by Kylie Brant
“Yes, I think you could safely say that something is very wrong.”
Concern sharpened his voice. “Did something happen?” He strode over to her. “Is it the reporters again? Carter?”
Her short laugh was devoid of amusement. “No, it wasn’t Carter. It was a friend of yours. Nushawn, I believe you called him. He wanted me to deliver a message to my man. He wanted me to tell Roarke that he didn’t mean any harm.”
Comprehension hit him like a one-two punch. He hadn’t recovered his breath when she said, “Nothing to say? How original.”
Dread, and even worse, panic, were circling in his gut. “Ellie...”
“Before you start, you might want to consider that I’m in no mood to be lied to. I’ve had enough lies to last me a lifetime.” Her voice was tight with suppressed emotion, and there was a flash of heat in her eyes.
“I’ve never wanted to lie to you.” The words tasted false even as they left his mouth. He winced at the expression of disdain they brought to her face.
“You’re lying now.” -
He couldn’t stand to have her watch him like that, wary and suspicious. It didn’t make it any easier when he made a move toward her and saw her take a quick, barely discernible step back. Hurt exploded with the force of a fist punching flesh. He stopped himself, muscles quivering as he held them rigid. “I know what you’re thinking....”
She cocked her head, waiting, and when he didn’t go on, asked, “And just what am I thinking, Sully?”
When he didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, she gave a tight smile. “Aren’t you even going to tell me it’s not what it looks like?”
He had to force air into his lungs. He felt like he was going down for the last time. “It’s not. It’s...” He swallowed hard, still with no idea of what to tell her. Years of living in the shadows had him grappling with the maze of truth and lies that made up his life, wondering how to shake off a lifetime of careful guard and offer her a piece of the truth.
When he left the sentence unfinished, she turned away, as if the sight of him was painful, and crossed to the trio of windows. “It’s narcotics enforcement, isn’t it?”
A moment ago he’d searched for words; now he couldn’t have spoken them if he’d tried. Strange that believing she thought him a criminal had been easier than dealing with the fact that she guessed the truth about him. A truth it was his job to hide.
His silence didn’t matter to her anymore. She didn’t even seem to notice it. “What is it? Local police task force? DEA? Customs?” She gazed out the window, her arms crossed around her middle in a gesture that spoke at once of hurt and defiance. “I figure something federal,” she went on in that flat, emotionless voice he hated. “Policemen, even detectives, don’t dive so far undercover they forget to come up for air. Of course, they wouldn’t have had the experience with life in the streets that you’ve had.”
Carefully, with the caution of a blind man on a freeway, he felt his way with her. “Most people would have drawn a different conclusion with the information you have.” The light from the lamp was just bright enough for him to see the way her fingers clenched at his words.
“Oh, I have no doubt what Carter wanted me to think when he told me the story about a man named Roarke. It’s a measure of his lack of ethics that he would twist the truth about you in an attempt to manipulate me.” One shoulder lifted. “But I had a lot of hours here to think, to put the pieces together. Odd, after ten years, how few pieces there really were.”
He closed his eyes for a moment then, and cursed the fact he’d been born a fool. “Ellie...”
Her fists jammed into the pockets of her shorts, and still she didn’t turn around to look at him. “I’ll admit that I considered quite a few scenarios, but I kept coming back to one thing—I just can’t bring myself to believe that you’re a criminal. Logically I know you couldn’t have done that time in prison Carter spoke about, because we’ve kept in contact over the years. And I’m certain that there is no way on earth you’d be dealing in the kind of death that killed your mother, and robbed you of a childhood. That only left one other possibility.”
Another time he would have basked in the expression of faith she’d made, but it was impossible to do so now. She’d delivered those words like she was dissecting his life under a microscope, with no more than clinical interest. Her detachment fanned the flickers of panic to flames.
Desperation fueled his words. “This doesn’t have to matter to us.”
