“No,” Hurricane said bitterly. “They didn’t.”
“Okay, well, it isn’t that big a deal.” It was, but I didn’t think I had anything to gain from pointing that out to her. “I’m telling you now. He’s been fixated on you for years.”
“Years?” Hurricane now appeared almost ill.
I stopped and mulled over her reaction. It didn’t seem all that strange that someone would nurse an obsession for that long, but then I supposed I’d had plenty of time to become accustomed to the concept. I doubted that Hurricane was kept informed regarding details about guys like Walker. She most likely had only a vague, abstract sort of inkling that they existed, but I imagined she didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the specifics. And now I’d gone and rubbed her face in it. Oops.
I tried to redirect her. “Not the point.”
“You’ve been running interference with this guy—keeping him away from me even though he thinks I’m his wife—for years?”
“Yeah. I guess. Unfortunately, he’s recently come to that same realization. Only now he thinks I’ve been keeping him from you because I want you for myself.”
Hurricane blinked at me. “Are you serious?”
“Completely. And he took my sister thinking he was taking me. He wanted to punish me for coming between you two. There’s no telling what he’s done to her while he’s had her.” The words felt too large and heavy and got stuck on the way out. I cleared my throat to make room for my next thought. “I need you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“Just don’t get within arm’s reach of him, no matter what.”
Hurricane appeared insulted. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No. I think you’re too noble for your own good. And I think if you saw a chance to distract him, to fight him to let Rory make a run for it, you’d take it.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?” Hurricane’s expression was earnest.
“It’d be terrible. No good could come of it, trust me.” If she did that, she’d put me in the worst position imaginable by forcing me to choose between tending to Rory and ensuring her safety. That was a losing proposition for me no matter how you looked at it.
“Just sitting idly by doesn’t come naturally to me.”
“I know it doesn’t. But just please try.”
She studied me. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“Thank you. There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“If things progress in the absolute worst way possible and Walker does somehow manage to get his hands on you, ignore your initial gut instinct to fight him and just go limp.”
Hurricane shot me a look that clearly said she thought I was insane. “You want me to go limp,” she repeated.
“Yes. Don’t struggle at all. Just drop to the ground.”
“What’s that going to accomplish?”
I took a long, slow breath. “It’s going to give us room to take a clear shot.”
“A clear shot?”
“Yes.”
“Like with a gun?”
I refrained from rolling my eyes but just barely. “Yes.”
“You’re going to kill him.”
“We don’t shoot to kill,” I clarified, parroting our training verbatim. “We shoot to neutralize the threat.”
“But you might kill him.”
I shrugged, disinterested. “It’s possible. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Wow,” Hurricane breathed.
“That about sums it up.”
Hurricane took her time letting that information sink in, and I didn’t push her. It was a lot to handle. “Thanks,” she said finally.
“For what?”
“For not trying to shield me from reality. Thank you for not handling me with kid gloves.”
“Well, you’re walking into an unorthodox situation. The least I can do is shoot straight with you. No pun intended. Thank you for this, by the way.” I swallowed against the lump forming in my throat. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, you helping me get my sister back. I feel terrible that you got dragged into it at all.”
“Hey,” Hurricane said quietly, resting a gentle hand on my arm. “I wanted to help. I demanded it, actually, if you’ll recall. And once Claudia told me exactly who this guy had—that it was your sister and not just some random woman off the street—well, there was no way I wasn’t going to help. I mean, if one of my brothers had been taken…” She shook her head as though she couldn’t even bear the thought, let alone finish it. She cleared her throat. “You guys all put your lives on the line for me every single day without expecting anything in return. This is the least I can do.”
I let out a ragged breath. “Well, thank you anyway, Miss Carmichael.”
“Zoey.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I want you to call me Zoey.”
“Oh, Miss Carmichael, I don’t think that’s—”
“Come on. Don’t you think we at least deserve to be on a first-name basis? I mean, we’ve made out, for crying out loud.”
I felt as though someone had thrown a huge bucket of ice water directly into my face. “What?”
Hurricane grinned at me. “I told you that day you showed up in my hallway that you looked familiar to me. Did you really think I wouldn’t figure it out?”
Oh, shit. “Uh, I’m not sure I follow you,” I lied. There was no way she remembered that night in the bar, and there was also no way I was going to be tricked into mentioning it.
Hurricane’s smile turned mischievous. “You are one hell of a fantastic kisser, Agent O’Connor. I’ll give you that. I spent several days after our little encounter lamenting the fact that Hannah showed up and I never got to bed you.”
I froze and willed myself to neither blanch nor blush. Given Hurricane’s low, throaty chuckle, I didn’t succeed in at least one of those endeavors.
“You turn almost as red as Hannah does. How adorable.”
“Miss Carmichael.” My tone was a blend of chastisement, embarrassment, and exasperation.
“Zoey.”
