Читать книгу Internal Affairs - Jessica Andersen - Страница 8

Sara had seen the kiss coming, and could’ve pulled away if she’d wanted to. Nothing was holding her in place…except her own memories of the two of them together, and the grief she’d felt standing at his graveside. He’d been dead. Now he was alive.

That was why, when he leaned in, she met his kiss. That was why, when he touched his tongue to hers, she returned the move in kind and crowded closer to him so their bodies aligned, though lightly. And that was why, when her blood and body heated at the feel of his bare skin beneath her fingertips and the taste of him on her tongue, she didn’t retreat as she knew she should. Instead, she crowded closer, mindful of his injuries but wanting for a moment—just a brief, beautiful moment—to pretend that the past year or so had been a bad dream.

His taste was sharp with pain and fear, but underneath those flavors was that of the man she’d known, deep and complex, rich and multilayered. Her heart kicked in her chest as she soaked in the sensation of touching him and being touched, cherished his soft groan, and the softening of his caress to one of pleasure, and acceptance.

She let herself linger a moment more, then ended the kiss. Regret pierced her as she drew away from him—or had he pulled away first? She didn’t know, knew only that now they were lying on her living room floor facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes, and he was there, really there after all these months.

And, she realized with a bite of disquiet, he still had the power to make her forget her better intentions, at least for a while.

Damn him.

Fanning the anger because it was a far safer emotion than any of the others he brought out in her, she sat up and glared at him. “If you tore your stitches, I’m going to leave you leaking.” Which wasn’t the most important issue by far, but was somehow the first thing that had come out of her mouth.

He just looked up at her for a moment, all hard muscles and man, sharp facial angles and clever dark green eyes, with a layer of masculine stubble on his square jaw and the thick dark hair that she’d delighted touching as they’d kissed, as they’d made love. No, she told herself, don’t think about that now, don’t remember those times. The present is far more important than the past, under the circumstances.

But before she could demand an explanation of where he’d been for the past several months, he said, “I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t clear whether he was apologizing a second time for grabbing her, for disappearing and faking his own death, for kissing her or for potentially having messed up her stitches. Since she wasn’t actually sure which she would’ve preferred, she let it go, asking instead, “What happened to you?”

“I…I’m not sure.” He sat up slowly and started climbing to his feet, dragging one of the blankets with him in the absence of clothing. He was clearly feeling his injuries now that his body was draining of the adrenaline spike that must’ve powered him to this point.

Sara rose and gripped his good arm when he swayed, even though her own legs were far from steady. Forcing herself to focus on the practical stuff when nothing else seemed to make any sense, she said, “Come on. As long as you’re on your feet, let’s get you to the bedroom.” She had a feeling he’d be headed for a collapse once the last of the adrenaline had burned off, and would rather he didn’t wind up on the floor again.

He leaned on her heavily as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. She told herself to ignore the fact that he was mostly naked, that her hands gripped the warm, lithe flesh that had brought her such pleasure in the past. She watched his face as they crossed the spot where they’d made love so long ago. When his expression didn’t change, she cursed him for being an insensitive ass, and cursed herself for caring when they’d been broken up for more than a year, and he’d been dead—in theory, anyway—for nearly half that time.

He hesitated at her office door, and she urged him past it to her bedroom, where he lay facedown on the bed with a grateful, pained sigh. He stayed obediently still while she checked his wounds, which were inflamed and angry, but showed little sign of additional damage.

“You got lucky,” she said, pulling the blanket up over him. “The stitches held.” Then, feeling unaccountably jittery, she sat on the edge of the bed they used to share, spinning to face him and perch there, cross-legged. He looked at her, expression unreadable, as she inhaled a deep breath and let it out again in a slow, measured exhale that did little to settle her sudden nerves. “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the deal. I didn’t call an ambulance or the cops, and I didn’t tell anyone you were here because of your note, and because we have enough of a history for me to give you the benefit of the doubt. But also considering our history, I think you’ll agree that I don’t owe you much more than that. So if you want me to keep helping you out, you’re going to have to give me a reason and some explanations, starting now.”

Although he was lying in her bed, injured and lacking the strength to stand on his own, his expression was intense as he reached out to her with his good hand and gripped her fingers in his. “Thank you for not turning me in.”

Something shivered down her spine at his choice of words. “Tell me you’re going to call Fax and Seth now, or whoever you’ve been working for within the PD.”

He grimaced. “I’d like to say yes, but…” He trailed off, his expression clouding. After a moment, he said, “Okay, I’m going to tell you the truth because whatever the details, I apparently trust you more than I do anyone else in the area.”

She frowned, confused. “I…I don’t know what that means.”

He tightened his fingers on hers. “It means that I don’t know your name. I don’t know my own name. I don’t know what we were to each other, or why our relationship—judging from what you just said, anyway—ended. And I damn sure don’t know who shot me, or why.”

