DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  I didn’t want to believe it, but once the seed of doubt was planted …

  Luke handed me an envelope filled with cash and the keys to the sedan.

  “Keep in touch.” He handed me a business card with his own numbers written on it. “Let me know the moment you have concerns. Okay?”

  I nodded. “I will.”

  I drove away while he stood in front of the SUV, watching me with those dark, distrustful eyes. I found myself wondering how Megan could have fallen for such a guy. It made me nervous, just standing next to him. He was like a cloud of mystery, the kind of guy that you could never really know or trust. He reminded me of the detectives I’d worked with back in San Diego.

  Creepy.

  Xander was waiting for me at the motel. We quickly packed out bags in the car and took off, headed once again to Dallas. We were closer than I’d imagined, arriving at the airport in under an hour.

  “It’s a bit of a longshot,” I said.

  Xander shrugged. “Maybe Waverly will come up with something in her computer searches.”

  “I’m sure she will. But that takes time.”

  Especially if you were CIA.

  How did I tell him that Luke thought he was some sort of assassin? Would the idea knock a hole in the wall of amnesia that had been blocking his memories since the accident? Or would it just ring false in his head?

  I was hoping for the latter, but was fearful of the former.

  Xander held my arm, offering support, as we walked into the airport and stood behind a couple at the car rental counter, trying to decide if they wanted a sports car or something more practical. When it was our turn, the clerk didn’t bother to look up at first. But then Xander spoke and the man’s head flew up, his blue eyes wide with something like shock.

  “Mr. Chandler? I can’t believe—when we heard about your accident, no one thought you’d …”

  “That I’d survive?”

  The man nodded, still staring wide eyed at Xander. “It was quite an accident. Our mechanic said that there must have been some sort of explosion in the engine to make it fail like that.”

  Xander glanced at me. The police report I’d read said that Xander had fallen asleep and slammed the car into a barrier. This was news to us.

  “What, exactly, were you told about my accident?”

  The man frowned. “That you were driving along a country road and the engine malfunctioned, causing the car to veer off the road and slam into a barrier. Our mechanic checked everything out—it’s routine after an accident involving one of our cars, in case it can be proven to have been mechanical error—and he said that it looked like someone had put a small charge in the engine, causing it to dump all the oil and seize up at a high rate of speed.”

  Xander leaned against the counter, moving in close to the man in an attempt to win over his sympathies.

  “I was badly injured in the accident.”

  “That’s what we heard.”

  Xander touched the scar on his face. “The thing is, I had a pretty serious head injury, and I have no memory of my life before waking in the hospital eleven months ago.”

  The clerk’s blue eyes fogged with moisture. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “We were hoping that you might be able to give us some information about the day I rented the car. How I rented it. If I was with anyone. That sort of thing.”

  The man nodded, his glance moving to me for the first time. “I don’t want to cause any trouble for you,” he said slowly.

  “It’s fine.” I smiled brightly. “I know he had a woman with him that night. We just want some details that we’ve failed to put together.”

  Relief filled the man’s eyes. “Well,” he said slowly, “the two of you were quite the couple. Quite memorable.”

  His eyes moved over Xander again. It was obvious why he remembered Xander. Was it bad that I found it amusing?

  “You arrived just ten minutes before we were due to close for the night. The woman you were with—tall, redheaded, pretty—was distracted, moaning about how late the plane had been. But you were calm, even laidback. You were actually my most pleasant customer of the day.”

  Xander smiled, once again glancing at me.

  “You rented a blue sedan. You had wanted an SUV, but the sedan was all we had left on the lot and you were in too much of a hurry to go to our other lot across town. The woman was angry about it, but you didn’t seem to care. You even told her to chill out. You paid cash, but you had a credit card on file.”

  “What was the name on the credit card?”

  The man glanced at me. “Richard Chandler.” He seemed to think it was odd that I would ask that question. “You showed ID, too,” he said, gesturing toward Xander’s back pocket.

  “You saw my driver’s license?”

  “You had a wallet full of ID and credit cards.”

  “All in the same name?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t see the names on most of them, just the tips of the cards.”

  “Do you remember anything else about him? About her?”

  The clerk stepped back, clearly struggling with something. Xander straightened up and smiled politely.

  “Really, it’s okay. Whatever you remember could be helpful to us, to me finding out who I was before the accident.”

  The clerk glanced at me and then back at Xander. “I got the impression that the woman was quite enamored with you. She kept touching you, sliding her hand over your back and hanging on your arm. And you gave her a couple of looks that suggested … well, I assumed you were lovers. But then, before you left …”

  He reached under the counter and popped open the cash drawer, pulling out something that had been placed under the cash tray. “You slipped this to me, like you were asking for help. I didn’t understand it, didn’t know what to do with it. I showed it to my manager and the cops when they came to tell us about the accident, but they didn’t think it was significant. They thought you left it on accident.”

