Secret Agent Affair

by Marie Ferrarella

Hooking his thumbs in his belt, he gave her a long, penetrating look. “You planning on writing a bio on me, Doc?”

  If he thought he could intimidate her—and with that look she was sure that was what he was thinking—he’d failed.

  “I just thought I might know someone who could give you a job.” She was thinking of her father’s security company. Kady’s husband, Byron, a former bodyguard and ex-cop, worked there along with a number of other people. Not to mention that Kane’s demeanor reminded her of Tony, Sasha’s husband. Tony was a homicide detective. On the job, they didn’t come grimmer than him.

  Both men—Tony and Kane, had the same tightlipped temperament, the same slow, probing nature. Maybe Kane could find a career in some aspect of security work. If she could get him to answer questions without putting up a fight.

  “What is it that you do?” she asked.

  He moved his shoulders in a vague shrug, stifling a wince as his left side issued a protest. “This and that,” he told her.

  “Well, that sounds flexible enough.” Even if the man didn’t, she added silently. He seemed forbidding. And she had a feeling it wasn’t just a facade. “I could call—”

  He cut her off. The last thing he wanted was for her to find him a job. That was being taken care of even as he stood here with her.

  “I said we were even,” he insisted. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  It wasn’t tit for tat in her book. She believed in free form. “I don’t work that way,” she told him, noticing a puzzled expression on his face. “With checks and balances. You need a job, I might know of somewhere to place you, that’s all I’m saying.”

  He had to continue being blunt. She wasn’t the type to retreat if he took her feelings into account.

  “I take care of myself,” he informed her in no uncertain terms.

  Her eyes lowered to the wound she had just finished stitching and dressing. Maybe he could have done it on his own, but most people don’t like to sew their own flesh back into place.

  “I’m sure you can.”

  The tone wasn’t exactly sarcastic, but close, he thought. Turning the knob, Kane pulled the door open. Only then did he nod at her.

  “See you around, Doc.”

  He meant it as a parting, throwaway line. Which was a shame, he caught himself thinking. Because in another lifetime, she would be the kind of woman he should have pursued—if he were into the whole hearth-and-family type thing. He could tell, just by looking at her, that she was. Women like that were best left alone. Because he wasn’t into that. And nothing good ever followed in his wake.

  She was at the door, less than a hair’s breadth behind him. “You’re going to have to change that dressing tomorrow,” she called after him.

  He didn’t turn around, but he did nod. “I can do it.”

  “And don’t get it wet,” Marja added, raising her voice.

  “Dry as a bone,” he promised, raising his hand over his head to indicate that he’d heard her as he kept on walking.

  “And—” She stopped abruptly as her cell phone rang again.

  He allowed himself a dry laugh under his breath. “That’s probably your sister, checking to see if I’ve done away with you yet,” he guessed.

  The next second he’d turned a corner and was out of view.

  Turning back into the apartment, she closed the door behind her and glanced at the phone’s screen. He was right, it was Tania. Had it been a full fifteen minutes yet? She didn’t think so.

  She knew that Tania meant well, but there were times when she felt so smothered by her sisters and her parents that she could scream.

  “I’m still breathing, Tania,” she announced as she opened her cell phone.

  “Good,” she heard Tania say, “then you won’t freak Jesse out when he gets there.”

  Her back against the door, Marja slid down to the floor, closed her eyes and sighed. “You woke up Jesse.”

  “No,” Tania was quick to correct her, “he was still up. Working on some blueprints for a new building by Lincoln Center.” She didn’t bother to keep the pride out of her voice. Jesse was an up-and-coming architect and someday people were going to point out his buildings to one another.

  “Call him and tell him not to come,” she ordered her sister. “Kane’s gone.”

  “Kane?” Tania echoed. “Who’s Kane?”

  “Mr. Bullet Wound Guy.”

  Tania didn’t bother to stifle her sigh of relief. “Thank God. Now put the chain on.”

  Marja rose to her feet again. Odd, but she could still feel Kane’s presence on the apartment, still all but feel his hand on her wrist when he’d first come to. “I will, now call Jesse off. Let the poor man get some rest.”

  “Will do.”

  The line went dead.

  Marja’s insides didn’t.

  Chapter 4

  Sometimes Kane couldn’t help wondering if some master plan existed out in the universe, or if things just happened in a haphazard, random pattern.

  By all rights, someone with his background should have been dead by now, or pretty damn well close to it. Both of his parents had succumbed to addiction while still in their early teens and the uncle, his father’s brother, Gideon, he’d been sent to live with after their untimely murder-suicide demise, had been long on alcoholism, short on patience. He’d barely survived the beatings.

  Social services had stepped in after that, when one of his teachers had reported the frequent bruises he’d tried in vain to hide.

  Being passed around from foster home to foster home had been no picnic, either. He’d literally closed up inside. After that, he’d taken to periodically running away. Being on his own was preferable to being under someone else’s thumb.

  Kane had learned from a very early age how to take care of himself. It came about out of necessity because he’d known that there was no one else around to do it, or to even care if he lived or died. His parents hadn’t. His uncle certainly hadn’t and neither had any of the families he’d been shipped to like a piece of tattered, hand-me-down clothing. No one had.

