by Juno Rushdan
“I’m flying to Atlanta today,” Doc said. “To follow up on a possible lead.”
CDC headquarters on a Sunday. “Why can’t you handle it over the phone?”
“A contact at headquarters might know something, but he’s scared. Won’t talk over the phone.”
“If you think it might be dangerous, I can send someone with you. Maybe Ares?”
No secret Ares was sweet on Doc. Once the mole problem was resolved and Doc was no longer under suspicion, Sanborn would take her up on her offer of dinner and exercise. As long as he wasn’t stepping on toes. Lady’s choice, of course.
She usually went out of her way to avoid Ares like the man was a walking bad rash, but it made Sanborn wonder whether she hated Ares or had a thing for him.
“No, please don’t send him.”
Halle-freaking-lujah.
“I don’t need backup, and if I did, Maddox would be a better choice. She’s warmer than I expected. There’s a real girl’s girl hidden beneath her tough exterior.”
Maddox, a warm girl’s girl?
He smothered a chuckle. Maddox was fishing for the mole, and Doc must be her target.
“Okay. No backup. Keep me posted and hurry back.”
“We’re monitoring airports, bus and rail stations,” Amanda continued. “Danny is digging into Reaper’s and Willow’s personnel files.”
“I’m looking into their known associates,” the kid said, munching on one of Janet’s cookies. “Maybe there’s someone local they’d turn to for help. I’m also diving deeper into Willow’s financials, since the accountants aren’t doing anything further until the requisitioned records come in from the bank in Grand Cayman.”
Reaper wouldn’t have gone to anyone who could be traced back to his records, but anything Daniel found on Willow would be more planted evidence and a waste of time. With his office bugged, he couldn’t tell the kid to flat out drop it.
“The forensic accountants are the experts. We’ll let them do what they do best. I don’t think looking into Willow’s financials is the right use of your time.”
The gung ho I’m-a-dog-with-a-bone gleam in Daniel’s eyes told Sanborn the kid wasn’t going to back down. Hard to tell if an ulterior motive ran beneath his tenacity.
“But, sir, I—”
“One,” Sanborn said, “never question me. Two, keep the facial recognition program searching for them. Is that all from Analysis?”
Amanda nodded, and the kid wiped crumbs from his face, his head lowered. Then she, Doc, and Daniel left.
While the door was open, he heard Janet firing up the Nespresso machine.
Once Daniel shut the door behind him, Sanborn looked at Castle, who leaned against a wall with his thick arms crossed. “Did you get it?” he asked, referring to the copy of the 911 call.
Castle nodded. “Dead end. A digital voice modulator was used.”
Not only did they not have the identity of the caller, they still didn’t know the gender.
Sanborn expelled a breath. “Go through this with a fine-toothed comb.” He handed Castle the flash drive containing a copy of Parker’s computer.
With a nod, Castle took it and left.
Janet walked in with a tentative expression and set an espresso on his desk.
He gave a nod of appreciation for the hot hit of caffeine. “Shut the door and take a seat.”
31
Caribbean Sea
Sunday, July 7, 5:30 p.m. EDT
Out on the water, temporarily safe in the middle of nowhere, time became an ecstatic blur. Willow had lots of questions about sex, and Gideon had lots of answers, with both words and actions.
Their first time together had nearly split him down the middle. His lungs had shuddered, eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he’d entirely forgotten about the pain in his side. He’d lost himself in her warmth, in the exquisite sensation that was more than primal.
Afterward, she’d explored his body in a fascinated, studied fashion. Her slim fingers found every knife scar and bullet wound. The fact that she already knew how he’d gotten each one had been a staggering comfort. She didn’t have to ask, and he didn’t have to lie.
With each conversation, she delved deeper. How many lovers had he had? How many at once? Not a barrage as if in interrogation or for leverage to use against him. She just seemed curious about him. None of his answers, no matter how startling he’d assumed they’d be, had been met with judgment. She soaked in everything he said as though bathing in sunlight.
People assumed he had panache, loved to party, knew how to command, all based on his looks and history as a quarterback. When they discovered he was terse, the last to arrive and first to leave a gathering, and his interest in shepherding a team was sorely lacking, they were disappointed and found it weird. They found him weird for being a contradiction to their expectations.
The brutal honesty he shared with Willow—her vision of him as something heroic rather than monstrous, where he was enough instead of a letdown—was more than he’d ever had.
A greedy, selfish part of him never wanted to let that go. But she deserved more. Happily-ever-after was bullshit for guys like him anyway, but he’d take happy-for-right- now. With her.
“When you were married,” she asked, washing the dishes from the dinner he’d fixed, “did your wife do all the cooking? Or did you pitch in like my dad?”
His mouth turned as dry as burned toast. Her questions rolled out with such casual ease, as if there were no boundaries. Answering her so far hadn’t felt like he was pulling his own teeth out with pliers as it had with Kelli, but this was the first time she’d asked about his dead wife. He was wired to disengage, but for some reason, with Willow, all he wanted was to connect.
She already knew the ugliest things in his personnel file. Seemed silly to hide the rest.
