On The Rocks (7 page)

She really should have shot him.

They stayed in thick silence —her glaring,
him grinning— and then the door pushed open again.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Kizzie
barked.

Bill Connolly’s head jerked up. His gaze
shifted from Kizzie to Lennox and back again. Cane assisting him,
he closed the door and came deeper into the overly-bright room.

“Hello to you, too, Baldwin. How was the
vacation to…?”

“Maldives,” Kizzie supplied. A smile ghosted
over her face as she thought of Phil and his ridiculous offer to
honeymoon there. What was he doing right now? Better yet, where in
the world were he and Xander?

“The Maldives,” the old man repeated before
regret had a chance to dig its claws into her again. He didn’t look
like he bought it for a minute but he bobbed his graying head.
“Where you…?”

“Intended to surf, but the winds were too
high. So I hopped a flight to Bali.”

“Which part?”

Kizzie frowned. “The part with waves,
Bill.”

Why the third-degree over her fake
vacay?

Surfing in the Maldives and Bali… Stopping a
lunatic from detonating a salted bomb in the Tidal Basin and
preventing the utter calamity that ensues when a
lunatic
detonates a
salted bomb
in the friggin’
Tidal Basin
…
Same diff, right?

“Really,
really
big waves,” she
added.

“You’re full of it, Baldwin.”

Kizzie stretched her arms out in front of
her. “Fine. They weren’t
that
big. But decent enough. I’d
show you the tan lines but, well, when you do it right there aren’t
any.” She tossed him a saucy wink and grinned. “Tag along next
time. Sun and sand would do you good. You’re looking a touch
pale.

“And what’s with the cane? Break your hip
doin’ the hully gully down at the old folks’ home?”

Heaving a sigh, Bill turned to Lennox, thick
brows bunched. “What happened to your face?”

“Had a run-in with an old friend.”

She snorted. “I thought you were dead.”

“Did you mourn me?” Lennox asked.

“Check that: I
hoped
you were dead.
Would’a saved me the trouble.” To Bill, “Did you have him tail
me?”

Judging by Bill’s face, his confusion at
that little morsel was sincere. He shifted his gaze from Lennox to
Kizzie and back again, the look on his face indecipherable.

Lennox paced toward her. “Don’t be so mean,
chuchu.
”

Kizzie snatched up her pistol and leveled it
at him. “In case you missed the first memo, I’m not in the mood,
Lennox.”

A
thunk
sounded from near the door
and reverbed in the echo chamber.

Kizzie kept her vision trained on her former
partner. In spite of the weapon, his movements didn’t slow. And
that smile was still in place.

And that plain pissed her off.

“You didn’t always feel that way,” he said.
“You used to—”

She squeezed the trigger.

BOOM!

Bill jumped back, looking mighty spry for a
septuagenarian. Made her hully gully comment all the more
plausible. He clapped a hand to his ear, screamed, “Jesus, Kizzie!
What the hell’s the matter with you?” as he shuffled toward the
kitchen, a blur in her periphery.

Smug asshole that he was, Lennox didn’t even
flinch. Came right up to her, bent at the waist, and caged her
thighs between his muscled forearms. His face paused a bare inch
from the warm muzzle, and he inhaled deeply.

A devilish glint in his dark green eyes,
Lennox whispered, “Don’t miss this time.” His jaw unhinged, lips
parted just a bit.

Kizzie lifted the gun so the barrel was
lined up nice and tidy like. “I never miss twice.” Louder, she
said, “Call off your mutt before my humanity kicks in and I
euthanize him.”

“Goddammit, Tate, stand down. Stand down!”
Bill barked. “You’re no good to me dead.”

“He’s not much use to you alive,
either.”

“
You
need a psych eval!”

“For what?” Kizzie rolled her shoulders
toward her ears. “I’m certifiable, William. It’s why you hired
me.”

