Midnight Fire (13 page)

Yeah. Hector Blake had been a terrorist and a traitor. If it was the last thing Jack did, he was going to unearth and expose everything Blake had done.

“I want him,” Summer said crisply. “I want this story. I want to take down everyone who has ever worked with Hector, I want to unmask what he’s done, how he has betrayed his country. I want to expose every step of this. With details. I’m going to kick ass and name names.”

Jack’s neck hairs rose. He knew Summer was smart and dedicated. She’d attended Harvard on full scholarships even though her education had been sketchy because of her hippie parents dragging her around the world.
Area 8
was one of the best known political blogs around and she’d built it from the ground up. So. Smart, dedicated and tenacious. If she said she wanted to expose all this shit to the public, she was deathly serious, and he had no doubt she would do just that. She was like a dog with a bone.

The other thing he knew was that the people involved in this conspiracy were vicious and ruthless. They had not stopped at assassinating his father, the next President of the United States, together with over seven hundred people, they hadn’t stopped at murdering the head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. They sure wouldn’t stop at killing Summer.

Whatever was going on was very big, run by powerful, ruthless people. The idea of Summer in their crosshairs made fear skitter along his skin, made his heart give a huge painful thump in his chest, made him break out in a sweat.

Because they would swat her away like a fly, without thought or remorse. Bullets were cheap and triggermen who would shoot a woman were cheap, too. The bullet would come flying to her head from a sniper’s nest and by the time the medics came, the sniper would be far away, the fatal weapon disassembled and placed neatly into its foam packing. The gun and the bullet would be clean of any markers and any DNA. Summer would be a broken doll on the sidewalk, another tragic victim of senseless violence in a year that had seen so many.

That beautiful woman, dead on the ground, brains and blood and bone spattered everywhere.

He couldn’t even go there. Now that he’d found her again, he realized suddenly, he wasn’t letting go.

He’d dedicated his adult life to his country, his family had been decimated, he’d lived in hiding for six months, putting himself in a dark deep hole, isolated and alone—and then he’d found Summer again.

She made him feel alive after a long time feeling like he’d been buried in the stone cold ground. She made his heart beat again.

No one was going to touch her.

However, saying
no
,
no way are you coming near this fucking story
was not going to cut it. He had no say over her life, though he’d like to. He’d like to have the right to tell her to do whatever she wanted as long as she stayed far away from Blake and whatever fuckheads he’d been conspiring with.

If he had a staple, he’d have stapled his mouth shut because that was what it was going to take.

“Um, we’ll see. Ah, I’ll make sure Nick feeds you intel as soon as we’ve verified it. So don’t worry that you’ll, ah, miss out on this story. It’s, um—” He licked suddenly dry lips. Fifteen years lying for a living, lying for his country, and he sounded like a moron whose hand had been caught in the cookie jar and was lying his way out of it. “It’s a big story, I know—”

Summer’s eyes widened with every stuttering word. She crossed her arms and tightened her lips and everything in her body language told him she was rejecting him and what he was saying.

“Jack Delvaux.” Her nostrils flared. Damn, she was pretty when she was angry. Color high in that pale rose skin, light gray eyes flashing like lightning. He shouldn’t be thinking this. He should be marshaling his facts, preparing a counter argument, preparing to convince her that this story was like grasping a third rail. Instant death.

Instead, like a crazy fuck, he savored the feel of the air around her heating up, watched her eyes flash and thought about her mouth that very recently had been touching his.

Focus
,
you fuck!
he told himself. But he was AWOL.

He tried on a smile. “That’s my name, don’t use it up.” The old childhood response when his mom reprimanded him for something he’d done.

“That’s not funny. This is serious.”

He nodded. Yes, it was. And she seriously was not going after this story until it was over and all the bad guys were in jail. And even then...

“You have that look.”

“That look?” He feigned innocence, though it was hard. He looked every minute of his thirty-four years and then some. And on his face it was clear that he hadn’t spent all that time reading in the library and helping little old ladies cross the street.

