True Deceptions (True Lies) (19 page)

Tears streamed down her face, but she focused on him with a cold stare that had replaced the beautiful innocence of the Cassie he’d once known. “Never once have you shown compassion for anyone. You walked away when Tucker pointed a gun at my head. You took a pregnant woman into a dangerous situation and then carted her all over Europe to get home. You almost crashed a commercial airliner. You left me in jail. You’re heartless.” She stood and walked up to him. An arm’s length away in distance, a million kilometers in understanding.

“As I stated before, Tucker would have found a way to torture you if I’d shown the slightest partiality toward you. I had to be cold, because I won’t put you at more risk than the assignment already entails. And as for Alex. She didn’t tell me she was pregnant until we were at the field making the exchange. When our exit was compromised, I flew her out and left the car to keep her safe. We’ve discussed the airport shutdown, and I stand by my decision. And as for you.” He gripped her shoulders. “I would have ripped the city apart to find you. I contacted Dane and begged him to engage his embassy’s contacts. I’m not an American, so they wouldn’t have released you to me. I needed to rely on Dane. Contrary to your ever-lowering opinion of me, I sure as hell was not going to let you rot in prison. You’re out, you’re safe, and I care. I care a whole hell of a lot. More than I should if I want to keep you safe.”

“Don’t touch me.” She brushed his hands off her shoulders. “I’m not your plaything unless there’s an audience in front of us, and right now, it’s just us.”

The darkness she’d experienced in that prison was eating her up. There was only one thing to do.

“Blame me if it makes you feel better, but I need to know what happened to you. Everything.”

“Poor Simon. Unable to handle the fact that you don’t, in fact, know
everything
.”

He clasped her arm, holding it firm.

She struggled to pull free but couldn’t. “Let me go.”

“Not until you tell me what happened at the prison.”

“No.” Her leg connected to his shin. It hurt like hell, but not enough to make him release her. She hadn’t hesitated to use violence. Definitely not the old Cassie.

“Tell me.”

She tried to slap him with her free hand. He moved out of the way with a millisecond to spare. Then he grabbed her free arm.

“I won’t let you go until I know every detail from the time you left my side at the Expo.” This technique wouldn’t win him points at a meeting of abuse survivors, but his in-your-face method had worked for many of his men who had lost either comrades, limbs, or the desire to live another day.

She pulled hard, but he held tight. His focus remained only on her. Whether she realized it or not, she had to talk.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I want to go home and start over, but since I have no home anymore, I’m simply going to try to forget about Jordan. And I can’t if you keep demanding I tell you.” The volume of her voice rose. “Don’t worry. I intend on finishing whatever my task is.”

He dropped his forehead to hers despite the knowledge that she could slam into it. His voice softened. “I need to know what happened, and you need to tell me.”

She’d never get through this if she held the memories inside to fester and destroy her. Although he’d been through the painful aftermath of missions gone wrong before, with other partners, this time, it felt more personal, as though
his
only hope at survival was making Cassie whole again.

Through tears and clenched teeth, she pulled out of his hold, but remained standing inches from him. “Debriefing me? I forgot. You have a need to get the mission accomplished. And how can you complete it if your technical expert falls apart?”

“I need you, angel.” His arm encircled her waist.

“You only need my knowledge.” She dropped her head onto his shoulder.

He lifted his other hand under her chin, careful to avoid the bandage, and brought her lips close to his. “I need
you.
”

He kissed her. A soft, sweet kiss that made no demands, only sought to comfort her. He didn’t stay away from her split lip. Instead, he brushed his lips across the swelling and licked the wound. She didn’t pull away. He kissed her again and again until her tears fell more quickly, and she began to return the kiss. Her body shuddered. She couldn’t hold back her tears. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the couch.

Her beat-up face rested on his chest, and her sobs came louder and faster. The agony of her nightmare finally surfaced. He held her tight as her body shook in uncontrollable waves. All he could do was rub her shoulders and let her mourn the end of her innocence. The Cassie of his dreams, the one with a permanent smile and a vegetarian pantry, had been lost to this brutal occupation.

