Midnight Remembered
Midnight Remembered
Gayle Wilson
Men with secret identites and hidden agendas–sworn to protect…and tamed by love.HE COULDN'T REMEMBERHow could he forget a past as a hardened CIA agent–or a partner as alluring as Paige Daniels? She could help him remember who he had been, why their lives were suddenly in danger and why, if they'd only been partners, he wanted her so much….SHE COULDN'T FORGETJoshua Stone. After three long years of believing him dead, seeing him stole her breath away. They'd been partners and, for one magical night, lovers. Paige had loved and lost him once–did she dare risk her heart again…to a man whose body obviously remembered her, but whose mind did not?
“I wanted you to remember me on your own. If you didn’t, I wasn’t sure you’d ever believe me.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I?” Josh asked.
“Because what we did…” Paige hesitated, unsure how to explain her own fears. “I know we probably weren’t the first operatives to…have sex on a mission. I’d be a fool to believe that, considering the stresses. But you were always so damned hard-line about personal involvement.”
“Until that night,” he concluded for her. “Why would I have changed my mind?”
She had wondered that a thousand times. Once for every day he’d been missing. Because she had always remembered what had been in his eyes when he laid his gun on the ground and looked up at her. She had always known there was some connection between that look and his subsequent disappearance. And the most obvious was that he had known he would never see her again.
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
The days are getting cooler, but the romantic suspense is always hot at Harlequin Intrigue! Check out this month’s selections.
TEXAS CONFIDENTIAL continues with The Specialist (#589) by Dani Sinclair. Rafe Alvarez was the resident playboy agent, until he met his match in Kendra Kincaide. He transformed his new partner into a femme fatale for the sake of a mission, and instantly lost his bachelor’s heart for the sake of love.…
THE SUTTON BABIES have grown in number by two in Little Boys Blue (#590) by Susan Kearney. A custody battle over cowboy M.D. Cameron Sutton’s baby boys was brewing. When East Coast socialite Alexa Whitfield agreed to a marriage of convenience, Cam thought his future was settled. Until he fell for his temporary wife—the same wife someone was determined to kill!
Hailed by Romantic Times Magazine as an author who writes a “tantalizing read,” Gayle Wilson returns with Midnight Remembered (#591), which marks the conclusion of her MORE MEN OF MYSTERY series. When ex-CIA agent Joshua Stone couldn’t remember his true identity, he became an easy target. But his ex-partner Paige Daniels knew all his secrets, including what was in his heart.…
Reeve Snyder had rescued Polly Black from death and delivered her baby girl one fateful night. Polly’s vulnerable beauty touched him deep inside, but who was she? And what was she running from? And next time, would Reeve be able to save her and her daughter when danger came calling? Find out in Alias Mommy (#592) by Linda O. Johnston.
Don’t miss a single exciting moment!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Associate Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Midnight Remembered
Gayle Wilson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gayle Wilson is the award-winning author of fifteen novels for Harlequin. She has lived in Alabama all her life except for the years she followed her army aviator husband—whom she met on a blind date—to a variety of military posts.
Before beginning her writing career, she taught English and world history to gifted high school students in a number of schools around the Birmingham area. Gayle and her husband have one son, who is also a teacher of gifted students. They are blessed with warm and loving Southern families and an ever-growing menagerie of cats and dogs.
You can write to Gayle at P.O. Box 3277, Hueytown, Alabama 35023.
Books by Gayle Wilson
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
344—ECHOES IN THE DARK
376—ONLY A WHISPER
414—THE REDEMPTION OF DEKE SUMMERS
442—HEART OF THE NIGHT
461—RANSOM MY HEART* (#litres_trial_promo)
466—WHISPER MY LOVE* (#litres_trial_promo)
469—REMEMBER MY TOUCH* (#litres_trial_promo)
490—NEVER LET HER GO
509—THE BRIDE’S PROTECTOR† (#litres_trial_promo)
513—THE STRANGER SHE KNEW† (#litres_trial_promo)
517—HER BABY, HIS SECRET† (#litres_trial_promo)
541—EACH PRECIOUS HOUR
561—HER PRIVATE BODYGUARD†† (#litres_trial_promo)
578—RENEGADE HEART†† (#litres_trial_promo)
591—MIDNIGHT REMEMBERED†† (#litres_trial_promo)
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY CIA
AGENT PROFILE
NAME: Joshua Stone
DATE OF BIRTH: December 28, 1960
ASSIGNED TEAM: External Security
SPECIAL SKILLS: Skilled in a variety of the martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, counterterrorism training, light and heavy weapons expert, mountain warfare expert.
AGENT EVALUATION: Highly valued and experienced antiterrorist operative whose disappearance during a covert operation forced the reassignment of his female partner.
CURRENT ADDRESS: Unknown
STATUS: Missing in action…
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Paige Daniels—She had survived her first and only mission for the External Security Team, but she had returned from it without her lover and partner. Just when Paige thought she had finally put that nightmare behind her, she discovered that some memories—and some men—are far more difficult to forget than others.
Joshua Stone—The most legendary operative of Griff Cabot’s elite team, Joshua Stone disappeared with a biological toxin worth millions on the black market. Had he turned traitor? Or had something so terrible happened to him that dark midnight that even Stone, with all his skills, couldn’t escape?
Jack Thompson—Why was his name on a folder in the top-secret files at the CIA? And why couldn’t he remember anything about the life he had led before he’d awakened from a coma in an Atlanta hospital?
Carl Steiner—He wanted the nerve agent in CIA hands, and he was willing to use anything or anybody to achieve that.
Andy Rombart—There is nothing more dangerous to a secret than a good cop with a couple of troublesome murders on his hands. And Andy Rombart was a very good cop.
Dr. Helen Culbertson—Could she reach the secrets locked in Jack Thompson’s mind? More important, would she survive the attempt?
To Phoebe Robinson—
for her unceasing support, her kindness and generosity
of spirit, and most of all for her friendship.
Contents
Prologue (#u43d5b508-b822-57ef-8dc4-895660a7b840)
Chapter One (#u7e968545-5813-5c53-be61-785f64f6ac0a)
Chapter Two (#udbc701e8-f8b6-5173-ae83-fc2a73c80563)
Chapter Three (#u5ee6883b-f69a-5168-8dfb-614619f11998)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we get out?”
Paige Daniels turned her head and found Joshua Stone’s gaze on her face rather than on what was going on in the village square. And despite the seriousness of what was happening out there, his eyes seemed full of amusement.
“I haven’t allowed myself to believe that we’re going to get out of here,” she admitted. “Not yet, anyway.”
“You have to have faith, Daniels,” Josh chided, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening as he grinned at her.
She turned her head, looking again at the men who were searching for them. They were moving systematically from building to building through the bombed-out rubble.
Armed primarily with out-of-date Soviet-made weapons, these rebels were as ill-equipped as were most of the Vladistan forces. Of course, there was nothing that said an old bullet couldn’t kill you as dead as a modern one.
“Okay…” she whispered, still watching the manhunt, “then first I’m going to take a hot bath.”
She heard a breath of sound beside her and recognized it as laughter. Her lips tilted in response, but this time she resisted the impulse to turn and look at him. Looking at Joshua Stone had proven too disruptive of her peace of mind during the weeks they’d spent together.
After all, he was her partner. A professional relationship. And so far it had been highly professional.
Despite her initial doubts that anyone could live up to the high regard in which Stone was held at the CIA, she had discovered that his reputation for ingenious planning and meticulous execution was well-deserved.
Partner. And nothing else, she reminded herself.
Even if there had been anything between them, now was not the time to allow herself to become distracted by it. Actually, she was determined that no one would ever know exactly how big a distraction Joshua Stone had been. Especially not Joshua Stone.
“Can’t say you don’t need a bath,” he said. “There is a certain primitive charm, however, in listening to your nightly efforts at hygiene. A real exercise in creativity.”
“Mine in making them or yours in listening?” she retorted.
Without warning, he moved closer. His concentration on the scene outside had intensified, in spite of the absurdity of the conversation they were having. And she had known all along that he had begun it to keep her mind off what was going on. Paige pressed back against the wall, allowing him greater access to the crack through which they had been keeping an eye on the search.
“All mine,” he said, his gaze still directed outside. Then he added, “And believe me, Daniels, I’m very creative.”
He was so near that she could feel his breath against her cheek. They had existed in this same kind of intimacy for weeks, compelled into physical proximity by the demands of the mission and by their living conditions. Despite that enforced closeness, things had never gotten anywhere near any other kind of intimacy.
At the beginning, if Josh Stone had attempted to initiate some sort of physical relationship, it would have made her uneasy. And she would have resisted. By now she was curious, to put it mildly, why things had never progressed beyond the easy camaraderie they shared. Stone’s notorious self-control? Or the fact that he didn’t find her desirable? She had to admit his lack of interest had piqued hers, despite her determination not to succumb to his reputed charms.
They had talked about everything under the sun in the long, cold evenings they had spent together. And she had been fascinated by the breadth of his knowledge on subjects ranging from rock and roll to Eastern mysticism. Not once, however, had the talk turned personal. Not until now.
She turned toward him again, at least as much as the close confines of their positions allowed. Josh was still focused on the soldiers outside, and the slant of late afternoon light coming in through the crack illuminated his face.
His skin had been darkened by the never-ceasing wind of this rugged, mountainous country. He hadn’t had a haircut in the four months they had been here. His hair’s natural curl was obvious as it had never been when he was able to keep it close-cropped, which was the way he preferred to wear it. And it was almost as dark as the hole they were cowering in, as black as the thick lashes that the shadowed those pale blue eyes.
His features, taken individually, weren’t extraordinary. Actually, they were harsh. Hard-bitten. His face was dominated by its bone structure: a Roman beak of a nose, high cheekbones, and a determined jaw. Tonight the shadow of several days’ growth of whiskers gave it a truly cutthroat aspect.
Joshua Stone was certainly capable of cutting a throat or two if he felt doing that would be in the best interests of his country. Perfectly capable, she thought, her eyes still examining that unusual combination of features.
They were not a satisfactory explanation of why this man had proven so compelling to her. Maybe it was the contradictions that fascinated her. His almost forbidding looks hid a reckless, devil-may-care personality. And those austere features included a mobile mouth that tilted into a smile at the slightest provocation. During the four brutal months they had spent in this devastated country, Josh had never lost his sense of humor or his patience. And she had sorely tried both.
He turned his head, meeting her eyes. “What is that you do every night?”
Think about you. “Sponge bath,” she said aloud.
“That’s my girl,” he said, turning back to the view through the crack. She watched the visible corner of his lips lift. “Sponge bath, huh?”
“I prefer not to become one of the great unwashed.”
“Implying I have?”
“Well…” she said, drawing the word out.
Suddenly his body, which was pressed against hers, tensed. Paige’s gaze flew back to the slit in the wall. One of the soldiers was coming toward them, his eyes sweeping the area in front of him, rifle held at the ready. She didn’t need the warning glance Josh shot her before he turned back to the crack.
Unconsciously, Paige held her breath as the soldier approached. Like most of his comrades, his boots were old and broken, his uniform a collection of mismatched garments, which had probably been purchased from Soviet military surplus long before the rebellion had broken out. None of which meant he wouldn’t know how to use the weapon he carried. Or wouldn’t be as willing to kill for his country as Joshua Stone would be.
As she would be? Paige wondered. She had gotten brave enough one night to confess to Josh that she’d have a real problem killing any of these people if they were forced to fight their way out of this beleaguered republic. After all, she had said, these aren’t the bad guys.
And she had not forgotten his answer: “Good guys or bad, if they shoot you, Daniels, you’ll be dead. Believe me, whatever you may feel about them, they won’t hesitate to kill you.”
She blocked the ongoing mental debate about what she would do in that worst-case scenario. It wouldn’t happen, she told herself, just as she had since they had begun this. She wouldn’t be faced with that decision. Not now. For all intents and purposes they were through, their mission complete. All they had to do was get to the border, which was less than five miles away, and wait for their contact to pick them up.
All they had to do. Those had been Josh’s words. And he didn’t seem to feel that the fact that those five miles were crawling with rebel forces searching for what they were trying to smuggle out of the country would make any difference.
The soldier shouted something over his shoulder. Despite her familiarity with the languages in the region and the crash course the CIA had given them in this specific one just before they’d left, she couldn’t understand the idiomatic dialect he was using. However, the sweeping gesture that urged the others to join him was universal.
She glanced at Josh again. Without looking her way, he held his semiautomatic up in one hand and pointed to it with the other. Only then did she realize she didn’t have her weapon out.
Pushing against Josh to let him know he had to give her some room, she unbuttoned the middle buttons of her parka and reached inside, her palm closing around the metallic weight of her own pistol. She held it for a second or two, and then she made herself pull it out. By that time there were two other soldiers converging toward their hiding place.
The building she and Josh had taken shelter in had once been some kind of government office. The top stories had been destroyed in one of the Russian air strikes, as had most of the rest of the village, with the exception of an old stone church, which was fairly intact. That had been the first place Josh had considered, but he had rejected it in favor of this one.
This particular building had collapsed inward, spilling structural debris from the top floors into the basement. The subfloor of the bottom story had been left partially intact, however, and it was under that part, sheltered against one of the outside walls, that they were hiding. The foundation had cracked as the building came crashing down, and they were looking out through a narrow separation that had opened up between the subfloor and the stones of the cellar.
They had had to crawl through a maze of fallen beams, broken boards and plaster to get into this corner. At the time, she had been relieved because it had seemed incredibly safe. Directly over their heads, the subfloor sloped toward the center of the basement, leaving just enough room for her to stand upright and be able to look out. Josh, who was taller by a good five or six inches, had to stoop to see out of the crack.
Two other soldiers had now joined the one outside. There could be no doubt that their attention was on this structure. One of them walked forward, stepping up onto the boards directly above her and Josh. Paige ducked her head, closing her eyes as a rain of dirt and broken mortar showered down on them.
The soldier’s boots echoed across the wooden floor above. He was making his way slowly because of the treacherous angle at which the boards inclined and the danger that the damaged floor might collapse under his weight. Which wouldn’t be a good thing for him or for them, Paige thought.
If he did make it across, on the far side of the cellar, clearly visible, was the set of steps they had climbed down this afternoon. The top ones had been exposed by the shattered floor joists, and from there the path she and Josh had taken across the debris-strewn basement wouldn’t be hard to follow. Their footprints would be obvious in the dust that had filtered down after the building’s collapse.
She felt Josh shift so that he was facing the opposite direction, looking behind them now. His movements had been painstakingly careful and almost noiseless, so as not to draw the attention of the soldiers outside. He was trying to get into a defensive position if the one who was in the building found them.
If that happened, Josh would be counting on her to take out the others before they could come inside. And then he would expect her to prevent the soldiers on the other side of the square from joining in the fray. Moving as quietly as Josh had, she raised her weapon, training the muzzle on the two men waiting outside.
Above their heads, the footsteps stopped. Paige didn’t know if that was because the soldier had found the broken beams too dangerous to cross or because he had spotted the cellar steps.
She heard him call out something to the others. One of the words had been stairs, she knew, but she didn’t get much of the rest. Under the assault of adrenaline, her mind seemed numb, focused only on the two men outside, who were her responsibility.
She put her left hand around the stock of the pistol, steeling herself to pull the trigger. That’s all she had to do. Point and squeeze. Don’t think. Just point it and keep squeezing until it’s over.
As the two began to move forward, she could hear the other soldier behind her now, much closer than he had been before. He must be at least part of the way down the steps, and unconsciously, she tightened her grip on the gun.
And then, suddenly, the two outside began looking over their shoulders. Shifting her gaze to that direction, she watched a military transport pull into the village square. The sound of its engine finally reached her ears, a few seconds after the men outside had become aware of it.
The truck seemed as dated as the rebels’ weapons, but given its olive drab color, there was no doubt what it was. Or, after a moment, why it was here. There were distant shouts, and the troops who had been searching the rubble began to trot toward the truck and clamber up onto the open bed. One of the soldiers standing outside the building where she and Josh were hiding turned back and called to their companion.
There was an exchange of shouts. Holding her breath again, Paige listened as the searcher’s footsteps began to retrace his route over the broken boards above their heads. The dust dislodged by his passage this time was less than before.
Then the soldier jumped off the subfloor right in front of the crack. Paige flinched involuntarily with the thud his combat boots made when they hit the ground.
As the three began to walk toward the truck, one of the others threw an affectionate arm around the shoulders of the man who had been in the process of descending into the basement. Consoling him? And then, laughing at something he said in response, the three began to jog toward the truck.
Neither she nor Josh said anything until the rebel forces were all aboard. As soon as they were, the transport began to move, lumbering out onto the main street with a belch of smoke from the exhaust and an ominous grinding of gears. As the sound of its laboring engine faded into the twilight, silence descended over the remains of what had once been a thriving community.
“Close call,” she said. Her heart was beginning to slow, beating in her chest rather than crowding her throat.
“The very best kind,” Josh said softly, his eyes still scanning the deserted village.
Looking for what? she wondered. Someone left behind to secure this place? To see if anything suspicious popped up after the rest of the unit departed?
The two of them wouldn’t show themselves, of course. Not until he was sure there was no one there. The Joshua Stone she had come to know in these four months took nothing for granted.
“What does that mean?” she asked, willing her voice to steadiness. “The ‘best’ kind. As far as I’m concerned there isn’t a ‘good’ close call.”
He turned, his eyes examining her features, which she imagined showed the strain of the last few minutes. “A good close call is one you survive, Daniels. A little danger gets the juices flowing. Keeps you young,” he said.
Paige felt as if she had aged ten years while she’d been waiting for the soldier to discover them. “You, maybe,” she said. “I don’t think danger has that same effect on me.”
“So what effect does it have on you?”
She hesitated a moment, and then she said truthfully, “It makes me glad to be alive.”
“And makes you appreciate life in a way you don’t think about too often,” he suggested.
He was right, of course. She was very glad to be alive. She wasn’t sure, however, if that equated to feeling more alive. Or to feeling younger. As for those flowing juices, there didn’t seem to be enough moisture in her body to work up a good spit. Her mouth was dry, hands trembling. Only with that observation did she realize that she was still holding her weapon.
“Think it’s safe to put this away?” she asked, lifting the pistol as she glanced up to find Josh’s eyes were on her face. They were again illuminated by the light which filtered in through the crack. For the first time since she’d known him, their blue seemed dark. Mysterious and unfathomable.
And his face was set, harder than she had ever seen it before, a tic visible in the tightness of his jaw. As she watched, his lips flattened. Then he turned his head, looking out through the narrow opening once more. She felt the breath he took, deep and uneven.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
He turned to face her, his eyes assessing. Then he stepped back, bending and laying his weapon on the concrete floor. He shrugged out of the camouflage backpack he was wearing, propping it carefully against the wall. Her eyes followed those movements. When Josh straightened, she expected some kind of explanation. Instead he simply looked at her again.
Unspoken permission to put her own gun away, as she had asked? If so, she wasn’t averse. Especially since she understood that would mean Josh felt they were no longer at risk.
They would probably wait out the night here. It was as good a place as any, especially since the village had already been searched. In the morning, according to plan, they would head for the border, deliver what they had been sent here to retrieve, and then get the hell out of Dodge. And despite Josh’s teasing, that hot bath was going to feel very good.
