More Than Gold
By Shirley Hailstock
ISBN: 978-1-939214-09-6
Copyright: Shirley T. Hailstock
April 2014
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher: Shirley T. Hailstock PO Box 513, Plainsboro, NJ 08536-0513.
Photo Credit: Canstock.com
Photo Credit: Pixabay - public domain
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MORE THAN GOLD
Morgan wore her leotard and tights. She could explain she was heading for the gym to practice when she saw him. Jack gave her no need to explain. Neither of them spoke a word.
He walked directly to her, his gait easy, unhurried, his weight balanced. She had to look up as he approached. Morgan watched him, a dark Poseidon, a devil-god rising from the sea, advancing toward her, the light of the water in his eyes. Her heart beat so hard she was sure he could see her chest moving. Yet they continued to stare, one at the other.
He stopped in front of her. Too close. He breathed hard from physical exertion. Morgan felt the same although she had done none of the work that he'd performed while she watched him.
Her eyes rose to Jack's. Gone was the coldness she'd always seen there. Gone was the hostility that normally greeted her when she found herself in his line of vision. His eyes were liquid, large brown circles that spoke to her without language, without tongue or teeth or movement. She heard his mind, his heart; his need for her already knew the words.
Dedication
To my sister Loretta Hailstock who had a dream and fought to win it despite overwhelming odds.
Table of Contents
Brian Ashleigh stared at the screen in the small, plushly appointed room. He sat in a great chair of soft rose velvet. It had wide arms, and both the seat and back moved to slightly recline for additional comfort. The room was a small auditorium that could seat fifty people, but only he and four other men occupied the space. Three of them sat on the first row, separated by an empty seat between them. One man sat in the center of the rows of seats and the fifth man sat alone on the last row, away from the group. It was his nature. He worked alone and didn't approve of this plan. The child on the screen was only a few years younger than one of Brian's daughters.
Dressed in a white leotard, she stood poised on the uneven parallel bars, her body leaning forward, her hands reaching for the next bar as she began another of several routines he'd watched more than once. At nineteen, she was America's sweetheart. The darling of an age of satellite television, palm-size video machines and music that made his eardrums split. She was beautiful, golden brown with long hair she'd tied into a ponytail. It bounced as she went from routine to routine, swinging sideways as it and her body seemingly floated on air from one release move to another. Brian had been an athlete in his youth. His sport was basketball. He'd played in high school and college, before it was necessary to be six foot seven to even be considered for anything more than the bowling league.
He knew the drill of hours of practice, the bandaged knees, muscle spasms and exhaustion that every athlete was committed to in their quest to stand in the spotlight. Morgan Kirkwood had spent most of her young life in pursuit of that goal. This would be her chance, that moment in time, that she'd worked toward. She had everything going for her: a past she'd overcome, her luck at finding the right venue and having it recognized. At nineteen she'd lived more, seen more, experienced more than most adults. She'd spent hours honing her muscles, refining her routine, working toward a goal that could only shine on one person in the world.
And he was going to ask her to give it up.
His eyes followed her across the film. She moved to a large clear area covered with blue carpet designed for floor exercises. Music began, an upbeat peppy song. She was poised, confident, ready. She wore a smile that showed no fear and no cares beyond her routine. Stopping in a comer, she started the first run, crossing the blue expanse of rug with an easy rhythm that almost made her routine appear effortless. Then she did the unexpected and did it well, so well he wasn't sure he'd even seen it. He watched her leap into the air, defying gravity, drawing her arms close to her body and making several turns and twists that had technical names like layout and double axial, but he couldn't remember which one went with which move, before her feet touched the ground with the sureness of a Billy-goat on a familiar mountain. No one in the room moved or spoke. Morgan Kirkwood had them spellbound. Brian was sure they were holding their breaths, just as he was doing, just as America did each time this leggy child came to the center of the arena.
She hadn't been slated to succeed at anything, not gymnastics, not even at life. She'd spent her early years on the streets, homeless, fending for herself, eating garbage and fighting to survive, trusting no hand that reached for her. Hands could look benevolent but turn quickly to swat her aside like an unwanted fly. Brian's heart tightened for this child. The woman who'd seen her on a playground and recognized her potential had been her caseworker and eventual parent. She'd convinced Morgan to take lessons at a local gymnastics- school and Brian had no doubt it had changed her life. He felt like a dog asking her to give up what she'd worked for her entire young life.
But he had no choice.
She was due to go in a few months. Seoul, South Korea. The Olympics. Morgan would go and the United States would watch their televisions for the two-week period when it looked like all was right with the world. To the average Joe, the world stopped and paid attention to the ministry of athletes, giving them the role of ambassadors of good will. Yet for Brian it was a much bleaker period. It was the time of terrorists and fools. It brought out the worst of the worst in an effort to disrupt, disturb, maim and kill. He was glad the event would not be on American soil.
The film was more than half an hour long. Morgan went through her routines over and over. Several different days and outfits passed through the magic of video. Brian looked at her face. He liked to see people, wanted to read through their exterior and see if the inner soul was good or bad. He'd been successful in most of his character calls, and looking at Morgan he could see her youth, her idealism, her complete blindness to the things he'd seen in his own lifetime. Yet he was about to ask her to join him in one of the worst. He needed her to save the United States from embarrassment on a worldwide scale. He needed her to attend the Olympics, and while she was there he needed her to steal. Break into a heavily guarded prison and return with a man, an intelligence agent, who held secrets that had lain dormant since World War II.
In exchange for this little package, which could get her caught or killed if she was lucky, he'd grant her a wish, but only one and only within reason. He defined reason and he offered the wish.
"Shall we watch it again?" Jacob Winston sat on his right. Jacob was in charge of the witness protection program and Morgan Kirkwood might well meet with him in the coming months. It was why he'd asked Jacob to attend. Along with him had come Brian's friend, Clarence Christopher, Director of the FBI.
"I've seen enough," Brian said. "Send it to my office."
Brian spoke into a phone connecting him to the projectionist in the glass booth behind them.
Replacing the phone in its cradle, he stood up. The four other men looked at him. "What do you think?" the youngest one asked, the man sitting on the farthest row, apart from the group, his face hidden in shadow. He was a loner, Brian knew, and he also knew what the man thought of the mission and the inclusion of Morgan Kirkwood as part of the plan. He disapproved of every aspect that involved the girl.
Jack Temple was a young, educated man who knew both the streets and the jungle. He'd lived in both. He joined the police academy, but had been recruited for work with the Central Intelligence Agency. Jack left his position and came forward, walking down the steps to the floor of the auditorium with unhurried steps.
"I'm against this," he said and not for the first time. "We'll get her killed or she'll get us killed."
"She'll be trained as best we can. She'll be a rookie, but everyone was a rookie once," Brian told him.
"She's not a rookie," he said. "She's less than a rookie. She's a goddamn civilian."
"Jack, she was your idea," Forrest Washington, Jack's immediate boss, pointed out.
"She wasn't my idea. I wanted an agent, not a child."
"Child? She's not that much younger than you," Brian said.
"You grow up fast in this business," Jack replied.
"She will," Brian told him.
She would have no choice. Jack looked young to Brian, although he was twenty-five. Brian was nearing twice his age and he would be sending him and that nineteen-year-old on a job to save face for the United States, its president and the country at large. Neither of them would ever be able to speak of it.
Jack stood face to face with him, although a head taller, and Brian made a decision he'd known he'd have to make even before seeing the film.
"It's time," he sighed. "See if she'll do it."
Twelve Years Later
Morgan Kirkwood hadn't made her bed over a warm grate in some filthy alley in the southeast section of Washington, D.C., for nearly twenty years. She'd replaced shoes made of torn newspaper soles and discarded rags with designer suits, handmade boots and satin bed sheets, but her sense of danger, the need for self-preservation, piqued her senses the moment she stepped from the oven heat of the garage to the air-cooled comfort of her kitchen.
Someone was here.
She could feel him. A man. She didn't smell a male scent or the faint odor of sweat. Not even a cologne betrayed his presence. It was the air that had changed. It hadn't been stirred like a morning cup of coffee or hastily rushed through by an aerobic exerciser. Whoever was here had passed through it with ease, barely moving, seeking, but not with stealth, more with purpose. Morgan had schooled herself to be aware. Living on the streets of D.C. had given her a course in survival, in being prepared for anything at any time. She thought she'd forgotten it, but her senses were alive, and Adrenaline pumped into her blood. Her mind sharpened as she thought of what was at hand that she could use as a weapon. Internal radar scoped the space, trying to hone in on the hiding place of her assailant. She didn't sense more than one.
He could be a robber, someone looking to feed a habit, someone she walked in on, but Morgan knew better. Whoever was here was looking for her. He'd been coming for twelve years. Finally they'd connected.
Tonight one of them would die.
***
Morgan put her purse on the counter and stepped out of her heels. The kitchen tiles were cool to her stockinged feet. Her clothes were a disadvantage, but she couldn't do anything about them. She'd been to dinner with friends and wore a straight dress with short sleeves and high heels. The dress had no pockets and she'd like to keep the car keys, but the dress had no place to put them. She was going to need her hands. As her mind probed the space around her, hunting for the hiding place of her killer, she removed money and her drivers license and, along with the keys, stuffed them inside her bra.
The kitchen had a pantry, but she didn't feel him in there. The space was small and crowded with canned vegetables, flour, sugar, bottles of maple syrup and other nonperishable foods. The dining room and living room were both accessible from the kitchen. Neither room had any hiding places that didn't involve furniture. There was a hall closet near the front entrance. Like most people living in development housing they entered through the garage. Morgan's house wasn't in a development. It was set apart, far into the woods, alone, deserted and, now she felt, vulnerable, but the garage was connected to the house by a short hallway. The front door was only opened for guests and to let the air in on warm, breezy days. It was much too hot today. Every house would have its air conditioner running, and the neighbors would be too preoccupied with the noise of life to notice anything different even if they could see Morgan's house.
Taking a knife from the kitchen rack, she noticed all of them were present and accounted for. The killer must have his own weapon. Of course he would, she thought, nearly laughing at her own stupidity. He hadn't picked up anything or moved anything. Every piece of furniture was in the exact place. Every dish, every pot was exactly where she'd left it.
But he was here.
She knew he would come, knew someone would. First Austin Fisk, reporter for that rag the St. Louis Star, begins poking into her past, calling for interviews and following her around. Then the mysterious feeling she was being watched by someone other than Fisk plagued her. He was too much an in-your-face reporter for covert action, but she could feel it. All the time. No matter if she went to the mailbox or drove into St. Louis to meet friends, there was that feeling of being under surveillance. She could see nothing, no matter how often she looked over her shoulder or glanced in the rearview mirror, only the feeling remained. There was no visible evidence of anything, but she knew someone was there.
Morgan moved through the space of her kitchen like a thief. She didn't want to be surprised. Her eyes shifted from side to side, taking in the entire room and all its crevices. Her heartbeat accelerated, pounded in her chest and her ears, and she consciously willed it to slow down. She needed all her wits, all her thought processes to be at their best if she was to survive.
He would know she was in the house. She'd disabled the alarm when she came in and he would have heard that. Somehow he'd gotten past the code that she'd programmed into the system. Morgan knew that wouldn't be hard to do. This was a good system, but it wasn't foolproof, especially for the kind of person they would send after her. What she had was worth a good price. The killer would be experienced, paid well and ready for anything.
Morgan had to be ready too. She circled around the living room, checked behind every piece of furniture and almost convinced herself she was being paranoid. She went to the stairs. She wouldn't go up. There was no way out if she went to any of the bedrooms. There were four bedrooms. He could be in any of them. While she checked one he could surprise her from behind. If necessary she'd go back the way she'd come.
Suddenly she saw something. A shadow. She whirled around. Nothing. Had she really seen it? Morgan was sure of her mind. If she saw a shadow, it was there. She moved toward the area. Slowly, her shoeless feet making no noise on the tiled entryway, she got to the stairs, looking right and left. Nothing.
Suddenly, he was behind her. A hand came over her mouth, cutting her scream. A gloved hand that tasted like engine oil clamped her mouth closed and prevented her from making a sound. She tried to scream, but he pulled her head back, wrenching her neck to the point of pain. His free arm grabbed the hand holding the knife and pulled it backward until the pain in her arm forced her to drop her only weapon. Then he circled her waist and his leg spread between hers and wrapped candy-cane style around one of hers. This kept her from kicking. If she tried to lift a foot she'd lose her balance and fall. Still she fought, using whatever appendage she had free, arms, hands, her body, her head. She tried to butt him, but he moved, anticipating her blow.
Morgan fought with every ounce of the twelve-year-old street waif who learned to withstand the dangers of being alone and female. She concentrated her energy, winding it into whatever move she made, concentrating her entire weight into the blow she intended to deliver. He outwitted her at every turn. But he relaxed the hold on her mouth. Taking advantage of it, she bit down on the hand in her mouth. Her killer screamed, but held fast to her, dashing her hope of escaping his hold. He kicked her leg out, too far for her to remain upright. They both went down to the bare floor. She scrambled, trying to get away, but he was larger, faster, stronger. He grabbed her about the shoulders and flipped her over, pinning her to the floor.
Morgan's hands were free and she pounded at the shoulders and head of the killer. He grabbed her hands and pinned them above her on either side of her head.
"Morgan, stop it!"
She looked at him.
"Not you," she said, and renewed her struggles.
"Stop it or I'll kiss you."
Every nerve in her body froze.
"That's better." For a moment he still held her, but then he sat back and moved away from her. Morgan was surprised. Why hadn't he killed her? She was surprised to find it was him.
Jack Temple.
She'd hoped whoever came would be someone she'd never seen before. To be killed by someone she knew, someone she'd met. She couldn't call him a friend. They'd been part of the same team once and when they parted, Morgan never expected to see him again. And now he was here.
Here for her.
She had to get away. Morgan inched away from him. He wasn't looking at her, but resting his head on his drawn-up knees. He looked winded. Maybe she could use that, but she had to act now. Morgan would have to pass him to get to the front door, and it was locked. Her only option was to go through the garage or one of the windows. She had an escape route, but she couldn't use it with him running behind her.
In a split second Morgan sprang to her feet and darted for the kitchen and the garage door. She wouldn't have time to open the door and take the car. Her best bet was to get out the side door and run into the woods. It was only fifty feet to the trees. Hopefully she could get there before he shot her in the back. She couldn't go toward a neighbor. She didn't know if he'd be willing to kill more than one person, but she wasn't going to take the chance. And her nearest neighbor was miles away.
Jack came after her. She heard him, but refused to turn around and look over her shoulder. He was a big man. She'd known his strength twelve years before when they were in South Korea together; she as a contestant in the Olympics and he as one of the coaches for the United States swim team.
Her stocking feet slipped on the permanently waxed kitchen tiles. Jack was on her in an instant. They crashed to the floor. She took his weight on her side. Again he flipped her over.
"What is wrong with you?"
"Just kill me now and get it over with," she hissed. She was breathing hard, her voice holding more bravado than she felt. How would he kill her? Strangle her? A bullet? The knife she'd lost the battle to hold onto? She could feel a heavy object pressing against her through his coat.
"Kill you?" He looked at her with piercing eyes that bore through her, but gave nothing away as to his intentions. She saw cold-bloodedness in them. "You think I'm here to kill you?"
"Yes, I do." Her chin shot out without her even thinking about it. She'd learned it in her youth. Never back down. Never show fear. And that gesture came back to her now. "Why else would you come?''
He got to his feet, pulling her with him. Morgan immediately looked for other methods of escape. He was stronger than she was, taller, maybe even faster, but she wouldn't let his advantages be disadvantages for her. She'd try anyway.
"I'm here because you called."
"I never called you."
"You called Jacob Winston."
Jacob Winston was the director of Witsec, the witness protection program. She wasn't in the program, but if anything ever happened to her, she was to contact him.
How could he know that? "I never called anyone by that name." She hedged, buying herself time.
The look he gave her told her he knew she was lying.
"Look, we need to talk."
He released her and stepped back. Morgan didn't know if he'd let her walk away if she tried, but his distance seemed to ask for her trust. She wouldn't give it, not yet. He could be anyone and he still could be here to kill her, but he had given her the proper buzz word. Jacob Winston. She hadn't called Jacob, but she had contacted him, by a secure electronic mail transmission. Her name hadn't been disclosed, only a code she thought she'd forgotten. It, too, had come to her mind as quickly as her street tactics had returned. She could personally attest to the will to stay alive now. Her message gave details of Fisk's efforts to interview her. She'd also mentioned her sense of being watched. That had been two days ago. She hadn't heard from Jacob.
"Let's go someplace else," Jack suggested.
Getting out of the house was a good idea. She was alone with him here and he could certainly overpower her, as he'd demonstrated twice. Going someplace very public would be a wise move. Before she could reply, the doorbell rang. Morgan froze for a moment as if another killer had already appeared.
