Surrender the Dark (6 page)

Rae backed away a step, unsure of and unnerved by what she’d just witnessed flashing through his normally emotionless eyes.

“Whatever it is can wait a couple more hours,” she said, continuing her retreat, not caring what he read into it. “I’ve got to go now or it will be dark on the way back, and I’d rather take those last ten miles in the daylight.”

He just shook his head, his expression implacable.

She stiffened, welcoming her anger. It was so much more familiar to her than the sizzle of awareness he was
increasingly rousing in her. “I know it’s been two years, but I’m pretty damn sure I can get into town and back without giving your presence here away.”

“You’ve done enough, you don’t have to shop for me.”

“I wasn’t planning on treating you to a complete new wardrobe, McCullough. And if you’re worried about running up your tab with me, don’t.” She pulled a beat-up leather wallet from the side pocket of her sweater. “It’s your treat.”

“You went in my wallet?”

His indignation fueled her growing anger. “You’ve intruded on every aspect of my life, McCullough, without my permission. Don’t expect me to go asking for yours.” She turned for the door, feeling her control slipping through her fingers.

“You brought me here, Rae.”

She spun around. “You were less than a mile from my house and you expect me to believe you weren’t heading here? I’m not exactly on the beaten path.”

“Coincidence.” She snorted and rolled her eyes. Jarrett swore as he shoved himself to a sitting position. “Even when I didn’t think I could make it the next five feet, I wasn’t going to come here. It’s not my fault you found me.”

“But now that you’re here, that’s not going to keep you from asking me to get involved, is it?” When he didn’t answer right away, she advanced on him. “Is it!”

“No,” he said, his voice deadly calm. “It’s not.”

Rae froze, rage and fear creating a foul taste in her mouth. “I don’t take orders from you anymore, McCullough,” she said rigidly. “And I’ve already told you my plans for the remainder of the day. Besides, after that episode in the bathroom, the rest will do you good.”

McCullough’s gaze darkened, and she felt her skin grow tight and warm. For once, she could read his expression easily, and she knew all too well what part of that “episode” he was recalling. She also doubted that she was concealing this fact any better than he was.

“Before you do anything, there are things you need to know.” His steady regard was as compelling as his still-hoarse voice. Then he suddenly relaxed and shifted his body back down on the bed, wincing slightly. “I don’t have time to waste either,” he said. “But you’re right about my needing to rest. So sit down and let’s get this over with before I pass out.”

Rae wanted to hate him for using her one obvious
weakness against her, but she didn’t. It was perfectly in character for him. Her actions had spoken loudly, and he had to know that her need to help him ran deep. She just prayed he hadn’t guessed why. She had yet to figure that one out for herself, so she damn well didn’t want to hear the answer from him.

She looked to the chair, then back at his face, wavering on the urge just to turn and leave him. After all, it wasn’t like he could come after her. She was still in control.

“Please.”

The single word hadn’t been phrased as a question, but the fact that he’d said it at all stunned her. It also told her more than she wanted to know about the seriousness of his predicament.

Somewhere she found the strength to turn toward the door. She had to get away from him for a while. “No.”

She made it all of two steps when his hoarse shout halted her in her tracks. “Dammit, I don’t want clothes, I don’t want more bandages, and I don’t want you running around out there! Now sit down and talk to me or I swear I’ll drag myself out of this bed and crawl down the mountain after you!”

Rae slowly turned back to face him. He hadn’t moved an inch, his body was still sprawled under her sheet, looking deceptively relaxed. But his jaw was rock hard, the muscles rigid. The glittering depths of his gray eyes ran chills up her spine, making her feel as if she were staring down an adult version of the puppy in her
garage, instead of the flesh-and-blood man she knew him to be.

She didn’t move. “Don’t ever threaten me,” she said evenly. “Hard as it is for you to believe, I’m in control of my own life now. I don’t want to talk to you about what you’re involved in. Not now, not later, not ever. I don’t care if there’s a terrorist hit squad camped at the foot of my driveway waiting to ambush me. You got yourself into this, you get yourself out. I’ll take care of myself.”