Bill grumbled something she couldn’t hear.
Didn’t matter. Her attention was wholly on Lennox. How could it not
be? He was so close she could smell his skin— that recognizable
scent of denim and leather. Clean sweat. A faint undercurrent of…
of… It was on the tip of her tongue but she couldn’t quite—

“
Everyone thinks Cubans are the best but
they’re not.” Lennox ran the fat red head of a wooden match along
the rough edge of the table. Friction turned to flame, and he
reverently roasted the rolled tube of leaves until the bottom
smoked like incense for a ritual…

That was it. Rocky Patel cigar. Nicaragua’s
finest.

Lennox would always complain about how hard
it was to get the good stuff in Belém. She’d thought to take him to
Managua once their stint at the mouth of the Amazon was over. Let
him grab a box of his own straight from the source.

God, she hated that she remembered that.
Hated that she could recall the many times she’d tasted it on his
mouth.

His gaze shifted over her face and an
unauthorized frisson of heat shimmied up from her belly and into
her cheeks. Kizzie forced herself not to look away. After all, she
still had the gun, even if the rage that fueled her these long
years was temporarily confused.

The O his mouth made melted into a hint of a
smile. Eyes locked on hers, he flicked out his tongue and licked
the tip of the pistol. Then he followed up with a gentle kiss to
the same spot.

Her abs tightened, and she fought the urge
to press her thighs together. The tongue flick and kiss combo?
Exact thing he used to do to a
veeery
specific spot between
her legs. The temptation to let those delicious memories take over,
coupled with her Xander-imposed “no touchy” rule, almost made her
forget she hated the guy.

But some things were just unforgivable.

She slammed down her horny and cocked her
head. “You always were a sick fuck.”

Lennox sank his teeth into his lower lip. “I
was the best fuck of your life, baby.”

True.

Just not for the reasons he thought…

“Sometimes,” he breathed, “I replay every
moment we were together in my head. It’s a sweet torture…
remembering all your spots and not having you there… all those
delicious little sounds you make. The way you’d bite your lip when
I made you come.” Softer: “Do you remember,
chuchu
?”

She remembered. Too well, in fact.

Humid Belémian nights came rushing to the
fore in a heartbeat, and suddenly she wasn’t in this too-bright
room in a CIA safe house. She was in their crappy apartment in
Belém, legs spread wide as Lennox’s hard body slid into hers.

Perfect training situation, then, wasn’t it?
Mission during the day. Missionary —doggy, and reverse cowgirl… for
starters— at night. It was like the man got high on the Kama Sutra
then OD’d on Cosmo magazines. Set out to try all four million and
eighty-five ways to make a girl go wild.

That was good for a while. But just when
she’d started to think she could trust him, just when she thought
somebody in the world had her back, Lennox ripped her fragile
foundation out from beneath her feet.

His calloused palm smoothed over her cheek
and Kizzie pulled away. “I remember everything,” she whispered.
Lennox beamed, and she added, “Everything.”

All that cockiness seeped out of his face,
replaced by something that looked like regret, anger, and sorrow
had a rather freaky threesome.

“H-hands!” a soft voice shouted from
somewhere in space.

Neither of them bothered to move; didn’t
bother to blink.

“Children,” Bill called. “Behave. We have
company.”

The newcomer’s voice was still going, and
Lennox glanced over his shoulder. Then that green-eyed gaze she
thought she knew so well locked onto her again. “We’re not through,
you and me
.
Not by a long shot.”

Kizzie pursed her lips. Sometimes silence
and a side-eye went farther than words.

Lennox finally moved out of her space and
she pulled her first breath in ages deep into her lungs.

Near the door, a woman had a gun pointed in
Kizzie’s direction. And Bill was eyeing her like he was taking her
emotional temperature.

Both situations ramped up her irritation. No
idea who the woman was, but Bill knew what happened with Lennox in
Belém. Knew how hard it was for her to go
back
and plant a
tracking device into Sanzio Galletti less than three weeks ago.

Why the hell would he pair her with Lennox
after all these years?

A shudder wormed its way through Kizzie’s
body, a mixture of repressed anger and that toxic, physical
attraction that landed her bare ass in his bed in the first damn
place. Nothing good could come from this mission, whatever it was.
To send her back on an op with her former partner wouldn’t just be
dangerous, it would be cruel.

But she knew exactly how to handle it.

