Traitorous Attraction

Kate shouldn’t have feelings for a man she’d seen only twice, including today, and hadn’t spoken to the first time. Connor had slipped into the somber room and had blended with the other mourners. His dark suit had fit him well, the jacket sitting across his broad shoulders and the tailored pants showing off his athletic build. His short hair was neat and trim, giving him an almost schoolboy appearance. A slight arch in his nose indicated it had been broken in the past, marring what would otherwise be considered model good looks. Kate had fought the attraction that sprang up. She’d learned her lesson about getting involved with special-operations men. That he was Aiden’s brother made her attraction even more unfortunate.

Kate wouldn’t have seen him at all, except she’d been waiting for him at the service. She’d owed him an explanation, something to help give him closure. To her dismay, she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to speak to him. Connor had stridden directly to the front of the room where a portrait of Aiden in a golden frame sat on an easel among the floral arrangements. He’d looked at the picture and bowed his head, bringing his hand across his face.

She’d averted her eyes, feeling she was intruding on a deeply private moment. When she’d finally looked back, Connor was gone. She’d searched the crowd for him but she’d had no luck locating him. Kate wasn’t entirely sure why he’d come. Perhaps he’d felt a sense of obligation to make an appearance.

Outside his home, even when he’d had his hand poised near his gun, Kate wasn’t afraid of him. She knew too much from Aiden about his older brother. Connor might be abrasive on the outside, but he was a good man who wouldn’t hurt anyone without a compelling reason. Male special-operations agents were a different breed of man. They could be chillingly cold and insensitively direct. Kate had learned not to let their words and tone intimidate her when she worked with them.

Kate reached into her handbag and withdrew two plane tickets. “I’ll tell you more when we arrive. You ready?”

“Are we traveling as ourselves or have you made other arrangements?” Connor asked.

Other arrangements, of course. Members of Sphere never traveled under their real names for business or pleasure. It was easier to cover tracks when using pseudonyms and fake documents. “We’ll be traveling undercover.”

Connor shook his head. “If you’re using an identity Sphere provided you, they’ll know exactly where you are and what you’re doing.”

Kate knew how the system worked. The tickets she had purchased and the identifications she carried had been generated using her personal resources. “Give me a little credit. No one knows I came here to talk to you and no one knows what I’m planning.”

Connor folded his arms. It was an improvement on his waiting-to-pounce stance. “Don’t underestimate Sphere. They know everything. It’s their business to keep everyone on their payroll under their control.”

Kate shivered. She didn’t like to think about the privacy she’d given up when she went to work for Sphere. Her financials, her personal life and her business life were open and available to Sphere for review at their discretion. But she had been careful about approaching Connor and creating their covers. She hadn’t made her plans at work or on any Sphere network or device. “They don’t know about this.”

Connor shot her a look of disbelief. “I’ll provide our travel documents.”

Kate suppressed an eye roll. That was another trait of special-ops men. They always thought they were right. “If you think it’s safer, then fine.” He was willing to come to Tumara. She was willing to make compromises to get what she wanted.

She had to make amends for what she had done and for the mistake she had made. Her guilt was severe and she was willing to risk her life to see Aiden safe.

Part II: Tumara, South America

Chapter 2

“When we land, are you planning to tell me more or do you need to keep me in the dark?”

Kate looked up from her ebook reader. It was the first time Connor had spoken to her on the long flight. His silence had stopped bothering her hours ago. He’d asked her not to make idle chatter and she’d respected the request. If he was angry at how she’d gone about convincing him to help her, she could accept that. “I’ll tell you what you need to know as you need to know it.” If she told him everything, he would ditch her. Maybe ditch her with enough resources to get home, but maybe not.

Her answer came out sharper than she’d intended. To her surprise, Connor appeared amused. “That’s the unofficial motto of the company where you work. Don’t believe it. It’s always better to know more.”

