Was she getting this good? Could she send out such small signals at will or did she really hate the idea of sharing what happened between us with anyone else? I, for one, guarded jealously every memory I had of our time together, from that insane first kiss to the night before she left.
She shook her head.
“I don’t think they could handle it.” She wiggled her eyebrows, and her smile grew even warmer. Even more sincere.
I put a lot of effort in smiling back. My chest felt constricted by her presence, by her ability to roll back time to a moment before we meant everything to each other. It was a lie, but a very convincing one.
“How have you been?” I asked, impulsively setting aside politeness and pretense.
She jerked her head up a fraction, surprised to hear the honesty in my voice. I was proud of her for being able to tell the difference between friendly professional banter and raw, personal interest.
“Working hard,” she said. “Only working,” she added bitterly.
There were no details in her file about a boyfriend or any kind of personal relationships except her family. There was a note appended to her psychological assessment regarding her inability to form romantic relationships, but I thought it might be out of date.
Shameful satisfaction rose in my chest. Only a monster could be happy she hadn’t found someone to share her life with.
“You?” she asked.
Her dry, brittle voice told me more than her question. She was forcing herself to ask about me. She didn’t want to know. Or she wanted not to know.
I’ve been attuned to Skye’s fear/safety settings since we started our dangerous games. I had to be able to hear the tinge of panic in her voice because she trusted me too much to ever stop me. The one-word question was decidedly in the red.
“I’ve been teaching for a few years,” I said. “Sometimes they pick my brain on active cases. I haven’t been in field missions. This job is all I have.”
She deserved to know that, like her, I hadn’t been able to forge a healthy, well rounded life for myself either. I had to hope that wouldn’t screw her up even worse.
“Do you like teaching?” she asked.
I took in a short breath before answering. I decided that she was calming down. She often went from red to green. Another measure of her immense trust in me. Apparently, what I did was safer for her to know than how I’ve been since she left.
“Yes,” I said. “Enough not to miss working Homicide.”
She raised an eyebrow, and I smiled at her intuition.
“Most days,” I added.
I had no idea how she did it, but this time the smile blossoming on her lips dispelled the tension between us.
Her dark blonde hair fell over her face when she tugged at the scrunchie to release it from the ponytail. She closed her eyes and her breathing slowed down. Deep inhales, long exhales. It reminded me of all the times I spied on her during her meditation.
My heart pulsed treacherously at this display of unconditional trust. Hypervigilance was one of the principles Skye lived by. It moved me deeply to see that her trust in me hadn’t diminished.
“I’m here with a couple of colleagues,” I said when I saw Alan coming through the door.
“How very adventurous of you,” she said.
I had to interrupt her before she made a threesome joke in earshot of the kids.
“And here they are,” I said, looking at Alan and Shania.
They had seen her and now were silently debating the seating arrangement. They both wanted to get the most out of this meeting. That meant sitting across from her, just like in an interrogation room. If I could, I’d trade my place with one of them. I wanted nothing more than to sit beside her. To feel her thigh against mine. To learn her scent all over again.
The duel ended with my least favorite outcome. Shania sat next to Skye. I would have preferred her to sit by my side. I’d have the chance to see a spark of jealousy in Skye’s eyes. And even if she could conceal it, I knew I’d slip up and Shania was sure to pick up on it. Calling people out on their suppressed feelings was Shania’s forte.
“We are big fans,” Shania said. “Can we ask you some questions?”
“Sure,” Skye replied.
“How much time do you have?” Alan asked, getting out a notebook from the inside of his jacket.
“Guys,” I said.
“It’s fine,” Skye interrupted me. “I haven’t been interrogated in ages.”
“Did Woods ask you?” Shania said.
Skye looked at me, raising an eyebrow inquiringly.
“We have a practical module,” I explained. “Each student interrogates an experienced undercover agent, who comes as if it’s an undercover mission. Fully in character.”
Skye ran her fingertips over tiny patterns on the outside of her glass. She tilted her head a little to the side before speaking.
“Who gets to interrogate you?” she asked, looking intently at me.
That was a game we never played. I had no suppressed desire to submit to anyone, but for a moment I wondered what it would be like to have Skye in control.
“I’m on the other side of the one-way mirror,” I said. “Observing, with the rest of the class.”
“Please say you’ll consider it,” Shania said, at Skye full of hope.
“It’s very useful,” Alan said. “If you can spare the time.”
Skye took a long sip of her drink. When she wasn’t undercover, she had trouble lying to people. She wouldn’t want to take part in the exercise for the very reason I wanted her to be there, but she couldn’t tell them that.
“Let’s hope that won’t be the case,” I said.
Alan and Shania turned to me with different degrees of outrage on their faces.
“We get active agents only when they’re not physically fit for active duty,” I said. “Let’s hope Nesting Skye won’t retire and she won’t get hurt.”
“Nesting Skye?” she asked.
