Don't be stupid again...
He could return to this world with nothing more than a few words of commitment. Tomorrow he could stay here, or he could be headed back to hell.
It was all up to him.
"Damn you, Joe," he muttered as they crossed the street. That bastard had known exactly what he was doing when he'd sent him out here to mix with regular people.
"They're coming into D.C. this week, Joe."
Joe looked up from his file on a European case he was working on to see Syd standing in the doorway of his office. "You sure?"
She nodded. "I just got the confirmation from Retter, and they've made six phone calls to APS this week alone to confirm their 'protection.' "
Asset Protection System, or APS, was the front for a known company of freelance mercenaries and contract killers. BAD had been trying to monitor it for a long time, but it was next to impossible. They could trace incoming calls only, and even those were infrequent.
Joe could hear the panic in her voice. But unlike Syd, he knew Steele wasn't about to leave them. Jail wasn't a picnic, and as distasteful as Steele found this work, it beat the hell out of prison detail.
"Don't worry, we haven't lost him yet."
She pulled her glasses off as she fretted. "Yeah, but what if we do?"
"Trust me, Syd. The best people to fight for freedom are the ones who've lost their own. They understand the importance of it a lot more than those who've never been without."
Syd wished she could believe that. But at the moment everything seemed so hopeless. "Maybe I should head out to D.C. and start looking for a way--"
"Give me twenty-four hours, Syd. That's all we need."
She wasn't so sure about that. "But it could be twenty-four hours wasted that I could spend trying to find a way into APS."
Joe got up from his desk. He picked something up and moved to stand in front of her. "You ever been to the Ryman?"
She scowled at his question. "What has that got to do with anything?"
"It's a special show tonight. They're actually broadcasting the Grand Ole Opry live from the stage like they used to in the good old days."
Okay...she was worried about national defense, and Joe was off on a nostalgia high. The only problem was, she really needed him to put down the crack pipe and join the rest of them in reality.
He handed her a ticket. "You should go."
She stared at the ticket in her hand as if it were an alien object. "You've completely lost your mind, haven't you?"
He gave her a good-natured grin. "Be there, Syd. It's an order."
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "I really hate country music."
His face turned deadly serious. "You know, there's a lot of things in life that I hate that I have to tolerate. Traffic. Lines. Tee's driving. Disco Muzak. But you get used to it." He paused to give her that "don't argue" stare. "Be there, Syd. It'll be good for you."
He walked past her, out of the office.
Syd sighed heavily as she stared at the ticket. "Someone shoot me, please."
"Any particular place you prefer?"
She turned to see Tee entering the office. "The head. Right between my eyes."
Tee frowned. "Okay. What has you so upset?"
She held up the ticket.
Tee laughed before she shook her head. "That man and his Opry. He's downright scary with it."
"Do I really have to go?"
"It's not so bad."
She was surprised by Tee's defense. She knew for a fact Tee's favorite bands were the Black-eyed Peas and Godsmack. "You've been?"
Tee shrugged as she moved to her desk and opened a drawer. "Joe likes it." Petey looked up from his bed, then settled back down to sleep. Ignoring her prized dog, Tee pulled out a small lime green iPod. "And this helps immensely."
Syd looked at it as if it were the Holy Grail. "Can I please borrow it?"
Tee tossed it to her.
She grabbed it and held it like a lifeline, which is exactly what it would be. "Thanks, Tee."
"No problem. Just promise me you won't shoot Joe."
"I'll try, but I can't promise the impossible." Syd left the office and headed back to her desk. But as she sat down, it wasn't her case that was on her mind.
It was Steele.
Over and over, she saw the pain in his eyes. Heard the pain in his voice. She was lucky. She still had her family. Granted, they had no idea what she did for a living. They only knew she was a federal employee. If she ever told them the truth, they would be worried constantly.