“That look of someone who wants to keep information secret. I encounter that look every single day of my working life, and let me tell you I make my living—a very good living at that—by getting past people who don’t want me to know anything.”

Shit. She thought this was about keeping secrets? Fuck no. This was about keeping her
safe
.

Jack no longer had a smile lurking in his voice. “These are very dangerous people, Summer. You know that. I’m just trying to keep you alive.”

Summer stepped closer to him, until she was almost touching him. Which was fine, fine. Except she hadn’t stepped closer to him because she wanted to give him another one of those amazing kisses. No, this was pure aggression, stepping into his personal space, up in his face.

Her expression was all business, sober and serious. “I have never run away from a story I felt to be in the public interest. Ever. And I have no intention of running away now. So you can take your fake concern and stick it—”

Jack kissed her. He couldn’t help himself. It was wrong wrong wrong. He told himself that even as he reached out to pull her toward him and crushed his mouth on hers. And yes, it was just as magical as the last time, and he was expecting the magic so it was real. It wasn’t just him being starved for a woman, any woman. He was starved for
this
woman, who felt so perfect in his arms. Mouth so soft, skin so warm...

Summer wrenched herself out of his arms and slapped him, hard, across the face. It was a real slap, too. Not a slap for form’s sake. His skin tingled.

He’d been tortured once. For eight hours before Hugh sent backup. It had been totally dispassionate and he’d survived.

This...
hurt
. Seeing Summer so angry at him hurt. She was absolutely right of course. You don’t shut a woman up by kissing her. Even Jack knew that. He’d been out of touch with women for a while, and over the past six months women had been like an alien species to him, but he knew that.

The thing was, he had absolutely not been able to resist her. Even now he was looking for a way to do it again. How could he say he was sorry when he wasn’t? Saying he was sorry for kissing her was absurd. It was the best thing to happen to him since the Massacre.

But—he had to take a stab at making amends because he saw coldness beyond the anger in Summer’s eyes and that scared him more than the anger.

He hadn’t thought it through. Jack Delvaux, ace super secret agent for fifteen years, hadn’t thought it through.

It was entirely possible that a lot of men had tried to get her to shut up by trying to kiss her. That just now occurred to him. She lived in a man’s world and men were pricks. Jack should know—he was one of them.

So he opened his mouth to give an apology when he didn’t feel in the least apologetic and he was saved by the bell. Or at least a ring tone.
Sinnerman
, Nick’s ringtone. Nick had programmed it in himself.

Jack held up a finger and watched as her jaws flexed.
Just a minute
, he mouthed then answered with the fervor of a man who’d been saved from annihilation.

“Nick. My man. Wassup?”

“Where are you?” Nick usually started off with
howzzit hangin’?
so his deep sober tone made Jack stand straighter and shoot a glance at Summer. Whatever this was about it wasn’t about Summer because she was standing right in front of him, glaring.

Except it was about Summer.

“I set up—or rather Felicity set up—a surveillance bot for Summer. Felicity’s a big fan of the blog and she wants to keep Summer safe. So she checked the cameras across the street from Summer’s place and got this—”

“What?” Summer asked Jack. “What is it?”

Grimly, Jack angled his screen so she could see and put it on speakerphone.

Summer cocked her head as she stared at the screen. A night view of a suburban street, greenery, an old jalopy parked on the street. His.

“I don’t see what—”

And then she could see what it was because it was a view of her apartment building. It was static, from a security camera. Not much appeared to be happening.

“There!” Jack said, and checked the timeline. Half an hour ago. He moved the slider from right to left and pointed to a spot on the screen.

Summer frowned, leaned closer. “What is it?”

Jack watched it again. “The head of someone, moving against the blinds. While we were here.” He met her eyes. “Someone’s been in your place, Summer.”

Blood drained from her face. “An intruder?” she breathed.

“An intruder.” Jack nodded. “Not me. So he didn’t mean you any good.” He addressed the screen. “Tell Felicity good catch.” She’d done superb work.

