Operation: Midnight Tango (12 page)

“You mean to tell me we went in there for nothing?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

She couldn’t believe it. She could feel her frustration building. “And you call yourself an agent? How could you do something so…unprofessional?”

“I was a little busy getting shot at.” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned away from her abruptly and walked several feet away. Emily could see his breaths puffing out into the frigid night air and understood how much this had upset him. Guilt nipped at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have blamed you. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t,” he snapped, turning back to her.

But she could tell by the tight set of his jaw and the dark flash of his eyes that she had. And not just a little. Zack Devlin was as upset as a man could be.

“I can’t believe I bloody screwed this up,” he said.

“Those weren’t the best of circumstances back there.”

His jaw flexed. “I just about got you killed.”

“No.” She pointed toward the direction from which they’d come. “The people at Signal and the bastards at Lockdown are the ones to blame for this. Not you.”

“I dragged you into this.”

“I hate to refute your preconceived notions about me, but I have a mind of my own, Devlin. I’m the one who made the decision to go in there with you.”

He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. “Yeah, well, thanks for letting me off the hook.”

“I don’t think either of us is off the hook just yet.”

Realizing she was right, that they were wasting precious time, he looked around at their surroundings. “We need to keep moving.”

“Where do we go?”

“Someplace where we can rest, get some sleep and food,” he said. “How well do you know this area?”

“Well enough to know there’s not a soul who will rent rooms to two people whose photos have been flashed on every television station in the county.”

“Is there a motel in the vicinity?”

“There’s a bed-and-breakfast near the state park.” Sighing, she looked around. “I’m not exactly sure where we are, but it’s only a few miles down the road from Signal Research and Development.”

“It can’t be far.”

Her gaze met Zack’s. “We can’t just walk in and check in. The desk clerk will recognize us and have every cop in the county knocking on our door before we can kick off our boots.”

A bit of the old humor came back into his eyes. “Don’t be so sure about that.”

She watched as he untied the satchel from his belt. Sinking into the snow, he opened the bag and removed several items. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Becoming someone else.”

She watched him dab something onto his palms and slick back his hair. Using the same gel-type substance, he adhered a thin black mustache to his upper lip. Next came the heavy, dark-framed eyeglasses. A clip-on tie.

“My God,” she said. “A disguise.”

“Any self-respecting agent has a quick-change disguise.” Shooting her a smile, he pulled a tube from the satchel and squeezed a small amount onto his palm. “I might need your help with this one.”

Emily crossed to him and knelt. “What is it?”

“Culloden.” When she only continued to stare questioningly at him, he added. “It’s similar to wax. Dries quickly. Perfect for scars.”

He expertly applied the substance to the outside corner of his right eye. Within minutes he had formed a perfect scar.

“How do I look?” he asked, getting to his feet.

Emily couldn’t take her eyes off him. In less than two minutes he’d gone from rough-around-the-edges inmate to nerdy bookworm fresh from some dusty bookstore. “You really are an agent,” she whispered.

He grinned. “Just wait until you see my Johnny Depp impersonation.”

THE LOST CANYON Bed-and-Breakfast was located in a small town not far from the Salmon River. Emily and Zack traveled most of the way via a small frozen creek, their footprints obscured by high grass, jutting rock and sometimes swiftly moving water. Twice they had to take cover when men on snowmobiles edged dangerously close. Both times they’d barely avoided being spotted.

Zack couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so utterly exhausted. His feet were wet and numb. His hands ached with cold and he felt frozen all the way to his bones. He could only imagine how Emily must feel.

“Nice place,” he commented as they approached the rustic grouping of cabins from the rear.

“I wonder if they’ve already been here looking for us,” she said.

“I’m sure they have.” He looked over at her and grimaced. She looked near collapse, if he wanted to
be honest about it. Damn, he hated putting her through this. He’d originally planned to disguise Emily, as well, and check in as husband and wife, but he wasn’t sure she had the energy left to do it.

Stopping at a picnic table beneath a stand of ponderosa pines, he turned to her. “I want you to wait here while I check in.”

She collapsed onto the bench. “They’ll recognize that coat you’re wearing.”

