by Vicki Hinze
“It doesn’t mean they weren’t, either.” Gabby turned to swim away. “I’m going back to the Jeep for my cell phone.”
“You calling the commander?”
“No. He’d just send Housekeeping sooner.” Treading water, she swirled to look back at him. “I’m calling Sheriff Coulter.”
“He could be involved, Gabby.”
“He busted his ass to evacuate Areas Three and Four,” she reminded Max. “And Darlene wouldn’t marry a jerk. She’d straighten him out or leave him. It’s that simple.”
“No marriage is ever that simple.”
“Don’t be silly. Put the rules on the table and live by them and any marriage is that simple,” she contradicted him. “Darlene is still there, so Jackson Coulter is a good man.”
“Are you willing to stake your life on it?”
“Why not?” He’d have to stand in line to take her out. Behind Commander Conlee, the Global Warriors, and only God knew who else.
“What about my life?”
She had been protective, and Max had just proven that he knew it. She thought for a second, recalled Darlene and Jackson together on different occasions and just having coffee at the Silver Spoon. Darlene admired him. It was in her eyes. “Yes,” Gabby told Max. “I’m willing to stake your life on it.”
“Then call him.”
Max trusted her judgment. She might not remember spit about her supposed real life, which made her wonder if she actually had one, but in her cover, she had gained Max’s respect. That meant a lot to her, though it probably shouldn’t. Of course it shouldn’t. But it did. Ordinarily, that might upset her. But with everything going on right now, it didn’t rate above a nagging gnat on the worry scale.
At the dock, Gabby climbed the ladder out of the lake and then rushed across the boards to the lawn and then to the Jeep. The door creaked open and she reached inside and grabbed her cell phone. Dripping water, she shook, slinging droplets onto the drying mud and dirt. Droplets of water pinged on the Jeep’s fender.
The sheriff answered on the third ring. “Coulter.”
“Jackson, it’s Gabby.” She leaned back against the side of the car. “You need to get up to Judge Abernathy’s camp and don’t announce it to anyone else just yet.”
“What’s going on?”
“Abernathy is dead.” She swiped dripping water back from her face, plucked at her clinging clothes. “Like I said, Jackson, keep it to yourself until you get here and check it out.”
“I’m on my way,” he said, then dropped his voice. “I’m afraid there’s a lot going on in Carnel Cove that I don’t know, Gabby. None of it looks good. And I think we may have some local power players up to their eyeballs in it.”
“I’m afraid you’re right.”
“I will find out, and whoever they are, they’re going to jail.” Steel edged his voice. “My family lives here, too, you know?”
Relieved that her gut instincts about him had been right, she nodded. “I know, Jackson.”
Sitting in her library at home, Elizabeth hung up the phone and checked off the name on her list, preparing to move on to the next one. Her phone rang and she answered. “Elizabeth Powell.”
“Where the hell is my team?”
Commander Conlee. Oh, dear. “They’re here,” she said, trying to avoid saying any more than was absolutely necessary. “Can I call you later, Commander? We’ve got a federal emergency evacuation going on, and I’m supposed to be telling people to evacuate right away.”
“Why?”
Now what? Inspiration hit. “Because Max said.” Let Conlee call Max to get his answers. That was safe. Max and Gabby had no idea there was a second team in Carnel Cove. “I really will have to get back to you, Commander.”
Before he could object, she disconnected the call and dialed the next number on her list. For a second, she considered giving Gabby and Max a warning call, and then decided against it. It would be best for them to remain in the dark. Then Conlee couldn’t hold them responsible for getting some of his hotshot operatives arrested for breaking and entering, grand theft, bank robbery, and whatever else Jackson had tacked onto the impressive list.
Elizabeth just hoped her plan to get the team out of trouble worked as well as the one that got them into it.
Chapter Thirty-four
Darkness fell as Max turned into the circular drive at Gabby’s.
She had an uneasy feeling in her stomach. “Are you sure it’s safe to come back here? This is Area Three and we know for a fact they sprayed it.”
