The Fifth Doctrine: The Guardian Series Book 3

by Karen Robards

The odd thing about it was, the flecks were almost certainly not stuck to where the 4-6-9 keys would be. Probably because by punching those numbers in, twice now, she had eliminated the last traces of the powder adhering to them.

  Frowning, she waited until the lock screen reappeared, then discovered that the almost invisible flecks of powder were centered on the 2.

  In the course of her not inconsiderable criminal career, she’d come across digital devices with separate codes partitioning them into what were essentially different units. Each code would unlock a different part of the device.

  Since the 4-6-9 keys were the only other keys to which powder had adhered, it seemed probable that if there was a separate code, it would include those three numbers plus 2.

  Twenty-four possible number combinations. Well under three minutes to try them all. As she started methodically punching in different potential combinations, she reminded herself that it was quite possible that there was an explanation that did not include a bifurcated device for why powder flecks had adhered to the 2.

  He could have accidentally brushed a finger over the key, for example, or something sticky could have dropped onto the screen …

  Even while she was reaching for various alternative explanations, her heartbeat sped up and her stomach tightened.

  A funny thing happened on the way to the love fest …

  She remembered how quick Colin had been to give her the XMI6 code when he’d discovered her with his phone in her hand.

  Because he had nothing to hide? Or because he did?

  She hit 4-6-9-2, and the lock screen dissolved into a message page.

  Two outgoing messages, three incoming messages.

  The first outgoing message, sent by Colin, was a sketchy description of the thugs who’d shot up Le Chien Rouge, with the tagline Identity Check Requested.

  The incoming reply read, Pending.

  The second outgoing message was a photo of Four-fingered Franz. It had obviously been snapped by Colin while they were dancing in Le Chien Rouge hours earlier. Why obviously? First, Franz was sitting at the table in the restaurant. Second, strands of what she recognized as her Alice wig dangled into the top portion of the photo. From the angle, and the way the strands were positioned, she felt safe in concluding that, while he’d been dipping her back over his arm and humping her (she could think of no more delicate way to put it), which had probably been done on purpose to distract her so she wouldn’t notice when he pulled his phone out and started snapping away, he’d been taking a picture of Franz behind her back.

  Along with the photo was the message Colin had sent off with it: Identity Check Requested.

  In the reply below the photo was a thumbnail bio that said Franz’s last name was Marcel and included multiple aliases. The final line included a flag that linked it to another file. That line read: Known associate of Mason Thayer.

  The third incoming message read: Team in place. Looks like you’re getting close. Keep me informed.

  The first two exchanges were with an entity called I-24/7, which she knew from harsh experience was connected to Interpol.

  The source of the last incoming message was even easier to identify, because the contact info heading it read Durand.

  Given the context, it wasn’t much of a leap to figure out what Colin was supposedly getting close to: capturing Mason.

  Which he’d been trying to do ever since she and he had first met. She didn’t know why she’d ever believed for a moment that it wasn’t still on his agenda.

  Staring at the name Durand, Bianca felt as if every last drop of blood was draining from her body.

  From her earliest childhood, Durand had been the hunter and she and Mason—her little nuclear family, as she’d thought of the two of them at the time—had been the prey. He’d been the rough equivalent of the boogeyman for her, and she’d spent a lifetime looking over her shoulder in fear of him. At the faintest hint of his presence anywhere in her vicinity, she’d been taught to flee, hide, disappear. His pursuit had been relentless, and he had never stopped. Just the sight of his name on Colin’s phone was enough to make the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

  Colin knew the threat Durand posed. He knew how she felt. The bitterness of betrayal formed a hard knot in her chest.

  She hit the flagged attachment to the first message.

  Skimming it, she saw that it was a list of crimes in which Franz was known or suspected to have participated. Eight were marked with asterisks. Those, she saw, were the ones in which he was thought to have worked with Mason, including a jewelry heist two years previously.

  Another was the bank robbery she had described to Colin. Only, of course, it had taken place years earlier than she’d implied.

  Would he have made the connection?

  Surely.

  She checked the time on the messages, remembered what time it had been when she’d first picked up his phone.

  No doubt about it: the messages had been sent and received while she was in the shower. When he’d forgone his shower to catch her on his phone, when he’d once again started questioning her about the identity of the man in the restaurant, he’d already had the answers.

  He’d been checking to see if she would lie to him.

  He’d been using her to try to capture Mason.

  He’d been in contact with Durand, and Interpol, for almost certainly the whole time they’d been together.

  He’d been playing her.

  Staring down at the phone, Bianca felt the kind of sickening sensation that sometimes happens when you’re in an elevator that drops too fast. Her stomach shot into her throat. Her pulse roared in her ears. She went all light-headed. She wanted to vomit.

  Then she got mad.

  Fingers clenching around the phone so hard she was surprised it didn’t shatter into a million pieces, she strode toward the bedroom, threw open the door and confronted the lying, double-dealing, untrustworthy dog who stood beside the bed in the now lamp-lit room fastening what she sincerely hoped were his still cold and soggy jeans.

  He looked up when the bathroom door flew open.

