Payback Page 9

  “You’re thinking too much,” he murmured against her ear.

  Faith laughed. “Once upon a time I would have said I’m thinking too little. Here I am, in bed with a man I barely know. One who works with the man I believe may have kidnapped my brother. On the surface, that doesn’t seem very smart.” Yet her little voice of reason was quiet, lulled into contentment after hours of lovemaking. Her head felt clearer. Her heart…well, it wasn’t lighter, not with Toby in trouble, but she didn’t feel on the verge of hopelessness.

  Or maybe it was just that her instincts continued to insist that Mark was a true ally.

  “Hmm.” Mark nuzzled her neck. “One might say that becoming involved with a reporter—”

  “Former reporter.”

  “No. From the few journalists I’ve known, one is born a newshound and stays a newshound until death.” He nipped her chin. “As I was saying, my getting involved with a reporter is not exactly a wise move. How do I know you’re not going to spill all my secrets in an exposé?”

  Faith leaned back so she could look him in the eye. “Do you really think that?”

  He shook his head and gave her a soft kiss on her forehead. “No. For some indescribable reason, my instincts tell me that my secrets are safe with you.”

  She smiled and kissed him. Which led to roving hands and deeper, more urgent kisses. A long while later, after the sweat had cooled from their skin and Faith was once again nestled against Mark, he cleared his throat.

  “I’ve read the news reports, but I want to hear your version of what happened with your sister. Why did you give up your career?”

  Panic shot through her. Faith jerked away from him and sat up.

  “Faith.” Mark’s soothing voice calmed her. The warmth and understanding in his eyes relaxed her even further. He wasn’t asking about her story so he could judge her, but because he cared and wanted to know her better.

  She had to admit that if they were going to move forward into a relationship then he deserved to know. She lay back down and let Mark gather her close to his body. Somehow it was easier to talk without having to watch his expression. Yet she found she couldn’t find the words to start.

  “Go back to the beginning and tell your story as if I don’t know the basics,” Mark finally prompted. “I want your interpretation, not the impersonal words from a report.”

  Okay. She could do this.

  “I used to be an investigative journalist,” she began. “I traveled all over the world covering humanitarian issues and political events. I spent probably ninety percent of my time away from my tiny apartment in Washington, D.C. ”

  Mark stroked his hand down her back. “You’re originally from Ohio?”

  “Yes. Dalioma, Ohio. Dad was a cop. Mom taught music at the high school and led the marching band. I’m the middle child. Toby is the oldest and Lyndi was the baby, ten years younger than me.”

  Even just saying her sister’s name made her throat tighten. How was she supposed to get through the entire story? But Mark didn’t pressure her to continue, so she swallowed the pain and forced herself to go on.

  “Lyndi started sending me letters while I was in college and continued writing after my newspaper assignments kept me overseas. Once she hit middle school her letters changed. She stopped writing pages about her friends and what happened at school, and instead wrote long, rambling paragraphs describing how much she missed me, how unhappy she was, and begging me to visit her.”

  Faith sighed. “Most of the time her letters arrived weeks after she’d mailed them, finding me in whatever city I’d made my temporary base. The few times I went home, Lyndi was so happy to see me I felt guilty for having being away so long.” She still dreamed of Lyndi’s face, radiant with joy when she’d met her plane that last time.

  “But…” Guilt clogged her throat. She coughed, then continued. “The hard truth was that after a few days, Lyndi’s constant attention started to smother me and I’d be itching to leave.”

  “Sounds natural,” Mark commented.

  “I thought so.” Now, she wondered whether she’d sensed the storm brewing in her sister and had just been too much of a coward to deal with it.

  “Anyway, time passed and Lyndi entered high school. Her letters became very infrequent, but when she did write she talked of not fitting in at home or at school. How she was never good enough for my parents. In more than one letter she accused me of not loving her, because if I loved her I’d stop traveling and stay home with her.”

  Even now, Faith questioned her decision to put career before family. If she’d stayed home, could she have stopped what happened? The psychologists told her it wasn’t her fault. That Lyndi had been responsible for her own actions. But Faith was the big sister. It was her job to protect her little sister and she’d failed miserably.

  “The letters from my parents mentioned that they were having trouble with Lyndi. A few of her relationships were abusive. One boyfriend even put her in the hospital with a broken rib. She’d gotten into fights several times at school and once got picked up for drunk driving, but their letters made it sound like nothing more than immaturity. A way for Lyndi to assert her independence after being the baby of the family for so long.”

  In hindsight, Faith understood that Lyndi’s acting out had been an attempt to convince herself that her parents loved her, no matter what she did.

  “Then Toby unexpectedly showed up at a refugee camp in Jordan where I was interviewing women who’d fled the Syrian civil war.” The heat had been relentless that day. She could still remember the sun-baked tightness of the skin on her face and the prickle of sweat meandering down her spine.

  “Toby dragged me to an isolated section of the camp and told me that Lyndi had gotten hold of a gun, waited for our parents to come home, then shot them before turning the gun on herself. All three were dead when the police arrived.”

