“Yes,” she said, not bothering to deny the truth. “I’ll talk to them.”
“That’s all I want.”
“I can’t guarantee how they’ll feel about it.”
“I understand. But what about you, Alex? How do you feel?”
She didn’t comment on his use of the nickname that had been an issue between them before. They were beyond that at this point, she thought.
“I think we can probably work together,” she said. “And that it would be beneficial to learning the truth about both Rainy and your sister.” If I can keep my head where it’s supposed to be, she added to herself.
He let out a relieved breath as he nodded, as if the entire issue was decided. As perhaps it was; he’d been right when he’d said her word would carry a lot of weight with the others. She knew if one of the others came to the group and said “We need to work with this guy,” she and the rest of the Cassandras would trust her judgment.
Even, Alex realized, Kayla, whose judgment about men had once been highly suspect. And she realized thankfully that she was thinking she could really let go of that past now. Everyone made mistakes—she’d almost married Emerson Howland, for heaven’s sake—and Kayla had obviously learned from hers. And as she’d said, if it wasn’t for that big mistake, she wouldn’t have Jazz, the best thing in her life.
Alex stood up. “I’ll discuss it with those I can reach—we’re all kind of scattered right now—and let you know what they decide.”
Justin nodded. He turned to go. Took two steps toward the door. Alex had come out from behind her desk, intending to go out the door behind him, when he turned again. She nearly ran into him.
He didn’t move out of her way. He just stood there, looking down at her. Alex was tall enough that she noticed when that happened. When he spoke, his voice had that rough edge that had sent a shiver up her spine.
“Remember when I said that was all I wanted?”
Almost numbly, she nodded.
“I lied,” he said, and lowered his head.
She could have dodged it, could have stopped him, but she was so startled she didn’t move. And the moment she realized what he was going to do a raging curiosity filled her. It was only in part fueled by the childhood imaginings of what it would be like to be kissed by the Dark Angel. The rest was purely and
simply the man here before her now, darkly handsome and fiery with deeply felt passion. That he would have that same strength of passion in other areas was something she hadn’t consciously thought about—perhaps hadn’t dared—but she knew it had to have been there in her mind somewhere, near the surface, because when his mouth came down on hers, her first thought was one of recognition.
There it is.
It was also the last coherent thought she could muster. It was as if every nerve in her body awoke at once, some that had apparently been sleeping her whole life. They awoke and began to carry the heat he was generating with his mouth. She couldn’t believe it was happening like this, it was just a simple kiss, he wasn’t even pressing for more, wasn’t pushing the kiss to a more intimate level. He was simply kissing her as if trying out the taste, lingering as if he liked what he’d found so far but was in no hurry to devour.
When he finally pulled back, Alex simply stared at him. He was breathing as though he’d run the FBI 10 point, six minute mile. She was pulling for air a bit herself. She thought he might do it again, thought in a rather scattered way that this was not the best place for this, but couldn’t think for the life of her how to stop him. If she even wanted to.
“I’ve learned a lot of patience in the past twenty-one years,” he whispered. “And right now that’s a damned good thing.”
This time he did go. Alex stared at the back of the office door he’d closed behind him, as if he’d known it was going to take her a moment to recover. She hoped it was because he’d been feeling like this himself, shaken and stirred, and a little stunned.
She couldn’t remember where she’d been headed. So instead she went back to her desk and sat down. For a long time she stayed there, her mind racing in so many directions she gave up trying to clamp down on it. The only thing she could remember clearly was her own thought on the day he’d followed her at Athena, before she’d known who he was. She’d thought then that whoever he was, he was a threat to someone or something she held dear. She never would have guessed it was she herself he would threaten, and that he’d do it with a single kiss that would about knock her socks off.
When she finally reached for the phone to call the other Cassandras, to tell them that they were no longer alone in their hunt, she was smiling.
And somehow she thought Rainy would have approved.
ALIAS
AMY J. FETZER
Published by Silhouette Books
America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance
To the women of the United States Marine Corps
Our often forgotten heroines,
mothers, sisters and daughters
who strap on a helmet, a nine-millimeter,
shoulder a rifle and heft a sixty-pound pack
just like their male counterparts.
For walking into danger
and being willing to die to protect and defend
the freedom of a nation.
If that’s not a true heroine,
I don’t know what is.
Semper Fi
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to
Amy J. Fetzer for her contribution
to the ATHENA FORCE series.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 1
Somewhere in northeast Texas
10:00 p.m.
Eli Archer’s world was about to change.
If he’d had any smarts, he’d have left for his usual Friday night out with his pals by now. Instead, he’d stuck around his house, drinking too much too early—and that turned a redneck bully into two hundred pounds of mean and nasty.
His mistake was in taking his temper out on his small, barely nineteen-year-old wife while Darcy was less than a hundred yards away.
