by Jenn Stark
“Done,” the first guard agreed, and immediately, she and her partner took off toward the back hallway to make the lie credible.
Then a third security guard peered harder at Gregori. “You’re the guy who went up the side of the building,” he said. “You.”
“Yes,” Gregori said as Angela glanced at him, startled. Both police and medical personnel converged on the building at that moment, but the man didn’t move. He only squinted at Gregori, shaking his head.
“I climb, man. You’ve got way too much bulk for what my guys said you did.”
Gregori grunted a short laugh, then they were swarmed by emergency personnel, and he and Angela stepped back.
“There’s no way you’re going to get out of having to give a statement to the police this time,” she said tightly. “And I don’t know who to trust. You really think my parents have been bugged?”
“I do.”
“Well, that’s flat-out impossible,” she bit out. “My parents are friends of the freaking governor. Since I’ve become a congresswoman, they’ve had government security on them, courtesy of same. Official. Government. Security. They couldn’t have been bugged.”
Gregori returned her gaze steadily, despite the pain it caused him. He was almost getting used to it—almost.
Angela’s lips twisted. “This sucks,” she muttered. “We’re about to get questioned by the damned police, and we don’t have our stories straight. I don’t know what you’re going to say, you don’t know what I’m going to say—we don’t freaking know each other at all. And I don’t know who to trust. Dammit!” She put her hands up to her temples, as if she needed to fight to keep her thoughts from pushing out of her skull. “We don’t have time!”
“You could faint,” he offered, the soul of reason. His suggestion had absolutely nothing to do with the sudden and unexpected desire he had to draw her into his arms, a desire he knew he should shove away…but didn’t. Instead, he took a step toward her.
“I’m sorry?” She blinked at him, her expression of dismay far more immediate and real than even when she’d seen her own parents collapsed in his arms. “I could what?”
“I’m your bodyguard. You’re my charge. You faint in my arms, I’m not talking to anyone until you’re safely in an ambulance. After that, I’m not talking to anyone until they talk to you first. I’m not a suspect. I’m a guy doing his job. I did what I thought I needed to do in an unfortunate scenario. If you faint, you’ll give us some time. You’ll get the answers you need before you have to make up a story you may have to take back later.”
Angela hesitated all of three seconds, then laughed with what sounded like genuine regret. “Nobody would believe I’d faint. I don’t even know if I could pull that off. What else you got? Can we get wired up somehow in, say, the next thirty seconds? I really don’t like how this is going down.”
More police showed up, and men and women in suits too. Angela cursed under her breath. “Homeland Security,” she muttered. “What the hell is going on here?”
Gregori felt the press of time bearing down on them both. “I can keep you safe, Angela, but you’re not going to like how.”
She grimaced. “Try me.”
“You and I have to build a deeper connection. A more permanent connection.”
She narrowed her gaze. “In the next thirty seconds? Unlikely.”
“Permanent—that’s not the right word,” Gregori conceded. “But…I need to know your emotions more clearly, as your reactions are happening.”
“So, a wire, but—”
“Not a wire.” He exhaled a long, shuddering breath. This was going to hurt, but he had no time to come up with an alternative. And if he was being wholly truthful, he craved this deeper connection he was suggesting to Angela. Craved it more with every passing second. “If you’ll let me show you, I think you’ll understand. But we need to do it now, before you’re sequestered by the police, so that I understand exactly what you’re saying and what I need to say as well. Make sense?”
“Not even remotely,” Angela said tightly, her expression once more unreadable. “But do it.”
Gregori reached out and took her hand in his.
8
There was no hesitation. That was what struck Angela most when she gave her hand to Gregori—there was no hesitation on her part, no fear. She’d never quite accomplished that when she’d interacted with most people for anything more than a quick handshake or collegial hug, but then again, she’d known for a few days that Gregori was not most people. And the touch of her hand on his, the warmth of his skin, even the zing of response that fluttered across her nerves simply felt right. Her cheeks flushed and her heart kicked up a notch, as if they weren’t standing in the middle of her condo building’s central lobby while her parents were being treated on the floor—but more like, almost like…
Like they were flirting. Like he was a man and she was a woman and their hands were touching and there was nothing else in the world but her and him and their joined hands, his fingers long and strong, his palms calloused, his skin—
“Look at me, Angela.”
She jerked back into focus, still staring at his hands. Gregori had said the words almost as a plea, as if what he was asking of her was a far greater gift than she could imagine, but still nothing he would force upon her. She needed—wanted—to respond to him, but fear now laced her desire, as well as heat and excitement and…
And he was waiting for her to answer.
Slowly, laboriously, as if the mere act of rotating her head required every muscle in her body, she turned to him. And then she couldn’t look away if she’d wanted.
The unending well of compassion in Gregori’s eyes made Angela gasp with a soul-deep anguish. This was what she’d been guarding herself against for all these years, the reason she never wanted to gaze too deeply into the eyes of another. Not for the fear of any horror she’d encounter in their eyes, but to avoid any love and understanding that waited there for her, absolution she could never allow herself to feel.
