One Night In Texas

“Right. Your responsibility. Not mine.”

“Gus—”

“No! There’s a reason I’m out of the business. So I can have a life that doesn’t involve having to do this short-fuse crap anymore.”

“Fly to D.C., hit the tarmac, unload the cargo, do a one-eighty and head back. That’s all I need.” Derek could see his friend starting to waver. “Come on, Gus. Haven’t we always watched each other’s backs? Always?”

Gus blew out a breath. “Playing the loyalty card is really low.”

“Hey, I’m stuffing myself into a tuxedo for you tomorrow. The least you can do is fly to Washington for me today.”

Gus closed his eyes and shook his head.

“It’s really no big deal,” Derek went on. “You’ll be back in time for the rehearsal dinner tonight. Hell, all we were going to do this afternoon is play golf anyway.”

“I like golf.”

“You also like to fly. Get in the van, and I’ll fill you in on the way to Love Field.”

“I need to talk to Sally first.”

“No. If you talk to her now, you’ll never get out of here. Phone her from the airfield. Tell her something came up, but you’ll be at the rehearsal dinner tonight.”

Derek opened up the passenger door. Gus stared at the van, then back at Derek. “You owe me for this.”

“You bet. Just name your price. After you get the guy to Washington.”

Gus hauled himself into the van. Derek stepped into the driver’s seat, started the engine and hit the gas. He wanted to get out of there before Gus saw his bride and changed his mind.

“Unbelievable,” Kevin said from the back of the van. “He talked you into it.”

Gus gave Kevin a deadpan look. “I’m a sucker for a sob story.” He turned back to Derek. “So, fill me in. Who’s my cargo?”

Derek gave him the short version of the predicament they were in, judiciously leaving out the part about Alyssa. No need to go there, particularly when it was a loose end he planned to tie up on his own later.

“So we’ve got to get this guy to Washington for interrogation,” he told Gus, “or come Monday morning, either the president’s trade bill is going down because a few congressmen don’t want to see themselves in compromising positions all over cable news, or cable news is going to have a field day when they get hold of—” He stopped short, looking in the rearview mirror. “Damn it.”

“What?”

“Somebody’s following us.”

Gus glanced in the side mirror. “That blue Mustang?”

“Yeah. He’s been hugging my bumper for the past few miles. This makes the fourth time I’ve changed lanes and he has, too.”

“It’s Barry Sutton,” Gus said. “Hard to miss that car. I saw him getting into it as we were leaving.”

Derek came to a red light and braked to a halt. “Any idea why he’s after us?”

“He’s a reporter who used to cover big stories but got busted to the society section. Maybe he’s looking for news from my wedding that’s a little more interesting than what color the mother of the bride is wearing.”

“Then we’d better lose him.” Derek put two hands on the wheel. “Hang on.”

Derek hit the gas and wheeled hard to the left, hopped the curb to the median and made a U-turn against the red light. He gunned it for fifty yards, then turned into a strip-center parking lot and headed down the service alley. Checking his rearview mirror, he saw Sutton’s Mustang still sitting at the red light.

“He’s not following,” Derek said.

“Hell, no, he’s not,” Gus muttered, rubbing his neck. “Did you have to jump the damned curb?”

Derek grinned. “You’ve gotten soft, Gus. That’s tragic.”

“No. Tragic is having to miss my golf game this afternoon.”

“Golf. Now, there’s some excitement.”

“It’s all the excitement I’m looking for these days.”

“Come on. Think about all the fun we used to have. You loved every minute of it.”

“Yeah. I did. But I love Sally more.”

He spoke with such conviction that Derek knew there was more to his relationship with his fiancée than some hot sex with a pretty lady. Gus had quit the team and started his own business for one reason only: so he could have that one special woman to come home to for the rest of his life.

When Derek thought about that, for some reason Alyssa’s face flashed through his mind.

No. Stop thinking about her like that.

