Do You Trust Me? (19 page)

How could she feel so
ravaged and yet so sated at the same time?

She cuddled against
him, grateful for his strength, for the wall of protectiveness that stood
between her and the rest of the world. If only this wasn’t so complicated.

If only I’d been able
to resist him in the first place.

She fell asleep with
the locket grasped in her hand.

****

When he was sure Rina
was deeply asleep, McCall slid out of bed, yanked on his jeans, and slipped
quietly from the room. He was grateful there was no one else in the upstairs
hallway as he made his way to the empty room next to Rina’s. He needed some
space. Badly. Closing the door and throwing himself onto the bed, he lay on his
back with one arm thrown across his eyes.

Shit!

How had he gotten
himself into this cement mixer? He never should have fucked her in the first
place. What a stupid mistake that was. But who knew she’d get into his blood so
easily? Or love the same kind of games he liked to play? Every time he took her
to a new experience and she tumbled in like a kid in a pool of candy, he felt
himself hooked more and more.

He really wanted to
tell himself it was just sex, but that was too big a lie. She was under his
skin, in his blood. In his mind. He had worked so hard to put the darkness of history
behind him, to focus only on his job. The blinding need that Rina aroused in
him and the feelings he refused to acknowledge were screwing up his life.

Rina!

He couldn’t get the
taste and feel of her out of his mind.

He knew she was hiding
something. As well as he’d come to know her, she might as well have been
wearing a sign. So why wouldn’t she tell him? Why wouldn’t she just tell him
what John had said when he called? He had the itchy feeling he’d somehow blown
any chance he had to get her to tell him the truth. He’d played this all wrong.

Shit!

What the hell was he
going to do now?

Chapter Eleven

Bryce Patterson
looked at his colleague, a tic jumping in his eyelid. “Everett, it was a chance
I had to take. Our deadline is getting closer and closer.”

Everett Hanes twirled
his glass on its coaster, not looking at the other man. “Well, it was a stupid
chance. Where did those people come from, anyway?”

“Brechtel’s son. He
assured me they’d get the job done.”

“I thought he had
better connections than that. These bungled incidents aren’t helping our cause
any. They’ll have that woman surrounded with so much security after all this even
the president couldn’t get to her.”

“And speaking of the
president,” Patterson said, “I made one last plea to get him to veto this bill
when it leaves the floor. Pointed out the economic benefits, the importance of
continuity with suppliers, yada, yada, yada. No deal. He’s adamant. He’s still
smarting from Halliburton, and he’s not giving the ghouls anything to suck
blood from if he can help it.”

“If only he knew he’s
signing his own death warrant.”

The two men were
silent for a while, each with his own thoughts.

Then Hanes spoke
again. “Doesn’t it scare you that we’re talking about assassinating the
president of the United States?”

“Not half as much as
the thought of losing my income from Brechtel and being poor in my old age.”

“Whatever happens, it
has to be before that bill comes out of committee and hits the floor.”

Bryce stood and
walked to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in his library. He enjoyed seeing
the woods that surrounded his home, the band of nature that separated him from
the city. This was the place where he could recharge at the end of a
stress-filled day and be ready to tackle what the next day brought.

He loved Washington, D.C., with all its political and social battles. The city had given him chances
for success he wouldn’t have found anywhere else. At this point in his life,
nearing the end of his political career, he was doing whatever it took to
ensure a golden retirement. If some sacrifices had to be made, some corners
cut, well, that was the price of achievement.

He turned to face Hanes.
“I’m stalling the bill as long as I can. I can’t be too obvious about it. And to
add to our misery, Brechtel insists on speaking with us.”

“Have you talked to
him since the last incident?”

“Not until he called
to say he was on his way here.”

“That’s way out of
character for him. He always avoids contact outside his office,” Hanes noted.

“I guess he thinks
coming to my house won’t be a problem. I’m far enough out in the woods to avoid
prying eyes.” As he spoke, the doorbell rang. “I’d say that’s him now. George
will let him in.”

Publicly, George was
Patterson’s legislative aide. In fact, he was a great deal more than that. He’d
been with Patterson since the early days of the first campaign, and the senator
had no secrets from him. Whatever he did, George was a part of. Even this. When
Patterson retired, George was planning to run for his seat, with his boss’s
support.

“I’m here.” Both men
turned as the door to the room opened, then slammed shut. “Meeting in person is
not a good idea, but I didn’t want to trust this conversation to a telephone.
And I didn’t want either of you seen coming to my office.” Andrew Brechtel’s
presence, larger than life, filled the library.

