Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan) (10 page)

“Good.”

“Look, I’m gonna finish up this paperwork, then round up my partner so we can get outta here. I’ve had enough of this place for one day. I don’t know how you can stand it full-time.” Talk about a depressing spot to work. Having to spend five days a week locked inside the most cursed spot on earth couldn’t be easy.

“Okay. Catch you later,” Bailey said with a pleasant nod. Before turning away, though, he licked his lips and cast his eyes downward. “Uh, would you please tell Detective Sloan thanks from me?”

“For?”

“Just thanks. I think she’ll understand.”

“Gotcha.”

He did get it. Ronnie had handled this guy just the right way earlier. In the process, she’d also probably made him fall a little in love with her, the way most red-blooded males did.

Something about his partner made her almost irresistible to most men. It wasn’t just the looks—which were stellar—or the brains, which put him to shame. She had the most fascinating combination of strength and vulnerability. He’d never known anyone tougher or more self-confident. He’d also never known anyone as determined to not let down her guard or actually feel anything that made her uncomfortable.

He guessed that was understandable, given the way she’d lost her father and brothers in the attacks. Still, that unobtainable quality in her made her that much more of a challenge. Ronnie could make a guy feel like a totally inept screw-up, make him want to do better just to impress her, and make him almost desperate to be the one to break through her emotional barrier. 

She could also make him want to dive off a cliff.

Frankly, that’s how he’d been feeling more often than not lately.

“Okay, well, bye,” Bailey said as he ducked out of the office.

“S’long,” he replied.

Mark got back to his notes, trying to remain patient. Finally, though, unable to help it, he glanced at the clock.

Eleven minutes.
Enough
.

He got up, leaving his folders and interview notes on the table, and ambled out into the hallway. Bailey was already gone, back to the office used by Kilgore, the main Secret Service supervisor. Daniels glanced toward that door, seeing it begin to swing open. Johansen, the only one of the three S.S. stooges who actually seemed like he had a clue, was stepping out, though his head was turned toward the room as he addressed someone inside.

Hoping not to be spotted, Daniels quickly strode to the stairs, and jogged down them, skipping every other step. Though he told himself he shouldn’t overreact, his inner-partner-voice kept telling him something was wrong. He’d learned to listen to that voice over the years, especially when it came to Ronnie. They might not have the personal relationship he’d once dreamed of having with her, but as partners, they were unbeatable and utterly joined.

When he reached the sub-basement, he called for her. “Ronnie? Where are you?”

No response. His concern growing, he flipped the breaker, setting the entire sub-basement ablaze, the harsh, bare bulbs spilling unforgiving light on the bloodstained floor. He could easily see in both directions and immediately knew his partner wasn’t here. Weird. He hadn’t passed her on the stairs, hadn’t seen her on the first floor. There weren’t even any roughed-out rooms on this level. There was absolutely no-place she could be that he wouldn’t see her, and he didn’t see squat.

His mind churning, Daniels killed the lights and trudged up the stairs. Though he couldn’t imagine why she would have stopped on the basement level, he decided to check it out, and went to the breaker. Nothing happened when he flipped it.  

Now general concern was becoming worry. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong.

He unsnapped his holster and removed his flashlight, very aware of the cavernous darkness. “Ronnie! Detective Sloan!”

Not a sound. Yet something made him proceed further, heading down the long, shadowy corridor, calling her name, shining his flashlight all around. His heart was pounding now, both because of the tension, but also because of his fear for her.

That wasn’t a good thing; she wouldn’t like him being afraid for her. But hell, he was crazy about the woman, personally and professionally. If anything happened to her, his life wouldn’t be worth shit, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep her safe.

Beginning to wonder if he’d just somehow missed her upstairs—if she’d hit the ladies room sometime after Bailey’s interaction with the janitor—he was about to turn around and go back the way he’d come. Just then, he heard a crunching sound beneath his foot.

He glanced down and saw the shards of a broken Exit sign.

“Damn it,” he mumbled, his tension rising. He drew his weapon. “Ronnie, answer me.”

Something made a tiny sound, a click, and he jerked his attention toward a door nearby. He ran toward it, seeing it move slightly. “Police! Get your hands up!”

Nobody rushed out, and he couldn’t rush in. Because, he realized to his horror, the doorway was blocked by a limp, lifeless body.

His partner’s limp, lifeless body.

-#-

The bitch had been bluffing.

She’d called out a warning to put up his hands, claiming to be speaking on behalf of herself
and
her burly partner.

But she’d been lying. Sloan had been all alone the whole time. Damn her to hell.

