White Lies (14 page)

           
 
"
Denver
?" Steve guessed.

           
 
"No. The closest town is forty miles from
the cabin by road, about fifteen air miles. It's a quiet, peaceful place, with
no one to put any pressure on you."

           
 
"It's really nice of you folks to do all
of this, just for the chance to talk to me when I get my memory back," he
drawled, watching Frank with a hard gleam in his eyes.

           
 
Frank laughed, thinking that some things never
changed. Even without his memory, he was so sharp he'd already put part of the
puzzle together. "Why don't you go to the apartment and start
packing?" Frank suggested to Jay, then lifted his brows in question.
"If you want to go, that is."

           
 
"She's going," Steve said flatly,
crossing his arms as he leaned against the bed. "Or I don't go."

           
 
Because she desperately needed the chance to
be alone and think, Jay said yes. She slipped from the room without looking at
either man, afraid they would see the terror in her eyes.

           
 
Steve regarded Frank in silence for a moment
before growling, "You told me there wasn't any danger. Why the safe
house?"

           
 
"So far as we know, you aren't in any
danger—"

           
 
"Look, you can cut the crap," he
interrupted. "I was an agent. I know all of this—" he gestured at the
hospital surrounding him "—wasn't done out of the goodness of the
government's heart. I know those guards aren't out there for decoration. I also
know you wouldn't go to the expense of hiding me away in a safe house unless
there was some threat to me, and unless you very badly need some information I
may have."

           
 
Frank looked interested. "How did you
know the guards were there?"

           
 
"I heard them," Steve replied
shortly.

           
 
Now what? Frank looked at the man who had been
his friend for over a decade and wondered how much to tell him. Not all of it,
for damned certain. Until the Man nailed Piggot, the masquerade had to continue
because it was Steve's best protection against any more attacks on his life. He
knew too much for them to leave anything about his security to chance, and for
the masquerade to be complete, it had to include Jay. The Man didn't take
chances with his agents, or his friends, and Steve was both.

           
 
"You're right," Frank said.
"You're an agent. A very highly trained agent, and we think the
information you got on your last assignment is critical."

           
 
"Why the safe house?" Steve asked
again, not letting up.

           
 
"Because the guy who tried to blow you to
kingdom come went underground and hasn't surfaced yet. Until we get him, we
want to make certain you're safe."

           
 
Like a burst of lightning, fury turned his
eyes to yellow. "And you dragged Jay into this?"

           
 
Frank watched him warily, knowing how fast he
could move. "Piggot doesn't know anyone survived the explosion. We just
don't want to take any chances with you."

           
 
The yellow eyes flickered at the mention of
Piggot's name. "Piggot. What's his first name?"

           
 
"Geoffrey."

           
 
Again there was that flicker in Steve's eyes
and Frank watched closely, wondering if the mention of Piggot's name would
trigger any real memory. But if it did, Steve kept it to himself. "I want
to see the file you have on him," he said.

           
 
"I'll see if I can get clearance."

           
 
"But don't expect it, right? I'm a
security risk now."

           
 
"That's the way it's played."

           
 
"Yeah. Now tell me why you had to bring
Jay into the game. She doesn't know I'm an agent, does she?"

           
 
"No. We brought her in to identify you.
It's as simple as that. And once she was here... you responded to her voice so
strongly that the doctors decided it would help you to have her around. So she
stayed." That was the truth, as far as it went. Frank just hoped Steve
wouldn't ask too many more questions. He'd told him about all he could without
clearance from the
Man.

           
 
Steve rubbed his jaw as he mentally cataloged
what Frank had told him. If he'd felt his presence was endangering Jay, he
would have walked away from her that minute, but he felt Frank's sincerity. The
other man thought they were safe enough. The deciding factor was the thought of
living in an isolated house with Jay, just the two of them. He would have
another chance. He would learn again what pleased her, and what made her angry.
They would have another first time together. After he got all his strength and
stamina back, they would lie in bed on cold, snowy mornings and make love until
their bodies were damp with sweat even in the chilled air, and she would give
him all the fiercely passionate love he could sense inside her. She presented a
calm, controlled facade to the world, but perhaps because he hadn't been able to
see her and had been forced to rely on his other faculties, he'd sensed the
depth of her emotions behind that cool control. Maybe he'd been fool enough to
let her slip away from him before, but not again.

           
 
"Okay," he said, exhaling slowly.
"So we go to this safe house. What kind of security and communications
does it have?"

           
 
"Bulletproof windows, reinforced steel
doors. The cabin is isolated, built on a high meadow. There aren't any roads
going up there, so a four-wheel-drive vehicle will be made available to you.
The cabin has its own generator, so there aren't any public utility records.
You're connected to a satellite-dish antenna for communication and
entertainment, with both computer and radio-sending capabilities."

