My Spy: Last Spy Standing (13 page)

A couple of women gasped.

She very nearly did, too. Seeing both the living parts and the metal somehow made the sight starker than when she’d rolled up his pant legs before and had seen only the prosthetics. Those were somehow sterile, removed, cold metal. But his scars, the terrible destruction of his living flesh... She swallowed the lump in her throat.

“I didn’t want to live,” Jamie said in a low voice. “At the field hospital, I begged them to let me die. When they didn’t, I promised myself I’d take care of it as soon as I recovered enough and had the strength.”

Antonio listened.

“You get to this dark place,” Jamie went on. “And it’s bad. When you’re there, it doesn’t seem possible that things will ever get better again. It’s like the life outside, the things other people do and see, that’s not real. You almost don’t even see it.”

The hostages watched him silently, barely daring even to breathe.

“Like when you’re over there, in the mountains for years on end, people shooting at you, you killing, blood every day. Every day one of your buddies gets blown to pieces. And it seems like that’s the only world. Like back here, this was just a dream, the houses and the family and the rain, the banks and the malls and teenagers who go shopping. It’s a dream or a fantasy. It doesn’t exist. Not to you.”

Antonio still pointed the gun at him, but his arm sagged a little.

“Thing is—” Jamie bent slowly and pulled his pants up, buckled his belt “—the other world...it’s there. It’s real. And the people in it hurt when you leave them.”

“Ain’t nobody will hurt for me,” Antonio said, but his voice wasn’t as hard as before.

“Your sons will,” Bree put in, talking around the lump in her throat, thinking about Jamie’s seven brothers and the sister he would have left behind if he’d been a weaker man and taken the easy way out. “They cared enough about you to take care of you. They’ll hurt.”

She drew a slow breath. “And all the families of all the people in here. They are going to hurt and they are going to grieve. People in here have fathers and mothers and kids. They didn’t get to say goodbye. Don’t make them go through this.”

Then everything happened at the same time. Antonio shoved the young woman away from him so he had use of both hands.

Jamie dove for him, but he was too late.

Chapter Twelve

The man blew his own head off a split second before Jamie reached him. As the hostages screamed, all he could do was secure the bomb.

He ignored the blood and gore and the crying and focused on the mechanism. No timer. He looked over the manual control with a flip switch—clearly a home-made job, but with enough of a punch to take out most of the building.

Thing was, as primitively as it was put together, he couldn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t go off if someone tried to move Antonio. Or if the man’s lifeless body slid out of the wheelchair. So he kept working on it as a SWAT team rushed in and spread through the bank, a dozen men dressed in black, holding assault rifles, shouting.

“Everybody down! Everybody down!”

Some of the hostages had leaped to their feet when Antonio had discharged his gun but now flattened themselves to the marble floor once again.

Bree stayed where she was, her hands in the air. “It’s okay. Everything’s under control. I’m the deputy sheriff. My badge is in my left back pocket.”

One of the men checked it for her. “She’s okay.”

She lowered her hands. “This is Jamie Cassidy. CBP consultant, explosives specialist. He came in with me.”

“Status?” the team leader asked.

“One perpetrator. Antonio Rivera. Self-terminated.”

“The bomb is still active,” Jamie put in as one of the SWAT members rushed over to him, probably their bomb expert. “Simple trigger mechanism. It’s a pretty shoddy job. You need to get these people out of here.”

The guy checked out the sticks of dynamite and twisted jumble of wires as the rest of his team jumped into action, helping the hostages up and rushing them toward the exit.

“Want to take over?” Jamie offered.

The guy shook his head. “You’ve got your hand on the wire. Go ahead.”

That was pretty much standard operating procedure. The chances of success went up exponentially if the man who started a disarming op was the one who finished it. It wasn’t something easily handed over midrace.

He focused on the wires, tracing each to their connections, careful not to set off the trigger. The SWAT guy held Antonio in place, making sure the body wouldn’t flop.

“All right. Okay. Almost there.”

Then, finally, the last wire was detached.

By that time, there were only three people inside: Bree, Jamie and the man helping him. The SWAT team had cleared the building.

“Well done,” the bomb expert said, putting the explosives into the safe box someone had dropped off at some point. “I’ll take it from here.” He walked away with his precarious charge in his arms.

For the moment, until someone came for the body, Jamie and Bree were alone. They walked away from Antonio, but didn’t step outside. Press waited out there, cameras flashing, the news team recording everything. The last thing he needed was his picture on TV. He was an undercover operative.

Bree’s eyes were haunted, her face grim as she glanced back at the prone body. “He didn’t have to die.”