“David and Keith say yes and Dr. Richardson backed them on it, Gabby,” Max said. “All effects of the spray should be out of the air by now. So long as we don’t wallow in the dirt, we’re good. Besides, you’ve had the vaccine, and if I didn’t get it at the lab, odds are I’m not going to get it—at least, according to Erickson and Burke. Some people have a natural immunity, and apparently, I’m one of them.”
He parked the Jeep and they went into the house. Both of them automatically ran a security check to make sure the place was clear of intruders and listening devices. When confident it was, they met up in the kitchen.
“Are you hungry?” Gabby opened the door and peered into the fridge, hoping for a six-course meal to suddenly appear and willing to settle for anything semihealthy and mold-free. When had she last eaten a decent meal? Her stomach felt plastered against her backbone.
“Starving.” He nudged her over at the fridge. “I tossed out most of what was in here—”
“Whatever for?” She glanced at him, then peeked into the nearly empty fridge. Bare shelves had her fighting a rush of disappointment, and her stomach growled in full-fledged protest.
“The storm,” he said. “Electricity went out and everything had spoiled.”
“Ah.” The smell of his skin and the lake and the wind competed with her stomach for attention and won. Bent at the fridge, she stood up and faced him, the open door between them. “I’d forgotten about the storm.”
Did she really say that? How could she actually say that? Worse, how could she mean it? It was true but, God Almighty. Forgetting a hurricane when evidence of it was all around her? Heat rushed up to her face.
“You feeling okay?” Max brushed a hand against her face.
It wasn’t really a personal touch, just testing her temperature, but it felt personal. Almost like a caress. It had been a long time since she’d felt a caress. “I’m a little tired, but okay.”
“You’re lying to me, Gabby.” He stepped around the door, stood before her, and clasped her shoulders, then gently squeezed. “Be honest.”
Be honest. Easy for him to say. He knew who he was, and what he was, and where things stood between them. All she had to make those judgments was his word and a few instinctive hunches, and considering the confusing signals she was getting—from him and from herself—that just wasn’t enough. Still, he looked so … concerned, and interested, and approachable. He looked as if he really cared. “I’m confused.”
“About what?”
She wished he would back up a step. Just a step. It was too hard to keep her head clear and her guard up when he stood this close, and hemmed in by the fridge door, she couldn’t step back. “About us.” Unable to stand it, she skirted around him, leaned against the kitchen counter, her back to him. “I remind myself over and over that this life isn’t real, that we aren’t married, that I’m not really a judge, but the problem is I don’t believe it.” She risked a look back at him. “It’s not that I think you’re lying to me, Max. I know you’re not. It’s just that …” Words failed her and she shrugged.
He stepped closer and clasped her shoulders again.
“What?”
She looked up at him, let him see the truth in her eyes, and called herself forty kinds of fool for doing it. “My mind and my heart don’t agree. I feel connected to you. When you look at me, I feel special. And I know it’s not just my imagination, or that you’re faking it, Max. I know it, just like I know
your body as well as my own. How can we not be real? How can I imagine that all this between us isn’t real? It’s the most real thing I’ve ever felt in my life.”
He cupped her face in his hands, stroked her jaw with his thumb, and cocked his head. “Would it help to know that my head and heart don’t agree on us, either?”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“And your body, too?” She groaned. “I mean, you know my body.”
His eyes warmed. “Intimately.”
She couldn’t help herself; she smiled, and wrapped her arms around his waist. “If I told you that I think I love you would it shock you?”
“Absolutely.” He masked his expression, hiding even a hint of his true feelings from her.
She needed a grip here, and she intended to get one. “Would that be a good shock or a bad one?” she pushed.
He hesitated before responding; looked as if he seriously considered not answering her at all. Finally, he said, “That would depend on whether or not you’re in control of yourself.”
He meant her memory. “What if I never remember completely? Do we hang in limbo forever, then?”
