Shatter (16 page)

Another long moment of silence fell between them. She could feel their mingling pain filling the space as if it were physically tangible.

“You’re wrong,” he finally said, his voice emerging flat, but still soft. “If he’d chosen correctly, you’d be dead and he’d have your research.” He lifted his gaze from the table. “You proved him wrong, Halina. Dead wrong. But you also paid one hell of a price to do it. And you made me pay a hell of a high price too, without ever giving me a choice.”

Her chest took that hit, directly beneath her breastbone. She winced. Lowered her gaze to the table. “You’re right. I can’t deny that. But you also say that like I made the decision lightly, which I didn’t.”

“And how would I know that, Hali? You made all the decisions without me. You didn’t even give me a
chance
to choose.”

His hurt was beginning to fade in rising anger again. Halina tried to brace for it even knowing it was useless. This was going to get dicey.

“Instead of coming to me for help,” he said, “someone who knew the ins and outs of law enough to be considered for appointment to the attorney general’s office and the presidential advisers list, you went to a distant relative who you didn’t even truly know you could trust. And you cut all ties—and when I say cut, Halina, I mean with a fucking axe—with the one person who cared about you the most, and who had the most influence to help you.”

She put up her hands, mostly as a reminder to hold her own frustration in check. “You have a very selective memory. You’re obviously forgetting that at the time you had already been
fired
from the attorney general’s office. Fired because you had mishandled a case involving a major—
major
—player in the chemical industry—”

“You damn well know I didn’t mishandle anything—”

Dex gave a half bark, as if to remind them their conversation was growing too heated for his taste. Mitch lowered his hand to Dex’s head.

“That’s not what everyone who created
influence
around the Hill believed,” Halina said. “They were made to believe that you were on a mission to railroad that chemical company. You had no pull with anyone who could have helped either of us at that time.

“And, really, Mitch, to expect me to come to you after all those months of me lying—about where I worked, who I worked for, what I did, why I came to this country, basically, who the hell I
was
—then asking you to bail me out for my own stupidity? And to risk your life doing it? I know you think I’m selfish, but even I’m not that callous.”

Halina thought back to her turmoil over wanting to confide in him yet knowing if she did, she risked his life because he didn’t have the power to protect himself. “You were so amazing to me all those months we were together, treated me better than anyone in my entire life. Loved me more than anyone has
ever
loved me. Honest with me at every turn. Took me on trips, bought me presents, introduced me to your friends, your family, even your work colleagues, like you were
proud
of me . . .”

Halina suddenly choked on the memories and stopped short.

Her appreciation of how well he’d treated her evidently didn’t move anything inside Mitch. His eyes narrowed and his face tightened in anger.

“So . . . what?” he asked. “You felt
obligated
to let me down easy? Thought the way you handled it was more . . . humane?” He laughed at the absurdity of the idea, but then cut it short abruptly as something ignited in his eyes. “Wait. You
knew
? You knew all those months, while I was killing myself to shut that company down, that it wouldn’t happen?”

Halina tensed her muscles. Clenched her teeth. This was what she’d been afraid of—unintended information spilling over. He was so damned smart. He had the most amazing way of piecing puzzles together. Now her mind was pinging around Classified Chemical searching for damage-control scenarios.

“You just let me fight for it and stress over it,” he said, his voice rising again. “Just watched as it ate away at me. As I fought myself right out of that job.”

“Don’t put that on me,” she said. “I tried to get you to back off the case. I tried everything to get your mind on something else—I made love to you, tried to take you on vacation, tried to talk you into moving to the west coast, hid your home files. I crashed your computer, for God’s sake. But you
wouldn’t
give up.”

Mitch pushed from his chair, his eyes both shocked and angry. “That was
you
?”

Halina’s breath froze in her chest. What had she said? Where had she gone wrong? He was too clever. Too perceptive. She should never have tried to explain anything, never given him any information.

He advanced on her, nearly a foot taller and staring down with so much fury burning in his eyes, she knew whatever misstep she’d taken, it had been huge.

Dex put himself between them, looked up, and barked.