Was it? Kate had been happier before she’d uncovered one of Sphere’s secrets: they’d knowingly left a man behind enemy lines with no intention of rescuing him. If her contact in the Tumaran government hadn’t secretly passed on a rumor he’d heard and a picture of what looked like Aiden, she would have believed Aiden was dead. If she wasn’t successful in finding and liberating him, Aiden would die alone in a dirty cage. Now that she knew what Sphere had done, she couldn’t forget it and she couldn’t walk away from the situation. “Knowledge is power, but knowledge can also destroy someone.”

Connor’s smile faded and his eyes turned darker. “The job you’ve chosen isn’t an easy one.”

“I never expected it to be.” Although when she had been recruited by Sphere, she had been an idealist, expecting the agency to have pure and noble intentions. She had never heard of Sphere prior to them approaching her. Most people outside the organization had never heard of them. It was how they preferred it. When she accepted the job, she had viewed the agency as a superheroes-slash-secret-spies organization. Their resources had seemed infinite and their power unending. When they talked about the conflicts they had resolved and the potential disasters they had avoided, she had thought of them as the good guys.

Since then, she had developed a different view of her job and a much different view of the organization.

Connor studied her face, and his gaze dropped down for a second and then back up to meet her eyes. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as working there,” Connor said.

A mixture of insult and annoyance streamed through her. Kate had worked against the assumptions people drew about her from the time she was a teenager. Her blond hair, slim—which she used to think of as scrawny—figure and long legs brought to mind a woman with little brain activity who was overly preoccupied with her looks. It wasn’t the case. Her intelligence was her greatest strength. Either that, or the way people underestimated her. Pride lifted her chin. “I am good at my job.”

“No doubt. You wouldn’t have been hired if you were anything less than exceptional.”

No trace of sarcasm touched his words and they stunned her. He thought more highly of her than she’d first believed. Whenever she made an assumption about him, she was wrong. He hadn’t been happy to hear about his brother; he had been on edge and anxious. He hadn’t believed her proof that Aiden was alive; he’d questioned her extensively. He hadn’t wanted her help in locating Aiden; he’d wanted to work alone.

She’d be smart to remember not to rush to judgment about Connor. He kept his thoughts private and concealed, and might have been trained on intentionally misleading people. “If you know I’m competent, then have a little faith in me and trust that I’m doing the right thing.”

“We both know it’s unlikely I’ll trust you. When it comes to my brother’s safety and well-being, I’d rather not put a stranger in charge.”

Harsh, but honest. Most undercover operatives for Sphere weren’t known for their social graces. Those who were gifted with a silver tongue were often sent on missions that used their ability to con a target to meet their objectives. “Then at least recognize I will be useful in this mission,” Kate said.

His eyes traced down her body again. “Having you along will cause more distractions for me. I’ll need to watch over you.”

Distractions had a heated overtone to it. Was he flirting with her in his own Connor-esque way? Acknowledging the basic human attraction between the two of them? He could have picked up on her crush on him. Despite his borderline rudeness, her interest in him hadn’t diminished. The strange attraction was textbook. Her father had been a firefighter. Kate had adored him. He was strong, smart and successful with an edge of danger. It was the type of man Kate chased, perhaps wanting to have the deep, exciting relationship her parents had. “I can watch over myself.”

“If we’re a team, we should watch out for each other.”

Which was it? They were a team or she was an impediment to him? He was impossible. “You want us to work together.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Regardless of what he said or how he tried to confuse her, she’d act like a team the best she knew how. “I’ll look out for you and me, okay?” It was how she operated on a mission even if she was behind a computer. She could take care of herself. She’d had training from Sphere, including weapons handling, hand-to-hand combat and survival techniques. If she couldn’t handle this mission, she wouldn’t have insisted on coming. She had limitations, but she would rise to the challenge. She always did.

Connor shrugged, though not dismissively. “Working at a desk won’t give you the skills you need out here. I’ll do whatever I can so when I find my brother, he won’t be pissed that I let his girlfriend get hurt.”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” Kate said. Where had Connor gotten that idea?

Connor lifted a brow. “I don’t believe you.”

