“Jed McNeil?” he repeated the man’s name. “Where have I heard that name before?”
“Ah…finally, memory and common sense kicking in.”
“Jed, don’t.” The soft appeal in Nikki’s voice grated Rick.
“I promise I won’t hurt him, darling.”
Darling.
That was the last straw.
Rick dragged his gaze away and turned to Nikki. “Who is he to you?” he demanded.
Behind them, approaching sounds warned them of other morning joggers. Nikki continued talking hurriedly. “If you get into a brawl, those people will call the cops, and we don’t want any more attention drawn on us right now. Please, not now, Rick. Jed isn’t here to fight you.”
“I don’t need to,” Jed said. “At the rate he’s going, he’ll be fighting with everybody else. Let EYES destroy him. Let Gorman make mincemeat of him and Task Force Two. He thinks he can handle everything and everyone on his own. Ricardo Harden against the big bad world, isn’t that right, Agent Harden?”
Rick blinked. He had heard those words before but from a woman’s mouth. “How are you connected to GEM?” he de
manded. “And don’t tell me you aren’t because you’ve just repeated a conversation I had with T.”
“Rick, Jed is sort of T.’s commander,” Nikki explained. “His group works with ours.”
“Does that mean you work for him too?”
She hesitated, looking at Jed for tacit approval. “Yes.” Her smile was tentative, unsure. “I can’t explain things till it’s time. Don’t fight, okay? Jed is testing you.”
Rick didn’t like the way they communicated with their eyes. Why was she so damn worried about Jed? “Who is he to you?” he repeated.
“Maybe she doesn’t want you to know,” Jed drawled. “Maybe it’s none of your business.”
“That’s not true! Jed, stop this, you’re making it worse.”
“You wanted answers about your past. Coming back here meant answering some hard questions yourself—you know this, Nikki.”
Hard questions. Hard lessons.
“It was you!” Rick accused. But why did he send Rick the photo? Why was he monitoring both him and Nikki separately?
Jed returned his regard coolly, not answering. Frowning, Nikki asked, “What—have you two met before?”
“Not personally,” Jed replied, “but I grow tired of the two of you wasting time.”
Rick hadn’t said anything about the faxed image because he wanted her to come to him freely, but this man’s presence was forcing the issue out into the open. He should be happy, but he wasn’t. He never liked being manipulated.
“Care to explain that last comment?” he asked quietly.
“Even my patience has limits, Agent Harden, and after the Gorman incident, it seems I have to force something to happen before I get my job done. You were too eager to hang yourself.” He looked at Nikki briefly before continuing, “I didn’t return her to you so you can spend time jogging.”
Rick rounded on Nikki. “What does he mean, return you to me?”
Her expressive eyes were startled-wide, like a doe caught in headlights. “Rick…”
“Those files I pulled from your laptop—there was one about me. It was dated about nine years ago, Nikki. You found out you had a husband but you didn’t come back. Why?”
“I…” She hesitated, then sent Jed a desperate glance. Rick pulled her around to face him. “Why do you need his permission? Even though you couldn’t remember, like you said, didn’t you think I should be informed that my wife is alive? Why didn’t you come back?”
She stared up at him, biting her lower lip hard.
Rick shook her. “Why? Who is he?” he thundered. The image of Nikki and Jed with the little girl taunted him. The possible answer tore a hole in his gut.
Movement caught the corner of his eye. To his surprise, Jed McNeil was almost ten feet away, heading toward the park area off the jogging trail.
He hadn’t even heard the man move
.
As if he knew he had Rick’s attention, Jed turned and called back, in a mocking drawl, “Don’t stop now. You’re heading in the right direction with those questions, Harden. I’ll be picnicking over there when you’re ready for more.” He cast a strange look in Nikki’s direction, and added in that soft tone, “It’s time, Nikki. Be brave.”
Nikki stared after Jed, exasperated at how matters were taken out of her hands. She knew that was the closest Jed McNeil would ever come to apologize for the havoc he just had wreaked.