He should have known she was lying, since she’d been stumbling around in the darkened sub-basement by herself for twenty minutes. He
had
known, deep down, but there’d been the tiniest sliver of doubt, the possibility that her partner had met her on the landing, the lumbering ox moving quietly for a change. So, after using his little electronic toy to make a helpless sound and lure her toward him, he’d ended up abandoning his plan to grab her and take her to a private spot for a good, thorough killing.

Leanne had been easy, so trusting and weak. Sloan would have put up a fight if he hadn’t gotten the drop on her. But if Daniels had come barreling down the hall after her, there would have been hell to pay. He’d have been in a fight for his life. So he’d had to play it safe.

Of course, he’d soon realized the partner hadn’t been lurking in the darkness with her. In fact, Daniels had been upstairs in the interview room the whole time. By that point, though, it had been too late to go back and finish the female cop off.

“Stupid whore,” he mumbled, his voice a low whisper as he watched through a window as the woman was loaded into an ambulance outside the front entrance of the White House.

He’d intended only to place Leanne’s head where it could be found, and slip away without being caught. But when Detective Sloan had wandered down into the sub-basement, by herself, he’d realized he might have the chance to kill two birds with one stone. He’d decided to stick around, see if he could lure her into a trap and finish her off. Though he might not have had the time to enjoy it, to kill her the way he liked best, even a clean, quick kill would have sufficed. The main point was to snuff out her life before she got any further with her investigation. Because he’d already sensed she was a bit too clever, too observant, unlike her blustering partner.

Maybe that bash in her head had caused brain damage. Perhaps a sharp splinter of skull had smashed into her brain, destroying her memories, ruining her for good, leaving her all but dead, anyway.

He could hope, anyway.

If it hadn’t, and she came through with her faculties intact, she’d be more determined than ever to find him. To get revenge.

He had to be careful. Oh, so careful. He’d always been lucky, but it had been his extreme caution that had enabled him to do what he did for so long and not get caught.

Maybe going after Sloan on the spur of the moment, without a detailed plan, had been a bad move. If she recovered, he could end up regretting that move for a very long time.

But there was no way of knowing now. He’d just have to keep his ears open, wait to find out if he’d hit her hard enough, if he’d based her skull and smashed her brains and shut her busybody mouth for good.

If not, there would be time to make new plans. And the next time, he wouldn’t screw up.

Trying to swim toward consciousness, through what felt like a sea of confusing, disconnected images, Ronnie flicked her eyes open. Immediately regretting that as sharp shards of light stabbed at her, she groaned and quickly shut them again.

Her head felt like it had been crushed in a vise, her brain throbbing in what felt like a too-tight skull. The slightest movement brought agony, so she remained very still, concentrating on taking slow, even breaths, trying to figure out where she was and what was happening.

“Detective Sloan? Veronica?”

Hearing the male voice, which she couldn’t instantly place, although there was a familiar ring to it, Ronnie tried to focus. She swallowed, wondering why her mouth felt so dry, why her head was on the verge of exploding, and why she was lying flat on her back in a bed when the last thing she could remember was walking down the steps to the sub-basement of the White House.

“Was I attacked?” she whispered through a cottony-dry mouth.

“Yes,” the man’s voice said. “You’re very lucky.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” she growled. She felt like something spat out of death’s mouth. Post chewing.

“It could have been worse. He might have used the other end of the two-by-four he smashed you with. That side had nails sticking out of it.”

Nails. Two-by-four. Bits and pieces began coming back to her. She’d been in the basement, right? And something had happened.

“So I should be feeling grateful?”

“Just be glad he didn’t stick around to finish the job.”

That voice—it was so familiar. She was reacting to it, growing tense but also a little excited, feeling both dread and the tiniest bit of pleasure.

Who the hell?

Needing to know, she opened her eyes again, slowly this time, letting the light cast by the beaming overhead fluorescents drift in gently rather than assaulting her. She couldn’t say she recognized the ceiling, or the fixture, but judging by the basic 12 x 12 ceiling tiles and the typical industrial lighting, she suspected she was in a hospital bed.

She shifted, feeling the uncomfortable groan of muscles resting on what felt like hard-packed straw, which further cemented the thought.

“Try not to move too much,” the man said. “The doctor said you’re going to have a bitch of a headache for a few days, and moving will just make it worse.”

She lifted a hand to her head, feeling a lumpy bandage on the right side. Around it, her hair stuck out wildly, short and stubby. A long strand brushed the other cheek, so she must look interestingly lopsided.

