Hard Target (32 page)

Speak of the devil… Alex whirled to face the AD, magazine still clutched to her now-pounding chest and blurted the first thought that came into her head. “Won’t see him… Is this true?” She rattled the magazine at him. “Have you been keeping him from seeing
me
?”

Dark raincoat swirling around him, her boss swept into the room. She regarded him in wary silence as he perched on the edge of her guest chair and withdrew a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. “If you want your promotion,” he said, “you’ll agree to cut ties with Dr. Jakes.”

At the idea of never seeing Simon again—of him living and breathing somewhere in the world and not being able to touch him, laugh with him, fight with him over the
Times
crossword puzzle or watch him drown his pancakes in syrup—her soul guttered and threatened to flicker out of existence entirely.

“I don’t understand. I mean, I might be able to understand why you didn’t want anyone to know where I was while I recuperated, but…”

She shook her head as all the pieces dropped into place. She’d wondered why her calls to Simon never got as far as his voicemail. Why the phone rang and rang. The FBI had been controlling who she had access to. Even Ryan was on assignment across the country, where he’d been undercover and completely unavailable to her.

Before this mess, panic made her sharper. Apparently her grievous bodily injuries had healed but her wits were dull and dangerously slow. “You can’t be serious about cutting me off from my…friends. When this made the six o’clock news, I ceased to be useful as an undercover operative.”

An indulgent smile, the first she’d ever seen on the man’s face, drew her own brows together. His smile faded and, belatedly, she realized she was scowling at him.

“Downing is still on the loose. Dr. Jakes is a target. If he were to be captured and knew too many of your secrets?” The AD’s expression had cooled, his mouth turning down at the corners. “I’m sure you can see why the Bureau can’t turn a blind eye to the relationship?”

This man had been her mentor. She’d wanted to follow his impressive career trajectory for more than five years. Now? Now she feared what that hard, fast climb would cost her. She’d end up emotionless, capable of any deceit and subterfuge in the name of a cardboard cutout of honor. The thought left her dead inside, not inspired.

“Tell me?” she asked, needing answers to her questions before she gave him the reply to his. “Why didn’t you want us to rescue the president?”

“Had you left the matter alone, we would have been able to jam the bomb. As it was? You made it worse and compromised an operation well above your clearance level.” The AD’s expression, remote only seconds before, flooded with cold anger. “Once he discovered your interference, Downing went off course and we lost the thread of that operation.”

“That’s not an answer.” Alex brought her chin up. “However, it seems to me that the Bureau should have found a way to convey to me the necessary pieces of information I’d need to do my job, because if the Bureau’s taught me anything, sir? It’s to think things through and make the best decision in the field based on the information available.” She glanced pointedly at the packet he’d set beside him. “And in that same vein, it makes me wonder why I’d be eligible for that promotion.”

The AD stood, leaving the papers on the little table next to him. “Because, when your heart isn’t involved, you’re someone who gets the job done.”

Alex reached out and swept up the papers. They outlined her promotion, new duties in Chicago, and an addendum eliciting her sworn oath that she’d never communicate with Dr. Simon Jakes again.

“I can’t believe you expect me to sign this.” The words sounded hollow to her own ears.

Never speak to Simon again?

Images flashed through her mind, individual stills of their life together—the way sunlight teased red-gold highlights in his hair and how he’d blush when she pointed it out, how he’d roll over in his sleep and search for her hand under the covers without ever waking up, the way his cologne somehow wove through her closet and into her clothes so she couldn’t help but catch whiffs of his signature scent throughout her day. With her John Hancock, those memories would fade to black and white. They’d become unrepeatable, those precious moments, discarded as if they’d been a sin. Or worse, a mistake.

The AD didn’t blink. “There’s a cost to doing business.”

“Is that why you didn’t arrest Downing when you should have before the banquet? Was the cost too high?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her tone.

Ice crackled over her skin as the AD’s stare turned arctic. “What part of
stay out of it
did you not understand, Agent Valentine?”

“Lives were on the line. Mine included.” She jabbed a thumb at her chest and resisted the urge to sit on the edge of the bed as a bone-deep weariness overtook her. Damn. And she’d been doing so well today too. A little quieter, but not by much, she continued. “We’re way the fuck beyond
clearance
. I was beaten and tortured for your cause, yet you can’t answer a question?”

The AD’s expression never wavered. He merely regarded her as a father might a child having a temper tantrum. She gaped at him, at a loss to understand this man she’d emulated for so long. What was so important about his job that he couldn’t milk so much as a drop of human compassion and kindness from his soul?

“Oh my God…” Alex staggered backward as she put two and two together and came up with the launch codes to this man’s motivations. “You did this for political gain? You maneuvered us. Treated us like nothing more than pawns on your chess board and
all
for political gain.” She grasped at the edge of the mattress for support. “Tell me. How grateful
was
the president for his public rescue? How high would you have strung up your conveniently tainted operatives if it had all gone wrong and your ass had been hanging in the wind?”

“You’ve always had a quick mind, but your comprehension on this matter is juvenile at best.” This time the corners of the AD’s mouth creaked upward, but the light in his eyes remained cool. “Where do you think our funding comes from? How exactly do you think directors are made?”

Ignoring his shallow answer, Alex flashed back to her conversation with the AD in the hall after Simon’s arrest.

“That’s what it all meant. That’s what you were saying without saying, and why you wanted me to keep my nose out of it.” She pushed away from the bed and paced a few steps before letting out a rueful laugh. “It’s hard to smoke someone who has all the facts. I was your cost of doing business. You were going to burn me—send both me and Simon to prison—if this all went wrong and the president got killed.”

