The Impossible Alliance

by Candace Irvin

  Reminyl?

  She couldn’t help it, she stepped back.

  She shouldn’t ask, dammit. She’d already asked too much of this man. Fate had already asked. Stolen. But when she sought out Jared’s broad shoulders as she had so many times during the morning, afternoon and evening, and saw the utter weariness in them—the sobering futility in his eyes as he scanned cot upon cot filled with their fresh crop of mangled bodies and the constant, quietly weeping resignation beside them—when he finally met her gaze and struggled so hard to produce a simple smile, she knew she had to ask. She had to know.

  “Abel, may I ask what was wrong with your wife? Before you gave her the stone? Why did she take the Reminyl?” She waited as the old man pulled his lingering gaze from his wife’s slumbering face to smile sadly into hers. Prayed.

  “The Reminyl was for her Alzheimer’s.”

  Chapter 10

  She knew. Jared swallowed the acid that had been slowly but surely eating away at the lining of his stomach and his throat for the past thirty minutes. Ever since the moment he’d glanced across that triage bay, desperately needing the solace those soft, green, eyes could provide, only to discover that blinding horror and gut-wrenching pity, had finally replaced it.

  Alex knew.

  Naturally he hadn’t confronted her while they were in the triage bay. Nor did he when they reached the main doors of the hospital, as he settled her jacket on her shoulders and pulled her close—for their armed audience, of course—while they waited for their cab. Nor did he dare to broach the subject while in the rear of that cab, just stared straight ahead into the dark. Hell, he didn’t even pause in front of Orloff’s house, lock his hand to the top of that rusted, wrought-iron gate and demand she come clean. No, he waited until they opened the door, shut it firmly and carefully picked their way up those polished wooden steps to reach the cloying privacy of the cramped guest room at the end of the hall. The moment she closed the door behind her, he spoke.

  “He told you.”

  She didn’t deny it. He hadn’t expected her to. But neither did she have the decency to face him. She stood at the door with her back to him, instead, dragging that gray jacket down her arms. She went on to waste another fifteen agonizing seconds as she zipped up the jacket and shook out the sleeves before folding one over the other. Only then did she pull herself up to her full height and turn.

  “Of course he told me. Why shouldn’t he? I asked.”

  Maybe it was the lingering horror, the pity. The complete calm. The quiet determination in her face. He didn’t know. All he knew was that he just snapped.

  “Why shouldn’t he? Because I asked him not to tell anyone, that’s why! Christ, I damned near begged. I still can’t believe I trusted him—again—but that’s my problem, not yours. I just want to know one thing. How the hell did you get it out of him when he swore on his wife’s grave he’d never tell? Hell, maybe you are screwing the man. Maybe you just decided it was prudent to lie about it. God knows you’re lying about everything else.”

  When she didn’t answer, when she just stood there, as if rocked to her core with that damned phony innocence locking in to every single bloodless inch of her face, he threw up his hands and stalked across the room, stopping when he reached the narrow, shuttered window between the nightstand and the bed. He spun around in time to catch the silent working of her throat. He watched, still seething, as those full lips parted, quivered, then pressed back together.

  Several moments passed before they parted again. A shallow breath bled out. “Sam knows?”

  Oh, she was good. Better than good.

  He tore the zipper to his jacket open and yanked the sleeves down his arms. Unlike her, he balled up the coat and flung it at the foot of the bed. “Give it up, lady. Why else does the man have you skulking around behind my back?”

  Her throat worked again, this time not quite silently. “Wh-what are you talking about?”

  “This morning? The mysterious package handoff? Orloff’s office? The locked door?” He shoved his hands beneath his bloodstained sweater as he stalked across the room to her. When she held her ground, he hauled the crumpled sheet of paper from the pocket of his jeans and slammed it up against the wall, six inches from the deceptively soft curls at her right ear. Satisfaction seared through him as she flinched.

  But a moment later she was back to cool. Composed.

  “What’s that?”

  “Take a look.”