  The sun had glared down out of a brilliant blue sky as if judging Faith for not saving her sister. As Toby’s words had sunk in, goose bumps had sprouted on her arms despite the temperature.

  “I’m so sorry.” Mark’s arm tightened around her and she realized that this was the first time she’d told the story to someone who was a complete outsider. His concern soothed some of the pain of telling the story.

  “You blamed yourself,” he said. “For not being home.”

  “Yeah.” She liked the way Mark didn’t try and pass judgment on her self-condemnation.

  “And that’s why you hate guns.”

  “Right again. I used to carry a gun on assignments, depending on what part of the world I was in. More often than not I had at least one knife on my body in addition to a gun. But after Lyndi’s death, I haven’t wanted to be near a gun.”

  “Until you decided to hold one on me.”

  Faith could hear the amusement in his tone. “Yes. I was desperate, so I picked up one of Toby’s emergency weapons.” Her lips kicked up in a smile. “That’s something you have in common. You’ve both planned ahead, assuming there will come a day when you need to go on the run.”

  She laughed at the frozen look on Mark’s face. “Maybe that’s why we get along so well,” she teased. “You remind me of my brother.”

  “I am not your brother.” Mark’s arm shot out and snagged her around the waist, pulling her flush against him. His mouth plundered hers in a thoroughly carnal kiss, and his intensely possessive grip left no doubt that he considered her to be his woman. A walled off section of Faith’s heart cracked open. Despite the danger, despite coming from two different worlds—he lived in the shadows and she exposed those shadows to the light—she’d never felt so cherished or protected.

  When Mark finally let her go, Faith couldn’t stop the broad grin of feminine satisfaction that stretched her cheeks. Giving him a peck on the lips, she snuggled against him.

  “What I don’t understand,” Mark said, running his hand down her hair, “is why you gave up journalism. I’ve read some of your pieces. You’re a ta
lented writer. Skilled at bringing the subject alive in a way that makes an emotional connection with the reader. Your compassion leaps off the page.”

  Damn, how did he always know the right thing to say? Did they teach him that during CIA agent training?

  “The local press tore our family apart,” Faith replied once she’d swallowed down the lump of emotion in her throat. “Every aspect of our lives was sifted through and made public, no matter how irrelevant. Someone even broke in and stole Lyndi’s diaries, then published entries in such a way as to make them seem like indictments based on fact, rather than the emotional outpourings of a distressed teen. The majority of articles painted all of us as guilty of the crime. Even my parents came under attack. The press decided that our treatment of Lyndi had fed her depression, even though there had never been any emotional or physical abuse. In fact, as the baby of the family, Lyndi was given more leniency than either Toby or me. We all loved her and tended to spoil her. So I don’t understand why she started to believe that no one loved her. When the police finally tracked down the diaries and returned them to us, I read the entire four books.”

  Faith’s eyes grew damp. “In the diaries you could see the progression. See how Lyndi’s insecurities grew like a cancer, twisting even the most innocent exchange into an attack against her by an uncaring world. But that’s not how the media portrayed her. They portrayed her as a victim whose pleas for help had been ignored.”

  Her old anger bubbled up. “That was bullshit. My parents did everything they could to help Lyndi. They talked to her. Got other adults Lyndi respected to speak to her. They even took her to counseling. But Lyndi…” Faith’s voice cracked. “She didn’t want to be helped. She enjoyed playing the martyr too much. Of course, the media ran with the martyr idea, ignoring the complexity of the situation. Because the truth didn’t fit neatly into the allotted sound bite.”

  She shivered. “I wasn’t naïve. While I always tried to treat the people involved in my stories with the dignity and respect they deserved, particularly if I was interacting with them during a period of grief, I knew not all of my colleagues acted with compassion. I fully understood that false or unfair reporting by some unscrupulous journalists created additional victims. Still, it was a shock when my family and I became the target of hostile and sensational reporting.”

  “I’m sorry.” Mark placed a kiss on her hair and Faith let the warmth of his concern wash through her, blunting the lingering pain of the memory.

  “Toby had taken leave from the army in order to attend the funerals, but all too soon he had to return to duty. Leaving me and my grandma to deal with the harassment. Maybe because I was a colleague, the reporters were hardest on me. They made my life hell for three months. It left a sour taste in my mouth regarding the entire profession. Made me question whether there was any honor left in journalism. For the first time in my life I was ashamed to admit that I was a reporter.”

  The shame had mixed with guilt over not being there for Lyndi, causing Faith to veer dangerously close to clinical depression. Only the support of her grandma and friends like Siobahn, combined with productive sessions with an experienced psychologist had kept her functioning and eventually helped her regain her perspective.

  “The whole ordeal also made me question why it was easier for me to investigate events overseas than to deal with family issues,” Faith admitted. “So I decided to give up my career and do what Lyndi had always wanted me to do. I settled down and put family first.”

  Sometimes she wondered if Lyndi would be angry that it took her death to make Faith finally stay home.

