by Paula Graves
“Need a ride?”
She looked up to see Hannah Cooper looking down at her with sympathetic eyes. “How’d you know?”
“Tiny police station. Voices carry.” She offered her hand to Ava, helping her to her feet.
“Don’t suppose you know where they’ve taken Sinclair, do you?” she asked Hannah as they reached a rental sedan parked near the edge of the visitor’s parking area.
“No. Alicia sent me in search of answers, but nobody’s talking.” Hannah adjusted the steering wheel and buckled her belt before looking across the seat at Ava. “I guess you didn’t get any answers, either.”
“No. Apparently I’m an unindicted co-conspirator to Sinclair, as far as the FBI is concerned.” She found the strength to strap the seat belt around her and slumped against the seat. “He’s a terrorism suspect. You know as well as I do he could be halfway to some secret CIA interrogation facility by now.”
“The CIA knows who he is and what he really did,” Hannah reminded her. “I’d be more worried that someone in Homeland Security wanted to make a name for himself off Sinclair’s reputation.”
Ava groaned. “Thanks. That makes me feel so much better.”
“Quinn’s gone back to Purgatory. He said he has better resources back at The Gates and thinks he can at least find out where Sinclair is.” Hannah was heading back toward the motel, Ava realized. She supposed the rest of the Coopers had decided to rendezvous there once the FBI finished debriefing them.
“Are any of you in trouble?” she asked.
“Our Alabama concealed-carry licenses are good here in Tennessee, our weapons all comport with state and local laws, and the only shots we took were in self-defense.” She shot Ava a weary grin. “Plus, our legal team is formidable enough to give even the FBI nightmares. I think we’re good.”
“How’s Gabe?”
“A lot better now that Alicia’s back.”
“Did Alicia and Sinclair get any more time together before the Feds took him away?” Ava had been whisked into protective custody so quickly that she’d missed most of what had happened at the camp. During her two-hour debriefing at the police station, she’d managed to learn that the rest of Cabrera’s men had been rounded up.
A local doctor had also examined her right there at the station, cleaned and re-bandaged her gunshot wound, given her an antibiotic shot and ordered her with kindly sternness to see her personal physician as soon as possible to get a prescription for more antibiotics.
She’d expected a little more pushback about the four El Cambio thugs she, Sinclair and the Coopers had killed, but apparently neither the FBI nor local law enforcement was eager to arrest American citizens for shooting foreign terrorists in self-defense. She might yet have to lawyer up, but for now, she knew better than to ask any questions when they were letting her walk out a free woman.
If only Sinclair had received the same treatment.
“No. They grabbed him up pretty fast.”
“And whisked him away to God knows where.”
“We’re going to find him,” Hannah said with quiet fervor as she slowed the car to turn into the motel parking lot.
Ava nodded, but she couldn’t quite muster up the same confidence. She knew how Byzantine a system they were dealing with.
By turning in her badge, she’d just locked herself on the outside. And thrown away the key.
Chapter Seventeen
As incarceration on a charge of terrorism went, Sinclair supposed his stay in the federal custody could have been worse. He’d been stuck in the federal prison in McCreary, Kentucky, undergoing intensive interrogation for three days, but nobody had waterboarded him, and any sleep deprivation he was dealing with came from his own copious store of old, familiar regrets.
They had kept him in solitary so far. One hour of physical activity, alone, outside his cell. The other twenty-three hours were spent in his cell, also alone, or across the table from a steady stream of less-than-friendly representatives of a veritable alphabet soup of federal law enforcement agencies.
It came as no surprise when the guard rapped on the bars of his cell around ten on the morning of his fourth day of custody and told him he had another visitor.
The visitor, however, came as a surprise indeed.
“You’re looking better than I expected,” Jesse Cooper said, his expression neutral but a hint of sympathy warming his blue eyes. “How’re they treating you?”