He kissed the top of her head and gently brushed back her hair. Bruises across her cheek and the fat, split lip made her seem tougher than she was. He was tempted to strip her down to see the extent of her other injuries, but he needed her permission and her trust, and at this point he had neither.

She faced the window. Soft lights glowed over the river at dusk. When her breathing became slower and more controlled, she spoke. “I grabbed some lunch and then went to Omnicore Explosives and obtained the price list. Darn. I lost it in everything that happened.”

Information he didn’t need, and a task she hadn’t needed to go on. It was his fault. One hundred percent his fault. He squeezed her more tightly, thinking about what could have happened. “That’s okay. I’ll call them later.”

She sighed against him, and then she started talking. She told him everything. When she reached the part of her story about the guard, he had to force himself to stay calm for her sake.

“In the end, he didn’t do anything. I fought back and escaped.” She rested her head back on his shoulder.

“Did he touch you?”

“Yes.”

“On your face?”

She nodded. “He punched me and pulled my hair. I’ve never been so scared.”

“You said you fought him off.” He held her tight and comforted her so she could continue.

He made her describe in detail what the man did. She tried to brush over the more intimate details, but eventually, through tears and anger, she told Simon everything. She’d escaped. She’d saved herself like the heroine she was, but didn’t believe herself to be.

A half hour later, his beauty slept in his arms. He looked down at her bruises and rubbed his thumb across her lips. She needed him and, by God, he needed her.

C
assie awoke to an overcast skyline. Still dressed in her jeans and Dean’s sweatshirt, she was stretched across the couch, entwined in Simon’s limbs. He seemed like a safe haven, but, as always, looks could be deceiving and often were. She slipped out from under his arm and used the bathroom. When she returned, Simon, wearing only a pair of shorts, was sitting up, typing on his phone.

Why couldn’t she hate him? Because he still held her trust, and he held her heart. She’d been unfair to blame him for what happened. Her actions, her consequences. It was time to stop blaming everyone else and take responsibility for her own life.

“Good morning.” A warm smile broke across his face.

She lifted her arm in a lame wave, unsure how to proceed after pouring out the humiliating details of her incarceration.

“Hi.” Her throat burned as she spoke. The outburst from the night before had strained it.

“You should take a shower. You’ll feel better after the long night.”

“In a few minutes.” She sat next to him. “I’m sorry for causing you so much trouble. You always told me to think before I acted, and I didn’t.”

His fingers brushed through her hair, lingering by the base of her neck. “You cared about another human being. You did what any decent person—at least one with a core of gold—would.”

“Not gold, iron. And it weighs me down. I’ve always felt in control of my life, but now I’m drowning. I can’t understand how you’ve lived this way for so long. I heard about Nicola. Some people in the office said she’d do whatever it took to finish a job, including sex and murder. I’m not sure I could sleep with a person I wasn’t attracted to, and I’m not sure I could kill anyone. And look at Alex, traveling around the globe with a husband following and a baby on the way. This life isn’t for me.”

He tugged on Dane’s sweatshirt and slid it over her head, leaving her in a white tank top. He’d made no secret of his hostility toward Dane, so she let him remove the article of clothing. His hands traced a pattern across her back and shoulders, occasionally lifting the back of her shirt—nothing sexual, but more clinical, as though looking for injuries. When his hands stopped moving, she leaned back against his chest. Two powerful arms encircled her waist, and Simon’s chin rested on her head.

“Don’t compare yourself to Nicola or Alex,” he said. “Nicola lived for her job and nothing else. She fought demons, both real and imaginary. Death never scared her. She lived with the motto “kill or be killed.” She was killed. And Alex? She has more innate skills than any one person should have and remain sane. Trust me, there are times when Henry needs to bring her back down from the ledge. No one is perfect. In fact, you have skills they would have bartered away limbs for. Neither one of them was great with computers, especially Alex. She barely uses her laptop, except for an occasional report she needs to file.”

“But my skills haven’t been necessary so far.”

“They are now. I’m still buying twenty drones from Pelican. I’ll need you with me in San Francisco when I do. And there’s a team of specialists meeting us in France to add explosives, making them suicide capable. You can outfit them. I can’t.”

