Rafe Sinclair's Revenge

by Gayle Wilson

  “Please go,” she said, the words little more than a breath.

  Instead of obeying, he reached out to place the tips of his fingers on the curve of her breast. She didn’t flinch or turn away, not even when he allowed them to slide slowly downward.

  She was still clutching the bra to her breasts with both hands, but there was room enough for him to slip his palm beneath the weight of the small, perfect globe. He allowed his thumb to trail over the nipple. Despite her lack of any outward response to his touch, it began to harden.

  Emboldened, he moved his thumb up and down over the nub, watching it grow more and more taut with each slow stroke. She made a sound, deep in her throat, something between a gasp and a sob. It brought his gaze quickly back to her face.

  Her eyes met his, but there was no warmth within their depths, darkened with an emotion he couldn’t read. It was clear, however, that it was not invitation. He supposed that was all that mattered.

  “Please go,” she said again.

  Then she swallowed. The movement was strong enough that he could trace it visually down the long, slender column of her throat. Despite her seeming calm, he realized this was no easier for her than for him.

  They stood at the beginning of a path they had traveled together more times than he could count. She had been the instigator as often as he had. Her needs as openly expressed. Her body as eager. He knew that if he ignored her request now, moving forward to take her into his arms, she would relent.

  She had begun to tremble. He could feel the slight vibration against his palm, still cupped beneath her breast.

  Fear or need? he wondered. Disgust or desire?

  Whatever emotion she felt, she had every right. He was the one who had left. The one who had offered no explanation.

  Even while acknowledging that, he didn’t move away. Instead, he allowed his fingers, their surfaces calloused from hours in his workshop, to close around the incredible softness of her breast.

  He would not have believed the pupils of her eyes could expand any farther into the rim of color surrounding them. They did now. Her mouth opened on a quick inhalation. Taking that as a signal, he began to lean forward, his head lowering and his lips parting to fasten over hers.

  As he did, the phone in the kitchen rang. For a long heartbeat, neither of them moved. And then it rang again.

  His inclination, based on more than what was happening between them, was to ignore it. It would be the fire chief with some unanswerable questions. Or Elizabeth’s partner.

  Whoever it was, there was no need for her to talk to them. The fewer people who knew they were here—

  “Griff?” she suggested, finally taking a breath. It was deep and quick as if she were winded.

  She was right. It could be Cabot. If whoever had answered at the Phoenix was even halfway competent, it would be.

  Reluctantly he opened his hand, turning away in the same motion. By that time the phone had rung again.

  He began to hurry, remembering that he’d told the man at the Phoenix they wouldn’t be at this number. Now that he’d realized who this must be, he understood how important it was not to miss this call.

  By the time he reached the hall, however, the answering machine had already picked up. Along with the caller, he listened to Elizabeth’s recorded message, hoping Griff wouldn’t hang up before he could get to the phone. He was almost to the counter when the tone sounded, signaling it was time for the caller to leave his message.

  He reached for the receiver, his hand beginning to close around it when the words came over the line. And with the first syllables, he froze in midmotion.

  “So, my friend,” Gunther Jorgensen said, the resonance of tone and the accent exactly as Rafe remembered them, “it seems our game begins anew.”

  Chapter Six

  He was torn between grabbing up the phone, screaming into it the kind of profanities Jorgensen deserved, or pulling his hand away from any possible contamination that being near the receiver might give. The latter was prompted by sheer revulsion, an almost superstitious reluctance to have any contact with the man who’d ordered that bombing in Amsterdam.

  As well as the more recent ones Griff had told him about?

  When the hollow click indicated the caller had hung up, Rafe began to shake his head, moving it slowly from side to side in attempted denial. Jorgensen was dead. He knew that. He had watched the bastard bleed to death on a street in Paris.

  If he’s dead, then who the hell was that?

  “Rafe?”

  At the sound of Elizabeth’s voice, he drew a long, shuddering breath. He moved his hand up and then away from the receiver, struggling to put the nightmare aspects of the call into some kind of perspective.

  That wasn’t Jorgensen. It couldn’t be. No matter what it had sounded like.

  “Was that Griff?”

  Obviously she hadn’t been in time to hear the message. For a second or two he considered keeping the contents from her. But she had to be told because if anything happened to him…

  He rejected that possibility, turning toward her. She hadn’t taken time to dress, pulling on a pale blue velour robe instead. She was in the process of belting it around her waist. At whatever she saw in his face, her fingers hesitated in the act of tightening the knot.

  “What is it?”

  Without answering, he reached over and pushed the play button on the answering machine. Again the accented voice delivered its taunting message.

  “Is that…?” The question trailed as she struggled to make sense of what she’d heard. “Was that Jorgensen? You said he was dead. You said—”

  “I know what I said, damn it.”

  He didn’t need to be reminded of the strength of his conviction. The images of the terrorist’s death had been replaying through his brain like a videotape being rewound and then fast-forwarded through the same part over and over again.