Dead bodies didn’t bother Jamie. He was used to the carnage of battle. But for her... Two violent deaths in the space of days were probably way more than the small town of Pebble Creek was used to seeing. She’d had a pretty tough week.

While he was comfortable with death, he wasn’t comfortable in the role of comforter. Yet something inside him pushed him to be just that, for Bree. He filled his lungs and waded into unfamiliar territory.

“We did what we could. It could have been worse. The bomb didn’t go off. You kept him distracted for a good long time,” he said. He really was impressed with her. “What you did gave the SWAT team a chance to get here.”

Her head dipped in a tentative nod. “I thought for sure you were going to rush him, right at the beginning. I thought for sure we’d be toast if you did.”

“I thought about it. Then I thought maybe I should try your technique of sweet-talking him. You must be rubbing off on me. I hope there’s a cure for that,” he teased, hoping it would lift her spirits a little.

“Wouldn’t exactly call what you did sweet talk,” she said, but gave a tremulous smile.

He reached for her, gratified when she went willingly into his arms. He brushed his lips over hers, relieved beyond words that they were both alive. He had no idea how Mitch Mendoza, his brother-in-law, handled going on joint missions with Megan before she’d taken some time off for the baby. Seeing Bree in danger had been nearly more than Jamie could handle. He would definitely not want to be in a situation like this ever again.

Her fresh, subtle scent, soap mixed with a light perfume, was in his nose, her curves pressed against the hard planes of his body. She was one of those good things he’d given up on at one point in his life. It seemed surreal that here he was, with the woman of his dreams in his arms.

But she was real in every way. And for now, she was with him, lifting her face to his. So he kissed her lightly. Because he really needed to feel her warmth and life and the reality of her being.

Antonio Rivera hadn’t been able to let go.

Jamie rested his forehead against hers. He had let go of some things, but not everything, he thought. What if he could let it all go: the past, the pain, the idea that he was a fighting machine and only that?

She made him want to reexamine his assumptions and the way he lived these days. He didn’t know if he could, if he should. But he wanted to, for the first time ever.

He dipped back for another taste of her lips.

She tasted so sweet, so right. She was infuriating. He’d nearly had a heart attack when she’d run up to the bank’s door to offer herself in exchange for the hostages. Yet, in hindsight, he should have seen it coming. She was no coward. She did whatever she thought had to be done.

She took care of her town; she took care of her sister. He admired her, he realized.

The kiss deepened, yet it still wasn’t nearly enough. What would be enough? Would anything ever be enough where Bree was concerned?

He had no idea, he admitted to himself as he pulled away. He had so much darkness around him. In some ways, his past still bound him. She was all light and smiles. He was a surly bastard. He didn’t want his darkness to touch her. Temporary slip of willpower or not, he simply wasn’t the right guy for her.

He would have told her that, but people were filing in through the door. Some of the SWAT team were coming back to finish their business.

* * *

A
BOMB
IN
a bank, with a fatality added, required enough paperwork to make her head spin. She would have more follow-up work the next day, but she had to set that aside and go get Katie, so Bree powered off her computer and locked up her office.

Jason Tanner was in holding, his parents notified. They retained a lawyer for him. He’d confessed to the photos and the unicorn massacre, but he would not budge on the shooting. Maybe tomorrow, Bree thought. Tomorrow was another day.

The station was buzzing; some of the bank hostages were still there, giving statements, something Lena and Mike were more than capable of handling.

“Tell Katie I said hi,” Lena called over as Bree told them she was leaving for the day.

The events at the bank crowded into her head as she drove, as she went over what she could have done to achieve a better ending to the standoff. She was the one who’d caught Angel Rivera. Angel had made bad choices. So had Antonio, in the end. Could she have done anything differently?

She was deputy sheriff, but she couldn’t say she was happy when someone went to jail or died, even if they were criminals. First and foremost, she was a peace officer. She wanted peace for her people. Which was why she made sure crime prevention was a very real program in the county, not just a political hobbyhorse to be dragged out at sheriff elections.

She looked in the mirror to make sure she looked okay before she picked up Katie. She drew a deep breath and forced a smile on her face.
No bringing the job home.
The only fast and hard rule she never broke.

She pulled over in front of the big yellow building where her sister worked, and Katie jumped into the car and started talking about her day immediately. Katie lived in the here and now, always. It was an amazing way to live, one that Bree sometimes envied. No worries, no regrets, no self-blame.

“Mrs. Springer brought cupcakes today,” she was saying. “They were chocolate with chocolate frosting. They had chocolate sprinkles.”

Bree pulled into traffic. “You can never have too much chocolate.”

“That’s what she said. Except when you’re a dog, because chocolate kills dogs. Then even a little is too much.”

“Very true.”

