Hearts Under Siege (14 page)

“My hopes are high enough already, Moll. Let’s wait until we read it. Okay?”

She sighed. “Yeah, okay. We need a cover story for your mother,” she reminded him.

“Yeah. I got nothin’. Any ideas?”

“Of course.” She nodded. “There’s a superstore up here. We need supplies.” Her cover story would keep her up all night, but it would serve a dual purpose—provide a reason she and Brady were gone, and do something nice for the Fitzpatricks. Brady stayed in the car while she shopped. She almost argued, because she didn’t want him reading the file without her. She should be there when he saw the truth, whatever it was. He’d need her if the information confirmed Chris’s death. And okay, she was eager to know what the file said, and it wasn’t fair of him to see it first. Sure, Chris was his brother, but he wouldn’t even have the file if Molly hadn’t followed her gut.

She pushed the cart faster down the main aisle, toward the crafts section. But what if her gut was wrong? Well, it couldn’t be
wrong
, the coffin was empty.
Something
was going on. But what if that something was just covering what Chris had been doing? What if it didn’t mean he was alive? She’d worked hard to keep that hope from building, but she’d sensed Brady’s mood getting lighter and lighter after their meeting with Dix, and even while they searched the offices. He was going to be crushed if his hopes weren’t borne out.

And if they were? If Chris
was
alive? That opened up a hundred other possibilities for heartbreak.

She grimaced and grabbed foam board, markers, glue, and a beginner’s scrapbooking kit, then headed for the counter, dragging her thoughts back to Brady and what he was discovering, sitting alone out in her car.

…

Brady ignored the file on the passenger seat. Or tried to. The diffuse light from the parking lot’s metal halide lamps filtered into the car and made the manila folder glow a little. Enough to call to him. He snatched it and shoved it between the bucket seat and the gearshift. He wasn’t looking at it here, in the darkness and out in an open parking lot, when he only had time to skim. They had to get home. He’d probably have to wait until everyone was in bed before he’d have enough privacy to read the file. Plus, it didn’t feel right even to glance inside without Molly.

Molly. Dammit.

When they’d met with Dixson, it was obvious the guy was interested in her. Two weeks ago, Brady would have been glad. She was so solitary. But she had a big heart and deserved someone who loved her as much as she would love him back.

There were a few times in college Brady wondered if she felt that way about him, even a little, but she never really acted like it. No jealousy of his girlfriends or hookups or anything. If she was ever going to display feelings, surely it would have been when he went nuts for Jessica. But all she’d ever been was protective.

Then that night in South America had happened. It was all a blur to him—heat and need and raw pain. She hadn’t turned clingy or suddenly had expectations, or any of the things women usually did after sex. She hadn’t acted like their friendship had changed a bit. And mostly, Brady didn’t feel it had. He was glad she was here with them. With him. His family couldn’t have coped with this tragedy without her, and since he’d been gone so long, he couldn’t have taken over arrangements and stuff nearly as smoothly as she had. So he was grateful.

But gratitude didn’t explain the rage that had roared through him when Dixson had looked at her like she was pastry. It didn’t explain the awareness that seemed to vibrate between them every time they were alone and standing close to each other. Residual body sense…or something else?

When his mother had warned him off her earlier today, he’d thought it would be easy to heed the warning. Friendships shouldn’t be messed with, especially the kind they had. Even though he hadn’t seen her much in the last ten years, their relationship was obviously intact. Though maybe fragile now, because of the sex.

His body heated, a wave of lust rushing through him when he thought of sex with Molly. He closed his eyes and remembered her under him, opening to him, crying out and biting him. Dixson suddenly became part of the image. Dixson fucking Molly, Molly crying
his
name.

Brady’s hands clenched and his jaw popped from grinding his teeth too hard.
No way. Not in this lifetime
.

The car’s back door opened and he jerked alert. Molly tossed a bag and something gigantic and white in the back seat, then climbed in the front.

“What’s it say?” she asked.

Brady blinked at her, struggling to get some control. Her scent filled the car, getting his body’s attention. “Huh?”

She tapped the file with her fingernails. “The file. What’s it say?”

“Oh.” He twisted forward and cranked the ignition, hoping the movement hid his confusion. “Nothing. I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t look.”

Molly pulled her seatbelt on and looked relieved. “Thanks for waiting.”

“No biggie. What’d you get?”

“Stuff for making a tribute board.” As he pulled out of the lot, she elaborated. “When we get home—I mean, to your parents’ house—distract your mother while I run the supplies upstairs. But it’s okay to be obvious about it. I need to get my hands on photo albums. I want her to know what I’m doing—what
we’re
doing, actually, because then you can hole away with me and look at the file while I make the board. For the funeral tomorrow,” she added, when he shot her a “WTF are you talking about?” look. “If she thinks we’re doing this as a surprise, she’ll leave us alone. And we should do it anyway. People will expect it.”

