by Vicki Hinze
“We are, sir,” Gabby interrupted. “Aren’t we, Max?”
“Absolutely, honey,” Max said without stopping to think.
“Honey?” Commander Conlee said. “Grayson, did you just set me up for all the paperwork that goes with harassment charges?”
“Deep-cover hazard, sir.” Max explained, his expression straight.
Oddly hurt, Gabby let go of his hand. He didn’t try to stop her, and that hurt her more.
“From all we’ve been able to determine, the Consortium has been dismantled. We’ll know more as time goes on, but Intel feels confident it won’t be functioning again before we can round up any residual parties.”
Candace stepped out of the storage room and up to the lab table. Gabby and Max tried to act normal, despite their surprise.
“Get Burke an earpiece,” Conlee barked.
Gabby passed hers to Candace. She tapped it into her ear, and then snagged the mike. “Hi, Commander.”
“Ms. Burke,” he said stiffly. “Where’s my boat?”
“My guess is the second Warrior used it to bug out after he set the team up with the jewelry theft and bank robbery.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Seems reasonable enough to me, sir.” She frowned up at the remote viewer. “I realize I’ve breached etiquette by letting Max and Gabby know I’m aware of you and you’re probably going to kill me for it, but I can’t leave the rest of the country vulnerable to protect myself.”
“What exactly are you talking about?”
“Carl Blake.” She frowned up at the remote viewer. “Your Intel people need a wake-up call on the Consortium and I’d just as soon they didn’t get it in the form of another biological attack—or worse, a chemical one.”
“Your point, ma’am?” Conlee urged her, oddly stiff and formal.
“My point is that Carl Blake might have been a bank president and a minor player financial whiz. He might have owned a couple companies and a ton of real estate. But, Commander, that man did not have the skills to mastermind these kinds of attacks. He wasn’t a strategic thinker. Take him away from money and he was lost. He related to everything by the bottom line and dollar signs. Everything. And speaking quite frankly, sir, he didn’t have the balls to take these kinds of risks. Someone is above him in this Consortium, sir. Someone sharper, stronger, wiser, who is willing to take more risks and is better able to protect himself from detection while doing it.”
Conlee grunted, softened his voice. “I understand you feel strongly about this because you were personally used, Candace. Logan Industries is your company and Blake put your reputation and life at risk. Outrage is normal, but—”
“Screw my reputation, Commander. This isn’t an ego thing. Didn’t you hear me? I knew Carl Blake, and he didn’t have what it takes to pull this off.”
“Intel feels confident the Consortium stops with Blake.”
“Well, Intel is wrong.” She parked a hand on her hip and stared up at the viewer lens. “Keep digging, Commander, or you’ll be leaving the U.S. wide open. That’s just a friendly warning. Intel is wrong.”
“Thank you for your input, Ms. Burke.”
Gabby knew that things were getting tense and touched Candace’s arm, cautioning her to back off. “Max and I will keep a sharp eye out for developments. Sissy mentioned ‘the chairman’ and referenced it to banking. She, Erickson, and Swift said only ‘the director’ about the Consortium. We’ll check it all firsthand.”
Candace glared back at the viewer and then nodded, satisfied. “That works for me, Gabby. I trust you and Max. And of course, I’ll be doing what I can—”
Conlee didn’t care for that snub or the indignant sniff that had come with it, and evidence of both came in his heated interruption. “You’ll stay out of it, or I’ll put your ass in jail.”
Candace didn’t appear worried, or forgiving. “When William Powell was dying,” she said, ignoring his threat, “he said you could be trusted, so I’m trusting you to keep an open mind on what Gabby and Max report on the Consortium. It is bigger, Commander.” She then looked directly at the viewer, letting him see her sincerity. “If you’re going to kill me for coming out of the proverbial closet, would you please give me twenty-four hours’ notice?”
“Excuse me?” Conlee sounded bewildered, as if his ears had deceived him.
