He was a trained operative. He understood the minutiae of emotional and physical torture. The enemy might speak a different language but they all used the same book. But studying it, going through the motions of it, even observing videotapes of it, was not the same as having your loved one put in that position. The former had only evoked a rage for justice on the behalf of the victim. But this was his Nikki. And the venomous blind fury snaking through him wasn’t after justice. He just wanted to find out the names—all the names—and strike. Maim. Kill. No one hurt what was his.
“Rick, you’re hurting me. You’re going to start bleeding again, if you aren’t careful.”
Her words brought him back and he saw that his clenched fists were tugging on her hair. He let go immediately, turning his hand over to stare at the cut.
“I couldn’t do a damn thing.” He swallowed the bitter
taste of memory in his mouth. The shock of listening to the shouts of warning over the wire. The fear when he had realized the covert operation had been discovered. The grim moment when he heard the wire snatched off one of the operatives and the accented voice coming on, informing them that everyone had been captured. “The whole thing went down so quickly and so badly, they weren’t able to send in a warning. They just decided to close the whole thing down, shut the operation right after your team disappeared at the rendezvous point.”
Rick paused, trying to control his anger before continuing. “It was very obvious the location had been leaked but no one up there wanted to listen to me. There was a quiet internal investigation and that was it. Every operative from that team was declared dead. Gone, just like that. Then we received the ultimatum that all of you would be killed off but no one here wanted to deal with the hostages. Not a fucking one of those bureaucrats would allow any action. They feared UN censure. I wasn’t allowed access to the files. I couldn’t read the message they sent so I could find out where they had you. I had never felt so helpless in my life.”
“Rick—”
The sympathy in her eyes overwhelmed him. She was so soft and giving, so willing to accept all that had happened. He couldn’t do that. Cupping her face, he gazed fiercely into her eyes. “The day they told me every one of you had been executed, I made a vow. I would find out what happened, and where they had buried you. I would keep requesting the government to get your body home, even though I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I would dig for the truth and bury Gorman and the rest of them.”
“Gorman,” Nikki breathed, and she was suddenly alert. “Rick, I need you to tell me about Gorman and you. What does he have on you?”
Was he that transparent? All these years, he had played his part so well, and this woman had seen through his charade in no time at all. “He has nothing on me,” he lied.
“But you brought his name up.”
“I just know he was involved in it,” Rick hedged. He couldn’t reveal the truth to her when he didn’t even know what it was.
To divert her attention, he rolled onto his back and took Nikki with him. Her hair spilled out around them as her sleep-warmed body spread out over him, and her sweet clean scent tantalized his nostrils. Waking up in the morning with Leah’s long, long hair, being a prisoner of her hair and scent, arms and legs. He had never been able to resist her when she weaved that spell around him. His body apparently had forgotten it was no longer that of a younger man’s, responding like a teenager being rubbed for the first time, the rush of desire so swift that it hurt.
Surprised, she lost her trend of thought, pausing for a few moments before she became aware of his physical reaction. She caught her lower lip with small even teeth when he pushed her thighs apart. He just wanted to nestle against her heat. Like that. His hands spanned her waist.
“You aren’t telling me something,” she whispered, her eyelashes fluttering rapidly as he started positioning her. “Rick, you’re keeping things from me.”
He was. But he couldn’t explain what he couldn’t understand. And she couldn’t give him answers about events she couldn’t remember. It was a catch-22. All he could do was make her mind open up to the past. What if it was true? What if she had really stolen those files so long ago? The old doubts that had eaten at him for eons were difficult to banish.
He arched up into her softness, and held her down onto him. Ever so slowly. He would never let those suspicions win. He would find proof, even if it took another ten years. Her eyes closed as she absorbed his thick length. It was slow sweet torture for him and she drove him half-crazy each time she adjusted position. Was she remembering? It was the only way he knew to connect her to him—her past with his.
“Rick…” Although she protested, Nikki didn’t try to stop him. She opened willingly, greedily, needing all of him. Her body was so hungry and similar to the way her appetite had gotten—it was unstoppable now that it had found what it
was starving for. Not food. This. This man.
Her
man.
She was a GEM operative, trained by the best in NOPAIN, nonphysical persuasion and innovative negotiation. She knew an evasive ploy when she saw one. Before she had married him, Rick Harden had been one of the best in the business when it came to the games of seduction. That was why she had known that I.I. couldn’t have succeeded by trying to tempt him with sex. Part of her had remembered how good he was, and of course, she was a different woman now. Her agency’s NOPAIN training gave her insight into how her husband’s mind worked.
