Hard to Forget

by Incy Black

  The opportunity to snatch his gun came sooner than expected. He turned his back on her to open the passenger door of a black Land Rover waiting for them on the street, ominous with tinted windows. Which was unusually careless of him.

  Placing the bag containing Claude on the pavement first, she lunged forward, one hand pushing hard between his shoulder blades, the other reaching for his gun.

  Just as swiftly, he linked a leg around one of hers, at the same time shouldering her off balance.

  She hit the pavement hard. Her head gave an audible crack. For a moment, she actually saw stars, but didn’t have time to ponder the phenomenon. She heard “stupid,” may have heard “crazy,” and “brainless” was in there, too. A savage tug on her wrist, and she was upright, the stars now a galaxy of wildly flashing pinpricks.

  “Fuck, can’t you even remember how to break a fall right?” He bundled her, none too gently, into the SUV. There was a yawl and soft thud as Claude hit the rear seat. Next thing, Jack was crawling over her without ceremony, the shortest route to the driver seat. She’d get no second chance at trying to seize the advantage from him again.

  He stabbed a key into the ignition. Turned toward her, swore again, then leaned across her once more. His tug on her seat belt was furious, the way he jammed it home, savage. There was nothing civilized about the way he raised her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. Who knew blue could burn black with fury? Dark blue, yes. She’d witnessed that herself on too many occasions. But blue to black? Never.

  She held back the need to blink, her eyelids burning at the strain. She’d surrender, but she wouldn’t beg.

  “Don’t ever try that again. I’ve killed men for less.”

  She was still trying to get her breathing under control when, half an hour later, he pulled the Land Rover to a halt, unclipped his seat belt and angled his body to face her.

  “There are two ways of doing this, Lowry. The hard way, or the even harder way. Your choice. You either walk in there with some semblance of dignity or I cuff you, hands and legs, and shoulder you like a sack of potatoes. What’s it going to be?”

  She’d opted for dignity. Pride alone kept her back ramrod straight as they crossed the stark concourse fronting the building she’d learned to loathe.

  The Cube—headquarters for the “plausibly deniable” units of the secret service—had none of the elegant symmetry its name suggested, and none of the legitimacy enjoyed by MI5’s elegant Thames House, or MI6’s Babylon-on-Thames monstrosity. A mash of concrete and sickly green glass, it rose three squat stories high. Those floors accommodated IT, research, and administration. But the real business took place in the sprawl of sub-terrain levels, buried below.

  Few knew of the Cube’s existence, and fewer still the true nature of the various task forces for which it served as HQ. It didn’t matter a jot that lines were regularly crossed and laws broken, so long as the public interest was protected.

  Four years since she’d last set foot in this building. Right now, she wished it could have been four hundred more. Her pride and humiliations, her protests and indignations, her messy past—all were entwined in the fabric of the Cube. A monument to the seriously murky side of the Intelligence Service.

  She shot a sideways glance at the rigid profile of the man who, while not actually touching her, marked her every move. He was ready to take her down, hard and fast, should she try anything.

  Surreptitiously, she raised her hand and tested the throbbing, raised knot at the back of her head. What the hell part of her Frankenstein mind—a crazy stitching of fear and obstinacy, conviction and doubt, traces of humor and futile tragedy—had induced her to trust him? Jack-bloody-Ballentyne. The man who wore his complete absence of conscience as if it were a badge of honor.

  He pushed through the bulletproof glass doors without sparing her a look. She curled her fingers round the tail of her fleeing courage and followed him. Not easy when her skin wanted to slough free and desert her.

  At the request of security, he reached sideways and tugged down her hood.

  Great, now she’d be fully exposed. Bring on the curious stares.

  From the way the anonymous pressed against the walls as they passed, she knew Jack must be glaring, but even he couldn’t stop the looks of quiet condemnation. Her identity was clearly no secret.