Because she’d hurt others. She’d failed them. She may only have been a child, but that didn’t change the reality of what she’d done.
There could be no absolution for her.
“No,” she gasped, and though Gregori could have no idea of what she was asking, what she was silently begging him to help her avoid, he shook his head almost imperceptibly, his gaze never leaving hers.
“There’s nothing you need to give up to me about anything you have experienced in the past,” he said, his voice a tortured whisper. She blinked at him. Did he know? Could he know?
No, no. That was impossible. But he continued on.
“Every door is yours to open or close as your spirit wishes. If the spirit wants light, the breath of hope, healing…those doors can open. If the spirit does not, they stay closed. Your spirit, your doors, your choice. Always. The past, your memories, are a sacred gift given only unto you. I will not claim them.”
“But—” Angela was trying to understand, she truly was, but what Gregori said made no sense. Then, somehow, his hands closed around hers, his big, meaty paws dwarfing fingers that had long ago been straightened, their bones reset into their proper lines, their constant ache as familiar to her as breathing.
So much pain.
In a flash, a flood of memories came piling back, along with the guilt. If only…if only she could do something to atone for everything she’d done. To make a positive difference in people’s lives, to keep them safe. To believe that her mind, her intellect, her insatiable curiosity could help people—not hurt them, the way she’d hurt her family so badly when she was a child, not once, but twice.
It was beyond foolish to hold herself accountable for what’d happened when she was a kid, and yet…she should’ve been smarter somehow. She should’ve recognized the threat coming for her. She should have known.
And there had been so much pain. She’d fought and struggled every time they’d come for her, lashing out and
striking against bone and brick and steel. She’d broken her fingers too many times to count because they would leave her alone then, at least for a while, until she healed. She always healed far too soon, far too many times for only being held for eighty-seven days. And then the torment would start anew, the terror and the screaming, until she had hardened herself enough to break something else.
In Gregori’s hands, though, there was no longer any agony, no more broken bones, and she dropped her gaze again to his clasped fingers as he spoke in soft and soothing tones.
“What I do need, however, is your trust and your openness to share everything that’s present today in your mind and in your body. Your emotions, your reactions, and the words that ride upon them, all shared with me, whether I’m standing next to you or if I’m across the room, or if I’m not even in sight. I need you to open a connection to me and let me feel.”
“But how?” Angela’s entire body tensed at this unexpected request, but it wasn’t a request she wanted to deny, necessarily. It was simply one she didn’t understand. Still, she once more met Gregori’s soft green eyes, their hold both strong and compelling. He studied her as if there was no one else in the room.
He also didn’t answer. She sensed that he’d made his request and waited only for a response from her. There would be no more words; there would be no more explanations. Not now, not yet. This was her time, her moment, and she either needed to give or withhold. The hows would then take care of themselves.
“Yes,” she finally said, and Gregori gently, ever so gently, squeezed her hands with his. Not nearly enough to hurt, barely enough for intimacy and support, but no sooner did he do so than the world came crashing back around her, the lights and sound coming up as if the settings of the room had been brutally adjusted. Angela jolted in surprise, her gaze going immediately to her parents as they were being lifted up on gurneys, covered with thick blankets.
“Wounds are not life-threatening, from what I can tell, though they won’t say anything for sure.” Joe was beside her again, talking fast and low, as if he feared she might freak out in some way. She realized with some surprise she was no longer holding Gregori’s hands. That he was, in fact, several feet away from her. When had he moved away?
“Where are they taking them?” she heard herself asking in her calm, stoic voice. Her fingers shook, and she didn’t know what to do with them. They trembled uncontrollably at the ends of her hands like someone else’s fingers, foreign appendages she needed to manage, as opposed to something that was part of her. She tucked her arms close to her body and snugged her hands against her rib cage as Joe kept talking.
“Georgetown. They’ve got a secured medical wing, and since your parents were the target of a potential terrorist threat, they’re going to get the full treatment.”
“There are bugs implanted behind their ears.” As if suddenly remembering this crucial detail, when it should’ve been at the forefront of her mind this whole time, Angela swung away from Joe and rushed to the EMT who leaned over her father. “Please. I need you to tell the doctors this. Please have them check for mechanical implants of some kind behind my father’s ears. My mother’s too, I think. They would be fairly recent.”
“Medical devices?” the EMT asked. “Something that’s been compromised?” Then he frowned. “Both ears?”
He clearly didn’t make the leap to the implants being surveillance devices or whatever the hell they were, but he didn’t need to. He only needed to tell someone who could do something about them. “I don’t know,” Angela said truthfully. “My father mentioned something about them, and I worry they’ve malfunctioned, maybe contributed to what happened here today, their reactions—”
The EMT nodded briskly, though he hadn’t been here to witness firsthand her parents’ screaming rants and wild-eyed frenzy after getting shot. That was something she didn’t think she was going to be able to unsee for a while. “We’ll tell them at the hospital,” he said, moving forward as Angela stepped back.