  She refused to release his gaze long enough to glance at anything. The mood he was in, he didn’t blame her.

  “It’s the goddamn manifest.”

  Another swallow. Again, not quite silent. She followed it with another quick working of that slender throat. “How…how did you get that?”

  “How else, Agent Morrow? I lifted it. From your bag.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  The hell it wasn’t. He flattened the sheet against the wall and jerked his chin toward the top. “Take a good look at the header block, honey. You told me you got that blood and those supplies from a friend. I sensed then you were lying. But stupid, doubting me, I chalked up the instinct to the Alzheimer’s. Figured maybe I needed to up the Reminyl level in my blood so it could rack my neuroconnections in tighter and stop up the slowly leaking sieve I’ve got for a brain. But you didn’t get that blood from a friend, or the supplies. This manifest proves it. Want to know why?”

  Nothing. Not even the quiet working of her throat. Just that damned deceptive mist in her eyes.

  Determined to ignore it, he flicked his gaze to the manifest. To the string of words that’d been branded into his memory from the moment he spotted them. “It says here the supplies were donated by Endlich Medical, Inc. Perhaps you’d care to tell me how you’re friends with a company that doesn’t even exist—except on paper? Endlich Medical is a goddamned phony shell, Dr. Morrow. Much like that rubber chest I cracked open out in the middle of the Hartz forest. A dummy corporation. Or am I the dummy? Am I just having another charming senior moment courtesy of my blisteringly premature case of early-onset Alzheimer’s?”

  She finally opened her mouth.

  He heard the air pull down into her lungs, felt her soft, shallow exhale. Smelled the tantalizingly sweet scent of her warm breath as it swirled up between them. He promptly purged each and every one of the unwelcome memories from his brain.

  “The man who set Endlich Medical up is—”

  “ARIES director Samuel Hatch. You know, our boss? That guy you’re not sleeping with? The same guy who didn’t tell you about the Alzheimer’s. The guy who doesn’t have you slinking around behind my back, making sure the marbles in my head don’t drop out one by one and roll into the gutter before I can stoop over and scoop them up, much less finish my final mission. The same guy who’s—”

  “My uncle.”

  He tore his gaze from the crumpled manifest and plunged it straight into her tortured stare. She was telling the truth. He didn’t need another four milligrams of Reminyl to prop up his gradually disintegrating brain. He didn’t need forty. He could see it in her eyes.

  Just like that his fury evaporated. He searched for it vainly, desperate to grab on to so much as a trailing wisp. To have something to hold on to as he tried to acclimate himself to this sudden spinning sensation in his head. To the absolutely incredible knowledge. Samuel Hatch was her uncle?

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, he’s my uncle. And he never told me about you, I swear. I did call him today. To fill him in on the information I’d unearthed about Greg Krazner. I was lying to myself. I really called to ask about another name I ran a check on. A woman by the name of Janice. Sam didn’t say a word. Hell, he practically hung up on me for the first time in my life. I’m guessing now that you were never involved with a twenty-eight-year-old, curvaceous translator who specializes in Russian.”

  He blinked.

  She shrugged. “Thought not. Then I’m also guessing that the woman I overheard you speaking to three months
ago is a fifty-six-year-old scientist by the name of Janice Errington. And I’m betting Janice is a bit more than your run-of-the-mill scientist, too. Maybe even a doctor?”

  “Geneticist.”

  She nodded. “Makes sense. Now. So does that phone call I overheard in my uncle’s guest room. While we’re on the subject, let me make it clear one more time. Sam told me nothing. I ran across a note in Orloff’s office listing your infection, Cipro, and another drug called Reminyl. I’m guessing now that Orloff was checking drug interactions for you. I may never have connected the Reminyl if it hadn’t been for Abel.”

  She seemed to think he knew what she was referring to. Christ. Had he forgotten something critical already? Maybe he did need to increase his dosage, because he had no idea.

  “Abel Braun? Elsa?”

  He shook his head. Her stomach roiled.

