More Than Gold (Capitol Chronicles Book 3)

by Shirley Hailstock

  Jack knew ways to get information. He was adept at torture. He could pry anything out of anyone. He knew ways to make a man talk, cry, beg, call for his God, his king, even his mother, but Morgan he couldn't touch, couldn't reach. She was too smart not to understand the danger she was in. If he left her, she'd be dead before the sun set. She was good. He gave her credit for planning and executing the plan, but he didn't know how she would act on the spot. Could she use what was available? Did she understand how people thought, acted, their natural instincts? He didn't know and he wasn't willing to test it with her life. She would have to put up with him, like it or not.

  Why was she as tight-lipped as a lobster claw clamped on a finger? There had to be a reason, something important, something she was protecting more than her own life. Jack wondered what it could be. He knew everything about her. Things the CIA didn't know he knew. He'd seen her file, read it completely and remembered every detail. There was no one she'd ever had a lasting relationship with and no unaccounted-for time periods. But Morgan was proving a master at many crafts. Deception could be one of them. There could be pieces missing from a written report. Something that wasn't in her file. It had been twelve years since she moved to Missouri. What could it be? Jack stopped. What or who?

  Then the thought hit him. He needed to ask her a question and he needed the element of surprise. Jack wanted to be sure he saw her reaction before she had time to conceal it. Seconds if he was lucky.

  Leaving the area that connected the two bedrooms, Jack went through the opening and straight to the bathroom. The water could no longer be heard falling into the tub. Jack didn't care if she was in the tub or standing naked in front of it. He opened the door. Morgan stood there, her body wrapped in a fluffy white towel. Jack didn't give himself time to think. He went through the mist and stood in front of her. He thought to grab her arms, but didn't want to touch her. He wanted an answer and he didn't know what he'd say or do if he touched that smooth, wet skin.

  "Do you have a child?" he demanded.

  "Sure," she said without the slightest hesitation. "Triplets."

  It told Jack nothing. Her eyes hadn't changed in that instant, but then she looked down. A moment later she turned to leave. His hands came out to detain her. She pushed at his arms. Instinct made him resist.

  "Let go of me," she said, not bothering to conceal the anger in her voice.

  He didn't.

  "Just who do you think you are, anyway?"

  "You want to know who I am? I'm your worst nightmare, Morgan Kirkwood. I'm that bad boy you've been warned about. The one with the leather jacket and bulging muscles. The one whose jeans are too tight, who wears T-shirts with cigarettes rolled up in the short sleeve of one arm, the one who's comfortable on any street corner and can deal with the crap no matter what it is. I know where the drugs are sold, have been sold and are going to be sold. Hell, I may have even used a few. Anything you want, I can get it. If you need medicine in the middle of the night or want someone knocked off, I'm your man." He hit himself in the chest.

  "I'm no valley girl," she countered. "I could have any bad boy I wanted, any good guy too."

  "But the good ones don't fascinate you. And I fascinate you, don't I, Morgan? I make your mouth dry when you see me. Your body tingles and gets tight in all the right places. Life flows between your legs and your body goes all hot, but you like it, don't you? You like that feeling. It tells you you're alive. You want me, want me to touch you."

  He took her chin in his hand. "Like you did that other bad boy. It's there, Morgan. It shows in your face, in the slant of your body. You wanted him, just like you want me. You might have put on airs, denied it to your friends, but you wanted him. You wanted to be pushed up against the lockers and kissed. You wanted all your giggling girlfriends to see it, so you could reign supreme in that small universe. But if he says anything to you, if I say anything, you use that razor-sharp tongue of yours to cut me to shreds, put me in my place, while all along, all I need to do is stand close to you, breathe the same air, let you smell the danger in me and you'll melt like a soft marshmallow."

