Exception to the Rule (16 page)

Great. Just great.

Kimmer sat on the unfinished wooden steps of the platform tent, her coat over her shoulders and her arms wrapped around her torso in a self-hug that was partly for warmth and partly a reflection of anxiety.

Anxiety, hell. She was terrified.

She couldn’t read Rio, and no matter how coolly she could manage to fake her confidence, it was still only a fake. Which meant that right now, Rio Carlsen was out roaming the camp, trying to make what discreet distractions he could when what he actually wanted was to rush into that nurse’s station with guns blazing—except, of
course, that he didn’t have any guns, and the goonboys had plenty. He’d told her he’d stick to the plan for now, but she had no idea if he would. She had no idea how far she could depend on him, or whether his intense loyalty to Carolyne would inspire him to some foolishness that could only mean trouble for all of them. Trouble for Kimmer.

But she didn’t trust herself any more than she did her unwilling partner.
Should never have come back here
. She should have known the memories would shake her self-confidence. Doubly foolish, once she had realized she couldn’t read Rio, to put herself in this position of working with him. The situation only made her question every thought she had, taking her straight back to those days when she’d never known if her decisions were the right ones, if they could keep her safe.

And in this case, she wasn’t the only one counting on those decisions. What if Rio had been right to want to charge in? What if taking the chance of catching the goonboys alert and waiting was smaller than the chance that Kimmer, thrown off stride by the way her background had crept in to mess with her mind, thrown off stride by her inability to read Rio, was totally wrong in her conclusions about the goonboys’ collective frame of mind? What if—?

Tangled up in the past and present, Kimmer could lose Carolyne her life. Or leave her country floundering in a national security disaster. Or…

Both.

She tightened her grip around her ribs, almost painfully so. She should be in the tent, trying to sleep.
Or at least genuinely resting. That was the whole point to this new teamwork.

Teamwork.

Rio’s temper had only simmered as Kimmer led him away from Carolyne to this tent. And as he’d taken in her setup by the dim light of a red-filmed flashlight, he’d finally turned on her. “You were on our tails the whole time,” he’d said. “Do you have any idea how much stronger we’d have been as a team? If I’d even known who you were? Those jerks never would have gotten near Caro tonight!”

“Get over it,” Kimmer had told him, recognizing in her own cool, sharp tones her attempt to put distance between them. “I’m not part of your team. I’ve never been part of anyone’s team, especially someone I can’t—”

There, she’d almost said it again. And he’d heard it, too, looking over at her from the stove unit he’d been inspecting, his wheat-blond hair reflecting dull red in the dim flashlight, the day’s stubble dark on his jaw. “It’s not about you,” he said, watching her. “It’s about Caro, and what’s best for her.” He raised an abrupt hand as if to forestall comment, although Kimmer hadn’t so much as opened her mouth. “Or if you insist, it’s about national security. But it’s not about you.”

“Know your strengths,” Kimmer had said. “I know mine. And I know Carolyne was far better off when I could work alone. If circumstances hadn’t changed, you’d still have no idea I was anything other than bitter Bonnie Miller with her big red nails.”

He only raised an eyebrow at her, and went back to shuffling through her instant trail meal packs. “I do know my strengths,” he said quietly. “And I can see yours.”

Kimmer stifled a desperate laugh that had little to do with his words and everything to do with the situation. She’d watched him for days now; she’d seen how he was with Carolyne, how genuine and caring. She’d seen him hold back at the picnic, wisely restraining himself to keep the situation from turning from a bad moment into a disaster. She’d never seen him do anything self-servingly cruel or manipulative. He may have triggered Leo’s memories of her with his questions, but he’d had no idea he was compromising her cover identity; her resentment came from too many layers of similar experience, not from any sense of what was fair. She’d seen nothing to indicate he couldn’t be trusted, that in fact he wasn’t the most trustworthy and genuine man she’d ever met. He was certainly the first man who’d ever tickled up an ache within her, a wanting to share. To get closer. To touch.

That part of her felt for his frustration, and she wasn’t used to that, either. Empathy for a man…

He’d given her a look, then, eyebrow raised in quiet inner comment, and he’d dropped the conversation for the moment. “Hmm,” he said, more to himself than to Kimmer. “With ingredients like this, they call it foo?”

