by Vicki Hinze
Remorse gnawed at him. Sebastian stiffened in his seat, drove on down the winding roadway. Steep cliffs lined the road. Twice, so far, he had seen pretty waterfalls. The next one he saw—
Bridal falls. Off to his right. At least a hundred-foot drop. Perfect.
He pulled an image of Glenna and the kids on the sailboat last summer from his memory. Holding it fast in his mine’s eye, he stomped down on the accelerator.
The car lurched, ripped through the guardrail. Metal crunched, glass shattered, and the car sailed out, over the gorge.
Sebe! Oh, God, no! No! Sebe … !
Moments stretched into lifetimes and a strange noise filled his ears. Weeping. The angels really were weeping. For him. Humbled, awed, he cried out, “I’m coming, Mama.”
The Impala plunged and tumbled, crashed into tree branches and trunks and sharp rocks. It burst into flames.
The Consortium had issued an ultimatum.
Sebastian Cabot had followed his orders explicitly.
Including the order to die on impact.
Washington, D.C., * Friday, July 5th
“You’re busted, Lieutenant Gibson.”
Senior Special Agent Gabrielle Kincaid stalked around the conference table, as rigid and tense as only the infuriated queen bitch of the highly skilled Special Detail Unit of the Secret Service could stalk. She stopped behind him, just off his left shoulder, and then bent low and whispered in his ear. “How does it feel to know you killed seventeen civilians, three seasoned SDU operatives, and two FBI agents?”
Gibson bowed his head, looked down from the copper-lined wall in the top secret Home Base headquarters’ conference room to the scarred table that had seen too many crises and even more ass-chewing debriefings. He didn’t dare to answer. Agent Kincaid would only get more steamed, and she was already close to boiling.
In his days as a security monitor at Home Base, Gibson once had seen her boil. It wasn’t an experience he was eager to repeat, much less instigate.
Agent Kincaid did not suffer in silence.
“You know we’re America’s last line of defense,” she said from behind him in a tone that raised the hair on his neck. “Our missions are critical to the nation’s safety. They require total and complete anonymity—absolute secrecy. There aren’t a hundred people in the entire country who know SDU exists, for God’s sake. That’s essential to our effectiveness.” She paused, lowered her voice a decibel, and then went on. “This was training, Gibson, but if you’re going to survive the transition from active duty military to SDU operative, then you’d better get one thing clear in your head right now. SDU is a stealth operation. You never, never, sacrifice its secrecy. Good agents who have devoted their lives to this unit have popped cyanide or been killed by other good agents in this unit to protect it. That’s a fact of life here. Burn it into your brain if you have to, but don’t ever forget it again.”
“I won’t, ma’am. I know the drill.” He risked a glance at her. “It was just a momentary lapse.”
Dressed appropriately in sleek black, she tossed her sun-bronzed hair back from her face and glared at him. “Then you also know that if you had one of these momentary lapses on an actual mission, everyone in the unit—including Commander Conlee and every single operative currently on missions worldwide—would be killed. Inside of twenty-four hours, all evidence that SDU existed would be eradicated. All evidence, including us.” Her green eyes burned nearly black with disdain and fury. “I’m not ready to die because you’re sloppy or incompetent and having momentary lapses, Gibson.”
Gibson’s stomach heaved and stuck somewhere in his ribs. “It won’t happen again, ma’am.”
“It had better not.” She walked around the table, leaned across it, and planted her spread hands on its scarred surface. “Understand this, too. My first obligation is to the security of the United States. You screw up again and I’ll kill you myself.”
How could anyone so beautiful be such a vicious, merciless bitch?
Her partner, Maxwell Grayson, would say it was God’s sense of compensation and balance, but Gibson considered it more likely God’s twisted sense of humor, reserved to make men crazy—or His secret weapon, used to scare them spitless. Either way, Gibson believed her every word from his toenails up. It was common knowledge in the unit that if Gabby Kincaid said something, you could take it to the bank and cash it. Or, in his case, to the graveyard and bury it. “Yes, ma’am.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “I’ll be back in two weeks to either bust you out of SDU or to certify your final training mission. I have no mercy, Gibson. Remember that,” she warned him. “Now, get the hell out of my face.”
Gibson wasted no time leaving the conference room. He felt scorched. Shamed and scorched and totally pissed off at her for being unforgiving, and at himself because he had screwed up and created a need for it. He knew better. “Damn it.”
Agent Maxwell Grayson stood leaning against the hallway wall. He straightened and then clasped Gibson’s shoulder in an unspoken gesture of sympathy. “Rough one, huh?”