  Xander took the item he held out to him, studying it closely for a long moment before he turned to me, holding it out with this dark look in his eyes that sent a chill down my spine.

  It was a photograph of a woman holding a child who looked to be about a year old. The woman was the same person I’d seen in the picture behind Xander in one of the photographs Ingram Porter had shown me. And the child … she had Xander’s eyes. There was no question in my mind.

  This was Xander’s family.

  I didn’t hear anything else the clerk said. We left a few minutes later, Xander holding the back of my arm like I couldn’t walk straight without his help. When we got to the car, he took the keys from me, forcing me into the passenger seat.

  “It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m married, Rhett,” he said when he was settled behind the wheel. “We could be divorced. Or she could be an old girlfriend who just happened to get pregnant before we ended things.”

  “Or she could be your wife, waiting and wondering in Denver where the hell you went.”

  Xander took the picture from me and studied it for a minute. “I don’t get any sort of vibe from the woman.”

  “What about the little girl?”

  He studied it a moment longer, his eyes widening slightly just before he set it down, sliding it into the console between our seats. Upside down.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  I didn’t believe him.

  “We could answer this question once and for all. We could take you to Austin, to Gray Wolf, and ask them to tell you who their client is.”

  He nodded. “Or we could wait for Waverly to do her computer check.”

  “That could take days.”

  “Would it be so bad to hide out in a hotel with me for a couple of days?”

  He was smiling, but there was something missing from his gaze. There was something about that picture, something he remembered. He knew that he was married and that he had a family waiting for him. And that made me feel sick to my stom
ach, the idea that I’d just helped a man commit adultery. Hadn’t I watched my mother do that too many times to count? Hadn’t I sworn I would never be like my mom, that I would never destroy a family because of my own selfish desires?

  “I want to see the place where the accident happened,” he said. “It’s not far from Austin, right?”

  “About fifty miles.”

  “Then we’ll go there and then we’ll go to Gray Wolf if Waverly hasn’t come up with anything before then.” He reached over and touched my knee. “I don’t know much about myself, about my character. But I don’t think I would feel this way about you if there was someone out there whom I’d committed myself to.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know enough.”

  I looked at him, suddenly not ashamed of what we’d done, but afraid that he would find out the truth, that he would want to go back to his life, the life that existed before now. I studied his face and was suddenly frightened that the moment he met Ingram Porter’s client he would turn his back on me t and never look back.

  I was more afraid I would lose him than that he was committing adultery by being with me. What kind of a person did that make me?

  Exactly the needy sort of person I’d never wanted to be.

  Chapter 11

  Hayden

  Waverly walked into my office, the split in her pencil skirt showing off her amazing legs. Was it any wonder that I couldn’t think of anything other than her damn legs all day long? Combine her legs with her incredible brain and her killer personality and she was a loaded gun, pointed straight at the place where my heart had once been.

  “I’ve run into an issue with the background check on Xander King.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, first off, there are like thousands of Xander Kings, Alexander Kings, or Alex Kings in this country. A dozen live here in Houston, three dozen live in Denver.”

  “Surely you can figure something out to narrow it down.”

  “Of course. I think I found the right one. My problem is, he appears to have served in the military, but his records are classified. And he disappears after that. He joined the Marines in 2000 and then completely disappeared. There’s no credit score, no driver’s license, no parking tickets or arrests. No nothing. He has no digital footprint after the day he joined the Marines.”

  “Then how do you know you have the right Xander King?”

  “Because he was arrested as a juvenile and his fingerprints are on record. I was able to get an FBI friend of mine to compare those prints to the prints the hospital took of our John Doe when he was in the accident.”

  As impressed as I was, I couldn’t help but be a little resentful that it was Waverly delivering this information, not Sam. Like always, the resent turned inwards after a moment. What kind of a man was I to keep comparing a living woman to someone long dead?

  I was firm with myself about maintaining fair expectations for my employees. Why couldn’t I apply the same standards here? I was sleeping with her, for God’s sake. The least I could do was find it in me to think of her as Waverly and not as a Sam-wannabe.

  I cleared my throat, aware that my ruminating had stretched a brief pause into an awkward silence. “There are only a few reasons why someone’s military record would be classified, and none of them are good.”

  Waverly inclined her head in agreement. “I’m thinking CIA.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my friend at the FBI said that a red flag came up on the fingerprints when he ran them. The only people who could do that are his superiors or the CIA.”

  My mind immediately went to the events of five years ago when Megan, Dominic, and I found ourselves embroiled in a mess with the CIA. Luke, too, but I didn’t consider him a victim of the situation. He was more of a perpetrator.

  If Luke had been honest, if he’d told the rest of us what Peter was up to and the danger it was bringing down on all our heads, we could have avoided a lot of what happened back then. Instead, he’d disappeared and then had his face altered so that he could come back and pretend to be one of us while he worked both sides of the game. A traitor I was still struggling to trust.

  But this was just a coincidence, right? It couldn’t have anything to do with that.

