01 A Cold Dark Place

by Toni Anderson

  And Alex realized what was going on. It was a trap, but not for him.

  The trap was for whoever was working inside the FBI.

  Taking it slowly, having no doubt that they’d already checked his plates, he drove away. Cover should hold. It was a good one, designed to protect the same government the FBI served. He didn’t think they suspected him else he’d have been on the floor with his hands cuffed, waiting for another rescue that wouldn’t come from people who were supposed to have his back.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mallory turn and lock onto his profile. Sweat ran down his spine. Not from the fear of getting caught, but from lying to the woman he loved down to his poor worthless soul.

  He knew he couldn’t lie to her anymore.

  He drove west, cutting down back roads. Then he pulled over and called Jane on the secure line. “It was a trap.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the FBI turned up, but the house was empty. A decoy.”

  “The killer might have just fled. The FBI could just be arriving. You knew there wouldn’t be much lead time—”

  “No. You don’t understand. I think this was a set-up to ferret out whoever is working with you inside the FBI. If they contacted you, they are about to be fucked. Any way you can warn them?”

  “They didn’t call. No one called. Maybe they knew it was a trap?” Her voice trembled. “If I call them to check that could compromise us all.” The encryption was excellent, but everything could be broken if you had a starting point.

  “Then maybe we’re safe. But someone is onto us and we need to change everything about how we operate.” Shit, Mallory. She’d been onto them and then transferred to the BAU. She was working with someone inside the BAU to bring down The Gateway Project. She was a smart cookie. Another reason to love her.

  Love? Crap.

  “Dump your cells and destroy the SIM cards just in case. Lay low until this is all over...I’ll be in touch.”

  Jane sounded tentative. “You should disappear for a while...”

  “I can’t.” He hung up. He couldn’t even remember how many days he had left on his contract. He just knew he couldn’t leave Mallory until the PR-killer was dead or arrested.

  Then he realized it was only a matter of time until she figured it out—she was too smart not to connect the dots. Sweat broke out on his back. He had to tell her. Lying to her face wasn’t possible, he’d figured that out almost the moment he met her. But going to jail and leaving her unprotected wasn’t an option either.

  Idiot. He slammed the steering wheel with the bottom of his fist. He’d known someone was onto them and he’d been arrogant enough to think he could get away with it anyway.

  His phone rang. Mallory. He picked up because he needed to hear her voice.

  “Alex?”

  There was a motel up ahead. “I need you to meet me. It’s not far from where you are right now.” He gave her the name. “Come alone.”

  “How do you know where I am right now? Did I just see you here?” Her tone held a healthy dose of suspicion.

  He hung up. She either trusted him or she didn’t. He pulled into the motel parking lot and dug into the data his programs had been sifting. He might be going to prison for what he’d done for his country, but first he was going to save the woman he loved.

  ***

  How did Alex know where she was? Mallory stood outside the store and stared at her phone in confusion. Had she seen him here at the store? In disguise? Driving a car she’d never seen before? And he’d just hung up on her.

  What the heck?

  Hanrahan was busy telling his people they’d wasted a day driving up to this spot, on his whim. They were pissed too.

  She didn’t care.

  The fact Alex knew Jane Sanders, her mother’s aide, and hadn’t mentioned the connection, was getting more and more suspicious. She got that horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach—like nausea only a hundred times worse because it wasn’t going away. Like maybe he had been watching her all this time simply because her mother had paid him. If that were true no wonder he’d been so hard to get into bed. God, she felt sick.

  Or was he simply following her today to protect her?

  That was the sort of thing he’d do too.

  There was another theory tugging on her brain. An insidious idea that, now it had taken root, wouldn’t go away.

  He’d come into her life the day after Meacher had been murdered in North Carolina. He’d shown up here again today when they’d baited the trap with another serial killer. Could he be...?

  No. It was ridiculous. He consulted for the FBI. He was good with computers. He was a hell of a marksman. He’d been in the military—those damned scars... He’d taken Frazer down without breaking a sweat. No. No. No. He ran a security firm. He wouldn’t do that. But he was in a unique position...to be the vigilante.

  Her hands shook. Why had he hung up on her? Why was he driving that old wreck of a car when he had his Audi? Her brain was arguing with itself and yet suddenly all the pieces snapped together. Him being in Charlotte. Him not freezing when they were attacked, instead reacting like he trained for such things even harder than she did. He was the man she was after.

  She was in love with a trained assassin, and having his baby. Oh, God. Her mouth went dry.

  Hanrahan stood arguing nose-to-nose with Frazer.

  “...what do you mean it was a training exercise...training for what?” fluttered across the clearing.

  “...my decision, not yours...”

  Barton was also on the phone. Maybe she was in league with the vigilante? Was she right now warning him? Was it Alex?

  And then it struck her—if Alex was the man they were looking for, a man who took the law into his own hands and dispensed justice as he saw fit, she’d just set into motion a sting operation that might end up implicating herself. She’d been in contact with the “vigilante.”

  Hysterical laughter bubbled in her throat and she needed to get away.

