Get Blondie

by Cassidy, Carla

  Chapter 17

  Cassie pulled her gun out of the waistband of her jeans and waited for the moment one of the two men rounded the corner to the side of the building where she stood without cover.

  If they caught her, they’d kill her. She had little illusion that somehow she’d manage to take them both before one of them would take her down.

  She intended to shoot first, before they knew what had happened. All she had going for her was the element of surprise. She clicked off her safety and slid her finger on the trigger.

  At that moment the end of the rope hit her on top of the head.

  She shoved her gun back in her waistband and gripped the rope firmly, then began to climb, desperate to reach the window before she was spotted. Kane pulled from the top, making her ascent easier.

  She was three-quarters of the way up the side of the building when the beam of light rounded the corner. Two hulking men followed the beam.

  Cassie froze in place. She hung motionless, suspended above their heads and prayed that neither one of them took this opportunity to decide they were into astrology and looked up.

  The two men stopped directly beneath her. “I’m telling you the Steelers could take the Chiefs any day of the week,” said the man Cassie didn’t recognize.

  “No way,” Sebastian replied. “The Chiefs are going to be contenders this year. You mark my words. We’ve got the defense and the offense this year.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I heard last year,” the other man said.

  Cassie closed her eyes and focused on maintaining her grip on the rope. While the two morons beneath her discussed football, she was dying a slow death.

  Her shoulders burned with the effort of hanging on to the rope and not moving. Burn…hotter…on fire. Her arm muscles began to quiver with her effort to hang on…hang still.

  She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to do anything to draw attention. If either of them spotted her she’d be a hanging duck for them to shoot.

  One of them lit a cigarette as they continued to talk and argue about football. Go. Just walk on by. Please keep on walking, Cassie thought.

  Her heart beat frantically as her sweaty hands momentarily lost their grip and she slid an inch down the rope. She clutched more tightly to the rope, her hands burning from the unexpected slide.

  She nearly sobbed in relief as the two men continued walking along the side of the building and rounded the next corner and disappeared. Frantically she continued moving up the rope.

  Kane awaited her at the window and pulled her inside and to the loft floor. He quickly pulled in the rope and slid down on the floor next to her. “You okay?”

  “I thought you said there was no activity,” she whispered.

  “There wasn’t until now.”

  She leaned her head back against the wall and drew deep, steadying breaths in an attempt to slow her galloping heartbeat. Her arm muscles still ached and her shoulders still burned, but she knew eventually the discomfort would pass.

  That had been too close, far too close for comfort. But at least she and Kane were in and the silence and darkness inside the building were both comforting and profound.

  “We’ll just sit tight for a little while,” Kane said softly from right next to her. “I’ve got a penlight, but I don’t want to use it while those bozos outside are walking around the building.”

  She nodded, understanding his desire for caution. It would take only a single flicker of light to give them away. If they were busted now, they’d never get a chance to stop Mercer.

  For several minutes they sat side by side in the dark silence, listening for any sound that would indicate something amiss. From inside the building they couldn’t hear the two men who patrolled the area.

  It didn’t take her long to notice several things that had nothing to do with sight or sound. The scent of Kane filled her head, the faint scent of soap and male, a familiar scent that made her feel both defensive and vulnerable.

  His thigh and shoulder pressed against hers, creating an evocative heat that she tried to ignore. Her skin still retained the imprint of his touch, the feel of him intimately against her. Making love to him had been the greatest pleasure she’d ever had and the biggest mistake of her life.

  Unresolved issues, that’s what Max had told her she had where Kane McNabb was concerned.

  But, as far as she was concerned, there was nothing unresolved about it. They’d been lovers and now they weren’t.

  Their lovemaking of hours before had been an anomaly, an error in judgment that wouldn’t happen again. End of story. What was left to resolve?

  Her desire. The answer came unbidden to her mind. What was left to resolve was the fact that spending time with him again, tasting his lips and sharing passion with him again had stirred up a new well of desire for him.

  God, she was so pathetic.

  She could pin a cockroach to the wall with her knife. She could climb a twenty-foot stone fence. She could go head to head with a burly bodyguard, but she couldn’t get one stinking, sexy man out of her mind.

  She didn’t know how long they sat in the darkness, in the silence before he stood and touched her arm, indicating she should get up as well.

  He turned on the tiny penlight and in the small beam Cassie realized they were surrounded by furniture. Love seats and highboys, sofas and dining-room tables, all unusually ornate and oversized.

  The furniture was situated so that there were plenty of hiding places. Kane led her to the middle of the loft and pointed to a small area between a tall bookcase and a six-foot solid wood wardrobe.

  Cassie slid in between the two pieces and sat with her back to the wall. Kane scooted in beside her, the two of them like sardines packed tightly in a can.

  “Now if somebody comes up either staircase to the loft, they won’t be able to see us,” he whispered. He shut off the penlight and once again they fell silent.

