Twin Targets

by Jessica Andersen

  Thankfully, this time forewarned is forearmed, she thought grimly.

  No doubt Agent Sharpe figured that the end of bringing down a man like Tiberius would justify any means. She, on the other hand, needed to protect not only herself, but also Celeste. To do that, she had to maintain whatever leverage she could get her hands on.

  Knowing it, steeling herself to negotiate when her conscience was crying for her to spill every last piece of information on the spot, she stayed silent, waiting for Sharpe to start the negotiations.

  Instead, he handed her a cup of coffee and gestured her to the small dining area of the galley, where there was a booth-style table and bench seats.

  She sat, blew across the surface of the steaming liquid and took a small sip, welcoming the burn of heat and the bite of caffeine.

  He sat down opposite her, and the booth was so cramped that their knees bumped beneath the table while he got himself settled. She moved away, all too aware of his maleness, of the way his aura filled the small space and made her think of how long she’d gone without a man’s touch.

  Swallowing through a suddenly tight throat and reminding herself that she needed to tread carefully, she lifted her coffee mug and said, “You’ll find me in the system as soon as you run the prints off this mug—presuming, of course, that’s your plan if I haven’t told you who I am before we reach the U.S.C.G. station at Gloucester.”

  She expected the obvious question: why are your prints on file? Instead, he skipped right over that and said, “In other words, you needed government clearance at some point.”

  She raised an eyebrow, then winced when the motion pulled at the cut she’d cleaned and bandaged in the bathroom. “You’re assuming I wasn’t arrested.”

  Again, his smile held no humor. “Consider it a hunch, based on what I know of Tiberius’s women.”

  “I wasn’t his lover.” There was little heat in the denial, though she was tempted to ask why that had been his first guess. She wondered how he saw her, what she looked like to him.

  After almost a year of interacting solely with the guards and Tiberius’s people, it seemed suddenly strange to be speaking with a man—a tongue-draggingly handsome man—who wasn’t part of that world.

  But that was the point, wasn’t it? He wasn’t entirely out of that world—he was simply on the other side. She wasn’t sure she could trust John Sharpe. She’d trusted Tiberius, and that hadn’t turned out well at all.

  “But you’re right that I haven’t been arrested,” she conceded his point. “A few parking tickets and a stern warning for doing sixty in a thirty-five zone outside Bethesda, but that’s it. And yes, I needed government clearance.” She paused, trying to gauge how much to reveal, how much to hold back. Finally, she went with what she figured he could get from her prints and a quick background check. “My name is Sydney Westlake. I’m twenty-eight, my twin sister, Celeste, and I were raised together in foster care and we own a house together in Glen Hills, Maryland. Up until a year ago, I worked in the genetics department of the Advanced Institute of Science in Bethesda, investigating the causes and possible cures for a rare genetic disease called Singer’s syndrome.”

  She paused when the boat’s engine note changed and their momentum slowed. There were no windows in the small galley, but she thought she heard the clang of a marker buoy, indicating that they were nearing land.

  “What changed a year ago?” Sharpe prompted.

  “As you might guess from the fact that I was swimming like hell to get away from Rocky Cliff Island,” she said drily, “I went to work for Tiberius. About a year ago my funding was cut, thanks to my lying rat-bastard of an ex-boyfriend. A few weeks after that happened, a representative of the Tiberius Corporation made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’ve been working in a private lab on the island ever since, the last three months of it under lock and key until tonight.”

  He’d gone completely and utterly still as she spoke, making her think of a predator freezing the moment it sighted prey. His voice was inflectionless—and damning—when he said, “You developed bioweapons.”

  She wanted to flinch from the condemnation, but didn’t because it was the truth. A far more complicated truth than he made it sound, but the truth nonetheless. “Not intentionally, and not willingly once I figured out what he actually wanted me to do…but yes, ultimately I developed a new DNA-based vector for Tiberius, and yes, under certain circumstances, it could be used for illegal purposes.”

  She couldn’t quite bring herself to call it a bioweapon. It should’ve been a cure, a salvation. Instead, it was a direct threat to national security.

  Sharpe set his coffee aside, very deliberately, and folded his hands on the table. “What is the target? How long do we have?”

  Incongruously, she noticed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Even more unsettlingly, she found that she was glad.

  It’s only because he’s the first male nonfelon you’ve seen in eleven-plus months, she told herself. That, and she appreciated how he’d stayed one jump ahead of her in their conversation. He didn’t repeat himself, and didn’t fill the air with useless questions and chatter. He was cool and calculating, yes, but she could already tell he was extremely intelligent.

  Which could make him very dangerous. He was smart, he had an agenda and he had the law on his side. It was up to her to make sure she got what she needed without pushing so far that she got herself locked up, leaving Celeste unprotected when Tiberius came for her. Because he would come for her. There was no question of that.

  Even now, the need to get to her ailing twin sister beat beneath Sydney’s skin, along with the fear that the time taken up with her rescue and the boat ride had been too long, that Tiberius would have already figured out what Sydney had done before she left.

  If she were in his position she’d grab whatever her adversary held dear, demand the computer password in exchange and then disappear with the technology.

