by Gayle Wilson
And if one of their own got injured or killed in the course of convincing him to do that, it was a loss the CIA was willing accept. Just a little collateral damage.
Conniving bastards, he thought again, leading the way into the cool darkness of the motel room.
All along they’d been laying their emotional traps, starting with Griff’s question. And you’re willing to stake her life on your certainty of that?
There was nothing else on earth that would have gotten him involved in this, and Griff, of all people, knew that. Just as he’d known that once the suggestion that someone might try to harm Elizabeth had been made, Rafe wouldn’t be able to leave it alone.
That was all the excuse he needed. It had taken him a few days to reach the decision, but in the end he had done exactly what they’d expected him to. He’d come here to find Elizabeth. And they’d been waiting for him.
Waiting to turn the screws. Waiting to up the stakes by making him believe that the explosion this morning had been an attempt on her life. Waiting for him to jump through their carefully arranged hoops all over again.
Except this time, he vowed, you sons of bitches are in for a huge disappointment.
Chapter Five
“Now what?” Elizabeth asked as they headed down the narrow two-lane that led to her house.
It had taken Rafe only a few minutes in the motel room to gather his belongings. His fury had been apparent with each motion. She couldn’t blame him for being angry, of course. He had been used. They both had.
Besides that, Darrell’s property had been destroyed and her life had been endangered. The agency would say it hadn’t been, but the more she thought about it, the less willing she was to accept that assessment.
A dozen things could have gone wrong this morning. There was no way anyone could guarantee that the explosion and the resultant fire would play out as it had. Not even the agency’s vaunted specialists.
Or if Rafe was correct in his suspicions, maybe those had been Griff’s specialists—the men she had worked with during her years on the EST. They would certainly be capable of rigging something that would work with the kind of precision demonstrated in this morning’s explosion. The question was whether they would be willing to put a former colleague at risk.
If Griff asked them to, she acknowledged. Especially if he made the reason compelling enough.
Maybe he had reminded them of the reality of the situation. If they didn’t do it, the agency would. And the CIA wouldn’t be nearly so careful as would the members of the team. If Griff had presented them with those options, they would undoubtedly have agreed to set the explosives.
“We contact Griff,” Rafe said.
“You really think he was involved in this.”
“I think he played me like a fish. And you said it yourself. He isn’t a fool.”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t be fooled.”
“After all,” Rafe said, “I was. And look how clever I am.”
“What I want to know is why you were fooled.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Griff came to you with a request. You could have refused. You should have refused, based on your certainty that Jorgensen was dead. Instead, you came here. I’m asking you why.”
Anything less than the truth would be ridiculous, given their situation. Still, it would be hard for him to openly articulate that he still cared about her, if only as a friend. Hard, no matter how obvious his actions had already made it.
“If anything happened to you, I would have felt responsible that I hadn’t passed on Griff’s warning.”
Not a lie, but far less satisfying than she’d anticipated.
“Then maybe Griff acted for the same reasons,” she said. “Would that be so difficult to accept?”
“What’s difficult to accept,” he mocked, “is that with all his resources he couldn’t verify Jorgensen’s death. It doesn’t wash. And if Griff knows this isn’t Jorgensen, then he also knows that neither of us is in danger. Except, apparently, from the agency.”
“Maybe—”
“Whatever their reasoning,” he interrupted, unwilling to listen to anything that might offer excuses for what had been done to them, “whatever their motivation, they have no right to manipulate either of us. We aren’t their hired guns anymore.”
She had never felt like a “hired gun,” and she couldn’t believe Rafe had either. At least not in the beginning.
The embassy bombing and its aftermath seemed to have changed him in some fundamental way. Even in the way he viewed the world and those he used to work with.
“Did a lot of people die in those bombings? The ones whoever they think is Jorgensen committed.”
“I’m not responsible for their deaths,” Rafe said.
He wasn’t, but that unfeeling pronouncement was so foreign to who he was that it held her silent. Rafe Sinclair had been the kind of man who believed evil must be fought, even if fighting against it meant you were sometimes forced to employ its methods. For him, there had been no shades of gray. Not about that.
And he had always accepted the full weight of responsibility for the battle they all waged. Maybe too much of the responsibility, she conceded. Especially if there were failures, as inevitably there were.
“I never said you were responsible,” she said. “I never meant to imply that. I’m not trying to convince you to do what they want, Rafe. I guess I’m just trying to understand Griff’s role in this.”
“That’s why I’m going to contact him. Besides, even if he’s not involved, he’s the only one who can call off the dogs.”
Call off the dogs? For a moment she couldn’t make sense of the expression. And when she had, she realized with dismay that Rafe could be right.
He was assuming the agency would continue to try to get him to undertake the job they wanted him for. Maybe the pressure would escalate into further acts of violence, even more direct than the explosion this morning.
