by Vicki Hinze
“Not specifically” There had been many arguments.
“It doesn’t matter. He threatened to slap you, so I followed him out to make sure he left the premises. He stopped to talk with Barber, and I overheard him say he was going to hire a couple of thugs to beat the hell out of you.” The memory clearly renewed his outrage, but Jonathan kept his voice level and even managed to shrug. “I took exception to it.”
“I see.” Her heart thudded in her ears. She screwed up her courage to ask the question that had bothered her more than she cared to admit for longer than she cared to admit. “Is that why you asked to be reassigned, or did I do something wrong?”
He dropped his lids, veiling his eyes. “I lost my temper. Me getting emotionally involved was a luxury neither of us could afford.”
What exactly did that mean? Had he gotten angry with Austin for what he’d said, or had he been angry with himself for losing control? Or maybe anger had nothing to do with it. Maybe he was just afraid that losing control, even for a moment, could cost him his life. She could ask him, she supposed, but his face looked brittle enough to crack, and he had done so much for her already. She couldn’t justify putting him on the proverbial hot seat. “Thank you for clearing that up.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.”
Well, hell. They were back to that “ma’am” business again. She knew why she should run from him emotionally, but why was he running from her? She stood up and gave in to the urge to sigh. “Jonathan, could you knock off the ma’am stuff and just be like you were in the swamp? Please. That’s the you I need.”
Wishing he would hold her as he had at the quicksand pit, she dropped her gaze to the floor and saw black sneakers. He expected trouble. Probably not trouble with her, but with Conlee. He was probably right.
“All right.” He stood up, and their hands brushed.
Turning, she clasped his arm and nudged him to face her, but he didn’t move to take her into his arms. Disappointed, she looked up and met his gaze. “There’s one other thing you need to know that I won’t state bluntly with the others, Jonathan. It could make you hate me. I don’t want that, but not telling you would make me hate myself.”
He lifted his brows, making no promises, and then waited for her response.
“Austin might have had help, but I know he dreamed up this nightmare at A-267, and no amount of evidence will convince me he didn’t. He’s good at manufacturing proof to back up his lies. If we manage to stop the launch, I’m going to devote the rest of my life to proving he murdered Harrison and Cramer and the others and to finding Linda Dean and her children.” Sybil’s voice thickened with steely resolve. “But if Austin launches this missile, legally or illegally, I’m going to see to it that he blows up with it.” It went without saying that she would be left behind in the evacuation and be blown up, too.
Austin Stone’s days of leaving victims in his wake and just moving on were over.
He had taken her blood.
Now she would take his.
Chapter Twenty
Saturday, August 10 First-Strike Launch: 08:15:27
Eight hours, fifteen minutes, and twenty-seven seconds left. The Home Base briefing room at A-267 was frigid and about as interesting as an unpainted canvas. Stripped to essentials, the walls were bare but copper-lined to deter the intrusion of listening devices. Furnishings were limited to twelve straight-back chairs and an oblong wooden table that stood scuffed and scarred by years of use and too many crises.
Commander Conlee objected to making anyone comfortable during briefings. Comfortable people relax their guard—and tend to be long-winded. In the commander’s opinion, briefings at A-267 had no business being either.
Sybil and Conlee sat at opposite ends of the table. While he looked tense and formidable, she felt as if someone had kicked her hard in the stomach. He could name her as a co-conspirator. She could lose everything, including her job and her freedom. Suspicion does breed contempt. If Jonathan hadn’t been standing near the door, she probably wouldn’t have been able to get the words out. With his back to the wall, his arms folded across his chest, and his expression neutral, he appeared totally passive. But she knew. Deep down, in those secret places she had sworn after Austin to forget she had, she knew she had Jonathan’s full support. He was there with her every step of the way.
“Commander,” Sybil said. “In our very first briefing, you taught me the three necessary ingredients to solving crimes. I’ve never forgotten them: means, opportunity, and motive.”
