Blowback (2 page)

The professor moved to speak to someone else, and David snapped back into alertness. He scanned the immediate crowd around him. No threats. But he couldn't relax. She could be here. Molly could be right here, in the same room as him. He ran a finger under his collar as his temperature rose.

He'd known she would be here, but he still hadn't decided whether to speak to her. And he'd had two months to think about it. Seeing her would be enough, he was sure. Just to rest his eyes on her again, even without her knowing, would fulfill nearly a year of longing.

He hoped.

Because he was knockdown sure as shit convinced that if he spoke to her, looked into her eyes, felt her soft skin again, he would be a goner. And he knew very well that he would stop at nothing to get her into his arms, his bed, and his life. So it was by far the best bet that he not draw attention to the fact that he was there. He could see her, yet she wouldn't see him. Distance was his friend. Distance and the lotion back in his room.

He took a sip of the ice water he was cradling. The professor was talking to two old guys who were almost busting out of their dress shirts. They seemed to be exchanging stories and laughing, one of them puffing on a cigar. He allowed himself a glance around the room.

And then everything went still.

Molly.

He closed his eyes momentarily. It was a hallucination. He was wise to them by now. She was in jeans and a T-shirt, which were the only clothes he'd ever seen her in. If she were real, she'd be in a beautiful cocktail dress. He shook his head and focused on his principal. He breathed in and out, in and out. Concentrated on the professor. Mentally he recited the things he knew about him.

His wife's name is Cathy.

His office is on University Boulevard.

He went to Cornell.

He looked briefly for signs of Molly again but couldn't see her. The focus technique had worked its magic.

He caught sight of Malone Garrett, his partner in crime on this job. A British son of a bitch who never took anything seriously and was perpetually ready with some smartass comment. He had his eyes on his own principal, an oil guy who'd been a target of some environmental activists, but he was drinking what looked like bourbon on the rocks. He'd heard rumors that Mal was ex-SAS—Special Air Service, the regiment that Delta Force was modeled on—which made him pretty damn hardcore, but David also knew he had his own rumors doing the circuit in his new company, and not all of those were true.

Mal grinned and raised his drink when he caught David's gaze on him. David raised his water glass back and rolled his eyes. Even drinking, Mal was on top of his game. Lucky bastard, being able to function like that. And he looked annoyingly crisp in his tux. David felt hot and uncomfortable in his. He couldn't wait to take it off. The Brit must have some James Bond gene. God, that pissed him off.

His principal moved out onto the terraces, where gas lamps offered a yellow glow to complement the brutal heat of the evening. He pushed nearer to the professor so that he could clearly see the hands and posture of the people around him.

He noticed a few bodyguards who were obviously packing weapons. With their bulging shoulders and virtually shaved heads, he tagged them as Russian. In the private security world, it paid to be able to identify other bodyguards. It was always good to know who you could go to for assistance if necessary. And it was good to know who you definitely couldn't go to. The Russians were in the latter category.

Their principal seemed to be an older man who was ignoring them. David didn't blame him. His bodyguards seemed to be scaring off anyone who might have wanted to talk to him. He just puffed his pipe and looked around hopefully. David saw his eyes light up. Good for him. He'd found someone to talk to.

David's attention snapped back to the professor, and then back to the Russian. He blinked. Molly-in-jeans was kissing him. He blinked again. It really was her. He was sure of it. A warmth washed over him, tempered only by a tightening in his stomach. Even in jeans, and a T-shirt that had seen better days, she put the glamorously dressed women there in the shade.

But what was she doing? Both Molly and the Russian were looking down at their clasped hands. One of them was obviously being overfriendly. He smiled. David bet that the Russian was so happy to have someone talk to him, he didn't want to let her go. But then he seemed to pull his hand free and something dropped to the ground. Molly swooped down to pick it up, and as she did, David saw a red flower bloom on the Russian's chest.

Before even mentally registering what was happening, David stepped toward the professor and grabbed his arm. He saw Mal moving toward his principal too. Neither of the Russian bodyguards had even flinched.

But David hesitated, eyes on Molly as she started to pull herself upright.