She had known coming back was a big risk. For so long, she had convinced herself that life was ahead, and looking back at the past wasn’t healthy. She died in that hellhole. She didn’t have any memory, save that of her grandmother. Besides, there was nothing worth going back to, since her agency had betrayed her. She hadn’t felt like reliving her nightmare by confronting those who had abandoned her. Rick’s tortured eyes denounced her cowardice. She knew there was no way to escape telling him everything now, not with Jed stirring the pot.
“Jed saved me from that prison,” she said, “but that’s not what you want to know, is it?”
He shook his head. “No. He is more than your leader, isn’t he?”
“He’s just my commander now,” she offered, and touched his chest gently. “I was little more than an animal for a long time, Rick. I had no memory. I was afraid of everything, especially of men. I could barely speak in complete sentences. Jed took me under his wing, nursed me back from my hell because he had been a prisoner of war before. He understood me.”
“How long?” Rick asked woodenly. “How long were you with him?”
Nikki clasped her hands in front of her. “Eighteen, nineteen months.”
Dropping his arms from her, he strode to the post where Jed had been leaning and glared at it as if he was going to punch it. “That means by that time you already knew you had a husband looking for you. My file you had was dated before that.” He swung back around, green eyes flashing. “You knew and still continued a relationship with him.”
“Knowing and having memory are two very different things,” Nikki said, swallowing the lump in her throat. Her voice sounded strange and hoarse. “I knew, but I didn’t feel anything. How could I have a husband if I couldn’t even recall what he looked like? And…” She hesitated, then rushed out, “And I didn’t want anyone else to touch me.”
Rick closed his eyes for a few seconds. “You let him touch you, even after you knew your identity, knew about your past life, knew that I—” He opened his eyes and looked at her as if she was a stranger. “—that I was here looking for you. You left me thinking you were dead, Nikki. Why?”
Her eyes had a hollow misery that pleaded for his understanding, but he couldn’t let it go. This was about what could have been. If he had had any tiny hope that she had been still alive, he wouldn’t have gone down the road to end up like this—a man she scarcely recognized as her husband.
Either way, she wouldn’t have recognized you.
He ignored the voice sneakily reminding him of her amnesia. “Why?” he demanded again, fiercely, ignoring the couple of joggers who came and went.
“Why would anyone want me the way I was?” Nikki countered in a low voice. “You don’t understand what it was like to
look in the mirror every day and see nothing but a broken thing. I had a choice, either to let go of everything or go insane with the memories. They repaired my looks. The physical scars eventually healed. But I have to be the one to take care of my mind. I’m the one who has to deal with the demons.”
“I’m not asking about the pain of what you went through, Nikki,” Rick said. “God forbid I would be such a bastard as to demand that everything be all right the moment you found out about me. I’m trying to understand. When you received the information, it was a year after you were freed. I assumed you would be curious about your past life, about anything or anyone connected with it, but you didn’t do anything, Nikki. You didn’t even give me a chance.”
“I’m sorry, Rick,” Nikki said. “I thought it was for the best then.”
His heart hurt. “I know what you’re leaving out,” he said starkly. “You had a new life. A new man. You didn’t want to drop everything to start anew yet one more time.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear the thought of—” She bit her lip.
Rick finished for her, the words torn out of him. “Of having another man touch you. Yes, of course. I see that now. It makes sense.” He turned away.
“You make it sound so…wrong. It didn’t happen overnight, Rick. I couldn’t take care of myself, didn’t even know what the next day would bring. Jed brought me back without the usual medical solutions for someone in deep depression. He was adamant that I wasn’t administered any more drugs. He was the only thing solid at that point—”
“Spare me the details,” Rick cut in, then instantly regretted it. He
wanted
the details, wanted the torture of hearing all about wonderful Jed McNeil. He stared into the distance. He could feel her coming nearer behind him, but he couldn’t let her see him right now. All this pretty sunshine, and he felt wintry-cold. “I suppose I should thank
him.
