Dangerous Games

by Tess Diamond

  She turned to find Jake jogging toward her.

  She waited for him to catch up, and he smiled.

  “That was a hell of a fight,” he said, his eyes gleaming with respect.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Maggie said. They arrived at the gravel walk that wound through the rose garden. Bright splashes of red, white, and pink stood out against deep green. She took a deep breath, trying to enjoy the flowers’ soothing fragrance, the sound of bees buzzing lazily around them.

  She finally stopped. They were out of sight of the house, half-hidden by the towering blooms. Her heart was beating too fast, her skin was radiating heat. She wanted to sit down and bury her face in her hands.

  “You okay?” Jake asked.

  Her wrists ached, and her lower lip, to her great embarrassment, began to wobble. She felt frayed at the edges, like a rope stretched too tight. Any more pressure, and she would snap.

  “Hey.” He reached out, placing his hand over her fingers. They were wrapped tightly around her wrist, her nails digging into her skin, leaving half-moon marks. With a startling softness—who knew such a big, rough man could be so gentle?—he coaxed her fingers free from their grip until their hands rested palm to palm.

  His fingers laced with hers, an intimate motion that sent a frenzied heat spreading across her cheeks, chasing away her anger with something even more powerful: desire.

  Maggie could feel gun calluses on his fingers—calluses that matched her own.

  It was like they fit together.

  “Come sit,” he said. He drew her to a marble bench set near the back of the garden, in a shady, ivy-covered alcove that provided some privacy. In the shadows, his expression softened, worry in his eyes.

  Worry about her.

  As soon as she was seated, Maggie let out a shaky breath. She hadn’t realized how close her knees were to buckling. Was that from her confrontation with the senator?

  Or from Jake’s touch?

  “So, you’ve been through some heavy stuff, I’m thinking,” Jake said softly.

  It was hard to think straight when he was touching her, when she could close the space between them in just one step, when his eyes were full of promises she wanted so badly to believe.

  “I could say the same thing about you,” Maggie said.

  “I was trained for it,” he said. “But you . . . you were young, weren’t you?”

  Once again, his perception was dead on. For a long moment, Maggie wondered if she could do this. When she’d told Paul, she’d divorced herself from her emotions and approached it like another case. She thought that would be easier for both of them. She hadn’t wanted Paul to worry.

  But that was what had ruined them in the end. That she kept running from the emotion. From the hurt. From the memory of Erica.

  She’d left her. She never should have. She should have been there.

  She should have died with her.

  It was a horrible thought. A selfish thought, when she considered her parents; her mother especially, who’d lost more in her life than any parent should. But it was one of the dark truths in her soul. One that lurked in the back of her mind, only peeking out late at night, never voiced, hardly acknowledged.

  “My father came from a very wealthy family,” Maggie said. “He was a good man . . . a great man. When his father died, he inherited a lot of money. It made him a target. It made us a target.”

  Jake shifted toward her so they lined up, his shoulder pressing against hers, the dip of her waist resting against the strong, warm line of his. He squeezed her hand, lending her the strength to continue.

  “My mom, she was always determined we grow up normal.” Maggie smiled at the memory. “We took the school bus just like everyone else. She didn’t want us to grow up snobby.” She stared up at the heritage oaks that bordered the rose garden, their ancient branches casting deep shadows across the gravel walk. Then she took a deep breath and went on.

  “It was a normal day. Everything about it was normal. Our house was a few miles out of town, so Erica and I were always the last kids on the bus at the end of the day. We didn’t think anything was strange when there was a new driver. It happened sometimes.”

  She could see Jake piecing it together, the dread on his face as he realized what she was about to tell him. Paul hadn’t done that—it was almost like he’d shut down out of fear. He’d been scared to make leaps. At what it might mean if he really considered what happened to her.

  There may have been dread in Jake’s face, but there was also acceptance warming his eyes and his touch. It bolstered her in a way that Paul’s concern and tiptoeing never did.

