The Impossible Alliance

It was better than the truth.

She sealed her fate with a single, telling shrug and damned herself to hell in the process. “Since Rita died, Sam and I have become…close.” It was the truth. But she also knew Jared would misconstrue it. Especially when she felt his gaze drop to the yawning gap in her shirt and linger there.

He dragged it up. “I’ll just bet you have.” His shadowy shrug was pointed. Insolent. “Too bad Sam has chosen to ignore your desires—and passed you off to me.”

Damn him.

Alex sucked up her pride as each of her forbidden fantasies about this man crumbled beneath reality. She should have caved in to temptation and engineered another meeting with Jared months ago, that one as herself. It would have saved her far too many sleepless nights. As it was, she still had to deal with this night. With him. The real Jared Sullivan and not some erotic figment of her imagination.

The silence between them thickened until it succeeded in deafening the constant nocturnal cacophony ringing through her ear. She should wait. Force him to break it.

To her astonishment, he did it on his own.

He reached up and pulled the knit cap from his head as he sighed. “Look, I was out of line. I have a lot of respect for Samuel Hatch. He’s a good director. A good man. What he does on his down time is his own business. Let’s just say I’m a little pissed to find out he sent me on a job without giving me all the facts. But I shouldn’t have taken that out on you. It’s not as if you knew I was coming.”

But she had concealed that same damning fact from him, hadn’t she? Not tonight, but three short months ago. Though she now knew this man would never, ever, bring up that brief, piercingly uncomfortable meeting, she could feel the accusation hanging between them—thrumming with betrayal.

With disappointment.

He might not know that she’d overheard half that call, but he did know she’d come out of that bathroom in time to discover tears trickling down the face of the Man of Stone himself, just before she’d dared to offer her own awkward sympathy. Never once mentioning that she was a woman.

Maybe it was the convoluted effects of that blasted coma. Maybe it was the escape. Maybe it was the constant, distracting racket in her ear. Hell, maybe deep down she was really just a coward at heart. Because she’d just discovered that she didn’t have the nerve to address that night at Hatch’s house out loud, either. Much less confess that she knew why he’d been so devastated. So she addressed the only part she could. “You’re right. Sam is a good man.” The best. But he was also more.

At least to her.

Unfortunately, if Sam hadn’t confided their relationship to Jared, then it wasn’t her place to share it, either. To do so would shatter the bargain she and her uncle had struck years before and, whether or not she believed Sam, would also risk both their careers, as well as her life. A life Sam had entrusted to the man waiting patiently to see if she’d accept his apology.

She should. Truth be known, she owed Jared an apology, as well, for her behavior when she’d regained consciousness in his arms. Behavior she still didn’t understand. She knew full well the man hadn’t been copping a feel. From the few but telling comments Sam had dropped regarding this particular operative through the years, Jared Sullivan was not a rutting stag. The opposite, in fact. Hadn’t she overheard proof of that herself?

She sighed. “Look, Agent Sullivan—”

“Jared.”

Alex stared into the dark, searched the shadows shrouding the man’s imposing body, especially the ones obscuring the equally imposing planes of his face. She finally gave up. He was just too far away. What she’d have given to have superhuman sight to go along with her souped-up hearing. Or at the very least have the nerve to snag that flashlight and shine it on that razor-sharp gaze. To know for certain if those eyes were glowing from the extension of an honest-to-goodness olive branch—or gleaming with open speculation.

He’d offered his real first name. What was hers?

She reached for the branch—and ignored the guilt. She extended her hand. “Dr. Alexandra Morrow.”

Even a detailed check into her background from someone at his level would support her claim. Whether or not he believed her, he extended his hand as well, the hard warmth engulfing hers. Heat slid up her arm. Her breath came out in rush.

He frowned. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She tugged her hand from his grip as quickly as she dared and forced a smile. “Still a little woozy, I guess.”

How long could she abuse that excuse?

His frown cleared as he nodded. “It’s because of the coma. I’m surprised you’ve held up as well as you have. You’re one for the medical books, you know that?”

She might. But he didn’t know the half of it.

