Deep Breath (19 page)

On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks.

 

—H. Allen Smith, American writer
(1906–1976)

 

12:15
A.M.

Harry stared down at his hellcat. She was livid. In tears. Shaking. He couldn’t blame her for a single one of the reactions. And after seeing her dive across the table at Charlie Castro, he’d expected a whole lot worse.

He shoved his hands to his hips, studied the gravel and concrete beneath his feet, seeing only what was illuminated by the light from the moon.

He still wasn’t sure how much to tell her, whether to bring her in or keep her on a need-to-know basis. Problem with that argument was that she was already in, and her need to know was critical.

“Harry?”

He looked up. She stood in front of him, small, shivering, her arms wrapped around her middle. He started with the simple truth. “It’s what I do, Georgia. That’s all.”

“That’s not all. And it sure as hell isn’t enough.” She advanced, slammed a hand down on the trunk. “And what the hell is it that you do? You’ve said that all weekend.”

“Let’s get in the car.”

“No. I want to know what you did with my dossier.”

“It’s not yours. Not anymore.”

She spun where she stood, came back around and stomped her foot. “What are you saying? Where is it?”

“Georgia—”

“No, Harry.” She was crying now, sobbing, screaming. “I need those papers. I need them. I have spent three years hunting them down. You can’t just take them away.”

He took her by the arm then, brought her around to the driver’s side of the car and urged her in. She didn’t fight him, but scrambled back into her seat and collapsed. Neither did she pick up the letter she’d dropped to the floor without having finished reading.

He turned toward her, made sure he had her attention. Her eyes were wet and wild, and more angry than hurt. “I’ll tell you what I can, but we’ve got to get back on the road.”

“Afraid you’ll be late for a consulting appointment?” she practically sneered.

“Yes.” He put the car back into gear and spun the tires pulling onto the road. “There’s only one thing that matters here. And that’s getting those people out of the diner.”

“Right. And how are you going to do that since you have nothing to bargain with?”

“Who says I have nothing? I have the lockbox you were sent to find.”

“With nothing inside.”

“Charlie doesn’t know that.”

Georgia jammed her crossed arms tightly against her chest. “You don’t really think he’s going to let everyone go without looking to see what’s inside.”

“I never said that he would.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

At that, she hopped around on the seat, her exasperation evident. She couldn’t sit still. And then there was her tone of voice.

Strident, with just a hint of condescension. “He’s got manpower you don’t have, Harry. Manpower with big bad guns. This isn’t some game you’ve been pulled into playing.”

“I’ve told you before. There’s a reason they call me Rabbit.” Though he doubted she found anything in the reminder reassuring.

“So what? You took the dossier to pull out of your magic hat and use against Charlie somehow?”

He draped one wrist over the steering wheel and cast a glance toward her. “Aren’t you at all interested in who hired Charlie to find it? And why?”

“If I had a way of finding that out, I might be. I don’t. I’m a treasure hunter. Not a cotton-tailed spy.” She ran both hands through her hair and sighed. “Anyway, right now my main interest is why the hell you took my property and when you’re going to return it.”

He was stuck thinking about her cotton tail and took a moment to respond. “You mean the general’s property, which you stole over twenty-four hours ago and never bothered to mention?”

“If you had known I had it, you would’ve turned it over to Charlie. I couldn’t let that happen.” She drew her knees up into the seat and turned to face him. “At least that’s what I thought then. I’m not sure what I think now.”

He wasn’t quite ready to make things any clearer, which it appeared she was waiting for him to do. “So you let me use my resources to find you another way out of your mess?”

“Yes. I did. And you can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing in my shoes.”

“You’re right. I don’t know what I would have done if I were you. But I do know what I had to do as me.”

Another few miles rolled by, another few minutes ticked along with the sound of the tires on the road. It was dark, the light from the moon all that was left since Georgia had closed the glove box.

He felt her gaze moving over him as she tried to figure him out. He weighed giving her a brief explanation. It wasn’t like she would ever know what she would need to find him again.

And taking what she did know to the authorities wouldn’t be in her best interest any more than his. But he didn’t like the idea of disappearing from her life and leaving her in limbo.