Someone screamed, and the guests looked at the source. He had about two seconds until mass panic. But he couldn't leave Molly. He spoke into his cuff mike to Mal. “Take the professor.” He knew that would piss Mal off, but he'd still do it. As David stepped to Molly, who was looking blankly at the Russian as he slumped to his knees, he saw Mal yanking the professor behind the bar in his peripheral vision. Another shot splattered one of the huge vases close to Molly. The cracking glass made more noise than the gunshot. He flung himself at her and brought her down to the ground, covering her with his body. The noise of the shattering glass brought the crowd from a polite murmur to shrieks of panic in about a second and a half.

Instead of lying prone, she tried to wriggle away from him, closer to the dead Russian. “Molly.
Molly.
Stop,” he said. But she acted like she didn't hear him. She reached for something and stuffed it in her pocket.

“Come on. We have to get out of here.” He jumped up and dragged her behind the bar. There were no more shots, but people were running in panic. He looked to the entrance of the party and saw Mal with his oil exec and Professor Rankin speeding back through the metal detector. As Mal walked them through the doorway, he grabbed a bottle of Kristal champagne from a table. Typical. A couple of seconds later the entrance was a bottleneck of people pushing and shoving to get away from whatever was going down.

He grabbed Molly's hand and pushed her toward the emergency exit door into the kitchen. It was deserted except for one cleaner, who was looking bemused. “Go!” David said, pointing at the exit door. The man dropped his mop and disappeared.

“David? David?” Molly said breathlessly, as they burst through the service entrance.

“Hang on,” he replied, not wanting to have that particular conversation here. He peered around the corner of the corridor and saw police running past a door at the end. He waited until the steady stream of white riot-helmets passed, and then he ran to the door and checked. No one.

“Molly!” he called.

No answer. He looked over his shoulder. Shit. Racing back to around the corner, he promised God everything if she was still alive. She was, but she was crouched down, arms wrapped around her knees. “Molly? We have to go.”

She didn't look at him, and didn't reply. Fuck this. They didn't have time for hysteria. He picked her up in his arms, and only then noticed a patch of blood on the wall where she'd been sitting. Her face buried in his neck, he looked at his hand. It was red too.

Three minutes later she was in his room. He laid her on his bed and rolled her over on to her side. Her T-shirt was soaked in blood.

A coldness rushed through him. Had she been shot too? He was just about to lift her shirt, when a voice spoke in his ear, scaring the shit out of him.

“So who's Molly?” Mal asked through his earpiece.

“A woman,” he said tightly.

“No shit, Sherlock. Anyway, I've got your principal. Nuts of steel that guy's got. My oil exec, on the other hand, has fled for his private jet.”

“Thanks for that. How's the Kristal?”

“Delicious. So who was the dead dude?”

David's jaw tightened. “I don't know. I'm waiting to ask Molly, but she's bleeding and maybe catatonic or something.

“Am not,” she mumbled.

“Bleeding from what?” Mal asked.

“Her skin.” His voice rose in exasperation. “Shut up. I'm looking.”

“No need to get your knickers in a twist. Wait. Is she conscious? Are you feeling up an unconscious woman?” He could hear that bastard's grin.

“Shut the fuck up,” David said.

“Don't speak to me like that,” Molly said, a little more strength behind her words this time.

“A little testy, mate, aren't you?”

Shit. David pulled his earpiece out and threw it in the trash.

“Molly, you're bleeding from something, I'm just trying to see where from. Do you remember being shot?” he asked, feeling a bit stupid for asking.

“I think I'd remember that,” she replied, rolling back to look at him. “David. It really is…Ow!” She sat upright nearly head butting him in the process. “Something's stabby there.” She gestured around her back.

“Lie back down and let me see. And yes, it's really me.”

She mumbled something into his pillow as he pulled up her shirt all the way to her shoulder. He grit his teeth. Molly had a line of glass shrapnel down her back. Nothing that he couldn't deal with himself, maybe five shards, but still, he couldn't believe she wasn't screaming the hotel down. He needed to take advantage of the adrenaline while it was numbing her to the injury. “What did you say?”

She pulled herself to her elbows and turned to look at him over her shoulder. “I said, ‘You said you'd come for me.'”

“What?” He grabbed his first aid kit out of his bag and lightly pushed her back down. Grabbing a pair of forceps and gauze, he set about removing the glass.

She just groaned. Good job too. He'd heard what she said, and it bit him to his core. When he'd last seen her at the airport in Iraq, he'd told her that he'd come for her. They'd had such an intense connection, albeit totally platonic, that he'd been sure that he would be looking her up as soon as he got stateside. But his sober, in-recovery head had prevailed. He'd struggled when he got back stateside. He was hauled over the coals by the Feds and then became instrumental in bringing down the black-ops company he'd worked for.

