The Impossible Alliance

by Candace Irvin

  “Dammit, Jared, I don’t have—”

  “Please. And you do have time. Hours. While you were sleeping I e-mailed Sam a situation report regarding tonight. I received an automated response. Something’s come up at his end. He didn’t say what. Just that he’ll be out of communications range for the next four hours. You can send an update then.”

  She finally sat, turned. He almost wished she hadn’t. Alex had been so exhausted earlier, she’d fallen asleep without changing. And now he was staring straight into that V.

  Samuel Hatch’s niece. Christ, who’d have thought?

  “What makes you think Karl wasn’t just screwing with you from the grave? Hell, why connect it to Sam at all?”

  “Because Sam has enemies.”

  Jared nodded. It wasn’t exactly an earthshattering disclosure. After all, the man was the director of ARIES. You didn’t get to that level and not rack up at least a dozen enemies along the way, whether or not their hatred was deserved. His thoughts must have shown.

  She sighed. “I know. It’s a normal agent fear. Protect thy family. Only, Sam learned firsthand it’s not always possible. I’m not saying this is connected to Sam. Just that it’s possible. Years ago my uncle had an affair with another agent by the name of Eugenie Williams—Agent Ethan Williams’s aunt. It was before Sam married my aunt Rita. Anyway, a couple of years later Eugenie’s family was targeted because she got too close to something. Sam never told me what it was. Only that he’s always feared his family would be next—and that he’s still after the guy who murdered Eugenie’s family.”

  “That’s why you created Alexander Morrow.”

  She nodded. “I got my first taste of ARIES in grad school. It came at a time when I really needed the distraction. Sam asked me to investigate a physics professor I knew on campus. He was suspected of passing scientific information to someone he had no business sharing it with. Aiden Swift had been assigned to the man, but even Aiden couldn’t get close enough to take the professor down. That’s when Sam brought me in—mainly because I was already in. He warned me up front it could blow up in my face. But he was also desperate. My own dad died in a training accident when I was two. He was a jet jock for the Navy. Maybe because I don’t remember much about him, Sam’s been more of a father to me than an uncle. I’d have done anything for him.”

  “You accepted the job.”

  She smiled. “By the time it was over, I was hooked. But when I told Sam I wanted in for the long haul, he freaked. Refused to consider the idea. So Aiden decided to help and Alexander Morrow was born. By the time I made it through the interview—with my own unsuspecting uncle on the panel—Sam realized I was serious. He caved in, but under one condition. I had to keep the alternate identity. Naturally we’ve refined it over the years.”

  “Naturally.” Jared knew he should say something more, but he was reluctant. Maybe because once he did ask, she’d realize how very badly he wanted to know. He slid his gaze to the laptop and stared at the words he’d typed but couldn’t understand, stunned that he could be so unnerved by the most basic question of all.

  “Yes, it is.”

  He jerked his gaze back to hers.

  She nodded. “My name really is Alex. Well, Alexis. Alexis Hatch Warner.” She raised her hand and held it out. “It’s been a pleasure getting to know you, Agent Sullivan.”

  He met her hand, folding those agile fingers in his as he nodded. “Jared. And trust me, the pleasure’s been all mine.”

  She smiled softly. “I’m glad.”

  He sat there for a moment, enjoying the warmth. The connection. The knowledge. He retrieved his hand reluctantly and stared down at his now empty palm. He needed to think. “You may be right about the mole.” The fact that Karl chose those specific words when he clearly understood they would be his last said a heck of a lot. But not enough.

  “So, what now, partner?”

  “We tell your uncle. But since we have the time, why don’t I finish typing Karl’s notes first? See if we can come up with something new to add to what we both already learned tonight.”

  She glanced at the laptop. “Mind if I take a look?”

  Normally he hated anyone looking over his shoulder while he was spitting out information from his brain, but this was Alex. He leaned forward to snag the corner of the computer casing, pulling the laptop onto his thighs as they settled side by side against the cramped headboard. “You want me to keep going, or would you rather start from the beginning?”