Joe didn't take many agents who had such attachments. Tee had told her that all of Joe's family had died before he turned twenty. Having experienced such loss firsthand, he didn't want to create a bureau of widows and orphans.
He also believed that having a family made an agent weak, vulnerable. It gave your enemies a target.
Syd wasn't so sure about that. Her mother could wield a mean garden hoe when she wanted to. There were enough snakes who'd given up their ghost because they dared venture into her yard to prove it. And her dad...get him talking on stocks and bonds, and he could bore anyone to death--even the meanest terrorist out there.
When it came to her sister, Martha, she could shoot even straighter and better than Syd. While growing up, Martha had wanted to join a Wild West show, courtesy of the Clint Eastwood movies. It had broken her heart when she'd found out that such things no longer existed. But it gave her a legacy that Smith and Wesson would envy.
Yeah, her family was about as loony as they came, but at least they were there for her. All she had to do was pick up the phone, and she could talk to any one of them any time she needed to.
Poor Steele. No one should live their life abandoned by their loved ones.
Sighing, she forced herself to focus on her work. Still, it all came back to one basic thing.
She needed a man who didn't want any part of her, or of this assignment. How could she ever convince him to help her protect the Uhbukistani president?
Sighing, she tucked the iPod in her purse, then slid it back into her drawer. "C'mon, Steele. Don't disappoint me. I need one man in my life who's dependable."
"Hey, Syd?"
She looked up to see Andre Moore in the opening of her cube. At an even six feet in height, Andre was a handsome African-American man who served as one of the intelligence experts. More than that, he was an amateur inventor. And as always, he was impeccably dressed in a white button-down shirt, a dark blue tie, and a pair of pleated trousers.
Since she'd been in Nashville, he'd been helping her prep for the Uhbukistani situation. "What'cha need, Andre?"
"I got some real bad news. The agent we had on this over in Europe has just been found in Georgia. His throat was cut."
"Yuri?"
He nodded.
Syd hissed as pain from that hit her. She always hated to hear about the death of an agent, and this one in particular hit her hard.
A draft from the CIA, Yuri Korjev had been a dedicated agent who had never let them down. The grandson of Russian immigrants, he'd been convinced that he could infiltrate the Uhbukistani inner circle and keep tabs on the president's son.
Obviously his failure had proven fatal.
She winced as an image of one of his famous grins went through her mind.
Don't worry, Yuri, she thought with conviction. We'll get them. But that was cold comfort for a man who was now dead.
"And it gets even better."
"Of course it does," she said quietly. Didn't it always? "What?"
"I looked into employment opportunities with APS. The only way in is by invitation. You have to be scouted. They're so paranoid, they make Howard Hughes look normal. I can't even get a bug in there."
"Great. So it's Steele or nothing."
He nodded. "If he turns us down, there's nothing else to be done. He's our only way into that door. The game is over before it begins."
And Yuri would have died for nothing...
There w
as no way she was going to see this fail.
"All right, then. Let's turn up the heat on our man."
"How so?"
"Leak the word that he's escaped from jail. If he's listed as a jailbreak, they'll lengthen his sentence, and he won't have any place to go to escape us."
Andre sucked his breath in sharply between his teeth. "That's awfully harsh, Syd."
"So is life, Andre. And until he agrees to help us, it's about to get a lot harsher for Steele."
Six
S teele entered Carlos Delgado's apartment on Church Street with a lot of trepidation as to what might be awaiting him. Especially after he'd had to battle the untold stack of McDonald's wrappers, files, gun/car magazines, and receipts for a seat in Carlos's Corvette.
He'd been in enough homes of his Army buddies to know to be afraid of another man's housekeeping abilities. Very afraid. Granted, he had a high tolerance for messes and dirty underwear, but he drew the line at left-out food, dirty dishes, and filth.
But he had to give the man credit. Carlos's apartment, unlike his car, was immaculate.
"You live alone?" he asked Carlos.