“Like a terrorism suspect.” Sinclair took a seat at the table across from the Cooper Security CEO, rattling his shackles to underscore his point. “How’d you talk your way in here?”
“Some people high in the government owe me a favor or two.”
“Don’t suppose you could call in a chip to get me out of here?”
“I can do better than that. I convinced Gerald Blackledge to give Alexander Quinn twenty minutes of his time.”
“Senator Gerald Blackledge?” Sinclair asked. “The same Senator Blackledge who called me vermin in a 60 Minutes interview?”
Jesse’s lips twitched at the corners. “Yes, that Gerald Blackledge.”
“God help me.”
“That’s up to God, but Gerald Blackledge knows a hero when he hears about one. He’s all over the Department of Justice to cut you loose and give you a damned medal while they’re at it.”
Sinclair frowned. “I’m no hero.”
Jesse shrugged. “Not sure you’re going to convince many people of that when they hear the risks you took in Sanselmo working for the CIA.”
“The CIA’s never going to let that information go public.”
“You’re probably right.” Jesse folded his hands on the table in front of him, the skin over his knuckles tightening as he leaned forward a few inches and pinned Sinclair with his cool blue gaze. “So let’s get to the next part of this interview. Why did you tell the warden you wouldn’t see Alicia if she showed up for a visit?”
He hadn’t thought she or anyone else he knew would be able to find him this quickly. The Feds had worked hard to keep the news of his arrest from reaching the newspapers until they’d made sure all of the El Cambio elements who’d sneaked across the border with Cabrera had been rounded up. But just in case the Coopers were as good as he’d heard—and apparently they were—he’d made sure his sister was on the “do not admit” list.
“I don’t want her to see me here,” he said.
“She spent years thinking you were a dead terrorist. I doubt seeing you here is going to make her think worse of you.”
“She needs to forget she ever saw me again. Go on with her life like it was. She’s happy, isn’t she? With her work and her marriage?”
“She is.” Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “She’d be happier if you were part of her life again.”
“How’d you find me so fast?”
“Blackledge, again. In some ways, he’s more powerful than the president.”
Sinclair supposed so. The wily old Alabama senator had been in congress for over two decades, and he had the clout and powerful committee assignments that came with that sort of longevity. “My parents would have a stroke if they knew Blackledge, of all people, had made himself my benefactor.”
Jesse Cooper grinned at the comment. “That’s what Alicia said.”
Sinclair had assumed his sister had informed their parents he was still alive, but if either of them wanted to see him, he hadn’t heard any word that they’d tried to make contact. “Do my parents know I’m alive?”
Jesse’s grin faded. “Yeah. They’re still processing the information.”
A kind way of saying they weren’t yet decided on whether to forgive him for working with the CIA against a group for which they’d had a lot of sympathy. Of course, they probably still saw El Cambio through the rose-colored lenses of their romantic radicalism.
Eight months with El Cambio had crushed his own illusions into dust.
“Alicia says to tell you they’ll come around. Eventually.”
He
suspected his sister was overly optimistic. He’d known when he’d taken up Alexander Quinn’s offer of an undercover assignment that his parents would probably never understand his choice.
But Martin and Lorraine Solano hadn’t stood in the shadows on La Curva del Muertos and witnessed Alberto Cabrera slice an old, deluded man damned near in two for daring to question El Cambio’s actions and motives.
“Ava Trent resigned from the FBI.”
Sinclair’s gaze snapped up to meet Jesse’s. “Resigned? Or was pushed out?”
“Resigned. Although she seems to think they’d have pushed her out sooner or later, since she wasn’t going to toe the Bureau line about you.”
“She shouldn’t have let me screw up her career,” he muttered, swamped with regret.
“She said you’d say that.”
“Does she know I’m here?” He hadn’t put her on the “do not admit” list, he realized. He supposed he hadn’t thought she’d try to find him, considering the hell he’d brought into her life over the past week.
