The Impossible Alliance

by Candace Irvin

  He watched the pulse at the base of her neck pick up its tempo until it matched the thudding of his heart.

  He released her hand slowly, carefully, deliberately ignoring the questions that crowded into her eyes as he backed away. “How far did you get?”

  She blinked.

  He jerked his chin toward the laptop on the makeshift nightstand across the cabin before she could misconstrue his question. “Your own reading. How far did you get?”

  Her gaze cleared. Her lips twisted sheepishly. “Not as far as you.”

  He actually laughed. “At least you won’t dream it.”

  “You do?”

  Perhaps because the question seemed motivated by genuine curiosity, he answered it. “Yeah.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “I wish I was. Just last week I fell asleep to the first Dear John letter I ever got. I was twelve. She broke it off because I didn’t know how to French kiss.” He grinned. “Still stings.”

  She laughed. “I’ll bet.”

  But moments later she grew silent, almost pensive. He might have drawn her out, but the rest of the week’s dream fodder had already begun scrolling past his memory’s still-eagle eye. Words filled his brain. Words he’d give almost anything to forget. Reports, tests, medical charts, updates. His mother’s death certificate. The cause.

  He closed his eyes and rubbed them.

  It didn’t help.

  Her hand touched his arm, scorching into the skin left exposed by the sleeves he’d shoved up while reading.

  “Are you—”

  He stood. “I’m fine.”

  It was time to make sure she was, too. He headed for the first-aid kit he’d left on top of the food cupboard, retrieving his scope and a suture kit. Several of the kit’s supplies would work in reverse. The warmth fled from her gaze as he returned. Carefully masked apprehension replaced it.

  “What are you doing with that?”

  He sighed. He’d waited all day, given her plenty of time to adjust. He’d even let her bathe and wash the temporary dye from her hair first. While he wasn’t a neurologist, as far as he could tell Alex had made remarkable progress in the past twenty-four hours. Almost all the lingering effects of the coma seemed to have worked themselves out. Except two. Her missing memory…and this strange fixation she had regarding the stitches in her scalp. He set his scope on the table and withdrew a pair of scissors and tweezers from the suture kit before setting the kit down, as well. He pointed the instruments toward the side of her head. “Alex, you need to get those sutures out. They’re three weeks old. It may sting a bit since the skin’s grown over in places, but it shouldn’t smart too much.” He forced a slight smile, aiming for reassurance and not exasperation. He laid the scissors and tweezers down beside the scope, hoping their absence would calm her.

  It didn’t. She tensed as he touched her jaw.

  “Relax, I’ll just take a look first. That’s all.”

  Before he could turn her head to gain a better view of the ancient sutures, she stood. “I need to visit the outhouse.”

  Two seconds later he was staring at his empty hands.

  He heard the cabin door open, then slam shut. He stared at the slab of scarred wood. What the hell was that about? Two days ago he’d have sworn he’d experienced it all with his mother. But in a way, Alex Morrow fleeing a simple pair of tweezers stunned him more than walking into his living room with his girlfriend on his sixteenth birthday all those years ago, only to discover his mother stretched out on the coffee table, snoring loudly—and completely nude. Gene Roddenberry was wrong. Space wasn’t the final frontier. The brain was.

  Alex slumped her head against the rough-hewn planks of the outhouse wall and closed her eyes, purging the remaining panic along with the air from her lungs. She forced herself to wait until her legs had stopped shaking before she raised her hand, seeking out the hearing aid. It had been a part of her for so long she couldn’t remember what it felt like to be without it. She tested the hold. Despite the way she’d torn herself from Jared’s seeking fingers, the hearing aid had stayed put.

  Thank God.

  Unfortunately, the microphone array was still as dead as the amplifier tucked neatly and discreetly all the way down her right ear canal. Partially deaf, but not exposed.

  At the moment she’d take it.