  I moved around the desk and leaned back against the edge. Of their own volition, my arms reached out and pulled Waverly close to me. She was such a beautiful woman, in ways far more than the physical. I slid my hand along the split of her skirt, up over her ass, biting back a smile when I discovered she was wearing one of those silky thongs she favored.

  She really knew how to play with my peace of mind.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a few friends at the CIA, would you?”

  “No. But I know a guy who knows a guy.”

  I leaned down and stroked her cheek lightly with my fingertips, enjoying the small smile that touched her lips before I bent and nibbled on them for a second. “Call him. See what you can find out about this guy.”

  “I will.”

  “It makes me nervous, having one of our best agents out there with a guy who may or may not be a fucking spook. Something about him rubbed me wrong the moment I first saw him. I never should have sent Rhett out there with him.”

  “Rhett can handle herself.”

  “Rhett is not as tough as she wants everyone to think she is.”

  Waverly pulled back a little, trapping my hand between her ass and her skirt. “You say that like you know her better than as just a boss/employee.”

  “Jealous?”

  She seemed to think about it for a moment. “No,” she finally said. “But I liked the idea that I was the first employee you threw up against the copy machine.”

  “You are. Rhett prefers the desk.”

  “That’s only because I haven’t had the opportunity to try it out yet.”

  That sounded like a challenge. We locked eyes and hers nodded yes. I immediately turned her around and bent her over the front of my desk, ripping down her skirt because it seemed like too much work to pull it up. I didn’t even have to remove the thong, just tug it out of the way.

  Holding her waist firmly, I buried my mouth between Waverly’s legs. She muffled her cries of pleasure and I whispered incoherent soft words, wanting her to know somehow that she meant something to me, even if I was only half a man and incapable of ever giving her more than this. She knew all that. There were no lies between us; and yet she accepted me exactly this way.

  That knowledge drove me to want to give her the full extent of whatever affection I was still capable of. I didn’t stop licking and biting until I felt her begin to shiver at the very edge of an orgasm.

  “Hayden,” she moaned, and I rose unsteadily to my knees, savoring the taste of her still on my lips.

  Moving in behind her, I swept her hair aside and pressed a soft kiss to the back of her neck. Then I was inside of her, thrusting so hard that the computer monitor sitting to her left fell over. I didn’t stop until she came and I followed, right behind. I called out her name this time, for the first time.

  Sam didn’t make her usual reappearance in my field of vision until after Waverly had kissed me, cleaned herself up, and slipped out of the office.

  It disturbed me to find Sam’s memory softly smiling. It disturbed me even more to realize that I was smiling, too.

  ***

  I was straightening my desk—and my thoughts— a few minutes later when Kasey stuck his head in the door.

  “Would it be okay if I sneak out early? I’ve got a family thing across town.”

  “Why aren’t you up in Dallas?”

  Kasey stepped into the room. “Luke told me that Megan had changed her mind. That she wanted him to go instead.”

  “What does Megan have to do with this? I’m the head of operations, and I gave you an assignment.”

  Kasey frowned. “He’s the boss’ husband. I didn’t think I should argue with him.”

  And then it
suddenly made sense. The CIA. It was all connected and Luke already knew it.

  Why the fuck hadn’t he told me?

  I waved Kasey away, grabbing the phone with an urgency that grabbed me by the balls.

  Rhett was in a lot deeper than I’d originally assumed. My operative was in trouble, and I’d put her right in its path.

  Chapter 12

  Xander

  I touched my hand to the concrete barrier that ran the entire length of the narrow bridge. There was a clear gouge in the concrete, at least five inches deep. I couldn’t imagine what the impact had been like. And seeing it, touching it, didn’t wake any memories in my head.

  “The car never slowed as it came around this curve,” the cop was saying. “That’s why we assumed the driver was impaired or sleeping. When the toxicology tests came back negative, we were convinced the driver had fallen asleep. The accident took place around two a.m., so that would have made perfect sense.”

  “We’ve been told that there might have been a small explosion in the car’s engine,” Rhett told him. “Could that have caused the crash, too?”

  “An explosion?”

  “It would have caused the car to seize up. At a high rate of speed, could that have caused this accident?”

  “Certainly. If the engine seized, the car would have continued under its own momentum and the driver would have no power, no brakes, no power steering, nothing.”

  Rhett looked over at me. I just nodded.

  “Could the explosion have caused some of the driver’s injuries?”

  The cop shrugged. “I’m not a doctor. But it seems to me that if the engine experienced some sort of explosion, it’s very possible that shrapnel could have entered the passenger compartment.”

  “Then he’s lucky to be alive.”

  “I’ve thought that since the night of the accident. If he’d hit the barrier just an inch to the left, he could have died instantly.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  The cop shrugged. “Because the car would have hit nearly head on. As it was, the engine compartment completely accordioned in on the passenger compartment, save for a small section of the driver’s side. If it had hit another inch to the left, the driver would have been completely crushed.”