  Jack took her mouth then without resistance. He pulled her against him, unmindful of the damp towel that separated him from her hot skin. She was soft and smelted of soap and hot water and something that could only be defined as her own personal perfume. The combination of it sent his senses reeling and his purpose with it. He knew in seconds he shouldn't have touched her. He'd kick himself later, but now his arms encircled her and she moved her arms around his neck. Her body was soft and warm and it seemed to wrap around his with precision.

  Jack was supposed to teach her a lesson. He was supposed to maintain control, but it snapped within microseconds of her action. It had been years, twelve long years, since he'd held her in his arms, since he'd kissed her, twelve years of dreaming and waking to find himself holding empty air. He wouldn't forgo the pleasure now. It was more than pleasure. It was paradise. She was real, alive and in his arms. Her mouth was hot and her body was soft in places he'd forgotten existed. Jack was lost and he didn't care. His tongue swept past her lips to taste her, devour her, drink her in as surely as if she were a twelve-year-old vintage. He wanted her badly and his mouth told her that, savagely taking what she had to give. He crushed her to him, lifting her off the floor and pushing her against the wall, driving his body into hers.

  It wasn't enough. He wanted to make love to her. He wanted to lose himself in her warmth, tearing the towel away from her and gazing on the golden glint that covered her skin from neck to toe. He wanted them safe in bed and he wanted to make every one of her dreams a possibility, each of her fantasies a reality. With her this close, with him inhaling the soft perfume of her skin, he knew everything he'd dreamed could come true. He understood fantasies and he was intimately acquainted with reality. What he held in his arms was real. She was heaven or at least as close to it as he'd ever come.

  The moment he touched her he knew he was lost. If she'd fought, pushed him away, it would have been better than this torture he knew couldn't continue. He lifted his head at the thought and buried it in her neck, kissing her skin, sampling the soft texture of smooth velvet. Her arms tightened around his neck and he squeezed her and his eyes shut. He kept them that way for a moment. He needed another second to hold her. Then it was time to destroy both their worlds.

  "That's it, Morgan," he whispered, his voice filled with emotion. "I'm your bad boy. The kiss is over. Your arms released." He pulled her arms away from him. "It's customary to run your hands down the bad boy's rock-hard chest." He demonstrated using her hands. "You like it, don't you? All bad boys have rock-hard chests. It's the law. And then it's time for the bad boy to move on, Morgan.

  "To the next one, and the next one, and the next. . ."

  ***

  Morgan didn't know how it happened. She heard his voice, heard the soft words. They had been sweet, mesmerizing, sexual. They pushed all the right buttons, turned her on. Then they changed. The softness remained but the words hardened. No longer did the letters have curved edges. They weren't rounded and comfortable, falling on her ears like sweet caresses. These words had metal spikes, long and ugly, protruding like daggers even through their whispering delicacy. They were nailed into Morgan's mind. The pain hit her like lightning striking. Then her hand was curling, turning from a long slender appendage that had dropped to her side into a tight fist. Her entire body tensed, then without volition, without thought, with nothing behind it but the brute force of an outcast teenager and all the shoulder she could muster, her arm swung out and she slapped him. The noise resounded about the room with the strength of a sonic boom.

  They were both surprised. Morgan had never slapped anyone. She'd been in fights as a teenager, many of them, staking her claim, showing bullies they couldn't run roughshod over her, proving time and again that she was tough enough to make it on the mean streets of Washington, D.C., but until today, until this moment, until Jack, she had never slapped anyone. She co
nsidered it the ultimate insult.

  Jack's hands came up to grab her, but he stopped himself. Murder surged into his eyes, black chips of obsidian, but it couldn't hold water if he saw what must be reflected in her own eyes. For a moment they held each other's gazes, poised like two mountain lions ready to battle over turf ownership. Then Jack stepped back from her as if he needed distance to keep himself in check. Morgan didn't move. She didn't back down. She never backed down.

  "And the next one," Jack said. "And the next one." Jack turned his back and left her. He closed the bathroom door. Morgan slipped down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. Her head fell forward and tears seeped from her eyes. He'd done what no other man had ever been able to do. He'd stripped her of everything. How appropriate it was for her to have on no clothes. He hadn't left her anything. He knew everything about her now. Her weaknesses. How much his presence destroyed her ability to think straight. How, if he came close to her, she was no more than a Roman candle ready to explode. And explode she would.