He looked annoyed by that question, and sounded annoyed answering it. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t either, Max. Keith said it could be permanent. So did Erickson. But it might not be. Candace’s memory wasn’t affected.” Gabby stroked the front of his shirt, running her fingertip along the center tab between the third and fourth buttons. “I might never remember. Then again, I might remember any moment. Either way, I don’t want to live my life on hold.”
“I understand that.” He stroked her face, dropped a kiss to her forehead, then her cheek. “I’m going to be really honest here, Gabby.”
Her heart felt as if it was squeezed in a huge fist.
“I could love you,” he admitted. “I love the way you look at me and the way you stroke my neck, like you’re doing right now. You let me know you want to be close to me, and not because you’re really thinking about it—it’s just an instinctive thing. I love it that you snore, that you didn’t even slow down when you were running down that dock and you asked me if you could swim. You trusted me, and jumped. I love a lot of things about you.”
The truth of what he was saying hit her. “But you’re afraid I’ll remember and then I won’t love you anymore?”
“It’s possible.” He lifted his chin, stared at the ceiling a second, then looked back down at her. “It’s probable. You didn’t trust me.”
Gabby couldn’t believe it. She felt so much for him, so deeply. “I know everything about you, Max, and I’ve always trusted you implicitly.”
He searched her eyes, seeking the truth. “Do you remember now?”
“Not in my head.” She felt a little foolish and a lot nervous. “But I know in my heart.”
A strange blend of relief and disappointment flooded his eyes. He pulled back and stared at her from the other side of the table. “Don’t you get it? You don’t remember, but I do. I could get suckered into loving you forever. But I only have one heart. I can’t risk giving it to a woman I’d mourn losing forever.”
“Yes, you can, Max.” She spoke gently to soften that harsh reality. “You have to risk it because you can’t not risk it.” She paused a second, then added, “That’s the problem with love. It’s not rational or wise or even just. It’s mostly a fickle pain in the ass. But when it’s there, it’s there, and it just stays put until you get weary of fighting it.”
He stood statue stiff, stared daggers at her. “I disagree.”
“Okay.” She walked back to the fridge, seemingly dropping the subject. “So what do you want to eat? Miraculously, it looks like the chicken is still good, but nothing else.” Bent double, she peeked up at him over the fridge door. “You love chicken, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I love chicken.” Frowning, he crossed over to the sink, got a drink of water, and then set the glass down. “How can you just drop this with an ‘okay’ and then go on like everything is normal?”
“Do I have any choice?” She shrugged, set the chicken on the counter, then washed her hands with hot, soapy water. “What do you want from me? I feel one way, you tell me I feel another—I don’t know what to do. It’s hard.”
“It’s hard for me, too.”
“I wish I could spare you, but I’m stuck. If you have a solution, I’m all ears.” She tensed, afraid he’d withdraw and she’d never be close to him again.
“I want you.” He pulled her to him, closed his arms around her, and kissed her hard and long and deep. “I just want you.”
Commander Conlee’s voice on the phone sounded impatient, stiff, and stern. “I’m waiting for an explanation, Grayson. We both know you disobeyed a direct order and now Gabby’s giving me lip, wanting me to hold off sending in Housekeeping to take care of you two for forty-eight hours so you have time to resolve things. What is going on?”
Max frowned at the bathroom mirror. He had a towel wrapped around his hips and a razor in his hand. “I was told to make a determination, and if necessary, to cancel Gabby. I’ve determined that’s not in the best interests of the United States.” Not to mention his own. He dabbed the edge of the towel to the water dripping shaving cream from his chin down his throat. “She’s fine, her cover is fine, and we’re following so many different threads on this mission I can’t keep up. I need her.” Never were truer words spoken.
“I see.”
Max couldn’t do it. He loved her and had made love to her. He couldn’t kill her and that was the bottom line. Conlee’s tone proved he knew it. “Yes, sir. I guess you probably do.”
“Vice President Stone will be glad to hear it.”
Max stilled, stared into his own eyes in the bathroom mirror. “Sir?”
“She said you would kill Gabby only if there was no way around it, and if anyone could find a way to let her live, you would. That’s why she insisted on you taking the assignment.”