  He supposed the only reason he hadn’t turned to a life of crime was that the thought of being confined in a cage made his chest tighten and the air stop dead in his lungs. Unlike so many who took to that way of life, he knew the odds against him and he was pessimistic enough to believe that no matter how clever he might be, prison would be his ultimate destination.

  Permanently tossed out of the system and on his own at eighteen, he’d done the only thing someone with no money and an ability to survive the most adverse conditions could do. He’d joined a branch of the military. Specifically, he’d taken to the air force. It was there that he’d wound up being tapped for Special Forces, which further developed his unique survival abilities.

  Somewhere along the line, bit by bit, he’d earned a degree in criminology. So by the time he’d returned to civilian life, joining an organization that could make use of his special skills—one of which was being able to terminate a man’s existence using only his thumbs—seemed like a very logical choice.

  And that was how he and the CIA came to a meeting of the minds.

  Fully grounded, Kane had no illusions about what he did. It wasn’t glamorous, but he felt it was damn necessary. And it got his adrenaline pumping, giving him a reason to get up every morning. Not having anyone to worry about or to come home to at the end of the day freed him to do other things.

  At times he had to admit, if only to himself, that he wondered what it would be like to have a wife and 2.5 kids. Especially the .5 part. But in truth, all that was utterly foreign to him. He had no reference base, no happy childhood or adolescence to draw on. His had been the kind of childhood that easily bred serial killers.

  Or loners.

  Which was what he was. A loner.

  He supposed he’d always be one, which was all right because he never made any long-term plans. The kind of life he led, working for the Company, did not inspire people to set up IRA acco
unts for their old age. Few ever attained that status and those who did, usually died of boredom, leaving their funds untouched for the most part.

  He liked what he did for a living as much as he could like anything. And making a difference, however minor, mattered to him, again, as much as anything in his life could matter to him.

  While he had few rules, there were two he followed. Don’t get attached and don’t screw up. Simple. And demanding.

  Kane supposed he’d been born jaded, which was as good a way as any if you had to be born at all. Being born jaded saved time, because eventually, everyone was stripped of their hopes and illusions. The end result was jadedness. He firmly believed this was inevitable. He’d just gotten a head start.

  “Well, everything looks to be in order,” the shapely blonde reviewing his forms said. She carefully placed the three sheets on her spotless desk and flashed a broad smile at him.

  He wondered what she’d say if she knew the only reason the position he was applying for had opened up was that certain people had persuaded James Dulles, an orderly in excellent standing with the hospital, to take an extended vacation in another part of the country. That was because he needed this position, needed an excuse to be on the hospital premises in a capacity where he could slip in and out without actually being noticed.

  No one really noticed orderlies in a hospital unless there was a mess to mop up. Otherwise, they could move around like shadows, having the run of the place. Since they had the grunt work, no one questioned their presence no matter where they were found—other than perhaps the ladies’ restroom.

  The Company intended to place two or three more of their operatives, men he’d worked with before, at Patience Memorial Hospital. Placing them as the “vacancies” that would suddenly come up in the next couple of days. But he was the center of this. It was his operation to pull off or screw up. So far, his track record was perfect and he intended to keep it that way.

  The woman who headed Patience Memorial’s Human Resources Department smiled at him. He smiled back. It would be interesting to find out her reaction to the fact that he knew more about Carole Reed than she knew about him. He knew she was divorced, currently between boyfriends and didn’t like being unattached. The way she gazed at him told him she was considering him as a possible candidate, someone to dally with as a bridge between the significant others.

  Carole looked down at the form. “Says here you worked in two different hospitals in L.A.” She raised her eyes to his face. “Tell me, why’d you decide to settle in New York?”

  He knew she was a California girl herself. Knew why she’d picked New York. “I like the change of seasons,” he told her. “And having everything I could need within walking distance.”

  Her eyes brightened and she nodded. She came very close to saying, “Me, too.” But instead said, “Good enough. Well, your references are impeccable and you sound like you’ll be a good addition to our little family.” Little was a whimsical term, seeing as how the teaching hospital was one of the larger ones in the city. Carole reached out across her desk, her hand extended. “Welcome to Patience Memorial.”

  Rising slightly in his seat, Kane took the offered hand and held it a beat longer after he shook it. His smile was warm, charming. Inviting. As befitted the persona he’d assumed.

  As always when he was on a job, he was performing. He found that he preferred it that way. When he was someone else, he could do whatever was needed of him without a second thought.

  The baggage he carried around only materialized when he was being himself.

  “Thank you,” he replied heartily, releasing her hand with just a trace of reluctance he knew the woman would appreciate.

  Carole tossed her head. Long, straight blond hair floated over her shoulder. “You start tomorrow, bright and early at seven.”

  It had taken him every shred of time, morning and night, to get everything in place. He was eager to get going. “I could start today,” he told her.

