PRESTON FOWLER, CIA Deputy Director of Closed Ops, Antiterrorism Division, sat behind his government-issue desk like the heartless son of a bitch he was and denied Jack Tanner’s request.
“You know he’ll kill her,” Jack said from between clenched teeth. “There’s not even a frigging question.”
Fowler shrugged one massive shoulder. “Maybe. But I’m not sending in a retrieval team for one skinny broad whose head is already screwed up. No way. You offered her a chance, she didn’t accept. She has no one to blame but herself.”
Jack rocketed to his feet and paced the narrow space between Fowler’s desk and the two upholstered chairs in front of it. How did he get this through that thick skull? “So we’re just supposed to let her die.”
“It won’t be the first time we’ve sacrificed someone for the greater good. We all know this going in. Get a grip here, Tanner. You didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.” Fowler straightened his hundred-dollar tie. “Try to act like a professional.”
Fury flashed anew inside Jack. He didn’t want to hear this crap. He halted his pacing abruptly, flattened his palms on the too neat desk and leaned in his boss’s direction in a blatant attempt at intimidation that was doomed to failure. “I trained her myself. She’s mine. I’m not going to write her off as a calculated loss.”
A nasty grin inched across Fowler’s heavily lined features. “You always did have a thing for her, didn’t you?”
Jack shook with the rage building beneath his barely controlled exterior. But he couldn’t lose it. That would only make matters worse. He’d already given away far too much about just how personal this was to him. “We’ve already taken enough from her. She deserves to be cut some goddamn slack.”
“Sit down, Tanner,” his boss growled, all signs of amusement gone.
“I want some damn backup here,” Jack demanded.
“Sit down.”
His fists clenched for battle, but his brain recognizing his proximity to maxing Fowler’s tolerance level for grief, Tanner dropped back into his chair. This was the part he hated about this damn job. The lack of compassion in those who sat behind a desk and had long ago forgotten what it was like to be out there risking his life for his flag.
“We’re pretty sure it’s Arad who has her, right?” Fowler suggested, feigning actual interest in the case.
Tanner forced himself to take a breath and think reasonably. “According to our intel the Israelis haven’t made a move yet. It has to be Arad. He’s the only one besides the Israelis who has an interest and the know-how and ability to move this quickly.”
Fowler nodded. “I agree. But I disagree with your assumption that he’ll kill her.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “He will kill her. She set him up. He has to know that.”
“But we also know that he liked having her in his bed.”
A new blast of fury had to be repressed before Jack could respond in a normal tone. “She wouldn’t be the first old lover he’s killed.”
Fowler flared his palms. “But the other one was a spy for the French D.S.T. France had no business trying to get one of their intelligence operatives in bed with him. Arad is convinced our girl is the neglected and vengeful daughter of the late Yael Peres. That makes her like him…as far as he knows.”
“The man is smart,” Jack argued impatiently. “If he hasn’t figured out her connection to us already, it won’t take him long.”
“We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”
Jack knew by the look in Fowler’s eyes that there was no changing his mind, but that didn’t stop him. “We owe her. She’s one of ours,” he urged in a last-ditch effort to sway the unmovable. “She gave up a lot for us.” He sighed. “More than even she knows.”
“You’re right,” Fowler agreed, to Jack’s complete surprise. “She is one of ours. And if she lives, I intend to use her to our benefit.”
Uneasiness nudged Jack. This was not a good thing. “What do you mean, use her?”
“Arad has gotten too powerful. The decision has already been made. It’s time to take him out of the picture. He makes too many people nervous, including some of our Israeli friends. She can help us do that.”
Jack laughed out loud, but the sound held no humor. “She’ll be dead long before we can put whatever the hell plan you’ve got up your sleeve into motion. Don’t you get it?” he demanded. “She’s probably dead already!”
“Then what’s the big deal?” Fowler demanded in that too reasonable tone of his. “If she survives, we’ll use her. If she doesn’t, then we’ll be saving the taxpayers a few dollars not having to keep her up.”
Jack pushed to his feet again. He wanted to climb across that perfectly organized desk and beat the hell out the thick-skulled bastard. But that would accomplish nothing. The last thing he needed was to get any further on Fowler’s bad side. Right now Jack was the only hope Ami had…and that wasn’t saying much.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, resignation heavy in his voice.
“See if you can get a line on where Arad’s taken her. Take some time and see what her status is with her old lover. If this plays out like I believe it will, once we’ve established that she’s back in tight with him, we’ll move ahead.”
“He’s probably in France. Finding his approximate location won’t be that difficult, but getting close will be impossible. You know how he works.” This was a waste of time. “Nobody gets close to him. He knew that other woman was D.S.T. before he ever welcomed her into his tight little group. He had his reasons. He used her before she even knew what was happening. It’s a miracle Ami fooled him.”
Fowler grinned, another of those sick surface conventions that made Jack want to reach across his desk and throttle him. “Love is blind. Besides, I have every faith in your ability, Tanner. You’ll get close enough to find out what’s going on. You’ve got a personal stake in this. Just like Arad.”
“Yeah, right.” Fuck you, too, Jack didn’t add.
