Sky High (Three Contemporary Novella's) (25 page)

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“I just told you, I’m giving up the story. I can’t report on it and be a part of it at the same time. It muddies the water. Frankly, I muddied the waters the minute I slept with you.”

“Oh. I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry.”

He smirked. “I’m not. Not really. Look, Meg, it’s okay. It’s just a story.”

“You can’t do this. If you don’t break the story, someone else will. Somebody will scoop you on it.
Serena
might scoop you on it.”

Garrett chuckled. “Maybe. Yeah, probably. It’s okay. I already emailed my notes to a colleague from the AP. Hopefully, once word of the arrest gets out, he’ll move fast and file his story first. The notes will help. It’s not the end of the world if he doesn’t, though.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because if I don’t, I can’t be there with you.”

She sucked in a breath and stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

He smiled ruefully. “I’ve seen a lot of terrible things go down in my life, and most of the time, there’s nothing I can do to change it. I just stand on the sidelines and bear witness. I finally have a chance to be a part of the story, to make sure one thing doesn’t end badly. I’d like to see it through.”

“Garrett, that’s…”

He rolled his eyes and laughed. “Yeah, very noble. Don’t worry, I won’t let it go to my head.”

Meg reached out and laid a hand on his arm. His skin was warm and his muscles deceptively strong. She pushed up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, just the way she had the first day they’d met. “I think it’s too late,” she whispered. “It already has.”

“I can’t believe I’m sitting in an actual FBI van,” Meg laughed as Agent Vasquez made some final adjustments to the wire she was wearing. “This is just like a movie.”

“Well, hopefully, it will be a bit less dramatic than on film,” David said, fiddling with his earpiece. “For all the crap Mark Rubiak has done, there’s never been any indication that he’s prone to physical violence, so you’re probably safe in that regard.”

“Definitely safe,” Garrett muttered from behind her. They’d let him come in the van with her, which was far more of a relief than she’d thought it would be. She couldn’t imagine doing any of this without him there.

“Even so,” David went on. “You’ve got the wire. We’ll be listening to everything. We’ll be sure he sits down at your table and engages in conversation before we move in, so there’s less chance of him seeing us coming for him and bolting. The closer we are to him, the safer it is for everyone around you. The last thing we want is to have to pursue him through a crowded restaurant.”

Meg nodded, craning her head to see where Agent Vasquez had tucked the wire’s battery pack.

“You don’t need to do much, Meg. Let him come in and sit down. Exchange some small talk. As soon as we see a clear opening to approach, we’ll be there. And if, for any reason, you get scared, just say ‘It looks like rain.’”

“But it’s sunny outside.”

David smirked. “That’s why we’re using it as a safe phrase.”

“Oh. Right. Wow, I’d make a terrible spy.”

“Well, hopefully, this is your first and last covert operation. You ready? We want you already in place at the table when he arrives.”

She nodded and wiped her hands down her thighs. Garrett touched her elbow and she turned to face him.

“I’ll be right here in the van the whole time. If something goes wrong, you’ll have a dozen federal agents on you, but you’ll also have me, okay?”

“You matter more than the agents. Thank you for coming. For giving up your story…”

He scoffed. “There will always be other stories. The world is pretty good about churning them out. There’s only one you, though, right?”

She swallowed hard. This was all sounding perilously close to a declaration, but she wouldn’t let herself get carried away. The situation was crazy and intense. When the smoke cleared, who knew what he’d think? And she still had a job to do.

“I’d better go,” she whispered.

“Yeah.” Then he reached for her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pressing his face against the side of her head. She gripped his waist and squeezed her eyes shut. “You’ll be fine.” She nodded wordlessly. Then he kissed her hair and let her go. “Go get the bad guy, Meg.”

Meg felt like there were neon signs flashing all around her saying “Federal plant!” “Wearing a wire!” and “Secret agent!” which she knew was ridiculous. She’d looked at herself in the mirror and she looked like…Meg. There’s no way he’d spot anything. She’d fluffed her hair, slicked on some lipstick, and unbuttoned her shirt an extra button in the van. In case Mark got spooked, hopefully that plus the promise of those chats would entice him through the door.

She’d just taken a sip of her tepid coffee when she glanced toward the door for the thousandth time and saw him come in. Same rumpled shirt and frayed cargo shorts, same messy hair and smudged glasses. He saw her and smiled. She forced herself to smile back, big and inviting. She stood up as he approached the table and he reached for her.
He can’t feel the wire, he can’t feel the wire
… She was so freaked out by that thought that she almost didn’t register hugging him. Still pale, soft, and sweaty. He’d been physically unappealing to her from the start. Now that she knew everything about him, he made her skin crawl.

“I’m so glad you came,” she murmured, trying to imbibe her voice with all the innuendo and promise of her chats.

“Me, too. You wanna come back to my apartment now? Your stuff is all still there.”

Panic flooded through her. “Uh…I thought we should talk a little bit first. Face-to-face finally.”

She casually motioned to the chair and Mark sat, although he looked a little annoyed at having been asked to do so. The little creep probably expected her to go straight home with him and strip off all her clothes before they’d even said hello.

“I gotta admit, Meg, I was surprised you emailed me.”

She shrugged, running her fingertip over the rim of her coffee cup and keeping her eyes off him. It made this easier. “I felt like there were still things unsaid between us.”

“Seemed like you wanted to do more than talk in your chats.” He leered at her. The dirtbag actually leered. Well, truthfully he was leering at her cleavage. Not much eye contact happening. She leaned forward and pressed her hands between her knees, knowing what it was doing to her boobs. He was mesmerized.

“Well, once I had a minute to think about it, I realized things weren’t really done between us, were they?”

