How Spy I Am (26 page)

“Now we’re going to
talk.”

I let out a whimper of
sheer relief at the sound of Kane’s voice, my heart resounding
against the hardwood.

“John, thank God! You
scared the shit out of me!” When his hold didn’t loosen, I added,
“You can let me go now. I promise not to shoot you.”

“Why would I believe
that?” His voice was a hard growl. “You’ve done nothing but lie to
me from the very beginning.”

Indignation made me
struggle against his grip. “I have not!”

I added an involuntary
yelp when he increased his pressure by a few pounds. “John, you’re
hurting me,” I said evenly.

“Really.”

I dropped my forehead
to the hard floor. That remote tone told me everything I needed to
know.

“Fine,” I mumbled into
the wood. “I knew it was a mistake to sleep with you.” When he made
no response, hot anger flared through my veins, and I jerked
against him, snarling. “Go ahead, then, asshole! If you like
hurting me so much, why don’t you beat the hell out of me? Because
we both know it’s all
my
fault, don’t we? You fucking
prick!”

He got off me so
abruptly the sudden cessation of pressure was almost as painful as
a blow. A cry wrenched out of me and I rolled slowly onto my side
and lay half-curled, hoping to protect myself if he did actually
hit me.

“You really think
I’d…?” The remote tone was gone, and I heard him swallow in the
darkness. “You think that’s what this is about?”

I drew a slow breath
and curled tighter, shivering in long waves. “How would I know?
What else are we fighting about?”

“Put this on.”

My warm fleecy robe
landed on top of me and I dragged myself to my knees, fumbling my
arms into the garment and groaning at the burning pain in my
over-stretched shoulders.

I heard the closet
door close and sudden blinding light made me squint.

“God, Aydan, you look
like hell.”

“Thank you.” I crept
over to lean my back against the wall and curled up, hugging my
trembling knees to my chest.

“What the hell were
you thinking?” he barked.

“John.” I fixed him
with a weary eye. “Shoot me, tell me what’s on your mind, or shut
the fuck up. Or hell, do all of them, in any order you please. I
don’t have the energy for your bullshit tonight.”

“My bullshit.”

“Yes. Your bullshit.
What are you doing in my closet?”

“Why aren’t you still
in Calgary screwing Hellhound’s brains out?”

I glared. “You don’t
listen very well, do you? I told you, he dumped me. Now what the
hell are you doing in my closet?”

A moment later the
obvious reason occurred to me, and I jerked upright. “You bastard,
you were snooping around in my house! You thought I’d be gone for
the night, and you were searching my place. You… you…
spy
!”
The inadequacy of the epithet only made me angrier.

Kane’s lips twisted.
“Look who’s talking. What the hell were you thinking, involving
Hellhound in one of your ops? He’s a civilian, dammit, you have no
right to endanger him!”

“Says the guy who got
him into that mess at Harchman’s and ended up getting him tortured.
Says the guy who
knowingly
sent him into that warehouse to
get the shit kicked out of him last week…”

I ran down as his
words sank in.

“It wasn’t an op,” I
protested feebly, realizing even as I said the words how
implausible they sounded. “I’m not an agent, I don’t have any ops,
it was just…”

This time he let me
trail off into silence, watching me with eyes like cold grey iron.
After a lengthy pause, he prompted, “Just what?”

“Nnnngh!” I thumped my
forehead on my knees, thinking furiously.

“I’ve known from the
start you were an undercover agent,” Kane said. “Why didn’t you
just trust me with it?”

“I’m not-”

“Cut the crap, Aydan!
Hellhound told me what you were doing. A night drop in an isolated
area, a mysterious contact, lives at stake…” He shot me a hard-eyed
frown. “The only reason I didn’t go directly to Stemp with this was
because Hellhound swore I could trust you. He said you were trying
to protect me from a mistake I allegedly made in the past.”

He raised a cynical
eyebrow. “For some reason, he believes you won’t lie to him.”

“I won’t.”

“But you’ll lie to
me,” Kane said softly.

“I’ve never…” I closed
my mouth on the words. Sank my head onto my knees. “Once. I only
lied to you once. And I admitted it afterward. I told you I was
sorry.”