“That isn’t all that we caught tonight,” Nick’s voice was grim. “There’s more. Two agents I trust were nearby and I asked them to go into Summer’s place, see if we could get fingerprints, DNA, something. Summer’s triggered some kind of trip wire and if we can get the identity of the intruder we’ll have a trail to follow. Or we thought we’d have a trail to follow.”

This wasn’t sounding good. “And?”

“These two guys are good, and discreet. Don’t worry about any leaks. One of them had the presence of mind to take out a sniffer and wand the door.”

Fear pumped a sudden icy jet in Jack’s veins. His voice turned hoarse. “There was a bomb?”

“No,” Nick said and Jack’s shoulders slumped in relief. “Something worse.”

Summer’s face was icy white. Her hands were clenched, knuckles pale. “Worse than a bomb?” she whispered. “What’s worse than a bomb?”

The screen changed and Jack could see Nick’s face, narrow-eyed and tense. “It was a new type of sensor we’re testing and it picks up about twenty types of explosives and four major bioweapons. Sarin, ricin, anthrax and botulinum.”

Summer swallowed, that long white neck bobbing. “And—and which was it?”

“Sarin,” Nick said. “They left a booby trap. The next time you opened your door, you’d have received a blast of sarin in your face. You’d have been dead inside the hour, Summer, and a sarin death is not pretty. They’re evacuating the building now.”

“That’s it,” Jack said, decisively. That was it for him. He couldn’t continue investigating in DC, not with Summer. And he wasn’t willing to leave her for a second. So he was done. “I’m taking Summer to my safe house and tomorrow we’re flying to Portland. Tell ASI to send a plane.”

San Francisco

The house was perfect. In the Mission, but enough on the edge of the fast growing and gentrifying tech sector to make it plausible for four young tech slackers to share the rent.

Drunks and addicts to the left of them, Google to the right, they set up shop. It was an old building, practically with a sell by date on its façade. It would fall to the tech giants soon. If not this year, then the next. As inevitable as looking at an old dog and knowing that it would die sooner or later.

Ostensibly the four young men were renting but actually the building and the two neighboring buildings were owned by a shell company that, if you wanted to spend about six months digging, was ultimately owned by the PLA. No one was interested enough to spend those six months and if they were, by the time the six months were up, the PLA would own most of California anyway.

The four young men operated very discreetly. They had a satellite uplink disguised as an HVAC on the roof, which was a weak spot. It was the only HVAC on the block, but the rooflines were changing monthly. No one would notice.

They had reinforced internet connections via a thick cable that snaked out of the building.

That was for the primary mission.

They were ready for the post-mission period, too. The basements of their building and the two adjacent buildings contained brand new powerful generators that could keep electricity running in their buildings for months. Special films had been put over all the windows. They were invisible from the outside but they acted as light filters. The time would come when there were no lights in the city and their building would be a beacon.

Thanks to the film, no light would escape. No one would know they were the only ones with power.

The three buildings were four stories tall. The team operated out of the first floor of the central building. That was where they worked, ate and slept. The other rooms on the other floors were filled floor to ceiling with supplies. Food, water, arms. They could live twenty years on what was in the buildings.

Twenty years wouldn’t be necessary, of course, but it was good to be prepared.

The generators and supplies had been brought in by stealth, at night, unloading vans from the alleyway in back. Supplies had been purchased from valid credit cards in fake names within a radius of a hundred miles, no purchase so big it would raise eyebrows.

Two of them had studied in the US and could easily pass for American. They made a point of hanging out in the local coffee shops and noodle shops, until they became a familiar sight. There were plenty of twenty something slackers dressed in torn jeans and tees. One of them had a favorite tee with KEEP CALM AND CODE on it. That got him knowing smiles from the baristas.

Finally, the preparations were over. They were fully stocked. Their use of power from the grid was perfectly normal—no billing anomalies would be noted. They used the grid for light and for the monitor they used for entertainment. The rest came from the monster generators in the basement.