  Maggie stared up at the sky, the fluffy clouds against the brilliant blue. She blinked back tears. “But the driver didn’t brake at our regular stop,” Maggie said, her voice thick with emotion. “We thought it was just a mistake. Erica got up to tell him, and then . . .”

  She could still see the flash of the gun, the way Erica stumbled backward, how she ran to shield Maggie with her body as the bus rocked back and forth, and the driver—some man their kidnapper paid off—yelled at her to stay still. The memory made her want to curl within herself, to hide, even now. But Jake’s presence made her brave. It filled her with an openness that had eluded her grasp for so long.

  “He drove us to a deserted spot, where the man was waiting for us. He gave the driver his money and blindfolded us, and threw us into the trunk of a car,” Maggie said.

  “Maggie . . .” Jake’s rough voice wasn’t full of pity, as she’d feared. Instead, there was a dawning realization in his voice. An understanding of the incident that had made and broken her.

  “He had us for five days,” Maggie said. “Erica . . . she was always the strong one. She didn’t trust him, didn’t trust that he’d let us go. We knew Mom and Dad would pay whatever money they had to, but the days kept passing and we knew something had gone wrong. Something had changed . . . we knew we had to do something before . . .” She swallowed and then went on.

  “Erica was tall. She took after Dad. There was this hole in the closet he kept us in where the wood was rotted away, and we managed to kick the space open big enough for me to wiggle through—but only me. I didn’t want to leave her behind. God, I never wanted to leave her behind . . .” Her voice cracked as she remembered the desperation that swamped her, the pleading in Erica’s face, her insistence it was the only way. Had she known she was as good as dead? Would it have mattered?

  Maggie knew it wouldn’t have. She knew it was likely that, in her older-sister wisdom, Erica understood what her choice would entail. And it hadn’t mattered to her.

  She had sacrificed herself so Maggie could live—and look how Maggie had repaid her. She’d failed at doing the one thing she’d dedicated her life to. Maggie blinked back tears, shaky with the truth she was baring so trustingly to Jake. It should have frightened her, but he made her feel safe. Understood.

  He understood pain. He was haunted too.

  “Leaving her behind . . . running through those woods . . . it was the hardest thing I ever did,” Maggie confessed. “I remember her exact words. Erica told me, ‘No matter what happens tonight, you and I are in this together.’ But we weren’t, Jake. I left her behind. I left her, and when I went back . . .”

  She couldn’t finish. She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t go back there, to that room full of blood, to the awful evidence that her sister was dead.

  That she’d left her to die.

  “What happened when you went back?” Jake asked softly.

  Maggie looked away from the acceptance in his eyes; the understanding. She didn’t deserve it, no matter how much she wanted it.

  “There was blood,” she said shakily, the memory of it creeping into her mind. “Her blood, it was everywhere. But she was gone. He . . . he didn’t even leave her behind for us to bury. Her headstone’s on an empty grave, and my mother goes and sits there every Sunday without fail because it’s the only thing we have. And it was my
fault. I left her. I should never have left her.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes. She tried desperately to blink them back but was determined not to hide them when she failed. They trickled down her cheek, and Jake reached out, brushing them away with his thumb, the tenderness in his touch causing a different kind of ache inside her.

  “You did what she asked of you,” Jake said softly. “You were a good little sister, Maggie. You listened to her, just like you should have. Just like she needed you to.”

  “I couldn’t save her,” Maggie said, feeling the cracked and heavy words build a barrier of guilt around her.

  “But you let her save you,” Jake said, cupping her cheek, his palm strong and rough against her soft skin. “She knew you were going to be safe. That you got away. That’s so important, Maggie. I’m pretty sure that was everything for her.”

  She met his gaze, and the earnestness she found there, the truth of his words, warmed her to the core. It made her almost believe him.

  It made her want to believe him.

  “She was a hero,” Jake said.

