“Elizabeth …” He sighed roughly. “I don’t want to scare you, but I’ve been in this business a long time, and I’ve seen a great many hostage situations. They’re potentially explosive for many reasons. If a hostage knows who the captors are, there’s always the possibility of testifying later in court. And if a hostage is held because of some information she has, she isn’t going to just forget it. Not, at least, as far as her captor is concerned.”
She stirred a little on the couch, staring at him with mistrust on her face but anxiety in her eyes.
Kelsey hurried on. “If Mallory’s holding Jo only until he gets something done—gets the evidence out of the way of whatever he’s doing—then maybe he will let her go, because then it would just be her word against his. But I don’t know that. I can find out what’s going on at Meditron, but without your help, I’m searching blindly, and Jo could get hurt because of that. If I push the wrong button because I don’t have information I need, I could stampede Mallory, cause him to move too fast. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” she whispered through stiff lips.
“Then trust me,” he asked softly.
“I don’t know you.” She hesitated, then blurted, “It’s my sister’s life we’re talking about! How can I trust you with that?”
“How can you trust Mallory?” he countered.
She bit her lip. “I’ve known him all my life.”
“He’s a shark,” Kelsey told her flatly.
Elizabeth almost smiled. “But a shark I know.”
Kelsey half nodded to acknowledge the point. “As in ‘better the devil you know than the one you don’t’?”
“Yes.”
He tried to ignore the inner sense of time rushing, and concentrated on this moment. Abruptly, without even realizing he was going to, he said, “My father was an agent. I remember I was sixteen when I found out; until then, I’d thought he was just a businessman. But that time, he came back from one of his ‘business’ trips with his arm in a sling and a bullet hole in his shoulder. That’s when I heard the real facts of life.” He smiled a little.
Elizabeth was interested despite herself and felt oddly moved because there was something constrained in Kelsey’s voice; this was not, she realized, something he had told many people. She waited quietly, hands folded in her lap, studying the face that had gone blank and hard after the smile died.
Another face. Another face he was showing her.
“For a few years we pretended everything was normal. My mother died and Dad threw himself into his work. I was in college, busy with my own life. Then I came home for summer vacation in my junior year, and Dad wasn’t there. Weeks went by. I finally called the ‘emergency’ number he’d given me. The next day, I got a visit from his boss, Hagen.”
Kelsey was hardly aware that he had slipped back into the past, barely conscious that he was twisting the big signet ring around and around the third finger of his right hand.
“It was so unreal,” he mused almost to himself. “If you could only see Hagen. He’s a round little man with a cherub’s face, a walking caricature of the self-important banty rooster. And this unreal little man was telling me that my father was on an unreal assignment, and they’d lost contact with him.”
“What did you do?” Elizabeth asked softly.
He looked at her, his face still hard and remote. “I was twenty-one, reckless. I demanded that Hagen let me look for my father. He agreed; I’ve never known why. Anyway, he gave me the information I needed, swore me in as an agent, and three days later I found myself charming my way into an international smuggling ring.”
When he said nothing more, Elizabeth said, “Kelsey?” very softly.
Kelsey, even with the remembered pain and bitterness tearing through him, heard her use his name—really use it—for the first time, and he was unaware of the longing in the look he gave her.
Inexplicably, she flushed, and asked him huskily, “What happened?”
“I enjoyed it,” he said, face remote and voice bleak. “At first. It was exciting in a way I’d never known. And at twenty-one who thinks of dying? What kid ever thinks it can happen to him or to someone close to him?”
“Your father?”
Kelsey drew a deep breath and released it slowly, raggedly. “He’d infiltrated the ring just as I had, but he hadn’t been so lucky; they found him out. Maybe he said the wrong word or gave someone a wrong look. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Anyway, they decided to make an example of him days before I got there. And they were creative about it. We were aboard an old freighter on the open sea, and I hadn’t been able to search the hold. I found out why when they brought … what was left of him up and threw him overboard.”
“Oh, my God,” Elizabeth whispered. She rose without thought and went to him, drawn as she would have been drawn to any wounded animal with anguished eyes. She placed one of her hands gently on his shoulder, and he took the other in both of his, staring down at it blindly.
In a monotone, he went on. “I could see he was dead; nothing human could have lived like that. And the worst of it was that I couldn’t react, couldn’t let them see what I felt. There were thirty of them, and we were on the open sea. I wasn’t armed. What could I do? I watched them throw my father overboard, and I turned as if it didn’t matter to me and walked away. And I guess I was convincing, because they never suspected me. We made port a few days later, and Hagen had an army out there an hour after I called him.”
“Kelsey, I’m sorry.”
He was still holding her hand gently in both of his, gazing down at it. “I went home. Back to college. I guess I even tried to act like a normal kid again. But I didn’t fit in that world anymore. I’d seen something I could hardly bear to live with, and it would be with me for the rest of my life. There were CIA recruiters at my college; when they offered me a job, I accepted. I worked for them about five years. Then Hagen came back into my life, and reminded me that he had sworn me in first and asked what the hell I was doing with the Company. He offered more freedom. I took it. And I fit in his world too.