He'd left the dark side, and maybe he should have found Molly, but something had held him back. He'd realized that she was better off without his fucked-up self hanging around. Now she was here, he couldn't imagine how he'd convinced himself of that. How he'd stayed away for so long. She was still…perfect. Well, bleeding, obviously, but perfect nonetheless. He had to keep his head in the game. The original plan: stay away from her. He didn't deserve her, and she definitely didn't deserve a broken, ex-military guy with no foreseeable future. Especially since he'd just effectively deserted his post.

No. He had to keep her at arm's length. The level of his attraction to her in Iraq had shocked him, rattled him to his core. But he'd been involved with such shady activities, he'd barely spoken to her. Barely spoken to anyone. Now, for sure, he was better. But the darkness still lurked. The memories of the deaths of friends, the nightmares, and cold sweats that came from nowhere. She'd never understand what he'd done. No one could.

He
barely could.

The last of the glass was out, and he sprayed an antibiotic ointment over the little cuts, and fixed a makeshift bandage with gauze and tape. “There. Good as new. Kind of.”

She sat up. Shit, her face was so white.

“Are you going to pass out?” he asked, concerned.

He shoved her head between her legs and held her down with his hand between her shoulder blades. She relaxed beneath his hand, and he found himself stroking her shoulders.

Her head popped up. Followed by the rest of her. She was at the door before he had time to react. “Dr. Doubrov. I have to find him. It's important.”

M
olly felt for her pocket. The envelopes were still there, thank God. She opened the door, but David slammed it shut.

“I'll just be a few minutes. I just have to see Dr. Doubrov. It's important.”

“Is that the guy you were holding hands with? He was shot, sweetheart.” He frowned at her.

Molly took a moment. Yes. He'd fallen down. He'd been shot? “Who shot him?”

David was silent for a moment, and her gaze rested on his face.

David. Here.

Hell, he looked good. All these months waiting for him, and he was just here.

When she had first really laid eyes on him, she was peeking at him through a window as he took an impossible shot into a trailer and saved them. He'd been drunk, and impossible. And she'd wanted him so much. Wanted to save him, to make him feel better. To stomp on whatever demons were keeping him from participating in reality. To run her fingers through his short dark hair. His eyes had been so sad, and he'd seemed resigned. Like he'd already given up on life. In that second he'd broken her heart as he'd saved her life.

It hadn't hurt that he was tall, and built in the way only a career combat military guy could be. Broad shouldered, with hard arms that she just wanted to be wrapped in. When his dark eyes had rested on hers, the hard lines on his face faded, and although his lips remained pressed into a hard line, his eyes had smiled at her. She thought. Maybe she hoped.

Right now, all she could think of was that she wanted to touch his face. To kiss him. To understand what had happened to him, and what had changed. And he had changed. He seemed more in control, sober, obviously. He spoke with a lower voice. Seemed less…something. She couldn't put her finger on the change. Her hand reached out to him, but she snatched it back before she could touch him.

She was on a mission. She was supposed to destroy the envelope she didn't use, but in the end she hadn't had time to give him either of the messages, so she figured she should keep them, but everything was getting confused in her mind. Should she destroy them both? Is there someone else she should give the message to? She had to keep working through the problem. If she stopped, she feared she'd break down and might never be able to pull herself together. She didn't want him to witness that. She clenched her fists.

“Who was he?” David asked.

“He's the Russian minister of antiquities. Alexandre Doubrov. Why would someone…?”

“I have no idea,” he said, leading her back to the bed. “But you're not going anywhere. There was no way he'd have been able to survive that shot. I'm sorry.”

She nodded but said nothing. He'd died right in front of her. Poor Alexandre. She had to get hold of Brandon to tell him she'd failed. But she wanted the whole picture before she called him. She yawned. Suddenly sleepy.

“So what have you been doing this past year?” David said, his voice seeming miles away.

Her mind immediately went to the airport at Iraq, as it had a million times before. He'd grabbed her and roughly pulled her into his arms, telling her that he would find her and come for her. Then he'd kissed her forehead hard and departed with his old team of explosive experts on a mission, leaving her to return to the states. Damn him.

“What have
you
been doing since we met last?” she asked sluggishly.