Damn. Her hair stylist was gonna have a fit. And considering he lived right next door to her, he was bound to see sooner rather than later.

“How long was I out?” She thought about that short hair, hoping it was what was left after an emergency haircut, and wasn’t new growth after a shave. Because that would imply she’d been out long enough for it to grow back an inch or two. “Tell me I haven’t been in a coma for weeks.”

He chuckled. “About eight hours.”

Eight hours
? Holy God.

“Technically they’re calling it minor head trauma.”

It didn’t feel very minor. “You mean a concussion?”

“Yeah.
They ran a CT scan and say you’re going to be okay. The laceration was pretty big and they had to staple it up, so you’ve got a bit of a bald spot under that bandage.”

Staples. Great. More metal for guards and soldiers to be suspicious about.

“The doctor will explain everything, I’m sure,” said the voice, which was coming from somewhere off to her left.

The doctor. Meaning this
wasn’t
the doctor.

Finally, knowing the recognition tickling the edges of her brain would drive her crazy, she carefully turned her head to the left. Her eyes still weren’t working properly, and she at first saw only a tall shape, in dark clothes, standing in the corner. She had to strain to see, blinking rapidly.

As he began to come into focus, his image swimming in her mind and in her memory, she emitted a little gasp. “You!”

“Me.” He sketched a small bow, then approached the bed. “How ya doin’, Sloan?”

Hell. It was really him.

“You’d better not be poaching on my case, Sykes.”

His mouth curved up in a half-smile, those blue eyes twinkling with secrets and merriment. She was lying here in a hospital bed, all banged up, hurting like hell, half bald, and he was smiling, handsome, perfectly dressed, and tormenting her, neither confirming nor denying that he was here to snake her out of Leanne Carr’s murder investigation.

Typical Jeremy Sykes.

“You don’t look like you’re in any condition to stop me.”

“Give me a couple of hours and I’ll put you flat on your back.”

He laughed softly. “Promises, promises.”

She kicked herself for giving him that opening…even while knowing a part of her had done it on purpose. As always, she just didn’t know how to react to the man.

They’d met in Texas, during O.E.P.I.S. training. Sykes had been the guy everybody loved but also secretly resented. It wasn’t that he was hard to like, or in any way unpleasant—far from it. He was just so damned perfect. Incredibly good-looking—like, male model perfect, and didn’t he know it. Flirtatious—he could charm anyone. Cultured—the Martha’s Vineyard type. Rich—his family owned some big, global corporation. Smart—he hadn’t gotten through Harvard because of his family connections but because he’d earned his way. And a good investigator—he’d been an FBI agent when chosen to join O.E.P.I.S., and had already received the highest commendation the bureau gave for bravery. He was also polite, quick-witted, friendly. All around nauseatingly perfect.

Ronnie had dubbed him Sucks the first week of training. Not just because of all of that, but also because he confused the living hell out of her. Having been raised in a house with two older brothers, and an overprotective-but-doting father, she’d been handling males since she was little. She always mentally knew where to put them, having compartments for all the relationships in her life: Family member. Perp. Victim. Friend. Partner. Boss. Lover.

Sykes hadn’t fit. Not anywhere.

He’d left her confused and curious, and the tension between them had been noticed and commented on by most of their classmates. If he scored a ninety-eight percent on an exam, she worked herself to the bone to hit ninety-nine. During simulations, if he’d studied a series of O.E.P. images and found a needed piece of information in two minutes and ten seconds, she’d just
had
to find it in two-five. They’d competed on the shooting range, shot after shot, both of them leaving their classmates in the dust but neither able to ever really get the edge over the other. 

There had only been one instance she could recall when they hadn’t been arguing, sniping at each other or competing. It had been near the end of their training, after a grueling day of looking at the most awful images of a test subject being led to the electric chair. The man had been a convicted killer, sentenced to die by a jury of his peers, yet Ronnie had discovered an untapped well of empathy within herself as she shared his final hours of life.

The images from the O.E.P. device had almost allowed her to become him. She’d found herself mentally walking in his footsteps, as she’d been trained to do.
Her
eyes had studied a tattered, much-read Bible, lingering with obvious sorrow and fear on the 23
rd
psalm.
She
had been the one to take an absurd amount of time eating a final steak dinner, complete with pecan pie and whipped cream.
Ronnie’s
were the feet trudging along the pitted, scarred linoleum floor that led from the cell to the death chamber.

She’d been the one who’d shed vision-blurring tears while the guards attached the straps. The one whose view had been blocked for a moment when the black hood was being put in place. The one whose very last sight on this earth had been an explosion of red as the capillaries in his eyes exploded.