  Since this was Tiberius they were talking about, he would probably do exactly that…and then once he had the password, he’d kill her and Celeste outright because she’d dared to cross him.

  “Sydney, how long do we have until he sells whatever you developed?” Sharpe pressed.

  “You have some time,” she answered. “I corrupted the lab reagents and jammed the computers on the way out. Without the password, it’ll take another scientist weeks, maybe months to re-create what I did. With the password…” She trailed off, trying not to consider that possibility but knowing she had to. “With the password, he could be up and running in a few days. Maybe less.”

  He muttered a curse as the boat engines cut out and the craft drifted for a few seconds, then bumped up against the dock. Above decks, they could hear the sound of tramping footsteps and men’s shouts as coast guard crewmen fastened the lines and secured the cutter.

  “And the target?” Sharpe asked.

  Sydney kept her eyes on his, refusing to look away even though she wanted to hide her head and pretend it was all a nightmare, that she hadn’t really handed this sort of power to a man like Tiberius. “The eventual target is, indirectly, the entire United States legal system.”

  “Go on.”

  Telling herself this was the only way, Sydney said, “I built a viral vector that was intended to treat the effects of Singer’s syndrome. Under orders—threats, really—from Tiberius, I altered the vector so it mimics the twenty marker sequences currently used for a standard DNA fingerprinting profile.” She paused, saw from his dark expression that he got it, and nodded.

  “Exactly. Once someone has been infected with the viral vector, any samples coming from his or her body will yield incomprehensible blurs with standard forensic DNA analysis. The police labs will be completely unable to match his—or her—DNA to crime scene samples or DNA fingerprints already on file.”

  He muttered a low, vicious oath. “In other words, you’ve single-handedly given one of the most ruthless criminal businessmen on the planet the power to render
the CODIS DNA database—and a good chunk of modern forensic analysis—completely useless.”

  Now she did look away. “It’s pointless to say how sorry I am. I thought the job was a legit front for his other dealings. I thought I could use his money—use him—to help people.” To help Celeste, and others like her who were often overlooked in favor of efforts to cure more common—and therefore more commercially lucrative—diseases.

  “You’re smarter than that,” he said without inflection, and for some reason that stung more than all the names she’d called herself in the dark of night back on the island, when she’d realized exactly the same thing.

  She wasn’t just smart enough to know better, she had known better and she’d taken the job anyway, because she’d been so desperate to find a way to help Celeste, so obsessed with the goal of prolonging her sister’s life and making up for the fact that the disease had struck one of them but not the other.

  As Celeste had accused her on more than one occasion, she’d been so sure she was right, she’d bent the rules to get what she wanted.

  Sharpe focused on her, his eyes gone dark with accusation, with condemnation. “Tell me more, and tell me fast. I’ll need you to reproduce whatever you can remember about the vector and your work so I can kick it over to the Centers for Disease Control and Homeland Security and get them started on a counter-agent. Then you’re going to sit down with me and the rest of my team, and we’re going to go over the past year of your life step by step. You’re going to tell me everything you can remember about the setup on the island.” He paused. “Basically, your butt is mine starting now, until I say otherwise. When it’s all over, if I’m satisfied that you’ve cooperated fully, then we’ll talk about your culpability and possible charges.”

  Sydney was surprised and not a little dismayed to realize that the slap of scorn in his voice mattered to her, that his opinion mattered when it absolutely, positively shouldn’t. He was a means to an end, nothing more.

  Still, she couldn’t help wishing they’d met under different circumstances, maybe even during different lifetimes. She thought she would’ve enjoyed getting to know John Sharpe a bit better, and figuring out what went on behind those cool blue eyes. Unfortunately, under these circumstances in this lifetime, they were destined to be at odds.

  She cemented that by standing and taking the two steps needed to bring her into his personal space, then looking down at him. “I’m sorry, but that’s not how it’s going to work, Agent Sharpe.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Excuse me?”

  Reminding herself not to back off, not to back away, she inhaled a breath that contained entirely too much of his energy, and said, “This is where the deal part comes in. I’ll tell you everything I know, but in exchange, I want guaranteed immunity from federal prosecution no matter what happens, and I want my sister and me placed in protective custody, effective immediately.” She faltered a little. “Tiberius is going to try to get to me through her. I can absolutely, positively promise that.”

  Sharpe rose from the booth and looked down at her for a long moment, his eyes seeming to pierce deep inside her and see things she’d rather keep hidden. She expected more questions, and braced herself to remain mute until she had a lawyer and a signed agreement, and assurances that Celeste was safe.

  She was surprised when he said only, “You disappoint me.”

  Then he turned and strode from the small room, his angry strides far too big for the tiny space.

  When he was gone, leaving his energy to vibrate into nothingness, Sydney remained staring after him. “Yeah,” she finally said, pressing a hand to her churning stomach. “I disappoint myself, too. The thing is, I’m doing my best to fix it.”

  Unfortunately, she didn’t think he saw it that way, which made him dangerous. Watch yourself with that one, she told herself as she headed for the narrow ladder. He’s too smart, too sure of himself.

  If she wasn’t careful, Special Agent John Sharpe could ruin everything.

