Breaking Point (9 page)

“I know the feeling,” Max said. It was a comment that was so aimed at her, but Gina refused to accept it.

“You could look for a new job,” she suggested to her brother.

“In this market? I don’t think so.” Vic shook his head. “With my luck, word would get out I was looking and I’d be given notice. We’re not all lucky enough to have some big airline lawsuit settlement in our savings account, Geen.”

“Lucky?” Max repeated, incredulity dripping from that single word.

Gina knew he was thinking that Victor actually believed it was lucky that terrorists had hijacked the airliner that her college jazz band had taken on their European tour. That the money she’d received as a settlement from the airline made the entire ordeal worthwhile.

She touched Max’s arm. “He didn’t mean it like that.”

Victor was oblivious to the fact that he’d just jumped, with both feet, on one of Max’s buttons. “Besides, I bought the condo when interest rates were low. I couldn’t get those numbers anymore.”

The muscles in the sides of Max’s face were jumping as he clenched his teeth.

“It’s all right,” Gina said softly. “It doesn’t bother me.”

He didn’t say the words—he wouldn’t dare admit it—but she knew that everything about her experience on that hijacked plane still bothered him.

Very much.

Mr. Clueless was checking his watch. “We should probably take off,” her brother announced as he pushed himself to his feet. “We’re meeting a coupla college friends down in Fairfax.” He held out his hand again. “Max. Nice seeing you again, even though it is a little creepy that you and my baby sister are—”

“Thank you, Victor,” Gina interrupted.

He shrugged. “I’m just saying. Just being honest. You’re always saying ‘be honest’—”

“Go be honest out in the hall. I’ll catch up to you in a sec,” she ordered.

“Feel better, man,” Vic called as he sauntered out.

“If he doesn’t go home soon,” Gina said, “I may be facing homicide charges. You should hear some of the things he’s asked Jules.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s been trying to get him to admit he’s not really gay. ‘Catherine Zeta-Jones, man,’ ” she imitated her brother’s voice. “ ‘You come home from work and she’s naked on your bed—are you really saying you’re going to walk away from that magic? And if you do say it, you expect me to believe you?’ ”

Max smiled, but it was still pretty grim. “You should’ve just let me kill him for you.”

“It still really freaks you out,” Gina asked. “Doesn’t it? What happened to me on the plane.” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “You should’ve seen how tense you got when he made that stupid comment about the settlement. We really should talk about it sometime. Like, in two weeks . . . ?”

She’d hoped her reference to their earlier conversation would make him smile again, but he just ground his teeth even harder.

She leaned across the table to kiss him. He didn’t exactly respond, but he didn’t pull away either.

“His plane leaves at twelve-thirty tomorrow,” Gina told him. “I’ll be dropping him at the airport in the morning. I’ll meet you in your room after your pool game. You won’t have any trouble recognizing me—I’ll be the soon-to-be-naked woman sitting on your bed holding a picnic lunch.”

She kissed him again, and headed for the door before he could argue.

It was, of course, entirely possible that he wouldn’t show up. That he would—how had Victor said it?—just walk away from that magic.

But Gina looked back and saw that heat in his eyes.

And she knew he’d be there.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

H
AMBURG
, G
ERMANY
J
UNE
21, 2005
P
RESENT
D
AY

Gina’s body was being held at the airport.

Upper-echelon FBI team leader Walter Frisk himself met Max at the plane—which had to be Jules Cassidy’s doing.

Frisk didn’t do more than shake Max’s hand, murmur something extremely brief about sorrow and loss, and then use his local clout to lead the way unchallenged through customs, through the terminal, and down into the airport morgue.

All of that was Jules’s doing, too. The junior agent had balls, that was for sure. When they arrived at the door to the room where the body was being held, Jules thanked Frisk and then politely but firmly dismissed the man, telling—not asking—him to wait outside in the outer hall with the security guard.

Giving Max privacy to go in on his own.

Which he did. On legs that were suddenly leaden. As bad as the past twenty-odd hours had been, these next few minutes were going to be worse, and he steeled himself.

Gina wasn’t alone in the holding area. There were dozens of the white space age–looking body boxes tagged and stacked against the wall. They belonged, no doubt, to the other victims of the terrorist attack, along with tourists who’d had heart attacks and car accidents, as well as a few expats who were finally ready to return home.

Someone had moved Gina’s open container—Max just couldn’t bring himself to think of it as a
coffin
—to a table in the center of the room. They’d also pulled a white sheet up and over her face. He just stood there, staring at the profile of her face beneath that shroud.

Her prominent nose.

Gina had laughingly called it her beak. Her passport to an extra large piece of tiramisu when she had dinner in Little Italy.

He’d never told her that he thought it made her face even more exoti-cally beautiful. He’d never said just how much he’d loved it.

How much he’d loved her.

Time passed. Minutes. Many, many of them.

And Max didn’t lift that sheet. He could not make himself move.

He didn’t want to see her dead.

Yet he knew he had to look. He couldn’t put her on that flight home until he’d provided a positive identification.