  “She was my hero,” Maggie said. “Afterward, I tried to make it up to her—to us. To the girls we were . . . to the woman she never got to be. I worked hard in school. I focused on getting into the Academy. It was all I wanted . . . all I thought about. I drank, slept, and ate negotiation. I needed to understand criminal motivation. To control it. I needed to . . .” She looked away, his hand falling from her cheek. She didn’t know how to voice it. That burning inside her, her compulsion to understand the criminal mind, to dissect it, so that if she learned the right combination, she could unlock the truth about what had happened to Erica. “I needed to somehow find a way to undo it,” she said. “Undo what happened to us. Undo leaving her behind. Undo even getting on the bus that day. And I thought if I could get other kids back safe, maybe some part of me could break free too. Maybe one night I wouldn’t close my eyes and find myself back in that closet, tied up like an animal, terrified of every sound.”

  “Why did you leave the FBI?” Jake asked.

  Because I got a girl killed.

  Maggie didn’t know if she could bear to tell him. Would the softness in his eyes fade to disgust and disappointment?

  “Two years ago, I got called in on a high-risk hostage situation,” Maggie said. “A man named Daniel Branson had developed an obsession with a teenage girl. Gretchen Ellis. She didn’t know he’d been stalking her, she was just . . .” Maggie’s hands clenched. “She was just a normal teenager,” she said, her voice cracking. “Branson was a sex offender who thought she was his soul mate. God . . .” Maggie shook her head, trying to banish the disgust and revulsion so she could go on. “He was delusional. He followed Gretchen and her best friend to a local mall—Sherwood Hills—and while they were in a boutique, shopping for a dress for her freshman dance, he walked up to her. Started talking about how much he loved her and how they were fated to be together. Gretchen was confused and then scared—and when she rejected him, he lost it. She’d shattered the fantasy in his head when she tried to get away from him. He couldn’t handle it; he’d built an entire world hinged on her. So he pulled a gun.”

  She looked down at her palms, thinking about how much better she felt when his hand was in hers, as if his strength filled missing pieces of her soul. Old wounds she tried not to disturb, that only came alive in her dreams.

  “Gretchen was fourteen,” Maggie went on. “Just like Erica. And there was something about her . . .” She blinked back tears, letting out a shaky breath. “It wasn’t just that they looked alike, even though they did, so much. It was what . . . what she did. Gretchen pushed her best friend out of the way. To safety. Just like Erica had done. That’s why Branson was able to grab her and put the gun to her head. Because she didn’t try to save herself, she saved her best friend.”

  “Like your sister saved you,” Jake said softly. Maggie nodded, her face twisted in agonized memory.

  “I thought I had control,” she went on in a stricken voice. “I thought I was over it, what had happened to me. I thought I could do my job and it wouldn’t affect me. That it would help me. Inform me in a way that no other agent could be. But I never thought about what would happen if I were ever in a situation where my memories took over and made me ruin everything. But it happened. Gretchen looked so much like Erica; she acted so much like Erica . . . and instead of taking time to suss things out, I—I sent SWAT in too soon. I thought it was the right call. That Branson needed to be shown extreme force. I thought it’d reaffirm how in over his head he was. I thought he’d buckle. But I was wrong . . . I was so wrong. I didn’t realize he would rather kill Gretchen than give her up. I should’ve taken my time instead of pushing. Grace wanted me to wait for a more detailed profile—I wanted to get Gretchen out of there as fast as possible. But SWAT made him panic. Violently. He shot her in the head before turning the gun on himself.”

  For a moment, Jake’s entire body tensed; she could feel his shoulder hard against hers. Then his hand squeezed her fingers gently as he looked into her eyes. She saw no blame or judgment there; instead, only a deep well of sympathy and pain that echoed her own. His lips softened, quirking up at the side, encouraging her, telling her she was safe. Somehow, it lent her the strength to go on.

  “I quit the FBI the next day,” Maggie said, straightening in her seat, trying to sit tall, to sound confident. Like it had been the right idea. It had, hadn’t it? “I walked away and I told myself I’d never come back. I really thought I was done. I told myself I was. But then Frank showed up and dragged me back in, and now . . .”