“Notice. You know. A heads-up that you’re sending Housekeeping for me.”
Max and Gabby turned their heads away from the viewer. Max cringed, Gabby grinned, not at all surprised. Candace would go toe to toe with anyone short of God.
“Get the hell off my viewer, Candace Burke.”
“Yes, sir. But kindly remember that your viewer is in my building. Perhaps things are different there, but in the South, it behooves one to be gracious. Civility is still expected—and appreciated.” She removed the earpiece and mike and returned them to Gabby. “He’s prickly sometimes, isn’t he?”
“We all have our moments.” Gabby couldn’t help herself. “Just out of curiosity, why do you want the notice?”
Candace shrugged. “I love banana splits.”
“What?” Totally lost, Max glanced at Gabby to interpret.
But she didn’t have a clue what Candace was talking about, either.
“I love banana splits, but I don’t eat them.” She tapped at her hip. “You might as well just plaster the pounds on your buns and save your stomach the trouble of processing. If Commander Conlee is going to kill me, then I want time to eat myself sick on the suckers.”
Conlee’s muffled chuckled sounded through the earpiece, and watching Candace leave the lab, Gabby felt oddly comforted. Conlee wouldn’t cancel or jail Candace Burke.
“So where is Dr. Swift?”
“Sheriff Coulter has him in jail,” Max said. “FBI will retrieve him in the morning.”
“Fine. You two stay put for a few days while we mop up, just in case. Keep watch for Cardel Boudreaux. We had a sketch artist work with that truck driver and we think Boudreaux ordered him to spray the low-income housing community. Customs has been alerted. My guess is that since his client, Carl Blake, is dead, he’s going to make a run for the border.”
“In his position, I would,” Gabby admitted. A snapshot of a man in Sissy’s living room flashed in her mind. A man wearing a hat with a flag pin in its brim. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?” Max asked.
“What?” Conlee mimicked him simultaneously.
“Cardel Boudreaux.” She remembered the flag pin in his hat at the airport, when he’d come into the country. “He was at Sissy’s. I didn’t recognize him with the hat. It was pulled low over his eyes. I should have had him, sir.”
“Go from where you are, Gabby.” Max sighed. “Between the car bomb failing and his client being dead, he had little incentive to hang around. I’m sure he’s out of the area by now. Hopefully, he hasn’t yet left the country. He’s the only link we’ve got to Sissy’s Consortium chairman—if Candace is right and Sissy lied about Carl being its toplevel manager.”
“The alert’s been issued through Homeland Security channels. You guys stay put there.”
“Yes, sir.”
Max took off his earpiece and mike and looked at Gabby.
“I feel like an idiot. The man was ten feet away from me, Max.”
He curled an arm around her shoulder. “Welcome to the human race, honey. You’re beautiful and smart and no more perfect than the rest of us.”
“I never thought I was perfect.” She hiked her chin, offended.
“No, you just demanded it in others.” He kissed her to take the sting out of what he’d told her. “But I adore you anyway.”
She didn’t believe it. Didn’t trust it for a second. “Right. Easy to say to a woman with a spotty memory.”
He laughed out loud and led her out of the lab.
“Laughing about that? Have you no shame, Maxwell Grayson?”
“None. You remembered my name. That’s enough.”
She turned off the water so she could hear him, grabbed a thick towel, and began drying off. “What? I’m still in the shower.”
“Sybil’s on the phone,” he shouted from the doorway. “Do you want me to have her call you back? It’ll be a day or two, she says.”
“Just a sec.” Gabby stepped out of the shower, bent forward and wrapped the towel in a turban around her head, then shrugged into her robe. Tugging at the tie at her waist, she opened the door and reached for the phone.
Max passed it to her. “Cute hat, honey.”
“Go away.” She rolled her gaze heavenward as if annoyed, but inside she was smiling. “Sybil?” she said into the phone. “Where are you?”