Hell, he didn’t like the idea of disappearing from her life at all. In fact, it didn’t take much imagination for him to picture the two of them driving until they hit the beach in Venice and never going home.

“Who are you, Harry?” she asked, her voice soft, wounded, sad. “Tell me. I’m hardly in a position to reveal your deep dark secrets to anyone unless I want to end up in jail again.”

Same train of thought he’d been traveling. Still, he pressed. “For what?”

“Let’s see. Impersonating whoever I impersonated and stealing the file from the general’s house. Not going to the cops about the siege at the diner and letting Charlie get away with his crime.”

“He hasn’t gotten away with anything yet,” he reminded her.

She snorted. “Unless you’re going to pull a supernatural SWAT team out of your hat and morph through the walls in energy particles, I don’t see any way around it. Which means I’m up shit creek for being an accomplice or an accessory or just a really bad American citizen.”

Oh, ye of little faith. Though he did like the
Star Trek
concept. “You think I’d let that happen? Let you take the fall for doing what you had to do to save your brother?”

“You took my dossier.”

“That’s business.”

“What sort of business? Because I’m pretty damn sure there are no blueprints of any kind in that file.”

This was where things got sticky. Staring into the darkness at the long stretch of road, he said, “I’m not an engineer.”

“Now there’s a surprise. Or not.”

He ignored her sarcasm. “I work for a private organization. We help people in trouble, and we do what we can to make sure the bad guys pay.”

“Bad guys like Charlie?”

“Usually we work on a larger scale. But, yeah. Bad guys like Charlie.”

She was quiet for several minutes, several miles. He could almost see the scales moving as she weighed his admission against her suspicions. “It wasn’t an accident that you came into the diner, was it? You were looking for Charlie.”

Half-right anyway. “It wasn’t an accident, no. But I wasn’t looking for Charlie.”

“You were looking for me?”

“I was looking for the dossier. You just happened to be my connection.”

“How? How did you make it? No one but Finn knew that I was chasing it down.”

“Charlie did,” he said, listening to the gears click in her mind.

“If you and Charlie both thought you’d find the dossier through me, then you’ve got to know who sent him to find it.”

“I’m getting close to figuring it out.” He was, in fact, down to two names. Paul Valoren and Cameron Gates.

“I can’t believe this. I cannot believe this,” Georgia said, collapsing against the corner where the seat met the door. “I’ve been beating myself up about taking advantage of you—”

“And I’ve been the one doing the taking all this time.”

She turned her head, stared out the windshield. “So what now? Are you going to give it back to me?”

“Do you want it back?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“After reading the general’s letter, I wasn’t sure you would want to know what’s inside.”

“I have to know what’s inside,” she said, toying with the frayed edge of a hole in the knee of her jeans. “It’s the only way to find out the truth about my father.”

“Even if it’s not what you’re expecting to find?”

Her head whipped around. “Why? What will I find?”

“I don’t know yet. It’s on its way to our ops center to be analyzed.”

“Ops center? What? You really are James Bond or something?”

“Or something, yeah.”

“Where is your ops center?”

“New York.”

“Did your personal carrier pigeon swoop down from the trees at the gallery and carry it off?”

He laughed to himself. “I wondered if you would figure out when I took it.”

“It’s the only time you could have. I haven’t let you and the dossier out of my sight at the same time since finding it.”

“Since stealing it, you mean.”

“Semantics. And since that was only a few hours ago…” She sat up straighter, shook her head in disbelief. “You gave it to Hank, didn’t you?”

“He’s the boss.”

“Does that mean you didn’t lie to me about everything?”

“I didn’t lie to you about a lot of things, Georgia. Only about the job.”

“Yeah,” she said with a snort. “Your whole reason for being here.”

She was right. This entire weekend past had been a lie. Sixty or so hours’ worth of deception. Except for their time in bed. Every one of those minutes of intimacy had been real.

Nothing in his life had ever been more so, and that much she needed to know. “I didn’t lie about us.”

She tried to huff, but he heard her voice quaver. “You mean the sex.”

