He shook his head back and forth. “She was behind me. There’s no way for me to know whether she had a shot or who fired. I was too busy watching a kid shove his gun into my face. Something drew his attention away from me for a split second. I think it was Geri. I dived to the left, in case I was blocking her shot, and grabbed for my gun. But it was too late. I heard shots, felt a kick in my right side. That was it.”
“Two shots? Three? How many?”
“Three, I think.”
“From behind you? Or in front of you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Dan—”
“It was over in a split second,” he cut in. “I heard shots. I felt a bullet digging into my side, and everything went black. There’s nothing after that.”
“Nothing?” she said again.
He looked directly at her, somehow seeming less like the agent and more like the man he so seldom let her see. Something eased inside of him, the tight control slipping, a warm, gentle heat coming into his eyes.
His voice softened, the hard edge all but gone, as he added, “Not until I looked up and saw your face.”
She wanted to believe it, wanted to believe he’d let down his guard and told her something he didn’t intend to admit. All of a sudden, the situation took on an intimacy that had no place here. He’d made this personal, when before he’d fought to make it anything but that.
Why, she wondered?
He didn’t do anything by accident, and he so seldom made mistakes.
She felt his hand close over hers, the touch gentle and warm and somehow terribly intimate. It was welcome, but so very out of character, as well.
Why?
She could guess. That he’d done it deliberately, calculatingly, would use any means available to him to influence the investigation. Even by using the way she felt about him?
She flinched. Because it hurt to think he’d use her that way. To think he was so good at playing games, he nearly got away with it. She wanted so badly to believe he cared about her that he nearly got away with it.
Angrily, she shut off the tape again, heedless of the fact that she was destroying the credibility of the interview. Maybe she could get one of their audio experts to edit out the breaks in the sequence, so that if she ever had to produce her copy of this interview for one of her superiors, it wouldn’t be obvious they’d started and stopped the tape again and again. At this point, she didn’t care. She just wanted to get through this, hopefully without screaming at him.
“Tell me what happened, Jamie,” he said softly, playing with her again.
Closing her eyes, she heard that same seductive voice, low and compelling, from lips so close to hers. She was remembering the night before disaster struck. She felt the hot brush of his tongue sweeping through her mouth, finally knew how it felt to be cradled close to that big, powerful body of his. Felt the full-blown force of his masculine charms focused intently on her.
Did I frighten you? he’d whispered intently.
He’d meant it then, she told herself. That night had been real. He’d kissed her hungrily, greedily, because he hadn’t been able to help himself, and he’d honestly worried he’d somehow frightened her.
Today, lying here battered and bruised, he’d used the same tone of voice deliberately to distract her from the business at hand. To throw her off-balance by letting her think it meant something to him to wake up, after nearly dying a half-dozen times, and find her sitting by his side. To have her face be the first he saw.
He was willing to use her feelings for him, because that was the kind of agent he was. It was the kind of agent he’d trained her to be.
Jamie could still see him so clearly in class that day so long ago. Being a woman in this business put her at a disadvantage in terms of strength and quickness, and she had to compensate for those disadvantages any way she could.
Use it, he’d whispered, standing much too close, crowding her with his body, sending an unmistakably sexual heat sizzling toward her. Use everything you have. Everything you know. Everything another person might have the misfortune to feel. Because your first objective is to get the job done. Any way you can.
It had been amazing, seeing him turn on the power of his masculinity like that, all in the name of making a point and teaching her a lesson.
Fine, she thought bitterly. She’d show him his lessons hadn’t been in vain.
She leaned close, let herself smile at him, let herself wish she had the right to press her lips against his, to let him set her body on fire.
“I can play this game just as well as you can,” she said softly, then let the anger come into play as well. “Because you taught me how to do it. So if you want to go at this as adversaries, that’s how we’ll do it.”
Chapter 5
“Jamie,” he began, giving a credible portrayal of a man who regretted what he’d just done.
Or regretted the fact that he’d gotten caught.
“Don’t,” she said, a reckless anger rushing through her veins and helping her to block out the sight of him lying in the bed hooked up to all sorts of tubes and wires. “Don’t lie to me, either. Geri and I have been through all of this. I know she’s the one who took off after the girl, even after you told her it was likely a setup. I know she ignored your warning to stay where she was and ran into the street.”
“You can’t prove that,” he said, maddeningly calm. “It’s nothing but my word against hers.”
Anger was a truly reckless emotion, she discovered. And she was frighteningly angry. “Geri said she had a clear shot at the suspect who shot you, but she didn’t take it. She said she couldn’t quite make herself take out what looked like a fifteen-year-old boy.”
“Are you telling me you could have? Are you saying you would have done anything differently that night?”
“I wasn’t there,” she argued. “It doesn’t matter what I would have done.”
“It matters if you’re going to sit in judgment of her. You have to ask yourself what would a reasonable person have done in that situation? What would you have done?”
“How can you defend her like this? You nearly died, Dan.”
“I didn’t die,” he pointed out, as if that was all that mattered.
