The Third Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Yes, but I will not—”

  “It’s hot in here,” Rick interrupted, moving the gun again. “Take off your sweater. Toss it over on the couch.”

  With shaking hands she did as he asked. And when she looked back at him, there was stark fear in her eyes.

  He had to leave it there, that fear, until he knew whether or not he dared to speak more freely.

  “Unbutton your blouse.”

  Erin didn’t argue again. And Rick vowed that if he made it through the next few days he’d spend whatever time he had left doing what he could to make up for the indignity he was causing her. The terror.

  He detested himself. What the job had made of him.

  He watched as her fingers moved slowly from the button at her throat to the one beneath it. And the one below that. Watched like a guard insuring that his captive followed orders—not as a man who…

  Her bra was silk. White with muted florals. Its sweetness dried the inside of his mouth.

  The tops of her breasts fell over the sexy silk contours. And her cleavage… He could almost feel her skin caressing his as he sunk his face between the—

  Erin’s hand dropped to her lap. And Rick’s gaze met hers. She didn’t look away, but faced him boldly. Bravely.

  And he saw she wasn’t wearing a wire.

  “Button yourself back up,” he said gruffly. Ashamed of what he’d had to do.

  She was curled up on her legs so she wouldn’t be wearing a calf wire. She was clean.

  “Could you show me the restroom?” Rick asked as soon as she’d put herself back together. She glanced at the gun. Stood.

  And he wanted to tell her she had nothing to fear from him. But he couldn’t. Until he knew what was going on, he needed her afraid of him.

  Banking on the likelihood that the bathroom would be off a windowless hallway, or at least positioned so that Halloway wouldn’t be able to see them, Rick followed Erin and pulled her into the room with him. And with his gun more visible, checked the room for bugs.

  When he was convinced it was clean, he stood between Erin and the door and reholstered his gun.

  The room was fairly large. Double sinks. A garden tub with faux windows whose sills were covered with plants. And a separate room at the back for the john. Decorated in beige and rose, the bathroom could’ve been out of a women’s magazine.

  But then, so could its owner. The classiest fashion magazine around.

  “I’m sorry,” he began. The words didn’t feel comfortable on his tongue. “I needed to know that you weren’t wired or being coerced in what you were saying to me.”

  “Of course I wasn’t. This isn’t television. It’s Temple, Michigan, Rick. Or Tom. Or whoever you are.”

  “One man’s already been murdered,” Rick reminded her. “Apparently by a professional.”

  “And that’s what you are, isn’t it?” Her tone resigned, she stared up at him.

  “What I am isn’t important right now. Knowing what’s going on and getting you out of it is.”

  “You think I’m in danger?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re the only one who’s held a gun on me.”

  “Because I needed to see if you were wearing a wire. I told you that.”

  “You could have asked.”

  “If you were hot, you would’ve lied. You’d have been expected to lie.”

  “And if I was hot, they would’ve known you’d realize it as soon as I undid my blouse.”

  “I was prepared.”

  “How?”

  “They’d have moved in. I was ready.”

  “Ready how?”

  “Just ready.”

  She glanced at the side of his chest. And didn’t press the issue.

  “I need the truth, Erin. How did you find out about Tom?”

  “Exactly like I told you. I had Ben Pope run your DNA.”

  “This Pope guy. How long have you known him?”

  “Five years. He’s not working for anyone, Rick. I’m certain of that. Your DNA gave you away. Why can’t you just accept that?”

  “Because Tom Watkins doesn’t have DNA.” Rick had withstood professional questioning from authorities who’d been given the go-ahead to treat him as a hostile and he hadn’t said a word. Even after they’d hooked him up to electric shock waves.

  He’d been trained not to speak, and in fifteen years had never done so. Not even when, during the shakedown in which he’d saved Eddie’s life, he’d had a gun to his head.

  “Of course he does. Everyone has DNA.”

  Rick shook his head. Thought quickly. And knew he had no choice but to trust her. He was living in her world now, not the underbelly he’d inhabited for so long.

  The rules were different here.

  He stood, hands on the waist of his jeans, facing her. “Tom Watkins doesn’t exist.”

  “He’s a convicted felon. I saw his record. He was serving prison time in Arizona until a year ago. Amazingly, that was about the same time you showed up here. Without a past. Rick Thomas is the man who doesn’t exist.”

  “You’ve got it backward.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I exist.” He fought the urge to reach for her. To touch her face. To feel the skin that haunted his dreams. “This past year, for the first time in fifteen years, I’ve lived my own life.”

  “Then who is Tom Watkins?”

  Making up the rules as he went along was a major part of Rick’s life. Changing rules in midstream, the norm. But no matter how many life-and-death situations he’d lied himself into or out of, he’d never once broken the code of silence. Never.

  Telling her could put her in danger.

  Not telling her might already have done so.

  “I need to know you’ll never repeat what I’m going to say.”

  Her mouth was pinched with tension, her brows drawn as she stared at him.

