Blowback (The Black Cipher Files Book 1) (29 page)

And if they were all in Department 5491. Did that mean they had all been kidnapped? “Yeah.” I headed toward the highway.

“Question number four,” he said slowly.

That meant he thought the question was important. “Maybe.”

“Where did that TICOM question come from?”

I thought about not answering. But since he’d asked Jordan about the committee, the World War 2 events kept nagging at the back of my mind. Was TICOM somehow connected? Maybe Lucas would see something I couldn’t. “Just fishing. Sometimes you just have to toss the bait in and see what happens.”

“Yeah.” Lucas was quiet for a moment. “But what does TICOM have to do with you? Or Staci Grant?”

“Number five?”

“Nope. Four is a two-parter.”

“I don’t know.” I connected the dots slowly. “How could Carson have had anything to do with my parents’s death? And why?”

“He definitely did. You heard what Antoinette said.”

She said Carson had felt responsible for my parents’s deaths. But why? My parents didn’t have anything to do with the NSA. Besides, Carson would have only been a junior director at the time.

The waning fall sun dipped low in the sky. It was early evening. I had a feeling Carson would be calling me fairly soon. “We need to get rid of this van. Antoinette would have recorded the plates.”

“Yeah.” He ran a hand over the dashboard, a funny look on his face. “I know.”

I could tell he didn’t want to leave it. “It’s only temporary.”

He inhaled slowly, then patted the dash. “I know.”

“Let’s head for McLean.” I can’t believe I was letting him get to me over his sentimental attitude toward a hunk of metal. “I’ve got credit cards to go with our current licenses in the duffel.”

“Gotta love that duffel,” Lucas said.

“We need a hotel.” The vision of Lucas in a bed flashed through my mind.

He punched in a website, looking for possible hotels. “I thought you’d never ask.”

THIRTY-ONE

The proprietress of the small bed and breakfast led us up the stairs. “I hope you two enjoy your room. You’ve missed the afternoon cordials and hors d’oeuvres.”

Damn, just what I needed. A cordial.

I took in the old fashioned wallpaper, fussily painted chair rail and molding, and wondered what the hell we were doing
here
.

“We had a late lunch.” Lucas’s voice rumbled from the vicinity of my forehead. His arm curled around my shoulders and held my brunette pageboy wig-covered head snuggled up to his chin, effectively blocking both my face and his.

His wool sweater made me itch. I rubbed against him, the sensation of his hard chest against my softer and more sensitive breast reminding me of another itch. One I had no intention of scratching, but an itch getting harder and harder to ignore.

“Here’s your room.” The older woman pushed open the door and stepped back to let us enter. She sent a warm smile to both of us. I couldn’t be sure but she might have winked at Lucas. “You two enjoy your impromptu stay.”

We’d taken the time to change our appearance to look like her typical customers. I’d wiped off the Goth makeup and removed the bondage jewelry. Now I wore boot cut jeans, a conservative pale yellow sweater, and pearls. Lucas had dressed in khaki pants and white button down pressed with sharp creases. His hair was still gray but he’d lost the glasses and slicked his hair into a younger looking style.

Look at us. Two harmless tourists. In Virginia to take in the fall color. If questioned, hopefully all she’d remember was our story of impulsively heading to the country from the city.

“Thank you,” I said huskily, annoyed not all of the huskiness in my voice was feigned.

“Breakfast is served between seven and nine.”

“We’ll be there.” Lucas pressed a kiss to my forehead, the warmth of his breath feathered against my skin.

As she tottered back down the hall, Lucas reached out and closed the door gently.

Without trying to appear as if I were jumping away from him, I jumped as far away as I could. “What are we doing here?” I whispered.

“This bed and breakfast was about as far from a chain hotel as you could get.”

From a hiding standpoint, it was perfect. We hadn’t had any tails since we lost the guys yesterday at Dr. Fitzhugh’s office. Unless the people after us had unlimited manpower, they didn’t have the time or the resources to canvass every small hotel in D.C. and surrounding area.

“You’re right.” But I didn’t have to like staying in a romantic place like this.

After dumping his van at Dulles, we’d used the new i.d.’s and gotten a rental car. We were Sherry and Bradford Hayes. Thank God she hadn’t asked to see my driver’s license, because on Sherry’s license photo, she still looked like a Goth Queen.

