Tired of waiting, Ike was headed back into William’s office when she heard a noise out in the hallway near the elevator lobby. Moments later, the outer office door swung open and an enormous man stepped through. He was seven-feet tall if he was an inch, with wide shoulders encased in a skintight purple T-shirt, wearing narrow designer jeans in a lemony color that was a stark contrast to the gray, drab New York spring day.
Ike’s pulse accelerated and she reached for her midback holster, only to remember she still hadn’t replaced the .22.
Before she could decide on plan B, the guy raised his hands. “I’m a friend.” He gestured behind him. “See?”
A woman stepped into the office, perfectly dressed, perfectly made up, perfectly feminine. Not necessarily a friend, though. Ike felt a kink of dismay at the sight of Max’s wife. “What are you doing here?”
The giant man glanced from Raine to Ike and back. “This is our victim?”
Raine frowned for a second before she said, “I guess so. You’re looking…good. Ike?”
Ike bared her teeth, suddenly sweating in the layers she wore beneath her stuffed-tight jeans. “I thought I’d try out a new style.”
The giant shook his head. “Sweetie, if that’s the new look, I really don’t want to see the old one.”
“And you are?” Ike snapped.
“Stephen Flores,” he said as if she should know exactly who that made him. He didn’t bother holding out his hand, probably figuring — correctly — that she wasn’t in the mood for social niceties.
Or else he didn’t want to touch her, just in case drab was contagious.
Raine smirked. “He’s head of makeup and costume for several Broadway productions. Max asked me to call in a favor. He said you need a new look.”
Ike’s heart picked up a beat. “My look is just fine, thank you.”
“Not if you’re going in deep,” William’s voice said from behind her.
She spun and found him and Max standing just inside the waiting area. Her stomach did a backflip when she saw the expression on William’s face, a complex mixture of reluctance, annoyance and something else. Something she couldn’t quite decipher but that had her blood flaring hot, then cold.
Her voice wasn’t quite steady when she said, “You’re sending me into Kupfer’s lab?”
He nodded shortly. “On two conditions. One, you let Stephen and Raine be in charge of the makeover. New hair. New makeup and jewelry. New wardrobe.” His mouth kicked up at the corners. “A whole new you. I don’t want there to be any chance of Odin seeing through your cover.”
A chill chased its way down her spine, but she nodded. “Done. And the second?”
“I’m going in with you.”
She stared at him for a heartbeat before she said, “No, you’re not.” She looked to Max for support. “You can’t possibly expect me to bring him into the lab. How are we going to explain that? And I can’t teach him enough science in the time we’ve got to —”
Max held up a hand. “He’s not going into the lab. But he’s damn well going to be with you every step of the way. You’ll wear a wire and a camera, and if things go bad, he’ll be there to pull you out.” Max stepped to William’s side so the two big men stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a united front that said, This is nonnegotiable.
“We’ll rent rooms near the Markham Institute and stay together when you’re not at work,” William said as though it made all the sense in the world. “I’ll have a surveillance vehicle outside the lab, and you can sneak me in after hours to look around. It could work. Hell, we’ll make it work.”
Ike’s stomach shimmied at the thought of sharing space with him, at the thought of having him listening to everything she said, observing everything she did.
It would be like living inside a box.
A very, very small one.
She heard a worried sound, realized it had come from her and covered it with a fake cough. She was aware of Raine and Stephen watching her from one side, Max and William from the other.
She imagined Zed watching from above. Beside him sat a teenage boy with drooping eyelids and an angel’s smile.
“Okay,” she said finally. When the word came out sounding weak and near tears, she swallowed hard and tried again. “Okay. I’m in. When do we start?”
Stephen pointed to the door leading to the elevators. “Right now, because, girlfriend, we have a lot of work to do.”
A sinking pit opened up in Ike’s stomach, but she breathed past it and told herself she could handle this, she could handle the makeover, could handle William. When that breath didn’t settle her stomach, she took another. And another.