  Minutes ticked by. She was aware of the sound of her own heartbeat, slow and steady now that they were settled in. There had been many times in their past when she and Kane had shared tight spaces, hiding from people who would kill them if they were found, eavesdropping on conversations they weren’t supposed to hear.

  Always, when on an assignment with Kane, she’d felt the peace of knowing she was with somebody as competent as her, that as partners, they were a force to be reckoned with.

  When they hadn’t been on assignment their time together had always been filled with passion and laughter, with an intensity of emotion that had been exhilarating. She’d missed it…the laughter…the passion.

  “It’s going to be a long night,” Kane said, his mouth close to her and creating a warm whisper in her ear.

  “Yeah, there’s nothing worse than waiting for the action to begin. Are we the only ones inside?”

  “Apparently so. Somehow the men outside managed to get by surveillance and on guard duty before the team could get anyone else inside. But there’s plenty of backup on the outside. They’ll come in like the cavalry when the time is right. I’d say your hunch was right. We’re in the right place at the right time.”

  “Let’s hope so. Let’s hope the guards outside aren’t some kind of a diversion,” she replied.

  They were silence for another long moment. “Tell me the truth, Cassie, you’ve missed this.”

  Her first impulse was to deny his words, to tell him that she had been perfectly satisfied with her life before the agency had tapped her for this particular assignment.

  She’d thought she’d been happy arguing with her neighbor, tending her lawn, fighting with common criminals and making arrests. But she’d been fooling herself and she knew she’d never be able to fool him.

  “Yeah, I missed it,” she finally replied grudgingly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m coming back,” she added quickly. “I agreed to this one assignment and that’s all.”

  He reached out for her hand and his fingers twined with hers. “We were good together, Cassie. We w
ere the best when we were together. We stopped a lot of bad things from happening in the world. We stopped a lot of bad people.”

  “I know,” she replied.

  “Why did you quit the agency?” The question hung in the air and before she had time to reply, he continued. “Why did you quit on me? You didn’t even come to see me in the hospital.”

  She heard the emotion in his voice, emotion she’d never heard before and she knew she owed him a real answer, not some smart-ass quip. She was grateful for the cover of the darkness, so he couldn’t see her face or read her expression as she replied.

  “Yes, I did. I was there while you were still unconscious. I saw you pale and still as death…” Her voice trailed off as she fought the lump of emotion that pressed against her chest. “I thought you would die and it was all my fault.”

  “Your fault?” He squeezed her hand. “You are so egotistical that you want to take the blame for me getting shot? You got it wrong, Cassie. I took that bullet by choice.”

  “Yes, to save me.” Hot tears burned her eyes and she was appalled that after all the time that had passed this still had the power to hurt. “Kane, if I hadn’t been your lover, if we’d just been partners like we were supposed to be and hadn’t blurred the lines, then you would have never jumped in front of me.”

  “Cassie, honey, do you really think I’ve been trained only to save the lives of the women I sleep with?” Gentle amusement filled his voice. “If you’d had two heads and four legs and turned my stomach every time I looked at you, I still would have jumped in front of you.

  I’m trained to save lives, Cassie. It had nothing to do with the fact that we were lovers.”

  There was a resounding ring of truth in his words, a truth she couldn’t deny. She’d never thought about it in those terms before. But she knew it was right.

  Both of them had been trained by the agency to save lives. Kane would have had to turn his back on all his training in order to remain still and let her take a killer’s bullet. If the tables had been turned, she wouldn’t have thought twice about jumping in front of him to save his life.

  Years of guilt fell away, guilt she had carried since that day so many years before. But still emotion was thick inside her.

  For it wasn’t just the fact that Kane had taken a bullet meant for her that had haunted her all these years, it was the realization that she’d allowed him into her heart in a way she’d never before allowed in anyone.

  It had been that realization and the woman’s intuition that had told her he had been in love with her. It had terrified her and she’d run…run away from the agency…run away from him.

  “Cassie, you belong working for the agency. You’re one of the best agents SPACE has. You have a gift, a knack for the kind of work that needs to be done. Denying that would be criminal.” He hesitated a moment, then continued, “and denying what we had together is a crime as well.”

  His lips touched the side of her neck and a thrill of pleasure washed over her, pleasure combined with a strange kind of pain.

  “Kane,” she protested and pulled away. “You kissing me isn’t going to change things.”

  “Even if I kiss you on the back of your neck?”

  His teasing made all her defenses jump into place. She didn’t want to have this discussion. He was her past, and the past wasn’t supposed to argue with you.

  “Surely this isn’t the place or the time to have this conversation,” she said impatiently.

  “It’s the perfect time and place,” he replied. “We have nothing else to do to pass the time but talk and at least this way I can be assured that you won’t run out on me in the middle of the conversation.”

  He released her hand and uttered a deep sigh. “I’ve waited five years to have this conversation with you and I’m going to have it. Cassie, you know as well as I do that there’s a possibility that one or both of us won’t walk out of this warehouse tomorrow. I think this is the perfect time to sort things out between us.”

