He rubbed her thumb with his, their hands still clasped on his thigh. “This is the first time since we’ve been together that I’ve felt you weren’t being completely honest with me,” he said. “I don’t like it. What are you afraid of?”
Not at all surprised that he had picked up on her fear, she looked away, terrified of being pushed into a corner with only one way out: telling him the truth about her intuitive skills.
Don’t do it. You’ll lose him. You know you will.
She would, just as she had lost everyone else in her life who had mattered to her. Her parents had considered her odd, one of her sisters thought she was a nutcase, and the other was scared of her. No one until Jazie and Taylor Lee had simply accepted her as she was—and they did because they were odd, nutcases, and scary to others, too. No doubt that’s what had caused Taylor Lee’s multiple engagements. She hadn’t admitted it, but Morgan knew.
“Morgan.” Jackson paused, then nudged her. “Honey, look at me.”
She steeled herself and then met his gaze.
“You have your reasons, and it’s okay,” he said, sounding tender and empathetic. “I’ll tell you what I want.”
It was okay? Just like that? Without shoving her, without insisting? Without condemning her for not revealing everything she could and more? Relief had tears choking her throat. Unable to talk, she settled for a nod.
“I want you,” he said simply. “I want us. All of it.” He brought their hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “I want everything.”
The cry in her throat rose, tears filmed her eyes, and a little mewl escaped from her throat. “Really?” She didn’t dare to believe it.
He nodded. “It’s right with us, Morgan. I know it down to my soul.” An attendant walked past, and he waited until she had moved out of earshot. “What I don’t want is a lengthy long-distance relationship.”
“Me, either.” She’d finally found him and she wanted them to be together, sharing their lives. “But my practice and my work with Sally. I can’t—”
“I can,” he said. “There’s a reserve wing at Providence. As soon as this is over, I’m going to talk with Secretary Reynolds and try to get him to assign me to it.”
“Jackson, are you sure that’s what you want?”
“I’m sure I want you, and that’s where you are,” he said. “Listen, honey, I’m not a kid. I’ve had relationships that I hoped would eventually grow to a glimmer of what we’ve got. They never did.” He wrapped her hand in both of his. “This is it, Morgan. Sometimes you get one shot. Only one. This is ours, and I’m taking it.”
“I feel the same way, but there are things about me you don’t know …”
“Same here,” he said. “But we’ll learn. We’ve got time.”
“But, wait—”
He held up his free hand. “I know you need more time to feel comfortable with this. That’s prudent, and I don’t have a problem with it. So we’ll take it slow and see where it goes. Sound fair?”
“More than fair.” But she couldn’t let him make drastic changes in his life without being totally honest with him. She couldn’t do it. “It isn’t just us and timing and the absence of crises, Jackson. We need time together for another reason, too, and it’s a big one that has a lot of impact on my life. If you’re with me, it’ll have a big impact on yours, too.”
“What is it?”
No signals, no signs of whether he was dreading this or glad that whatever it was had now been brought out in the open. That didn’t do a thing to settle her fears or calm her nerves. She thought about keeping her mouth shut about it, but that was definitely the wrong thing to do. He deserved the truth. “I’m intuitive, Jackson.”
He laughed. “Yeah, you are.”
Confused, she blinked, and then blinked again. “No, I mean …” She paused, looked around, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m really intuitive.”
“I know, honey.”
He looked as if he expected her to say more, but she had no idea what else to say. She settled for, “It’s my special ability.” Surely he’d get her meaning now.
He smiled and stroked her face. “Is this your big secret? The one that’s had you in knots?”
She nodded.
“Ah, Morgan.” He sighed, pulled back to see her face more clearly. “Honey, even a man only semi-conscious couldn’t be around you more than five minutes and not know that.”
She stilled, frowned, blinked, then tilted her head. “Really?”
He nodded. “It’s evident in everything you say and do.”