Brady shook his head in awe. “You’re a genius.” And she was. The plan was perfect.

Except for one thing.

He’d be holing up with Molly in her bedroom all night long.

Chapter Nine

Molly escaped upstairs with her supplies, but left the door open so she could hear into the second-floor hall below, where Donna had stopped her son.

“What are you doing with those?” Donna asked.

Brady answered, “I felt like flipping through them. You know.”

After a beat, his mother said, “I know. I’m not sure you should be alone, though.”

“I’m fine, Mom. Running around a lot. I just want…”

Molly could tell by the way he let his voice trail off that he wanted her to fill in the blank.

“Okay, hon.”

She must have hesitated, because Brady said, “What?”

“I’m a little worried about you. You’ve been so focused on Jessica, and everything else.”

Molly pictured Brady quirking his lips in a rueful smile.

“I’m fine, Mom. There’s plenty of time to grieve, too.”

“I know. It’s not that, really. It’s more like…you haven’t yet accepted that he’s dead.”

Uh-oh
. Brady was good at hiding things, but this was his mother.
Nobody
was good at hiding things from their mother.

Brady drew in a noisy enough breath that Molly heard it all the way upstairs. “I probably haven’t,” he cleverly admitted. “Because it would mean admitting all my guilt and stuff. Speaking of which, where’s Dad?
Ow!
”

Donna must have smacked him. Molly smiled.

“He’s out in the shop, of course. How cliché can you get?”

They moved on to mundane things, and Molly retreated to organize her supplies. A few minutes later, Brady appeared in the doorway.

“We good?”

She nodded from her cross-legged position on one of the beds. “You get the photo albums?”

He dropped them on the bed in front of her, bouncing her neatly arranged tools out of place. She scowled at him, but he wasn’t looking. He’d sat on the edge of the other bed, clutching Chris’s file.

“You want help with that?” he asked with obvious reluctance.

Molly pulled the albums closer and flipped the top one open. “No, we’d get lost in ‘Remember this?’ and it’d take all night. I’ll work on the tribute board, you read the file to me. Softly, so your mom doesn’t hear us,” she added, and he grimaced.

“Yeah, that’s all we’d need.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

Brady finally looked at her. “What?”

“Why is that all we’d need? What’s she gonna say?”

He opened his mouth, looked at the albums, and shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. Let’s get to work.” He shifted to lean against the wall, his legs stretched out over the edge of the bed, and flipped open the file folder with exaggerated casualness.

Molly sat unmoving for a few seconds, thought briefly about efficiency and timing, then dropped the three photos she’d selected so far and launched herself across the room to land next to him. “Okay, I changed my mind. I can’t stand it.”

Brady flashed a grin at her, an unguarded, happy expression she hadn’t seen in so many years. It took her breath away, and since he was inches from her, she had to fight the urge to kiss him, a reward for his happiness.

“What about the tribute crap?” he teased her. “You said you’d work on that.”

Molly pinched his bicep, then leaned into his side and looked down at the file. “You’ll help me after we look at this.”

“Okay.” His shoulder slid against hers as he took a preparatory breath. She wrapped her arm around his and threaded their fingers. He grabbed on, holding tight as he slowly turned over the file’s cover.

Attached to the left side was a basic personnel sheet and Chris’s photo. Her heart caught at the steady, open smile on his face. She scanned the page, noting data they could both recite by heart. Just the basics, nothing revelatory.

The top page on the right side was blue and blank. A cover page, to keep passersby from catching a glimpse of anything sensitive. Brady flipped it back and tucked it under. The next page was a mission sheet, according to the boldface label at the top. Boxes listed the agents involved, handlers, suppliers, carriers. A mission goal had its own box, then parameters, locations, logistics and, on the back—upside down so they didn’t have to remove the page or turn the file to read it—details of the mission.

Molly’s pounding heart slowed before she’d read more than the date at the top. January, this year.

“So, they must have different files for each year,” she guessed. Her fingers tingled as Brady loosened his grip slightly. “Odd that it’s in chronological order going forward, instead of in reverse order.”

He shrugged, reading the details of the old mission.

“Do you want to skip ahead?” she asked, running her thumb over the edges of the papers. Her nail caught on something harder at the bottom. “If there’s anything in here that’s going to tell us something, it’ll likely be in the back.”

“Probably. But no, let’s read straight through. Missions sometimes connect, and whatever’s going on could go this far back. We’ll have a fuller picture if we read it all.”

“Okay.” She let go of his hand so he could use both to turn pages. “Let’s do it, then.”

For the better part of two hours, they read. It only took three mission summaries for Molly to suffer a surge of guilt.

“I’m not supposed to be seeing this stuff,” she said. “I mean, neither are you, but at least you’ve been on missions. I’m not supposed to know any of this. Where you guys go, who you deal with, how decisions are made…”

Brady turned his head. “You can be trusted with anything you see or hear. Don’t worry about it.”

