by Karin Harlow
“Calculating,” Cruz muttered.
Godfather smiled. “Exactly.”
He turned and stared at the static images left on the screen. At every turn, Jax had challenged life—no fear, no hesitation, no regrets. The woman who’d left the room less than twenty minutes ago was hard as nails on the outside, but terrified on the inside. He’d seen it in her eyes. And he’d seen it magnify each time she’d thought someone had been about to touch her. Sighing, he rubbed the back of his neck.
When he had chest-butted her, he’d honestly had no clue what she would do. But when she hadn’t attacked, he’d known then he had her. He liked that despite her instinct to fight, she had the self-control to do what was in her best interest.
“She does a good job hiding behind that mouth of hers,” Stone said. “But she’s not just unstable. She’s scared, and fear causes mistakes.”
Godfather nodded. The future of the team hung on every member’s being in top form, mentally and physically. “Fear can be turned around and used to one’s advantage,” he said.
“It can also make you second-guess yourself,” Cruz said from beside him.
“In Jax Cassidy’s case, her fear will keep her focused,” Godfather rejoined.
“I know we all agreed to recruit a female operative,” Stone started, “but . . . she makes me nervous. Our motto has always been no rules. We do the job and we do whatever it takes. Stealing. Killing. Fu—” Stone hesitated.
Godfather shook his head. “She’s too smart to use her body as a first assault.”
Cruz coughed. “Didn’t she just tell us she seduced the information she needed out of that fed?”
Godfather nodded again, trying very hard not to get pissed at his men. Didn’t they see the potential in her that he did?
“Different set of circumstances. When I’m done with her, she won’t have to use her body in a sexual way to gain the upper hand. Her brain will do all the work. It’s why I recruited her.”
Stone swiped his hand across his face in frustration. Godfather knew what bugged Gage. He didn’t attempt to quell his concerns. It would go down as it always did. When the team had reservations, they hashed it out, then came to an agreeable, mutual resolution. The last thing he wanted was for there to be dissension among his operatives. Each one of their lives depended on complete trust in the other.
“Did any of you notice how she practically jumped out of her skin when she thought I was going to touch her?” Stone asked, then directed his next question at Godfather. “And when you chest-butted her, she about caved on the spot.”
Godfather nodded. “Normal behavior in a perceived hostile environment. She’ ll be desensitized soon enough. She’ ll go through the same assimilation you all went through, but the accelerated version.”
“I don’t think—” Stone started.
Godfather flashed. “You don’t think what? Or do you suddenly have a problem with my authority, Stone? Or is it something personal?”
Stone met the stares of his teammates. Leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head, he looked squarely at Godfather and said, “Nothing personal, sir. She’s just damned distracting.”
Godfather smiled. “I know. Another reason she was handpicked. I’m counting on every man we set her up against to be blindsided.”
“How much time do we have before she needs to be up to speed?” Cruz asked.
Godfather stood, thoughtful, then said, “As much time as she needs.”
Every man in the room stood, slack-jawed. Godfather shook his head in bewilderment. “Do I have to explain the differences between the sexes again?”
“How long is as long as it takes?” Cruz demanded. “And why?”
“Because, Cruz, she’s a female! And a traumatized one at that. She needs to heal.” He glared at each man in the room. “Do you want her discharged before she’s emotionally stable? Do you want her as your cover and take the chance she’s going to nut up, or do you want to give her the time she needs to work things out?”
“What if she doesn’ t?” Stone said.
“She will,” Godfather flatly answered, then exited the room.
Godfather stalked from the war room and down the hall to the office area. He nodded at the petite blonde who turned from one of her four computer screens in her chair. Her dark brown eyes shone bright with intelligence and, he could see, concern.
He frowned and put his hand up in the stop position. “Not you too, Naomi.”
He watched her set her jaw. Always a prelude to an argument. “I might be just your paper pusher, sir, but I have a stake here too. That woman is half cocked, loaded and about to go on a killing spree.”