He told himself, as he had for the past six months, that thoughts like those would eventually get him into trouble. Soon he’d be roped and tied like Gus, playing house with his wife and golfing with his buddies. But he just wasn’t cut out for that kind of life, and he had yet to meet a woman who could convince him that he was.

FORTUNATELY THE REST of the job went off like clockwork, which was a big relief for Derek after everything that had gone wrong. Wilson and McManus had Owens waiting at Love Field when they arrived. In fewer than three hours, the blackmailer would be in Washington. With any luck, Owens would crack and give the interrogators the name of his client and the location of the blackmail material. Then they’d call Derek in one more time to retrieve it, and this problem would be put to bed once and for all.

But right now he had to deal with Alyssa.

Kevin stayed in the van across the street from the Waterford, punching his computer to let Derek back into the building. As Derek ascended the elevator to the penthouse, his heart was pounding a little harder than usual. He’d rather take a beating than face Alyssa after what had happened in there.

As the elevator doors opened, he spoke into the microphone, telling Kevin he’d be out of touch for a short time and to stay put until he contacted him again. Then he flipped the microphone off and made his way to the master bedroom.

Alyssa sat on the bed exactly where he’d left her, but the anger she’d displayed earlier seemed to have disappeared. Instead, when she looked up at him, her green eyes were full of the pain of betrayal. And he was the reason why.

Stop beating yourself up. You had no choice.

When he settled beside her on the bed, she shrank away from him. He sighed heavily.

“I’m going to untie you,” he told her, “but I can’t let you leave yet. We need to talk. Agreed?”

She nodded.

He removed the gag first, easing it away carefully, wincing when he saw the red, irritated skin at the corners of her mouth. She stretched her jaw stiffly, refusing to look at him. When he untied her ankles, then her hands, he was dismayed to see the ties had left their mark there, too.

“I can’t believe you did this,” she said, rubbing her wrists. “I can’t believe—”

He touched his hand to her arm. When she jerked it away from him and stood, he wondered if she intended to bolt from the room. Instead she merely walked several paces away and stopped, her back to him, rubbing her upper arms with her palms.

“You left me in Seattle,” she said, her voice quivering as if she were on the verge of tears. “After a whole week together, suddenly you were gone. And now…and now this.”

“Alyssa—”

“How could you do this to me?”

With that, she dropped her head to her hands and began to cry.

Derek felt a shot of apprehension. He’d sailed through military combat with flying colors. He ran a team of stealth operatives, keeping his cool in situations unimaginable to the average man. His pain tolerance was legendary. He had very few weaknesses.

But watching a woman cry was one of them.

He’d expected her to be fighting mad. That he could have dealt with just fine. But now that she was falling apart, he had no clue what to do.

“Alyssa…”

He rose from the bed and went to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. To his surprise, she turned quickly, ducked her head and fell against him. He automatically wrapped his arms around her and she laid her head against his chest, her body shaking with sobs.

“You’re a liar,” she said, crying so hard she could barely speak.

“I know, but—”

“And a thief.”

“Well, technically I am, but—”

“And a bully.”

A bully? Now, wait a minute. He’d been called a lot of things in his life, but never that. He liked to think he wasn’t one of those guys who acted tough just for the sake of intimidating people, but clearly she thought he was.

But even as she berated him with one accusation after another, she clutched her arms more tightly around him, as if she was begging him to tell her that none of her words were true.

Unfortunately most of them were.

“Alyssa, sweetheart, listen to me. I had no choice. I had to—”

All at once she slid out of his arms and pushed him away, so hard that he stumbled backward. It startled him so much that a second passed before he realized what else she’d done.

She’d grabbed the gun from the small of his back.

He started toward her, but she’d already raised the weapon. Stopping short, he held his palms in the air, unable to believe that the woman he’d thought was crying had a face as dry as dust.

“You’re right, Derek,” Alyssa said. “We have some talking to do.”

