Smoke and Mirrors (23 page)

“Stop wasting time,” Alasdair growled, head down in search of someone to harass.

I shoved his belongings onto the gurney and managed to mumble, “Make yourself useful and carry your own baggage.”

Quick as a viper’s strike, Brad’s thumb found the wet track running down my cheek and obliterated it. “Crybaby.” I leaned into his touch, unable to speak. “Everything’s going to be fine, Alex. It’s going to be fine.”

I held his hand the entire flight.

I held it as we crossed onto the rooftop elevator of The Firm’s London hospital.

And I held it until he was taken through doors through which I was barred.

Even then, I held it with my heart.

B
rad lay propped against his pillared bed’s headboard, reassured by the wide slice of ocean and sky. It had been simultaneously awing and familiar to see again, to watch the world go past with sight instead of hearing and touch.

But that difficult time had had its benefits too. He had learned to trust his other senses more: to listen for what
wasn’t
said, to identify by scent, by taste.

He’d found himself thinking of Nigel’s Sammy during those moments. Quiet, layered thoughts that hurt less but lingered longer.

He let his sight wander over Parker’s sleeping figure. She was calm in sleep. Tranquil in repose. Silent save for the soft exhalations that rippled the sheet beside her. He put a hand to her hair.

‘She saved our bacon on that one.’

“You’ve lost your sense of subtlety, Alasdair,” Brad ribbed, well aware of what his DIF was really saying.

“I could point out the obvious, that you’ve lost a rather more vital sense yourself. But that would be in bad taste.”

“Kind of you to restrain yourself on my account.”

“Quite.”

Silence had descended for a long moment. “In as far as Karma goes, I’ve been suitably told off.” There would be a safe London life, all right. Only, it would be him leading it. Ms. Brothers had proven herself more than worthy of a field agent’s position and would likely continue in that vein.

‘Which means, now that you’ve bowed to Karma’s sovereignty, she’ll likely gift you with 20 stroke 8 vision. And –”

“And?”

“And then Dr. Bacon will turn the tables and insist you stay home and keep house.”

There had been an indisputable mirth in Alasdair’s words that echoed again and again each time Brad opened his eyes and saw.

Saw the fallout of an op from which he’d only just snatched his life.

The revelations of Jack’s deceit and depravation had been unimaginable. Photos of Brad, covertly taken at work, outside work and even on his boat, were lovingly displayed in albums and frames around Jack’s flat. And in every photo which also captured Nigel, arm strung over Brad’s shoulders in one instance, Forsythe’s face had been neatly cut away, replaced with a similarly sized one of Jack.

With almost unlimited access to SIS information, it seemed that Jack had set about tracing Nigel and Brad’s movements, tagging their Assets, their Targets, and their enemies, until a web was laid out, with a Shelob-Jack masterfully weaving strings of invisible silk into a tapestry of disaster.

Raul Fernandez was one of his first pulls. A guerrilla leader who had been offered a substantial cut of ‘future monies’ in exchange for a subtle friendship with his former enemy, Alberto Sanchez.

“…offer to protect his hidden crops and give him some of your land for growing more. In exchange for a cut in his profits and a promise that his public word of hatred for your group will not include attacks on your men by his mercenaries, I’ll ensure that he encourages the president to turn a blind eye on your Russian arms dealings. Then, if you’re ever caught, you’ll have a friend in a high place. A friend who has the ear of the President.”

Raul had been confused. “…but I haven’t any arms dealings with the Russians…”

“With me, you will. I have connections who will supply you with any number of Russian AK-47’s, SCUD missals, you name it.”

And so Nigel, guided by Jack’s invisible hand, had unknowingly supplied Raul with weapons, thinking the rebel leader’s subsequent arrest was landing a big fish in the fight against terrorism.

Raul was arrested, never knowing he had been set up by his philanthropist, and had gratefully accepted Jack’s ‘brilliant’ plan of escape without questioning its ease. He never realized his only reason for existence was to get Alberto out of the picture so Sanchez’s money would naturally flow into De Torres’s bank account, an account easily traced by an SIS vetter/hacker.