Patterson and Hanes backed
away slightly, blown by the wind of barely controlled anger.

“We’re always at your
disposal, Andrew,” Patterson said, recovering first. “Please. Sit down.”

“I don’t have time
for sitting. I’m here to clean up the mess one of you made and tell you some
hard truths.” He threw his jacket over a chair and began pacing the room. “Of
all the damn idiotic things to do. Bryce, I see your fine hand in this. And my
son’s, whether he admits it or not.” He stopped pacing, almost nose to nose
with Bryce. “Did you ever stop to think of the fallout? Of the unwanted
attention this will draw?”

“Getting that woman
is a priority,” Patterson reminded him. “If John Devargas had passed the chip
on to his team, we’d be guests of the federal government instead of sitting in
this library. If they don’t have it, his sister does. There’s no one else he’d
trust with it. I’d give a week’s pay to know why she hasn’t turned it over.”

“I’d have thought she’d
go right to his boss with it,” Brechtel commented. “But my man hasn’t heard a
thing, which is very unusual.”

“John may have told
her there’s a mole,” Hanes reminded them. “If so, she has no way of knowing who
it is and she won’t move until she does.”

“Thank god for that.
But if she’s waiting for some kind of signal, all the more reason we need to
get our hands on her before that happens,” Patterson protested.

“You know this little
drama of yours has so far cost me two of my best people,” Brechtel snapped. “They
had to be disposed of.”

Both senators stared
at him.

“I don’t understand,”
Hanes said, his voice not quite steady. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I couldn’t
leave them with the little covert unit the government thinks no one knows
about. Their silence would only have lasted so long. I had to take chances with
a man it took me years to get in place in order to do it.”

Brechtel dropped into
one of the leather chairs, pulled out a cigar, and glared at the two men in the
room with him.

“Andrew, I’m sorry,”
Patterson said finally. “If I had known...”

“William knew.”
Clip
went the cigar cutter. Brechtel deposited the tip in an ash tray, flicked on
his lighter, and paused in his diatribe while he lit up. “He chose to ignore
it. William likes to think he’s smarter than me. This time all he’s done—all
you both have done—is buy us more trouble than we need.”

“The bill’s going to
come out of committee soon,” Hanes said. “We need to move before then.”

“I agree. But this
time I want you to leave it to me. Not my son. I’ve been doing this longer than
any of you, and I’m better at it. You both do your thing on Capitol Hill, and I’ll
take care of little Sarah Jane or whatever her name is.”

“Do I even want to
know what your plans are?” Patterson asked cautiously.

“I wouldn’t tell you
anyway. Can’t afford any more screwups.” He heaved himself to his feet and
reached for his jacket. “Stay the hell out of things you don’t know how to do.
If I want something from you, I’ll let you know. Meantime, we either kill the
bill or the president. I don’t much care which.”

He stomped out,
leaving both men shaken.

Chapter Twelve

Rina woke feeling as
if she hadn’t slept at all. Despite the exhausting sex, her sleep had been
disturbed by the conflict that constantly wrestled with her brain, the fact
that battered her mind every day from the minute she woke up. Someone on the
team was a traitor, and she had no idea how to identify that person. Every one
of them—Sullivan Raines included—was in a position to betray the team members. And
the tighter things got, the more imperative it was for her to find out who it
was.

Even if it’s McCall.
Oh, John, please don’t let it be him.

If she couldn’t trust
McCall or anyone else on the team, what did she do with the locket and its valuable
contents? Was there someone in another government agency she could turn to?

John, you said you’d
send me a sign. Where is it? I’m getting in deeper and deeper. You don’t know
how much I’d give just to hear you call me Dusty one more time and tell me how
to make things right.

The mirror in her
bathroom brutally reflected the shadows under her bruised-looking eyes and the
lines of strain in her face. She showered, removing the plug and rinsing it
carefully, and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, postponing the trip downstairs as
long as possible.

Finally, she couldn’t
stall any longer. Someone was bound to come looking for her.
She descended the
stairs slowly. Just before she reached the kitchen, she heard McCall’s voice,
hard and uninflected, and stopped where she was. Reflected in the sliding
doors, she saw him leaning against the counter, cell phone clapped to his ear.

“No, I damn well will
not tell her that. I’ll tell her nothing. It’s too great a risk.” Pause. “I
know you’re the boss, but you have to trust me on this. God knows we seem to
have little enough of that around here. We can’t give her that piece of
information. What if she’s more than an innocent bystander in all this?”
Another pause. “All right. But give me some time.” He snapped the phone shut.

