White Lies (8 page)

           
 
It was hard for Jay to enter Steve's room
after the emotional battering she had taken. She needed time to get herself
under control, but she felt the pull between them again; it was growing so
strong she no longer had to be in the room with him, touching him. He needed
her right now, far more than she needed time. She opened the door and felt his
attention center on her, though not even his head moved. It was as if he were
holding his breath.

           
 
"I'm back," she said quietly,
walking to his bed and putting her hand on his arm. "It seems I can't stay
away."

           
 
His arm twitched urgently, several times, and
she got the message. "All right," she said, and began reciting the
alphabet.

           
 
Sorry.

           
 
What could she say? Deny that she'd been
upset? He would know better. He felt the pull just as she did, because he was
on the other end of that invisible rope. He turned his face slightly toward
her, his bruised lips parted as he waited for her answer.

           
 
"It's all right," she said. "I
didn't realize what a shock I had just given you."
Yes.

           
 
It was odd how much expression he could put in
a single motion, but she felt his wryness and sensed that he was still shocked.
Shocked, but in control. His control was astounding.

           
 
She began spelling again.

           
 
Afraid.

           
 
The admission hit her hard; it was something
the old Steve never would have admitted, but the man he had become was so much
stronger that he could admit it and lose nothing of his strength. "I know,
but I'll stay with you as long as you want me," she promised.

           
 
What
happened?
 
He made it a question by a
slight upward movement of his arm.

           
 
Keeping her voice calm, Jay told him about the
explosion but didn't give him any of the details. Let him think that he'd
simply been in an accident.
Eyes?

           
 
So he hadn't understood everything she'd told
him before and needed reassuring. "You'll have more surgery on your eyes,
but the prognosis is good. You'll see again, I promise."

           
 
Paralyzed?

           
 
"No! You've broken both legs and they're
in casts. That's why you can't move them."

           
 
Toes.

           
 
"Your toes?" she asked in
bewilderment. "They're still there." His lips moved in a very slight,
painful smile.
Touch them.

           
 
She bit her lip. "Okay." He wanted
her to touch his toes so he'd know he still had feeling in them, as a
reassurance that he wasn't paralyzed. She walked to the foot of the bed and
firmly folded her hands over his bare toes, letting his cool flesh absorb the
heat from her palms. Then she returned to his side and touched his arm.
"Did you feel that?"

           
 
Yes.
 
Again he gave that painful fraction of a
smile.

           
 
"Anything else?"

           
 
Hands
.

           
 
"They're burned, and in bandages, but
they're not third-degree burns. Your hands will be fine."

           
 
Chest.
Hurts.

           
 
"You have a collapsed lung, and a tube in
your chest. Don't do any tossing around."

           
 
Funny.

           
 
She laughed. "I didn't know anyone could
be silent and sarcastic at the same time."

           
 
Throat.

           
 
"You have a trach tube because you
weren't breathing well."
Face
broken?

           
 
She sighed. He wanted to know, not be
protected. "Yes, some bones in your face were broken. You aren't
disfigured, but the swelling made it hard for you to breathe. As soon as the
swelling goes down, they'll take the trach tube out."
Lift the sheet and check my—

           
 
"I will not!" she said indignantly,
halting her spelling when she realized where his words were heading. Then she
had to laugh because he actually managed to look impatient. "Everything is
still there, believe me."
Functional?

           
 
"You'll have to find that out on your
own!"

           
 
Prissy.

           
 
"I'm not prissy, and you behave or I'll
have a nurse change your tube. Then you'll find out the hard way what you want
to know." As soon as she said the words she felt herself blushing, and it
didn't help that he was smiling again. She hadn't meant to sound the way she
had.

           
 
The effort of concentrating for so long had
tired him, and after a minute he spelled
Sleep.

           
 
"I didn't mean to tire you out," she
murmured. "Go to sleep."
Stay?

           
 
"Yes, I'm staying. I won't go back to my
apartment without telling you." Her throat felt thick at his need for
reassurance, and she stood by the bed with her hand on his arm until his
breathing changed into the deep, steady rhythm of sleep. Even then she was
reluctant to take her hand away, and she stood beside him for a long time. A
smile kept curving her lips. His personality was so strong that it came through
despite his limited means of communication. He wanted the truth about his
condition, not vague promises or medical double-talk. He might not know his
name, but that hadn't changed the man he was. He was strong, much stronger than
he had been before. Whatever had happened to him in the past five years had
tempered him, like steel subjected to the hottest fires. He was harder,
stronger, tougher, his willpower so fierce it was like an energy field
emanating from him. Oh, he had been a charming rascal before, devilishly
reckless and daring, with a glint in his eye that had turned many feminine heads.
But now he was... dangerous.