  The woman laughed lightly, as if he’d told a joke. “Tomorrow will be fine.” Taking a square of paper from a green dispenser on her desk, Carole wrote a room number down for him. She handed it to him before she got up from her chair. “Report to this department tomorrow. Raul will show you the ropes. He’s a little snippy in the mornings,” she warned, “but he doesn’t mean anything by it. Try not to get on his bad side—or to take anything he says before noon too personally.”

  “I try not to get on anyone’s bad side,” he told her, and for the most part, that was true. Getting on someone’s bad side meant getting noticed and his goal had always been the exact opposite, no matter what the situation.

  Carole rose slowly, like a model who knew that every set of eyes in the room was trained on her. In this case, there was only one set to look at her, but an audience was an audience.

  “That’s a very good philosophy,” she told him brightly. And then, Carole escorted Patience Memorial’s newest employee to the door of her office and once again smiled invitingly just before he left.

  He could have had her, he thought, walking away from her office. Probably right then and there on her desk if he’d turned up “Dolan’s” charm a notch. The physical coupling would have satisfied the gnawing hunger that the woman who’d bandaged him up had aroused. But again, it would have drawn too much attention his way and he couldn’t afford that now. Not if his assignment was to have a successful resolution.

  He would have to put up with the damn gnawing.

  The details of his assignment were nebulous and sketchy at best. Over the last three weeks, their specialists monitoring the Middle East had picked up international chatter, a lot of it, focusing on a possible terrorist threat occurring at Patience Memorial. The probable target in that case would be the Jordanian ambassador’s daughter, Yasmin. The twenty-two-year-old woman was arriving at some unspecified date in the near future to undergo a delicate operation. She had a tumor that had intricately woven itself through her brain.

  Two of the country’s foremost brain surgeons were going to perform the surgery. One was flying in from the west coast, the other had been on the staff of Patience Memorial for over ten years.

  Whether the threat came in the form of a kidnapping—something he highly doubted because of the ambassador’s contingent of bodyguards—or a bombing, he didn’t know. No one did. That only meant he had to be ready for anything—which also included the very real, frustrating possibility nothing would happen.

  The enemy enjoyed playing their little war of nerves, enjoyed planting chatter to unnerve the opposition. They made sure to plant enough rumors so that everyone was in a hypervigilant state. There would be so many false rumors until the real one came and if the public had gotten blasé about the rumors, it would turn a deaf ear to the chatter just when it should be listening closely. Much like the old fable about the boy who cried wolf.

  But all that was for the movers and the shakers to sort out and deal with. He was just a foot soldier on the front lines, determined to remain alert to any and all threats. He was there to dismantle the bomb if necessary, to defuse possible volatile situations whenever possible, regardless of the personal consequences.

  And that was why he was so good for the job. Because there was no one to take into account when he thought about so-called “personal” consequences. No one would mourn him, no one would cry if he never walked through another doorway.

  No one would know that he’d ever existed.

  Which was just the way it was supposed to be, he reminded himself.

  The thought left Kane cold, even though it was of his own making.

  “Kane?”

  He was on the first floor, weaving his way through the various connecting corridors, on his way out of the building. The moment he heard his name, he stopped dead.

  Someone knew him. But who? There was a quizzical inflection in the woman’s voice, as if she was surprised to find him here.

  That makes two of us.

  The voice was
vaguely familiar, but before he could access the mental database he kept in his head, the owner of the melodic voice had reached him and stood before him.

  The woman who’d removed his bullet. Marja.

  He didn’t know if this was good or bad.

  “It is you,” Marja breathed in surprise.

  On a break, she was rushing to the tiny gift shop to see if she could pick up a card that eloquently apologized for forgetting a friend’s birthday. Eloquently because she’d missed the date by almost a month, which was bad, even for her.

  She’d almost reached the shop’s door when her attention had been drawn to the man who’d just walked by the gift shop. The set of the shoulders, the gait, everything whispered of familiarity, teasing her brain like a trivia question she knew the answer to, but was just out of reach.

  And then, she knew. It had taken her less than a heartbeat to recognize him.

  Only a week ago, she’d removed the bullet and sewn Kane Dolan up. And every day of that week she’d thought about him, usually against her will. Thought about him and wondered if he was all right. If she’d done the right thing, caring for him and not reporting the bullet wound to anyone, not even either one of her brothers-in-law.

  Most of all, she wondered if she’d ever see him again.

  And now, just like that, here he was, standing right in front of her as if she’d conjured him up out of her imagination. It was almost eerie. Had he come looking for her? Or was he here just to have his wound rebandaged as she’d suggested?

  He wasn’t saying anything, but his gaze felt intimate, as if all the barriers between a man and a woman had evaporated in the heat of his expression.

  She forced herself to say something and not just stand there like a life-size cardboard cutout of herself. “Are you here for a follow-up?”

  It was her. It wasn’t just his imagination. She was talking, although he hadn’t heard what she was saying. “What?”

  “A follow-up,” she repeated. “For your…” Her voice trailed off and then she nodded at his side. “You know.”

  Yes, he knew. And he’d had that taken care of the day after she’d seen to his wound. His handler had one of the Company doctors examine his wound. The physician had declared his wound well cared for and on the mend. So there was no reason for him to come looking for medical aide.