She lowered her pistol, unwrapping the nearly bloodless fingers of her left hand from around those of the right. She usually kept the weapon in the side pocket of the fatigue-type pants she wore, and she wanted it back there, out of the way. She doubted Josh would approve. The location was not particularly handy, not if she needed the gun in a hurry.
Given her ambiguous feelings about engaging in any kind of shoot-out with the rebel forces, however, that was okay by her. She’d leave the quick-draw responses to people like Joshua Stone.
She looked down to guide the insertion of the barrel back through the opening of her parka. Josh’s hands were suddenly there, preventing her. Surprised, she looked up, expecting to find that she had somehow misinterpreted what she had thought was permission to put her weapon away.
As she hesitated, trying to understand, his left hand took the pistol and shoved it into the pocket of his own jacket. And then his right hand slipped into the opened placket of her coat.
Holding her eyes, he began to unbutton her shirt, fingers moving quickly over the task, as if this were something he had done a thousand times. He probably had. But not with her.
As soon as he had undone two or three of the buttons, his hand flattened and pushed inside the opening he’d created. And his palm encountered not bare skin, of course, but her long johns. She could tell by the sudden widening of those blue eyes that he hadn’t expected the thermal underwear, despite the climate.
“Think you could possibly have on any more clothes, Daniels?” he asked, the teasing note back in his voice.
She was almost too shocked by what had happened to formulate an answer. And more shocked when his palm moved upward to cup the softness of her breast. As it did, his eyes dilated slightly, the pupils expanding outward into that rim of sapphire.
She wasn’t wearing a bra. She wasn’t all that well-endowed to begin with. Besides, Josh was right. She had on so many layers of clothing as protection against the cold that she had known no one would ever be able to tell. Now, of course…
Josh’s thumb and forefinger found her nipple, pebbled with cold and the aftereffects of fear. It seemed to have hardened even more now with anticipation. Watching her face, he rolled it between his fingers, the pressure almost enough to be pain. And almost ecstasy. As the sweet, hot heat began to roil through her lower body, she closed her eyes, exhaling through her mouth the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
“You like that?” he asked softly, increasing the pressure.
She nodded wordlessly. The juices he’d talked about flooded her body in a molten stream of sensation as he touched her.
“Then tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me you like it, Daniels. I need to hear you say it.”
“I like it,” she whispered, knowing only now that this was what she had been waiting for for four months. Right or wrong. Smart or very stupid, she had been waiting for Joshua Stone to touch her. Waiting for him to claim her body. To possess it.
She wanted him to do those things. Most of all, she wanted him. Wanted him with a need so sharp it, too, verged on pain.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” he whispered, seeming to echo her silent confession. “A very long time. Every night I’d listen to the rustle of your clothes, and I’d imagine I was undressing you. And then I’d hear that cloth moving over your skin, and I’d imagine my mouth there instead. My tongue touching all the places you were bathing. But I’d be bathing them. Caressing them. Caressing you.”
He had put his cheek against her forehead, and his mouth was moving beside her temple, his whiskers abrasive. His breath was warm and moist as it stirred over the fragile skin, which had already dampened with a fine dew of perspiration just at the thought of what he was saying. Another sensation to add to the dominance of his fingers, which had never ceased their movement over and around her nipple.
“All those cold nights, I’d lie in that bed thinking about how warm I’d be if you were under me, your skin sliding, wet and slick, against mine.”
The last was so soft the words were little more than breath. Less sound than the suggestion of it. And the images they produced were as seductive as the husky timbre of his voice. His mouth on her skin, warm lips gliding over her cold, shivering body. His tongue touching all the intimate places that no man had ever touched in that way before. No one before Josh Stone.
Compared to him, she had known she was inexperienced. Maybe that had been one of the things she had found so exciting. She had known that if he ever made love to her, it would happen in exactly this way. He wouldn’t ask permission. Or give her warning. He would simply take her. Dominating. Controlling.
And even if she had no idea what she wanted, he would know how to please her. She had understood from the beginning that he would be this kind of lover. She had wanted him to be.
He lowered his head, putting his lips against her neck. His tongue followed the blood as it pulsed through the artery there. Then it traced to her ear, dipping inside, and slowly trailed downward again, until his mouth encountered the top of her shirt.
Think you could possibly have on any more clothes, Daniels? he had asked. But what she had put on, she could take off.
She wanted his lips and his tongue on her body. Moving over the hollow of her collarbone and across the small, highly sensitized swell of her breast. Circling her nipple, just as his fingers had caressed it, their movements sure and unhurried. So sure. So knowing. As his mouth would be.
She turned her head, bending her knees a little so she could put her lips under his. His head tilted to accommodate the kiss, his mouth fastening hungrily over hers. There was nothing tentative about the movement, but he didn’t push his tongue inside as she expected. His lips played with hers, making contact and then breaking it, only to touch her mouth again at a slightly different angle. A series of small weightless kisses, which gradually gave way to something else.
His mouth opened, his lips moist and warm, trailing languidly over hers. Breaking off and then coming back to hers again. And again. And yet again.
Only after what seemed an eternity did his mouth fully open and his tongue contact hers. Her lips had already parted, ready for the invasion that was not an invasion, but the long-awaited answer to an unspoken invitation.
His head turned slightly, the alignment again perfect. He eased her against the wall at her back, one arm around her waist. His fingers deserted her breast and worked at the buttons of her clothing, a barrier between them that neither wanted there.
He never released her mouth, however, plundering it even as he unfastened and pushed aside layers of fabric. He eased her parka over her shoulders, guiding it down her arms, and she let it fall to the floor.
She should have felt the cold, but she didn’t. She was aware of nothing but the movement of his mouth and his hands. After he had tugged her shirt out of her pants and unfastened the last of its buttons, it followed the jacket to the floor. Only when he pulled the top of her thermal underwear over her head did he break the contact of the kiss, just long enough to accomplish that task.
“Your turn,” he said, his mouth again over hers, so that the words were muffled by her lips, almost lost against them. Her mind seemed drugged by his kisses, so that she didn’t respond for a moment. And he didn’t wait.
He unzipped his parka, shrugging out of it and dropping it onto the floor beside hers. And then he took her hands and put them against the buttons of his shirt. Finally, she seemed to comprehend what he wanted her to do.
Her fingers trembled over the simple task, and after a moment his hands lifted, brushing hers aside as he pulled the shirt out of his pants and then apart, those two actions almost simultaneous. And as soon as he had, he leaned against her.
His bare chest pressed against her breasts, flattening them, and her breath released in a low moan. She was conscious on some level of the cold, damp stones behind her, but she was far more conscious of the warmth of the solid wall of his chest, hair-roughened, moving enticingly against the front of her body. Against the hardened peaks of her breasts.
Her arms went around him, spread hands caressing. Following the corded muscle of his shoulders and the long, elegantly sculpted back and narrow waist. Trailing up the smoothly ringed column of his spine.
They were completely naked above the waist, and oblivious to the cold. Their bodies were pressed tightly together. Hands exploring. And it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Not for either of them.
His palms cupped under her hips, lifting her into his erection. She gasped again as she felt the undeniable proof that he was as aroused by what they were doing as she was. A little danger gets the juices flowing.
Was that what this was all about? A reaction to what had just occurred? To the close call they’d had? And if it were? she asked herself, the intellectual question almost unimportant as her palms moved over the warm, smooth skin of his back. Did she really care about his motives? Were hers any purer?
This was about two people coming together after a long and tantalizing physical awareness. Maybe that’s all it was for him, despite what else it was for her. And if, as his reputation indicated, this was all Joshua Stone was ever willing to give, she would take it. Her decision. And her choice.
She arched her back, changing resolution into action. His hands were still cupped under her hips, and as she moved, he pulled her closer, groaning as their bodies came together, as close as they could get physically, given the situation.
And then he released her, dropping her back to the ground so quickly she staggered. His hands, working at the fastening of her pants, steadied her by the simple expedient of grabbing a handful of their fabric.
Then, he was unbuttoning and unzipping with a frenzied urgency. Her hands found the waistband of his trousers, working as hurriedly, as desperately.
Given that frenzy, she expected him to take her standing up, pressed against the wall behind her. Instead, he bent, putting one knee on the floor, and pulled the two down-filled parkas together to form a makeshift pallet at her feet.
When he looked up, the slant of fading light from the crack over his head fell on his eyes, highlighting them. Their pupils were wildly dilated now, either from the darkness in the cellar or because of what was happening between them.
She could barely see the rest of his features, but his mouth was set again, almost stern, unsmiling. And for some reason a jolt of anxiety moved through her stomach. That was not the way a man about to make love should look.
When he held up his hand, inviting her to join him on top of the two parkas, she never thought about refusing. She put her still-trembling fingers into his strong, dark ones, letting him pull her down to the spread coats. As his body lowered over hers, moving as if he had all the time in the world, the last thing she saw before the subtle remains of daylight faded away into night were Joshua Stone’s eyes looking down into hers.
And no matter how many times she recreated that scene during the next three years, she found she could never quite be sure what had been in them.
Chapter One
“Special Ops is asking for you.”
Paige glanced up from the magnifier through which she was studying the latest satellite images of a site along the Russia-Afghanistan border. Her boss hadn’t stopped at her desk. He had simply tossed the paper that held the message he had delivered down on it and then disappeared into his own office.
Special Ops, she thought, wondering how long it had been since she had heard those words. Not nearly long enough.
She wished she could treat the summons as casually as Pete Logan had. Instead, the phrase created an unwanted frisson of anxiety. Almost in self-defense, she looked down through the magnifying glass again, ignoring the paper Logan had dropped on her desk and trying to bring her concentration back to the photographs that had come in only an hour ago.
She had been totally absorbed in them before the interruption. After all, this was her job. Being at the beck and call of Special Operations was not, she thought fiercely, feeling her anger build, despite her attempt to focus on the satellite images. The days she had spent with the spooks were over and done. Long gone. Long forgotten.
Which was why, of course, her ability to concentrate was all of a sudden shot to hell, she thought in disgust. She pushed the magnifier away, the motion almost violent.
Special Ops. What the hell could Special Ops want with her? She glanced at the paper lying on the outer edge of her desk, as reluctant to pick it up as if it were something vile.
The print was facing the other direction, and she couldn’t quite manage to decipher the upsidedown signature of whoever had issued the request. After a fruitless few seconds of trying, she reached out and turned the paper around, her eyes automatically scanning the one-line message before they fell to the name at the bottom. It was one she recognized.
Her gaze lifted to the door of Logan’s office, but she resisted the impulse to go in and ask if he knew any details. Even if he did, it wouldn’t change anything. She knew that. She would have to answer this summons, no matter how unpleasant reentering that world, if only for a little while, might be.
Too many memories, she thought. Too many ghosts. And she wasn’t looking forward to resurrecting a single one of them.
“WHY NOW?” Paige asked. “I told you people everything I knew when it happened.”
“You people?” Carl Steiner repeated pointedly, his tented fingers resting under his chin. His dark eyes were amused.
She understood why he had questioned her wording. She had once been one of the people assigned to the CIA’s Special Operations Branch, which Steiner was now head of.
“I told Griff,” she said. “It’s in the incident report.”
“Tell me,” Steiner said. He hadn’t raised his voice, but that was obviously an order. As an assistant deputy director, he was entitled to give them.
Paige didn’t know why she would hesitate to tell him. Other than the fact that she couldn’t see any point in bringing something to life that had been stone-cold dead, maybe even back when she had reported on it to Griff Cabot. Nearly three years ago, she realized with a sense of disbelief.
It didn’t seem possible it had been that long since she had sat in this room pouring out that painful story to someone she considered a friend. Her eyes rose to study the face of the man who now sat behind Cabot’s desk. A man who wasn’t her friend and never had been.
She didn’t have any reason to dislike Carl Steiner. Not any concrete one, anyway. When the External Security Team had been disbanded, however, there had been a lot of rumors that this man had had a major role in that decision.
They had all known, intellectually at least, from the moment of Cabot’s death that the demise of his team would follow. But when the order had come down, none of them had been prepared. The team and their relationships to one another had been too important. Too much a part of who each of them had been then.
“I want you to tell me about Joshua Stone,” Steiner said, his eyes on her face.
Paige had no idea what it might reveal, but that same sensation she had felt when she had heard her boss say Special Ops lurched through her stomach again. Just at the sound of the name. His name.
“He disappeared,” she said. And then nothing else.
She didn’t know what Steiner wanted from her. Or why they were bringing this up after all this time. Joshua Stone was almost certainly dead and buried in some frozen wasteland thousands of miles from here. There was no reason not to let him stay buried, she thought, resenting Steiner’s stirring of the ashes of her life. Particularly these.
“Circumstances?” Steiner prodded, glancing down at a folder in front of him.
Paige’s eyes followed his, wondering if he were looking at Griff’s report. And wondering if Cabot had written down everything she had told him. Even those parts she had clearly intended to be for his ears only.
Maybe there ought to be an official designation within government communications for the kind of conversation they had shared that day. She had never told anyone else the truth about what had happened in Vladistan. No one but Griff. And no matter what Steiner said, she knew she never would.
“We had completed our mission,” she said. As soon she uttered the word “mission,” her mind had gone back, reliving those long-ago events, in spite of the fact that she had sworn never to revisit these memories.
Steiner hadn’t given her much choice, however, and she supposed it would be better just to get this over. Tell him only as much as she wanted to and no more. And trust that Griff hadn’t betrayed her confidence about the rest.
“We were supposed to meet our contact the next day,” she continued, forcing the words through her throat, which seemed constricted. “There was more rebel activity along the border than we had expected. We had to hide a few times from patrols, the last time just a few miles from the border. We knew we were cutting it close, but…it hadn’t been an easy assignment.”
Her voice faded, thinking how true that was. The area had been unstable when they had been sent in, and in the months they had spent there, everything had fallen apart. Including their in-country support. At the last, it had been just her and Josh.
“Go on,” Steiner prompted.
“And then…Stone disappeared,” Paige said, her voice softer than she had intended. More emotional? People like Steiner didn’t like emotion, not of any kind. That’s why they were here. Why they were the ones in charge.
“You woke up the morning before you were to cross the border and found that Stone was missing.”
She nodded, determined not to remember the events of the night before that discovery. She had done that too many times. Especially during that first year.
A long time ago. Just saying those words in her head was a form of comfort, putting distance between her life now and what had happened then. Do it, she told herself. Tell him the rest and be done with it. Put it behind you again.
“Russian tanks rolled in less than four hours later, and Griff, through our contact, ordered me out. I wasn’t given any choice about whether I wanted to leave or not.”
“And exactly what did you do in those four hours?”
There seemed to be accusation in the tone of the question, and Paige’s eyes narrowed against it. “I tried to find Josh. We had to get out before the Russians came, so I tried to find him.”
“And the nerve agent?”
That’s why they had been sent into Vladistan. To find and bring out a deadly neurological toxin, a new class of nerve agent for which there were no antidotes. It had been developed in one of the old Soviet weapons complexes, located in the region. When the rebellion started, the fear in the West was that the rebels might use the agent against the invading Russian troops, provoking a nuclear retaliation.
And then suddenly, feeling stupid that she hadn’t figured it out before, Paige realized this was what Steiner’s summons was all about. There was again unrest within Vladistan. Some people were already predicting another rebellion. Had that nerve agent now shown up in the wrong hands?
It could, of course. It could have at anytime during the last three years, she supposed, because when Joshua Stone had disappeared, that lethal toxin had disappeared with him.
“Josh was carrying it in his backpack,” she said. “I never saw it again.” Or him.
She had told Griff the truth about what had happened between them. A truth that might even be included in the folder Steiner had in front of him, but she didn’t intend to mention her personal involvement with Joshua Stone unless Steiner brought it up. The uneasy silence built until he broke it.
“When you woke up,” Steiner said, his voice flat, no longer questioning, “Stone was gone.”
Paige nodded.
“And you never saw him again?”
Something about the question bothered her. Not the words themselves, which were only the truth, but the nuance of tone in which he had asked. Was that skepticism she heard?
“Griff believed Josh must have been killed shortly after he left the building where we had taken shelter. The whole area was in chaos. Full of rebel patrols.”
“Yet Stone, an experienced operative, left the safety of your hiding place. And he left it alone, leaving you asleep.”
“Maybe he heard something and went out to investigate.”
She had tried for three years to come up with a viable explanation for Josh’s actions. That was the only one that made any kind of sense to her. She could tell by Steiner’s eyes that it made none to him.
“Or maybe he had an appointment,” Steiner said. “A highly lucrative one.”
At the time of his disappearance there had been elements within the agency who suggested Joshua Stone had seen an opportunity to make a fortune and had taken it. A new and very lethal nerve agent would bring millions on the terrorist black market. Stone had both the skills to get it out of the country, and, with his External Security Team experience, the contacts that would be necessary to sell it.
Griff Cabot had never credited that explanation for Josh’s disappearance. Cabot had always had complete confidence in the integrity of his team. Stone, however, wouldn’t have been the first CIA operative to have gone rogue, Paige admitted. And there had been something about his eyes that last night…
“If you’re suggesting that Joshua Stone turned traitor, then you need to review his record,” she said aloud, blocking that niggling, disloyal image. “Griff Cabot, who knew Stone better than anyone else, dismissed that possibility out of hand.”
“Griff would never admit that one of his operatives had gone bad. I’m afraid I’m not quite that…trusting.”
“If you seriously believe Joshua Stone sold that nerve agent to the highest bidder, then how do you explain why it’s never been used?” A shot in the dark, Paige acknowledged, but she had heard nothing in the last three years to suggest it had.
“Maybe whoever bought it is biding their time, waiting for the right opportunity.”
“Or maybe whoever killed Stone never found the toxin,” Paige said. “Maybe they never realized what he was carrying.”
“I confess I prefer your scenario to mine,” Steiner said. “I suppose only time will tell which of us is right.”
“It seems to me that three years is time enough to tell. Joshua Stone wasn’t a traitor.”
“And I sincerely hope you’re right about that, too,” Steiner said, closing the folder and getting to his feet. “If we need any further information, we’ll be in touch.”
His face was unreadable, but it was clear from his words that he considered the interview to be at an end. Paige knew she should be relieved, both that it was over and that his questions had been no more probing. For some reason, however, there was a letdown after the abruptness with which this questioning had ended. The whole thing seemed anticlimactic, especially in the face of the frightening suggestions he had made.
Paige stood, pushing the heavy leather chair back from the edge of the desk. She wondered if she should offer him her hand and decided, illogically, that she didn’t want to shake hands with Carl Steiner. She didn’t want anymore contact with him than was necessary. She reached the door to his office and then, very definitely against her better judgment, she turned back.
Steiner was still standing behind his desk. He was looking down at the file he had just closed, the tips of the fingers of his right hand resting on top of it, as if it might spring open if he didn’t hold it shut.
“Why now?” she asked again.
His dark eyes lifted, questioning.
“Why bring me in to talk about this now?” she asked.