“It’s clean.” He reached into the leather duffel and pulled out a salami. “How about some dinner?”

My stomach growled. Loudly.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

I wondered where we were going to eat. The website had billed this as cozy and quaint...with internet access. They had the cozy down pat. The room was dominated by a mahogany highboy and gigantic matching bed. With barely two feet on either side of the bed, the room had no space for any other furniture, say a chair or a sofa. A tiny window seat decorated the dormer window, one side of the bed held a small night stand, and a brick fireplace was tucked into the room’s corner.

The bed was it.

Lucas spread out a towel on the gold duvet cover near the foot of the bed. “Picnic first.”

Lucas laid out the salami, cheese, and crackers along with a Swiss Army knife. He whisked a bottle of Chardonnay from the bag as well.

“Where’d you get that?” They sure as heck hadn’t sold that at the gas station mini mart.

“The proprietress. They keep a stash of bottles refrigerated for just such a situation as we find ourselves in.”

“What? Running from an unknown government agency while trying to figure out which one and why?”

He put a hand over his heart and the other swung into the air. “Weary, but impulsive travelers with a yen for romance.”

“Give me a break. Did she really fall for that?”

“It worked.”

No, I thought, as I watched him smile, that’s not what worked.

Lucas zeroed in on the one thing guaranteed to get me to do what he wanted. “You won’t do your sister any good if you aren’t at your best. Eat.”

I tensed again, then focused deliberately on relaxing my shoulders. Lucas came up behind me and kneaded gently, his thumbs pressing into the tender spot between my shoulder blades.

“Jesus, Jamie. You’re so tense.” His breath tickled the back of my neck, sensitizing my body. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to lean back and let him shelter me.

But my focus right now had to be my sister. Had to be finding a way to get Johnny away from her. And finding a way to keep her safe. She’d left for the farm alone.

She should be safe for the weekend.

I sliced the cheese and salami while I got my emotions under control.

“I need to find Johnny.” Lucas poured the golden Chardonnay into crystal wine glasses. Where had he gotten those? “As much as you want to protect your sister.”

“Do you think Johnny has anything to do with the kidnappings?” I worried.

“Johnny is just a kid,” Lucas said firmly. “Maybe a little mixed up but I don’t believe he’s involved in anything of this scale.”

A feeling of sympathy rose in me for Johnny Wishbone. He’d been lured to the job almost exactly the same way as I had.

Lucas slipped his hand into mine and tugged me toward the bed. “Talk to me. Maybe it will spark something.”

“I understand Johnny.” I understood that wish to prove yourself at any cost. “He wants to succeed. He wants to show them they didn’t make a mistake by recruiting him.”

“So what is he going to do now?”

I knew what my next step would be. Get closer to the target, Bella, and reel her in. “God help Johnny Wishbone if he hurts my sister.” I hopped up on the bed and sat cross-legged, the fluffy down comforter bunched uncomfortably under my knees.

“He won’t. I know this kid.” Lucas swung up next to me. He propped the pillows up against the headboard and prompted me to lean back.

I shook my head.

He grabbed both wine glasses and handed one to me.

“You
think
you know this kid.” I took a sip of the crisp Chardonnay. “He isn’t that kid anymore. There’s this moment...an instantaneous rush of confusion when you’re asked to do something that goes against the code of behavior you grow up believing is right.”

I stared at the cream lace curtains, a filmy shade between inside and outside, distorting, concealing both sides from the other. “But you do it. And you don’t look back.” I drew my gaze away from the curtains, down to the lush cotton spread. “Because you can’t.”

“What did you do?”

“I did what had to be done.” It wasn’t the answer he wanted but the only answer I could give.

Because you close everything off. Close it off so it can’t hurt you. And never look back
.

“I don’t believe he will. But...we won’t let him hurt her,” Lucas said softly. He bumped a cracker loaded with a slice of salami and cheese into my compressed lips. “Eat this. Please.”

I opened my mouth, let him feed me a cracker.

The furnace kicked on, the radiators hissed with steam, filling the silence. Lucas pulled his laptop out of the duffel. “Let’s find Johnny.”