”
His bitter laugh ripped through Nikki. The last thing she had wanted to do was hurt him, ever. She loved him. Always had. Always would. It was so simple now, standing here in
the open fresh air. When there was nowhere else to hide, the truth always shone. Didn’t her grandmother say so?
“Rick, don’t fight with Jed, please.”
He swung around, and she inhaled sharply at the stark pain in his eyes. “Why? You think I can’t win you back? You think I’m exactly what he said I am, don’t you? A bureaucrat who can’t do a damn thing anymore.”
She stared at him, shocked that his perspective was so
male
, so utterly out of her hands. Fighting for her. She hadn’t even considered that fact. All she had wanted was to regain knowledge of her past, but of course, she had been shortsighted. One couldn’t regain knowledge without dealing with everything else in her past.
“The hungry ghosts,” she muttered.
“What are you talking about?”
She hadn’t realized that she’d spoken aloud. She shook her head, at him as well as at herself. She was getting dizzy going back and forth like this. “I’m asking you not to fight because you’re both good men, and it’s I who have caused this wrong.” To you, she added silently, but like a coward, dared not say it out loud.
Her words took the anger out of Rick. What right did he have to be feeling like this when she had gone through so much? But the hurt remained. To be forgotten was one thing, but to be put aside, like something unimportant…He swallowed. “You’ve done nothing wrong.” He sighed. What was there to say? “Maybe the fact that you hid the truth from me, that you never wanted to come back to me.”
“Rick, I didn’t know!” Nikki cried. He was standing close enough that she could step into his arms and hug him, but it was as if he had erected a wall between them. She couldn’t seem to reach him. “I didn’t know how I would feel.”
“And your agency sent you back here. It wanted you to use my feelings for you to get something. What is it?”
He had swooped down on the truth so suddenly, she stared back at him wordlessly for a few seconds. Laughter from strangers jogging by. A chainsaw buzzing in the distance. The rustle of leaves against branches. Yet it was the silence inside
her that grew loud as a boom box, a crescendo that had built into a bursting sound wave. The moment of truth was the perfect
chuung.
If only it wasn’t killing her to have to tell it.
“Your relationship with Gorman,” she replied, gazing directly into those green, green eyes. “What he has over you.”
He nodded crisply, as if he already knew. “And once you found this information out, and your assignment was done, what would you get out of it?” There was a businesslike tone to his voice, much like when he talked to his subordinates.
Very slowly, she replied, “I retrieve the files they had of me. I get to know what really happened that day. I read about all their reasons for the decision to make me a broken wing.”
“I see. Then you—what—go back to Jed McNeil and live happily ever after? Isn’t that the romantic ending you seek, Nikki?”
He was still speaking in a monotone, and she couldn’t stand it. “Jed and I haven’t been together for a long time, Rick,” she told him. “This was years ago. Can’t you forgive me for that? He’s just a friend now.”
“I told you, you’ve done nothing wrong,” Rick said woodenly. “It was to be expected. He was there for you and I wasn’t. Now, let’s go see your Jed and see what he wants.”
Nikki felt a swelling of fear. “What do you mean?” she asked, touching his arm for the first time. He jerked and turned toward the path heading to the park.
“So I can be clear on how to help you get your past back,” he answered, still in that very polite voice. “Everyone wants something from me, it seems. I’ll gladly do my best to give it to all of you.”
Nikki stared after his retreating back. She didn’t want her past. She wanted her future, and he was walking away from her.
E
verything was crystal-clear now. What a reminiscing fool he had been. Rick strode down the path, looking neither left nor right, as he headed for the open area beyond the clump of bushes that screened the path from picnickers.
It was a weekday and early in the morning, and there was unlikely to be many people about. He spotted Jed immediately. Who wouldn’t? The man was everything he wasn’t, obviously. He didn’t look like he spent a day in an office or much time in a suit and tie, or drank martinis for lunch. He didn’t look like the type who would be hindered by red tape. In fact, he didn’t look like he needed to jog for the sake of getting out of the stupor of dealing with bureaucratic games.