She laughed again, not quite so stifled this time. “It’s good,” she said. “Better than MREs.”

“I was with the Agency, not the Army.”

“I’ll bet you’ve had MREs.”

His pained expression told her she was right. And they’d exchanged a few more words and established a shift time line, and off he’d gone, ready to commit quiet mayhem while she—theoretically—rested. Resting meant getting her cold butt off this splintery wooden
step and parking it on the bunk instead. Resting meant closing her eyes and not finding herself drawn to one repetitive, inescapable conclusion, drawn from every single encounter she and Rio had ever had.

Kimmer might be the one with the knack, but Rio Carlsen—casually, so personally and without even trying—consistently read her better than anyone she’d ever known. Certainly better than she could even begin to read him, or—given the odd emotional blockage that emerged when she tried—ever expected to.

She didn’t know whether the irony of it was delightful or simply terrifying.

K
immer woke, fully and suddenly. She waited, listening, curled up against the cold while the faint light of dawn announced itself against her eyelids. Something had woken her….

“I’m over here.”

Rio Carlsen’s voice. Deep, a little hoarse with fatigue, more self-possessed than during any of their exchanges from the evening before. Something crinkled; Kimmer opened her eyes to find him taking a generous bite of one of her granola bars. She blinked, not quite able to accept that she now shared her hideout with someone who not only took up his own physical space, but also somehow seemed to fill out the nooks and corners of the whole tent. It didn’t make sense that he could touch her from here, especially not now that he seemed to have found his balance and was back in his easygoing place.

Didn’t make sense and wasn’t even fair.
I don’t need this
.

He swallowed, chasing granola with a generous swig of bottled water. When he lowered his head, wiped off his chin and found her still looking at him, he said, “You were right. I don’t fit under the crawl space.”

She closed her eyes. Trust him to have tried. She eased down in the sleeping bag and pulled it over her head. There had to be another plan. Another way to do this.

“Do you have your gun in there?” He sounded nothing more than curious. Possibly amused.

She didn’t emerge. “Yes.”

“And that little knife I saw at the picnic?”

“Yes.”

“How about the—”

“Yes,” she interrupted. “Yes, yes and yes. Your point?”

“No point.” Definitely amusement. The jerk. But just as quickly he got down to business. “I think it’s time for you and your various and sundry flesh-damaging accoutrements to get up. Looks to me like we’ve got a window of opportunity.”

This time, she pushed her head back out of her cocoon, taking a deep breath of the crisp air. “Details? And last night?”

“Quiet last night. No one else came. They kept Carolyne at the desk, but I didn’t see them do anything more than prod her.” His expression tightened to worried unhappiness; he didn’t look at Kimmer. She was just as glad. “Halfway through the night they quit coming out to check on my happy little-rustling-animal noises, but I don’t think they got any sleep. A few moments ago
they let Caro go into the back room. One of them is with her, probably on the floor; I left a sleeping bag there. Another hit the recliner just before I left. The third was in the kitchen—and now he’s probably the only one still awake.”

Kimmer gave him an unabashed assessment, from ruffled hair to day-old stubble to the circles under his beautiful eyes to the worry and fatigue drawing his dark brows together and accenting the startling angles of his face. He was tired—too tired to make a move right now. His reflexes would be off, his desperation-tainted judgment unsound. And then she looked back at his eyes—implacable, rich brown in the morning light in spite of the yellow cast from the tent canvas. She wouldn’t be able to stop him. Not this time. “I’ve got a stay-awake if you want it. It’s dosed for me, though.”

He grinned and looked her over just as thoroughly, his gaze sweeping the small bundle she’d made of the sleeping bag. “Don’t waste it—but I found a camo stick I intend to borrow.”

She wiggled free of the blessed warmth, grabbing a fresh pair of socks and her hiking boots, jamming them on her feet with an alacrity that made Rio grin again. “Not a polar bear, I see.”

“Brrr,” she said, and yanked her vest out of the sleeping bag where she’d kept it warm for this very moment. In short order she’d slid her fingers through her cropped curls and grabbed a chilly premoistened towelette from her scant overnighter kit, scrubbing her face hard enough to take off the faint freckles. Disposing of it, she moved right on to her own granola bar, yogurt and a handful of baby carrots, downing them with a nutritional
booster shake more commonly marketed to the elderly or chronically ill. When she discovered Rio looking at her with bemusement—no doubt wondering where she packed it all away, as did everyone—she said, “You should eat more. It’s here, and if your stomach growls while we’re sneaking around close to the building, we’ll both be more than sorry.”