There was the smallest of pauses, not even enough to call suspicious, unless you were already suspicious. “The region is becoming unstable again. This is a loose end that was never satisfactorily resolved. The agency doesn’t like those. Since you were the last person to see Stone alive…”
A loose end? Somehow Paige didn’t think he meant the disappearance of Joshua Stone. Steiner’s concern was almost certainly for that incredibly dangerous chemical weapon, which had gone missing in a region noted for being a powder keg.
As she watched, the thin lips of the head of Special Ops moved into what was supposed to be a smile. It seemed cold, lacking in feeling. Maybe someone like Steiner didn’t really feel. Maybe that’s what made him good at this. And maybe that’s what had made her such a failure.
“Good luck,” she said, barely avoiding sarcasm.
She put her hand on the knob and opened the door, stepping out into the deserted hallway, and then closing it carefully behind her, deliberately not letting it make any noise.
She hadn’t believed him, she realized. Intuition, maybe, but she thought Carl Steiner was lying about wanting to tie up loose ends. Something had happened, something besides the ongoing instability of that area. Something that had revived the mystery of Joshua Stone’s disappearance.
However, whatever was happening in Special Operations these days, she told herself determinedly, was no longer of any concern to her. And thank God, it was also no longer her responsibility.
JACK THOMPSON hunched his shoulders, holding the evening paper he’d just bought over his head as he made a run for the cab that had finally pulled up to the curb in front of his office building. He hated rain. Especially cold rain. It made all the bones that had been broken ache with a renewed vengeance.
He jerked open the cab door, slid in across the cold vinyl of the back seat, and then slammed it shut against the downpour. After he gave the driver his address, he settled gratefully into the taxi’s stale warmth.
He’d take a couple of extra-strength aspirin when he got home, he decided, and turn up the thermostat. He had some stronger stuff, but he saved that for the headaches. He hadn’t had one of those in almost three weeks, he realized, and he hoped to God he never had another.
He gazed out the window as they began to move, watching the twilight-darkened streets rush by through the screen of raindrops on the glass. A car had pulled out from a parking place on the opposite side of the street at the same time the cab had, and its headlights briefly haloed the droplets with rims of gold.
“Rain’s a bitch,” the driver said, “but I hear this stuff’ll turn to snow tonight. I ain’t looking forward to that either.”
Jack pulled his eyes from the wet gleam of the sidewalks, which were reflecting the lights from the stores behind them, and glanced at the back of the driver’s head.
“I hadn’t heard about the snow,” he said.
“Not from around here, are you?” the driver asked, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “Originally, I mean.”
“No,” Jack said. His accent was different enough that it sometimes evoked comment, although Atlanta was pretty cosmopolitan these days. He wasn’t from the South, however, and anyone who was spotted that immediately.
“Where you from?”
He knew the driver was only making conversation, maybe to relieve boredom, maybe in hopes of a larger tip. And Jack could have supplied the facts easily enough. Trying to feel some connection with them, he had gone over the information the cops had provided a million times.
He knew everything on those sheets by heart. And none of it felt real. Or meant anything to him. That would pass, the doctors had assured him. That feeling of disassociation with who he was. Simply the lingering result of the head injury. And, they had said, he was lucky its effects hadn’t been more severe.
“Don’t push it,” the psychiatrist he had seen at the last hospital had warned. That had been just before Jack had been released from the rehab center, his physical injuries healed, even if his memory hadn’t yet returned. “If it comes, it comes. If you try to get it all back, if you push too hard, then…who knows what may happen?” the doctor had said, shrugging.
Jack could remember wondering exactly what he meant by that. He had made it sound as if Jack’s brain would implode or something if he tried to force the return of those memories.
Still, he knew they were there, lying just below the surface of his mind. Sometimes, especially in dreams, they were so close he could almost touch them. It was like looking down into a dark pond and seeing things beneath the surface, murky and unclear, but definitely there. Just a little too far down to reach.
“Hey, buddy,” the cabbie said.
Jack’s eyes came back up, meeting the questioning ones in the rearview mirror. The cabbie was looking at him as if he thought Jack was some kind of nutcase. People did that sometimes. They seemed to pick up on the fact that there was something wrong. That something about him didn’t fit anymore. Jack never was quite sure how they knew, but their eyes always looked at him just like this guy’s were now.
“Des Moines,” he said.
“Yeah?” the driver said, his voice relieved. “Could’a fooled me. That don’t sound like the Midwest.”
Jack smiled, and then he deliberately turned his head, looking out the window again as the rain-glazed streets swept by. He had heard that comment a couple of times before, and it had bothered him enough that he had even checked it out. Not so much because of the accent, but because of the way he felt.
So he had paid one of those people-find agencies on the Web to do a search for a Jack Thompson from Des Moines. It had all been there. Exactly like the cops had told him.
Then why the hell can’t I remember any of it? Why the hell doesn’t any of it feel as if it has a damn thing to do with me?
There was no answer from the gathering darkness to either of those questions. Just as there hadn’t been for the past three months. And he was beginning to be forced to think about the possibility that there never would be.
PAIGE KNEW as soon as she opened the door to her apartment that someone had been there. A hint of something alien lingered in the familiar air. It took her a second or two to identify the smell as cigarette smoke.
Maybe not the smoke itself, she acknowledged, taking a deep breath, but the whiff of it that clings to a chronic smoker’s clothes and hair. She stood before the door she had closed behind her, wondering if there was someone else in her apartment. A burglar? Or another, more dangerous kind of intruder?
It felt empty, however. She knew intuitively that whoever had been here was now gone. If she had come home half an hour later, the heating system and the filters would probably have taken care of the faint odor, and she would never have known.
The first thing she did was to take the semiautomatic out of the bedside drawer where she kept it. Although she was grateful to have it in her hand, it felt almost as alien as the ghostly scent she was chasing. Then, despite her sense that there was no one here, she checked out all four rooms, opening closets, looking under the bed and behind the shower curtain.
Nothing seemed to have been taken or disturbed. Despite that, she couldn’t help but feel as if she had been invaded. Violated, somehow. This was her home, and someone had come into it without her permission.
It wasn’t until her hand was on the phone to report the break-in, that she remembered the call to maintenance she’d made. More than three weeks ago, she realized. It had been her first request for repairs since she had moved in. Was it possible, she wondered, that the maintenance staff had let themselves in without notifying her they were coming?
Which should be easy enough to check out. She walked over to the light switch by the door that led from the living room into the kitchen. It controlled the overhead fixture in the kitchen and had started malfunctioning a few weeks ago.
Of course, she could walk across the kitchen and turn on the overhead light by using the switch beside the sink, but since these were newly constructed apartments, something going wrong so quickly had seemed strange. She had been afraid it might mean faulty wiring, which had made her nervous enough to call.
She pushed the switch up now, and the fixture in the middle of the kitchen ceiling didn’t respond. Which didn’t necessarily mean maintenance hadn’t been here, she acknowledged. Just that they hadn’t fixed whatever was wrong.
Paige walked back to the phone, shrugging out of her coat and throwing it over the back of the couch as she did. She took the resident manager’s card out of the drawer of the end table where the phone was sitting, and laying the pistol down, she punched in his number. She’d feel better knowing that he had sent someone up here today, she thought, as she listened to the distant ring. A hell of a lot better.
When he said hello, she got right to the point. “This is Paige Daniels in 1228. I was just wondering if you sent somebody up here to look at my kitchen light switch?”
“Hold on a minute,” the manager said. In the background she could hear the sound of papers rattling and finally he came back on the line. “It’s gonna be a while on that, Miss Daniels. The crews are taking care of emergency situations first—heating and plumbing problems. You did say the other switch still works?”
One part of her mind was assimilating his denial and his questions. The other part was trying to figure who had been here if not maintenance. “It works,” she agreed. The hand that wasn’t holding the phone closed over the pistol again. “Look, are you absolutely sure no one’s been up here today?”
“The switch start working again? Sometimes wiring does that. Probably just a short. If I were you, I’d just keep it off until we can get somebody up there to take a look at it.
“Would it be better to throw the breaker?” she asked, realizing only now that it was possible what she had smelled hadn’t been tobacco smoke. Maybe it had been hot wiring.
“I don’t see why you’d need to do that. Besides, that breaker probably controls some other stuff, too.”
“I’m a little nervous because I smelled smoke when I came in from work,” she said, readily discarding her original theory.
“Just now?”
“About five minutes ago.”
“You still smell it?”
She took a breath, drawing air in through her nose. She had been inside long enough now that she couldn’t smell anything. Coming in from the fresh air outside had made the scent of smoke obvious. Now however…
“I’m not sure. Look, could you just come up here and check out that switch? Maybe something’s hot under the plate.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. She couldn’t blame him. It was Friday night, already late because she had stopped for dinner on the way home. And maintenance wasn’t his job. Of course, keeping the complex from burning down probably was, at least as far as his employers would be concerned.
“I’ll be right there,” he said, apparently reaching that conclusion at the same time. “You understand I can’t fix the switch, but I can make sure nothing’s smoldering under it.”
“Thanks,” Paige said. “I really appreciate this.”
She put the phone down and walked back over to the wall plate. It looked innocent enough. No telltale threads of smoke escaping from behind the ubiquitous plastic rectangle. She was probably being ridiculous.
She took a quick look around the apartment. There were a few dishes in the sink and her coat was out. She walked across to the couch and picked it up. She opened the drawer of the phone table and slipped the pistol inside before she carried her coat over to the hall closet and hung it up.
After she had shoved the dirty plate and cup from breakfast into the dishwasher, she headed back to take another look at the switch plate. She put her nose close to it, inhaling deeply, trying to find any trace of what she had smelled before. It seemed to have vanished, however, and she straightened, blowing the air she had just inhaled out in a small sigh of frustration.
She was headed back to the bedroom to look into her closet again when the doorbell rang. Maybe maintenance was slow, but the resident manager seemed to be on the ball.
Paige hurried to the door and looked out through the peephole. It was the same guy who had showed her the apartment six months ago. She turned the latch and the knob at the same time, a two-handed operation, and threw open the door.
“Hi,” he said. The shoulders of his jacket were dark from the rain. He was carrying a small screw driver, and he had a pager on his belt, revealed by the open windbreaker.
Just as she had earlier, he stopped on the threshold and, lifting his nose, scented the air like a hunting dog. “Don’t smell a thing,” he said, smiling.
“Maybe it’s a false alarm, but I definitely smelled something when I came in.”
She didn’t mention that her first impression had been cigarette smoke and that she had thought someone had been in here. Right now all she wanted was for him to make sure that during the night her apartment wasn’t going to go up in flames with her inside it. Little enough to ask, she told herself.
He walked over to the switch and made the same sniff test she had made. She expected another comment about not smelling anything, but he didn’t make it. Instead, he walked into the kitchen, and she heard him open the circuit box. There were clicking noises, and the light in the kitchen went off.
When he came back, he said, “Let’s take a look.”
He placed the tip of the screwdriver into one of the tiny Phillips head screws and began to unthread it. When he had finished with the first screw, he took the other one out, slipping the plastic plate off the wall. There was no whiff of smoke from the rough cut opening behind it. There was only a tangle of wires, none of them smoldering.
The manager put the screwdriver and the cover plate on the floor, carefully laying the screws on top of it. He bent so that he was on eye level with the hole in the wall. Then he reached into it with one finger, pushing around amid the wires.
“Nothing hot. No smoke. I think that it probably—” His voice stopped, as his finger probed deeper into the hole. “What in the world?” he said, the words almost under his breath.
Hearing them, Paige edged closer, anticipating a glimpse of a frayed or burnt wire. She couldn’t see anything, however, and other than bending down and putting her head next to his as he poked around in there, she wasn’t likely to.
Almost as soon as she thought that, he inserted his thumb as well as his index finger into the hole, fumbling among the wires. And when he straightened, he brought something small and dark out of the opening. He laid it on the palm of his other hand.
“Never seen anything like this before,” he said. “Not in a wall switch. Maybe they were going to put in a dimmer and then changed their minds. Cost overruns, maybe. They must have decided to go with a less expensive option.”
He held the object he’d retrieved from the faulty switch out for Paige’s inspection. She didn’t need a closer look. She had recognized it immediately. What the resident manager had just taken out of the wall of her apartment was the latest version of a very sensitive listening device. At some time during the six months she had lived here, someone had bugged her apartment.
SHE SPENT most of the night tossing and turning, everything that had happened running endlessly through her head. She replayed Steiner’s words, examining each of them, even trying to remember the expression on his face when he’d said them. And every time she did, she came back to the same comment. Something that hadn’t reverberated as strongly then as it should have.
Of course, at the time she hadn’t known that the agency was bugging her apartment. She still didn’t know that, she admitted, trying to be reasonable. What she did know was that there had been a very sophisticated listening device planted in her wall, exactly like the state-of-the-art ones the CIA used.
She couldn’t know how long the bug had been in place, but the light switch had started acting up after she’d moved in. Maybe a couple of months ago. Maybe a little less.
And another thing she knew was that someone had been inside her apartment today. To put the device in her wall? Or to check on it because it had stopped working?
Or had they been there for some reason totally unrelated to the bug. To search the apartment? To read her computer files? She hadn’t found any evidence of either of those things, but she knew that whoever the agency sent would be good at what they did.
And “good at what they did” brought her back to the other significant thing that had happened today: Steiner’s summons and the comments he had made as she had been about to go out his door. This was a loose end that was never satisfactorily resolved. Since you were the last person to see him alive…
She thought all the pertinent questions about that mission been asked back then. And as far as she knew, they had been answered to the agency’s satisfaction. Or at least to the satisfaction of anyone who had known Joshua Stone.
Had a trusted operative disappeared in order to sell that nerve agent on the black market, as Steiner implied? There was no denying such a sale would have been a huge temptation for some people. Not for Joshua Stone. She would never believe that.
Griff Cabot had believed that Stone had been captured by one of the opposing sides in the rebellion. If the Russians had taken him prisoner, they might have tried to arrange a trade, exchanging Josh for one of their own compromised agents. Washington usually agreed to such deals to get their people home, and Cabot would have done his best to influence them to make that decision. As far as Paige knew, no such offer had ever been made.
The strongest likelihood, given the time frame, was that Josh had heard someone outside the cellar that night. He had gone to investigate and been captured by the rebel forces.
Maybe they had taken him with them as they retreated from the Russian advance, intending to interrogate him later. Or maybe whoever had captured Josh hadn’t known about the theft of the toxin. Maybe they had simply killed him, leaving his body and the backpack he’d carried in the snow, never knowing what a valuable prize they’d lost.
Whatever happened, Joshua Stone, the most experienced member of the External Security Team, had disappeared forever on that mission. And Paige Daniels, the novice, had escaped from Vladistan as Russian tanks rolled across its border. She had escaped, and Josh had not. Maybe, as she had always believed in her heart, because he had gone out into that dangerous darkness to protect her from whatever he had heard.
Lying in her bed, eyes open and staring, the haunting images of that night played again through her consciousness. The same night he had made love to her for hours, until she had finally drifted into a deep and exhausted sleep.
She hadn’t allowed herself to indulge in this particular exercise in futility in a very long time, but she didn’t deny those memories tonight. And they steeled her determination to prove Carl Steiner was wrong. She was as convinced today as she had been then that Joshua Stone hadn’t been a traitor.
By bugging her apartment the agency seemed to be trying to implicate her in whatever they imagined Josh had done three years ago. And she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong on that mission. Nothing except sleep while someone took her partner. Nothing except survive when he hadn’t.
Now someone in his own agency was trying to blacken Joshua Stone’s name. And there was no one from the External Security Team left to defend his reputation. No one but her.
She had failed him once before. No one had ever seemed to blame her, but she had always blamed herself. And after three long years, she had discovered that the ghost of Joshua Stone was one she needed very badly to put to rest.
Chapter Two
Reactivated.
Paige stared at the screen, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. As she tried to think what else that word could possibly mean, she fought a surge of emotion she didn’t want to feel, not after all this time.
She had started her search as soon as she’d gotten into the office this morning, trying to discover what had set Steiner off. Something must have come to light fairly recently that had made him question Stone’s disappearance. Something that had made him call her in. Something that had made them plant a listening device in her apartment. Something.
She had spent most of the day scanning page after page of the tedious situation reports that had come in about Vladistan during the last four months. Because of her work in Sector Analysis, she was already familiar with most of this material. And on closer examination she had found nothing that might be construed as having anything to do with Josh or with the nerve agent he had been carrying when he’d disappeared. The computers had been next, and she had cross-referenced everything she could think of that might apply to the region, to the rebellion, or to that particular mission. And again, she had come up empty.
It was only then, an exercise in nostalgia perhaps or maybe because she had run out of ideas, that she had tried to access the old External Security Team files. Unbelievably, she had found that the access codes had never been changed. The files themselves were intact, even though the team hadn’t even been in existence for more than two and a half years.
The bureaucratic mind works in mysterious ways, Paige had thought, as she typed in Joshua Stone’s name. When the file came up, she had discovered the reactivated notation. And the date it had been made was less than four months ago. She scrolled through the whole thing, trying to find more recent additions or changes, but there were none.
Which made no sense, she thought in frustration. Why activate a dead file and then do nothing with it? Or was the reactivation simply a clerical error? Did somebody key in the wrong access number? Things like that happened, even at the CIA.
And she might have been willing to believe they had in this case, if it hadn’t been for Steiner’s questions yesterday. If you put these two things together, they had to mean something. Something obviously connected to Joshua Stone’s disappearance.
Reactivated. There was nothing else there. Nothing after that one entry, which had brought a dead file back to life and out of limbo where it should have remained. Why would someone reactivate a file and then not put anything in it? That made no sense. Unless…
When the explanation hit her, producing a rush of adrenaline so strong her hands began to shake, it all made sense. Because it fit the pattern. And the bureaucratic mind-set. Joshua Stone had been a member of External Security, and she knew what had happened to the other operatives on that team.
As far as she could tell, she was the only one who was still working for the agency. After the fiasco in Vladistan, she had requested a move back into Sector Analysis. Griff had tried to talk her out of leaving, but the transfer had gone through.
Then Cabot had been killed, and the elite antiterrorist team he’d assembled stood down. Since she hadn’t been a member long enough to have participated in any of the black ops missions the EST was famous for, Paige couldn’t represent any threat to security, and she had been allowed to stay in the CIA.
The other agents, however, had been destroyed—at least on paper. And then they had been carefully resurrected. Recreated as totally different people, their original identities erased. Their agency records had been purged, so that no one could ever trace those men, or what they had done, back to the agency.
In most cases, their names had been changed and they had been relocated. At least a couple of them, like Jordan Cross, had had their physical appearance altered as well.
Now she was looking at the agency’s file on Joshua Stone, a man who had been presumed dead before the team was disbanded. It had been reactivated, brought back to life less than four months ago. Then nothing had been added to the folder, so maybe…
Paige closed the file and backtracked. There was no “list all” feature on these kinds of secure files, so when she reached the main directory, she typed in the date when the designation on Stone’s file had been changed. Then her hands hovered over the keyboard as she stared at those numbers, almost afraid of what she might find. Finally, holding her breath, she hit Search.
And was bitterly disappointed when there were no results, other than in the folder she had just closed. There was no other file with a matching date in this entire section of the records. There shouldn’t be any recent dates, of course, since the team was no longer in existence, but that didn’t explain why someone had changed the designation of Josh’s folder.