He sat across the room from her in an armchair. “Giving evidence, getting my shit back together, you know, the usual.” He dragged the chair closer to the bed, still keeping his distance.

Her mind wasn't really in the room. She was picturing Alexandre's face as he'd caught sight of her. How his face had lit up, happy to see her there. How he'd kissed her cheeks and then how he'd jumped, a little startled, when he'd felt the contraband being exchanged. And then…he'd been shot. In front of her. Was it
because
of her? Suddenly she realized she was cold. A few seconds later she was shivering uncontrollably. Her brain ceased to work…at least in any meaningful way. All she wanted to do was get warm.

“Get in.” David gestured to the bed. She didn't need to be asked twice. The huge fluffy duvet was calling to her, but she couldn't seem to move. “You're probably going into shock, Molly.” She felt his hands pushing her down.

“How back together is your shit, then?” she mumbled, fast losing the threads of consciousness.

“Not very,” his voice came from far away.

When she awoke, David was asleep in the armchair. She bit back a groan as she sat up. Her cuts stung like a motherfucker. She'd been cut by the vase, which had been shattered by the guy who'd shot her friend. She took a steadying breath. Okay. She could do this. Her country had asked her to step up, and she'd tried her best. But she wasn't done. She hadn't failed…yet.

She grabbed her phone and looked for Brandon's number so she could text him. A quick glance told her that David was still asleep.

Mission not accomplished. Mission Impossible.

Crap, she couldn't say that. She didn't really know what to say. Maybe that was too much. Maybe someone was monitoring her phone. Was she paranoid? Getting too far into this? She deleted it and tried again.

Cocktail party was a bust.

There. No one could read more into that, surely. Besides which, a shooting at a G20 cocktail party was bound to be covered by all the news channels. She hit
SEND
and watched for a reply. Nothing. She pulled the envelopes from her pocket and felt them under the duvet. Was the message to blame for the shooting? Maybe it was a warning that he was going to be killed and she'd arrived too damn late to save him?
Stupid effing airline.

“How do you feel?” David said, his voice making her jump.

“I don't know how to answer that,” she said, gingerly leaning back onto the pillows. “My back hurts, my friend…well my acquaintance, is dead, and I guess it could easily have been me, right? I mean if you hadn't jumped on me?”

He stretched his arms above his head and she heard a series of clicks as his joints cracked. She winced at his grimace. And something in her softened. She wanted to touch him, to ease his pain, his past. A wave of warmth flooded through her as she watched him awaken properly. No, she couldn't think that way again. He'd already broken one promise to her, she wasn't going to get sucked into him again. But…she was alone in a hotel room with him.

“Don't look at me like that, sweetheart,” he said.

“Like what?”

He gave her a “you know what I mean” look.

Before she could say anything, a weird vibration came from the other side of the room. A tinny voice. “Um, I think your trash can is talking. That's…not right…right?” She held her head. This was all so surreal that there had to be a good chance that she was dreaming, or maybe locked in an asylum somewhere having a very specific delusion. David being in Greece, Alexandre being shot, the stupid message she hadn't passed. No one could blame her for taking a second to see if things were actually real. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head.

David pinched her as he went by. “Yup. It's all real.”

She opened her eyes, solely with the purpose of eye-rolling him, and saw him fish something out of the wastebasket and stick it in his ear. It took her a second.
Oh, right.
Must be an earpiece. Which kind of explained the fractured conversation she vaguely remembered from last night. Last night…

David shoved the earpiece in his ear. “What's up?”

“Do you want to go on a field trip?” Mal asked.

How was he not hung over and still sleeping? That guy had the constitution of an ox. An ox on PCP.

“I'm kind of tied up right now,” David said, stretching again and shutting the bathroom door behind him.

“Nice work, mate. Wait. Literally tied up? You need help, or privacy?”

There was just no talking to him.

“What field trip?”

“To the sniper's lair.”

A jolt flashed through him. “Yeah. That's the sort of field trip I'm interested in.”

“You know the proper answer to that question should have been ‘No, we'll let the authorities handle it'?”

“I'm not proper,” David said. Mal was right, but this felt personal now. He wanted to get answers for Molly. If nothing else, he could give her that.

“I thought you might not be. Meet me in the lobby in ten.”

“Roger that.” David took the earpiece out and eyed the shower. He was still in his suit pants and shirt from the night before. He needed to change. Nothing said “guy we need to question” like a disheveled guy in a tux following a night of death and destruction.

