His Spy at Night (Spy Games Book 3) (22 page)

“If he knows you’re CSIS, he’s not going to come right out and say so,” Harry said.

She continued to frown. “I can’t figure out what his game is.”

He lost his last shred of patience with her. “Because this isn’t a game. I know you think it is, but it’s not. People have died.”

She looked at him as if he’d disappointed her. “No one uses stolen military goods to build schools. A lot more people will die if we don’t cut off the supply chain.”

“I don’t want one of them to be you.”

A glimmer of his Lies returned. “You don’t need to worry about me. CSIS investigates threats to Canadian security. When international situations become dangerous, we alert the CIA and have the Americans send in the SEALs to do the dirty work. How do you think they found Osama bin Laden?”

None of this was funny to him. All of the possessiveness he’d tried to submerge surged to the surface. “You’re done. You’ve got enough information to have Vanderloord arrested. That’s the last time you’re to be alone with him.”

He heard the sharp inhalation of her breath from across the room. “Did you just give me an order?”

He’d made a tactical mistake. She liked him giving her orders in the bedroom. Nowhere else. Yet he refused to back down. He controlled what happened inside the embassy, not CSIS. Certainly not Lies. “You aren’t going to convince me to help him gain access to any Canadian defense contracts. If that’s all he wants, he won’t have any more use for you. You might as well call John Carmichael and tell him your investigation is over.”

“Or I’ll tell Bernard you fired me, and since he’d be the reason why, I’ll persuade him he owes me a job. Would you like to know how I’ll do that?”

He choked back his retort. She was as angry as he was and deliberately goading him. If he truly believed in his heart that she’d use sex to get what she wanted, it would be impossible for him to love her as much as he did.

He loved her.

The shock of the discovery, coming as it did on top of everything else, left his head reeling. He couldn’t be in love with Lies. She was too unpredictable. Too fearless, with no sense of self-preservation. Boundaries were mere suggestions. To her, rules were made to be broken. She drove him crazy.

And she made him feel so, so alive. Every day with her promised a unique new adventure. He’d had a taste of excitement and going back to dull would never cut it. If anything happened to her, he couldn’t swear he’d survive.

She’d ruined him.

“I’d better go.” He grabbed his briefcase and overnight bag from the floor of the small entry and opened the door. His steps slowed despite his head urging his reluctant feet forward.

She didn’t try to stop him so he left.

* * *

The insistent ringing of the phone beside her bed pried her from sleep.

Dull morning light grayed the opaque glass wall across from the foot of her bed. For one hopeful moment, as she groped for the receiver, she thought Harry might be calling to apologize.

If she’d been more awake she would have known better.

“Harry left in a hurry last night,” Bernard said.

She freed herself from the sheet, its stranglehold the result of a warm room and restless night. “He didn’t like that I had dinner with you and he didn’t believe I had no idea we’d be dining alone. I don’t think he’s over you sleeping with his former girlfriend,” she added, just to be mean. She was in a bad mood and didn’t mind passing it on. “And I doubt very much if I’m going to be able to convince him to get you a meeting with those primary contractors. It looks like you’re on your own.”

If Bernard was disappointed, he didn’t let on. “You genuinely like him.”

That
didn’t quite capture how she felt about Harry this morning. “Of course I do. What’s not to like?”

“I’m sorry, Lies.”

He sounded sincere. She hadn’t expected sympathy from him. Then again, she hadn’t realized she’d need any. She stared at the thick glass blocks of the wall. She didn’t know if she and Harry were finished or if he was simply being Harry and required time to think matters through, but she’d gotten one message last night loud and clear. They were two very different people, and sex, as great as it was, wasn’t going to be enough to overcome that.

“Lies? Are you OK?”

She had to get her head back in the game. Bernard didn’t care about her personal life, regardless of how sincere he pretended to be. She drummed up feigned indifference. “Of course. It’s Harry’s loss, not mine.”

“I feel responsible. I promise I’ll find some way to make it up to you. I’ve got business here in Amsterdam for the next few days, but we’ll have lunch later in the week when I get back to The Hague.”

He had a lot of nerve to suggest it after the way their dinner had ended, illustrating the colossal ego she was dealing with. It also meant that, despite the snafu with Harry, she continued to have something he wanted.

“I’d like that.”

She set the receiver back in its cradle. After days of dancing they now had each other right where they wanted. Bernard would do her a favor that came with enough strings attached for her to owe him bigtime.

Walking out on her last night had been the best thing Harry could have done for her. It gave her a plausible reason to be bitter enough to betray him. Besides, he’d be back. She’d seen him hesitate at the door. He wasn’t any more ready to call it quits than she was—although it might be best if they did. Last night was their first real fight of what promised to be many. He knew that as well as she did, which was why he’d kept going.

So why was her heart so damn sad at the thought of their affair being over?

According to the clock it was a few minutes after ten, a little early to call Yasmin on a Sunday morning. At the same time there was a good chance she’d be in.

Yasmin answered on the fourth ring.

“Why do I always fall for the wrong men?” Lies demanded.

“Beats me. I’m not the right person to ask.” Her cousin’s answer came out husky with sleep and pitched unnaturally low, as if she were trying not to wake someone. “Give me a second.” Lies heard the rustling of bedclothes and the creak of a mattress, then the faint snick of a door being carefully closed. “OK. Tell me all about it. What did you do to make Harry mad?”

“How do you know I’m talking about Harry? And why do you assume I was the one who did something wrong?”

“Because I saw the way you look at each other. And I’m not assuming you did something wrong, I’m saying you did something to make him angry. You did, didn’t you?”