“Oh, yeah.” Gibson looked back, grunted. “I’ve got a debrief with Commander Conlee next, and I’m not sure I’ve got enough ass left for him to chew.”
Conlee wouldn’t have to chew; Gabby had done a thorough job. But Max didn’t mention it to Gibson. Dreading the meeting was a vital part of his training. “You’ll probably survive it.” Max nodded to add weight to his words. “She’s tough—”
“She’s a bitch,” Gibson interjected with feeling.
Max couldn’t disagree. Her unofficial title around the unit was “Queen Bitch.” He had caught wind of it, though no one had expressly referred to her by it to him. For that, he was grateful. As her partner, Max would have been obligated to take exception, and since she had earned the name, that wouldn’t be easy to stomach.
Rightly or wrongly, Gabby made an all-out effort to be hypercritical of other agents’job performances. Hell, in the last six years, she had alienated everyone in the unit except Commander Conlee and his second in charge, Jonathan Westford. But Max gave credit where it was due, and being hypercritical was only half the story on Gabby. Fairness demanded that Gibson know it. “She’s hands down the best active operative in the unit,” Max told him. “What she rips you a new one for can— and probably will—save your life down the line. It has others, including mine. That’s worth remembering.”
“I will.” Gibson dragged a hand through his short, spiky hair. “If I get down the line without her killing me first.”
“There is that.” Max stuffed a hand in his pocket.
Resignation flickered over Gibson’s face. “She meant it literally, didn’t she?”
Max wasn’t sure exactly what “it” was, but he could imagine well enough. “I’ve worked with her for five years. Whatever she said take as fact. I’ve never known her to make an idle statement or an empty threat.”
Gibson’s face leaked all its color.
Ah, she’d threatened to kill him, Max deduced. Glad her anger wasn’t squared on his head, he nodded. “Better get a move on. Commander Conlee is waiting.”
“Wish me luck.” Gibson rolled his shoulders, shook off some tension, and then took off down the hall.
“You got it.” Not envying him the next half hour of his life, Max watched him go and then walked in the opposite direction, down the hallway, and finally into the conference room.
Gabby stood near the far wall, her arms folded over her chest, her eyes closed, her chin tilted to the ceiling. It was her classic pose for on-the-job meditating to harness her temper.
Max gave her a moment, then spoke up. “Still terrorizing the troops, I see.”
“Only when necessary to keep them from killing others, Agent Grayson. Perhaps one day, you.” She sat down in one of the hardback chairs and glanced at her watch, clearly pressed for time.
Venting her temper had her face flushed. It looked good on her. Ticked off because he’d noticed, he shifted on
his seat and turned his thoughts to business. “You summoned?”
“Yes. Commander Conlee thought it would be a good idea to brief you on the Four Grande operation before I fly back to Florida.”
Gabby had been undercover in Florida for the past seven months, investigating judicial corruption claims involving a suspected cell of creative, and unfortunately, extremely effective mercenary assassins known as Global Warriors and their connection to a local judge named Abernathy The Four Grande operation was a secondary mission she’d taken on. Knowing simultaneous missions were not uncommon to her or to other seasoned SDU covert operatives, Max sat down across the table from her. “Okay. Shoot.”
“Succinctly put, Four Grande is in the mop-up stage. I turned it over to the FBI late yesterday. They’ve handled the arrests.”
SDU worked totally behind the scenes. Overt agencies handled the public aspects of all missions. “How many were there?”
“Three. All senior members of Four Grande who were in the country to buy arms through a phony charity they’d set up on the web. That operation has been shut down and the FBI is tracking all transactions back to their points of origin. Homeland Security’s all over it, so we’re done.”
Another success. “Excellent.” She might be a bitch, but she was good at her job. Max admired her—not for her devotion, all SDU operatives were devoted—but because as hard as she was on everyone else, she was harder still on herself. He respected that, and all of SDU respected her work. Who could argue with her stats?
Gabby shrugged and a long lock of hair crept over her shoulder. “I would have liked to dig down another layer in their organization to make sure we’d totally disrupted their operation, but they were within forty-eight hours of taking delivery on dirty nukes. Couldn’t risk it.”
“Good call, in my humble opinion.”
She managed a nod. “So we delivered. Close your file on Four Grande.”