Right now, her body was primed for loving. She couldn’t help that because she loved this man. Her mind, however, continued to analyze him. He had grown so tough without her, so used to finding things out without any cooperation that he was just going to take care of this whole thing his way. He would seduce her while he searched for the answers himself.
She understood him only too well. It was his way of protecting her now because he couldn’t back then. Her self-made bureaucrat was still trying to dig through all the paperwork after all these years to find something that was missing. He hadn’t accepted her death for what it was and had made up his mind to look for the details surrounding her demise. Not just her. But for something she couldn’t remember. That bothered her, just as not being able to remember him while she was in that cell bothered her. Were these two things linked?
All analysis scattered as Rick began an escalating tempo where they were now physically connected. Closing her eyes, Nikki gave in to his demands. For now. Her body was too ravenous, and he was the feast. The rhythm grew faster. She panted. He twined her hair round and round his hands, bringing her face down to him. She braced her hands on his broad chest that rose up and down as he went faster and faster. She shook like a rag doll as he urged her to the edge. She felt his fingers reach between them. She keened. No more.
“Oh yes, more. Tell me you want more.”
Of course she did. She rode his erection with a desperate need, riding on crest after crest as erotic flashes of memory of them coupling tumbled like picture cards in her head. How could she not want more? He owned her body and soul.
He muttered her name. She collapsed onto him. As their breathing slowed, she kept asking how she could block this man from her mind for so long. What was she hiding from herself?
The phone rang, and Rick curled a lazy hand on her back, keeping her with him. She heard the deep rumble of his voice in between his heartbeats. The tempo quickened slightly, and she frowned. He hung up.
“What is it?” She raised her head.
The sexual afterglow had disappeared. “They are sending a car for me. They went to Denise Lorens’s apartment when she didn’t show up for the review board yesterday and didn’t call in today. She was found dead in her apartment, and my fingerprints are all over her.”
R
ick stared out of the window, taking in the scenery down below. It faced the courtyard where many of the employees enjoyed taking their breaks—a peaceful place amid war strategizing. And up here, in his office, a thorough mess. Just like his life.
But then nothing was normal anymore. He used to think that his life was one big metaphorical knotted ball. No matter how hard he tried to unwind it, the tighter the knot became, until the tension of being what he had chosen to be was squeezing the life out of him. Everything had become functional—yes, no, and sometimes, a shrug. He didn’t care much, except when he thought he had found another clue to explain his past. It was a painstaking process—the slow gathering of files and evidence.
His bitterness grew to self-disgust when some young SEAL sent by Admiral Madison so easily caught the very person he had been after all these years. In a space of a few months, that brash military-turned-TIARA operative had cornered the traitor and along the way, found the love of his life.
Rick’s lips curled with ironic mockery. Steve McMillan and Marlena Maxwell. He would not forget that pair soon. They had made him see what he had become. They had reminded him of what he was. And his envy and years of bureaucratic tunnel vision had blinded him so much that he had lost the chance to be the one to hold the evidence over Gor
man. If he hadn’t been so stupid, he would have had something over the ex-deputy director.
Instead, the traitor was locked up, with a whole cache of secrets that no one knew how to pry out of him. All Internal Investigations wanted was negotiating one thing—the names of the network of rats. Rick wanted something more personal. He wanted to force Gorman to tell the truth about the past. After Gorman was incarcerated, the knot had become the rope around his neck. He was going to be hanged for all these years of playing the yes-man to ex-Deputy Director Gorman. Everything looked pretty hopeless.
He turned from the view and observed Nikki sitting serenely at the desk. There was concern in her eyes. He realized now that she never said anything until she needed to. It made him wonder what else she was keeping from him.
Had she known what his life had become without her? A fucked-up ball of knots. She had reappeared out of nowhere, took the whole yarn of deceit he had woven, and had gently, patiently unraveled his life out of it.
“You recorded the whole thing,” Rick stated rhetorically, and even now, in his office a couple of hours later, he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yes.”
“Did you plan to record the night we were going to share or was it a spur of the moment thing?” he asked.
Curiously enough, he didn’t feel deceived. Or angry, even. The other night he had thought he had Nikki Taylor where he wanted her, and he found she’d planted bugs on him. She had sat in her car listening in on his conversation with Denise Lorens and hadn’t said one word of it before now. A GEM operative, he reminded himself. She was now one of those witches who couldn’t be seduced.
Her blush did something to his insides. She looked down at her lap. He was torn between tenderness and suspicion, need and questions. How much of her was trained? Did they reshape her into this, using her partial amnesia? He couldn’t help it. She was here, yet she was still stolen from him.