He glanced down at the coat. Criminy, he’d nearly forgotten. “I must be getting sloppy.” Quickly he removed the satchel from his belt and pulled out the phony trench coat. It was made of a special fabric that compressed exponentially but never wrinkled. With a single shake he had a full-length trench coat—less the bulk.

“How do I look?” he asked, slipping it onto his shoulders.

“Like a vacuum-cleaner salesman.”

He grinned. “I was going for antiquarian-book connoisseur, but door-to-door salesman will do just fine.” He leaned close and brushed his lips against hers. Even though the contact was light, he felt it like a jolt of electricity charging through his body. Her lips were soft and warm despite the cold, and for an instant Zack thought he was going to fall right into the kiss….

Her expression was startled when he pulled back. “What was that for?” she asked.

“Luck,” he said and headed toward the bed-and-breakfast office.

The pleasure of the kiss was still vibrating through him when he opened the door and stepped into the small, cluttered office. The place was over-heated and smelled of dust. In the corner a television was blaring a local newscast. The clerk behind the counter was leaning back in his chair, asleep.

Zack walked up to the counter and hit the bell with his palm. The clerk jerked awake, his feet hitting the floor at the same time his eyes opened. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

“Sorry to wake you,” Zack said, using his best East Coast inflection. “Do you have a room?”

The kid stood and walked to the counter, stretching. “We got one cabin left.”

“That’ll do.”

The kid slid a form across the counter. “Fill this out.”

“Certainly.” Zack set his phony wallet on the counter, then set to work filling out the form with false information.

“Where you headed?” the clerk asked.

“Convention in Boise.” Because he didn’t want to partake in idle chat, he quickly finished the form and fished several bills from his wallet. “What time is checkout?”

“Noon.”

Zack looked at the cuckoo clock on the wall. That would give them a few hours to shower and sleep. After that he wasn’t sure what to do. Maybe after he got some rest he would be able to think straight.
After all, he was working on thirty-six hours with no sleep and very little to eat.

At the door he stopped and turned to the clerk. “What are the chances of my getting some food?”

“Not good,” the clerk said.

Zack crossed back to the counter, dug a twenty-dollar bill from the wallet and laid it on the wood surface. “You sure about that?”

The clerk’s eyes widened. “I’ve got a hot plate in the closet. I could probably dig up some soup.”

“I’ll wait.”

Two minutes later Zack left the office with a hot plate and a family-size can of vegetable soup in tow. It wasn’t much, but it would sustain them until they could get a decent meal the next day.

It seemed as if the temperature had dropped twenty degrees in the few minutes he’d been inside. He glanced across the snow-covered parking lot toward the picnic table where he’d left Emily. A chill passed through him when he found the table empty.

Where the hell was she?

He crossed the small lot at full speed. At the picnic table he slid to a stop—and froze. She was curled on the bench, asleep. Relief made his legs go weak. She was lying on her side with her arms wrapped around her body, so beautiful it hurt just to look at her. And an emotion that was part affection, part something he didn’t want to acknowledge, went through him.

Setting the soup and hot plate on the table, he bent and scooped her into his arms. Her eyes fluttered, widened.

“It’s just me,” Zack whispered.

She looked around quickly, as if trying to orient herself. “What—”

“You fell asleep.”

“I just closed my eyes for a second.”

“It’s all right.” He bent slightly toward the bench. “Grab that hot plate and can of soup, will you?”

“You can put me down, you know. I can walk.”

“You’re wiped out.”

She didn’t protest when he turned and started toward cabin number six. Nestled amongst a few winter-dead cottonwood trees at the rear, the cabin was relatively private, out of sight from the road and the office.

On the wooden porch Emily slid from his arms and Zack unlocked the door. The single-room cabin was rustic, with a corner woodstove, pine-plank floors and rough-hewn cedar beams. A small iron bed dressed in a white down comforter and several Southwestern-themed throw pillows dominated the room. A door to the left opened to a small bathroom with a stand-up shower. A sliding door to the right revealed a postage-stamp-size closet.