She had delivered, and he never had opened a file on Four Grande. If he had, it would have been empty. This had been yet another mission where she had shut him out and had handled it entirely on her own—failing to mention in this briefing, of course, that she’d nearly been killed by one of the three men arrested and she should have activated Max to protect her back. He should raise hell at her for taking unnecessary risks, but he’d be wasting his breath. Instead, he settled for a resigned, “Great.” Yet, sensing something was off, he really looked at her.
Gabby was his age, thirty-five, and five-eight, though she had mile-long legs that made her appear taller. Her hair looked sun-flashed and hung long and loose down past her shoulders, framing her face. She was classic, commanded double takes, and still couldn’t be considered anything but beautiful. Taking in the whole package, she was striking. But what made her compelling wasn’t the physical package. It was something … different.
She had an earthy sensuality that aided her in playing a wide variety of undercover roles and hinted at that “something different.” Exactly what it was, she kept private, but Max knew it existed—he sensed it—yet he couldn’t, and never had been able to, peg it. That made her a little mystical, and, combined with the deliberate bitchiness he’d decided had to be a protective shield, damned sexy. Not that he’d ever acted on his attraction to her—they were partners—but he understood why men felt drawn to her and compelled to tell her their secrets. Hell, at times, he himself had felt both.
That nebulous something was probably Gabby’s greatest professional asset—next to her mind. The woman was incredibly sharp and flexible and fast on her feet. And, blessing or curse, her work was her life.
“I take it your investigation is going well down in Florida?” Max asked, relatively certain it must be since the commander hadn’t told him otherwise. Though, with Gabby involved, one couldn’t honestly tell. Max wouldn’t bet his career that she kept Conlee up to speed twenty-four, seven.
“Complex. Moving at a snail’s pace, but fine.” She glanced at her watch again and then stood up. “I’ve got to leave now or I’ll miss my flight. Unless something significant breaks, I’ll catch you up on developments in two weeks, when I come back to bust Gibson.”
She was headed back to Carnel Cove, Florida, to the Global Warrior/Judge Abernathy corruption case. Back to her primary undercover assignment as a judge. “Is Gibson that bad?”
Sparing Max a grunt to signal he should know better, she grabbed her purse, then slung its strap over her shoulder. “No, he’s that good.”
“Of course.” Max bit back a pleased-with-himself smile. He had a lot of faith in Gibson. “You wouldn’t waste your time ripping a lousy trainee a new ass.”
“I wouldn’t?” she asked from the door, casting Max a sly glance back over her shoulder.
“No, you wouldn’t.” Max revealed his feeble grip on how her mind worked. “You’d just shoot him.”
She didn’t smile, but she did look tempted. “You’re learning, Max.” She walked out of the conference room, her heels clicking on the ceramic tile.
The echo grew more and more faint, and Max rewarded himself with a smile. “I’ll be damned.”
For the first time in five years, Gabby Kincaid had called her partner by his first name.
Did he dare to hope she was thawing?
That wouldn’t be a smart move on his part. He seriously doubted she was getting used to the idea of having a partner. She’d been direct about not wanting one, and in five years, she never once had activated him on their joint missions. On those rare occasions where he’d had the audacity to suggest he could be helpful to her, she had flatly reminded him that she always worked alone. That rigid stance didn’t leave much room for thawing.
Max rocked back on his seat. In the sheen of the copper wall, he replayed their last conversation, where he’d had the temerity—some would say, bad judgment—to offer to help her.
Unless Commander Conlee orders you to put a bullet through my head, don’t interfere on my missions. Any of my missions. Actually it’ll be best if you just stay the hell out of my way. SDU missions carry high stakes and higher kill rates. I respect that. And if I die on one, it’s going to be because I screwed up, not because some partner got me killed.
Her back being wide open had nearly killed her—a circumstance for which Commander Conlee had blamed Max, until he had reported that “don’t interfere” exchange between him and Gabby. Then, despite the commander’s assurances, it had taken a while for Max to shake-off the feeling that she had slammed him and his personal worth. Conlee had said that her attitude had everything to do with herself and nothing to do with Max, his skills, or his abilities as a seasoned operative. That when it came to SDU covert operations, Gabby Kincaid was top notch. She knew it, and she trusted no one but herself.
In time, the woman had earned Max’s respect and, more than once, his admiration. Somewhere along the way, he had accepted the commander’s opinions about her as truth. In SDU, working with a partner without trust marked you both for certain death, which left Max with no choice but to agree with her. Lacking trust, she did best work alone.
Even if it killed her.
LADY LIBERTY
A Bantam Book / November 2002
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2002 by Vicki Hinze
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eISBN: 978-0-307-48690-5
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