Alone With an Escort

by Angela Claire

  She waited.

  “It can’t become too unreal, because then you’d lose your empathy. And that’s the end of everything. You become as bad as what you’re supposedly fighting against. I’ve seen agents like that.”

  “Your mother?” Maybe she shouldn’t have asked, but she wanted to know.

  He laughed, low. “She wishes. No, my mother isn’t as emotionless as she likes to pretend she is. I’m living proof of that. It’s true she’d never talk about my father or even tell me who he was, but the fact she had me, and, ah, worried about me so much, proved she’s human.” He kissed the top of her head. “But if you ever meet her, don’t you dare suggest it. She might shoot you.”

  She laughed, as well. Then she asked, out of her frickin’ mind, “So will I meet her?”

  His answer was to kiss her, long and hard, and when he let her up for air, he said, “This was all so stupid of me. To bring you here.”

  “You don’t bring women here?”

  “Never.”

  “Charges?”

  “My God, never. The truth, Veronica, is my contact with women—”

  “Don’t say you were a virgin because I’ll never believe it,” she teased, getting a chuckle out of him.

  “Well, ah, no. But you could call me a relationship virgin. We, ah, guys like me, have hook-ups only. A lost weekend occasionally. But the woman never knows who we are, who I am, I mean. I’ve never…”

  When he didn’t continue, she admitted, “I’m not exactly an expert at relationships, either. That boyfriend who ran away to Vegas—”

  He laughed and she swatted his bare chest.

  “Don’t laugh!”

  “I can’t help it!”

  “Anyway, Philip was my first serious boyfriend. I’ve always been too driven to worry about guys. I had some hook-ups, mostly instigated by Mattie.”

  “This Mattie sounds like a very bad influence.”

  “I hope you get to meet her.”

  He said nothing.

  “She’s probably worried to death about me, when I didn’t call her to give her the scoop on her birthday present. God, I hope she doesn’t freak out when she sees the refund on her credit card.”

  He ran his thumb along the hollow of her cheek. “I wish I could let you contact her, Veronica. I do. But we have to figure things out first.”

  She grinned. “And how are we figuring things out by staying in bed together for days?”

  He flipped her on to her back and came on top of her. “Delegation, baby. Delegation.”

  Chapter Ten

  #xa0;

  Jonathon opened the refrigerator and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the faintest of shadows from the hallway. He was just mapping his lunge to the nearest gun—in the broom closet, he was pretty sure—when the shadow stepped out into the light.

  He straightened and turned to her. “Jesus, Mother, that’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

  Monica Vale was inexplicably in his kitchen, in her usual on-the-job outfit of all black, minus the skull cap to mask her shock of red hair.

  He slammed the refrigerator door closed. “How did you get past the sensors?”

  She raised one eyebrow. “You insult me, Jonathon.”

  “That doesn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy about how safe I am here.”

  “Again, you insult me. Just because I can get in doesn’t mean there are more than a handful of agents around the world who could.” But she added, “Of course, all it takes is one.”

  “Really. Stop with the reassurances.”

  “I didn’t come to reassure you. I will take the opportunity to point out, however, that you’ve let your guard down, just as I warned you would happen in a place like this. I never dreamed you wouldn’t at least be able to detect me by the time I got in the house. But I’ve been here for minutes already.”

  “You win the super-spy award again, Mother. So what are you doing here?”

  “You said you’d contact me. You didn’t.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  He leaned back against a cupboard, glad he’d thought to pull on some sweatpants before he came down for a snack. He and Veronica had barely gotten out of bed in the last three days. He’d never felt so relaxed and sated. The sight of his no-nonsense mother brought an unwelcome shot of the real world into their cocoon.

  “How did you know I was here, anyway?”

  She shrugged. “I know my son.”

  Shit! That meant she’d planted something here that alerted her when he was in residence. He’d find it and un-root it later if it was the last thing he did.

  “You have Dr. Barrett with you, I assume.”

  He glanced toward the stairs, hoping she was still asleep in bed. “Yeah. So what is it?”

  “I’ve found the mole.”

  At least she was bringing good news. “Great. Who is it?”

  “You.”

  “Is that some kind of a riddle?”

  “No. They have a very complete record of everything, Jonathon.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She ignored the question. “Traitors die. No matter who they are.”

  He shook his head. This was such a fucking dirty business. “Nice to hear. So, who’s the traitor? And don’t say me again. I take it what you mean is someone is trying to frame me. Do you know who it is?”

  “I guess we’ll see. I’ve led whoever it is here.”

  He stood straighter. “What?”

  “I have my suspicions about who it is, but I can’t prove anything until he shows himself. I’m afraid I had to disengage some of your sensors here and there. I couldn’t trust that whoever it is would be as adroit as I was at avoiding them. They seem awfully clumsy in their attempts to frame you.”

  “I’m putting aside for the time being the fact that you fucking led them to my house, Mother, so that I can ask you what their attempts to frame me consisted of so far.”

  Monica waved one of her small hands dismissively. “I don’t want to get into the weeds right now, Jonathon. I can’t be sure how many will be coming.”

  He shook his head in disgust. “I’m getting Veronica out of here.”

