by Debra Webb
But he hadn’t and now it was too late for that.
McBride leaned forward, flattened his palms on that glossy desktop, and put himself at eye level with Worth. “I want you to remember this moment when you come begging for my help again. So that when I turn you down cold you’ll know that whatever happens is on your head.”
Worth backed off first. He shifted his gaze to Grace. “Don’t let him out of your sight until he’s on that plane headed the hell out of here.”
“Yes, sir.” Grace tugged at McBride’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”
McBride held Worth’s gaze for two beats more before walking away. Fury roared deep in his gut. He had come here to do the right thing. Just went to show that doing the right thing was vastly overrated.
At the stairwell door, Agent Pratt’s voice interrupted their exit. “Wait up, Grace!” He hustled over to where they stood. “SAC said I was supposed to go with you.”
“I want a drink,” McBride announced to the two of them. His bullshit index had hit maximum.
“That’s not going to be easy at this hour,” Grace warned.
Pratt reached for the stairwell door. “I know a place that’s open all night.”
Things were looking up. McBride clapped Pratt on the back. “Good. You can drive.”
On the landing inside the stairwell, Grace paused and said, “This whole thing is a mistake, McBride.” She searched his face and eyes as if she hoped to see some hint of agreement or sense of indignation.
“If you’re referring to the drink, you can give it up. If it’s that load of crap Worth just dished out, don’t waste the energy, Grace.”
“Look,” she argued, “I have my issues with you, but I’m pretty sure you don’t care for reporters any more than I do. This is crap. The director’s decision was unfair.”
McBride had stopped expecting life to be fair about three years ago. Who knew? Maybe he had started to get a little cynical even before that. After what she had been through, Grace should understand that feeling. Or maybe she was still looking through the rose-colored glasses of youth.
Whatever, his excursion into the worst of his past was over. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”
1:15 A.M.
Pratt’s source turned out to be a friend who operated a liquor store and who was willing to provide on the house a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee sipping whiskey.
Grace was annoyed with McBride as well as her colleague, but right now the demons were grumbling and McBride needed some peace. The images and voices in his head just wouldn’t shut up. Mixed in with his own personal demons were some of Grace’s. He had heard more than enough about the ravaged bodies left behind by the serial rapist-murderer referred to as Nameless to have a reasonable handle on how that horror went down for her.
That she had survived that sick son of a bitch and had put her life together so well was an outright miracle.
But the bastard had left his mark.
McBride studied her from the corner of his eye as they exited the elevator on the seventh floor of the Tutwiler. That was why she had balked those two times. Why she had a problem with comments about her body.
Goddamn, he had been an asshole.
He hadn’t taken into consideration that she might have suffered in her life the same as he had. But then, she was so damned young, who would expect such a horrific past? She’d only been seventeen when that twisted fiend took her.
She had every right to be hypersensitive about her body and he had unknowingly capitalized on that.
Outside the door to his room, rather than stick the keycard into the lock, Grace faced him. “Don’t you dare look at me that way, McBride.” Her eyes warned that she knew exactly what he had been thinking.
McBride kept in mind that Pratt was right behind him. “Sorry, Grace. I was just admiring your … shoes.”
Pratt chuckled.
Grace took it well enough. She arched one eyebrow and suggested, “Shove it, McBride.” She glanced past him. “You too, Pratt.”
She unlocked the door and completed a walk-through of the room and adjoining bath while McBride pulled JD from the brown bag wrapper. He reached for a tumbler. “I don’t suppose either of you would care to join me.”
“You know how it is,” Pratt said with a halfhearted shrug.
Grace tossed her purse onto a chair. “Are you going to drink that straight or do you need a Coke?”
He picked up a glass from the silver tray on the table and poured a hefty serving. “Obviously you don’t know your whiskeys, Grace.” He indulged in a slow, soothing swallow, then turned to the lady glaring at him. “Otherwise you wouldn’t ask.”
“I’ll take the first watch,” Pratt offered.
He grabbed one of the chairs at the table and headed for the door.
McBride looked around the room. No way was he talking openly in here where any number of bugs could have been planted by his friends at the Bureau. But he had things to say to Grace. He opened the French doors and walked out onto the balcony, balanced his drink on the banister, and lit a smoke. He stared out at the city where Grace had grown up and wondered if she recognized that her need to escape to that bigger assignment was more about running away than proving herself. If she stayed clear of the past she didn’t have to own it. Didn’t even have to acknowledge it unless someone, like him, forced her to.
It wouldn’t do anything but fester. And one of these days, when she least expected it, she would wake up and discover that the infection had spread, consuming her entire existence.
Then she’d be just like him … nothing.
Eventually she strolled out to join him, as he had known she would. As much as she wanted to pretend she was on their side, she wasn’t. She was on his. That was another one of those things she hadn’t owned yet.