  Morgan pounded the floor in anger, but there was nothing she could do except hurt her hands. She knew how she felt about Jack. She hadn't thought he knew until a few moments ago when he burst into the bathroom and kissed her. She couldn't call what he'd done a kiss. He sapped her of life, removed the carefully constructed wall she'd lived behind almost all of her life. He'd shattered the glass, melted the invisible structure in the heat of the unleashed fire that should have burned the small bathroom and the two of them to cinders. But Fate wasn't that kind. She had never been kind to Morgan. Fate had always been the ghost who stepped in to kill her dreams. It had taken her best friend, Jean, from her, but brought her foster mother, Sharon. Then it had taken Sharon and given her the Olympic chance, a carrot she didn't recognize for what it was. Her chance at the top of the world would be marred by a small matter of breaking into a foreign jail and living, but not to tell about it.

  She forgot about Fate. It abandoned her for long periods. Then it came back just when Morgan thought she was off screwing up someone else's life. She should have remembered Fate never completely abandons her. She came back when Jack appeared and now she had left again, giving her another opportunity to face him and see the scorn in his eyes.

  CHAPTER 6

  "The plan was to get Hart Lewiston out of jail," Morgan began as if she were answering Jack's question from dinner. She wouldn't acknowledge anything that had happened in the bathroom. Nothing had happened there, she told herself. She stood in the doorway, dressed all in black, the same as she'd been the night she got Hart Lewiston out of the jail. Jack turned to look at her, but didn't move from his seat at the bar. She came into the room. She didn't sit or go near him. She needed space, the entire floor, the entire state. She paced around before continuing.

  "I had memorized the floor plan. I knew the layout, all the exits, the doors, cells, guards rooms, bathrooms, warden offices, laundry. I knew the exercise yard, the intake pipes, water pipes, heating ducts. I'd memorized everything about that prison from the barbed wire fencing to the width of the ledge surrounding the roof. I'd practiced getting in and out of it. A special setting had been set up just for me. It was designed to help familiarize me with the layout. I'd practiced a special routine in daylight, twilight and darkness. I could do it under a full moon, in dense fog, or rain, or sleet. I could do it barefoot or with cramps in my toes. Nothing had been left to chance. Regardless of time of day or weather conditions, I was prepared. Everything was under control."

  Jack knew everything she told him, but he didn't want to interrupt her.

  "Then it happened." She turned to look at him. He sat still, frozen almost, as if moving, breathing, the tiniest twitch of a finger would break her fragile connection between time-present and time-past and she'd decide not to continue.

  Morgan, however, had no intention of stopping. That night had been burned into her brain like some cerebral video disk that played for an audience of one.

  "The building was constructed of red brick, old brick. It must have been there for centuries. The stone was rough to the touch and hard to get a foothold in. Much of it crumbled when I touched it. Putting weight on it, even my 103 pounds of muscle, was enough to make the walls turn to dust. It's a wonder a strong wind didn't topple the structure in on itself."

  "But you got inside," Jack prompted. His voice was low, without emotion or inflection. This was a story she'd waited twelve years to tell. And she was telling it to him.

  "I climbed the wall, imagining it to be the rock wall in the special gym. My feet slipped more times than I expected. It took longer to do the Spiderman act and then the timing was thrown off."

  Morgan sat down on the sofa. She stared into the past. She no longer saw Jack, although she was aware of his presence. She was always aware of him being there. She wanted to reach across the table and take his hand, make him again the anchor that kept her grounded to the earth. But she remained where she was and Jack stayed in his position.