She did turn then, and he winced at the look of sad incredulity on her face. “What matters is that I didn’t find out from you. What matters is that you never trusted me enough to tell me. Not ten years ago, not a month ago.”
His fingers itched; he wanted to touch her. He didn’t dare. “I didn’t keep it from you to hurt you. My job, my life, depends on keeping my cover. Telling you anything just puts you in danger.”
But she was already shaking her head. “No, you’re not going to pull that protective crap on me now, Sully. Not now. This doesn’t have anything to do with protecting me, or anyone except yourself. It never occurred to you to tell me because there’s still a huge part of yourself you keep off-limits. You’ve doled out little bits, but never enough to really let me know you.”
He crossed to her then, if only to close the physical distance between them. She was pulling away without moving an inch, and he was suddenly terrified. “I was going to tell you, just as soon as this investigation I’m involved in is over. I just needed more time.”
“More than a decade?” The disbelief in her question slapped at him. She let the question hang in the air between them. “If you’d ever had any intention of telling me, you’d have done it by now. I’d invaded every other part of your life, and this was the last part you had free of me, wasn’t it?”
The quiet resignation in her voice tore at his heart. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t know how to tell you. I mean, after all this time....”
“Yes.” There was a wealth of meaning in that one word. “After all this time. It’s no mystery to me, Sully. You didn’t tell me because I’d already been allowed as far into your life as I was going to get. I believed you were starting to open up, but then, you had an ulterior motive for sharing what you did about your mother, didn’t you? That should have been my first clue to how badly you wanted to push me away.”
“I haven’t been pushing you away. Just the opposite.” Drum tight with tension, he swung from her and paced the room. “The job—it’s difficult to explain. But I have good reason for not wanting you close enough to get involved in it.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” The calm acceptance in her words should have been soothing. Instead, they shot him with slivers of fear. “You didn’t tell me. That in itself speaks volumes more than words ever could.”
Slowly, with dread in every movement, he turned to face her. She was looking at him, but her eyes could have been a stranger’s. “You never considered sharing something that has been a huge part of your life for years. You never felt the need. That really tells me all there is to know.”
Desperation, and a fear unlike any he’d ever known, burned hotly in his chest. “I’ve been working a deep cover for more than two years. I couldn’t jeopardize the case. And I wouldn’t jeopardize you.”
A sigh seemed ripped from the depths of her, and her gaze dropped away. “It’s been a long day.” Her voice was quiet, but deliberate. “I’d like you to leave.”
His hands fisted at his sides, but he already knew he couldn’t batter through the wall that had sprung up between them. A wall of his own making. Panic sprinted up his spine, roughened his words. “Don’t do this. I need you, Ellie.”
Her shoulders stiffened, as if he’d dealt her a mortal blow. “You don’t know how I wish I could believe that, how much I’ve wanted to hear it. But I have to protect myself. You’re big on protection—you understand that, right? I can’t...” Here her breath hitched. The sound sent lances of pain piercing throug
h him. “I want you to leave now.”
He felt like he was in a wind tunnel, with time and events zipping by him until they had no semblance of sense, of sanity. As if from a distance he watched himself walk away from the best thing in his life. Go to the door. Open it. It wasn’t until he was standing in the hallway, with the sound of the door shutting behind him, that reality crept a glacier inch through the numb shell encasing him.
The feeling of helplessness that flooded him was unfamiliar; the hopelessness was not. He’d never been a man to dream until Ellie. It was the cruelest of jokes that having sampled just a small taste of happiness with her was going to make a return to his normal solitude jarringly harsh.
He forced one foot in front of the other, each step taking him farther and farther away from her. Tearing Ellie out of his life was going to leave a void he wasn’t sure he could exist with. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to try.
Chapter 14
The meeting was lasting well into the early hours. Sully rotated his aching shoulders and shifted in his seat. The cigarette in his hand added to the faint haze in the room. His glance slid over the dozen or so occupants and landed for a moment on Lowrey. Kale was loving this. It added to his fantasy that he was involved in a Bond-like adventure, instead of the same old bureaucratic BS.