Raul never knew Jack had set him up to buy the uranium from the very Scottish power plant tech Jack had ‘rented’ it, using his access to top secret clearance.

In the end, it was assumed that Jack planned to disappear into the mists, bank accounts filled with monies made up from the combined enterprises of Sanchez and De Torres and the proceeds of SIS’s purchase of the ‘dirty bomb’; all without having to resign from SIS, at least not right away.

But that had changed when Parker had put an end to Jack’s silent career as an arms dealer, drug trafficker and future billionaire.

She turned over beneath Brad’s hand, eyes opening to the light of dawn, lips parting as she yawned. Smiling lightly, she slithered up next to him, fitting herself against his naked torso. Heat radiated across their bodies.

“What is it?”

He kissed her sweet mouth, just as a knock sounded on the door. “Yes?”

Hesitation clipped the housekeeper’s words. “Sorry, Signor, but there’s someone here to see you.” Her voice dropped an octave, becoming a conspiratorial whisper. “A man from the 007. An Englishman.”

Stifling the urge to laugh, to howl at her understandably inaccurate view, that the men from SIS were no more than a necessary evil which had brought naught but danger to her employer, Brad cleared his throat. “I will see him in a moment. Thank you, Signora.”

He could almost feel her smile through the door. She would protect her injured master, the master who had been so wronged while aiding the idiots who needed his help catching bad men.

Oh, Brad could hear her now, clucking to her son about the ‘horrible men from England who couldn’t do their job without the help of Signor De Torres. Who needed him to aid them in the apprehension of some of his business partners gone bad’.

“And of De Torres? Isn’t he guilty as well?”

It would be met with a grunt.
A mother knows her son. De Torres is like my son, like you; don’t you think I’d know? Signore is a good man.

Brad stood up, kissed the toes that extended out from under the sheets, and pulled on his robe. The Dottoressa had definitely moved up a notch in the housekeeper’s eyes when she’d saved Giovanni’s life, not once, but twice.

The details were never divulged, much to her disappointment, but she seemed content with the basics.

Truth, Brad repeated to himself, always truth, even when you lie for a living.

“Who the hell could that be?” Parker asked, stretching like a cat.

He was tempted not to find out, to drop his robe and leave his newly found eyes open wide as he drew her against him. But he forced himself to the door. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m going down.”

She tossed a pillow at him, flipping onto her stomach and pouting prettily. “If only that were the case.”

Smiling, he closed the door to the thump of a pillow and descended the staircase.

There stood Agent Thomas Donovan, codename Bullseye.

“
Fucking cocky name,”
Nigel had complained.

Tall, slim and dark, he was Sardinian as the next man to be found on the dusty road to Cagliari. They shook hands and Brad dismissed the haughty housekeeper, who might have been planning how to poison their guest’s food or at least erase the nonexistent marks of his hand-tooled shoes from the marble foyer.

Brad directed the man to his study, to the room he had had made clean as new fallen snow. No one could hear them there, no one except her.

Sitting opposite his guest, Brad offered him a cigar. It was declined. “Aren’t they letting smokers into SIS anymore?”

Donovan shook his head. “Only feel free yourself.”

Like I wouldn’t in my own home.

Brad’s skills and impeccable record as an executive agent were well known, but he was still older. A man who, at least in these young eyes, hadn’t learned yet that smoking of any type was bad for a person’s health.

Oh, but Brad knew that.

Only in a job that was by nature very bad for one’s health, sometimes habits like cigar smoking made for a childish way to cheat death.
If I smoke these and don’t cark it, maybe the next guy down the line will miss when he aims.
Or so went that line of thinking.

De Torres lit the cigar, but Brad inhaled, grateful for the burn of the fragrant smoke in his lungs. It meant he was alive to enjoy the things he loved: cigars, fast cars, and most of all, the woman upstairs.

“…glad you are back on the roster, and very pleased that your roles here are uncompromised. Involvement of SIS has in actuality sealed your reputation, your alias here.”

Brad nodded, blowing a puff of smoke toward the sea.