"Are you expecting anyone?"
She shook her head. Frightened, Morgan's hand came up as if to catch hold of something or someone for support. Jack cautioned her, pulling a gun from under his jacket. She'd known it was there. She'd felt it while he had her pinned to the kitchen floor. Noticing her hanging hand, she dropped it to her side. Jack motioned for her to go to the door. She picked up the knife that had been her weapon against him and went toward the portal. He took up a blend-into-the-wall position which would have been laughable if she wasn't already geared up to be frightened to death. Morgan peered through the curtain and saw her friend, Michelle O'Banyon, standing alone on the porch. She relaxed. Her whole body went limp and she grabbed the doorknob tighter than she would have if her Adrenaline wasn't working overtime.
"It's all right," she said to Jack as she pulled the door open. "Michelle, what are you doing here?"
Michelle pulled the screen open. "I can't come in, Morgan. I'm in a real hurry," she said in a rush. "I have to get to the train station, but since I was passing and I've been carrying this bowl around in my car for a week, I thought I'd drop it off."
Michelle hated being indebted to anyone, even if it was for a bowl containing potato salad which Morgan had taken to a backyard barbecue and left. She offered the package to Morgan, who realized she was still holding the knife. Both of them looked at the gleaming blade at the same time. Morgan offered a weak smile. She was glad she hadn't actually cut Jack with it.
"I was cooking," she explained.
She moved sideways to place it on the small table next to the door where sat a vase of fresh flowers. Morgan changed them once a week. She loved the smell of them. This week it was roses. She'd had carnations last week and an exotic bird of paradise spray the week before. She laid down the knife and turned back to Michelle. The knife fell off the table and clattered to the floor. Morgan instinctively turned and in that split second the explosion sounded.
Morgan turned in time to see Michelle blown inward through the door. Blood splattered across me room. Morgan straightened, a look of amazement on her face. Michelle's body was flung through the foyer. She slammed into the wall and hung there, suspended like a slack puppet for a moment before sliding to the floor. Morgan's heart hammered as she realized Michelle was dead. She started for her. Jack sprang from his hiding place, tackling her, bringing her down to the floor and covering her with his body. Shots rang out, showering the house from the outside. Windows exploded, spraying glass over the room. The vase on the table was hit. A shard pierce Morgan's bare arm. The walls above her were riddled with bullets. She could hear bullets crashing through the windows of her living room, knew the splattered whisper of them finding solace in the books that lined one wall.
Morgan cowered under Jack. Clenching her teeth together, she dug her fingers into his arms, holding him as her protector. The gunfire seemed to grow faster and louder. Outside it sounded like there must be an army using its entire arsenal against them. When would they stop? How many were there? Morgan couldn't wait.
"We have to get out of here," Jack shouted in her ear. "We'll go to the garage and take your car—"
His sentence was cut off by a huge explosion coming from the garage. Morgan knew her car had just been vaporized. There would be no escaping using it.
"Follow me," she told him. "I have a way."
"You're not going to try the back door?"
"No,'' she said, throwing him a look that would have stopped any street thug.
Morgan crawled on her belly as if she were a seasoned soldier. Jack followed her. Outside he'd made out four men, but there could be more. From the artillery they were throwing at the house, he knew it was only a matter of time before they came inside. There were four entrances, including the garage entryway and the sliding glass door off the great room in the back. He'd made sure they were all locked, but none of them would stand up to bullets. The glass doors and windows were definitely a weak point. He had to believe there were people in the back waiting for them to come through one of the doors.
Morgan went toward the kitchen. She opened a door which led to the cellar. He'd explored it earlier. She had a gym down there, hidden, concealed. He'd found the entrance that opened by using a code on a security panel. He didn't know how she got it built under a house this size and this old. But the normal basement, which must have been of standard height, had been lowered to a cavernous size where she could tumble and jump up and down on trampolines and parallel bars. There was no musty smell, only the latent odor of chalk she used to coat her hands and maintain a tight and dry grip on the equipment. Jack hadn't seen any exits on that level. On the level above it were only windows. The old double-door entry had been cemented over.
"There's a way out down here?" He grabbed her shoulder, stopping her on the steps.
"Yes." She didn't provide any more information, only continued to run down the stairs as fast as she could. Jack followed. He knew she could lie. She could run cons, pick pockets, steal into and out of places without being noticed. She could throw a knife with an accuracy rate of a thousandth of an inch to the mark. Thankfully, he'd reached her before she had a chance to use her knife-throwing talents on him. He remembered her file, the things she'd done to survive before she was adopted, before she found her place in the gymnastics arena. She could be leading him to his death, but he didn't think so. The bullets were real. She knew that. And he had no choice.
Morgan punched in the code with a speed that said she could do it in her sleep. Then she pulled the door open and they began their descent into her private gym. The door closed behind them. This was her alone place. No one knew of this room, or she wouldn't conceal it so carefully. Jack wanted to take a moment to question her about this space, but his mind was on escape. If they got out of here, he could ask about it later.
Down they went. Down a long set of stairs that wove back and forth, flight by flight. Although he had found no exit when he'd checked this two-hundred-foot room, not on the flooring under the apparatus or through any of the exterior walls, he knew it was here. She'd concealed it well and he thanked her for it now. Above his head the shooting stopped, but he could feel, not hear, but know the silent footfalls of the intruders.
"They're in the house," he whispered.
"How good are you at gymnastics?" she asked. Grabbing a pair of running shoes lying near the beam, she laced them on.
Jack was thrown by the question, but answered it the only way he knew how. "I can hold my own."
"I hope that's good enough."
He had the feeling she knew he was lying. They passed beams and uneven bars, trampolines, a pit filled with foam rubber cubes over which a single wooden bar hung. In front of them was a wall of mirrors and nothing else. Jack didn't think they could walk through the mirrors, but it looked as if there was nowhere else for them to go. Without his seeing her do anything, a panel opened electronically in the ceiling. It was next to a light at the far end of the gym. When the panel opened a rope lowered to about twelve feet off the floor. Morgan jumped onto the beam as if walking on a four-inch-wide pedestal four feet off the floor was part of her natural state. She negotiated its length without a waver of imbalance, her feet as sure as if she were walking on flat ground. At the end of the beam she leapt two feet straight up and grabbed the hanging rope. With grace as elegant as any athlete in competition and without using her legs for support, she pulled her weight up hand over hand and swung her lithe body through the opening.
"Come on," she said, looking back at him. "They're going to find this door any minute now."
Jack didn't have time to hesitate. Climbing the rope wasn't a problem. He could do that, though not as gracefully as she had. He needed to use his legs. Getting up on a four-inch piece of wood with a padded covering to grab the rope was something else. He made it on the second try. He didn't need to jump far to grasp the rope. Once he reached it, he was up and through the hole in the ceiling in no time.
"How do we close this?"
Morgan did nothing more than touch herself. She had no remote unit, keycard or any other device that he could see, yet the rope and panel started its movement back to the original place. If he hadn't found this opening, he was confident the people shooting at them wouldn't find it either. Even if they did, could they reach it? Jack breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe for the time being. All they had to do was be quiet and wait out the time.
Once the panel closed the space was pitch black. Like being in a darkroom, no light escaped into this area. He had no idea of the dimensions. Was it large enough for him to stand up or was it a crawl space? The air here was stale, musty, feeling as if no one lived here or wanted to live here. He could still smell the chalk, but it was old, like going into a school when they were tearing it down and the bricks and mortar that held the building together had settled into screaming memory of the thousands of voices that once shared the space.
"Give me your hand," Morgan whispered.
He reached toward her voice in the dark. It was the kind of voice that should be heard in the dark: low, rich, seductive, sexy. His hand brushed her waist. She found it and moved it away from her body but kept hold of him. She stood. Feeling the pressure of her hand pulling at him, he stood too.
"Don't let go," she whispered, and she started to walk.
"We aren't going to wait here?"
"Now that they've found me, they're not going to leave until they find where we're hiding. We have to go."
She pulled on his hand and he started to move.
"How big is this. . .place?" he asked, spreading his free arm out to ward off whatever was denied his eyes and to try and maintain his balance in total darkness.
"You don't have to worry about bumping into anything."
That wasn't his concern. The two of them walked. She led and he followed. About thirty seconds after they started in the pitch darkness, she switched on a flashlight. Jack noticed there were no cobwebs. The place wasn't a room but a long narrow corridor with paneled walls and light sconces. Before climbing through the ceiling tile they'd already come to the end of the building. They must be outside of the house by now.
"How far does this go?" Jack asked after they'd walked another three minutes.
"It will end soon."
It did. The paneling ended at another wall. Jack trusted her when she said there was an exit. At the wall was a heavy door which swung open easily, as if its hinges were oiled regularly. Again this one required an electronic code for access. They went through it and into a tunnel. Morgan turned and reset the code then closed the door. It not only had an electronic lock, but she bolted it with three primitive slats of wood that fell neatly into wooden place holders. Anyone trying to get through it would be greatly hampered even if they tried to blast through it with gunfire. She'd thought of everything.
And that made him uncomfortable.
If she'd put this much thought into an escape plan, someone must really be after her. Why? He hadn't gotten that information. He'd wanted to talk to her, but there hadn't been time. Before they got to say anything the bullets had started flying.
After the door was secure she pulled a backpack from a concealed shelf.
"Turn around," she ordered.
"What?"
"I never expected anyone to be with me. I have to change clothes. So turn around or I'll switch this light off and you'll lose your equilibrium and fall over."
"Wouldn't you like me to unzip you?" he asked playfully.
"Funny," she replied with a look made grotesque by the single beam of light in the vast darkness.
Jack smiled, then turned around. He could hear her taking her dress off. The familiar sound of a zipper being pulled down made him think of things he had no time for now, like how she'd felt lying under him on the floor before the melee started. He could see a shadow thrown against the wall. She pulled something over her head. He had a mental picture of her without that black dress and his body suddenly tightened. He heard the thunk of something falling and her quickly scooping it up.
"A lot of planning went into this,'' Jack said to get his mind off his thoughts.
"Didn't you think I was up to it?" she quipped.
"That's not it," he replied. That was exactly it, but he wasn't about to admit it. "It's just for someone who's such an upstanding citizen, this is not the usual finished room."
"You can turn around now."
She was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. Her hair was completely off her face, pulled into a ponytail that fell over her shoulder as she leaned forward. He was suddenly reminded of the nineteen-year-old he'd seen on a strip of film twelve years ago.
"I thought you said you knew all about me." She started walking again. "Didn't you learn all my talents?" Jack ignored the barb. "Where is this leading?"
"To the outside."
The ground under them changed from flat to a smooth incline. Its steepness rose sharply until Jack had to practically crawl. There was no paneling here. He was in a tunnel with corrugated metal cylinders angling toward some unknown area. It was cold but dry. He could smell the earth, not the sweet smell of 1 freshly turned or freshly planted ground, but the dank, mildewy odor of dirt. Morgan stretched the distance between them without seeming to notice. Then they reached a ladder embedded in a cement wall. Immediately she started to climb. Without hesitation, Jack followed. At the top, she pushed at a grate, using all her strength. It opened and Jack could see the sky above them, clear and starry. Fresh air rushed in with the scent of night on it. He breathed in deeply.
Morgan took no time to look at the sky or the stars. She came out of the hole in the ground, and as soon as he cleared it, she slammed the grate back in place and concealed it with the ground vegetation.
Jack looked around the area. They were in the woods. The road was visible about fifty feet ahead of them. Crickets and cicadas vied for dominance in the normal night. "Where are we?" he asked.
She looked at him. "Still in the line of fire."
Jack followed her line of sight. The headlights of two cars darted in and out of the trees. They drove slowly and sprayed a searchlight into the woods. They were obviously looking for someone and Jack knew he and Morgan were the prime suspects.
"Climb the tree," he commanded. She didn't question his authority, but started up the trunk. Jack did the same. They'd just made it into the leaves when the light swept the trunk. Jack put his hand on her waist to stop her. They settled in the arms of two branches, her body pressed into his, and waited, peering through the leaves, neither saying a word.
The cars rolled by slowly, continuing to search as they moved down the road. Jack and Morgan remained hidden in the branches, rigidly alert. When the car went around the curve in the road, Morgan relaxed against Jack. He felt the tension in her body leave it. He slipped his arms around her, securing her to his chest. He told himself it was to keep her from falling, but Jack knew he wanted to hold her. It had been twelve years since he'd had his arms around her. He thought he could forget her, but throughout his career she'd made several appearances in faraway places during long nights and in his dreams. She hadn't known it and she never would. He could keep her safe, but that's all he could do.
Jack looked through the branches, after the car. It was no longer visible. He waited, turning to look in the other direction, wondering if there were more vehicles. From the gunfire that slammed into the house, there had to be more than two cars. Jack had counted more than seven handguns, an equal number of rifles, more assault weapons than should be on the streets of a major city, let alone a small community like St. Charles, Missouri. The noise from the rapidly firing guns muffled the other machinery. He couldn't make out how many other types there were. Who were they? What did they want?
Morgan moved suddenly. She inched away from him to begin her descent to the ground.
"Not yet," he said, restraining her. Moments later a pickup truck sped past them. In its wake, it bent the branches of nearby bushes to the ground. Before they could snap back, another car came behind it, barreling forward with the same intense speed. Morgan shrank back against Jack. Her arms tightened around his waist. She lay in his arms, her head pressed against his shoulder.
Ten minutes later they were still holding each other. Jack felt it was safe to move.
"We should get going," he said.
They climbed down without a word. Morgan struck out immediately in the direction the trucks had gone.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"I have a car," she told him. "I'm going to get it."
Jack's car was back at her house. He hadn't parked in front of the house. The car was several hundred feet from the entrance to her driveway. He'd walked the remaining distance. It was a cautionary action. Jack had been part of the CIA too long to get caught with his pants down, but today seemed a blunder he hadn't been prepared for. Thankfully, Morgan had an escape plan. Jack admitted he was impressed with Morgan. Few women he'd known would even have an escape plan, or the presence of mind to keep their heads in the wake of certain death. Jack had thought of Morgan as the vulnerable nineteen-year-old who needed looking after, but she proved him wrong and he admired her for it.
"How far is this car?''
"About a mile from here." She walked with purpose, the backpack not slowing her gait one bit. Jack matched her stride. She left the road where the cars had been and continued her trek through the woods.
It was totally dark and only his keen night vision and training made it easy for him to see where he was going.
"Why don't you tell me what's going on?" Jack asked.
"Didn't Jacob fill you in?"
"He had no time."
"Why not? I sent the message two days ago."
He grabbed her arm and pulled her to a halt. "I only found out today."
Her eyes changed. They were barely visible in the darkness, but he saw the difference before she moved her gaze to his hand. He let her go. He had the feeling she knew he'd rushed to her side, but then he dropped the idea. She couldn't know. They hadn't seen each other for twelve years. She remembered him from the Olympics, but she had no knowledge that he'd come here as soon as he discovered she could be in danger.
"Twelve years ago I didn't just go to the Olympics." She started walking again. "I helped the government get a man out of a South Korean prison."
Jack knew this. He'd been part of the mission. In fact, her actions had been the direct result of his own idea, one he no longer regretted, but had from the very first thought should have been used only as a final solution.
"Now someone is trying to kill me."
"Twelve years is a long time. Why did they wait until now?''
"I don't know. Olympic fever. Maybe they didn't know where I was. Maybe something has happened to trigger this action." She glanced at him, never breaking her stride. "I only know they started playing that tape and Austin Fisk showed up."
"Fisk."
"You know him?"
Jack's instinct was to deny it. He denied everything. It was ingrained in him. If he were ever captured in a foreign country, he was to deny knowledge of anything except his cover. The problem here was he had no cover and he felt more and more vulnerable the longer he stayed in Morgan Kirkwoods' presence.
"I know of him. We've never met."
"But. . ." she prompted.
"But he's tenacious, not likely to let a fish go once he's got it on the hook."
"And he's trying to hook me."
The ground they were covering flattened out and Morgan increased her pace. He checked her breathing, but she looked as if this was a country stroll on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Finally they came to a fence. Without hesitation she scaled the twelve feet to the top and used her backpack to cover the circular barbed wire. Jack noticed the small black and white sign stating U.S. government property. do not enter. Morgan didn't appear to see the sign, but somehow Jack knew she knew it was there. He followed her over in the same manner and they continued through the nearly complete blackness.
"We're not going to be suddenly surrounded by men in green fatigues with rifles at the ready, are we?"
Morgan actually smiled. It was the first time he'd seen her do that. She shook her head.
"What is this place?"
"It's an abandoned research base. No one's been here since the Vietnam War ended back in the seventies."
"No one but you?"