4

ALYSSA WASN’T too thrilled to be holding a gun on anyone, particularly this man, because even with a firearm she wasn’t completely sure she was the one in control. But she wasn’t about to let him see her apprehension. And after all, it was a dream scenario, wasn’t it? Getting the opportunity to hold a gun on him and demand answers to the questions that had been driving her crazy for the past six months?

“I thought you were crying,” Derek said.

She made a scoffing noise. “Over you? A man who used me, lied to me, then left me? Hardly.”

She hoped to see him at least wince at that, but his expression held steady. The only indication of any emotion was a narrowing of his eyes as he assessed the situation. The gun felt heavy in her hands and she shifted it a little to get a better grip.

He held up his palms. “Be careful with that gun, sweetheart. The trigger’s pretty touchy.”

“Stop patronizing me.”

“Ever fire a gun before?”

“No, but it can’t be all that hard. All I have to do is pull the trigger.”

He eyed her carefully. “You and I both know you won’t shoot me.”

“Maybe not. But I might take out that picture window over there. I’ll bet a little glass raining down twenty-three stories would draw a crowd.”

He flicked his gaze to the window, his brows pulling together as he seemed to consider the consequences of that. Slowly he looked back. “Okay, then. What do you want?”

“First of all, let’s see some ID.”

“It wouldn’t tell you a thing.”

“It would tell me your real name.”

“It would tell you what my name is today.”

“Which is not Derek.”

“Yes, it is. That part is the truth.”

“But the last name you told me was a lie.”

“So you tried to look me up?”

Suddenly she felt silly about that. Chasing after a man who clearly hadn’t cared about her in the least? What would she have done if she’d found him?

“Call it curiosity,” she said. “And I found out everything you told me was a lie.”

When Derek gave her nothing in return but cold silence, Alyssa felt a shot of irritation. “Never mind. I don’t care about all that. Just tell me why you broke into this apartment.”

He paused for a moment, as if deciding just how much to reveal. “I work for the government.”

“Since when do they employ burglars?”

“That’s not what I am.”

“You sure look like one to me.”

“I retrieve things that can’t be recovered in conventional ways.”

“Such as blackmail material on half a dozen U.S. congressmen?”

His gaze held steady. “So you heard.”

“I heard. And Gerald Owens is doing the blackmailing?”

He paused. “Yes.”

“Why does he want to blackmail congressmen?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“What’s on the DVDs you’re after?”

“I can’t tell you that, either.”

“Tell me about the Learjet hangared at Love Field.”

He was silent.

“Oh, I get it. You could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me?”

His jaw tightened with irritation. “You don’t have any idea what you’ve stepped into here. It’s not a good thing that you overheard what you did.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. Whenever there’s a breach of security, standard operating procedure is for me to report it to my superiors. But if I’d done that, you’d be in the company of federal agents right now, being persuaded that it’s in your best interest not to tell a soul what you know.”

“That’s kind of B-movie, isn’t it?” But a tremor of uneasiness crept up her spine.

“Even the most outlandish fiction has some basis in fact.”

“But if you really are the good guys—”

“The good guys sometimes do wrong things for the right reasons.”

“So if you’re one of those good guys, what stopped you? Why didn’t you just turn me in?”

He took a casual step toward her, but there was nothing casual about the expression on his face. It had shifted into the one he’d worn that first night she’d seen him in the hotel bar, full of the kind of sexual promise that had captured her attention at a single glance.

“Because,” he said, “I wanted to be the one doing the persuading.”

Involuntary shivers of excitement raced through her, filling her mind with images of their sweat-sheened bodies as they’d made love for hours on end…

Wait a minute. What was she thinking?

She jerked her mind out of the past and back to the present. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…

She stood straighter, tightening her fist on the grip of the gun. “Derek?”

“Yes?”

“You can take your sexual manipulation and shove it.”