He kept his attention on the city lights and the way the skyscrapers thrust toward the night sky with the brooding mountains in the background. Nice view. Out there and next to him. He didn’t have to rest his eyes on her to appreciate the way she looked tonight. Deep emerald skirt and matching jacket that made the green flecks in those dark brown eyes stand out. Black blouse beneath, vee-neck showing just enough cleavage to whet the appetite. And those sexy black shoes he’d already admired.
But the real attention-grabber was her hair. She had worn it down. Maybe because there hadn’t been time to do otherwise. They had been on her deck with a glass of wine in hand talking about her past one minute and the next they had been rushing to get to Eighteenth Street.
He’d almost succeeded in erasing that hurry-up-and-wait Bureau mentality from his head. Jump higher, rush faster. Play by the rules. Make sure the Bureau never looks bad. No risks. No gray area. Just black and white. Do as you’re told
Grace leaned against the railing, asked nonchalantly, “You have any idea who could have leaked those details?”
As casually as she issued the question, he recognized the tension in her posture. He had won her over to some degree and now she wanted to be able to explain away the possibility that he had done anything wrong.
“Not a clue.” He sipped his drink. Not a fucking clue.
She turned to study his profile. “After I left you here that first night, you didn’t hang out at the bar?”
He looked her in the eyes. “Yes, as a matter of fact I did. But I didn’t talk to anyone. Ask the bartender if you feel the need. He’ll tell you that I repeated a single word several times. Another.”
She looked away. “I had to ask.”
“Sure.” He knew the way it was done. “We all do what we have to.”
“You didn’t bring anything written with you that someone could have taken from your room?”
He had to laugh at that. “Well, Agent, you were there. You saw what I brought with me. The clothes on my back. Not even a toothbrush.” He patted his back pocket. “And I don’t carry a copy of old case reports in my wallet.”
She exhaled a big exasperated breath. “There has to be an expl
anation. If it didn’t come from Quantico and it didn’t come from you …”
As least she sounded like she believed him.
“Lots of people knew what went down,” he offered for lack of anything else to say.
“But not word-for-word details,” she countered.
She was right about that. “Other than the notes I kept in my office at Quantico and the official file, there was no place to get verbatim information except from a live source.”
A frown tugged at her pretty face. “What happened to your working notes?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? I walked out with nothing.” A memory bobbed to the surface of the cesspool of negativity in his brain. “They shipped my personal stuff to me later. Maybe the notes were in there. I suppose they could have opted to retain the work-related memos and notes.”
“What’d you do with the stuff they sent?”
“Never opened it.” He knocked back the last of the JD in his glass. “Still packed up in boxes at my place in the Keys.”
She reached for her phone. “Worth needs to know that there may have been work notes at your residence. There could’ve been a break-in since you’ve been away.”
“Forget it, Grace. It doesn’t matter. Worth—the Bureau—wants me out of this. Don’t you get it? No matter what you prove, nothing is going to change. They don’t want the world to know what happened three years ago. As long as I’m guilty, they’re innocent.” He laughed. “The truly ridiculous part is that none of it matters. The boy died. Proving who was responsible won’t bring him back. Won’t change the fact that his daddy blew his brains out. Or that he killed an agent.
“It’s done. Over. Let it go.”
“And what happens when Devoted Fan e-mails us on Monday?” she countered.
“Worth will deal with it.” Tension he tried hard to ignore negated the relaxing effects of the one drink he’d consumed.
“What about the victim? Considering we don’t have a trace of evidence and there’s no pattern to his work, the victim could be anybody. He could be stalking that person right now. Are you just going to let the next one die?”
He turned his face back to hers. “You can do this, Grace. You were the one who figured out Jones was at the steel mill, not me.”
“That’s not true,” she argued. “I just juggled the priority list, that’s all. You were the one who ID’d her so we would even know who we were looking for.”
“The point is, you’ve got Pratt and Schaffer and all those other guys. Work with them. Let them in. If you keep pushing all your colleagues away, you’re never going to make it. This business takes teamwork.”
“You’re pretending this is all going to go away,” she argued, “and you’re wrong. He’s planned this very carefully. Whatever he has in mind for the next round, saving the victim will be about you … not me, or any of the others. He wants to prove how invaluable you are. Each round will be harder, more personalized. Mark my word, without you, we’ll lose and someone will die. That’s assuming we can even fool him into believing you’re still on the case.”
“I need another drink, Grace.”
He went back into the room, reached for the only comfort he trusted.
As much as he’d love to leave Grace feeling warm and fuzzy about the hero she had thought him to be, this wasn’t his problem anymore.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
3:00 A.M.
The door of the hotel room opened and Vivian snapped to attention. She tugged at her skirt and righted her jacket. Her bottom was numb from sitting in this damned chair.
McBride stepped into the corridor, let the door close behind him. “How you holding up?”
“Well, let’s see, I’ve counted the stripes in the wallpaper five times. What does that tell you?”
He crouched down to her level. “I think you can come back into the room. I’m pretty sure no one’s going to try breaking down the door. Birmingham PD and hotel security are making sure the media doesn’t ambush us. There’s no need for you to sit out here like this.”
