Dreamspinner Press Year Four Greatest Hits

by Felicia Watson

And didn’t it seem like every time I arrived home, Joe was there already? Calling in with plans and briefings for future missions, bringing Niall interesting articles on military development. Could have been swapping GI Joe outfits for all I knew. He even answered the phone a couple of times when it rang, and neither of us could reach it immediately. What sort of familiarity was that in a guy’s own home? I knew I was behaving irrationally. I knew it was stupid, to feel resentful just because someone wanted to help us out.

  But that was the point; it no longer felt like my home. It felt like Niall’s, like it was, of course. He could invite whoever he liked, and I was just a guest who happened to have a key. He never told me any different.

  So I was restless; I went out a lot. My choice of drug, maybe. Couple of times Judith couldn’t get hold of me when she wanted to, and there were mutterings about me being unreliable. Whereas Joe Lam gave the job the kind of single-minded commitment that I just didn’t have the time for—and damn me if I didn’t hear that comparison more than once.

  Though not from Niall. He never harked back to the attack; he never called me unprofessional or useless or careless. I heard it only in his silence, in his lack of defense on my behalf. And his preference for someone else’s company over mine.

  He just wasn’t there for me anymore. His eyes were hot over me in the day, and at night his hands were as amazing and possessive as always. But he didn’t smile as much; he scowled at me a hell of a lot more. My attitude was irritating to him and my lack of adequate paperwork suddenly seemed a crime against the state. So I went out a lot more, and sometimes I didn’t come home. I went to my own shabby little apartment and slept alone and angry. Well, tried to sleep, anyway.

  It sounds pathetic now, just cataloguing those months after the attack like that. Was it fair? Was I fair? To me everything felt like a betrayal: that Niall privately did believe I’d put him in danger. That I’d been proved a failure, compared to his standards. Everyone had been angry with me—and suddenly he was angry too. And that felt a fuck of a sight worse than any inquiry.

  But however much he blamed me, or hated me, or despised me—and as always, I didn’t really know what he was thinking—that was no reason for him to turn to someone else, was it? Not while I was still around.

  He’d nearly been killed. I reminded myself of that many times a day and tried to bite my tongue. The important thing was to get him fit again and back on active service. Mission Dove was our priority, and despite the personal tribulations of the Project Team, we all had to be ready for whatever was required. Perhaps I thought that when he was physically okay again, things would settle back down. Perhaps I was a fool.

  Basically, we were a time bomb, fuse set and ready to blow.

  Niall would have empathized with my analogy.

  BACK IN my rocky, mean little trailer, I heard the snap of the cell phone closing. I waited for a minute or so, but Niall didn’t speak again. I focused back on him. He looked pale, really ill. He stood still as a rock, his eyes staring at me but his mind obviously elsewhere. I wondered if he had delayed shock, and I was startled by the thud of distress in my own body. Then he stirred and seemed to become aware of me again. “Joe’s still critical. It’s an emergency operation. It’s his leg… they’re not sure about his leg. When the door hit him, it fractured the bone in several places. The knee is badly damaged.”

  “Shit.” I felt sick. Guy didn’t deserve that. “And a bit of a bummer, being stuck here, eh? You can’t go visit him. Take grapes and flowers, hold his hand.”

  Even though I’d dropped my eyes like I had plenty of better places to look, I still caught Niall’s scowl. “Don’t be pathetic, Tanner. I know what road you’re driving down, and I can tell you, it’s no more fun now than it was before. I’ll say it just once more—we’re not together. Joe and I are not seeing each other.”

  I suppose I could have said I was sorry they’d broken up. But then, I wasn’t. And Niall would’ve known the lie for what it was. He couldn’t have spent all that time with me without learning just a couple of my little ways, could he? “So what was the trouble then? Too many long nights out in the field while he sat at home collating your notes? My partner doesn’t understand me?”

  “Don’t you ever fucking listen, you idiot?” His voice was raised now. Guess I’d got the response I wanted. “We’re not together. We never were!”

