“Pardon me?” the community center guard interrupted, giving Shay the edge to jolt away. A retired police officer, he wore his new uniform with crisp precision. “They’re impounding your car and need the keys.”
No car, no apartment, no purse. She couldn’t even have her dog for comfort, since she’d given Buster over to her neighbor to watch. All of which seemed petty to complain about when she could have died. “The key is still in the ignition. I was about to leave when the shooting started.”
“Thank you, Miss Bassett.” His eyes blazed with the excitement of being back in the thick of things. “I’ll bring it around for the tow truck.” The old flatfoot launched into a light jog back toward the crime scene.
Shay was alone with Vince again, but not for long. “I think it’s best that I stay with someone else.”
“Because of that kiss that doesn’t exist.”
“I can stay with Angeline. In fact, I should go ahead and call her now.”
“I thought you said she already has a full house.”
“Can you promise me that if we’re alone in a hotel room, we won’t kiss again?” Or more.
His silence answered loud and clear.
“I’m calling Angeline.” She pulled out her cell phone, the tow truck beep, beep, beeping as it backed to hook up her car.
Her thumb hovered over her cell phone keypad as she watched the guard slide into her little car to move it into a better position for the tow truck. Her ten-year-old compact wasn’t much, but it was hers. Pocked with bullets, it had protected her well this morning. How odd to feel such a swell of nostalgia for a car she’d planned to replace when the end of the year sales rolled around.
She forced herself to look away, turning her back and focusing on her phone again. Vince scowled at her, obviously not one bit pleased about being overridden.
Tough.
She hit the preprogrammed number and snuck one last look at her soon-to-be-towed compact, the guard cranking the engine. The phone rang—
And her car exploded.
Don guided his car through the landscaped entrance leading into his condo complex and wished raging thoughts were as easily steered.
He had a couple of hours for a shower and power nap before he needed to return to the office. He wouldn’t have left at all, but his people wouldn’t have their take on the video feed ready until then. He suspected it could be a long time before he saw the inside of his place again.
His heart jackhammered a litany of denial in his ears, but he couldn’t ignore reality.
Some bastard had tried to blow up his daughter.
Had he and Paulina been so focused on concerns about an attack at the hearing, they’d missed a sign? His screwup could have cost Shay her life.
He wound along the narrow road, inching past a rent-a-cop doing rounds in his cart. Yet another reminder of how close Shay had come to dying. If not for that too-thoughtful-for-his-own-good old guard moving her car for the tow truck . . . There had to be more they could do.
At least they had a lock on a cell phone from those responsible. Now they had to hope the kid didn’t toss it. Their intel showed it was a prepaid sort, but unlike the mob, these thugs didn’t have disposable income. He wanted to grab the little bastard and rattle his cage.
Paulina, however, had vetoed him. She thought that would alert others in the chain, causing them to close ranks. She insisted they could learn more by cloning the cell phone, enabling them to trace all the other numbers it called. The dark ops team’s advanced technology expanded the scope, speed, and reliability of sniffing out a network through electronic cloning. Now that Paulina had fast-tracked the secret FISA warrant needed to cover their butts legally, they were ready to roll. Vince and his fellow aviators would be spending a crap-ton of time at their workstations.
Impotence roared through his veins as fiercely as his high-powered engine sped up. He powered down lanes leading him deeper into the gated neighborhood of three-story mock brownstone condos.
He whipped up the driveway in his corner unit, headlights sweeping across the minimalist yard and the front stoop.
A front stoop with a woman waiting for him.
His shoulders slumped.
Jayne sat on the top step, her long legs tucked to the side, porch light glinting off gray blond hair held back from her face in a clasp. She’d worn her shoulder-length hair that way since the day he’d met her in college. She’d always been perfectly groomed, perfectly composed, perfectly pissed at all the ways he hadn’t been the perfect husband.
He glanced down the row of condos, and sure enough, there was a car parked in the guest spot. If there was anything in this world that would give him a heart attack, that woman topped the list.
He turned off the engine and stepped out with a heavy sigh he reserved especially for his ex-wife. “I have to shower, change, eat, and head straight back to work. You’re going to have to take a number.”
“If I listened to every time you said that, we would never have a conversation.”
Sounded like a good plan to him.
“Don, we have to talk.”
“Fine.” He brushed past, catching a whiff of her Chanel perfume.
His senses tumbled into a time warp of naked memories that left him twitching below the belt. He tamped down irritation. He’d been married to the woman for nineteen years. They’d slept together, had great sex before their relationship dried up. It was only natural his body would occasionally go on autopilot when she walked in the room.
He absolutely refused to feel guilty. He and Paulina had never asked for nor expected exclusivity.
Still, he had been sleeping with her for four months, respected her in the workplace for a year now. She deserved better from him.
Don pushed inside his condo, Jayne hot on his heels with tut-tutting.
“Wow, Don, love your cookie-cutter decorator. I must get his number. I’ve always longed for a place with nothing more personal than a razor and food.”
“I like brown and black. So sue me.” He wasn’t here enough for it to matter anyway.