  She wished she’d never had this stupid idea. Wished she was sitting in her office dodging verbal darts from Henderson and searching through wastepaper bins. Palpitations fluttered in her chest.

  Did she turn him in?

  There was no evidence—just a hunch.

  She stumbled around the front of the car as if drunk. Frazer frowned at her. “You look like shit. You need to go home.” He ran an agitated hand through his blond hair that made it stick out in disarray.

  Was it him? Was he the mole?

  She met Hanrahan’s gaze.

  “If you’re not feeling well, Special Agent Rooney, you should go home.”

  Recognizing he was giving her the out she desperately needed she went with it. “Something I ate for breakfast I think, sir. What’s going on?” she asked rather desperately.

  “This was apparently just a training exercise.” SSA Frazer’s eyes cut back to hers. He looked volcanically pissed. Christ, she couldn’t wait for him to find out this was all her idea. Her stomach roiled.

  “You can leave,” he said. “Make sure you check in when you get back to Quantico. I don’t want you falling off the map with this UNSUB still at large.”

  Barton went to get in the car with her.

  “Not you, Barton,” Hanrahan stated. “I want you to ride back with us. I’m going to need your phone.” He held out his hand and Barton looked at him like he’d gone insane.

  “What? Why?”

  “We need all your phones. We’re doing an update.” It was so obviously a lie that Barton planted her hand on her hip.

  “In a store parking lot?” she sneered.

  “It’ll only take a few minutes.” Hanrahan probably wanted to check the call logs and see if anyone had tampered with them compared to the cell tower data. It was a good idea.

  “What about her?” Barton jerked her head toward where Mallory was just sliding behind the steering wheel.

  “Agent Rooney’s not a full member of the team. She
doesn’t need the upgrade. She’s also a federal agent who I’m sure can drive herself back to the office without a bodyguard.” Hanrahan snapped at her but his eyes held apology. If she hadn’t felt like puking she’d have high-fived him. Barton pinched her lips and then with a glare at both Hanrahan and Frazer she tossed him her phone and stood fuming with her arms crossed.

  Mallory kept moving. When the SSA held out his palm for Frazer’s phone, Mallory thought the guy was going to explode. Instead he handed his cell over. She put her vehicle in reverse to turn it around, and he stood watching her like he could see inside her brain. Mallory’s heart pounded harder and harder though she never stopped driving. She needed to get out of there. She needed to think.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mallory had never understood the need to fall off the grid. Until now.

  The motel was some fifty miles east of Colby, West Virginia. Alex had texted her a room number. She looked up at the uninspiring building, grabbed her purse, and climbed out of her car in the parking lot. A noise behind her made her spin, hand firmly on the butt of her weapon.

  Alex.

  Christ, just looking at him hurt, but his expression was cold and remote.

  Was this the real Alex? Or was the real Alex the guy who made love to her until she gasped out his name? She’d thought she’d known him but looking into those guarded eyes she knew she’d been kidding herself.

  He turned his back on her and walked to a silver sedan—the one she’d seen at the store. Started the engine and waited, both hands visible on the steering wheel. She stared at him for a full ten seconds before she walked over and stood there. Drunk on lunacy.

  “Take the SIM card and battery out of your phone,” he told her quietly.

  “So you can take me somewhere quiet to kill me and dump the body without anyone following?”

  He held her gaze. “If I wanted to kill you you’d already be dead.”

  A sharp pain shot through her chest. “Are you the vigilante I’ve been searching for?”

  He just looked at her and she felt small and stupid.

  “I need the words, Alex.”

  There was a wild look in his eyes, so far removed from the cold stare he’d met her with she almost took a step back. “How about these words, Mallory. I love you. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you with that black eye, and no room for anything in your life except looking for your sister’s killer. I love you, Mallory Rooney, and I will tell you everything you need to know, but on my terms.” His eyes cut back to the road, looking for her back-up.

  She sucked in a breath. Those words of love were ones she’d wanted to hear but what did they mean now? He didn’t deny any of her accusations. Blood thumped through her veins with an aching thud. They had no future. She’d been sleeping with a killer. Sharing her body, worse, her heart, with a murderer. Her hand touched her stomach and she swallowed. Did she tell him about the baby?

  A shudder of revulsion moved through her. Would he kill them both? Or would she turn him in and one day have to confess to her child that their father was serving life in prison—or worse, on death row—and she’d been the one to put him there?

  His eyes softened and almost begged her to get in the car. Her throat hurt from locking down a sob. Maybe she was the world’s biggest fool. She couldn’t believe that the man who’d fought so hard to keep her safe would harm her now. Of course she hadn’t suspected the truth about him until today and he’d probably assumed she’d continue in blissful ignorance. Her whole life was built on ignorance and now it was crumbling. Crashing like a stack of cards in a hurricane.

  “Mallory.” His voice softened. “Get in the car, please. We’ll go somewhere and talk. I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Something in his expression snapped another piece of her heart. She loved him but she didn’t want to be stupid. She rested her hand on the rim of the window and he reached out and touched her finger, as if he couldn’t not touch her. She felt the connection to the tips of her toes.

