Midnight Fire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  Summer had kept her ear close to the ground but she hadn’t heard about any of this. “So, among many other things, we’re talking about the murder of a senior officer of the CIA.”

  “His body was found two days after the Massacre, in his basement. Nobody came looking immediately. All law enforcement was tied up in the aftermath of the Massacre and dealing with the blackout. But I knew something was wrong when I got to the safe house and Hugh wasn’t there.”

  “That’s when you decided to disappear?”

  Jack’s face tightened and a dangerous shadow passed over his features. “There was nothing on earth that could have kept Hugh from meeting me there except death. And I was Hugh’s protégée. So being presumed dead at the Burrard was a gift. If it was known that I’d survived, I’d have had a target pinned to my back. I’m good but I’m not good enough to evade the kind of resources the CIA can bring to bear. Whoever the mole or moles were, they’d have enough autonomy to fake evidence that I was involved in the Massacre and put out a hit on me.”

  “Evading them for six months is amazing.”

  “Not if they thought I was dead. The bad thing was I couldn’t be with Isabel. I had some off-the-record credit cards and hired private detectives to stay in the hospital while Isabel was in a coma and to watch over her apartment when she was released. When she decided to move to Portland it was a huge relief. I kept an eye on her via computer.”

  Six months underground, posing as a homeless vet. Not many men could pull that off. “Have you found anything in these six months?”

  “Yes.” His jaws clenched. “Hector Blake was definitely involved. He made a vast fortune off the Massacre and parked the money in offshore accounts. He could never have made that much money without prior knowledge. I was keeping an eye on him. I was terrified when Isabel called him. In Portland, she fell in love with a good man, Joe Harris. Former SEAL. He works for a security company and one of their IT people found out that Blake had made a shit ton of money. Isabel called him to accuse him. I was in Portland already. I was there when Blake showed up.” His mouth twisted. “I arranged things with Isabel’s fiancé and his security company. They called in a good guy from the FBI. The FBI is the only agency I would swear is not involved in the conspiracy.”

  Summer studied him. “So you saw Hector Blake die. In Portland. That’s a huge story right there.”

  “It is,” Jack said steadily. “But not one I’m going to tell you, not yet anyway. But I’ll make you a deal. Work with me and at the end, you’ll be the one to break the story. But not before we figure out who the moles are in the US government. Any hint that you have some information and you won’t live out the day, Summer. And I won’t have your death on my conscience. So we work together and you stay under the radar and we crack this thing. I have allies in government. There’s that clean FBI agent we’re working with and to a limited extent we can use FBI resources. So let’s team up. What do you say?”

  And he held out his hand. Huge, long-fingered, scarred. Not the long, slender flawless hand that had once stroked her to ecstasy.

  Summer stared at that hand. Teaming up with Jack Delvaux. It would have been her fondest dream fifteen years ago. Something she’d secretly hoped would happen. That the Golden Boy would choose her to be his partner.

  And here, fifteen years later, that not-so-golden man was asking her to partner with him. Not romantic partner, of course. Summer was never going there, ever again. But he was asking her to team up with him to break the biggest story ever. Pulitzer Prize material.

  But more than the career boost, Summer wanted in on this because her country had been attacked. And if what the darknet said was true and what Jack said was true, her country had been attacked by Americans. For money. And the plot wasn’t over. More was to come.

  The Massacre had nearly brought the country to its knees.

  The streets were teeming with the homeless, unemployment was just below Depression-era levels, there was talk of Social Security going bankrupt. The country was dispirited, worn down, having absorbed blow after blow.

  They had done this, whoever they were. Americans had conspired to bring her country low.

  Summer loved America. She’d grown up in hellholes around the world. The only criteria for her parents for settling in a place had been cheap drugs, and Summer had seen hopeless despair, chaos, dictatorships. Coming to America as a teenager had been like walking into paradise. Not because it was richer than other places but because it was better. With all its problems, the underlying ideal held. Of the people, by the people, for the people. They weren’t empty words. She’d embraced America with all her heart and she was prepared to fight her country’s attackers with all she had.