  But sooner or later—preferably very soon—she was going to have to figure out how to replace the damned thing. Easy enough while in the States. Not so easy while actively on the job. Especially this job. Even if the entire Rebelian countryside hadn’t been gutted and looted, compliments of DeBruzkya and his goons years before, she wouldn’t have been able to walk into a medical-supply store and buy another one. Not one with the hypersensitive capabilities she was used to. And certainly not without arousing Jared’s suspicions.

  Dammit, she should have let him remove the stitches. At least then, it would have been over with.

  Don’t.

  Hindsight might be cheap, but it wasn’t always a bargain. Without mirrors in that cabin, she’d been playing blind man’s bluff all day. There were only so many times a woman could fool with her hair and not get noticed. Especially with a man whose gaze was as sharp as Jared’s. Since the moment she’d looked into those eyes, she’d had the distinct feeling that dark amber stare caught everything and promptly memorized it.

  She didn’t know how right she was.

  Jared didn’t have just a photographic memory. His brain was like a computer. No wonder Sam had once said Jared was the smartest man he’d ever known. She also knew he was the most humble.

  But there was something else.

  What, she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Whatever it was, he was consumed by it. Still.

  Janice?

  Months ago, when she’d stopped by her uncle’s house two days early to pick up the latest model of her now malfunctioning hearing aid, she hadn’t expected to run into anyone, let alone Jared. She’d blindly walked out of that bathroom only to stumble onto ARIES’s top search-and-rescue agent slipping into the guest room to complete an extremely personal call. She’d been so stunned she’d almost dropped the vial. She still couldn’t believe a woman would actually dump him.

  But it was true.

  Unlike Karl, she could recall with eerie perfection the shock in Jared’s voice as he slumped down to the bed.

  “You’re sure?” A heavy pause. “Then I guess that’s it.”

  His resigned sigh followed. She’d known then he hadn’t intended on arguing. Maybe they already had.

  “No, Janice, there’s nothing else to say. No reason for us to see each other again. It’s already over. Goodbye.”

  She’d never forget the thick swallow that had punctuated the silence that followed as he’d dropped his hands to his lap and bowed his head, cradling the cell phone as if it was a lifeline that just might ring if he stared at it long enough, prayed hard enough. But it hadn’t. And then, moments later, Jared had stiffened as he realized someone else was in the room.

  Her—but as a him.

  He’d shot to his feet, scrubbing the tears from his dusky cheeks as he gruffly asked how long she’d been standing there. Too long. And not nearly long enough. As God was her witness, she’d never come so close to blowing her cover in her career as she had that day, staring across that tense, silent room, wanting so damned badly to cross it, to reach out and comfort him. To hold him while he poured out the pain. She’d been about to.

  Until the humiliation set in.

  His humiliation.

  One look into Jared’s eyes and she’d known exactly how he felt. She’d known in her soul that he would have given his for her to have been as deaf as she’d once prayed another man could be blind. Maybe that was why she’d done it. Maybe that was why she’d sucked up her compassion, picked up his pride and flat out lied.

  Only now she was beginning to think she shouldn’t have. She might have been able to help. True, she might not have known true love. But she
had one hell of a handle on rejection.

  Chapter 6

  Where the devil was he?

  Alex lifted her hand and rapped on the door to Karl’s room, more loudly this time.

  Silence.

  Odd. She dug into her trouser pocket, automatically reaching for the remote control for her hearing aid. It wasn’t there. She’d left it in her hotel room.

  Great. She could have used it to kick up the intensity of the sound waves behind that door. She already knew Karl wasn’t in the shower, since she didn’t hear water running, but that didn’t mean the man wasn’t snoring quietly on his bed—unless he’d opted to stand her up, instead. She wouldn’t put it past him. Not after that crazy story over breakfast, followed by his almost frantic insistence at the conference this afternoon that she meet him for dinner so he could provide proof. She ran her fingers across her mustache and readjusted her glasses, then rapped on the door one last time.