“I mean us. Making love. Being with you that way was as real as it gets. You have to know that.”

“Does it matter?”

It mattered almost more than his job—a realization that had been eating him up since last night. He didn’t want to screw up his position with SG-5, but neither did he want to lose Georgia.

Not when everything he felt for her seemed so damn real, so damn right. “It matters. More than anything.”

“That’s not so easy to believe when you took away the one thing I valued most in the world.”

“More than your brother’s life.”

“No. Of course not.”

“More than your own?”

“No.”

“I can’t begin to know what your life has been like, Georgia. But I do know it will go on no matter what your father did or did not do.”

She let that sink in, riding in silence as they approached the Waco city limits. “So why are you sticking around?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have what you want. Why not go on your merry way? Move on to the next bad guy. Leave me to deal with Charlie. You have no real stake in what happens.”

“That’s not who I am, Georgia. And I’m pretty damn sure you know that by now.”

She blew out a heavy breath. “I don’t like being kept in the dark, Harry. I don’t like being deceived.”

He wasn’t sure how much of her statement was directed at him and how much toward her father. He gave her what he could while making the turn into the airport and following Simon’s instructions on where to find the car.

“Right now, there is a tractor-trailer rig parked on the side of the road across from the diner. It’s been there since Friday night.”

“What? I don’t understand. And what are we doing at the airport?”

“Patience, grasshopper,” Harry teased, pulling into the space nearest to the old pickup Simon had described. He turned off the car and climbed out, heading for the trunk and his bag there.

Georgia slammed her door and followed him to the rear of the car, watched while he stripped off his dress shirt and pulled on a long-sleeved black tee.

He tossed her one, too. “Here. Put this on.”

She moved her gaze from his chest to the shirt she held. “I’m not stripping in a parking lot.”

“Put it on over what you’re wearing. You can take it off when we get there.”

“Get where?” she asked, tugging the shirt over her head.

“To where we’re going.” He toed off his dress shoes, pulled on combat boots, laced up the legs of his suit pants inside. “Anything in here you need between now and tomorrow?”

“Between now and later today, you mean?” He nodded. She shook her head. “Nothing as valuable as there was a few hours ago.”

“I’ll get it back to you. I promise.” He slammed the trunk. And then, because he loved the way she looked swallowed up in his shirt, he hooked his elbow around her neck and pulled her close for a kiss.

It was a kiss long overdue, and he made sure she knew it, opening his mouth over hers and sliding his tongue inside the minute she parted her lips.

He made it fast, made it hard, and then stepped away, taking her by the hand and hauling her cute little ass to the truck.

1:30
A.M.

They drove the rust bucket of a pickup back toward Waco Phil’s, stopping a third of a mile away at a wrecking yard filled with similarly disreputable vehicles.

Harry warned her on the drive that they’d be making the last leg of the return journey on foot. She was in shape. The night was cool. She didn’t mind.

What she did mind was still not knowing what was going on. Harry seemed more into giving orders than sharing the steps he’d mapped for her to follow.

Focusing on the moment had to be her priority. She’d think about the general’s letter and bequest, about the truth surrounding her father, when Finn’s life was no longer on the line. For now, getting him back in one piece was all that mattered.

Harry was right about that. Harry was right—an expert, even—about a lot of things. And no wonder.

The man spied for a living. He had resources and contacts and who knew what else at his disposal—obviously not everything on the right side of the law.

She couldn’t compete with that. She was surprised he was even letting her tag along. He was in survival mode now, silent, intense, a man apart.

And she swore standing there in the airport parking lot that she could have kissed him forever.

As much as he had taken from her, he had given back—was still giving back—even more. He didn’t have to be here. She’d told him so many times that he could have left her in Dallas to fend for herself.

What she hadn’t known until tonight was that he’d stayed even after his own job was done. He hadn’t returned to his mysterious ops center along with Hank and the dossier. He’d remained behind. With her. For her.

Then he’d pulled her close and kissed her as if needing her at his side, as if finding his own strength in having her with him as his partner, his lover, his woman. She’d felt drawn to be every one, almost as if she’d found everything she’d been searching for all of her life in Harry.