Carlos snorted as if he understood why Steele was asking that particular question. "I have a cleaning lady who comes in once a week, even though Joe keeps warning me that one day she could turn into La Femme Nikita and shoot me. But I think it's worth the risk. I'd much rather take the chance on someone trying to kill me than to scrub out my own toilet...or, Dios forbid, do laundry." He shivered.
Steele could respect that.
"Besides, if she looks like Peta Wilson or Bridget Fonda, it might be worth a bullet or two." He winked and made a clicking noise between his teeth.
Steele shook his head. "I take it you have a thing for blondes."
"Definitely. The longer the legs, the better. Know what I mean?"
Yes, he did. But at the moment he seemed to have a preoccupation with a woman who had very average-sized legs, long dark hair, and accusing green eyes.
Carlos led him around the large living room, toward the breakfast counter that separated it from the kitchen. "There's beer, Coke, and food in the fridge, so help yourself."
"Thanks."
There wasn't a lot of furniture in the apartment--a brown leather sofa with end tables, a coffee table, and two media center recliners. The place was built more for comfort than for entertaining others.
Carlos had a top-of-the-line media center and stereo. There were Corvette and vintage-car Auto-Trader magazines piled up on the coffee table under four different remotes.
"Bathroom is down the hall. First door you come to. My bedroom is the next one down, so you can understand why I'm not going to show it to you."
"No worries. I have no interest in it."
"Good."
Carlos walked into the kitchen and opened a drawer where he kept a spare set of keys. "The sofa pulls out into a bed that already has linens and a blanket. There's a spare pillow and more blankets in the hall linen closet across from the bathroom, along with towels and washcloths. The only rule here is if you mess it up, you clean it up, or I kick your culo."
Those were rules he could live with. "Seems fair enough."
Carlos handed him the spare keys. "I need to get back and work on my case." He pulled out his wallet and handed Steele a business card that actually listed Carlos as an insurance broker. Joe had thought of everything. "You need anything, give me a call, and I can be here in less than fifteen minutes."
"Thanks." Steele tucked the card in his back pocket.
Carlos nodded before he left him alone in his place--something that again showed an unbelievable amount of trust. For agents, they seemed remarkably trusting. Too much so at times. It didn't jive with what he knew about such beasts, but then these guys seemed to like to thwart tradition. Which made him wonder what they would be like out in the field.
Either they were extremely effective, or total fuckups. He hoped, for the president's sake, they were the former and not the latter.
Steele wandered aimlessly through the small apartment. The furniture around him was mostly black and brown, very contemporary in design. There was a collection of black-and-white photographs on the wall behind the plasma TV. By the looks of the people in them, he'd assume they were Carlos's family. Most of them bore a striking resemblance to the man. And in the center of the photographs was one of a much younger Carlos with a boy around the age of thirteen. They had their arms slung around each other and looked as if they were celebrating something.
It must be the brother he'd mentioned earlier, who had gone to school in Miami.
Steele felt a sharp pang in his chest as he thought about his baby sister, Tina. As a kid, he'd been the overprotective brother to the point of making her insane. There had always been something very fragile about her, and that frailty had made their father push her constantly as he tried to "toughen her up." It was those two things that made him want to be a buffer between her and the world. To keep her safe no matter how mild or severe the danger. Even so, she'd worshipped him in that little sister-big brother way.
She'd been the only one in his family who had bothered to contact him at all after his arrest. He'd gotten a Christmas card from her with three simple sentences inside it.
Hope you're okay. Please don't tell Mom and Dad I sent this to you.
I love you,
Tina
Even now, the pain of her words cut through him. But at least she'd remembered him.
At least she'd made some kind of effort to contact him, even though they both knew their father would have her head if he ever found out. That man was incredibly unforgiving of any slight, whether imagined or real. God, country, and honor were all that mattered to him. Family be damned if they ever interfered with the above.
Steele winced at the reality of that. There would never be a way to reconcile with his father. He'd embarrassed a man who knew nothing of forgiveness.