Or, maybe, he’d secretly wanted to leave open the possibility that she’d show up one day, flash those pretty hazel eyes at him and declare her undying devotion?
Fool.
“She does,” Jesse said. “She’s here, as a matter of fact.”
Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t quell a rush of excitement. “Here in McCreary?”
“Here, waiting in the warden’s office.”
A flood of adrenaline jolted through him, doubling his heart rate in seconds. Ava was here. She was here. If he asked, someone would bring her to see him.
He could almost picture her, those mountain-pool eyes, that wicked smile. Those delicious curves he could still feel under his palms as if his hands had perfect memories.
Jesse’s eyes narrowed again. “Are you going to let her see you?”
He clenched his fists around the chains of his shackles. “Not like this.”
Jesse gave him a long, considering look. “Blackledge won’t stop until you’re out of here. You realize that, right? You won’t be here forever.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sinclair answered, refusing to let himself hope. “There’s nothing for me out there anyway.”
“Quinn wants you to go back to Purgatory and work for him at The Gates.”
“Sure he does.”
“You think I’d make something like that up?” Jesse flexed his hands. “Alicia made me promise to offer you a job at Cooper Security instead.”
Sinclair laughed. “Don’t strain yourself complying.”
Jesse smiled. “You’re not really right for the kind of work we do at Cooper Security, to be honest. From what little Quinn has told me, your skill set is better suited to investigation. Our company is security-oriented. We have only a small corps of investigators and no current openings.”
“I’m not getting out of here anytime soon anyway.”
“Clearly, you’ve never met Senator Blackledge.”
Two hard raps sounded on the interview room door. It opened a second later, revealing Dunn, the guard who’d brought Sinclair in shackles from his cell. “Time’s up.”
“You won’t see Ava, will you?” Jesse asked as he stood.
Sinclair almost said yes. But he caught himself before he made the mistake. “No. Tell her to go home and forget about me.”
“Yeah. I’ll do that.” Sarcasm tinted Jesse’s reply.
Once Jesse had gone, Dunn escorted Sinclair back to his cell and relieved him of his shackles with another guard looking on.
“Thanks,” Sinclair said.
Dunn’s gaze whipped up as if suspecting him of being sarcastic. Only after a long, considering moment did his expression clear. He gave a slight nod as he locked the cell door. “Keep your head down.”
Sinclair planned on taking that advice to heart. If he wanted to survive life in prison, he had a feeling he’d need to keep as low a profile as possible.
* * *
“WHY THE GATES?” Ava asked a few seconds into her slow circuit of Alexander Quinn’s corner office. It was a remarkably Spartan space for a man who’d lived such an exotic life for nearly two decades. A plain walnut desk, a built-in book case only a quarter full. No photographs on the desk, only a blotter and a pen holder.
Quinn leaned back in his leather desk chair, his hands steepled over his flat belly. “Adam Brand suggested it. You know Brand from your time with the FBI, don’t you?”
“By name and reputation, mostly.” She stopped at the window, her attention snared by the striking view of the mist-shrouded Smoky Mountains to the east. “Why’d he suggest The Gates as the name for your agency?”
“Purgatory. The gate thereof.” As she turned to look at him, Quinn’s lips curved in what passed, for him, as a smile. “It’s a bit fanciful for my tastes, but I’ll admit it’s evocative. A few good men and women, standing in the breach between heaven and hell.”
“Think a lot of yourselves, do you?”
His smile broadened a twitch. “Do you want the job or not?”
She turned back to the window, her pulse pounding a nervous cadence in her ears. Decision time. The offer was better than anything else that had come her way in the month since she’d turned in her creds to Pete Chang and resigned from the FBI. The pay was good, the surroundings gorgeous, and Purgatory was actually a shorter drive from her parents’ farm in southeastern Kentucky than Johnson City had been.
But if she was serious about putting her feelings for Sinclair Solano behind her, was it really wise to take a job with the man who’d been his CIA handler for five years?