And the only way Rafe had of letting the CIA know that what they were planning wasn’t going to work was to go through Griff Cabot. The only way—no matter what Cabot’s original role in this had been.
THAT HE STILL HAD the phone number said something, Rafe supposed, about his previous relationship with Griff Cabot. A couple of years ago Griff had approached him about joining the Phoenix. Despite the fact that he had turned down the offer, he had slipped the business card Cabot had given him into the back of his wallet. It was still there.
He laid it and the Glock on the counter in the kitchen of Elizabeth’s bungalow. He studied the information printed on the face of the card for a few seconds. He was surprised to find there was nothing in the wording on the card to hint at the purpose of the Phoenix, an organization Griff had built from the ashes of the elite team the CIA had destroyed.
He picked up the phone Elizabeth had left on the counter after she’d called her partner to tell him she was all right but was going to be taking a few days off. Rafe hadn’t been in favor of that, but had given in to the argument that if she didn’t make some explanation of her absence, the old man was liable to file a missing person’s report.
Receiver in hand, Rafe hesitated, tamping down his anger. He shouldn’t judge until he’d talked to Griff. After all, he could be wrong in his assessment of what was going on.
He could be, but his gut told him he wasn’t. And through the years if there was one thing he’d learned, it was to trust his instincts.
As he tried to impose control over his emotions, he could hear an occasional sound from the back of the house where, at his insistence, Elizabeth had gone to put a few things into an overnight bag. If he didn’t get some kind of satisfaction from the call he was about to make, it was an absolute certainty that he wasn’t leaving her here. Not alone.
If Griff couldn’t or wouldn’t make it clear to Steiner that the agency’s ploy wasn’t working, the quicker he got Elizabeth out of Magnolia Grove, the better. He wasn’t taking any chances that
someone might get carried away and do something stupid. Or something unconscionable.
He took a breath, finally punching in the number. He listened to the distant ringing a couple of times before he thought to glance at his watch.
Twenty after four, which meant it was after business hours on the east coast. Cabot had never been the kind to adhere to a time clock, however. He worked until whatever project was at hand had been completed. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe Griff was still in the office—
“Phoenix.”
The voice that answered wasn’t one he recognized. Certainly not Griff’s. Nor did he think it belonged to any of the operatives he’d worked so closely with during his years at the agency, although that was hard to tell from only one word.
“Griff Cabot, please.”
“Griff’s out of town for the weekend.”
Silence stretched across the line after that exchange of information. Although Rafe waited, there was no offer to take a message. No question about the purpose of his call. Maybe that was SOP for any organization that did the kind of work the Phoenix handled.
“Is there a number where he can be reached?”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
The series of questions and answers had given Rafe more opportunity to compare the voice on the other end of the line to those in his memory. It still didn’t ring any bells. Someone who hadn’t been with the team, which made him reluctant to give out any more information than he had to.
And what the hell can it matter? he thought. It wasn’t as if he had a lot of choices.
“Someone who used to work for Griff,” he said.
Again a few seconds elapsed before the response.
“Worked for him in his former capacity?”
“You could say that.”
“Are you in…some kind of difficulty?”
Rafe resisted the urge to laugh at the euphemism, although he hadn’t found anything else about this day the least amusing. In the back of his mind was the image of Elizabeth’s colorless face when he had rounded the corner this morning.
“I need him to give Steiner a message for me.”
“I’m not sure I can help you with that.”
“Tell him I don’t like being used. Tell him I don’t work for the company anymore. They’re going to have to do their own dirty work.”
Another hesitation. “Is there a number where Griff can reach you?”
“Not this one,” Rafe said, knowing they would already have it traced. “We won’t be here. You can tell him that as well.”
“‘We’?”
“She doesn’t like being used either. Of course, she’s a little more tolerant of this kind of betrayal than I am. She’s still trying to find some excuse for Griff’s role in all this.”
“If you’re implying that Griff Cabot has in some way betrayed you, then you don’t know him as well as you suggest you do. You certainly never worked for him.”
That confidence in Griff’s integrity where his own people were concerned should make him feel better, Rafe thought.
Except I’m no longer one of his people.
“Maybe he was used, too,” he said. “I really hope that’s the case. If he was, tell him to take it up with Steiner. After he tells the bastard to find himself another boy. This one isn’t going to play.”
“I need a number where Griff can reach you.”
“I don’t know where I’ll be. Somewhere Steiner won’t be looking. Just see that Griff gets the message.”
“If you’ll—”
Rafe didn’t wait to hear the rest. He put the phone back on the counter, imposing a strict control to keep his hand from slamming it down. The call had been wasted effort. The man he’d just talked to couldn’t do anything. Not on the weekend. Not with Griff out of town.