He grinned in anticipation and licked his lips, eyes still on her tits. Meg suppressed a shudder. Over his shoulder, through the glass windows of the cafe, she saw David and Ken on the sidewalk with several of the other agents from this morning. It was starting. Or rather, it had already started. They’d told her that the actual arrest would be conducted by the Mexican police, which meant that if the FBI agents were out on the sidewalk now…

Just then, a Mexican couple in the booth behind Mark silently slid out of their seats. Two large men, also Mexican, casually walked in the cafe and stopped, looking around as if deciding where to sit, but they’d effectively blocked the door as well. One man came ambling out from the direction of the restrooms and another from the kitchen. Mark hadn’t noticed yet. He was still staring at her tits. But Meg could see them closing in on him from all sides.

“I’m glad you think so, Meg.” He licked his lips. “So why don’t we skip lunch and just head back to my place now?”

Meg frowned and sat back in her chair. He blinked as she broke the spell. “I think you’re going to be a little busy this afternoon, Mark.”

His pasty skin turned even whiter and his beady eyes went wide behind his glasses. “What did you call me?”

She grinned, enjoying the horror dawning in his eyes. It must feel something like that moment when she sat across from him, slowly realizing everything she’d been building her life around had been a lie. Mark made an attempt to stand, but it was too late. While his eyes had been fixed on her cleavage, he’d been surrounded by police officers, and now two beefy hands came down on his shoulders, pinning him to his chair.

“Mark Rubiak,” said one of the big guys from the front door. “You are under arrest.”

As the officer kept rattling off the temporary charges that would land him in a Mexican jail until extradition, Mark looked back at Meg. “You bitch.”

“You know, Mark, you really shouldn’t trust people you meet on the internet. They could be lying through their teeth about
everything
.”

“How did you figure it out? You, of all people?”

She bristled at that, at the implication that she was too stupid and naïve to bring him down. Well, he’d figure out in short order that was exactly what had happened. The broken little rich girl he’d duped had turned the tables on him and sent him to prison. He’d have years and years to mull that one over so she didn’t bother correcting him. Looking over his shoulder again, she saw Garrett standing on the sidewalk, watching her intently, like he wouldn’t be able to breathe until she was out of this situation. She grinned. “I got very, very lucky.”

#

He waited for her. After the arrest at the cafe, they went back to the FBI offices where Meg was whisked away into the supersecret areas to give testimony and go over evidence and a million other official things, and they said Garrett couldn’t be there for that stuff. It took hours. All day. She figured he must have left ages ago. David walked her out front where a car waited to take her back to Garrett’s. When they walked through the door to the lobby, Garrett was there, sitting in one of their uncomfortable plastic lobby chairs, elbows on his knees, eyes on the floor.

David smirked. “Looks like you’re okay from here. Car’s out front, just tell him where to go. And, Meg? Thank you again. Great job today.”

She hugged him goodbye, because that’s what she always did. She’d hugged Agent Vasquez, even Ken Durkin, even though he’d looked like he might break. Once David was gone, she walked over to Garrett. When her feet came into his line of sight, his head jerked up and she could swear she saw several very encouraging emotions flash across his face at once: delight, relief, happiness.

“Hey, you waited for me.”

He stood up and cleared his throat. “Of course. How’d it go?”

“Good. Long. I’ll have to testify in New York, of course, but he has to be extradited first, so it will be a while. David gave me this.” She waggled her passport in her fingers. “Technically it was seized with the rest of my luggage when they searched the house and should have stayed in evidence, but he pulled some strings.”

Garrett frowned at the passport. “Well, that’s good,” he said, his words at odds with the expression on his face. “It’ll save you having to deal with the embassy. You can go home tomorrow.”

Meg’s stomach bottomed out and she flushed icy cold. She willed him to look at her face and amend that statement, but he kept his eyes carefully averted. “Uh, yeah,” she stammered at last. “I guess I can. I better go get my stuff together.”

Now he looked at her, a brief flicker of a gaze that she couldn’t quite read. Then he turned and extended an arm for her to walk ahead of him. “Sure thing. Let’s go.”

They rode in silence back to his place. Meg watched Mexico City slide past the car windows as the driver wound through the hectic snarl of traffic. Such a vast city and she’d barely seen it. How ridiculous that just a week ago she’d thought she was moving here. That felt like a dream now, some crazy thing that happened to some other version of Meg. So much had happened. The girl who got on that plane back at JFK was gone. From the minute Garrett had sat down next to her, everything had started to change. She looked over at him. He was staring out the window, too, hand curled pensively in front of his mouth. She didn’t want to move to Mexico anymore, but she certainly didn’t want to leave yet, not when he was staying. But maybe one night was all he wanted or needed with her. Funny, she came here and was horribly betrayed by one man, but a different man was the one who was breaking her heart.

Garrett unlocked his apartment and motioned Meg inside. She slipped past him and he closed the door, leaning back on it, watching her.

“Well, I guess I’ll call the airline and see what I can get for tomorrow,” she said, her voice flippant.

His gut churned. This was all happening too fast. He knew it was probably for the best, get it done quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid. But when she’d shown him that passport and he realized what it meant, panic like he’d never known gripped him. She should go home as soon as possible, start the business of putting this nightmare behind her and getting on with her life. That was absolutely for the best. But…

“Meg…”

She turned, face hopeful but eyes wary. “Yeah?”

He shook his head. No, he couldn’t do this. She was so bright and young and unsullied. He needed to turn her loose to go find the brilliant life she was destined for. She took a step toward him. His fingers curled into the door handle like that inanimate object might hold him back from doing something stupid.

“Garrett?” she murmured, taking another step toward him.