Dangerous to Love

by Sally Tyler Hayes

  Jamie turned her head away, not wanting her mother to see how deeply hurt she was, not wanting to think Dan still could hurt her this much.

  “I don’t know how to stop caring about him,” she said miserably. She had a feeling things were going to get worse before they got better.

  An hour later, Jamie strolled inside the staid, utterly respectable-looking four-story brick office building in Georgetown where she reported for work when she wasn’t off on some mission.

  On the fourth floor, she walked through a door discreetly labeled Linguistic Services, Inc., a company loosely affiliated with the Commerce Department. The outer office did indeed house a small business offering the services of experts who wrote and spoke more than a dozen foreign languages and hired themselves out, either to high-ranking diplomats and government officials doing business in the capital or to Americans with interests abroad. Jamie spoke four languages fluently, and if pressed, could communicate on a rudimentary level in two more, which gave her more than adequate cover for the job she was supposed to have.

  She entered a door to the right, marked Private, waited at a second set of doors to punch a code into the numbered keypad, which opened a ten-inch square panel in the wall. She placed her hand against the pressure pad, which scanned her palm, then beeped twice as a reinforced door slid open.

  In the next room, she pulled out her ID for the security guard, who punched a code at her desk that brought up a retina scan at the third and final security door.

  Inside, Jamie headed for Tanner’s office. A former CIA operative who got his start in the military, Tanner was a real up-and-comer, a go-getter, and he was probably close to firing Jamie because she still hadn’t given him her Section 123 report. But Tanner, she found, was tied up. His secretary, Amanda, promised to try to work Jamie in if he got a break.

  Closing her own office door behind her, Jamie sat down at her desk and thought about what she was going to do. Tanner had accused her of letting her personal feelings for the agents involved cloud her judgment on the issue, and she couldn’t argue that point with him.

  Much as she tried, it was impossible to keep her personal feelings out of this. Obviously, Dan was lying to protect Geri. She was the one who disregarded orders and took off after the girl, and that decision led to a chain of events of disastrous proportions.

  As for the fact that they were shot with one of the prototype weapons, she thought it must have been Doc’s. Dan must have been mistaken, either in thinking it was Doc’s voice he’d heard on the radio or in thinking he talked to him only thirty seconds before he was shot. Either more time had elapsed, which would have given someone time to shoot Doc, grab his weapon and use it on Dan and Geri, or he simply believed it was Doc who responded to his call on the radio. It had been storming that night. They had been fighting static and interference from the storm, and they didn’t exchange more than five words the last time they spoke. Under those circumstances, how could he possibly be certain he was talking to Doc? Jamie didn’t think he could.

  She was up and pacing around her office at that point. All she had to do was write down the facts, substitute a few out-and-out lies and give it to Tanner. It was what he and Dan both wanted—for her to lay the blame squarely on Dan’s shoulders, and be done with it.

  Maybe that was the problem—she didn’t want to be done with it. She still wanted to find the people who shot Dan and Geri. She was still angry and frustrated and hurt, and had no way to work through those feelings or to let them go.

  She was seated at her desk again a moment later, when Geri Sinclair burst in. Geri had been back in the office on restricted duty for two weeks. Jamie wondered if she’d talked to Dan or seen him, but she hadn’t found a way to ask.

  Normally the epitome of calm, Geri slapped some papers down on the desk, leaned across it and demanded, “How could you do this?”

  “Do what?” Jamie asked.

  “Recommend that Dan be reprimanded in connection with the shooting and Hathaway’s escape?”

  “What?”

  Jamie snatched up the papers, unable to believe what she was seeing. It was labeled a Section 123 report, marked Confidential, supposedly written by her with copies sent to a half-dozen people. Flipping to the back, she was even more surprised to find an excellent likeness of her own signature on the final page.

  “Where did you get this?” Jamie asked.

  “Tanner and Mitchell went over the findings with me this morning. You knew they would. You knew Dan would see this, too. I can’t believe you placed the blame for this whole disaster squarely on him.”

  Jamie started to explain that she hadn’t, that for reasons she couldn’t understand, someone had written the report and forged her signature. But that was too incredible to believe. It wasn’t just a serious breach of department procedure, it was also offensive and hurtful to her personally, but she wasn’t ready to blurt all this out to Geri. Jamie bad to think first, had to find out who’d done this and why.

  “I told you what happened out there. I told you the truth,” Geri said. “Don’t you understand? It wasn’t him. It was me.”

  “I heard—”

  “I thought you cared about him,” Geri said. “Even if you don’t, I thought you were honest, at the very least.”

  “I talked to Dan about this,” she said, carefully reining in her temper. “I would have thought you had, too.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Ask him,” Jamie suggested. She should have left it right there, but couldn’t resist adding the rest, to find out if he’d been in contact with Geri this whole time. “Assuming you know where he is. Assuming he’ll speak to you.”

  Geri stood back and studied her, thoroughly and dispassionately. “He didn’t tell you where he went when he left the hospital?”

