Page 5

Whoa , Jack thought. Breaking into Blake’s house. But it turned out he wasn’t going to have to break in, he could simply walk in.

“So, I can get us in his house, but once we’re in we might need to crack into safes. Do you have your safe-cracking kit?” Summer flicked a glance at him.

“I’m good,” Jack replied. He was. He was loaded for bear with surveillance equipment and the suppressed Glock 19 and MP5 Nick Mancino had given him in his gym bag. Plus of course his set of picks, a powerful autodialer and some C-4. Summer didn’t have to know how well equipped he was. She was already a little spooked at knowing who he’d become.

Summer. Summer Redding.

The funny-looking girl had turned into a beauty by the time she hit college. Jack’s head had definitely been turned and he’d made his play immediately. But then a lot of girls had turned his head back in the day. Beautiful girls were thick on the ground at Harvard. Healthy, wealthy American girls with twenty thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontics in their mouths, years of dance lessons and tennis lessons and a lifetime of eating excellent food. They’d all had glossy hair and white teeth and it had been like a male cornucopia. All he’d had to do was reach out his hand and there they were.

Summer had been stunning, but then they all were.

Now…not so much. Not many of the Harvard girls had aged well. Oh, they were perfectly well maintained. Lots of gym time, lots of beauty salon time. Some had already gone under the knife, sometimes multiple times.

Summer hadn’t. That was a natural beauty he was looking at. A very pissed-off natural beauty.

Well, after bedding her fifteen years ago, popping her cherry then walking cheerfully away without a word, then seducing her roommate and two other girls on her dorm floor, only to crop up after being declared dead and break into her home…pissed off seemed pretty reasonable.

“That’s his official home,” Summer said. “And we’ll search it top to bottom. But he also has a luxury apartment that no one knows about. He brings—brought—his mistresses there and did drugs. Or at least he did according to my aunt, who hated him.”

Pretty Summer Redding. Surprising him. “Do you know where it is? The secret apartment? And do you have keys to that, too?”

She smiled. “I know where it is, and I have the keypad code.”

“Wow.” Surprise after surprise. “How did that happen?”

“It’s a long and unpleasant story.” She sighed. “So, the no-frills version is that my aunt used to send me in to obtain evidence against him for the divorce. He didn’t know that she knew about the apartment. She blackmailed one of his mistresses for the code.”

“Let’s hope he hasn’t changed the code,” Jack said.

“I seriously doubt that. At least in my day, Hector was tech-challenged. And he thought no one knew about the apartment. My aunt said it wasn’t registered in his name but in the name of some corporation. We’re bound to find something either in the mansion or in his bachelor pad.”

A secret hideaway where Blake might have kept records. Exactly what he needed. “Blake was part of the conspiracy, no question about it. He helped the plan that killed my parents and he wanted to kidnap and then kill Isabel to shut her up. Let’s go. We’re going to break into both places.”

Summer stood. “Okay. We’ll take my car. Where’s yours? And how can you have a car if you’re dead?”

“You’d be surprised at the things dead people can do. I bought myself two rust buckets and had the chassis strengthened and the engines completely overhauled. One’s in Portland and one’s here. I bought them under one of my identities and have the ID ready if I’m stopped. Never have been, though.”

Summer looked up at him, frowning.

“What? Do I have lettuce in my teeth?”

“No. I’m wondering whether you need to put your wig and beard on. You’ve survived this long as a dead man, I wouldn’t want to be the one to out you.”

He balked suddenly at putting the beard and wig on. He hated wearing them. They itched and made him feel confined. More than that, they made him feel like a non-person, which was, of course, the fucking point. But suddenly, with Summer here, knowing full well that it was a security breach, he couldn’t stand the thought of wearing his homeless costume. Particularly the BDUs that smelled of piss. He didn’t want to be an unperson. He wanted to be Jack Delvaux again, in the worst way. Seeing Summer again…seeing what an incredibly beautiful and fascinating woman she’d become, the man in him rebelled at going back into hiding, like a cockroach scurrying back under a rock.

But he couldn’t say that. “Your car’s in the garage, right? And you have an elevator that goes to the garage?”

He knew because he’d checked.