There was not much that got past Godfather’s right arm. Naomi Sullivan was the one who facilitated the details. While he was lord and master of the team and ops, she was mistress of the internal working of L.O.S.T.—reports, dossiers, procurement of official dummy docs, fact finder, travel agent, realtor, shopper of all things necessary for survival, and, ultimately, backup. She even hired the housekeeper. And the cleaners who took care of messes they left behind. She was the glue that held them all together. Rarely did she work in the field. They were all better served by her doing what she did best—keeping them alive and making them disappear, all from a stroke on the keyboard. She was to Godfather what Miss Moneypenny and M combined were to 007.
“Did something happen between here and the assimilation chamber?”
She shook her head, her short blonde bob brushing her cheeks. “To the naked eye, no. But she’s as jumpy as a rabbit and has serious people issues. She looked haunted. Unstable. She scares me.”
“We all have people issues, Naomi, that’s why we’ re here.”
“She’ ll run the first chance she gets.”
“While she was out we implanted a GPS chip in her scalp.”
Naomi gasped, her big brown eyes widening before narrowing. “You are a bad, bad man, Mr. Black.”
His smile retracted. “Don’t forget it.” As he strode past her to the observation room that gave him complete access to the assimilation chamber, Godfather scowled again. He stopped at the door to the observation room. As he opened the door, his frustration mounted. Did Angela Giacomelli have too much crap in her head to be of use to him? Would she be the downfall of L.O.S.T.? Had he made a mistake? He would never jeopardize what they had all worked so hard for. His gut told him she would work out. Yes, she was a head case right now. Unpredictable and too damaged to use. But he knew that with time and training he would have the perfect foil for getting to criminal masterminds.
He stepped into the dimly lit room. Though she wouldn’t be able to hear or see him, Godfather was still careful when he entered. He was surprised to see Cruz and Stone inside, both intently watching the lone figure on the other side of the mirror.
Wrapped in a thick white robe, her dark hair hanging damp around her shoulders from her shower, Jax sat at a table, facing them, with a feast of Italian food spread out before her. He knew she hadn’t eaten that day, and probably not much the day before. From his extensive file on her, he knew Italian was her favorite. He’d hoped to entice her with it, but her head hung from her shoulders as she picked at the meatballs in front of her.
“Dr. Martin is on her way,” Stone said.
Godfather nodded.
“It’s going to take more than a shrink, even one as good as Barb, to fix that,” Cruz said, inclining his head toward Jax.
“Yeah, but I’m going to make her into a lethal weapon. Better than all you assholes combined,” Godfather mused out loud.
“What’s wrong with us?” Cruz asked, indignant.
“Not a damn thing. She’s just going to be more.”
Gage snorted. “I’ ve got a hundred bucks that says Doc Martin won’t be able to crack her.”
“You’ re on,” Godfather said.
They all knew firsthand what Barbara Martin was capable of extracting from someone who wanted to keep their pain buried. They had all been a
t her mercy at one time or another. She was ruthless and relentless. Godfather always had the feeling she had lost someone close to her, and maybe felt like she had something to prove to the rest of the world. When he’d voiced his thoughts, she’d shut him down, curtly reminding him he’d not been there to discuss her private life but to let her get into his head and make him healthy enough to bring in the bad guys the regular cops couldn’ t.
Godfather let out a long breath and looked back at Jax, who now twirled the spaghetti on her plate until she had a huge glob of it on her fork. She flung it down and absently started to twirl another glob.
“I liked her better full of piss and vinegar, not like this. Beaten,” Cruz grunted.
“Don’t underestimate her,” Stone said. “Underneath that wet hair is a sleeping tiger.”
“You’ re right, Stone. I don’t think she has it in her to quit anything. Our problem, once she buys into her new life, is going to be keeping her leashed.”
“You should have seen her all bristly and hissing in the sally port at the courthouse—and even on the bus. I think it’s just part of her nature.”
