Midnight Fire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  She’d have died alone, without anyone even in her head to say goodbye to.

  Summer shuddered.

  “You can have a breakdown later,” Jack said. He lifted her arms and put them in the heavy overcoat he’d dropped around her shoulders. Just like dressing a child. A big soft scarf replaced the one she had on. Jack wrapped it around her lower face and covered her neck and jawline. Finally, Jack placed a big brown hat on her head. Felt, with a brim. It was a little large and settled low on her head.

  She focused on him, focused on his eyes as if they were waltzing and she had to look at him not to get dizzy. Then she was able to focus on more than those sky blue eyes and saw that he’d changed, too, with another heavy dark blue overcoat, a big scarf and the Fedora.

  “I raided Hector’s closet. We weren’t seen coming in, but there are no guarantees. If someone did catch us, we’ll look different going out.”

  Summer nodded. The warmth of the overcoat and Jack’s big body so close to hers were chasing away the bone-deep chill she felt. But her throat was too tight to talk.

  “Sweetheart, we really have to go.”

  She nodded again, a jerky movement. She had no control over herself at all.

  Jack bent and gave her a quick kiss, heat and light blossoming on her mouth. As if he were prince Charming—which he certainly wasn’t—it brought her back to life.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  “Good girl.”

  They walked swiftly out, Jack’s arm around her back. She could feel the heat of his arm through the overcoat, her coat and shirt. He bent, murmured in her ear. “Keep your head down. The brim will cover your face.”

  She watched her feet. He didn’t even need to say it. She was feeling so shell-shocked she’d have had to watch her feet anyway. Her whole body felt as if someone had cut some strings—she had to focus to put one foot in front of another, not stumble, not walk into a wall.

  Luckily, Jack was right there. He had the backpack slung over one shoulder and had his other arm around her. She wasn’t going to stumble and she wasn’t going to walk into a wall. Not while he was holding her so tightly.

  In some dim corner of her mind Summer realized that Jack had shortened his stride for her—they were matching steps exactly—and yet they were moving fast. Through the fog in her head, she observed as they walked down the stairwell and out the side door. In the stairwell, her footfalls were the only sound. Though he was much bigger and heavier than she was, Jack managed to make not a sound going down.

  Then they were out in the open air of the night and Summer gasped, taking in a huge breath of night air. She finally felt like she could breathe.

  A big hand clasped her neck warmly and forced her head down.

  “Big breaths,” Jack ordered and she obeyed. One big breath, two.

  “Better?”

  “Yes,” she gasped. “Better.”

  “Okay then.” He took her arm, looking around carefully. “Let’s get going. You can break down at my place.”

  Break down. Oh, God. Yes. She’d nearly had a breakdown in Hector’s secret apartment. It had felt exactly like the bottom dropping out of her world, like going into shock, like extreme trauma.

  “I’m so sorry,” Summer whispered miserably. “Sorry to wimp out on you like that.”

  Jack stopped examining their surroundings and turned to her with a deep scowl. “Jesus, Summer. You just found out someone wanted to kill you with sarin. Do you know what sarin does to people?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I do.”

  “So I think you’re justified in freaking out just a little, don’t you?”

  She nodded numbly.

  “And you can freak out later all you want, but right now we have to go.” Jack’s eyes seemed to glow in the dark. “Okay?”

  She nodded again.

  “Good girl.” Jack gave a half smile and bent to give her another one of those heart-stopping kisses that seemed to heat her up from the inside. “Let’s go.”

  In moments they were out on the street, Jack, eyes darting left and right under the brim of the Fedora. They passed her car and kept on walking fast down the street.

  “Hey, Jack.” Summer slowed down. “That was my car back there.”

  The street was full of Mercedes, Lexuses and BMWs. Hers was the only Prius. How could he have missed it?

  Jack didn’t answer immediately. He just gave a grunt of satisfaction next to a big luxury car Summer didn’t recognize, bent and pulled something out of his backpack. A few seconds later, he had the front and back plates in his hand and as she gaped, he switched plates between a monster black SUV and the luxury sedan. He walked quickly back to her Prius and took two plates out of his backpack, and switched those with her Prius’s plates.

  “They’ll be on the lookout for your car, but for the moment they’ll be scanning traffic cams for your license plate number. They won’t have the tag numbers I just put on your car.” He pointed to the black SUV. “I’ll take that vehicle. Follow me in your car and when I pull over, pull over behind me. We’ll leave your car far away from here and proceed with the SUV.”

  “How can you get in the car? You don’t have the key!” Summer objected. Jack just looked at her. “Oh. Okay.”

  If he could break into her super secure apartment surely he could break into a vehicle.

  By the time Summer got her Prius started, Jack had already broken into the huge SUV and stopped ahead of her. She pulled out and followed him. They headed south, crossed the 11th Street Bridge. Jack stopped at a suburban used car lot. Summer pulled in behind him and parked.

  Half the street lights were broken. It was a bad part of town, barely clinging to a low end kind of respectability, but she knew that four blocks farther south, it became no man’s land.