“Only because I caught
you in the lie.” When I didn’t answer, he asked, “Why can’t you
give me the honesty you give him?”

Heavy exhaustion
dragged at my limbs and I thumped the back of my head against the
wall a couple of times. “I’m not going to have this conversation
with you. We both know where it goes. I’m not going to compare
you.”

“I’m not asking you to
compare us. I’m asking a simple question.”

I jerked to my feet,
sick and tired of the whole conversation. “Fine. You want to know
why? Arnie and I promised each other the truth, and he never puts
me in a position where I have to lie to him. If I say I can’t tell
him, he accepts it. You push me and corner me and won’t take no for
an answer. And who do you think you are to accuse me of lying? You
lied to me, too.”

I reached past him to
turn off the lights and fumbled for the doorknob in the darkness.
“So now do you want to know if your dick is bigger than his?
Compare how many orgasms he gives me? Do you want to know what he
does to me in bed-”

Kane’s big hand closed
on my shoulder, his hard body blocking my way. “Aydan, that’s not
fair.” His voice was raw in the darkness. “You know that wasn’t
what I was asking. And I’ve never lied to you.”

I stiffened against
the urge to slap him. “Bullshit! You lied your face off. You swore
all you wanted was friends with benefits and you lied to me, and
then you made it my fault when you were disappointed. Fuck you,
buddy!” I shoved past him and out the door.

He caught up with me
at the entrance to the kitchen, catching my arm to pull me to a
halt. “Aydan, I didn’t lie to you. I said I understood that friends
with benefits was all you wanted. I never pretended I didn’t want
more. And I never said our argument was your fault.”

As I turned to him in
the moonlight, his face hardened. “Wait. Now I get it,” he growled.
“Oh, you’re good. You have sex with me and then turn it into a
fight so you can keep me distracted from your undercover ops. Play
my best friend off against me. Mess with my mind until I can’t
think straight. And you just did it again. Created a fight about
sex to deflect my questions. Goddammit, you’re cold.”

His grip tightened
painfully as I gaped at him. “Okay, honey, the sex was great, but
now we’re going to talk,” he snapped. “And if I don’t like your
answers, you’re going to be talking to Stemp and a lot of other
people. I guarantee you won’t enjoy the conversation.”

I stared up at him,
stricken dumb by the annihilation of every ounce of trust, every
gesture of friendship, every moment of warmth between us. The angry
stranger glared back at me from Kane’s face. His fingers bit into
my arm. “Talk,
spy
,” he grated.

The sheer magnitude of
the destruction held me speechless and paralyzed except for the
ever-increasing tremor in my knees. I opened my mouth but nothing
came out.

Kane’s shadowed face
was set in lines of fury. “Don’t you dare,” he hissed. “Don’t you
dare pull this act on me.”

A voice finally
returned to my mouth. It wasn’t my voice, but I used it anyway.

“Get out.” A voice
like the arctic wind whipping up needles of snow. “Take your hands
off me and get out of my house.”

Kane sneered. “So now
you don’t want my hands on you. I didn’t hear you complaining while
you were coming your brains out in my bed.”

Overwhelmed, I swung
at him with my free hand, mindlessly trying to drive the ugliness
away. Drive away the pain and loss. Drive him away.

His hand snapped out
to clamp around my wrist, stopping my palm inches from his face,
and he held me effortlessly when I tried to jerk away.

I summoned the last of
my energy for a scream. “Get out! Get out,
GET OUT
!”

His face twisted and
he flung me away from him before turning on his heel to stride
away.

My knees gave way and
I sank to the cold floor, huddling there for a long time after the
door slammed behind him.

I didn’t appreciate
Jack’s excellent curry lunch as much as I might have under other
circumstances. I passed off my haggard appearance as the result of
a night of insomnia, which was technically true.

Despite my
overwhelming desire to crawl into a hole and pull it in behind me,
I managed to respond to her friendly conversation, and I felt
better by the time I left in the early afternoon.

My improved mood
evaporated when I parked my car at home. I slouched in the driver’s
seat, staring blindly at my garage wall. Maybe I should tell Stemp
about this whole mess.

Hell, Kane had
probably beaten me to it. He’d been so disgusted by me last night,
he probably couldn’t wait to tell Stemp.