Well, what a laugh
that was. He didn’t trust her any more than she trusted him. So what was
really
going on here? She stepped into the kitchen, deliberately ignoring McCall.
After pouring herself a cup of coffee, she started out of the room.

“Where are you going?”
His voice sounded like a knife cutting through steel.

“I’d like to say to
the Bahamas,” she retorted. “But just to my den.” She was desperately trying to
process what she’d overheard without showing the turmoil she felt.

“What are you going
to do in there?”

She wanted to throw
her coffee at him but stopped herself. Why was she being such a bitch? He wasn’t
doing anything different than she was. “I’m going to try writing. I have a book
on deadline. Do I need a hall pass?”

He didn’t say
anything, and she didn’t move, just stared at his face, his phone conversation
echoing in her head.

“Something bothering
you?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The look on your
face. Are you trying to tell me something?”

The words seemed to
just fall out of her mouth. “Exactly what is it that you damn well will not
tell me?”

“You eavesdropped on
my conversation.” His voice was hard and accusatory.

She could see him
trying to regroup.

“No. I would never do
that. But I couldn’t help hearing you when I was in the hall.”

“And you chose not to
announce yourself? Let me know you were there? How nice.”

“You’re evading.” She
put her mug down carefully and took a deep breath. “I assume that was Sully you
were talking to. What is it he wants you to tell me and you won’t?”

She could see him
fighting a battle with himself. Who exactly was he trying to protect here? And
what if that wasn’t Sully on the phone but someone on the other side? God, she
felt sick every time she thought he could be
the one.

“Never mind,” she
said suddenly. “Don’t tell me. But when you call Sully back—if in fact that’s
who you were talking to—tell him I’d rather protect myself and it would please
me if you all got the hell out of here.”

McCall walked over to
the sliding doors and stood looking out into her yard. Gone was the man who chased
away her nightmares, who made her body sing. Who held her and soothed her. Who
introduced her to the darkest pleasures she’d ever known. This was a hard
warrior who gave no quarter. “This is a very unpleasant business I’m in, Rina.
Filled with nasty people who do unimaginable things. There’s no way you can
protect yourself against them.”

“I hear what you’re saying.
John felt the same way.”

He snapped around. “John
told you that? When? Is that what he said when he called you?”

Uh oh.
“We
didn’t. I mean, he didn’t.” She was stumbling over her words. Why was she such
a blabbermouth? “When he joined your team, that was one of the reasons he gave
me for doing it. He wanted to help fix some of the mess.”

Don’t touch the
locket.

He stood so close to
her now she could hardly breathe. “We need to get some kind of handle on John’s
last contact. Find out what he did with his information.”

I’ll bet. Do you want
it for Sully or yourself? Who are you really, McCall?

“Why didn’t he just
tell you the last time you talked to him?” she asked, curious.

“The call dropped off
before he could finish talking. We never made contact again.”

But I talked to him.
Why the convoluted message?

Trust no one. You’ll
know who to give this to.

“What was the last
thing he said? Can you tell me that?”

“You know I can’t.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Unless, of course, he told
you
the same thing.”

Rina turned away from
him. “I already answered that question.”

McCall reached for
her, his fingers biting into her arm. “You’re hiding something, Rina, and I’m
getting sick and tired of whatever game you’re playing. It might damn well cost
you your life. Don’t we trust each other at all yet?”

“I don’t know. Do we?”

Even with anger
sparking between them, the moment he touched her, her traitorous body leaped to
attention, nipples hardening, pulse throbbing between her legs. McCall’s jaw
tightened and his eyes darkened. It seemed, no matter what, the sexual thread
between them tugged and pulled.

Yanking her arm way,
she looked away from him. “Never mind. Think what you want.”

“All right.” He made
a sound of disgust in his throat. “I just hope whatever is sticking in your
craw doesn’t blow up in your face.” He backed away. “We’re going to be doing a
bunch of stuff around here today. Increasing the security. Making some
contingency plans.”

“Why can’t you tell
me what Sully said in that phone call? I agreed to stick my neck out to help
trap these people. Doesn’t that buy me any new information?”

He shook his head. “Not
an option.”

“I asked you this
before, McCall. Is this all a big act on your part? Get me into bed so you can
see if I’ve got something to spill?”

He was furious now,
his eyes blazing. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know a
damn thing about anything, Rina. Least of all about me. Go in your den and
work.”

He let himself out
into the yard where she saw Gage waiting for him.

Rina sighed. Things
were getting a lot more complicated than she wanted.

Help me, John.

****

The three men seated
in the room looked at each other.

