Guardian in Disguise

“I shouldn’t walk when I’m woolgathering,” she admitted, stepping back a little when all she wanted to do was step forward and press herself up against him. Her cheeks warmed again. “Sorry.”

“Hey, we teach at a college. Aren’t we supposed to be absentminded?”

That smile again, that devastating smile. It reached out and filled her with warmth, especially in her most secret places. God, she hoped he couldn’t smell her pheromones. She was glad when the breeze quickened, blowing any possibility away. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be that absentminded,” she replied.

He laughed quietly. “I was coming to look for you.”

Her heart leaped and she forced it back down. “But my office is that way.” She pointed.

“I checked your schedule and figured you were on your way back from class.”

Another wave of heat rolled through her. She almost hated him for the effect he had on her. “Oh,” she said, unable to think of anything witty. “Why?”

“Because tomorrow’s Saturday. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Want to ride up into the mountains with me?”

She wanted to say no just because she wasn’t ready to admit she might be a fool. Because she really didn’t trust men all that much. Because it would be easier to convince herself all over again that this man had something to hide than it would be to risk the possibility of getting hurt by him.

But Gage’s reassurance rang in her ears, reminding her that she’d never vetted a boyfriend before. Besides, this was a bike ride, not a date. He probably thought it would be more fun to share the time than ride alone.

And she really, really wanted to go. She knew she was lying to herself when she decided it would be an opportunity to learn more about him. She just wanted to be on that bike, wrapped around him, winding up mountain roads with the wind in her face and the changing leaves showing between the firs.

“Yes,” she said, the word escaping her before she even realized it was coming.

“Great.” His smile widened a bit. “I’ll pick you up around ten, so the air has a chance to warm.”

She gave him directions to her apartment building, promising to be out front.

“Wear something warm and rugged,” he said. “Basic safety rule.”

“I know. Thanks.”

Then before she could gather herself, he was striding away again.

She realized that she watched Max walk away an awful lot for someone she had just met.

Resuming her trek to her office, not all that far really given the small size of the campus, she wondered if she needed her head examined.

She only wished she knew who was crazier, Liza the woman or Liza the reporter. At the moment, it seemed like a toss-up.

Hiding in plain sight is how Max explained it to himself. The best way to defang Liza’s suspicions was to make himself available as if he had not a single thing to hide. It had always worked before.

Besides, riding on the bike wouldn’t provide a whole lot of opportunities for in-depth questions or conversations. Of course, he was planning to bring a picnic lunch for them to enjoy, but that was part of the illusion.

Because he was all illusion. Sometimes he wondered if any part of his real self still existed. Every so often, the question would rise up and sting him.

Who was he? Damned if he really knew anymore. Doing his job required learning to think like the people he associated with. He not only had to reflect their actions, but also their thoughts so he would never slip, never be caught unawares, never give himself away.

Maybe he was just questioning himself because he’d been dumped into a new role and still hadn’t learned to entirely think the part. Worse, this role was only temporary, so part of him was resisting the change.

It was, he vowed, going to be his last game. He was going to finish this and then try to find his way back to who he really was before his thinking got so messed up he needed a decade on an analyst’s couch.

Easy to think, maybe not so easy to do. Sometimes he honestly wondered.

Late that night, he got on his bike and roared along the back roads of Conrad County. He had a contact here—a name given to him by Ames—who he could turn to if he needed to. But existential questions weren’t exactly the kind of thing he was supposed to need help with.

No, he was left with his own personality disarray and his own questions to be dealt with as he wrapped up his final job.

So what exactly did he know that was real? The bike between his legs, the almost-crazy ride down dark county roads and Liza.

His thoughts persistently came back to Liza. She was real. He wasn’t so sure, though, about how he was responding to her. Yes, she was acting on him like a sexual magnet, but she wasn’t the first, nor would she be the last, probably.

No, there was something else about her. Something that suggested her greatest lust was for truth, one lust he wouldn’t be able to satisfy.

He’d had some problems with his job before, times when he had questioned himself, but never before had he felt soiled by it.

Until now. Thanks to her.

His motives didn’t matter, not a bit.

How was he supposed to deal with that?

By playing the game out, he realized as he twisted the throttle up until he was tearing down the road like a bat out of hell. By playing it out.

He had no other choice.

Far, far away in a run-down section of Washington, D.C., a woman with long black hair and a sequined tube dress beneath a baggy olive drab jacket walked swiftly along dangerous streets with loudly tapping heels. More than once a car pulled up to the curb, but when the driver rolled down the passenger window to accost her, she shot him a death look that made him peel away fast. In her pocket, she clutched a small pistol, and each time her hand tightened around it.

She made it back to the abandoned, derelict apartment house, the one with the big signs saying it was scheduled for demolition, and slipped in through a back way until she reached an apartment in the middle of the hall.

She stepped into a filthy room where a bunch of mattresses padded the floor. A kerosene heater fought off the night’s chill.

Five men waited for her, all of them dressed in various kinds of cast-off army-style clothing. She couldn’t have looked more out of place.

They all looked up at her arrival.

“I got his real name,” she said with savage pride. “It was like we thought. And if that isn’t enough, I’ve got a date with the source in two nights. The way this guy is crumbling, I’ll probably get an address pretty soon.”

The man who went by the name Jody sat bolt upright. “Give me the name. I’ll find the bastard no matter where he’s hiding.”

The woman smiled, and it wasn’t pleasant. “Maybe you can. But if you can’t, I will.” She fingered the switchblade in her other pocket. She did like to use a knife, and a certain ATF agent was going to be her next work of art.

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