  “The couple you lay next to for over an hour in that cot this morning while red blood cells drained into your arm?”

  Relief flooded him. He flushed. “I didn’t catch their names.”

  He hadn’t even asked. The social lapse had been deliberate, too. Why ask for someone’s name when you were just going to end up forgetting it? Forgetting them. Only, once the old man had dropped his cryptic warning, he’d realized he was going to have to let the guy in. At least far enough to get the rest of the story out. But the old man had nodded off before he could ask. And then he’d spotted Orloff leaving. With that package.

  “What was in the box?”

  The second her throat began to work, however subtly, silently, he knew it was coming.

  The lie.

  “Jared, that box was private. Personal.”

  Yeah, that’s what he’d thought. He pushed off the wall and stepped back. Away from her. The contents of that box were personal, all right. He didn’t doubt her for a second. Sam had probably mailed her a personal bar of soap so she could have it on hand in case she needed to clean up after his very private, very dirty laundry.

  She grabbed his arm. “Wait—”

  He held up his hands. “It’s okay. You keep your secrets. It’s a good move. A smart one, too. It’s not like I wouldn’t have a fifty-fifty shot at blabbing your business all over the world before I forgot it, anyway, whether I meant to or not.”

  He never should have said it. Much less let her know he felt it. Because here came the pity.

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

  He’d pulled some pretty ballsy stunts in his career. Pulled off some damned daring missions. Gone in to rescue folks his buddies had told him could never be rescued—and brought them out alive. He’d stared death itself in the eye more times than he cared to remember and had always come out the winner. But right now he knew that deep down, he was nothing more than a goddam, sniveling coward.

  He proved it to the both of them as he turned away, slinking across that all-too-tiny room. He didn’t stop until he was staring directly into a set of wooden slats, trapped on the wrong side of that suffocatingly narrow window.

  He heard her cross the room, as well, felt her stop behind him. He knew exactly what she wanted. More. She’d begged him to open up in that cabin. Well, he just had. He’d said more in the past five minutes than he’d said in days, than he’d said in years, and they both knew it. He also knew he had nothing left to give. Not to her. He couldn’t risk it.

  “Jared?”

  He flinched. A moment later he was forced to close his eyes as those strong, capable hands reached out and tentatively cupped his taut shoulders. The same hands that had spread blankets, distributed pills, changed bedpans, mopped puddles of blood and far, far worse from the floor today. Hands that’d worked beside him and then with him to keep the life from seeping out of yet another child and then been willing to learn how to stitch the gaping wound left behind because there were no more pairs of hands left around to help.

  Those same hands threaded into his hair, smoothed it, their subtle caress causing his breath to hitch somewhere in the middle of his throat, then stop up his lungs altogether. He cursed his decision to pull the ponytail out in the cab. Aching scalp be damned. Anything would have been preferable to the heightened sensation the loose hairs were picking up on and then magnifying before shooting down into his groin.

  Lord, was he a bastard of the first degree. That he could even think about sex right now.

  But the truth of it was, he’d thought about it a lot lately. Mostly about how much he missed it. About how much he wanted to have it…with her. Hell, he wasn’t kidding anyone. He didn’t want to have sex with the woman standing six inches behind him. He wanted to make love to her.

  All night long. Over and over again.

  He wanted to memorize every inch of that long, lean body. Every dip, every curve. He wanted to memorize her scent and her taste. The sensation of those agile fingers as they slid over him. He wanted to soak up the sounds she uttered as he kissed her. Every moan, every gasp, every sigh. He wanted to stare into those soft green eyes and watch as the passion slowly clouded into the mist. And then he wanted to watch her as she came apart in his arms.

  He’d give anything to remember it. To remember her.

  Hell, he still wasn’t even sure how it had happened, much less why. He just knew it had. He knew in his heart and in his soul that he’d sacrifice every word he’d ever read, every memory he’d ever formed, if he could just guarantee that he’d remember the woman standing quietly behind him now. But he couldn’t.

  And eventually he wouldn’t.