“I believe in carrying my weight. I helped with laundry, cooking, cleaning.”
“I saw her picture. She was gorgeous. She looked like a supermodel.” Her voice took on an edge that made his chest tighten. “You two made the perfect couple.”
That was what everyone had thought, and in pictures, they had. Not in any way that had mattered. “We made the worst couple,” he said, and she looked at him over her shoulder with a hint of surprise. “I was gone a lot. We led separate lives, where I paid the bills. Win-win for her unless I was in town. It only lasted as long as it did because I hate to lose.”
If only he had let her go…
“You sound like your marriage was a game, and not a fun one.”
Yeah, the Thunderdome where they’d dueled gladiator-style.
She faced him, wiping her hands on a towel. “Why did you get married?”
He heaved a breath, ashamed of his reasons. “I met her when I was playing football, right before a bad injury.” He’d taken a nasty hit junior year. The doctor didn’t know if he’d play again. “She took care of me. Cooked. Cleaned. Drove me to physical therapy.”
He shrugged, but his gut burned. Kelli had slipped close by taking care of things he could’ve paid someone to do. He’d assigned great value to it because he didn’t know what that type of attention was worth.
“Anyway, I healed, came back stronger senior year. When she suggested we go to the courthouse and get married, I said yes.” Mistook lust for love. “My buddies said she wanted to nab a guy who’d play pro.” What a fool he’d been. “She swore it didn’t matter if I went pro or not. I’d never had someone of my own. Stupid and crazy, but I wanted to try it.”
He looked out at the calm waves.
“Before I graduated, the Agency recruited me. It felt right.” Like it was what he was meant to do. “I turned down a multimillion-dollar football deal and joined the CIA instead.”
Furrowing her brow, she tilted her head. “The CIA doesn’t recruit out of the blue.”
She was right. They didn’t.
“How did they lure you away from the fame and money of professional football? Why would they approach you in the first place? When they look for undergraduates, they covet linguists and those who score off the charts on particular aptitude tests.”
Nothing slipped past Willow.
Gideon spoke Farsi, Arabic, and German, but he hadn’t learned those in college. Sometimes the CIA disguised decryption challenges and potential field agent profiling as extra-credit questionnaires and psychological experiments. They loved former military with highly specialized skills, but they didn’t recruit all-star athletes.
“Ask me another time.” Discussing his failed marriage was one thing. Explaining how he had become the man he was today, well, that was a different story. “Mind grabbing me a beer?”
He pushed the throttle, increasing the boat’s speed.
She handed him a cold longneck and pressed her palm to his chest. “Did your marriage not work because you both missed being with other people? Or was it a personality thing?”
“I didn’t give Kelli the life she lied about wanting. She wasn’t happy. With my choices or with me. She cheated, more than once.” The first time, he’d found out by reading her diary. She’d claimed it had been a mistake bred out of loneliness and swore it wouldn’t happen again.
“Did you ever cheat?”
He’d been miserable with a capital M, but he wasn’t a shitbag who’d break a sacred vow. For better or worse, and he’d meant it. Gideon was a lot of things, many of which weren’t good, but a cheat with a wandering eye wasn’t one of them.
“No.”
“Why didn’t she just leave you, if she wasn’t happy?”
“I think she was looking for my replacement. Someone else who’d pay the bills and take care of her. When she found him, she’d planned to divorce me. The paperwork is still sitting in her glove compartment.”
Unloading all of that hadn’t stung the way he’d expected. Instead, a great weight lifted, but he braced for the inevitable look of pity from Willow and the obligatory I’m sorry.
“You’re smart, honest, strong enough to do scary things that’d make most people lose sleep or their lunch. You can cook and you’re a fantastic kisser. An even better lover. I can’t imagine why any woman would cheat on you.” She gave him that look again that made him feel like he was a superhero who could leap tall buildings in a single bound. His ego could get used to the adoration in her eyes, if it wasn’t such a problem.
“Throwing steaks in a pan isn’t cooking,” he said, “and I could be a shitty lover, since I’m only the second one you’ve had.”
“Guess when our time together is up, if I’m still alive and not in prison, I’ll have to find a new lover for the sake of comparison.”
Stone-cold jealousy smacked him senseless. It came out of nowhere, like a brass-knuckle sucker punch. Insane since he had no claims on her and didn’t want any. Everything she needed was the opposite of him.
He shuttered the reckless emotion. When this thing between them had run out of steam and she was cleared, she should find someone else. In the meantime, he’d focus on setting the right standard in the bedroom, raise the bar so high some nice guy couldn’t live up to it.
“You should indulge and experiment with a few lovers.” He sounded remarkably nonchalant, despite the wrenching twist in the pit of his stomach. “Before you settle on one guy.”
The hurt expression that tightened across her face gave him the distinct impression he’d been tested and had failed. What shocked him was the instant desire to do anything to wipe that look off her face.
Willow patted his chest, something in her receding, and strutted away to the bathroom. A minute later, the shower started. The relief he’d expected—at no subsequent deep conversation or flaming circus hoops for him to jump through to fix whatever he’d done wrong—didn’t come.