“Home, sweet home,” Zack said, switching on the light and stepping into the room.

Emily came up beside him. “Not exactly the Hilton, but it will do in a pinch.”

He watched her carry the hot plate to the table by the single window. Zack knew his mind should be on how he was going to get them out of this mess. On how he was going to find the mole at MID-
NIGHT while at the same time eluding the people from Lockdown and Signal Research and Development. But watching Emily, he found he couldn’t think about anything except the way she moved, the radiance of her face, the way she’d tasted when he’d kissed her.

He walked up beside her and eased the hot plate from her hand. “Let me take care of that.”

“If I stop moving, I’ll collapse,” she said.

“That’s the idea,” he said. “Take a shower. I’ll warm the soup. Then we’ll get some sleep.”

“Are you forgetting there are people with guns looking for us?”

He hadn’t forgotten that. Not by a long shot. But Zack knew what exhaustion and hunger could do to a person. It could wear them down, weaken them, not only physically but psychologically, too. “We’ll grab a couple of hours of sleep, some food, then we’ll see if we can come up with a plan.”

If he only had an idea of what that might be.

THE MAN IN THE SUIT COULDN’T believe the situation had deteriorated so severely and so rapidly. There were too many people involved, and all of them were asking questions. Questions he didn’t have a clue how to answer.

A knock sounded at his door.
About time,
he thought. “It’s open,” he snapped from behind his desk.

The man who entered the office walked with a limp and carried a thin portfolio. Without speaking,
he took the chair opposite the desk and set the portfolio on the glossy surface.

“Devlin’s file?” The man opened the portfolio. His mouth stretched into a smile as he began to read. “Excellent,” he said, aware that his heart was beating quickly. But it was from excitement this time, not fear or dread or all the things he’d been feeling since Devlin and Emily Monroe had fled Bitterroot some thirty-six hours earlier.

When he’d finished reading, he put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Devlin has quite an interesting history, doesn’t he?”

“He definitely has a weak link.”

He reached for the phone on his desk and punched in a two-digit speed dial. “I want you to put together a file on Emily Monroe. I want to know everything there is to know about her. I want this information yesterday. Do you understand?” He smiled at the voice on the other end. “Excellent.”

A knock at the door drew both men’s attention. “Come in,” the man behind the desk said.

Marcus Underwood walked in. “You wanted to see me?”

“Sit down.”

Underwood took a seat in the second visitor’s chair and tried not to act nervous. But his forehead was slick with sweat.

“Have you contained the problem yet?” the man behind the desk asked.

Underwood shifted in the chair. “Not yet.”

Turning slightly, the man swiveled in his chair
and looked out at the predawn darkness. Devlin and the Monroe woman were still out there somewhere. Roaming free and carrying secrets that would destroy everything he’d worked for if those secrets were leaked to the wrong person. God in heaven, how could this have happened?

He turned his attention back to Underwood. “I want every man and woman we’ve got working on this Devlin thing. Do you understand?”

“We’ve got over thirty men working a twenty-mile perimeter.”

“Then why the hell haven’t you found them!” he exploded.

The prison administrator licked his lips, looked nervously from the man sitting next to him to the man behind the desk. “Devlin has proven himself quite resourceful.”

“You have every resource at your fingertips,” the man behind the desk said in a low, dangerous voice. “Use them. Find that son of a bitch and his accomplice.”

“I’ll do my best.”

He thought about it some more, felt another squeeze of panic. “If we don’t find them by noon today, we’re going to have to bring in law enforcement.”

The man in the wingback chair spoke for the first time since Underwood entered the room. “If Devlin or Monroe talk to the wrong cop, it could present an even more complicated problem. Devlin can be quite convincing.”

“We’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen, won’t we?”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“Let me spell it out for both of you.” The man behind the desk looked at Underwood. “Put out a press release to the local media. Do what you have to do to discredit Emily Monroe. Leak the photo of her and Devlin kissing in the locker room. Doctor it if you have to, but make it persuasive and compelling. Make sure Lockdown, Inc. sounds reliable and trustworthy. But make damn sure she is portrayed as his accomplice. Make sure you mention her father.”