Sudden suspicion interrupted Lies’s desire to unload her own problems. “That had better be the soccer player and not Baart in your bedroom.”

“It’s neither. He’s an accountant with the company I work for.” Yasmin sounded self-satisfied. “He asked me out a few times and I finally accepted—which I might not have done if I hadn’t met Harry and liked him so much. So see? We really do share a type. Now tell me what you did wrong so I’ll know not to repeat your mistake. Then we’ll figure out how to fix it.”

No words came out. She shouldn’t have called Yasmin. She couldn’t explain to her how two parts of her life kept converging. She couldn’t say how she had thought she’d loved Michael Ajam, but that the man she’d been in love with had never existed, while Harry, on the other hand, exemplified everything that Michael had turned out not to be.

She wanted to be talked out of fixing things with him, not encouraged to do so.

She’d called the wrong person.

“Go back to your accountant,” she said. “We can talk later.”

She cut off Yasmin’s protests. Then she called Dan.

“Jesus, Lies. It’s four-thirty in the morning here.” He sounded annoyed and impatient, although neither was an unusual state for him to be in so she didn’t let that deter her.

“I’ve done something stupid and I need someone to talk to. If I tell you about it, can we keep this conversation off the record?”

Three long seconds dragged by. “It depends on how stupid it is and who it involves.”

“It’s similar to the last stupid thing I did and might or might not involve the defense trade commissioner to the Netherlands.” Perched on the side of the bed, she tensed for his reaction. It would set the tone for how much she’d feel free to say.

“What is it with intelligence officers?” Dan demanded. “Are your social skills really so poor that you can’t hook up with strangers in bars whenever you need an itch scratched? Because it can’t be stellar standards or morals holding you people back.” He blew out a resigned sigh. “OK. As long as the trade commissioner isn’t committing any crimes and neither of you is compromising national security, this is off the record. But pretend I’m your brother and spare me the details.”

A load shifted off her shoulders. Judging by Dan’s reaction, hers wasn’t the first phone call of this nature that he’d ever received.

She told him as much as she dared, holding back anything to do with the investigation—because John Carmichael had instructed her to keep it to herself—and the intimate details, because she didn’t think Dan needed to hear how Harry had taken her from behind while she’d been bent over his sofa.

“Why are you telling me all this and not a girlfriend?” Dan asked when she finished. “Why is it my shoulder you’re crying on?”

She didn’t know. “You told me to protect my integrity on this assignment. I guess I needed to hear that I haven’t done anything too terribly wrong.”

“What are your instincts telling you? Do you think you can’t do this job to the best of your abilities? Do you believe you’ve compromised your investigation?”

“No,” Lies said. “I don’t believe I have.”

“Neither do I.” He said it with enough conviction to ease her conscience. “Don’t get me wrong. I’d rather you hadn’t gotten involved with the trade commissioner. But while a lawyer might bring it up during disclosure, I doubt if it would have any real effect on the outcome of a trial. And I don’t think that’s why you really called me.” He paused as if gathering his thoughts, or maybe he was deciding if he should voice an honest opinion. “I think you really want me to tell you to stop seeing the trade commissioner. I’m not going to do that. I want to ask you a question instead and I want you to be honest with yourself when you answer it. Is he worth sacrificing your career for? Because from what I’m hearing there doesn’t appear to be any middle ground between the two of you. It sounds to me as if he hates your job.”

A sick sensation clamped her stomach muscles in a vice. “What do I do?”

“Forget about whether or not he hates your job for a second and take a step back. Do
you
like your job? Would you consider taking a desk job instead?”

“I love fieldwork,” she admitted. “No. I don’t want a desk job. Not yet. Maybe someday. But not in the foreseeable future.”

“Don’t ever give up on something you love to make someone else happy, Lies. You were angry with me for telling John you’d gotten involved with Ajam. You thought I was being sexist and had double standards. Maybe I was and maybe I do. I know this sounds stereotypical, but women are more likely to give up their dreams for men than men are for women. I’m not saying to stand your ground without compromising. I’m suggesting if you want a relationship with the trade commissioner, you should start out the way you mean to continue or you’ll both end up miserable. Oh, and Lies?”

“Yes?”

“If sleeping with the trade commissioner negatively impacts on this investigation in any way, this conversation won’t remain off the record. And the stakes are too high for me to protect you. You understand that, don’t you?”

Her fingers tightened on the phone. She’d known it when she called. “I do.”

“Remember the order and priority of your commitments. Get your case wrapped up first and sort out your personal life second. That’s the best advice I can give you right now.”

“Thank you.”

She laid in bed for a long time, mulling over their conversation. Dan was right. Until she finished this case she couldn’t give Harry the consideration he deserved. She’d call in sick at the embassy for the next few days, then head to Amsterdam and eavesdrop on Bernard with that listening device she’d planted in his master bathroom.

It would give her the break from Harry her heart and mind sorely needed.

* * *

The glum Sunday morning reflected Harry’s mood. He hadn’t planned on waking alone. It was no one’s fault but his own that he had.

He wasn’t the type of man who confided the details of his relationships with women to other men.

Instead he called Alcine.

They hadn’t parted on warm terms. While he deeply appreciated her confiding her concerns about Vanderloord to him, he’d been less enthused about the details of their affair and the accompanying list of his faults that she seemed to believe justified it. He couldn’t say why he was calling her now.

He almost hung up. His thumb hovered over the telephone icon on his cell.

“Harry?”

He closed his eyes. “Alcine. How are you?”

Caution crept into her tone. “Is something wrong?”

Yes. I need to know I’m not a complete ass as far as women go and that I have at least a few redeeming qualities.