He most definitely didn’t want to think about Doc.
Or Jamie.
So, what was left? He decided to take care of his partner.
“It’s as much my fault as yours,” he explained.
“No,” she insisted.
“Come on, Geri. You know me. If I thought this was your fault, I’d be yelling right now. I’d bring down the plaster on these walls, and your ears would be burning. I am not a nice man or an easy one to work with, and you know that better than anyone.”
She shook her head again. Tears slipped from beneath her tightly closed lashes. She bent her head until it rested against the mattress, the top of her head against his right side. Dan knew that because his eyes told him, not his body. It was unnerving to realize he didn’t feel the top of her head pressing at his side.
“I’m sorry,” Geri whispered. “Dan...I’m so sorry.”
Her shoulders started to shake, and Dan made an instinctive move to sit up and take her in his arms, forgetting for another split second that his body no longer responded the way it always had. He swore softly, put his hand on Geri’s head to let her know it was okay. She could stay here like this if she needed to. He would do his best to comfort her, as he hadn’t allowed himself to comfort the woman standing near the door with her back to him.
God, Jamie, he thought, not letting himself glance in her direction. Just go away.
It had been a fantasy, after all. Him and Jamie, saying those things to her, kissing her as if he could devour her whole, thinking they could have a future together. He wouldn’t let her sit by his side and try to smile and pretend it didn’t matter if he couldn’t stand up. If he couldn’t draw her to him deep in the night, pull her body beneath his and slip inside of her and make love to her, like a man.
It had been a flat-out lie when he told her making love to her wouldn’t have meant anything to him. There’d been a time when he hoped it wouldn’t. But a man didn’t spend years wanting a woman who meant nothing to him, and now he saw that he’d waited until it was simply too late, until he had nothing to offer her but a monumental struggle with no guarantee he’d ever be the man he used to be.
He thought again of that first night he spent in this room, groggy, half of him numb, half of him hurting like hell, lying in the dark, close to going stark-raving mad until he opened his eyes and saw her sitting by his side and holding his hand tightly in hers. She looked like an angel that night. Like a little slice of heaven. Like a savior.
Save me, Jamie, he thought. Take me away from here. Make it all fade away.
But he couldn’t ask that of her. He wouldn’t put her through the struggle that lay ahead of him.
Chapter 6
A month later, Jamie walked into Dan’s room late one night and found it empty. Her heart lurched sickeningly for a moment, even as her head told her he was fine, that he was getting stronger every day.
She, on the other hand, still woke up in a cold sweat, dreaming of those nightmarish days after the shooting. It didn’t help that she still had to see him from time to time because of her job. Not that he was being uncooperative or unkind, as he had been that day in his hospital room. He’d kept things strictly businesslike between them, being distant, calm, quiet, answering her questions, but nothing more.
Perhaps she should be grateful for his indifference, but after weeks of it, she’d found indifference could hurt just as well.
Turning away from the empty room, Jamie went to the nursing station, where she found a familiar face, a fortysomething nurse with kind eyes.
“Hi, Annie. How’s your favorite patient?”
“Going stir-crazy,” she complained. “Making all of us crazy, as well.”
“He’s not in his room.”
“I know. He likes to be alone, and that’s a difficult thing when you’re stuck in a hospital. He’s been roaming the halls for the past week trying to find some peace and quiet. I finally thought of sneaking him into the next wing. It’s being renovated, so no one’s there at night after the construction crews leave. Most of the rooms are finished now, and one of them’s a solarium. I took him down there an hour ago and promised to leave him alone.”
“Oh.” Jamie hesitated.
“Come on.” Annie took her by the arm. “I wouldn’t dare barge in on him now, but if you’re willing to risk it, I’ll show you where he is.”
They walked past a construction zone barricade, down a deserted corridor. Jamie said, “He’ll be leaving soon, won’t he?”
Annie nodded, stopped herself before adding anything more.
Weeks ago, Dan had ordered his doctors to stop talking to anyone about his condition—something Jamie found particularly hurtful. She couldn’t make herself stop worrying about him.
Her pride hadn’t let her come right out and ask him how he was doing. She could tell just from looking at him that he was almost well. She supposed he’d be leaving the hospital soon, and she knew he was in physical therapy, because she arrived one day while he was there and had to wait until he was finished to talk to him. A few people had mentioned his name in connection with a nearby government rehabilitation facility where Geri was already located, working to regain full use of her right arm and shoulder. Jamie suspected Dan would be going there soon, and she might never see him again, if he didn’t come back to the agency.
She found the door at the end of the deserted hallway, pushed it open to a small, darkened room filled with couches and chairs and plants. The far wall and half the ceiling was made entirely of glass, and during the day she supposed it gave the patients the impression of being outdoors. But it was late now, and the sky was black. Thunder rumbled ominously. Lightning flashed in the distance. It had been raining on the other side of town, where she’d come from, and it looked like the rain was following her.