  Alex stared at the man’s back as the last of the fantasy came crashing down around her. Jared Sullivan was dying all right, but it wasn’t from Alzheimer’s. At least, not just yet. Right now he was dying from the most insidious disease of all. Loneliness. She should know. She recognized the symptoms all too well. Even as she waited for him to turn, she knew he’d never do it on his own. She’d have to force him. Maybe even beg. She didn’t care. All she cared about was figuring out a way to staunch his pain. She sucked up her pride and did it.

  “Please.”

  To her surprise, he actually turned.

  She almost wished he hadn’t. The anger and accusations had been bad enough, but she’d understood them. She also refused to let them get to her, to let him get to her. But how could she ignore the agony? The absolute devastation?

  His eyes.

  They were dark, almost black with pain and self-doubt and, yes, even fear. To see that in this man, knowing what he’d done in his life, knowing what he’d done for her—

  Oh, God. She couldn’t even finish the thought. All she could do was feel.

  She reached up and cupped her hand to his face, smoothing the fingers of her right hand across his cheek, catching the single tear that had slipped free, soothing it from his skin before it could bleed down into the dark shadow covering his jaw. She sucked in her breath as he closed his eyes and turned his face into her palm. His lips were as warm and as smooth as they’d been in this very room twenty-four hours before.

  Except now they trembled. He trembled. And it wasn’t from passion.

  Before she realized what she was doing, she’d already stretched up into him, the agonizing band on her own heart easing as he turned down into her, catching her own tears with his still-warm, still-smooth, still-trembling lips. And then they weren’t. She didn’t even flinch when his hands came up to frame the sides of her face, directly over her ears, as he tilted her head to gain instant, scorching access to her mouth. She simply answered his driving, needy kiss. His groan rasped through her, stoking the desire.

  Within seconds she’d plowed her fingers into that glorious hair and used it to drag him closer. He groaned again, shifted again, sealing the length of her body to his—but then he froze. A split second later, he tore his mouth from hers, leaving her confused and bereft as he dug his fingers into her shoulders and shoved her to arm’s length.

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “Dammit, I will not be a charity case. And I sure
as hell won’t be a pity f—”

  “Don’t! Don’t you dare say it. Don’t even think it.” She knew he was hurting, but, by God, he was not going there. She sucked in a lungful of blistering air, using it to purge herself of the fury. “You’re wrong. You are not and will never be a—”

  “Oh, yeah? What am I supposed to believe? That you’re in it for love? That you care? That you’re hot for my body? Or are you looking for a baby to go along with the picket fence and the rest of that mythical forever-after crap. Sorry, can’t help you there, either. Had a vasectomy when I was eighteen, compliments of the U.S. Army, just in case. Or maybe it’s the photographic brain that turns you on? Well, I’ve got news for you, sweetheart. It won’t last. None of it will. I won’t last. Take my advice and get out now. While you’ve still got the chance.”

  “No.”

  He slammed his hands down on the desk. “Jesus, woman! What is it with you? You think this is some kind of game? It’s not. It’s ugly and it sucks, but it’s life. My life. And trust me when I tell you the first time you end up having to hold my hand so I can cross the street or wipe the drool off my chin—or, worse, wipe my goddamn naked ass—it’s gonna get old. Very, very, old. Pretty soon, you’ll wish to hell it was just plain over.” He stood there, his arms locked over that desk, his shoulders still shaking with the rage of it. With the desolation and the shame, the fruitlessness. The guilt.

  His mom.

  She was certain when he finally broke his tortured gaze from hers and turned to sink onto the edge of the bed. The absolute resignation as he stared off at that shuttered window. Lost in the past. In the pain.

  I got the memory from her.

  She didn’t need a geneticist to know Jared had gotten something else from his mother. From the file she’d read today, she knew he hadn’t gotten a thing from the rest of his father’s family until it was too late. He truly believed he was alone in this. Like his mom, he wouldn’t have a spouse to share the coming burdens with, and unlike his mom, he wouldn’t even have a child.