The Hard-Ons of this world couldn’t compete with the gangly man sitting casually at the picnic table, legs thrust out, sunglasses pushed up on his dark head, tanned face turned toward the morning sun, as if he had every right to enjoy life, as if he had no worries for his future. Rick unclenched the hand he had unconsciously fisted.
Life reflected the truth all the time. All Rick had to do was look for it. He was looking at it now. He had wanted to go back, grasping at a past that shone like a mirage in a desert, but reality had finally shown itself. He was Hard-On. Accept it.
He squinted in the sunlight as he studied Jed. He looked thoroughly relaxed but Rick doubted that the other man wasn’t aware of his presence. From what he had seen of
them, these GEM operatives were good. Marlena Maxwell’s undercover persona had fooled him. Diamond’s cool handling of the first Gorman interview had impressed him. Rick’s lips curled derisively. And Nikki had certainly done her job well; she had found the crack in his armor. And this man, in plain jeans, was their almighty leader. He didn’t look it but the aura of danger clung to him like a second skin.
Jed opened his eyes. “Have a seat,” he invited. “Nice day for a picnic.”
“I’m not hungry,” Rick said. He didn’t sit.
“Food for thought, Agent Harden, can be just as calorie-filled.”
“You can stop the NOPAIN shit, McNeil, if that’s your real name. I’m immune to your manipulations.”
Jed’s silver eyes glinted in the sunlight, a startling contrast in his tanned face. There was an aloofness in them that Rick had seen before. He had interviewed men with that same look. Killer eyes. Merciless. So here was the operative gazing back at him. The eyes blinked and there was nothing again, just a cool, easy expression.
“Why would I use Nonphysical Persuasion on you, Agent Harden?”
“Marlena tried. T. Nikki. I see a pattern here,” Rick replied. “The Agency has similar programs, not as advanced as your group’s training, but then we don’t specialize in trickery.”
“We’re all on the same side, Harden.”
Rick cocked his head. “The same page, McNeil. Rarely do different agencies have the same agenda.”
“Spoken like a real bureaucrat.” Jed crossed his arms and stared out at the distance. “So where’s Nikki? On the same page with her yet?”
She hadn’t come with him. “Is that what this is all about?” Rick countered quietly. “For all of us to be on the same page? What do you gain from this?”
“We all want to know about the past, don’t we?” Jed replied enigmatically.
“Quit fucking around. I know why you faxed that photo.” Rick paused, waiting for Jed to question him, but when he re
mained silent, he shrugged, and added, “What I want to know is, why were you lying in wait for Nikki’s computer to download the files? Why were you shadowing her trail? After all, if you’re in charge, shouldn’t you be the one authorizing that risky move she made?”
Jed’s lips curved, giving a hint of a smile—or maybe it was a sneer, Rick couldn’t tell—as he looked into the distance again. “We don’t do things like Task Force Two, Harden,” he said softly. “We don’t get any glory for being successful or any blame for a snafu. In other words, we get things done.”
“No, in other words, you guys don’t have any accountability.”
“Accountability?” Jed shifted his gaze back to him sharply. “Who’s accountable for Nikki’s being what she is now?”
Rick snapped back, “You don’t know yourself.”
“But we’re talking about accountability, not which agency is better at finding the truth, aren’t we?” Jed asked.
“You’re fucking playing with words again. Fine. I work in a situation that hindered my personal investigations, but I
will
get to the truth.”
“Not if EYES has reasons to stop you.”
Rick heaved a sigh and sat down at the end of the picnic bench. He looked out at where Jed was gazing, and saw in the distance a few people playing a game of horse on a basketball court. “It’s beginning to look like they are part of the network,” he admitted.
“Some elements in them are,” Jed agreed.
There was a pause as they both watched one of the players put the ball through the hoop consecutively. When he finally missed, Rick asked, “And was Nikki hired as the independent contractor to smoke them out?”
“No. Admiral Madison wanted an independent report for his committee for national security because of the number of leaks putting his SEAL teams in danger. Nikki’s specialty is finding how a system fails—where the possible weak links are and how to balance those with changes. She was, after all, part of a failed system, and knew firsthand how things get
buried away. Besides, her past knowledge of having worked in the directorates gave her superior advantage at getting information. The risks she took, you see, weren’t risky at all. Nikki knew how far in the system she could go without being caught.”