“You are my way out,” he said roughly. “The one and only way.”

Cold dread crawled over Rae’s skin. She knew then that leaving for the afternoon wouldn’t solve a thing. She couldn’t avoid him until he was well, and she couldn’t toss him out.

He’d just come back.

He’d come back and make her listen. One way or the other, he’d make her listen.
Don’t do this to me
, she suddenly wanted to beg him.
Not again. You can’t.
She visualized herself on her knees, begging him, and knew she’d do it if she thought it meant he’d leave her alone. She’d learned the hardest way imaginable that pride wasn’t worth hanging on to when your soul was at stake.

Her body stayed in place, though, her mouth remained shut. Not knowing what other course she could take, she simply stood there and braced herself for what was about to happen.

“There is no other way,” he said, the quiet of his tone making her flinch as if he’d punctuated each word with the lash of a whip.

“I won’t do it,” she said, her own voice nothing more than a whisper, the protest sounding feeble even to her. “I don’t care if millions of lives are at stake, McCullough. You can’t ask me to do this.” To her horror, her voice broke. “You just can’t.”

From a place deep inside her that she didn’t know she still had, she found the strength to turn and walk silently to the door. What she wanted to do was run screaming from the room, out of her house, down the mountain—away from McCullough, away from his endless missions, away from herself.

“It isn’t millions,” he said, “but it is thousands. Tens of thousands.” Each word was like a bullet in her back, but she kept going, even as she mentally staggered under the brutality of what he was doing to her. “Most of them innocent civilians. Women and children.” She did stumble, her stomach churning, her throat clogged with a burning panic, her eyes so dry that they hurt. “And they won’t die swiftly.”

Bull’s-eye.

Rae gripped the doorway, her knuckles white with the strength it took to remain upright. He’d been back in her life less than one week and she was already physically exhausted, mentally battered, and emotionally wrecked.

In a sudden move, she swung violently around and stormed to his bedside. She wanted to kill him with her bare hands for what he was doing, and his expression told her he knew it, believed it. And damn his eternal hide, he even understood it.

Yet he didn’t so much as flinch when she leaned over
him, balled the pillowcase on either side of his head in her fists, and shoved her face into his.

“Then I’ll say prayers I no longer believe in for them,” she said raggedly. “Cry tears I don’t have left to spare for them, and relive, in sympathy for them, every moment of the torture I want only to forget.” She tugged at his pillow in silent fury, then flung it away at the same moment she pulled back and straightened. Her chest heaved with the effort it took to keep from screaming. “But I won’t give up my soul for them, McCullough. Or for you. Do you hear me?” Her voice had risen until even she heard the note of desperation, the edge of hysteria that threatened her last shred of control. “I just got it back.”

She took a deep breath, forcing herself to regain control in front of him, forcing him to watch. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse with emotion, but even. “There was a time when I would have done anything for you. J.M. Incorporated was where I worked, but it was also my home. One like I’d never had. It had rules, regulations, rewards for good behavior, punishment for bad. I understood those rules. Played by them. Reveled in them, dammit.” She forced her fingers to uncurl. He said nothing, his expression still damnably closed. “I was the best courier you ever had. And as much as I hated you and the screwed-up mission that had put me there, I even understood why you left me to rot inside that stinking cell. I knew those rules too. A captured courier becomes persona non grata. I knew that and still I never broke. Never told them a thing.”

“Rae—”

“Don’t you dare,” she whispered furiously. “I got past the hate and despair and focused my energy on what had gone wrong. On why. And when I figured out I’d been set up and that you and JMI were still at risk, I did everything in my power to escape. And I did it. The whole time I thought only of getting back to JMI, to warn you, but also to come back to the only thing I knew. I wanted to come home. I visualized how stunned and surprised everyone would be. I even fantasized that my miraculous survival and the information I had to deliver might even get a response from my cold-as-steel boss.”

She stepped back and hugged herself tightly. “So imagine
my
surprise when I tried to make contact and found out that JMI—that
you
—considered me the enemy. That you hadn’t just given me up for a loss because the mission fell apart and I got caught, but you actually believed the bastard who’d set me up. You thought I’d gone over to the other side.”

