Hard Target (9 page)

Günter seemed to consider the paper, probably a blueprint of the gallery housing the Picasso.

“I’d say if you found out who their phone people are…responded to a trouble call about ninety minutes before shift change…you could hide out in one of the wiring closets until closing time. It’d allow you to bring your tools. Disable the alarm and circumvent the camera feed so Alex could get the dummy frame inside.” Günter sighed. “You really should wake her. Let her work with you to figure this out.”

“Are you on
her
side now?” Though Simon kept his voice to a whisper, agitation screamed from every syllable.

Alex curled her fingers into the sheet, clutching the fabric tight.

“I’m not on her side. I just don’t want to see you make the same mistakes I made.” Regret couldn’t have been more obvious if it’d been lit in neon above Günter’s head. “Look. I know I haven’t asked, but would you like to tell me exactly what happened? Between you and her?”

“I’m still not sure what happened myself. I came out of the shower one evening to a posse of FBI agents in my apartment. They’d thoroughly trashed the place.” Simon tilted his kitchen stool on two legs and kept a grip with one hand on the table. “My boss was with them, holding my personal laptop.”

Alex pictured Simon’s old third-floor walkup. A plethora of books and artwork scavenged from old books and magazines brightened the faded wallpaper and gloomy lighting. He’d made her tea and coffee in chipped china cups. She’d cherished the worn china simply because he found them interesting enough to collect for her at the Sunday flea markets they enjoyed. He wanted something feminine to make her feel at home when she came over, he’d said.

“Alex had gone out for a bit. To the store for some things we needed for dinner. She was gone way too long. I’d just given her the key to my place the week before…” Simon peered into the bottom of his beer bottle before draining the dregs. “I didn’t see her again until my trial.”

“Did you try to contact her?” Günter asked.

“No.” He turned his head toward where Alex lay shrouded in darkness. “What would’ve been the point?”

Alex fought a stab of pain at the remembrance. The weeks she’d waited for a letter, an explanation, or even a simple invitation to visit him. But it’d never come. Then, she’d tried to see him. It’d been hard enough walking through the doors of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, but sitting in the exposed lobby when she heard from a guard Simon never wanted to see her again? That had been humiliation and heartbreak rolled into one.

“Don’t you think maybe someone else could’ve planted those files on your laptop? Even remotely?” Gun broke into Alex’s ugly memories, washing them away.

“I suppose, but she had my laptop password and my key.”

Günter paused, beer bottle halfway to his lips. “How’d that come about? She must’ve nicked it. But you knew?”

“My password?” Simon laughed, a warm sound. “Yeah. We both got paranoid about one another pretty quick. I hacked into her computer and she into mine around the same time. That was an interesting conversation to say the least.”

Alex remembered the red rose on her pillow. The words,
Change your password, Agent Valentine
on the accompanying card. He’d come over that night with a bottle of wine and they’d talked until dawn, then made love well past sunrise.

“I was going to ask her to marry me the night of my arrest. Over takeout Chinese and a bottle of pinot noir.” His laugh was self-deprecating. “Romantic, huh?”

Alex suppressed a gasp. Günter didn’t say anything, merely reached into the fridge and popped open another beer before setting it down in front of Simon.

God, he really sounded innocent. Either he believed what he said, or he was an amazingly good liar. And a sociopath too. Alex sat up on her elbow. “If I got you access to your old laptop, do you think you could hack into it? Figure out who did this to you?”

Draping his arm over the back of his chair, Simon faced her. Gun seemed to recede farther into the shadows.

Sitting fully upright, she pushed her hair behind her shoulders. “I wouldn’t offer if I was the one who set you up.”

“You testified against me,” he said.

“If you really are innocent, I want to know who did this to you. Who did this to us.” Even she didn’t understand what made her willing to let him prove himself now. After all these years.

Simon stood and crossed to the bed. Alex examined the shadows obscuring his face and wondered at his thoughts.

“I already know who did this to us.” He shook his head. “You.”

Covers tangled around her legs and she had to push them aside to stand. In the kitchen, Günter took a long sip of his beer and watched her and Simon as they faced off.

“If what you say is true, I’ll get your name cleared.”

“You can’t give me my life back. You can’t return what I lost.” He took her in with a sadness of expression that extinguished any remaining hope he’d forgive her.

“I know.” She grasped his hand and gave it a quick squeeze before he pulled his hand away. “I just need to know. For me too. Maybe then we can move on.”

And maybe then you won’t hate me.

Günter stood and moved to the door. Neither Alex nor Simon heeded his leave-taking as the latch clicked softly shut behind him.

“Do you really believe me?” he asked.

Alex plumbed the depths of her emotions and came up with the same conflicting feelings she’d had on the subject, almost from the beginning. This time, however, something made her want to believe in him.

“At first…” she began, then shook her head. He didn’t need to know about her interrogation. The questions they’d asked her and how she’d responded. He only needed to hear how she felt now, and she needed to be honest. “I’m willing to take a look at the evidence.”

Simon stepped away.

“Come to bed,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a couch.”

“Or a headboard to cuff me to,” she muttered.

He gave a wry snort and stripped off his jeans.

His naked ass drew her stare. Holy hell, without a change of underwear today he’d gone commando at her place. “I can sleep on the floor…”

“Alex.” Jeans in his hand, he faced her in all his masculine glory. “I promise not to touch you. Just let’s go to bed.”

She couldn’t lift her gaze from the length of him nestled against his testicles. Her fingers curled with the urge to grasp him and feel him harden in her palm. “Are you sure?”

He tugged on his pajama bottoms, hiding himself from view. “I’m sure.”