“I remember, ma’am.”
“In this crisis, we’ve got all three on Austin Stone as a suspect. We know A-267 is a classified site and access to it is severely restricted. We know Austin designed the system and his corporation maintains it. So his means and opportunity to reconfigure the system are established facts.” Now came the risky part. “What you might not know is that he has motive.”
“Which is?”
“To set me up, Commander.”
“Possible. But only if he has your DNA.” Conlee rolled his stubby cigar between his forefinger and thumb. “We’ve gone through his records with a fine-tooth comb. Your DNA just isn’t in his possession.”
“There is no way all of his records could have been checked this quickly”
“His last extensive inspection was three weeks ago. We just had to pull everything from then forward and scan it in.”
“Scan it in?”
“Because of the sensitive nature of his work with us, all of his records are subject to full review. We scan a copy of everything.”
Well, hell. She wished she’d known that before now. “For how long?”
“In his case, since Secure Environet was founded.”
Too late. “But nothing from before then?”
“There is nothing from before then.”
“In this case, there is. I’m going to have to digress, but, please, just hear me out,” she said. “This is embarrassing, Commander, but you need to know it to understand the significance of what I’m about to tell you.”
“I’ll treat whatever you say with discretion, ma’am.”
Grateful, she nodded. “If I had died in the plane explosion, my fifty-two percent of Secure Environet stock would automatically have reverted to Austin. He has repeatedly asked me to sell him my interest, but I’ve elected not to do that.” Please, God. Don’t let Conlee ask her why. “Fortunately, a judge supported my decision. That infuriated Austin. Greed and the desire to hurt me—because he couldn’t force me to relinquish the stock—could have motivated him to concoct this crisis and get involved with Faust and maybe with PUSH.”
Jonathan felt sick. Greed and a desire to inflict pain on one person was a hell of a reason for committing treason. Yet he felt confident that Austin Stone would consider it logical and reasonable. More likely than not, he’d consider this crisis a proportional response to the wrongs committed against him.
“Reasonable deduction,” Commander Conlee said. “But the fact remains that he hasn’t accessed this site and, unless he’s memorized it, he doesn’t have your DNA. We’ve checked and double-checked everything else.”
“He could have it, Commander,” Sybil said. “I realize my credibility could take a nosedive because I didn’t report this immediately, but the simple truth is I only just remembered it.”
How would she react to that remark if she were in Conlee’s shoes? She’d be skeptical as hell, but she hoped she would be open-minded, too. “Years ago I was an unnamed subject in one of Austin’s experimental trials on a security device. He could have my DNA from then. I think it should be double-checked.”
“This was from before the two of you founded Secure Environet?”
She nodded. “It was a private project he was working on at home while he was employed at Divetal.”
Conlee rolled his tongue inside his cheek. “We wouldn’t have picked up on it then. Divetal owned his patents. We picked up their records.”
“These trial studies
weren’t incorporated then.” A question came to mind. “But why wouldn’t they be part of the new system’s records? Didn’t he bring in this new design through Secure Environet?”
“They should have been included. He would have had to substitute the trials from another incarnation of this system for those of this incarnation. Otherwise, he never would have gotten authorization to proceed in the project and we would have picked up on the DNA match.”
Too nervous to sit any longer, Sybil stood up and clenched the back of her chair. Her knuckles knobbed, whitened. “Look, the bottom line is Austin is not innocent in all of this, Commander. I strongly believe he and Faust are working together. I can’t prove it—not yet—but I know it.”
Pensive, Conlee tugged at his lower lip. “You realize how this looks?”
At least he wasn’t summoning security—though he looked as if he were considering it. “Unfortunately, I do.”
Conlee glanced at Jonathan, who gave him a nod so slight that if she hadn’t been watching for it, she would have missed it. “We’ll do what we can,” Conlee finally assured her. “But due to the extenuating circumstances, I think it would be best if you leave the investigation to us.”