  “Oh, wow, am I interrupting?”

  Veronica was in the doorway, interrupting indeed, in one of his T-shirts that came to the top of her thighs and nothing else. She tugged on it, as if reminded of the fact.

  “Veronica, this is my mother.”

  His mother? My God. She didn’t look anything like him. She was tiny, for one thing. Five foot two or three at most with delicate bone structure and very white skin that complemented the red hair that she wore in a short pixie cut. Despite the lack of resemblance to her son, if Veronica had been told they were related she would have said sister, not mother. And little sister at that.

  Jeez, how old was she when she had him?

  The woman held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Dr. Barrett. I’m Monica Vale.”

  Veronica shook her hand while Monica glanced at her son.

  “I must say, Jonathon, somebody should have taken a look at her before they assigned you to bring her in.”

  “Save the indignation. You’re the one who’s leading them right to her.”

  The tension between mother and son was palpable. And from what Jonathon had told her, Veronica hadn’t expected this much discord between them. He talked about his mother with a kind of resigned amusement. Right now, he looked seriously pissed at her.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “We’re leaving.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  A loud buzzer, more urgent than a smoke alarm, but more intermittent than a fire alarm, sounded.

  Jonathon shook his head. “Fuck. What did you do?” he demanded from his mother.

  “I left a few in place, but only the ones he won’t be aware he triggered.”

  Jonathon stalked out of the room and Veronica followed him to the study. He pushed a number of buttons and a screen cam
e on. It wasn’t a television, she saw. It was a closed-circuit TV and Jonathon was glued to the screen, watching a man crouched behind a rock, doing something with a weapon.

  His mother came in and stood behind him. “I thought so.”

  “O’Reilly,” Jonathon said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “The man you killed at the motel who you said looked familiar? It was Rutger Linden.”

  Jonathon nodded. “Right. That’s right. One of the first jobs I was on. O’Reilly brought him in and he escaped.”

  “That was probably when O’Reilly was turned. Unless he was rotten from the start. Hard to tell.”

  “What was with the video?” Jonathon asked tonelessly.

  She shrugged. “Who knows? A reality show someday, maybe. The quick DNA analysis of the body showed it was Linden. I had some contacts who were able to get to that motel—”

  “I didn’t tell you what motel.”

  “I put together some odds and ends to determine the scene of your little shootout—before it was sanitized. And it was sanitized. O’Reilly is still claiming he has no idea where you went or where you are. Anyway, I cross-referenced Linden with agents and the connection with O’Reilly, and you came up. That’s what gave me the first hint it might be O’Reilly. Once I had that, he had left plenty more. Sloppy. But I can’t say I’m surprised. There was always something off about that man. I didn’t trust him.”

  “You don’t trust anybody!” Jonathon turned on her. “I hate this whole fucking business. This whole fucking life. Why did you lead him here? Just to spoil this place, didn’t you?”

  “I was trying to avoid having you posthumously labeled a traitor, as a matter of fact. For which you’re welcome.”

  This woman’s blasé response to the prospect of her son’s death was unnerving. Veronica couldn’t remember much about her own mother, but what she could was of warm hugs and soothing words and unconditional love.

  Was this little pint of dynamite really Jonathon’s mother?

  Monica Vale gestured to the house around them. “Whether I led someone here or not is irrelevant in the long run. Even if you stayed here for the rest of your life, somebody would find you. Eventually. You might as well learn that now, Jonathon. The only way out of the Agency’s life is to die.”

  Veronica could not stop herself. She shot in front of Jonathon, as if she needed to shield him from his mother, and spat out, “How could you say something like that to your own son? What’s wrong with you?”

  Jonathon’s arms went around her from behind. “My little protector,” he murmured.

  His mother smiled at her. It should have made her feel chilly, such a warm smile given what Monica had just said, but it didn’t. For the first time, Veronica could see the resemblance between mother and son.

  “Are you, Dr. Barrett? Are you my son’s protector?”

  Veronica felt embarrassed now, as if she didn’t have the right to get in between the two of them. As if she didn’t have the right claiming she could protect a man like Jonathon Vale. But Jonathon’s arms were still wrapped around her.

  “You say one word to hurt her, Mother, and you’ll regret it,” he warned.

  Monica’s smile didn’t waver. “I see it’s reciprocal. That’s convenient.”

  Jonathon spared a glance sideways at the man on the screen who hadn’t moved. “So any ideas here? I assume you have some kind of a plan. Or is this another sink-or-swim exercise?”

  Monica approached the screen, giving it her full attention.

  And she didn’t even turn around when a man came into the study pointing a gun at Jonathon.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Vale,” James Conley warned.

  “I assume you’re talking to Jonathon, not me, James,” his mother said, taking her eyes off the screen where O’Reilly still crouched.

  This seriously did not compute.

  Was the tableau being picked up outside on camera a decoy, perhaps? To render him off-guard? If it was anyone but Monica Vale who had been watching it with him, he would assume that was what had just happened.

  “What is this, Mother?”

  “You’re dirty, Jonathon,” James continued, “we know you are. And there’s only one cure for a dirty agent, isn’t there, Monica?”