  Maybe the man didn’t snore.

  Well, if Karl wasn’t here, the proof wasn’t, either. If it existed at all. She turned to leave—only to stop in midstep as muffled footfalls approached the opposite side of the door.

  It opened.

  She swung around. “It’s about time.”

  “I know, Alexi, I know. I fell asleep.” Karl’s shoulders hunched sheepishly as he ran a paw through his already shaggy pile of straw, snarling it even more. She studied the whites of his eyes as he ushered her into the room. They were red, puffy.

  Enough for her to believe him.

  She skirted the rumpled double bed that couldn’t possibly accommodate Karl’s massive frame comfortably and stared at the table beside the window. There was plenty of light shining up from the capital of Holzberg below, but no food. “Where’s dinner?”

  “I have yet to order.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m just here to see if you can put your money where your mouth is.”

  “My money? I don’t—”

  “The proof, Karl. The proof.” She sighed as he walked toward the window, leaving her beside the bed. He turned to face her, his hips resting on the ledge. “You do have it, don’t you?”

  A second later, she caught a soft swish, followed by a muffled thump in the bathroom. If Karl had been sleeping alone, who the hell was in there? Alex spun around, but it was too late.

  “Greetings, Dr. Morrow. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” The Makarov 9 mm, its meticulously polished, seven-inch silencer already attached, detracted from the sincerity of the salutation, as did the pockmarked face leering two feet above. Hell, so did the identically armed goon hulking behind him. One against three, plus two pistols.

  Stall.

  “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

  The pockmarked man passed his weapon to his goon—and retrieved something that truly put the fear of God into her.

  A syringe.

  It was full.

  She stepped back, swung her gaze to Karl’s, hoping against hope that he was as baffled as she was.

  He wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Alexi. I was forced. I have… How do you Americans say it? Ja—divided loyalties. I could not—”

  “Halt die schnauze!” Mr. Pockman yelled.

  She stepped forward. “Why? Who are you to force Karl to shut up?”

  Bad move.

  Ugly smile. “I am the other loyalty.” The grin that followed was even uglier. The syringe came up.

  It was now or never.

  She chose now.

  Alex swung around, cleanly clipping across the jaw the one man who didn’t expect her attack. The back of Karl’s head bounced off the window frame with a solid thud, dazing him as he fell forward. She hooked her shoulder into his ribs and hauled his body around to slam it straight into Pockman and his sidekick.

  The former lost his syringe, the latter lost his gun.

  She vaulted over Karl’s body a second before he scrambled to his feet, only to freeze as the goon grabbed his pistol. But the goon leveled his Makarov at Karl, not her—and fired. The silenced thwack slammed into her eardrum and ricocheted down her rib cage to rip straight though her heart.

  “No!”

  But it was too late. Karl fell forward again and this time, he didn’t get up.

  A moment later she felt something cold and hard slam into the right side of her skull directly behind her ear, bringing her to her knees less than a foot from her old friend. She tried turning her head as she pitched forward, but ended up with her hearing aid smashed into the thick carpet. Maybe that was why she saw Karl’s lips move, but couldn’t hear what he said.

  His lips moved again.

  Whatever Karl had said, it must have been important, because Pockman leaned over and grabbed that pile of shaggy straw. He ripped it up, exposing the thick, bobbing knot at the center of Karl’s neck—just before he slit Karl’s throat from ear to ear.

  Karl opened his mouth one last time.

  But all that trickled out was blood.

  Alex screamed, putting everything she had into one last punch as the tip of that gleaming syringe shot toward her—

  “Jesus, lady!”

  She stiffened. “J-Jared?”

  “I”m here, Alex.”

  Please, Lord, let her be dreaming. Her heart still pounding, her mind still racing, the blood still thundering through her veins, she forced her lids open and stared up into those deep amber pools. Not Pockman’s eyes. She glanced at the black silky hair spilling over her neck. Not Pockman’s hair. She studied the large hands locked to both her wrists, the solid forearms and generous biceps—one still healing—above them. She dragged her gaze across the sculpted muscles of that massive chest. Every inch was smooth, dusky. Naked.

