Her scantily clad body had been bathed in moonlight, her breasts pressing against her threadbare T-shirt, the lacy edge of her panties peeking at him beneath the hem. All the blood had pumped from his brain to another part of his anatomy. He wanted her, badly, wanted to feel her silky skin rubbing against his, hear her sexy little cries in the back of her throat when he plunged inside her. Wanting her, knowing he couldn’t have her, had him clenching his jaw so tight his teeth ached.
So instead of holding her against him, he’d held her at arm’s length, and his frustration that he couldn’t do more than that had him saying things he shouldn’t have said. Then she’d dropped him on his butt and started laughing, and all he could think about again was how much he wanted to kiss her. Just once, he’d told himself. One kiss, then he’d leave. But one kiss hadn’t been enough, could never be enough.
He let out a deep sigh. The smile that was still on Heather’s face, even in sleep, told him far more than she realized. That smile and the gift of her body tonight told him she’d forgiven him for arresting her and for abandoning her in that cell when he could have easily gotten her out.
But he didn’t deserve her forgiveness, and he shouldn’t have made love to her, because there was no turning back. There was no future for them. There was no way to pretend she’d never been arrested, that she hadn’t broken the law to try to save her sister from going to jail—not without giving up his career. For him, being a DEA agent wasn’t just a job. It was his life. It was who he was. He couldn’t give that up, not if he had a choice.
He tucked the covers around her, then picked his clothes up off the floor and quietly walked to the door.
“Nick?”
He turned at the sound of her sleepy voice. “Yes?”
She propped herself up on her elbows. “You’re leaving?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m going to my room. We both have to get up in just a few hours. We should get some sleep.”
Even in the near-darkness he could tell she was weighing his words, searching for the truth hidden in them. He owed her the truth, and the sooner she knew it, the sooner they could both focus on the case again. And somehow find a way to move on.
He drew a deep, bracing breath.
“Don’t say it.” Heather’s voice was frosty. “You don’t have to say anything about...us.” She laughed bitterly. “Condition number one, right?”
He briefly closed his eyes, hating the sound of hurt in her voice. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t care about you. I—”
“Oh, please. Spare me, okay? I wanted you. I knew it was a mistake, that nothing had changed. My bad. What’s done is done. Just tell me what happened with Gonzalez. Did you interview him? Did you find out where my sister is?”
He hesitated, feeling awkward, despising himself for hurting her. He also wasn’t sure what to tell her. She’d find everything out in the morning, but if he told her what he’d learned, she wouldn’t get any sleep, and she’d make herself sick with worry.
“Nick? You know something. Tell me.” Her brows were drawn down and she was clutching the covers like a lifeline.
He sighed and chose a half truth. “Gonzalez didn’t tell us where Lily’s being held.”
She closed her eyes briefly, as if she was in pain. “But did he at least tell you she’s okay?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry. There’s nothing else I can tell you right now.” Coming in here had been a mistake, one that he sorely regretted. He opened the door.
“Because you
can’t
tell me, or because you won’t?”
He answered without turning around. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Because I can’t. I honestly don’t know if Lily is okay or not.”
But he had every reason to believe she wasn’t.
The silence stretched out between them. He finally turned around to look at her. She stared at him, as if she was deciding whether or not she could believe him.
“Thank you,” she finally said, her voice firm, cold. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
He curled his fingers into his palms. He gave her a curt nod and stepped out of the room.
Chapter Twelve
For reasons Heather would understand all too soon, the DEA had taken Gonzalez to a secret location an hour north of Key West. Nick sat in the conference room beside Heather, waiting for Gonzalez to be brought in.
Heather was pale this morning, with dark circles under her eyes. She’d barely eaten anything for breakfast, no matter how much Nick cajoled and tried to talk her into taking care of herself. Knowing this was his fault had guilt eating him up inside.
Unfortunately, once she heard what Gonzalez had to say, she was probably going to go from bad to worse.
Part of what Nick couldn’t tell her last night was that he’d spent several hours at the docks, creating a cover story for what had happened. It was imperative that Gonzalez’s capture be kept secret. But there had been several people who’d seen the swarm of DEA agents converging on that boat. Those people would see a story in the paper this morning that Nick had helped plant, a story that described a fiasco, painting the DEA as having mistakenly targeted a local fisherman thinking he was dealing drugs. But they’d found nothing. Their tip had turned out to be wrong, and there were no arrests to report.
The story would make it look like the DEA had bungled an investigation, a small price to pay for the agency to cover up what had really happened and to keep their original mission intact. Or at least, partly intact.
The true story from last night had changed everything.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Nick asked. “You don’t have to meet with him.”
“I have to find my sister.” She swallowed hard. “Or at least find out what happened to her. I’ll talk to him. Did he...did he say why he wanted to talk to me? I mean, he knows I’m not Lily. So why would he insist on seeing me?”
Nick knew exactly why Gonzalez wanted to speak to her. Originally he’d thought it was kinder not to tell her ahead of time, because it would just drive her crazy hearing it from him, then having to make the long drive to speak to Gonzalez and ask the questions that would be going through her mind. Now Nick was second-guessing that decision. Maybe he should try to soften the blow by telling her himself, now, before Gonzalez came in.