  “Hey,” he said. Once upon a time the crooked smile that accompanied that might have dazzled her. Now it made her see red.

  “You lying bastard,” she snarled. “Did you really think you could reverse honey-trap me?”

  22

  Monday, December 16th

  “What?” Colin looked startled.

  “4-6-9-2,” she spit, and hurled the phone at him.

  He caught it with a deft one-handed grab before it could hit him. His expression now lively with alarm, he shoved the phone into his pocket without even bothering to look at it and came toward her.

  “You had sex with me to try to get me to lead you to Mason. How low, how vile, can you get?”

  “Wait—hold on. Just calm down. No, I did not. What makes you—”

  “I saw the messages on your phone, you asshole.” She was so angry her voice shook. “The hidden messages, on the secret part of your phone you hid from me.”

  “Need to know,” he said, which was the equivalent of waving a red flag in front of a bull.

  Steam practically poured out of her ears. “You know where you can shove that.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong. I had sex with you because you’re gorgeous, and sexy, and I wanted you—want you—so much I was getting half crippled from it every time I was around you. You got under my skin the first time I saw you. You—” He was close by then, and made the mistake of reaching for her.

  “Don’t even try.” She executed a push-up chest strike that knocked him back several feet.

  “Damn it, Bianca.”

  She stalked toward him. “How much of it was a lie? The Five Eyes thing? Lynette Holbrook? The ChapStick? The CIA kill team? All of it? Tell me.”

  Retreating before her, he held his hands up placatingly. “None of it. Nothing. No lies. Well, maybe an omission or two. But everything I told you is true. Lynette, Park, all of it. Yo
u’re overreacting.”

  That was so infuriating she could practically feel her body vibrate like a tuning fork. “I’m overreacting?”

  “Shh, don’t screech. It’s just after four in the morning and we’re in a hotel, remember? The last thing we need is to draw attention to—”

  “News flash, Romeo. I don’t give a damn.” With the dresser at his back, he was out of room. She kept coming, and got right up in his face. The fact that he was a head taller and almost twice as broad just made him more to want to kill. “Do you get paid extra for seducing women? Or, wait—you’re pretty sneaky with a camera. Did you make a sex tape? Are you going to try to use it to blackmail me? Good luck with that.”

  “Would you listen?” This time he succeeded in grabbing her arms. Growling, she used a lightning combination of momentum and a hip throw to put him on the floor. Sneering down at him as he lay grimacing on his back, she turned to walk away.

  “Damn it. That hurt.” With a quick lunge he managed to catch her ankle and send her tumbling to the floor, too. Luckily, the butt-ugly carpet cushioned the fall. She hit on her side, rolled to her back and just had time to register the unpleasant prickliness of the synthetic fibers beneath her before he threw himself on top of her. Catching her wrists before she could administer the double ear strike that was whipping his way, he pinned her to the carpet with his weight. “Hold it right there. We need to talk.”

  She gave a snort of unamused laughter. “In your dreams. You really think I’m going to believe a word you say?”

  “Like you’re a fount of honesty and integrity?” His weight and heat and the sexy smoothness of all those bronzed muscles was newly familiar in a way that acted as the rough equivalent of a match to gasoline.

  “More than you.” Snapping her heel sideways up toward her butt, she used the strength in her legs to kick her body up with enough force to flip him off her. Freeing her wrists with a jerk, she leaped triumphantly to her feet and aimed an ax stomp at his stomach. He managed to dodge it before springing upright himself.

  He said, “You’ve been lying to me ever since we met.”

  With both of them now on their feet, they circled each other warily. His breathing had quickened and his eyes gleamed a challenge at her.

  She bared her teeth at him. “Not only have you been lying to me, you’ve been using me and manipulating me.”

  “I’ve saved your ass is what I’ve done.”

  “Oh, is that what you tell yourself when you look in the mirror?” Her words dripped scorn.

  “Just so we’re clear, last night was not a honey-trap. I have never honey-trapped you. You, on the other hand, have definitely honey-trapped me.” Without even a flicker of his eyes to warn her what was coming, he lunged, caught her around the waist and propelled her backward until they crashed down onto the bed.

  “What?” Throwing chops and elbows, most of which he managed to avoid or parry, she fought to free herself from his attempts to hold on to her. The bed creaked and shuddered, reminding her of— Don’t even go there. “Jackass.”

  “Would you stop?” Barely managing to catch a knee that was meant for his privates in the thigh instead, he grunted at the impact and once again made use of his superior weight by throwing his body on top of her. She went for his eyes. His hands shackled her wrists, pinning them beside her head. She glared up at him. “Who kissed who and then hit them with a Taser? Who kissed who again and then knocked them out with a drug?”

  “Who kissed who on a boat and then handcuffed them to a rail?”

  “That wasn’t a honey-trap. That was done for your protection. Just like me having a team assembled to arrest Thayer if he shows up around you again is for your protection.”

  “Bullshit.” Snagging his leg with her foot, she executed a sweep that allowed her to throw him off her. Instead of making good her escape and catapulting from the bed, she flung herself on top of him, straddling him and pinning him in place with an elbow to his throat. From that position, she could have crushed his larynx with ease. Instead she leaned in and exerted just enough pressure to make sure he knew what she could do.