She produced a smile, mostly at the idea of McBride trying to be sweet. In a totally unsettling way she found this charming. “Thanks, but I’d better follow orders.” Worth had been specific. No one was to come near McBride’s room.
That he was still awake surprised her. She had halfway expected him to drink himself into unconsciousness. Maybe he wasn’t the drunk he wanted people to believe he was. His don’t-care attitude kept everyone at a distance. She had already decided that he used intimacy as a tactic to ward her off. That whole cocky, swaggering attitude was more for show than anything else, she would wager.
The problem was, it didn’t exactly work. The last time she had been this physically attracted to a guy she had been seventeen and graduating high school. No one since. All the dates and one-night stands added up to nada.
“I wanted to finish the discussion we started last night,” McBride ventured as if he had read her thoughts.
“Oh no.” She waved off that idea. “I did all the talking last night and you got off with just listening.”
He already knew too much about her.
“I shouldn’t have made all those cracks about—”
“Don’t you dare,” she snapped. She’d seen that look in his eyes when they had first returned to the hotel. The sympathy. She hated that! “I’m over the past.”
“You’re over Nameless?”
She shuddered inwardly, did all in her power to prevent him from seeing the reaction. “Yes.”
“Then say it.”
This was ridiculous. “Go back in the room, McBride.”
“Say it.”
Fury tightened her lips. “Nameless.” Hot bile rose in her throat. She glared at him. “Are you satisfied now?”
“You’ve had sex since then?”
Was he kidding? It was a damned good thing there weren’t any guests in the rooms on this end of the corridor. Having a balcony put him in a corner room and this wasn’t exactly prime tourist season.
“My sex life is none of your business.” She crossed her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes. The man was unbelievable.
“Just answer the question, Grace. It’s a yes or no response. Simple.”
He was nuts. But one look at his face told her he wasn’t going to shut up until he had his answer. “Okay. Yes. Of course.” She added in a whisper,”I’ve had sex. Lots of times.”
“Lots of times, eh?”
“Go away, McBride.” There was a crazed fan out there kidnapping people to make him look like a hero and he was asking her about her sex life? Talk about a trip into the Twilight Zone … they were there and checking out T-shirts.
“Did you feel it?”
“Okay.” She shot to her feet. “That’s enough.” She paced, mostly in circles, but it seemed the thing to do. Anger sparked, making her want to kick something.
“I’m not talking necessarily about an orgasm, Grace.” He pushed to his feet, propped against the doorframe. “I’m talking about feeling it. Here.” He patted the center of his chest. “Or do you disappear during sex the way you must have when Nameless made you … do those things.”
She stopped, pointed a furious look at him. “There’s nothing wrong with me, McBride. I’m fine. I can do my job. I can lead a normal life. I’m not the disappearing girl.”
Her circle expanded, became more of an oval shape. She had to keep moving or risk hitting him.
She had heard all those questions before. You need more therapy, Vivian. How can you expect to experience true intimacy if you remain in denial? Each new voice echoing in her brain made her more furious. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She had survived. That was all. Yes, she’d had to do … things … she never wanted to think about again. But she was alive!
There were twelve other women lying dead in the ground because of that twisted piece of shit! She had lived to tell about it and that was what counted.
She refused to think about him or that time. That part of
her life was over. She had a career. Building that career was her focus now. A deeper relationship would come later. She had barely turned twenty-five. There was time, dammit.
McBride waited for his answer. Damn him.
“Go back into the room,” she snapped.
He shook his head. “Not until you tell me the truth.” That husky, rich voice slid over her skin, making her shiver despite the fury lashing through her. “Do you remember the truth? How to really feel? To let go and enjoy the moment? How to savor the pleasure … to allow your partner all the way inside?”
“I suppose you know all about the pleasure and getting all the way inside,” she mocked. He was such a hypocrite! Here he was telling her how she should lead her life and he was hiding behind booze and sex!
“I might be running away from who I used to be, but I know who I am now, Grace. I feel it more than I want to. I don’t always like it, but I’m damned sure not afraid of it.”
She strode up to him, stared at that face with all its too intriguing angles and lines. Peered into those assessing blue eyes. “I’m not afraid, McBride. Remember, I kissed you.”
He licked his lips as if he had just remembered that too. “That’s when I knew you did that little vanishing act. I felt you disappear.”
“You don’t know anything about what I feel!” How dare he be so damned arrogant! “If, as you claim, I disappeared during that kiss it was because my mind wandered. Maybe that was about you, not me.”
He straightened away from the doorframe, put his body close enough to hers that she could feel his heat … close enough that he could have kissed her with the tiniest shift of his head.
“When I kiss you, Grace, you’ll feel me.”
Her body humming with the need to let him prove his point, she retreated a step. “Go back into the room.” She took her seat and aimed her attention straight ahead. One more hour. All she had to do was get through one more hour.
6:00 A.M.
Birmingham International Airport
“We’re inside.” Vivian scanned the line at the ticket counter. “He’s at the counter now,” she told Pratt. “We’ll wait for you at the food court.”