“It’s our nickname for you,” Alan said.
“Woods is right,” Shania said, contritely. “I got carried away. I’m sorry.”
Skye accepted her apology with a friendly nod.
“Didn’t you say you had questions for me?” she asked.
The next couple of hours flew by for all of us. Alan and Shania fired questions at Skye. She answered, truthfully for the most part. She enjoyed playing to the two-layered audience. All three of us were trying to read her. We paid attention to her gestures and her voice as much as to her words.
Skye’s phone vibrated. One glance at the caller ID and she stopped the game.
“I have to take this,” she said standing up.
Shania stood up to let her get out of the booth, and that was when I made my mistake. I looked at Skye walking away. The sudden stab of pain must have been plain on my face. Shania’s jaw dropped.
Damn. Someone else knew now. Someone who worked with me every day. When Skye got back, they resumed their friendly interrogation, but I couldn’t miss the change in Shania. My student formulated her questions more carefully, and, to my annoyance, she paid attention to me when Skye answered.
Skye
I liked the two enthusiastic interrogators, but the annoyance of not being alone with Woods was growing. Fate had dropped this opportunity into my lap and I was wasting it talking to other people.
Short of asking Woods to walk me to my room, I had no idea what to do to get him alone. The more the time passed, the worse got the need to do just that. Bad, bad idea. I downed a shot of whiskey to distract myself from thoughts of Nick taking me to my room, coming in, coming… The alcohol burn made my eyes water and I started coughing. Some badass secret agent I was.
I blushed furiously due in part to the alcohol and in part to all the thoughts about what would happen after I got Nick into my room.
“Oh, wow, that’s the time?” Shania exclaimed and shot up out of the booth. �
��We have to go. We have a thing.”
If I hadn’t picked up on her overacting, Alan’s surprise was a big clue. The young woman shot him a meaningful glance. It was like seeing Woods and Robinson having a conversation without saying a word.
So, she figured out she should leave us alone. She was going to tell Alan, too. At that moment I didn’t care. All I wanted was to have a few more minutes alone with Nick before our lives went their separate ways again.
“You don’t have to be somewhere urgently, too?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“I’m sure they didn’t have, either,” he said.
His voice was a bit sad. He didn’t like that his apprentices figured out that I was more than a former colleague. Suddenly, being alone with him didn’t seem a good idea. He could focus all his attention on me, and that both thrilled and scared me.
“Bright kids,” I said, “but exhausting. Order me a coffee, please. I need to shove my face into a bucket of cold water.”
The bar had filled up with agents from the conference while we’d been talking. I shimmied through the crowd like a ghost. I could blend in to the point of invisibility, even among people more observant than the norm. If the clients were asked to describe me, at least half of them wouldn’t be able to tell a single relevant detail. The other half might say that I had a nice ass.
A steaming coffee waited for me when I got back from the bathroom. It smelled pretty foul to my tea loving nose, but I knew the tea here would be undrinkable.
“So, I have fans,” I said sitting back across from him. “I hope I rose to the height of their expectations.”
“Of course you did,” he said immediately.
“How did I do? I want your opinion as a professional interrogator.”
His gaze darkened at the word. I hadn’t meant it as an insult, but now I wondered just how much consulting on active cases he did. Interrogators in the CIA had a lot of leeway in the methods they employed. Just how dark had Woods got when he was no longer shackled by NYPD procedure?
“You didn’t lie,” he said. “You got close to lying a few times.”
“Nature of the beast,” I said. “You know how it is in a job. Which did you catch?”
“Your breaking point,” he said. “You evaded their questions, but you are worried about it.”
“I had to play it off,” I said. “It would take too long,” I said. “Making them understand that each moment I’m undercover I have to check who I really am and at the same time I have to forget that very thing.”
“Did you ever want to stay?” he asked.
It hurt to hear that question. If Woods, my mentor and my Master, had doubts about my ability to come back from a mission…
“That’s nuts,” I said, keeping my voice casual out of habit. “How could I stay in a world where all my past was a fiction made by the agency that sent me there?”
“By betraying that agency,” he said offhandedly. “There are many organizations that would welcome you. They would provide you the backup for that new life.”
“A life without my family,” I said derisively. “Even if I leave out the absurd assumption that I would ever turn against the agency who sent me under, breaking ties with my family is a price I would never pay.”
He stared morosely at the ice melting in his glass.
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe you would risk losing your family.”
Family was a delicate subject. Our backgrounds were polar opposites. My idyllic childhood in sunny California, with my eccentric but loving parents, with my pacifist older brother and troublemaker younger sister never felt real to Nick. He never burdened me with all the details, but he told me enough when he justified himself for the one thing he did not want to give me.
“Was that the only near-lie you caught?” I asked when the silence between us became oppressive.
“Yes,” he said. “Were there more?”
“I’d say no, but I might be lying,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
He rewarded my effort with the shadow of a smile.