Sara felt the blood drain from her face, and imagined she’d just gone very pale. Which was okay, because she had a feeling she was about to faint. “You don’t…”

He shook his head. “Not a clue. I’ve got nothing. Why don’t you tell me what you know about what I’ve been up to lately, and we’ll see if anything jogs a memory.”

A bubble of near-hysterical laughter pressed on Sara’s windpipe. “You…you don’t remember any of it?”

He turned one hand palm-up. “Obviously I remember the walking-around skills, like how to drive, and that it was a damn good idea to cover up with the jacket so nobody would see my back. But that’s survival stuff. I don’t—” He broke off, throat working. “I don’t remember the things that make me an individual.” He tried for a grin. “The only thing I know is that I’ve got good taste in beautiful, capable women who deal well in a crisis.”

“Good taste, maybe, but also a roving eye,” she said quellingly, trying not to let him see how much the words cost her. “But that was more than a year ago. In the interim, you died in a prison riot. I watched your parents bury you.”

Whatever he’d been about to say in regards to his fidelity—or lack thereof—died on his lips, and his face went blank with shock. “You’re kidding.”

“That’s so not something I would kid about.”

“Why in the hell would I fake my own death?”

Sara hesitated, trying to sublimate her own swirling emotions to the practicalities demanded by the situation. As a doctor, she knew she should let him rest. Retrograde amnesia, whether from a head injury or mental trauma—or both—could pass quickly…or it could prove permanent. If she bided her time, the memories might start coming back on their own, with less shock than she was likely to cause by telling him about the terrorists, the prison riot and his own disappearance. Unfortunately, she didn’t think she had the luxury of time to let him remember on his own. The amnesia fit into her theory that he’d been undercover, explaining why he hadn’t gone to whoever had been overseeing the operation. But it also fit into the less-likely-seeming possibility that he’d been with the terrorists voluntarily, then run from them during the chaos of the manhunt. He hadn’t known which side he was working for, or even what was going on.

In either case, she realized, the terrorists and cops would both be looking for him. And she couldn’t do the logical thing and turn him in to the task force, because al-Jihad’s people had infiltrated the official response at almost every level. Until they knew who Romo had been reporting to, and whether he trusted that contact, keeping him hidden could truly be a life-or-death scenario, as his note had said.

She had to tell him about the situation, she decided, and hope the information would help him remember who he could trust. But that left the question of where to begin the story.

As if reading the question in her face, he said softly, “Start with the two of us. Why did I come here?”

That was easy. “We were lovers. You even lived here for a few months before we broke up. That was about a year ago.”

“You said I had a roving eye,” he said. “I was unfaithful?”

“Once.” Which had been enough for her. She’d made a point never to give second chances in situations like that. She wasn’t her mother. “It was a long time ago, though, and not really pertinent to what’s going on.”

Rather than dragging him through a one-sided postmortem of their yearlong love affair, she told him about how al-Jihad, Lee Mawadi and Muhammad Feyd had orchestrated simultaneous bombings in shopping malls across Colorado just prior to Christmas several years earlier, killing hundreds, including a large number of children who’d been waiting to see the mall Santas.

She described how, after a lengthy trial during which Lee Mawadi’s ex-wife, Mariah, was briefly suspected of complicity and then exonerated, the three powerful terrorists were convicted for the Santa Bombings and sent to the ARX Supermax Prison north of Bear Claw City. There, through the sort of clandestine communication network that tended to exist in supermax security prisons despite the inmates’ isolation, al-Jihad made contact with Jonah Fairfax, who was supposedly doing life without parole for killing two federal agents during a raid on an antigovernment cult up in Montana. In reality, he was a deep undercover operative tasked with ferreting out al-Jihad’s contacts within federal law enforcement. In that guise, his handler encouraged him to help al-Jihad and his lieutenants escape. That same handler, Jane Doe, had been working with the terrorists all along. Fax had turned out to truly be one of the good guys, despite Sara’s concerns when her best friend, Chelsea, had fallen for the escaped-convict-maybe-undercover-agent. He and Chelsea’s friends had banded together to foil a terror attack on a local concert, recapturing Muhammad Feyd in the process. The others—including Jane Doe—had remained at large, though, and intelligence suggested they had fled the country.

A few months later, Lee Mawadi had reappeared in the Bear Claw area, gunning for his ex-wife, Mariah. Sara was less clear on the details, except to say that the ex was now engaged to one of the FBI agents on the task force. The two had been instrumental in foiling a planned attack on the prison, though they hadn’t stopped the riot that had killed—supposedly, anyway—Detective Romo Sampson of the BCCPD’s internal affairs department. Who patently wasn’t dead.