Seeking some refuge from the grief of all he'd lost, he walked outside onto a small concrete balcony that overlooked the city. There was a small white plastic table and two matching plastic chairs. One was so close to the table that it was obvious that it wasn't used much. The other was angled so that Carlos could sit out here and enjoy the scenery. Oddly enough, there was an empty bottle of Black Label Jack Daniel's under it.
Steele frowned at the sight as he wondered how lonely Carlos must be that he sat out here drinking, alone.
Not willing to think about that, he continued to scope out the view. Carlos had a great view of the skyline and downtown area. Nashville was an interesting place. It was a comforting city--not too large, not too small. There was something familiar and inviting about it. It could be Anyplace, USA.
And before he knew what he was doing, Steele left the apartment to wander around the downtown streets.
God, it'd been way too long since he'd last been able to do this. He had no duties, no obligations.
No one knew his past. He was just another guy on the street. Not a trained sniper. Not a convict.
He was just Joe Average again. And it felt great.
Smiling to himself, he walked for blocks, doing nothing more than just enjoying the sunlight on his skin. There were numerous shops in the downtown area that were alive with activity. Nestled among a wide variety of restaurants and businesses, most of them paid tribute to country music.
He lost track of time as he drifted in and out of the stores, talking to people for the first time in months. No one here knew who he was or what he'd done. They spoke to him like a human being. Like a friend.
He was on top of the world.
Until he happened past a small cafe. Steele froze as he saw a flash of the Leavenworth prison in an aerial shot, along with the words "breaking news."
His heart pounding in trepidation, he pushed open the door to listen.
"Convicted of attempted murder against a senior ranking officer, Joshua Daniel Steele is believed to be armed and dangerous. He's said to be he
ading west, but details are sketchy at present. Local law enforcement officers have been given his picture and are preparing a massive multi-state hunt for the fugitive...."
And then they flashed his mug shot. Oh, what a beautiful picture that was. His head was bald, and he had a lovely smirk on his face that made him look like a serial killer. No doubt his mother would be so proud of her son's newfound celebrity status. He could imagine his father spewing his coffee right about now and cursing violently from his home in Manassas, Virginia.
Steele felt as if he'd been sucker-punched. This couldn't be happening...
Damn them! Why the hell would they do this to him?
Rage darkening his gaze, he glanced around the slightly crowded room slowly, grateful that no one except for one waitress seemed to be paying attention to the TV--and luckily, that one woman hadn't looked his way yet. Trying not to look nervous or suspicious, he backed out of the cafe before someone recognized him.
"So much for going back to jail," he snarled under his breath. He was now an escaped felon who would have additional time tacked onto his sentence--just what he needed.
Apparently BAD had just screwed him. But little did they know, he wasn't the kind of guy to just bend over and take it. Oh, no. They'd turned on the wrong person this time, and he fully intended to make them pay.
"Syd, you've got no people skills."
Syd let out a disgusted breath as Joe chewed her a new one. Angry over his lecture, she clutched the arms of her chair while he sat on the opposite side of his desk, glaring at her. "We need him. Now he'll have no choice except to join BAD."
Joe's eyes turned even icier. "You should have consulted me before you alerted the media. Dammit, woman, this is not the way to start off this assignment. Have you any idea how hard he's going to be to hide? Not to mention how pissed off he is? And now you expect me to hand a loaded rifle to a man who no doubt wants all of our heads on a platter? Yeah...brilliant plan, Agent Westbrook. Got any more great ones in there? Tell you what, why don't we just call up the Uhbukistanis and turn over our plans and IDs to them too? Sounds good, huh?"
She really didn't need his sarcasm. "I didn't have time to wait."
Joe came to his feet, an angry tic keeping time with her rapid heartbeat in his left jaw. "Look, I don't issue orders often, but dammit, when I do, I expect them to be obeyed. You don't ever go around me again, do you understand?"