I welcomed the chance. If we found him, then I could get to him make sure he never went near Bella again.

We spent the next half hour going over every piece of information we had about Johnny Wishbone/Donald Christian. He had no known address, no phone number, no utilities. He had a fake email account and an untraceable cell phone number which he never gave out online.

Finally we struck pay dirt in an email about attending a lecture tomorrow.

“Perfect.” Lucas searched the Georgetown University website, pulling up the details of the lecture. “We’ve got a time, noon, and place, McNeir Auditorium.”

“What if he doesn’t show?”

“Then we wait for another opportunity.”

We were so close. “Maybe we should go now.”

Lucas glanced at the watch on his wrist. “We’ve got over twelve hours until the lecture. If we loiter, campus police will be all over us.”

I picked at the bedspread, pulling at a loose thread. “I’d rather go now.”

“We draw more attention to ourselves if we leave now.”

True.

He slid his long fingers along my jaw, traced the curve of my ear and curled around my neck. Slowly he eased toward me then, gently, gently he pressed his mouth to my cheek, in a kiss so tender it took my breath away.

He eased back to his side of the bed. “What if I rig a way to track Johnny so we can find out if he moves before then?”

“Great. How?”

“I’ll tap into his email. Every time he communicates, an alarm will go off. We get a bead on where he’s going and then we’ll know if he changes plans in the next twelve hours.”

He looked so pleased with himself. And it was good. Really good.

“Let’s do it.” Of course the alarm only worked if the kid actually sent an email to change his plans.

Lucas held up a hand. “I know it’s not foolproof but it’s a hell of a lot better than sitting in the rental car outside the auditorium all night.”

“Okay.”

Lucas set the laptop on the minuscule night stand and started finessing the keys. Within a few minutes he’d pressed the sleep button.

“It’ll go off loudly enough to wake us.”

“So that’s it. We should connect with him...tomorrow.”

THIRTY-TWO

Reality hit. Lucas had found Johnny. Which meant he was leaving. Gone. History.
Sayonara. Adios. Auf Wiedersehen. Adieu.

An ache burned low in my gut. I’d gotten used to having Lucas around, used to bouncing ideas off of him, used to him giving me comfort, support and friendship. Used to
him
.

I didn’t do relationships. Didn’t know how. My relationship growth had been stunted at fifteen while in the burgeoning stage of understanding how a man and a woman fit together.

But I realized, for the last few days I’d actually been making a stab at it. And I’d liked it. Probably more than I should have. There it was. I’d liked it. I liked him.

I liked Lucas.

Wine clung in my throat like tiny razor blades.

Lucas put his hand on mine. “I’m not leaving.”

Of course he was. Everyone left. Wasn’t that how it worked? I’d served my purpose. Time to move on. It wasn’t a question of if, but more like when, he would leave. I knew the score, knew because I’d been the one doing the leaving since I was twenty.

I couldn’t say all the things bunched up in my throat. So I said the obvious, “You found him.”

“And I’ll deal with him.”

I tried to drag in air but somehow breathing was difficult. My chest hurt, as if my lungs had shrunk to the size of a pea and couldn’t hold any more oxygen. I curled my toes into the rich cotton and took another sip of wine to avoid commenting.

“I’m not leaving,” he said it again. But I didn’t believe him.

I might do the initial leaving but no one ever came back. Everyone left me sooner or later. I knew that. I was comfortable with that. I understood and handled it.

But his words opened up something inside me, a hope unfurling cautiously. Because I didn’t want him to leave.

I didn’t do begging but for a moment, I wanted to. Resolutely I pressed my lips together. The two feet of quilt between us yawned wide like the chasm of the Grand Canyon. Impassable. Unsurmountable.

Until Lucas leaned across and dragged me into his lap. His arms circled around me, and pulled me onto his thighs.

He took my wineglass and deliberately, slowly placed it on the bedside table. His fingers tunneled through my hair holding me in place, holding me still. His other hand came up to rest on the curve of my hip, the heat burned through the heavy denim of my jeans.

His mouth possessed mine. With heat, with fire, with absolute intensity. Lucas kissed me as if he couldn’t ever let me go. This was not the kiss of a one night stand.