Godfather watched her intently as Stone’s words penetrated his brain. She’d fallen hard, but it was in her nature to fight. But not quite yet. She wasn’t done crashing and burning.
He knew from experience that it could take years just to be able to function on a most basic level. The hardest part was reaching out and asking for help, then accepting it. Because accepting help meant you had to be honest, and being honest meant exposing the ugly rawness inside. He still had his own demons that lurked deep inside him. Every day he wrestled with them, and every once in a while they got the upper hand. Yeah, he knew exactly where she was coming from.
He looked back at Jax through the two-way and stopped breathing. She stared at him as if nothing but air separated them. Her green eyes sparkled dangerously. But it wasn’t her glacial glare that had him holding his breath, it was the way her fingertips probed the area behind her right ear. He knew the moment she figured it out. He cringed when she took the fork and bent back one of the tines on the edge of the table.
“Holy shit,” Cruz whispered.
She dug the tine into her scalp and probed with her left hand. Godfather watched her face. Her eyes glittered in fury, not once wavering from the two-way mirror. Bloodied fingers lowered from her head. She raised them. There in her fingertips was the flat GPS chip, no larger in circumference than half the size of a small eraser head. She dropped it onto her plate, where it made a slight ting sound. Never once did she break her stare.
Unhurriedly, she stood and made her way around the small table. As she did, the sash on her robe loosened. She didn’t bother to tighten it. She stopped when she stood directly in front of them. An excited twitter skipped along his spine. Not sexual excitement but the excitement of knowing he had hit the jackpot. All three men stood silent, watched and waited.
She leaned toward the mirror and breathed heavily onto it, fogging it up. With a bloody finger, she wrote A-S-S-H-O-L-E-S in the fog, then flipped them the bird.
Stone laughed.
Godfather nodded, his lips quirking as relief poured through him. “I think, boys, she’s going to do just fine.” He knew as he said the words that his initial instincts had been spot-on. She would become a prime operative.
FIVE
July 7, 8:32 a.m.
Washington, D.C.
It was already eighty-two degrees with the promise of hitting the century mark by noon. The dog days of summer held the nation’s capital in a choke hold. But despite the heat and the oppressive humidity, tourists swarmed the city. Like the flocks of birds spanning the rich, velvety green carpet of the mall, they took advantage of the cooler temperatures of the morning before flocking to the cooler interiors of the numerous monuments and museums.
Senator William Rowland did not pause to behold the wonder of nature or observe the multitude of tourists that swarmed around him. Instead, he drew a deep, nervous breath and scanned the crowds who mulled around the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He looked up at the solemn stare of Lincoln, then past the marble statue in search of the man he’d seen only a handful of times over the last two years. Always clandestinely. Always at night. Always beneath the Gettysburg Address. The symbolism of their meeting spot was not lost on Rowland.
Today, Rowland had insisted on a daylight meeting.
His lips drew into a tight line as he glanced at his watch. The man was late. But it didn’t matter. Today would be their last meeting. Rowland was not a coward by any stretch of the imagination. There was no room for a queasy stomach in politics, but there was something about the man he was meeting that unnerved him on a very primal level. Even when he’d been desperate and, like an angel of mercy, the man had materialized, his instincts had told him to turn and run, that nothing but trouble would come from even the slightest association. But he hadn’t run. Lives had been at stake, all because the American government had not done what had needed to be done. The man, however, had delivered, and the tentative alliance they had formed had blossomed into a full-fledged codependency. Unfortunately, while Rowland had known that codependent relationships always benefited one party over the other, he’d only just realized that he was the person at the losing end of the equation.
Feeling like a target standing out in the open, Rowland walked through the groups of awe-inspired tourists, the strolling couples holding hands, and the man reading a newspaper on a park bench.
Startled by the sudden pressure of a firm grip on his right shoulder, Rowland flinched and spun around.
“Senator Rowland, good morning,” the man the senator knew as Colonel Lazarus said from behind him.