  Definitely not Pockman’s.

  Neither was the scarlet splotch staining the edge of that hard, morning-whiskered jaw. The same whiskered jaw she’d been staring at or, rather, trying not to stare at, from the moment she’d returned from that outhouse three nights ago. Two long, excruciatingly tense days had passed since, during which they’d both retreated by tacit agreement to separate corners of the cabin to study their mission’s backgrounder files and heal.

  She knew he’d chalked up her continued avoidance of those damned stitches to her coma. She didn’t care. It was better than the truth. Definitely easier.

  Or so she’d thought.

  After falling asleep after yet another evening of terse silence, she wasn’t so sure. She did know she’d picked a hell of a way to break it. She dragged her gaze back to that scarlet splotch, any hope she’d had that she hadn’t caused it vanishing as it continued to darken before her eyes, and cleared her throat.

  “Sorry for…hitting you.”

  “S’okay.”

  When he didn’t move, much less release her wrists, she cleared her throat again. “You, ah…want to let me go?”

  “Depends.”

  She swallowed firmly. “On what?”

  “You.” His brow rose. “You done swinging?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m done holding.”

  But he wasn’t. He did release her hands, but he didn’t move. Not far, anyway. And not off her bunk. His hips were still pressing down into hers, his sweats-encased thighs still tangled with her own. His elbows still levered that dusky chest twelve inches above the mattress—mere inches above her. She stared at the medallion dangling between them. At the profile of some man she didn’t recognize etched in relief on the small gold coin. At the color that reminded her of someone she did.

  Karl.

  The rest of the dream came flooding back, nearly swamping her. Only it wasn’t a dream, was it? She bit down on her lip as the tears threatened.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  “You sure?”

  She managed another nod. This one came out jerkier.

  “You saw Karl die, didn’t you?”

  She swung her gaze to his. “How did you—”

  Compassion filled the amber
. “You shouted his name.”

  Despite her attempts to hold it in, her breath came out in a ragged rush. “He betrayed me.” She would have given anything to be able to hate him, but she couldn’t. Poor Karl. His double-crossing her would have led to his death in the end, anyway. From what she now clearly remembered, Pockman did not seem the type to leave witnesses. She stiffened as the rest locked in.

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t an accident. I wasn’t kidnapped because I stumbled across something, or discovered something I shouldn’t have. I was the intended target all the time. Karl lured me there. There were two other guys in the bathroom.” But the output on her hearing aid had been fluctuating all day. She hadn’t heard the men until it was too late. “They were armed and one had a syringe. I managed to get the drop on Karl, but the shorter thug got the drop on me. Then he injected something into my neck. I passed out. But not before—” She broke off.

  She couldn’t finish. It was too painful.

  For all his flaws, Karl had been the closest thing to a friend she’d had in years.

  “You passed out, but not before they slit his throat.”

  “You could have told me.” Even as she whispered the accusation, she knew it wasn’t fair. Jared was right not to tell her. Now they knew the memory was real—and hers. She just wished to God it wasn’t. She dropped her gaze to the medallion. “They shot him first. But he tried to tell me something before he died. That’s why they slit his throat. To shut him up.”

  “Can you—”

  She shook her head. “No. I can see his lips moving, but something’s blocking the rest. Maybe it’s me. Maybe some part of my brain is still fighting it. Or maybe it just wasn’t audible.” But that was impossible and she knew it. Her hearing aid had been acting up, but she’d been less than a foot away from those terse, moving lips. She’d still had one good ear. That close, she should have heard something.

  She closed her eyes and pushed her fingers into her temples. She deliberately pictured Karl again, on that floor. The shock in his eyes, the regret. His lips moving.

  She strained her ears, her memory.