  Jamie couldn’t admit to Geri that he hadn’t. She was furious with herself for saying as much as she had. But she had her answer. Geri obviously did know where he was. He hadn’t cut everyone out of his life.

  “Why did you do this to him?” Geri said finally.

  “I didn’t do anything to him,” she insisted. “This is what he wanted.”

  “What?”

  “You should know. After all, he did it for you.”

  The instant the words were out of Jamie’s mouth, she regretted saying them. She certainly took no pleasure in seeing the stunned expression that spread across Geri’s face.

  If Dan wanted her, that was his choice. Jamie would hold her head up high and find a way to wish them well.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, ashamed of herself for how poorly she’d handled this conversation. “I assumed you knew what he was doing.”

  Geri shook her head, and rubbed absently at the muscle in her right arm, the one that had been damaged in the shooting. She looked a bit like she had that night in the emergency room when she found out Doc was dead. Jamie wondered just how many lives had been torn apart by that one, awful night.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  Geri picked up the report and held it in front of her. “It isn’t true. Dan didn’t... You know it isn’t true.”

  Jamie did know, just as she knew she hadn’t written that report.

  After Geri left, Jamie leaned back in her chair and tried to think about what do to next. If she could, she would have talked through the entire mess with Dan, because she trusted his take on things more than anybody else’s. But he’d made that impossible, damn him.

  If she couldn’t talk to Dan, she’d go to Josh. He appeared to be a lightweight, a too-pretty man who just played at life, who flitted from one woman to the next and never took anything seriously. Jamie had believed all of those things when they started working together. But she knew better now. She also trusted him.

  Jamie got up to find him. As she walked into the hallway, she came face-to-face with Amanda.

  “Tanner has a break in his schedule,” Amanda said. “He’s waiting for you right now.”

  Feeling decide
dly uneasy about facing him this moment, she muttered her thanks and followed Amanda down the hall. When she entered Tanner’s office, he was sitting behind his desk, his attention focused on his computer screen. He motioned for her to wait a moment, and she did, getting angrier and more nervous every minute.

  Finally, he turned to her and said curtly, “Is there a problem?”

  Because he hadn’t invited her to sit, she stood in front of his desk, feeling the urge to snap to attention, as she would have while a superior officer chewed her out in military school, something she greatly resented at the moment.

  “I understand I’ve finished my work on the Section 123 report and submitted my findings,” she said.

  Tanner got to his feet, walked around behind her. She heard him close the door, none too gently.

  “Yes,” he said, from some point behind her. “You have.”

  “It has my signature on it,” she complained.

  “Yes, it does.”

  “How could you—”

  “I’ve asked for it several times,” he interrupted. “I’ve tried to be patient, while everyone from Mitchell on up has been on my back about this. It couldn’t wait any longer. So I took care of it.”

  Took care of it? Jamie was livid. “You forged my signature on an official agency report, and I—”

  “Careful, soldier,” he cautioned, coming around her right side and glaring at her. “You might want to think carefully about who you’re talking to right now. I know we don’t often stand on ceremony around here, and maybe I’ve been lax, and let things get too informal. But I am still your superior, and you’d do well to remember that.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said firmly, holding her temper in check.

  “I gave you an assignment,” Tanner said. “Maybe one that was too much for you to handle, especially after I had to pull Carter away to handle something else. But I’ve been patient, I told you what was expected of you, and you chose to ignore all of that.”

  “What was expected of me?” she said, wanting to hear him say it He expected her to lie.

  Tanner sighed heavily and continued pacing back and forth behind her. “Allowing Hathaway to escape while in our custody was the worst error this agency has ever made. We’re being scrutinized as never before, and I’m doing all I can to see that this agency survives. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Good. Because I’m tired. I’m frustrated. I’m angry, and I don’t have time for agents who can’t follow a direct order,” he barked. “You will do exactly as you’re told, when you’re told, and nothing else.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jamie,” he softened his tone just a bit, “as a section leader, there are things I often know that I can’t tell you. There are things my superiors know that they can’t tell me, and there are things that only the president and a handful of his top advisers know that the rest of us can only speculate on. But rest assured that the people at the top have the best information available to them as they make their decisions. Our job is to trust in the abilities of our superiors and to carry out their orders.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I know our agents have always been given a certain amount of freedom when operating in the field. I know we’ve counted upon your good judgment and your initiative, that it’s served this agency well. But I don’t need that from you right now. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, I know this has been a difficult few months. I know we’ve all been working under a great deal of stress, and I’m willing to look the other way on some of the differences you and I have had since the shooting....”

  “Differences?” she said. A polite euphemism, if she’d ever heard one. He’d submitted a Section 123 report he’d written under her name, with her forged signature attached to it.

  “We had to give up someone,” he said sternly. “Dan was the senior agent. Geri’s much less experienced than he is. He admits he knew she was likely to go after that girl, that he feels he should have done more to stop her. Barring that, his first responsibility is to the agency, to the mission he’d been given. He should never have left the warehouse that night. And everything went to hell from that point on.”