“How come you’re here?” he asked. “You weren’t the speaker they announced initially.”
The truth rose to my lips and I was already talking before I even considered lying to him.
“There was a security breach on one of my old operations,” I said. “I’m one of the key witnesses for the prosecution and some people are trying to figure out who I am.”
His shoulders stiffened. Why did I keep forgetting that he worried about me? I didn’t have to lie to him to protect the operation. I should have lied to protect him.
“They’re setting a trap,” I said quickly. “When the DA’s office traces the hit to the source, I could even get out of testifying at all. Once they’re caught putting a hit on a police officer, they will take any deal that keeps them out of the chair. In the meantime, I get to chill in a five-star hotel and meet my fans.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” he said.
I wanted to believe that I was able to dispel his concern. I lied to myself that I was staring at his body to figure out if he was calming down or he was just raising his shields.
I missed the feel of his body against mine. I missed the warm embrace when he came home from work. I missed nestling my head into his arm when we sat on the couch watching TV. I missed the million small things we shared as much as I missed the sex.
“Your trainees left us alone,” I said.
“They figured it out,” he confirmed. “There’s a list of people who know about us,” he added. “It’s in our files. Do you think your supervisor doesn’t know?”
I never had the curiosity to check what the Agency knew about me. The new shade of bitterness in his voice warned me he had checked. Did it bother him? To know that we were footnotes in each other’s CIA file?
“It’s not like we kept our relationship secret,” I said.
“We kept some secrets, Belle.”
Need exploded inside me to hear my title said in his gravelly voice. For an insane moment, I forgot the years that had passed. I awaited instructions that would build up desire, anticipation, frustration and eventually, rewardingly, would unleash mind-wiping pleasure.
When he didn’t do or say anything, I burned with shame. I had to move the conversation along, even if my voice would betray me.
I didn’t dare to look at him, certain that my yearning would overcome my pride. He’d made me beg for what I wanted often enough. And he’d never disappointed me when I did. The magic words were under a heavy lock in a corner of my mind. All the things that were in my grasp if only I said the right things.
“I didn’t find any mention of anyone knowing about it,” he said, seeing my distress.
“Sometimes,” I whispered, “I wonder if ‘it’ was real.”
I nearly jumped out of my chair when my phone vibrated. I made considerable efforts to understand what Stone was saying. He had to repeat his instructions three times. With any luck, he might think I was drunk. Anything was preferable than the pathetic truth that my former crush on Nick Woods had flared up again.
“Sorry,” I told Woods when the call ended. “My unexpected vacation in Virginia is canceled. I have to go pack my stuff.”
“Did you even unpack?” he asked.
Damn. I forgot how well he knew me.
“Walk me to my room,” I said.
The words stumbled out of my mouth without my control. I’d blame the alcohol but my third shot of whiskey was untouched on the table. I scrambled to find a good way to rescind my invitation.
“Sure,” he said.
It was awkward as hell to walk out of the bar with him without holding his hand. Old thoughts and old confessions floated out of my memory and my subconscious. My body was demanding one thing, my mind another. The two impulses fought inside me during the silent elevator ride. When the doors opened to my floor, I still didn’t know what I needed mo
re.
Nick
We walked in silence to her room. Lust swirled in me like a tornado. It fed on the dozens of tiny signals she gave off. Had she given up the attempt to hide her own desire? Or was it so strong it broke through her defenses?
“Don’t ask,” I commanded myself. “Don’t ask. If you love her, if you want to set her free, don’t ask her if you can go in.”
If she would be the one to ask, saying yes or saying no would be equally damaging.
We strode in silence, with our hands buried in our pockets. Her arm brushed against mine, and we both ignored the shiver. We were a few steps from her room, and we were deliberately slowing down.
She stopped abruptly in the middle of the corridor, and turned toward me.
“Don’t ask,” I begged her in my head. “Don’t invite me into your room, baby.”
“I wasn’t fair to you,” she said.
She pushed her hair out of her eyes and tucked it primly behind her ears.
“You would have never asked me to give up my job,” she said so quietly I had to strain to hear her. “Maybe I could have stayed away for a few years. Getting more bitter all the time because I had to give up my calling, while you still followed yours, even though your own job had plenty of dangers. Eventually the need to go back on missions would win. You wouldn’t stop me. “
It was as if she echoed my own thoughts, and yet at that moment I wanted to find arguments against it. I wanted to keep her close, to keep her safe, but she was absolutely right. I would not have stopped her from following her calling.
She took a small breath and looked away from me before continuing.
“So, I’d start again,” she said. “And possibly get killed. There would be no ‘we’ to take care of our child. Sooner or later, it would probably be only you. Alone again, responsible for another human being.”
That was the darkest of all the probabilities I explored when I considered saying yes to her. Skye dead. Leaving me to take care of a child with the same problems as the rest of my family. Leaving me alone in this cold universe.
In Chaos (Undercover Book 3) Page 4