Disappointment sent her tummy into a freefall, but she nodded and crossed to the bed. Still wearing her clothes minus her bra, reluctant to touch any of those clothes from her past life at least for tonight, she crawled under the covers and moved to the far side of the mattress. The bed swayed with her movement and she relished the gentle motion with a sigh. Simon climbed in and the bed swayed harder.

“Must be interesting during sex.” She cringed when she realized what she’d said.

Mid-pillow fluff, Simon paused. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Alex rolled away, avoiding Simon’s stare. He dropped his pillow to the mattress and followed her motion. Leaning over her, one palm near her stomach, he said, “I’ve never slept with anyone in this bed, Alexandra.”

She affixed her attention on the soft glow of the alarm clock. The punctuation mark between the digits pulsed softly.

“Afraid you’d get seasick?” The heat of his naked torso radiated onto her skin.

“Offering to help me find out?” His quietly posed challenge vibrated up her spine.

On impulse she rolled to her back, then froze. She’d spent so long not thinking about Simon, not wanting Simon, that to have him here, now, pressed up against her, played out like a waking dream. She was sure if she blinked he’d fade away.

“You promised not to touch me,” she whispered.

He shifted so his body no longer rested along her flank. She immediately regretted the loss of contact. With one last, long look she couldn’t quite fathom, he rolled away. Hours later, when the bed no longer swayed and the air-conditioned room wrapped tendrils of ice around Alex’s shoulders, she listened to a softly snoring Simon and wished for his body heat. He’d always liked to sleep like a polar bear in the arctic. Chest bare, he wore only his striped pajama bottoms. Even in the winter. She shivered and pulled the covers more tightly around her.

Simon opened his eyes and blinked sleepily. “Cold?”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered, though they were the only ones in the room.

“C’mere.” He drew her close and settled her into the crook of his arm.

The heat of his skin sank through her light top, his warmth like that of a blanket fresh from a dryer. The man could kick off some serious heat. She let out a soft sigh and breathed in his scent, so clean and crisp. Fingers slipping from her hip down to her waist, his hold loosened. Grew heavier. When a snore wuffled between his lips, she knew he’d fallen back to sleep.

Alex used the position and his repose to her advantage. With brazen interest, she studied the moguls of his pecs and abs, the taut landscape broken only by the tightly pebbled, ruddy skin of his nipples. As she drank him in, a little devil settled on the shoulder of her womanly pride and asked how he could sleep when she lay in his arms. She wanted him to want her. It shouldn’t have been so easy for him to sleep with her in his arms. Without thinking where her actions might lead, she brought one fingernail to his left nipple and circled the nub. His chest stilled. Her hand froze.

“Alex…” He groaned her name.

“Kiss me?”

Lowering his chin, he looked down at her. “Just a kiss?”

She nodded. He groaned again.

Soft, hesitant, his lips met hers. She darted her tongue to taste him and his chest expanded under her hand. He increased the pressure of the kiss, tightening his arm around her torso. Drawing her close. She moaned into his mouth and he rolled them both so she lay beneath him. Poised over her, touching her with no part of his anatomy other than his lips, he made love to her mouth. First kissing and suckling, next tugging and nibbling, then plunging his tongue between her lips until she arched, gasping for breath and for more.

Palm hovering over her breast, the heat of his skin burning up the air between his hand and her flesh, he asked, “You sure you don’t want me to touch you?”

Her nipples contracted to painful hardness, compelling her to arch just a fraction. Just enough. Simon closed his hand over her breast and Alex keened her approval. He squeezed harder, then swiped the pad of his thumb over her engorged nipple. Her hips responded with a measured, involuntary thrust. Nostrils flaring, Simon looked skyward, seeming to beg the heavens for strength to endure his own arousal. He massaged her nipple, circling and flicking until pain-pleasure forced her head to and fro on the pillow. Strands of hair sticking to her lips, hips rocking, Alex fisted the sheet and begged wordlessly for more. The bed swayed with her motion, mimicking the sex act. A sensible part of her mind whispered dire warnings and held up brightly colored caution flags that almost, but not quite, overruled desire.

“Touch me. Love me.” Her breathless plea convulsed his hand at her breast and she cried out as pinpricks of light sent her spiraling out of control. Out of her mind. If Simon wanted her as much as she wanted him nothing would stop them now.

“Sweetheart.” He removed his touch and kissed her forehead. “No.”

Alex grasped his hand and tried to force it lower, along her belly to her sex. She wanted his fingers there. His lips. His tongue. Simon resisted her attempts and clenched his hand into a fist before rolling away with a force that jarred the bed, rocking it violently.

Breath still coming in little gasps, Alex sat up and clutched the duvet to her chest. Humiliation washed over her in a sickening cascade. She’d asked him not to touch her. Any other man would’ve had her clothes in a ball at the end of the bed by now, but Simon wasn’t just any other man.

“I’m sorry.” The realization she’d pushed him hard against the wall of his honor disgusted her. “God. What’s wrong with me?”

Wordlessly, Simon flipped away the covers and padded to the bathroom. The light clicked on and the door shut, leaving her with only her regrets for company.

“Afternoon.” Simon muttered the greeting into his first cup of tea and kept his attention firmly on his half-day-old copy of the
Times
.

Though he’d managed to skirt around the embarrassment of facing Alex in his own bed, it was tough to escape the
walk of shame
entirely in your own apartment. Alex observed him from two feet away. He knew this because he could see her pink toenail polish peeping at him from beneath the corner of the arts section. She curled her toes in a self-conscious gesture before moving away from him and into the kitchen.

Kiss me
, she’d said last night—a request that should have sent him running to the security flat where he and Günter kept a spare bedroom. Instead, what had he done? He’d played the besotted lover and acquiesced to her pretty little plea. Imagining the pebbled heat of her nipple against his palm, he stifled a groan and felt the first pangs of a headache.