  His eyes narrowed at her. He didn’t struggle. Given where her elbow was, her reaction to that was, Smart man. “Thayer’s wanted by every major law enforcement agency in the world. Sooner or later, he’s going to go down. There’s not a doubt about it. And if you’re working with him when it happens, you’re going to go down with him. And I’m not only talking getting arrested and spending years in prison. I’m talking getting killed, as in shot, hanged, beheaded, whatever, depending on who gets to him first.”

  “In other words, you’re using me to try to catch Mason for me. That is so sweet—aren’t you the noble altruist?” She pressed a little harder with her elbow. He coughed, but didn’t try to fight free. Instead his eyes bored into hers.

  “Why are you so loyal to him? Does he have something on you? Whatever it is, if you tell me we can make it go away. I’m on your side, baby, I swear.”

  “You really think I’m going to fall for that?” But the question startled her, made her think. She was loyal to Mason because—despite everything, deep inside she was still bound by the ties of a lifetime, she supposed. Because, no matter how bitter the betrayal, some tiny, unclued-in part of her still thought of him as her father. It was a stark realization.

  Which she had no intention of sharing with anyone, much less the lying scumbag beneath her.

  “It’s the truth. I am on your side. I’ve been on your side from just about the first moment I saw you, when you fell from the ceiling in your sexy underwear.”

  Her lip curled. “Save it. Think I don’t know an enemy when I get seduced and backstabbed by one?”

  “If you think I’m your enemy, why don’t you go ahead and push that elbow down a little harder? Larynx is like an eggshell. Doesn’t take much to crush it.”

  Their eyes met. In his she read complete confidence that she wouldn’t do it. The galling part? He was right. She wasn’t going to kill or even really injure him, just like she hadn’t really injured him all along. Time to face the terrible truth—she’d been pulling her punches. The other terrible truth was, so had he.

  So what did that say about the state of their—not relationship?

  Short answer: there was a reason love was a four-letter word.

  Not that there was any question, any longer, of her being even the slightest bit in love with him. Her eyes had been opened in time, which was a good thing, really. Where could it lead—gold rings and picket fences and babies? Given what she was, those were things that weren’t ever going to happen for her.

  But something like, say, a broken heart had been a dangerously close-run thing.

  “Go to hell.” She flung herself off him in complete self-disgust, then rolled off the bed and retreated toward the middle of the room. A succession of creaks told her that he was getting off the bed, too. She turned to glare at him.

  “I’m trying to catch Thayer because he’s a wanted criminal and catching him is my job. I’m trying to keep you safe while it happens so you don’t go down with him.”

  She folded her arms over her chest. “That’s the biggest load of crap I ever heard.”

  “It’s the truth.” He came toward her. “Just like I brought you into this and hooked you up with Five Eyes because if I hadn’t, sooner or later the CIA would have killed you. And speaking of, and referring back to the whole lying-through-your-teeth-every-time-you-open-your-mouth thing, you’ve never told me anything even approaching the truth about what you did to get a CIA kill team sicced on you. So how about it?”

  “Need to know,” she said with bite. “And by the way, just so you know, if you ever touch me again I’ll break you in half.”

  An upward quirk to one corner of his mouth told her what he thought of that. But he stopped where he was, thrusting his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels as he regarded her almost grimly.

  “Look,” he said. “There’s—something
—between us. I don’t know—a spark. Instead of fighting it, maybe we should try exploring it, see where it leads.”

  “Screw that.”

  “You know it’s there as well as I do. Last night—”

  “You know what? The best thing you can do is forget last night.”

  “—was special. You are amazing, and—”

  “I don’t care.” Her tone fierce, she broke in again before he could say anything more. Remembering how they’d been together, the things they’d said and done, infuriated—and hurt. Mustering every inner defense she had, she rejected the memory along with the pain, walled them off, compartmentalized them into something to be dealt with later as she’d been taught. The anger she grabbed on to with both hands, used it as inner Kevlar to wrap around her stupidly vulnerable heart. “Whatever ‘special’ thing you’re trying to make me think is there between us, isn’t. It’s nonexistent.”

  “Bianca—”

  “We had a one-night stand, and it’s over. If it meant more than that to you, I suggest you try calling 1-800-get-a-life.”

  He opened his mouth as if to say something else, closed it again and ran a hand through his hair. “Bloody hell. We don’t have time for this. I know you’re pissed at me, and I’m not saying you don’t have reason. But how about we put aside the personal for right now and concentrate on doing the job we came here to do? Then we can talk this out.”

  She met him look for level look. “Fine. If you didn’t totally lie about everything, if this operation is as crucial as you led me to believe, if me delivering this flash drive to Park will really get the CIA off my back, then let’s get going and get it over with. But you can forget about talking later. After the job’s over, we—you and I—are done. Got it?”

  From his expression she expected an argument, but after the barest of hesitations he inclined his head. “If that’s how you want it,” he said.

  “That’s how I want it.”

  “Then you got it.” He glanced at the clock beside the bed. “It’s 4:32. We have a little less than an hour and a half before you’re scheduled to meet with Park.”