She took another step back, clutching at her sweater even as her control slipped through her hands. The words she’d been unable to say that day in his office, when he’d silently read the report she’d flung in his face and then said he’d reinstate her, the words she’d buried deep inside her for two long years for fear they’d eat her alive if she let them surface—those words spewed forth and she didn’t even try to stop them.

“I handled everything else, McCullough. The torture, the mind games, the deprivation. Everything. Because never, not once, did I honestly think you would believe that I could betray my country, betray JMI, betray
you.
But you did. And only then did I break.” She walked to the door, feeling almost as if she were standing outside of herself, watching this happen. “And you. You just sat there and calmly offered it all back to me. No apology, no excuses, just another ugly day in the dirty business of transferring sensitive information.” She shrugged in mock nonchalance. “You win some, you lose some, and occasionally you make a mistake. Can’t take any chances, don’t trust anyone. It’s all part of the game, right? Here’s your job back, no hard feelings.”

She stopped to pull in some air. “You didn’t even ask me if I was all right.” Exhausted and feeling colder than she had in a long, long time, Rae let her arms drop limply to her sides. “I was so stupid. Incredibly, magnificently stupid. But you taught me the final lesson real well, McCullough. There is no such thing as home. No such thing as trust, or loyalty. It all has its limits, its boundaries. Well, I couldn’t spend another minute guessing where the line is drawn. So I came here and made my own boundaries, drew my own lines.”

She was nothing but a hollow shell, yet she kept her gaze fixed on his. “You’re the one crossing them now, Jarrett McCullough. And you can’t have me back, because I don’t exist for you anymore.” She turned and walked out the door.

Jarrett felt battered and beaten in ways that had nothing to do with his recent injuries. He knew he deserved far worse. In that moment he hated himself. Even more, he hated his job. That hatred went deeper than
the consuming anger that had festered in his conscience like an untreated sore as year after year passed and the need for a man with his skills never seemed to diminish. No matter how good he got, how hard he worked, no matter how many lives he put at risk, no matter how many he kept safe, there was always more to do. There was always another war being fought somewhere. Always more lives on the line. Endlessly. Forever.

Jarrett actually thought he might be sick. And it would serve him right if he was left there to choke in his own vomit. When had he become the monster she’d just described? There was no question that he was one. She hadn’t uttered a single untrue word. When had he gotten so caught up in working for the betterment of the many that he’d lost complete sight of the spirit and integrity of the few? Especially the few who worked for him.

He tried to tell himself that he’d just assumed they were all in it together, that they must feel the same as he did or they wouldn’t be risking their lives. It didn’t wash, though.

Dear God, what had he done to her?
Jarrett grabbed big handfuls of the blanket covering him, the rage growing inside him until the urge to thrash and yell and scream, to hurl things against the wall and shout down the house, was almost uncontrollable. And just as suddenly he wanted to roll onto his side and curl up into a ball and hide within himself until this new awareness went away.

He could do neither. His crippling limitations clawed at him. He’d never needed to control a situation
more, never needed to take action as he did right that instant, and he was forced to do nothing.

He raged against that truth until he could no longer contain it. Reaching out, he grabbed the first thing he touched, the water pitcher. He hurled it against the far wall, but the resulting crash and spray of water did little to quell the fury rising in him.

“Rae!” he roared, even as he knew she’d never come. “Rae!” He yelled her name as loud as he could; it felt as though it were being ripped from his aching throat. He called over and over, the command eventually turning into a hoarse plea as it echoed throughout her house. He couldn’t stop. Even when his voice was nothing more than a raw whisper, he kept repeating her name until, exhausted, he slipped into a restless, tormented sleep.

Rae made it as far as the hallway before the loud crash and first shout of her name had her collapsing against the wall. Like a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from, she forced herself to endure his repeated shouts, unable not to. She slowly sank into a huddled ball as his voice grew more ragged and finally, mercifully, faded to silence.