  “At first I stayed in my hometown, but after Gramma died there were too many memories. Too many people who wanted to talk about Lyndi and no one that I cared deeply about to hold me there. So I moved to a small town in Maryland not far from D.C. I teach journalism at the local college and run the high school newspaper. I try to make sure my students understand that the press has a responsibility to behave with sensitivity toward individuals. That the truth shouldn’t come at the expense of trampling people’s dignity and privacy into the ground.”

  Mark gave a small snort. “That’s the difference between our professions. People are just pawns in the intelligence game. Yes, we claim that our ultimate goal is to make the world safe for the ordinary citizen, but that’s not really why successful agents continue to do this work. We like manipulating. Like working within the protection of the shadows and not having to follow the rules that constrain the rest of society.”

  “That sounds cold. And lonely.”

  “No. It’s a power rush when you outmaneuver an enemy and gain the information he’d worked so hard to hide. A rush that I suspect is as addictive as cocaine. I’ve lived most of my life working to get the next rush. The more dangerous the mission, the stronger the rush.”

  She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “But don’t you ever get lonely?”

  Mark put his fingers against her cheek and turned her face so that he could look into her eyes. “No. I’ve never been a particularly social man. Most people hold little interest for me beyond what they have to offer in respect to my job. I’ve never had problems finding female companions and have never wanted more than a shallow, physical relationship with them.”

  Faith’s stupid heart sank.

  “Until you.”

  Joy. A brilliant smile threatened to split Faith’s face. She kissed him and that led to more loving, which this time felt deeper. Richer. She might have fallen too hard, too fast, but damn if she wasn’t going to hold on to Mark for as long as she could.

  Chapter Eight

  One Week Later

  “Abernathy,” Mark called to the guard who’d recently been assigned to Kerberos.

  “Sir?”

  At first glance, the man appeared the same as any other guard. Military short haircut. Clean shaven. Erect posture. But his eyes when they met yours were a little too wary. Too much like a puppy waiting to be kicked. And he moved gingerly, as if he couldn’t quite control the faster movements of his body.

  The man supposedly had been put through a new program by Dr. Kaufmann. This one wasn’t meant to bulk men up and turn them into powerful, nearly indestructible soldiers. Instead, the new program aimed to create a faster, more intelligent spy and assassin. Mark knew that Dr. Nevsky had originally been tasked by the CIA to produce super spies and assassins, just as the DOD had wanted Nevsky to give them super soldiers. Apparently Kaufmann had decided to add the spies to his program against Jamieson’s wishes, although Mark’s boss had agreed to give the newly enhanced men a try.

  Thus Abernathy’s assignment to the administrative side of Kerberos. “Touchdown Tiger Rose,” Mark said.

  Abernathy straightened and a blank look came over his face. “Ready for orders, sir.”

  “You have a key to Jamieson’s office?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Mark swallowed the bitterness at the back of his mouth. “I want you to go into Jamieson’s office and bring me a copy of the contents of the folder labeled Test Subjects that is in the bottom right desk drawer.” While he suspected that during their last meeting Jamieson had placed the folder in the drawer as a test to see if Mark would try to access the contents, he couldn’t pass up this opportunity. It was the first hard proof he’d seen that tied Jamieson to Kaufmann.

  He handed Abernathy a camera. “Take pictures of the documents inside the folder with this. I am particularly interested in a list of names I believe you will find there. Also, I want copies of any other files relating to Kerberos and Kaufmann’s lab. You will not speak about my request or otherwise give any indication to another person regarding what I have asked you to do. Understood?”

  Abernathy’s eyes held the unfocused look of a dreamer, making Mark’s stomach churn as the man saluted. “Yes, sir!”

  “Very good. Jamieson is out of the building right now, along with his personal guards. Work as fast as you can, then return to me when you have completed
your task.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mark watched the man speed walk down the hall, before returning to his desk. Jamieson had requested that he put together a list of potential clients who might be interested in purchasing the enhanced men to supplement their roster of personal bodyguards or to bulk up their private armies. Mark used his knowledge of the underworld of Russia and Eastern Europe to make a start on the list, but he couldn’t fully focus due to uncharacteristic nerves.

  His unease wasn’t because this was his best chance to find out if Jamieson had authorized Toby’s abduction. Rather, he didn’t want to let Faith down. And at this point, his key priorities included passing on any information that would help the SSU locate and destroy Kaufmann’s lab.

  When a knock came on his door ten minutes later, Mark flinched even though he’d been expecting it. “You’re back faster than I estimated,” he said as he ushered Abernathy inside, then closed the door behind him.

  Abernathy handed over a new file folder containing still warm photocopies of the requested documents. He placed the camera on Mark’s desk. “I used the personal copy machine inside the office,” he said by way of explanation.

  “Thank you.” Mark hadn’t realized that the enhanced spies and assassins retained their capacity for independent thought, but on further reflection, that made sense. Spying and assassination required subtlety and an ability to think quickly on your feet. Which meant this new category of enhanced men posed a greater threat than the overly muscular, violent soldiers Kaufmann turned out. A side effect of the military side of the program resulted in the altered soldiers thinking at a child’s level, unable to independently process and follow through on complex ideas without receiving commands directly from their handlers.