But he didn’t really
have anything to report, other than his suspicion that I was a spy.
That was old news to Stemp. And if Stemp had decided not to trust
me, he would have locked me up by now.

I blew out a long sigh
and got out of the car. I couldn’t change anything now. All I could
do was wait to see if Robert contacted me again.

I spent the afternoon
working at my computer, but the blinking white square didn’t make
another appearance.

After an inadequate
supper of leftovers, I dragged my leaden body back to the computer
desk, propping my chin in my hand and fighting my heavy eyelids.
When I discovered I’d made the same bookkeeping mistake three times
in a row, I quit in disgust.

The ring of the
telephone jerked me out of a restless sleep. Heart pounding, I
squinted with sleep-blurred eyes at the clock beside my bed.
Six-fifteen. On a Sunday morning.

Oh shit.

My heart kicked up to
double-time while I pawed clumsily at the handset.

“Ms. Widdenback.”
Stemp’s flat voice made me suppress a groan.

“What’s wrong?” I
demanded.

“I need your team
assembled here by nine A.M.”

“Okay.” I hung up,
knowing he wouldn’t tell me anything more until I got there.

I arrived at Sirius
Dynamics early, too jittery to stay home any longer despite my
fatigue. I was sitting on the sofa in my office, discovering that
feeling jittery at the office wasn’t in any way superior to feeling
jittery at home, when Stemp stuck his head in the door.

The twitch of humour
was back at the corner of his mouth. “Nice setup for a news
article, Ms. Widdenback. I appreciate your dedication to your
cover,” he said, and continued down the hall.

Oh God, now what?

Nobody had arrived to
bring my network key up from the secured area yet, and I had no
intention of going down to get it myself. But I could still use my
Sirius fob to get into the network as long as I didn’t have to do
any decryptions.

I gripped the fob with
a sinking sensation and stepped into the virtual corridor.

The network was
deserted, and I created a simple internet browser in the nearest
vacant sim room. Holding my breath, I searched Arlene Cherry.

Oh, for chrissake.

I stared hopelessly at
the lurid headline and accompanying photo. Come to think of it, I
had vaguely noticed a bright flash the other night.

‘Porn Star in
Catfight’, the headline read. The picture had been snapped just
after I’d punched the brunette, and it was in regrettably clear
focus. Her fingers were tearing at my hair, her face contorted. My
fist was sunk in her midriff. I looked annoyed.

For some reason that
made me snicker. I’d been scared and frantic to escape, but my
expression in the picture looked as though I’d been dealing with a
minor but irritating inconvenience.

Feeling more cheerful,
I shut down the sim and stepped painlessly out of the portal. When
I blinked my eyes back into focus, Spider was smiling down at
me.

“Good morning,” he
greeted me. “It’s nice to see you come out of the network with a
smile on your face for a change.”

“Yeah. I wish I could
use the Sirius fob all the time.”

“I wish you could,
too,” he agreed. “What were you enjoying in there?”

I shot him a grin that
contained a few more teeth than usual. “Arlene Cherry’s latest
headline.”

He winced. “I’m
sorry.”

“It’s okay, Spider,
you don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“Actually, um…” He
gave me a tentative glance before turning his attention to his
toes. “I, um, I created the article. Sorry. Stemp’s orders.”

“What? You’ve been
following me around with a camera just in case I did something
newsworthy?”

“No!” He blushed. “No,
that was just some random guy who saw a catfight and snapped a
picture with his cellphone camera. He thought it was funny and
uploaded it to his Facebook page, and my facial recognition
algorithm flagged it. When Stemp saw the photo, he decided we could
use it to reinforce your cover. I’m really sorry,” he repeated.

“It’s okay, Spider.”
When he didn’t look up, I reached out to squeeze his hand. “Hey,
Spider, you don’t have to feel bad about this stuff. If you’re
planning to apologize every time it happens, you’re going to run
out breath. It’s just part of the job. Let it go.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. It’s
okay.”

He took a deep breath.
“Thanks, Aydan.”

“No problem.”

Kane and Jack arrived,
deep in conversation, and Jack broke off to give me a smile. “Hi,
Aydan! Did you sleep better last night?”