She didn't answer. She didn't have to. She'd come straight here without a path or a road. She'd made her way to this place as if from memory. Finally they stopped at a wreck of a building. It was an old barracks and looked as if it were set at the edge of the woods. Any paint that had been on the outside of the wash-worn wooden structure had long since been beaten off by wind and rain. Weeds had grown into vines and trees, snaking in and out of broken windows and doors as if they were giant reptiles taking back from the world what it had stolen from them. The entry door lay close to the ground, hooked onto a rusty hinge by nothing but the grace of God.
Morgan marched straight for the place. She pushed her wiry frame under and over branches, easily going toward her purpose.
"This is where you have a car?" Jack asked, ducking so the swinging branch missed him.
She didn't answer, only continued toward a more dilapidated structure behind the barracks. This one was a corrugated metal building that looked like a huge tube of which half was above the ground. They were usually used as temporary structures, but with the military anything temporary took decades to replace.
Inside there was little light, but this fact did not deter Morgan Kirkwood. Her actions made Jack think she possessed some kind of internal radar that guided her in this dark space. Her feet never faltered as she went from task to task. The cavernous room looked to have once held bunks. Jack remembered his own time in the service, the bed he occupied with a chest at the foot. It held all his worldly possessions and they could acquire nothing that would not fit in that three-square-foot space.
"Brace yourself, Mr. Temple. There's going to be an explosion."
Jack checked the window. He crossed the room, skirting the dirt and dust that had taken up residence in the abandoned metal container, to where she stood. Morgan opened a concealed panel in the wall and pulled something out.
"What is that?"
"A remote control." It was a black rectangle, the size of a cellular phone. She pushed the only button on it, a white disk the size of a dime. Jack heard nothing. "It'll take ten minutes," she said. Then she replaced the control in its hiding place and concealed the panel. Nothing looked disturbed when she finished.
Without another word, she started walking again.
"Just a minute." He stopped her. "Isn't it time we developed a game plan?"
"I have a plan," she informed him in a voice that said don't push me.
She went through the doorway back into the night. Stepping as sure-footed as if she were walking on smooth concrete, she traversed the yard in front of them. Jack ran to catch up with her.
He grabbed her arm and brought her around to look at him. "You want to clue me in? It seems we're in this together, whether that pleases you or not."
"It does not."
Jack took a deep breath. Why had he come here? At least he knew how she felt about him. Despite the way she'd relaxed against him in the tree not half an hour ago, she didn't want him around. Jack admitted he wasn't used to this type of reception. Women were usually glad to see him. But not this one.
"Morgan, I know you're scared. I know these things have never happened to you before, but we're going to have to work together if we're to survive this. It's not over."
"I know that." Her teeth were set and she spoke through them. "It's why I'm getting this car and getting out of here."
She turned to walk away, but again he stopped her.
"Where are you going then?"
"I have a place."
"Where?"
She clamped her mouth closed. She wasn't going to tell him. It made sense. He even admired her for her caution. Anyone who could set up an escape plan as intricately executed as she had would be smart enough to only tell someone she trusted implicitly where she was going. And she didn't trust him. He had the idea that she trusted no one. Good, he thought.
He followed her when she started walking again. They went to another abandoned building. Just as she reached the door, the explosion happened. Jack instinctively grabbed her and pushed her to the ground. He rolled over, coming to his knees, all the while keeping her with him. The sky behind them was bright orange. Jack expected the people trying to kill them to come through one of the buildings.
"It's the house," Morgan explained.
"What?"
"The explosion."
"You blew up your house?" Jack stated.
"To smithereens," she said dryly. "Now, there's no trace of me. Nothing to be found. I'm completely invisible."
***
Invisible. That was the perfect word to describe her. Since she was born, practically no one had thought twice about her. A waif on the streets, unwanted, unseen by finely dressed strangers who'd deny she even existed, to be swatted away like some insect. She loved her house, the friends she'd made in the last twelve years. She'd been cautious, disguising herself with the skillful use of makeup to keep people from recognizing her as the skinny teenager crushing roses to her chest as she sang The Star Spangled Banner in front of a stadium of spectators and millions of television viewers.
Morgan walked fast enough for it to be an exercise program. She often rushed when she thought of her life on the streets, as if she could outrun the memory of that time. No matter how fast she walked or ran the memories stayed with her.
And not only those of being on the streets. There was Jack. And that kiss. She thought she was over him, but how could she be over something that never had a beginning? And without a beginning, there could be no middle, no end. That's where she and Jack stood, strung up in some nether region where life didn't exist, where love didn't exist, but where Jack had kissed her, where there was the promise of something, but before she could define it, it ended. Yet Morgan would take its memory to her grave. When Jack threatened to kiss her at the house, every nerve ending in her body reacted to the memory of that one, long ago time when the two of them shared a small piece of heaven that would be forever trapped in some untouchable cavern where unrealized dreams are stored.
She arrived at the building where the car was hidden. Pushing aside her thoughts, she suddenly wanted to get away fast. Time seemed important. She didn't have the feeling that anyone would discover them if they stayed here, but she wanted to be away. She knew it was her thoughts egging her on, her memories she wanted to distance herself from, even though logic told her she could never get away from them.
The entire place looked abandoned. The army left nearly thirty years ago, closing the base and leaving it like an obnoxious relative. The sense of decayed life hung over the place, giving it the look and feel of a graveyard at midnight. Light and air seemed to enter a building and hang there, trapped and stale, as lost as the past.
Morgan shivered as she wedged herself through the door of the hangar. The cavernous building was dark inside. She coughed at the dry air.
"Wait here,'' she told Jack. He caught her arm as she started to walk away.
"We should stick together."
"There is only room for one of us where I'm going." She looked him up and down. He had broad shoulders and a body devoid of extra bulk, but he would fit. She was smaller and thinner.
Pulling her arm free, she left him, disappearing through a door at the far end of the room. In minutes the wall that had been in place for the past twelve years slid away as if it were highly oiled and maintained. The car rose on the elevated platform and she started the engine.
Jack faced her in the headlights. He squinted, covering his eyes, and started toward the car.
"Let me drive." He opened the driver's side door.
"No," she said.
"You're in no condition."
"I'm driving," she stated, and she reached for the door. Jack held it, stepping between her and the door.
"I'm not moving," she said slowly. "If you don't get out of the way I'll leave you here."
For a long moment they stared at each other. Two lions ready to spring, growling, snarling animals with equal strength and equal stubbornness, vying for domination.
"Jack, you showed up today out of the blue. I don't know if you're on my side or here to kill me. You saved my life tonight and for that I am grateful, but I set this plan up years ago and I'm going to carry it out. Now get in the car or get out of the way."
He hesitated only a moment before going around to the passenger side. Morgan took off as soon as he pulled his lean body into the seat. She didn't wait for him to put on a seat belt or even close the passenger door. The dust cloud behind the car couldn't be helped. As she went through the electronic gate, she hoped the dust would settle enough to cover the tracks, but if it didn't there was nothing she could do about it, and she vowed to worry about only the things over which she had control.
And that brought her to the man sitting next to her. He intrigued her, even aroused her, but she had no idea why he was here, and that scared her. Twelve years ago, she'd met Jack in the airport just before they boarded the plane to Seoul. They were both going to the Olympics, she to compete with the gymnastics team and he as one of the swim team coaches. She remembered seeing him at Dulles International just outside Washington, D.C. His eyes seemed to seek her out. She shivered the moment they made contact. He held her gaze for only a moment before dropping it to return to his own team. Afterward he appeared to go out of his way to ignore her. At least until that last night. The night of the final competition. The night she'd stolen into a foreign prison, nearly lost her life, raced like fire to return to the arena and take her place on the balance beam and then to end the night with tears in her eyes and Jack Temple's arms around her.
***
Jack stared at the road ahead. Frequently he glanced at the speedometer, expecting Morgan to use the car to relieve her tension. She held it to the posted limit, going not a single mile over the legal speed. Jack took a moment to review the car. He'd been disappointed when he saw the monster vehicle she'd appeared with. They needed something low and sleek, something that could hold the road and become one with it. If they needed its power, he wanted to make sure it was there.
He could hear the purr of the engine. It told him that this car was as finely tuned and carefully maintained as the escape route the two of them had taken to get out of the house. It was unpretentious, but not the one he would have chosen for an escape.
He just wondered where they were escaping to. They were heading east on Route 70. It told him nothing since this route could take them anyplace between St. Charles, Missouri, and the Atlantic Ocean.
"Morgan," he spoke her name softly. He felt she was concentrating so intently that any sudden noise would shatter her ability to control the car. "Where are we going?"
She didn't answer right away. Jack began to feel she hadn't heard him when she spoke. "Don't worry. I know the way."
She switched on the radio to a country music station and went back to her driving in silence.
Jack wondered about her. What had happened to her in the past twelve years? How had she lived? The house they'd left in the quiet wooded area was beautiful, with furnishings and paintings, although he'd seen none of her trophies or ribbons, cups or medallions he knew she owned. On her way to the Olympics, she'd picked up a double score of awards. She dressed well and had many friends. She hadn't married or even been engaged, but she was a beautiful, desirable woman.
Morgan continued to drive. The night disappeared hour by hour. They hadn't stopped for gas or food or to use a bathroom. Jack kept tabs on her reactions, making sure she was alert. He had no complaints about how she handled the car. She drove the way she'd done everything since he'd met her, efficiently, competently, as if she knew what she wanted and how to get it. She and the car merged into one. The road made up the third part of the strange trio. She drove as if this was part of her daily commute, that she had been over this surface day in and day out, that she and the bumps, holes, smooth edges, ragged surfaces knew each other intimately and swayed and moved to avoid any inconvenience.
While Jack wasn't concerned about Morgan's driving, he was, however, concerned about her. She was burying her feelings, swallowing them inside and using the car as a transfer device. He wasn't sure she knew she was doing it. From the profile he'd read he knew she'd been very shrewd as a child. Spending years alone on the street had taught her to hide her feelings, to keep them inside and never allow anyone to see what she felt. The car was a safe haven for those feelings. What she couldn't talk to him about, what she knew needed an outlet, she gave it through the car, but it was a controlled giving. She looked as if she was running on automatic, like she'd set the car to drive itself and turned on her own personal cruise control to keep from feeling anything.
Jack knew better. There was at least one time when she didn't keep her feelings to herself. She'd poured them out with long heart-rending tears while he held her in his arms. He wanted her to trust him enough to do it again. He wanted her to tell him what she felt. Despite her facade of strength and ability, she probably hadn't done anything like trust another human being in twelve years, maybe longer. He'd been there for her before. It was important that he be there again. He'd helped her through it before. Helping her again was why he'd come this time.
***
"That was a pretty amazing house," Jack began. "I suppose the options we walked through won't be found registered at the city building department."
For a long moment Morgan remained quiet. Jack didn't think she'd talk to him at all.
"Come on, Morgan. I'm on your side. I haven't asked anything about why you had a secret escape route or a car, with an engine that purrs like a kitten, hidden in an abandoned military base. The least you could do is talk to me."
"Why are you here?" She broke her self-imposed silence with a voice so low he had to strain to hear it.
"I don't know. I was hoping you'd tell me that."
"I don't need your help and I don't want it. So if it's all the same to you, I'll let you out at the nearest town and be on my way."
Jack sighed. He wasn't used to people not wanting his help. Often when he got to someone, they were willing to follow him, assuming he knew how to keep them safe. He wasn't sure about Morgan. He had no idea how much trouble she was in.
"Morgan, can we start over?"
She took her eyes off the road and looked at him for as long as she could before returning her attention to the road. "I don't think so," she said.
"Morgan—"
"I didn't build the gym myself," she started speaking at the same time as he did. Jack allowed her to finish. "Before the Army base closed, the commander had it built for his children. He had the foundation dug and moved the house to sit over it. Once the base closed, the house was vacant for years. I got it because of. . . connections." She didn't explain any further. "So you are correct, Jack. It won't be found on any building department's plans."
"What about the escape tunnel? Did he build that too?"
"That was mine."
"You did that?"
"Don't look so surprised. I am capable of many things."
"It's not that. It's why?"
"Why did I think I needed one?" she asked. "I suppose that's a moot point now. I needed it, it was there."
"And the explosives?"
"I wasn't sure that would work." She almost smiled. "I found an old manual at the base one night. It wasn't about making bombs. I found that information on the Internet. The manual was about the techniques of disarming bombs."
"Why would you want to bomb your own house?"
"I didn't hurt anyone," she rushed to say. "That's why it was ten minutes after I set the timer. I left a recording warning anyone inside they had ten minutes to get out before the house was blown up."
She hadn't answered his question. "But it was your home." Jack couldn't imagine leaving a place he'd lived in for twelve years by destroying it on purpose.
Morgan took her time answering. "I didn't want to leave anything around that would help someone find me."
Jack thought she'd chosen her words very carefully. He wondered if she was telling the truth. Why wouldn't she want any trace of herself left? He thought about the house she'd lived in. It was beautifully decorated, but impersonal. Morgan lived there, yet the only room that he could say he felt her a part of was the gym. She might walk through the other rooms, but her presence was invisible, everywhere except that chalk-filled air of the underground gym.
"What's this all about, Morgan?"
He couldn't have shut her up more quickly if he'd put duct tape over her mouth. And he could think of something else he'd like to put over her mouth. It wasn't tape.
Jack wondered what she was thinking. It had been twelve years since they'd last seen each other. He thought that was enough time, but it was wiped away in one tumble to the floor of her hallway. He'd seen her struggling under him and he wanted to kiss her. She wanted to be unseen, unknown and untraceable.
***
At daylight Morgan pulled off the main road and zigzagged through a series of secondary roads until she finally reached a narrow strip of blacktop that seemed to be swallowed by trees and bushes. The blacktop faded into a pothole-ridden, broken road and then dropped all pretense of being paved. The car's suspension system barely registered a change. Jack wondered exactly what was under the hood of this nondescript vehicle. Certainly more than he had initially given it credit for, but Morgan had planned carefully, and this car was no less outfitted than that tunnel above her gymnasium.
"Can you tell me where we're going now?" He spoke for the first time in hours. His throat was dry and his knees cramped from sitting in one position for so long.
Morgan swung the car sharply around a bend and a house came into view. The road changed from packed earth to gravel. The house wasn't what he'd envisioned. With all the trees around them he expected a log cabin or some hidden away building with crumbling walls and in serious need of a paint job. What he saw was a sprawling three-story mansion with high white columns and a veranda and balcony that appeared to ran the full circumference of the building. In front of it was a large man-made lake. They drove around it, along an oval driveway outlined with deep red stones that led up to the wide porch and double front doors.
Morgan stopped the car and got out. Placing her hands on her lower back, she arched it, then raised her hands to the sky and stretched. She gave a reviving cry, reminiscent of the first stretch of the morning. Hours of sitting had taken a toll on her too. She rotated her shoulders. Then, pulling the backpack from the car, she started for the house.
"Do you own this house?"
"No."
"Are you sure we'll be safe here? I didn't see any gates around it."
She continued walking. "I've only been here once."
"You seemed to know exactly how to get here."
"I know a lot of things."
Jack let that go. He needed to determine their immediate safety before delving into her education, street or otherwise.
"Who owns the house?" he asked.
"It belongs to a friend of mine. I have permission to use it anytime I want." She opened the screen door and punched a memorized code into an electronic lock. Morgan's world seemed to be populated with electronic locks, gates and doors.
And now assassins.
Jack didn't doubt the people after Morgan weren't amateurs. They knew who she was and exactly where to find her. The fact that she was so well-prepared for them is a story he wanted to hear.
"This friend of yours," Jack spoke. "Is he here?"
"No."
"How do you know he won't decide to come up for the weekend?"
"Because we left her splattered all over my foyer." Jack was smacked by the cryptic comment. He knew Morgan was hurting inside and trying to deal with it. There wasn't time for grieving, not even time to do the right thing for a life that was so suddenly ended. He understood her grief. He'd seen it before, even experienced it himself when he lost a friend during a raid in Lebanon. He had seven men to think about. He couldn't stop when one of them went down. But Remy hadn't been shot. He'd been caught, not killed. At least not right away.
"There's a bathroom down that hall and several others upstairs."
"Morgan?" She hadn't stopped moving since she got out of the car. She walked quickly from room to room on the first level. Another familiar action for someone grieving and trying not to let anyone else know. He went to her and took her arms. He turned her to face him. "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine." She tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold. She winced, but he knew he wasn't holding her too tight. He loosened his hold anyway.
"You're not fine. You're remembering. You're no longer driving. Your concentration isn't on anything and that leaves you time to remember. Tell me. Don't go through it alone. You don't have to."
She looked at him then. Eyes that had been avoiding his shifted to stare straight at him. Her brown irises were huge and bright. Then she slapped his hands away.
"I said I was fine." She stepped away as if she were back on the streets, scared, alone and fending for herself. "There is food in the refrigerator and plenty of entertainment if you want it. If you're tired, there are eight bedrooms on the second floor. I'll be in the last one on the right. You can use any of the others."