  She realized she was tiptoeing and forced extra weight into her heels. She’d be damned if she’d admit to one fraction of the fear polluting her veins like a river choked dead with factory waste.

  He held a frigid silence as he escorted her down into the bowels of the earth.

  The artificial lighting burned bright. She narrowed her eyes to defuse the glare. Three levels down, she lost the battle to hold her head high and settled her attention on the battleship gray linoleum instead. Uncaring of why, she edged closer to her betrayer. When her step faltered, he didn’t reach to steady her, but he did curb the length of his stride, which was kind—for Jack.

  “In here.”

  She raised her chin, seared him with what she hoped was a look of disgust, but suspected revealed nothing but her dread. Spine snapping straight, head balanced high, she stepped across the threshold of the cell-like room.

  Without a word, he clicked the door, shutting her in.

  She blinked wildly to ease the insistent sting in her eyes. She’d shoot herself before she gave way to tears. Designated agents, experts in interpreting body language, were sure to be watching her. She couldn’t afford to show weakness of any kind.

  She glanced nervously at the darkened mirror taking up the length of one wall, and seeing no reason why she should make the job of whoever was on surveillance easy, she tugged her hood back up.

  A metal table and four facing chairs, all screwed to the floor, stood in the center of the cell. Ignoring them, she moved forward, turned and settled her back against the mirror, and inched her way down to the floor.

  She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and hugged tight, her stare fixed on the door. She’d fight when they came—she’d lose, but she’d take a few of them down with her.

  Because “they” could be on either side, good or corrupt. There was no way of knowing, and she daren’t take the risk of getting it wrong. Secrecy was endemic at the Cube. The various task forces neither questioned nor shared. That was the unwritten rule. A stupid rule, because it made identifying traitors and holding them to account impossible.

  Where the hell was Jack? She doubted the rogue agents would try anything too obvious in his presence. He might be an utter bastard but…but what? The damned man had shot her. If ordered to dispose of her, would he question, would he even hesitate?

  She glanced at her wrist. Where the hell was her watch? How long would it be before someone came? She started counting down time in her head.

  …

  The meeting ended.

  Not bothering to hide his offense at the political step dance that had just taken place, Jack glared down the barrage of hostile looks he received from those filing out of the conference room, including Smith, the Commander’s right hand man. Smith hadn’t appreciated being dismissed when Jack was ordered to wait behind because the Commander wanted a word.

  He had done his best for her. Defended her corner. But what if he hadn’t done enough? He closed his eyes and took a moment while he waited for the burning in his stomach to ease.

  “Thank you,” the Commander said when they were alone. “It would not have been appropriate for me to argue my daughter’s case. I’m grateful that you were here, and even more grateful that you troubled to bring her in safely.”

  Jack didn’t acknowledge the man’s quiet appreciation with the customary “Sir.” What kind of father put his own position before that of his daughter? They’d been ready to disappear Lowry off to the nearest military containment facility. No investigation. No trial. Everything under the radar.

  All of it happening too damned fast for his liking.

  Christ, w
ithout his protests, she’d already be on her way to GKW—God Knows Where. To face what? A little something in her food? A little something in her vein? Lowry had been pretty adamant about someone wanting her dead, and after he’d witnessed what had happened to Adrian Wainwright, maybe a touch of her paranoia had rubbed off on him. Or maybe he just needed a decent night’s bloody sleep.

  He cleared his throat to catch the Commander’s attention. “Will that be all?”

  Lowry’s father nodded, shuffled papers, and used the surface of the boardroom table to tap them into uniform order.

  Jack’s hand was already reaching for the door handle when the Commander spoke. “Do you think she did it?”

  Jack turned. “Excuse me?” His hearing wasn’t impaired; he just couldn’t believe her father would ask that question.

  “You know her better than I do. Do you think she did it?”