“And of course, you know her so well,” Rick added bitterly. A failed system. Did she see him that way?
“Yes.”
“You don’t give an inch, do you?”
“Neither do you, Agent Harden. Or I wouldn’t have risked Nikki’s happiness just to save your ass.”
Rick clamped down on his anger. Responding to the baiting would just please the other man. He glanced coolly at Jed’s profile. He looked so engrossed in the scene over there, one would think they were here casually discussing sports.
“Let’s spell out ‘horse manure,’ shall we? Let’s see how many points I get for the reasons you’re so interested in my ass. What does GEM want from Ricardo Harden, the most likely suspect in treason at the moment?” Rick asked, injecting careless mockery in his voice. “Point, your agency’s prints are all over the place on this one, starting with Marlena Maxwell going after Gorman not so long ago. Your side had obviously been targeting him for a long time, what with Miss Maxwell’s two-year undercover work.
“Point, I should’ve known there was something bigger than Gorman brewing, when right after he was caught, another agent from your outfit whisked him away without a single squeak of protest from EYES. No red tape, nothing. That means you have more power than EYES. I’m thinking the General Accounting Office.
“Point, with Gorman gone, I’m suddenly your target, so you sent another operative after me.” He paused to take a deep breath, betrayal tasting like a dry bitter pill. “Nikki Taylor showed up conveniently as an independent contractor brought in by Admiral Madison, who had also recently infiltrated my task force team with his SEAL, Steve McMillan. Coincidence? Or maybe he’d been working hand-in-hand with GEM. He had netted Gorman and now has a case for his
national security committee. So the magic question is, what do you want with me, McNeil, that you sent Nikki after me? How am I doing with the game?”
“You’re scoring well,” Jed replied, finally taking his eyes from the far-off game, “except for one thing. If you were a traitor, I’d never even consider sending Nikki into this assignment, Harden. I’d have come after you myself.”
Rick unflinchingly met those cold eyes for long seconds. In another time and another place, they could have been friends. They were both, after all, protective of those they loved. In this time and in this place, however, it happened to be the same woman. He knew if Jed had found any reason to destroy him, he would. The veiled violence he had sensed was very real now, as if the other man wished to reveal just enough to let him know who he was dealing with. Yet Jed had triggered a series of events from his actions, and it wasn’t just his choice of Nikki for this assignment.
“Why did you fax me that picture?” Rick asked suddenly. “Why now, when you could have done it sooner? Years ago? Months ago?”
Jed nodded. “I wonder when you’re going to ask some good hard questions,” he mocked. “You seem a man in search of the truth, but are you ready for it?”
“You think I can’t handle the truth?” Rick countered harshly. He told himself he could. When Jed laughed softly, he warned, “Don’t fuck with me, McNeil.”
Jed pinched his bottom lip as if to erase a smile. “Point,” he said, in the same soft tone, “the faxed photo pushed you into action, as I meant it to. Sending it earlier didn’t serve any purpose. Nikki wasn’t prepared to tell you who she was and I wasn’t going to betray her. However, after she revealed herself to the review board, I wasn’t bound by her secret any longer.
“Point, her secret lies in her past and her constant need to find herself through her writing. I could make her remember without your help, Harden, but that, too, wouldn’t have served any purpose. Nikki chose not to remember, and I honored her wishes. However, when she chose to tell you who
she was, I couldn’t justify not pushing her any longer. So I dumped her files on your lap. Her secrets. Her personal musings in her plots. You don’t think I was romancing you, do you? Those files
are
her past. I don’t have time to sit and fill you in on ten missing years. You’re supposed to read them.”
“I did,” Harden interrupted. He had been intrigued by Nikki’s writing. It was wrong to do it but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. He had to know this new woman who was also his wife from long ago. He had searched for a hint, any references to himself, but found nothing direct. Just that damn file with his name, with the date that told it all.