“But—” Sybil started to interrupt.
“We need to move, ma’am.” Jonathan cut her off. “We’ve all got a lot to do and”—he paused and looked pointedly at his watch—“only eight hours to do it.”
Conlee sent Jonathan a look of pure relief. While he would do what he had to do to get his job done, Conlee clearly wasn’t enthusiastic about going toe to toe with Lady Liberty. She had a reputation for sticking to her guns until her competition folded, and both men knew that reputation had not been given, it had been earned.
Jonathan and Sybil exited the facility and returned to his Volvo. Heat rippled through the leather interior.
She snapped her seat belt into place and then shoved her sunglasses up on her nose. “So what exactly do we need to do? Or were you just getting me off the commander’s back?”
Tired, scared, and admittedly embarrassed by her former husband’s lack of ethics, she was itching for a place to dump her frustration, but it wasn’t going to be on his head. “First, you’ve earned your credibility, so the commander believes you. You hover, and you create doubt. He starts to wonder if you think you need to be there to do damage control—to protect Austin or yourself. Others, aside from Conlee, are going to have those same suspicions. So he’s protecting you by taking you out of the line of fire.”
Jonathan cranked the engine, then adjusted the air vent to blow in his face and cool him down. “For what it’s worth, I believe you. And I believe you’re right and Austin is up to his crooked neck in this crisis. If he’s convinced he’s going to blow himself to hell and back, he might just abort the launch—provided you’re not in his face, reminding him why he started the damn crisis in the first place.”
“I’m sorry” Sybil glanced over at him. Tired and stressed out enough to forget her inhibitions and fears, she revealed the truth. “I don’t like what this is doing to me inside. I married him, Jonathan. I can’t believe I married a man like him.”
“You also had the wisdom and good judgment to divorce his lousy ass. You can’t look at one without the other.” Jonathan put the car in drive and headed down the dusty road, back toward town.
“You know, I love that about you.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but now that she had, she couldn’t take it back. There was nothing left to do but brazen it out.
The hint of a smile curved his lip. “What?”
He didn’t seem upset. He did seem interested. She stretched an arm over the seat back. “You look at both sides of things and make me be fair to myself.”
“You have a hard time with that. Everyone gets a fair shake except you.” He glanced her way. “Everything isn’t your responsibility or your fault.”
Being frank with him wasn’t so bad. Actually, it felt pretty good. “Thank you.”
“For believing in you when you’re telling the truth?”
He seemed just outraged enough by that circumstance to be endearing. Touched, she covered his hand. “For being you.”
“I’m good for you, Sybil.” He gently squeezed her fingers.
He sounded almost militant, as if he were trying to convince her, and maybe even himself. “Yes, you are.”
A motorcycle whizzed past. The rider didn’t have on a helmet. She swallowed a sigh, refused to worry about him, and looked at Jonathan. He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, beyond the windshield. “Jonathan?” Her throat felt thick. “I want to be good for you, too.”
Jonathan braked for a red light, let the words soak in and become real. For years he had wanted to hear some remark, see some sign that she thought of him as more than an agent, and finally, when he had convinced himself that it just wasn’t going to happen, she had. How long, he wondered, would it take him to really understand how her mind worked? Every time he thought he had it nailed, she did a one-eighty on him. And since Geneva, the woman had sent out more mixed signals than a pay-per-view channel scrambler.
“I love that about you, too. That I can feel that way and tell you.”
“You’re making me crazy, Sybil.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I’m not sure yet.” He wished to hell he knew. “Maybe both.”
She tapped her sunglasses up on her nose, adjusted her safety belt. “All I meant was that if you think or feel it, you say it—straight out. I admire that.”
“I don’t.” He also wished she’d take off those damn dark glasses so he could see her eyes. “In fact, I rarely say what I feel with you.”