“In Washington. I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Me, too.” She walked out of the bath and down the hall, then into the bedroom. “I know this whole thing has been hard for you.”
“It was awful. But I hedged my odds,” she confessed.
“How? For crying out loud, Sybil, you sent Max to kill me.”
“I did,” she admitted. “But I knew he wouldn’t do it unless he couldn’t not do it.”
“Oh, really?”
“You’re crazy about the man, Gabby. He’d have to be dumb as a dead stump to not know it, and knowing it, he couldn’t kill you. It was low risk—for a high-risk proposition.”
“Well, thank you so much for that comforting thought.” She plopped down on the bed, tumbled to her back, and then stared up at the white squiggles on the ceiling. “So is he crazy about me, too?”
Sybil didn’t answer.
Gabby waited, but when it became obvious she wasn’t going to answer, Gabby nudged her. “Sybil, are you still there?”
Worry filled her voice. The kind of worry that passes between two women who have been friends too long to hide anything of consequence from each other. “What’s wrong?”
Wishing she’d kept her mouth shut—Sybil would obsess, she was so protective—Gabby glared at the globe on the light fixture. “Conlee didn’t brief you about me getting the infection?”
“He did. But you’re cured. So why are you asking me how Max feels about you?”
She’d always been too observant and sharp to deceive. “There’s a little residual effect.”
“What kind of residual effect?”
The phone bumped Gabby’s chin. “My memory needs a few patches. Max is helping me fit them in.”
“Patches?” Her voice bordered on hysteria. “What the hell do you mean ‘patches’?”
“I don’t remember some details. But don’t worry. Nothing that would jeopardize anything. It’s personal stuff.”
“For example …” Sybil prodded.
“I remember my cover, okay?” Gabby let out a sigh of pure frustration. “I don’t remember not being married to Max or not loving him or not being a judge or not really living in Carnel Cove.”
“You think your cover is your life?” Sybil sounded stunned.
Hell, she had to be stunned. Gabby was stunned by it, too. “I did. I don’t anymore.”
“Oh, Gabby.” Fear, regret, concern, worry. So much worry.
“Don’t start, Sybil. I mean it. I’m fine.” Gabby plucked at the coverlet with her forefinger and thumb. The rich texture felt good next to her skin, oddly comforting. “Sybil, was I really crazy about Max?”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely.”
“Well, I guess that’s it, then.”
“What?”
“I love the man. I thought I was married to him, but he said no. I believed him—well, not at first, but after a while—and yet …”
“You still felt married to him.”
“Yeah.” She rolled over onto her side, scrunched a pillow to her chest. “But that could have been because we’ve been married so many times.”
“True,” Sybil agreed. “But if even knowing that, you still love him …”
“Shut up.” Gabby groaned. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this? He’ll make me crazy.”
“You’re already crazy.”
“I’ll be worse.”
“You’ll be better.” Sybil laughed. “Trust me on this.”
Sybil and Jonathan Westford had been down this road. It hadn’t been an easy one for them, either, but Gabby had to confess, they both seemed happier than ever. She grunted. “I’m not sure I like this, Sybil. Not at all.”
Sybil laughed harder.
Gabby lost it. “You could pretend to be sympathetic, you heartless bitch. Remember how crazy you were when you were going through this?”
“Yes, I do. And I also remember you were about as sympathetic as a stone. You laughed at me, too. Now I see why.” She gave Gabby a sniff of a snort. “Suffer, darling. It’s worth it.”
“I doubt it.”
“Oh, it is, Gabby.” All teasing left Sybil’s voice. “Absolutely.”
“You know, you’re as goofy now as you were when we were in college and we used to sneak down to Miller’s Pond to skinny-dip. You got stuffy for a time—Mr. Snip-It’s lousy influence, no doubt. I’m glad you divorced him and you’re back. I couldn’t stand that man.”
“Gabby!”