  “So how come he was at the apartment with you when it was blown up? Kind of late to be working on Department business, eh?”

  “I told you. We were investigating the attack on Judith. The day before, someone had sent her a package impregnated with some kind of poison. A fairly unsophisticated device, but that was partly why no one thought to check it out thoroughly. It nearly blew up in Cissy’s face when she came to check it out.” He dismissed the shock on my face with an impatient wave of his hand. “And everyone knew what we were working on. Judith did, Simon did. It was an official directive. I had security clearance, and we were in constant contact with the Team, through Joe. Hell, Simon even lent one of his guys to help us with the research, liaising with the office, that kid Greg who dropped me off yesterday. What category of hot date does that fit into?”

  My anger was still simmering. “Far as I remember, you’ve never needed hearts and flowers to enjoy a good fuck.”

  “Tanner!” He was yelling now. Only a foot away from me, fists clenched at his side. Just like the old days. “That’s way out of line. You are so damned childish!”

  “And you’re so damned smug!”

  “Leave it, Tanner. Now!” His eyes glinted with warning. “You never could hold your tongue.”

  “And maybe you couldn’t resist holding something a whole lot more intimate, right?”

  For just one, shocking second, I thought he might hit me. The fists flexed—but his arms stayed by his side.

  “So maybe I’d have been tempted.” His face was very flushed now. “Maybe I found it more rewarding, being with someone who wasn’t out partying all the time, someone who was there more often than not—”

  “So maybe the welcome was a little less frosty for him.” I was incensed now, almost beside myself. “Maybe you opened up a hell of a lot more to him. After all, there’s so much more to share between the pair of you. How was the pillow talk? Full of boyish dreams of guns and bombs? Gives a whole new meaning to Wham, bam, thank you ma’am! And so much more rewarding than my sorry little disaster stories.”

  Had I forgotten what a match Niall was for me when he chose? “And maybe, yes, it was more rewarding than your pointless jealousy and your ridiculous melodrama and….” His voice caught in his throat; it was convulsing with fury. ”You stupid bastard! You stupid, stupid….”

  We were struck dumb almost at the same moment, as the same thought obviously crossed our minds. Our stupid, selfish minds, obsessing over old ground, old wounds—self, self, self. And I was the worst culprit of all; me and my vicious, unruly, destructive temper. My fucking, fucking temper!

  I looked at Niall, stricken. Joe had been my friend. A friend to all of us. Still was, dammit! And he was lying in a hospital bed, maybe losing the use of a limb, maybe never coming back to us as anything like his strong, active, high-principled, unpretentious self. And both he—and the man in front of me—had barely escaped with their lives.

  “Tanner—”

  “I’m sorry,” I blurted out, speaking at the same time as his strangled groan.

  And I was. For so much, I couldn’t have listed it in a day.

  Tuesday 09:30

  GOD KNOWS what we might have said and done then, but events overtook us. In the frozen silence following our outburst, Niall tilted his head away from me and his eyes hardened.

  “Did you hear that?” he murmured.

  I bit back my usual “Hear what?” quip, because a comment like that from him merited my full attention. He had the background and training, after all. I listened carefully. Nothing specific, but what I did notice was the absence of noise; the tr
ailer park seemed unusually quiet for an emerging morning, even if most of the inhabitants were normally out and about by now, on whatever legitimate or nefarious occupation they chose. And now I came to think about it, I’d not heard a single dog’s bark since I woke.

  I caught Niall’s calculating gaze and I nodded. Our arguments were forgotten, kicked to the side like a used candy wrapper. He started to move slowly around the room, working toward the outside door of the trailer, dodging around the window as he passed. “Where’s your weapon?” he whispered.

  “I’m on suspension.”

  “To hell with that,” he muttered. “You always had a private license anyway.”

  Guess he knew me better than to think I’d live out here without adequate protection. My hand dropped to a pile of magazines beside the couch and peeled out a rather useful handgun from underneath “Heavy Metal Monthly—February.” He grimaced at my less-than-sophisticated security precautions, but I saw an equivalent weapon in his own palm. I wondered which file that had been hidden in.