“Look,” he said, turning in his chair to face her. “I couldn’t tell you this last night, but you’re going to find out in a few minutes so I’m going to go ahead and tell you. When we brought Gonzalez in, he insisted that he wasn’t—”
A knock sounded on the door. Before Nick could tell the agent on the other side to wait, the door opened. Two DEA agents came inside, flanking Gonzalez, who had chains dangling from his wrists and legs as he shuffled into the room.
Heather’s complexion turned ashen. Regret curled inside Nick. He definitely should have warned her before they got here. She was in for a shock, and she was already shaking and looking impossibly frail. But there was no going back now.
Gonzalez’s dark brown eyes went straight to Heather and never wavered, even as the agents wove chains from his cuffs to two shiny new steel hooks that had been bolted to the top of the table this morning for this very purpose. That was one of several things Nick had insisted on before allowing Heather anywhere near the man.
Another thing he’d insisted on was that Heather wasn’t going to meet with Gonzalez alone. Gonzalez had been adamant, wanting to talk to her by himself. But Nick had refused to budge an inch, even when Dante had ordered him to do so. Nick had threatened to pull Heather out altogether to make his new boss back down.
Thankfully, Dante hadn’t called his bluff, because Nick wasn’t so sure he had enough influence on Heather right now to make her agree to let him pull her off the case.
“We’ll be right outside if you need anything,” one of the agents said.
Nick nodded his thanks and waited until the agents had left before addressing Gonzalez.
“All right, Mr. Gonzalez. You have your audience with Miss Bannon, as requested. If you threaten or insult her in any way, this meeting is over. Understood?”
Gonzalez’s honey-brown eyes focused on Nick.
“I’m perfectly aware of your conditions, Agent Morgan,” he said, in a thick accent. “And I assure you, I have nothing but Heather’s best interests at heart.”
Heather suddenly reached for Nick’s hand beneath the table. He flicked his gaze up to hers in surprise, but she wasn’t looking at him, so he threaded his fingers through hers and gave her a reassuring squeeze.
“The only thing I want to hear from you,” Heather said, her voice surprisingly strong, “is where my sister is. I want her to be safe and I want to bring her home.”
“We both want the same thing, I assure you. I love Lily very much, and I want nothing more than for her to be safe and as far from Key West as possible.”
“If that’s the truth, why are you holding my sister hostage?”
“You misunderstand, Miss Bannon. I’m not the one holding your sister hostage.”
Heather’s eyes widened. She looked at Nick as if for confirmation. He gave her a slight nod. If anything, her face turned even more pale.
“What are you saying?” she asked Gonzalez.
The chains attached to his wrists rattled on top of the table as he tried to reach his right hand across to Heather. When the links pulled him up short, he grunted and clasped his hands together.
“Miss Bannon, allow me to explain. Do you recall when Lily visited you about six months ago and asked you to go to a convention with her?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant, Mr. Gonzalez,” she replied. “How is my sister? Have you hurt her?”
He shook his head. “I assure you, I’ve done nothing to harm your sister. As far as I know, she is alive and well.”
Heather’s breath caught. “As far as you know?”
“Please, let me explain,” he said. “The convention? Do you remember?”
“Yes, yes, I remember. It was one of those identical twin things, where they bring twins from all over the world to meet up and make friends. She begged me to go with her and I couldn’t take the time off from work, but she was insistent. So I went with her to registration so she could get in—they only let pairs of twins register. But then I went back home. Why are you asking me about the convention?”
“Because that’s where I met Lily.”
Her brows drew down in obvious confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“I was one of the attendees.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. The only people who are attendees are...”
He nodded. “You’ve figured it out, I see. I’m not Jose Gonzalez, the man holding your sister. I’m Luis Gonzalez, Jose’s identical twin brother.”
* * *
H
EATHER
FRANTICALLY
SHOOK
her head, certain she couldn’t have heard him right. “You’re not Jose Gonzalez?”
“No. I’m not.”
She looked to Nick for confirmation.
“We’ve fingerprinted him,” Nick said. “He’s definitely not Jose. The DEA never realized Jose had a twin, but that’s the only explanation.”
“But...you know my sister?” she asked Luis, her voice hesitant.
“Yes. As I said, we met at the conference. Like you, I did not want to go. But my brother wanted to go.” His mouth twisted with disdain. “Not because he wished to socialize, but because he wanted to use it as a front for some deal he was planning. Then he met Lily, and they hit it off.”
Heather tried to make sense of what he was telling her. “You sound bitter about that.”
“I am. We both liked Lily when we met her. But my brother...he takes what he wants. And he wanted her.”
Heather studied his facial expressions, his eyes, trying to decide if she believed him. “Are you a drug dealer like your brother, Mr. Gonzalez?”
“No, Miss Bannon, I am not. I am a businessman. My brother’s activities grieve me deeply, but no matter what I do I can’t seem to dissuade him. However, when I realized what had happened to Lily, I couldn’t sit back and ignore it. I had to do something. That’s why I’m here.”