Too bad he couldn’t feel that same level of excitement hell, what was being discussed involved him more directly than anyone else. He wished he could care, but nothing seemed to have much meaning since that day a week ago when his life had suddenly emptied of purpose.
He brought the cigarette to his lips and sucked in savagely, letting the smoke fill his lungs. He’d stayed away from Ellie, as she’d asked. The need to see her was a powerful lure, one he fought every waking minute. Only the threat of the pain that would burst anew at seeing the hurt on her face, in her eyes, kept him away.
Maybe if his life had been different, he’d have known what she expected, would have known how to give it to her. Perhaps if he’d had the experience of a family he’d understand the sharing that she’d spoken of. He’d never pondered that lack until now. Never regretted it so bitterly.
“What do you think, Sullivan?”
He hadn’t been following the argument in the room, but there had been no need to do so. They’d been covering the same ground all evening. “Seems to me that it all depends on whether we have enough already to float a conspiracy charge against Conrad and Vargas.”
All eyes turned to the short, round, balding man seated behind the desk. Division Chief Ed Paquin was a leading cocaine-conspiracy expert. It was his job to gather all the scraps of information, taped conversations, acquired evidence and mold them all together into an airtight case. He pursed his lips and leaned back in his chair, which emitted a protesting squeak. “You’ve got plenty to ensure multiple convictions for Conrad. But then, I assume if he was all you wanted, you’d have moved on him months ago.”
“We want Vargas,” O’Shea asserted. His green eyes glinted in the artificial light. “How close are we to getting him?”
The man considered. “The times he’s entered the country correspond to the shipments Sully can attest to. A good lawyer will call that circumstantial. We’ve got Sully’s taped conversation, which will be damning. I’d feel a hell of a lot better if we had some phone conversations between him and Conrad.”
“He was too careful for that,” O’Shea said. “Our taps didn’t pick up anything, either on Conrad’s office or home line. He’s used safe phones.”
“What are the chances Conrad would turn state’s evidence and testify against Vargas?”
“I don’t like that idea,” Ted Baker protested. He’d been listening silently up to that point. “We have enough to bury Conrad. What if we went after them both, promised Conrad a reduced sentence for his testimony, and Vargas gets off? Then we’ve got almost nothing to show for our efforts.”
O’Shea looked at Sully. “What do you think the chances are of getting Conrad to flip on Vargas?”
Sully dropped his cigarette on the scarred tile floor and ground it out. “I wouldn’t bet on it. I would have sworn Conrad was bloodless until I saw him with Vargas. He’s scared of the man, clear through. He’d probably take his chances with prison. He’d figure he stands a better chance of making it out alive.”
“Then we have to go ahead with the investigation,” asserted Kennedy, the superior officer from customs. “I’d rather see us go after a shipment, as well as the men. I’ve said that before.”
“A seizure isn’t necessary for a conviction of conspiracy to distribute drugs,” O’Shea said with the weary air of one who’d repeated himself endlessly.
“I know that,” the other man snapped. Sully wondered if the interagency “cooperation” was about to unravel. He didn’t envy O’Shea his part in smoothing the waters. “But it strengthens our case, and it makes headlines. I don’t care what you say—headlines help.”
Sully’s lips twisted cynically. For every bust that ever went down, for every dead agent it cost, there were always plenty of suits to push themselves before the media and take the credit. Put a news camera before some of the damn bureaucrats, and they were like teenage boys in the back seat of their daddy’s cars—no self-control, and no thought of protection for others.
“Kennedy’s right,” Baker interjected. “We might not like it, but our funding depends on our successes. And the better we publicize our big cases, the better for our agencies.” He shrugged half apologetically. “Big cases attract Washington’s attention. We’ve put the resources into this thing. The more we have to show for it at the end, the better for everyone involved.”