  “Keep going. From what little I saw, the notes appeared to be in chronological order. The first part should be mostly standard scientific housekeeping. Measurements, basic tests and the like. Then the hypotheses. Let’s skip to the conclusions.”

  He picked up where he left off. She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, then, “How do you do that?”

  He shrugged…and kept typing.

  “You have no idea what that says?”

  “Nope. It’s just a picture in my head. I just focus at the top of the frame and scroll down.”

  Several more moments past.

  “Okay, I admit it. I’m jealous as hell.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Oh, please.”

  He glanced up. “No, really. Trust me, there are some things you never want to see again.”

  “Name one.”

  He grinned, determined to keep it light. “Army-enlistment contracts, bills, Dear John letters.” His grin faded before he could stop it. “Test results, death certificates.”

  “Oh.”

  Though it wasn’t necessary, he jerked his stare to the computer and fused it to the screen as he forced his tiring fingers to pick up the pace.

  Another minute passed.

  Alex leaned forward. “What the—? No way. No blessed way.”

  He jerked his gaze to hers. “What’s wrong?”

  “Scroll back a few pages.”

  “How many?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, three or four. To that huge column of numbers.”

  He knew exactly what she was referring to. Two and a half pages later, he ceased scrolling.

  Confusion furrowed her brows. “This has to be a mistake.”

  He shrugged. “Could be, but it’s not mine.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t forgotten—” She killed the rest immediately. He shook his head before the flush finished slamming into her cheeks.

  “Don’t worry. I know what you meant. To answer your question, no. I can still see the pages clearly. If those numbers are wrong, the error’s Karl’s, not mine.”

  “Did the notes have a picture to go with them? A graph? Maybe even a diagram?”

  “Several. Got ’em right here.” He passed the laptop into her hands and reached for the spiral notebook he’d left on the nightstand. “I like to do the diagrams and pictures first. Reproducing them can be tricky.” He shrugged as she flipped the cover open. “Use your imagination. I’m a lousy artist.”

  She chuckled as she turned the page. “It’s all in the hands, partner. All in the hands.” Another flush stole across her skin. He knew exactly what she was thinking. What she was remembering. Because he was remembering it, too.

  Two nights ago. Her hands, on him.

  Tonight. Beneath that balcony. His hands. On her.

  They exhaled together.

  She flipped the page—and cursed. “Oh my God.”

  “What?”

  “Keep typing.”

  He took one look at the sheer terror blazing on her face and performed exactly as ordered. What the hell was he writing?

  “We’re in trouble. Big trouble.”

  He kept typing. “Why?”

  She kept reading. “That second column of numbers you typed a page back? Those are radioactive-decay rates for a little-known element called astatine. There’s less than one gram of astatine on the planet.”

  “Out-of-the-box chemistry?”

  She kept her gaze fused to the screen. “In its most inc
redible form. But in this case we’ve got a guy named Bruno DeBruzkya tossed into the mix.”

  “Hell.”

  “You got it.” Her fingers bit into his arm. “Keep typing.”

  He did.

  She grabbed his right biceps, digging her fingers into the cut that hadn’t quite finished healing as she followed up the next page with an even darker curse. It took another page before her fingers loosened their grip. “You can stop for now.”

  “You sure?” Her hand might have fallen away, the overwhelming urgency faded from her eyes, but the new light burning within scared the ever-lovin’ bejesus out of him.

  “Yeah. Karl’s just repeating experiments now. Verifying results. Remember that hokey-sounding ancient myth?”

  “He who owns the stone owns the world?”

  “That’s the one. It is ancient, but it’s not hokey. That stone—that ruby—is older than our entire planet, than our entire solar system. And all those mysterious deaths that were attributed to the jewel? They’re not so mysterious anymore.”