Kate sighed. His unwillingness to trust her was a problem. She had been forthcoming about the fact that she was withholding information about Aiden. Why couldn’t he accept she was telling the truth about her relationship with Aiden? “I’m getting accustomed to that response from you.”

Connor let the conversation lapse into silence. He liked doing things his way and he didn’t let anyone into his private thoughts. Fine. She could deal with that. She had enough on her mind. Her most pressing concerns were Aiden and ignoring the fact that she was in an airplane thousands of feet from the ground. Sitting on the aisle seat lessened her phobia of heights slightly.

Her e-reader was her diversion. She returned to her book. It didn’t hold her attention despite being the latest release by her favorite author. Kate’s thoughts switched to the captivating man in the seat next to her. Connor and Aiden looked very much alike. Both brothers were tall, broad and dark, though Aiden’s hair was a shade lighter. Connor had shaved his beard and cut his hair shorter, giving him an appearance more like his brother. The similarities ended there. Their personalities were acutely different. Aiden, though businesslike in the field, was warm in person. Ten seconds with him, and he had people eating out of his hand. He had never questioned her or Sphere. He did as he was told and he did it well.

Connor, on the other hand, was icy and distrusting. His distrust had cost them a full day. He had gone out of his way to organize transportation when she had made careful arrangements. He still thought she might be setting him up. Maybe he’d picked up on her nervousness and had assumed she was leading him into a trap, not suffering from guilt.

When the captain of the airplane announced they would be descending, Kate turned off her e-reader and closed her eyes, pressing her head against the seat. In a few minutes, they would be on the ground. A mild headache pulsed at the fringes of her mind and her stomach turned over.

“You look pale. Are you going to be sick?” Connor asked.

“No. I’m fine,” she said, her stomach dropping. She didn’t want to admit to him her fear of heights.

He swore under his breath. “Are you afraid of airplanes? Or heights?”

No point in lying. He’d already noticed her body language. “Just the latter and only when it’s high enough that I know falling will kill me.” A perfectly reasonable fear: falling to her death with nothing to stop her.

“Great. That’s great. Phobias in the field will get us both offed.” Connor was whispering, but the irritation in his voice was clear.

“I’ll be fine in the field.” She’d been authorized to work for Sphere and they had an extensive screening process. They didn’t think her height phobia made her a danger to anyone. Her primary job function was performed from behind a computer, but if her fear had been debilitating, she would have been eliminated as a candidate.

Connor didn’t let up. “You should have told me. Full disclosure. You’re playing a dangerous game.”

She rolled her head to look at him and opened one eye. “First, you asked for no such thing. Second, you haven’t told me any of your fears. Third, I wasn’t about to give you more reasons to want to ditch me.”

“One, fair enough. Two, I don’t fear anything happening to me and, three, I’ve already tried to ditch you. You’re a pit bull when you want something.”

A pit bull? He was comparing her to a dog. She chose to take his words as a compliment. “Thank you. Perseverance is one of my best qualities.”

“Your perseverance will get you killed. You’ve got to know when to back down and back away.”

That got him a full-on stare, eyes wide-open. “I’m not backing down on this. I will find Aiden.”

“We’ll see.”

Dismissive words. Anger gripped her. She would prove him wrong. “Yes, we will. And when I return to the States with him, I won’t invite you to the welcome-home party.”

“Just like a woman to worry about inconsequential things like having an exclusive party for someone.”

Her mouth opened. What a jerk! Her crush on him waned to almost nothing. Despite her frustration, she kept her voice low. “How can you say that to me like that’s all I care about? I sought you out to help your brother, and it wasn’t exactly easy to find you nor have you been particularly pleasant to work with.”

Connor shrugged. “I don’t know what you care about, but I’d wager most of your intentions are self-serving. Just like a typical, shallow woman. Do me a favor. When we’re looking for my brother, try to keep the whining to a minimum. I can’t stand to hear a woman jabber on about her nails and her hair and her clothes, especially when I have something important to do.”