  Jack was still holding his hand out, waiting for her. “Deal?”

  She took it, trying not to react to the feel of him. Such a different hand from the one she’d known. Hard and callused and hot.

  His hand felt electric in hers, a massive burst of energy and heat.

  “Deal.” She pumped his hand then let go, happy not to be touching him. Pleasure at his touch had absolutely nothing to do with the pact they had just sealed. She had no business being affected by his touch, none. “We start by you showing me all the information you’ve gathered.”

  Jack’s mouth turned grim. “It’s not much, unfortunately. A lot is rumor and supposition. We were expecting to catch Blake, not bury him. We were going to make him talk and then we’d have enough proof to go to the Attorney General with the intel. We weren’t expecting a corpse. Now I don’t know where to go, how to follow the thread.”

  “Well.” Summer stood and, startled, Jack stood, too. “It’s a very lucky thing you have teamed up with me, Jack, because I do know where to go next.”

  “Where?”

  “Hector’s house. I have the keys.”

  Chapter Three

  Whoa, Jack thought. Breaking into Blake’s house. But it turned out he wasn’t going to have to break in, he could simply walk in.

  “So, I can get us in his house, but once we’re in we might need to crack into safes. Do you have your safe-cracking kit?” Summer flicked a glance at him.

  “I’m good,” Jack replied. He was. He was loaded for bear with surveillance equipment and the suppressed Glock 19 and MP5 Nick Mancino had given him in his gym bag. Plus of course his set of picks, a powerful autodialer and some C-4. Summer didn’t have to know how well equipped he was. She was already a little spooked at knowing who he’d become.

  Summer. Summer Redding.

  The funny-looking girl had turned into a beauty by the time she hit college. Jack’s head had definitely been turned and he’d made his play immediately. But then a lot of girls had turned his head back in the day. Beautiful girls were thick on the ground at Harvard. Healthy, wealthy American girls with twenty thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontics in their mouths, years of dance lessons and tennis lessons and a lifetime of eating excellent food. They’d all had glossy hair and white teeth and it had been like a male cornucopia. All he’d had to do was reach out his hand and there they were.

  Summer had been stunning, but then they all were.

  Now...not so much. Not many of the Harvard girls had aged well. Oh, they were perfectly well maintained. Lots of gym time, lots of beauty salon time. Some had already gone under the knife, sometimes multiple times.

  Summer hadn’t. That was a natural beauty he was looking at. A very pissed-off natural beauty.

  Well, after bedding her fifteen years ago, popping her cherry then walking cheerfully away without a word, then seducing her roommate and two other girls on her dorm floor, only to crop up after being declared dead and break into her home...pissed off seemed pretty reasonable.

  “That’s his official home,” Summer said. “And we’ll search it top to bottom. But he also has a luxury apartment that no one kno
ws about. He brings—brought—his mistresses there and did drugs. Or at least he did according to my aunt, who hated him.”

  Pretty Summer Redding. Surprising him. “Do you know where it is? The secret apartment? And do you have keys to that, too?”

  She smiled. “I know where it is, and I have the keypad code.”

  “Wow.” Surprise after surprise. “How did that happen?”

  “It’s a long and unpleasant story.” She sighed. “So, the no-frills version is that my aunt used to send me in to obtain evidence against him for the divorce. He didn’t know that she knew about the apartment. She blackmailed one of his mistresses for the code.”

  “Let’s hope he hasn’t changed the code,” Jack said.

  “I seriously doubt that. At least in my day, Hector was tech-challenged. And he thought no one knew about the apartment. My aunt said it wasn’t registered in his name but in the name of some corporation. We’re bound to find something either in the mansion or in his bachelor pad.”