           
 
Steve's expression was remote as he
concentrated, considering the angles.

           
 
"Are there any active security systems,
or just the passive precautions?"

           
 
"Just the passive."

           
 
"Why not thermal or motion sensors?"

           
 
"To begin with, this cabin is so safe it
isn't even on file. And there's a lot of wildlife in the area, which would
constantly trigger the alarms. We could set up a perimeter of thermal sensors
and program the system to sound the alarm only at a large heat source, but a
deer would still set it off."

           
 
"How inaccessible is this place?"

           
 
"There's just one track leading to it,
and I'm being kind by calling it a track. It winds from the cabin across the
meadow and down a mountain before it hits a dirt road, then it's twenty more
miles before the dirt road runs into a paved secondary road."

           
 
"Then a laser across the track would
alert us to most visitors, while almost eliminating alarms triggered by
wildlife, by covering only a thin strip of the track."

           
 
Frank grinned. "You know, don't you, that
a bunny is going to hop through that light beam and set off the alarm? All
right, I'll have a laser alarm system set up. Do you want an audible or visual
alarm?"

           
 
"Audible, but a quiet one. And I want a
portable beeper to carry with me when we have to leave the house."

           
 
"For someone with amnesia, you sure
remember a lot," Frank murmured as he took a small pad from his inside
coat pocket and began making notes.

           
 
"I remember the names of the heads of
state of just about every country in the world, too," Steve replied.
"I've had a lot of time to play mind games with myself, putting together
pieces of the puzzle by cataloging a lot of the things related to my job."

           
 
"Your job meant a lot to you. It does
that, sometimes, takes over so much that the personal side of life kind of
fades away."

           
 
"Has it done that for you? "

           
 
"It did once, a long time ago. Not
now."

           
 
"How did you get involved in this? You're
FBI, and this sure as hell isn't a Bureau operation."

           
 
"You're right about that. A lot of
strings were pulled, but there are a few people with the power to manage
it."

           
 
"Very few. So I'm CIA?"

           
 
Frank smiled. "No," he said calmly.
"Not exactly."

           
 
"What the hell does that mean, 'not
exactly'? I'm either CIA or I'm not. There's a shortage of alternatives."

           
 
"You're affiliated. That's all I can say,
other than to assure you that you're perfectly legal. When you recover your
memory you'll know why I can't say more."

           
 
"All right." Steve shrugged his
acceptance. It didn't really matter. Until he regained his memory, the
knowledge wouldn't do him any good.

           
 
Frank indicated the bag he had brought in with
him. "I brought street clothes for you to change into, but first let me
get the surgeon in here to finish your exam. After that, I guess you'll be
released."

           
 
"I'll need more clothes before we go to
Colorado
. By the way, where did I live?"

           
 
"You have an apartment in
Maryland
. I've arranged for your clothes to be
packed and carried to the plane, but they won't fit until you've gained back
the weight you've lost. You'll need new clothes until then."

           
 
Steve grinned, feeling suddenly
light-spirited. "Jay and I will both need new clothes. The snow in
Colorado
is probably ass-deep to a giraffe."
Frank threw back his head and laughed.

           
 
Jay sat on the bed in the cramped apartment
she’d been using for the past two months. Her heart was pounding and chills
kept racing up and down her spine.

           
 
The implications, and complications, of the
situation terrified her. Now she knew what it was that had been bothering her
off and on for two months; what she had never been able to put her finger on
before. When she had been brought here and asked to identify the man in the
bed, she hadn't been able to positively say he was Steve Crossfield. Then Frank
had said that the man had brown eyes, and she had based her identification on
that, because Steve had had dark, velvety eyes, "Chrissy eyes."
Probably to a man, or on a vital statistics sheet, brown eyes were simply brown
eyes. They didn't allow for chocolate brown, hazel brown or fierce
yellow-brown. But Frank had known that the man had brown eyes!

           
 
She pressed her hands to her temples and
closed her eyes. Frank must have known the color of his own agent's eyes, and
he had known that Steve's eyes were brown, so it followed that Frank had also
realized she couldn't base her identification simply on eye color, yet he had
led her to do exactly that. She realized now that he had gently maneuvered her
into declaring the man to be Steve Crossfield. He must have known there was at
least a fifty-percent chance that the man wasn't Steve, so why had he done it?

           
 
The only answer she could come up with, and
the one that terrified her, was that Frank had known all along that the man was
the American agent and not Steve. He had taken Steve's identity and given it to
the man, and given the tale substance by having Steve Crossfield's ex-wife
confirm the identity, then maneuvered her into a bedside vigil that would have
convinced anyone. So Steve, the real Steve, was dead, and the agent had been given
his identity for... protection?