  Chapter Three

  John knew he shouldn’t have been surprised by what Sydney had revealed. And he wasn’t really. What surprised him was the depth of his anger. She might not have been Tiberius’s lover, but what she had done was far worse.

  He’d wanted her to be innocent, he realized as they disembarked and slogged their way toward the main building of the coast guard station. Despite the fact that he damn well knew better, he’d wanted her to be innocent, which she so incredibly wasn’t.

  “Can I borrow your phone?” she said suddenly.

  He handed it over. “Calling your lawyer?”

  She sent him a look that he couldn’t interpret, but that touched his skin with a skitter of warning, of want. She said softly, “Do you blame me?”

  She dialed a Maryland exchange, waking what sounded from her side of the conversation like the lawyer who’d been handling her affairs while she’d been on Rocky Cliff Island. He referred her to someone local and she made a second call.

  Within fifteen minutes, a fifty-ish briefcase-toting blond woman in a mint-green skirt suit strode through the front door of the coast guard station, looking wide-awake even though it was nearly 3:00 a.m.

  John watched her eyes skim the room and could practically see her thought process as she sorted through the coast guarders and himself before reaching Sydney: pilot, pilot, swimmer, cop, ah—client.

  She made a beeline for Sydney, took up a protective position at her client’s side and then turned to John, having apparently—and erroneously, at least at the C.G. station—identified him as the guy in charge. “Is there somewhere private my client and I can speak?” the lawyer asked.

  John gestured to a nearby door, having already cleared it through the Renfrew brothers and their superiors. “You can borrow that office. My people are pulling together the paperwork as we speak.”

  Sydney looked at him, and he caught a flash of nerves and worry in her lovely brown eyes. “What about my sister?”

  “The locals are already en route. They’ll make sure she’s safe and get her someplace protected.” He’d thought briefly about using the sister as leverage, but had decided against it, not because he had any compunction against using the tools given to him, but because he knew Tiberius well enough to realize the good guys would lose that leverage if they delayed.

  Instead of looking relieved, she looked discomfited, and a little guilty. “You’ll need…” She trailed off, took a breath and said, “Celeste is wheelchair-bound and requires special care. You’ll need to take her care provider with her, or find someone else to do the job, and you’ll need a vehicle she can be wheeled onto. She shouldn’t be removed from the chair.”

  Only his natural tendency to play his cards close to his chest kept John from cursing, not only because it meant reorganizing what was supposed to be a quick find-and-grab, but also because it proved what he’d already begun to suspect: Sydney Westlake was planning on giving him exactly as much information as she chose to, exactly when she chose to. This wasn’t a free exchange of information. It was a damn chess game.

  Worse, he was finding himself intrigued by her rather than annoyed, which was surprising, and he didn’t care for surprises. In his experience, they tended to end badly.

  “Let me guess,” he said as a few more pieces of the puzzle connected in his brain. “Your sister has Singer’s syndrome.”

  “My twin sister. Yes.”

  “Which explains why you locked the computers instead of destroying them.” If he’d been a cursing man he would’ve let rip right then, because the information added a whole new layer of complications with the realization that her goal and his weren’t the same.

  He wanted Tiberius dead or behind bars, and wasn’t really picky which way it went as long as the bastard was out of circulation and his operation disassembled piece by miserable piece. She, on the other hand, wanted to save her sister with a treatment that could potentially be used to topple the federal justice system, and then get her life back witho
ut any repercussions.

  “Yes,” she agreed, glancing away from him. “The computers were firewalled against connection to any outside network, so I couldn’t e-mail the files off the island, and Tiberius’s people wouldn’t supply me with a flash drive or anything I could carry with me. I kept both my main and backup files on the system, and now they’re locked until either you take down Tiberius and get me back on that island, or Tiberius tortures the password out of me.”

  She said the words with such hollow calm that he believed her, and even felt a stir of compassion. He, too, had seen what happened to people who wound up on the wrong side of Tiberius. It wasn’t pretty.

  “Look,” he said, “I can sympathize to a degree. If I had a sister I’d probably feel the same way. But all the good intentions in the world don’t change the fact that you went to the island willingly.” His voice turned hard.

  “I might have to accept this deal, but I’ll be damned if I let you withhold valuable information in the hopes of saving your sister. Getting our hands on—or destroying—the weapon you created is our first priority. Bringing Tiberius down is our second. I’m sorry, but recovering information that might or might not cure your sister has to come behind both of those things on my priority list.”

  He expected her to argue fiercely. Instead, she inclined her head ever so slightly. “I know.” She blew out a breath and pressed her palm to her stomach beneath the borrowed sweatshirt. “In my head I know all that. I even told myself it would be okay if I died escaping, and Celeste died because I didn’t make it out and get the cure to her, as long as Tiberius couldn’t use my work the way he wants to.” She paused, then shook her head. “The thing is, I’m not that person. Maybe it makes me selfish or spoiled, but I’m not willing to make that sacrifice.” She fixed John with a look. “It’s up to you, big guy. You take what I’m willing to give you and run with it, or I’m out of here the first chance I get, and then Celeste and I are off the radar.”