She couldn’t be wrong about this. It fit. It made sense. Maybe she was just rushing the bureaucracy, giving them more credit for efficiency than they deserved. After all, it might have taken them a while to decide what to do.
She typed in the following day’s date. And when there were no results for that one either, she typed the next date in the blank. Then the next, working methodically now.
And finally, ten days after somebody had brought Joshua Stone’s file back to life, there it was. A matching date. In the middle of all the inactive folders of a now-defunct, highly secretive special operations team was a brand new file. A new name. But not a new man, Paige knew with absolute certainty.
“Joshua Stone,” she said softly. “Fancy meeting you here.”
NOT MUCH DOUBT, Paige thought, her eyes focused on the man seated across the crowded restaurant. Not much doubt left at all, despite the obvious physical changes.
This was the closest she had come to him. Close enough to study his features. However, even at a distance, his mannerisms had seemed heart-stoppingly familiar. The set of his head. The understated, almost elegant power of his body. Something about the way he used his hands. Even their shape.
She knew in her heart that this was Joshua Stone. The blue-black hair was threaded with gray, and then there were the scars, slightly reddened as if they were still fairly new. One crossed his right brow, causing a break in its thick black line. The other ran from the corner of his lips, slanting downward across his chin to disappear under his jaw.
Even the structure of the bones seemed slightly altered, as if they had been broken and then put back together, the fit not quite as perfect as it had once been. His nose had definitely been reshaped, molded into something less arrogant. The result was no less compelling or attractive, but it was different.
She had been trailing the man who called himself Jack Thompson for almost two days, but she hadn’t approached him. She had told herself that she wanted to be sure she wasn’t mistaken. That this wasn’t some kind of bizarre coincidence. That’s what she had told herself, although she had known the truth about who he was, almost from the moment she had seen him again.
Now there were no more excuses. The only thing left in doubt was what she wanted to do about what she’d discovered. Because she knew that no matter what Griff Cabot had believed three years ago, Joshua Stone wasn’t dead.
She didn’t know where he had been during those years, but there was no mystery about where he’d been the last couple of months. He had been living in Atlanta, working for one of the international brokerage firms headquartered here. Paige had wondered if the company was a front for the CIA or if it was simply a legitimate business that had some reason to cooperate with the agency by placing one of its ex-agents—an operative the CIA wanted to hide—on its payroll.
She didn’t suppose that really mattered. It was just something to think about instead of all the other things she’d been trying not to think about since she’d discovered Joshua Stone wasn’t dead.
She looked down at the unappetizing salad in front of her, wondering why she had ordered it. Because other than eating, there isn’t any excuse for being here.
Josh had eaten in this small neighborhood café both of the nights she’d been trailing him. He had stopped in on his way home from work. Having tried it now herself, she couldn’t say much for his choice.
She poked at a piece of lettuce with her fork, finally spearing it, along with a piece of ham and a small slice of cheese, on the tines. She dipped the combination into the watery looking salad dressing, and then raised the fork to take a bite. She looked up as she did, directly into Joshua Stone’s eyes.
She wondered if he felt anything remotely resembling the jolt that had given her, even from across the room. She looked down quickly, but she was forced to admit that this must have been what she was hoping for when she had come in here tonight. Hoping he would notice her. Hoping he would make contact, despite whatever rules the CIA had set up for his relocation.
She supposed that what the agency did with members of the EST worked like Witness Security. Contact with anyone from their former life would be forbidden. Even with a former partner.
She realized that she was still holding the forkful of food halfway to her mouth. Pretty telling, she supposed, but after all, Josh should understand. It wasn’t often one was confronted with a ghost.
She wondered what he was thinking. That this was an accident? A fluke? Or that the agency, maybe even Steiner himself, had sent her?
She put the fork down on her plate, unable to make herself take that bite. And then slowly she raised her eyes again, prepared now to make contact with his.
Josh was eating, his concentration seemingly on the newspaper that was folded to fit beside his plate. Just as if he hadn’t seen her.
But he had. There was no doubt in her mind about that. Which must mean that he didn’t want to acknowledge her. Not in so public a place. And he was probably right about that.
She knew where he lived. She could approach him at his apartment building. Or maybe on his way home, which was even safer, because it would give him the opportunity to decide where they should talk.
As she was thinking all that, the question she had been trying to deal with was still stirring in the back of her mind. For the past three years, she had tried not to think about Josh Stone because she had believed he was dead. Had he ever, during all that time, thought about her? After all, he had always known where to find her. Which must mean…
She turned her head, looking out at the street through the rain-streaked plate glass window beside her. Which must mean, she continued doggedly, no matter how painful she found the conclusion, that Josh had consciously made the decision not to try to see her again.
That decision would have nothing to do with whatever rules the CIA had set up for his disappearance. Joshua Stone didn’t play by the rules. Few of Griff’s agents ever had. That characteristic was almost a requirement for the EST. If Josh had wanted to contact her, he would have. And since he hadn’t, she would have to assume he hadn’t wanted to.
She could deal with that. She could deal with almost anything, she decided, feeling anger build again, as long as whatever was going on with Joshua Stone and the CIA didn’t get her called into Steiner’s office for the third degree. Or didn’t make the agency bug her apartment.
She wanted an explanation for those two things. A truthful explanation, which she would never get from Steiner. Eventually, she damn well would get it from Josh Stone. After all, she thought with a trace of bitterness, he at least owed her that.
While Josh finished his dinner, and he didn’t hurry over the meal, Paige drank the rest of her coffee, savoring both its warmth and the subtle stimulation of the caffeine. She couldn’t keep her gaze from touching on him occasionally, and after a while she stopped trying.
His eyes were still locked on the newspaper he had brought in with him, acting as if he were completely unaware that Paige was sitting across the room. Of course, Josh was better at this game than she was. He always had been.
As soon as she saw the waiter bring his bill, she signaled for hers. She handed her server a ten, without taking the check he presented and waving away his attempt to make change. She slipped into her coat and headed straight toward the door, making no effort either to avoid or to pass near Josh’s table.
He had made it clear by meeting her eyes that he was aware of her. And he had made it equally clear, by ignoring her, that he didn’t want them to be seen together.
When she stepped through the door, she realized the rain that had plagued the Georgia city for most of the past two days had finally stopped. However, it must have dropped ten degrees while they’d been eating. She turned up the collar of her coat, holding it around her throat with one gloved hand.
She began to walk the three blocks to Josh’s apartment, her eyes searching every foot of that distance for somewhere she could wait for him. It would need to be out of public view and yet within hailing distance of the sidewalk where he would pass. An alley or a recessed doorway. Actually, anything hidden or relatively sheltered from the eyes of passersby would do.
She could always wait beside the steps that led up to the front entrance of his apartment building. That was almost as public as the restaurant, however, and she suspected Josh wouldn’t be any more eager to be seen with her there.
Finally, having found nothing better, she went down the short flight of stairs that led to the basement entrance of his building. She leaned against the damp concrete block wall, not fighting the memories the feel of it evoked, and looked up at the steps he would have to climb to reach the front door.
She wasn’t sure he would notice her standing down here. And she still wasn’t sure she would speak to him if he didn’t. Actually, she admitted, she wasn’t sure about much of anything.
Except that Joshua Stone wasn’t dead. And that he had never sought her out during the three years that had passed since she had last seen him that night in Vladistan.
WHEN PAIGE finally heard footsteps, unconsciously she pressed more closely against the wall, her body hidden in the shadows as she listened. The footsteps passed by the front entrance and then by those that led down to the alcove under the stairs where she was hiding. She looked up in time to watch the man whose steps she’d been listening to walk by. It wasn’t Josh, and she took a breath in relief.
Maybe he had stopped off somewhere on the way home to do some shopping or an errand. Or maybe he wasn’t coming home because he suspected she would be waiting for him. And maybe a whole hell of a lot of other things, none of which she would have answers to unless Josh gave them to her. He obviously didn’t plan to do that unless she approached him and asked for them.
What was wrong with her? she wondered suddenly. What was she doing here, waiting for a man who had made it clear he didn’t want to see her? For some reason, she closed her eyes, fighting the sudden sting of tears. And she couldn’t understand why she had this ridiculous urge to cry.
After all, the reason she was here wasn’t personal. Their former relationship had impinged on her professional life. She was convinced that someone had bugged her apartment because of her association with Josh Stone, and she wanted to know why. She wanted answers that made sense. Answers from him.
The footsteps that approached this time didn’t move past the entrance. She opened her eyes, ears straining to follow them. When they started up the front stairs, her heart jolted again, as strongly as when Josh had met her eyes across the restaurant.
And those reactions, after three long, silent years, made her furious. Not at him, but at herself. Using that anger, Paige stepped out of the shadows, looking up at the man climbing the stairs. At the man she had known as Joshua Stone.
Perhaps he noticed the movement. Or maybe the intensity of her stare made some kind of psychic impact. Whatever drew his attention, Josh looked down, again right into her eyes. Despite the distance between them, she could see his widen. Then they narrowed slightly, just as they used to when he was trying to figure something out. And this one shouldn’t be too hard.
She didn’t say anything, and neither did he. Their gazes held for maybe twenty seconds, and then he came quickly down the stairs he had just climbed. He glanced over to where she was standing a couple of times as he made the descent. To keep an eye on her? Afraid she’d disappear? she wondered, not even bothering this time to deny the corrosive bitterness she had fought during the last two days.
But disappearing wasn’t her act. That’s what he did. What he had done, she amended. He had just…disappeared.
Josh walked over to the top of the flight of steps leading down to the covered basement entrance where she was standing. He stood a long moment, unmoving, still looking at her.
“You were in the restaurant,” he said finally.
She nodded, not trusting her voice to sound anywhere near normal. And, damn it, she wanted it to. She wanted it to sound calm and rational and unemotional.
“Were you waiting for me?” he asked.
How about for three years. Which wasn’t completely fair, she admitted. Most of that time she had believed Josh must be dead. So that didn’t constitute waiting, exactly. Besides, they had made no commitments. Not even…
“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Are you in trouble?”
“Steiner’s asking questions about you,” Paige said.
Despite her fear that her voice might betray her reaction to seeing him again, to being this close to him, the statement had sounded perfectly natural. Cryptic, perhaps, but at least she didn’t think her tone gave away her inner turmoil.
“Steiner?” he repeated, as if puzzled by the reference.
“He took over when…” Paige stopped, suddenly unsure, maybe because of that seemingly genuine puzzlement, exactly what Josh had been told.
“You know about Griff,” she said, not phrasing it as a question. If this was an agency hide, and everything she had found in the computers indicated it must be, then of course, Josh would know about Cabot’s death.
They became aware at the same moment that someone was walking toward them. A man and a woman were approaching, moving toward him. Josh turned his head, openly watching them, which surprised her.
The couple walked passed the entrance, deeply engrossed in their conversation. Josh waited until their voices could no longer be heard before he looked down at Paige again. Even in the dimness, his eyes were as blue as she remembered them.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Those names don’t ring any bells. Maybe you’ve got me mixed up with somebody else.”
She supposed she should have been expecting that denial, but she hadn’t been. Maybe he was part of some witness security deal, with the formal constraints that imposed, but he was also her partner. Her lover. Or he once had been. And he owed her more than this. They all did. From Steiner on down.
She had been lied to throughout this entire deal, and it infuriated her. She’d spent so many damn hours during those three years regretting the things she had done. Regretting even more the ones she hadn’t done. Too many hours lost out of her life to be fobbed off with this crap.
“I don’t think so,” she said almost mockingly. “I don’t think I’ve got you mixed up with anyone else.”
He took a breath, his lips pursed slightly. She tried not to remember what they felt like moving over her skin in the darkness. Tried and failed, and for some reason that made her even more furious.
“Look—” he began again, his voice still reasonable, not reacting to the obvious anger in hers.
“Your name is Joshua Stone,” she said, interrupting whatever lie he intended to offer. “You were a member of Griff Cabot’s External Security Team. You and I were on a mission in Vladistan when you disappeared. That was three years ago. And then, less than four months ago, they put you back into the computers as Jack Thompson. I’ve seen the file, so ‘You’ve got me mixed up with someone else’ won’t work, Josh. Not with me.”
“Vladistan?” he repeated, and she wondered why he had picked that out of all the rest. “In…Russia?” he questioned.
“A republic of the former Soviet Union.” Paige corrected. She sounded like some geography professor.
“Who is ‘they’?” he said, ignoring the lesson. “Who put me back into the computer?”
He had asked those questions in exactly the right tone. As if he really didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Of course, Josh had always been good. So damn good at everything.
“The company,” she said. That was the nickname for the CIA that almost everyone who worked for the agency used.
“Debolt?”
Which was the name of the firm he was working for here in Atlanta. Again the tone of his question held exactly the right note of confusion. She laughed, mocking his skill. The sound of her laughter almost prevented her from hearing his next question.
“After the accident?” he asked. “Is that what you mean?”
“What accident?”
The word had shocked her for some reason, jerking her out of her very satisfying anger. But the concern in her repetition was the wrong response, and she regretted it as soon as she had given it voice. She had wanted to convey her absolute certainty that she knew who he was and knew that he was lying to her. And then she had bit on that ploy like an amateur.
“The wreck,” he said. “Is that what this is about? Insurance or something? If so, maybe you’ve got the right guy but the wrong name.”
There was enough information there, and the tone reasoned enough, that she had to stop and think about what he had said. Accident. Wreck. Insurance. Wrong guy. Except, of course…
“Not Debolt,” she said again, rejecting the scenario he had just dangled in front of her. “The CIA. And you know what I’m talking about, Josh, so let’s stop playing games. Maybe you’re only doing what they told you to do, but don’t expect me to buy it. Maybe I didn’t spend as many years in special ops as you did, but I spent long enough to know how to do a computer search. Joshua Stone dies, and Jack Thompson is born. It’s all there. Right in the External Security files for anyone who wants to look for it. And I think that means you’ve got a problem.”
He said nothing for a long time, his eyes still considering her face. Trying to read it, maybe? She didn’t care if he was. She was telling the truth. A truth he needed to hear. If she could find him, then a lot of other people could as well.
“I think you’d better come in,” he said. “We need to talk.”
The strongest emotion she felt when she heard that invitation was satisfaction. She had forced him to listen to her and to stop making those ridiculous denials. She started up the basement steps, expecting him to lead the way over to the street-level set of stairs and up to the building’s front entrance.
Instead, he stayed where he was, watching her face until she reached the top. When he still didn’t move, she stopped beside him, looking into his eyes. She didn’t know what she had expected to find in them. Embarrassment that he’d tried to put her off like that? Admiration that she hadn’t bought that cock-and-bull? Maybe even some memories.
They held none of those things. They were interested. Reflecting the same deep intelligence she remembered so vividly, but nothing else. Not even, it seemed, an admission that they had once been more to one another than professional associates.
“I take it I’m supposed to know you,” he said.
Just when I was about to give you some credit, Paige thought. Her mouth tightened in frustration. She broke contact with his eyes, looking past him, focusing on the row of cars parked across the street. An exercise in gathering control, like counting to ten. And then it became something else.
“They’re taping us,” she said, her eyes coming back to Josh’s. “Someone in a car across the street is filming us.”
“Filming?” he repeated, turning around and staring at the car that was parked along the opposite curb, its motor running.
What Joshua Stone had just done was against everything Paige had been taught when she’d been brought over to Special Ops. Griff’s people were carefully trained. They had to be because the things they were called on to do were not only dangerous, but potentially embarrassing for their government as well.
And one of the cardinal sins was to have your picture taken. To have your face caught on camera. That was especially true while you were on a mission, but the rule applied at any time. Any place. And Joshua Stone, the best agent she had ever known, had just blatantly violated it.
As shocked as she had been by his turning toward the man who was video recording their meeting, she was even more surprised when he began walking toward the car. The camera was still pointed toward them, still filming. Josh stopped at the near curb and looked both ways before he stepped out into the street, not even seeming to hurry.
Was he going to ask them to stop shooting? Or was he going to try to get the tape? Which called into question, she supposed, just who Josh thought the two men in that car might be.
Paige’s guess was that they were from the agency. Either they had followed her here, which probably wouldn’t have been too difficult, despite the routine precautions she had taken, or they had already been running surveillance on Josh.
She couldn’t quite figure out why they would be doing that. Why would the CIA be keeping tabs on one of their own? Especially on someone who was no longer working for them? That almost made it seem…Almost made it seem…
Her mind was racing again. And even as it did, Josh reached the car. He opened the door and said something to the man with the camera. Paige was too far away to hear the words, but the man lowered the recorder and looked up at Josh, answering him.
She was already fumbling to open her purse where her weapon was, her hand moving almost without her volition. She had started toward the street when Josh reached out to take hold of the camera, as if he intended to wrest it from the man who was apparently reluctant to give it up. Paige began to run, closing the distance between her and her former partner.
Her gun was in her hand, but she prayed she wouldn’t have to use it. If the men in that car were fellow agents…
And then the guy with the camera came up out of the front seat, still holding onto it with one hand. With the other, he was reaching into his pocket.
Paige’s heart rate accelerated, knowing she was going to have to make a decision about whether to shoot within the next ten seconds or so. It was a decision she didn’t want to have anything to do with. One she didn’t have enough information to make. And one that would inevitably be influenced by what had once happened, a long time ago, between her and Josh Stone.
She stopped, gripping the semiautomatic with both hands, willing them not to shake. She drew a bead on the chest of the man who was struggling with Josh over the camera.
Her concentration, however, was on his other hand. And then, moving almost in slow motion, that hand began to come out of his pocket, bringing something with it.
Chapter Three
This isn’t supposed to be happening, Jack Thompson thought.
He couldn’t even begin to explain why he had come over to confront the two men. When he had seen that camera, for some reason he had been overcome by an overpowering wave of anger.
The doctors had warned him. They had said that a tendency to impulsive and risky behavior was a fairly common result of head trauma. He hadn’t paid much attention, because up until now he hadn’t sensed any lack of restraint within himself.
Up until now, he thought grimly, aware that the guy he was struggling with for control of the camera was reaching into his pocket with his other hand. And he knew with cold certainty, a feeling which tightened all the muscles of his stomach, that the cameraman was going for a gun.
Something Jack wished he had. He could almost feel the solid, reassuring weight of a weapon in his hand. Except he didn’t have a gun, and he couldn’t remember ever having touched one. Couldn’t consciously remember, he amended, because somehow he knew that he had. And he wanted to again. Right about now would be a real good time.
The fumbling hand finally emerged from the side pocket of the guy’s coat. And he hadn’t been wrong, Jack thought, seeing what it held. He wished to hell he had been. He also wished that he hadn’t started this. What could it possibly matter that someone was videotaping him while he was talking to a woman? A stranger. It sure wasn’t worth getting killed over.
He willed his fingers to release their grip on the camera they were struggling over. The unexpected loss of opposition unbalanced the cameraman. He staggered backward, crashing into the open door of the car. Both hands rose automatically, almost shoulder high, as he tried to regain his balance.
