Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I like him,” Annie said. And Pierre obviously did, too, the little traitor. She stretched in her seat. God, but she was exhausted.

  “I like him, too, but he’s so…” Martell searched for the word.

  “Gay?” Ric supplied.

  Annie looked at him in scathing disbelief.

  “What?” he said. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. I’m just saying that he sets my…what’s it called—gaydar clacking. That’s all.”

  “No, he’s not exactly gay,” Martell mused. “More like…precise.”

  “The same way I set it off?” Annie asked Ric.

  “But it’s not like he’s fussy,” Martell continued, “like Felix on The Odd Couple. More like…careful. A brainiac instead of an ass-kicker, but maybe that’s a good thing.” He frowned at Annie as what she’d said finally penetrated. “The same way what?”

  She turned to him. “Bruce told Ric that I was gay. And he believed him.”

  Martell laughed. “No way.” He looked from Ric to Annie and back. “Really?”

  “Yes really,” she confirmed. “And by the way—Felix? Totally gay.”

  “Dude was married,” Martell pointed out.

  “Yeah, and his wife threw him out because she at least figured out that he was totally gay.”

  “Can we please talk about our potential impending deaths?” Ric implored.

  “You know…” Martell leaned closer to Annie. “If you’re into women, I have this friend, Brandi? And I’m thinking if you and she and I all got together—”

  “Stop,” Ric said. He sounded annoyed.

  “Martell’s kidding,” Annie told him.

  “About the three-way,” Ric said. “But he’s moving in on you. I see him—I’m watching him—and he’s moving in.” He looked at Martell. “So just fucking stop.”

  “Boy Scout dropped the F-bomb,” Martell whispered to Annie.

  She nodded. She’d heard. Ric didn’t like to say that word in front of women, which was kind of funny, considering how much he apparently liked doing it, as a verb, with them.

  “This is what I mean.” Ric bit off each word, his mouth a grim line. Was it possible that he was actually jealous? After last night’s sex show starring Lillian Lavelle and her giant boobs?

  “Although, okay. Fine,” Ric continued. “Maybe we can create a triple-win scenario.” He looked past Annie to Martell. “You want her? You got her—but it’s got to be for as long as this investigation lasts, and I know even a week is long for you. But I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars to help you suffer through.”

  “Oh, this is nice,” Annie exhaled. “I knew I hadn’t seen the last of that bribe.”

  “It’s not a bribe, it’s payment.” Ric’s volume increased. “You can take her to Europe, take her on a cruise—I don’t care—just take her. Get her out of here. Cuff her and throw a bag over her head if you need to—just fucking keep her fucking safe.”

  In the silence that immediately followed Ric’s outburst, Annie realized that the FBI agent had opened the conference-room door and was standing there—looking as if he wished he’d waited outside.

  But no way was Annie going to let Ric’s crap go. “You have a hell of a lot of nerve,” she lit into him. “Offering to pay Martell to kidnap me in front of a federal agent?”

  “Bad time to come back in,” Cassidy decided, starting to back out the door.

  Martell stood up. “I was just going to go out, too, give ’em a little space—”

  But Annie didn’t want space. She didn’t want to sit here with Ric and rehash everything they’d already said last night. They were both running on empty—they’d had about two hours of sleep this morning, after the police had finally left and before the various window-and windshield-replacement trucks had arrived.

  “I’m doing this,” she told him.

  Ric nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m…” He rubbed his forehead, pressed the bridge of his nose. Annie could relate. She had one hell of a headache, too. “Sorry,” he repeated. He turned to Jules. “Here are my terms. She’s never alone. If she’s not with me, she’s with Martell or you. Or one of your other agents, but I want to meet them first.”

  Jules sat back down at the table. “Is your apartment big enough for a roommate?” he asked Annie, taking his pad out of his briefcase, so he could make notes.

  “No.” Ric answered for her.

  “Yeah, actually it is,” Annie said, but Ric wasn’t listening.

  “She moves in here,” he told Jules. “That’s nonnegotiable.”