“Alasdair passes on his congratulations and says he’ll be there when you need him. Either of you. This case earned you both, well I’m certain you know what it’s earned you –”

Yeah, a bloody fortnight’s rest and a nice round deposit in a bank account he didn’t really need. But that was platinum in SIS, a true pat on the back for a job well done.

“Which is why I’m here,” Donovan continued, “To let your staff and the people in this area believe that De Torres’s reformation is complete. That is until he manages to keep SIS from sniffing too closely around his dealings, and then, well he’s back up and at it again when next we need him.”

Brad smiled indulgently. C’s idea of a joke no doubt. Send in the newbie to tell him and Ms. Brothers that they had pulled a rabbit out of a hat and could have a little R and R before being called back in. “Yes, thank you, but the result was due to the work of
a lot of good people
.” Thomas had been at Nigel’s welcome back party. The one held in C’s office just days before Nigel and Sammy’s wedding.

A wary look crossed the younger man’s face. At least he knew enough not to gloat about a job well done when it had cost SIS one of its best agents. “C wanted you to know a box is on its way. It’s filled with the contents of Forsythe’s desk. He thought you might want them.”

Brad blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

Donovan, young with a few cards up his sleeve, stood and shook Brad’s hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you again. Give your
partner
my regards as well.” He shot a brief glance upwards, to where he thought the bedroom might have been.

Composure regained, Brad tilted his head, cigar clenched between his teeth. He loathed an inelegant insult. “I’ll give her your regards when she wakes. She has, after all, had a very rough night.”

Let him take that however he’d like.

•   •   •

“A rough night?” I asked when he walked back into the room, cigar smoke curling, robe dropping as the door closed.

His cigar found its way to the ashtray. He found his way into my arms. And then we were on the outer deck, my back to the railing, our bodies meeting like the sea and sky, a smudgy non-existent place of perfect melding.

I sucked in a breath of salty sea air, content to be in that fuzzy place, lost between my life as Parker and that of Alexandra. He was there too, alternating between Italian and English, between Giovanni’s overtly controlling tendencies and his growing comfort in our newfound equality.

Arching back, I felt the railing cool against my back, stiff and unyielding as the metal of which Brad was made. He thrust hard against me: once, twice, three times before we ended up on the rug below our naked feet, the one with animals curled in the sinewy reposes our bodies strove to emulate.

The rug burned my shoulders, but I pushed against it, willing myself to take him faster, deeper. He was gasping now, holding my hands against the stone beside the rug, repeating indistinct versions of my many names, begging me for release as he begged me to keep it away.

At last, bending my knees and pressing my feet flat against the ground, I drove upward with my pelvis and felt him shatter. Collapsing against me, he clutched the backs of my thighs and we came hard and fast.

Later, an infrequent rain pattered, waking us from the haze as it separated the dappled water from the smooth sky. We came apart, rolling onto our sides so that I was curled along his back. He was facing the ocean, content to stare through orbs that saw, as I was content to stare at the solid wall of his flesh.

“A penny for your thoughts,” I asked, aware of the last time I had spoken those loaded words.

His voice was soft, almost inaudible, and I thought he might be falling to sleep. “I was thinking that I could get used to calling you Parker, Ms. Brothers.”

A smile creased my face, and I traced a line on his scarred back. “What makes you think I’d like that?”

He turned to face me, smug and sheepish within the same grin. “I don’t know. Something about me finally getting used to having you as a partner?”

“That’s still debatable, Mr. Milton.”

He snorted. “Not really. It’s strange though, our names. Almost fated.”

“You believe in fate?”

“Maybe. Sometimes. Other times, I don’t know. I mean do you think it was fate that got Nigel and Sammy killed?”

He had a point, where did one draw the line between calling something good, fate and something bad, an accident?

My lips met his firm, yet tenuous ones. Ones touched by the grief that always resurfaces with a loss of such magnitude. “If the worst that happens to a couple is instant death in one another’s arms, then yes, I think fate might be the right word.”

His eyes were dark, the absence of color in which I felt most at home. “And us, with names and jobs like ours, what do you think fate has in store for us?”