The Ties That Bind r5-4

by Cliff Ryder

He tilted his head and kissed the top of hers. Her hair smelled like cinnamon, clean and sweet and exotic all at the same time.

  Tina pushed away from him and sat up, a look of wonder and concern on her face. He tried the silent angle again, hoping to hear her thoughts first, but not certain he should let her mixed emotions come out with a statement first. He wanted to reassure her, but he wasn't sure what he was supposed to reassure her about. They both knew that he wasn't here to stay.

  "I should go home," she said.

  Her quiet tone was more of a question than a statement. She waited for his reply, but he wasn't sure what to say. She started to move off the bed, her head hanging a little low. All of a sudden Jason felt like a heel.

  "No," he said, keeping his tone low and soft. "Stay."

  "Stay?"

  "You didn't bring your coat and it's freezing outside," he said.

  She went from shy to furious in the span of two heartbeats. She started stomping around the room gathering her clothes. Jason knew he had done that wrong, but wasn't sure how to rectify it. His experiences with women weren't the kind that demanded the right words at the right time after sex. He'd successfully avoided real relationships his whole life.

  He slid off the bed and put on his pants. Grabbing her arm as she stormed past him, he tried to pull her in for a kiss, but she stared at him as if he were a snake. He was beginning to feel like one and not quite certain why. "Tina, wait," he said. "I'm sorry. All of this has taken me by surprise. I don't know all the right words to say. Just stay and we can talk about it."

  She left the bedroom with her clothes in hand and went to the bathroom. She came back out dressed and slipped on her shoes.

  "Come on," he said, hating the pleading sound in his voice. "Don't leave like this."

  She turned to look at him and before he could say anything else, grabbed his coat off the table and stormed out the door.

  Jason sank into one of the chairs, running his hands through his hair. A sudden thought occurred to him. And he turned his gaze over to the table where his computer and other equipment were situated.

  Tina had just walked out the door wearing his coat. The coat he'd put his handheld system in just before she'd arrived.

  "Damn women and damn complications," he shouted.

  11

  Jason grabbed his shoes and a sweater from the bedroom. Throwing them on, he half ran to the front door and opened it. As the blast of freezing-cold air hit him full-force, he knew that this wasn't going to go well. He glanced at the thermometer as he ran out the door — thirty-five degrees before the windchill, and an icy rain was starting to fall.

  He ran across town to Tina's house. No matter what, he needed to get his PDA back so that he could call in the Scorpion and get the other equipment that Denny thought he needed and maybe…maybe he could muddle through an explanation.

  He wasn't good at this sort of thing, talking about what he was thinking or feeling, and he couldn't afford any more interference in this mission. Where Tina was concerned, it seemed that none of the lines that were supposed to work felt right. And besides that, she was different. Different than any other women he'd ever known, ever been with. She would see what he could say as the cheap platitudes they were. Sadly, they were all he could offer her. His mission had to come first.

  By the time Jason made it to Tina's street, he was soaked and half-frozen. As he turned the corner, he stomped in a puddle that didn't look deep, but was actually a pothole in the road deep enough to slosh icy-cold water past the top of his boot.

  "Damn it," he cursed, feeling his toes curl as his sock turned into a freezing sheath of wool.

  Taking her porch steps in one big motion, he banged on her door, knowing that he could only stand there for a couple of minutes at most before he really needed to be inside and out of the cold. The wind shifted, and rain started slanting in sideways. The porch wasn't much protection and his foot was turning to a Popsicle with each passing second.

  Tina pulled open the door a crack, and Jason didn't wait for an invitation. He pushed his way inside.

  "What the hell are you doing?" she yelled.

  "Freezing my ass off!" he snarled. "You took my coat."

  He stepped farther into the room and came to an abrupt halt when he saw Chris Marley sitting on her sofa. Jason turned to stare at Tina, then back at him. The warmth that he had felt as he initially entered the house was replaced by a wave of ice that cut deeper than the storm brewing outside.

  The evidence was damning. Chris must have been waiting here for her to report back to him.

  Inside, all the confusion he'd been feeling since this mission started faded away. He knew who he was, what he did, what he had to do. He didn't need or want a family. He was an assassin, a spy, a professional — and he'd let his feelings for Tina get in the way.

  Jason turned his gaze back to Tina, letting every ounce of cold he felt pour out toward her. "Not involved, huh?"

  He grabbed his coat off the chair by the door and could tell from its weight that the handheld was still in the pocket. He pulled it on, turned and stormed out the door, slamming it behind him. Taking several deep breaths, he stood for a moment on the porch and wondered why he hadn't just killed them both, but he realized that no matter what, he needed time to process this new information.

  Maybe there was a way to work all this to his advantage, to use them both. In all his years, he'd learned that wasting a local asset should always be reserved for a final option. They were all but impossible to replace quickly. And the simple fact was that he wanted to go back in the house and take them both out, but he knew that was his anger doing his thinking for him. He had to hold back a bit, to wait. They weren't direct threats, at least not yet.

  He ran all of the way back to his cabin, cursing himself the entire way. How could he have missed it? How could he have been so blind? She was a better actress than he'd given her credit for, and he'd fallen for the entire show. He tore open the door to his cabin, the wood creaking in protest, and stomped inside.