  A secret hideaway where Blake might have kept records. Exactly what he needed. “Blake was part of the conspiracy, no question about it. He helped the plan that killed my parents and he wanted to kidnap and then kill Isabel to shut her up. Let’s go. We’re going to break into both places.”

  Summer stood. “Okay. We’ll take my car. Where’s yours? And how can you have a car if you’re dead?”

  “You’d be surprised at the things dead people can do. I bought myself two rust buckets and had the chassis strengthened and the engines completely overhauled. One’s in Portland and one’s here. I bought them under one of my identities and have the ID ready if I’m stopped. Never have been, though.”

  Summer looked up at him, frowning.

  “What? Do I have lettuce in my teeth?”

  “No. I’m wondering whether you need to put your wig and beard on. You’ve survived this long as a dead man, I wouldn’t want to be the one to out you.”

  He balked suddenly at putting the beard and wig on. He hated wearing them. They itched and made him feel confined. More than that, they made him feel like a non-person, which was, of course, the fucking point. But suddenly, with Summer here, knowing full well that it was a security breach, he couldn’t stand the thought of wearing his homeless costume. Particularly the BDUs that smelled of piss. He didn’t want to be an unperson. He wanted to be Jack Delvaux again, in the worst way. Seeing Summer again...seeing what an incredibly beautiful and fascinating woman she’d become, the man in him rebelled at going back into hiding, like a cockroach scurrying back under a rock.

  But he couldn’t say that. “Your car’s in the garage, right? And you have an elevator that goes to the garage?”

  He knew because he’d checked.

  “Yeah, so? This place is still surrounded by security cameras.”

  This is where it got tricky. “Not any more, it isn’t,” he said gently.

  Her eyes widened. God she had gorgeous eyes. A light silvery gray, bright and intense, alive with intelligence. He could almost hear the gears engaging in her head. “You disabled the security cameras in my building?” she asked, appalled.

  He nodded.

  “I don’t know whether to be mad at you or admire you.”

  “The latter?” Jack ventured. He’d wanted to switch the cams off temporarily but it would have taken a ton of time so he’d ended up just disabling the damned things.

  She stared, wide-eyed, hovering between anger and admiration and finally gave a half laugh. She’d opted for Door Number Two. Good.

  “When you broke into my apartment you didn’t do permanent damage, did you?”

  “No,” he said truthfully. But the building’s security cams were all gone. Probably about $20K worth of damages.

  “Whew.” She shook her head ruefully. “So I guess it’ll be okay if you don’t go into Full Homeless. What about at Hector’s place?”

  “I’ll disable his system, too. At both places.”

  If she wondered why he was so hot on not going Full Homeless, as she put it, she wasn’t saying it. Jack was aghast at himself because he was breaking opsec, big time. He thought for a second about putting that beard and wig back on and then—nah. Not going there.

  The hell with it.

  “Looks like you gave yourself over to a life of crime,” Summer said as she gathered her coat and purse.

  Jack grunted. Yeah. There had often been a very fine line between being undercover and being a criminal during his fifteen years with the National Clandestine Service. But if it kept the enemies from America’s shores, it was fine with Jack. Until he realized that he’d been working for the enemy.

  Summer was quiet in the elevator going down, which suited him. She stared straight ahead, lost in thought. Jack positioned himself slightly behind her so he could look at her without her noticing. He didn’t want to perv on her but, man. She’d turned into an amazing woman.

  Slim but without that skinny look he hated. He’d spent long periods in places where people were skinny because they didn’t have enough to eat. He hated that look in fashionable women, all bones and sinews and hollows. All those underweight women looked deprived and unhappy. It was unnatural. Summer was slender, but strong, toned and healthy looking.

  And...gorgeous.

  Amazingly beautiful women were rarer in their thirties than in their twenties. Good looks were often a free gift to the young. After that, how you lived your life showed. And Summer lived her life well, it was apparent in every cell of her body.

  And she did important work.