  He stood to the hinged side of the door and put his hand flat on the thin metal sheeting.

  “Um….” I thought I ought to try one last whispered attempt to save him from himself. “We should call the Team, Niall. Simon said no external interaction, remember.”

  And then the smallest, weariest smile teased at the corner of his mouth. My heart lurched at the memory of it in different circumstances. “I’m with you, Tanner MacKay. Since when were you external interaction?”

  So what was I to make of that?

  I braced myself on the other side of the door, ready to move out when it opened. The stale smell of cheap fried breakfast crept across the trailer park and in through the gaps under the sill, teasing at my nostrils; the roar of the traffic on the distant highway growled in my ears, travelers driving to and from the airport on the other side of town, blissfully unaware of what was going on in this part of the neighborhood. Nothing else sounded amiss. And yet every hair on the back of my neck stood to attention, my mind more alert than it had been for months. I had a sudden, very vivid memory of how we’d often been, Niall and I, facing things together, high on adrenaline and arrogance and the pure enjoyment of each other’s company. How it once had been, and not as the reluctant companions of today.

  Niall hissed rather loudly, trying to get my attention. He scowled at me from his stance on the other side of the doorway. “No dog, right?” His eyebrow raised in question.

  I nodded. Smart guy had registered the change outside as well as I had. “There’s usually some sound from Dylan in the mornings. He’s always on watch.”

  “Dylan?”

  “Junk’s dog. The big Rottweiler. He’s our early warning system, our protection.”

  Niall raised an eyebrow again, maybe at my familiarity with life here. “Who’s Junk?”

  “This site is his patch. It’s like he’s in charge.” I shrugged. No time right now to run through the supporting cast.

  “Any other doors?”

  I shook my head.

  “Okay. I’ll take the high shot, you cover the low. On five, on my count. You good for that?”

  I winced. “You think now’s the time to doubt it?”

  For a second, it looked like he smiled. “Right. Guess I should know you better than that.”

  I looked straight at him then, and God knows what emotion showed in my eyes. But you don’t, anymore. You don’t know me at all. I startled even myself with the depth of bitterness in my heart. I wondered just how long I’d been carrying it so deep—and for how much longer it might stay embedded there.

  THE SLAMMING of my door against the side of the trailer as Niall thrust it open wrenched me back from my thoughts. It was a shock, but I was quick enough on his heels. I dropped to a crouch, gun held with both hands, forced out in a full stretch like I’d been trained. My eyes peered into the sharp morning light, a little hazy over the rooftops of the other trailers. I took in most of the scene within seconds. Opposite my trailer was Zac’s, which he shared with a wide range of pets, always adding to them every time he went into town. I’d seen everything from raucous, green-plumed parakeets to somnolent snakes that I suspected had never had an official visa out of their own country. Next to that was a smaller, neater trailer owned by Ruthie, a grandmother of twelve, with kids who were equally divided between loving and loathing the menagerie next door. On the other side of Ruthie’s was a smaller, currently unoccupied trailer, one of a couple she owned and occasionally rented out. The trailer the other side of Zac was owned by Phil. The hood was braced open on the vehicle in front of it. Phil ran his “rare parts” business from there.

  Beside mine was Junk’s trailer, big and black and aggressively pimped-up. There was an empty dog bowl, lying on its rim on the ground outside the door. The space underneath that trailer was dark and hidden; there were the old tracks of dusty footprints all over the place. Junk didn’t work at anything regular—or not as I’d seen—but he was usually off the park during the day. Even so, he didn’t always take Dylan with him, but there was no sign of the dog.

  It seemed like business as usual—but with no caretakers.

  On the other side of the doorway, Niall was also evaluating the scene. “Nothing. It’s gone, whatever or whoever it was.” He tilted his head slightly, as if he were trying to tune in to potential danger.