She was right and he knew it. He reached for her sack of groceries, thoughtfully refrigerated by Mother Nature. Kimmer stood, rearranged her sleep-twisted clothing and grabbed up her overnighter. Clean clothes would be great, but she’d settle for sprucing up as best she could in the privacy of the latrine. “Be here when I get back.”

He didn’t hesitate, popping a carrot in his mouth and talking around it. “Get back fast.”

She did. Already he was impatient, stretching even as he finished eating. He bent to retie his black high-top sneaker as she slid her sleeping bag under the head of the bunk and grabbed the camo stick. “Let’s get this straight. We’re going in to scout the place. I’ll get in close if possible, and check out the interior through the front window.”

“Or through the front door, if you like,” Rio said dryly. “It doesn’t close squarely after their grand entrance yesterday evening.”

Kimmer gave a few thorough stretches, a deliberate athlete’s routine in spite of his impatience. She pulled one arm over her head and eyed him, gauging his mood as best she could. Their proximity—combined with her inability to read his every move, to anticipate his actions both foolish and wise—brought out a surge of the pre
vious night’s uncertainties. She took a deep, deliberate breath, trying to hide emotion as she said, “I’m counting on you to do as we’ve discussed. Don’t screw with me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t—?”

She didn’t give him any time to ruin his wise decision. “Don’t go cowboy. Don’t leave me hanging out in the open because you’ve got no intention of working this together. Don’t ruin Carolyne’s chances because you’re willing to lead me on.”

He grew too serious, too suddenly. And too close—when had he gotten so close? Had he always been there, standing under the apex of the tent where he didn’t have to stoop, or had his expression just closed the distance between them? He gave a slight shake of his head. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Right. And I’m supposed to believe that…why? Oh, right, because so many other people in my life have paved the way
. It was those people whom she couldn’t read—the ones she’d been close to, even if the ties had been of fear and desperation rather than love—who had betrayed her the most consistently. Used her the most consistently. As though the only thing that kept anyone else from doing the same was her ability to see it coming—or their knowledge that she would, if they tried.

Rio knew she couldn’t read him as she could the goonboys. She’d let it slip, and now he knew. He knew he could get away with it.

But Rio, a big man gone gentle with what looked almost like understanding, repeated himself. “If I see the perfect opportunity to grab Caro out of there, I’m going to take it. You should know that. But only if it’s perfect…not if it’s just wishful thinking. And not if it leaves you exposed.”

Define “perfect.”
Her expression shifted to skeptical. Or rather,
more
skeptical.

He shook his head again. “I won’t play you. I’ve had enough of that. If it’s not right, I won’t go for it. And I don’t expect it to be right.”

“What happened?” Kimmer heard herself say, suddenly more curious than she even wanted to admit. Those gaps in his record were SOP for an ex-CIA agent; the CIA liked to stamp Classified on everything it could, whether it truly mattered or not.

He didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. He didn’t try to hide the sadness or even the regret that he couldn’t tell her—not that she’d expected him to. She hadn’t even expected herself to ask. He said, “Another time. When it goes both ways.”

It startled her. What made him think there would even be another time?

Wishful thinking.

Kimmer took a breath, a deep one. Wishful thinking? She didn’t even know herself anymore. She should call Hunter, tell them to get someone else in place. She should at the least report the new circumstances. Hell, she should have done it the night before, during that time she had spent wrapped up in herself on the steps to this tent. More evidence of just how big a mistake it had been to send her here. She’d been arrogant to think she could handle it, regardless of the pressure Owen Hunter had applied. He’d been wrong, too.

She raised her hand, stopping Rio even as he headed for the split between the front tent flaps—having rightly decided that the conversation was over and that they’d waited long enough. He hovered with tangible impatience
as she pulled the phone from her backpack and flipped it open. The background display lit long enough to blink “low battery” at her, and then died. She stared at it for a bemused moment and then gave a short little laugh.

Of course. All those times she’d frustrated and worried Owen when she faked this very situation just so she could avoid an impending lecture or entangling restrictions, and here it was coming back to sneer at her.
Of course
.