She returned his nod, anyway. “I admit there was a moment there when I didn’t think I’d make it. If you hadn’t slung me into that harness…” She trailed off, wincing in memory—and then in reality as the magnified screech of a hoot owl somewhere overhead ripped through her skull. Even so, that owl had nothing on that thundering iron bird. “You saved my life back there. I’d like to thank—”

He shook his head, cutting her off. “It’s not necessary.”

“Yes, it is.” She risked the dizziness and captured his hands, squeezing them quickly. “Thank you.” She breathed her relief as the roiling vertigo remained at bay—until an unmistakably erotic pull replaced it as he squeezed back.

“You’re welcome.”

She swore she could feel the air between them warm. Thicken. She did not want to know if he felt it, too.

Leave it to her blasted hyperactive hearing aid to pick up the masked whoosh of his own breath. This time, it was his hand that executed a discreet retreat. His entire body withdrew several steps, too. He turned and dropped his stethoscope, flashlight and black knit hat beside the rucksack and machine gun he’d left at the base of a tree. He unhooked his web gear next, adding the nylon harness to the pile. His first-aid kit followed. Moments later his massive chest blocked her view as he hunkered down. It didn’t matter. The vibrations from the zippers at the legs of his jumpsuit ripped across her eardrum as he released the rows of metal teeth just above his boots. They died out as he stood to peel the insulated coveralls down and off his boots, boots that until that moment she hadn’t realized were more lumberjack than Airborne Ranger. A second later the jumpsuit joined the pile of gear. She watched, intrigued, as he tugged the rubber band from his hair. The shadows obscuring his features deepened as the thick silk slipped past his shoulders to settle around his face.

“Well?”

She nodded approvingly as he stepped in front of her. Evidently she wasn’t the only quick-change artist around. With his hair flowing freely and that matching cable-knit turtleneck toning down his massive chest and arms, in addition to his dark jeans and nondescript jump boots, Agent Sullivan looked more like a local woodsman out for a midnight stroll than a finely honed ARIES operative on the prowl in the backwoods of…

“Where are we?”

He stilled. “You don’t remember?”

Before she could answer, he turned back to the pile of gear, leaning down to retrieve something. She stared at the disk of that gleaming scope as he returned.

Great.

She steeled herself as he moved in close, determined to ignore his scent and his warmth as he tucked the cool disk into the curve of her upper breast. “I don’t have a blessed clue where we are. The last I remember, I was attending a conference in Holzberg. I’m not even sure how long I was out. I woke up a couple of days ago…I think. It’s hard to say, since I kept falling back under. Twice I saw someone else. A man. He’d been beaten severely. I think he was a doctor or at least a nurse assigned to treat me.”

He slipped the scope from the gap in her shirt and tucked it beneath her collar, sliding the disk far enough down her back to listen to her lungs. “Why?”

“He was wearing a white lab coat.”

“I don’t suppose—”

“No. I didn’t see a name. I didn’t hear one, either. Except for my own.” She breathed easier as he withdrew the scope and hooked the tubing around his neck—until he lit up the face of his watch. The dial glowed softly as he captured her wrist and timed her pulse. She willed it to slow.

“Hmm.”

Was that a good “hmm” or a bad “hmm”? She decided on the former, easing out her breath as he withdrew his fingers altogether, then headed for the pile of gear. He headed back, sans scope—but with a mini flashlight in his right hand.

Oh boy.

“The man spoke to you?”

Her panic revved as Jared turned on the flashlight.

“Alex?”

She dragged her gaze to his. She’d been right to worry earlier. Those amber eyes might be mesmerizing, but they were also much too shrewd for her peace of mind. She could almost feel her ear throb beneath them. He was waiting.

What had he asked her?

She shoved the panic down and cleared her throat. “Excuse me?”

“The man. You said you heard your name. Did he speak?”