  “Alex, what are you saying?”

  “According to Karl’s hypothesis, the original, uncut crystal was found several hundred years ago smack-dab in the middle of the Hartz forest. In a very large, still steaming crater.”

  “A meteorite?”

  She nodded. “The crystal was inside it.”

  “Crystal? You mean the ruby?”

  “It’s not a ruby per se. Not given our frame of reference. It’s more. The stone is comprised mostly of corundum—aluminum oxide—and it does contain enough chromium that its color has got to be blood-red.”

  He could hear the but. “You mentioned a radioactive element called astatine, something about there being less than a gram on the entire planet? Are you saying there’s astatine in there, too?”

  “Yes, but I was wrong about the amount. So is modern science. There’s at least another gram in that stone. I also forgot to mention that astatine is the most radioactive element known to science. Our science. But there’s something else besides the astatine in that crystal. Trace elements that don’t match anything I’ve seen before. There’s at least one new chemical element in that crystal, perhaps two. Karl wasn’t sure and neither am I. I’d have to examine the stone. But I do know that the presence of those particular elements are allowing the astatine to bind with the chromium and corundum in unusual ways—very unusual ways. Jared?”

  Something in the way she whispered his name drilled straight up his spine. “Yeah?”

  “Do you know what a ‘flash lamp pumped laser’ is?”

  He flipped through his memory, dragged the corresponding file to the fore. According to a spread American Scientist did five years ago, a flash lamp pumped laser was simply a laser that used ruby rods as its operating medium. But also according to the magazine, ruby lasers weren’t very powerful.

  Until now?

  “Alex, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “That depends on what you think I’m saying.”

  “That this particular ruby, with that particular combination of extra elements, will be able to power one hell of a laser?”

  She nodded slowly.

  His air bled out. “But that’s not what you were saying.”

  She shook her head.

  “Spell it out, sweetheart. You’re out of my league.”

  She took a deep breath and turned to the next page in the spiral notebook. To the last diagram he’d sketched. She tapped the center with the tip of her finger. “A ruby laser fueled by rods made from this particular crystal will be powerful enough to take out satellites in outer space. General DeBruzkya will have his very own, very private, deadly effective star wars.”

  She closed the notebook and leaned back against the headboard, staring across the room.

  The overhead light flickered as if on cue. Underscoring the sudden precariousness of their mission, of the entire blasted world order. A new world order. The likes of which had never been seen, much less contemplated before. Not by men with a conscience. With that much power at his disposal, Bruno DeBruzkya would see that the ancient legend come to pass. He would truly own the world. And then it hit Jared. What had already hit Alex.

  Karl Weiss hadn’t sold her out. The man had been hoping like hell his friend, his connection, would be able to figure out a way to get him and that gem out of Rebelia for good.

  But there was more.

  The relatively lax security at Veisweimar castle, Sokolov’s willingness to kill Karl before the laser had even made it past the sketch stage in a scientist’s notebook, the fact that Karl himself had supposedly lured her into the deadly trap and then tried to warn her with his very last breath.

  “DeBruzkya doesn’t know what he’s really got, does he?”

  Her eyes glistened as she shook her head. “Nope.”

  The notes were written in two different languages DeBruzkya and his thugs didn’t speak. Delmonican and chemical. DeBruzkya’s ignorance was easy to understand. Jared didn’t speak the languages, either. But at the moment, the second scientist who’d been invited into that makeshift lab, however unwillingly and unknowingly—Alex is Hatch Warner, aka Alex Morrow—was speaking a language he did understand. In fact, she was screaming it.

  Silently.

  The piercing agony of losing someone she’d truly cared about. The all-consuming fear of not knowing if that person had realized before it was too late that, in the end, she had understood. She had forgiven.