  He got out before she did and was at the driver’s side door in an instant. “Don’t lock the door,” he said as she was getting out.

  “What?” Summer waved her hand at the grim surroundings. “It’ll be boosted before dawn if I don’t lock it.”

  “Exactly.” Jack met her eyes. “I’m really sorry sweetheart but you’re going to have to sacrifice your cute little car. If we leave it here unlocked, inside of twenty-four hours it will be in a chop shop or taken out for a joyride and left in a field somewhere. The best way to get rid of a car. They’ll never find it.”

  “Oh.” Instinctively, Summer reached out a hand and put it on the fender, caressed the metal. She sighed. “I just paid her off.”

  Jack hooked an arm around her neck, pulled her to him and kissed her forehead. “Sorry.”

  Not sorry enough to change the plan, though.

  Her car. She loved it. It had never broken down or abandoned her, not once. It had served her faithfully like a knight of old and she was going to abandon it to a fate worse than death. Maybe cut up for parts or left to rot and rust in some abandoned field.

  “Summer.” Jack cocked his head at the SUV. Time to go.

  “Yeah, yeah.” She gave the fender a last farewell pat and followed Jack to the SUV, having now lost her home and her car. Her last attachment to her old life was the broad-shouldered man in front of her, bending to open the passenger door of a stolen vehicle for her.

  * * *

  Jack was about as sure as he could be that no one could know he and Summer were in this SUV. They could track it as much as they wanted. It was anonymous and had someone else’s plates on it and no one could possibly know they were inside. The windows were tinted very dark. He’d chosen it for that reason.

  Behind his safe house was a covered alleyway. He’d park there, safe from overhead drones or even satellite surveillance. The safe house had no security cams around it. He’d made sure of that.

  But there was another reason he wasn’t taking evasive maneuvers. He w
anted to get to the safe house as fast as was humanly possible. He drove at the exact speed limit. Getting pulled over would be hard to explain away so he didn’t give any police officer any opportunity to do so.

  He knew the route so well he was on automatic pilot. He checked all the mirrors constantly, was aware of the cars behind him at all times and knew he could pick out a tail immediately, but he did this without thinking too much.

  All his attention was focused on Summer. She was way too silent and way too pale for his liking. She had the uncoordinated movements of someone who’d had a bad shock. She’d stumbled when getting out of Hector’s little hideaway, something someone as naturally graceful as Summer wouldn’t do.

  Even in the uneven light of the street lamps he could see her skin was pale as ice, almost cadaver pale. Even her lips were white and he knew for a fact that even without makeup her lips were a full, rich rose color. She looked drawn, as if she hadn’t eaten or drunk in days, as if something had sucked vital things out of her, leaving a husk.

  Well, something had sucked vital things out of her. Her home had been invaded. That was a very basic trauma, almost as bad as being physically attacked. He hadn’t told her and he wouldn’t tell her for as long as he could get away with it—but her home was basically gone. That lovely flat, decorated with style and pretty personal touches, full of watercolors and fresh plants and tons of books and CDs—gone. The Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Sciences Department of the FBI would go over it molecule by molecule but no one would guarantee that every single possible booby trap had been eliminated and Jack wouldn’t let her go back in if there was the faintest possibility of contamination. Every single soft surface of the apartment—curtains, sofas, all clothes, all tablecloths and sheets, the bed mattress—would be encased in plastic and removed to an FBI laboratory and she would never get them back again.

  And anyway, Nick and the Director wouldn’t let her go back in until the investigation was completed. Which might be next month, next year. Might be never.

  And her car—that was over, too.

  Jack reached over and squeezed her hands. She was clasping them in her lap. They were cold, dry. He held them until he felt them start to heat up. There wasn’t much Jack could give her right now. He didn’t even have a home to take her to. But she was welcome to as much of him as she’d take.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. He spoke quietly, as if she’d been in a bad accident.

  She didn’t respond. Her pretty profile was still and pale.

  Jack drove on in the dark, windy night. The straight route home took them through some trafficked avenues and he kept close watch on the cars around him, but nothing pinged on his radar.

  About twenty minutes from the safe house, Summer finally spoke.

  “I’m really sorry I freaked on you back there.”

  “You’re allowed, when you discover that your home has been seeded with a deadly bioweapon.”

  She sighed. “It’s not that, it—” Her lips clamped shut.

  “It’s what?” Jack asked. The road was broad and almost empty. He swiveled his head to look at her directly. She seemed a little less in a state of shock now. Sad and afraid but not devastated.

  Summer shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Jack slowed down. “This is a serious situation, Summer. You were about to say something. It wasn’t nothing. Tell me.”

  “Or what?” She turned to give him a faint smile. It was a sad effort but he was happy to see she made that attempt. “You’ll beat it out of me?”

  God.

  “No, sweetheart.” Jack picked up one of her hands, brought it to his mouth. It wasn’t icy cold any more. He kissed the back of it, as if she were his liege lady. “I could never hurt you and you know that. But I’m trying to keep us alive here, doing my very best, and I don’t like question marks, things left unsaid. They could get us killed. So I would be very, very grateful if you could finish that sentence for me.”