“
You
destroyed my office and took those files? The files that connected
Classified Chemical
with
Schaeffer
?”

Her stomach iced over and dropped.

She didn’t have to worry about that family blood becoming a problem for her—she sucked at this spy business.

God, she felt so stupid. So . . . inept. She crossed her arms defensively. “I didn’t hurt anything in your office.”

He lifted a hand toward Halina. Her mind sharpened. Her arms dropped to her sides. Dex growled. Mitch’s gaze was shining bright green and laser sharp as he put a rigid index finger to her chest. “If you lied about that needle invention, I’ll find out. If you took a payoff from Schaeffer, I’ll find out. And I swear to God, Halina—”

Something moved in her peripheral vision, but Halina didn’t remove her gaze from Mitch. The amount of anger he was emitting had an unnerving sizzle sliding over her skin.

Mitch looked toward the movement, immediately dropped his hand, straightened, and curbed his anger. And Halina knew Christy stood nearby.

“Everything . . .” the attendant started hesitantly, “all right back here? You’ve even got poor Dex riled.”

Halina dropped into a seat next to the window and across the table from where Mitch had been sitting. Dex perched faithfully at her side and rested his head on her thigh.

Christy offered two fresh beers to Mitch even though he hadn’t touched the others. He took them with an absent gesture toward Halina. “We’re just . . . hashing out some issues.”

“Halina?” Christy looked past Mitch. “I’m not kidding about tossing him out. The copilot’s my little brother, but he’s a big guy, and he’ll do anything I tell him to do.”

Halina huffed a laugh and glanced from the corner of her eye toward Christy. “Could he throw me out? I’m ready to go.”

Christy turned those bright blue eyes on Mitch. “Come on, Mitch.”

“Okay. Okay.” He set the beers on the table and raked his fingers through his hair. “I’ll take it down a notch.”

Christy leaned in and lowered her voice, but Halina still heard the woman murmur, “Better take it down a couple or I’ll have something to say about our family accepting your charter again. We’ve only got twenty minutes left on the flight. Behave yourself.”

Halina didn’t feel worthy of Christy’s loyalty. It didn’t matter that she’d made the best decisions she could have made at the time. It didn’t matter that her decisions had kept Mitch alive and safe. It didn’t matter that her decisions had kept a psychopath power monger from creating an army of super killers. Halina still saw herself as Mitch did—a deceitful, selfish, manipulative liar willing to do anything to keep herself safe, including fuck him. An evil-minded scientist who’d contributed to Schaeffer’s sick scheme and let him run free to harm others, which, no doubt made Halina just as guilty of the man’s crimes in Mitch’s mind.

Christy returned to the front.

Mitch rubbed the back of his neck. “Why did you do that? With the files and my computer? Why were you trying to get me off the case?”

Halina took a deep drink of her juice and winced at the tangy sweetness. Her taste buds twanged and tingles spread through the pivot points on her jaw. She set down the glass.

“Schaeffer knew we were dating. I don’t know how, I never told him. But he came to me one day and very simply stated that if you didn’t get off the Classified case, you were going to lose your job. Then insinuated that I might want to help you out if I didn’t want to see that happen to you.”

Halina stared at the table and concentrated on plugging this little leak in Pandora’s box without either creating more or breaking the damn lid off. And she tried to do it without any more lies. If she had to remember one more lie, she might as well just check herself into an asylum.

“I shrugged it off. But then you came home talking about the problems. And then the problems got worse. And worse. And worse. And I’d find myself in an elevator with Schaeffer or pass him in the hall or see him in a meeting and get, ‘How’s Mitch’s job going, Halina?’ or ‘I hear those high-stress jobs can really put a lot of pressure on relationships,’ or ‘One black mark on an attorney’s reputation can kill his chances to advance.’ I knew if I didn’t try to do something . . .”

Halina downed the rest of her juice, forced it past her throat, tight with the half-truth forming there.

“It doesn’t seem so monumental now, but at the time, your losing a job you loved so much seemed like the end of the world to me.”