I pondered how to respond. “She told you, didn’t she? Hannah, I mean. You didn’t figure anything out. You merely badgered Hannah into spilling the beans.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny.”
“Spoken like a true politician.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“You were pretty low-profile, too,” Hurricane said, her expression musing. “I can usually spot you guys a mile away, and I hate to admit I had no idea you were an agent that night. Although I suppose I should’ve figured it out right away. I mean, you did rescue me from that overbearing guy like some sort of knight in shining armor.”
“Um…thanks?” Had that been a compliment? I wasn’t sure.
“Anyway, I think we’re far beyond the usual formalities, don’t you?”
I considered that question for a long moment. I didn’t feel comfortable addressing a protectee by her first name but didn’t have much to gain by arguing that point with her. Especially not now.
“I’ll try. That’s the best I can do.”
Hurricane laughed. “Fair enough. Just out of curiosity, if Hannah hadn’t shown up, would you have gone to bed with me?”
My brain shuddered and then ground to a halt. All I got was static, and even that was faint. “I’m sorry. What?”
Hurricane’s eyes were dancing. “What? Did you think I kissed you just to get rid of that guy?”
“I—I, uh…Yeah. I did think that.”
“Well, I mean, that didn’t hurt, but that’s not why I did it.”
“But…but you’re straight!”
“Says who?”
“Says your fiancé, for one.” That was a stupid response. I mean, my own girlfriend was like the poster child for sexual fluidity. But my brain wasn’t exactly working correctly. How the hell had we ended up talking about this? And how in the world did I stop it?
“Sexuality isn’t
a constant. Just because I prefer boys doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy girls every now and again.”
“Oh.” My head was buzzing now. I was searching for a way to change the subject and coming up empty.
“You’re a very attractive woman, Agent O’Connor. Surely you know that.”
My face wasn’t just on fire. It burned with the heat of a thousand suns. Seriously, why were we even having this conversation? She couldn’t have been sincere. In fact, something occurred to me, and I frowned. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
Hurricane seemed amused. “Yeah. Maybe a little. I may not go out of my way to ditch you guys anymore, but a girl’s still got to have a little fun. For what it’s worth, I did think about it, at the time. And I did wonder what would’ve happened if Hannah hadn’t shown up.”
I gaped at her, uncertain of the appropriate response. It’d never occurred to me that she would’ve wanted to go to bed with me, or with any woman. I’d never followed that scenario with her through to any sort of conclusion, so I had no clue what I would’ve done.
A light knock on the door interrupted our little bonding session, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Hurricane shot me a wide grin and moved to answer it while I retrieved all the items I’d previously flung out of my duffel bag and stuffed them back inside. I was so focused on my task I didn’t notice Hurricane’s return until she was standing right in front of me.
“Okay,” I said as I finished with my bag and zipped it closed, thrilled to return to familiar bounds. “You’re all set. We should—” As I’d been talking, my eyes had traveled from what I’d been doing over her shoes and up her legs, and not until I looked all the way up did I realize I wasn’t speaking to Hurricane.
I was speaking to Allison.
Son of a bitch.
Chapter Eighteen
The words I’d been in the process of uttering dissolved on my tongue, and my heart sputtered. I froze, too overwhelmed to speak.
“So,” Allison said, letting the word hang in the air.
“So,” I repeated, getting to my feet.
“Big op, huh?”
“Yup.”
“You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get her back.”
“Yeah.”
We existed in silence for a long, uncomfortable moment, during which I determined that I really liked the color of the bedspread. And the stitching was amazing.
“We need to talk,” Allison said, straight and to the point, her voice low and throaty.
“What about?”
Allison stepped closer, and it took every ounce of willpower I had to hold my ground. Did I want to get as close to her as possible or retreat? Being pulled in two opposite directions put the kibosh on my momentum altogether.
“Really?” Allison’s tone dripped skepticism, and she lifted one eyebrow. “That’s what you’re going with?”
I shrugged and ducked my head, picking at the fraying strap of my duffel bag. “It was worth a shot.”
The air between us was charged as an uneasy silence once again descended. Allison slid the fingers of her right hand beneath my chin and tipped my head back up.
“Ryan, you promised. We promised. We have to talk about this.”
I sighed and took her hand, removing it from the far-too-intimate position of cupping my face. I couldn’t handle that level of closeness. “Allison, we don’t have time. And this definitely is not the place.”
“Claudia promised to come get us when they finish hashing out the details. We aren’t holding anything up.”
“I still don’t think that—”
“After you got shot, I stopped taking for granted that you’d always come home in one piece. It reminded me that no matter how mundane the assignment, things can always go wrong. I want to talk about this now, before everything starts. Please.”
She didn’t point out that this situation could go south at least half a dozen ways, and we might not have another chance to talk about it. But she didn’t have to. I supposed she was right. However, that didn’t make me any more inclined to have this discussion.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m just not ready.”