She disappeared, leaving him alone.
***
Morgan needed some down time. Her nerves pulsated fire. Red and raw, they spewed flames, licking at the backs of her eyes, until she wanted to scream. Her eyes were blurry from the intense pain in her head. The headache had begun last night, but she'd staved if off while she drove, wishing she had her medication handy, but knowing it had gone up in flames with the house on Wild Meadow Lane. She had a small bottle in the first-aid chest, but that was in the car's trunk. The road had been practically empty for most of the drive. She didn't have the beams of other cars' headlights stabbing her with illumination, and the steering wheel acted as an anchor, keeping her sane.
Her kind of life didn't come without a physical manifestation of the abnormalcy that was all but tattooed on her forehead. What a normal life was like she had no clue. She'd traded the streets for what she thought should be normal. It had the promise of normalcy, but it had been temporary, only letting her glimpse the good life. She could be part of it for a price and that price was time. For a short period she could live like the rest of the world, but then she would trade one set of circumstances for another. Some people tried to cope by disappearing into bottles of Jack Daniels or pints of Boone's Farm Apple Wine, an elixir so cheap it burned through tissue on the way to the stomach. Others escaped the world through slow forms of suicide like crack, heroin or one of the psychotropic drugs with long names and short initials. With her it was stress-induced migraines. She wasn't sure her own methods of coping weren't as potentially dangerous and suicidal as daily doses of cyanide.
The headaches began the winter after she'd moved to St. Charles. At first she thought they were normal headaches, but their constancy made her realize headaches were generally symptoms of some other physical problem, and that her body was telegraphing her a message so loud she couldn't ignore it. Morgan visited her doctor for a complete physical. It rendered nothing organically wrong with her. The doctor determined, from her description of head-exploding, light-sensitive pain, that she suffered from migraines. Morgan understood the stress and worked to provide physical outlets for it. The first was an exercise program that resulted in her building the escape tunnel. She hadn't begun thinking of it, but later thought her headaches would be less frequent if she knew she could hide or escape the house if someone came looking for her. For a while this had helped and she felt better, slept better. Then Austin Fisk entered the picture with his constant questions and implicit threats of bringing the world to her door. The headaches returned with a vengeance so forceful they could rival any switchblade stab.
And now Jack.
She could do nothing with Jack around. He threw her equilibrium off big time. In this state she was too aware of him as a man. She could use his arms around her, protecting her, for the moment keeping her fears at bay. But that was a door she could not open. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. She still hadn't come to terms with his presence. Why did he show up now? Although he'd saved her from exposing herself too soon when they were in the tree, he could still be her assassin.
She went to the bedroom and closed the door. Pulling the drapes shut the soft green tones of the guest room disappeared, and the furniture melted into shrouded shadows. The darkness eased the throbbing pain somewhat. Closing her eyes, Morgan massaged her temples a moment then went to the bathroom in search of aspirin. She thought of Michelle lying back in her house. It was doubtful anyone would find anything of her after the explosion. Poor Michelle, who never hurt anyone, and never had a headache judging from the contents of this medicine cabinet. Closing the mirrored door, she went back into the bedroom and lay across the bed.
It was too far to go back to the car for the medicine. Sleep would have to do.
***
Jack didn't pursue Morgan. He understood what she was going through, and even though she didn't have to go through it alone, she was insistent on not allowing him to help her. Jack didn't know if he blamed her. He'd come to see her because he'd been there when her message came through. Jacob Winston was his friend and they were meeting for lunch. Her message interrupted their departure and Jack told Jacob he'd check it out. He wasn't authorized to work in the United States. His area of concentration was overseas, the Middle East and Asian countries, oil-producing areas and places where nuclear weapons could become an immediate threat. After the Soviet Union collapsed and each of the states became its own country, the threat increased with bureaucracy in chaos. There was little or no accounting for medical research, viruses and super-viruses, or weapons of mass destruction. Paperwork and missiles fell through cracks as wide as superhighways. Some of them found their way to Middle Eastern countries and that's where he came in. With his coloring and ability for language, he was less likely to stand out than some of his contemporaries.
Jack surveyed the house as he thought of his job then and now. The downstairs was clean of electronic bugs and the kitchen was fully stocked with food. Both the refrigerator and freezer were filled to capacity. The cabinets bulged with every type of dry goods. He wondered if Morgan was telling the truth. She said she'd only been here once, but she moved through the house as if she were a swimmer moving through water.
Jack checked the locks downstairs on the doors and windows before going upstairs. Bedroom by bedroom he checked them for anything out of the ordinary. They were all clean. At last he got to the door where Morgan told him she was going. He knocked lightly. She didn't answer. Gently he turned the knob and opened the door. The room was in complete darkness. She lay across the bed, asleep. Her feet dangled over the side and she still wore the tennis shoes she'd had on for more than twelve hours.
She couldn't sleep that way. Jack knew she was exhausted, but her feet would swell and she wouldn't be able to walk. He went in and closed the door to keep the light out. The room suddenly seemed much longer than it had when he looked inside. He felt as if he was intruding on her. Feelings toward her made him warm and he felt himself becoming aroused. She looked so peaceful in sleep. When she was awake she was always on guard. He'd seen it twelve years ago and he saw it yesterday when she came into her house. Sleep was her only refuge, the only time she could let her guard down, drop all the masks she held firmly in place, the barriers that kept the world away from her, kept her safe from needing another person. There was only one time he knew of her need, of the fire she kept encased inside her. He remembered it still, as if it had happened yesterday and not twelve years earlier.
He'd kissed her. A kiss that moved him, changed him so he never forgot it, but also scared him so badly he could only turn and leave. He walked away from her, but he wanted to run. She'd altered his reality, jolted it as surely as if she'd taken a tire iron and beat him about the head. And there was nothing he could do but stand and accept the pain.
Jack took Morgan's legs and lifted them onto the spread. He unlaced one shoe and eased it off. She sat up.
"What. . ." Her eyes were wide and afraid.
"Shhh," he said, reaching out and pushing her down. "Go back to sleep. I'm here."
She lay down and closed her eyes. Jack stared for a moment. He'd never seen anyone as beautiful as Morgan Kirkwood. Even at nineteen when he'd viewed her on the film in the CIA headquarters building, she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and she was barely more than a child. She was still as beautiful, but no longer a child. She was a woman and he couldn't help being aware of it. Jack stood there for another moment before forcing himself back to his task. Quickly he removed her other shoe and pulled a light blanket over her. The air conditioning had been turned on and he didn't want her to get cold.
He looked down at her, wanting to kiss her forehead, wanting to curl her body into his and hold her, the way he'd held her in the tree, but he couldn't trust himself to stop there. He brushed his knuckles down her face and left the room.
The door clicked quietly closed.
Morgan Kirkwood opened her eyes. She raised her hand to her cheek and slowly caressed it against her skin.
Outside a perfect May morning was in the making. Jack walked into the backyard noticing the area had both advantages and disadvantages. The house sat alone in the middle of a manicured yard. The landscaper had probably been paid well to clear the land and form a sloping emerald green lawn that extended from the house to the trees at its perimeter. Square-cut hedges dressed the outside of the house, broken here and there for massive flowering plants, roses, philodendron, forsythia, a holly bush whose bright red berries would contrast the snow in winter, and the ever-present bougainvillea, which must be law for every landscape architect since it appeared in most yards in the eastern United States.
The perimeter of the property was ringed by oak and sycamore trees. The trees prevented anyone from surprising them, but conversely they had three hundred feet of open space before the trees would provide cover for escape should it be necessary. The front of the house also had the reflecting pool. Jack found pumping equipment and a fireman's hose. This far from another house or any other form of civilization, the house had its own water supply in case of fire. It also had its own emergency generator. Michelle O'Banyon must have been very well-to-do. Jack wondered about caretakers. Someone had to keep the lawn cut and the refrigerator stocked. He wondered about the road too. It was hidden from a casual driver and far enough back that when it became nearly impassable, any normal driver would assume they'd made the wrong turn and go back. It was good for hiding, Jack thought.
Morgan had to feel comfortable to come here. He turned to look at the upstairs windows. Her room faced the open yard where he stood. The closed drapes indicated her sleeping quarters. He thought of her lying up there, oblivious to the danger they'd gone through, and he knew there was more ahead of them.
The shot that took out her friend, Michelle, had been a Meier RD-12, a gun that shoots a spray of bullets in the form of a circle. The impact is enough to cut through bone and tissue surrounding the heart and fling it against the wall ahead of the body. The average hit man was a sharpshooter, whose weapon was as personal to him as his fingerprints. Their choice of firearm was something small, easy to carry, easy to dispose of if necessary. The bullets that had killed Michelle O'Banyon came from a weapon he knew. It was stock-in-trade for his profession, military, deadly and identifiable to terrorists.
Jack turned back, continuing his surveillance of the area. When he reached the trees, he estimated the distance to the house at three hundred feet, the length of a football field or three Olympic-size swimming pools. Leaning against a tree, he pulled his cellular phone from his pants pocket. The small, government-issued instrument was state-of-the-art. As thick as a Hershey candy bar, it contained all the internal technology to reach any other phone or communication device on the planet. He pushed the button that called up the password screen and tapped out the memorized code onto the flat keypad, then pressed his thumb to the identification pad and spoke into the speaker. Through a massive amount of secure computer code, his verified signal uplinked to a military satellite thousands of miles above the earth and bounced his scrambled voice code back to a specific secure phone in FBI headquarters only eight hundred miles from Jack's present location.
"What the hell is going on there?" Jacob Winston, director of the witness protection program sounded angry. Jack knew an LCD panel had lit up in Jacob's office revealing Jack's location and identity. Before Jacob even lifted the receiver, he knew who was on the phone. "I've got reports of Morgan Kirkwood's house exploding, gunfire exchanged and one dead body. What happened?''
"I'd like an answer to that question myself," Jack replied. "I'd only arrived on the scene when the light show began."
"Is she safe?"
"For the time being. We escaped the house before she blew it up."
"She blew it up?"
"There isn't time to explain everything that happened, but she's an amazing woman, Jacob. She had a planned escape route you'd have to see to believe." He hoped his voice didn't reveal his emotions. He'd never had a problem doing it before, but whenever he thought of Morgan Kirkwood, any rules of keeping himself separated from the situation evaporated like ice on a griddle at five hundred degrees. "We drove all night to our present location." Jack was careful to keep names out of the conversation. The line was secure as far as he knew, but no system was foolproof. Jacob knew where they were and he'd been identified by both voice and thumbprint before the phone at FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital had even rung. Jacob could locate him by the signal from his cell phone if he needed an exact location.
"Is she safe?"
"Not in the long run. Twenty-four hours at best."
"You're there to make sure she's all right." Jacob appeared to be giving him orders. "I'll send enforcements. Can you hold?"
"I'm not authorized."
"I'll clear it," Jacob said.
"Copy," Jack said. "I'll still need to check in," he paused. "I need to know the situation."
"She hasn't told you?"
"She's got a problem with trust. One I believe is validly supported by circumstances of the past.'' Jack didn't have to tell Jacob of Morgan's Korean operation which had gone horribly wrong. He already knew most of the details. "She thought I was here to kill her and I'm not sure she doesn't still think that." He stopped short of accusations, but knew Jacob understood the implication. "Do you have anything?"
"Nothing," Jacob said. "Other than her message about her suspicions, we can only assume it has something to do with her past. That's your ballpark."
He and Morgan had been together on one mission, twelve years ago. What could that mean now? "I'll check into it."
"We'll talk later," Jacob said, indicating there was more on the table than could be communicated over satellite links despite the security measures in place. "Sit tight, we're on our way."
The phone went dead. Jack checked the state of the drapes on Morgan's windows. Nothing had changed. He hoped she was still sleeping. It was nearly time for him to sleep too, but he had one more phone call to make.
Brian Ashleigh headed the Central Intelligence Agency. He was a great guy, a hands-off manager to his direct reports. Jack didn't report to him. He reported directly to Forrest Washington, director of antiterrorist activities in the Far East. Forrest gave his agents in the field the freedom to act. He realized the agents had to have the latitude to make decisions on their own. There was no book of rules to follow for the situations a field agent could face. It was instinct, experience and intuition that was the guidebook.
But Forrest was away on vacation and Jack had to call the director in his stead. The problem was, Jack shouldn't be here at all. He had no rights and no protection under the law other than that of a private citizen. This was not his pool or even his neighborhood. He had no authority here. The fact that Morgan Kirkwood's life was tied to his presence and ability to protect her, or that she'd once been pivotal to a successful CIA operation, meant nothing to Brian Ashleigh. She was no longer active. She'd performed one operation and had been duly retired.
When this call was verified and his identity confirmed, Ashleigh would burn his ass over the satellite-linked carpet.
***
Where was Jack? Morgan's first thought when she woke was of the man who might be here to harm her. She checked the clock. It was afternoon. She'd been asleep for hours. Her headache was gone and she felt better. Not rested, but better. She hadn't felt rested in years. After yesterday it seemed like a lifetime. And she was hungry.
Pushing back the blanket Jack had obviously thrown over her, she got out of bed and folded it neatly. She didn't know which of the rooms he'd chosen to sleep in, but the house had presence to it, a stillness that said nothing was moving and no one was about. No smells came from the kitchen, no coffee or television playing to disturb the rhythm of air currents. Morgan had made a study of air in the house she'd occupied. She knew any changes due to barometric pressure or the presence of living human beings. This house wasn't her domain, but she could feel the quiet. Jack was here, but he was asleep, not moving, not disturbing the air.
Morgan wanted to look for him, peep into each of the bedrooms and see if he was comfortable, see if the chiseled features in his face changed to the little boy face she imagined it could be. Jack's features were hard. She wondered what he did to keep his face so stern and serious. Through the long night of driving, his face had remained still, unchanging, immobile. At the beginning he'd sneaked glances at her, but after a while his stare was trained on the road ahead of them. She wondered at the practice it must take for him to put total concentration into a task. He probably had the same technique when he slept, but she wouldn't know that since she wouldn't look for him.
The kitchen was stocked to the rafters. She'd known it would be. Michelle had told her there was plenty of food, and Morgan didn't expect any less than she saw. She knew Michelle had grown up poor, dirt poor. She'd come from the mountains of Tennessee, from a large family, where money was short and mouths long. For years she didn't wear shoes, didn't go to school, didn't eat and didn't see any future greater than the one in front of her face. She'd told Morgan this during her first Ladies Auxiliary Annual Tea Party. The kind of place where the society of the town congregates to socialize and plan. Michelle had pulled herself up from the uneducated muddy streets and changed her life, but her kitchen was always packed with food as if she was afraid she'd have to return to that life of hunger. Morgan understood her. They both had the same kinds of backgrounds. Morgan's had been a fight for existence and Michelle's a struggle to survive. They came from the same cloth and believed in the same things. Except for Jack they would have died on the same day. A tear slipped into the corner of Morgan's eye and she wiped it away.
Jack had already eaten. There were dishes in the drainer that had been washed and stored. Morgan knew he had to be as hungry as she was, but her migraine superseded her need for food.
Quickly she scanned the contents of the freezer. Thoughts of broiled steak and baked potatoes dripping with raw butter, lumped high with gobs of sour cream wafted through her mind and made her mouth water. Only there were no potatoes to bake. She could bake pork roast and couple it with warm applesauce and gravy-laden mashed potatoes from a box. There was frozen shrimp and lumpfish, a tray of baked lasagna she could cut and microwave. And for Michelle's efforts at dieting, there were packaged dinners from Weight Watchers, The Budget Gourmet and Lean Line. While Morgan would love to have a decent meal, the preparation time was too long. Her headache could return if she didn't fill her stomach soon. She wondered what Jack had eaten as she pulled the lasagna tray from the freezer.
As the microwave sent radiation at a frequency of 2,450 MHz into the molecules of her food, causing them to move rapidly and generate enough heat to cook it in a few minutes, she stared through the kitchen window. The glass structure composed the entire wall, broken only by the huge wooden frames that sectioned it into six panes and separated the outdoors from the inside. Without the frames, the double layer of tempered glass would appear invisible. Without adornment, the window's giant panes were nearly as large as she was tall. The lawn on the other side was bright green and healthy, but Morgan's mind returned to a different time and a different pool. She saw a cool pool of water and a man swimming in it.
Jack's strokes were strong and rapid. His shoulders rotated through the liquid, propelling him forward toward his goal of the pool's end. Back and forth he swam, switching direction with only a mere disturbance of water. He fascinated her and she found it difficult to look anyplace else while he swam. But Jack Temple had been a coach, not even a competitor. He had been within the age range, no more than twenty-five she estimated. Competition wouldn't be a problem for him. She wanted to ask him why he was coaching and not competing, but he stayed away from her. His body radiated a don't-come-near-me message. Consequently, she gravitated toward him, but kept her distance, usually observing his personal practice sessions from the far end of the audience section or through the glass observation room.