  “You are my attorney. I’m speaking as your client,” he said. “You cannot take this information anywhere.”

  She inhaled a deep breath. And released it.

  “It has to be that way,” he said.

  “Okay.” Erin relaxed against the marble counter, looking down at her feet and then back at him as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. You have my word. But I can’t guarantee that I’m going to keep you on as a client.”

  “Understood.”

  “Who’s Tom Watkins?”

  “He’s an alias, created for me by the government of the United States.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re a government agent?”

  “I was.”

  When Erin’s shoulders dropped with relief and her features softened, he had to add, “Sort of.”

  She frowned. “Don’t play games with me, Rick. It’s been a hard day and—”

  “I worked for a covert operation,” he said. “We were formed under the Department of Defense, but not officially. We were there to do all the jobs the government couldn’t, but that, for the protection of the American people, had to be done.”

  “Illegal jobs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who knew about you?”

  “No one but our sergeant knew our real identities. But certain people were aware of our group. The president knew, at least initially. I assume, as new presidents came on board, they were informed about our status. The secretary of defense always knew. One or two others. We were funded under a committee assigned to terrorist prevention research, but we were under very deep cover.”

  “You say you’ve been doing this for fifteen years?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does a kid of twenty-two get a job like that?”

  “I was recruited by my army sergeant.”

  “You and how many others?”

  “There were four us, including the sergeant.”

  He’d tell her what he had to in order to ensure her cooperation, which he had to have to get her and Sarge out of danger.

  He was going to need her suppor
t when he skipped town in the morning.

  He had to keep her safe while he was gone; he needed her help to do that.

  And to keep an eye on Steve for him, too.

  Erin told herself not to believe a word he said. The man was holding her hostage in her own bathroom.

  And she wanted to hold him.

  “You were in prison in Arizona,” she reminded him. Reminded herself. Government agents didn’t go to jail. Unless they’d turned traitor.

  “Tom was. And his DNA was supposed to disappear from the system upon his release.”

  “So Tom was in prison for some kind of undercover operation? You were there on purpose? Working?” Could she actually be buying this? It sounded like a badly written guy flick.

  “No. He was in prison because the job he’d been working on went sour.”

  “Went sour how?”

  “I have my suspicions, but I’m not sure.”

  The garden tub beckoned Erin. Whether to drown her sorrows or to soak away her pain, she didn’t know. She just wanted to escape for a while. To shut off her mind, her doubts, and simply rest.

  “I need more, Rick. This is your chance to convince me of your innocence and so far you aren’t doing it.” Not completely enough to calm her fears, anyway.

  “Intelligence said that a highly respected, high-ranking government official in Arizona was on the take. He was in with some Mexican cartel and had been facilitating some pretty major drug trafficking. A stash had been diverted and he’d intercepted it. It was in a private safe underneath the bar in his office at the state capital. I was sent in to retrieve the drugs.”

  He didn’t name names. Erin didn’t ask. “So what happened?”

  “I got in. Found the safe. Got it open. But as soon as I did, a special agent with the Department of Defense burst into the room and I was arrested.”

  Her stomach hurt. “Wait a minute,” Erin said. “If you were an agent, then…”

  “Our team was covert,” Rick said, his voice as strong, his gaze as clear, as always.

  As clear as it had been when he’d lied to her.

  “We operated with the understanding that if we ever got caught, we were on our own. It had to be that way to preserve the anonymity of what we did—to protect the government from ever being held accountable for the jobs we did.”

  The story was too fantastic. And yet…she was starting to believe him. Really believe him.

  “But wouldn’t whoever had sent you in there have access to other operations? Shouldn’t someone have made sure no agents were working against you?”

  “Of course they should have.”

  She was beginning to understand.

  “You were set up.”

  “That’s what I believe.”

  “What did your sergeant say?”

  “That the special ops agent had been acting outside protocol. He’d heard about the politician, knew the drugs were going to be moved. He didn’t know who to trust so he went in to make sure he could implicate the man before the evidence could disappear. He went into the room under his own cognizance.”

  “I suppose that’s possible.”

  “The timing was too perfect. Either I’d been given the wrong window of time or he’d known I was going to be there.”

  “Or that the drugs were.”

  The way Rick was studying her was different. She wasn’t sure how. The air in the room closed in. Became…intimate.

  But Erin no longer felt like escaping.

  27

  No one had been told about the drugs. That was how their jobs worked. When intelligence pointed to the most sensitive issues, Rick and his peers were called in and intelligence went dark. The four of them were the only agents who knew the details of their jobs so that if something went bad, they were the ones left twisting in the wind.

  Most times only Sarge and whichever of the three of them was on a particular job knew anything about its existence. And once Sarge had handed off a job to one of them, even he didn’t know the details. It stopped with the person doing the job.

  But what if Erin was right? What if someone had known about the drugs? Had the guy, the other agent, been after the drugs? And not sent after him?