Lennox might have seduced her once in her
short life, but he wouldn’t get a chance to do it again.

IN THE SMALL space between the two steel
security doors, agent Rachel Hayford sprawled on the concrete slab,
palms clamped over her ears. That didn’t stop the ringing or the
feeling that her head was splitting in half. It also didn’t help
make sense of the image before her. The heavy inner door she’d just
pushed open now had a brand new peephole when seconds before there
wasn’t one.

A tremble started from deep in her belly and
quickly spread through her chest, out to her limbs, and into her
fingers and toes. Even her nails and lashes were shaking! Had she
not paused for that reassuring breath —a breath meant to quiet her
inner critic’s constant mantra of
You’re not ready for this… You
can’t do this…
— had she not waited that half a second, that
still-smoking hole wouldn’t have been in the door. It would have
been in her head.

And a hell of a lot messier, too.

Her stomach lurched and she nearly
vomited.

Oh, hell.

She
wasn’t
ready for this. Couldn’t
do this.

This was supposed to be a simple info dump.
She’d sat in with Fletcher on a couple of these exchanges. Meetings
like this usually happened over a secured phone line or in one of
the designated soundproofed rooms at Langley, but a change of
location did
not
mean a change in protocol. Agents met,
details were transferred, everyone left in one piece to carry out
their part of the mission. Noticeably absent from that protocol:
Agent puts bullet in Rachel Hayford’s perfectly coiffed head.

What the hell had she gotten herself
into?

Thanks, Dougie.

He should be doing this. This was his
job.

Operative word: was.

Before she chased the white rabbit down the
Where’s Fletcher? hole, she refocused her attention on her current
situation.

The outer door was just inches behind her.
She could reach up, turn the knob, and crawl back out to the street
in a matter of moments. And once the urge to piss her pants passed,
and she got her legs under control, and she figured out how to walk
again, she could run like hell and call headquarters from a cab on
her way back to the airport. In a couple of hours, she’d be in the
safety of her little cubicle —well, now her corner office with a
window— in McLean.

Hands shaking, Rachel reached for the knob.
Using the sturdy gold ball for leverage, she hoisted herself to her
feet but stayed down.

Voices floated in from the direction of the
open doorway. She couldn’t make out how many people were inside or
what they were saying. Their tones were too low. Or they could be
yelling. Honestly, she wasn’t sure. Her heartbeat was still
clanging in her head like cathedral bells at high noon.

Back against the door and eyes straight
ahead, Rachel dragged her messenger bag around her body. It took a
couple fumbles before she figured how to operate the flap. Reaching
inside, she located the compact handgun she kept on her at
Fletcher’s insistence.

He’d been adamant about her carrying and
Rachel never understood why. Aside from the early morning jog
around the streets of her gated neighborhood, the most dangerous
thing in her life was working a desk job for the CIA. Why would
she
need a gun?

“‘Cause you never know when someone’ll try
to blow your brains out,” Fletcher had said.

Truer words were never spoken.

She should go. She was in over her head.

A head she’d very nearly lost just moments
before.

Okay, time to get out of that loop.

But for some reason, she couldn’t. For
goodness’ sake, she’d almost
died
!

The shaking started up again, a little more
violently this go ‘round. Her loose-fitting jeans felt like
skinnies two sizes too small. The crisp white blouse was plastered
to her back. The blazer? Sweltering.

And about that blazer. Really, Rach? A
blazer?

Why did she wear this outfit? Who was she
fooling? She might as well have emblazoned
CIA AGENT
across
the back of the navy coat in bright gold lettering. At least then
she wouldn’t feel like a fraud. This sad, sad attempt to carry out
the most
remedial
covert mission was already headed toward
the land of Charlie Foxtrot.

She was meant to be a two.
Fletch’s
two. Not the lead on—

“
You
need a psych eval!”

The words came barreling into her hiding
spot as though shouted over a megaphone. Rachel blinked. Had she
said that out loud?

No. The voice was too deep to be hers. But
whomever it belonged to was spot on in their assessment.

“Dangit, get a grip,” Rachel muttered
through clenched teeth.