“I’m always prepared for the unexpected,” she answered.
“I can see that.” He left the window and moved around the boxes strewn about the chaos that used to be his office. “Are there any more surprises you have in store for me?”
“You mean, I’m not a constant surprise enough?” she returned lightly.
He pulled a nearby chair and sat down in front of her. Taking one of her hands, he placed a kiss on her wrist. Her pulse jumped to life. He couldn’t help it. He had to be near her. Touch her. Feel her.
“Look around you, Nikki. This is my world—or was—until it fell apart. This is the second time everything around me had turned into chaos. The first time was when you disappeared.”
“Is this time my fault too?” she asked.
Her pale slender hand was small compared to his. Did she know what power she held? “I’m not assigning blame. What I’m trying to do is make sense of things.”
“Don’t you want me back?” There was a slight catch in her voice, as if she couldn’t bear to ask the question.
He squeezed her hand. He had to keep reminding himself that she couldn’t remember everything between them. “Didn’t last night tell you anything?” He smiled at the self-conscious heat in her cheeks. A thought occurred. “Or maybe you were just recording that too?”
“No!”
Her denial brought a moment’s shame of his thoughtlessness. He kissed her hand again and leaned closer. She looked at his lips, and the need and hurt in her eyes made him groan. “Ten years, Nikki. I’m now hard and selfish and distrustful. I question everyone’s motives and I operate solely to gather data for some stupid obscure future date. I—”
She silenced him with her free hand, covering his mouth lightly. “Rick, don’t.” Her plea came out in a hush, even though they were the only two people in the room. “We can’t change what happened to us. I don’t want you denigrating yourself because you think you could have done something to change the past, or because you are what you are now.”
Rick removed her hand, held them both tightly. “What I
am now,” he told her, bitterly, “is a used-up bureaucrat that they will try to demote again. What I am now is someone who hadn’t lived up to expectations, who couldn’t do his job right, who didn’t really care about anything in this whole universe except to find—”
He stopped. He was going to say to find “her,” meaning Leah. His whole existence was to find out about his dead wife and to bring her body home, and to search for information to prove that she wasn’t the traitor. That was what gave him the incentive to carry on.
But his wife was here. Home. And maybe if he just let them shoot his career down, he wouldn’t need to dig up what happened that night when she left. He wouldn’t need to care about justice. Let them put all the black marks in his file. Let EYES blame him. It would be his cross to bear. And Gorman would still be in prison.
“Except to find what, Rick?” Nikki prompted.
He gathered her close, half dragging and half lifting her out of the chair into his arms. “It doesn’t matter now,” he said, taking a deep cleansing breath, filling his lungs with the scent that clung to her hair and skin. “I have you back. You’re my whole universe. Always.”
Nikki blinked away the tears that gathered. His universe. And he made her feel like she was his center. She had never felt this protected and needed. Yet she couldn’t help but ache for the underlying meaning in his declaration. All around her was what remained of Rick’s world, what had been important to him for so long—in boxes and upturned drawers.
His entire office was in shambles. All the files were gone. His desk had been rifled through. They didn’t even leave his paintings untouched—they were on the floor, after it had been ascertained that nothing was hidden behind the frames. Internal Investigations had been very thorough.
Yet they didn’t know her man. He was just as thorough. Just as determined as they were. He was also innocent. Nikki knew this in her soul. He wasn’t an accomplice to Gorman or any traitor. He had chosen to be seen as a yes-man for a reason, and she knew it had something to do with her. But he
wouldn’t tell her. What did she do that was so bad that he decided to keep it a secret all these years?
She had the advantage of most of the review board. They had been given the redacted version of Rick’s files, but Admiral Madison had gotten his hands on the real thing, with all the details. When she’d received it, her heart had leaped into her throat. This was it. Since her own file was nowhere to be found, Rick’s was her only link to her past. This was like her own personal
Tung Seng
, the Book of Knowledge, filled with lessons and information.
However, like the
Tung Seng
, it was also cryptic, open to interpretation. She had read it through quickly, then slowly, and then once more. So much left unsaid. So much deception between the lines. She might not be able to remember everything but she could still tell a lie and detect a cover-up.
“You’re what matters most,” he told her, stroking her back.
She closed her eyes, welcoming the comfort of Rick’s strong arms enfolding her. She wondered whether she could ever mend this broken man, who thought he had failed her somehow. He dismissed his own strength of will so easily. Set on his mission, he had obliterated so much of himself to fit into this mold he now wore with deceptive ease. She had enough memories of him now to know that the old Rick was no bureaucrat, had despised paperwork, and had no conscious agenda other than to serve his country.