  “No.” He swallowed don’t be stupid with difficulty. “Lowry couldn’t kill to save her own life. Why do you think I never sent her out into the field? She had a hard enough job getting her head around the fact that to be effective in the war against crime and terrorism, an agent has to be ready to cheat, trick, collude, and deceive, without conscience. For her, joining the Service was the wrong career choice. But her opting to work out of the Cube? To sign on with the Assassins? Pure suicide. It’s what broke her.”

  The Commander poured himself a glass of water. Jack noticed his hand shook. “Bruised, not broke. That’s why she remains such a threat. She might not cope well under fire, but offend her sense of what’s just, and nothing will stop her. And, God knows, we—the Service—offend her. The danger that she’d come back at us and fight has always been real. It was just a question of when and how. Anyone who worked with her will have known that deep down here.” The man thumped his fist against his abdomen.

  He conceded her father the point. That niggling pain in his head? The mysterious twist in his gut that kept him awake at night? Her fault. Lowry-bloody-Fisk—refusing to be set aside and forgotten. He should have known.

  “Think she’ll ever forgive us?” the Commander asked quietly.

  “Not if we screw up the investigation into Wainwright’s murder. Not if we ignore the possibility of someone trying to frame her and fail to ask ourselves why. ”

  “We may not like what we find. Politically, things could get…complicated.”

  Jack fixed his concentration on the oil portrait of Queen Elizabeth II hanging its somber over the boardroom. He’d heard and made the toast “to Queen and country” more times than he could count. He wondered if the poor woman had a clue about the shit that went down in her name. Just as he wondered how the Commander couldn’t see that his first priority should be Lowry. “She’s your daughter.”

  His boss’s head snapped up, uncustomary sparks of anger flaring in his eyes. “Are you sure you want to debate the issue of family, Jack? The ties you have with your own are tenuous, to say the least. Some advice: Put that right in the near future, or you’ll just end like me—wondering if this god-awful job’s worth it.”

  He managed to keep his arms stiff at his sides, but there was little Jack could do to stop his hands balling into fists. His family was strictly out of bounds. “She’s in holding room 12B; maybe you should speak to her,” he pressed stubbornly.

  “No. The greater the distance between us, the better. I won’t risk whispers that the investigative process has been in any way compromised by my interference.”

  Jack’s throat narrowed. His mouth filled with dust. “So, she’s on her own.”

  “If she’s innocent, she’ll be cleared by the internal investigation you insisted upon. I’ll put my best men on it.”

  But would those best men be good enough? Jack doubted it. Lowry had few supporters. Her conspiracy theories, which she had not been shy about sharing, had ostracized some, worried others, and brought ridicule from too many. Christ, she didn’t stand a chance.

  Not his problem. She wasn’t his responsibility. Thank God. And he didn’t want her forgiveness. What the hell would he do with it? No, what he needed was distance from her. She tied him in knots. Example: Earlier, when helping her down from that fucking wall. Her smooth, feather-soft skin naked beneath his fingers, as his hands slid from her hips to the narrowness of her waist. Her hot little gasp. The fact that she’d clung to him for just a moment too long, her curves pressed tight against him. He’d wanted. Any other woman, he would have accepted her invitation, taken her fast, and bugger the consequences. But Lowry had found and tugged on the single thread of decency left in him. A thread of decency, which, if allowed to unravel, would compromise his ability to do his job. Goddamnit.

  “You’re not going to like this, Jack, but when I said I’d put only the best on my daughter’s case, that included you.”

  No. Not him. Aside from the fact that she’d already messed up his sleep pattern and screwed with his head, he didn’t want her shining a too-bright light on the integrity of the Service. Not when he’d made it his life. He’d already had one lesson on the catastrophic consequences of exercising poor judgment—just ask his brother, Richard—he didn’t need his ass kicked with a metal-toed, size-whatever, but definitely huge boot, again.

  “Use someone else. Nick Marshall.”

  “Marshall will lead the investigation. You will be in charge of her protective custody. And Jack, if she’s even halfway right about one of our own wanting her dead, she’s going to need it. Besides, who else is she going to trust?”