  Her heart pounded in her chest. It had done that on the final night of the competition. When she should have been in the arena, waiting her turn or resting with her team members, she was scaling bricks that needed pointing. At the top she found the entrance, a small window. The grate on it was old, rusted and no longer fit into the base of the cemented window frame. As expected, the grate was loose and she easily pushed it aside. The room was empty. Her heart slowed as she felt this job might go as planned. She should never have allowed that thought to enter her brain, for nothing afterward would follow the plan.

  "Morgan."

  She'd stopped talking. Her memory was replaying the night, but Jack wanted the details. "I got into the building through a window near the roof. It was a tight fit, but my length and lack of body fat had to be one of the reasons they chose me." She paused and glanced at Jack before beginning to talk again. "He wasn't in his cell. It was on the top floor at the edge of the hall near the tiny room the window led into. The cell was empty."

  The place smelled of human waste, sweat and hopelessness, like something had died there long ago and the walls held onto the odor of decay and rot as a warning to all who came after. She fought to keep from coughing. Even now, half a world away from that place, Morgan wanted to cough.

  "No guards patrolled the classic row upon row of iron-barred cells. The lighting was dark and I couldn't see into the other cells." She could hear the murmur of collective pain. It covered centuries of life and death and despair, day after day of relentless boredom. Boredom that became agony. If you've never heard it, it's difficult to explain, so she didn't try to tell Jack what it sounded like. There were no words to describe it. It had to be experienced, and Morgan knew she'd never wanted to sentence anyone to that kind of torture.

  "I started down the rows, keeping my breath controlled, not wanting any of the prisoners to see me, call out and alert a guard. But it was already too late. The guards knew I was there. The prison had an electronic surveillance system. No one told me."

  "They didn't know," Jack supplied.

  "I found Hart Lewiston. He was in the cell near the end of the row. The lock mechanism was exactly as I'd been told. I opened it with the key I'd been given. Hart had been drugged. I thought he was asleep, but I couldn't wake him."

  This is when fear first set in. Morgan knew she wasn't going to be able to complete the assignment. She wasn't even sure she could get out without being killed. Her hair had been pulled up and confined with pins. On her head was a black skullcap, matching the black body suit she wore as camouflage for the night and muted light of the halls.

  Her face, already dark by natural selection, was painted with a black, odorless grease. She was designed to blend into the walls, no more noticeable than a shadow.

  Morgan was going to have to carry Hart back to the room in which she'd entered. She grabbed his arm. It was cold and hard.

  "At that moment I knew he was dead."

  "Who was dead?"

  "Lewiston. The man in the bed
had been dead a long time. His body had begun to harden."

  "Morgan, you're not making sense. Hart Lewiston is alive. You got him out of the prison."

  "I was going to try to carry him back," she continued as if she hadn't heard him. "But the man was dead. It was all going to be for nothing. I was going to die for a man who was already dead. They knew. The Koreans knew. Someone talked, told them, set me up."

  She stood up then, hugging herself, holding her arms around her body as if she would spill out.

  "I turned to run. All I could think of was the tiny window in the small room, getting back to it, getting to the roof. The helicopter was to meet us there, me and Hart Lewiston. It would take us to safety. But I knew as I rushed down that hall that there would be no helicopter when I got there. Nothing would wait for me except the thin, dimensionless air. I would be stranded, alone, unprotected, huddling in darkness until they found me. Still I raced to it. It was my only hope and I streaked toward it.

  "Suddenly, someone stepped out in front of me. He grabbed me. I struggled, started to scream. He clamped a hand over my mouth. He wore a uniform. I couldn't see his face, but I could feel the buttons pressing into the tight skin of the jumpsuit I wore. He whispered in my ear for me to be quiet. I was too frightened to do anything else. I kept thinking, this is it. This is where I die. After surviving the streets of D.C., facing down bullies, drug dealers and pimps, after scavenging in garbage cans for enough food to survive on, after coming all the way to Korea and getting so close to the goal I'd worked my entire life to attain, I was going to die in a dark prison twenty-five thousand miles from home."

  "Morgan." Jack came up behind her. "You're all right. You aren't in Korea now. This is only a memory. It can't hurt you."