She usually left before he completed his routine. Morgan had watched him enough to know the length of time he took before returning to the residence village and his team.
Except for that one night.
Maybe she had the next day's mission on her mind or her own final competition had driven her to the pool. Whatever the reason, she overstayed her timing and Jack came out of the water to find her, the only spectator, in the stands.
Morgan's heart hammered in her chest. They'd spoken to each other once, on the plane when they'd both headed to their seats at the same time and the plane hit an air pocket, causing them to collide. His hands caught her arms and she looked into his eyes. She couldn't move, couldn't speak. Now she felt the same way watching him come toward her. She stood, wanting to run, feeling the need to escape. He was dangerous. She knew dangerous men, could recognize them in a snap. Jack was deadly. She should run from him, stand clear whenever he was around. Yet he attracted her like morning attracts the sunrise. She couldn't keep her eyes off him. Danger poured from him like the water rolling off his shoulders and chest. It shimmered down his athletic legs, glistening like rivers of black gold.
Morgan stood up and moved to the floor. Her gym bag hung on her shoulder. Her brain told her to leave. Her preservation depended on her getting out of the room, but her feet took root in the cement flooring. Jack's eyes pierced through her, holding her in place. Morgan couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to. Her feet had nothing to do with her former street mentality. She wasn't trying to protect her turf or stand up to the neighborhood bully. There was something about Jack that drew her. It was visceral, mysterious, magical even. She had no explanation. It was as if they had to be together, but coming together would mean fire and perishing. There was no way to stop it. It was destined. She could only stand and wait, watch while doom reached out for her. She would embrace it, knowing it was forbidden, that nothing good could come from it, but helpless to do anything to change the forces that had already been set in motion.
Morgan wore her leotard and tights. She could explain she was heading for the gym to practice when she saw him. Jack gave her no need to explain. Neither of them spoke a word.
He walked directly to her, his gait easy, unhurried, his weight balanced. She had to look up as he approached. Morgan watched him, a dark Poseidon, a devil-God rising from the sea, advancing toward her, the light of the water in his eyes. Her heart beat so hard she was sure he could see her chest moving. Yet they continued to stare, one at the other. The room about them shrank, bringing the humid air closer and making it hard to breathe. Heat escalated, growing hot enough to boil the pool water.
He stopped in front of her. Too close. He breathed hard from physical exertion. Morgan felt the same although she had done none of the work that he'd performed while she watched his efforts. His body heat grew, enveloping her in its flames. She could almost see the red-gold color of the encompassing wave as they teased her with their all-consuming power.
Her eyes rose to Jack's. Gone was the coldness she'd always seen there. Gone was the hostility that normally greeted her when she found herself in his line of vision. His eyes were liquid, large brown circles that spoke to her without language, without tongue or teeth or movement. She heard his mind, his heart, his need for her already knew the words.
His short hair glistened with pool water, bright, caught by the ceiling lamps that bathed him in a soft gold glow. Morgan watched a drop of water roll over the curve of his ear. It caught the lobe and hung there like a star, its light captured and sparkling bright. More drops joined it until the tiny weight became too heavy and burst in an exciting explosion.
Morgan gasped. Jack's hands reached for her waist, aligned their bodies, engulfing them in the dual heat of furnace-hot generators. Her gaze came back to his. For a moment she saw a question in the depths of his eyes. Then his head dipped and his mouth captured hers in a searing kiss. An ageless, timeless communication of man to woman. A fire-hot, molten revival of life. A circling, waving tsunami of need pouring from one to the other and back in a ceaseless wave of desire, passion, rapture.
Morgan had secretly dreamed of him. She'd imagined this kiss in the darkness of her bedroom, never thinking it would ever be a reality. He lifted his head to reposition his mouth over hers. Morgan grabbed his arms to keep from falling and Jack's arms embraced her, deepening the kiss. She melted into him, her arms encircling his neck, his arms caressing her back.
Jack's hands moved to her hair, combing upward from her neck over her crown, anchoring her to him in a frontal full nelson.
His mouth grazed hers, like a burning prairie fire, dry and coarse, and moving out of control, pushed along by the wind. Morgan tumbled like the bush into him. Going up on her toes she made room for Jack to pull her closer as if he were the fire and she the life-giving air it fed on. Long ancestral caravans of relatives rushed into Morgan. A sweeping panorama of her own female ancestry rushed in a ghostly progression, making her realize the force from which she'd come, the women who'd slaved and toiled to bring her here to this life and this man. A desert of hope in a sprawling mirage of spewing fountains.
They hung like that, supporting legs and arms and torsos. Bobbing heads switched positions like the ticks of a clock. They dodged, danced and connected. Two complementing souls finding each other over a planet full of people, knew their joy, the wonder of being alive, the height of a thousand yesterdays and the singularity of one frozen moment in time.
***
Jack broke contact just as he'd begun it. He shifted Morgan's head to his shoulder, letting her rest there while they both hungered for air and each other. Nothing so cataclysmic had ever happened to her before. There were no words to describe it, not now, not in the past, the present or the future. Only the perfect tandem communication between two souls.
Then Jack released her. He stepped back, their personal space still twined, their auras mixed, their heat comingled. Morgan felt the connection between them, as strong as iron chains, bonding them together as invisible as a breeze. His eyes were hot on her, so hot that had she not already been contained inside a form of skin, she would have flowed across the floor like the puddles of water about them.
Emotion didn't cross his face, but his eyes changed from loving and wanting to questioning, confusing, and finally regretting. Then the shutters closed over his face as surely as if he'd donned a mask. Morgan felt a coldness pass between them as if she stood in the path of a cold, frigid wind. Then Jack turned and walked away.
The gym bag on her shoulder dropped to the wet floor. Droplets of water rained upward, splashing against her legs and soaking into her stockings. A moment later her knees lost their power to keep her upright. She sank to the floor, oblivious of her tights, unconcerned about the bones in her knees, uncaring of the potential for hazardous injury to future competitions. All she understood was that something special, unique and wonderful had been offered to her, but like everything else in her life, it had been jerked away before she could touch it.
***
The sound of a mixer jolted Morgan back to the kitchen. She whipped around looking for the source of the noise. Her gaze darted from one appliance to another, but there was no mixer. Nothing moved. The counter was nearly free of all electronic devices used to make work in the kitchen a marvel of efficiency and time-saving convenience. Yet the sound continued. A wisp of movement caught Morgan's eye.
She turned toward it, forgetting the pool scene which had played out so many years ago, to find the subject of her thoughts leaning against the doorjamb. It had been twelve years, twelve years of nights since she'd seen him. Long, restless, unfulfilled nights, when she could capture an image as fleeting as stardust.
Now there he stood—solid, comfortable, commanding and sexy as a soft night with a moon on the rise. Then the fog surrounding her brain lifted. It wasn't a mixer she heard. It was the sound of giant rotors beating the air.
A helicopter!
They'd been found. But how?
Jack came through the door.
She glanced over her shoulder. The window suddenly made her feel exposed, vulnerable. "Who did you call?" she demanded.
"It's all right. They're here to rescue us."
Jack headed toward the back door.
Morgan grabbed his arm, stopping him. She listened to the sound. He'd think she was crazy if she told him she could hear the type of helicopter it was. She'd spent a lot of time listening, training. Every morning and each evening the traffic control helicopters flew over the major arteries leading to downtown St. Louis. She also knew the sound of commercial helicopters. She'd once dated a helicopter pilot and he'd taught her how to tell the difference. He wanted her to be able to distinguish his approach from the traffic control system. Morgan admitted she wanted to learn. Anything that might help save her life in some future time, she took advantage of. This might just be the time.
She gestured toward the window. The sound was high. "Who did you call?'' she asked again.
"Jacob Winston."
Jack pulled himself free and headed again for the door. She listened intently. Morgan didn't know a military helicopter. She could only tell that this one sounded heavy. Its beat through the air had a slower rhythm than the commercial ones. She didn't know what that meant, but instinctively she understood there was danger present.
She turned as Jack reached the door. Through the windows she saw the helicopter. Its dark hulk lined up with the huge wall that provided beauty and light, but no protection. In a second she was after Jack.
"Jack, no!" She lunged across the room, slamming into Jack as bullets shattered the window. Glass spewed across the kitchen with hurricane force. She and Jack crashed into the wall of the small enclosure and sank to the floor. Their arms caught together as they crammed into the tiny space, each one trying to protect the other.
"Got any ideas how we get out of this?" he whispered in an ironic form of humor as the bullets stopped shattering everything around them.
"No," she said flatly. Her hands moved quickly over him, frisking him in their awkward position on the floor. She found what she appeared to be looking for. Reaching inside his pocket she pulled the cell phone out and smashed it against the wall next to Jack's head. He reached past her trying to halt her attack on the device, but in his position he was no match for her determination. The phone fell in pieces which Morgan picked up and pulverized until the electronic enemy could no longer hurt her.
"That was our only link with help."
"Well it wasn't working properly if this is the help it summoned."
"Follow me and stay down." He crouched into a crawling position and led her up the back stairs. Thank goodness Michelle's "cabin" was no cabin. Bullets plummeted the house. They ran through the upstairs toward the front of the house. Abruptly Jack stopped and looked at the ceiling. Morgan followed his gaze.
"It's moving," she said, tracing the path of the helicopter above their heads.
He didn't speak, but pulled her faster behind him. They ran down the front stairs and to the cellar door. Jack went into the darkness. Morgan wondered what he was doing, but she didn't take time to ask. She followed him. As if he'd been here before, he went straight to a panel and flipped several switches. Then they started back to the cellar stairs. The sound of bullets became louder the closer they got to the top. Jack stopped before barreling through the door.
"We've got to get outside," he whispered. Morgan thought he talked more to himself than to her.
"The helicopter is out there."
"I know," he answered. "We better hope there is only one of them."
"What are we going to do?"
"Bring it down."
***
The idea had come to him in a flash and he wasn't at all sure it would work, but he'd been in tight situations before and knew he had to work with whatever tools presented themselves. In this case the tool was water.
"I want you to stay here."
"No!"
"I don't have time to argue with you."
"Then don't. I'm not staying here. You might need me."
"You don't even know what I'm going to do."
"I don't care. Whatever it is you could only have thought of it in the last two minutes, so it can't be that well thought out. I'm not staying here, so stop wasting time."
"I knew you'd be trouble the moment I saw you," he muttered. "Stick close and keep your head down."
At the side door Jack listened until they knew the helicopter was at the back of the house. Cautiously he looked out. Grabbing her hand he quickly pulled her through the door and to the fire hose he'd discovered earlier.
He pulled hose from the circular frame that held it neatly out of the way. He touched the water pipe and could feel the pressure there.
"Unroll this," he told her, indicating the tan-colored hosing. "Keep doing it until it's all off the frame. At my signal turn on the water." Again he touched the knob which when opened would force water through the tubing.
Jack took the end of the hose and started toward the back of the house. He stopped at the edge and looked for the helicopter. The range of the hose was designed for the height of the house. Jack glanced at the roof above him to gauge the distance. The helicopter had been low enough to spray the kitchen with bullets. He only hoped when it came back around, it was low enough for the water to impact it.
He listened as the sound grew louder, coming toward him. The direction was right. His heart pounded. He was only going to get one chance. Looking back, he saw Morgan. She had nearly unrolled all the hose. He thought of her standing on her beam so many years ago. He'd put her in danger that day and he'd done it again today. She only had him, even if she didn't realize it yet.
Turning his attention to the task, he spotted the helicopter the moment it swung around the house. Like a giant bug the cabin came into view, its windows smoky gray to prevent glare. Jack knew he would be in plain view, and the guns mounted on the sides of the aircraft would have a perfect target in his jean-clad body.
Jack readied the hose. He lifted his hand and held it in the air. The helicopter flew slowly, its rotors whipping the air, sucking the air upward, creating clouds of dust. Jack thanked the dust for the camouflage it afforded him. He was banking on human nature. It was natural to jump, react in some way, to the sudden splash of a blinding wall of rainwater heaved up by one car and hitting the windshield of another. This was his intention. He had surprise on his side. He hoped he also had perfect aim.
Quickly he dropped his hand, then grabbed the hose in a photographer's stance. Water started through the spiral of hose Morgan had unleashed. He felt it blow through the fabric hose as it swelled and hardened the hose about his feet and legs. A second later it gushed through the spout like a thrusting geyser. Pointing the hose at the juncture just under the beaters, Jack aimed the extension. The helicopter swayed to the side as the g-force connected with its mark. Jack took a step forward, spraying water over the windshield. Then he found the opening in the side and water gushed into the cabin, surprising the pilot. The man fought the flow, letting go of the stick in an attempt to plug the hole and move away from the impact. The helicopter became a huge, uncontrolled, metal weight with no method of remaining airborne. The big-nosed craft pointed downward. The tail rotor spun the machine around backward.
Jack worked with it, keeping the water flowing, moving as the craft moved to keep the water going inside and disorienting the pilot. Since the craft was low to the ground when it came around the house, it had little recovery distance or time for the pilot to grab the stick and pull the helicopter out of danger. It struck the ground in a labyrinth of snarling metal and shattering glass.
Morgan turned the water off at Jack's command and came running in his direction. Jack held onto the hose in case he had to use it. The pilot lay forward in his seat, restrained only by the shoulder harness required of all pilots in flight. Morgan stopped at Jack's arm. Her hand found his instinctively. He dropped the hose and squeezed her fingers, barely conscious of the action. They both looked at the mass of white metal stained with green grass and dirt, its rotor blades pitched into the ground like huge steel knives. The engine hissed and ticked. A white smoke came from a closed panel near the top.
"Is he dead?" she asked.
Jack didn't answer. He started forward. Morgan followed, still holding his hand.
He stopped at the entrance to the craft. The door had been ripped from its mooring and lay several feet from the mangled mess. Blood drained from the head of the helicopter's only occupant. Jack didn't think he was dead. He took a step forward.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm going to get him out of there."
"Do you think that's a good idea? It might explode."
"If it didn't do it on impact, it's not likely to happen now."
He dropped Morgan's hand and went toward the man in the seat. "If there's anything in the house you want, get it now and go to the car."
"Why?"
"He isn't alone." Jack indicated the unconscious man. "The minute he doesn't answer the radio signal with his source, there will be others."
Morgan took a step back. She hugged herself and looked around as if afraid she'd find someone behind her.
"Go!" he shouted. "Meet me at the car in one minute. Not a second longer."
Jack hated this job. He couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when he'd become dissatisfied with what he did. Maybe he had always been dissatisfied. The world sat on the brink of destruction and often he was the linchpin holding the two sides together. He knew it would always be that way. That there were younger men, more idealistic, men who hadn't been beaten by their lifestyle, ready to take his place. He wanted out and he was going to get it. It should have been easy. He should be sitting in his house in Montana with his feet up, smelling the crisp air and enjoying the mountains that were both majestic and imposing, where the likelihood of terrorists coming across them was small. That hadn't happened. The decision had been taken from him when he'd gone to Jacob's office for a leisurely lunch and ended up here, on this road in broad daylight, heading east with no apparent destination in mind, but with unknown assailants behind them and not a clue as to why.
He wished he hadn't come here, that he hadn't had the misfortune to be in Jacob's office when the message appeared on his screen. Jacob hadn't shared it with him. His friend had only canceled lunch. Urgent business was the excuse, but the look he'd thrown at Jack said the message somehow concerned him. Intuitively he knew that. Curiously, he rushed to see the screen. Jacob cleared it, but not before the name Morgan Kirkwood jumped off the monitor like a bridge to his past.
Jack was planning to resign. It was his reason for being in Washington. He'd told Jacob first. Jacob was his friend, the closest thing to a friend he had or dared have in his line of work. Jack planned to formally present his resignation after lunch, but that hadn't happened. Abruptly he changed his mind when he realized Morgan was involved. Badgering Jacob was useless. The only thing he learned was that the former Olympic champion lived in Missouri and that she had never, in the past twelve years, left a message for anyone in the bureau.
Something had to be wrong. Jack knew it on more than one level. First, that Morgan had called for help and second that Jacob immediately reacted to her name after a twelve-year silence. Something had to be seriously wrong. Jack felt responsible. Morgan Kirkwood had begun to turn her life around. She was on her way to being a normal working American. Then he'd come into her life, without her knowledge, and changed all that. It was his fault. She would never have been in this situation, whatever it was, if he hadn't given his plan to the powers that be. But he had. And he couldn't undo it.
So he'd volunteered to check out the situation and get back to Jacob if there was the tiniest bit of trouble. What he'd seen couldn't be considered tiny: one murder, an explosion, a daring escape, a drive through the night to a hidden house in the woods and a helicopter fight with a fire hose. Jack didn't know what had sparked any of this, but he was going to find out, and he was going to find out now.