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Gayle Wilson
Men with secret identites and hidden agendas–sworn to protect…and tamed by love.HE COULDN'T REMEMBERHow could he forget a past as a hardened CIA agent–or a partner as alluring as Paige Daniels? She could help him remember who he had been, why their lives were suddenly in danger and why, if they'd only been partners, he wanted her so much….SHE COULDN'T FORGETJoshua Stone. After three long years of believing him dead, seeing him stole her breath away. They'd been partners and, for one magical night, lovers. Paige had loved and lost him once–did she dare risk her heart again…to a man whose body obviously remembered her, but whose mind did not?
“I wanted you to remember me on your own. If you didn’t, I wasn’t sure you’d ever believe me.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I?” Josh asked.
“Because what we did…” Paige hesitated, unsure how to explain her own fears. “I know we probably weren’t the first operatives to…have sex on a mission. I’d be a fool to believe that, considering the stresses. But you were always so damned hard-line about personal involvement.”
“Until that night,” he concluded for her. “Why would I have changed my mind?”
She had wondered that a thousand times. Once for every day he’d been missing. Because she had always remembered what had been in his eyes when he laid his gun on the ground and looked up at her. She had always known there was some connection between that look and his subsequent disappearance. And the most obvious was that he had known he would never see her again.
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
The days are getting cooler, but the romantic suspense is always hot at Harlequin Intrigue! Check out this month’s selections.
TEXAS CONFIDENTIAL continues with The Specialist (#589) by Dani Sinclair. Rafe Alvarez was the resident playboy agent, until he met his match in Kendra Kincaide. He transformed his new partner into a femme fatale for the sake of a mission, and instantly lost his bachelor’s heart for the sake of love.…
THE SUTTON BABIES have grown in number by two in Little Boys Blue (#590) by Susan Kearney. A custody battle over cowboy M.D. Cameron Sutton’s baby boys was brewing. When East Coast socialite Alexa Whitfield agreed to a marriage of convenience, Cam thought his future was settled. Until he fell for his temporary wife—the same wife someone was determined to kill!
Hailed by Romantic Times Magazine as an author who writes a “tantalizing read,” Gayle Wilson returns with Midnight Remembered (#591), which marks the conclusion of her MORE MEN OF MYSTERY series. When ex-CIA agent Joshua Stone couldn’t remember his true identity, he became an easy target. But his ex-partner Paige Daniels knew all his secrets, including what was in his heart.…
Reeve Snyder had rescued Polly Black from death and delivered her baby girl one fateful night. Polly’s vulnerable beauty touched him deep inside, but who was she? And what was she running from? And next time, would Reeve be able to save her and her daughter when danger came calling? Find out in Alias Mommy (#592) by Linda O. Johnston.
Don’t miss a single exciting moment!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Associate Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Midnight Remembered
Gayle Wilson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gayle Wilson is the award-winning author of fifteen novels for Harlequin. She has lived in Alabama all her life except for the years she followed her army aviator husband—whom she met on a blind date—to a variety of military posts.
Before beginning her writing career, she taught English and world history to gifted high school students in a number of schools around the Birmingham area. Gayle and her husband have one son, who is also a teacher of gifted students. They are blessed with warm and loving Southern families and an ever-growing menagerie of cats and dogs.
You can write to Gayle at P.O. Box 3277, Hueytown, Alabama 35023.
Books by Gayle Wilson
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
344—ECHOES IN THE DARK
376—ONLY A WHISPER
414—THE REDEMPTION OF DEKE SUMMERS
442—HEART OF THE NIGHT
461—RANSOM MY HEART* (#litres_trial_promo)
466—WHISPER MY LOVE* (#litres_trial_promo)
469—REMEMBER MY TOUCH* (#litres_trial_promo)
490—NEVER LET HER GO
509—THE BRIDE’S PROTECTOR† (#litres_trial_promo)
513—THE STRANGER SHE KNEW† (#litres_trial_promo)
517—HER BABY, HIS SECRET† (#litres_trial_promo)
541—EACH PRECIOUS HOUR
561—HER PRIVATE BODYGUARD†† (#litres_trial_promo)
578—RENEGADE HEART†† (#litres_trial_promo)
591—MIDNIGHT REMEMBERED†† (#litres_trial_promo)
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY CIA
AGENT PROFILE
NAME: Joshua Stone
DATE OF BIRTH: December 28, 1960
ASSIGNED TEAM: External Security
SPECIAL SKILLS: Skilled in a variety of the martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, counterterrorism training, light and heavy weapons expert, mountain warfare expert.
AGENT EVALUATION: Highly valued and experienced antiterrorist operative whose disappearance during a covert operation forced the reassignment of his female partner.
CURRENT ADDRESS: Unknown
STATUS: Missing in action…
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Paige Daniels—She had survived her first and only mission for the External Security Team, but she had returned from it without her lover and partner. Just when Paige thought she had finally put that nightmare behind her, she discovered that some memories—and some men—are far more difficult to forget than others.
Joshua Stone—The most legendary operative of Griff Cabot’s elite team, Joshua Stone disappeared with a biological toxin worth millions on the black market. Had he turned traitor? Or had something so terrible happened to him that dark midnight that even Stone, with all his skills, couldn’t escape?
Jack Thompson—Why was his name on a folder in the top-secret files at the CIA? And why couldn’t he remember anything about the life he had led before he’d awakened from a coma in an Atlanta hospital?
Carl Steiner—He wanted the nerve agent in CIA hands, and he was willing to use anything or anybody to achieve that.
Andy Rombart—There is nothing more dangerous to a secret than a good cop with a couple of troublesome murders on his hands. And Andy Rombart was a very good cop.
Dr. Helen Culbertson—Could she reach the secrets locked in Jack Thompson’s mind? More important, would she survive the attempt?
To Phoebe Robinson—
for her unceasing support, her kindness and generosity
of spirit, and most of all for her friendship.
Contents
Prologue (#u43d5b508-b822-57ef-8dc4-895660a7b840)
Chapter One (#u7e968545-5813-5c53-be61-785f64f6ac0a)
Chapter Two (#udbc701e8-f8b6-5173-ae83-fc2a73c80563)
Chapter Three (#u5ee6883b-f69a-5168-8dfb-614619f11998)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we get out?”
Paige Daniels turned her head and found Joshua Stone’s gaze on her face rather than on what was going on in the village square. And despite the seriousness of what was happening out there, his eyes seemed full of amusement.
“I haven’t allowed myself to believe that we’re going to get out of here,” she admitted. “Not yet, anyway.”
“You have to have faith, Daniels,” Josh chided, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening as he grinned at her.
She turned her head, looking again at the men who were searching for them. They were moving systematically from building to building through the bombed-out rubble.
Armed primarily with out-of-date Soviet-made weapons, these rebels were as ill-equipped as were most of the Vladistan forces. Of course, there was nothing that said an old bullet couldn’t kill you as dead as a modern one.
“Okay…” she whispered, still watching the manhunt, “then first I’m going to take a hot bath.”
She heard a breath of sound beside her and recognized it as laughter. Her lips tilted in response, but this time she resisted the impulse to turn and look at him. Looking at Joshua Stone had proven too disruptive of her peace of mind during the weeks they’d spent together.
After all, he was her partner. A professional relationship. And so far it had been highly professional.
Despite her initial doubts that anyone could live up to the high regard in which Stone was held at the CIA, she had discovered that his reputation for ingenious planning and meticulous execution was well-deserved.
Partner. And nothing else, she reminded herself.
Even if there had been anything between them, now was not the time to allow herself to become distracted by it. Actually, she was determined that no one would ever know exactly how big a distraction Joshua Stone had been. Especially not Joshua Stone.
“Can’t say you don’t need a bath,” he said. “There is a certain primitive charm, however, in listening to your nightly efforts at hygiene. A real exercise in creativity.”
“Mine in making them or yours in listening?” she retorted.
Without warning, he moved closer. His concentration on the scene outside had intensified, in spite of the absurdity of the conversation they were having. And she had known all along that he had begun it to keep her mind off what was going on. Paige pressed back against the wall, allowing him greater access to the crack through which they had been keeping an eye on the search.
“All mine,” he said, his gaze still directed outside. Then he added, “And believe me, Daniels, I’m very creative.”
He was so near that she could feel his breath against her cheek. They had existed in this same kind of intimacy for weeks, compelled into physical proximity by the demands of the mission and by their living conditions. Despite that enforced closeness, things had never gotten anywhere near any other kind of intimacy.
At the beginning, if Josh Stone had attempted to initiate some sort of physical relationship, it would have made her uneasy. And she would have resisted. By now she was curious, to put it mildly, why things had never progressed beyond the easy camaraderie they shared. Stone’s notorious self-control? Or the fact that he didn’t find her desirable? She had to admit his lack of interest had piqued hers, despite her determination not to succumb to his reputed charms.
They had talked about everything under the sun in the long, cold evenings they had spent together. And she had been fascinated by the breadth of his knowledge on subjects ranging from rock and roll to Eastern mysticism. Not once, however, had the talk turned personal. Not until now.
She turned toward him again, at least as much as the close confines of their positions allowed. Josh was still focused on the soldiers outside, and the slant of late afternoon light coming in through the crack illuminated his face.
His skin had been darkened by the never-ceasing wind of this rugged, mountainous country. He hadn’t had a haircut in the four months they had been here. His hair’s natural curl was obvious as it had never been when he was able to keep it close-cropped, which was the way he preferred to wear it. And it was almost as dark as the hole they were cowering in, as black as the thick lashes that the shadowed those pale blue eyes.
His features, taken individually, weren’t extraordinary. Actually, they were harsh. Hard-bitten. His face was dominated by its bone structure: a Roman beak of a nose, high cheekbones, and a determined jaw. Tonight the shadow of several days’ growth of whiskers gave it a truly cutthroat aspect.
Joshua Stone was certainly capable of cutting a throat or two if he felt doing that would be in the best interests of his country. Perfectly capable, she thought, her eyes still examining that unusual combination of features.
They were not a satisfactory explanation of why this man had proven so compelling to her. Maybe it was the contradictions that fascinated her. His almost forbidding looks hid a reckless, devil-may-care personality. And those austere features included a mobile mouth that tilted into a smile at the slightest provocation. During the four brutal months they had spent in this devastated country, Josh had never lost his sense of humor or his patience. And she had sorely tried both.
He turned his head, meeting her eyes. “What is that you do every night?”
Think about you. “Sponge bath,” she said aloud.
“That’s my girl,” he said, turning back to the view through the crack. She watched the visible corner of his lips lift. “Sponge bath, huh?”
“I prefer not to become one of the great unwashed.”
“Implying I have?”
“Well…” she said, drawing the word out.
Suddenly his body, which was pressed against hers, tensed. Paige’s gaze flew back to the slit in the wall. One of the soldiers was coming toward them, his eyes sweeping the area in front of him, rifle held at the ready. She didn’t need the warning glance Josh shot her before he turned back to the crack.
Unconsciously, Paige held her breath as the soldier approached. Like most of his comrades, his boots were old and broken, his uniform a collection of mismatched garments, which had probably been purchased from Soviet military surplus long before the rebellion had broken out. None of which meant he wouldn’t know how to use the weapon he carried. Or wouldn’t be as willing to kill for his country as Joshua Stone would be.
As she would be? Paige wondered. She had gotten brave enough one night to confess to Josh that she’d have a real problem killing any of these people if they were forced to fight their way out of this beleaguered republic. After all, she had said, these aren’t the bad guys.
And she had not forgotten his answer: “Good guys or bad, if they shoot you, Daniels, you’ll be dead. Believe me, whatever you may feel about them, they won’t hesitate to kill you.”
She blocked the ongoing mental debate about what she would do in that worst-case scenario. It wouldn’t happen, she told herself, just as she had since they had begun this. She wouldn’t be faced with that decision. Not now. For all intents and purposes they were through, their mission complete. All they had to do was get to the border, which was less than five miles away, and wait for their contact to pick them up.
All they had to do. Those had been Josh’s words. And he didn’t seem to feel that the fact that those five miles were crawling with rebel forces searching for what they were trying to smuggle out of the country would make any difference.
The soldier shouted something over his shoulder. Despite her familiarity with the languages in the region and the crash course the CIA had given them in this specific one just before they’d left, she couldn’t understand the idiomatic dialect he was using. However, the sweeping gesture that urged the others to join him was universal.
She glanced at Josh again. Without looking her way, he held his semiautomatic up in one hand and pointed to it with the other. Only then did she realize she didn’t have her weapon out.
Pushing against Josh to let him know he had to give her some room, she unbuttoned the middle buttons of her parka and reached inside, her palm closing around the metallic weight of her own pistol. She held it for a second or two, and then she made herself pull it out. By that time there were two other soldiers converging toward their hiding place.
The building she and Josh had taken shelter in had once been some kind of government office. The top stories had been destroyed in one of the Russian air strikes, as had most of the rest of the village, with the exception of an old stone church, which was fairly intact. That had been the first place Josh had considered, but he had rejected it in favor of this one.
This particular building had collapsed inward, spilling structural debris from the top floors into the basement. The subfloor of the bottom story had been left partially intact, however, and it was under that part, sheltered against one of the outside walls, that they were hiding. The foundation had cracked as the building came crashing down, and they were looking out through a narrow separation that had opened up between the subfloor and the stones of the cellar.
They had had to crawl through a maze of fallen beams, broken boards and plaster to get into this corner. At the time, she had been relieved because it had seemed incredibly safe. Directly over their heads, the subfloor sloped toward the center of the basement, leaving just enough room for her to stand upright and be able to look out. Josh, who was taller by a good five or six inches, had to stoop to see out of the crack.
Two other soldiers had now joined the one outside. There could be no doubt that their attention was on this structure. One of them walked forward, stepping up onto the boards directly above her and Josh. Paige ducked her head, closing her eyes as a rain of dirt and broken mortar showered down on them.
The soldier’s boots echoed across the wooden floor above. He was making his way slowly because of the treacherous angle at which the boards inclined and the danger that the damaged floor might collapse under his weight. Which wouldn’t be a good thing for him or for them, Paige thought.
If he did make it across, on the far side of the cellar, clearly visible, was the set of steps they had climbed down this afternoon. The top ones had been exposed by the shattered floor joists, and from there the path she and Josh had taken across the debris-strewn basement wouldn’t be hard to follow. Their footprints would be obvious in the dust that had filtered down after the building’s collapse.
She felt Josh shift so that he was facing the opposite direction, looking behind them now. His movements had been painstakingly careful and almost noiseless, so as not to draw the attention of the soldiers outside. He was trying to get into a defensive position if the one who was in the building found them.
If that happened, Josh would be counting on her to take out the others before they could come inside. And then he would expect her to prevent the soldiers on the other side of the square from joining in the fray. Moving as quietly as Josh had, she raised her weapon, training the muzzle on the two men waiting outside.
Above their heads, the footsteps stopped. Paige didn’t know if that was because the soldier had found the broken beams too dangerous to cross or because he had spotted the cellar steps.
She heard him call out something to the others. One of the words had been stairs, she knew, but she didn’t get much of the rest. Under the assault of adrenaline, her mind seemed numb, focused only on the two men outside, who were her responsibility.
She put her left hand around the stock of the pistol, steeling herself to pull the trigger. That’s all she had to do. Point and squeeze. Don’t think. Just point it and keep squeezing until it’s over.
As the two began to move forward, she could hear the other soldier behind her now, much closer than he had been before. He must be at least part of the way down the steps, and unconsciously, she tightened her grip on the gun.
And then, suddenly, the two outside began looking over their shoulders. Shifting her gaze to that direction, she watched a military transport pull into the village square. The sound of its engine finally reached her ears, a few seconds after the men outside had become aware of it.
The truck seemed as dated as the rebels’ weapons, but given its olive drab color, there was no doubt what it was. Or, after a moment, why it was here. There were distant shouts, and the troops who had been searching the rubble began to trot toward the truck and clamber up onto the open bed. One of the soldiers standing outside the building where she and Josh were hiding turned back and called to their companion.
There was an exchange of shouts. Holding her breath again, Paige listened as the searcher’s footsteps began to retrace his route over the broken boards above their heads. The dust dislodged by his passage this time was less than before.
Then the soldier jumped off the subfloor right in front of the crack. Paige flinched involuntarily with the thud his combat boots made when they hit the ground.
As the three began to walk toward the truck, one of the others threw an affectionate arm around the shoulders of the man who had been in the process of descending into the basement. Consoling him? And then, laughing at something he said in response, the three began to jog toward the truck.
Neither she nor Josh said anything until the rebel forces were all aboard. As soon as they were, the transport began to move, lumbering out onto the main street with a belch of smoke from the exhaust and an ominous grinding of gears. As the sound of its laboring engine faded into the twilight, silence descended over the remains of what had once been a thriving community.
“Close call,” she said. Her heart was beginning to slow, beating in her chest rather than crowding her throat.
“The very best kind,” Josh said softly, his eyes still scanning the deserted village.
Looking for what? she wondered. Someone left behind to secure this place? To see if anything suspicious popped up after the rest of the unit departed?
The two of them wouldn’t show themselves, of course. Not until he was sure there was no one there. The Joshua Stone she had come to know in these four months took nothing for granted.
“What does that mean?” she asked, willing her voice to steadiness. “The ‘best’ kind. As far as I’m concerned there isn’t a ‘good’ close call.”
He turned, his eyes examining her features, which she imagined showed the strain of the last few minutes. “A good close call is one you survive, Daniels. A little danger gets the juices flowing. Keeps you young,” he said.
Paige felt as if she had aged ten years while she’d been waiting for the soldier to discover them. “You, maybe,” she said. “I don’t think danger has that same effect on me.”
“So what effect does it have on you?”
She hesitated a moment, and then she said truthfully, “It makes me glad to be alive.”
“And makes you appreciate life in a way you don’t think about too often,” he suggested.
He was right, of course. She was very glad to be alive. She wasn’t sure, however, if that equated to feeling more alive. Or to feeling younger. As for those flowing juices, there didn’t seem to be enough moisture in her body to work up a good spit. Her mouth was dry, hands trembling. Only with that observation did she realize that she was still holding her weapon.
“Think it’s safe to put this away?” she asked, lifting the pistol as she glanced up to find Josh’s eyes were on her face. They were again illuminated by the light which filtered in through the crack. For the first time since she’d known him, their blue seemed dark. Mysterious and unfathomable.
And his face was set, harder than she had ever seen it before, a tic visible in the tightness of his jaw. As she watched, his lips flattened. Then he turned his head, looking out through the narrow opening once more. She felt the breath he took, deep and uneven.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
He turned to face her, his eyes assessing. Then he stepped back, bending and laying his weapon on the concrete floor. He shrugged out of the camouflage backpack he was wearing, propping it carefully against the wall. Her eyes followed those movements. When Josh straightened, she expected some kind of explanation. Instead he simply looked at her again.
Unspoken permission to put her own gun away, as she had asked? If so, she wasn’t averse. Especially since she understood that would mean Josh felt they were no longer at risk.
They would probably wait out the night here. It was as good a place as any, especially since the village had already been searched. In the morning, according to plan, they would head for the border, deliver what they had been sent here to retrieve, and then get the hell out of Dodge. And despite Josh’s teasing, that hot bath was going to feel very good.
She lowered her pistol, unwrapping the nearly bloodless fingers of her left hand from around those of the right. She usually kept the weapon in the side pocket of the fatigue-type pants she wore, and she wanted it back there, out of the way. She doubted Josh would approve. The location was not particularly handy, not if she needed the gun in a hurry.
