Dangerous to Love

by Sally Tyler Hayes

  Jamie looked up and found herself at her car. She punched the code into the door that unlocked it, then turned to face Josh again. He was a friend, a very good friend, who pulled her to him for a quick embrace.

  “So, this is what a man has to do to get your attention? Annoy you? Insult you? Belittle you? You’re a disgrace to liberated women everywhere.”

  “I know. Believe me, I do.”

  She was a smart woman, and it broke her heart to admit it, but no matter how mad Dan Reese made her, she’d always been aware of him as a man, a big, tough, gorgeous man. She suspected he’d been indulged by what he considered the weaker sex his entire life. It showed in the grin he wielded like a weapon, the one that cut right through her as neatly and efficiently as any knife she’d ever handled.

  Jamie had seen women make absolute fools of themselves over men, and she’d always assumed they were just weak, pathetic creatures, somehow lacking in the common sense she possessed. And then Dan swept into her life, making her realize she could be as foolish as any other woman. All it took was the right man. Or the wrong one.

  “Be careful,” Josh said.

  “I will,” she promised. “Josh, do you know anything about his ex-wife?”

  “Not much. I don’t think I ever even saw her. Somebody told me she hated the military, hated the agency.” He shrugged. “You know the kind of toll it takes on relationships—the danger, the long absences.”

  Jamie did know. She’d grown up in a military family.

  “Somebody told me she gave Dan a choice, his job or her,” Josh said. “He chose the job. That should tell you something about the kind of man he is.”

  Oh, she knew his kind of man, the kind who kept everything inside, who worked hard, lived dangerously, accepted the risks as a fact of life, one who never let anyone get close to him. Jamie wanted to break through all those barriers. She wanted to know the man inside.

  Once again, Josh urged her to be careful. Then she climbed into her car and took off, thinking there was just one problem with being careful—it hadn’t gotten her anywhere with Dan.

  Her first truly rash decision was that she should fix breakfast for them at her apartment in the morning, because she wanted Dan all to herself for a while.

  She wasn’t exactly a picture of domestication, but the stores made it easy these days and she’d worked odd hours long enough to know where she could shop in the middle of the night. Jamie found fresh fruit, croissants and jam, two kinds of flavored coffee and some eggs she would scramble with some peppers and cheese. Shamelessly, she added fresh flowers and scented candles to her purchases, as well.

  At home, she readied the food, found vases for the flowers. She lit one of the scented candles and took it into the bathroom, where she poured her favorite bath salts into the tub and soaked herself until the water turned cold. After drying her hair, she smoothed lightly scented lotion all over her body and, because she was ghastly pale, put on a bit of makeup. Then she dug through her closet, wondering what a well-dressed woman wore when she invited a man to breakfast on their very first date.

  She had nice pajamas that weren’t at all revealing, but still soft and smooth and shimmery. It would be presumptuous of her, but then there’d been nothing subtle about the way he kissed her in the hallway. Nothing subtle about her impulsively inviting him over the minute he got off work, either.

  She set the pants aside to put on later, then slipped on the top of a pair of silky peach-colored pajamas, which fell to a few inches above her knees, and walked to the fulllength mirror that hung on the back of her closet door. Once again, she remembered the rough, strained sound of his voice in the hallway. I want to see you.

  Would he like seeing her in this?

  Closing her eyes, she imagined that kiss one more time, except this time she was in whisper-thin pajamas. The heat of his body would sear right through her clothes. So easily, he could push the fabric aside, slide those calloused hands of his against the bare skin of her back or brush the collar aside to nibble on her neck. Heat started to rise from a point deep inside her. Her breasts felt full and heavy, aching for the touch of his hands. Her breathing wasn’t quite steady.

  She felt as if she was standing on the ledge of a building fifty stories high or the edge of a cliff, with no gear, no safety harness, no ropes. No plan. Just air under her feet, free fall in the making. Nerves came shimmering to life inside her. The reality of what she’d set in motion, what she wanted to happen in the morning, was starting to sink in.