“No—yes.” She shook her head, shook off the panic. “No. He wasn’t the one who called my name. But, yes, he did speak. The first time I came to, he was leaning over me, talking softly, as if he thought someone might be listening. At least I think so. At the time I was woozy, confused. I couldn’t understand the language. It could have been Rebelian, but I can’t be sure.” She’d been pretty out of it. “Anyway, by the time he switched to English, I’d passed out. The next time I awoke, he was handcuffed to the bed beside mine. At first I thought he might be sleeping—or dead. But then a couple of armed thugs entered the room. He’d been beaten into unconsciousness. They dragged him out, probably for another round of torture.” She fell silent as Jared sighed. The sound was heavy, rife with regret

“I’m sorry. I had my orders.”

“I know.” She also knew he truly hadn’t had time to search for the man when they left. In the end, neither of them had. If Jared had bowed to her demands and gone back, all three of them would be dead by now.

“I’ll put out the word. See what I can find out. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Hell, maybe he did.”

She flinched as Jared slid his fingers beneath her chin. He had to have noticed, but he didn’t comment on it as he gently turned her head and tipped it slightly. She forced the panic down again, forced herself not to pull away as he bathed the side of her face with the red glow from his flashlight.

“The thugs, did they say anything?”

She didn’t dare move, much less nod. “Yes. But again, I can’t be sure about the dialect. I do know they were carrying AK-47s. The rifles sported Romanian forward pistol grips.” No surprise there. The Romanian black market had been thoughtfully arming the goons of Eastern Europe for years. She dug her fingertips into her palms as he probed the line of stitches behind her right ear.

Don’t move. Keep him talking.

It just might keep him distracted enough.

“So…where exactly in Rebelia are we?”

It worked. He withdrew his fingers and switched off the flashlight before tucking it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Fifty-one kilometers inside the northeastern corner of the Hartz forest. Two days ago, another ARIES operative by the name of Robert Davidson and his fiancée Lily Scott discovered you were being held in General Bruno DeBruzkya’s stronghold, Veisweimar—a medieval castle that served as a makeshift prison in World War II. As you discovered for yourself, DeBruzkya has since turned the castle into a fortress. The information came from the general himself. He told Lily you were alive, but he never said you were unconscious. Hatch sent me in to pull you out.”

It made sense. The last thing she knew, she was supposed to meet a colleague. To discuss DeBruzkya and his threats to— Nothing. The memory stopped there.

Again.

“What is it?”

“My head.” More specifically, her memory. “It’s just not there.” She dug her fingers into her temples, but the impromptu massage didn’t help now any more than the previous hundred desperate kneadings had. “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t remember what happened.”

Thanks to her hearing aid, the base curse he’d meant to keep beneath his breath reverberated through her ear.

“I’m sorry.”

He sighed. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault. In fact, it’s extremely common. Most coma patients don’t remember the events directly proceeding their trauma. It’s called retrograde amnesia.”

Just what she didn’t need to hear.

Her curse echoed his.

“What do you remember? According to Hatch, the last he heard you were about to meet with a Delmonican colleague. A man by the name of Karl—”

“Weiss.” She nodded. “That much I do remember. I also remember why we were supposed to meet. Karl and I first met years ago, shortly after I joined ARIES. It took a few years to develop him, but he’s turned out to be one of my more reliable sources. He’d contacted me a couple of days before, asking me to meet him in Prague. But he was nervous. Karl said he’d stumbled across something regarding General DeBruzkya, something I would find fascinating…and frightening. I asked him to meet me in Washington, D.C. since I was scheduled to deliver a paper before the Congressional Subcommittee on Environment, Technology and Standards. Karl refused.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t say. But I got the distinct impression he was afraid he was being followed. Terrified even. And you have to know Karl—he’s a big man.” She flicked her gaze to Jared’s massive shoulders. “Almost as big as you. Karl doesn’t scare easily. But trust me, he was then.”

“So you agreed to meet on his turf.”

She nodded. “The conference in Holzberg was perfect. Karl’s a physicist who spends much of his spare time devoted to regional environmental issues, and I—”

“Received dual doctoral degrees in environmental geology and chemistry. You graduated with honors.”

She blinked. “How did you know that?”

“I read your dossier on the flight.”

She could have sworn he flushed.

It must have been the shifting shadows, the sliver of moonlight filtering through the slowly parting clouds. She shrugged it off and sent out a silent thanks to her former ARIES mentor for pounding home the first rule of undercover work six years before. Stick to the truth, honey, whenever and wherever possible. It’ll save you from getting bit in the ass when you least expect it. Good ol’ Aiden Swift. No doubt about her memory there.