  Jared closed the file he’d created and shut down the computer. When the screen went blank, he leaned forward and set the laptop on the nightstand. He carefully loosened the spiral notebook from Alex’s pale arms, stopping to unhook the crimped end of the wire as it snagged at the V of the sea-green sheath still clinging to her curves. He ignored the brief glimpse of perfection itself as he dropped the notebook to the floor and leaned forward again, this time to smooth the tears from her cheeks. “It’s okay, honey. He knows.” Oh, God, those eyes.

  “Does he?”

  He tucked her curls behind her ears. “Sure he does. Karl was your friend, Alex. He knew you.”

  “No, he didn’t. Karl didn’t know me at all.” Her shrug was almost helpless, the soft twist to her lips beyond sad as her shimmering, reddened stare met his square on. “Neither do you.”

  What on earth was she talking about? Of course he knew her. And she knew him. Better than anyone did. He didn’t care how many days they’d spent together. She knew him better than Sam Hatch or his own mother had known him. But when she shook her head, the fear slipped in. The almost blinding panic. She had concealed something. But what?

  “Alex…what are you trying to tell me?”

  The fear locked in as the silence dragged out. Her throat began to work. He glanced down at her hands. She’d bunched the stretchy fabric into her hands so tightly, her knuckles were stark white against the green. He might be afraid, but she was absolutely terrified.

  “Sweetheart?”

  For some reason that seemed to help. She managed to draw a deep breath, even managed to loosen her fingers slightly. “I need to tell you some—” Another breath, this one achingly shallow. “Well, it’s, ah, not something I can say. Or, well, something I seem to be able to say, so I’m…just going to show you. Okay?”

  He forced himself to sit there. To not reach out and grab her and haul her close. To let her do whatever it was she seemed determined to do—while he prayed.

  “Sure.”

  She sucked in another breath. Unlike her last, this one seemed to reach all the way to her toes. Then she slowly raised her hand. At the base of her neck, she skirted her hand to the side. There she reached up and fingered the lobe of her right ear. Funny, until that moment he hadn’t realized they weren’t pierced. He shoved the observation aside as her fingers lingered, as the terror in her hands finally locked into her eyes.

  The hell with this. He reached out—

  But her hand was gone, and…so was her ear.
<
br />   Completely.

  Cleanly.

  The side of her face wasn’t marred in any other way, or in any way at all. Her entire right ear was simply gone. It was as if the cartilage had been neatly trimmed down until its edge was almost flush with the smooth skin of her face. He dragged his gaze to hers as he struggled to absorb the sight.

  The naked shock.

  She simply shrugged. “Welcome to the real freak show. Front row, center seat.”

  Chapter 13

  The second that word came out of her mouth, Jared snapped out of it. A millisecond after that, he realized what was really going on. Alex wasn’t terrified. And she sure as hell wasn’t waiting, calmly or otherwise. She was dying. And it was his silence that was killing her.

  So he said the only thing he could. The truth.

  “I want my money back.” He anticipated her flinch, whipping his own hand up and grabbing hers before she could raise it again, before she could return what had to be Harold Blaine’s most amazing masterpiece yet. He leaned close. Close enough so she couldn’t escape. Close enough so there would be absolutely no mistake. “I want my money back because I don’t see a freak.”

  She didn’t say a word.

  But the tears had returned. With a vengeance. His hands still locked to hers, he leaned forward, this time, smoothing the silent rivulets with his lips.

  She stiffened. Almost imperceptibly, but it still tore through him, through his heart. Especially as she pulled away to slip her hand into the leather bag she’d tucked at the side of the bed before she’d fallen asleep earlier. The one he now knew why she never seemed to be far away from. It wasn’t the bag. It was the gold vial she withdrew from within. That’s what the adhesive he’d noticed when he’d located the manifest was for. What that box had been for.

  Her on-again, off-again, on-again hypersensitive hearing made sense now. Perfect sense. Given just how powerful her hearing was, he’d lay odds the entire outer ear was a cleverly disguised microphone array. Harold Blaine was truly brilliant.