She hadn’t realized it. Hadn’t thought of her gift in that way and certainly hadn’t noticed it in her interactions with other men. He wasn’t getting it. He couldn’t be grasping the scope of it. “Jackson, I don’t think you understand the realities of what I’m—”
“I get it.” He nodded to add weight to his claim. “I swear, I do.”
She thought about what he was telling her and reached an inevitable conclusion that stunned her and had the bottom dropping out of her stomach. “You’re not just perceptive, are you?” No answer.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered softly. “You’re intuitive, too.”
His eyes twinkled. “Ah, the light dawns.”
Morgan glared at him. “Well, you could have told me.”
He rolled his eyes back in his head. “You knew.”
She started to deny it, but the truth was she had indeed known. Again and again, she’d thought it. Hell, she’d even told the commander that Jackson was too perceptive to be anywhere but front and center on her need-to-know loop. “Yeah, I guess I did know, even if I didn’t truly realize it until now.”
“I have to say I’m not like you,” he warned her. “I don’t have your range.”
Interesting. “What is your range?”
“Limited at best,” he confessed. “Except when it comes to you.”
“Me?” That surprised her.
“I think it’s the chemistry. Something happens to me when I’m around you. It’s like there’s this whole new layer, a deeper level of insight.”
Oh, yes. “There is that.”
“It hones the focus,” he said, a lilt in his voice. “Or something like that.”
Something like that. It was hormones, and he damn well knew it. The input of multiple layers of sensory impressions simultaneously rather than sequentially. He was teasing her. Teasing her, about this. She could barely believe it.
“Could be hormonal?” she suggested. “Maybe.” The devil glinted in his eye. “But it’s probably gas.”
Morgan laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “Jackson, you’re incorrigible.”
“No, I’m not.” He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose. “But I am crazy … about you.”
Happiness settled inside her. “I’m crazy about you, too.” She turned her head and kissed his cheek, and an image formed in her mind of them spending that time together, getting to know each other without fires and bullets and death and destruction intruding. It was a nice image.
And she prayed they survived the mission and lived long enough to see it become reality.
Because, unfortunately, as much as she wanted that reality, G.R.I.D. and Thomas Kunz himself were equally intent on a different reality: one in which Morgan and Jackson were dead.
On the commander’s one-to-ten scale, she had ranked the danger on this leg of the mission at ten. The best it got was an eight, and that was only if the CIA had failed to pinpoint the location of Kunz’s hideaway compound by the time Morgan and Jackson arrived in Honoria.
If Kunz had bugged out, then the risks to everyone involved diminished. But if the CIA had been successful, then the danger spiked off the charts. The bean counters were so convinced of it that they’d expanded their thinking and tagged the entire island chain as the kill zone.
The plane landed, its tires squeaking on the landing strip.
Morgan swallowed hard. Eight or ten? Danger increased or decrea
sed? Were they in or out of the Kunz-defined kill zone?
Soon, they’d know …
CHAPTER 14
Daniel Gaston had short and spiky blond hair, blue eyes, and a forgettable face, which was an asset in CIA circles generally, and in Gaston’s covert assignments for the CIA specifically.
Privately, before boarding the first flight, Morgan had explained to Jackson that Gaston had worked with the S.A.S.S. on previous missions in the Middle East and on the U.S.-Mexico border case Darcy had handled last July. One never talked openly about business matters in public places, especially when anyone could be trying to intercept their every word for the purpose of information or intelligence gathering. With everyone being suspect, it was far too risky.
Morgan recognized Gaston on sight. Having seen his photo on the “Active” wall in the S.A.S.S. headquarters bunker at Regret, she headed in his direction.
“Dr. Cabot,” Gaston said. “Good to see you.”
“You, too, Daniel,” she said, then handled the introductions.
Gaston and Jackson shook hands.
“This way,” Gaston said, motioning them through a throng of people, some reuniting with loved ones and others boarding the plane. Most were tourists, gauging by their well-rested looks.