Given her ambiguous feelings about engaging in any kind of shoot-out with the rebel forces, however, that was okay by her. She’d leave the quick-draw responses to people like Joshua Stone.
She looked down to guide the insertion of the barrel back through the opening of her parka. Josh’s hands were suddenly there, preventing her. Surprised, she looked up, expecting to find that she had somehow misinterpreted what she had thought was permission to put her weapon away.
As she hesitated, trying to understand, his left hand took the pistol and shoved it into the pocket of his own jacket. And then his right hand slipped into the opened placket of her coat.
Holding her eyes, he began to unbutton her shirt, fingers moving quickly over the task, as if this were something he had done a thousand times. He probably had. But not with her.
As soon as he had undone two or three of the buttons, his hand flattened and pushed inside the opening he’d created. And his palm encountered not bare skin, of course, but her long johns. She could tell by the sudden widening of those blue eyes that he hadn’t expected the thermal underwear, despite the climate.
“Think you could possibly have on any more clothes, Daniels?” he asked, the teasing note back in his voice.
She was almost too shocked by what had happened to formulate an answer. And more shocked when his palm moved upward to cup the softness of her breast. As it did, his eyes dilated slightly, the pupils expanding outward into that rim of sapphire.
She wasn’t wearing a bra. She wasn’t all that well-endowed to begin with. Besides, Josh was right. She had on so many layers of clothing as protection against the cold that she had known no one would ever be able to tell. Now, of course…
Josh’s thumb and forefinger found her nipple, pebbled with cold and the aftereffects of fear. It seemed to have hardened even more now with anticipation. Watching her face, he rolled it between his fingers, the pressure almost enough to be pain. And almost ecstasy. As the sweet, hot heat began to roil through her lower body, she closed her eyes, exhaling through her mouth the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
“You like that?” he asked softly, increasing the pressure.
She nodded wordlessly. The juices he’d talked about flooded her body in a molten stream of sensation as he touched her.
“Then tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me you like it, Daniels. I need to hear you say it.”
“I like it,” she whispered, knowing only now that this was what she had been waiting for for four months. Right or wrong. Smart or very stupid, she had been waiting for Joshua Stone to touch her. Waiting for him to claim her body. To possess it.
She wanted him to do those things. Most of all, she wanted him. Wanted him with a need so sharp it, too, verged on pain.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” he whispered, seeming to echo her silent confession. “A very long time. Every night I’d listen to the rustle of your clothes, and I’d imagine I was undressing you. And then I’d hear that cloth moving over your skin, and I’d imagine my mouth there instead. My tongue touching all the places you were bathing. But I’d be bathing them. Caressing them. Caressing you.”
He had put his cheek against her forehead, and his mouth was moving beside her temple, his whiskers abrasive. His breath was warm and moist as it stirred over the fragile skin, which had already dampened with a fine dew of perspiration just at the thought of what he was saying. Another sensation to add to the dominance of his fingers, which had never ceased their movement over and around her nipple.
“All those cold nights, I’d lie in that bed thinking about how warm I’d be if you were under me, your skin sliding, wet and slick, against mine.”
The last was so soft the words were little more than breath. Less sound than the suggestion of it. And the images they produced were as seductive as the husky timbre of his voice. His mouth on her skin, warm lips gliding over her cold, shivering body. His tongue touching all the intimate places that no man had ever touched in that way before. No one before Josh Stone.
Compared to him, she had known she was inexperienced. Maybe that had been one of the things she had found so exciting. She had known that if he ever made love to her, it would happen in exactly this way. He wouldn’t ask permission. Or give her warning. He would simply take her. Dominating. Controlling.
And even if she had no idea what she wanted, he would know how to please her. She had understood from the beginning that he would be this kind of lover. She had wanted him to be.
He lowered his head, putting his lips against her neck. His tongue followed the blood as it pulsed through the artery there. Then it traced to her ear, dipping inside, and slowly trailed downward again, until his mouth encountered the top of her shirt.
Think you could possibly have on any more clothes, Daniels? he had asked. But what she had put on, she could take off.
She wanted his lips and his tongue on her body. Moving over the hollow of her collarbone and across the small, highly sensitized swell of her breast. Circling her nipple, just as his fingers had caressed it, their movements sure and unhurried. So sure. So knowing. As his mouth would be.
She turned her head, bending her knees a little so she could put her lips under his. His head tilted to accommodate the kiss, his mouth fastening hungrily over hers. There was nothing tentative about the movement, but he didn’t push his tongue inside as she expected. His lips played with hers, making contact and then breaking it, only to touch her mouth again at a slightly different angle. A series of small weightless kisses, which gradually gave way to something else.
His mouth opened, his lips moist and warm, trailing languidly over hers. Breaking off and then coming back to hers again. And again. And yet again.
Only after what seemed an eternity did his mouth fully open and his tongue contact hers. Her lips had already parted, ready for the invasion that was not an invasion, but the long-awaited answer to an unspoken invitation.
His head turned slightly, the alignment again perfect. He eased her against the wall at her back, one arm around her waist. His fingers deserted her breast and worked at the buttons of her clothing, a barrier between them that neither wanted there.
He never released her mouth, however, plundering it even as he unfastened and pushed aside layers of fabric. He eased her parka over her shoulders, guiding it down her arms, and she let it fall to the floor.
She should have felt the cold, but she didn’t. She was aware of nothing but the movement of his mouth and his hands. After he had tugged her shirt out of her pants and unfastened the last of its buttons, it followed the jacket to the floor. Only when he pulled the top of her thermal underwear over her head did he break the contact of the kiss, just long enough to accomplish that task.
“Your turn,” he said, his mouth again over hers, so that the words were muffled by her lips, almost lost against them. Her mind seemed drugged by his kisses, so that she didn’t respond for a moment. And he didn’t wait.
He unzipped his parka, shrugging out of it and dropping it onto the floor beside hers. And then he took her hands and put them against the buttons of his shirt. Finally, she seemed to comprehend what he wanted her to do.
Her fingers trembled over the simple task, and after a moment his hands lifted, brushing hers aside as he pulled the shirt out of his pants and then apart, those two actions almost simultaneous. And as soon as he had, he leaned against her.
His bare chest pressed against her breasts, flattening them, and her breath released in a low moan. She was conscious on some level of the cold, damp stones behind her, but she was far more conscious of the warmth of the solid wall of his chest, hair-roughened, moving enticingly against the front of her body. Against the hardened peaks of her breasts.
Her arms went around him, spread hands caressing. Following the corded muscle of his shoulders and the long, elegantly sculpted back and narrow waist. Trailing up the smoothly ringed column of his spine.
They were completely naked above the waist, and oblivious to the cold. Their bodies were pressed tightly together. Hands exploring. And it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Not for either of them.
His palms cupped under her hips, lifting her into his erection. She gasped again as she felt the undeniable proof that he was as aroused by what they were doing as she was. A little danger gets the juices flowing.
Was that what this was all about? A reaction to what had just occurred? To the close call they’d had? And if it were? she asked herself, the intellectual question almost unimportant as her palms moved over the warm, smooth skin of his back. Did she really care about his motives? Were hers any purer?
This was about two people coming together after a long and tantalizing physical awareness. Maybe that’s all it was for him, despite what else it was for her. And if, as his reputation indicated, this was all Joshua Stone was ever willing to give, she would take it. Her decision. And her choice.
She arched her back, changing resolution into action. His hands were still cupped under her hips, and as she moved, he pulled her closer, groaning as their bodies came together, as close as they could get physically, given the situation.
And then he released her, dropping her back to the ground so quickly she staggered. His hands, working at the fastening of her pants, steadied her by the simple expedient of grabbing a handful of their fabric.
Then, he was unbuttoning and unzipping with a frenzied urgency. Her hands found the waistband of his trousers, working as hurriedly, as desperately.
Given that frenzy, she expected him to take her standing up, pressed against the wall behind her. Instead, he bent, putting one knee on the floor, and pulled the two down-filled parkas together to form a makeshift pallet at her feet.
When he looked up, the slant of fading light from the crack over his head fell on his eyes, highlighting them. Their pupils were wildly dilated now, either from the darkness in the cellar or because of what was happening between them.
She could barely see the rest of his features, but his mouth was set again, almost stern, unsmiling. And for some reason a jolt of anxiety moved through her stomach. That was not the way a man about to make love should look.
When he held up his hand, inviting her to join him on top of the two parkas, she never thought about refusing. She put her still-trembling fingers into his strong, dark ones, letting him pull her down to the spread coats. As his body lowered over hers, moving as if he had all the time in the world, the last thing she saw before the subtle remains of daylight faded away into night were Joshua Stone’s eyes looking down into hers.
And no matter how many times she recreated that scene during the next three years, she found she could never quite be sure what had been in them.
Chapter One
“Special Ops is asking for you.”
Paige glanced up from the magnifier through which she was studying the latest satellite images of a site along the Russia-Afghanistan border. Her boss hadn’t stopped at her desk. He had simply tossed the paper that held the message he had delivered down on it and then disappeared into his own office.
Special Ops, she thought, wondering how long it had been since she had heard those words. Not nearly long enough.
She wished she could treat the summons as casually as Pete Logan had. Instead, the phrase created an unwanted frisson of anxiety. Almost in self-defense, she looked down through the magnifying glass again, ignoring the paper Logan had dropped on her desk and trying to bring her concentration back to the photographs that had come in only an hour ago.
She had been totally absorbed in them before the interruption. After all, this was her job. Being at the beck and call of Special Operations was not, she thought fiercely, feeling her anger build, despite her attempt to focus on the satellite images. The days she had spent with the spooks were over and done. Long gone. Long forgotten.
Which was why, of course, her ability to concentrate was all of a sudden shot to hell, she thought in disgust. She pushed the magnifier away, the motion almost violent.
Special Ops. What the hell could Special Ops want with her? She glanced at the paper lying on the outer edge of her desk, as reluctant to pick it up as if it were something vile.
The print was facing the other direction, and she couldn’t quite manage to decipher the upsidedown signature of whoever had issued the request. After a fruitless few seconds of trying, she reached out and turned the paper around, her eyes automatically scanning the one-line message before they fell to the name at the bottom. It was one she recognized.
Her gaze lifted to the door of Logan’s office, but she resisted the impulse to go in and ask if he knew any details. Even if he did, it wouldn’t change anything. She knew that. She would have to answer this summons, no matter how unpleasant reentering that world, if only for a little while, might be.
Too many memories, she thought. Too many ghosts. And she wasn’t looking forward to resurrecting a single one of them.
“WHY NOW?” Paige asked. “I told you people everything I knew when it happened.”
“You people?” Carl Steiner repeated pointedly, his tented fingers resting under his chin. His dark eyes were amused.
She understood why he had questioned her wording. She had once been one of the people assigned to the CIA’s Special Operations Branch, which Steiner was now head of.
“I told Griff,” she said. “It’s in the incident report.”
“Tell me,” Steiner said. He hadn’t raised his voice, but that was obviously an order. As an assistant deputy director, he was entitled to give them.
Paige didn’t know why she would hesitate to tell him. Other than the fact that she couldn’t see any point in bringing something to life that had been stone-cold dead, maybe even back when she had reported on it to Griff Cabot. Nearly three years ago, she realized with a sense of disbelief.
It didn’t seem possible it had been that long since she had sat in this room pouring out that painful story to someone she considered a friend. Her eyes rose to study the face of the man who now sat behind Cabot’s desk. A man who wasn’t her friend and never had been.
She didn’t have any reason to dislike Carl Steiner. Not any concrete one, anyway. When the External Security Team had been disbanded, however, there had been a lot of rumors that this man had had a major role in that decision.
They had all known, intellectually at least, from the moment of Cabot’s death that the demise of his team would follow. But when the order had come down, none of them had been prepared. The team and their relationships to one another had been too important. Too much a part of who each of them had been then.
“I want you to tell me about Joshua Stone,” Steiner said, his eyes on her face.
Paige had no idea what it might reveal, but that same sensation she had felt when she had heard her boss say Special Ops lurched through her stomach again. Just at the sound of the name. His name.
“He disappeared,” she said. And then nothing else.
She didn’t know what Steiner wanted from her. Or why they were bringing this up after all this time. Joshua Stone was almost certainly dead and buried in some frozen wasteland thousands of miles from here. There was no reason not to let him stay buried, she thought, resenting Steiner’s stirring of the ashes of her life. Particularly these.
“Circumstances?” Steiner prodded, glancing down at a folder in front of him.
Paige’s eyes followed his, wondering if he were looking at Griff’s report. And wondering if Cabot had written down everything she had told him. Even those parts she had clearly intended to be for his ears only.
Maybe there ought to be an official designation within government communications for the kind of conversation they had shared that day. She had never told anyone else the truth about what had happened in Vladistan. No one but Griff. And no matter what Steiner said, she knew she never would.
“We had completed our mission,” she said. As soon she uttered the word “mission,” her mind had gone back, reliving those long-ago events, in spite of the fact that she had sworn never to revisit these memories.
Steiner hadn’t given her much choice, however, and she supposed it would be better just to get this over. Tell him only as much as she wanted to and no more. And trust that Griff hadn’t betrayed her confidence about the rest.
“We were supposed to meet our contact the next day,” she continued, forcing the words through her throat, which seemed constricted. “There was more rebel activity along the border than we had expected. We had to hide a few times from patrols, the last time just a few miles from the border. We knew we were cutting it close, but…it hadn’t been an easy assignment.”
Her voice faded, thinking how true that was. The area had been unstable when they had been sent in, and in the months they had spent there, everything had fallen apart. Including their in-country support. At the last, it had been just her and Josh.
“Go on,” Steiner prompted.
“And then…Stone disappeared,” Paige said, her voice softer than she had intended. More emotional? People like Steiner didn’t like emotion, not of any kind. That’s why they were here. Why they were the ones in charge.
“You woke up the morning before you were to cross the border and found that Stone was missing.”
She nodded, determined not to remember the events of the night before that discovery. She had done that too many times. Especially during that first year.
A long time ago. Just saying those words in her head was a form of comfort, putting distance between her life now and what had happened then. Do it, she told herself. Tell him the rest and be done with it. Put it behind you again.
“Russian tanks rolled in less than four hours later, and Griff, through our contact, ordered me out. I wasn’t given any choice about whether I wanted to leave or not.”
“And exactly what did you do in those four hours?”
There seemed to be accusation in the tone of the question, and Paige’s eyes narrowed against it. “I tried to find Josh. We had to get out before the Russians came, so I tried to find him.”
“And the nerve agent?”
That’s why they had been sent into Vladistan. To find and bring out a deadly neurological toxin, a new class of nerve agent for which there were no antidotes. It had been developed in one of the old Soviet weapons complexes, located in the region. When the rebellion started, the fear in the West was that the rebels might use the agent against the invading Russian troops, provoking a nuclear retaliation.
And then suddenly, feeling stupid that she hadn’t figured it out before, Paige realized this was what Steiner’s summons was all about. There was again unrest within Vladistan. Some people were already predicting another rebellion. Had that nerve agent now shown up in the wrong hands?
It could, of course. It could have at anytime during the last three years, she supposed, because when Joshua Stone had disappeared, that lethal toxin had disappeared with him.
“Josh was carrying it in his backpack,” she said. “I never saw it again.” Or him.
She had told Griff the truth about what had happened between them. A truth that might even be included in the folder Steiner had in front of him, but she didn’t intend to mention her personal involvement with Joshua Stone unless Steiner brought it up. The uneasy silence built until he broke it.
“When you woke up,” Steiner said, his voice flat, no longer questioning, “Stone was gone.”
Paige nodded.
“And you never saw him again?”
Something about the question bothered her. Not the words themselves, which were only the truth, but the nuance of tone in which he had asked. Was that skepticism she heard?
“Griff believed Josh must have been killed shortly after he left the building where we had taken shelter. The whole area was in chaos. Full of rebel patrols.”
“Yet Stone, an experienced operative, left the safety of your hiding place. And he left it alone, leaving you asleep.”
“Maybe he heard something and went out to investigate.”
She had tried for three years to come up with a viable explanation for Josh’s actions. That was the only one that made any kind of sense to her. She could tell by Steiner’s eyes that it made none to him.
“Or maybe he had an appointment,” Steiner said. “A highly lucrative one.”
At the time of his disappearance there had been elements within the agency who suggested Joshua Stone had seen an opportunity to make a fortune and had taken it. A new and very lethal nerve agent would bring millions on the terrorist black market. Stone had both the skills to get it out of the country, and, with his External Security Team experience, the contacts that would be necessary to sell it.
Griff Cabot had never credited that explanation for Josh’s disappearance. Cabot had always had complete confidence in the integrity of his team. Stone, however, wouldn’t have been the first CIA operative to have gone rogue, Paige admitted. And there had been something about his eyes that last night…
“If you’re suggesting that Joshua Stone turned traitor, then you need to review his record,” she said aloud, blocking that niggling, disloyal image. “Griff Cabot, who knew Stone better than anyone else, dismissed that possibility out of hand.”
“Griff would never admit that one of his operatives had gone bad. I’m afraid I’m not quite that…trusting.”
“If you seriously believe Joshua Stone sold that nerve agent to the highest bidder, then how do you explain why it’s never been used?” A shot in the dark, Paige acknowledged, but she had heard nothing in the last three years to suggest it had.
“Maybe whoever bought it is biding their time, waiting for the right opportunity.”
“Or maybe whoever killed Stone never found the toxin,” Paige said. “Maybe they never realized what he was carrying.”
“I confess I prefer your scenario to mine,” Steiner said. “I suppose only time will tell which of us is right.”
“It seems to me that three years is time enough to tell. Joshua Stone wasn’t a traitor.”
“And I sincerely hope you’re right about that, too,” Steiner said, closing the folder and getting to his feet. “If we need any further information, we’ll be in touch.”
His face was unreadable, but it was clear from his words that he considered the interview to be at an end. Paige knew she should be relieved, both that it was over and that his questions had been no more probing. For some reason, however, there was a letdown after the abruptness with which this questioning had ended. The whole thing seemed anticlimactic, especially in the face of the frightening suggestions he had made.
Paige stood, pushing the heavy leather chair back from the edge of the desk. She wondered if she should offer him her hand and decided, illogically, that she didn’t want to shake hands with Carl Steiner. She didn’t want anymore contact with him than was necessary. She reached the door to his office and then, very definitely against her better judgment, she turned back.
Steiner was still standing behind his desk. He was looking down at the file he had just closed, the tips of the fingers of his right hand resting on top of it, as if it might spring open if he didn’t hold it shut.
“Why now?” she asked again.
His dark eyes lifted, questioning.
“Why bring me in to talk about this now?” she asked.
There was the smallest of pauses, not even enough to call suspicious, unless you were already suspicious. “The region is becoming unstable again. This is a loose end that was never satisfactorily resolved. The agency doesn’t like those. Since you were the last person to see Stone alive…”
A loose end? Somehow Paige didn’t think he meant the disappearance of Joshua Stone. Steiner’s concern was almost certainly for that incredibly dangerous chemical weapon, which had gone missing in a region noted for being a powder keg.