But until he saw her, until he touched her cold, lifeless face, he could pretend that they were wrong. That Gina wasn’t really dead.

That her eyes were still sparkling the way they sparkled whenever she laughed and leaned in close to kiss him.

I’ll stay as long as you need me.

But she hadn’t stayed. Probably because Max had convinced her that he didn’t need her.

And now he would never be kissed by her again.

Because he’d been too goddamn afraid.

“Max, I’m coming in.” Jules Cassidy closed the door behind him with a solid-sounding thunk.

Jesus. Max somehow found his voice. “Don’t.” The word was little more than a growl.

Cassidy didn’t flinch or falter. “Sweetie, you’ve been standing in here for nearly half an hour,” he said gently. “I’m just going to pull this from her face so we can see her, okay?”

It was obviously not a question Jules wanted Max to answer, because he didn’t give him time to respond. He just reached out and . . .

God God God! Gina was horribly, hideously burned. Max recoiled, taking a step back, but then . . .

He stopped. All air had left his body, as if he’d been slammed in the stomach, and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak.

But Jules could. “It’s not her,” he whispered, wonder in his voice. “Holy shit, it’s not Gina.”

Whoever was in that coffin was young, female, with long, dark hair and a prominent nose. When she was alive, she had probably looked a lot like Gina, particularly from the distance. At dusk.

But whoever she was, she was
not
Gina Vitagliano.

It was entirely possible that Max was going to throw up.

But he knew that he couldn’t, because throwing up would take far too much time.

Instead, he spun to look at the rows of other coffins lining the room, and Jules—good man—knew exactly what he was thinking. He quickly moved to help.

The latches weren’t locked. They popped open and . . .

Old man.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir.” Jules Cassidy gently closed the lid.

Max moved on to the next, barking, “He’s dead, he doesn’t care.”

He flipped the latches, and opened the lid and his heart stopped because it was another young, dark-haired woman lying there, but thank God again because she, too, wasn’t Gina.

Still, something inside of him finally snapped.

He must’ve made some sort of sound, because Jules was right there, next to him. Jules—the only man Max knew who would apologize to a corpse.

Or dare to put comforting arms around his boss, a man whose hardassed intolerance for stupid mistakes—one strike and you were off his team—was legendary.

“We’ll find her, sweetie,” Jules told Max, his voice in his ear. “We will. But I honestly don’t think we’re going to find her in here.”

For several dizzying seconds, it was possible Jules was the only thing holding Max up.

“God, I want her to be alive,” Max squeezed the words out, daring to put voice to his emotions. He wanted it so badly, he didn’t trust himself to be unbiased about the odds. He pulled away from Jules, wiping the tears from his face. Fuck that, until he found Gina, he didn’t have time to cry. “Do you really think she’s still alive?”

The kindness and sympathy he saw in Jules’s eyes pissed him off.

“And don’t goddamn answer that as my friend. You’re not my friend. Fuck friendship,” Max said, even though he knew damn well he wouldn’t be having this conversation with any random subordinate. “You work for me. Answer as if your job depended on your telling the truth as you see it—as an experienced field agent.”

Jules nodded as he closed the second coffin, keeping his apology to its occupant silent this time. “It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.” He glanced at Max as they moved on to the next box. “A misplaced body. You know that as well as I do, sir. It falls under the way too common
snafu
heading.”

He opened the locks and Max braced himself as they lifted the lid and . . .

Young man. Very battered, very dead young man. Somewhere his mother was crying.

“But I think,” Jules continued as they moved to the next, “that at this point, it’s okay if you allow yourself to feel at least a little bit of hope.”

Max had to wipe his face again. He hadn’t cried at all when he’d thought Gina was dead. He’d just turned his heart into solid stone. But now these freaking tears just would not stop.

Because his heart was beating again. He could feel it, thumping wildly in his chest.

Hope wasn’t the only thing he was feeling. He was also feeling fear. If Gina was alive, then where the hell
was
she? If she wasn’t dead, then she could be in danger.

“We’re going to need some assistance in here,” Jules continued, looking over to where the coffins were stacked, some six high. “I’ll stay. Frisk can send some of his team to help.” He paused. Made sure Max was listening. “We’ll also need to double-check with the lab doing DNA identifications. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Some of the people killed in the terrorist blast were little more than jumbled body parts. That grim knowledge made it easier to stop the motherfucking crying.

“Why don’t you go over to the hotel,” Jules suggested. “I’ll check with Frisk’s team, find out why they put this other girl on their list as Gina Vitagliano. You know, was she carrying Gina’s passport, or was the passport found somewhere in the rubble and assumed to be this girl’s? God, Max, if Gina’s passport was lost or stolen . . .”

It could have happened. Gina might have taken a side trip to, say, Berlin. Somewhere in-country. It was possible she might not know her passport was gone. Hell, she might not even know she was believed to be dead.

If Gina’s passport had been stolen, she could be back at her hotel, right now.

“I know it’s a long shot,” Jules was saying, “but it wouldn’t be the first time that type of
snafu
has happened, either and . . . Whoa!”