For so long, Downing had eluded them by conducting most of his criminal transactions outside the US, or by layering them under so many middlemen they never managed to cut off the head of the beast. The man had enough political and financial industry connections to buy his way out of any rumors or real trouble. So, when the occasion presented itself to bring him down with an assassination attempt on live television, the AD and those above him must’ve seen the opportunity as well as its inherent risks. By setting up a known felon and his ex-lover to get their hands dirty on the operation, they were playing it smart. At least, that was one way to look at it, if you weren’t the person with the crosshairs on your chest.

Motions wooden, Alex turned to her bedside table and opened the top drawer where she’d placed her journal, e-reader and a few bucks. The lone remaining item was a leather bifold holding the badge she and Simon had recovered along with the papers in Downing’s safe. She traced the worn edge before picking it up and flipping open the cover. Her badge had meant everything to her for so long. Too long. In clutching it in one hand and the career ladder in the other, she’d almost lost the one thing, the one
man
, she should have been clinging to all along. Simon might not even want her in his life, but it was time to let go of things that could be clutched and manipulated and forced to heel. It had taken losing him once and finding her way back to him to show her what mattered most.

Alex squashed with extreme prejudice the only pang of regret that dared rear its head. Setting the papers down, she placed her badge on top of the tidy pile and met her boss’s—
former
boss’s—gaze. “Some costs are too high.”

Frowning, as if he couldn’t believe she’d be so stupid as to trade her job for a relationship and a future she had no indication existed, he took the folio. “I never expected you to practice such poor judgment, Valentine.” The AD stared down at her, expression inscrutable. “Tell me. Do you have any reason to believe Dr. Jakes capable of honorable conduct? He’s a criminal, a thief and a liar.”

A nurse bustled in with some pills and Alex waved her off.

“You’re talking about a man who saved my life after I asked him to place everyone he cared about—including himself—in danger.” She moved toward him with controlled fury, her steps as carefully measured as her words. “He did everything we asked and more.”

They stood nose to nose now.

“If that’s not honor, then I don’t know what is,” she said, so angry now the words tumbled out on top of one another. “But I’ll have to forgive you for not recognizing the quality when you see it.”

The AD gave her one last hard stare before pivoting on his heel and stalking from the room. Alex watched him go. With every step that carried him farther away, additional weight lifted from her shoulders. Buoyed by the knowledge she’d made the right choice, she grabbed her bag. Screw waiting around. She didn’t need a doctor’s permission to leave. Belongings packed in under three minutes, she shouldered her duffel and walked out of the hospital and toward her new life. Or at least her apartment.

Alex traversed Greenwich Village streets awakening with traffic and commerce and sniffed the air. A hint of fall greeted her in the damp crispness. She bought flowers and fruit from a little market, said hello to her mailman, and made it almost to her front stoop before she remembered the wreck that awaited her inside. Closing her eyes, she wondered at the intelligence of quitting her only source of income when she had an apartment without working wiring or an intact mattress.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Well, nothing could be done now. She’d job hunt later—probably get a position with a bank or a security research firm. Not all was lost. Only a little damaged for the time being.

Pushing the door open, she expected the stench of rotten food and water damage. Instead she encountered a hint of lemon oil, shiny floors, fresh paint and a vague chemical scent that reminded her of a furniture show room. She blinked a few times at a new couch with a big red bow placed jauntily on top.

Simon
…

Alex stepped inside, half expecting him to appear. Her mind’s eye had him wearing only his pajama bottoms. His glasses would be folded over his waistband. He’d pad barefoot toward her and… Oh God. Her libido—it worked. A wide-eyed tour of her apartment revealed new everything—curtains, linens, bed, dresser. All that had been destroyed he’d restored with loving care and matched to the best of his abilities.

“Oh Simon.” Alex traced her fingertips around a frame holding the picture of them from the Coney Island photo booth, then turned, smiling, to study a collage he’d created of all of Ryan’s surveillance photos of him.

So you don’t forget me
… his handwritten note read.

How could she ever forget him?

“Sweet, isn’t it?”

The memory of that voice alone had haunted her drugged haze as she healed the worst of the damage. Hearing it now, issued by the man behind her nightmares, turned air to ice in her lungs. Alex forced her numb feet around, her progress marked by the rush and retreat of white noise in her head. One minute it was all she could hear. The next, she’d hear cabs honking or the thump of bass as an invincible teen sped by. Her body moved reluctantly, fighting her command to face the monster until the last possible moment.

John Downing leaned casually inside the open front door she’d been too stunned to close and lock when she’d found her apartment restored. Hand fluttering to her throat, she mentally searched for a weapon without looking around. As long as he thought she was too scared to fight him, she might stand a chance. In her peripheral vision Simon smiled at her from the collage, a goofy smile on his face, and she knew she’d fight this battle and win. For him.

Downing stepped past the threshold, stalking her as she moved backward toward the kitchen. “How are you, smart girl?”

“What do you want?” She didn’t have to fake the tremor in her voice. Alex fervently hoped the question would prompt Downing to answer. She needed to buy time, but it was at a premium and her credit was maxed out.

Running his fingers lightly along the edge of a table, Downing shrugged and studied the small space as if seeing her place for the first time, and she wondered inanely if he’d really never been inside before.

“I thought I might find Dr. Jakes visiting.” Downing gave a false smile. “I have a gift for him.”

She looked behind her as she continued to back away but froze at the sound of a slide chambering a bullet. Her stomach fell at the thought she might not see Simon again.

“Turn around, smart girl. I want to see your face when I pull the trigger.” Downing laughed at his little joke. “I wonder which will be more classic? Your expression or Jakes’ when he sees what’s left of your head?”