She wished she could say the same for Karl. “I remember checking in to the hotel, but that’s it.”

“Nothing else at all? We know you arrived, because you sent an initial message. Try picturing yourself at the conference, seeing Karl, shaking his hand, sitting down to catch a lecture with him, even a meal. Try—”

“Dammit, I told you. I don’t remember. It’s like the whole conference was sucked into a black hole. There’s nothing to picture because there’s nothing there. I can’t remember if we were supposed to meet in my room or in his. Hell, I don’t even remember if we met at all.” She pushed her fingers to her temples and growled. But again, it didn’t help.

“Take it easy. It’s okay. If the memory’s not there, don’t force it. You’ll only lock yourself up more.”

She lowered her hands and sighed. “Is it permanent?”

“Loss of the final traumatic event that caused the amnesia can be. But given enough time and rest, you may be able to recall the memories leading up to it.”

May? She was stuck in the middle of Rebelia with no idea of who’d smashed in the side of her skull and dragged her across the border, and all Jared could do was tell her she may eventually remember? She turned and stalked over to the pile of gear he’d left at the base of the next tree, resisting the sudden, almost overwhelming urge to kick his rucksack back to Holzberg. And when those damned hands settled over her shoulders, their calming warmth sparked the opposite effect than the one he’d obviously intended, ratcheting her anger up another level.

“Relax.”

She spun around. “Relax? That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one with a great big blank where part of your life should be.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, it’s normal.”

“Normal.” She snorted, unable to let go of the inexplicable fury despite his soothing voice, or maybe because of it. She crossed her arms and glared at him. “You’re awfully calm for someone who just learned his partner has a hole in her brain.”

Another one of those infuriating enigmatic shrugs.

She was a split second from exploding when her fury simply…evaporated. Stranger still, she wasn’t as stunned by that as she was by the intense urge to weep that supplanted it.

Weep?

No way. She did not cry. Dammit, she’d cried a total of three measly times in the past fifteen years. The first when her father died. The second when her aunt Rita had passed away. The third pity-fest had taken place four months later, halfway through graduate school, the day she’d discovered just how much the love of her life wasn’t in love with her. She hadn’t cried since.

So why the devil was she blubbering now?

“It’s the coma.” He tipped her chin. To her utter humiliation, he reached up and smoothed the tears from her cheeks.

“I swear, I never—” She sealed her shame with a violent, shuddering hiccup.

“I know. I told you, it’s the aftereffects of the coma.” He pulled her close and guided her head to his shoulder, stroking his hands up and down her back as she continued to sob for all she was worth, drenching the inky strands of his hair along with the wool sweater beneath. “Shh. It’s okay. The anger, the crying jags, the mood swings. They’re normal, I promise. They’ll pass.”

Eventually they did. At least this one did. Unfortunately, by that time she managed to pull herself together, the shame had set in. She tried backing away, but his arms stopped her.

“Don’t.”

She flinched as he tucked her hair behind her ear. She was simply too raw to prevent it. “Please. Let me go.”

“No.” His fingers slipped beneath her chin. “Look at me.”

Why? It was too dark.

Except it wasn’t. Not this close. Not anymore. The blanket of clouds had thinned even more, spreading apart to leave a generous three-quarter moon and a broad swath of stars behind. The twinkling lights studded the canopy of the pine forest, allowing her to make out that tawny gaze with painful perfection. She didn’t want to see it. To see him. And she certainly didn’t want him seeing her. Not like this. She’d hadn’t felt this exposed in her entire life. In less than two hours, under the obscuring cover of night, this man had managed to see far too much.

God only knew what he’d see in the harsh light of day.

“Are you okay now?”

Not by a long shot. “Yes. Will you please release me?”

He did.

They both breathed easier.

She stepped away from the pile of gear as he hunkered down, fully aware that she was affording herself room, rather than him. He dug through his ruck and pulled out a dark T-shirt. Before she could stop him, he’d stripped the sweater from his chest and he held it out.