That much hope had brought Max to his knees.

Apparently if he didn’t let himself weep like a little girl to relieve this emotional pressure building inside of him, he was in danger of hitting the ground in a dead faint.

Jules crouched beside him, checking for his pulse. “Are you okay? You’re not, like, having a heart attack or a stroke, are you?”

“Fuck you,” Max managed, swatting his hand away. “I’m not that old.”

“If you really think heart disease is about age, then you definitely need to make an appointment with a cardiologist, like, tomorrow—”

“I just . . . tripped,” Max said, but when he tried to get up, he found he still hadn’t regained his equilibrium. Shit.

“Or maybe you needed to get on your knees to pray,” Jules said as Max put his head down and waited for the dizziness to pass. “That excuse sounds a little more believable, if you want to know the truth. ‘Hello God? It’s me, Max. I know I’ve been lax in my attention to You over the past forty-mmph years, but if You give me a second chance, I’ll make absolutely certain that this time around I’ll tell Gina just how much I love her. Because withholding that information sure as hell didn’t do either of us one bit of good, now did it?’ ”

“I did what I—” Max stopped himself. To hell with that. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“That’s right, you don’t.” Jules ignored Max’s attempt to push him away, and helped him to his feet. “But you might want to work up some kind of Forgive-Me-For-Being-a-Butthead speech for when you come face to face with Gina. Although, I’ve got to admit that the falling to the knees thing might make an impact. You’ll definitely get big points for drama.”

Max straightened his suit, brushed off his pants. He took a deep breath, blew it out hard. He had to remember to keep breathing.

Because Gina was
not
going to be waiting for him in her hotel room. Life just wasn’t that simple or easy.

He still didn’t know why she had left Kenya in the first place, or even who she was traveling with, for that matter.

“You want me to come with?” Jules asked him. “To the hotel? So you don’t
trip
again and maybe break your nose this time and—”

Max shook his head. “I need you here.” Jules was the only one besides Max who could identify Gina. There was still a chance she was in one of those boxes—her body merely misplaced.

There was an even bigger chance she was still going to need one of those boxes for her flight home.

He had to remember that.

Even if she was alive, she was missing.

But the odds were that she was not alive. Because even if she hadn’t been killed in the bombing, her passport may have been taken by someone who wouldn’t have wanted her to report it as stolen. One best-case scenario had her tied up and locked in some ancient cellar somewhere. Worst had her already under the cellar’s dirt floor.

Still, the odds of Max finding Gina alive were greater than they had been when he’d first walked into this room. And for that he was grateful.

Jules had his hand on the doorknob, his body language clear—
ready
?

Max wiped his face one last time. He was as ready as he’d ever be, but first he cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

For maybe the first time in his life, Jules Cassidy didn’t try to make a joke. He didn’t make a big deal out of it in any other way, either. He just nodded and pushed open the door, saying, “You’re more than welcome, sir,” as they both went out of the room.

Sir.

Not “sweetie.” Not even Max.

Not out here where someone might overhear.

But as they walked down the hall toward both Frisk and the security guard, Jules just couldn’t keep himself completely in line. “So about that promotion,” he murmured in a voice so low that even Max had trouble hearing him. “It’s in the bag, right, crybaby-man?”

And Max did the one thing he thought he’d never do again, a mere hour ago as he’d entered the Hamburg terminal to identify Gina’s body for air passage home.

He actually laughed.

K
ENYA
, A
FRICA
F
EBRUARY
23, 2005
F
OUR
M
ONTHS
A
GO

It was after midnight when Molly finally came to his tent.

Jones had been expecting it, expecting her, and he knew what he had to do.

He just hadn’t realized how difficult it was going to be to do it.

“You can’t come in,” he told her, but she spoke right over him as she pushed her way inside.

“No one saw me,” she said and then she kissed him.

What had he been thinking? That Molly would meekly wait outside, that she’d understand that although the threat was diminished, it wasn’t gone, and that they couldn’t know for sure that no one had seen her coming in here?

And Jesus, had he really—stupidly—believed that when he was with her again, like this, in private, that he’d be able to step back and tell her not to kiss him?

He’d waited an eternity to be with her—it had been so goddamn long . . .

She was kissing the shit out of him. And hero that he was, he didn’t stop himself from kissing the shit out of her, right back.

He kissed her, even though he knew he shouldn’t, couldn’t. Because fuck that. She was fire in his arms as she pressed herself against him, as his eyes damn near rolled back in his head from all those years of wanting her so badly.

She was touching him, running her hands down his back and across his shoulders, up his neck and through his hair, as if checking to make sure he was really all there. True gentleman, his focus and both hands were on her amazing ass, as she opened herself to him, wrapping one leg around him in an attempt to get even closer.

“You’re so thin,” she breathed. “And that cane—are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine. The cane’s a prop.” He knew he had to tell her to call him Leslie now, or Les. But damn, he loved being Dave Jones. It was Jones who’d first met her. It was Jones with whom she’d fallen in love.