His words landed hard. Suicide implied someone would die. “Like a suicide bomber, but the drone is unmanned? What about the other side? Will the explosives hurt people?”

“Cassie, this game we play is so much bigger than the two of us. I try to keep casualties to a minimum, but I’m not perfect. My job is to prevent most arms from getting to the people who ordered them, but to be effective undercover I need to have some shipments go through. Otherwise, who would use my services? We track the shipments closely and most of the time, we prevent the guns from getting through to non-allies. But this game makes for strange bedfellows. Several groups I assisted years ago now have a different diplomatic arrangement with Great Britain, going from friends to foes. Everything changes, all the time.”

“Who are the drones being sold to?”

“The North Korean businessmen we met in Jordan. They’re impatient with the ruling party, because they haven’t seen the profits they were promised years ago, although they see large amounts of wealth flowing past them to the president’s friends and family. They’re hoping to start a war with South Korea by flying the drones over the DMZ to strike some South Korean, or even better, U.S. military targets. They figure they can make more money during a rebuilding of a united Korea, rather than wait for the current North Korean regime to share some of the wealth.”

The muscles across her shoulders and up her neck tensed. She shifted to face him. “We’re starting a war?”

He kissed her forehead. “It’ll look that way, but you’ll reprogram the drones so they detonate on the North Korean side of the border, thus averting disaster. The trick is to have the detonation linked to someone other than you and me. Perhaps faulty circuits.”

The tension in her shoulders eased. She could actually avert a disaster in this job. “That’s brilliant.”

“Ironically, it was Tucker’s idea. He’s better working strategy than he is in the field.”

“He was a field agent?”

“He was in the field, but was incompetent.”

“As bad as me?”

“Worse.” Simon’s warm smile cracked into a full-fledged grin.

She shook her head in feigned shock. “Impossible.”

“Believe it. He would have given away the keys to MI6 if they hadn’t taken him out of the field.” He squeezed her tight, as though he’d never let her go. “I’d take you on my team over Tucker in a heartbeat.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry about spending time with Dane. He was so nice to me, I couldn’t just ignore him after everything he did for me.”

Simon kissed her again on the forehead, so gently it felt more like the draft from a butterfly wing. A strange but sweet gesture coming from such a giant of a man. “I’m not threatened by Dane in the least.”

“You’re not?”

“He’s always brought out the worst in me.”

“You know him?” That would explain the almost friendly hostility they shared.

“We’ve met a few times in the past and have battled over women. He usually won, but he always cheated.”

“Are you afraid he has a shot with me?”

Simon laughed. “Not a chance.”

“Really?”

“You’re mine.” His voice lowered, and his gaze burned though her.

As much as she liked the idea of being Simon’s, the newly emerged warrior in her stopped a full surrender to him. “I’m not property, Simon.”

“Let me finish. When I lost you in Jordan…” He paused and swallowed hard. “Let’s just say I never want to lose you again. Ever.”

He tightened his grip on her as if she would leave if he let go. He shouldn’t worry, because she was staying put.

She kissed his cheek and tried, but failed, to curb the rush of tears from her eyes.

He moved his lips over the scratches on the side of her face, down over the bandage on her chin, and returned to her mouth where he soothed the pain with a lick of his tongue.

She pulled back, her heart beginning to beat out a rushed and panicked rhythm. “I don’t think I’m ready for anything more than your sweet kisses.”

He laughed. “I agree. You have full control over whether or not we resume being lovers. And I’ll be more than happy to resume where we left off when you come to me begging on hands and knees. Only that will convince me you’re ready.” He stood up, leaving her alone on the couch. “You better shower and get dressed. I’m moving back into the bedroom. We can share it.”

“I thought I was the one in charge of this relationship?”

“I never said that. You’re in charge of when we have sex again. I’m in charge of this operation. Since you’ve recovered from being pissed at me about your time in jail, you need to be close to me for several reasons. First, we both should sleep in the bed for a better night’s sleep. Second, I don’t want you out of my sight any longer than necessary.”