“I want the job,” she said.
Quinn nodded as if he’d never had a doubt what her answer would be. “How soon can you start?”
“Tomorrow.” The sooner she got her mind off her regrets, the better. Work would give her something else to think about, at least.
And if the mountains cradling the investigation agency’s quaint Victorian mansion-turned-office reminded her a little too keenly of her brief reunion with Sinclair Solano, she’d just have to deal.
“Have a seat while I get the paperwork started.” He waved at the pair of sturdy leather chairs in front of his desk as he rose and headed for the door.
She did as he asked, though the minute the door clicked shut behind him, she got to her feet again and returned to the window. The sky visible over the mountain peaks was a tumultuous gunmetal-gray, darker clouds scudding across the sky with a threat of rain.
It reminded her of standing in the parking lot of the Mountain View Motor Lodge in Poe Creek, locking gazes with a dead man.
She closed her eyes as the door opened behind her, not willing to let Quinn see her regrets.
“Oh, sorry, I thought this was Quinn’s office—”
She thought for a second that she’d conjured up the deep, smooth timbre of Sinclair Solano’s voice. She turned slowly, expecting to find the room empty, the door still closed.
But a pair of dark eyes stared back at her, widening with surprise. Lean features, even more starkly angular than before, softened around the edges as he spoke. “Ava.”
“I thought you’d gone back to California. Family reunion.” He’d been released from prison over a week ago. The news reports had gone rabid for the story of the terrorist turned CIA double agent, especially when it became clear that there might be a Solano family feud brewing between the new American hero and his parents.
Interest had finally begun to wane when formal statements from the elder Solanos indicated a reconciliation had occurred during a family get-together at the family’s Napa Valley vacation home.
“Yeah, well. It got a little frosty among the grapes, so I thought it was time for a change of scenery.” His gaze softened as it wandered over her. “You look good. How’s your hip?”
“Mostly healed. Looks like there’ll be a scar.” There was something surreal about hearing the casual tone of her reply when every nerve ending in her body had sparked alive at t
he sight of him. She felt herself straining helplessly toward him, iron to a magnet.
“What are you doing here?”
“Taking a job.”
He stared at her silently, tension building second by second.
“Is something wrong?” she asked finally when he didn’t say anything more.
“Quinn hired me this morning. Officially this time.” His brow furrowed. “He didn’t mention he’d offered you a job, as well.”
“Oh.” She tried not to feel the sharp arrow of pain that arced through her chest at the wary look in his eyes. “I haven’t signed a contract. I can still decline the job.”
“Do you want to decline?”
She wasn’t sure what he was asking. Or what the brief flare of animation behind his expression meant. “No. I don’t. I need a job, and this one seems right up my alley.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you’d rather not run into me every day. Considering what helping me out did to your previous career.”
Did he really blame himself for her losing her FBI job? “I quit the FBI. They didn’t fire me.”
“After what you did for me, you didn’t have any hope of advancement.”
Probably not, considering how annoyed the U.S. Attorney General had seemed about having a senator turn the prospect of a high-profile terrorism conviction into a forced mea culpa for arresting an America hero. But Ava didn’t care. It was worth everything she’d given up to give Sinclair a chance at living a halfway normal life again.
Even if he didn’t want to live it with her.
“I don’t think my prospects were all that good anyway.” She wished she could read his mind, see what he was thinking behind those cautious brown eyes. “Have you gotten to spend any more time with your sister?”
He smiled for the first time, genuine emotion peeking through his wall of reserve. “Yeah, I have. She’s surprisingly forgiving, considering.”
“You have time to make things up to her now.”
“I wish—” He stopped midsentence, his lips pressing together.
“You wish what?” She wanted to believe the flicker of feeling darkening his eyes was for her. But she’d already spent two weeks of her life trying to see him when he was in the federal prison in McCreary, only to have him refuse her attempts at contact.