All he could hope for was that whoever had answered at the Phoenix would do what he’d been asked to do and pass on the message when Cabot returned. In the meantime…
He realized belatedly that the sounds from the back of the house had faded while he’d talked. No drawers were being opened and closed. No coat hangers slid along the metal bar in the closet. No footsteps crossed and recrossed the wooden floors.
The quality of silence that had fallen bothered him. If Elizabeth had finished packing, she would have come back in here, interested in finding out the result of his call.
He picked up the gun he’d removed from the trunk of his car, the solid weight of it reassuring. He had checked out the house before he’d let Elizabeth go to the back, but he hadn’t checked the locks on the windows. It was possible someone had left one of them open to provide themselves with a way in.
Actually, anything was possible considering the people he was dealing with. That was something he couldn’t afford to forget.
He moved across the kitchen tiles without making a sound. A couple of boards in the dining room creaked revealingly under his weight, but then, his hearing was probably hypersensitive.
All his senses were. Sharpened. On edge. Ready to confront whatever or whoever had put a stop to Elizabeth’s preparations to leave.
He stopped at the doorway that led into the hall, automatically shifting his weapon into firing position, left hand under the right. He eased far enough around the frame of the door to see down the hall and into Elizabeth’s bedroom.
There was no sign of her. Nor could he see anyone else. All that was visible was a dresser against the wall, one of its drawers still open, and the foot of the bed, the disordered spread spilling off onto the floor. Unmade, because she’d been running late this morning.
He tiptoed down the hallway, his gun trained on the bedroom doorway. When he reached it, he paused to listen again. There were faint noises coming from inside the room. Nothing he could identify.
Breathing, maybe? The sound of two people breathing, one holding the other captive as they silently waited for him to enter the room?
He weighed his options, limited as they were. He could feel adrenaline rush into his bloodstream, a physiological reaction he couldn’t prevent. Nor could he prevent the psychological reaction that might well result from it.
That was the wild card in any situation involving stress and danger. He never knew when something would send his brain spiraling back to the day of the embassy bombing. And the longer he delayed now, the more chance there was that something here would set that sequence into motion.
He took a couple of long strides, carrying him through the doorway and into the bedroom. At the same time he brought the muzzle of his gun around to point toward the corner of the room from which the noises he’d heard had seemed to originate.
And realized he had been wrong in every surmise. Elizabeth was alone. There had been no sounds of packing because she had already finished and was in the process of changing out of the clothes she’d worn to work this morning.
Her shock seemed as great as his. She brought the bra she’d just removed back up against her body in an unsuccessful attempt to cover her breasts.
Despite the adrenaline coursing through his system, the images evoked by this present reality had nothing to do with the horrors of the embassy bombing. They revolved instead around the endless hours the two of them had spent making love.
Once he’d known the contours and textures of her body as well as he knew his own. Better, since he had never fantasized about his. He had certainly fantasized about hers, especially through all the long, empty years of their separation.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes dilating in shock.
He lowered the gun, straightening from the slight crouch he’d assumed when he’d entered the room. He’d been prepared to face an intruder. He wasn’t prepared to face this.
“I thought somebody was back here.”
She shook her head, denial or confusion, but she didn’t ask why he would believe that.
“I needed to get out of those clothes,” she offered, glancing down at the garments she had removed.
They lay o
n the floor around her, exuding the faintest hint of smoke. His gaze followed hers, and then, without his conscious volition, it focused on her feet.
They, too, were bare, narrow and high-arched. The nails had been painted a dusty beige-rose. Above them, her ankles were slim and elegant, the left marked by a small, very discreet tattoo of a heart.
He had run his tongue over it a hundred times. Dropped kisses along the shapely calf above it. Continued upward to press his lips against the sensitive skin inside her thigh.
He was powerless now to prevent his eyes from retracing that sensual journey. Other than her first unthinking reaction in raising the bra, she had made no attempt to cover herself. She didn’t now. And he was incapable of tearing his eyes away.
“Elizabeth,” he said softly, taking a step nearer.
Despite the stench of smoke that lingered in the fabric of the clothing at her feet, the fragrance of her perfume was suddenly all around him, as familiar to him as the process of breathing. Underlying that was the subtle scent of her skin, woman-sweet, intensified by the heat and humidity.
“Don’t,” she said.
He lifted his eyes to hers, mentally acknowledging her wisdom in warning him off. There were far too many memories between them. And their emotional intensity was unabated, despite the meaningless encounters with other women in which he’d indulged during the last few years.
Those had been nothing more than fruitless attempts to erase the remembrance of this. Of her. He knew now, if he had ever doubted it, how miserably he had failed.
His entire world had changed in the matter of hours one day in Amsterdam, but nothing had changed about this. Nothing was any different than it had ever been in the way he felt about this woman.
He shifted the Glock to his left hand. It would be no help against the threat he faced. He had no weapons against the danger that loomed like a pit before him. He had never had any defense against the way she made him feel.