The Vice President had insisted? “What made her think—? How could she be convinced I wouldn’t kill Gabby? When I got here, I had every intention of carrying out that order.”
“I have no idea. Maybe it’s woman’s intuition. Hell, what man really understands them anyway? Bottom line is it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’d better be right about her cover or a lot of good men, including you and me, are going to die, Grayson.”
Max swallowed hard. He’d made the call, and he had to stand by it—and by her. “I accept full responsibility, sir.”
“Yeah, well, that and a buck will buy me a cup of coffee, but it won’t do a thing to get either of us through the pearly gates.”
Max resumed shaving, stroked a lick down his cheek. “I’m not wrong about this, sir.”
“All right, then. I sent a second team down there to assist. They arrived, but haven’t reported since. Find them and send them back to Home Base. We’ll consider the matter of Gabby closed. But if it becomes necessary—”
“I’ll handle it.” He rinsed the razor in the sink, beneath the faucet of running water. “You have my word, sir.”
“Fine.” Commander Conlee paused, and then shifted topics. “Intel sent me the tape of your conversation with Dr. Erickson. Have you sorted it all out yet?”
“Not yet, sir. We’re working on it, but we’ve had a few complications.”
“Serious ones?”
“Oh, yeah.” Max rinsed the last bits of shaving cream from his face and blotted it dry. Then he dropped the towel tucked at his waist and shrugged into his clothes. “We found tanks inside tanks in Carl Blake’s sprayers on the trucks.” Max propped the phone in the crook of his ear and buttoned up his shirt. “Someone switched the canisters in the lab, so the trucks were spraying Z-4027. The testing was pulled on the outer tanks. That’s why they came back clear. The inner tanks held the Z-4027, which was being sprayed in specific, handpicked locations.”
“Who picked them?”
“My guess, the C
onsortium Erickson warned us about. One of the drivers was told to spray a low-income housing area not on his list by an unknown man wearing a FEMA jacket. It wasn’t Stan or any of his guys, so we’re figuring it was that second Warrior.”
“Logical deduction. Have you gotten a fix on him?”
“We think he was the masked man who shot out two of the Jeep tires. He escaped. This man’s like a ghost. He’s avoiding the hotels, resorts, and apartments around here. Elizabeth and Miranda have been canvassing them.” Paige sensed he was still in the Cove, but always moving. Max grabbed a comb and ran it through his hair. “Wherever he is, he’s lying low.”
“What about the spraying?”
“It’s stopped now, and Erickson and Keith Burke have accounted for all the chemicals. But the consequences of what was already done are going to be steep.”
“How steep?”
“I wish I knew.” Max put the comb back into the drawer and closed it. He splashed on some aftershave that smelled tangy and not sweet. “After we made the link from the Consortium to Abernathy to Sebastian Cabot and his suicide in the Napa Valley region, we went to put the pressure on Abernathy. Gabby was convinced he knew a lot more than he was telling, and I think he did, too.”
“But?”
“He’s dead, sir. Three mosquito bites on the back of the neck, just like Judge Powell.”
“Z-4027?”
“That’s not verified yet, but if I were a betting man, I’d say odds look reasonably good. I’ve, um, been unable to locate Gabby’s test results on Judge Powell.”
“Why don’t you just ask her?”
Oh, here it came. “Remember the lab incident, sir?”
“Grayson, how could I forget it?”
Max winced. “There were repercussions. Candace and Gabby are fine. Well, mostly fine, but Gabby is experiencing some … residual effects.”
“What kind of residual effects?” Steel ranked softer than his tone.
“Long-term memory loss, sir,” Max confessed, lacking any alternative to lying, and he just couldn’t bring himself to lie to the commander. “Keith Burke gave them both injections. Neither responded to them, but then Erickson secretly injected them both. They got better. We’ve got the two of them consulting now to see if it’s Erickson’s alone—which he says it isn’t—or a combination of the two vaccine injections that arrested the infection.”