“Jesus, I hate when you do that!” A man always in complete control, the senator did not like surprises. Yet all this man did was surprise him. Rowland turned, facing Lazarus. He was dressed completely in black, not one inch of his pale skin showing except the lower part of his face. The guy was just plain odd. Reluctantly, Rowland shook the colonel’s gloved hand even as he struggled to meet what he knew were pale, frosty eyes shadowed by a wide-brimmed black felt hat and thick sunglasses. The colonel’s lips pulled back from very long teeth. At that moment, the senator knew how it felt to look down a shark’s throat. The fine hairs on his body rose, and his skin chilled beneath his ample clothing. The colonel’s grip increased. The senator scowled and yanked his hand away.
“Just staying on top of my game, Senator.”
The senator’s scowl deepened. Nervously, feeling like he was in the colonel’s crosshairs, he glanced around, half expecting to see the glint of a scope. “This isn’t a game,” Rowland bit off, still unable to shake the feeling he was a target.
The colonel smiled wider and slid down the large pair of black sunglasses as he too scanned the peripheral area. Unlike Rowland’s rigid stance, the colonel’s body was relaxed in a defiant, I-dare-you-to-try-something kind of way. Apprehension settled with a thud in Rowland’s gut.
“C’ mon now, Bill, you’ re a sitting U.S. senator. No one would dare take out a U.S. senator.” A short pause emphasized the colonel’s next words. “Would they?”
Rowland narrowed his eyes, not missing the threat. It was a habit the colonel had fallen into, and one he was going to cut short, here and now. “You talk about audacity?”
The colonel raised a black umbrella he had been holding in his left hand and pressed a button. With a short, sharp snap, it popped open, casting a dark shadow over both men. Rowland jumped back at the abrupt sound. The colonel smiled. “I have a slight sensitivity to the sun.” He inclined his head forward. “Shall we walk, Senator?” he asked, inclining his head away from the thickening crowds. “I feel too much like a target standing still out here in the open.”
“Talk about a target? You’ ve painted one on both our backs.” They walked toward the Vietnam Memorial. “This latest business in Venezuela? Too high-profile. Too damn high-profile.”
“The job was co
mpleted,” the colonel said.
“Damn it, man!” Rowland shouted, then lowered his voice when several passersby gawked. He grasped the colonel’s beefy arm and steered him over to the far edge of the promenade. “The lunatic running that country already despises us as it is. And what do you do? Leave one of his oil ministers cut from balls to gullet—and on a public road, no less!”
The colonel abruptly stopped and jerked his arm from Rowland’s grasp. Low and level he said, “He needed to be found. It needed to be public. It made the correct statement! And, might I remind you, we also left enough dope and evidence of dummied bank accounts to suggest cartel involvement.”
Rowland moved to the edge of the grass and softly said, “It was in the papers for Christ’s sake. If it ever leaked out that we, that I, was involved—”
The colonel quickly cut him off. “That’s never going to happen because I’ ll never let it happen.” The colonel laid a hand on his shoulder. “Senator, you contracted The Solution to do the things our government can’t or won’t do.” The colonel leaned in until they were almost nose-to-nose. “Why? Because if it comes down to it, we’ ll take the fall instead of you. And believe me, that won’t happen.”
“And Turkey? Explain Turkey to me.”
The colonel stepped back, dropped his hand and shrugged. “What’s to explain? The Iranian consulate was harboring a known terrorist. That SOB Say-Ed and that extremist he was protecting had to go. Making it look like a homo love-murder-suicide was genius and not my idea, I might add, but that of a very good operative. The same one who handled Venezuela, in fact.” The colonel softened his tone and said, “Look, Senator, we’ re on the same side here, and with all due respect, everything is fine. Could not be better, in fact. We’ re cleaning up a lot of the bottom-feeders out there.” He looked pointedly at the senator. “That which needs handling is getting handled, and no one, no one is going to be the wiser.”