He swung the car into a rest stop and cruised into the farthest parking space. It was afternoon, but only a few cars were parked in the spaces. No one was around them. He got out of the car and went around to Morgan's side. He opened the door and pulled her out of the seat.
"We need to talk," he said by way of explanation.
Instead of going toward the building, he headed for the wooded area in the back. Several empty picnic tables dotted the landscape. He dropped her hand when they were well away from the parking area and the small building where weary travelers stopped to use restrooms, check maps and load up on junk food before returning to their cars, vans and trucks and heading again for distant destinations.
Morgan looked tired and scared, and although she fought hard not to let it show, Jack could see it. He gritted his teeth and forced himself not to turn away. He didn't want to see her looking like this. If he let his emotions get in the way he'd put off asking his questions. "I want to know what is going on," he started.
"I don't know."
"Someone is trying to kill you and you have no clue why?'' There was more anger in his voice than he intended.
"I think I said that."
"Why did you contact Jacob?"
"Just how do you know Jacob?" she countered. Jack was wondering when she was going to put the fact that he knew the director of the witness protection program together with his presence.
"My acquaintance with him is not the question. What is the reason you called him?"
She folded her arms under her breasts and closed her mouth. Jack looked at her. He needed to change his tactics. Threatening her wasn't what he had in mind. He needed to make her talk. Even if she didn't want to. There was one way he had of making her talk. He'd discovered it in Korea when she came off that gym floor after her final competitive rotation. He took a step closer to her. Immediately her arms went to her sides, her hands curled into fists. She stepped back, but Jack saw her body harden. Every line of her being went on the attack.
***
Morgan knew the look in his eyes when he'd stepped forward. She'd seen it only once before, but it was unmistakable. Jack was going to kiss her. She turned around. "I'm going to the car," she threw at him as she started to leave. He caught her arm and spun her around.
"Not yet. I want to know what's going on."
"Give me one good reason why I should tell you anything?'' She snatched her arm free.
"Because I just saved your pretty little ass—"
"Which wouldn't have been in danger if you hadn't called Washington," she interrupted.
Jack took a deep breath and let it out. "You're right."
She blinked at his words. She hadn't expected him to agree with her. Her stare had to be evidence of that, but she was right. Although she couldn't believe Jacob Winston had anything to do with their situation, someone else did. For a moment she thought it might be Jack, but he'd saved her more than once.
"I came here to check out the situation."
"Well, so far you're not doing a very good job."
Jack grabbed Morgan's upper arms and pushed her against the trunk of a tree. The rough surface dug into her back. The action surprised her but she revealed little to let him know.
"Stop it!" he shouted, his face only a couple of inches from hers. I'm sick and tired of you complaining about everything. I know you're scared. Fear is natural and I won't think less of you if you show it, but stop this clawing at me. We're in this together."
Morgan raised defiant eyes to him. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn't. She was scared, yet her eyes were dry. She hadn't been this scared since she was in Seoul, hanging from the top of a prison wall with one hand, nothing beneath her but useless air.
Jack looked back at her, giving nothing away. He was as hard as the bark digging into her back and she knew he was right. She had been clawing at him. Ever since he'd shown up in her house, she'd been trying to hide how she felt, falling into old habits, attacking before she could be attacked.
She held his gaze, knowing he wouldn't back down. She understood this was a crossroad. This was the moment when she either trusted him or she would have to survive alone.
She stared into the phantom depths of his eyes, looking for a sign, something to guide her, but with Jack there was nothing. He only gave away what he wanted other people to see, and he wanted her to see nothing. She dropped her head. She lifted her hands, placed them at his waist and stepped into his space. Her forehead touched his chest and rested there. She felt him stiffen. She knew her action surprised him. It was uncharacteristic for her too, but she needed the contact and somehow with Jack it seemed all right. Her arms circled his body as she took comfort from the liaison. Jack held himself still while she lay against him. After a while his arms came around her and he cradled her closer. She held onto him, trying not to think, not to read anything more into his arms than comfort.
He was a cold man. The one who had kissed her so passionately and then walked away as if she were just another part of the water and he was a rock over which she passed, had his arms around her. Her impact on him was the same as a single drop of water passing over the sheer cliffs of a stone mountain.
Yet Morgan heard his heart beating. The rhythm was fast, faster than she thought it ought to be for a man of stone.
***
Jack should let her go. His arms shouldn't be around her. She felt too good and she smelled like soap, a lemon concoction of some type. He didn't like flavored scents. They gave away too much. He was used to finding people by scent as well as cunning. He never wore cologne, used only basic soap, unscented deodorants, detergents and shaving creams. You could hide a body, suspend yourself on closet shelves or in the branches of trees, but you couldn't prevent fragrance from giving away position. Yet he didn't mind it on her. He liked knowing her scent, knowing how the perfume touched her skin, mixed with her special chemistry to produce that combination that was favorable to his taste. He wanted to move his nose closer to her, inhale the fragrance, feel the warmth of her skin against his mouth.
He didn't dare. What he was doing was already too close for comfort. His body knew it and soon she would too. With an effort greater than any man should be asked to put forth, Jack pushed her away and stepped back.
"Thanks, Jack," Morgan said. She looked him straight in the eye. "I didn't mean to make you the object of my anger. I'm not used to having anyone. . ." She trailed off. She wasn't used to having people help her, having people looking out for her. Jack knew her history. She was a loner. In that they were alike. He didn't often have anyone at his back either.
"We're in this together," he told her. "I'm here to help you. I'll keep you safe."
At least he'd try. He looked in her eyes, hoping for trust, or to find the worry he'd seen since their reunion two days ago gone, but it was there. She trusted him, he could tell that, but she was still worried. The look nearly undid him. He turned away. It was that or kiss her.
"We need a plan," he said a moment later when he felt in control enough that he wouldn't act on his instincts.
"I agree," she said.
"First I need to know what we're up against."
Jack looked at Morgan carefully. He wanted to see her reaction to the request. Each time he'd mentioned her running she'd evaded the question. He wanted to see what she did now. He wanted to know if she was about to tell him the truth or if she was about to lie.
It was textbook. He'd learned the technique early during his days of training. Eyes to the right, accessing the creative. A quick intake of breath. All she had to do was begin with "to tell you the truth," to complete the total picture. She was going to lie.
"I honestly don't know," she told him. Not the first-order phrase, but the second. She knew something, but she wasn't about to give him the benefit of her knowledge. Now he wished he had kissed her. He knew how to seduce a woman, use his own sexuality to get her to tell him what he wanted to know. He'd done it before, not often, but when necessary he'd used whatever methods were at hand.
Why hadn't he done it with her? Why hadn't he seduced her to gain her trust, her will to give him everything he wanted? He knew why. She wasn't the usual victim. He had feelings for her. And he'd kissed her once. He knew what that had done to him then, and if he tried it again he wasn't sure if he could remember his purpose or if the same thing would happen to him now that had happened before. He'd lost himself in his need for her. Lost so much of himself that he had to walk away without an explanation, stay away for years, lying to himself that she was only a job and he didn't want her in his life. Yet at the first mention of her name he was on a plane, breaking into her house and holding her in his arms.
"Do you have a plan?" She interrupted his thoughts.
"Twelve years ago we were in Seoul together." Jack had to play a card she didn't know he held. He needed her to tell him the truth. This time he'd get it by giving her a bit of himself. Hopefully, she would do the same.
"Yes," she replied.
"You broke a man out of prison."
"Excuse me," she said with only a slight hesitation. She was better than he thought she'd be. He'd seen her in action before, but he thought he could surprise her. Instead she played her own hand. "I was in Seoul for one reason."
"To break Hart Lewiston out of jail, steal some vital documents and turn them both over to CIA agents who would get him out of Korea." This time he did see the surprise on her face. "Then you were to compete in the Olympics. You weren't expected to win the gold medal."
Morgan turned away from him. She grabbed hold of the tree he'd pushed her against for support. He could see by her head and shoulders she was putting his presence in Korea twelve years ago together. He hadn't been a mere coach of the swim team. He'd been a CIA operative there to make sure she succeeded. Or what? What if she hadn't succeeded? Was he there to also make sure she wasn't captured? That she wasn't left behind in a condition to talk, to tell anyone what she knew, what her mission had been?
"Who are you?"
"I'm your protector.''
"In Seoul. . ."
"There and then."
"Now?"
"Now I'm here to find out who is trying to kill you," he paused. "And why."
Morgan looked up at him, her heart in her eyes. She didn't try to conceal her feelings or her doubt.
"Protector, Morgan." His voice was low, sensual and inviting. She felt it almost with a tangible quality as if he'd woven the words and draped them over her shoulders. "I never had a wish or an order for anything other than that. I would never do anything but keep you safe."
He took her arm and led her to the picnic table. She sat on the top with her feet on the bench. For a while, neither of them spoke. Then Morgan linked her hands and looked at the trees along the back of the picnic area.
"I didn't intend to sing," she began. "There was so much going on, in my head and in the arena. The arena looked like a wave of color, people screaming and cheering. I tried to find someone I knew in the crowd, but there was no one and everyone. People smiled at me, shouted my name, waved American flags." She paused. "I was so glad I was an American. I could go home, back to a place where life on the streets was better than life in that hole. I could return to a place where I'd never have to remember the prison I'd seen, the horribly emaciated men with things growing off their bodies that shouldn't be there, people without teeth and with blood crusted in places where they should have faces. When the music began I don't know what happened. My chest filled with a fear I'd never known, not when I was on the prison ledge and not when I was running through the streets. I didn't understand any of it. Then I heard the music. I remembered insignificant things like being in grammar school in a play we did. It taught us to learn the anthem. And the voice came. At first I didn't even know it was mine. I thought it was all inside my head until the crowd went wild. Everyone was on their feet and I didn't know why. I thought the prison guards had come or the police and they were heading for me. I thought of running, hiding, doing anything to get out of the limelight, but it wasn't to be. Coming down from that center block threw me into a horde of reporters, coaches, well-wishers. They herded me away to an interview room. Everyone wanted to know how I felt. What made me sing. I was used to thinking fast, coming up with lies to get out of any situation, but I was in over my head and I had no place to go."
She stopped, remembering what came next. She was coming apart. Every question someone asked took a huge effort to answer. She looked for help. He was in the room, against the back wall. Jack stared directly at her. Her eyes darted toward him. He nodded only slightly, but it was enough to give her an anchor. She took a deep breath and got back on track. She answered questions, coming up with lies to support her when needed. Thankfully most of the time she could answer with the truth. She called on her teammates, sitting next to her, giving them most of the credit, saying she only did what they had all come to Seoul to do—win! It was the truth for her team, but for her it was a lie.
She smiled at the cameras, held her hands up clasped in the hands of other team members, but she was crumbling inside. Her eyes were bright and she blinked rapidly to hold back the tears. She needed to get out of the room. The air was heavy and she felt it pressing against her. When her coach finally called an end to the interview, she left at the back of the line. Midway down the hall a hand came out and clapped over her mouth. Another went around her waist and she was dragged backward into a dark closet.
"It's me. Jack." He spoke in the darkness and her struggles stopped. She recognized his voice although they'd exchanged no more than a dozen words in their entire time together. He turned her into his arms. "Let it out," he whispered. "We're alone." Morgan clung to him as if he were her lifeline. Tears she couldn't stop poured from her eyes, wetting his shirt and soaking through to the dark skin beneath it. She cried for everything in her life, her mother, her adoptive mother, the man in the prison, her team, her lies, even the bullies she'd fought on the streets. She didn't know how long she stood there, enfolded in Jack's arms, drawing his strength or why no one came looking for her. She only remembered cradling herself against his strong body, feeling his soft kiss on her hair and forgetting everything and everyone else in the world.
***
For a while, after she stopped speaking, Jack didn't say anything. They sat in silence looking at the trees. The answers weren't out there. Only the two people sitting here, not looking at each other, had the answers. He noticed she stopped without mentioning the two of them. He wondered if she was thinking about it. He wondered what she felt in that closet when she cried on his shoulder. He thought of it more often than he cared to admit. Holding her, letting her cry against him, being there when she needed someone. He often wondered in the intervening years who it was she needed, who was the man whose shoulder she used to tell her joys and sorrows. But he'd always cut the thought and think of something else. It made him angry to think of her with another man. He knew there had been others.
It was an irrational anger. She wasn't his. They weren't lovers. They were barely friends. More like two people who'd met due to circumstance. It bothered him that she thought he'd returned as her assassin. He'd never hurt her. He couldn't.
"Tell me about the escape." Jack pulled his thoughts away from the past, his voice gruffer than he intended. She tied him in knots and it showed.
"It was supposed to be easy. I'd studied the floor plans, knew every detail down to the last window."
"I don't mean that part."
"You already know that part, right?"
He nodded. He knew the details of what went down. He wanted to know what else she had taken or what she knew, what would cause someone to try to kill her twelve years later.
"What did you leave Seoul with?"
"The clothes on my back and a gold medal."
"And that's all?"
"That's all."
She didn't hesitate. This was a sign of the truth, but she was lying. She was good. She'd had plenty of practice at survival training on the streets and he'd seen it firsthand.
"What about information?"
"The clothes on my back," she repeated succinctly as if she were speaking to a retarded child.
Jack stood up and faced her. Morgan stared at her hands. He said nothing until she looked at him. When she did he placed his hands on the tabletop on either side of her, trapping her within his space.
"If you only left with the items you mentioned, why was your house rigged with explosives? Why did you have an escape plan in place? Why were you so prepared for something to happen, so much so that you'd practiced it until you could do it in your sleep? You had a car waiting, one that could hold its own against a military Humvee. And I'm not going to even mention the access to a closed military base. Why had every contingency been planned with unerring detail if all you left Korea with were the clothes on your back and a gold medal?"
Jack's face was close enough to hers for him to see the pores in her skin and the tiny dark specks across her nose, but her eyes were steady and calm, cold even.
"I was a girl scout," she answered, her voice holding as much ice as the coldness in her eyes. "Always be prepared."
"You were never a girl scout. You were a streetwise kid on the fast track to jail or a nameless bullet from a drive-by shooting until your social worker adopted you and channeled that idle energy onto a beam and a bar."
Morgan pushed his hands away from her sides. Jack took a step back. "You think you know me, don't you? You don't know the half of it. Where did you grow up, in some pretty little house with a picket fence, or in a shore town where the tourists come each summer and where you can always find a girl on the beach?" She took a long breath. "Well life isn't like that for all of us."
"No, it's not. And you don't have to tell me I don't know you. I know everything."
"You wish you did."
"I know everything about you. I probably know more about you than your own parents. After you left Seoul you spent a brief time in D.C., being debriefed I'd guess. Then you moved to St. Charles and virtually disappeared. You never changed your name, but it's not that unusual. There's no man in your life now. You have plenty of friends, women friends, but you're not gay. The last man you had a sexual relationship with was named Orren Sheridan. You went out with him for six months, had sex two to three times a week and always ate ice cream afterward. You gained eight pounds during that interlude. Lost ten when it was over. Would you like me to tell you the color and flavor condom he preferred?"
***
Morgan leapt off the table and turned her back to Jack. Rage boiled inside her like a nuclear reactor on full, gathering strength as its core went from superheated to rocketing meltdown. A dark river of fury hidden in her core, down under her soul, a muddy bed of anger that ran red and flashed through layers of logic and restraint, erupted with orgasmic force. Morgan found this mountain inside herself. A deep, wide vessel, molten, bubbly, white-hot with a hunger that fed through her organs as it fought with little or no resistance to get to the surface.
Her eyes burned and blood poured into her face, searing her with its heat. She knew it had to be a dark countenance of horror displayed there. She felt invaded, exposed, naked. Jack had ripped away everything she held closed up in her heart, stripping her of the carefully constructed camouflage, leaving her bare for the world to see and gawk at, held up to the multitudes to be criticized and stoned. She hated him for it, but she couldn't deny it.
There was something she could do, however. She turned back to face Jack. She could prove to him and to herself that she wasn't that streetwise nobody, because that nobody would have retaliated with her fists, that nobody would have extracted a pound of flesh for the insult. And Jack deserved to be hit, flattened, but she had choices. Her adoptive mother had told her that. Whatever she was, whatever decisions she made, were one of a set of choices. She wouldn't deny that it would feel especially good to ram her fist down Jack's throat, but she would make the civilized choice.
She turned and walked away.
***
"Damn!" Jack kicked the ground. What was it about her that got his juices working? They couldn't have a decent conversation without it escalating to the ground zero point of a nuclear explosion. Jack sat on the table, his feet in the same position as Morgan's had been. He needed to calm down before returning to the car. He rested his elbows on his knees and closed his eyes.