  “Now we’re here,” Jake finished for her.

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Maggie confessed. “I’m not up to this. I’m just too broken.”

  “Maggie,” he said gently. It was just her name, but for some reason, it was what made her want to break. To lean into him and take the comfort he seemed ready to offer. He placed his hand on her leg, not squeezing, but resting there, a reassuring strength. After a moment’s hesitation, she brushed her hand over his. He smiled at the small gesture.

  “With jobs like ours, there are going to be failures,” he said quietly. “People will die. Sometimes it’s our fault . . . sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes life just screws with us, and even though we did everything right, followed all the rules, and hit the right targets, sometimes people still die. It’s always harder when it’s a kid, I know. Trust me, I know.” The catch in his voice and the way tension seeped into his muscles made something deep inside her ache. He understood pain.

  He understood her.

  What a feeling—to lay yourself bare, to put everything out there, and to be known. It was liberating. Exhilarating.

  Healing.

  “I’ve made mistakes too,” Jake continued. “Big mistakes. I’ve screwed up so bad that good men . . . and even children have died. And I have to carry that, just like you carry Gretchen and Erica. That sort of weight, it breaks us; it does. But here’s the secret, sweetheart: When we put ourselves back together, we’re stronger. You are strong, Maggie. Hell, you’re the strongest woman I know, and I was raised by an Army wife.”

  She smiled.

  “Look at you,” he said, reaching out and cupping her cheek. A frisson of electricity shot through her, and she wanted so badly to close her eyes, to embrace the feeling, but she couldn’t look away from him. From the way he touched her like he wanted to know all of her—the good, the bad, and the beautiful. “You’re amazing,” he whispered, leaning forward, his lips brushing against hers.

  He kissed her like it was the last thing he wanted before he left for war. Like she was air and light and sound.

  She kissed him back. Deeply. Desperately. Wantonly. Suddenly, she needed everything. Her fingers wove through his hair, relishing its silky feel against her skin. All she could think of was having nothing between them, her bare skin against his, the aching drag of his mouth sliding down her neck, her collarbone, her bre
asts, her stomach. Lower and lower, to the core of her.

  She shouldn’t be doing this. There was a case. She should be—what, exactly? She couldn’t think with Jake’s mouth on hers, his taste enticing her. The warmth pooling inside her was almost unbearable.

  What was there left to do? She was fired for sure, not that she’d ever been officially hired in the first place. The senator would be certain she didn’t go near the case. She was done.

  But she could have this. She wanted this. She wanted him. She craved him with a need that should frighten her, but consumed her instead. She wanted to push him against a wall and drink her fill. To take the comfort he offered. To feel the indulgence his eyes promised.

  She made up her mind. Pulling away from Jake, she rose to her feet. And when she got up and held out her hand, his eyes simmered with heat.

  They would have to be quick, but she could have this. She could have him.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  There was a greenhouse set behind a thicket of trees to the west of the rose garden; a small glass building with slanted windows and roughly hewn tables holding rose starts and orchids. As soon as they were inside, Jake fell upon Maggie like a starving man. His mouth was back on hers, his hands slipping under her shirt, tracing over her rib cage, palming the weight of her breasts, his thumb brushing over her nipple through her bra, making her gasp.

  “God, you’re so perfect,” he said, kissing her hard, his fingers making quick work of the buttons on her blouse. He pushed it off her shoulders and for a moment, he just looked at her. The awe and anticipation in his face made her feel cherished. His practiced touch, the easy way he flipped open the hooks on her bra, made desire coil inside her stomach. Warm air hit the sensitive skin of her breasts, and her nipples peaked, aching for contact.

  She needed to see him too. With fevered urgency, she flipped the tables on him, grabbing his shoulders and pressing him against the glass. He grinned at her sudden display of dominance, his eyes daring her to do her worst.