As she watched, the thin lips of the head of Special Ops moved into what was supposed to be a smile. It seemed cold, lacking in feeling. Maybe someone like Steiner didn’t really feel. Maybe that’s what made him good at this. And maybe that’s what had made her such a failure.
“Good luck,” she said, barely avoiding sarcasm.
She put her hand on the knob and opened the door, stepping out into the deserted hallway, and then closing it carefully behind her, deliberately not letting it make any noise.
She hadn’t believed him, she realized. Intuition, maybe, but she thought Carl Steiner was lying about wanting to tie up loose ends. Something had happened, something besides the ongoing instability of that area. Something that had revived the mystery of Joshua Stone’s disappearance.
However, whatever was happening in Special Operations these days, she told herself determinedly, was no longer of any concern to her. And thank God, it was also no longer her responsibility.
JACK THOMPSON hunched his shoulders, holding the evening paper he’d just bought over his head as he made a run for the cab that had finally pulled up to the curb in front of his office building. He hated rain. Especially cold rain. It made all the bones that had been broken ache with a renewed vengeance.
He jerked open the cab door, slid in across the cold vinyl of the back seat, and then slammed it shut against the downpour. After he gave the driver his address, he settled gratefully into the taxi’s stale warmth.
He’d take a couple of extra-strength aspirin when he got home, he decided, and turn up the thermostat. He had some stronger stuff, but he saved that for the headaches. He hadn’t had one of those in almost three weeks, he realized, and he hoped to God he never had another.
He gazed out the window as they began to move, watching the twilight-darkened streets rush by through the screen of raindrops on the glass. A car had pulled out from a parking place on the opposite side of the street at the same time the cab had, and its headlights briefly haloed the droplets with rims of gold.
“Rain’s a bitch,” the driver said, “but I hear this stuff’ll turn to snow tonight. I ain’t looking forward to that either.”
Jack pulled his eyes from the wet gleam of the sidewalks, which were reflecting the lights from the stores behind them, and glanced at the back of the driver’s head.
“I hadn’t heard about the snow,” he said.
“Not from around here, are you?” the driver asked, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “Originally, I mean.”
“No,” Jack said. His accent was different enough that it sometimes evoked comment, although Atlanta was pretty cosmopolitan these days. He wasn’t from the South, however, and anyone who was spotted that immediately.
“Where you from?”
He knew the driver was only making conversation, maybe to relieve boredom, maybe in hopes of a larger tip. And Jack could have supplied the facts easily enough. Trying to feel some connection with them, he had gone over the information the cops had provided a million times.
He knew everything on those sheets by heart. And none of it felt real. Or meant anything to him. That would pass, the doctors had assured him. That feeling of disassociation with who he was. Simply the lingering result of the head injury. And, they had said, he was lucky its effects hadn’t been more severe.
“Don’t push it,” the psychiatrist he had seen at the last hospital had warned. That had been just before Jack had been released from the rehab center, his physical injuries healed, even if his memory hadn’t yet returned. “If it comes, it comes. If you try to get it all back, if you push too hard, then…who knows what may happen?” the doctor had said, shrugging.
Jack could remember wondering exactly what he meant by that. He had made it sound as if Jack’s brain would implode or something if he tried to force the return of those memories.
Still, he knew they were there, lying just below the surface of his mind. Sometimes, especially in dreams, they were so close he could almost touch them. It was like looking down into a dark pond and seeing things beneath the surface, murky and unclear, but definitely there. Just a little too far down to reach.
“Hey, buddy,” the cabbie said.
Jack’s eyes came back up, meeting the questioning ones in the rearview mirror. The cabbie was looking at him as if he thought Jack was some kind of nutcase. People did that sometimes. They seemed to pick up on the fact that there was something wrong. That something about him didn’t fit anymore. Jack never was quite sure how they knew, but their eyes always looked at him just like this guy’s were now.
“Des Moines,” he said.
“Yeah?” the driver said, his voice relieved. “Could’a fooled me. That don’t sound like the Midwest.”
Jack smiled, and then he deliberately turned his head, looking out the window again as the rain-glazed streets swept by. He had heard that comment a couple of times before, and it had bothered him enough that he had even checked it out. Not so much because of the accent, but because of the way he felt.
So he had paid one of those people-find agencies on the Web to do a search for a Jack Thompson from Des Moines. It had all been there. Exactly like the cops had told him.
Then why the hell can’t I remember any of it? Why the hell doesn’t any of it feel as if it has a damn thing to do with me?
There was no answer from the gathering darkness to either of those questions. Just as there hadn’t been for the past three months. And he was beginning to be forced to think about the possibility that there never would be.
PAIGE KNEW as soon as she opened the door to her apartment that someone had been there. A hint of something alien lingered in the familiar air. It took her a second or two to identify the smell as cigarette smoke.
Maybe not the smoke itself, she acknowledged, taking a deep breath, but the whiff of it that clings to a chronic smoker’s clothes and hair. She stood before the door she had closed behind her, wondering if there was someone else in her apartment. A burglar? Or another, more dangerous kind of intruder?
It felt empty, however. She knew intuitively that whoever had been here was now gone. If she had come home half an hour later, the heating system and the filters would probably have taken care of the faint odor, and she would never have known.
The first thing she did was to take the semiautomatic out of the bedside drawer where she kept it. Although she was grateful to have it in her hand, it felt almost as alien as the ghostly scent she was chasing. Then, despite her sense that there was no one here, she checked out all four rooms, opening closets, looking under the bed and behind the shower curtain.
Nothing seemed to have been taken or disturbed. Despite that, she couldn’t help but feel as if she had been invaded. Violated, somehow. This was her home, and someone had come into it without her permission.
It wasn’t until her hand was on the phone to report the break-in, that she remembered the call to maintenance she’d made. More than three weeks ago, she realized. It had been her first request for repairs since she had moved in. Was it possible, she wondered, that the maintenance staff had let themselves in without notifying her they were coming?
Which should be easy enough to check out. She walked over to the light switch by the door that led from the living room into the kitchen. It controlled the overhead fixture in the kitchen and had started malfunctioning a few weeks ago.
Of course, she could walk across the kitchen and turn on the overhead light by using the switch beside the sink, but since these were newly constructed apartments, something going wrong so quickly had seemed strange. She had been afraid it might mean faulty wiring, which had made her nervous enough to call.
She pushed the switch up now, and the fixture in the middle of the kitchen ceiling didn’t respond. Which didn’t necessarily mean maintenance hadn’t been here, she acknowledged. Just that they hadn’t fixed whatever was wrong.
Paige walked back to the phone, shrugging out of her coat and throwing it over the back of the couch as she did. She took the resident manager’s card out of the drawer of the end table where the phone was sitting, and laying the pistol down, she punched in his number. She’d feel better knowing that he had sent someone up here today, she thought, as she listened to the distant ring. A hell of a lot better.
When he said hello, she got right to the point. “This is Paige Daniels in 1228. I was just wondering if you sent somebody up here to look at my kitchen light switch?”
“Hold on a minute,” the manager said. In the background she could hear the sound of papers rattling and finally he came back on the line. “It’s gonna be a while on that, Miss Daniels. The crews are taking care of emergency situations first—heating and plumbing problems. You did say the other switch still works?”
One part of her mind was assimilating his denial and his questions. The other part was trying to figure who had been here if not maintenance. “It works,” she agreed. The hand that wasn’t holding the phone closed over the pistol again. “Look, are you absolutely sure no one’s been up here today?”
“The switch start working again? Sometimes wiring does that. Probably just a short. If I were you, I’d just keep it off until we can get somebody up there to take a look at it.
“Would it be better to throw the breaker?” she asked, realizing only now that it was possible what she had smelled hadn’t been tobacco smoke. Maybe it had been hot wiring.
“I don’t see why you’d need to do that. Besides, that breaker probably controls some other stuff, too.”
“I’m a little nervous because I smelled smoke when I came in from work,” she said, readily discarding her original theory.
“Just now?”
“About five minutes ago.”
“You still smell it?”
She took a breath, drawing air in through her nose. She had been inside long enough now that she couldn’t smell anything. Coming in from the fresh air outside had made the scent of smoke obvious. Now however…
“I’m not sure. Look, could you just come up here and check out that switch? Maybe something’s hot under the plate.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. She couldn’t blame him. It was Friday night, already late because she had stopped for dinner on the way home. And maintenance wasn’t his job. Of course, keeping the complex from burning down probably was, at least as far as his employers would be concerned.
“I’ll be right there,” he said, apparently reaching that conclusion at the same time. “You understand I can’t fix the switch, but I can make sure nothing’s smoldering under it.”
“Thanks,” Paige said. “I really appreciate this.”
She put the phone down and walked back over to the wall plate. It looked innocent enough. No telltale threads of smoke escaping from behind the ubiquitous plastic rectangle. She was probably being ridiculous.
She took a quick look around the apartment. There were a few dishes in the sink and her coat was out. She walked across to the couch and picked it up. She opened the drawer of the phone table and slipped the pistol inside before she carried her coat over to the hall closet and hung it up.
After she had shoved the dirty plate and cup from breakfast into the dishwasher, she headed back to take another look at the switch plate. She put her nose close to it, inhaling deeply, trying to find any trace of what she had smelled before. It seemed to have vanished, however, and she straightened, blowing the air she had just inhaled out in a small sigh of frustration.
She was headed back to the bedroom to look into her closet again when the doorbell rang. Maybe maintenance was slow, but the resident manager seemed to be on the ball.
Paige hurried to the door and looked out through the peephole. It was the same guy who had showed her the apartment six months ago. She turned the latch and the knob at the same time, a two-handed operation, and threw open the door.
“Hi,” he said. The shoulders of his jacket were dark from the rain. He was carrying a small screw driver, and he had a pager on his belt, revealed by the open windbreaker.
Just as she had earlier, he stopped on the threshold and, lifting his nose, scented the air like a hunting dog. “Don’t smell a thing,” he said, smiling.
“Maybe it’s a false alarm, but I definitely smelled something when I came in.”
She didn’t mention that her first impression had been cigarette smoke and that she had thought someone had been in here. Right now all she wanted was for him to make sure that during the night her apartment wasn’t going to go up in flames with her inside it. Little enough to ask, she told herself.
He walked over to the switch and made the same sniff test she had made. She expected another comment about not smelling anything, but he didn’t make it. Instead, he walked into the kitchen, and she heard him open the circuit box. There were clicking noises, and the light in the kitchen went off.
When he came back, he said, “Let’s take a look.”
He placed the tip of the screwdriver into one of the tiny Phillips head screws and began to unthread it. When he had finished with the first screw, he took the other one out, slipping the plastic plate off the wall. There was no whiff of smoke from the rough cut opening behind it. There was only a tangle of wires, none of them smoldering.
The manager put the screwdriver and the cover plate on the floor, carefully laying the screws on top of it. He bent so that he was on eye level with the hole in the wall. Then he reached into it with one finger, pushing around amid the wires.
“Nothing hot. No smoke. I think that it probably—” His voice stopped, as his finger probed deeper into the hole. “What in the world?” he said, the words almost under his breath.
Hearing them, Paige edged closer, anticipating a glimpse of a frayed or burnt wire. She couldn’t see anything, however, and other than bending down and putting her head next to his as he poked around in there, she wasn’t likely to.
Almost as soon as she thought that, he inserted his thumb as well as his index finger into the hole, fumbling among the wires. And when he straightened, he brought something small and dark out of the opening. He laid it on the palm of his other hand.
“Never seen anything like this before,” he said. “Not in a wall switch. Maybe they were going to put in a dimmer and then changed their minds. Cost overruns, maybe. They must have decided to go with a less expensive option.”
He held the object he’d retrieved from the faulty switch out for Paige’s inspection. She didn’t need a closer look. She had recognized it immediately. What the resident manager had just taken out of the wall of her apartment was the latest version of a very sensitive listening device. At some time during the six months she had lived here, someone had bugged her apartment.
SHE SPENT most of the night tossing and turning, everything that had happened running endlessly through her head. She replayed Steiner’s words, examining each of them, even trying to remember the expression on his face when he’d said them. And every time she did, she came back to the same comment. Something that hadn’t reverberated as strongly then as it should have.
Of course, at the time she hadn’t known that the agency was bugging her apartment. She still didn’t know that, she admitted, trying to be reasonable. What she did know was that there had been a very sophisticated listening device planted in her wall, exactly like the state-of-the-art ones the CIA used.
She couldn’t know how long the bug had been in place, but the light switch had started acting up after she’d moved in. Maybe a couple of months ago. Maybe a little less.
And another thing she knew was that someone had been inside her apartment today. To put the device in her wall? Or to check on it because it had stopped working?
Or had they been there for some reason totally unrelated to the bug. To search the apartment? To read her computer files? She hadn’t found any evidence of either of those things, but she knew that whoever the agency sent would be good at what they did.
And “good at what they did” brought her back to the other significant thing that had happened today: Steiner’s summons and the comments he had made as she had been about to go out his door. This was a loose end that was never satisfactorily resolved. Since you were the last person to see him alive…
She thought all the pertinent questions about that mission been asked back then. And as far as she knew, they had been answered to the agency’s satisfaction. Or at least to the satisfaction of anyone who had known Joshua Stone.
Had a trusted operative disappeared in order to sell that nerve agent on the black market, as Steiner implied? There was no denying such a sale would have been a huge temptation for some people. Not for Joshua Stone. She would never believe that.
Griff Cabot had believed that Stone had been captured by one of the opposing sides in the rebellion. If the Russians had taken him prisoner, they might have tried to arrange a trade, exchanging Josh for one of their own compromised agents. Washington usually agreed to such deals to get their people home, and Cabot would have done his best to influence them to make that decision. As far as Paige knew, no such offer had ever been made.
The strongest likelihood, given the time frame, was that Josh had heard someone outside the cellar that night. He had gone to investigate and been captured by the rebel forces.
Maybe they had taken him with them as they retreated from the Russian advance, intending to interrogate him later. Or maybe whoever had captured Josh hadn’t known about the theft of the toxin. Maybe they had simply killed him, leaving his body and the backpack he’d carried in the snow, never knowing what a valuable prize they’d lost.
Whatever happened, Joshua Stone, the most experienced member of the External Security Team, had disappeared forever on that mission. And Paige Daniels, the novice, had escaped from Vladistan as Russian tanks rolled across its border. She had escaped, and Josh had not. Maybe, as she had always believed in her heart, because he had gone out into that dangerous darkness to protect her from whatever he had heard.
Lying in her bed, eyes open and staring, the haunting images of that night played again through her consciousness. The same night he had made love to her for hours, until she had finally drifted into a deep and exhausted sleep.
She hadn’t allowed herself to indulge in this particular exercise in futility in a very long time, but she didn’t deny those memories tonight. And they steeled her determination to prove Carl Steiner was wrong. She was as convinced today as she had been then that Joshua Stone hadn’t been a traitor.
By bugging her apartment the agency seemed to be trying to implicate her in whatever they imagined Josh had done three years ago. And she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong on that mission. Nothing except sleep while someone took her partner. Nothing except survive when he hadn’t.
Now someone in his own agency was trying to blacken Joshua Stone’s name. And there was no one from the External Security Team left to defend his reputation. No one but her.
She had failed him once before. No one had ever seemed to blame her, but she had always blamed herself. And after three long years, she had discovered that the ghost of Joshua Stone was one she needed very badly to put to rest.
Chapter Two
Reactivated.
Paige stared at the screen, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. As she tried to think what else that word could possibly mean, she fought a surge of emotion she didn’t want to feel, not after all this time.
She had started her search as soon as she’d gotten into the office this morning, trying to discover what had set Steiner off. Something must have come to light fairly recently that had made him question Stone’s disappearance. Something that had made him call her in. Something that had made them plant a listening device in her apartment. Something.
She had spent most of the day scanning page after page of the tedious situation reports that had come in about Vladistan during the last four months. Because of her work in Sector Analysis, she was already familiar with most of this material. And on closer examination she had found nothing that might be construed as having anything to do with Josh or with the nerve agent he had been carrying when he’d disappeared. The computers had been next, and she had cross-referenced everything she could think of that might apply to the region, to the rebellion, or to that particular mission. And again, she had come up empty.
It was only then, an exercise in nostalgia perhaps or maybe because she had run out of ideas, that she had tried to access the old External Security Team files. Unbelievably, she had found that the access codes had never been changed. The files themselves were intact, even though the team hadn’t even been in existence for more than two and a half years.
The bureaucratic mind works in mysterious ways, Paige had thought, as she typed in Joshua Stone’s name. When the file came up, she had discovered the reactivated notation. And the date it had been made was less than four months ago. She scrolled through the whole thing, trying to find more recent additions or changes, but there were none.
Which made no sense, she thought in frustration. Why activate a dead file and then do nothing with it? Or was the reactivation simply a clerical error? Did somebody key in the wrong access number? Things like that happened, even at the CIA.
And she might have been willing to believe they had in this case, if it hadn’t been for Steiner’s questions yesterday. If you put these two things together, they had to mean something. Something obviously connected to Joshua Stone’s disappearance.
Reactivated. There was nothing else there. Nothing after that one entry, which had brought a dead file back to life and out of limbo where it should have remained. Why would someone reactivate a file and then not put anything in it? That made no sense. Unless…
When the explanation hit her, producing a rush of adrenaline so strong her hands began to shake, it all made sense. Because it fit the pattern. And the bureaucratic mind-set. Joshua Stone had been a member of External Security, and she knew what had happened to the other operatives on that team.
As far as she could tell, she was the only one who was still working for the agency. After the fiasco in Vladistan, she had requested a move back into Sector Analysis. Griff had tried to talk her out of leaving, but the transfer had gone through.
Then Cabot had been killed, and the elite antiterrorist team he’d assembled stood down. Since she hadn’t been a member long enough to have participated in any of the black ops missions the EST was famous for, Paige couldn’t represent any threat to security, and she had been allowed to stay in the CIA.
The other agents, however, had been destroyed—at least on paper. And then they had been carefully resurrected. Recreated as totally different people, their original identities erased. Their agency records had been purged, so that no one could ever trace those men, or what they had done, back to the agency.
In most cases, their names had been changed and they had been relocated. At least a couple of them, like Jordan Cross, had had their physical appearance altered as well.
Now she was looking at the agency’s file on Joshua Stone, a man who had been presumed dead before the team was disbanded. It had been reactivated, brought back to life less than four months ago. Then nothing had been added to the folder, so maybe…
Paige closed the file and backtracked. There was no “list all” feature on these kinds of secure files, so when she reached the main directory, she typed in the date when the designation on Stone’s file had been changed. Then her hands hovered over the keyboard as she stared at those numbers, almost afraid of what she might find. Finally, holding her breath, she hit Search.
And was bitterly disappointed when there were no results, other than in the folder she had just closed. There was no other file with a matching date in this entire section of the records. There shouldn’t be any recent dates, of course, since the team was no longer in existence, but that didn’t explain why someone had changed the designation of Josh’s folder.
She couldn’t be wrong about this. It fit. It made sense. Maybe she was just rushing the bureaucracy, giving them more credit for efficiency than they deserved. After all, it might have taken them a while to decide what to do.
She typed in the following day’s date. And when there were no results for that one either, she typed the next date in the blank. Then the next, working methodically now.
