Rules of Betrayal

58

They stood face-to-face in the dark. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Jonathan needed the time to take her in. He noticed the hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail, the windburned cheeks, the chapped lips. There was a scar on her jaw that hadn’t been there before-a laceration that had required stitches. She wore a loose-fitting black blouse and jeans, and he knew they were not her clothes. He met her eyes, and the shock of seeing her hit him like a gale-force wind. Yet there was no surge of lost love, no overwhelming desire to take her in his arms. Some time ago he had forbidden himself to consider her his wife. He loved her, no question, maybe something deeper than that. Even now, her outlaw beauty thrilled him. With no distance separating them, the sound of her breathing slow and shallow, the warm smell of sandalwood rising from her skin, he was as overwhelmed by the animal force of her personality as he had been the day he met her.

“What in God’s name are you doing here?” asked Emma, her whisper strangled with rage.

“I should ask you the same question,” said Jonathan.

Emma tossed the flash drive onto the desk. “So Connor finally got to you. He must be very proud of himself. What did he tell you?”

“That you helped Balfour bring the cruise missile’s warhead down from the mountain. That was enough.”

“That must have surprised him.”

“Why, Emma?”

“You mean Frank forgot to tell you? He betrayed me, Jonathan. He wanted to have me killed.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Then what do you know?”

“I know that you’re helping a half-crazy arms dealer deliver a nuclear warhead into the hands of a very rational, very capable terrorist who will not hesitate to use it against the United States.”

“Then you really don’t know a damn thing at all.”

“I know that Prince Rashid tortured you.”

“Is that how Frank convinced you? ‘Save your poor wife’?”

Jonathan’s hand touched hers. “Are you all right?”

“I’m alive. Only a few new scars. Practically beauty marks in our trade, darling. Now, why don’t you mind your own business?”

“You are my business.”

“I was never your business,” she flared. “It was the opposite way around. Get that through your head once and for all.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you want,” she said, as if suddenly too tired to convince him otherwise. She shifted her weight, and her expression changed. On a dime she changed from beleaguered to ice-blooded operative. “I am curious as to how he got you inside Balfour’s armed camp.”

“The Pakistani government wants Balfour out. He hired a Swiss plastic surgeon to alter his features so he can disappear after he sells the warhead.”

“And Connor swapped you in for him?”

“Something like that.”

“So now you know what it’s like to be someone else. How does it feel?”

“I don’t like it much.”

“Neither did I.” Emma dug her chin into her throat and adopted Connor’s sincere baritone. “Buck up and take one for the team, Dr. Ransom.”

“Stop it.” Jonathan grabbed Emma by the shoulders. “Why are you still here?”

“It was part of our deal. He saved my life. In return I helped him bring down the warhead, and now I’m teaching him how to live under the radar. I’ve been doing that for almost ten years. Who better?”

“Balfour’s handing over the bomb tomorrow. We can’t let that happen. Where is the exchange taking place?”

Emma smiled coldly, eyeing him from across their personal no-man’s-land. “You’re out of your depth, Jonathan.”

“You didn’t leave me much choice.”

“You could have said no.”

“That wasn’t a possibility.”

Emma stepped out of his grasp. “Go back to your room. Go to sleep. And when you wake up tomorrow, you’d better have a damned good reason for leaving. In fact, I’ll give you one. You don’t do well under gunfire. Your nerves are shot. All this excitement tonight got to you.”

“I can’t do that, Em.”

“You’re nothing to Connor. He knows you’ll never make it out alive. Do you really think Balfour’s going to let you walk away from here after you’ve altered his appearance? You-a Westerner? The color of your skin marks you as a permanent liability. You still have a chance if you go now.”

“There’s a nuclear warhead in that building right there. I’m not going anywhere until I get that information to Frank Connor. Where is Hangar 18? What does EPA stand for?”

Emma didn’t answer.

“We can do this together,” he said. “We can make it right.”

“I’m not on your team, Jonathan.”

At that moment he caught a look in her eye that frightened him. It was a fanatic’s regard, a militant anger that had never been there in the past. Once she’d been his lover, his wife, his confidante, and his closest friend. In the space of an instant, he realized he no longer knew her. She was a stranger, and if he wanted to live, he had to consider her the enemy.

“I won’t let you help him, Emma.”

Her eyes dropped to the knife in his hand. “Be careful,” she said. “You could hurt someone with that.”

“Where is the exchange taking place?”

Quick as a cobra, Emma locked her iron grip around his hand and raised the knife to her throat. “Did they teach you where to insert the blade so I won’t be able to scream? It’s right here. Just below the collarbone.” Jonathan tried to pull the knife away, but she was too strong. “One downward thrust,” she continued. “The blade pierces the heart. Do it quickly enough and there’s no time to react.” She dropped her hand and raised her jaw, leaving herself open and vulnerable. “There,” she said.

Jonathan yanked the knife away. In the dim light, her eyes shone like blown glass. He could smell her hair, see the beads of perspiration on her cheek. She raised her face to his and kissed him, her lips lingering on his. “Leave or I’ll tell Balfour who you really are.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Try me.”

“And if I tell him you’re my wife?”

Emma pushed her body against his. “You don’t have the balls.”

Jonathan stepped back, regarding her with horror. “What happened to you?”

Their eyes locked, and something in Emma softened. Her shoulders dropped, and she sighed. “I’m-”

The words were cut off by Balfour shouting from the motor court. “How could it be only one person?” he demanded as doors opened and slammed and boots pounded the bricks. “And we couldn’t even catch him! I should have all of you shot at dawn! No blindfolds. No last cigarettes. You’re all worthless! How are my guests?”

Emma glanced out the window. “He’s coming inside. Go back to your room. Do as I told you. It’s your only chance.”

Jonathan checked the motor court and saw that it was empty. He turned back to Emma. “You’re what?” he asked.

But that Emma had disappeared at the first sign of danger. Any trace of vulnerability had vanished as if it had never been. “Nothing,” she said. “You’d better be gone tomorrow or I’ll keep my promise. Do you understand?”

Jonathan threw a leg over the windowsill and found a foothold. Carefully he climbed down the wall.

It was only when he was back in his room and the window was closed and he was feverishly writing down all the information he’d gathered that he remembered he had left Connor’s flash drive on Balfour’s desk.