  “Not fair,” she complained, and this time the smile was less strained. “You’re appealing to my better nature.”

  “Anything that works, sweetheart.”

  She sighed. “It has nothing to do with” —she waved her hand “—with whatever is going on. Back there, at Hector’s secret little love pad, when I heard that my house had been booby-trapped with sarin, I flashed back on something that happened in my childhood. A bad memory. That’s all.”

  Summer’s childhood had been really rough. Jack knew that. He’d heard his parents talking about her when she lived with Vanessa and Hector, who’d totally ignored Summer in their vicious fights with each other. His parents, bless them, had tried to take Summer under their wing.

  “Tell me,” he said gently. “If you talk about it, it’ll pull the punch of the memory. I don’t know what else is going to happen, probably not a whole lot of good things, so I’d like to know what could be a trigger for you. Drag up memories that make you freeze.”

  She sighed. Looked down at her lap. Clasped her fingers together then pulled them apart.

  She was going to talk. She wanted to talk. Jack recognized the signs. He gave her the time she needed.

  “Okay,” Summer said finally. She stared straight ahead, not looking at him, which was not a good sign. Summer always looked people right in the eyes. This was going to be bad. “The summer I was eight my parents and I were living in Cartagena, Colombia. It wasn’t a happy place. We were surrounded by cartel soldiers and pushers but I suppose that was sort of the point, for my parents. They got high a lot. Sometimes they left me alone for days. Once, they left to go somewhere—I have no idea where—and I ate something tainted. It gave me violent food poisoning. For almost two days—I think it was two days, I lost all track of time—I vomited and voided everything that could be voided.

  “I spent two days and two nights curled around the toilet in blinding pain, drenched in my own waste, and I begged God to let me die. I’ve never been so sick before or after in my life. I thought I was going to die alone in a miserable hole in Cartagena and I didn’t want to die alone.” Her long lashes swept down as she looked at her hands again. They were trembling and she clenched them so hard the knuckles turned white. “That’s what I was flashing on. Being violently sick, all alone. Dying alone.”

  Jack swallowed but didn’t allow anything at all to show on his face. Nothing. Because he felt such vast pity for the little girl who’d been left alone while so sick, and a murderous rage at her careless junkie parents who hadn’t taken care of her at all.

  The summer Jack had been eight, he and his parents and Isabel—the twins hadn’t been born yet—had taken a long vacation in Disneyworld and it had been sheer heaven. They’d all had a fabulous time. The memory of that summer still made him smile. He’d been loved and protected when he was a little kid. He’d lived in a bubble of happiness all his childhood, looked over by loving parents.

  It had never occurred to him that not everyone’s life was like that and he doubted he’d have understood it at the age of eight.

  He’d had no idea of what the world was like and by the time he discovered it was full of fuckheads who liked inflicting pain and chaos, he was a man, and he’d started extensive training to handle them.

  Not eight years old like Summer had been, helpless and vulnerable and abandoned. Nearly dying on her own in a foreign country would have been an imprinting experience—something that colored the rest of her days.

  He understood completely how she flashed on that experience.

  This was a woman who’d known adversity as a little girl beyond anything he’d ever had to experience. And now someone was after her.

  Whoever these fuckers were—and he suspected the DD of the CIA, among others—they weren’t going to touch Summer. He was going to make sure of that. He was going to stick by her side and he was going to take her awa
y to the safest place he could think of.

  And then he and Nick and the FBI and the guys at ASI were going to go on the attack.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said quietly and she nodded.

  Now that he was close to the safe house, Jack made his usual rounds to check for tails. He drove three blocks in every direction, in a grid. Circled his block twice. And he was clean.

  “We’re here.” He turned quickly into a little driveway then took a right under a canopy in the alleyway out back.

  “Good thing.” Summer picked up her purse from the footwell. Her movements were smoother now, hands no longer trembling. “You went around the block a couple of times. I thought maybe you were lost.”

  Lost. Jack never got lost. He was about to say so when he saw her smiling at him. A genuine smile. She was teasing him. He put on his seducer’s voice, the one he hadn’t used in years. “I always know where I’m going, darlin’. You can count on that. Stay here.”

  He rounded the big vehicle and opened her door. She’d been unsteady on her legs when she got in. She didn’t seem to be unsteady now but...he wanted to help her down. He wanted that badly. He wanted his hands on her in the worst way. Layers of wanting. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t trembling and was steady on her feet. He wanted to reassure her that he was there for her, in the most basic way there was—by physical touch. And he wanted his hands on her because he wanted her.

  Not now, he told himself sternly. He’d learned to control his dick a long time ago. In college he’d been guided in most of his decisions by his dick, but that hadn’t been him for a long time now. So this sudden lust in the middle of the most dangerous op of his life, with the greatest consequences, danger at every turn for Summer too—that was wrong.

  It threw him off his stride. He’d been a top operator for Hugh because he was focused like a laser beam on the op, always. The people he loved—his family—were far away and safe and that always allowed him to be concentrated on the mission. He had no idea how his fellow Clandestine Service operators managed to focus when they had loved ones living in the same city.