It was ridiculous. Attraction and lust, sure. Those she understood; they took no time, struck like lightning. But not honest affection and the sort of emotional hunger she felt for Harry. Surely true love didn’t happen over a weekend. Especially not a weekend rampant with lies.

Walking ahead of her by three or four steps, Harry glanced back, smiled, urged her on. He made it easy for her to push herself, trusting her, encouraging her, slowing when his long legs took him too far ahead.

But really? Walking behind him, watching his body in motion—the roll of his hips, the reach of his legs, the determined set of his shoulders—was where she wanted to be.

They’d moved to the far side of the road once they’d left the cover of the hulking wrecks in the junkyard, and were now using the brush along the fence line for cover.

There had been very little traffic; the few times cars had passed, they’d simply dropped flat to the ground in the shoulder’s overgrown weeds.

She imagined she’d arrive at their destination with cockleburs in her hair and smears of green across her knees, chest, and palms. But she could hardly complain. Reaching the tractor-trailer rig meant they were that much closer to freeing her brother.

Of course, it also meant she was that much closer to having to tell Harry good-bye. And unlike earlier in the day—last night, yesterday, whenever it had been—she wasn’t quite as right with this being the end of their line.

What she wanted was to know Harry in real time, not spy time, not lie time.

She wanted to sit back with a cold beer while he grilled burgers on the patio, and baseball played in the background on Finn’s big-screen TV. She wanted to drag him through her favorite junk shops and flea markets, sharing the fun of an unexpected find.

She wanted to eat out of his popcorn tub at the movies, his arm draped over her shoulder holding her close. She wanted to sit beside him on the beach on Padre Island, stare across the gray-blue water and talk about life—or not talk at all. Just sit and enjoy being with him.

She wanted for one week, for even one day, for both of them to lead the sort of lives that allowed for simple joys and normalcy. She was tired of fighting bad guys like Charlie Castro and Arthur Duggin. She wanted her life back, and to see how it fit with Harry’s.

It wouldn’t, of course. The man worked in espionage or intelligence. He was an agent or a spy or an undercover operative of sorts. The specifics really didn’t matter. None of the possibilities would mesh with her days spent searching out treasures in attics and barns.

That didn’t mean she was ready to have him walk out of her life completely. Not yet, with so much about him to learn and explore. She took that airport kiss as a sign. If he felt the same way, if he had thought at all about taking the rest of his vacation time and spending it with her…Except he wasn’t on vacation, was he?

She scurried forward when Harry slowed and waved her on, the bulky, boxy outline of the big rig now in view. Even his vacation had been a fabricated story enabling him to worm his way closer to her and the dossier. Ugh, was there anything real between them?

Had he been telling her the truth when he said their intimacy had been anything but a lie? That it had been as real as it could possibly get? Believing that would go a long way toward easing future regrets. Because coming out of this with long-term misgivings was the last thing she wanted to do.

She shook off the thoughts and looked up to find him waiting for her at the corner of the rig’s cab. Once she’d reached him, he knocked, the sound seeming louder than it probably was. She was tense, nervous, wondering what the hell she was getting herself into.

The door pushed open from the inside. The cab was dark, but when a hand came down to help her up, she took it. Harry boosted her from the backside and followed her into the cramped space. Or so it seemed cramped until the other man inside slid back a panel to reveal what in any other rig would have been a sleeping compartment.

She swore she had just stepped onto the stage of a movie set. An outpost in space. Or a high-tech military headquarters. A scaled down operations center, she supposed. The sort of environment Harry was used to working in. It was nothing like she had ever seen.

The door closed behind her. She glanced back at Harry and, as she did, realized the cab’s windows were blacked out. Even with the red and green and blue lights burning in tiny pinpoints and larger rings, no one outside would be able to see in. Clever. Ingenious. She was definitely impressed.

“Simon Baptiste, meet Georgia McLain,” Harry said, wedging past her into the sleeper-cum-instrument console room. She backed up to sit in the driver side captain’s chair and swiveled it around.

