Traitorous Attraction (14 page)

His face turned serious. “I’ll listen. I won’t say anything.”

Kate took a deep breath, unsure until this moment what she would say, if anything, about her feelings for Connor. An excited utterance during the throes of passion didn’t mean much. She wanted to give her feelings the reverence they deserved. “I love you, Connor.” A simple statement and a complex message at once. She had no expectations of a reaction and she was glad she didn’t.

His face didn’t move. His eyes were still and his mouth was drawn into a straight line. Was he hiding his reaction because she had told him he couldn’t respond? Or did he truly have no reaction? With a man like Connor, trust came slowly. She regretted prefacing her statement with a request for silence.

Connor shifted on the bed. “You’ve put me in a tough place. You don’t want me to respond, but I’ve never had a woman say those words and not have them create an overarching issue that needs to be addressed.”

An
issue?
That was a softer word for
problem.
He thought her loving him was a problem. She wasn’t sure what she’d wanted his reaction to be. Happiness? Contentment? Or maybe deep, deep down, she had wanted the words to burst from his lips in return. She fumbled for an explanation as insecurity consumed her. “I know you aren’t ready to say those words. I know it takes time. But I wanted to say them because they are true for me and I wanted you to know how I felt.”

Connor blinked at her. “You don’t want my thoughts on the matter?”

Based on him calling her words “an issue that needed to be addressed,” she didn’t think him elaborating would make her feel any better. “Can my words just be what they are? No discussion is needed.”

He hesitated a moment and then kissed her again. “Okay, no discussion tonight.”

At some point, they would talk about it. But for now, she welcomed quiet and fell asleep in his arms.

* * *

“Go over it again. We missed something,” Connor said, his hands fisting and unrolling in frustration.

“We haven’t missed anything,” Kate said. They’d reviewed the spreadsheets, diagrams and charts they’d created to organize and analyze the data they had gathered about La Sabaneta. The prison was locked down. No one had ever escaped except in a body bag. Thirteen men had tried. One had made it to the final checkpoint hiding inside a food-delivery truck, but he had been discovered and shot on sight.

Supply trucks came and went on a seemingly random schedule. The back, undercarriage and inside of every truck was checked by two separate guard stations both entering and leaving the jail. As old and decrepit as the prison was, their security system and use of technology were cutting-edge.

“What about bribery?” Connor asked. “Let’s go over the employee list again. Someone must be in desperate straits and need money. A gambling problem. Loan debt. High alimony payments.”

Kate had performed analyses of information for Sphere for years. She understood the underhanded methods of buying someone off or manipulating someone’s fears and finding a weak link that would help achieve the end goal. Even with a hundred policies and rules in place, by finding a weak link, they could exploit it and they could free Aiden. As yet, Kate didn’t see it. “Connor, we’ve gone over this. We would have to bribe an entire block of guards, every single person who patrols Aiden’s cellblock or interacts with him.” As extreme as that would be, it had other challenges. They hadn’t confirmed the cellblock where Aiden was being held or if the prisoners were rotated. They hadn’t even confirmed if Aiden was in La Sabaneta.

Connor paced the room. “How can I get myself thrown into prison at La Sabaneta?”

Shock knocked Kate’s thoughts on their side. “You cannot be serious. Never mind the thousand problems with getting arrested, once you are inside, how will you talk to Aiden? How can you be sure you’d be jailed there? Would you leave me out here to figure out how to get both of you out?”

Connor threw his hands in the air. “What can I do? I can’t leave him there, and we have nothing. We’ve gone over this a dozen times.”

Frustration was getting the best of him. “Then we’ll go over it a dozen and one times. I know you are used to being in the field and taking action. What do you think went on at headquarters during every mission while you were in the field? Analysts were sorting and filtering information until we found how to do what was needed. It doesn’t happen easily and it sometimes takes more information or a certain amount of creativity to find a way. We don’t need to do anything rash and drastic. Not yet.” Kate moved her computer from her lap and crossed the room to Connor. She put her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest. He needed to calm down so they could think clearly. “We are not leaving Aiden there. But we also are not putting you into a prison when we have no method in place to free you. Even if you could commit a crime and be sent to La Sabaneta and placed near Aiden, what can you do once you are inside? If there was an easy way out from the inside, Aiden would have already found it.”