  “Do you know how much I hate it when you talk over me?” Annie asked.

  Ric didn’t even bother to look at her. “This is a deal I’m making with Cassidy. It’s his job to figure out how to make you comply. I want to be compensated appropriately for our time,” he told the FBI agent, “both Annie and me. And Martell, too, if we need him. I don’t know what the going rate is for consultants or contractors or whatever you call this, but I’ll check it out and let you know.”

  “I’ll check as well.”

  “I’m not looking to get rich here,” Ric stressed. “Just fairly compensated.”

  “I understand.”

  “I want Annie to go to a firing range sometime in the very near future. I want her to get a look—up close—at the weapons that Burns and his men will probably use to shoot her.”

  That was meant to scare her, but Annie didn’t have to protest. Jules did it for her. He looked up at Ric. “We’re going to do our best to prevent anyone from—”

  “Yeah, and how’d your best work out for Peggy Ryan?” Ric countered.

  The mention of the missing agent was clearly a sore spot for the FBI agent. The two men stared at each other for several long seconds before Jules answered. “Not well,” he admitted. He looked back down at his list of Ric’s demands. “What else?”

  Ric glanced at her. “I want Annie to be able to walk away at any point in this investigation. Just pack up and leave, if she wants to.”

  Jules nodded.

  “And witness protection, if necessary. Regardless of whether or not Burns is convicted. Regardless of whether or not he’s even charged, or whether she stays through to the end. Monetary compensation in the event of death. A guarantee of covered medical and physical therapy expenses in the event of injury.”

  “You want health insurance,” Jules concluded. “Where do you think you are, Canada?”

  It was clearly a joke, but Ric didn’t laugh. “I want a guarantee of covered—” he started again.

  “Thank you,” Jules cut him off. “I got it.”

  “That’s it,” Ric said.

  The FBI agent looked at the list, reading through it again, flipping back a page to where his notes started. When he was finally done, he looked up at Annie. “Is this all right with you?”

  She nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “Because we start tonight.”

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  Robin was dressed and pouring himself the evening’s first drink when someone knocked on his hotel-room door.

  It probably wasn’t Dolphina or another of his handlers—there was still a solid hour before he had to leave for…whatever event was happening tonight.

  Well, maybe it was Dolphina, who’d recently decided she no longer hated him and that she’d rather be his mother. Over the past few days, she’d made sure he ate right, found time to exercise, and if he drank a little too much, she got him safely back to his room—all without ending up in his bed.

  Although, that might no longer be true. Last night he’d been particularly shit-faced, and as he’d stumbled over the seam between the suite’s living-room tile and the bedroom carpeting, she’d caught him and kept him from breaking his nose. He’d repaid her by dragging her back with him onto his bed, because she was not unattractive, and when he got skunked, sex of any kind seemed better than no sex at all.

  As so often was the case with him when he drank too much, that was
where his memory went from murky to dark.

  So yes, it was probably Dolphina a-knockin’ on his door. She knocked again—louder this time.

  Robin looked through the fish-eyed lens of the peephole and…

  Holy dancing Jesus. He almost dropped his drink. He looked again.

  He took off the chain and opened the door, and yes, it definitely was Jules Cassidy standing in the hotel corridor.

  Dressed in eveningwear similar to the tuxedo that Robin himself had on.

  Other than the tux, Jules hadn’t changed at all in the past few years. Same short dark hair, same trim, compact body, same handsome face, same warm brown eyes.

  Same molten attraction in those eyes that didn’t fade even when he smiled.

  The man had a ridiculously sweet smile, even when it was tentative, as it was now.

  “Sorry to surprise you,” Jules said. “I called your cell, but you didn’t pick up.”

  Robin didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He no longer spoke English—it had been flabbergasted out of him. Instead, he stepped back and gestured for Jules to come inside.

  Jules, of course, hesitated. “I was actually thinking we could go down to the bar.”