  The whole mission was compromised. His cover was totally blown. And now, in addition to everything else, he was going to have to kill Tina. There was no other choice.

  "Damn!" he said.

  He changed into dry clothes, making sure to put on several layers to keep the cold at bay. He checked his weapons and stepped out into the bitter night.

  He still had a lot to do. Checking his watch, he knew that the first order of business was to get to Blue Whale Bay and send out the Scorpion to get the next load of equipment. Once that was done, he could come back and do what needed to be done with Tina and Chris.

  The only silver lining to having his cover blown was that he could use whatever means were necessary to extract information about the operation from Chris.

  Considering the man's attitude and how he was feeling right now, he might actually enjoy that.

  * * *

  Jason sent the Scorpion to the offshore team even before he reached the cove. The rain had eased its temperamental drumming, but it did nothing to change his mood as he waited for the machine to return. He waited nearly an hour, huddled on the rocks, before the Scorpion returned, climbing onto the beach like a giant insect. The new equipment in tow was easily removed, and he started entering the navigational coordinates he thought he would need to get into the underwater cavern. Then he'd follow one of the submersibles out into the ocean, and with any luck at all, it would lead him straight to the submarine. He could accomplish his primary and secondary missions, then handle the cleanup.

  "I thought I'd find you here," he heard Tina say.

  He almost smiled. The damn woman had done it to him again. He reached into the Scorpion once more and turned on the scanners, then pulled his Glock out and turned around to face her. A quick glance at the scanners showed that there was no one else in the area. She was either extremely confident or extremely foolish to come alone. He knew what he needed to do next, and the laser dot appeared on her chest.

>   In the darkness, she noticed the steady red point of light, then brought her gaze up to meet his.

  "It's amazing how quickly we've gone from stay to go," she said. She took a hesitant step back. "At my house, you thought I'd betrayed you," she said.

  "Don't move," Jason said, his voice calm. She knew he intended to kill her and would do so without hesitation. "So," he continued, "I suppose this is the part where you tell me it was all a coincidence. Chris just happened to be at your house."

  "Yes," she said. "It was a coincidence. It's not like I invited him over." She sat down on his quad and waited for him to approach.

  He moved closer, keeping his aim steady. "Well, at least you're following the script now," he said. "Next you'll beg me not to kill you or maybe offer me up some of your smuggler friends instead — isn't that right?"

  She started to reply, but he cut her off.

  "I knew that I shouldn't have trusted you," he continued. "Save the pleas for mercy and since I already know who the smugglers are, offering them up won't do you any good. I should have ended all of these complications the first day out of Nome."

  He raised the weapon a little bit higher. "The mission comes first."

  "You really do live an empty life, don't you?" she asked. The words hit him like a cold, hard slap on the face. "You don't have anyone in your life that you trust. No one you can count on. I almost feel sorry for you, having been there myself once."

  His finger tightened on the trigger. He had to do it.

  Tina kept talking. "You know, if I really believed that you would kill me outright, without giving me a chance to even explain, I wouldn't have come out here. I hope my grandfather is right and that I'm a good judge of people. I think if you were going to kill me, I wouldn't have gotten out word one."

  "Perhaps," he whispered. "I've been doing this job a long time. It's the little amusements that carry one through the tougher times."

  "I don't know who you really are, Jason. And I've told you the truth. I'm not involved and I don't have any friends that you would really be interested in. I can't imagine telling you that my grandfather smokes illegally imported Cuban cigars will win me many points." She held up her hands in defeat. "I guess you'll either have to listen and make your choice or kill me and have to go on living life just as you have in the past."

  He shrugged. "My past isn't so bad. I've been living with it for a long time. But what the hell, I'll play along. Why was he there? And don't tell me he was just taking a walk around the block and you ran into him."

  "I don't know," she said. "He was waiting at the house when I got back. He's been after me for some time to go out with him, but I've always turned him down. I sort of figured it was done, that he'd gotten the message. Suddenly he has a renewed interest and I don't know why. But I do know that after you barged in, he didn't seem all that excited to be talking with me. If I were to guess, I'd say that he and his smuggler friends suspect you of being onto them, of having been the one that broke into their facility earlier. They probably sent him to me to try to get some information."

  Jason nodded. It made a certain amount of sense. How did she manage to cloud his judgment so easily? "Anything else?" he asked.

  "That's all I've got," she said. "He took off right after you did, so at this point your guesses would be as good as mine."

  He moved closer, watching her breathing patterns, studying her body language. If there was even a hint of a lie, he'd shoot her dead…but there wasn't. If she was lying, she deserved an award for her acting. Still, he had to know if he could really trust her. A wandering nuclear weapon and a submarine capable of delivering it were far more important to the safety of the world than one dead woman, whether he liked her or not.

  There was one button he could push, and maybe find out where she really stood.

  "And the sex," he asked. "Was that all a setup, too?"

  Tina jumped off the quad, marched straight up to him and slapped him across the cheek. Hard. He didn't stop her. "You bastard," she hissed.

  "So, that's a no," he said, holstering the Glock.

