Hot Intent (Hqn) (20 page)

The sharp knives of his paranoia were dulling slightly, but the certainty that he was being watched and that his watchers meant him harm remained. Soon. Soon all the loose ends would be tied up, and Alex Peters would be no more.

He supposed it was a little extreme, but what choice did he have? Until everyone stopped chasing him, he would never be safe. He dawdled in a bar until his flight was ready to board. He sat down, buckled in and closed his eyes.

Katie. How was he going to deal with Katie? His initial plan had been to kill her. But now he wasn’t so sure about that. It would draw a lot of attention to him. And her brothers could be a problem if they decided to come after him. There were a lot of McCloud boys, and they were a dangerous bunch. He would hate to have to kill them all.

And what about Dawn? He could snatch her and take her with him now, but it would make establishing a cover exponentially harder with a toddler in tow. Better to run alone, set up a new life and retrieve her later.

But that left the question of Katie still looming. Katie, who had betrayed him and handed him over to the government without a second thought. She really did deserve the worst he could do to her. Not to mention it would be immensely satisfying to hurt her as deeply as she had hurt him. Which left only one burning question in need of an answer.

To kill her or not to kill her?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

K
ATIE
LET
HERSELF
into the penthouse apartment cautiously. The interior was dark and cool. Silent. She let out the breath she was 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 that 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 to 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’d really loved him. But he’d made his lack of return feelings crystal clear to her. Strange how love could transform to hatred like this. She really, actively despised him 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. 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’d call her a Pollyanna for thinking like that. The loss of him was a sharp pain in her chest.

As exhausted as she was, she tossed and turned, her thoughts churning around in her head. Maybe that was why she heard the front door locks disengaging. 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 on the lights. Wait. It was after midnight; no one innocent was here.

A dark figure moved stealthily through the bedroom door. She slipped out of her hiding place behind the door and jammed her pistol against the man’s spine. She ordered, “Freeze.”

The intruder froze, and at the same moment, recognition of his height, silhouette and the scent of his aftershave registered.
Alex.
“Gotcha. 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.
Oh, no, he didn’t.

Oh, yes, he did.

Her fury blazed 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.”

He snorted. In the darkness, his teeth flashed momentarily in a hint of 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 wanted to look him 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 of light thrown down by the halogen spotlights, looked like hell. It wasn’t so much that he needed a shave or that his clothes looked like he’d slept in them. It was his eyes that staggered her.

They were chock-full of barely restrained violence. He looked like 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 Uzi 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 ground out more unconvincingly than she’d hoped for, “I would never betray you, Alex.” She would have added that she had loved him before 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 magically come to my rescue.”

“There was nothing magic about it,” she gasped as his arm got heavier on her neck, partially cutting off her air. “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 building crawling with Marines, 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. And if you’re too big a chauvinist or have your head shoved up your ass too far to recognize that about me, then I guess you don’t deserve my love.”

He rolled his eyes at her grand declaration like a total jerk. “I’m neither stupid nor gullible enough to believe you miraculously rescued me. I never should have trusted you. My father always said 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 psychobabble. 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 a little. 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 he was wrong 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?” He moved across the room and opened 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 brilliant scholar, Alex Peters, ever 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 Guantánamo. 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.

“What are you talking about?”

“You and your entire family are a walking platitude. You believe that anything American is better than everything else in the whole damned world. You’re so blinded by your loyalty to the Stars and Stripes that you can’t see how your government really rolls even if its crap is stinking right under your nose. Look at me, Katie. Your precious Uncle Sam has turned me into a killer. Is that the work of a noble and honorable entity?”

She stared at him in dismay. “Knowing how to kill does not make you a killer.”

“What the hell do you think I did during my training? Sit around crocheting doilies? I not only killed once, I killed multiple times. In cold blood. I snuck up on living, breathing people and murdered them at the behest of your precious government.”

She reeled in shock. Is
that
what had him so messed up? No wonder he was imploding. “The way I understand it from my brothers, it’s not murder if you’re following a legal order.”

He made a sound of disgust. “You seriously think you can split semantic hairs over killing human beings? Are you really that naive?”

“I’m not naive,” she retorted hotly. “I get that killing other people is a heinous burden to bear. I’ve watched my dad and my brothers bear it, thank you very much. I know the toll it takes on them. So don’t talk to me about being naive. We’re talking about you, here. Pollyanna though it may be, I do believe that sometimes legitimate, decent, well-meaning governments have to eliminate certain threats if we’re all to be safe. It’s not pretty, but it’s reality.”

He disappeared into the bathroom and emerged with a handful of toiletry items he stuffed in around the corners of his bag.

“You know the drill as well as I do,” she tried. “If you didn’t do the job, somebody else would have. If I know you, Alex, you did your best to make clean kills that caused no suffering.”

He didn’t answer, but his jaw did ripple angrily.

“You don’t have to punish yourself for doing your job. There are people you can talk to. Who can help you work out your feelings. A couple of my brothers have done it.”

“I don’t need counseling,” he burst out.

“From where I’m standing, it looks like you do,” she replied as calmly as she could muster. “It looks to me like you’re going to great lengths to deny yourself happiness, to punish yourself.”

“You’re the one not being honest, Katie. I know who and what I am. You, on the other hand, are deluding yourself.”

About him or about herself?
Sadly, she asked him, “Do you hate yourself so much that you’re willing to cut me out of your life rather than allow yourself to love anyone?”

He didn’t bother to answer. He merely threw her a derisive look that spoke volumes.

Her spine stiffened. “You really don’t deserve me, do you?”

For an instant, something like pain crossed through Alex’s cold stare. But then the shutters closed again.

Something snapped inside her. He was being an idiot, plain and simple. She battered against his internal barriers without much hope of breaking through, but she had to try. “You’re so convinced that any show of emotion is a sign of weakness that you can’t let yourself experience the most basic and simple of human emotions. I see a pitiful, broken human being when I look at you, Alex Peters, not some tough-as-nails superspy. You’re nothing more than a scared little boy running around trying to convince everyone else of how terrible you are. And you’re failing. Do you hear me? You’ve failed.”

Waves of icy rage poured off him but she was too infuriated to care at this point. How dare he walk out on her like this?

“Here you go, running away from home again. This is the cowardly act of a child, Alex.”

He zipped the suitcase closed and set it on the floor by the door. He whirled so fast that she recoiled in spite of herself, and snarled right in her face. “You are an anchor around my neck, and furthermore, you betrayed me. I do not trust you. You do not deserve my love. I’m
finished
with you.”

He grabbed the suitcase and stormed out of the bedroom, leaving her to stare at the empty doorway and struggling to draw her next breath. He was gone. Really, truly gone. It was as if the earth had fallen out from under her feet and she was plunging downward into a bottomless abyss that would never end.

It was so tempting to let her knees buckle. To fall to the floor and curl up in a little ball and never uncurl. Blackness closed in around her heart, so dark and thick she didn’t think she would ever find her way out of it. But from somewhere deep, deep inside her a kernel of determination remained.

Dammit, she was a McCloud. A fighter. She might have lost the man, but she wasn’t about to let him leave thinking she’d betrayed him. She would never betray a friend, let alone the man she had loved. He bloody well did
not
get to have the last word this time.