  A stiff drink would be great right about now. But then Robin realized he was holding a glass of rum in his hand. He hadn’t yet added the Coke, but what the hell. He took a healthy sip, and his ability to speak returned. “I’ll be mobbed. Down there. I can’t just go to a bar anymore. Well, I can, if I grunge up, but not on the opening night of a festival like this.”

  Jules nodded. “I should’ve realized. I’m sorry, I’m…Congratulations. I’ve heard great things about the movie and…Your career’s really…Congratulations.”

  He was as flustered as Robin was. Maybe even more so. And he’d known who was going to be on the other side of the door before it had opened.

  “Please come in,” Robin managed.

  Jules looked past him and into the suite. It was huge—and set up as a living room. Sofa and chairs, and even a full-size dining table. No king-size bed for them to have to pretend not to notice. That was on the other side of French doors that Robin kept tightly shut, mostly due to the fact that he was a slob.

  “Thanks,” Jules said as he came inside, as Robin shut the door behind him, putting the chain back on—which Jules noticed. Of course, FBI agents tended to notice everything.

  But God, he still smelled exactly the same. And suddenly Robin went from just barely able to speak to unable to shut the fuck up. “Jesus, I’ve missed you,” came spewing out just as Jules said, “I’m here on business.”

  And that wasn’t just disappointing, it was also awkward as shit.

  “I guess that means you don’t need a drink.” Robin filled the silence with social noise as he crossed to the bar, desperate for a refill. “How about a soda? Water? Juice?”

  “I’m fine.” Of course, Jules being Jules, he was unable to ignore difficult things. He closed his eyes briefly. “So, okay, I’m not fine. I’m as thrown by this as you are, and I’m sorry that I came up here because seeing you is…You look good. You look…too good. So I should just say what I came to say, so I can leave.”

  No doubt about it, this elephant-size attraction they once shared hadn’t died a natural death over the past careful years of zero contact. It was here in the room with them, looming large, as if absolutely no time had passed.

  Except it had. A lot of time. “Am I allowed to ask how you are?” Robin found himself a bigger glass. “How you’ve been, what you’ve been up to?” He glanced over to where Jules was standing, still over by the door. “You still seeing what’s-his-name, the Marine?”

  “Ben.” Jules supplied the man’s name, but no other information. “Look, I’m going to the party tonight—the same party you are. I checked on the Internet and saw you were in town and…I’m here because I didn’t want to do this in public—see you for the first time after so long. Especially not while I’m working undercover.”

  “You’re undercover,” Robin repeated, bringing his drink over to the leather sofa. He’d first met Jules nearly two years earlier, when the FBI agent was part of a team protecting Robin’s sister. Janey had received death threats when they were filming American Hero, her award-winning biopic that outed a popular World War II hero. It was Robin’s portrayal of the gay war hero that had first put him on Hollywood’s map.

  The death threats had turned out to be real, and people had gotten shot. Including Robin.

  A woman—one of the bodyguards’ wives—had actually died.

  “Undercover doing what?” Robin asked as he sat down.

  “My job,” Jules told him.

  No shit, Sherlock. “How dangerous is it this time? Is it—”

  “I need you to pretend you don’t know me,” Jules interrupted. “I’m using a different name, but…Just keep your distance. Please. You have no reason to approach me, so…Don’t.”

  “So on a scale from one to ten, where one is not at all, and ten is very, it’s a, what? Eight? Nine?” Robin sipped his drink, trying to act as if the idea of Jules putting his life on the line didn’t make him want to throw up. Of course, it wasn’t as if Jules had spent the past few years sitting behind a desk, out of harm’s way. In fact, Cosmo had told him—apparently the Spec Ops and Intel communities were closely knit—that Jules had been badly injured not too long ago. That was how he’d met Ben-the-Marine—in the sick bay of an aircraft carrier after helping to save the world.

  Again.

  “I’ll be there with several other people,” Jules told him now. “Stay far away from them, too. Plus, there’s a local man? Gordon Burns. He’s got a son, Gordie Junior. Stay away from both of them.”