  Had he been given the same window of time and just happened upon the room seconds before Rick had gotten out?

  He didn’t buy it.

  “There has to be a tie-in between what’s going on here and the Arizona deal,” he said aloud. “And whoever’s behind this has been planning it long enough that Tom’s DNA didn’t disappear from the national registry of convicted criminals like it should have.”

  “Tie-in to what?” Erin asked. “To the break-in at my office today? Because they were looking for information on you?”

  Rick had another choice to make. “To that,” he said, then added, “And to Charles Cook’s death.”

  “Cook? What’s that got to do with a drug deal in Arizona?”

  “I think it’s pretty clear I’ve been framed,” he said. “Maybe just to cover up a mistake someone else made. But maybe not.”

  “You’re saying you think the only reason Charles was killed was so someone could frame you for murder?”

  The missing Homeland Security emails had not been explained. Or recovered.

  “I’m saying it’s a possibility. Or that Charles found out something to do with my past, just because I happened to take a construction job at the local EMA office where he worked. And once he knew something, he had to be disposed of.”

  “I think the killer was Paul Wagner and you were a convenient fall guy.”

  “That would be fine with me.”

  “But that still doesn’t explain your compromised cover.” She was frowning at him. “Or the break-in at my office.”

  “I know.”

  “This is serious, isn’t it?”

  Reading the fear in her eyes, Rick nodded.

  She sat on the edge of the tub, hands on either side of her. And after several minutes, she glanced back up at him. “What are we going to do?”

  Oh, God. He liked that we far too much. This woman was going to be his downfall. He just knew it. He’d introduced her to Steve. Broken a fifteen-year code of silence.

  And got a soft feeling inside because she’d included herself in his battle.

  He was thirty-seven years old and he’d lived too long.

  “We should call Sheriff Johnson.”

  “No.” He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh. But she had to understand. “First and foremost, I am the front man on this,” he told her. “There’s no discussion, debate, compromise or question on that.”

  She nodded. “The sheriff’s a good man, Rick. We can trust him. And we need him.”

  He understood her fear. He understood his life.

  “Someone planted that knife in my home within minutes of the sheriff’s search of my place,” he reminded her. “We don’t know who we can trust.”

  “I trust Sheriff Johnson with my life.”

  “What about the people he works with? The people he’d call in to help?”

  “I trust them.”

  “With your life?”

  Her silence satisfied him.

  “There’s another reason we can’t call him.”

  “What?” She was wary. And he didn’t blame her.

  “Because I’m going to be leaving town.”

  “That contradicts the terms of your bail.”

  He acknowledged the comment with a slight nod.

  And Erin stood. “Rick, you can’t—”

  “I have to,” he interrupted. She came closer and he grabbed her arms, holding her gently, maybe imploringly, if he had it in him to beg. “I have to put Tom back out on the streets,” he said, weighing his words carefully. Asking her to understand a covert government position had been hard enough. He couldn’t push his luck by disclosing the underworld life Tom Watkins had lived to do his job. “It’s the only way to find out who’s after him. Or me.”

  She didn’t pull bac
k. She probably should have. Erin’s eyes as she peered up at him made him soft. Weak. “You’re setting yourself up as bait,” she said. “Yes.”

  “How do you know that whoever’s behind this will realize you’re out there?”

  “If they’ve framed me for murder, if they’ve broken into your office to get my files, they know every move I’m making. Or close enough. They’ll find me.”

  “You’re going back out there to the people Tom knew, aren’t you?”

  “It’s best if you don’t know that,” he said. And when she started to pull away, to argue, Rick guided her back to him and said, “I’m serious, Erin. I’m putting you in too much jeopardy as it is, just telling you I’ll be gone. You could be charged with aiding and abetting….”

  “That’s my choice to make.”

  “It’s pretty obvious you’ve already been a target because of me. I can’t tell you any more. I don’t want anyone else to have a reason to come after you.”

  “They’ll come after me if they even think I know anything,” she said. And she had a point.

  “If something happens, if I’m not back by Tuesday night, I want you to go straight to the sheriff. Tell him everything I’ve told you. And insist on taking a lie detector test. I want it understood that you know nothing about where I’m going or who I’m meeting.”

  “These people—do they know you’re coming?”

  “No.”

  “But they’ll find you.”

  “Yes.”

  Erin didn’t like it. Not any of it. She didn’t like being in danger. Having her office trashed. She didn’t like being privy to potentially illegal activity. She could lose her career if it was ever discovered that she’d knowingly covered for a client who was breaking the terms of his bail.

  Not that Rick had asked her to cover for him.

  But she would. She knew that was the choice she’d just made.

  “Do you think we should go sit in the living room?” she asked. “Bruce Halloway has to be wondering what we’re doing….”

  “We could be in your study reading law books.”

  She stopped as she was reaching for the door, turned and looked at him over her shoulder. “How do you know I have a study filled with law books?”