Extreme Measures

25

Zane grunted as the bullet pierced his leg, and Eve’s heart shot into her throat as she watched.

The force of the shot knocked off his center of balance, and Carter couldn’t hold on. Zane’s body hit the deck with a thunk. Trying not to focus too much on what she’d just done, Eve shifted her gun back up. Before Carter could dive for the boat, she fired once, twice, three times.

Carter’s gun went flying. His body sailed backward. A splash echoed when he hit the Potomac. Sprinting forward, Eve looked over the end of the dock into the dark river, but she couldn’t see Carter’s body in the fast-moving water.

“Holy hell, you shot me.”

She rushed back to Zane, dropped to her knees, and rolled him to his back. His pants were ripped at the right thigh, and blood was already seeping from the wound. Heart in her throat, she set her gun down on the dock and ripped the denim wider so she could see the damage.

Air filled her lungs. “I grazed you. The bullet didn’t go in.” She whipped off her jacket and pressed it against the blood. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

He cringed and pressed his palms back against the dock so he was partially sitting up. “You fucking shot me.”

Relief warmed the icy-cold space that had formed in her chest when she’d seen Carter holding a gun to Zane’s head. “You told me to.”

“I know, but . . .” He frowned up at her. “You don’t have to look like you enjoyed it so damn much.”

Eve couldn’t help it. She smiled. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t mad at her. He was here. He was . . . hers.

“Where’s Carter?” he asked.

“In the water somewhere. I can’t see him. I hit him three times in the chest. No way he survived that.”

“Dumb dead bastard,” Zane muttered. “It didn’t have to end like that.”

Eve didn’t care about Carter anymore. She only cared about the man currently beside her.

Holding the jacket against his wound, she caught his face with her other hand and kissed him. Hard.

“Don’t ever make me do that again.” Breathing fast, she rested her forehead against his. Her heart felt like it was about to jump out of her throat. In the distance, the faint sound of sirens echoed on the breeze.

“Don’t run from me ever again,” Zane said quietly.

Easing back, she stared into his dark eyes, knowing she had so much to make up for. “I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. I knew as soon as I got here that I needed your help, but by then it was too late. I just . . . I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“And look how well that worked out.”

He was making jokes. God . . . She closed her eyes and just tried to breath. “I wasn’t running from you, Zane. Not like before. So much of what I’ve done, I did to try to keep you safe, and it turns out that all along you were the target. Not me. I was a stupid idiot.” Tearing her eyes open, she looked deep into his. “I’ve done things on my own so long, I . . . I don’t know how to rely on someone else.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to learn. I’m not going through this again, Eve. No more running.”

“No more running,” she whispered. Her heart filled, and tears burned the backs of her eyes. “You followed me.”

“Like a pathetic puppy dog.” He frowned. “I’ll never hear the end of it from Miller and Ryder.”

She smiled, leaned in, and rested her forehead against his once more, her heart growing with every second. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

“Sexual favors,” he mumbled when she kissed him again. “Lots of them.” Voices echoed from the direction of the house, and footsteps sounded on the dock. “I’ll make you a list.”

She laughed, for the first time in months—years, really—feeling nothing but happiness. “I have no doubt you will.”

Zane leaned back against the bench outside CIA headquarters in Langley and crossed his arms over his chest in the midafternoon sunlight.

People passed along the pathway as they entered and exited the building, and above, the leaves of a giant maple swayed in the breeze.

He shifted, feeling the scratch of the bandage on his leg beneath his jeans. Luckily, Eve had shot him in his bad leg, and a lot of the tissue there was already numb. He had to hand it to her. She could have done big-time damage to his already-fucked-up leg, but she’d made sure he wasn’t seriously injured.

A slow smile spread across his lips. The throb in his leg would always be there, but he hadn’t needed pain meds in days. And, he realized, a lot of that need had been a crutch, trying to deal with the loss of losing her, not true physical pain. Since she’d come back into his life, he’d been stronger, more agile, and though he still wanted to shake her sometimes, happier than he’d ever been.

His smile faded as he looked toward the entrance again, wondering when she was coming out. Wondering what the hell she was going to say when she did. They’d both been questioned separately, but the Agency was doing an in-depth debriefing with Eve, and he hadn’t seen her since federal agents had shown up at Roberts’s house. A tiny place inside couldn’t help but worry what two days’ separation had done to her.

The double doors at the building’s entrance slid open, and a woman in a dark suit and crisp white dress shirt stepped out into the sun, her dark hair blowing gently in the wind. She slipped on sunglasses and looked around, and when her eyes found him, she froze.

Moment of truth. His pulse kicked up. Things said or done in a moment of extreme duress couldn’t exactly be counted on. He might have teased her about making things up to him with sexual favors, but whether or not she ever paid up was another matter entirely.

She jogged down the front steps and headed his direction, stopping a foot from his bench. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Play it cool. “A little bird told me you’d be done today.”

“Roberts.”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t see her eyes behind those dark shades. Couldn’t read her expression. Pushing to his feet, he said, “How did it go?”

“Okay. Natalie’s finally talking, filling in some needed gaps about how she and Carter hooked up and how they brought Cross into their plans. Cross is really the hero in all of this. If he hadn’t turned on them, both of us might not be here now.”

Zane nodded. “You give them the file?”

