Volcano (18 page)

Ana sprung to her feet.
“This has
nothing to do with our troubles at home,” she said, stepping in front of him so
she was out of the camera’s view.

Mark raised his eyebrows. “So, you admit there are troubles
at home?”

“
My
admitting it is not the news flash here. But
that’s neither here nor there. We’re talking about my recent abduction; the
fact that you didn’t once think to pat me on the back for--”

“You wanted me to pat you on the back?” Mark asked,
dumbfounded. It had been all that Mark could do to keep Ana unaware of the fact
that she’d not just disabled Hay Long, she’d flat out killed him.

“You’re hopeless,” Ana said, looking like she meant it.

“I
am
proud of you, proud of the way you handled
yourself in the motel. Never said that I wasn’t!”

“Never said that you were. Just sat there like some
Goddamned bureaucrat, taking notes.”

“It’s
my job
to take notes,” Mark said, his voice
rising
more than he would have liked. “And you damn well
know that. What’s this really all about, Ana?” Mark asked, trying to see into
her through her deep, black eyes. But even her pupils were obscured by the
shadows of the room.

“I’ve told you,” she said, turning away, “all you
need to
know.”

“Hey,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and spinning her
back toward him. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about!
 
Is this about McFadden? Is that why you
won’t come clean?”

Ana hardened her expression and looked away.

Mark felt like the last sailor on the Titanic before it went
down. He slackened his grip but didn’t let go. “Tell me it’s not what I’m
thinking. That you and McFadden--
”
 
Mark
felt hot bile rise in his
throat. Ana and that CIA bastard all twisted up in the sheets. He should have
killed him when he had the chance.

 
“Not that,” she
said, reeled back in back his eyes.

“Well, I did find you in his shirt- and not much else.”

“I know it looked bad.”

“You have a talent for understatement.”

“And you have a talent for losing control!
 
You should have seen yourself. You would
have killed him if-”

“Now you’re being melodramatic.”

“Now
you’re
being patronizing!

Mark let out a steady breath. There was a day when nobody
would have beaten him at this
game,
a whole platoon of
staff sergeants couldn’t have gotten under his skin. What was
happening
to him?

He was scared shitless he was losing his marriage, that’s
what.

Ana huffed and raised one eyebrow. “Are we talking here or
getting back into a fight?”

Mark licked his lips. “I’m up for talking,” he said, his
voice growing
froggy
.
Because, more
than anything, Mark didn’t want to fight.
He wanted to take the woman
who was standing before him in his arms and make her believe that nothing
between them was lost. But first, Mark had to find a way to convince himself.
Only yesterday, he would have sold his soul to the devil for another
opportunity to hold
Ana
close. But now, every time
Mark shut his eyes, all he could see was Ana swooning against that smirking
bad-assed cowboy. It rankled him and tore him apart to think that Ana,
his
Ana,
might have given herself away to someone as undeserving as fricking
Joe McFadden. But still, Mark needed to know or they’d never move beyond this.
Would never stand a chance.

Ana wiped the corner of her eye but said nothing.

“I mean it,” Mark said, “whatever you’ve got to tell me,
Ana. The truth, no matter how it hurts.”

“I don’t want to...hurt you,” she said, her voice cracking.

“I’m a big boy.”
 
Mark forced an unsteady smile, fearing that maybe he wasn’t quite big
enough to take whatever she had to tell him. “Though maybe I haven’t been
acting like one lately.”

“We’ve both made mistakes.”

Mark prayed to God the mistake she was talking didn’t stand
about six feet tall with red-brown hair.

Ana squeezed shut both eyes and tears trickled through long,
black lashes. “Joe’s in real trouble, isn’t he?”

Mark massaged her upper arms with his palms. “McFadden’s
going to be alright. He’s a tough SOB. Tough as they come.”

Ana nodded through her soft sobs,
then
opened her eyes.

“How about us?”
 

Mark slipped his arms around her, damning the camera at his
back. Wishing there were somewhere, anywhere they could be alone.

“We,” he said, dipping his head toward hers, “you and I,
Ana, are even tougher than any old SOB.” And he meant it. Despite Joe’s
long-term hold on the woman he loved, Mark had won Ana over years ago. And he
didn’t intend to let her go now. No matter what had happened in that cabin.