Instead, the urge to check on her niggled at him.
I can’t imagine why any woman would cheat on you.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, doing more than imagining why Kelli had cheated. The bitterness of his own limitations alongside the memory of their last argument hacksawed through him. Tamping it down, he took a long pull on the beer.
Humming from the bathroom rose above the beating sound of the shower. He smiled at the sweet melody, drumming his fingers on the wheel to the tune.
The water shut off. Her humming flowed into pitch-perfect singing. She waltzed through the kitchen naked, drying her hair with a towel.
Willow was sexy as hell, a constant temptation, and he’d never tire of looking at her.
She ascended the steps, graceful, the most sensual woman he’d ever seen, no trying required. He roped an arm around her slender waist and hauled her onto his lap. She fell against him. Cool wet tendrils of her hair clung to his cheek and chest. A damp sheen covered her skin the way he wanted his mouth and fingers to. Suddenly, he was jealous of the shower.
“What’s that song?” Faintly familiar, the name danced on his tongue.
Resting her head on his shoulder, she gazed at him. Fading sunlight twinkled in her soulful eyes. She curled her arm around his neck and kissed him. Those petal-smooth lips subjugated him with a frightening softness.
“‘I Love You, Baby.’” The whisper roared through him like thunder.
It’d been four high-stress, high-octane-fueled days, amplified by adrenaline, but one thing was certain. He wanted to know what loving her and being loved by her would be like.
For the first time in his life, he was drawn to a woman without wanting to own her. Kelli had been a possession more than a partner. It’d taken him a long time to reconcile to that horrible fact.
With Willow, he cared so deeply about her happiness, he wanted her to be free of him to find someone better. As crazy as it sounded, it was the sanest thing in his life.
“That’s the name of the song. Actually, ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.’ By Frankie Valli. Released May 1967. My parents’ song. Dad always sang the I love you, baby part to my mom.”
A wistful smile rose on her lips, but sadness swam in her eyes. She caressed the stubble on his face, kissed him lightly, and drifted onto the back deck.
He swiveled around in the chair, his gaze drawn to follow. Wind whipped through her hair, the incandescent light of the early evening framing her in a golden glow. With no clothes, no makeup, hair caught in a soft breeze, she was a striking beauty. He’d always remember how she looked right now.
Not once did she glance back at him, but the sense she needed him chafed inside his chest. He lowered the throttle and cut the engine.
Strolling outside, he said, “What are you thinking, starling?”
She stilled, and her radiant eyes found his. “Why did you call me that?”
“You remind me of one of those wild songbirds with glossy, dark feathers.”
“But I’m a redhead now.”
“Not forever.” He eased up beside her.
Sunlight bounced off the shimmering, crystalline water. There were no other boats around and the sea was gentle.
She looked out over the water. A cool distance yawned between them. She seemed far away even though she was next to him.
His throat tightened around an unbearable lump. “Where are your pearls?”
“In the backpack. If they fell in the water or anything happened to them, I’d be devastated.” She gazed at the sky. “They were my mom’s. Those pearls have been in my family for three generations. They’re all I have left of her.”
Exhaustion would only compound all the negatives, making her anxiety worse. “You should sleep.”
“I tried. I can’t. If I had my computer, I’d be fine, but it’s in ashes, with my clothes, mementos, pictures of my mom I never saved to the cloud, my house. My mom loved that house. I was bor
n there.”
This was the most grueling thing she’d ever endured, losing every material possession, her career at stake, life at risk, and her father, who she cherished, was in a coma. Gideon was blown away by her quiet strength. Most people would’ve unraveled, wallowed in tears. Not his starling. She was titanium at the core.
“I appreciate you risking everything to help me.” She sighed. “I know it’s your job to find the mole and I’m nothing more to you than a mission, but you don’t have to babysit me.”
“You started out as a target.” Not even that was true. He’d picked her because he wanted to know her, to get close, and not for a job. “But you’re not just a mission. You’re…” Everything I didn’t know I wanted but that I don’t deserve.
She gazed up at him, waiting, a bright look of expectation dancing across her face.
“You’re important. To the Gray Box.” To me. He rubbed the back of his neck, anxious to make her understand what he was still figuring out. “I’m sorry this forced us together.”
Her gaze fell, and her shoulders slumped as if something inside her had deflated.
Fuck, it wasn’t coming out right. “I’m here for you.” He white-knuckled the railing. “I’ll do whatever I can to ease the strain of this on you.”
“I’m not a baby you need to coddle.” Her voice was a little too sharp, too defensive.
He fought the urge to pull her into a fierce hug. “Then it’s good the only thing I know how to coddle is an egg.” Eyes on the water, he roped an arm around her shoulders.
After a few minutes, her tense body melted pliantly against him, and she rested her head on his chest. They stood there, not talking, the silence an easy comfort. She let out a heavy breath as if surrendering and turned in to him, wrapping herself in his arms.
A strange sensation soaked through him, both comforting and disturbing. He held her, giving the hug she must’ve needed. She’d lost so much and was hurting. He wanted to give her anything and everything, gift wrap the world for her if it’d make her feel better.