  Jamie would give him anything he wanted.

  Anything.

  She hoped that would be enough, that the night would be the beginning of something wonderful between them.

  Too restless to sleep, she opened her patio doors. It was fairly quiet where she was, but in the distance, lightning still danced across the sky. She stood there listening to the rain. From the west, she heard a crush of sirens, which didn’t alarm her. There was always some sort of trouble in the city. But a few minutes later, she heard something else. She could have sworn it was the distinctive, rhythmic strumming of a big, military helicopter.

  Why would anyone be flying in weather like this?

  Jamie felt a shiver work its way down her spine.

  She was setting the table for two when her doorbell rang. Jamie turned to the clock; it was much too early for Dan.

  Cautiously, she walked to the delicate-looking table in the hallway where she kept her keys, her purse and three novels between elegant, scrolling bookends she’d picked up in an antique shop in Georgetown. The book on the right had a false bottom with a keypad lock. In the hidden compartment, there was a gun. Just in case anyone ever came to her door like this.

  The doorbell rang again as her fingers hit the last number in the coded lock. As she retrieved the loaded gun, she heard a voice calling to her.

  “Jamie? It’s Josh.”

  That was odd. He certainly didn’t make a habit of showing up at her apartment at 3:00 a.m. And if they’d been called out on assignment, someone would have summoned her to the office, either by phone or through the high-tech pager she always kept with her. That was basic procedure.

  With professional caution, she unlocked the door but didn’t open it. Then she backed up three steps with the gun in her hand, keeping it trained on whoever was behind the door. “It’s open,” she called out.

  The door swung inward, revealing only Josh, who, despite the hour, managed to look incredibly elegant and polished in a pair of jeans, a white button-down and a wellworn leather bomber jacket.

  It wasn’t until she took another look at his face that she knew something was wrong.

  “Put the gun down, Jamie,” he said gently.

  Something in his voice stopped her cold. He ended up taking the gun from her hands himself, then closed the door, took her by the arm and turned her toward her bedroom.

  “We have to go out. You need some clothes and some shoes.”

  “Why?”

  It was all she could manage, but her mind was racing, rapidly considering possibilities, all of them bad, all of them personal.

  Jamie stood silently by his side while Josh dug through her dresser drawers. She took the black leggings he put into her hands and tugged them on, took the warm wool socks he found in another drawer, slipped into the loafers he pulled from her closet.

  “Find another shirt,” he said, before he walked out of her bedroom.

  Jamie did. She had a whole wardrobe designed around hiding a gun on her body. Automatically, she reached for something that would do just that. When she walked back into the living room, she donned her shoulder holster, tucked her gun inside, then pulled a loose jacket over it. She let Josh help her into her raincoat. When he held out her own ID and keys, she shoved them into the coat’s deep pockets and followed him.

  Once she thought she was prepared to hear the answer, she choked out the words, “It’s Dan, isn’t it?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Where is he?”


  Josh put her into the car he’d left double-parked in front of her building. Hunched down on his heels in the open doorway, he looked her right in the eye and said, “On his way to Bethesda.”

  She nodded. Then she waited until he walked around to the driver’s side, climbed into the car and started it. “The helicopter?” she asked.

  As he accelerated down the road, he reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Somebody called you?”

  “No. I heard it take off. Couldn’t imagine why anyone would be flying in weather like this.” Of course, the answer was obvious now. He was hurt, badly.

  Minutes counted.

  Seconds, even.

  Much of the ride was lost on her, as was their arrival at the hospital, where she kept quiet and stuck close to Josh. Normally, nothing rattled her on the job. Not even a threat to her life. But this was different. This was personal. This was Dan. Clipped, intense conversation flowed around her, which she didn’t even try to comprehend, letting Josh handle it. He would do that for her, because he knew how terribly afraid she was that Dan was dead or dying.