She sputtered. Was asking Connor for his help a mistake? She wanted to help Aiden, but could there be another way? How could this be the amazing, considerate man whom Aiden had spoken of? Aiden had made his brother sound like a hero. But the Connor she was seeing was a self-centered, misogynistic—

The plane jarred against the tarmac and the pilot’s voice announced their arrival.

Connor grinned. “Look at that. We’re on the ground and you didn’t throw up on me or pass out. Nice job.”

Realization flooded into her. “You were antagonizing me on purpose?”

He winked at her. “Not hard to do and it distracted you, didn’t it?”

It had. Her anger lessened. “You didn’t mean any of that?”

“Not the insulting stuff, no.”

She wondered what he considered insulting. She didn’t question every word he’d said, though certain phrases replayed in her mind. Dangerous game. Would her perseverance get them killed? Kate didn’t thank him for the distraction, though she’d seen yet another side of Connor. He’d seen her need and had taken action.

When they debarked the plane in Carvalo City, the capital of Tumara, Connor said nothing to her. He gathered his carry-on from the overhead compartment, murmured his gratitude to the flight attendants as they passed and strode down the hallway into the main airport. He blended into the crowd around him. Connor didn’t turn around to see if she was following. Maybe he didn’t care. He disappeared around a corner and mild panic shook her. A man like Connor could vanish and she wouldn’t find him. He’d been trained by the best in the world in evasion and disappearance techniques.

A hand came around her forearm and pulled her into an alcove. Kate started. Connor’s grip on her arm was strong as he held her against his body. The tension in his muscles tightened his hard body and his eyes burned with red-hot emotion. “We were followed.”

The words were accusatory. “What? How?” She struggled to step away from him. He didn’t release her.

“I don’t know how. I thought you might.”

Her jaw slackened. He was quick to imply she was lying and trying to screw him over. “I was careful. We traveled under your arrangements, remember?”

He pulled her bag from her hand. “This has to go.”

She wasn’t an amateur. “I checked my things. They’re clean.”

His eyes narrowed. “Then it’s something on you.” He dropped her bag to the ground and his hands moved to her shoulders, inspecting the fabric of her clothes. As he moved his hands lower, Kate shrugged off his touch. His intentions were to find a bug or tracker on her, but the contact was igniting her desire for him, making her hot and bothered. “I don’t know if you’ve been living in the woods for too long and you’ve forgotten basic social decency, but you can’t feel me up in an airport. I don’t have any tracking devices on me.”

“I’m not feeling you up. This isn’t about a cheap grope in a public place. This is about keeping us safe and finding my brother. Take off all your clothes and change into mine. They could have sewn something into the fabric of yours. It’s not safe. They track every employee every moment of the day. The sooner you realize that, the safer you’ll be.”

Kate didn’t believe him. Her movements at work were monitored and her use of the computer equipment restricted, but Connor made it sound as if Sphere tracked her everywhere. They could request access to her personal financial documents or talk to her friends and family about her leisure-time activities, but she would have been alerted if she was under investigation. “You’ve lost it. They don’t know I’m here and they certainly don’t know I’m with you.” Aiden had mentioned his brother was paranoid about security and she had witnessed plenty to support it, but this was ridiculous.

“Change. Your. Clothes.”

A man and a woman walked past them, their heads bent together in conversation. Connor tensed and lowered his head, tucking it into the nape of Kate’s neck. The closeness and his hands on her shoulders sent lust spiraling through her. It was the wrong time to get turned on, but Connor did something to her. He had the confidence and the moves and just enough daring to make him dangerous.

“They’ve been following us,” Connor said.

Kate had noticed the couple on the plane, but it didn’t qualify the man and woman as stalkers or Sphere agents. They didn’t approach, and aside from a casual glance at them, neither seemed interested in her and Connor. Their disinterest was the most curious part. Not even a second glance at the couple lingering in a dark alcove in an airport?

What reason did anyone from Sphere have to follow her? Her boss had been clear he wouldn’t search for Aiden. Kate hadn’t told him she’d planned to do so because Sphere would have discouraged her or outright forbidden it. Instead, she had pretended to accept what he’d said and had made her plans to find Connor.