Eight minutes later, he emerged from the bathroom in jeans and a T-shirt, thinking about what he needed to take with him on the field trip. And then he remembered. Molly. Sweet, crazy, and injured Molly. What had she been trying to pass the Russian before he'd been shot? He had a concern that she was into something bad. He'd definitely witnessed the attempted pass. He didn't imagine that. He didn't think. But then he hadn't believed Molly was actually there, even when he'd seen her. Maybe he was still teetering on the edge of insanity.

“Where are you going?” Molly asked from the bed.

She was lying back down again, on her side, looking sleepy. He grabbed a bottle of military-grade ibuprofen from his bag and shook out a horse pill. “Here. Take this before you sleep. I'll be back in a couple of hours, okay?”

She nodded, and as she took the pill and glass of water, he fought every instinct to crawl in beside her, and wrap his arms around her as she slept. He'd killed someone to save her life in Iraq, and that had to mean something. She was his to protect now. What the hell was she into? Or was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time? He wanted to know what was in her head. Why her eyes had lost that glow of openness he'd remembered. He wanted her so badly. Had been wanting her for months. He shook his head and reined in his impulse.

“Don't go anywhere. I'll wake you when I get back.” He hesitated and leaned down, swiftly pressing his lips to her forehead. He let himself out of the room and braced the door as it closed so the bang wouldn't startle her, hanging the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the handle.

In the lobby, Mal was drinking coffee from an impossibly small cup and reading a newspaper. He didn't acknowledge David's presence.

David pulled out his phone and pretended to scroll through emails as he surveyed the foyer. There were two policemen behind the reception desk looking at a computer and one talking to the concierge. David stowed his phone and strode out of the hotel, snagging some tourist brochures from the concierge desk, figuring brazenness would save the day. It worked. Both the hotel employee and the policeman smiled at him as he left. You could get away with anything ninety-nine percent of the time if you smiled and appeared relaxed.

He hooked a left outside the hotel and loitered by a newspaper bodega. To his alarm, the English newspapers all led with the assassination of a Russian official at the G20 meeting. The Greeks were outraged that this had happened on their turf, and all the other coverage was speculating on why a minister of antiquities was the target.

“Not exactly low profile,” Malone said from behind him.

David just nodded and walked toward the next block. As soon as they were out of earshot of the bodega guy, Mal pointed to the left, and they took the road that led to the back of the hotel.

“So, who's the bird?” he asked.

Of course that would be the first thing he mentioned. “Just someone I met last year.”

“Pre, or post fucked-up breakdown?” he asked boldly.

David shot him a look, trying to figure out the line of questioning. He wasn't one hundred percent sure about Molly and what she was doing last night, but that was his problem and he wasn't going to lay her open for Mal to investigate. He paused, not willing to suggest that she had anything to do with the situation, nor wanting to lie.

“Look. It's no secret you were totally fucked up last year. I don't mean anything by that…we've all been fucked over at some time in the last ten years. That's war for you. All hot girls, dancing, and booze. Bound to get to a bloke eventually. But the thing is: you froze. You had one fraction of a second of indecision, and then you left your principal. Because of her. So I'm going to ask you again. Is she part of the bad stuff that you went through last year, or part of the recovery?”

David got it. Mal was asking if he needed to get involved to stop David crashing again. He'd have asked the same thing. “She's neither actually. She was an innocent bystander in Iraq last year. We had some kind of connect—”

“All right, mate. I don't need you to get mushy on me. I just need to know that she's not going to be a problem for us.”

He decided to come clean-ish. “She's an archaeologist. A speaker at the conference. I knew she was coming, but I didn't plan on making contact with her again. She knew the vic and went to greet him, which is when he was shot. That's pretty much all I know right now. I'm mostly sure she's not going to be a problem.”

“Mostly. That's terrific. Mostly. There's a lot of potential crap in that word, you know.” Mal increased his stride as they crossed another road.

“I swear, man. Not a problem.” He sounded more confident of his answer this time, but maybe he still hadn't been convincing enough.

Mal gave him a fast look of barely hidden disbelief. David couldn't blame him. Unfortunately he couldn't be sure of anything, especially that she was any less of a problem than the police presence at the building. He didn't want anyone diving into his background, and he suspected his boss didn't either. He guessed they'd have to get into the sniper's lair some other way.