Chapter 14
Katie cautiously let herself into Alex’s penthouse apartment, where she and Dawn had lived for the past year. The interior was dark and cool. Silent.
He’s not here.
Not only could she tell by the deep stillness, but she felt his absence in her bones. She let out the breath she’d been holding.
That was relief deflating her lungs like that, right? She was furious at him. No disappointment whatsoever, darn it.
André had been adamantly opposed to her coming back here when he’d debriefed her earlier.
She still couldn’t believe Alex had turned out to be so unstable.
And selfish. What a bastard. But André had regretfully informed her that the CIA assessment of him was that he had snapped.
He could not be trusted. They’d declared him a rogue agent, armed and extremely dangerous.
If Alex was as crazy as they said he was, no way would he come back here. Right? It was the one place people knew to look for him. He would avoid his home like the plague.
Part of her wished he would show up here. That he would come looking for her to explain himself and apologize.
There must have been a reason he’d ditched her in Cuba not once, but twice. Her initial fury had given way to grief. She really, truly, loved him.
But he’d made his lack of return feelings crystal clear to her. Strange how love could transform to hatred and back again so quickly. She’d actively despised him for several days for up and leaving her.
Wiped out after all the travel and long hours of debriefing in exhaustive detail with André, she crawled into the master bed.
Fortinay had been deeply disappointed when she failed to produce any proof of chemical weapons stockpiles in Cuba. But all of the samples had ended up with Alex. And at this point, she expected he’d destroyed them all.
At least she was able to describe in exact detail where the bunker was located.
They’d even pulled up a live satellite feed and had her zoom in on the spot.
It had been creepy to look at the Zacara factory, the dirt road, and that innocuous grassy mound.
It was all so vivid in her mind, but it was starting to take on a dreamlike quality as it slipped into the past.
She supposed the CIA would send more operatives down to check the place out since she and Alex had failed. At least they’d brought out intel that the chemicals were there. That was something. If Alex were here, he would call her a Pollyanna for thinking like that.
The loss of him was a sharp pain in her chest that came and went. Sadly, she suspected she would live with those unpredictable slashes of grief across her heart for a long time to come.
As exhausted as she was, she tossed and turned, her thoughts churning furiously. Which was why she heard the front door locks disengaging in the wee hours of the night. She rolled out of bed and to her feet in one fluid move.
No lights came on in the condo, and her internal threat sensors went on high alert. Alex or someone here innocently would have turned the lights on. Wait. It was well after midnight. No one innocent was here.
A dark figure moved stealthily through the bedroom door. She slipped out her hiding place behind the door and jammed her pistol against the man’s spine. She ordered, “Freeze.”
The intruder froze at the same moment recognition of his height, silhouette, and the scent of his aftershave registered simultaneously. Alex .
“Gotchya. I win,” she said dryly.
Except she didn’t win. He simultaneously dropped to his knees, spun around, and surged up from below, ripping the pistol out of her hand and slamming her backward against the wall with a forearm across her neck. She glared at him disbelievingly.
He’d just attacked her. Surely not.. .
Surely, he had.
Abrupt fury blazed in her gut, and she let it. “What the hell are you doing here?” she snarled past his forearm.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “This is my home.”
“Not for much longer, it isn’t. The entire CIA is looking for you. You’re done, Alex.”
In the darkness, his teeth flashed momentarily as he smiled in sardonic amusement. She supposed he had a right to be amused. She doubted they would catch him if he didn’t want to be caught, either.
“What are you doing here?” she challenged.
“Taking care of a few loose ends before I disappear.”
“Is that what I am? A loose end?” Her voice rose. “Why did you abandon me in Cuba?”
“They sent you down there to spy on me. And then you betrayed me.”
“I never betrayed you!” she exclaimed.
She reached out to activate the light switch. She damned well wanted him to look her in the eye when he spouted that crap at her. Small halogen spotlights created strategic pools of light around the room.
Alex, who happened to be near one of the bright circles thrown down by the spotlights, looked like hell. It wasn’t so much that he needed a shave or his clothes looked as if he’d slept in them several times. It was the look in his eyes that staggered her.
They were chock full of barely restrained violence. He looked as if his usual tight control was on the verge of failing catastrophically.