  When Jules was dealing with dangerous people, he was one serious son of a bitch. And right now his grimness level was off the scale.

  “What have they done?” Robin asked. “Burns and son.”

  Jules shook his head. “I’ve already told you too much.”

  “What’s the name you’re using?”

  Jules was getting pissed, but he wasn’t as good as Robin was at disguising it. His exasperation leaked out of him. Or maybe he just wasn’t trying to hide it.

  “I’m curious. Do you go for something simple? Bob Smith? John Jones?” Robin said, because it was easier to talk about this than admit the truth—that if he could, he’d go back in time to that day when he’d let Jules walk out of his life. Because despite what Jules had said, he was not here merely on business. No. He was here because he couldn’t stay away. “Is it just a different name? Or do you create a whole backstory and character—”

  “Don’t fuck this up for me, Robin. If you talk about this, with anyone…”

  “I won’t,” Robin said. “I just—”

  “Mine’s not the only life that’ll be in danger,” Jules finished. “It’s a ten, okay?”

  Jesus. Robin had to swallow hard past the fear that was now securely lodged in his throat. “That’s pretty intense,” he said. “Are you sure you didn’t come here as some kind of…doomed man’s final wish?”

  Jules laughed. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  But when Robin stood up, he left his cool demeanor, his amusement, his act of calm nonchalance, his entire lifetime-perfected facade behind him on the sofa, and Jules’s smile faded.

  “You didn’t ask me how I was,” Robin said quietly. “Sure, you’ve probably seen me in the tabloids. Now I’m dating Kristen Bell. Now I’m a threat to Sarah Michelle’s marriage. Now I’m clubbing with Susie McCoy. I would’ve at least expected something like Gee, Robin, are you still trying to fool yourself into believing that you’re relentlessly hetero?” He answered his own question. “No. No, I’m not.”

  The look on Jules’s face was one that Robin knew he would remember for the rest of his life. Wariness. Hope and defeat. Anger and yearning and weary despair. Hunger.

  Hunger. God, yes. Robin knew it was reflected on his own face, in the way he was standing and breathing. It was
in his voice as he spoke. “I think I probably said it best when I said, Jesus, I’ve missed you.”

  Jules looked over at the door, but he didn’t move. He just let Robin come closer. And closer. “I have to go.”

  “Don’t,” Robin said. “Stay. We’ll both just…skip the party.”

  “I can’t.” But he wanted to. One thing about Jules, he wasn’t afraid to let people know what he was feeling. When he wanted to hide it, he could, but when he didn’t…There it was. Of course it was still mixed with that despair. Disappointment. Hurt. Mistrust. Doubt.

  “Duty calls, huh?” Robin said. All he had to do was keep talking, keep this conversation going. As soon as he got close enough to touch him, they would both just go up in flames.

  “Yeah,” Jules said. “That one’s pretty high on my list of, oh, about five thousand reasons why I can’t do this.”

  “You know, I’m supposed to mingle. Tonight. The festival crew will be introducing me to people. I assume you don’t want me to scream and run away if we come face-to-face.” Like they were right now.

  Face.

  To.

  Face.

  Jules was breathing hard, as if he’d just sprinted up twelve flights of stairs, as if his heart were pounding the way Robin’s was.

  As if he, too, were remembering the too few times they’d taken their single-minded attraction out for a stroll and kissed.

  Only kissed. Because at the time Robin had still been uncertain about his sexuality. Jules had been flatly honest about not wanting to be part of what he called Robin’s science experiment.

  After two years, the experiments were over. And the results were in.

  America’s hottest new sex symbol and Hollywood’s freshest young action-adventure star, Robin Chadwick, was undeniably gay.

  A mere half a dozen people on the entire planet knew this career-flattening fact, Jules being one of them.

  Of course, Jules had known the truth before Robin had.

  Jules, whom Robin had fallen in love with, almost on first sight, even though, at the time, the idea of falling in love with another man would’ve made him laugh out loud.