  “I watched him die,” he said, working to modulate his tone so it would be more reasoned.

  “Then…who the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Some kind of tape. Bits and pieces of his voice that have been spliced together.”

  There was little use in denying, even to himself, that it had been Jorgensen’s voice. As he offered the explanation of how that could be, his mind grappled with the concept. Was it possible the message had been pieced together?

  So, my friend, our game begins anew.

  As threats went, it wasn’t much. Despite his overreaction. And it told him virtually nothing about Jorgensen’s plans.

  He tried to decide if the words fit with what he knew about the German’s psychological profile. Although it had been almost six years, he hadn’t forgotten anything about the man he had studied so carefully.

  And, he conceded, there was nothing about this message that rang false. It was arrogant enough to fit with the murderer he had hunted down and assassinated. Or had he?

  “Could they do that?” Elizabeth asked.

  She meant could the CIA splice together that message. They could, of course. There was very little in the way of technological wizardry they couldn’t perform.

  “If they had the tapes.”

  “From some kind of surveillance, you mean? Or from conversations the satellites intercept?”

  The latter was a more likely possibility. As far as he was aware, they had never infiltrated any of the cells Jorgensen controlled. The National Security Agency, however, listened in on millions of communications. If what they had just heard was a tape, maybe the agency had gotten some of the stuff from the NSA.

  “I don’t even know that it was a tape,” he said aloud. “Maybe it was someone with a gift for mimicry. I don’t know who that was or what the hell is going on. I do know that whatever it is, we aren’t going to sit around here waiting for Act II.”

  “WHAT MAKES YOU THINK Griff will be there?”

  Elizabeth didn’t look at him as she asked the question. Despite the hours they’d spent t
ogether in the car, she couldn’t seem to move past the few moments before Jorgensen’s call.

  They had seemed frozen in time as his mouth slowly lowered to hers. Those endless seconds were caught in her memory so that she had wondered again and again what she would have done if the phone hadn’t rung.

  “He may not be. We have to go somewhere.”

  Rafe had said nothing about what he was thinking during the journey. He’d done most of the driving, letting her take the wheel only when fatigue demanded he catch a few hours of sleep. And as she had driven through the Carolinas last night, the dark, silent miles clicking off while he slept, she’d tried to make sense of all that had happened during the past forty-eight hours.

  In the blink of an eye she had gone from bemoaning the boredom of her existence to sheer unadulterated terror. Back to a world she thought she’d left far behind.

  At the same time, the only man she’d ever loved had moved back into her life. And almost back into her bed.

  She turned her head, studying his profile. In the strong morning light she could see a faded scar at his temple, nearly covered by the way he now wore his hair. She had already noticed the faint discolorations, all that were left of those scars that marred his hands.

  He had never told her about the embassy bombing. What she knew, that he had saved several people who had been trapped in the rubble, she had learned from other sources, including the official citation for valor the agency had awarded him.

  And she also knew that what had happened in Amsterdam that day was in some way connected to what had come between them. He had sent word by Griff asking her not to come to the hospital there. She would always wonder if it might have made a difference had she disregarded his wishes.

  “Even if Griff’s not at the summerhouse, we should be safe there,” he said. “At least long enough to figure out what to do next.”

  He pulled his gaze from the road to look at her. She nodded, and after a few seconds, he turned his attention back to the traffic on the crowded interstate.

  As she watched, unable to tear her eyes away, his fingers tightened over the steering wheel, stretching the scarred skin on the backs of his hands. The memory of those same fingers drifting over the curve of her breast yesterday was suddenly in her head. It seemed she could still feel his thumb teasing her nipple. Sensation stirred within her lower body, evoking other memories. Other touches.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Her eyes came up to find that his lips had flattened. A muscle tensed and then released along his jawline.

  “For what?” Rafe Sinclair had never before apologized for making love to her. Why would he now?

  “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be involved in this.”

  “His information seems woefully out of date.”

  The blue eyes again focused on her face. Questioning.

  “If he’s trying to get at you by threatening me…”

  “It isn’t Jorgensen,” he said, choosing not to comment on what she’d just suggested about their relationship.

  “Why would the agency think they could manipulate you that way? I mean now,” she added.

  There had been a time when Rafe would have taken action against anyone or anything that put her in danger. His feelings for her then probably hadn’t been a secret. Nothing ever was in a group as close-knit as the EST.

  Griff had almost certainly known. Probably his superiors at the agency had as well.

  She doubted she and Rafe were the only members of the team who had ever indulged in a more-than-professional relationship. And she had never been certain Griff disapproved. What the team did was both covert and highly dangerous. Neither of those elements of their work encouraged the formation of emotional liaisons, especially with outsiders.

  Yet they were normal men and women in the prime of life. With normal sexual appetites. To think that there wouldn’t be physical attachments between some of them would be naive. Griff Cabot wasn’t.

  “Steiner’s never been accused of being too bright,” Rafe said dismissively.

  “And Griff?”