Morgan's face rose in his mind, not the face of the woman in the car, the one who hated him, but the nineteen-year-old in Korea. The woman who had come to the practice pool and knotted his stomach into Gordian knots. He'd created this monster and he had to get it under control, but first he had to get himself under control. He had emotions. He'd tried to hide them, had done so successfully for the past twelve years, but Morgan had the ability to unravel him with no more than a look. He couldn't blame her if she hated him for the rest of his life. He hadn't intended to blurt that part out about Orren Sheridan. He hadn't intended to betray anything he knew, but he couldn't keep it in. She got to the core of him, made him angry. She didn't do what he expected and while one part of him admired her for it, the other wanted her to conform. But if she conformed, she wouldn't be the same person.
This had to be the contradiction his father had told him about. He could use some advice now. Since he'd set foot on U.S. soil, nothing had worked as he expected it would. He hadn't resigned. He was in the middle of nowhere with a woman he couldn't get a straight answer out of and he still didn't know what was going on. Each time he asked her a question his mind either went south or he stumbled over their past. If only he could tell her the truth.
Jack stood and turned toward the car. Morgan sat in the passenger seat, her back straight enough to contain fused vertebrae. She stared straight ahead. He climbed into the driver's seat. For a moment they sat in silence, looking at the same scenery, but somehow he knew her mind wasn't on grass and trees.
"I apologize," he said. "I never meant to say that."
"It's all right," Morgan answered, her voice flat, unemotional. "You shouldn't even know the things you know."
"It seems we're making a really bad start here. We can't start over."
"Yeah, too many bullets flying through the air."
Jack laughed. He wasn't sure if she meant to be funny, but he wanted to lighten the air in the car, which had taken on the solidity of raw honey. He glanced at her and hoped to see a slight smile, even the shadow of one would be welcome, but she still sat rock-solid straight and stared through the glass.
"Morgan, I need to know what is going on. I can't help you if you won't tell me the truth."
"The truth!" she burst out, swiveling in her seat to look at him. "What about telling me the truth? What about leveling with me? For the past twelve years you've been privileged to my life, every aspect of it, and why? I'm a nobody. Yet you, and God knows who else, can diagram my life like it was a complex sentence."
"Not totally," he contradicted her, using a calm voice, when he again wanted to grab her and make her understand the life he thought so much about was in danger. But he'd hurt her emotions, not just hurt them, trampled over them, riding roughshod like some cowboy outlaw. She wasn't one of the scum of the earth he was used to dealing with, and he wasn't immune to her.
He touched her hand. She pulled it away. "Morgan, I'm concerned about you." She looked at him men. "Why is someone trying to kill you?"
"I don't know." Her answer seemed serious, honest. Jack decided not to push her. She had something or she knew something. He had to give her time to trust him enough to want to tell him the truth. He only hoped whoever was trying to kill her would wait that long, however long that turned out to be.
"All right." He changed the subject. "We have to ditch this car."
"Why? It's faster than anything we could rent or steal."
"It's been made. That guy in the helicopter had plenty of time to get the make, model and color, not to mention the license tag number."
"He'll get nowhere with that."
She surprised him again. She'd taken extreme precautions to make sure she could survive. From the looks of her plans, she expected to be alone, dependent on no one and nothing but her own resourcefulness. Suddenly he felt sad. He knew what her life had been like on the streets and since, but it was a paper life, unreal, a dossier to be computer tagged and filed, read by privileged eyes only. What had it done to the person sitting beside him?
"Morgan, you're not alone this time. I'm here." His fingers stroked the back of her hand. A few seconds later his fingers closed around her hand. Her thumb moved across his palm. The gesture was small, only a mere brush of her finger, but for Morgan it was a step the size of the Grand Canyon. She didn't work in a team. She trusted no one and relied on no one. She was a loner, just as he was. Even her choice of sport, gymnastics, was a solitary event There were six women on the United States team, and while they could only win the gold medal for their country based on the combined scores of the group, the individual performance was the rate at which they were judged. Yet simply running her thumb over his hand, wrapping five long slender fingers around that of another human being, was like a scream. And he was here to make sure that scream was heard.
Janine Acres sat at a table in the bar in the Continental terminal of Atlanta International Airport sipping a Margarita. She'd had it shaken and salt generously applied to the lip of the glass. For an airport bartender, used to adding water to scotch or tonic to gin, the man made a masterpiece of a Margarita. Janine loved them, but rarely drank any. They killed too many brain cells, and she often needed all her brain cells to cope with training the future gymnasts of the world.
She smiled at the thought. This was what she and Allie had joked about doing when they trained together. They were going to become coaches and have a school that turned out only Olympic-class gymnasts.
Janine checked her watch. Where was Allie? Alicia Tremaine. On the team, she had been Jan and Alicia was Allie. Life hadn't quite given them their dreams, but it hadn't squashed them either. Not like they were doing to Morgan Kirkwood.
Janine owned and directed a gymnastics school and camp in Clay, West Virginia. When Allie finished competitive gymnastics, she landed a job commentating on sports at a major cable station. Since then she'd gone on to acting and now starred in a television sitcom. That's what probably held her up, Janine thought. It was hard enough to reach her by phone. Even by cell phone. You had to go through a ton of secretaries and assistants before getting to her, then she had so little time to talk. But when Janine mentioned the news report on Morgan, the two agreed to meet.
As Janine checked her watch for the third time, Allie appeared in the doorway. Who would have thought that skinny kid, who tried to hide in the doorway of the gymnastics class, would become the head-turner of stage, screen and television? Janine watched her approach, noting the men at the bar swiveling around with interest as she passed them. Allie seemed not to notice them as she scanned the area. Janine stood up as her friend approached. They hugged, covering the years of absence that kept them apart.
"I ordered you a drink. I hope it isn't too watery," Janine said.
"I guess that's my cue to apologize for being late," Allie said, slipping into her chair. "I apologize."
Janine suddenly smiled. "Allie, you're going to be late for your own funeral."
The tension that Janine felt somehow eased. She licked the salt rim and took a drink. Allie swished the straw in her scotch.
"How have you been?" Allie began.
"Fine. The school is going well. I have more students than I can handle."
"And you love it," Allie said.
Janine grinned. "I admit it. I do." Then she turned serious. "You know Morgan loaned me the money to begin the school. She even donated some of the equipment. I still have it. I don't know how it would ever have gotten off the ground without her."
"I didn't know that. What happened to the endorsement money you received?"
"Spent."
"Janine, you spent it all? On what?"
Janine wasn't that proud of her past. "Parties, high living, family." She frowned. "Suddenly I was no longer young, no longer a darling, endorsements went to someone else. I spent like there was no tomorrow and then it was tomorrow. The only person who knew was Morgan. She came through with the loan and the school was born."
"Morgan was always friendly." The sarcasm wasn't lost on Janine. Morgan was anything but friendly. She was cautious, staying by herself, waiting, hanging back, looking to see when someone would spring at her.
"I've been thinking about that recently," Janine said.
"What? How friendly Morgan was?"
"Remember that last six months, before we left for Korea? Morgan became a different person."
"It was the pressure. She wanted to win and she wasn't the favorite. We all knew it. And our coach kept harping on it during every practice session." Allie took a sip of her drink.
"That was only psychological pressure. He thought she'd work harder. She was exactly that kind of person. Tell her she can't do something and she'll find a way."
"She sure did," Allie confirmed. "It surprised the hell out of me when she went through that routine on the beam. I'd never seen anything like that before."
"She did pull a big rabbit out of her hat that night." Jan hesitated. "But before that, during the training, I thought her nerves were on edge too, but I don't think so anymore."
"Why?" Allie asked. "What's happened?"
Jan wasn't sure she knew if anything had happened. In fact she felt pretty stupid right now for her intuition. It wasn't like her to get on a plane and fly three hours for a meeting. "It's probably nothing more than coincidence, but after I heard that news report about her house exploding and no mention of her, I started thinking."
"She couldn't have been there. There was only the mention of one body and that wasn't Morgan's."
"Then where is she and why hasn't she contacted her friends?"
"Janine, when was the last time Morgan contacted you?" She waited a second, but the question was rhetorical. Morgan hadn't contacted any of them since she got off the plane from Seoul twelve years ago. Even when she donated the money and equipment for Janine's school, she only came once in person. All the other transactions were between their two lawyers. At the time, Janine thought it was to save emotion between the two of them. Morgan knew Jan was the sappy one. Morgan didn't like to show emotion. Standing on that pedestal with the tears and The Star Spangled Banner playing had probably been the pouring out of years of pent-up passion. Her body was so full of holding it in that if she hadn't done something, she would have exploded. Morgan's life had been hard and she didn't trust people, but if she could help a friend, she would. Jan knew the Olympic team was Morgan's family.
"Did Morgan ever say anything to you?" Jan asked.
"About what?"
"About what was going on in Seoul?"
"You mean with that swim coach? God, he was good-looking." Allie smacked her lips together as if she was appreciating fine food. "What was his name?" She stared across the room, concentrating. "Something Jack or Jack something, I can't remember, but Morgan said nothing about him. Not a word."
"I don't mean the coach. I mean anything about anything?"
Allie shook her head. "Did she say something to you?"
"She mentioned only once that she didn't think she would die a normal death."
Allie put her drink down and leaned forward. "What does that mean?" she asked slowly.
"I don't know. She wouldn't explain after she said it. In fact, she laughed it off, but you know Morgan. She was always so serious about everything. I let it go, but now I wish I hadn't."
"Do you think we should go to St. Charles and talk to the local authorities?"
"It sounds melodramatic, Allie. I know that, but I'm afraid something might have happened to her."
***
Country music poured from the radio, twangy voices that Morgan had grown to appreciate, detailed lovers losing each other, other women trying to take your man or gossip in the town that would bring you down, and women vowing to stand by her man. Morgan heard the messages and understood. She'd been all those women and knew all the men. Now more than ever she understood the stories these miniseries told in three-minute bytes. She knew why she'd taken to them, drowned in the sorrow that each of the women felt when the man she loved turned and walked away or put his arm around the blonde and strutted off with a backward glance that said, you lose.
Jack drove in silence for some time. Morgan felt as if the air had been damped down. She wouldn't go so far as to say cleansed, but she wasn't angry anymore. She wondered about Jack. What had his hand on hers meant? Where was this going, not just the car, although she had no idea where he was heading either, but so far the direction was all right. She wondered where this entire episode would lead them. Would they survive it? She had to admit she was glad to have someone with her.
She'd imagined running before. She knew it would come to this one day, but all her planning had been for one. She never expected any allies, certainly not the one man who had occupied space in her closed heart for the past twelve years.
Unbidden, her mind returned to the past. She thought of him—at the end of the gymnastics arena. Back in a time, a history they couldn't relive, couldn't change.
Morgan stood six feet back from the springboard. Her heart hammered in her chest Everything about her was wrong. She was too nervous, her hands were sweaty, her breath came too fast and she was too aware of the activity in the room. This was her final competition. It was now or never, she thought. This was the moment she had worked for her entire life, yet her mind was blank. Where were the words she was going to tell herself at this moment, where were the song lyrics, the inspirational refrain that had been part of the opening night ceremonies and was threaded throughout the last several days as a reminder and inspiration for the years of training that had brought the athletes to this moment? Where were her affirmations? Even a mantra would be welcome at this point. Yet she was numb. There was nothing there except the memory of the last hour clogging her brain, memory of an exercise gone wrong. What would the director say when he heard the details of her failure? She didn't know and didn't care.
No one expected her to win here anyway. They'd told her that to her face. She looked at the scoreboard. She needed to be perfect to win. Why was she even here, even trying? No one was perfect and they all knew it.
The short distance to the beam looked like a mile. The springboard only a square in the vastness of the enveloping cavern. The beam only a ribbon in a sea of blue foam. She took a deep breath and looked at the crowd. The seats were full, everyone moving, talking, looking at her. Then they too began to recede. They blurred into a multicolored collage, moving away from her as if she'd been drugged. Their sound went with them, reducing in volume until all she heard was a soft rush of a wave coming ashore.
She wasn't the favorite in this event. If she lost no one would think anything of it. And after what she'd done tonight in the prison, it was all she could do to remember her routine. Morgan closed her eyes and raised herself to her toes. Then she came down again on her heels. She opened her eyes and found Jack Temple in her direct line of sight. He stood against the far wall, looking her directly in the eye. She was sure his mouth curved into a slight smile and that he nodded at her. His strength gave her motivation. She took that strength, latched onto it, made him her focus. Going up on her toes again she started her run. She reached the carpeted springboard. Both feet hit the end at the same time. Using her body weight, Morgan propelled her long frame into the air. Everything slowed down. She could see every move, feel everything around her, as if she were in a dream, one in which she was both spectator and participant. She was aware of her hair, her ponytail flying about her head, the air in the room pressing against her, the feel of her leotard against her skin. She swirled around as if she were performing a synchronized water dance. Tucking her arms close to her body, she completed her mount to the four-inch, fabric-covered beam with a full-twisting front flip. Her feet connected with the apparatus with the precision of a diamond needle cutting through metal. Her knees and ankles locked and she stood straight and tall playing to the one man whose eyes she could see. The rest of the sixty thousand people could have been at home with the millions of spectators around the globe watching this performance. The only one whose approval she sought as she stood upon the four-inch structure was Jack Temple's.
Her routine continued in the same manner as her mount: slowed down, allowing her to see clearly every twist and turn. Jack looked on as she went through the splits, the handstands, the tumbles, with flawless accuracy. She could hear the pounding of her feet and hands as they made contact, see the small puffs of dust form clouds as she went from one effortless exercise to the next. Then the dismount loomed before her. It was the most difficult part of the routine.
Height was the key. Standing at the far end of the beam, she began the three-step run and bent her knees, then stretched— and reached for the ceiling, clawing as much air as she could reduce to physical possession. Climbing into the fluid medium she tucked her body into a ball, tumbled head over heels twice, then extended herself into a straight missile, locking her elbows in and twisting her entire frame into a full layout before hitting the impact-absorbent floor as if her feet had just found the opposite magnetic pole and once set could not be dislodged without a searing force. Her arms rose into the air saluting the judge and the crowd.
For a moment the entire arena was silent. She looked around. The audience swirled like a blurred photograph. Then thunder struck, a deafening force that broke the calm and clamored to the top of the building, threatening to tear the domed roof from its hinges. She could hear her name chanted and the scores went up on the lighted board. She watched the tens come up one by one. Each of the judges had rated her the same.
She looked for Jack Temple at his post by the wall. He hadn't moved. This time, instead of a nod he saluted her win. A moment later, she was attacked by her congratulating team members and sight of Jack was lost.
She wondered about him now. Glancing sideways, he still drove without a word, but apparently with a mission. In Korea, she didn't think he knew how much his presence had done for her routine, but now she wasn't so sure. He said he knew everything about her. Did that include her psychological makeup? Could he read her mind, her thoughts? Did he know what she needed, and had he stood against that wall for moral support or to send her signals that the worst was over, nothing else mattered? She'd done her job.
Hart Lewiston was on a transport plane with a full medical setup on his way to a military base in California. Only a few people knew a woman, a mere child with fantastic agility, had been instrumental in getting him out of the prison, and none of them could put the name of Morgan Kirkwood with that black-clad figure who could skirt the building ledge with the same nerve-racking calm of a high-wire acrobat. At least no one Morgan knew.
***
Backwater towns are the worst places to hide. Small villages and hamlets have too many prying eyes and too many curiosity seekers. They needed a large city, a place where people were more apt to be concerned about their own lives than what was going on next door, a place where there were many transients and no one asked questions or remembered faces. And Jack needed to make another phone call.
Since they'd left the house in Illinois they'd been traveling east. A green reflective sign pointing toward Indianapolis loomed ahead. Jack pulled off the road at the first exit ramp and headed toward downtown. They needed to get rid of the car, but they couldn't pull into a hotel without one.
"Where are you going?" Morgan spoke for the first time in hours, it seemed.
"I have a plan," he told her. "There's a field office here. I can get us some help."
"No!" Her eyes shifted to him and he saw fear there.
"What are you afraid of?"
"I don't know these people. Who are they and why are you willing to trust them to help us?"
"Morgan, they're operatives of the United States government. It's their job."
"I've been in this place before. Operatives of the United States approached me. Riddled me with lies and half truths and got me involved in an operation where I was expendable. I didn't like it then and I won't walk back into that kind of situation again."
"It's not your call." His voice was hard. He forced it to be that way. He really wanted to reassure her. He understood her fear. He'd had the same feelings in the past, but he knew this was the best course of action. It was regulation, by the book. Jack wasn't often a rulebook player. He found rules restricting, and they often needed to be revised for the jungle, the desert, the terrorists after him and the powers trying to make it his last day on earth. This had to be different. This was Indiana, not Iran.
Jack had been the reason Morgan got into this, but he didn't have full authority on his side. He'd only known part of the story at the time and she could have lost her young life. Thank God she hadn't. He didn't know if he could have lived with himself if anything worse had happened that night.