  My eyes smarted as I stared around the park. Felt a bit damned stupid with the gun out in the open, so I let my hand drop down to my side. But I didn’t put the gun away. “Maybe it’s nothing, like you say. I’ll go check.”

  I started carefully down the shaky steps. I’d never taken time to fix them properly to the trailer itself, but then, I usually jumped them in one stride. Niall looked at me, startled. “We’ll go together.”

  “No we won’t! You’re not even here, remember? You’re invisible. You’re in hiding.”

  He snorted. “What the hell does that matter?”

  “No,” I said again, firmly. Something in my tone made him stop his descent down the steps after me. “This is my place. I’ll do it.”

  He stared for a while longer and then he nodded acceptance. He turned to go back into the trailer, annoyed maybe, and his foot slipped on the cracked rim at the top. He fell awkwardly to one side, just for a second, and he leaned back against me. Hell, it was far from deliberate! But as his body bumped mine, his hand reached out instinctively to right himself against my shoulder, and he held onto me.

  First time for three months.

  I should have fixed those steps….

  I heard my gasp as if it came from someone else. A someone else who lifted his hand and pressed it quickly over Niall’s, holding it tight to stop it being snatched away. A someone else who felt his eyelids droop with desire and his fingers tingle with the need to slide their way down the smooth skin of Niall’s upper arm and slide a possessive hold around the taut, muscular waist.

  It was so much more shocking than the earlier touch of hands. The desperate reaction of my body was astonishing. It must have been like reliving your hidden traumas under therapy—not that I’d ever had the time or inclination to try that out for myself. Doorways opening, memories flooding back, the sensory overload of things that had once been familiar and fascinating. Except that these memories hit low and hard and cruel, and the flame of remembrance seared through every nerve end that connected with him.

  Memories. They suck, don’t they? And they don’t let you go easy.

  WE’D HELD it all together right until the end of Mission Dove.

  Damned thing had taken nearly three months more, while Niall was working his way gradually out of his convalescence. Judith let him back on duty when most of the main peace talks were being drawn to a close and many of the delegates had already returned to their political day jobs. He complained that he didn’t have a lot to do, but he knew he wasn’t as fit as before, though he’d healed a damned sight faster than anyone had expected.

  Maybe he was more pissed
off at missing out than I’d realized.

  I caught him doing push-ups late on a Sunday night. I’d been out for the weekend and came back to his apartment to freshen up for my own shift on duty. He must have heard me come in, but he didn’t acknowledge me. I stood in the shadows of the bedroom doorway and watched him work, stretched out on the wooden floor. The muscles tensed across his bare torso, again and again, as he carefully lifted his body. The scar was much paler than before, though still obvious against his dark skin. He was dressed only in his shorts, the light of the bedside lamp glinting in the trail of sweat down between his shoulder blades. He gave the slightest grunt as he moved, maybe with the effort, maybe counting the presses.

  I found I was holding my breath. I hadn’t called him for the last three days. Hadn’t been in touch in any way. As he straightened his body and climbed back to his feet, I looked at the graceful way he moved, and I ached all over for him. Not only for the easy, vibrant sexuality of him. Not only for the lust that had always been our constant companion. The maelstrom of emotions was deep and uncomfortable and confusing to me. I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing all weekend, and wondered what the hell I was trying to prove to myself.

  He stood in front of me, regaining his breath. He pushed sweaty locks of hair off his forehead, and his dark eyes challenged me. “Tanner. Are you staying?”

  Hell of a question. Maybe he wanted to know if I’d make a late supper, or if I wanted the bathroom before him. Something mildly domestic like that. Or maybe it was something far more significant. Scared of the latter option, I took the first. “Sure,” I said. I couldn’t stop my eyes from raking his body; my nostrils flared gently from the smell of his sweat. “Need an early night. I’ve got a five a.m. start tomorrow. A surveillance job on the warehouse near the conference center where they’re clearing out the final equipment—”

  “Me too,” he interrupted. “We’re covering it together. Judith’s instructions.”