Then she lifted her chin and marched out the door.
Chapter Five
By noon the next day Ike had decided that the term makeover was a myth propagated by reality TV and people who sold cosmetics and home gyms. It wasn’t about being made over at all. It was about being unmade, about being stripped of uniqueness and turned into some Pretty Woman stereotype.
And even though she knew that was the whole point, there was a line she wasn’t willing to cross.
“No way.” She leaned back in the salon chair and heard a crinkle of protest from the tinfoil the stylist had folded into her newly extended hair. When Stephen kept coming at her, she cupped a hand over her right ear beneath the foils. “The earrings stay. Nonnegotiable.”
“It’s not permanent,” the big makeup artist said in his unexpectedly soft voice. Today’s T-shirt, worn over silver-toned pants, sported a turquoise happy face, but Ike wasn’t smiling.
She shook her head. “Look, I’ve given in on everything else.” Maybe not always gracefully, but she’d given in. “I’ve let you pick new clothes from the skin out, I’ve put up with hair extensions, a new makeup regime and lectures on how to walk, talk and act.”
The worst part was that, unlike the makeover reality shows where the producers kept their victim away from mirrors until it was time to unveil the finished product, Stephen and his minions had let her watch each stage of the unmaking, and she’d seen herself gradually disappear. Everything that made her unique and different, everything that made her stand out from the crowd and made her who she was…it was all gone. No more spiky black hair or tight clothes, no more swagger or attitude.
No more Ike Rombout.
She swallowed past a lump in her throat and continued, “My head is spinning, and I’m going to be paying off my credit card until well into next year. I’m not backing out, not by a long shot, so if that was Caine’s plan, it failed. But I’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and this is it. The earrings stay. Work the hair around them or something.”
She’d meant that last sentence to come out like an order, but it ended up sounding like a plea, one that had Stephen’s eyes darkening with speculation as he said, “Why? Do they remind you of a man?”
Picturing Donny, who’d had more guts than any two grown men she’d ever met, she touched the stud in the middle of the three piercings. The clear diamond had a small blue inclusion at its center, making the stone more beautiful for its flaw. “Yeah, sort of. The middle one is for my brother. The bottom one was a gift from my parents a long time ago. And the top one…” She trailed off as her fingers found the blank spot where the glittering black diamond used to rest. “It’s a work in progress.”
The original stud lay in Zed’s casket. She’d buy herself another once his killer was brought to justice.
Stephen touched her arm through the stylist’s plastic cape. “They’ll still be in your heart. And I bet your family wants you to come home safe. Right, chica?”
Her parents had no idea who she was or what she was doing, but the pain of that estrangement had long ago faded to a dull ache, and Ike didn’t want to go there. Instead she said, “Don’t call me chica. You’re no more Latin than I am.”
At least she didn’t think he was. Raine’s makeup artist friend seemed to morph among characters on a nearly constant basis, sliding seamles
sly from fabulous gay man to slightly seedy hipster to Latin lover without pause. She didn’t know which one was the real Stephen Flores, but did it really matter? The point was that she believed each of the chameleon roles when it was in front of her. He was, in his own way, a master of disguise, changing her perception with a shift in posture and voice.
And, damn it, he was right about the earrings.
She held out for a moment longer before she exhaled on a sigh that felt as if it came up from her now-painted toes. “Right.” She undid the earrings, pulled them free and tucked them in her jeans pocket beneath the cape, leaving her earlobe feeling naked and exposed. “What’s next?”
He didn’t gloat, merely pointed to the shampoo station. “First we rinse. Then we talk about a name for your character while we cover up those holes in your ear.”
But by the time Stephen and the stylist had rinsed the gunk out of her hair, they’d gotten caught up in a deep discussion about bangs and layers and seemed to forget about her name. That was a good thing, because as Ike watched her new hair take shape in the mirror, she felt the panic build.