  "So you're not going to kill me?"

  "Not yet," he replied. "But the night is young. I'm either a trusting fool or a very lucky guy. I guess only time will tell."

  "You've worked for the government for too long. It's made you too suspicious," she said.

  "In my line of work, there's no such thing," he said quietly. "And it's what has kept me alive."

  Tina moved to his side and rubbed his cheek, kissing the handprint that she left. Jason turned and kissed her deeply. "I wish you'd had a better life," she said when they came up for air. "Being alive isn't the same thing as living."

  This was no time for emotional entanglements. "Maybe someday I'll get the chance to try it out, but right now, you need to get back to town and I need to get back to work," he said.

  "When should I expect you?"

  "Probably not until later tomorrow," he replied.

  "I'll see you tomorrow, then. Don't make me come looking for you."

  Tina got on her quad and left. Jason watched her drive off into the distance, then turned his attention back to the submersible. He watched the radar, making sure that her signature was well and truly headed back to town. Suddenly, he saw another one pop up on-screen. And another. They were approaching fast.

  Acting on instinct, he ducked his head down just as a bullet whizzed through the air where his head had been a moment before, sounding like an angry bee. He dived out of the submersible and somersaulted on the ground, his gun ready as he came up. During the roll, he heard an odd cracking sound from inside his coat, but ignored it for the moment, knowing that the quad speeding down the hill toward him took precedence. He took aim at the driver, but had to move again as a second ATV crested the hill, the passenger firing repeated bursts with a MAC-10 submachine gun.

  Jason fired as he rolled, taking out the driver of the first ATV. It spun out of control, throwing the driver and the shooter to the ground in a crumpled heap. Taking cover behind a cluster of rocks, Jason turned his attention to the second quad. Like the first, there were two people on board, one driving and one shooting.

  The shooter opened up with the MAC-10 again as they sped toward him. Sharp shards of rock chips flew through the air, but he kept his profile low, waiting for an opening.

  Just as they turned to get a better angle, Jason moved again, rolling to one side and yanking the gunman off the quad and to the ground. The momentum of the movement had both of them tumbling toward the beach.

  Jason found his feet first and pounced on him, but the man was motionless. His neck had been broken in the fall. He spun around to take on the next threat, but realized that both the quads were gone. The survivors had left their dead companions and disappeared into the night.

  He quickly checked the bodies, confirming what he already suspected. The men were from town. He hopped into the submersible and checked his radar. The two quads had made it into town, and there were also boats nearby in the water. They must have been planning another weapons drop and his timing had just been bad. He quickly programmed the Scorpion to retreat back into the water, then checked his coat. Damn, he thought, pulling the shattered remains of his shooting glasses free from the pocket. So much for that toy.

  If possible, he needed to keep his cover if he could. Jumping on his quad, he raced back into town, cut down an alley and went straight to Tina's. This time he didn't bother knocking as he ran into the house. He slammed the door shut as she came out of her room.

  "Jason, what…"

  "No time." He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to the bedroom, stripping off his shirt and tearing hers off over her head.

  "Jason…"

  "They're coming," he whispered. "Move fast."

  She complied, pulling at his clothes, throwing them on the far side of the bed. Jason pulled her on top of him on the bed.

  They could hear someone pounding on the outer door, but neither moved to answer it. Jason
heard it slam open and the rush of footsteps, but tried to focus on keeping calm, knowing that he still held his Glock beneath the blankets in his other hand if the situation went south on them.

  "Tina!" someone shouted from the living room.

  "What the hell!" she yelled as three men burst into her bedroom.

  The cop stopped short and fumbled for words, stammering and stuttering.

  She didn't bother to cover up as she turned, exposing her breasts even more as she faced them. She climbed off Jason and yanked a robe down from the closet door. "Get out! Get out of here right now!" she shouted.

  The three men retreated to the living room as Tina slammed the bedroom door, then turned to Jason and winked at him. She put on her robe while Jason slipped on his jeans and a shirt, tucking his Glock into his waistband and covering it with the long shirt. Together, they walked out into the living room.

  "Which one of you is going to tell me what the hell is going on here?" Tina snarled. "Sheriff Giles? Do you have an explanation?"

  Giles, Chris Marley and a man Jason hadn't met before all stood in the living room, staring at the floor and looking pretty sheepish. On a bet, he would guess that the third man was one of the drivers from the quads.

  "Two men were killed tonight," Giles said. "These guys think that your friend there might have done it."

  12

  "Oh, my God," Tina said, her voice filled with alarm. "Who was killed?"

  "Rod Omiak and Joseph Kuzruk."

  "What happened?" she asked.

  She gestured for the men to sit down on the sofa, and took her own seat in an overstuffed chair. Jason sat on the arm of her chair. If things turned ugly, he wanted to be close to her.

  "I'm not sure yet," Giles said. "I haven't even seen the bodies. Chris and Troy here came over to the house and said there was a murderer in town and they thought you might be next." He shrugged, blushing furiously. "Then when we got here, we heard noises and…Well, you know we thought…and so we…Sorry, Tina," he finished.

  "Did it look like I was being murdered to you?" she asked.