Ana attempted a smile, but her trembling lower lip gave way
until Mark bent forward and steadied it with a kiss. But when his mouth met
hers, Mark wondered silently if Ana was wishing she could feel the bristle of
asshole McFadden’s moustache against the soft cushion of her lips.

Mark pulled back, cursing himself for the notion. Why couldn’t
he leave well enough alone? Why did he have to prod and press, pushing Ana
toward a confession he was nowhere ready to hear? He had her here, didn’t he?
And the way she looked up and into him made him believe there was nowhere else
she’d rather be. They were a family, the three of them. And, McFadden be
damned, Mark was going to move heaven and earth to keep it that way.

“You and me, Ana,” Mark said, holding her in his arms and
damning what the DOS saw on that ridiculous camera, “nothing else matters...except
for Isabel.”

Ana sniffed and pressed her lips together. “Joe did tell me
something. Something about Al Fahd,” she whispered. “But, I thought if I told
you... If I gave you all the information, you’d send me packing to the new safe
house with Carolyn and Isabel. That I’d never get the chance to-”

Mark felt the relief welling within him like a burst of
springtime rain.
That was it? Ana wanted in the game?
All the secrecy
and duplicity were about Ana wanting to contribute to the operation? This wasn’t
about her hitting the hay with that smirking red-assed cowboy, after all?

Mark swooped in for a kiss with surprising finesse, thrilled
to find
Ana
heavy in his arms as if all power had been
swept from her knees.

“What was all that about?” Ana asked pushing back and
gasping for breath.

“That’s
about how much I love you,” Mark said. “How
I’m so damn crazy about you, that- when I thought I was losing you, Ana- I
couldn’t see straight... How I’m never going to let you doubt my feelings
again.”

“You tell me what McFadden told you. All of it, word for
word. If we can add some new intelligence to what the DOS has already pieced
together here, we stand a fighting chance of getting Al Fahd. Hay Long and his
sorry friends, too. ”

“We, as in you and me?”
Ana asked, as his
lips closed in over hers.

Mark nodded and pulled her tight, cradling her head in his
hands, threading his fingers in her sweet silky hair. Hair he’d been so
worried, dead afraid, he’d never be able to see, touch or smell again. Mark
felt his sensations ignite and his blood pulsating to a boil.

This was
his
Ana, the woman he’d longed for and
awaited
a lifetime. And no goddamned simple excuse for
another man was ever going to take her away. Mark would make certain.

“Mark,”
Ana
said, shaken, as he
broke the seal of their lips. Shaken, yes, Mark thought with an easy confidence
that raced to his loins. Shaken in the way Ana
liked to be
shaken
:
shaken- and stirred
. “There’s a camera at your back.”

Mark felt his blood run cold, as an unwanted film reel fast-forwarded
through his brain. The pictures it painted of one amorous CIA operative Joe
McFadden and his wife sent a dry-ice fire coursing through his veins. Ana
couldn’t have done a better job of dousing the moment, if she’d poured a
champagne bucket down his back. Stinking cameras.
The
all-too-patent reminder that, in this world, one was always watched.
Which only made Mark burn at the thought his wife and one horny CIA bastard had
been holed up alone in the wilderness for two days- with no one to observe
them
, or keep them honest. Was
Ana
even being honest with him now? Or had prolonged exposure to the “business”
enabled
Ana
to carry off her indiscretions just as
cavalierly as any operator executing her mission?

“Worried about the film getting back to McFadden at eleven?”
Mark snapped, an undisguised chill clinging to every word.

Ana broke free of his arms, stunned. “That was a low
blow!
 
I thought we were done with
discussing Joe.”

“Even the mention of his name upsets you, doesn’t it?” he
asked, scrutinizing the heat in her face.

“No, Mark,
you
upset me. Just when I think there is
hope for us, believe we are getting on track, you go and do a jackass thing
like that.”

“Well maybe, if you had nothing to hide, you wouldn’t be so
hellfire defensive--”

“Hell?” Ana cut in. “You’re the one living in hell, Mark.
Some
sort
of inferno you’ve invented in you’re own
mind!”