As if he could read his mind, Jed said, “Of course you did. You’re an information addict. You need to know. That’s your strongest and your weakest point. Nikki writes about you all the time, or are you simply that blind?”
Rick wasn’t going to agree with him. “You break into her files and read her personal stuff and think I’m condoning it because of your explanation?”
“You break into everyone’s files and read their personal stuff,” countered Jed. “Don’t be naive. Nikki knows what I’m like. She has no problem with it.”
“You bastard. Quit bringing that up to get me.”
“Quit being so easily distracted.”
“We’re not going to settle this by talking.” Rick wanted to bash the man’s head in, see some bruises on that nice tanned face.
Jed shrugged. “I’m not here to settle anything with you. You’re a means to an end, and I’m just doing my job. You want to fight, we can do that later, but the business at hand is to get hold of that list.”
“You don’t need me for that,” Rick pointed out. “Plenty of hackers and code breakers out there besides this burned-out bureaucrat. Cut to the chase.”
Jed bent down and pulled a weed out of the ground, studied it, then proceeded to break the plant apart. “Three and a half years ago, during an operation involving arms dealing, some members of my group were betrayed in a way similar to Nikki’s assignment.” He twisted the flowerlike heads off.
“A couple of them are still missing. Everything pointed to an internal mole.”
He snapped the thin stems off the weed methodically. “It took two more years before we could trap this arms dealer again, with T. working inside and M. working outside. When M. arrived at D.C., we had two objectives. One, get the inside mole. Two, sell our arms dealer something we could track. Gorman’s theft of the laptop gave us an opening. He needed a middleman, so we sent in Marlena. Once she retrieved it, Tess gave her a tracer laptop we’d set up.” He pulled the two remaining leaves off.
“Point, we finally have Gorman but he isn’t talking. Someone else is still running the show, and we need that list that Gorman is dangling in front of EYES. Internal Investigations has been acting suspiciously at every turn and we have reasons to believe they don’t want the real list out. You already know you’re going to be the sacrificial lamb.”
When Jed arched a brow inquiringly, Rick nodded and dryly noted, “My hindering McMillan and Miss Maxwell didn’t endear me to you, I presume.”
“T. was in charge. She knew enough about your past to negotiate with you to let McMillan out of custody.”
“She told me in the end Gorman would be mine. She said the past was catching up,” Rick murmured, remembering that conversation with the operative who had hinted about his past. “Is there no one in your agency that doesn’t play word games?”
Jed acknowledged the sarcasm with a small quirk of his lips. “Nikki doesn’t.”
Rick looked at what remained of the weed in Jed’s hand. “So where do I fit in this grand scheme of things?”
“Simple. I know you aren’t the mole. Your actions looked more like you’re protecting someone important to you. That tells me more than all your bureaucratic hide-and-seek how much you really loved your wife, dead as she was to you. Tell me what Gorman still has over you, Harden. We’ll get the list decoded and I’ll make whatever you’re afraid of go away.”
“So sure? What if it involved Nikki?” Rick countered, re
assessing the power of this man. “She’s so adamant about getting her files back. What if her files show something that would destroy her?”
“It’s your job to make sure the truth doesn’t.”
Rick stared into those silver eyes for a long time. “You aren’t going to take her from me,” he finally stated carefully.
“I rarely give any opponent the chance to take anything that’s mine.”
“So the kid in that picture…”
“Is mine. She’s right now doing her sophomore year in college.”
Relief washed through Rick. Nineteen…too old to be Nikki’s child too. “You son of a bitch. You purposely wanted me to think you and Nikki had a child.”
Jed shrugged. “Nikki isn’t the only one needing prodding.”
He had been thoroughly played. That photo had pushed him into drastic measures. Was he so predictable that another man could second-guess what he would do to Nikki? “You’re making this awfully easy for me,” Rick said testily. “Save my career. Give Nikki back her past. And you out of the picture. Give me a reason to trust you, McNeil. How do I know it isn’t just another of your NOPAIN games?”