The long tresses were significantly lighter than her trademark blue-black, and the honey-brown waves glowed with highlights of auburn and gold. Wisps framed her face, making it look soft and feminine beneath the light touch of blush and eye shadow Stephen had assured her would take no time at all to apply each morning.
Ike, whose normal makeup routine was limited to a swipe of waterproof black mascara, had been skeptical. Now, looking at the nearly finished product, she had to swallow a bubble of panic.
She looked familiar, damn it. Not like herself but like her childhood memories of her mother, before Donny’s long string of illnesses had taken their toll. She looked like a member of her own family, which was something she hadn’t been in many years.
As she blinked hard, Stephen crouched down so their faces were level in the big mirror. “You look great, hon. You’ll do great. As long as you remember to play your part, nobody’ll make the connection between Ike Rombout and this woman.” He squeezed her shoulders, partly in support, partly in warning. “Speaking of which,” he continued, “what have you decided to name her?”
This isn’t permanent, Ike told herself when a big knot threatened to block off her throat and steal her breath. It’s an act. A job. You can do this. You have to do this. For Zed. For everyone else who’s been hurt by The Nine.
“Eleanor,” she said finally, and her voice cracked on the word. “My name is Eleanor.”
“ELEANOR ROTH?” MAX shuffled through the IDs, credit cards and other assorted paperwork on William’s cluttered desk, nearly dumping the cup of pens in the process. “Did you pick that or did she?”
William snorted. “She did, of course. If it’d been up to me, I would’ve gone with something more appropriate.”
He shoved the pens to the other side of the desk and turned the cup so the FBI logo faced away from him. Max liked him to have the cup on the desk to impress the clients, but that didn’t mean William should have to look at the damn thing every day and remember that Michael Grosskill was still in charge.
“Like what?”
It took him a moment to remember they’d been talking about Ike’s name. He shrugged. “I’m not sure, maybe Spike or Killer. An Eleanor is soft and feminine, which Ike is definitely not.”
That earned him a sidelong look from Max. “You don’t think Ike is manly, and we both know it.”
Wincing at the thought that his partner had picked up on the subtle sexual tension that seemed to be growing between him and Ike, William said, “You’re right, she’s not masculine. She’s a very attractive woman.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem.” When Max simply sat on the corner of his desk, waiting, William exhaled. “Okay, you’re right, there’s a problem. But it’s with me, not her. At least not directly.”
He pushed away from the desk, stood and moved to stare out the window, not because he particularly cared about the cityscape beyond or the gray sky and falling rain but because he needed to move, needed to do something to burn off a sudden spurt of restlessness. “I haven’t told you much about why I left the Bureau.”
“I figured you’d talk about it when you were ready,” Max said. “I know you were undercover in the Trehern organization and that Viggo Trehern was scum of the first order. BoGen rumor had it that you were the only one to stay undercover — and alive — long enough to bring him down. You received a presidential commendation and helped put the bastard in jail for life. Sounds like a job well done.”
“Except for the collateral damage.” William jammed his hands in his pockets and stared at the raindrops splatting onto the window. “It was about a year after I went in undercover. I’d roughed up a few bottom-feeders and put a crooked dealer in the hospital on Viggo’s behalf, and he’d started trusting me with bigger things, mostly personal protection. Bodyguard stuff. I’d hit the clubs with him and his boys, sometimes make sure his female flavor of the week didn’t stray. Mostly the women came and went, but there was this one girl who stuck for a few months. Sharilee.”
He could picture her even now, how her sharp, hard-edged features had fit in with the lifestyle and how her brittle laugh had cracked at the edges, sometimes turning sad.
“I didn’t like her at first,” he said, more to himself than to Max. “What was to like? She was one of Viggo’s women. But I’d been under too long and I was getting strung out, starting to question things. There had already been two opportunities for Grosskill to move in, but he’d messed them both up. Thankfully not so Viggo knew. But I knew.” He paused. “I was frustrated with the Bureau, mad at Grosskill for screwing things up and, yeah, starting to make friends in the organization. The lines were blurring even before Sharilee, but she brought things to a head.”