He left Fowler’s office with a bad feeling in his gut. He waffled between wanting to kill someone with his bare hands and wanting to get rip-roaring drunk. But neither of those things would help Ami. He wasn’t sure anything outside a miracle straight from God would make a difference. At this point, it probably didn’t matter in which direction the pendulum swung for her, she was likely dead either way.
AWARENESS CAME in slow, gradual degrees. Though she couldn’t move, Ami could feel a bed beneath her and a cool sheet over her skin. It was too soft to be her bed at home. Robert preferred a firm mattress. There was a distinctly bad taste in her mouth. She tried to swallow, but the effort proved too monumental a task so she drifted back to sleep.
Sometime later, though she still couldn’t open her eyes, she did hear voices. The whispered words were too hushed to distinguish. Was she in a hospital? County General, maybe? She remembered rushing to her car.
But what had happened after that?
More voices and images filled her head. The sound of a door slamming…the squeal of tires. Fear welled inside her. She’d been kidnapped. Tanner…the CIA guy. Terrorists. She tried to shake her head. To deny the memories slowly seeping back into her skull. This couldn’t be real. She didn’t know anyone in the CIA, and she sure didn’t know any terrorists. Maybe she was having a breakdown of some sort. That would explain everything.
There was only one way to prove it was all just a bad dream. She had to open her eyes and look. Ami focused intently on the task, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. Finally her lids drifted open. Unaccustomed to the light, she snapped them shut again. But she had to see. Slowly she opened her eyes once more, blinking to adjust. Large windows or doors of some sort lined the wall she was facing.
She could hear the voices again. A little louder now. Her head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton, but at the same time as heavy as a bowling ball. She couldn’t move. All she wanted to do was to go back to sleep. But if she went back to sleep she would never know where she was
or why she was here.
With a groan she managed to roll onto her back. A large fan slowly circled above her. Richly stained wooden beams appeared dark against the white ceiling. Where was she?
If Arad or the Israelis get their hands on you first, there’s no way back.
She’d been kidnapped, her mind told her again, more firmly this time.
Ami bolted upright. She groaned and held her head in her hands until it stopped spinning. Finally she lifted her gaze and blinked until her eyes had regained focus. Oversized furniture lined this new wall she faced. An armoire and a couple of chairs with a table between them. At first it felt as if she were seeing everything in black and white since there appeared to be no color in the room other than varying shades of gray. She looked to her right again, at the wall of windows she’d seen before. The blue sky that reached down to touch the green and brown earth beyond the glass allayed that concern.
But where was she?
Ami pushed the sheet away and gingerly dropped her feet to the bare wood floor. Take it slow, she told herself. She grabbed hold of the bedpost and was distracted a moment by the intricately carved detailing of the stout wooden post. She pulled herself up and stood absolutely still for a time to relieve the vertigo. She took in a deep, steadying breath. There was something vaguely familiar about the way the room smelled, but she couldn’t grasp the fleeting memory. Finally, when the dizziness had passed, she took one tiny step at a time until she reached the wall of windows.
French doors stood between two massive windows. A balcony sprawled in front of her. Beyond that was the autumn-colored forest she’d seen reaching up to the blue sky. The sun was low, almost hidden behind the treetops. Nothing she saw looked even vaguely familiar. She reached for the lever to open the door but a voice stopped her.
“That would be a mistake.”
The deep, erotic sound of the accented voice stroked across her senses, shimmered through her soul, stirring something hidden and long forgotten. But with the dangerous lure of the sound came fear, stark and deep, making her flesh pebble with goose bumps. Slowly, she turned to face the man who’d spoken.
He stood in the shadows on the far side of the room, watching her. Hair as black as midnight fell around his broad shoulders. Without the white shirt he would have disappeared completely into those deepening shadows.
“If you step out onto that balcony, the guards have orders to shoot.” He said this with cold, calculating calm.
Ami reached way down deep for any courage she could find and asked, “Where am I?” Her voice sounded small and as shaky as she felt. She trembled before she could stop herself. She was cold, she rationalized, and hugged her arms around her middle. Only then did she think to look down to see what she was wearing. A man’s shirt. The worn soft fabric whispered against her bare skin. The masculine scent that clung to it elicited an alien yet somehow familiar yearning deep inside her.
He moved toward her. Her head came up, not because she’d heard him, for he made no sound, but because she felt him. Felt him move closer to her as if his presence was somehow connected to her own. She flattened against the door as the thick tension radiating from him slowly closed in around her.
When he stood only three or four feet away, he stopped, the reality of his size slamming into her full-force then. He was tall. Broad shoulders tapered into a lean waist and narrow hips. Long, muscular legs filled out the jeans he wore. Her gaze traveled back up to his face. There was no denying that this was an extraordinarily good-looking man, all angles and shadow, but it was his eyes that were the most compelling of his assets. Deep, dark, pools of heat that could see right through her. That familiar yearning…a recognition of sorts flared, making her shiver.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked, his silky voice now rough with impatience.
She shook her head. “Please, I just want to go home.” Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked rapidly to hold them at bay. She didn’t want to cry. She wanted to be strong. Strong enough to somehow convince this man that he’d make a mistake. A terrible mistake.