He bowed his head with frustration, then looked back up. “Alyssa—”

“I have control of this situation, and you don’t like that. So you don’t mind manipulating me however you think you need to so I won’t talk. You seduced me in Seattle, then lied to me, and you’re not above doing it again.”

“I haven’t lied to you. I told you why I’m here.”

“You’ve admitted only what you know I overheard.”

He was silent.

Alyssa’s anger escalated. “I want the whole story. I want to know why you left me before and exactly what you’re doing here now, or I swear to God I’ll blast a hole right through that window.”

Derek said nothing.

“Damn it, after what you did to me, you owe me the truth!”

“I can’t tell you the truth!”

“Fine. Then I’ll just let the authorities deal with you.” She swung the gun around and pointed it at the window.

“Alyssa, don’t!”

Derek dove at her, wrapping his arms around her waist. The moment their bodies collided, she inadvertently tightened her finger on the trigger.

A shot exploded.

As Derek’s momentum knocked them both to the ground, whatever glass wasn’t on its way to the pavement twenty-three stories below clattered to the bedroom floor. Alyssa lay beneath Derek, feeling totally disoriented and flabbergasted beyond words, because she hadn’t actually intended to pull the trigger. She’d just been so angry, and threatening him had felt so incredibly satisfying.

Derek yanked the gun from her hand and stuffed it into the back of his jeans. Slapping his palms on the floor, he levered himself to his feet, then hauled her up beside him. He pulled her over to the bed, grabbed his backpack and her jacket, and dragged her out of the bedroom.

“Derek!” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Security’s going to be up here any minute. And the cops won’t be far behind.”

“No! I’m not going anywhere with you!”

He continued to pull her along, though, giving her no choice. She saw the elevator ahead and he hauled her inside, then hit the button. The doors closed and the elevator descended.

Alyssa felt a glimmer of fear. After all, she didn’t know this man. He’d danced around his true identity the entire week they’d spent together in Seattle, so she’d never known who he really was. Even if he was telling her the truth now, that he worked for the government…

Sometimes they do the wrong things for the right reasons.

Maybe he did, too.

They reached the first floor and the doors opened. The lobby was empty. Derek strode out of the elevator and tried to open the door leading to the parking garage.

It was locked.

He rattled the door, then turned back. “What’s going on?”

For a moment Alyssa wasn’t sure. Then she remembered. “Security has probably overridden the main system with the emergency circuit that locks down the building. Nobody can get in or out.”

“Will the guards come to check out the back elevator?”

“If they don’t, they’re not doing their jobs.”

Derek spit out a curse. Alyssa couldn’t help feeling a glimmer of satisfaction. “Looks like you’ve got a problem, doesn’t it?”

He spun around. “Damn it, Alyssa! Don’t you get this?” He strode back to her. “My team operates under the radar. If I’m caught, nobody in Washington is going to admit I exist. That means that if I’m arrested, they won’t do a thing to help me. I swear to God, I’m one of the good guys, but if you blow the whistle on me when the security guards show up, I’ll likely be convicted and do jail time. Now, is that what you really want?”

Alyssa swallowed hard. Could he be telling her the truth?

The pieces fit. Everything she’d overheard pointed to him being exactly who he said he was—a government operative with orders to retrieve blackmail information on congressmen. If all that was true, if he really was one of the good guys, then if she turned him in…

“Alyssa?” he said. “Can you get me out of here?”

The soft plea she heard in his voice gave her the feeling that his life really was in her hands. She pictured him in a jail cell, lost to the world for years, all because he’d followed government orders. Her resolve began to disintegrate.

Trust him.

Even though there was no logical reason for her to act on those words, they sounded inside her head until they screamed so loudly she couldn’t ignore them.

She let out a breath of resignation. “Yes. I can get you out of here.”

“How?”

“My key card will override the lockdown mechanism. It’s in the pocket of my jacket.”

He pulled out the card, tossed her jacket to her, then turned to look at the door. “There’s no reader on the inside.”

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