           
 
The word startled her, but when she examined
it, she realized that it described exactly the man he had become. He was a
dangerous man. She didn't feel threatened by him, but danger didn't necessarily
constitute a threat. He was dangerous because of his steely, implacable will;
when this man decided to do something, it wasn't safe to get in his way. At
some time in the past five years, something had drastically changed him and she
wasn't sure she wanted to know what it was. It must have been something
cataclysmic, something awful, to have so focused his character and
determination. It was as if he had been stripped down to the bare essentials of
human existence, forced to discard all his personality traits that weren't
necessary to survival and adopt new ones that were. What was left was hard and
pure, unbreakable and curiously resilient. This was a man who wouldn't admit
defeat; he didn't know what it was.

           
 
Her heart was beating heavily as she stood
looking down at him, her attention so focused on him that they might have been
the only two people in the world. He awed her, and he attracted her so strongly
that she jerked her hand away from his arm as soon as the thought formed. Dear
God! She would be a fool to let herself get caught in that trap again. Even
more now than before, Steve was essentially alone, his personality so honed
that he was complete unto himself. She had walked away relatively unscathed
before, but what would happen to her this time if she let herself care too
much? She felt scared, not only because she was teetering on the edge of
heartbreak, but because she was even daring to think of getting too close to
him. It was like watching a panther in a cage, standing outside the bars and
knowing you were safe, but feeling the danger that was barely restrained.

           
 
Making love with him before had been... fun,
passionate in a playful way. What would it be like now? Was the playfulness
gone? She thought it must be. His lovemaking would be intense and elemental
now, as he was, like getting caught up in a storm.

           
 
She became aware that she could barely
breathe, and she forced herself to walk away from his bed. She didn't want him
to mean that much to her. And she was very much afraid that he already did.

           
 
"What do we do?" Frank asked
quietly, his clear eyes meeting shuttered black ones.

           
 
"We play out the hand," the Man
answered just as quietly. "We have to. If we do anything out of the
ordinary now, it could tip someone off, and he isn't able to recognize his
enemies."

           
 
"Any luck in tracing Piggot?"

           
 
"We lost him in
Beirut
, but we know he hooked up with his old
pals. He'll surface again, and we'll be waiting."

           
 
"We just have to keep our guy alive until
we can neutralize Piggot," Frank said, his tone turning glum.

           
 
"We'll do it. One way or the other, we
have to keep Piggot's cutthroats from getting their hands on him."

           
 
"When he gets his memory back, he isn't
going to like what we've done." A brief smile touched the Man's hard
mouth. "He'll raise mortal hell, won't he? But I'm not taking any chance
with the protected-witness program until he's able to look out for himself, and
maybe not even then. It's been penetrated before, and could be again.
Everything hinges on getting Piggot."

           
 
"You ever wish you were back in the
field, so you could hunt him yourself?"

           
 
The Man leaned back, hooking his hands behind
his head. "No. I've gotten domesticated. I like going home at night to
Rachel and the kids. I like not having to watch my back."

           
 
Frank nodded, thinking of the time when the
Man's back had been a target for every hit man and terrorist in the business.
He was safe now, out of the mainstream ... as far as was generally known. A
very small group of people knew otherwise. The Man officially didn't exist;
even the people who followed his orders didn't know the orders came from him.
He was buried so deeply in the bowels of bureaucracy, protected by so many twists
and turns, that there was no way to connect him to the job he actually did. The
President knew about him, but Frank doubted the vice president did, or any
department secretary, the Chiefs of Staff or the head of the agency that
employed him. Whoever was President next might not know about him. The Man
decided for himself whom he could trust; Frank was one of those people. And so
was the man in Bethesda Naval Hospital. Two days later, they took the tube out
of Steve's chest because his collapsed lung had healed and reinflated. When
they let Jay into his room again she hung over the side of his bed, stroking
his arm and shoulder until his breathing settled down and the fine mist of
perspiration on his body began to dry.

           
 
"It's over, it's over," she murmured.

           
 
He moved his arm, a signal that he wanted to
spell, and she began reciting the alphabet.

           
 
Not fun.

           
 
"No," she agreed.

           
 
More
tubes?

           
 
"There's one in your stomach, for feeding
you." She felt his muscles tense as if in anticipation of the pain he knew
would come, and he spelled out a terse expletive. Her hand moved over his chest
in sympathy, feeling the coarseness of his hair as it grew out, and avoiding
the wound where the tube had entered his body.

           
 
He took a deep breath and forced himself to
slowly relax.
Raise head.
It took her
a few seconds to figure that one out. He must be incredibly sore from lying
flat for so long, unable to shift his legs or lift his arms. The only time his
arms were moved was when the bandages were changed. She pressed the control
that raised the head of the bed, lifting him only an inch or so at a time,
keeping her hand on his arm so he could signal her when he wanted her to stop.
He took several more deep breaths as his weight shifted to his hips and lower
back, then moved his arm to halt her. His lips moved in silent curse, his
muscles tightening against the pain, but after a moment he adjusted and began
to relax again.