“You’re saying to continue the case until the next shipment,” O’Shea interpreted.
“Any extra time gives your men opportunity to collect even more evidence,” Paquin said. “That aside, you’re going to want to pick up Vargas when he’s in the country.”
“I say we move ahead with the investigation,” Lowrey put in. “I don’t know about Sullivan, but I’m not willing to pull out now.”
Collin O‘Shea got to his feet and moved restlessly around the room. Sully watched him closely. Not for the first time that evening, he noted that the man looked the worse for wear. Too much time dealing with interagency frictions, he supposed. This case was taking its toll. Sully had never known him to belabor a decision this long before, but then, he’d never been involved in a case of this scope. He wondered if O’Shea had more riding on this investigation than Sully knew. Cases had made and broken state supervisors before.
He waited for the man’s decision with an effortless ease that had nothing to do with patience. If he weren’t here, he’d be back at his apartment. Alone. With nothing to occupy it, his mind had a way of transporting him back to when life had seemed to brim with the impossible, however briefly.
The trouble with happiness, he thought as he shook another cigarette out of the pack and lit it, was that it left such a void when it was gone. The emptiness caused by Ellie’s absence was a gaping wound that would never heal. That reality squeezed his chest like a vise. If he hadn’t disappointed her a week ago, he would have done so later, in countless ways. He’d prolonged the inevitable breakup, but it had been inevitable.
He squinted at the men in the room, some of them silent, others talking at once. His mouth tasted like a gravel truck had driven through it, the result of too many cigarettes and not enough food. He needed sleep, but that hadn’t been visiting too regularly for the past several nights. As he waited for OvShea to decide the future direction of the case, he began to give silent thanks for this job. Without it to occupy his mind, he would have gone out of his head already.
“Okay.” When O’Shea spoke, the room quieted expectantly. “We’re going ahead with the investigation. I want to be sure we have enough on Vargas to put him away.” He looked at Sully. “When do you meet with him again?”
“Conrad didn’t say. But I’ve gone over the plans with him already. Vargas is care
ful. I figure he’ll want to hear them firsthand. We can’t move ahead until he approves them, so I figure it shouldn’t be much longer.”
O’Shea crossed to Sully and contemplated him soberly. “You look like hell, Sullivan. You sure you’re up to this?”
“You don’t look so great yourself.” Sully took a quick puff of the cigarette burning down in his fingers. “I’m ready for this. I’ll do my job.”
O’Shea nodded slowly. “Just be sure you do it with even more caution than ever, will you?”
Caution. Sully considered the word. It was the quality that had served to keep him alive all these years. It was a trait that kept senses alert, the inner guard raised. Funny, no matter how deeply ingrained that trait was, it had been no defense at all when it came to Ellie.
Ellie lay awake in the darkness, trying to force her mind to rest. It was useless; this would be another night she wouldn’t sleep through. There had been enough of them in the past couple of weeks to recognize the signs. Rather than lying wakeful in bed for hours, she rose and padded out to her dark apartment.
Bill didn’t stir from his cozy sprawl in the recliner. He’d turned up his nose at the bed she’d brought home from the pet store; it sat unused in the corner of the kitchen. He’d claimed the chair as his territory the first time he’d entered the apartment. The sight of him there never failed to bring a pang.
She went to the worktable that stood before the triple windows. It was full now, holding no less than eight new pieces. She’d worked tirelessly; indeed, when the midnight shadows had become too oppressive, she’d often risen and gone to her wheel.
She looked at the work without pride. They were good; she could tell that, but there was no joy in the knowledge. Only a kind of burning emptiness that seemed to stretch and expand more with each day.
The potter’s wheel had provided a channel for her restless energy, each new piece a focus for her churning thoughts. As distractions, they’d provided only momentary relief. Once each piece had taken shape beneath her hands, been fired and glazed, the desolation had threatened to take over again, and she’d been driven to banish it anew. Anything rather than think of the man who had caused it.