“But you still want me to tell you where the bug is planted,” she guessed.
“And when you did it.”
She hid her smile, burrowing in his warmth. Thorough. Constantly assessing. He would not rest till he found her little bug. “It’s one of my hair clips,” she told him. “I put it on your collar, behind your neck.”
“When I was carrying you, talking to Denise.”
“Yes. I didn’t want to leave you alone with her.”
“Were you listening?”
“Yes. Does that bother you?” It had disturbed her when she was outside his apartment building, listening to Denise’s attempt at seduction. Jealousy, she had discovered, wasn’t
green. It was a blinding vermillion. She didn’t think she took a breath until she heard Rick pushing Denise away.
His massage paused a moment, then resumed. “Would it have bothered you if I had gone along with it?” he gently asked.
“Yes.” She knew it would have hurt.
“I don’t like blackmail, little bird.” His voice hardened. “I’m sorry she’s dead. No one deserves to be murdered for information, but she was burning her bridges, playing both sides.”
Nikki caressed his jaw, feeling the tension pulsing there. “In her way, she liked you, Rick. Wanted you. She thought she could have you and power, too.”
He turned his face and nibbled her palm. “She didn’t know you have both, little bird.”
His words evoked a glow inside. She felt him nudge her and willingly turned up her face to meet his lips. The glow burst like sunshine, and she returned his kiss with fervor. They sat together like that, and she could feel the silence vibrating with a harmony that she associated with when she heard her
chuung
. It was the most beautiful quiet she had ever heard.
A knock disturbed their momentary peace. Usually Greta would buzz the intercom, but everything had been disconnected or was under some pile of papers.
The heavy office door cracked open and Greta peeked in. She studied them for a moment and spoke hesitantly, “Mr. Harden, they are here. Admiral Madison said it would be better to use the conference room down the hall than your office.”
“I wonder why.” Nestled comfortably against his chest, Nikki couldn’t see his face, but his voice was laced with sarcasm. “We’re missing a few chairs. There is plenty of room on the floor, though. We can all have a pow-wow in the middle of the room.”
Nikki couldn’t help it. She chuckled at the ridiculous image of the uniformed admiral, the congressmen, and the heads of the various departments sitting cross-legged among
the jumble. She felt the answering rumble of Rick’s silent laughter under her ear.
“Sir…” Clearly the secretary was nervous that she had to convey that message back to the VIPs.
“We’ll be right there,” Rick told her.
“Yes, sir.”
“I wonder what their decision is,” he said, as he helped her on her feet. “Your tape doesn’t exactly show EYES in a good light.”
Nikki looked up at Rick. His eyes were the same intense green that had haunted her when she sat in darkness so long ago. It was the color of life, calling to her. She just didn’t know then that it was also Rick in her mind. The truth had always been in her. Her grandmother’s prophecies were becoming more and more important. Why had she ignored them for so long? She had wanted knowledge and yet didn’t even try to understand her own spiritual anchor. She wouldn’t make the mistake again.
Feeding the hungry ghosts. Setting the truth free. Nikki hoped they wouldn’t continue burying it. If they did, they buried her past, too.
A dead CIA agent. No police questioning. Instead, a private conference with two congressmen on the intelligence committee, EYES headhunters, Admiral Madison, and the deputy directors of TIARA could only mean one thing. There was going to be a major cover-up. Rick had gone through something similar before.
It was bureaucrat time. He didn’t need to analyze the situation. He could list all the political reasons from memory. It was an election year. Funding was at stake. TIARA could be eliminated. The agency would handle its own, take care of this situation before it blew up in its face. A major shake-up would not be good for its global reputation. It would also put all overseas connections at risk.
The air-conditioned conference room, along with the mood of its occupants, added to the morguelike atmosphere
Rick put a protective hand on Nikki’s lower back as they entered. He would break them if they made one move against her. He hadn’t been collecting data all these years for nothing. She didn’t owe them a damn thing.
There weren’t many initial pleasantries except for an exchange of smiles between Nikki and Admiral Jack Madison. Rick noted that they liked each other, catching the concerned gleam in the other man’s eyes. He remembered that the admiral had recently gotten married. Good. He didn’t need to get on the bad side of the man yet another time by warning him off his wife.
“Here are the facts, Agent Harden.”
Here we go, Rick thought.
“There is a list floating around, or at least that is what Gorman said. Denise Lorens told you she had the list, and according to this tape we just heard, she’d manipulated it to entrap you. Those were her words, but we cannot confirm her motives because she is dead.”
“In other words, you don’t believe that she actually contaminated the list,” Rick said.