Jamie shivered, both from the thought of the coming storm and from the look in Dan’s eyes when he turned his head and saw her. She expected to find him in the wheelchair, something she dreaded. But the chair was empty, parked beside the sofa. He was sitting on a sofa with his arm stretched along the back of one of the cushions, looking so wonderfully normal, impossibly handsome and strong.
“Hi,” she said tentatively.
“Hi.” He watched her with an unnerving stare. “More questions?”
“A few.”
His shoulders rose and fell with a long, slow breath, and he nodded toward the chair beside him. “Have a seat.”
Jamie draped her coat over the chair and dared to take a seat on the far end of the sofa on which he was sitting. A crack of thunder startled her. She flinched at the sound. The air-conditioning kicked on a moment later, and she shivered.
“Cold outside?” he asked.
“A little.” Jamie said. “I need to go over some things with you. About the Section 123 report. Tanner’s after me to wrap it up, and I still have a few inconsistencies between your version of what happened and Geri’s.”
Like whose weapon he was shot with and which one of them decided first to leave their post to try to save the girl.
With a wry smile, Dan said, “There’s nothing else I can tell you, Jamie.”
“Of course not.” Which meant he was protecting his partner, to the bitter end, despite what it cost him. She folded her arms in front of her, ran one hand up and down the opposite arm in a vain attempt to warm herself, and tried to make sure he understood how this was going to play out. “You know we’re going to hang somebody out to dry on this?”
He nodded.
“Tanner claims it’s the way of the world. We lost Hathaway and his work. We lost Doc, and someone has to pay for that.”
Dan nodded. “That’s the way it works.”
“I don’t think this was your fault,” she insisted. “I think you were in a lousy situation, and you made a split-second decision, one I’m glad I didn’t have to make.”
Dan bypassed everything but the bottom line. “Blame me, Jamie,” he said softly.
“I can’t do
that.”
“Why not?” He leaned farther back against the sofa cushions as if it meant nothing to him.
“I don’t think it’s your fault.”
“You’re missing the point. Someone’s going down for this, and the list of possibilities isn’t that long. It’s not going to be Doc,” he insisted.
“No,” she agreed.
“Geri’s a good agent. She can still be a good agent, and I want her to have that chance. Which leaves me.”
“But what about your career?”
“I’m not coming back, Jamie,” he said easily. “So it doesn’t mean a damn thing to me if my name shows up on that report as the reason why the whole operation went sour.”
“Dan—”
“Listen to me. It’s not like I’m making a huge sacrifice here. My career’s over. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I’m never going to be mobile enough to be a field agent again.”
She turned her head away, closed her eyes and fought against a tightening in her throat that threatened to choke her, fought to hold back a fast, hot rush of tears, as she imagined the worst.
That he wouldn’t walk again?
He hadn’t said that exactly. She fought to find reassurance in the fact that he hadn’t come right out and said he wouldn’t walk again. He said he wouldn’t be mobile enough to be a field agent. That could mean anything. That he could walk but not run. That he could run but not climb a mountain or hack his way through a jungle, if need be.
She pulled herself together enough to face him. He was wearing that same expression he had when she’d been trying to get him to admit it was Geri’s fault, not his, that the operation at the warehouse had gone bad. The one that said Jamie could do her damnedest; he wasn’t talking.
Exasperated, she stood up to leave. “I can’t put my name on a report full of lies. I won’t”
“Think about it, Jamie. Nothing you say in that report is going to change anything for Doc or for me.”
“I can’t do it,” she repeated.
From outside came a streak of light, then the booming sound of thunder. Already on-edge, she gasped, her selfcontrol a tenuous thing.
Dan reached for her hand. Surprised, she let him pull her down to sit beside him, felt his hand on her shoulder, his touch gentle and reassuring and so wonderfully warm.
“Let it go, Jamie,” he urged. “Put it behind you, and move on.”
He was confusing her terribly now. He never touched her. He wasn’t nice to her, either. And while she would like nothing more than to sit here, savoring his sweetly satisfying touch, she knew he was telling her to forget much more than the report or the shooting. He wanted her to forget about him as well, but she hadn’t found a way to do that.
Maybe if he’d never held her in his arms. Maybe if she didn’t still dream about that quick, hard embrace in the hallway, about steamy, sweet kisses in the dark, she could. But she knew. She remembered.
Without warning, another crack of thunder sounded, and she flinched, his hand tightening on her shoulder, then kneading at the tension there.
“I’ve never seen you jump at the sound of thunder,” he said.
“I’m tired,” she claimed. “Jumpy. It’s been a bad day. Bad week. Bad month. Tanner wants my report. He’s been pushing the whole time.”
“He’s under a lot of pressure right now, and he’s passing it down the line to you.”
“I know, but I still have all of these questions, pieces that don’t fit together the way they should. Did you know we hardly looked in the district for the two suspects and the girl you and Geri described? Doesn’t that seem odd to you? Both of you said they looked like they came straight out of the gangs, and we’ve hardly looked for them here.”
“I thought everybody agreed they were pros. Looking like gang kids let them move in and out of that neighborhood without drawing attention to themselves.”