At the first scream, Darcy’s long legs ate up the dry, flat land, each step on her toes to make as little noise as possible. She hitched over the porch railing and stopped short of rushing through the half-open back door, then flattened against the wall. The floorboards creaked but Eli couldn’t hear the noise over his own shouts. Over the degrading insults he threw at his wife, Mary Jo.
Darcy reached up and gingerly unscrewed the back-porch light, throwing the area into darkness.
She’d been watching the isolated country house from the tree line since sundown. Up close, it was worse. Sacks of garbage torn open by animals were stacked against the house. The stench of rancid grease and rotten food hung in the night air, which pulsed with swarming flies.
Darcy’s eyes watered. The place reeked more of hopeless neglect. Its sagging porches and roof begged to be put out of their misery with a well-placed wrecking ball. Paint barely colored the wood exterior, the stains of the rusted tin roof streaking the sides of the building like bars caging in its inhabitants.
But a shiny new pickup truck sat in the dirt driveway, a full gun rack clear in the rear window. Easy to see where Eli’s priorities lay. Darcy had already unloaded the weapons and removed the firing pins. But that didn’t mean Eli Archer didn’t have more. Men like him always had more weapons than guts. Predictable morons. Eli drank heavily, worked little and, for recreation, tortured stray cats and spotlighted deer. That Eli beat his wife was a character flaw that put him just below amoebas.
A real prize.
Inside the house, Eli shouted for his boots. He was leaving. Men like him always left long enough to work up some twisted reason as to why they pounded on women—she had personal experience to back up that theory. Darcy prayed Eli went out the front door without hurting Mary Jo again. Confronting a drunken wife beater was not in her immediate plans, but she couldn’t let him hurt the girl. If his mood was any indication, he’d kill her.
Darcy spied through the window for a sign of Mary Jo Archer. Shadows moved behind tattered curtains, and her heart pounded a little harder as the people inside drew closer to her position.
This was stupid. Normally, she snatched abused women while the men were gone. She could be shot for being this daring, but she couldn’t abandon Mary Jo, either. And where the heck was Jack? He should have been here by now to back her up.
She moved to the open doorway, peering inside. Despite what the Archer place looked like on the outside, the interior was tidy and clean. But then how else would Mary Jane spend her time as a prisoner in her own home?
Darcy flinched when another door slammed somewhere inside, shaking the windows. She heard Eli’s voice, harsh and deep as he hurled foul words at the woman he’d promised to love, honor and cherish.
Three days ago, Darcy had been woken by Mary Jo’s call around midnight, the voice on the other end of the line sounding achingly familiar, hushed, terrified. Sobbing. The caller had heard from her only friend, Tomas, a worker at the local grocery store, that Darcy helped women like her. Darcy had driven like a madwoman to get there, to find Tomas and discreetly learn all she could about the Archer household. It paid to be aware of routine.
Eli met his pals at the Bullriders Saloon like clockwork every Friday night, leaving his wife locked inside the house like a punching bag he stored for his rage. He was so terrified of losing her that he’d installed latch locks better suited for a storage shed.
Pig.
That pissed Darcy off more because she understood exactly what Mary Jo was feeling right now. Terror, hopelessness. A loneliness that imbedded itself deep into her bones. And the constant worry over which insignificant detail would provoke another battle for your life.
It ends tonight.
The sound of flesh hitting flesh then a cry of pain came through the open wi
ndows and doors. Without a choice, Darcy took a breath, then stepped through the back doorway, into the kitchen. No one noticed.
Mary Jo was on the floor, scooting back out of her husband’s reach, but Eli kept coming, a growling bear intent on his kill. Man, he was a big one.
Darcy slipped her knife out if its sheath. “Touch her again, Eli, and you’re a dead man.”
Eli whipped around, scowling mad. “Who the hell are you? Get the fuck outta my house!”
Darcy stood on the threshold. “Leave her alone.”
He latched on to Mary Jo, holding her off the floor like a limp rag doll. “She’s my wife, I can do what I want with her.”
“No, you can’t, actually. Legally or morally.”
Darcy inched closer, gripping the knife, point down to slice faster and with greater accuracy. Eli didn’t look the least bit intimidated by the nine-inch blade. Guns were his deal. Darcy didn’t like guns. They were noisy and registered. And though she didn’t really want to stab Eli, he wasn’t looking very cooperative right now.
Dangling in Eli’s grasp, Mary Jo whimpered, her lip bleeding.
Darcy couldn’t spare a look at the woman. She kept her gaze on the man threatening them both as she moved the blade slowly back and forth, waiting for the knife to catch Eli’s attention. When it did, he let his wife go, grinning as he headed toward her.
He charged like an angry bull going after the red cloak. Darcy stood her ground till he was three feet away, then sidestepped out of his path. He plowed past her into the kitchen table and landed hard on it, shattering the table legs and crashing to the floor.
