Chapter 11
Chapter 11
A s if it wasn’t enough of a shock to see a trained agent break down into a fit of weeping, she stunned him further by stumbling forward and pressing herself uninvited into his embrace. By instinct his arms came up to clasp her, cuddling her closer like a yowling puppy. Her face nestled into the crook of his neck, wetting it with her tears.
“Shh,” he murmured, his hand making soothing passes over her hair.
He waited to speak further until she finally settled, her sobs waning to become little shudders. Eventually she took a step back and used her sleeve to swipe under her eyes. “What happened? PTSD? Did you freeze? What?” What could make a trained operative behave that way, especially one as cool and collected as Gum Lady?
In true Gum Lady fashion, she answered his question with a question, rather three of them. “Why did you bring me here? What was that about? What is wrong with you? ”
“What? What are you talking about? I intercepted your intel. You haven’t checked in. The Colonel is miffed. I was helping you.”
“How does bringing me to a death den with what could only be a murderer help me in any way? Is this some sort of new excursion the resort is offering? A terror thrill ride to make you appreciate real life?”
“You can drop the act. I have contacts. I know you’re CIA. You told me so yourself.”
Her lashes worked furiously, spritzing little dewdrops of tears in their haste to clear her eyes. “You must be joking.”
“If I am, it’s not funny. I don’t get what’s going on with you.”
“The CIA, as in the Culinary Institute of America .”
The ensuing silence echoed like the aftermath of an atom bomb.
“What?” he rasped after what felt like an eternity. There was no way, absolutely no way anyone in the history of time had ever mistaken the two things for each other. And certainly he wasn’t the first to be so monumentally stupid. This had to be some ploy, some spy trick to throw him off track. He licked his lips and stepped forward to grip her biceps, giving her a little shake. “Are you a spy? Tell me the truth. I swear I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“Yes,” she said, wrenching free of his grasp and giving him a little shove. His relief was short-lived when she continued. “I’m a corporate spy, sent here to rate the resort. It’s what I do. I’m a wringer.”
“You…you…you…” At any other time he might be disturbed by that revelation, but not now. Right now it didn’t hold a drop of water to his growing horror. “You’re a corporate spy?”
She nodded. “I go places undercover and rate their services. I thought you knew; I thought you understood the real reason I was here and that was why you’ve been dogging my steps. But this…” she gestured to the abandoned building. “What even is this? What is going on?”
In answer, he yanked her bag away from her, ripped it open, and stuck his head inside. There had to be a gun in there, had to. But there wasn’t. His hand emerged from the bag holding a handful of suckers and dog biscuits. “What is this?”
“Anytime I leave the resort I run into hungry children and dogs. So I always bring treats along.”
“What about your gun?” he demanded.
“I’ve never touched a gun in my life. I wouldn’t begin to know what to do with one.”
So this was what horror felt like, abject horror of his own making. “We have to go now. Right now.” Without waiting for a response, he grabbed her hand and practically dragged her behind him, tossing her into the truck and taking off, his heart thudding a million miles a minute. For a while his own panicked breathing was all he could hear, so it came as something of a surprise when he realized she was speaking to him.
“Hey.” Finally she jabbed him in the arm, breaking his frantic reverie. “At what point do you get to tell me what’s going on?”
He darted her a glance, suddenly seeing her anew. Had she always been so tiny? So breakable? If she was over five feet, it couldn’t be by much. And her face was softer than he remembered. Why did he have the vision of her being stern and capable in his mind?
“We’ll talk in my office, okay? Let me think a minute.” He faced forward again, gripping the wheel. Your emotions are too close to the surface, Jones. Ridge had told him that once, the first week on their team. He’d been assessing them all, their strengths and weaknesses. Jones hadn’t paid him much heed, truthfully. Mostly because he always saw his ready emotions as an asset. He wasn’t a robot like the rest of them, lacking the ability to disconnect his heart from the rest of his body. But now he understood because it wasn’t softheartedness that tripped him up; it was anger. Gum Lady had gotten under his skin in a major way and instead of stepping back from the situation and taking a breath, he had rashly assumed she was the contact for whatever current debacle was happening around him. WhathaveIdonewhathaveIdonewhathaveIdone. The miserable little refrain played over and over inside his head. Not only had he royally messed up, but he was going to have to fess up to his mistake, both to her and to his former coworkers.