He pitched his keys on the black lacquer dinette table. Jayne still had baby pictures of their two kids on her key chain, for God’s sake. Of course she also used that as a reminder to their adult children of how they’d failed to do the expected thing of marrying and having children. Which usually lead right into how bad he’d fucked up in raising them.
She hitched her purse higher on her shoulder. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”
Damn, the woman was so good with the guilt, she should hire out. Right now any issues he had with his kids took a huge-ass backseat to making sure he didn’t lose a child altogether.
His gut burned. “Not really. But if you’re going to tell me anyway, make it quick.”
“As polite and sensitive as ever, I see.”
Maybe the whole thing was just indigestion from the casserole Paulina fed him.
He tossed his roll of antacids beside his keys. “I thought when we got divorced we would spend less time together?”
Standing behind the sofa barricade, Jayne straightened a pillow on his leather sectional. “You were in the air force then. There isn’t any way to spend less time together when you were gone all the time.”
“Yeah, yeah, old script. I took care of Sean’s tuition. We’re done here.” He gestured toward the front door.
She dropped her leather purse on the couch. “Don’t you dare ignore me.”
“No worries, Jayne, you’ve always made sure no one ignores you.”
“Are you trying to pick a fight?”
“We never needed to try.” As much as he wanted to send her on her way, he couldn’t waste the time standing around. “If you want to talk, you’re going to have to follow me around, and you’d better speed things up, because I’m going to be naked and in the shower within the next five minutes.”
Jayne grabbed him by the arm, stopping him as much by her grip as by the fact that they never touched
each other at all anymore. He stared down at her smooth hair and furrowed brow.
Her Chanel perfume wafted up again, another thing that hadn’t changed. He remembered the scent well after buying the requisite bottle every Valentine’s Day.
Her trembling, however, tugged at him far more than her scent.
Don gripped her shoulder. “Jayne?”
“It’s all over the news. I had to hear it on the car radio that someone tried to kill our daughter. And then when I spoke to her, she tells me this threat has been going on for days? You let her wander around without knowing what kind of danger she was in.”
And Jayne didn’t even realize the worst of it.
“She knows now.”
“When did you tell her?”
He forced himself not to look away like some disobedient toddler about to pitch the remote control in the commode. Lord, but Shay had been cute when she waterlogged their electronics. “We couldn’t risk her tipping anyone off.”
“We? We?”
“The FBI, the government.” He was skating on thin ice acknowledging that much. He couldn’t go so far as to out the air force or how he, a CIA agent, had tangled himself up in an operation on U.S. soil.
She shrugged free of his hand on her shoulder. “Damn you and damn governmental obligations. I put up with your BS when you were ignoring me. But when the job comes before your own flesh and blood, our children you are biologically obligated to protect . . .”
She shoved against his chest. Once. Twice. Hard.
He captured her wrists. “I’m doing what I think is best for her.”
“You’re doing what you always do.” Her fingers curled into fists against him, digging deep until her manicured nails disappeared altogether. “You view the world through analytical eyes, because it’s easier than actually feeling anything.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
She pulled her arms free slowly, eying him with incredulity. “Are you really so clueless that you don’t get it? Even your children know. I believe the air force suspected, too, but you were of better use to them numb.”
Numb? She thought he was some robot? Just having her here and talking about Shay in danger had him roaring inside with hellish memories of that night their daughter had tried to kill herself.
The doctors had all made it clear Shay hadn’t been “acting out.” She’d been serious. Days after that boy Tommy had died, she’d taken amphetamines bought off some street corner, filled the tub with icy water, and made a longitudinal cut along her wrist to sever more arteries and veins.
Anger, impotence, and yeah, pain threatened to explode him. “Screw you, Jayne. And screw this. I don’t need you probing around inside my head. So what if I don’t go all Joe Sensitive like that nice, safe accountant you’ve been dating? For all his sensitivity, the loser took six fucking years to put that engagement ring on your finger, and he still doesn’t have the balls to set a date.”
Don turned to snatch up his antacids.
“Ever heard of PTSD?”
That, he couldn’t let pass. He turned back to face her. “Yeah, I’ve heard it from you non-fucking-stop, even after we divorced. You’re the one who needs to listen. I wasn’t a POW. I never got shot down. I may have been . . . overtaxed at times, but that’s a long way from PTSD.”
“You keep telling yourself that.” She stood her ground in her pretty flowered skirt with her cotton top hugging her willowy body, pearls at the neckline. “Just like others told themselves because they were afraid of missing out on a promotion. I had to stop caring about you a long time ago, but I do care about our children and what happens to them.”
Like he didn’t? That horrible night still fresh in his mind, he felt anything but emotionless. “Ah, I see where this is going. You’re blaming me again for Sean’s aimless life, for Shay slashing her—”
“Stop.” Just that fast her composure faded. Tears swelled in her blue eyes. “Do not go there just to hurt me so much I can’t think. I’m talking about today. Right now. Making sure that you’re doing everything you can to keep our baby girl safe.” Her voice faltered. “I can’t risk her again,” she gasped. “I can’t—”
Ah hell.