“I know. But shouldn’t we at least look? Shouldn’t we try to find someone who saw them? Or heard something that night?”
“Jamie, the agency doesn’t have the case.”
“I know. But our people are the ones who got shot.”
“Let the CIA and the FBI handle it,” Dan said.
“They’re looking for Hathaway. Not the people who shot you.”
“It’s all connected. Find Hathaway, and you’ll find out who shot Geri and me.”
“I know that, too. But none of it explains why no one’s working the case from this end. Why not try to find the people who shot you and let them lead us to Hathaway?”
“How do you know no one’s looking?”
“Because I’ve been down there. I’ve asked,” she said.
Dan was scowling at her. “Tell me you didn’t go down there by yourself.”
She ignored the question. What she did was no business of his.
“No one’s been down there in weeks,” she said. “Hardly anyone’s asked questions there. Or searched around Burns Avenue. Think about it, Dan. That warehouse is minutes from the FBI and the CIA’s headquarters. The task force has sent agents all over the country, all over the world, looking for Hathaway, but they haven’t checked an area minutes away. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
“There must be an explanation. Probably that the FBI and the CIA have information they haven’t shared with us,” he concluded. “Or Tanner knows things he’s been ordered not to tell us. It happens, Jamie.”
She sighed, wondering if she was wrong about this, wondering why she couldn’t ignore that nagging little voice inside that told her something didn’t add up.
“What did Tanner say about working it from this end?” Dan asked.
“That we screwed up and lost the case.” She shrugged. “That if we want a chance to get the case back, we’ve got to be team players right now and stay out of it. That hopefully, once everybody calms down and we give the big boys someone to blame, we’ll be brought back onto the case.”
“He’s probably right.”
She stared at him. “Don’t ask me to believe you’d back off and leave it alone if this was your assignment. I know you wouldn’t.”
“Okay, I probably wouldn’t. But could you just stay the hell away from Burns Avenue?.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it’s dangerous.”
She laughed. “This is a dangerous job. You know that.”
And as soon as the words were out, she wanted to call them back. But it was too late. Was it too late for them as well? Was there nothing she could say to him? Nothing she could do?
“Dan,” she tried. “I’m sorry.”
He brushed off the comment, as if it was of no consequence at all. He leaned his head against the back of the sofa cushion and stared at the blackened sky overhead. Jamie checked her watch, amazed. She’d been here for nearly ten minutes, and he hadn’t once tried to get rid of her. That had to be a record.
She took a minute to study the man beside her. He was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and a Marine Corps T-shirt. His hair, which he normally kept very short, looked almost shaggy, curling a little on top and in back where it barely brushed against the collar of his shirt.
He’d been cooped up inside for a month, so his skin was paler than normal, and he’d lost some weight. But he would never be considered scrawny. Maybe it was just seeing him out of his hospital bed, sitting on a sofa, looking so normal, but she kept thinking that any minute he was going to get up and walk across the room. It was hard to believe he couldn’t, that maybe he never would.
“You look good,” she confessed. Gorgeous, she could have added. Sexy. Healthy.
He stared at her for a minute, then looked toward the windows again. “I’m getting out of here soon,” he said offhandedly.
“I heard. Rehab?”
“Yeah.”
“For what? A few weeks? Months?”
“Months.”
Which meant that they could help him? Or that they were going to teach him how to deal with life in a
wheelchair? She wanted to ask. Damn him for not telling her, for leaving it to her to ask.
She knew a little of what he was facing, wondered if he’d go through it alone, as he seemed to go through everything else in life.
“Have you ever known anyone who’s been in extensive rehab?” she asked.
“Nothing like what I’m facing. Why?”
“One of my brothers blew out his knee a few years ago.”
“Football?” he guessed. “Basketball?”
“No. He’s a pilot. He bailed out of his plane a little too low to the ground, and his parachute didn’t have time to open fully.”
Dan smiled and shook his head. “Tell me something. Is there anyone in your family with a healthy respect for danger?”
“Someone from my family has served in every war this country ever fought. So yes, we’re familiar with the concept of danger,” she said, ready to defend her family to anyone. “My brother happened to be with the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Bosnia when his plane was shot down. He was trying to keep it from crashing into a civilian area when he bailed out too late and ruined his knee.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“My youngest brother’s a test pilot. He wants to take the space shuttle for a spin one day. And my other brother never made it home from the Gulf War.”
Jamie froze, unable to believe she’d just blurted it out like that. She never told anyone that. It was too painful, even years later. But Rich had been on her mind lately, another thing dredged up by the shooting at the warehouse.
She shivered. She’d loved him so much. He was someone who put his life on the line day after day, and she’d lost him. Surely something like that would make a smart woman think twice about falling in love with a man who took risks every day of his life, and she liked to think of herself as a very smart woman.
“Jamie.” Dan’s hand closed tightly over hers. “You’re freezing. Come here.”
He tugged on her hand, and she knew she shouldn’t let herself get any closer to him, knew it would only hurt more when it came time to leave. What did he mean by touching her this way, anyway?
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