“Now you’re making me crazy.” She smiled. “Whether or not you realize it, you’re blunt, Jonathan, and opinionated. It’s nice.”
Along with everything else standing between them, they didn’t need to add false impressions. Already they had a healthy list. “Opinionated, yes. But you’re mistaken on the other. I feel a lot of things I don’t say” That had to be the understatement of the millennium, particularly where she was concerned.
“For example …”
“You confuse the hell out of me.” He looked over, then right back at the road. A rusty Ford swerved into his lane, and he slowed down to give it space. “One minute I think what’s happening between us is personal. The next I don’t fit into your plans. I can’t keep up.”
“Me, either.”
That remark earned her a look she’d been feeling for a while.
“You might as well stop glaring. I’m not at all afraid of you. All I meant was that you confuse me, too. Actually, it’s not you but me who confuses me. I mean, I confuse myself. No, what I really mean is, the way you make me feel confuses me.”
“I’m getting dizzy, Sybil.”
“Sorry. It’s the way you make me feel. That’s what’s confusing.” At the moment, she looked baffled and unnerved. “You see, I like you.”
“We’ve known each other for years and you just realized that?”
“No, I’ve always liked you, but not like this. This is… different.” She blew out a sigh. “Frankly, I’m having a hell of a time with this, Jonathan.”
“That I understand.”
Relief washed through her. “Thank God. I was afraid you wouldn’t. This isn’t a comfortable place to be alone.”
“Oh, no. I do. Trust me on this one.”
She grunted, then ate a streak in her lipstick, pondering her thoughts. “You make me feel special and important to you.”
“You are important to me.”
“I know you told me I was, Jonathan, but you make me feel it. There’s a difference. I don’t like it. The difference, I mean.” She pointed at a blue Taurus. “Watch that guy. His brake lights are out.” Without missing a beat, she turned back to her topic. “And I love the way I see myself through your eyes. I hate loving that.” A dreamy smile touched her lips. “But I think every woman needs that sense of feminine prowess, Jonatha
n. Most don’t know they need it, and some probably never get it, but it really changes the way a woman feels about herself. I’ve never had it until now.”
“You’ve always been feminine.” He sounded surprised.
“I haven’t always felt feminine or attractive.”
“You’re kidding.” His voice was dead-level flat. “But you’re beautiful.”
Her face warmed. “It’s been a long time since anyone has thought so.”
“Sybil, thinking has nothing to do with it. Look in the mirror, for Christ’s sake.”
“You’re missing the point, Jonathan. That’s just surface clutter. The important stuff isn’t reflected in glass, it’s reflected in a man’s eyes when he looks at you. You feel it in his hands. He touches you as if you’re some priceless treasure. He talks to you, not at you, and he hears and listens and respects what you have to say. Those are the things of real beauty, Jonathan.”
He swallowed hard. “We need to change the subject.”
Surprised by the harshness in his tone, she stared at him. “Did I offend you?”
“No.”
If his voice got any sharper, it would cut stone. “I did. I’m sorry—”
“You didn’t offend me, okay?”
“Jonathan, I might have trouble verbalizing my intimate feelings, but I’m not stupid. You’re clearly upset. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, and I’m trying to apologize, damn it, so let me and let’s—”
“I am not upset,” he said, enunciating each word distinctly. “I am, however, fighting an intense urge to park this car and make love to you, so unless you’re in the mood, you need to change the damned subject.”
Stunned, she gaped. “Oh.” Her voice came out as a breath of sound.
“Quit looking at me as if I’ve sprouted a spare head. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, either.” He rolled his gaze. “I’m only human, Sybil.”
Her heart beat hard and fast. He had to be teasing. He did that a lot—teased her. Of course that’s what he was doing. But he didn’t look like he was teasing, and he certainly didn’t sound as if he were. If his words had been any stiffer they could have walked to her ears without sound waves. “Do you really want to make love with me, or are you teasing?”