Gaston led them to a white Land Rover and opened the door. Jackson crawled into the back, and Morgan slid onto the passenger’s seat beside Gaston. Hands on the wheel, he started the engine and pulled out. There was no traffic, and one turn off the main thoroughfare took them on a bumpy, dusty dirt path heading toward the shore. “We’ll have to take a boat from here,” he said.
“How long will it take to get to Tavanipupu?” Morgan asked, rolling with the pitch on the rutted road.
“We aren’t going there,” he said. “We’re heading farther out.”
“Why?” Jackson asked, gripping the hand bar beside him.
“Late yesterday, we got a positive ID on Judy Meyer. Apparently, she likes to shop with the locals on Tavanipupu. One of the vendors there made a delivery for her. This morning, we got on it.”
“Was he there?” No need to mention Kunz’s name. “No. He bugged out.”
Difficulty odds just dropped from ten to eight. Commander Drake would have mixed emotions about that. She’d be glad Morgan and Jackson weren’t facing Kunz, but she’d be upset as hell that Kunz was still on the loose, wreaking havoc and plotting terrorist attacks.
Gaston glanced over. “Looks like he departed within the last twenty-four hours, though it might have been thirty-six—we’ve gotten conflicting stories on that. But he left behind plenty you’ll want to see,” Gaston assured her. “We’ve got the area manned and secured.”
“What was the area?” Morgan asked. “A G.R.I.D. compound or—”
“No, no compound,” Gaston quickly glanced at her, then darted his gaze back to the road. “Though it appears as if he had an operations command center up and running there.”
“So this place was just somewhere he went to hide when the heat got too hot.”
“It’s a little more than that.” Gaston’s eyes lighted, and he let out a low whistle. “A 15,000-square-foot resort built for one,” Gaston said. “Amazing place.”
“Oh, man. We found his … did we find Thomas Kunz’s private home?” Jackson asked, incredulous.
“Looks like it was exactly that.” Gaston’s smile touched his eyes.
Morgan sensed it was so but remained totally perplexed. “And he just walked out and left everything?”
“No, he didn’t do that,” Gaston said, grimacing. “He made sure we wouldn’t get much in the way of personal data on him. But the house itself tells us far more about him than we knew up to this point.”
“So the place is empty?” Morgan attempted to clarify.
“Not exactly.” Gaston hit a deep rut, rolled across it, tossing the Land Rover into a steep pitch.
Morgan grabbed the door and held on until they leveled out. “Then what exactly did he leave behind?”
“Something personal, Dr. Cabot. You’ll get what I mean soon enough,” Gaston assured her. “You have to see it yourself to understand …”
Morgan supposed she would have to see it for herself, considering Daniel Gaston was being about as clear as mud.
Gaston pulled the boat into a cove and putted alongside a long wooden pier. Near the shore, a man he hadn’t introduced, seated at the bow of the boat, jumped out and tied off to the pier. Then Gaston cut the engine. “We’re here,” he said. “This is it.”
Three other boats were anchored in the water inside the cove, and a speedboat was tied off on the other side of the pier opposite them. Jackson looked at them and then at Gaston. “I take it all of these are ours.”
He nodded.
“The divers, too?”
That observation surprised Gaston. “Yeah.” “Where are they?”
Gaston stepped out of the boat and hopped onto the wooden planked pier. “Under us.” He turned around and looked back at Jackson, who held Morgan’s arm while she stepped ashore. “Kunz favors underwater compounds, and since we didn’t find any signs of one on the island itself …”
Morgan grunted. Kunz had gone underground to build compounds in Iran, and Kate had the memories to prove it. He also had done that on the Texas border with Mexico. His going underground here was definitely possible.
They walked past four men stationed above them at various points along the shore, then took the stairs up the steep cliff from the beach. Gaston didn’t speak to the men—obviously protecting their identities—so Morgan acknowledged them with nods. One appeared to be local from his tanned skin, clothing, and distinct facial features. The other three were decidedly American and not trying to hide it.