Before he plugged in the time line to those facts and realized they were several months askew—but very true and an important piece to a bigger crack in Pandora’s box—Halina lightened the subject.

“So this is a family deal, this charter service?”

“Yeah.” He turned to stare out at the clouds. “The brothers are all pilots. Christy flies too, but prefers not to. Tyler flew for the air force. I represented him and that’s how I found out about this charter service.”

He turned away from the window and stood without looking at Halina. “I need a break. I’m going to call Seth.”

Mitch walked toward the front of the plane and Halina stared at the cream leather seat he’d vacated. She knew he didn’t believe her. But it sure would have been nice to hear even a couple words of support or understanding . . . even just acknowledgment of the stress she’d gone through.

She certainly didn’t expect, need, or even want gratitude. Just . . . understanding. But it didn’t look as if that would be coming. And she ached with the punch of his dismissal and rejection all rolled into one.

 

S
chaeffer slammed down the newspaper and stabbed at the nurse’s call button. “Peggy!”

She didn’t answer. The bitch was ignoring him on purpose. He was her only goddamned patient. She was probably flirting with one of those pompous Secret Service agents again.

He held the button down. He had no idea if that made it buzz any longer out at the nurses’ station or wherever the hell the nurses got the signal, but he hoped it did. When he released it, he yelled, “Peggy, get in here and deal with this damned beeping, for God’s sake.”

The door opened and the crotchety bitch swept in. “How difficult is it to keep your arm straight, Senator?”

“How difficult is it to shut your mouth and do your job,
nurse
?” He shook the paper out and glanced through the door where one of the agents stood. “Where the hell is Colonel Young?”

“No sign of him yet, sir.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Gil scanned the columns for the article he’d been reading when that damned IV pump had started beeping for the millionth time that morning. He was so ready to get out of this godforsaken place, and if shit like this article kept popping up, he’d never be able to leave.

Peggy snapped the door to the IV pump closed and rounded the bottom of the bed.

“What?” Gil said, still half waiting for the
don’t bend your arm
mantra. “No warning from the warden?”

With her hand on the doorknob, she faced him. He didn’t take his gaze off the paper. “I’m done wasting my breath on you. I’m saving it for patients who actually care about their treatment.”

“Hallelujah.”

“And you are not a prisoner, Senator. Please, use this door at your earliest convenience. It’s big enough for even you to get through.”

The fat dig burned. Gil flashed a glance her way with a threat on his tongue, but she slammed the door so hard the blinds over the glass rattled. Gil winced at the noise and muttered, “Fucking bitch.”

He started reading where he’d lost his place, but the door opened again. He didn’t bother to look up. “I’m not going to choke down any more of this hospital crap you call food. If you can’t get the kitchen to provide something decent to eat, then get your ass out to Bistro Bis and pick up two orders of eggs Benedict.”

“Thanks for thinking of me, but I’ve already eaten.”

The deep male voice, filled with too much confidence and attitude to be one of the Secret Service agents’, filled the room. Gil looked up just before the door closed again. He took in the sight of Owen Young in uniform, his chest weighted down by medals, and snapped the paper before returning his gaze to it, even though he wasn’t reading anymore.

“Don’t you fall face-first into your food with all that weight on your chest, Young?”

“You should be nicer to the people here, Senator,” he said, approaching the bedside. “They hold your life in their hands.”

“They do a job, same as you, nothing more. And they do a shitty job of it too. You all have a lot in common.” Gil slapped a backhand against the article and glared at Young. “This has become a problem, Owen. You need to handle it, and you need to handle it better than you’re handling Foster and those menaces he calls a team.”

Young’s sharp green eyes darted to the paper, scanned the headline,
Syria’s Chemical Weapons Linked to American Chemical Mogul,
and returned to Gil’s face. “It’ll blow over.”

“No, it won’t.” He snapped the paper again—he just loved the sound—and folded it. “The FBI has been trying to contact me for a week.”

Young’s lids lowered and his jaw clenched. “And you’re just telling me about it now. We had a discussion about communication, Senator. The last time you delayed informing me, you lost Quaid Legend.”