Kate hadn’t given a reason for her leave of absence, except to say she needed a break after months and months of long hours and high stress. Lots of her colleagues took sabbaticals from work. Vacations were encouraged to keep stress from causing mistakes. Her work leave shouldn’t have been a big deal or raised any red flags. Was Connor right? How closely did Sphere track her activities?

Connor took off in the direction from which they’d come.

Kate grabbed her bag from the ground and chased him. “Where are you going?”

“Getting out of this airport. You need to ditch your clothes and that bag,” Connor said. He tore the bag from her hand and shoved it inside a nearby trash can.

Kate looked at it and then him, confusion and fear overwhelming her. Her clothes and supplies were in that bag. He was making fast, impulsive decisions as she knew field operatives were trained to do. Indecision cost precious time that was sometimes in short supply. On her training missions, she’d had time to think and plan. Connor was moving in the opposite direction of the exit signs. With a final look at her bag, Kate left it in the trash can and followed him. Connor glanced over his shoulder.

“They know I made them,” he said.

Glancing behind her, Kate felt her heart rate escalate. The same man and woman from the airplane and the hallway were following them. Though they weren’t running, they were closing the distance and moving quickly. Could it be a coincidence that the couple had changed their direction soon after Kate and Connor had?

She wasn’t that naive. Not anymore. “What should we do?” Kate asked, accepting that Connor was the expert on this mission and they were safest following his directions.

Connor didn’t say anything. He’d quickened his pace. He pushed at doors as they passed, perhaps searching for an open one to duck inside. After several tries, a door popped open. They slipped inside an office with a window to the outside. She assessed their options. The L-shaped desk and bookcase were cheap particle board covered with laminate and the file cabinet was made of scratched and dented mental. Connor grabbed the desk and pushed it across the carpet. He slid the file cabinet in front of it, angling it against the wall to barricade the door.

He unlocked and opened the window. “It’s a ten-foot drop. Can you make it?”

Kate looked between the door and the window. Ten feet? That didn’t seem high.

The door opened partially before slamming against the desk Connor had used to block it.

“Open the door. Kate, please be reasonable. We’re worried about you.”

They’d used her name. She tossed away the final remnants of her flimsy theory that she and Connor had misread their intent. They were agents from Sphere.

“I’ll go out first and break your fall,” Connor said.

Break her fall? Running to the window, she looked down and her vision blurred. She’d told Connor her fear of heights only included life-threatening falls. Faced with one that might only injure her, dizziness washed over her and fear threatened to freeze her in her tracks. The desk moved across the carpet, and the file cabinet ground into the drywall and slid along the wall as the agents forced open the door.

Connor disappeared over the ledge, his backpack strapped to him. With a final look back, Kate mimicked his actions. She slipped through the window onto the ledge, refused to look down, wobbled at the edge and jumped. Several seconds later, she was pressed to Connor, his strong arms around her. He’d caught her fall as he’d said he would. As far as she could tell, nothing had been broken.

Her stomach was against his face. As she slid down his big body to get her feet on the ground, the friction between their bodies burned through her. She wove her arms around his neck to gain her balance. He set her down and his arms lingered around her. “Are you injured?” he asked.

The eye contact set off a tiny shower of sparks between them. “I’m fine. I think I lost my job, though.”

“Those are the stakes. The moment you pursued this course of action, you put your job on the line. Smart woman like you, you must have considered that.”

He’d worked for Sphere. He knew what it took to separate from them and the consequences if the separation was not amicable.

Kate’s stomach knotted with worry. She had considered it, but facing the reality was harder than she’d expected. Her home, her car, her bills and her reputation were at risk because of one decision she’d made. Refusing to turn back now, she forced the negative thoughts away. Her career wasn’t as important as a man’s life, and for the next several days or weeks, however long it took to find Aiden, she would stick to their plan.

Connor released her and Kate grasped his upper arms to steady herself. “Would you have left me behind if I’d been caught?” she asked.