Anger flashed in her near-black eyes like lightning crackling over a desert—there one instant, gone the next. Unspeakable sadness rushed in to fill the void, and my heart clenched.
“Not ready to talk? Or not ready to forgive me?” she asked. Her words had an edge that made me tread carefully.
“There’s nothing to forgive. You didn’t do anything wrong. I know that. I’m just not quite…ready to address it. That’s all. Not right now. Hell, maybe it doesn’t even need to be addressed. I know we said we wouldn’t keep anything from one another anymore, but maybe we can break that rule just this once.”
Allison’s expression was part wary and part hopeful. “So, you’re not breaking up with me? Because earlier you said you didn’t want me up here, and—”
“I do,” I whispered softly, not bothering to banish the pain or longing from my words. “I really do. I was being an asshole before. I’m sorry.”
“Good. Because I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
The admission stole the air from my lungs and made my stomach free-fall in the most wonderful way. A small, sad smile crept over my lips.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you either. It’s just hard for me to…” I was unsure whether I should even finish that sentence.
“Me, too.” The stillness stretched taut between us, heavy and smothering. And then, so quiet that I had to lean in to hear her, “I don’t like thinking about you with anybody else, either. I can barely look at Jamie without wanting to punch her in the face. And I actually like her, so…”
“Yeah.” Because that summed it up perfectly. I couldn’t go a full five minutes without picturing her and Byers together, and it made me ill and furious all at the same time. Irrational, maybe, but here we were.
“It was because of you, you know.”
I furrowed my brow. “What was because of me?”
“The reason I couldn’t find anybody to date. That was your fault.”
Anger spiked within me once again, and I narrowed my eyes. “How was that my fault?”
Allison sighed and favored me with a look of embarrassment shot through with amusement, underscored by a despondent sort of smile. “Every single woman I went out with reminded me of you.”
My anger stalled. “What?”
“It wasn’t always big things, either. I made sure to avoid blondes with blue eyes for obvious reasons. But little things about them crept up on me. Like the way one woman’s eyes sparkled when she looked at me. Or the perfume another one wore. Or the way another woman memorized my coffee order right off the bat.”
“Exactly how many women were there?” I tried for teasing and somehow managed to hit the target, if not the bull’s-eye.
Allison smiled mysteriously. “A few.”
“Great,” I muttered sarcastically.
“The point is, not a single one of them could ever have hoped to eclipse you in my eyes. Or in my heart.”
I flushed yet felt chilled. I hated thinking about her smiling at someone else, holding someone else, kissing someone else. But it was tough to get wrapped around the axle about those things when she’d basically just told me I’d managed to ruin all of that for her without even being there.
“Oh,” I said.
“You asked me earlier why him. That’s why. He was about as far away from you as I could get. Nothing about him reminded me of you. It was less painful for me that way. Easier for me to pretend I hadn’t made the biggest mistake of my life when I let you go.”
I grimaced, as much at the reminder as at her twisted logic. Clearly, despite my earlier plea, we were going to discuss this. My heart felt heavy, like it’d been flooded with twice the normal amount of blood and was now too full inside my chest. Its ache was making me anxious.
“For what it�
��s worth, it wasn’t even that regular a thing.”
“That’s not what it sounded like earlier.”
Allison now looked irritated. “Yeah, well, he did that on purpose. Probably because, as you pointed out, he’s a douchebag. We slept together a handful of times at most. And as soon as I found out I was coming up here for that PPD visit, I told him it would never happen again.”
“You did?”
“Of course.”
Okay, that threw me. “But…why?”
Allison appeared embarrassed. She suddenly became interested in studying the bedspread that’d captured my attention earlier. “Because I was going to see you.”
I hesitated as I attempted to decipher her meaning. “Did you want to get back together before you came up here?”
A long pause. “The thought had crossed my mind.”
“Huh.” That revelation both pleased and confused me. Would she have gone back to Byers if I hadn’t suddenly become single in the middle of her visit? “Wait. So you and Byers were over before that trip to Hong Kong.”
“Yes. We were definitely over.”
“And he knew that?”
“Trust me. I was perfectly clear.”
I frowned as I mulled over her words. “But then why would he imply otherwise?” I murmured more to myself than to her. “And why would he—” A sudden flash of realization hit me. “Holy shit.”
“What?”
I smacked my forehead with the heel of my hand and closed my eyes. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”
“See what?”
“He wanted more. He has feelings for you.”
For an instant Allison looked like she wanted to deny it—or at least pretend she hadn’t already reached the same conclusion—but ended up nodding again. “I sort of suspected that. He always seemed way more into what we were doing than I was.”
“Oh.”
“And then when we were in Hong Kong, I guess he overheard our last conversation before you were shot. I know we didn’t say anything graphic, but it was clear that whoever I was talking to wasn’t just a friend.”
“So, that’s why he started giving you such a hard time after that. He was pissed.”
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