The experience had disarmed her. Affected her so much she’d needed to get away from everyone and let herself deal with her surprising reaction.

Sykes had found her sitting under a tree on the grounds of the police academy where they’d trained. For the next two hours, they had shared the kind of deep, true conversation Ronnie couldn’t remember sharing with anyone. He’d caught her in a moment of vulnerability, and she’d let go of her emotions, confessed her misgivings, her fears, her anxieties. As if she’d opened a door between them, Jeremy had done the same, sharing the stress he’d felt about having to fight against his wealthy parents every step of the way to follow his heart and go into law enforcement.

She told him about her brothers and father. He’d told her about his best friend from the academy, who’d been assigned to FBI headquarters…and had fallen on 10/20.

It had been an incredibly human interaction. And it had ended with an embrace, one she’d never forgotten.

There’d been nothing terribly sexual about it, even though Ronnie’s heart had been pounding in her chest, her body on high alert. The confused attraction she’d felt for him from the start had returned in full force, accompanied by a new understanding of who he really was and what really made him tick. So, yeah, she’d definitely been aware of the hardness of his chest, the broadness of his shoulders, the tender way he stroked the small of her back.

Mainly, though, what she remembered was the gentle intimacy of it. The connection of spirit. That kind of thing didn’t come easily to Ronnie, and she’d never quite gotten over the fact that Jeremy Sykes, the only person she’d ever met who could intentionally get her to lose her temper—which she was half on the verge of doing right now—was the one who’d evoked such a response in her.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, thrusting away the confusing memories.

He held his hands up and out, playing innocent. “Hey, don’t blame me, I got dragged down from New York in the middle of the night when it became pretty obvious that you weren’t going to wake up right away.”

“Tell me they didn’t give you my damn case.”

A hesitation. Then, “They didn’t give me your damn case.”

She allowed herself a soft, relieved sigh.

“But, uh, they do have something else in mind. And knowing the way you feel about me, I suspect you might think it’s even worse.”

How could he possibly know how she felt about him when she’d never figured that out herself? She’d spent far too much time trying to understand her own mix of feelings for the man, that vacillated from reluctant admiration to attraction to dislike. Other than that one strange interlude, she was usually torn between wanting to punch his face off or to push him down and screw his brains out just to get him out of her system. Confusing didn’t begin to describe it.

He approached the bed, his eyes moving constantly, assessing her, narrowing the tiniest bit as he studied her banged-up head. A muscle in his jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth, as if, beneath that breezy charm, he was furious that she’d ended up here, in this condition.

That made two of them.

“What happened, anyway?” she asked, her memories returning, but still a little fuzzy. She’d been searching the basement, had stumbled upon Leanne’s head, which had been left like a gross gift in the middle of an empty room. Then…unimaginable pain. 

“According to your download from this morning, an assailant came at you out of the darkness. You tried to defend yourself but he slammed you in the head. Once you were out, I got nothing but pictures of your closed eyelids.”

Her jaw fell. “You looked at my downloads?”

He shrugged. “That’s one reason they called me in. I extracted them wirelessly while you were under and took a peek.”

That felt…intrusive. Yes, she’d known all along her job skirted the edges of decency when it came to respect for privacy, but she mostly thought about it from the perspective of investigator. Ronnie had her own code, she would never intrude where she shouldn’t, or invade the most intimate moments of someone else’s life without having a damn good reason. So she hadn’t quite anticipated the quick jolt of violation she felt, knowing someone else had looked into
her
visual memories. It was like Sykes had opened up her mind and scooped out a piece of it.

As if reading the bit of mind he’d scooped, he insisted, “The last fifteen minutes before you lost consciousness. That’s it, Veronica, I didn’t look at anything else.”

Fifteen minutes…still a lot of images. The O.E.P. device recorded images every single second. That was sixty per minute.

Sykes might have only gone fifteen minutes into her memories, but he’d still seen a lot. Enough to make her shift uncomfortably on the bed, thinking of all the personal stuff a person would see if they went back a full day into her mind. She only had his word that he hadn’t. She made a mental note to never look at herself naked in the mirror and to shower and go to the bathroom in the darkness. And she might just have to swear off sex for good.

Hell, who was she kidding? Sex was one thing she liked enough to risk embarrassment, even if she didn’t get it all that often. Huh—good thing the O.E.P. device couldn’t capture what she mentally pictured, because she’d definitely imagined Jeremy Sykes without his clothes a time or two. The bastard had just snuck into her brain her somehow.