“Put it on. We’ve got a decent hike ahead of us.”

“No, you keep it. Since you’ve read my file, you know I did my grad work in Colorado. I doubt I’ll even notice the cold.”

“You’ve also been in a coma for three weeks. Trust me, you’ll notice.”

Three weeks? Just like that, the vertigo returned. She swallowed the nausea that came with it. “That long?”

He nodded…and held out the sweater.

This time she took it. Evidently he was right about the mood swings, because she couldn’t muster the brazenness she’d ridden earlier as she’d stripped the prosthetic from her chest in front of him. She left the filthy shirt tied beneath her breasts and pulled the thick turtleneck on over it. His tantalizing scent swirled through her, suffocating her. Worse, the sweater still carried his heat.

Ignore it.

Somehow she managed—until she glanced up and caught the glimmer of moonlight slipping across that seriously sculpted, dangerously dusky chest. A moment later the rippling muscles disappeared beneath the T-shirt. Disappointment warred with relief as he tucked the hem into his jeans, then leaned down to repack his rucksack. But at least her lungs had kicked in. She breathed deeply as she pushed up the sweater’s sleeves.

Shock yanked the air right back out.

Blood?

She raised her right arm and fingered the damp stitching again, the raw edges of the rip. She leaned closer, this time sniffing the knit fabric, and cursed.

“You were shot.”

He nodded as leaned down to tuck his jumpsuit into the ruck. “Grazed.”

“Let me take a look.”

“I already did.” Before she could argue, he reached into his first-aid kit and pulled out another cravat. He flipped the green fabric over itself and wrapped the resulting triangle around his right biceps as he stood. “But you can tie it off for me.”

Alex retrieved the ends as he stepped in front of her, avoiding the man’s steady gaze as she pulled the fabric snugly against the muscle bulging beneath the bandage. His subtle, smoky scent swirled through her. Dammit, he was fantasy fodder, nothing more. A figment of her dreams. She secured the knot quickly and stepped back. “How far?”

His dark brows rose as he glanced up.

“The hike,” she clarified. “I assume we’re headed to a safe house.”

“We are. Four kilometers.” He flipped his thumb over his right shoulder. “That way.”

“And this new assignment? It has to do with Karl and Bruno DeBruzkya, doesn’t it?”

Jared took a step back, as well. But he said nothing.

He was holding out on her. She could feel it. The air between them had changed. Grown cool, distant. Almost wary. Like him. For a man who’d been tasked with a mission, a mission he’d already told her she shared, he was suspiciously closemouthed. Why? All she’d done was ask about DeBruzkya and—

“Karl.”

Jared reversed his direction, this time stepping toward her. Still guarded, still wary. If anything, even more so. His body language sealed it. Her memory might not have been functioning up to par, but her instincts were. She took a deep breath, sucked up the pain and regret and just said it. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Jared nodded slowly. “When ARIES lost contact with you, they went searching for Karl. He wasn’t there. Not in your room or his. He didn’t settle his hotel bill, nor did he attend his own lecture scheduled for the following day. He just vanished. Our recon team found traces of blood in his room. His type. A week later his body turned up on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t pretty.” He reached out and cupped his hands to her shoulders. “You okay?”

“No. He was a contact, but he was also my friend.” She grimaced at the irony of it. At her pathetic self. Karl might have been her friend. But he hadn’t even known she was a woman.

“H-how—” She swallowed the tears that threatened for the second time. She refused to give in to them. Nothing would be gained by it. Karl would be better served if she focused on finding the bastard who murdered him. She pictured her friend. His shaggy blond hair. His awkward, hulking body. That damned goofy grin. The passion that radiated off him when he spoke about his true love, physics.

It worked.

The tears dried and the pain in her heart eased, if only slightly. But at least she could think about Karl without that stifling sense of suffocation that had clamped down onto her lungs since she awoke. She could even see him at the conference, in his hotel room— “That’s it!”

“You remember seeing him?”

“Yes. We were supposed to meet in his hotel room. We did. I was furious, too.”

“Why?”

“Because he’d had me fly halfway around the world to rehash some wild Rebelian legend about the Gem of Power.”