“You fell for her?”
William shook his head. “No, but we became friends of a sort. Then one day…” He pressed his hands flat against the glass and watched the raindrops trickle beyond his palms. “A bunch of us were there — me, Trehern, the doctor he’d cultivated as a source for pain meds, Sharilee, maybe six other guys…” He trailed off, remembering that it’d been raining that day, too. “Trehern was waiting on a big deal and he was getting antsy. He’d had a run of bad luck and needed a big score, kept thinking this was it, this was the one that would turn the organization around. Guess he’d gotten suspicious, too. There’d been one too many leaks. He knew the feds had someone on the inside.”
“He made you?” Max asked.
William shook his head. “Not me. He had it down to Sharilee or the doctor. Played one off against the other for a few minutes, getting madder and madder when they both kept denying it. I tried to calm things down, tried to keep Trehern on an even keel. I was arrogant enough to think I had everything under control, but…” He trailed off, remembering how it’d escalated too quickly. “The bastard shot her dead where she stood. She got this surprised look on her face and sort of said ‘oh’ before she went down. Just ‘oh.’”
Max let the silence rest for a minute, then said, “I’m sorry.”
“Be sorry for her, not me.” William closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cool windowpane. “I was six, maybe seven feet away from her. I could’ve stopped it. I should’ve stopped it.”
“You were on the job.”
“So was she. Turns out she was DEA and the doctor was with HFH. It’d been Grosskill’s bright idea — a multi-agency op where the left hand didn’t know what the right one was doing.”
“Then her death is on Grosskill, not you,” Max said.
“It’s on both of us,” William said quietly. “I let it go on too long, thinking I could stop Trehern without breaking cover.” He exhaled on a curse. “Not five minutes after the shooting, the DEA came in with guns blazing. Trehern slipped out ahead of the bust, and a couple of us got snagged, but Grosskill decided to keep me under. He let one of Trehern’s
lawyers get me out, figuring it’d confirm my loyalty if it looked like I’d been put through the wringer and kept my mouth shut.” He grimaced. “That was one of the few times the bastard did the right thing, though I didn’t thank him for it at the time.” He turned away from the window and met his partner’s eyes. “I was in nearly another year after that before we finally closed the net.”
Even then, Grosskill had managed to screw it up, costing two good agents their lives. By the end of it all, William hadn’t given a damn about the presidential commendation. He’d spent a month lying on a beach on the FBI’s tab until the nightmares died down and then handed in his resignation. He’d wandered for a bit and ended up back in Boston, where it had all begun. He’d met Max there and he’d found a new purpose, but the work had brought him right back to the same place — watching out for a woman who intrigued him when he damn well knew better.
Sharilee had been Trehern’s woman — he hadn’t known she was a fellow agent until too late, thanks to Grosskill. And Ike…Ike was her own woman, William knew, and that wasn’t a good thing. He couldn’t trust that she’d follow his instructions when her own instincts were telling her to do something different. Hell, she’d already come close to getting herself killed. He’d be damned if he sat around while she tried again.
“That’s what happened at that meeting the other night,” Max said, nodding as he made the connection. “You didn’t want Ike to turn into another Sharilee, so you broke cover rather than risking her.”
“Yeah,” William admitted. “But I didn’t get the timing right then, either. Don’t tell Ike I said so, but she might’ve been right when she said I jumped the gun. If I’d played it cool and bluffed it out, I might’ve gotten her out safe with my cover intact.”
Because he hadn’t, she was going to be in worse danger than before, going undercover unarmed, untrained and without direct protection, damn it.
Max was quiet for a moment before he said, “Do you want to swap and have me go to the Markham Institute with Ike while you stay here and protect Raine?”
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