What if I didn’t? The thought came unbidden and refused to remain unexamined. What if he didn’t call for backup? What if he handled it himself? He was capable, more than. He could send Gum Lady on her way and no one would ever have to know how badly he’d screwed up.
He waited to speak until they were situated in his office and, miraculously, she let him.
“The thing is… See, sometimes in this world…” He paused and clasped his fingers under his chin. “OK, here’s the deal…”
He couldn’t do it. Once again she looked so innocent and wholesome, a tentative doe standing at the edge of the road, about to be run over.
She rapped her knuckles on his desk. “Excuse me, could I get someone without a babbling speech impediment to give me this explanation?”
And we’re back. “That murderous thug thinks you’re his contact now.”
Her lashes fluttered and then she laughed. Hard. “Oh, my goodness. This is great. Is this some kind of new thing you’re trying out? Like Thriller Tourism, right? Because there’s definitely a market.”
He shook his head slowly and unblinking. Her smile slid to a look of alarm, then fear. “Gum Lady,” he began in a conciliatory tone.
“It’s Carol,” she snapped.
“What?”
“My name. It’s Carol.”
“Like Christmas Carol?”
“Wow. That’s completely new material. In my twenty-seven years on this earth, absolutely no one has made that leap before. You should write for television. Tell me, Paul Blart, what’s your name?”
“Jones.”
“Are you a supermodel or celebrity? What’s the rest of it?”
“Jones will be fine.”
She rolled her eyes and snatched a piece of correspondence off his desk, raising her brows at him. “David? David Jones? You’re making fun of my name when you’re either the lead singer of The Monkees or a deceased pirate?”
“It’s a family name,” he said, yanking the paper out of her grasp. He could only hope it gave her many paper cuts. “Also, shut up.” He smoothed the paper on his desk a few times and took a deep breath. “Look, I think I know how we can easily undo this.”
“How?”
“You have to go away. Like now. Right now.” He clapped his hands together a couple of times. “Chop, chop.”
She stared at him with a look that was becoming familiar for all the loathing it held. “Absolutely no.”
“Absolutely yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Please?” he tried. For a second she paused and he thought the plaintive tone and big eyes worked. Then she scowled.
“No.” This time she stood and turned for the door. He dove across the desk and threw himself in front of her, blocking the exit.
“You don’t understand. You cannot stay here.”
“Why not?”
They were very close now, nose to nose. She smelled like the tropical products the spa used and something else, something sweet, making it harder to say what he needed to say. He sucked a deep breath through his mouth, trying hard to block her scent.
“Because they will kill you.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I mean no. That kind of thing doesn’t happen to people. No one goes on assignment and ends up dead.”
“Gum La…Carol, I was a Navy SEAL, heavily involved in military intelligence for most of my career. Almost all my friends are still in that track. Believe me when I tell you that you have absolutely no idea what actually goes on in the world. And believe me when I tell you that you are in real and present danger. We have to get you out of this country, the sooner, the better.”
“And I am telling you I can’t go . I am in the middle of a job here. They hired me because I’m willing to go, willing to travel, and I have the expertise and training for the assignment. It’s not the kind of job where I can say, ‘Whelp, the security guard got me in a pickle so I have to leave the job unfinished.’ I will not leave here until my job is done, the end. Find another solution.”
“There is no other solution except…” His gaze darted to the far wall. No, he couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it.
“Except what?”
His thumb pressed the area between his eyes that was quickly becoming a headache. “The only thing left is to call my former team leader and…”
“Are you being paid extra for the dramatic pauses? And what?”
“And tell him how badly I screwed up,” he murmured.
“Let me see if I understand what’s going on here. You would rather have me cut my job short and leave the country than admit to another person that you, a grown human, made a mistake?”
“You clearly don’t know much about men.”
She grasped his shirt and gave him a little shake. “Make the call, David.”