“I think that, for a while, I got some kind of satisfaction out of defying death. I became a danger junkie. I just didn’t give a damn what happened. I took the most insane chances.”
Elizabeth found that she was softly kneading his shoulder, instinctively trying to ease taut muscles. Her eyes were burning and there was a lump in her throat.
Kelsey shook his head a little. “God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t had the luck of the Irish and several outstanding partners over the years. My luck held long enough for those partners to straighten me out.” He looked up at her then and forced a small smile. “I’ve been an agent almost fifteen years.”
Elizabeth hadn’t realized she was standing so close until he looked up at her. She was, she realized then, standing between his knees. Too close … too close. But she couldn’t move away, couldn’t break the hold of his slate gray eyes. She cleared her throat. “Why did you tell me?”
He shrugged. “You said you didn’t know me. Now you know more about me than most of the friends who’ve known me for fifteen years. Maybe that’ll count for something.” He sounded almost tired, and his face had the strained look of something held still for too long.
She didn’t know what to think. Trust him—or not trust him? Which was the real Kelsey? This quiet man with pain in his eyes, or the one who would lightly charm and passionately seduce? Unaware of the confusion in her voice, she said, “I don’t trust you, Kelsey.”
“I know you don’t. But I wish like hell you would.”
“You confuse me. You say you want to help. But you also said that this weekend we would—”
“Be in your bed.” He sighed softly. “I didn’t count on this, Elizabeth. I didn’t count on you. In my business, you don’t get close to anyone involved in the situations you’re investigating, because it puts you in danger. In danger of losing your objectivity. In danger of caring too much about the ‘wrong’ t
hings. In danger of forgetting all the training and years of experience.”
He released her hand, finding her waist and gently pulling her down until she was sitting on his thigh. His voice became lower, deeper, his eyes intent as they searched her face. “A good agent has to be virtually autonomous, able to act instantly and think only of resolving the situation. When you’re … self-contained, nothing can hurt you. You do your job and walk away. But when you lose that autonomy, when there’s someone involved who means too much to you, it makes the job harder. It makes you doubt yourself.”
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” she managed.
“I think you do. You’re too much a woman not to.”
Elizabeth was very conscious of his hard thigh beneath her, of the latent power of his arms, one around her back and the other lying still across her bare thighs. “I can’t help wondering if you’ll—”
“Walk away from this job when it’s finished?”
She nodded mutely.
“No,” he said, and felt again that inner shudder, that rumble of warning.
Shaken, Elizabeth protested, “How can you know? You said that you found your work exciting, dangerous. Once this job is done, there won’t be any danger here, Kelsey. It’s a small town in the back of beyond; there isn’t anything here!”
“You’re here.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard, and she was only distantly aware that she was speaking at all. “You can’t catch the wind,” she whispered. “Chain the lightning. And you’re as elusive as those elements. Somehow, I know that.” So many faces. So many men he had shown her.
Kelsey understood what she was saying; the problem was that he wasn’t entirely certain if she was wrong. Some rational part of his mind just didn’t know for sure. Would he be content without the harried dangers of fifteen years? Could he step out of Hagen’s world where he fit so well and into Elizabeth’s where he might not fit at all?
His hesitation was telling. “I—I don’t know, Elizabeth. I won’t willingly walk away, I know that.”
“What do you want from me?” she nearly wailed.
He hesitated again, torn between agent and man, wondering if there was, after fifteen years, any real boundary line between the two. “Trust me. Let me help you. Let me help Jo.”
“And that’s all?”
“You know it isn’t.”
Elizabeth tried to draw away from him, but stopped when his arms tightened. “It can’t be both,” she said tautly.
“It is both.” He could feel his iron control slipping, and there was a raw sound to his voice. “Dammit, Elizabeth, I want you! I can’t just turn that off.”
Bewildered as much by her own feelings as by him, she let anger shape her words. “I imagine it’s happened before in fifteen years, hasn’t it? Autonomous or not, I’m sure there’s been a little sexual tension here and there. We’re both adults; why not call a spade a spade? Blaine has the same problem, I’m afraid. But at least he pretends to love me.” She wasn’t really sure, but she thought she heard Kelsey curse bitterly just before his lips captured hers.
And Elizabeth was bitter herself, furiously bitter, because her mind and body, for the first time in her adult life, seemed jaggedly separate. Confusion, mistrust, and anxiety were a jumble in her mind, but her body responded with instant flaming desire to his searing kiss. Her hands moved slowly up corded forearms, touched the short sleeves of his shirt, slid over the smooth material until she could feel the muscles padding his shoulders and back.
She was feeling with every sense, aware as if all the nerve endings of her body were sensitized by his touch. But, even more, she felt his feelings; with a powerful empathy she had never known before, she could feel his anger and his need, feel some terrible battle taking place inside him. And she had the strange, overpowering impression that Kelsey himself wasn’t completely aware of that inner war, or if he was aware, that he was fighting to ignore it.
His lips left hers finally to trail down her throat in a hot demand, and Elizabeth spoke huskily without even thinking about it. “No. You’re angry.”