He reached for her. She shoved at his chest again, but this time he didn’t restrain her hands or move away. He just tucked her against him, her tears flowing so fast now they soaked through his shirt to sear his skin. There came the guilt pouring over him in buckets full. He hadn’t just failed the kids. He’d failed her.
“Jayne, honey, shhh. It’s okay, Jaynie. She’s okay now. Strong and whole.” Probably more so than him if he took his ex-wife’s assessment of his mental stability to heart. His arms twitched tighter around her. “We’ve got everything under control. She’s being protected. Nobody’s going to get through Vince Deluca.”
She swiped her wrist under her nose and sniffled. “Vince, huh? You always did have a lot of faith in him, even when other people didn’t. I admired that about you.”
There was a time he and Jayne had liked a lot of things about each other.
“Vince is a good man.” Don reached into his back pocket for his handkerchief and pressed it into her hand, the same way he’d done the day he’d proposed and she cried her eyes out then, too.
And it hadn’t taken him six years to pony up the ring or the date.
“Thanks.” She knuckled away the tears, her fingers stained with mascara. She inched back, a wobbly smile in place at odds with the tear streaks in her makeup tugging at something inside him. “I can’t believe you still carry these.”
“A guy never knows when he’ll have a pretty girl crying on his chest.”
“Girl?” She snorted on another sniffle. “Good Lord, Don, I haven’t been a girl in . . . I don’t even want to say how long.”
Something shifted inside, something that compelled him to say, “You’re still pretty, and you know it.”
He only looked into her eyes for less than a second, and then he was kissing her.
When had he even lowered his mouth to hers? He’d just acted by instinct born from years of marriage. Her mouth felt the same, soft and fitting at just the perfect angle to give him access, and he couldn’t stop his response to her, to the familiarity triggering some sort of sensory memory.
Feel those subtle curves.
Taste her peppermint toothpaste.
Smell more of her Chanel scent until it was as if she filled every inch inside him.
His body went on high alert, and damn it, damn it, damn it, he needed to get his head on straight and his ass in gear. He deserved every bit of that guilt she’d been heaping on him.
Casserole churned uneasily in his gut even long past when it should have been out of his system.
He broke away. No easing or niceties. He had to put an end to this. He set Jayne away from him, both of them gasping. She looked as horrified as he felt.
“Don, that was wrong.”
“I know, and I am sorry. It won’t happen again. I’m doing everything I can to keep Shay safe, and I’ll make sure you’re kept in the loop as much as is legally possible.” He gripped his bedroom doorknob. “I have to shower. You can see yourself out.”
The front door clicked closed before he even made it to the bathroom.
No more rides around town on his bike.
No more leaving Shay out there in the open.
Vince would make sure she stayed in protective custody until she delivered her congressional testimony and they had had the people responsible for these threats in custody.
She rode in the rental car beside him, staring out the window at Lake Erie, picking nervously at her clothes, covered in grime from hitting the dirty parking lot. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get over the horror of how that dear old guard died in my place.”
Words weren’t going to fix this one. Vince kept driving.
The FBI had arranged a safe house setting for her at a hotel, even transferring her dog to a kennel and gathering necessit
ies for her rather than risk showing her face anywhere.
Vince turned on a side road, each glowing streetlamp taking them farther from the East Side. He couldn’t even think about how close she’d been to those bullets, how close she’d come to turning that car key. Sure, he’d been in the vehicle with her, but he’d faced death often enough in his life to shake off the near brush.
Her near misses with the bomb and the drive-by, however, shook him to his boots at a time when he was already reeling from the impact of her mouth on his. He eyed the rearview mirror, checking again for a tail.
Still clear.
Within the next five minutes, he would have her locked up and secured in an exclusive hotel with police protection throughout the building. He would feel better if he could stay with her 24/7, but he still had a job to do, a job that would hopefully put an end to all of this.
Even now, Don had his people following up leads.
Vince winced from thoughts of Shay’s dad. Thinking about her father only brought back old scripts of staying away from Shay out of respect to him. Old habits were tough to break.
But after that explosive kiss against the car, he suspected this was one avenue he would have to travel if he ever expected to put thoughts of Shay to rest. She, however, didn’t appear so inclined.
He paused at a stoplight right outside the hotel, even though the street was deserted so late at night.
Sighing, Shay shifted her eyes from the window to his face. “It’s going to be a long night if you’re not talking to me.”
“Fine then. What do you want to talk about?”
She tapped her chin, eying the hint of a goatee he’d shaved into his five o’clock shadow. “I thought military guys couldn’t have any facial hair other than a mustache. My dad was always complaining about having to shave so often.”
Ah, she wanted to make small talk to dodge the obvious. Still not willing to acknowledge what had happened between them. Something rare, by the way.
Her avoidance spoke more of how much the kiss had rattled her.
He stroked his short beard. “We call this category one relaxed grooming standards. There are situations where something like this is acceptable. Suddenly my bald head doesn’t look so hard-core military, does it?”
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