Deadlock

by Cherrie Lynn

  “Children,” Helix called, holding up both hands.

  “Thank you, Helix,” the Captain said with a rare note of sarcasm. “What do you propose, Jace?”

  From the time he was a kid, no one had listened to him. Not his parents who abandoned him. Not the foster parents who ignored him. Teachers hadn’t known what to make of the troubled kid with brilliant computer skills. Professors had begun to somewhat understand him. But the Captain—he was the first person in Jace’s life to listen to him, to value his opinion, and he did not take that lightly.

  “I propose to forget about it. My distinguished colleague, however”—he indicated Helix—“does not agree and wanted to bring you all into the loop because of the vulnerabilities this incident might have exposed. Once those are addressed…” He fumbled with his words, trying to be respectful and failing miserably. “I really couldn’t give less of a shit about Lena Morris. Or her sister.”

  Cap turned to Sully. “See if security has been compromised. Run a comprehensive check. Overturn every rock.” She nodded, suddenly serious. Then Cap’s piercing dark eyes turned to Jace.

  “You do need to determine why this young lady approached you.”

  I was afraid of that, he thought. “Yes, sir.”

  “This could have been something she was instructed to do, if her sister is being held hostage. We need to know why and by whom. It might not be anything that serious. Hopefully it isn’t. But we can’t know that.”

  “Makes sense.” Even if he didn’t like it one damn bit.

  The meeting then turned to other Department of Defense cases, and the heat was off him, thank Christ. He hadn’t liked sitting under the scrutiny of his team members while they no doubt picked apart every move he made or word he uttered. Like being naked under a spotlight. He breathed a sigh of relief when Cap dismissed them, but then he asked Jace to hang back.

  Jace watched his team file out with sympathetic glances back at him. He wanted to tell every one of them to kiss his ass.

  Cap got up and moved to the coffeepot, where he poured them both fresh mugs. Jace accepted his gratefully and downed it, scalding his throat in the process.

  “Now. Tell me everything you wouldn’t tell the others,” Cap said, spearing him again with that assessing gaze.

  “That’s really all there is. I sent her on her way.” He knew the man could smell a lie like a bloodhound. “I might have…kissed her.”

  A laugh from the Captain was a rare thing. “You might have?”

  “I definitely did. The woman makes me crazy.”

  “That’s obvious, Jace, but let me caution you against letting her get to you. We need you levelheaded.”

  “You don’t have to caution me. I’ll get to the bottom of this if you need me to, count on it.”

  “I believe you. But let’s not seek revenge on this woman, either.”

  Jace met his gaze head-on. “Believe this, sir. If I wanted to do that, it would already be done.”

  Cap looked at him for a long time, then sipped his coffee. “Understood.” He set the mug down and wiped at an invisible speck on the table. “You still have a lot of bitterness. But if I haven’t said it enough already, your contributions to this team are invaluable. Frankly—selfishly—I’m glad you’re here, whatever it took to get you here.”

  What it took was the singlehanded destruction of his future, but he supposed he could understand that viewpoint. It still made him grit his teeth.

  “I didn’t scrape you from the bottom of the barrel like some of my past recruits,” Cap went on. “You had a bright future ahead, while some of the others had nothing, and you had that stolen. I understand the anger. You have to leave it behind, son. There’s no place for it here.”

  Jace laced his fingers together and exhaled long and deep. “In the end I was facing what they all were, though, wasn’t I? Jail time. That’s why we’re all here. We didn’t want to do time. You saved us all. So, thank you. I guess I seem like an ungrateful asshole sometimes.”

  “The main reason I want you to look into this situation further…” Cap produced a nondescript manila folder from his high-security briefcase and slid it across the tabletop with the tips of his fingers. “…is this.” Jace lifted his gaze from it and cocked an eyebrow at the older man before reaching forward and drawing the folder to himself. He flipped it open to find a picture of Lena staring up at him from—CIA credentials?

  What?

  “The fuck?”

  “Apparently, there is a missing CIA agent.” Cap drew a long breath. “One special agent Lena Morris.”

  It was all Jace could do, considering their conversation a few minutes ago, not to explode from his chair and throw the table across the room. Instead he said, very calmly, “You’re shitting me.”

  The Captain let that go without comment. “I didn’t want to drop this information on you in the presence of the others. Let them do their jobs, but I want your special attention on this.”

  So everything Lindsey had said was true.

  “It’s quite possible, actually likely, that the sister who came to you has no idea her twin is CIA. Jace, I’m telling you this with utmost confidence that, if you have further contact with this woman, you won’t blow any cover Special Agent Morris maintains.”

  “Of course I won’t.” His pulse felt ragged in his ears. Lena Morris. CIA. It explained so much. Yet…

  “Do you have any questions?”

  “Yeah. How did she pass the goddamn psych eval?” The Captain gave a long-suffering sigh, and he quickly added, “Any other intel I should be aware of?”

  “I’m afraid this is all we have at the moment, which is precisely nothing. She was undercover and hasn’t reported for days. That’s all we know. I’m hoping you can change that soon.”