Connor held her against him. “Aiden and I can put our heads together. My brother and I are good at what we do, but when we’re together, we’re even better. We’ve never worked a mission together, but growing up, whenever I went to Aiden with a problem or he came to me, we’d work it out.”

Kate stroked Connor’s arm, hoping she was offering comfort. She and her sister, Elise, had never liked each other. Generally, when they were together, they brought out the worst in each other. “You are lucky you had each other. My sister and I never got along.”

“Would you risk your life to find her if she were jailed in some remote hellhole?” Connor asked.

Kate didn’t have to think too much about it. Of course she would. She wasn’t sure if Elise would do the same for her, but differences aside, she loved her sister. “Yes. I would get her out.”

Kate broke away from Connor. Being wrapped in his arms made her ache for him. While sex was relaxing, it wouldn’t help, and they were on a deadline.

She thought about the methods they had used at Sphere to gather intel or provide resources. Calling in favors, networking and bribery were typical techniques used. “What about pulling strings?” Kate asked.

“Whose strings do I need to pull?”

“Is there anyone who owes you a favor? Political allies who you worked for in the U.S. who might be able to get us inside the prison or in touch with someone in power in the prison?” Kate asked.

“I can make some calls. I’ve worked with Senator Allen a few times in dicey situations. I don’t think he would publicly acknowledge that he knows me, and I don’t have any hold over him to compel him to help me.”

“Senator Allen?” Kate asked, surprised Connor was in touch with the well-respected and highly feared member of Congress. He was the senior member of the secret committee that oversaw projects at Sphere. Senator Allen moved mountains and found miracle solutions when others had long given up. “Why did you meet with him?”

“Classified exchanges of information, briefings on missions and once for a personal favor,” Connor said.

“A personal favor?” Kate asked.

“He needed my expertise on a family matter. I can’t discuss the details.”

“Perhaps, then, he does owe you a favor,” Kate said. She considered his position. “Would he help us even though he’s working with Sphere?” Kate asked. So many people who worked with Sphere were corrupt. With Sphere looking for them, could they take a chance and bring someone else into their mission? “Perhaps he would go out on a limb and help you.”

“It’s worth a call,” Connor said. “It’s worth doing anything I can to help Aiden.”

* * *

Connor called the number he’d been given for Senator Allen’s private line. The number was disconnected. He tried the senator’s office number next, and as he’d expected, he wasn’t put through to the senator. A perky, but firm-sounding woman promised she would deliver his message to the senator. Connor had his doubts about that. He’d had to leave a vague message in case the senator was working closely with Sphere and wanted him and Kate found and brought back to the United States for prosecution.

If his message was passed along at all, it would be given to the senator along with the hundreds of other calls he received during the week, half of them from crazies with unreasonable demands. Connor supposed his request wasn’t far outside the realm of crazy.

The senator wouldn’t risk communicating directly with Connor. Connor was a former secret agent and his hands were dirty. Now that the senator’s daughter had been returned to him safely, he had no use for Connor. Though the senator played a role at Sphere, he kept that part of his work hidden from the public.

Connor picked up the sketch Kate had drawn of La Sabaneta. Wild ideas sprang to mind, blooming from desperation and fear for his brother. Catapulting himself inside the perimeter. Climbing the fifty-foot wall and braving the razor wire and snipers posted around the gate. Dropping in via a parachute and trying not to be shot as he drifted to the ground wearing a colorful chute.

Even if one of his off-the-wall ideas got him inside, finding Aiden and then navigating a way out was uncertain. Connor didn’t know his brother’s physical or mental state. He could be near starvation or have suffered from beatings.