“Yeah, so? This place is still surrounded by security cameras.”

This is where it got tricky. “Not any more, it isn’t,” he said gently.

Her eyes widened. God she had gorgeous eyes. A light silvery gray, bright and intense, alive with intelligence. He could almost hear the gears engaging in her head. “You disabled the security cameras in my building?” she asked, appalled.

He nodded.

“I don’t know whether to be mad at you or admire you.”

“The latter?” Jack ventured. He’d wanted to switch the cams off temporarily but it would have taken a ton of time so he’d ended up just disabling the damned things.

She stared, wide-eyed, hovering between anger and admiration and finally gave a half laugh. She’d opted for Door Number Two. Good.

“When you broke into my apartment you didn’t do permanent damage, did you?”

“No,” he said truthfully. But the building’s security cams were all gone. Probably about $20K worth of damages.

“Whew.” She shook her head ruefully. “So I guess it’ll be okay if you don’t go into Full Homeless. What about at Hector’s place?”

“I’ll disable his system, too. At both places.”

If she wondered why he was so hot on not going Full Homeless, as she put it, she wasn’t saying it. Jack was aghast at himself because he was breaking opsec, big time. He thought for a second about putting that beard and wig back on and then—nah. Not going there.

The hell with it.

“Looks like you gave yourself over to a life of crime,” Summer said as she gathered her coat and purse.

Jack grunted. Yeah. There had often been a very fine line between being undercover and being a criminal during his fifteen years with the National Clandestine Service. But if it kept the enemies from America’s shores, it was fine with Jack. Until he realized that he’d been working for the enemy.

Summer was quiet in the elevator going down, which suited him. She stared straight ahead, lost in thought. Jack positioned himself slightly behind her so he could look at her without her noticing. He didn’t want to perv on her but, man. She’d turned into an amazing woman.

Slim but without that skinny look he hated. He’d spent long periods in places where people were skinny because they didn’t have enough to eat. He hated that look in fashionable women, all bones and sinews and hollows. All those underweight women looked deprived and unhappy. It was unnatural. Summer was slender, but strong, toned and healthy looking.

And…gorgeous.

Amazingly beautiful women were rarer in their thirties than in their twenties. Good looks were often a free gift to the young. After that, how you lived your life showed. And Summer lived her life well, it was apparent in every cell of her body.

And she did important work.

Jack had been reading Area 8 for the six years of its existence, and he hadn’t read a stupid article yet. Area 8 hosted journalists of opposing views, but unlike many publications, the tone was always respectful, which he imagined she set.

And she was so fucking hot.

Maybe because it had been such a long time since he’d been with a woman. His last mission had been sexless because he couldn’t afford distractions. Being undercover was dangerous. He could handle the danger to himself but he couldn’t drag a woman into that life. He’d be painting a target on her back.

And of course the past six months had been absolutely sexless. Who was going to bed a homeless guy who smelled of piss? He’d barely been seen as a human being let alone a man.

So he was a little out of practice here with being in an enclosed space with a beautiful woman. A beautiful, accomplished woman who was definitely smarter than he was and whom he’d wronged. A long time ago, sure, but she hadn’t forgotten. There was wariness and distance there, not good things in a former lover. Jack had liked to leave them smiling back in the day.

Fuck. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking at all. Summer had been like an ice cream cone, all creamy and delicious. But vanilla. And then chocolate and strawberry and double fudge ice cream cones had presented themselves, readily available.

That week with Summer had been amazing. She’d been incredibly sweet and after that first little shock at her virginity—who the hell was a virgin at eighteen at Harvard? How the fuck could he have known?—it had been absolutely great. If Jack could rewind the clock, knowing what he knew now, he’d have grabbed onto Summer with both hands and never let go.

But—he’d been twenty-two and full of hormones and the party was never going to end. And then the CIA had come calling and his life had split into two.

But that week with her…it had been really great. His eyes roamed down her slim, straight back, from her strong shoulders to the ridiculously tiny waist to the full hips. God. He’d held her down while he?—

Summer sniffed and wrinkled her nose, turning her head slightly to glare at him. “What’s that smell ?”

“Homeless stuff, sorry.” He held up his gym bag. “Never leave home without it.”