But Mark was far too much of an analyst to believe it. No
matter what Ana said, Mark couldn’t ignore his gut instinct, that needling
inner voice that told him Joe McFadden alone with his wife in a cabin spelled
trouble.

“Well then, tell me, Ana. Look at me. Look me in the eye and
swear you didn’t do it. That, the whole time you were out there wearing nothing
but his shirt, there was no sexual contact between you and McFadden.”

Ana’s eyes shot daggers. “I’ll be damned if I'll stoop to
your level. The jealous husband, for God’s sake! Whatever happened to the man I
married
?!
”

“He married you,” Mark returned, with a callous edge.

Ana pursed her lips and damned her streaming tears.

“Yeah well, screw the camera!” Ana shouted, pointing over
Mark’s shoulder. “And screw you, too!
 
’Cause that’s all it’s ever about, isn’t it? Your game, by your rules-
and rest of us
be
damned for not living up to your
expectations!”

“I think,”
Mark
said, fighting to
steady the tremble in his voice, “you’re getting a bit out of control...”

Ana gave a disgusted snort. “You’re so bad off, you don’t
even know when you’re doing it any more!
 
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
 
If it hadn’t been for Isabel, you’d have
smashed poor Joe to hell and back!”

“No Ana,” Mark said, a forced tranquility in his voice. “I’m
saving that for next time.”

“Fine, be a maniac,” Ana said, backing toward the door and
motioning toward the camera. “It’s all a matter of DOS record now, anyway.”

Mark cursed and glanced at the camera. It was true. The two
of them had provided the boys in security with a regular three-ringed
performance. Mark removed his suit jacket, sick and tired of making a goddamned
spectacle of himself. He strode to the corner and tossed his suit coat up and
over the camera lens.

“Now,” he said, leveling a look at his wife, as he rolled up
first one
shirt sleeve
and then the other.

Ana’s eyes widened.

“You stay right where you are,” she cautioned, inching back
toward the exit.

Jesus H. Christ, she didn’t for a minute think...?

“Dammit Ana,” Mark said, his neck glands swelling, “you
can’t think that I would--”

But the look on her face said, yes, she did. Ana Kane was
scared senseless.
Physically afraid of her own husband.
And why not?
Mark admonished himself.
He’d
been blowing hot and cold ever since they’d come in here. At once begging her
to reveal her secrets, then cursing her for daring to say anything at all
.
It wasn’t Ana Mark wanted to pick up and slam into the nearest wall, it was Joe
McFadden- or maybe the whole lot of bastards who’d started this entire mess to
begin with. But, from the fear in her eyes, Ana couldn’t see that. Jesus
Christ. Ana only saw Mark gunning for her.
No God, not that.
Anything but that.
Mark was angry, confused, it was
true. But he’d never laid a hand on a woman in his entire life
.

“Ana,” Mark said, the reality ramming him in the face like a
pair of brass knuckles, “wait...”

Ana pulled open the door. “When you’re ready to listen,” she
said.
“Really
listen, Mark, and leave that temper of yours behind you-
you know where to find me.”

***

“Is it under way?” Tom Mooney snarled into the phone.
“Because you’re already three Goddamned days late.”

“You don’t need to worry about days,” the Arab cooed in
response. “All in good time, Mr. Wolf. All in good time.”

“We have forty-eight hours before she blows,” Tom said.
“Your men were supposed to already be in place!”

 
“We had a little
complication to take care of first.”

“What complication?” Tom growled.

The line fell silent for just a moment too long.

“No worries, Mr. Wolf. All is under control. This New Year’s
Eve is a celebration your nation won’t soon forget.”

Tom sat back in his chair satisfied. Yes, that was part two
of the plan.
A mass scale attack on the American public.
Not so invasive that people would die. Al Fahd had assured him of that. But
just threatening enough that they would be severely sickened- and scared to
death they would never again be safe walking the streets of America. Not until
they got somebody entirely new in charge. Someone with not only diplomatic
experience but a sterling intelligence background as well.
Someone
who, unbeknownst to the public, would have secured millions of US dollars in
Chinese financing for his upcoming political campaign.