And finally, ten days after somebody had brought Joshua Stone’s file back to life, there it was. A matching date. In the middle of all the inactive folders of a now-defunct, highly secretive special operations team was a brand new file. A new name. But not a new man, Paige knew with absolute certainty.
“Joshua Stone,” she said softly. “Fancy meeting you here.”
NOT MUCH DOUBT, Paige thought, her eyes focused on the man seated across the crowded restaurant. Not much doubt left at all, despite the obvious physical changes.
This was the closest she had come to him. Close enough to study his features. However, even at a distance, his mannerisms had seemed heart-stoppingly familiar. The set of his head. The understated, almost elegant power of his body. Something about the way he used his hands. Even their shape.
She knew in her heart that this was Joshua Stone. The blue-black hair was threaded with gray, and then there were the scars, slightly reddened as if they were still fairly new. One crossed his right brow, causing a break in its thick black line. The other ran from the corner of his lips, slanting downward across his chin to disappear under his jaw.
Even the structure of the bones seemed slightly altered, as if they had been broken and then put back together, the fit not quite as perfect as it had once been. His nose had definitely been reshaped, molded into something less arrogant. The result was no less compelling or attractive, but it was different.
She had been trailing the man who called himself Jack Thompson for almost two days, but she hadn’t approached him. She had told herself that she wanted to be sure she wasn’t mistaken. That this wasn’t some kind of bizarre coincidence. That’s what she had told herself, although she had known the truth about who he was, almost from the moment she had seen him again.
Now there were no more excuses. The only thing left in doubt was what she wanted to do about what she’d discovered. Because she knew that no matter what Griff Cabot had believed three years ago, Joshua Stone wasn’t dead.
She didn’t know where he had been during those years, but there was no mystery about where he’d been the last couple of months. He had been living in Atlanta, working for one of the international brokerage firms headquartered here. Paige had wondered if the company was a front for the CIA or if it was simply a legitimate business that had some reason to cooperate with the agency by placing one of its ex-agents—an operative the CIA wanted to hide—on its payroll.
She didn’t suppose that really mattered. It was just something to think about instead of all the other things she’d been trying not to think about since she’d discovered Joshua Stone wasn’t dead.
She looked down at the unappetizing salad in front of her, wondering why she had ordered it. Because other than eating, there isn’t any excuse for being here.
Josh had eaten in this small neighborhood café both of the nights she’d been trailing him. He had stopped in on his way home from work. Having tried it now herself, she couldn’t say much for his choice.
She poked at a piece of lettuce with her fork, finally spearing it, along with a piece of ham and a small slice of cheese, on the tines. She dipped the combination into the watery looking salad dressing, and then raised the fork to take a bite. She looked up as she did, directly into Joshua Stone’s eyes.
She wondered if he felt anything remotely resembling the jolt that had given her, even from across the room. She looked down quickly, but she was forced to admit that this must have been what she was hoping for when she had come in here tonight. Hoping he would notice her. Hoping he would make contact, despite whatever rules the CIA had set up for his relocation.
She supposed that what the agency did with members of the EST worked like Witness Security. Contact with anyone from their former life would be forbidden. Even with a former partner.
She realized that she was still holding the forkful of food halfway to her mouth. Pretty telling, she supposed, but after all, Josh should understand. It wasn’t often one was confronted with a ghost.
She wondered what he was thinking. That this was an accident? A fluke? Or that the agency, maybe even Steiner himself, had sent her?
She put the fork down on her plate, unable to make herself take that bite. And then slowly she raised her eyes again, prepared now to make contact with his.
Josh was eating, his concentration seemingly on the newspaper that was folded to fit beside his plate. Just as if he hadn’t seen her.
But he had. There was no doubt in her mind about that. Which must mean that he didn’t want to acknowledge her. Not in so public a place. And he was probably right about that.
She knew where he lived. She could approach him at his apartment building. Or maybe on his way home, which was even safer, because it would give him the opportunity to decide where they should talk.
As she was thinking all that, the question she had been trying to deal with was still stirring in the back of her mind. For the past three years, she had tried not to think about Josh Stone because she had believed he was dead. Had he ever, during all that time, thought about her? After all, he had always known where to find her. Which must mean…
She turned her head, looking out at the street through the rain-streaked plate glass window beside her. Which must mean, she continued doggedly, no matter how painful she found the conclusion, that Josh had consciously made the decision not to try to see her again.
That decision would have nothing to do with whatever rules the CIA had set up for his disappearance. Joshua Stone didn’t play by the rules. Few of Griff’s agents ever had. That characteristic was almost a requirement for the EST. If Josh had wanted to contact her, he would have. And since he hadn’t, she would have to assume he hadn’t wanted to.
She could deal with that. She could deal with almost anything, she decided, feeling anger build again, as long as whatever was going on with Joshua Stone and the CIA didn’t get her called into Steiner’s office for the third degree. Or didn’t make the agency bug her apartment.
She wanted an explanation for those two things. A truthful explanation, which she would never get from Steiner. Eventually, she damn well would get it from Josh Stone. After all, she thought with a trace of bitterness, he at least owed her that.
While Josh finished his dinner, and he didn’t hurry over the meal, Paige drank the rest of her coffee, savoring both its warmth and the subtle stimulation of the caffeine. She couldn’t keep her gaze from touching on him occasionally, and after a while she stopped trying.
His eyes were still locked on the newspaper he had brought in with him, acting as if he were completely unaware that Paige was sitting across the room. Of course, Josh was better at this game than she was. He always had been.
As soon as she saw the waiter bring his bill, she signaled for hers. She handed her server a ten, without taking the check he presented and waving away his attempt to make change. She slipped into her coat and headed straight toward the door, making no effort either to avoid or to pass near Josh’s table.
He had made it clear by meeting her eyes that he was aware of her. And he had made it equally clear, by ignoring her, that he didn’t want them to be seen together.
When she stepped through the door, she realized the rain that had plagued the Georgia city for most of the past two days had finally stopped. However, it must have dropped ten degrees while they’d been eating. She turned up the collar of her coat, holding it around her throat with one gloved hand.
She began to walk the three blocks to Josh’s apartment, her eyes searching every foot of that distance for somewhere she could wait for him. It would need to be out of public view and yet within hailing distance of the sidewalk where he would pass. An alley or a recessed doorway. Actually, anything hidden or relatively sheltered from the eyes of passersby would do.
She could always wait beside the steps that led up to the front entrance of his apartment building. That was almost as public as the restaurant, however, and she suspected Josh wouldn’t be any more eager to be seen with her there.
Finally, having found nothing better, she went down the short flight of stairs that led to the basement entrance of his building. She leaned against the damp concrete block wall, not fighting the memories the feel of it evoked, and looked up at the steps he would have to climb to reach the front door.
She wasn’t sure he would notice her standing down here. And she still wasn’t sure she would speak to him if he didn’t. Actually, she admitted, she wasn’t sure about much of anything.
Except that Joshua Stone wasn’t dead. And that he had never sought her out during the three years that had passed since she had last seen him that night in Vladistan.
WHEN PAIGE finally heard footsteps, unconsciously she pressed more closely against the wall, her body hidden in the shadows as she listened. The footsteps passed by the front entrance and then by those that led down to the alcove under the stairs where she was hiding. She looked up in time to watch the man whose steps she’d been listening to walk by. It wasn’t Josh, and she took a breath in relief.
Maybe he had stopped off somewhere on the way home to do some shopping or an errand. Or maybe he wasn’t coming home because he suspected she would be waiting for him. And maybe a whole hell of a lot of other things, none of which she would have answers to unless Josh gave them to her. He obviously didn’t plan to do that unless she approached him and asked for them.
What was wrong with her? she wondered suddenly. What was she doing here, waiting for a man who had made it clear he didn’t want to see her? For some reason, she closed her eyes, fighting the sudden sting of tears. And she couldn’t understand why she had this ridiculous urge to cry.
After all, the reason she was here wasn’t personal. Their former relationship had impinged on her professional life. She was convinced that someone had bugged her apartment because of her association with Josh Stone, and she wanted to know why. She wanted answers that made sense. Answers from him.
The footsteps that approached this time didn’t move past the entrance. She opened her eyes, ears straining to follow them. When they started up the front stairs, her heart jolted again, as strongly as when Josh had met her eyes across the restaurant.
And those reactions, after three long, silent years, made her furious. Not at him, but at herself. Using that anger, Paige stepped out of the shadows, looking up at the man climbing the stairs. At the man she had known as Joshua Stone.
Perhaps he noticed the movement. Or maybe the intensity of her stare made some kind of psychic impact. Whatever drew his attention, Josh looked down, again right into her eyes. Despite the distance between them, she could see his widen. Then they narrowed slightly, just as they used to when he was trying to figure something out. And this one shouldn’t be too hard.
She didn’t say anything, and neither did he. Their gazes held for maybe twenty seconds, and then he came quickly down the stairs he had just climbed. He glanced over to where she was standing a couple of times as he made the descent. To keep an eye on her? Afraid she’d disappear? she wondered, not even bothering this time to deny the corrosive bitterness she had fought during the last two days.
But disappearing wasn’t her act. That’s what he did. What he had done, she amended. He had just…disappeared.
Josh walked over to the top of the flight of steps leading down to the covered basement entrance where she was standing. He stood a long moment, unmoving, still looking at her.
“You were in the restaurant,” he said finally.
She nodded, not trusting her voice to sound anywhere near normal. And, damn it, she wanted it to. She wanted it to sound calm and rational and unemotional.
“Were you waiting for me?” he asked.
How about for three years. Which wasn’t completely fair, she admitted. Most of that time she had believed Josh must be dead. So that didn’t constitute waiting, exactly. Besides, they had made no commitments. Not even…
“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Are you in trouble?”
“Steiner’s asking questions about you,” Paige said.
Despite her fear that her voice might betray her reaction to seeing him again, to being this close to him, the statement had sounded perfectly natural. Cryptic, perhaps, but at least she didn’t think her tone gave away her inner turmoil.
“Steiner?” he repeated, as if puzzled by the reference.
“He took over when…” Paige stopped, suddenly unsure, maybe because of that seemingly genuine puzzlement, exactly what Josh had been told.
“You know about Griff,” she said, not phrasing it as a question. If this was an agency hide, and everything she had found in the computers indicated it must be, then of course, Josh would know about Cabot’s death.
They became aware at the same moment that someone was walking toward them. A man and a woman were approaching, moving toward him. Josh turned his head, openly watching them, which surprised her.
The couple walked passed the entrance, deeply engrossed in their conversation. Josh waited until their voices could no longer be heard before he looked down at Paige again. Even in the dimness, his eyes were as blue as she remembered them.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Those names don’t ring any bells. Maybe you’ve got me mixed up with somebody else.”
She supposed she should have been expecting that denial, but she hadn’t been. Maybe he was part of some witness security deal, with the formal constraints that imposed, but he was also her partner. Her lover. Or he once had been. And he owed her more than this. They all did. From Steiner on down.
She had been lied to throughout this entire deal, and it infuriated her. She’d spent so many damn hours during those three years regretting the things she had done. Regretting even more the ones she hadn’t done. Too many hours lost out of her life to be fobbed off with this crap.
“I don’t think so,” she said almost mockingly. “I don’t think I’ve got you mixed up with anyone else.”
He took a breath, his lips pursed slightly. She tried not to remember what they felt like moving over her skin in the darkness. Tried and failed, and for some reason that made her even more furious.
“Look—” he began again, his voice still reasonable, not reacting to the obvious anger in hers.
“Your name is Joshua Stone,” she said, interrupting whatever lie he intended to offer. “You were a member of Griff Cabot’s External Security Team. You and I were on a mission in Vladistan when you disappeared. That was three years ago. And then, less than four months ago, they put you back into the computers as Jack Thompson. I’ve seen the file, so ‘You’ve got me mixed up with someone else’ won’t work, Josh. Not with me.”
“Vladistan?” he repeated, and she wondered why he had picked that out of all the rest. “In…Russia?” he questioned.
“A republic of the former Soviet Union.” Paige corrected. She sounded like some geography professor.
“Who is ‘they’?” he said, ignoring the lesson. “Who put me back into the computer?”
He had asked those questions in exactly the right tone. As if he really didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Of course, Josh had always been good. So damn good at everything.
“The company,” she said. That was the nickname for the CIA that almost everyone who worked for the agency used.
“Debolt?”
Which was the name of the firm he was working for here in Atlanta. Again the tone of his question held exactly the right note of confusion. She laughed, mocking his skill. The sound of her laughter almost prevented her from hearing his next question.
“After the accident?” he asked. “Is that what you mean?”
“What accident?”
The word had shocked her for some reason, jerking her out of her very satisfying anger. But the concern in her repetition was the wrong response, and she regretted it as soon as she had given it voice. She had wanted to convey her absolute certainty that she knew who he was and knew that he was lying to her. And then she had bit on that ploy like an amateur.
“The wreck,” he said. “Is that what this is about? Insurance or something? If so, maybe you’ve got the right guy but the wrong name.”
There was enough information there, and the tone reasoned enough, that she had to stop and think about what he had said. Accident. Wreck. Insurance. Wrong guy. Except, of course…
“Not Debolt,” she said again, rejecting the scenario he had just dangled in front of her. “The CIA. And you know what I’m talking about, Josh, so let’s stop playing games. Maybe you’re only doing what they told you to do, but don’t expect me to buy it. Maybe I didn’t spend as many years in special ops as you did, but I spent long enough to know how to do a computer search. Joshua Stone dies, and Jack Thompson is born. It’s all there. Right in the External Security files for anyone who wants to look for it. And I think that means you’ve got a problem.”
He said nothing for a long time, his eyes still considering her face. Trying to read it, maybe? She didn’t care if he was. She was telling the truth. A truth he needed to hear. If she could find him, then a lot of other people could as well.
“I think you’d better come in,” he said. “We need to talk.”
The strongest emotion she felt when she heard that invitation was satisfaction. She had forced him to listen to her and to stop making those ridiculous denials. She started up the basement steps, expecting him to lead the way over to the street-level set of stairs and up to the building’s front entrance.
Instead, he stayed where he was, watching her face until she reached the top. When he still didn’t move, she stopped beside him, looking into his eyes. She didn’t know what she had expected to find in them. Embarrassment that he’d tried to put her off like that? Admiration that she hadn’t bought that cock-and-bull? Maybe even some memories.
They held none of those things. They were interested. Reflecting the same deep intelligence she remembered so vividly, but nothing else. Not even, it seemed, an admission that they had once been more to one another than professional associates.
“I take it I’m supposed to know you,” he said.
Just when I was about to give you some credit, Paige thought. Her mouth tightened in frustration. She broke contact with his eyes, looking past him, focusing on the row of cars parked across the street. An exercise in gathering control, like counting to ten. And then it became something else.
“They’re taping us,” she said, her eyes coming back to Josh’s. “Someone in a car across the street is filming us.”
“Filming?” he repeated, turning around and staring at the car that was parked along the opposite curb, its motor running.
What Joshua Stone had just done was against everything Paige had been taught when she’d been brought over to Special Ops. Griff’s people were carefully trained. They had to be because the things they were called on to do were not only dangerous, but potentially embarrassing for their government as well.
And one of the cardinal sins was to have your picture taken. To have your face caught on camera. That was especially true while you were on a mission, but the rule applied at any time. Any place. And Joshua Stone, the best agent she had ever known, had just blatantly violated it.
As shocked as she had been by his turning toward the man who was video recording their meeting, she was even more surprised when he began walking toward the car. The camera was still pointed toward them, still filming. Josh stopped at the near curb and looked both ways before he stepped out into the street, not even seeming to hurry.
Was he going to ask them to stop shooting? Or was he going to try to get the tape? Which called into question, she supposed, just who Josh thought the two men in that car might be.
Paige’s guess was that they were from the agency. Either they had followed her here, which probably wouldn’t have been too difficult, despite the routine precautions she had taken, or they had already been running surveillance on Josh.
She couldn’t quite figure out why they would be doing that. Why would the CIA be keeping tabs on one of their own? Especially on someone who was no longer working for them? That almost made it seem…Almost made it seem…
Her mind was racing again. And even as it did, Josh reached the car. He opened the door and said something to the man with the camera. Paige was too far away to hear the words, but the man lowered the recorder and looked up at Josh, answering him.
She was already fumbling to open her purse where her weapon was, her hand moving almost without her volition. She had started toward the street when Josh reached out to take hold of the camera, as if he intended to wrest it from the man who was apparently reluctant to give it up. Paige began to run, closing the distance between her and her former partner.
Her gun was in her hand, but she prayed she wouldn’t have to use it. If the men in that car were fellow agents…
And then the guy with the camera came up out of the front seat, still holding onto it with one hand. With the other, he was reaching into his pocket.
Paige’s heart rate accelerated, knowing she was going to have to make a decision about whether to shoot within the next ten seconds or so. It was a decision she didn’t want to have anything to do with. One she didn’t have enough information to make. And one that would inevitably be influenced by what had once happened, a long time ago, between her and Josh Stone.
She stopped, gripping the semiautomatic with both hands, willing them not to shake. She drew a bead on the chest of the man who was struggling with Josh over the camera.
Her concentration, however, was on his other hand. And then, moving almost in slow motion, that hand began to come out of his pocket, bringing something with it.
Chapter Three
This isn’t supposed to be happening, Jack Thompson thought.
He couldn’t even begin to explain why he had come over to confront the two men. When he had seen that camera, for some reason he had been overcome by an overpowering wave of anger.
The doctors had warned him. They had said that a tendency to impulsive and risky behavior was a fairly common result of head trauma. He hadn’t paid much attention, because up until now he hadn’t sensed any lack of restraint within himself.
Up until now, he thought grimly, aware that the guy he was struggling with for control of the camera was reaching into his pocket with his other hand. And he knew with cold certainty, a feeling which tightened all the muscles of his stomach, that the cameraman was going for a gun.
Something Jack wished he had. He could almost feel the solid, reassuring weight of a weapon in his hand. Except he didn’t have a gun, and he couldn’t remember ever having touched one. Couldn’t consciously remember, he amended, because somehow he knew that he had. And he wanted to again. Right about now would be a real good time.
The fumbling hand finally emerged from the side pocket of the guy’s coat. And he hadn’t been wrong, Jack thought, seeing what it held. He wished to hell he had been. He also wished that he hadn’t started this. What could it possibly matter that someone was videotaping him while he was talking to a woman? A stranger. It sure wasn’t worth getting killed over.
He willed his fingers to release their grip on the camera they were struggling over. The unexpected loss of opposition unbalanced the cameraman. He staggered backward, crashing into the open door of the car. Both hands rose automatically, almost shoulder high, as he tried to regain his balance.
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Gayle Wilson
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Men with secret identites and hidden agendas–sworn to protect…and tamed by love.HE COULDN′T REMEMBERHow could he forget a past as a hardened CIA agent–or a partner as alluring as Paige Daniels? She could help him remember who he had been, why their lives were suddenly in danger and why, if they′d only been partners, he wanted her so much….SHE COULDN′T FORGETJoshua Stone. After three long years of believing him dead, seeing him stole her breath away. They′d been partners and, for one magical night, lovers. Paige had loved and lost him once–did she dare risk her heart again…to a man whose body obviously remembered her, but whose mind did not?