"We need help, Morgan." His voice was softer this time. "Backup. Other agents to escort us back to D.C. I promise you everything will be fine."
She hesitated, obviously not trusting him. She had been on her own so long, fending for herself, never really allowing anyone to get close to her, get near enough to trust. Why should she trust him, especially if she knew she was here because of an offhand comment he'd made in a conference room twelve years ago.
"Morgan, you're going to have to trust someone. I promise I'll take care of you."
She sat back. "You already said it wasn't my call."
She lapsed into silence and Jack took it as consent. He continued toward town, but wasn't going to drive directly to the field headquarters. He knew better than to trust out of hand too. He'd call first, set something up. He had a friend in the Indianapolis office. Maybe he could even get a call into Jacob, find out if anything further had developed as to what the real reason was that Morgan Kirkwood had been put on a hit list. Who was trying to kill her?
And why?
The main street into the center of Indianapolis was a corridor of insurance companies. Few people expected anything else in Indiana except the 500, a wide track for race cars to circle. Most have probably forgotten that Michael Jackson and his entire family were born in Gary, or that all the music and video clubs have a warehouse address in Terre Haute. Indiana is only the way to get someplace else. Jack admitted he considered it that way too. He wasn't here to stay. It was a way station on his trip to the capital. He only hoped whoever was after them didn't realize they would stop here. At least not until they had vacated the place and had a clear and definite idea of what the next move should be.
He hated working without a plan, even if it was one he made up minute by minute. The problem was he didn't know the problem and that made it impossible to solve.
***
The air in the conference room on the fifth floor of FBI headquarters was thick with concern. The newspaper accounts of Morgan Kirkwood's house exploding made front-page news in St. Charles, but was buried on page three of the Post-Dispatch. Jacob could thank a quick-thinking agent working at the paper who reported a gas leak as the cause. The official report revealed a dangerous explosive and a timing device as the real cause. Thank God, there was only one casualty, a neighbor named Michelle O'Banyon.
"Where are they?" Forrest Washington had cut his vacation short when word reached him that Jack Temple was under fire in the Midwest. Jacob knew the man was concerned about Jack. Their relationship to each other was the same as Jacob's to Clarence Christopher, the director of the FBI. They bonded, became more than friends—they were family.
"Jack called three nights ago. Since then there's been no word," Jacob replied.
"We can't reach him either. Apparently, his phone has been deactivated. We did find a known member of the Korean mob at the out-of-the-way house of the dead woman in St Charles. What's the connection?"
Clarence Christopher sat forward. It wasn't often the two major arms of the government's law and order forces intersected and Morgan Kirkwood didn't appear important enough to be the catalyst for this high-level meeting. Unfortunately, Jack Temple had stumbled into something and Morgan was the pointman.
"You tell us," Christopher said. "We inherited the Kirkwood woman and were given only part of the story. Don't bother to deny it." He stopped Brian Ashleigh with a wave of his hand. Both Jacob and Clarence knew how agencies worked. They didn't reveal anything that wasn't necessary. So the file Christopher had read on Ms. Kirkwood gave her background and a few details of the one and only sanction she'd been party to. What Ashleigh had in his protected files was the rest of her story.
Washington slid a manila envelope across the polished surface of the conference room table. "This is the whole of it," he said. Jacob opened it, finding a CD and some papers inside.
"The CD is a video history of her. The notes tell you everything we know."
Christopher raised a silver eyebrow.
"Everything," Washington repeated.
Jacob knew of her involvement in freeing Hart Lewiston from the Korean prison during the '88 Olympics. Twelve years had passed without a sound from her and now the Koreans were after her. It didn't make sense and Jacob liked things to add up.
"Lewiston is a U.S. senator, a presidential candidate. Does he have anything to do with this?"
"We've checked him out," Ashleigh admitted. "He's as clean as snow."
"What about the Koreans?"
"We can't find a connection."
"Revenge?"
"After twelve years?"
"It's a matter of honor. They probably know she helped free Lewiston and she beat their number one champion out of a gold medal."
"Makes no sense," Jacob replied. "The same people aren't in power any longer."
"What about those that are?"
***
Just how much money did Jack have on his person? Morgan thought of this when he left to ditch the car. She wanted that car. It had taken a fair amount of time to restore it to peak performance. That car could outrun any police vehicle between here and New York. It served them three days. It seemed longer. She couldn't believe he'd only shown up in her life three days ago. It felt like they'd been running forever.
Morgan looked around at the room. It was standard Holiday Inn fare, clean, bright and with a view of the pool below. She thought he'd pick an out-of-the-way motel, something cheap and not the kind of place you'd expect to find a CIA operative and a fugitive from a twelve-year-old Olympic competition. Again she wondered about the cost and how Jack was paying for it. He wouldn't be stupid enough to use a charge card, she hoped. If he had, someone would surely have traced them by now. She whipped around, looking at all the windows and doors, suddenly feeling vulnerable. Paranoia would invade her mind soon. She needed to talk to him, to find out what he planned, but they didn't communicate well. She'd learned that twelve years ago by a practice pool. And from three days alone in the car with him.
Morgan was alone and hungry. She had plenty to survive on for a while. She didn't know how long. Her plan, if she ever needed one, was to abandon the house and make her way to Washington, D.C. in the car. There she would contact Jacob Winston and turn herself in. She'd met him once and she trusted him. He was a fair man, tall, serious with blue eyes, and she felt he genuinely cared about her. If he suggested she go deeper into the program, she would do it. Now she didn't know. She hadn't expected to have anyone with her. She never expected to see Jack after they returned from Seoul. She never expected to have him look at her and find her body tingling with unfulfilled longing.
Jack was a problem.
She had to get away from him. Now was the perfect time, before he got back from wherever he'd gone to dispose of her car. He worked for the CIA, she thought. He was the professional here. He could take care of himself. So why was she hesitating? She never hesitated before. She always knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it. She'd often had to fight for it, and she'd taken her share of the knocks, but she could take care of herself. Jack was a hindrance. She needed to be alone, running by herself, taking care of herself.
She swung around, searching for her backpack. Loading it over her shoulder, she checked the room for anything else she might need, then went toward the door. With her hand around the knob she stopped. Should she leave him a note? He could return and think she'd been kidnapped by the people looking for her.
Grabbing a piece of paper and pen from the desk, she wrote quickly, but did not write a note for Jack. She scribbled the hotel phone number on a scrap of paper and pushed it into her pocket. She would call him in a few minutes and tell him she was all right. She wouldn't wait for him to talk. She wanted to hear his voice one more time, but would not give him time to talk her out of her decision.
Morgan opened the door and peered into the long hallway. The carpet, a maroon pattern that gave with her step, stretched the length to the elevator. Lights at regular intervals bled overlapping pools on the floor and walls. Morgan looked for the stairs. That exit should be better. The elevator was a trap, a tiny room, with no escape. When it opened she would be prey to anyone on the other side of the sliding doors.
Someone like Jack.
Or worse.
She left the room and closed the door. Ten feet away, in the opposite direction, a red exit light hung over a door marked "stairway." She headed for it. The door's weight, designed to provide protection from fire, gave as she pushed it open and turned to softly close it. Inside, the walls were white. Huge pipes six inches in diameter ran up the wall behind the door.
Morgan turned, took a step and walked directly into Jack. She would have fallen if his hands hadn't come out and grabbed her.
"Where do you think you're going?" He squeezed her hard against him. She didn't struggle because she knew it was useless. She was caught. His eyes were angry. She'd seen anger before and it didn't frighten her.
"Let go of me." She pushed back, needing space and air. He surprised her by being there, but being shackled to his body was too close for comfort. This was another reason she needed to get away from him. She wasn't the same woman when he was close, and she couldn't drag him into the mess she'd made of her own life. Even if he was better trained than she was.
Even if he could save her life. She could get him killed and she wasn't willing to let that happen.
She might have known he'd take the stairs instead of the elevator. Didn't everything about him tell her he'd take the stairs even if it was thirty flights? His body was muscular and hard. She'd been pressed against it more than once and she knew the contours of his chest and arms.
"I'm getting out of here," she hissed, more angry with her own reactions than with his unannounced presence.
"So you can get killed?"
"I won't get killed. I've been on my own forever," she threw at him. "In the first place, my plan didn't include you. So leave me alone. I don't need you. Whatever I have to do I can do without your help."
Jack stared at her without a word. It went on long enough to make Morgan uncomfortable. Suddenly he hauled the door open and pulled her through it. In seconds they were back in the hotel room staring each other down like two gunfighters in the middle of town at high noon.
"Prove it," Jack challenged, anger so tightly wound he felt he'd snap any second now. She blinked, confused by the question. "Prove you don't need me around and I'm out of here." Jack grabbed her wrists. She gasped and he nearly let go. "I haven't done a tenth of what I can, but you don't need me. Show me how you don't need me." He noticed the way her breasts rose and fell under the light fabric.
Morgan stepped forward, pushing her hips against him. Her mouth clamped on his. He didn't pull away. Her tongue dove into his mouth. She used her mouth as the only weapon available to her. Moving her head, she repositioned her mouth, taking more of him as he joined her in the kiss. Her hips rubbed suggestively against his lower body. She could feel his arousal. She raised one leg, wrapping it around one of his and shifting up and down, feeling the heat and the hardened bulge in his pants. As expected he released her wrists. She felt his arms circle her waist and begin to pull her closer. At that moment she jerked her leg and pulled him off balance. Together they went down. At the same moment they hit the floor Morgan rolled away. With the speed of lightning she grabbed his arm and twisted it behind him in a way that forced immobility.
She looked at him for a few seconds, breathing hard. "This is what I could do to get out of that," she said. Holding his arm only long enough to make her point, she dropped it and went to her bedroom.
Jack collapsed with the slamming of the bedroom door. In all his years no one, no one had ever gotten to him the way she did. And a woman! He didn't mean to belittle women. They could be as tough as men. He'd run up against his share of them. This one he should be able to overpower with a nod, and she'd taken him down, reduced him to nothing more than a weak mass of need. And she'd been so cool about it. So calculating. Unemotional.
Damn, he cursed, she was getting to him.
***
Morgan opened the door to the bedroom half an hour later. Her face was clean of makeup and her hair was loose about her shoulders. She'd brushed it straight. It fell to her shoulders then curved slightly upward on the ends. A tease, Jack thought. He wondered if she'd done that to entice him. If so, it worked. He wanted to slip his hands in the soft mass, bring it to his nose and inhale the clean flowery smell of her shampoo. And he didn't want to stop there.
Jack planned to leave as soon as it was dark. Morgan had foiled his plans more than once, but today she'd proved he couldn't leave her alone, he couldn't trust her not to get herself killed. It would be better if he could. He'd like to walk away. He'd like to forget everything and just go, but he couldn't. It wasn't in him. Maybe the idea of quitting wasn't part of his future. He hadn't started out to find trouble, but it had found him and there was no way he could leave Morgan to fend for herself. No matter how much she thought she could handle it.
Or how much she set off his hormones.
He needed to call Forrest Washington and find out what, if anything, had turned up. When he ditched the car he hadn't had time. He thought he needed to get back to the hotel and as it turned out, he did. He even ordered room service so he wouldn't have to leave the woman he was now sworn to protect.
"I'm sorry," she said, standing in the doorway. "That was unfair of me. I should never have done it."
"It was effective," Jack said.
"It's not like I do this all the time," she replied angrily.
Before Jack could answer, there was a knock on the door.
"Room service," he explained as he went to it. He put his hand on his pistol and looked through the peephole. He opened the door and the waiter set up the food on the dual desk-table. It was small and they would have to sit close if they were to eat together. Jack paid the waiter in cash and moments later they sat across from each other.
"Do you trust me enough to tell me the truth?"
"I have told you the truth." Her voice was a little higher than usual but she controlled it. "I don't know anything more."
"What about Korea? What happened there?"
Morgan stuffed a small red potato in her mouth and chewed. She didn't look at him, yet Jack stared at her as he waited. She took her time. She wanted to tell him. He could almost taste it. She wanted someone she could talk to, tell about that night.
Jack had been there. He knew some of what she could tell him, but not all. He didn't have a clue why someone would wait twelve years to come after her. He wouldn't rush her, wouldn't push her into doing or saying anything. She would tell him. He knew ways to get her to talk. He could force her to tell him what he wanted to know, but he wanted her to tell him on her own. He wanted her to want his help. He wanted her to need him. He knew she would do it, but she would only trust him in her own time.
"I won a gold medal," she finally said.
***
Jack linked his fingers and rested his forehead against them. Morgan had disappeared into the bedroom right after she ate. He could hear the water running in the shower. There was no window in the bathroom and they were on the ninth floor. There was a window in the bedroom, but he didn't think she'd want to die scaling the side of the building trying to get away from him. This was not the prison. There was no ledge, no intricate ironwork for her to grab hold of. Between her room and the ground was only the brick face of the building, no place to get a foothold for anything greater than a spider, and while she might be able to dismount from a beam and stick to the floor, she wouldn't be able to use any of those skills from this location. The door was her only means of escape and she'd have to pass him to reach it.
What was he going to do? Short of tying her to the bed, he needed her cooperation. In order to save her life, he needed her to want his help. Why wouldn't she? She couldn't still think he meant to harm her. He could never do anything like that.
Jack knew ways to get information. He was adept at torture. He could pry anything out of anyone. He knew ways to make a man talk, cry, beg, call for his God, his king, even his mother, but Morgan he couldn't touch, couldn't reach. She was too smart not to understand the danger she was in. If he left her, she'd be dead before the sun set. She was good. He gave her credit for planning and executing the plan, but he didn't know how she would act on the spot. Could she use what was available? Did she understand how people thought, acted, their natural instincts? He didn't know and he wasn't willing to test it with her life. She would have to put up with him, like it or not.
Why was she as tight-lipped as a lobster claw clamped on a finger? There had to be a reason, something important, something she was protecting more than her own life. Jack wondered what it could be. He knew everything about her. Things the CIA didn't know he knew. He'd seen her file, read it completely and remembered every detail. There was no one she'd ever had a lasting relationship with and no unaccounted-for time periods. But Morgan was proving a master at many crafts. Deception could be one of them. There could be pieces missing from a written report. Something that wasn't in her file. It had been twelve years since she moved to Missouri. What could it be? Jack stopped. What or who?
Then the thought hit him. He needed to ask her a question and he needed the element of surprise. Jack wanted to be sure he saw her reaction before she had time to conceal it. Seconds if he was lucky.
Leaving the area that connected the two bedrooms, Jack went through the opening and straight to the bathroom. The water could no longer be heard falling into the tub. Jack didn't care if she was in the tub or standing naked in front of it. He opened the door. Morgan stood there, her body wrapped in a fluffy white towel. Jack didn't give himself time to think. He went through the mist and stood in front of her. He thought to grab her arms, but didn't want to touch her. He wanted an answer and he didn't know what he'd say or do if he touched that smooth, wet skin.
"Do you have a child?" he demanded.
"Sure," she said without the slightest hesitation. "Triplets."
It told Jack nothing. Her eyes hadn't changed in that instant, but then she looked down. A moment later she turned to leave. His hands came out to detain her. She pushed at his arms. Instinct made him resist.
"Let go of me," she said, not bothering to conceal the anger in her voice.
He didn't.
"Just who do you think you are, anyway?"
"You want to know who I am? I'm your worst nightmare, Morgan Kirkwood. I'm that bad boy you've been warned about. The one with the leather jacket and bulging muscles. The one whose jeans are too tight, who wears T-shirts with cigarettes rolled up in the short sleeve of one arm, the one who's comfortable on any street corner and can deal with the crap no matter what it is. I know where the drugs are sold, have been sold and are going to be sold. Hell, I may have even used a few. Anything you want, I can get it. If you need medicine in the middle of the night or want someone knocked off, I'm your man." He hit himself in the chest.
"I'm no valley girl," she countered. "I could have any bad boy I wanted, any good guy too."
"But the good ones don't fascinate you. And I fascinate you, don't I, Morgan? I make your mouth dry when you see me. Your body tingles and gets tight in all the right places. Life flows between your legs and your body goes all hot, but you like it, don't you? You like that feeling. It tells you you're alive. You want me, want me to touch you."
He took her chin in his hand. "Like you did that other bad boy. It's there, Morgan. It shows in your face, in the slant of your body. You wanted him, just like you want me. You might have put on airs, denied it to your friends, but you wanted him. You wanted to be pushed up against the lockers and kissed. You wanted all your giggling girlfriends to see it, so you could reign supreme in that small universe. But if he says anything to you, if I say anything, you use that razor-sharp tongue of yours to cut me to shreds, put me in my place, while all along, all I need to do is stand close to you, breathe the same air, let you smell the danger in me and you'll melt like a soft marshmallow."