  Jack had been reading Area 8 for the six years of its existence, and he hadn’t read a stupid article yet. Area 8 hosted journalists of opposing views, but unlike many publications, the tone was always respectful, which he imagined she set.

  And she was so fucking hot.

  Maybe because it had been such a long time since he’d been with a woman. His last mission had been sexless because he couldn’t afford distractions. Being undercover was dangerous. He could handle the danger to himself but he couldn’t drag a woman into that life. He’d be painting a target on her back.

  And of course the past six months had been absolutely sexless. Who was going to bed a homeless guy who smelled of piss? He’d barely been seen as a human being let alone a man.

  So he was a little out of practice here with being in an enclosed space with a beautiful woman. A beautiful, accomplished woman who was definitely smarter than he was and whom he’d wronged. A long time ago, sure, but she hadn’t forgotten. There was wariness and distance there, not good things in a former lover. Jack had liked to leave them smiling back in the day.

  Fuck. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking at all. Summer had been like an ice cream cone, all creamy and delicious. But vanilla. And then chocolate and strawberry and double fudge ice cream cones had presented themselves, readily available.

  That week with Summer had been amazing. She’d been incredibly sweet and after that first little shock at her virginity—who the hell was a virgin at eighteen at Harvard? How the fuck could he have known?—it had been absolutely great. If Jack could rewind the clock, knowing what he knew now, he’d have grabbed onto Summer with both hands and never let go.

  But—he’d been twenty-two and full of hormones and the party was never going to end. And then 9/11 and the CIA had come calling and his life had split into two.

  But that week with her...it had been really great. His eyes roamed down her slim, straight back, from her strong shoulders to the ridiculously tiny waist to the full hips. God. He’d held her down while he—

  Summer sniffed and wrinkled her nose, turning her head slightly to glare at him. “What’s that smell?”

  “Homeless stuff, sorry.” He held up his gym bag. “Never leave home without it.”

  “Well put it in the trun
k when we get into the car.”

  “No can do, sorry.” He shrugged. “Have to keep it with me at all times. The best I can do is keep it on the backseat but I have to be able to reach it quickly. I can put on the piss-soaked jacket, beard and wig fast. Fourteen seconds. I practiced and timed it. Takes me fourteen seconds to get my homeless on.”

  “Oh.” Her voice softened. “That might have saved your life. If Blake would go after Isabel who is harmless, he definitely would have come after you if he suspected you’d survived the Massacre.”

  Jack nodded. “I’m not easy to kill, but yeah. If I hadn’t gone underground, if I’d openly investigated the Massacre, I’d be dead. Arranged traffic accident, mugging gone bad...these guys don’t fuck around.”

  “No.” Her beautiful face tightened. “They’re willing to kill hundreds of people and plunge the country into near bankruptcy. They don’t play around.”

  The elevator stopped with a soft ping and the doors opened onto the garage. Summer didn’t move. She stared ahead then turned and cupped his bristly jaw with a soft hand. “I’m glad you’re still alive, Jack.” And then she walked out.

  Well, damn. What the fuck was he supposed to say to that? Did that mean she still—no. Don’t read too much into it. She was a good person and of course she was glad he hadn’t been shot in the head or nudged off a cliff. Though considering how he’d treated her in college...she’d have been justified to shoot him in the head herself.

  She was halfway across the garage and some primitive instinct made him hurry to catch up. He’d long ago learned how to cover ground fast without running. He was at her side in an instant.

  Nobody knew he was here but it wasn’t lost on him that if someone knew he was alive and that he was with Summer, she wouldn’t be safe. And that was like a cattle prod to the chest. The idea that someone could hurt Summer...God. Because whoever was behind this conspiracy, both in the CIA and in China, if it originated there, whoever was pulling the strings, was ruthless. Would kill without hesitation and Summer’s beautiful light would be blown out. Jack shivered and caught up with her, stepped past her and opened the driver’s side door without thinking.