“Yes. But you won’t hear any of this on the nightly news. It’s being covered up. Humbolt’s discovery, Carter’s involvement . . . The Agency’s burying it in the name of national security.”

Zane figured as much. He slid his hands in the front pockets of his jeans.

“The bombing in Seattle’s being blamed on a Chechen terrorist group. By tonight it’ll be all over the media. Along with the headlines: WE CAUGHT ’EM.”

“What about Carter?”

Eve crossed her arms over her chest. “They found a bulletproof vest a mile downstream with three slugs in the front chest plate. But no sign of Carter.”

That didn’t exactly put Zane at ease. But James Dietrick was no longer his worry. “They’ll find him, Eve. It’s what the Agency does best.” He tipped his head and narrowed his gaze. “And what about you?”

“Me?” Eve exhaled a long breath and uncrossed her arms. “They’re moving me out of CI. Giving me my station of choice. Anywhere in the world.”

His heart felt like it stopped, right in the center of his chest. For a CIA operative, that was the ultimate dream. To pick where you wanted to work. He couldn’t remember the number of times in Beirut he’d heard Eve say she wanted to be stationed in Paris or Madrid or Rome.

He forced his lips into a smile when inside he wanted to scream. No way could they make this work with her halfway around the world for months—years—at a time. She’d told him once she never planned to marry because the life of a CIA officer caused too much strain on a relationship with time and distance separations, and he knew from their week together that her thinking on that point hadn’t changed. And why he hadn’t remembered that until right now, he’d never know.

“Congratulations.” His voice was rough. Strained. Screw it. If she didn’t want him, he wasn’t gonna beg. He cleared his throat. “I know that’s what you wanted.”

“I never said that’s what I wanted. I said it’s what they offered.”

He wasn’t sure what she was saying.

A wry smile turned one side of her lips, and she held out her hand to shake his. “The name’s Evelyn Lenore Wolfe. Retired. I think this time we should start from the beginning, without all the aliases.”

For a second, time stood still. And every cell in Zane’s body vibrated with disbelief. Followed by a tiny voice in the back of his head whispering, No way. You have to have heard her wrong. “Wh-what?”

Her smile widened, and with her free hand, she tugged off her glasses. “No ‘what’ about it. I turned them down.”

Relief was the sweetest emotion, whipping through Zane’s body with the force of a hurricane. He snagged her hand, closed the distance between them, and tugged her in tight. His arms closed around Eve’s waist, drawing her trim, toned body flush against his. “Lenore, huh? That one I didn’t see coming.”

Glasses dangling from her fingers, she pressed her hands against his T-shirt and smiled. “That’s what you caught from my whole info dump there?”

“I’m trained to pick out the most important pieces of information.” His expression sobered as he looked down at her amber eyes. “I didn’t want you to quit, beautiful. Not for me.”

“I didn’t quit for you. Geez, it’s like you think the world revolves around you or something.”

He tightened his arms around her. “It does. Where you’re concerned.”

Her smile faded, and she looked down at her hands. “I did it for me. I’m ready for a change. Ready to do something that matters. I don’t want to be responsible for innocent children dying anymore.”

“Evie.” He let go of her waist with one arm and tipped her face up to his with a finger under her jaw. “That kid in Seattle lived. The news updated this morning. No fatalities.”

“Oh, thank God.” Her eyes slid closed.

He wrapped his arm around her waist again, loving the feel of her next to him. Loving that this was the start of something incredible, not the end like he’d feared. “You really quit?”

She laughed and rested her cheek against his chest. “Don’t sound so shocked.”

“I can’t help it. You never do anything I expect.”

“Ha. In a few weeks you’ll be wishing I’d stayed. I have no job now, and I haven’t been without a job since I was fifteen. I’ll probably drive you nuts until I find something else.”

“Baby, you can drive me nuts anytime, anywhere.” And suddenly, he could think of a hundred different ways.

“We’re going to have to start over on a lot of things, you know. I mean, I don’t even know where you live.”

“In Colorado. I’ve got a house there.”

She looked up in surprise. “You do?”

He smiled. “Remember all that money I inherited? I had to do something with it. It’s a great place in the mountains outside Aspen, but it could definitely use a woman’s touch.”

Unease flashed in her eyes, but it quickly faded and was followed by a slow, warm smile. “I think I might be able to help you out there. As long as you do the cooking.”

“Deal.”

Sighing, she sank into him, and he smiled into her hair, holding her close, treasuring every single second. All those long, lonely nights after she’d left him, he’d never once thought it could possibly end like this. But it wasn’t the end. It was the beginning. And he vowed here and now not to screw up their second chance.

“You know,” he said after several seconds, “if you’re serious about a job, I might be able to help you out there.”

Her head lifted, and she eased back to look into his eyes. “What kind of job?”

He shrugged. “I know this security company that’s always looking for the best of the best.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you and Ryder were on the outs.”

“Nah. Ryder loves me too much.”

She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m glad someone does, because I hate you. I really do. I always have.”

“No, you don’t.” He smiled as he leaned down and brushed his lips across hers. “You love me.”

She sighed against his mouth and tightened her arms around his neck. “I’m pretty sure that love will be the death of me.”

“No way. Those sexual favors you owe me, though? Yeah, those might be.”

She barked a laugh and rose up on her toes to kiss him. “Then you better hold on, Archer. Because I’m unpredictable in a variety of ways.”

His lips curled against hers. “I can’t wait to see what you do next.”