“Well put it in the trunk when we get into the car.”

“No can do, sorry.” He shrugged. “Have to keep it with me at all times. The best I can do is keep it on the backseat but I have to be able to reach it quickly. I can put on the piss-soaked jacket, beard and wig fast. Fourteen seconds. I practiced and timed it. Takes me fourteen seconds to get my homeless on.”

“Oh.” Her voice softened. “That might have saved your life. If Blake would go after Isabel who is harmless, he definitely would have come after you if he suspected you’d survived the Massacre.”

Jack nodded. “I’m not easy to kill, but yeah. If I hadn’t gone underground, if I’d openly investigated the Massacre, I’d be dead. Arranged traffic accident, mugging gone bad…these guys don’t fuck around.”

“No.” Her beautiful face tightened. “They’re willing to kill hundreds of people and plunge the country into near bankruptcy. They don’t play around.”

The elevator stopped with a soft ping and the doors opened onto the garage. Summer didn’t move. She stared ahead then turned and cupped his bristly jaw with a soft hand. “I’m glad you’re still alive, Jack.” And then she walked out.

Well, damn. What the fuck was he supposed to say to that? Did that mean she still—no. Don’t read too much into it. She was a good person and of course she was glad he hadn’t been shot in the head or nudged off a cliff. Though considering how he’d treated her in college…she’d have been justified to shoot him in the head herself.

She was halfway across the garage and some primitive instinct made him hurry to catch up. He’d long ago learned how to cover ground fast without running. He was at her side in an instant.

Nobody knew he was here but it wasn’t lost on him that if someone knew he was alive and that he was with Summer, she wouldn’t be safe. And that was like a cattle prod to the chest. The idea that someone could hurt Summer…God. Because whoever was behind this conspiracy, both in the CIA and in China, if it originated there, whoever was pulling the strings, was ruthless. Would kill without hesitation and Summer’s beautiful light would be blown out. Jack shivered and caught up with her, stepped past her and opened the driver’s side door without thinking.

“Thanks,” she said and slid in. “You’re riding shotgun.”

He had to clench his jaw to keep it shut. He wanted to drive. Needed to drive. But it was her car, her rules. Jack thought briefly about taking his car but it would stand out in Blake’s neighborhood.

“Of course,” he murmured, walking over to the passenger side, sitting down and pushing the seat back as far as it would go. Her car wasn’t made for tall people. He placed his bag in the footwell behind Summer, where he could reach it fast.

“How long do you think it will take to get to Casterly Blake?” The Delvaux kids’ term for The Glades, Blake’s over the top mansion, given to it the summer everyone read A Game of Thrones . Blake would have made a great Lannister. He’d been all about money and power.

“About an hour. What?” This with a sidelong glance at him.

He couldn’t hide the wince. It would have taken him maybe half an hour. “Nothing.”

“Don’t you ‘nothing’ me, Mr. Secret Agent man. I’m not about to get pulled over for speeding. Blake is dead. Nothing is going to change that. Speeding will get us nowhere.”

Except it would get them to Casterly Blake fast. Jack hated slow driving. He was all about speed. And there was something tingling in his system, some kind of sixth sense that something was happening and he needed to move fast.

Or it could be the woman at the steering wheel, carefully taking corners, beautiful face very serious. Maybe it was a different kind of tingle he was feeling. Not that operational tingle but one farther down.

Long time since he’d felt that tingle.

Think of something else.

“So,” he said. “Area 8.”

“Yep.” She took a neat turn, an excellent driver. He relaxed a little. He didn’t trust too many people behind the wheel. But she clearly knew what she was doing.

He wanted to know more about her. The extraordinarily pretty, nerdy girl had grown into a gorgeous and fascinating woman who wasn’t giving him jack shit about herself.

“Where’d you get the name? Area 8? Is that like Area 51?”

That coaxed a faint smile out of her. “Nope, not at all. Area 8 is a part of the brain discovered by a scientist called Korbinian Brodmann. It processes uncertainty and, interestingly, it processes hope, or rather expectation in conjunction with uncertainty. We live in an uncertain world that holds out some hope.”

“Hence, Area 8 .”

“Yep.”