  “It’s only a matter of time before the FBI figures out you’re involved. The FBI was monitoring all calls made by their agents when we set up that sting. He or she will give you up. You know that.”

  “Whoever works inside the BAU doesn’t know my identity any more than I know theirs. And no one called me with this information, I bugged Frazer’s phone.”

  Her heart cracked wide. “So you are the vigilante.”

  He wouldn’t say the words but his eyes told her everything. Maybe he worried she was wearing a wire and had fifty agents waiting in the wings to swarm in and arrest him. That’s what a true FBI agent would have done.

  “I’d never hurt you, Mallory. You have to believe that. And I will turn myself in, but not until you are safe from the asshole hunting you. After that I don’t really care anymore. I’m done.” This dead tone scraped away another layer of her heart. How could she love this man? Worse. How could she not?

  She was a fool to believe him but she got in the car any way. Then dismantled her cell proving she wasn’t just stupid, she was stark raving mad. He started driving. Several miles to another motel, the silence crackling with tension. He parked at the end of a row and walked around to open her door.

  Nice manners for a stone-cold killer.

  She followed him up the stairs and to the end unit. He stepped inside and closed the door. She didn’t know whether to be terrified or furious. Both emotions warred inside her and fury won.

  Her jaw set. “You used me.”

  “No.” He put the car keys on the desk beside the TV and sat in a chair, resting his face in his hands. “I didn’t use you. You seduced me and I fell like a fucking rock.”

  Hot blinding tears filled her eyes. She wanted to believe him. She couldn’t. “You knew I was looking for you. You knew I’d searched ViCAP for vigilantes.”

  He didn’t deny it.

  “Who are you working with in the BAU?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t come here to listen to lies, Alex. I have to turn you in”—her voice cracked but she ignored it—“don’t you dare lie to me about this.” She took a step toward him and he lifted his head to look at her. Her career was fried when the powers-that-be found out about their relationship. She was having his baby for God’s sake. She needed her job to help find out what had happened to Payton, but it all faded to nothing when weighed against losing this man she’d fallen in love with.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” he said.

  She narrowed her gaze at him. “What doesn’t work that way?”

  “The Gateway Project. We aren’t told the identities of the other people involved in the organization. We deal with an intermediary.” His eyes were full of secrets.

  He knew a hell of a lot more than he was saying. Or he was insane. Or maybe that was her. “Gateway Project?”

  “It’s an off-the-books government organization that uses people like me to deal with violent offenders in an expedient manner.”

  “Expedient? You shoot them in the goddamn head!” Her knees wobbled and she dropped to the bed. His words sank in. “It can’t be government-sanctioned. We have prisons and the death penalty to deal with these cases—”

  “Is your sense of justice still so black and white? Is there no room for gray, even after everything your family has been through?”

  She refused to answer. Refused to engage.

  “You know how long most victims’ families wait for death penalty sentences to be carried out? After the lawyers get through the postponements, the trial, appeals system, habeas corpus? It can take as long as twenty-five years. These aren’t even cases where guilt is in question. The justice system is supposed to balance the scales but instead it tortures the victims’ families for decades.”

  “There’s no morality in murder.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” He closed his eyes, but not before she spotted the pain there. “Every individual is responsible for their actions—inclu
ding me. I don’t like killing but it’s what my country asked me to do, and I do it.” He drew in a big breath, voice calm again. “Do you know what it costs to pursue capitol cases? Seventy percent more than non-capitol cases. Since 1978, enforcing the death penalty has cost $4 billion in California alone.”

  “You can’t put a cost on human life.” Mallory shoved her hand into her short hair.

  “Sure you can. There’s a cost to health services and law enforcement, isn’t there? How many more cops could have been hired to patrol and make California safer with four billion dollars?” The curve of his mouth gutted her. “Is it really easier to believe the man who’s fallen in love with you is a cold-blooded assassin rather than just another form of law enforcement?”

  “Alex...what you’re doing isn’t law enforcement. It’s murder.”

  “I serve my country. The same way I served it in uniform. And I don’t carry out orders unless I am personally one-hundred percent sure the target is guilty. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just telling you how it is.”

  Mallory realized he was either running an elaborate scam, nuts, or this thing was much bigger than she and Hanrahan had ever imagined. “Who’s in charge of The Gateway Project?”

  They exchanged a silent look. He wasn’t going to tell her. Damn. Cold sank through her clothes and her skin felt dipped in ice.

  “Now you have a decision to make,” he told her.

  Instinctively she touched her abdomen. His eyes followed the movement but she doubted he understood its significance. “I can’t pretend I don’t know, Alex.”

  Lines appeared between his brows. “Shit, I know that. But before you tell your FBI bosses I want to help you find the man who abducted your sister, the man who is after you. Then you can bring me in. That should save your career.”

  Her eyes shot to his. How did he know the heart of her so well? He was offering the opportunity to go after the man who’d destroyed her family, destroyed her parents’ marriage and her sister’s life with no comeback on herself. The idea of making the killer hurt, making him suffer and maybe pulling the trigger was seductive.