  Fuck. Good point. “Has the shoot-to-kill order has been rescinded?”

  The Commander surprised him by chuckling. A rare sound, if not unique. “Distrusting the Service already? It didn’t take her long to get to you, did it?

  If her father knew just how much she’d gotten to him, he might not be as keen to hand over his daughter into Jack’s charge.

  …

  She pointedly ignored Jack when he re-entered the cell. His impersonation of the grim reaper hadn’t slipped. If anything, it was more convincing.

  “Get up, Lowry. I’m taking you into protective custody.”

  She ignored his instruction to rise. “Protective custody? What’s that a euphemism for, exactly?”

  Four fast strides, he dropped to his haunches, his glare easily capable of flaying the armor-plate from a tank. No hesitation, he got smack up in her face. “Don’t. Piss. Me. Off. I’m not in the mood.”

  She bit back a furious protest. He was right. This was not the time to be obstructive. Jack didn’t do turmoil. He didn’t do inner conflict. Yet, behind the anger, that’s what swirled in his eyes.

  The hairs at the base of her neck pricked. Was Jack compromised? Had he been ordered to do something he didn’t want to do? What? And where the hell did that leave her?

  Not once did he relax his fierce grip on her arm as he frog marched her back along the corridors of the Cube, through Reception, and back out to his vehicle—into which he didn’t so much hand her as bundle her inside.

  This time, she snapped home her own damn seat belt.

  Before activating the ignition, he paused and gave her a long, hard look as if searching for an answer.

  Goose bumps the size of mountains stretched her skin. How was she supposed to respond if she didn’t know the question? She held his stare for as long as she could, then, conceding defeat, turned her head away to look through the passenger-side window.

  Yup, the Cube was just as ugly as it had always been.

  “So who was dumb enough to step on your toes, Ballentyne… And who’s got my cat?”

  She gasped and gripped the edge of her seat as, with eye-watering speed, Jack pulled out into the heavy flow of rush hour traffic.

  “Your father. On both counts. Now, shush and let me concentrate. I need to think.”

  Shush? Not an expression she’d ever expected him to use. A soft word, so totally at odds with the hard, brutal-when-required man she knew him to be. On top of which, he was mega-smart with a mi
nd that could solve problems at warp speed. So just how complex had things become for him to demand silence “to think?”

  Chapter Six

  Since when had protective custody necessitated the need to switch cars—twice? Cars Jack had broken into and hotwired, because they weren’t a part of the Service’s fleet of vehicles.

  Odd behavior, for a man tasked with taking her to a Service-maintained safe house. At least she presumed that’s where they were heading. Jack hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with any explanation.

  But she was done with his silence. He could think his deep thoughts some other time. “So, what’s the safe house like?” she ventured conversationally to disguise her anxiety.

  “Not exactly taking you to an official safe house,” he muttered, his eyes on the traffic. “I don’t appreciate playing a game I don’t understand, so I’ve reset the rules. You’ll be safe; just don’t get your hopes up about the standard of the accommodation.”

  Her heart stopped. That explained the stolen cars. He’d been covering their tracks, making sure their whereabouts remained uncertain—even to the Service. “You’ve always been unorthodox, but they’re not going to like this, Jack.” Christ, was he mental?

  “Tough. My play. My way.”

  Lowry rolled his words around the inside of her head. Jack bent the rules, but he’d never before gone rogue. The Service was too important to him. And he was destined for the top. One day he’d have her father’s job, a position for which he’d been in contention for from the moment he joined the Service.

  And she had a nasty suspicion he was putting all that on the line. For her. “Pull over, Jack. Let me out. Break all the rules you like, but not because of me. I won’t be responsible for ruining your career. You can tell them I overpowered you. ”

  “Yeah, like they’d believe I’d let that happen,” he scoffed, his eyes raking her slight frame to drive his point home.