  “Yes, sir. So you were about to put this to the team before I opened my big mouth about my visitor the other day?”

  “I actually wasn’t, not yet. I was waiting until we had more to go on.” One corner of his mouth tilted up. “But then you opened your mouth.”

  Yeah. That had gotten him into trouble more times than he could count.

  Chapter Six

  The email had no subject and no sender, but Lindsey didn’t need either.

  You have my attention, Meerkat. Come back and we’ll talk.

  She glanced up from her phone, sweeping a glance around at the bustling Christmas shoppers braving the cold and the snow. That creeping feeling of eyes on the back of her neck made her skin crawl beneath her scarf. The stores twinkled with festive lights and decorated trees, and everywhere was the sound of holly jolly music and laughter, but she couldn’t shake the perpetual darkness she’d felt suffocating her in the few days since Lena’s disappearance.

  But was he insane? She wasn’t going back there. Jace Adams had an anger management problem, and she wasn’t about to knowingly put herself back in the position of being its target. They didn’t have anything to talk about. She had no more information today than she had when she’d built up her courage to knock on what she thought was a stranger’s door.

  Well, she had at least a little more information now. She knew what his mouth tasted like. She knew the invasive insistence of his tongue, and she also knew the feverish dreams of having it elsewhere on her body. Any man who could kiss like that would surely be more than capable of giving a multitude of oral pleasures. Despite her anger at his asshole ways, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  The hottest kiss she’d ever had, and someone who hated her had given it to her.

  He didn’t hate her. He didn’t know her. He hated Lena, and with good reason. She had to remember that.

  Her dreams hadn’t all been good. Dark, twisted nightmares had woken her more than once. With each one, she became more convinced something was terribly wrong and she was insane for not bringing the police in.

 
All of those dreams had involved the horrible things her twin could be enduring right now. But Lena was strong. She could hold her own. It was the only thought that gave Lindsey any comfort, that and the overly optimistic idea that Lena might show up at any moment, vibrant and happy and full of life. Ordinarily, Lindsey was livid upon Lena’s jovial reappearances, but right now, she would give anything to see her that way again.

  Leaving her house had become difficult. She was scared.

  But the walls had begun to suffocate her, and like it or not, there weren’t very many shopping opportunities left between now and the holidays. Her mother’s chipper voice asked her over the phone every other day if she was getting her shopping done, always worried that she worked too much.

  It wasn’t unusual that she hadn’t asked about Lena. They knew her ways as well as Lindsey, if not more so. The only comment she’d made was wondering if she was going to make it for Christmas dinner. Lindsey could only bring herself to reply, “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  Tears burned the back of her eyes now as they had then. It hadn’t been a lie, but she hadn’t been forthcoming with the truth, either.

  What was she going to do?

  The jewelry case blurred in her vision, and a puzzled saleslady asked if she needed any help, but Lindsey shook her head and turned away, shoving her hands in her coat pockets and hunching her shoulders. She wasn’t up for this today, wouldn’t ever be up for this until Lena was back. She had to do something. If she did meet with Jace, she needed more to give him.

  Early evening enshrouded her as she left the department store, burying her mouth into the warm fabric of her scarf against the cold, keeping her eyes downcast.

  Lena didn’t have any real friends. It had occurred to her many times over the past few years that she didn’t know one single person to call for help when Lena pulled her disappearing acts.

  How could that be so? When she left, who did she go with? What did she do? And how was it that she had always been so adept at dodging questions? Now she was gone, and Lindsey had no one to turn to.

  Of course, she wasn’t quite sure who Lena would turn to should their situations be reversed. She’d always liked it that way. She supposed her twin did, too.

  There was one bar she knew Lena frequented, however. She talked about it sometimes, though going out for a night of drinking wasn’t something Lindsey did, so she’d never joined her.

  An outrageous idea occurred to her, one that was absolutely insane, really, and not something she was sure she could pull off—if she dared to try. But if she wanted to find out information about her sister, she had the best weapon imaginable in her arsenal.

  She had Lena’s face.

  …

  It’s a long shot. She stared at herself in the mirror, but she was desperate.

  Lindsey had stabbed herself in the eye no less than three times trying to get the perfectly winged liner her twin always wore. The big, loose, effortless curls Lena sported took a hell of a lot of effort. And the slinky sequined top showed way more skin than she was comfortable baring, one of many insanely skimpy items her sister had talked her into buying in anticipation of wild nights that had never come.

  But if she showed up anywhere not looking like she was coming home from a nightclub on a Saturday night, anyone there who knew Lena would probably wonder what the hell was wrong with her.

  It was disconcerting to look into a mirror and see not herself but someone else. She rubbed sweaty palms on skintight, destructed jeans.

  You have to get yourself together. Lena never fidgets.

  There was a grim set to her mouth that was also very unlike Lena, but no amount of makeup was going to hide that.

  Well, she couldn’t worry about it. All she planned to do was perch up on a barstool and observe, see if anyone seemed to recognize her or if they seemed overly surprised to see her. She also realized she was setting herself up for trouble—maybe she would see her sister again.