The man Harry had introduced her to was big and gorgeous in that way of quarterbacks. Muscled, but not bound. Rangy and long. Before he turned, she saw that his hair was pulled back with a matching black rubber band. The thick tail hit his shoulder blades.

And then he smiled. A wide, welcoming smile full of deep set dimples and white teeth. Georgia responded in kind. “It’s nice to meet you. I would say I’ve been looking forward to meeting you since hearing so much from Harry, except he hasn’t said a thing.”

“Nice to know the boy has a proper respect for the rules,” Simon said, a hint of a Cajun accent in his voice, his bright green eyes cutting up to Harry. “I gotta say it’s good to see you, boo. As much as I dig on Willow and on Oz being a werewolf, I miss the human conversation.”

Harry turned to Georgia. “He’s on a forty-eight-hour
Buffy
marathon. You’ll have to excuse him.”

“There is no excuse for me,” Simon said, and laughed. “Or so everyone’s been telling me since the day my mama shoved me into the world and slapped me for taking so long.”

Georgia grinned. She had to. It was the only way to deal with the madness, even as her thoughts turned to her brother. “Do you know what’s happening in the diner? Are Finn and the others okay?”

“Had a nice chat with your brother last night.” Simon settled the headset he’d obviously removed earlier back into place and straddled the stool in front of the board. “One-sided, to be sure. But a nice change from listening to Xander piss and moan.”

She plowed past his
Buffy
comparison. “You talked to Finn? How?”

“Not talked,
cher
. Listened in.” He tapped the receiver in his ear. “He was singing The Grateful Dead.”

“Wait. I’m lost. How are you able to hear Finn?” A stupid question to ask considering she was sitting inside a spymobile. But knowing that Finn was upbeat enough to be singing was music to her ears. “I mean, I’m sure you have the equipment…but how?”

“Trade secrets.” Harry held out a hand. “C’mon. Simon and I need to discuss man business. I’ll get you settled in the trailer.”

“Fine. Be that way.” She stuck out her tongue while letting Harry tug her up from her seat. “I hope it’s refrigerated at least.”

“Ah, you just wait,” Simon said. “Boo here may try and convince you that car of his is riding in style, but you see my trailer? You know the truth.”

Harry shook his head and, ignoring Simon’s laughter, pressed his thumb against what looked like a two-inch-square television screen on the sleeper cab’s back wall. A red light glowed, a line scanned down, then up, and another panel slid open, this one revealing what appeared to be a fully furnished apartment.

She followed Harry inside. The door closed behind them. He let go of her hand and let her explore. Obviously all the widgets and gadgets of their trade were within Simon’s reach, while the state-of-the-art trailer gave new meaning to the term mobile home.

Georgia could’ve lived here without complaint for the rest of her life. And take this on the road while antiquing? She walked deeper into the interior, moving slowly until Harry turned up the track lighting. And then she stopped.

The walls were papered to appear as red brick, the furnishings painted white in a style she thought of as Scandinavian spare. But the accent colors of fire engine red and Christmas green and bright banana yellow gave it personality, brought it to life.

She loved it, and almost forgot why she was here. Until she turned and saw Harry standing at the door, ready to leave her, to return to the world where she didn’t belong. It was hard not to be hurt when it was her brother sitting in the tin can across the street.

She didn’t show it. She just raised a hand. “See ya.”

“Getting the hang of blowing me off?”

“Just don’t want you to worry about me while I’m in here with the womenfolk.”

“It’s just for a few minutes, Georgia. While I get a briefing from Simon. I won’t be gone long.”

A briefing. Two little words. Simple words. Words that accentuated the cavernous gulf between their two worlds. She’d never been to a briefing in her life.

She reached for the hem of Harry’s shirt and tugged it over her head. “I’m fine. Do what you need to do.”

“Twenty minutes. Thirty max.”

“It’s not like I have anywhere to be. Just go.” She fluttered one hand dismissively. “Do.”

He looked so crestfallen, so certain he was in the wrong to leave her alone, that she softened, her heart turning to mush. “Oh, Harry. We’ll figure out the rest of this stuff later. I swear to you, boo. We will.”