Connor had known secret agents who had been left lame or limbless after being imprisoned in a foreign country. He’d known some that had gone absolutely bat-crap crazy and had been unable to function in society after their ordeal.

Connor promised himself that if Aiden needed lifelong support, he would provide it. If his brother needed a caretaker, he would be it. He wouldn’t let his brother down and he would see that the people who harmed him paid dearly.

Kate was on the phone with some contacts she had from the State Department. She was still in her role of Kate Swiss and she was good. Diplomatic and kind, she was sweet-talking information out of people with practiced ease. She also pulled some scams, pretending to be tech support, obtaining log-ins and passwords to get inside systems she didn’t have authorized access to. Cup of coffee in one hand and keyboard in the other, she was amazing.

And she loved him.

It was hard to believe and even harder to hear. Connor wasn’t an easy man to love. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him he was closed off from the world—both emotionally and physically. Connor didn’t like people being close to him or in his space. He didn’t like turning his back to anyone, sure a knife would be stuck in it the moment he did. He had a firm grip on the reasons for that. His mother had left when he was a boy and he might have been better off if his father had, too. It was textbook abandonment issues. He had no close family except Aiden. Aiden was the one man he trusted.

Ariana had mentioned that Aiden had spoken to his parents. Connor spoke to his father when he had no other choice, but what about their mother? Was it possible that Aiden had reestablished a connection with her? Aiden was bent on seeing the best in people. He gave more chances than he should. He forgave and forgot. Hardships in life didn’t hold him back or keep him down. That trait in Aiden was something Connor had fought to protect and deeply envied.

In the past, Aiden had tried speaking to him about their parents. Over the years, Aiden had brought them up in conversation, but Connor had shut down those discussions quickly. He didn’t want to talk about the painful past. He wanted to get on with his life, and going over those long-past events seemed pointless.

Yet, Connor hadn’t moved on fully with his life. He seemed stuck in the same patterns of keeping people at bay, expecting them to leave him just as his mother had. Even when he attended college, changed jobs, changed hobbies and changed diets, those changes were superficial and didn’t open him to others in the same way that came easily to Aiden. Deep down, Connor had never changed. He stayed in protective mode and waited for someone to screw him over. It was something he hated about himself and yet he was unsure how to change.

Except Kate had gotten in and she’d gotten in more than a little. He’d had girlfriends before, but he’d never shared anything with anyone about his life. He had shared much with Kate in the short period of time that he’d known her. She’d affected him. She’d gotten past his reservations and proved to be loyal and steadfast.

If those qualities weren’t enough for him to question his reluctance to trust her, she brought so much more to the table. Like her intelligence, her keen mind, her humor and her beauty.

His phone rang and Connor hesitated answering. A withheld number could be Sphere trying to trace him. He had his signal rigged to bounce around cell towers across the world, but Sphere could have technology to counter his attempts to hide his location. He braced himself. “Yes.”

“Connor West?”

Connor recognized the voice he’d last heard years ago. Senator Joshua Allen. That was fast. Almost too fast. Perhaps the senator had been alerted by Sphere that he and Kate were people of interest and the senator was establishing contact for them. “Senator.”

“You needed my help?”

“How did you get my message so quickly?” Connor asked.

“My incoming calls get logged to my phone-message system. I set an alert for your messages to be sent to my phone directly.”

“Why?” Connor asked.

The senator chuckled. “You can take the man out of the paranoid agency, but you can’t take the paranoia out of the man.” He cleared his throat. “You saved my daughter’s life. That’s reason enough. I owe you and I pay my debts. I won’t pretend I’m unaware what’s going on between you and your former employer. I know you and an analyst have gotten involved in complicated matters and you’ve landed in some trouble.”

Connor appreciated Senator Allen being up front with him. “Someone from my family is in trouble. I’m trying to help him.”

“I wasn’t asking for an explanation. You rescued Chelsea. You did things I couldn’t have expected or asked for to have her returned safely. That’s enough for me.”

The no-explanation-needed return of favor was unexpected. “I need help. I need access to someone in a prison in Tumara.”