  “So, what about Geri?”

  “She’ll be reprimanded, but allowed to continue with her regular duties as soon as she’s physically able.”

  “And Dan?”

  “I talked with him a few days ago. This is what he wanted.” Tanner eased back onto the front of his desk, relaxing for the first time. “Now, can I assume this is finished?”

  Jamie had the feeling her career was hanging as precariously ever. Tanner probably wanted an apology, and she wasn’t sure she could give him one. She was still too angry at the way this had been handled, at the fact that her name was on that report. Trying to sound properly contrite, without actually apologizing, she said, “It’s been a difficult time.”

  Tanner nodded. “If this has all been too much for you... If you feel you can’t carry out your duties at the moment... Tell me now. If not, I want your word that you will do exactly as you’re told from here on out. No questions asked. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  It was clearly a warning, one she had to consider carefully.

  First, she needed to see what was in that report. How hard could that be? After all, supposedly she wrote it.

  Two hours later, she had the report in her hand. Jamie took it and left the building, walking off the worst of the tension inside her. Three miles later, she sat down outside to read the report and got angry all over again. Not that the report held any great surprises or that it was so different from what she would have written herself—if she’d agreed to go along with the version of events Dan and Tanner wanted in the report.

  Her anger came from the way Tanner had taken the matter out of her hands, in the fact that the report held her signature, and in believing she was the only one who truly wanted to find the men who shot Dan and Geri. Somehow that had gotten lost in the government’s frenzy to find Alex Hathaway, especially once his fingerprints were found on the gun used to kill Doc.

  But two other government agents had also been shot that night, and the people responsible for it had never been found. That aspect of things had been pushed onto the back burner somehow, and Jamie was having trouble accepting it. She understood the theory—that whoever had come to get Hathaway out of the country was responsible, that they were likely long gone, and that Hathaway’s work was of vital importance and must be found. But Dan was in a wheelchair. Their lives had been torn apart, and the people responsible for it were still out there. If they were ever found, it would only be because someone found Alex Hathaway and, in the process, also found the shooters outside the warehouse that night.

  Jamie couldn’t accept that, either.

  The case haunted her. So did the place. She’d been down there wandering around again the day before. There had to be something more she could do. And she kept thinking about the missing weapons, Dan’s, Geri’s and Doc’s. They’d found the Colt used to kill Doc a few blocks from the warehouse, and she could accept the idea that in his haste to get out of the area, Hathaway might have dropped that weapon. She could accept that after shooting all three agents, someone did a quick search of their bodies, disarmed them and took their weapons with them.

  But where were those weapons now? Still in the hands of the men who shot Dan and Geri? And if anyone used them to commit a crime, the six-millimeter bullets were sure to raise red flags with the investigating officers. Jamie wondered if anyone had spotted either the weapons or the bullets.

  She could put in a formal request for information from the agency to the FBI, which kept a number of databases available to state and local law enforcement agencies across the country. But if Tanner saw the request, he’d know what she was doing—deliberately disobeying the order he’d just given her.

  There had to be another way to get into the FBI databas
es. And then she remembered Amanda’s fiancé...Rob Jansen. He was a computer expert; he helped maintain those databases. And he knew her. She decided it was time to ask for a favor.

  Later that afternoon Jamie was feeling better. She’d made the decision to follow her instincts and keep digging for information on the shooting. She met Rob Jansen in person, explained the information she needed and gave him a vague explanation of why she didn’t want to go through official channels to get it. He knew it was information she could easily have gotten access to by making a formal request through Division One, but he agreed to check the databases himself. That way there would be no official record that she’d requested the information, and no one but Rob and Jamie would know if they’d found anything.

  She’d also have the satisfaction of knowing that at least she’d checked. Hopefully, Tanner would never find out.

  That taken care of, she had to turn to the business at hand. She and Josh were attending a party at the French embassy that night. They were back on the assignment they’d been working on when the explosion in London temporarily put the job on hold. In honor of the occasion, she was dressed to kill, both literally and figuratively. But she and Josh were meeting at the agency first.

  There was a stiletto strapped to the inside of her left thigh and a tiny but deadly .22 in her little black evening bag. The dress left no options for hiding a gun on her body. It was mostly strategically placed black sequins held together by a bit of flesh-colored mesh—nothing she would have selected herself, but she had to admit it was effective. In this dress, high heels, sheer black stockings and several thousand dollars in jewelry wrapped around her wrist and her neck, she could catch the eye of any man she wanted—including a certain reclusive Frenchman who was suspected of funneling sophisticated explosives from one of his legitimate businesses in the United States into the U.K.

  Strolling through the office, she found Josh flirting with one of the secretaries. As always, he managed to look elegantly handsome, not a wrinkle to be seen in that wickedly expensive tux of his, not a blond hair out of place, and he was beaming at her.