  Josh steered her to a room at the end of the hall where two military guards stood outside a glass-paneled door. Josh flashed an ID and her reflexes took over. She pulled hers out of her coat pocket and displayed it for the guards.

  While Josh fired questions at them, Jamie glanced into the treatment room and saw a man and a woman, doctors, shaking their heads and pulling off latex gloves stained bright red. It seemed as if an eternity passed before the crowd clustered around the gurney shifted to give her a clear view of the patient’s face.

  No, not a face. A white sheet draped over a face.

  She closed her eyes and let the knowledge sink in. The person inside that room was dead. A strangling sound of protest slipped out of her throat. Josh turned to her, and she gestured with a trembling hand toward what she’d seen.

  Josh swore. “It’s not Dan, okay?” He grabbed her by the arms and held on. “Jamie? Dan’s upstairs in surgery. He made it to surgery.”

  Relief, swift and intense, spiraled through her. Josh was quietly giving orders. He wanted two guards with the body at all times. No one got close to it without his or her permission. No one answered any questions about what had happened, either.

  So, the dead person was either a suspect or another agent.

  “Is it Geri?” she asked.

  “No,” he said.

  She breathed a bit more easily, even though she and Geri weren’t close. Geri was quiet and serious, highly competent, but she kept to herself. Dan had a great deal of respect for her. Maybe he felt even more than that for her. Jamie never felt she had the right to ask. But she didn’t want to see her dead.

  “Jamie,” Josh said, nodding toward the body under the sheet. “It’s Doc.”

  Doc was a living legend, affectionately known as the Old Man, because he was the most experienced agent they had. Rough and tough and intimidating as hell, but the first guy you wanted on your side in any kind of fight. He and Dan had always been the backbone of the agency, both of them in it from its beginnings.

  Now Doc was gone.

  “Hey?” Josh grabbed her by the arms and held her tightly. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard for you, but I don’t have time to mince words right now. We’ve got work to do, Jamie, and I need you with me.”

  She nodded, knowing he’d sacrificed precious time by coming to her apartment himself to tell her the news about Dan, knowing he was through covering for her. She’d have to start acting like an agent again, and not a woman who—

  She took a deep breath. “I’ll get myself together,” she promised.

  His hand settled on her shoulder. “I know you will.”

  Jamie forced herself to think. Her friend and colleague had lost his life. How had that happened? Why? “Someone got inside?” she said, scarcely able to believe it.

  “Yeah. The whole thing’s blown wide-open.”

  Josh turned and headed down another hallway. She followed him, still struggling to decide what this meant. “The men we were guarding? The scientists?”

  “One of them’s gone,” he said dryly.

  “Gone?” She considered the possibilities. “Dead? Kidnapped? What?”

  “I don’t know yet. Tanner’s at the scene trying to sort it out. And you and I have to work it from this end.”

  Jamie looked to the end of the hallway and saw yet another pair of military guards outside another treatment room and began to realize the scope of the disaster that had befallen Division One. In its illustrious five-year history, the agency had never lost an agent in the field. Until tonight.

  Nodding toward the room in front of them, Josh said bleakly, “Geri’s in there.”

  “All three of them?”

  Josh nodded, then turned his attention to the new set of guards.

  Jamie was stunned. How was it possible that three agents had gone down in one night?

  True, the work they did was dangerous, and there’d been more close calls than usual of late. Some of the more cynical, more experienced agents said the agency was due—for disaster. Things had been too good for too long, and it couldn’t possibly last.

  But this? Despite her years in the military, Jamie had never seen a disaster of this magnitude hit so close to her, to people she worked with. Oh, God, she thought. She couldn’t think about that. Not tonight. Not when she was feeling so shaky already. Work, she thought. This was about work. Doc was dead, Dan was in surgery, and Geri was hurt, too.