  “I thought you believed he wasn’t involved.”

  “I don’t know what I believe. Not anymore. All I know is that I’ll be glad to get out of this car.”

  “A couple of hours,” he said, glancing toward her again.

  “And if Griff’s not there?”

  “We hole up until he’s back in the office on Monday. Whatever’s going on, he’s still our best bet for finding out the truth.”

  “Are you sure you can get into the house?”

  “I know the codes. If they haven’t been changed, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “And if they have been?”

  “Then we pay the Phoenix a visit,” he said, the muscle in his jaw working again. “I wonder if they’ll be glad to see us.”

  IT WAS APPARENT that Rafe had been in Cabot’s summerhouse, probably on numerous occasions. Not only had he known the security codes that had gotten them in the front door, but he was obviously familiar with the arrangement of the rooms.

  “You’ve been here before,” Elizabeth said, looking into the formal rooms they passed, the furniture protectively draped with Holland covers.

  “Of course.”

  He didn’t follow up his answer with the question she’d been expecting. Haven’t you?

  She hadn’t. She had heard about the huge old Victorian house Griff Cabot owned on the Virginia coast, of course, but she’d never seen it.

  Supposedly it had been in his family for generations. Through the years of Griff’s service with the CIA, it had served as both a safe house and an operations center for the team on more than one occasion. Elegant and isolated, it was also equipped with the best security devices that money and the agency’s cutting-edge technology could provide.

  “Hungry?” Rafe asked, putting her bag down by the staircase that led up to the second floor.

  She was, she realized. They had existed on what they could pick up in the service stations where they’d stopped to get gas. Nothing that would qualify as real food.

  “There’s a well-stocked pantry, I suppose.”

  “There always was,” Rafe answered, leading the way toward the back of the house.

  The decor, even in the informal rooms through which they passed, was very different than that of any beach house she had ever seen. She suspected a lot of what was here Griff had inherited along with the house. Old money, and lots of it, she thought.

  She had known that about Cabot. As a result, she had often wondered how, and more importantly why, he’d ended up doing the thankless government job he had handled with such skill. Of course, service to one’s country had always been a tradition among the Southern aristocracy. Maybe that was handed down along with all that money and places such as this.

  “What sounds good?” Rafe asked.

  “Almost anything but peanut butter crackers,” she said, remembering the packages of those he’d tossed into her lap at the last stop for gas.

  “I think we can manage something more substantial.” He opened the double refrigerator, examining the contents briefly before he closed the door. “It must have been a while since anyone’s been here.”

  He crossed to a door on the opposite side of the kitchen. Opened, it revealed a deep pantry full of canned goods, packages of staples, and a variety of mixes and boxed meals.

  “Something easy,” she said, leaning on the counter to watch him. That was still a pleasure, she admitted. As much as it had ever been.

  She knew he was self-conscious about the scars by the fact that he took the trouble to hide those he could. Judging by the ones that marred his hands, he probably shouldn’t be. She couldn’t imagine that those on his body—

  Dangerous territory, she decided, forcing her gaze away from the broad shoulders of the man examining the contents of the pantry to take in her surrounding. The kitchen had been redone at some time in the last few years, she realized, the redesign inc
orporating all the modern conveniences.

  “There’s some gourmet marinara sauce in a jar. If jar and gourmet aren’t a contradiction in terms.”

  It probably wouldn’t be here, she thought.

  “Pasta?” she asked.

  “Take your pick.”

  His voice sounded slightly hollow coming from inside the shelf-lined room. What he’d just said seemed to suggest that she join him in there to make that decision.

  She didn’t relish being that close to him. Not in such a confined space. At least not until she’d had time to recover her emotional balance after what had happened between them.

  What had almost happened, she amended.

  Since nearly twenty-four hours hadn’t been enough to do that, she wondered how long she thought it would take. Of course, she had never managed to put her feelings about Rafe Sinclair into any sort of balance during the past six years. What made her believe she could now?

  “I’m not hard to please,” she said, deciding discretion was definitely the better part of valor. “Whatever you decide—”

  She stopped because he had reappeared in the doorway, a jar of sauce in one hand and a package of pasta in the other. He tossed the latter to her, making a preliminary throwing motion as a form of warning before he released it.

  “Twenty minutes?” he asked as he set the jar down on the counter she’d been leaning against.

  “About that,” she agreed, skimming the instructions printed on the back of the pasta.

  “Then I’m going to take a shower.”

  She looked up to smile at him. “Somehow I’d gotten the impression you were going to cook dinner.”

  “Have you ever known me to cook, Elizabeth?”

  “I thought you might have learned something in the last six years.”

  “Many things, but not that.”

  “Care to enlighten me?” she asked.

  His mood had changed completely since they’d been here. The cold, angry man she had ridden beside through a half dozen states seemed as relaxed in this environment as when he’d been standing beside her fireplace, drinking her best whiskey as if that were his right. As relaxed as he had been during the initial team meeting she’d attended.