  “There’s nothing to sort out,” she hissed with aggravation. “We were lovers and now we’re not…end of story.”

  There was a long pause. “We were more than lovers and you ended the story.” Again there was an edge of emotion in his voice that she’d never heard before. “Cassie, just because your mother threw you away doesn’t mean you aren’t worthy of being loved.”

  She stiffened, wishing she could run from him. “That’s hitting below the belt.”

  “But it’s there, isn’t it,” he countered. “Sometimes the past can hurt you, if you give it power over you. Not everybody leaves, Cassie. Max didn’t and neither did I.”

  He put an arm around her and pulled her closer, so that if she leaned her head to the right it would rest against the hollow of his throat.

  She refused to lean her head there, remembering too many nights when she’d slept next to him, nestled against his body, her face burrowed in his neck.

  How like him, to go for the jugular, to bring her mother into the mix. But his words struck a chord and sent questions chiming through her.

  Had her mother’s abandonment made her afraid of commitment of any kind? Had that childhood experience tainted her, making her feel unworthy of love from anyone else? Was she allowing the past to hurt her present? Had she run from Kane because she hadn’t wanted to chance the possibility of being abandoned yet again?

  “I got an address off Mercer’s computer for her.”

  His arm tightened around her. “Here in town?”

  “Yes, 1327 Paseo Drive. According to Mercer’s records she was living there five years ago.”

  “What about your brother?”

  Cassie thought of Billy and a new ache rose inside her. “There was no record for him. Five years ago he would have been nineteen. I’m assuming he would have been living with her.” Unless she’d tossed him out years ago like she had Cassie.

  “Where’s your father, Cassie? I’ve never heard you mention him.”

  “The better question would be who is my father.” She sighed. “My mother was only sixteen when she got pregnant with me. She was a party girl, wild and free and according to her my father could have been any of many men.”

  She had long ago come to terms with the fact that the identity of her father would forever remain a mystery. Besides, she didn’t really need a father. She already had one…Max.

  “You think she’s still there?”

  She followed his jump of thought easily. “Who knows. Years ago we never stayed in one place for too long. We were evicted about every five or six months from one place or another. But she’s older now. Maybe she’s straightened out and still lives at that address. As soon as this is all over I’m going there to find out.”

  “What do you want from her?”

  His question whirled around in her head. What did she want from the woman who had left her to fend for herself in a strange city when she’d been nothing more than a child?

  Certainly she didn’t need dating advice or motherly wisdom. She didn’t need to exchange recipes or celebrate birthdays. It was far too late to forge the kind of mother/daughter bond she’d only read about in books.

  “I want answers,” she replied. And I want to know if she ever thought about me, worried about me. I need to know if she ever loved me at all.

  “I hope you get what you need, Cassie.”

  They fell silent and it was only then she relented and leaned her head against him. There was comfort in the familiarity of him.

  Who knew what the morning would bring? Kane was right. It was possible one or both of them wouldn’t make it out the warehouse alive. The potential for death had always been a part of the assignments for the agency and that had made life that much richer and sweeter.

  At the moment she couldn’t imagine anything more right than sitting in the embrace of Kane’s arm and resting her head against him. It was one last poignant, sweet moment before the uncertainty of life returned.

  She awoke when a hand
clamped down firmly over her mouth. She instantly became aware of three things. Early-morning sunlight whispered into the windows around the ceiling of the warehouse, male voices could be heard from outside the building, and less than a foot in front of her face a silvery strand of web held the biggest, meanest-looking spider she’d ever seen.

  She stiffened, her gaze riveted to the creature that danced mere inches in front of her face. She knew Kane had placed his hand over her mouth to still the scream he knew the sight of the spider would bring to her lips.

  The scream was there now, trapped behind his hand. If he took his hand away she wouldn’t be able to help the bloody scream that would rip from her.

  The blood in her body all seemed to move to her head, leaving her lungs void of oxygen as a rush of light-headedness overtook her. In the back of her mind she knew she was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack.

  The spider dangled on the end of the silvery strand, threatening at any moment to drop right on top of her. She was frozen in fear, hypnotized by the sight of the big, eight-legged creature.

  “Shh,” Kane whispered in her ear as he pulled his arm from around her back.

  On a rational level Cassie knew the terror that washed over her was not rational, she knew that a spider couldn’t hurt her, but that didn’t stop the chill of horror that filled her.

  She also knew, on a rational level, what had caused her phobia of insects and bugs. Her fear had been born on a morning when she’d been twelve and had been awakened from sleep by the creepy-crawl of dozens of beetles climbing all over her.

  She’d had no idea where they had come from. She’d been sleeping on a slightly damp piece of cardboard in the back of an alley when the bugs apparently decided she was invading their personal space.

  They had been everywhere…on her legs, crawling beneath her blouse, creeping over her neck and face. She’d screamed and fought them off, swatting and running out of the alley in an effort to get rid of them.

  That’s what she wanted to do now…scream and run. She’d rather take a bullet from one of the men outside than allow the spider to fall on her.