“I’ve been a little under the weather—”

“You’ve been
hiding out
. The doctors said you could have left the hospital last week if it weren’t for the new ailments you come up with daily. Now I know why, especially given your dislike of the staff and—God forbid—the food.”

“You know what you need, Owen?” Gil narrowed his eyes. “You need to get yourself some pussy. Why don’t you go on over to the Alibi Club tonight? I’ll call and let them know you’re there as my guest.”

“What I need, Senator, is information and in a timely manner.”

“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” Gil demanded.

Owen angled his head, the move calculated and menacing. “Have you?”

He held Gil’s gaze too steadily and with too much authority. Gil was sweating beneath his pajama top, one the Secret Service had brought him from home. The sweat would start pouring off him any moment, and Owen would mistake that for weakness.

“No, Owen. I’m talking to the man who should have found and captured Legend, O’Shay, and the lousy team of firefighters who broke them out of a top-security federal—”

“Prison?” Owen interrupted.

“Lab,” Gil countered. “What progress have you made since you came in yesterday?”

“I’ve discovered that you failed to mention you involved Abernathy in this train wreck of a scheme, Senator. And I’ve discovered Abernathy is running the wrecked car down a hill at three hundred miles per hour to inevitable catastrophe.”

Anger surged. “Abernathy’s balls had better be in Pakistan.”

“If they are, he’s not attached to them. He’s here, Senator. He confronted Halina
Beloi
and Mitch Foster outside
Beloi’s
home in Washington State last night. And it might have helped me find them earlier,
before
Abernathy, had I known her
real
name.”

“That wicked bitch,” Gil muttered, heat and pressure swelling inside his body. Sweat trickled from his forehead and into his eyes. Gil grabbed a washcloth and wiped his face. “I didn’t think she’d ever have the balls to use her real name again.”

“You’re missing the point—”

“No, I’m not. The point now is that Abernathy’s trying to get her research and take over while he thinks I’m incapacitated.”

Gil tossed the covers back and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The momentum sat him halfway up, but without the strength to pull his body forward, Gil fell back, struggling to retain some dignity with the use of the bed’s handrails. By the time he’d righted himself, Gil was struggling to breathe and every damn machine made some kind of outrageous noise.

Gil sat with his back to Owen, but he could sense the other man’s smirk. He shot a glare over his shoulder, but didn’t catch Owen grinning to himself. The man was still frowning.

“Why didn’t you tell me Abernathy was in this up to his balls?” Owen paced slowly toward the windows, his hands clasped and fisted behind his back.

“Because he’s not supposed to be,” Schaeffer bit out. His face had to be glowing candy-apple red by now. His eyes had to be bulging out of his head. The damn heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen monitors were dinging and beeping as if warning of an imminent nuclear explosion. “Like I said, he’s supposed to be in Pakistan, handling the acquisition of smart weapons. You have to
stop
him. You
have
to find Beloi before Abernathy does.

“He doesn’t give a fuck about anything but that project. And he’s got strong connections in Indonesia. That’s where he wanted us to grow this in the first place. He won’t take the time or go to the trouble to kill the whole damn team like he should. They don’t pose any significant threat to him. He’ll just grab Beloi and drag her under. Which will turn Foster and the others into a pack of rabid hyenas against me.”

Peggy rushed in, took one look at Young, and turned from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll. “Oh.” She gave Owen a grin, one that made her look far less crotchety and a hell of a lot younger. “No wonder he’s trying to launch these things through the roof. But, then, you kinda have that effect on me too, Colonel.”

Owen grinned. “Good morning, Peggy.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.” She slid her blue gaze up one side of Owen and down the other on her way toward the monitors. “Thanks for turning it around for me. Mmm-mmm. Definitely something about a man in uniform.”

“That is the worst display of unprofessional behavior—” Gil started.