His thick Spanish accent made it difficult for Heather to understand him. She had to think for a moment about what he’d just said for it to make sense. “Then you know what happened to my sister and where she is?”
“I know she was taken against her will several days ago from your apartment in north Florida. And I know she’s with my brother right now—again, being held against her will—in one of his compounds, but I don’t know which one. I’ve been trying to find out. I want Lily away from my brother as much as you do. I don’t want her hurt.”
Heather rubbed her temple, trying to relieve the dull ache that had started. “If you don’t know where she is, why did you want to talk to me? What were you doing at that dock last night?”
“My men have been on the lookout for information to help me find Lily. As soon as I heard she was in that bar, I headed over, hoping she’d somehow gotten away from my brother. But when I got there I found out one of my brother’s men was talking to you inside the bar. I knew he was trying to lure you outside to kill you. I figured out which boat was his and waited.”
“You were there to...protect me?”
“Yes.”
She gave a harsh laugh. “You didn’t protect me, Mr. Gonzalez. You destroyed my best chance to find my sister. That man was going to take me to see her.”
“Heather,” Nick said, “it’s possible he may be telling the truth. We had a team of agents looking into Luis’s background last night, proving his identity. Everything is checking out. And what he says about the man who took you to the boat is valid. That man was one of Jose Gonzalez’s most trusted men, known for doing his dirty work. It’s highly unlikely he would have thought you were really Lily. We believe he knew exactly where Lily was, and that you were her sister, and he was going to take you out into the ocean to kill you.”
Heather shivered and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Then I guess I owe you both for saving my life last night.” She dropped her face in her hands. “It’s hopeless. There’s nothing else I can do. All of this was for nothing. No one is going to lead me to my sister.”
She straightened and put her hand beneath the table to clasp Nick’s hand again. She hated that she was leaning on him right now, after last night, but she needed his strength, his reassurance. He owed her that much, at least, for making love to her then rejecting her. She squared her shoulders.
“What is Jose Gonzalez planning?” she asked Luis. “Is he keeping my sister alive just long enough so he can tell her that he killed me? Is that what he’s doing? Or is she even alive at this point?” She thumped her fist on the table. “All these silly fake tattoos were a waste. No one ever believed I was Lily.”
“If I may disagree, Miss Bannon,” Luis said, “I don’t think it’s a waste at all. If I didn’t know Lily so well, I would have completely fallen for your trick. I believe most people in my brother’s employ would think you were Lily as well. The only ones who wouldn’t are his bodyguards and the men he trusts the most, men who have been around Lily long enough to be able to tell you two apart.”
Heather studied him for a moment. “You’re saying pretending to be Lily can actually work then?”
“In the right circumstances, yes.”
“And yet, you were able to tell I wasn’t Lily. How could you tell?”
“It’s not your looks that give you away. It’s how you hold yourself, how you walk. Lily is a bit more, ah, more of a free spirit. She has attitude. You’re more like a librarian playing dress-up.”
Nick let out a snort of laughter beside her.
She glared at him and he sobered.
“What do you mean by ‘right circumstances’?” she asked.
Nick squeezed her hand beneath the table, capturing her attention. “While you and I have been trying to use your likeness to Lily as our angle to find her, Dante’s men have been canvassing the Keys and following up on leads. They believe they may be able to determine exactly where Jose is holding her within a few days. The problem is that, even once they figure out where his compound is located, there isn’t much they can do through legal channels. Unless someone actually sees Lily and swears out an affidavit that she’s being held against her will, we have no justification for a warrant.”
“How about the fact that someone tried to kill us, twice? Isn’t that enough for a warrant?”
“No. It isn’t. We don’t have a firm link between what happened and Jose Gonzalez. We don’t have anything with which to make a case. That’s where the ‘right circumstances’ come in. Once we determine where Jose is holding Lily, we’ll have to do something, cause a diversion, to get Jose to leave the island. Then we’ll use Luis and you, pretending to be Jose and Lily, to gain access. We’ll go in with enough force to take over and, hopefully, rescue Lily.”
“Hopefully?”
“Hostage situations are always tricky. No guarantees. We have a lot of details to work out. You won’t be bait again. I won’t allow that. And you aren’t physically going to the island. If we use you at all, we’ll do it through a video hookup, to speak to some of Jose’s men. I’m not putting you in harm’s way again.”
“But—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “I mean it. There is absolutely no circumstance under which I will foolishly allow you to be put in danger again. I won’t shut you out. You can stay here and listen or even help us plan. But that’s it. Once everything is set, I’m taking you back to the hotel. And tomorrow morning you’ll go back to Saint Augustine. You can do the video hookup remotely, without being anywhere near Gonzalez.”
Heather glared at him and crossed her arms.
Nick rapped on the table.
The door immediately opened and Tanner leaned in and looked at Nick. “You’re ready?”
“Yes. Tell Dante to get everyone in here. It’s time to come up with a plan that will end this once and for all.”