Jamie was fuming. “You didn’t die?” she repeated incredulously. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? No harm done? That you don’t hold her responsible for what happened—”
“I don’t,” he insisted.
“So the agency shouldn’t either?” Jamie continued. “You think this is just about you? About nothing except how you feel? Or what you’ve lost?”
“I’m the one lying in this bed,” he pointed out. “I’m the one who can’t move a muscle from here down.”
He touched his hand to his hipbone and made a sweeping downward motion. Jamie felt cold and weak and dizzy, all at once. She must have made some sound, something that drew his gaze to her. She felt her eyes flood with moisture, felt unable to hide anything from him then.
She hadn’t asked what, if anything, he felt. Because she didn’t think she was ready to hear his answer. But it had been more than forty-eight hours since the doctors dug the bone fragments out of his spine. The swelling would have disappeared by now.
He still couldn’t feel anything, and he’d chosen to just blurt it out to her. Deliberately, she reminded herself, cruelly. She’d never known him to be cruel. Cynical, sarcastic, chauvinistic, self-confident to a fault, but not cruel. Jamie leaned back in her chair, finding herself in need of its support, feeling utterly weary and inadequate to the task she’d been given.
“Go ahead,” she invited, weary of sparring with him with words. “Get it out. Say whatever you want to say.”
He swore viciously, succinctly, then looked away. “I blame myself for this as much as I blame Geri, and, yes, I think my opinion should carry some weight. Lay off Geri. She’s saved my butt more than once, and I don’t want her hung out to dry over this.”
“Dan...” she b
egan. “You don’t understand. This isn’t just about what happened to you.”
“What do you think it’s about? Us?”
“No, I’m not talking about us.”
“Jamie, there is no us. So don’t sit there thinking we’ve lost anything or that Geri’s to blame. Don’t make this out to be some great tragedy, either, just because we never got to finish what we started.”
She flinched. “I’ll try to work on that,” she said. “I’ll try to learn not to give a damn about anybody. The way you do.”
“What did you think was going to happen, Jamie?” he said wearily.
She closed her eyes tightly, trying to hold back the tears.
“We would’ve had sex, all right?” he blurted out. “Probably really good sex. For a while. But it wouldn’t have lasted, and it wouldn’t have meant anything. At least not to me. It never does to me.”
“Are you trying to hurt me?” she asked, her voice quiet and throaty and much too weak. “Or to make me hate you? Because you should know that you’re doing a really good job of it.”
Satisfied, she saw that she’d finally managed to silence him, although it had come too late in this war of words to be considered a victory. She hated sinking to his level. But she was tired of being manipulated and insulted and hurt, and she struck back, going at him in the same way he’d come at her.
“Doc is dead,” she said.
“What?”
“He’s dead,” she repeated, watching the emotions flicker across his face, reading them easily in the seconds it took for him to control his reaction.
It occurred to her that by springing the news on him like that, she’d done precisely what he’d always told her to do. She had knowledge he didn’t possess, and she’d used it to learn what she needed to know, in spite of how he might feel.
And she’d accomplished one thing. She knew now he hadn’t known about Doc.
“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “I know the two of you were close.”
He turned away from her then. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his face turned even paler than it was before. She sat beside him without saying another word as the minutes ticked by.
Finally, he asked, “What happened?”
“Apparently one of the scientists we were guarding that night shot him.”
“What?”
“A Dr. Alexander Hathaway, an American working for a government contractor. He was inside the lab that night. There were no signs of forced entry into the lab, his fingerprints on the door. He opened it from the inside and walked away. No one’s seen him since then,” she explained. “His fingerprints were on the gun used to kill Doc.”
“So it was a setup.”
She nodded.
“And we walked right into it.”
“I know you and Geri both thought the shooters were kids from one of the local gangs. But we think they must have been foreign agents, most likely affiliated with some terrorist group.”
“Why?”
“Apparently Hathaway’s discovered some sort of terrorists’ dream weapon. We don’t know much more than that.”
“How the hell are we supposed to find him if we don’t even know what he discovered?”
“We’re not supposed to find him. The FBI and the CIA caught the case. Word at the office is that the president himself ordered us out of it, because he was so angry we lost Hathaway in the first place.”
Jamie waited, knowing it was a lot to take in all at once. She’d had four days, and she still could hardly believe all that had happened.
“So they’re keeping this quiet?” Dan asked. “No APB? No local law enforcement? Just CIA and FBI?”
“Hathaway’s on top of the FBI’s most wanted list, but for killing a federal agent. There hasn’t been any mention of top-secret research being missing, although I’m sure the whole thing will come out if Hathaway isn’t found quickly. I don’t know what kind of progress has been made, but whatever Hathaway was working on has the Pentagon scared to death.”
“I didn’t know,” Dan said. “I had no idea...”
“I know.” Jamie picked up the tape recorder one last time and clicked it on. “I just need to clarify a few things. When you left the front doors of the warehouse, you radioed Doc first?”
“Yes.”