Rio needed no explanation as she dropped the phone on her cot; he headed outside the tent and together they moved quietly through Camp Cardinal, working so smoothly together that they were halfway to the nurse’s station before Kimmer realized the extent of it—how they took each other’s cues, how Rio respected her small signals to stop and wait, how she respected his intent to move again and honored his unspoken declaration that it was safe to do so.

After that it was harder; she’d become too aware, and started second-guessing both herself and him.
It’s because you have time to think
, she told herself. In a crunch, she’d be fine. She told herself that, too.

Repeatedly.

He’d upset her. Rio knew he’d upset her, but he didn’t know why. He didn’t know why he cared so much, either. Kimmer was a walking bundle of contradictions—a strong individual who appealed to him with that self-sufficient strength and even with her sharp tongue, all declarations of her independence. She wasn’t someone who’d stay with a man out of need…but by choice.

If she so chose at all. Because every now and then, be
neath that strength he glimpsed an astonishing vulnerability—one Rio hadn’t figured out yet. One he shouldn’t even care about, not with Caro waiting for rescue, or at least for some sign that he hadn’t abandoned her.

But whatever had thrown Kimmer off balance seemed to retreat as they reached the nurse’s station, crouching in the same spot they’d taken up the night before, with the building at their two o’clock and the small clearing looming like a football field of exposure before them. Rio eased down to his knees to watch the window, intent on spotting inside activity—not an easy task, with the sun rising behind them to glance off the window.

On the other hand, someone looking out that window would see nothing but glare, and if Kimmer happened to be at the edge of it, they might well miss her. He glanced at Kimmer’s narrowed gaze within the streaks of camo-stick greasepaint, and suspected that she realized the same.

Moments of silent waiting showed them nothing but a serene little building in a colorful country dawn, and Kimmer turned, touching Rio’s arm. “Let’s do a circuit,” she murmured. “If it’s clear, I’ll move in to the window.”

He gave a short nod and felt obliged to add, “Caro’s in that back bedroom. If I think I can get her out—”

She slanted him a warning look, her eyes too dark in this tree-shadowed morning light to show the depth of the blue.

He cut off her impending warning with a sharp, impatient gesture. “It serves none of us if I do something stupid.”

She eyed him a moment longer, then looked away with an unsatisfied tightness at the corner of lips that
were shaped to curve in a quiet smile but hardly ever did. “I’ll be ready.”

That, he suspected, was as good as it got. He eased back into the woods, then circled away to the left while she went right. Inevitably, a chipmunk scolded one of them with a series of bright, chirping barks; Rio hesitated, waiting to see if anyone inside would notice or care.

Apparently not.

He moved onward, skirting just inside the edge of the woods until he reached twelve o’clock from their original position of six, with the building in the center. Pensively, he stared at the dark, blank spot of a window at the back of the building, and off to the side at the smaller frosted window of the bathroom.
It’s just another operation
, he told himself, but it was a lie. He’d done urban ops and remote ops and he’d been in rugged, dangerous terrain…but he’d never been trying to extract his cousin. The same girl he’d grown up with, who’d always beat him at mind games and puzzles, the one he’d watched grow first gawky and then into what he considered, with admitted bias, a quiet beauty. He’d taken on the first boy who’d cruelly and deliberately broke her young, earnest heart, and then he’d learned to back off so she could handle things her own way. That they’d been living in different parts of the world for six—was it seven?—years had made no dent at all in their connection.

So take a breath, shake it off and don’t do anything stupid
. He eyed the bedroom window, wondering how easily it would open; all he’d checked from the inside when he’d had the chance was how securely it locked. Deliberate movement caught his attention; he found Kimmer waiting fifty feet away. He shook his head to
indicate he hadn’t seen anyone, and she nodded; he pointed at her—you?—and she shook her head in turn. If there was anyone out here, he’d hidden himself well.

She nodded in the direction from which she’d come, ready to approach the front of the building. Rio indicated the back window, intending to do the same; she scowled. She was right enough at that; he couldn’t see into the dark room well enough to know if someone stood out of sight, perfectly able to spot his approach. He used a finger to indicate his planned path—back to nine o’clock, up to the corner of the building and along the back to the window.