“We’ll have to do
this ourselves,” Andrew Brechtel said at last. “Those other idiots couldn’t
derail a garbage truck.”

“Where does the bill
stand now?” William asked.

“Coming out of
committee next week for a floor vote.”

“It’ll pass the
Senate easy,” George Franklin commented, knowing both Brechtels looked to him
for assurance. He was, after all, the manipulator. The game player. The man who
did all the dirty work without ever getting a smudge on himself. And certainly
not on the Brechtels. “It’s already passed in the House. The president should
have it soon after that.”

“We have to take Brandon out before that,” William pointed out. “Otherwise the two things will be too
closely connected.”

“Even now it’s dicey,”
George added. “We really need to have every detail down pat.”

“We have no choice.”
Andrew slammed a fist on the desk. “I can’t believe it’s gone this far. For as
much as we pay them, our tame politicians should have been able to kill it long
before this.”

“Halliburton cast a
long shadow.” William’s voice was tinged with a combination of bitterness and
envy. “They were the first civilian contractors and they are still top dog.”

“Not for long,” his
father snapped back.

“Nevertheless, everyone’s
nervous about contract awards. No one wants to take chances.” He cleared his
throat. “And we need to get our hands on the girl, too. Find out what she knows,
get whatever her brother gave her, and get rid of her.”

“What if she doesn’t
have it?” George asked.

“Then we’re no worse
off than we are now,” Andrew told him. “We’ll simply dispose of her where no
one will ever find her. If we can’t do it before, the event at the Alamo would be the best place for both projects. Check with our man inside again, see if he’s
been able to come up with anything that will help us.”

George Franklin rose
from his chair. “I’d better start making some phone calls. You have your person
in place, right, Andrew? All those arrangements have been made?”

“You don’t need to
worry about that. It’s all set. You just do your job.”

Franklin
left the room, William
on his heels.

Alone again, Andrew Brechtel
hesitated, then picked up the phone to make a call.

****

Bryce Patterson
looked at the caller ID, read the word Blocked and picked up the receiver with
reluctant fingers.

“Damn it, Bryce.” The
words exploded through the connection. “You had a simple chore to perform, and
you can’t even get that right.”

Patterson suppressed
an urge to throw the phone across the room. This was his benefactor. He couldn’t
afford to antagonize him. “I’ve stalled as long as I can without looking
suspicious, Andrew. We’ll just have to move a little faster on our end.”

“My end, you mean. I want
the president’s schedule for the big event. That bill should hit his desk about
the same time as his visit to Texas. Let’s hope he shows up for his
presidential performance before he can pull out his signing pen.”

“Are you talking
about the March second event? Shit, Andrew. They’ll have more guards than in a
prison.”

“Don’t you worry
about that. Call that idiot Heller and get all the details from him. If we’re
going to make him president, he can at least get us some information.”

“I’ll call him today,”
Patterson agreed. “But we’d better do this carefully.”

“You aren’t the one
to be giving warnings, Patterson.”

Both men hung up. For
the first time since they’d begun hatching this little plan, Bryce Patterson
wished himself someplace else. Anyplace. He’d go along with a lot of things.
Already had. But murder, especially of the president, despite what he’d said to
Everett Hanes, was getting a little hard to swallow.

He picked up the
telephone again and with a sour taste in his mouth, dialed a familiar number.
When the call was answered on the other end, he said, “This is Senator
Patterson. Connect me with Vice President Heller, please.”

****

Sullivan Raines
leaned back in his desk chair, eyes closed, fingertips rubbing his temple. Noel
Stennis, seated in one of the overstuffed chairs nearby, watched him carefully.
He knew his boss was used to dealing with situations filled with strain and
tension.
Normally,
he didn’t worry about him, but this time there were too many factors turning up
the heat.

It wasn’t every day
they were faced with a plot to kill the president of the United States.
John
Devargas’s disappearance underscored the long reach of the people involved.
Noel fully expected they’d find John’s body any day now. And of course the
killings of the captured attackers had set everyone’s teeth on edge. The
presence of a mole, as yet undiscovered, made everything twice as dangerous.
The attempts to kidnap Rina Devargas despite her protection detail showed the
daring and desperation of the plotters.

And overriding it
all, the life of President Nicholas Brandon hung in the balance. If not for John,
they wouldn’t even have known the plot existed.

“We’re missing
something, Noel,” Raines said, without opening his eyes. “There’s got to be
some clue to where John hid that chip. We’re just not seeing it. And I don’t
know how much longer I’m willing to use his sister as bait. I’d never forgive
myself if I dishonored his memory by letting Rina get killed.”