“And the blog? You didn’t study journalism.” He frowned. “Or did you?” He hadn’t been too concerned with the majors of the women he bedded in those days.

She shot him an ironic glance, perfectly aware of what he paid attention to in college. “I studied political science. My parents dragged me to some very unsavory parts of the world. I saw exactly what chaos and disorder could do. It wrecked lives, stunted lives. I wanted to figure out what made some societies stable and prosperous and what made some societies brutal and volatile. The ruling class is the obvious answer but there’s more there. A lot of it has to do with what people expect from their society and that’s what I wanted to dedicate my life to. I expect a lot and say so.”

“You must get disappointed a lot, too.” The unexpectedly bitter response was impossible to repress. Jack hadn’t had too many kumbayah moments lately. More or less everyone he knew was venal and power hungry and the few who weren’t had the bad habit of falling dead.

Her hands tightened on the wheel. “I think I had lower expectations than you, Jack.”

That shut him up. Because, yeah, she’d had a lot of crap in her life at a very young age. Her parents had both come from rich families but they were druggies and had died young, but not before dragging Summer all over. She’d had no stability and God knows what she’d seen when she was a kid.

Jack, on the other hand, had grown up in a great family. Stable and loving. He’d been in his twenties before he’d had anything bad happen to him. And it hadn’t even happened to him. They’d found the body of an Iraqi informer he’d recruited floating in the Tigris River, sans a lot of body parts. Body parts that had been cut out of him while still alive.

He’d seen a lot of bad shit in his NCS years, really bad shit. But he’d had a bedrock of love and stability in his early life that had acted as a shield. Summer hadn’t had that at all.

So Summer was right to call him on his bullshit. “I read Area 8 all the time,” he said quietly. “It’s great. Looks like you’ve got a wide range of correspondents.”

“And informants,” she answered. “Lot of wrongdoing going on. I didn’t mean for Area 8 to be a whistleblowing site. I wanted to pursue deep policy issues in an accessible fashion. I wanted to talk about the unsung heroes who work hard on our behalf. I wanted to be a sounding board for new ideas that would make our lives better. But I ended up being swamped by reports of politicians out of control and financial types openly stealing and smiling while they do it.” She shook her head. “That wasn’t what I wanted but it’s what I got.”

Jack was burningly and inappropriately curious about her personal life. Was she married? She wasn’t wearing a ring but then she wasn’t wearing any jewelry at all. So maybe she was allergic to jewelry but there was a guy handy to cook her soup and rub her feet.

Fucker. Jack hated him already. Summer was a catch for any man. She was gorgeous and smart and kind and she’d been really funny when they were going out, though they hadn’t had a chance to talk about funny things this evening, what with trying to smoke out traitors and murderers.

Of course, there was the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room—the way he’d treated her. He’d fucked her blind for a week and then…well, and then he moved on. He remembered clearly showing up at her dorm room door and seeing her delighted face and then?—

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose.

—then her devastated face as she realized he was there to take her dorm roommate out. Because Summer had been pretty and fun but her roommate was hot too and—why not?

Jack could barely remember how he’d thought in those days, those college days before everything changed. It was like childhood memories—vague and tenuous. And just like a child he’d reached out for what he wanted, the newest shiny thing, without any thought to the consequences. He had a vague memory of Summer’s roommate. She’d turned out to be a bitch, but by the time he realized that, he’d gone on to another girl on Summer’s floor.

What a slut he’d been.

He might even have slowly made his way back to Summer—because she’d definitely been the very best—but then life had intervened, the CIA had come calling and his previous life was over.

And it was probably a good thing that he’d had so much sex in college because his CIA days hadn’t exactly been drenched in it. Sex had been hard to find and to arrange and more or less every available female around had been off-limits. Either because she was a colleague, or a potential enemy or a potential target for recruitment or that pretty chick in the bar needed to be vetted before he could ask her out…

And he’d been undercover which meant lying all the time. It’s one thing to lie for your country to a potential enemy. It’s quite another to lie to someone who might be a perfectly nice woman. But who might also be a secret agent for a foreign intelligence service.

But in the days before he dedicated his head and heart and—with hindsight—his dick to his country, he had slept around on an industrial level.

And probably broken Summer’s heart.

Fuck.