“Yes, I’m angry,” he said thickly against her throat. “I’m angry because I’ve got no business staying on this job. I should leave, let another agent take over. But I can’t leave. You matter too much. Dammit, Elizabeth.”
She was aching all over, fighting a mad desire to give in to the emotions storming through her with frightening force. But her mind could no longer control the separate entity that was her body, that hungering, splintered part of herself that wanted him beyond all else. Her fingers tangled in his thick hair and her head fell back, allowing him more room to explore, and the heat of his mouth on her flesh sent a wild tremor through her.
“Kelsey …”
He murmured wordlessly, a raw sound, and one big hand cupped the back of her head as he abandoned her throat to fit his mouth to hers again. He kissed her with a hard, driven passion, exploring her mouth, taking it fiercely. And when that devastating kiss ended, Elizabeth couldn’t even reclaim the breath he had stolen from her.
“You belong to me,” he said flatly, hoarsely.
She looked at his hard face through dazed eyes. “No,” she whispered, distantly terrified of losing herself in the elusive complexity of this man. How could she belong to him when she didn’t know who or what he was? How could she risk the most vulnerable part of herself by placing it in his keeping? No. She couldn’t.
He held her eyes with his own, knowing he walked a knife’s edge, knowing he was moving too fast. But he had no choice. There was no time, no time for the patience and rituals of courtship. “You belong to me,” he repeated. “You know it, and I know it. Say it, Elizabeth. Admit it.”
She swallowed hard, caught in the slate gray of his eyes. She was confused, aching, frightened by the intensity of his demand and by her own instinctive urge to admit what he demanded. “I … No, I can’t … I won’t.”
“You have to,” he said ruthlessly, driven by the impersonal ticking of his inner clock. “Stop thinking, Elizabeth, and feel. Your body knows you belong to me. Do you want me to prove it? If I carry you up those stairs, will you be able to say no?”
She closed her eyes, a ragged sigh escaping her. “Damn you. Oh, damn you.”
FOUR
THE ADMISSION, DRAGGED from her totally against her will, was too devastating to let stand alone and vulnerable, and Kelsey knew it. Quietly, he said, “Feel me shaking, Elizabeth. Feel what you do to me. There hasn’t been a moment since we met that I haven’t been on fire with wanting you.”
She looked at her fingers, still tangled in his thick hair, and forced her hands to move downward. But they would only move as far as his shoulders where they rested, feeling the hard padding of muscle over bone. And she could feel his hands, one still at her waist and the other at the back of her head, gentle fingers moving in her hair almost compulsively. She could indeed feel him tremble.
“It’s just physical,” she said finally, almost inaudibly.
The muscles in his jaws tightened, but his voice remained quiet. “Is it? Whatever it is, it isn’t going to go away.”
Elizabeth had never felt so torn. She wanted the man and mistrusted the agent—if that was what he really was. And, whatever he was, he had made her no promises, nothing she could hang on to. Was he using her to get information? Whatever his body felt, was his mind coldly calculating, probing the strength of her resistance? Why else would he have forced her to admit she couldn’t say no to his desire?
She didn’t know what to do!
In the same still, quiet voice, he said, “I could carry you up those stairs, Elizabeth. I could make you mine so completely you’d never doubt it again. We both know that. But you’d hate me for it, and fight me all the way. Not physically, but emotionally. I don’t want that.”
“You want information,” she said dully.
Kelsey hesitated, then swore softly. “Yes, I do. But that’s apart from us, apart from what we feel.?
??
“No, it isn’t.”
“Elizabeth—”
“I’ll tell you.” She broke away from him with an abruptness that caught him off guard, moving to a window on shaking legs and staring out blindly. Would she be putting Jo into even greater danger? She didn’t know, couldn’t know. But she did know that she could no longer bear being torn by the question of whether Kelsey was bent on seduction simply to get the information from her.
She had to know!
Several hundred miles away in a high-rise office building in Manhattan, the weekend quiet of a certain floor was broken by Zachary Steele’s disgusted voice.
“That’s it. Far as I can take it.”
Of the several people quietly watching his labors on the computer, only Raven spoke up. “And?”
“And nothing.” Zach sat back, looking at the others thoughtfully. “I just ran head-on into a military code lock.”
Josh Long, sitting close beside Raven on a vacant desk, frowned at his security and electronics expert, and friend of more than fifteen years. “Military? Now, that’s a bit … unexpected, isn’t it?”
Raven looked at her husband, worried. “What on earth has Kelsey stumbled into?”
Lucas Kendrick, chief investigator for Long Enterprises, turned away from another computer and shook his head at their inquiring looks. “No dice. Blaine Mallory’s so clean he squeaks. Personal bills paid off or current, business accounts up to date. An A1 credit rating, and a pillar of his community. The IRS has no complaints with his returns, and if he’s living above his income, he’s hiding it very well. He hasn’t put a foot wrong. Not even a traffic ticket.”
Kyle, who was sitting on a low counter beside Luc’s computer, looked baffled. “I don’t get it. Mallory comes up clean, Meditron is protected by a military code lock, and Pinnacle turns out to be a nice little Southern town. What gives?”