“If you can’t keep yourself calm, Senator, we’ll damn well do it for you.” The wench turned right back into Mr. Hyde, fur, fangs, and foul mouth. She silenced some monitors, messed with others. “I’ve had it with you and your temper. If you want to die, I’ll call over to Bethesda Naval Base and ask Trina to pay you a visit. She’s been begging me to let her come spike your IV since you got in. Seems you’ve made your share of enemies in the nursing population.”

“I knew you weren’t very smart.” Gil spoke to Peggy, but shook his finger at Owen. “Now I have a witness to your murder conspiracy.”

Peggy slammed the door of the IV pump again and gave Owen a long-suffering look. Owen just chuckled and Peggy slid past him with a hand on his bicep and a murmured, “Don’t leave without saying good-bye, Colonel.”

When the door closed behind him, Owen’s smile vanished. “What does the FBI want?”

“I’m the one suffering here, not that bitch.”

“Senator,” Owen said, drawing his attention away from the door. “What does the FBI—?”

“They’re asking about my relationship with Classified Chemical. My name must have come up during their investigation into
this
.” He rattled the paper.

Owen’s gaze narrowed. “What the hell aren’t you telling me now?”

“Nothing! There is nothing to tell. There is no connection between me, Classified, and that chemical bomb in Syria. You’ve got to be asinine to think I’d jeopardize my position in the Senate or on the Armed Forces Committee by getting involved with something like this.” One monitor started beeping again and Gil growled, about ready to rip off every wire, every tube. “That’s why you need to get them off my ass. There’s nothing to sniff. Make it happen, Owen.”

“You want me to control an FBI investigation. Why not just ask me to bring you every Taliban head on a silver platter, Senator? I think staying here for a while is the best idea, because your head still isn’t on quite right.”

“Owen—”

“And because Abernathy is among the many who are starting to believe you’re not going to come out of this
coma
. They’re all starting to feel safe. Starting to make moves. If you show yourself now, they’ll all go underground like rats in the light. The last few weeks will be a complete waste. The guys I have on Foster and Beloi’s trail will be screwed, and Abernathy will be working underground. They’ll all be as impossible to stop as that FBI investigation.

“And we both know that if Foster doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be found. His resources in the military community are endless. His finances, thanks to you and Classified, and that damn chemical leak at Lejeune, are deep. Every member of the team that supports him has powerful abilities your sick games gave them.”

Gil’s jaw had clenched, his fingers curled into fists. “Watch your step, Owen,” he said, his voice breathless with the increase of his heart rate and breathing. “You’re making me see black.”

“Welcome to my world, Senator.” He lowered his voice and never broke eye contact. His warrior instincts were in full swing, and putting Gil even more on edge. “
You
created this problem.
You
dragged me into it.
You
threatened my future and my life. So you’ll just have to deal with my way of repairing
your
fuck-ups.”

Arrogant, condescending sonofabitch.
Gil reached over to a bedside table and picked up a folder of information he’d printed out from the mini-office set up in a corner of his hospital room.

“I don’t care how you make it happen, Owen, just make . . . it . . . happen.” Gil slapped the file against Owen’s decorated chest. “Here’s a file on the agent who’s got her fangs out for me. A Special Agent Sofia Seville.”

That name made Owen’s gaze dart back to Gil’s and remain. Made him reach for the folder and hold on to it.

Gil let go, triumph sliding through him. “I see you recognize her name.”

“We served together in Afghanistan,” Owen said, guarding his expression again. “I knew she’d retired from the army and gone to the FBI, but last I’d heard, she was working out of Virginia.”

“Well, she’s here now and obviously trying to come down hard on me to make a name for herself. Use your past relationship with her, Owen. Create a new relationship with her. I don’t give a fuck how you do it, but pull her fangs out of me.”

“Senator, Seville and I only have a distant professional—”

“Don’t give me that shit, Owen. I’ve seen her picture. Don’t tell me you weren’t doing her while on tour together in Afghanistan. A man can’t even get a decent whore in that place without the fear of getting his cock blown off by a suicide pussy bomber.”

“You’re mistaken, sir—”

“Don’t argue with me, Colonel. Just make it happen
now
so I can get the hell out of here without having to worry about them ambushing me at home.”