Two police officers were already there. Through the windows, she could see the first news van pull up. She knew they wouldn’t dare to cross the cordon of protection the police currently offered her, but she’d eventually have to talk to the press, if only to have her own statement out and official before all the speculation could begin again.
A uniformed woman stepped in front of her. “We have some questions we need to ask you, Ms. Stanton. Do you need medical treatment before we do?”
Angela straightened. In truth, she hadn’t been shot, had only been shaken up. “I can speak with you now,” she said, her tone once again measured and calm, her face—she hoped—a careful mask of understanding and concern, and maybe a little fear, because that was what was appropriate in this situation. Ever since she’d come home after being abducted and held for eighty-seven days in a metal cage, emaciated and broken and so, so betrayed, she’d studied hard to learn what her appropriate reactions should be to any situation. She’d practiced them over and over again in her mind and on her face as she’d stood in front of a mirror, until she knew she could handle any surprise event. “I’m happy to give you whatever you need. I do need to get the hospital soon, though, to look after my parents.”
“Understood. This will only take a minute.”
The questions started up then, all of them strangely expected, almost comforting in their familiarity. Did her parents have any enemies? Did she have any enemies that she had thought of given the incidents of these past few days? What were her parents’ backgrounds and medical history, what was her history within the condo building, her daily routine? The police didn’t ask about any reasoning behind the attack. They didn’t ask many follow-up questions at all, one of them taking notes on a small pad while their body cameras and recording devices worked in tandem. This would definitely not be a situation of he said/she said.
The interview took another ten minutes or so, then Angela’s security team tightened around her once more. Joe was the only truly familiar face, even as her gaze sought out Gregori standing at the far edge of the room. He glanced at her only momentarily as she turned her gaze to him, then he returned to surveilling the room as if he could draw explanations from the shattered glass and scrambling people.
When she’d been cleared by the EMTs and the police, they’d taken her SUV to the hospital. Ahead of them and behind them drove two marked police cars, with neither their lights nor their horns blaring. After they’d hustled Angela into her car, the rest of her brand-new security detail had remained behind with her media coordinator, a fresh-faced, attractive man the press already loved. Yet another wall in the series of barriers that made her life possible.
Gregori sat next to her while Joe positioned himself in the front seat. Joe turned around and started talking quickly as the car sped away from her condo building. “No ID on the two assailants, though they appear to be the victims of their own mutual assassination contracts,” he said, disbelief still strong in his voice. “There was absolutely no reason for them to take each other out after the disappearance of the third gunman, but they did. It’s going to make figuring this all out that much more difficult without witnesses.”
Angela grimaced. “Anything from the hospital?”
“Your parents have been admitted and are both in surgery. Their prognosis is good. No word on the devices or implants or whatever they are.” Joe’s gaze slid to Gregori. “What are they again?”
“Unknown,” Gregori rumbled, and his voice seemed to vibrate through her, shining a light on all the dark and frightened places she hadn’t fully realized still lurked within her. “Depending on the technical expertise on staff at the hospital, I suspect they’ll let us know if they recognize the device as standard equipment of some sort, although standard equipment doing what, I have no idea.”
Something in Gregori’s voice caught at Angela, but Joe seemed to accept his words at face value. “Fair, fair. And if they’re devices of questionable provenance, they’ll be handed over to Homela
nd Security for analysis. If we’ve got some sort of biomechanical terror faction in operation, sophisticated enough to get to a congresswoman’s parents and stage this attack, we’ve got way bigger problems than everybody realized.”
Gregori gave a fleeting smile. “I think that’s a fair statement no matter what they find.”
They rode in silence the rest of the way to the hospital, where Angela, Joe, and Gregori were taken to a private waiting room in the protected ward, the space discreetly tucked away from the main bustle of the hospital. There were no media allowed anywhere near, and she suspected they wouldn’t be allowed past the front desk of the facility. Fine by her.
Gregori and Joe kept their heads bent together, with Joe continuing to grill Gregori over how he was able to scale the building so quickly, his experience in confronting the assailants, his interviews with the police, and a broad outline of how they were going to need to increase Angela’s security. The brief respite she’d had in the wake of the Atlanta attack was clearly at an end.
To have been targeted again so quickly defied logic, though. If someone was trying to scare her into some sort of compliance, they were going about it in entirely the wrong way, at least if they were trying to be secretive about it. That thought truly nagged at her. Any legislation she’d approve would now be colored by her own personal experiences. And while that could be good, the opposition to any such legislation would be quick to point out that she was possibly suffering from some form of posttraumatic stress, and so could she really be trusted to help bring such legislation to light?
Then again, who better to champion an antiterror bill than someone who was personally touched by terrorist tactics? Particularly since she hadn’t lost anyone close to her, other than her security detail, which was awful enough. Had someone somewhere assessed the optics of killing her parents versus killing a security guard? She shuddered to think.