  His mother folded her arms across her chest. “It’s true, Jonathon. James here has a very impressive file on you. I found it hard to believe when I saw it, but it speaks volumes.”

  He was speechless himself for a second and he edged closer to Veronica to block her. What the hell was this?

  He regretted not having gone for the gun when he’d first seen his mother.

  Shit! Had he really thought that? He stared at the diminutive assassin. Whatever she was, whatever he thought she was, she was still his mother. “You can’t possibly believe this, Mother.”

  “I didn’t want to, Jonathon. Of course, I didn’t want to. But this house”—she gestured around her—“this insane need you have to separate yourself from the Agency. I could see how it might lead you down the wrong path.”

  He studied her, but as usual her face showed nothing of what she was thinking. And James Conley, smirking, gun in hand, seemed pretty damn sure of himself.

  Jonathon began to reassess the situation, recalculate possibilities—could he perhaps tackle James?—when his mother withdrew a gun from a back holster and pointed it at him.

  Fucking pointed it at him.

  Part of him couldn’t believe it. And part of him—the lonely little boy whose mother went stiff when he thrust himself into her arms for a hug, so many times that he finally stopped—part of him wasn’t surprised one bit. That part had maybe even expected it someday.

  What had he said to Veronica earlier? That his mother was human? How could he have been so wrong?

  “Is this an execution?” he asked, finding it almost impossible to get the words out.

  “Yes,” his mother said without hesitation.

  “Oh, my God,” Veronica whispered, sliding around his attempt to block her with his body in order to stand at his side.

  “No other remedy for a bad agent, isn’t that right, James?”

  “Yeah, so go ahead. Let’s get this over with.”

  There was a long moment where Monica looked at him, at her son, so different from her in so many ways, but still so much a product of her. Jonathon met his mother’s stare head-on. He could try to tackle her—more difficult than it would have been to take on James, since slight as she was, she moved almost as if she could float sometimes—but she had taught him most of his moves and would anticipate them.

  He glanced sideways at Veronica, who hooked her arm in his, not backing off in the slightest. He couldn’t let this happen to her.

  “Will you let Dr. Barrett go, when you’re done?”

  Veronica started to object, but Monica cut her off. “Dr. Barrett will meet the same fate you do, Jonathon.”

  He scowled. “The least you could have done was lie.”

  Veronica’s grip tightened on his arm as his mother smiled.

  “Go on, Monica!” James urged.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she countered. “I thought there were orders to film it.”

  “Oh, right, Christ.” Keeping his gun in hand, James felt in his back pocket and extracted an iPhone.

  “I’m not going to let you do this, Mother.” Jonathon used the term deliberately.

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  He knew right then just what he would do, as if Monica, the instructor, was recommending the move by telepathy.

  “Go ahead. I’m filming.” James held the iPhone out, parallel to the gun he still kept pointed at Jonathon.

  Jonathon wasn’t going to worry about him. His reflexes were not quick enough to hamper Jonathon once he made his move.

  But before he could, Monica turned and shot the gun out of Conley’s hand.

  Bleeding, James sank to his knees, dropping the phone and cradling the hand that had been nic
ked in the process of Monica divesting him of his gun. “What the fuck! What the fuck did you do that for?”

  Monica stood over him. Given the disparity in their sizes, a casual observer, even Veronica maybe, would think Conley could overtake the little Monica with no trouble, even with one bleeding hand. But Jonathon knew, and Monica knew, and even Conley knew, that he would be dead before he even tried.

  Her voice was as cold, as toneless as ever. “You really thought I would kill my own son? You’re so much stupider than I gave you credit for.”

  A rush of relief swept through Jonathon. And it wasn’t just relief at not being shot or even at Veronica not being shot. It was deeper than that. More elemental.

  Relief that his mother could not do this, no matter how many things she may have done. Had probably never even considered doing this, whatever her reasons were for the entire charade—first acting as if she had uncovered O’Reilly as the mole then pretending she believed Jonathon was and intended to do her duty.

  James said nothing, his mouth going with no sound coming out, like a fish out of water gasping for air.

  “Come, come now, James. Don’t go all strong and silent on me.” She picked up the iPhone and held it up, still recording, to film him. “Or don’t tell me you plan to try to keep your mouth shut in this interrogation? That wouldn’t be wise. My methods are usually clean, but I make exceptions for men who frame my son then order me to kill him.”

  “You… you…” he stammered. “You agreed to it!”

  As if he was still taking in this turn of events.

  “Yes, I’m very good at lying. I can see that what I tried to teach you in basic training went right over your thick skull. But Donovan?” She turned the iPhone around to film herself. “Neil, you should have known better.”

  “He thought it was brilliant!” James cried. “Said it was coming full circle.”

  “Yes, he would.” She clicked something off on the phone and laid it face-down back on the floor. “Well, don’t you worry, James, I’ll be bringing Donovan full circle myself. In the meantime, what shall we do here?”

  “He said you killed your own lover!” He looked over to Jonathon. Maybe trying to win him over in this bizarre circumstance. Then back to Monica. “His father! Donovan said you killed your own son’s father. So why not kill the son?”