“I am Michal Arad.” That intent gaze bored more deeply into hers, watching, analyzing. “This name means nothing to you?”
Her lips trembled and a sob escaped before she could stop it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are or why I’m here, but there must be a mistake. I have to go home.” I need to hold my baby, her heart cried. “Please,” she whispered, emotion choking her. “Please, just let me go home.”
“So Gil was right. You remember nothing.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stroked his chin. The sound of a day’s beard growth rasped beneath his fingers. She shivered, her gaze settling on his full lips. They moved slowly, sensually, as he spoke. “Even with the sodium pentathol. Interesting.”
Sodium pentathol? That’s why she felt so groggy. They’d drugged her. She suddenly remembered the prick of a needle when she’d first been dragged into the van in the hospital parking garage. How long ago had that been? Where was she now? She pivoted and stared out the window, desperation surging through her with every beat of her heart. She didn’t recognize anything at all about the landscape. How could she hope to get away when she had no idea where she was?
“Where am I?” she heard herself ask again, her voice weary now. The fierce emotions were draining out of her, leaving a kind of resigned numbness. She was going to die. The CIA guy named Tanner had warned her and she hadn’t listened. And now it was too late…no way back.
“You are in my home. That is all I will tell you until I have made a decision.”
Ami shivered again with something more than fear, then almost laughed out loud. She was pathetic. Despite her dire circumstances the man’s deep, compelling voice still had the power to make her tremble with a mixture of emotions that frightened her even more than the thought of death.
She faced him again, knowing that nothing she said or did at this point would make a difference. She was dead. It was only a matter of time. She would never see her baby again. And who would raise him? Would Robert still care for Nicholas now that she was out of the picture? She prayed with all her heart that he would. Why hadn’t she married him a year ago? Then there would be no question. She’d been such a fool.
“What decision?” she asked…no, it wasn’t a question, it was a demand, she realized as the harshly uttered words echoed in the room. Feeling suddenly brave, or maybe too incredibly stupid to care, she lifted her gaze and stared directly into his. “What decision do you have to make?”
He touched her then. Her breath caught, but to her credit she didn’t pull away. Those long fingers lingered on her cheek, then trailed along the column of her throat, making her tremble yet again.
“The decision,” he said, his accented voice soft yet undeniably lethal, “as to what I will do with you now that I’ve found you.”
She looked away, unable to tolerate that penetrating gaze a second longer. “Whatever you believe I’ve done to you, you’re wrong.” She stared fully into those dark eyes. “I’m not who you think I am.”
He flattened his hands on the door on either side of her and leaned in closer, so close she could feel the whisper of his warm breath on her face.
“It is not a matter of what I believe,” he told her, his voice just as soft, just as deadly as before. “It is a matter of what I know. I know what you’ve done. And I know exactly who you are.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MICHAL LEFT THE ROOM, his senses humming with a mélange of emotions. Need had somehow surged to the fore-front and overtaken all others, however, and that infuriated him beyond reason. He did not need this woman.
He would not fall prey to her seemingly innocent temptation again. For he knew firsthand that she was not innocent. His jaw tightened with the fury building inside him at his own stupidity. She had plotted the assassination of her own father and had used him to accomplish that end. She had made him drunk with her wicked, feminine wiles…had given up her body entirely to him. Whatever he had wan
ted she had given until he had grown blind with lust, driven only by need, and finally becoming completely obsessed.
She had been his one obsession, his one mistake.
Then he had lost her.
He closed his eyes and fought the emotion that accompanied that last thought. For two endless years he had believed her dead. He had grieved the loss, prayed for his own death, apathetic of his destiny without her. In their short time together she had become everything to him.
And now he’d found her again…alive and well.
His eyes opened wide with renewed determination. He would not fall under her spell this time. She was evil…a harlot. A bitch who cared for no one other than herself.
Wherever she had been hiding, whatever she had been doing all this time, mattered little to him. She was here now and now she would pay for her betrayal.
The word had traveled swiftly to him. Some imbecile had failed in his attempt to assassinate Natan Olment. The press had insisted that the American was the target, but Michal knew better. Olment was high on the list of those wanted dead by the supporters of the fallen Taliban. Though forced underground to carry out its machinations, money was no obstacle for the crippled organization. The payment for making such a kill would be substantial, the task a simple one. Olment and his security advisor were fools. Michal could have taken him out on numerous occasions, had played the scenario over in his mind and laughed at the ease with which he could accomplish the hit if he so chose.
Now that ridiculously lax security would be tightened. The security advisor replaced, as should have been done months ago. Those with less skill than Michal would bemoan the loss of potential opportunity. To him it made no difference. The reputation he had earned spoke for itself. Lucky for him, Olment had no part in his plans for the immediate future.
Of course that could change, but Michal didn’t see that happening as things stood. Olment dabbled in nothing that interested him.
The woman on the other side of the door he braced against dragged his attention back to the present. He had a more pressing quandary at the moment than what his next crusade would be. He had to decide what to do with her. His jaw tightened again. She had to die. There was no real question there. But he would be the one to decide when her fate was to be carried out.
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