“What?” Good God, Sybil couldn’t defend her jerk of an ex even now, could she?
“You remembered Miller’s Pond,” Sybil said. “You remembered college. You remembered that you always called Austin Mr. Snip-It.”
“Yeah?” And that meant … What?
“Gabby, those are real memories. They’re not part of your cover.”
Gabby stilled. Blinked hard three times, and struggled to keep up with all the flashes of scenes of her life playing through her mind. All at once, she remembered everything. Activating Max. The details of this mission and of others. “Oh, God, Sybil. I was lovesick. Can you believe it? I can’t believe it. But it’s true. It is. I kept all those passports and identities because in them I’d been married to Max.”
“I know, Gabby.” Sybil’s voice softened. “You two have a few days there. Relax and give things time to settle.”
“Right.” The odds of that were about a million to one. “I felt dopey and I hated it. I really hated it, Sybil.”
“I know you did. Look, give Max a chance. That was something you were never willing to do before. Take the risk, my friend. He’s worth it.”
“But am I?”
“Of course, you are. Gabby, don’t you know he thinks you’re amazing? He’s always thought you were amazing. That’s why you drove him nuts.”
“That makes perfect sense.” Gabby didn’t try to bury her sarcasm. “And you know this because …”
“You do the same thing. It’s human nature. You dislike anything or anyone who gets too close. You always have.”
She had. How did she come back with something clever on that? It was the truth. “I don’t like you very much some times.”
“I love you all the time.”
She frowned, groused. “Me, too.”
“Look, you did nothing and had nothing. If you want something, then take the risks. If you don’t, then don’t whine about it. Either way, get off the dime, Gabby. You’ve got guts. Use them or lose what you could have with Max. The choice is yours.”
“I just love how you beat around the bush and express such compassion and gentle understanding.”
“You do enough bush beating for both of us. Especially when it comes to Max. If you want him, dear heart, go get him. Otherwise, let him go.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s exactly that simple.” Sybil paused a second and then went on. “I’ve got to run. I need to be on the Hill in fifteen minutes.”
“Desert the sinking ship. Go ahead.”
“You’re not sinking. Your ballast just needs a little fine-tuning. Decide what you want, Gabby. Then go get it. I’ll check in with you later to see what you decided to do. In the meantime, will you please try not to stomp around and make Max nuts
?”
“What?”
“When you’re scared, you stomp around like a bear with thorns shoved between its toes.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do. You always have.”
Gabby frowned. “Okay, so I do. I won’t.”
“Thank you,” Sybil said sharply. “I’m glad you’re not dead, Gabby. I would really be lost without you.”
“Me, too.” Gabby swallowed hard. “Now get going and make Congress tow the line.”
“Jonathan sends his love.”
“Me, too,” she said. “Bye.”
Gabby hung up the phone and just lay there. She couldn’t make herself move or think.
She couldn’t make herself face Max.
Max hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. He hadn’t meant to hear any of the conversation between Gabby and Sybil. But he had. And he’d known the very moment Gabby had begun to remember. The very second. How much she remembered, he didn’t know, but how much did it take for her to realize she didn’t give a damn about him?
A sour knot formed in the pit of his stomach that left a bitter taste in his mouth and dread in his chest. He walked back to the kitchen, his steps heavier than they had been just moments earlier, when he’d felt pretty good about the success of the mission and his relationship with a woman who was unlike any other woman in his life.
She remembers now. You’re no one special to her again. You’re nothing to her again. Just the partner she never wanted.
That hurt like hell. He hurt like hell. He sat down at the table and stared out the window above the sink. Maybe it hurt so much because he’d never had that kind of connection to anyone else before in his life. Maybe because he had always been attracted to Gabby, even before he understood why she played the Queen Bitch at the unit. Maybe it was because he hadn’t really known before what he had been missing in feeling special to one woman who looked at him with love in her eyes and touched something good inside him he hadn’t even known was there.