“We don’t have a dog.”

“No, we don’t. We have unicorns.”

“Scott said once they had a burglar and their dog chased it away.”

Bree glanced at Katie then back at the road. They’d had some scary vandalism, then a fatal shooting at the house within the space of a week. Just because Katie lived in the now didn’t mean she didn’t have logic. She did, and plenty of it. And maybe logic said that if bad things could happen at their house as they had, they could happen again.

“You know the bad guy we talked about?”

Katie nodded.

“We caught him today. Jamie did, this morning. The bad guy is going to jail. All locked up.”

“And can’t get out.”

“That’s right.”

“Scott was in a car accident once,” Katie said. It was a non sequitur, and they talked about that next.

She saw Jamie’s SUV in front of her house as soon as she turned onto her street. He’d gone into work after they parted at the bank. He only had half a shift, as Mo had to do something with his stepson and they’d traded time.

His seat was tilted back, she saw as she came closer. He seemed to be asleep. Good. He deserved some rest.

Katie got out and went straight to the front door with the keys. She loved locking and unlocking things, and any kind of lock mechanism. She could play with a combination lock for hours when she’d been younger.

She had a whole collection she’d accumulated over the years. Some she’d picked up with their mother on garage-sale outings—their standing Saturday morning mother-daughter date that had since been replaced by hanging out with Sharon. Many other locks since, even antique ones, had been given as gifts by friends—several by Eleanor. Katie could remember the combination to every single one of them.

Bree walked over to Jamie’s car. He had all the windows rolled down, probably to catch a breeze.

His eyes were open by the time she reached him. “Hey.”

Her gaze caught on a bundle of yellow police tape on his backseat. He’d gathered that up from around her property. So Katie wouldn’t have to see it and remember.

Her heart turned over in her chest. “Hey.”

“Thought I’d stop by to make sure everything was okay.”

“Jason’s in jail. Thanks to you. I think we’re done with trouble for a while. Hopefully.”

He nodded, looking tired and rumpled with bristles covering his cheeks; he was so incredibly sexy, he took her breath away.

“What are you going to do about that busted living room window?” he wanted to know. “It doesn’t look too safe the way it is.”

She glanced at the empty frame. The contractor who worked with the police station, people who cleaned up crime scenes, had taken away the broken glass when they’d come to clean up the blood inside. She’d recommended them to families of victims many times in the past. They did excellent work. But they didn’t do repairs.

“I called it in. Should be fixed tomorrow. It’s a standard-size window, so at least I didn’t have to do special order.” That would have taken forever.

“How about I hang out on your couch tonight?”

He was asking and not telling her. Definite progress from Jamie Cassidy.

“It’s not exactly a high-crime area. And I’m well-armed. I’m kind of the deputy sheriff.”

The corner of his mouth lifted a little. “For my peace of mind, then.”

Because he cared?

There went that funny feeling around her heart again.

“You’re just here for the triple-winner breakfast,” she joked. “Nobody can resist my salsa egg scramble.”

His lips tilted into an almost smile. “Maybe.” And then he got out, unfolding his long frame, and followed her in.

Katie was already going through her predinner routine.

“Jamie is having dinner with us.” Bree took off her gun harness and hung it in its place, out of reach, although she didn’t have to worry about Katie. Her sister was excellent with remembering and following rules to a T.

“Hi, Katie.”

“Hi, Jamie.” She glanced through the hole in the window at her unicorns, and seemed to have no problem with Jamie being there. She skipped to the kitchen cabinet and grabbed another plate.

Bree went upstairs and changed into a pair of jeans and a tank top, then padded back down to start dinner. Fried chicken steak, an old Texas staple, was one of Katie’s favorites.

“What can I do to help?”

She stopped for a moment to look at him. “When was the last time you slept?” He worked long hours for his team, then he was helping her in between.

“I’m good.”

“I have a well-oiled dinner routine with Katie. How about you lie down on the couch for a minute?”

He raised an eyebrow. “So because I’m a man, you assume I’d be no good in the kitchen and you’re telling me to stay out of the way? Very sexist.”

“Deal with it.” But she was smiling as she shook her head. “You’ll get to do manly things later,” she said, without really thinking about how that sounded until his face livened up.

“Not what I meant.” She tried to backpedal, laughing.

He looked skeptical, one dark eyebrow rising slowly. “What did you mean, exactly?”

“Like chopping wood out back.” Or something like that.

He didn’t look convinced.

So she turned to the stove while he walked off to take a predinner nap.

She didn’t think anyone could sleep through the pots banging and Katie’s chatter, but he did. He must have been truly exhausted. But he rolled right to his feet when she finally finished the gravy and called him to dinner.