  “What in the world happened out there?” she asked.

  “That’s what you and I have to find out,” Josh said as he pushed open the treatment room doors. Inside, a burly male nurse stopped them. Josh flashed his ID and started explaining who they were and what they were doing.

  “Josh?” A weakened voice called out.

  Jamie turned toward the woman lying on the gurney. Geri’s eyes were glazed with pain, her face incredibly pale, her speech slurred. Two people were working over her right shoulder, which was packed with blood-soaked gauze. Jamie went to the gurney and put her hand on Geri’s other shoulder. “We’re right here, Geri.”

  “Dan?” she said weakly.

  “Upstairs. In surgery.” Knowing the next question that would follow, Jamie pushed onward. “Doc is dead.”

  Geri’s brows crinkled and her eyes worked to focus on Jamie’s face. “They got inside?”

  Jamie nodded. “Who? Who got inside?”

  “Kids. Gang kids.” Breathlessly, she gave a quick description of the colors they wore, the car they’d driven, the two teenage boys and the girl she’d seen.

  It didn’t make sense. A gang of teenage hoods coming after a trio of government scientists? Why? Before she could ask anything else, the nurse stepped in and motioned her away.

  “Geri,” Jamie added, “we’re going upstairs. To check on Dan.”

  Tears seeped out of the corners of her closed eyes. “My fault,” she said weakly. “Dan? It was all my fault.”

  Jamie felt a rush of anger. If that was true... If it had been Geri’s fault... No, she thought. Geri was in shock. More than likely, she wasn’t thinking clearly. There’d be time for questions later. Time for answers. For now, she had a job to do.

  Jamie waited until she and Josh were alone in the elevator before she said anything else. She was running on pure adrenaline now, on her training, her determination and her sense of justice. She was strong and capable, and the man upstairs fighting for his life had trained her well. She wouldn’t fall apart now.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” she told Josh, thinking like an agent now. “A teenage gang? So intent on breaking into a government lab, they made it through three armed federal agents?”

  “No way in hell,” Josh said.

  “No,” she repeated. “No way.”

  Chapter 3

  Bone-tired, Jamie sat in a straight-backed chair in the hallway. Bent forward at the waist, elbows on her knees, head in her hands, s
he stared at the floor.

  She’d been waiting for hours. So much time had passed before they even knew Dan had pulled through surgery, so many more before the doctor could say with any confidence that he would make it through the night.

  A bullet had ripped through his side and struck a glancing blow to his spine. Jamie had stood like a statue as she listened to the surgeons go through the litany of possibilities, all of them bad. Very easily, he could have bled to death in the alley near the warehouse. He had arrived at the hospital with no measurable heartbeat and no spontaneous respiration. His heart had stopped twice more on the operating table. A weaker man would have died already. But Dan Reese had never been weak. He was in top physical condition and possessed a will of iron.

  It was nearly six o’clock in the morning, a little more than twenty-four hours after the shooting. He’d made it this far, and she had to believe he would live.

  Jamie had had someone pull his personnel file. His ex-wife was still listed as his nearest relative, and Jamie had called the woman, who hadn’t sounded particularly upset. Her exact words had been, “It was bound to happen sooner or later.” She wouldn’t be coming to the hospital. Jamie had also left a message for his brother, who lived in California and hadn’t yet returned her call.

  Josh was out somewhere, using what little information they had and searching for the people who did this. Jamie had been shuttling back and forth between the hospital, the office and the scene of the crime, the pace frantic, her nerves frayed to the breaking point. She was worried, angry, and more tired than she’d ever been in her life.

  At the sound of footsteps in the hallway, she sat up, pulling back her shoulders and lifting her chin as yet another doctor came out of Dan’s room in an isolated corner of the surgical intensive care unit. Jamie stood on legs that still trembled and tried to read the expression on the doctor’s face. She decided he looked every bit as grim as he had all night long.