  Then Mom and Dad will be dealing with losing both daughters. Smart.

  Shaking her head, she grabbed her handbag and headed out.

  It wasn’t a long drive, but with the way the snow continuously drifted against her car’s windshield, she began to think she would never feel warm again even with the heater going full blast. A chill had sunk into her bones, freezing her from the inside out. This had to turn up something. And then, maybe she would go to Jace, if he could behave himself.

  Faces turned toward her as she entered the bar, but she detected little more than male appreciation or feminine dismissal behind any stares she received. It was fairly crowded and warm despite her chilled blood. She sidled around people standing at tables to find an empty spot at the bar, quickly learning how difficult it was to appear inconspicuous when you were scoping people out. The bartender ambled over and looked at her expectantly.

  “Cape Cod,” she ordered, citing one of Lena’s go-to drinks. When it came, she only dared a couple of sips. Not that she never drank, but she didn’t want to dull her senses. She might need them.

  Then again, she might not.

  Minutes ticked past.

  Ball games and sports channels played on various TV screens.

  The mood was happy and celebratory. Christmas was coming. All the while, Lindsey looked for anyone, anything suspicious, but no one seemed to be paying her much attention. Maybe Lena had no friends here after all. A man swayed up and offered to buy her another, but she turned it down. Thankfully, he moved on without fuss.

  She began to despair, staring down into her drink’s crimson depths. At the bottom of the glass, at its darkest, it looked like blood. A low voice spoke in her ear.

  “Lindsey, what the hell are you doing?”

  Startled, she whirled on her barstool, then reared back as she felt her own blood drain from her face. Griffin glared at her with his brows drawn together. She’d been sitting here for at least half an hour and had missed seeing him. She was a horrible detective, and this entire idea seemed ludicrous.

  “Nothing,” she said, grabbing her purse. The creepy, crawling feeling on the back of her neck, which she had been feeling for days, began to make sense, not that she liked knowing its source any better. Then again, if he wanted to remain unseen, why had he approached her? “I was about to leave. What are you doing here?”

  “Maybe the same thing you are,” he said, sounding dejected even as he cocked a meaningful brow at her attire.

  “Have you been following me?”

  “No. I just saw you.”

  She didn’t believe that for a second. “Have you heard anything?” she asked, watching him closely.

  He shook his head. “Have you?”

  How much to tell this guy? Her gut insisted on nothing, but something told her he already knew far more than he would ever let on. He could be complicit. He could have been the one who trashed Lena’s apartment, who’d stolen the picture of the two of them together. Hell, at this point, everyone was a suspect, every nondescript face she’d passed on the street, every person in this bar.

  “No. And I really do need to be going now.”

  She slid off the stool and strode quickly away, looking for the exit, any escape. He fell into step beside her, matching her strides with much longer ones, and she realized she didn’t want to leave with him beside her. She stopped and looked at him.

  “Why don’t I believe you?” he asked.

  “I might ask you the same thing,” she said. “Please stop following me.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “You’re following me right now.”

  “Dammit, I only want to find her. I have no motives beyond that. I’m not the bad guy.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that just because you say it? I’m suspicious of everyone right now.”

  His face fell. “You do know something. Listen, you need to get out
of here. Let me buy you a cup of coffee somewhere else, and we’ll talk about it. Public place, you don’t have to worry.”

  Jace Adams’s face flashed through her mind right then, hard-chiseled and disapproving, and despite spending less than five minutes in the man’s presence, she wondered what he would think about all this. What advice he would give. If he would tell her to flee from this guy right now or take up his offer and see if she could get anything out of him.

  She felt so in over her head. Face-to-face interaction wasn’t her forte. Reading cues or body language or any of that stuff eluded her. She sucked at it. She never knew what to say or when to say it or when to not. Lena had told her time and time again she was too trusting, too naive. That was why her sister had been able to burn her so many times, she was sure.

  How quickly that had changed, though. The best idea right now was to stay guarded.

  “I’m sorry, but no. I don’t have time.”

  “At least give me some way of reaching you if I need to.”

  “Tell you what, you give me some way of reaching you.”

  He cursed under his breath, slipping his hand inside his coat to draw out a pen. Lindsey fumbled through her purse and produced a receipt for him to write on. He scribbled a number and handed it over. “Don’t hesitate to use that if you learn anything. Anything, Lindsey.”

  Before she could agree—or not—he walked away, leaving her in a sea of people but never having felt so lost or alone.

  Chapter Seven

  Jace hadn’t named a time, but the other day she’d woken him, and that had been in the afternoon. It was eight thirty now, so it seemed as good a time as any.

  Lindsey trembled inwardly as she knocked on his door. She hadn’t even gone home to change out of her Lena costume. As soon as he answered, she launched into her prepared spiel, stumbling over the words. “I told my best friend exactly where I am and who you are. If you’re going to be an angry brute, I’m leaving, and if I disappear, the police are going to know exactly where to come.” It was a lie, of course. She had no one to tell.