None of them nodded back, a signal that officially they weren’t there, and a nonverbal directive to forget that she had seen them. She glanced at Jackson and sensed he knew the drill.
At the top of the steps, the house came into view. It was breathtaking and huge, its terraces landscaped beautifully with palms and tropical flowers. As they drew closer, Morgan saw the residence was made of brick. Shocking to see white bricks here. Really shocking, when everything had to be brought in by boat or … “Is there a landing strip on this island?”
“Oh, yeah, and a helicopter pad,” Gaston said. “Kunz could depart the fix at a moment’s notice by sea or air, fixed wing or rotor.”
They walked past a viewing post and then onto a terrace. Not so much as a leaf littered it. White columns stretched up to the roof of the house, and Morgan moved under the overhang, blissfully grateful for the shady reprieve from the relentless sun. “I’d like to walk through.”
“Sure,” Gaston said. “The area you most want to see is at the dead center of the house, down a level. It’s secured.”
Morgan nodded to acknowledge she’d heard him and then walked through each room, opening her senses to whatever input might come. Yawning space. Soft colors, light pastels, luxurious lighting fixtures, and palm-leafed ceiling fans. It had all the promise of a very elegant, expensive, and surprisingly livable home. But not one stick of furniture remained in it. Not so much as a trash bag twist tie in the kitchen cabinets, or a smudge of toothpaste in the bowl of the bathroom sink.
“Professionally cleaned,” Jackson said, walking up beside her. “From all appearances, they did a very thorough job of it, too.”
“I don’t expect his men dared to disappoint him on this assignment.” Kunz would have had their heads on platters.
“Oh, yeah. He’d definitely find that offensive and let them know it in no uncertain terms.” Jackson looked out the window. “Great view.”
They looked at the cove, with its aquamarine water, pristine white sandy beach, and quiet gentle breezes rippling through the lush green foliage and brightly colored flowers.
“It’s beautiful,” Morgan said, “and very soothing.” She kept walking, but there was little to learn of the man in his empty house, and she couldn’t pick up a
nything of note in the way of residual imprints because there’d been too many others through it before her. She had sensed Kunz here, but he had been at ease then and not tense.
He’d known that he had plenty of time to leave before they found his home.
“Okay, I’m ready,” she told Gaston. “Take me to the hub.”
She followed him to the center of the house and through a guarded doorway that she had assumed on her walk-through was a closet. It wasn’t. It opened into a round room with a five-foot border of walkway. Inside the border, a wide, ornate spiral staircase led down to the floor below. “His remote operations center.” she speculated. Gaston nodded.
Two armed men stood at the foot of the stairs.
Morgan looked around. It was a large underground area, at least eighty by eighty. Bare floors, bare white walls, no windows … and no support beams. In every visible corner, something had been removed from the walls near the ceiling. Morgan paused, focused. Security cameras. She stepped off the stairs and into the room.
A twenty-foot-long, stark white, curved desk that had been hidden by the stairs came into view. Surprise flickered through her. “He left a desk?”
“It’s built into the wall,” Gaston said.
They walked over to the desk. Two more guards manned it, one at each end, and with each step closer, Morgan felt her dread grow stronger and stronger—so strong it nearly stole her breath. “Jackson.” She looked over at him. “Prepare.”
He nodded, letting her know that he’d picked up on whatever was coming, too. His expression stiffened, grew more guarded and closed.
Morgan moved around to face the desk. Shock pumped through her, and she understood the sensation of dread completely.
At her side, Jackson gasped. “Bruce.”
“It’s not him.” Morgan clasped his arm. “Bruce is at Providence,” she reminded Jackson. “He’s safe.”
Gaston darted a gaze from the dead man to Jackson, then to Morgan. “Holy shit, he’s his brother?”
“His brother’s double,” she whispered.
“I should have picked up on the resemblance,” Gaston said, looking truly repentant. “I’m sorry, man.” He backed off to give them space and a moment to recover.
Vicki Hinze - [War Games 04] Page 25