“It was his voice that answered? You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“He never gave you any indication something was wrong?”
“No,” he said, then paused to think. “Wait, I did know something was wrong. When I caught up with the girl, Geri had the guy who’d been holding the gun on the girl. We were in the alley. Too far back to see the front of the warehouse. I tried to reach Doc on the radio to tell him what happened, but he didn’t answer.”
“What happened next?”
“I got shot.”
“How long between the time you left the warehouse doors and the time you tried to raise Doc and he didn’t answer?”
“Thirty seconds, maybe.”
Jamie nodded, knowing what he was doing. Measuring the distance from memory, thinking of how fast he’d been running, of how much ground he could cover at various speeds. She’d run the distance herself the day before from the warehouse doors to the spot where he’d been found.
It would have taken split-second timing. Hathaway had to know they were coming for him. He had to be in communication with them, had to be ready to take Doc out as soon as his accomplices drew Geri and Dan away from the front of the warehouse, and then disappear.
But was thirty seconds enough time for someone to shoot Doc with a Colt .45, get to the alley, shoot Dan with a prototype gun, then shoot Geri seconds later? Which meant someone was mistaken—or still lying about something. One of them had to have lost their weapon before Dan was shot.
“One last thing,” she said. “Your weapon? Think for me. Where was your weapon when you were hit?”
“At my back. Tucked into the waistband of my pants. I had my hand on the handle.”
“You’re sure.”
“Jamie, no one’s ever taken my own gun away from me.”
That had been her first reaction when she heard the ballistics report. No one would get his weapon away from him. Still, if he had his when he was shot, if Geri had hers as she claimed, if Doc had been at his post inside and nothing out of the ordinary had happened thirty seconds before... It wasn’t possible. Ballistics didn’t lie.
In this case, the ballistic evidence said Dan and Geri had been shot with a 6 mm, a high-powered bullet used by the prototype weapons the agency was testing. They weren’t available on the open market yet. No one else had them, except the manufacturer. Which mean someone was lying. If the weapons were ever located, technicians could fire the weapons and check for markings on the bullets, then use serial numbers to find out which agent’s weapon was used in the shooting. But so far, they hadn’t recovered the weapons.
Frustrated, Jamie clicked off the tape recorder for the last time.
“Dan, we’ll have to go over this again,” she cautioned.
“I know.”
“Geri’s in the next room,” she said carefully. “She’s been asking to see you. But I can’t leave you and Geri alone until...”
He nodded, understanding.
It was basic procedure in investigating a crime. Separate the witnesses, the victims, the suspects, everyone, until all their statements had been taken. Memories were amazingly fluid, even when you didn’t have to worry about people making up a story to protect themselves. She was taking a risk, letting Geri in. But she might learn everything she needed to know, as well.
If the situation were reversed, Dan wouldn’t hesitate to bring the two of them together, if he thought he’d find out what he needed to know.
“Do you want to see her?” she offered.
“Yes.”
Jamie pushed open the door, spoke briefly to the guard. A moment later, Geri, looking oddly vulnerable sitting there in a hospital gown and a robe
with her right arm in a sling to immobilize the injury to her shoulder, was there. Jamie dismissed the nurse and pushed the wheelchair to the side of Dan’s bed herself.
She took one quick glance at the two of them. Geri’s face was anguished, guilt-ridden. And Dan’s? Was that compassion she saw? Kindness? Understanding? Concern? He certainly hadn’t shown any of those things for her today.
And then she simply couldn’t watch any longer. Jamie walked to the door and turned her back on them, praying they would tell her what she needed to know so she could put this whole mess behind her.
Dan knew his partner well. She could be tough as nails when she put her mind to it. She didn’t take crap from anyone, didn’t lose her cool under pressure. She was a straightforward, strong, tough, extremely capable woman, and he admired her for all those things. He had never seen her cry. He’d made as many mistakes as she had, and he wouldn’t let her blame herself entirely for what happened.
“Buck up, soldier,” he said.
Geri shook her head sadly. Her face was utterly pale, her eyes glistening with tears.
“Don’t,” he said softly. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
He watched as her normally rock-solid composure crumbled, as she fought a losing battle with her emotions. Obviously, kindness wasn’t going to cut it here.
“God,” he groaned softly, “if I’m doomed to spend the rest of my life surrounded by a bunch of weeping women who are going to fuss over me, or try to take care of me or—even worse—feel sorry for me, I swear I’ll throw myself out of the first open window I can find.”
From the corner of the room, he saw Jamie flinch. Geri looked puzzled. There was a brief spark of anger, which he hoped would simmer and grow. But it died out as quickly as it appeared, and she looked hurt all over again.
“It’s not going to work, Dan.”
He shrugged easily and worked up an uneasy grin. “I had to give it my best try.”
Geri nodded, still fighting tears.
He might have to watch her cry, too, because he hadn’t let himself look at anything but her sad, pale face. Because he didn’t want to see her in that wheelchair, didn’t want to think of what his life would be like in one of those.
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