He was a man on a bridge. But he wasn’t there to jump. He had an Ouzi and was about to start shooting everything and everyone who crossed his path. Her Alex was nowhere to be seen in the hot stare of this operative.
Funny, she’d thought his cold stare and icy focus were scary. But this volatile version of Alex was a hundred times scarier.
She choked out past his arm on her throat less convincingly than she’d hoped for, “I would never betray you, Alex.” She might have added that she had loved him more than she hated him, but there was no telling how Alex in this furious frame of mind would react.
He snorted. “That’s your opinion. But I was the one interrogated and drugged. You had free rein to roam around the base. And then you magically came to my rescue.”
“There was nothing magic about it.” She gurgled as his arm got heavier on her neck, partially cutting off her air.
She forced out in a raspy half-whisper, “I was scared to death and had to be creative and sneaky. I climbed out a window, and stole a woman’s purse, and had to sneak around a big office building crawling with soldiers, thank you very much. ”
“You. With no training whatsoever. You want me to believe you pulled off a daring rescue at the last second before they loaded me up with scopolamine and made me spill my guts to them.”
“Yes. I do.”
He snorted under his breath, and she added indignantly, “You’re not the only resourceful, creative person on earth, you know.
I happen to be able to solve problems and think outside the box, too.
” He looked skeptical, and she added, “If you’re too big a chauvinist or have your head shoved too far up your ass too to recognize that about me, then I guess you don’t deserve my love, after all. ”
He rolled his eyes at her grand declaration.
What a jerk!
He retorted, “I’m neither stupid nor gullible enough to believe you miraculously rescued me. I never should have trusted you. My father always did say never to let a woman past your guard. I guess he knew what he was talking about.”
“Whatever the hell happened between him and your mother doesn’t have to ruin your relationships with women forever, you know.”
“Cut the psycho-babble bullshit. I don’t have time for it. And I don’t have time for you. You always did slow me down.” He shoved away from her and she coughed as she rubbed her throat.
Ouch. It was true that she slowed him down, but it still hurt to hear him say it so baldly. She’d hoped he would put up with her because she loved him and he cared for her. Apparently, not.
Grief tore through her, but she brutally shoved it aside and, instead, let her fury have free rein. This was likely the last time she would ever see Alex. Her last shot at making him see how wrong he was about her.
“Alex. When have I ever given you reason to believe I’m anything but totally loyal to you, first and foremost?”
“Never. Which is damned suspicious, don’t you think? Particularly given how rah-rah-red-white-and-blue you are.”
He strode across the bedroom and quickly dialed in the combination locking a long trunk at the foot of his bed. No surprise, it held an array of weapons in custom-made trays. He lifted them out onto the bed and surveyed the arsenal.
She spoke to his rigid back. “So, if I had acted disloyal you wouldn’t have trusted me, and if I act loyal now, you distrust me even more?
That makes no sense. Since when is the great genius, Alex Peters, illogical?
Think, Alex. Get off this emotional roller coaster of yours long enough to ask yourself what’s wrong with you. ”
He whipped around to face her. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m exactly the creature you all made me into.”
She stepped into his line of sight, forcing him to acknowledge her whether he liked it or not. “I have never tried to make you into anything. I loved you just the way you were.” Past tense.
He stared at her for a moment as if he’d caught the past tense in her words. Maybe that was even a little shock passing through his silver stare.
But then he whirled away and headed for his closet. Dammit. She thought she might have gotten through to him there, for a second.
If he wouldn’t talk about his feelings, maybe he would at least explain to her what the hell had happened on the mission. “Why did you bail out on me in Cuba, Alex?”
He emerged from his spacious closet with a suitcase, which he opened on the bed. He began removing clothing from dresser drawers and layering the bag with weapons, ammunition, and apparel. “I never bailed out on you,” he eventually answered.
“You most certainly did. Twice! You made me go to Gitmo alone, and then you ditched me in that café in Guantanamo. Why?”
“It’s what spies do,” he snapped. “They cut their losses and run.”
“Don’t throw platitudes at me. I want a real answer.”
“Platitudes? Coming from you, that’s hilarious,” he bit out.