His words warmed her, but didn’t ease her discomfort. “The directors probably wouldn’t feel that way.”

“They won’t know.”

She knew that wasn’t true. Even if by some miracle their break-in at HQ wasn’t discovered, if they acted on any information they found, SIEGE would know. And if they found nothing worth acting on, unless they somehow returned the file without anyone ever knowing it was gone, the directors would know she’d seen it. They’d never believe Brady didn’t share it with her.

But feeling bad about it was pointless. What was she going to do, stop? Not let Brady tell her what he found out? Hardly.

So she sucked it up, and they read on. Most of the summaries followed a predictable pattern that, she came to realize, meant the mission had gone like clockwork. Information gathering was pretty boring, at least when reduced to its basic details. She couldn’t tell what kind of info was gathered in each mission. Some of the wording no doubt indicated what Chris was collecting, but she wasn’t knowledgeable enough to decipher it. Brady probably was, but if he decided something was important, he’d tell her.

She fought a yawn and read on.

…

After two hours and three months of mission summaries, Brady needed a break. He went downstairs to get them drinks. Molly, thank God, stayed upstairs to work on the photos. He needed a break from her as much as from the files. Being so near her for so long was driving him nuts.

His socks whispered against the floorboards in the second-floor hallway. He heard murmuring behind his parents’ door and checked his watch. Ten-thirty. Not that late, but tomorrow was going to be a hellacious day. The stairs creaked as he descended, the ground floor holding an empty stillness. There was a small light on in the living room, plus the one over the stove in the kitchen, but when he peered down the back hall, he couldn’t see light through the crack under Jessica’s door.

Good. He wasn’t up to supporting her right now. He decided to make Molly a cup of tea and swished the kettle to check the water level before turning on the burner. She’d asked for juice, but heating the water gave him a few minutes alone.

God
. He leaned against the island and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his burning eyes. His head swam, but not from the tedium of report-speak or the lack of helpful information in those reports. It swam from soaking in the heat of Molly’s body, pressed against his side from shoulder to ankle, her breast brushing his forearm every time she shifted to see the file at a different angle.

He’d tried holding it closer to her, having her hold it, and reading to her, but she was still always too close. Without being close enough. Her natural scent had strengthened as their bodies warmed so that he couldn’t inhale a clean breath—and didn’t really want to. Over the last two hours, she’d licked her lips six times, and each time it called his attention to her mouth. He had never paid any attention to it before. Even in South America, he’d been in such a haze of pain and need, he barely remembered kissing her.

Now, just the word was enough to make him harden. Not a full-blown woody, but more than passing interest.

He didn’t know what it meant. Proximity? Basic, unfulfilled need? Confusion because of everything that was happening? He couldn’t figure it out until this stuff with Chris was settled. And that meant ignoring whatever pull Molly had on him.

The water in the kettle made that surging noise as it heated, pulling his thoughts back out of the attic. He folded his arms and focused. Chris’s missions had come across straightforward enough. There was a short string of them in early spring that was connected, but after that, he’d been all over the place. And already in May, he’d increased the number and length of the missions he took on. A week, instead of two or three days.

Brady’s mother had always updated him on family stuff, too, and from what he could remember, Chris traveled a lot before that, but was never gone very long. So what had changed? The baby? No, that was too early. But maybe if they were planning for one… It still made no sense. He’d think Chris would try to stay home more. It wasn’t like they got paid by the mission. Okay, some generated extra hazard pay, but not the ones Chris had loaded up on last spring.

The kettle began to whistle, and Brady grabbed it before it screamed, pouring water over some icky-smelling herbal teabag.

“Who’s that for?”

He jumped. Water splashed onto his left hand and he cursed, shaking it off. He glared at his father. “Molly. She’s making this”—he waved his hand up and down—“thing. Photo thing. Tribute. For tomorrow.” He finished pouring, set the kettle down, and grabbed a paper towel to wipe up the mess. The stinging in his hand, he ignored.

“That’s nice of you, to bring her tea. She likes it with honey.” His father leaned casually on the doorjamb, hands in his pockets.

Brady glowered. “I know how she likes it.” He snatched the honey pot from its spot on the counter. “You have something to say.” It wasn’t a question. He recognized his father’s body language.

Amusement flashed over his father’s face. “Right to the point? No small talk, random conversation, crap like that?”

“Yeah, ’cause we’re so good at that,” Brady muttered. “You always have something to say.”

His father nodded, then pushed away from the wall. “Come sit for a minute.” But he didn’t walk to the breakfast nook. As Brady did as he’d been told, Rick got two mugs out of the cupboard, inserted coffee pods in the fancy coffee maker, and hit the button to brew. He didn’t say anything until the coffee was done.

When he set one mug in front of Brady and sat across from him, Brady said—sullenly, but he didn’t care—“I was going to have soda.”

His father ignored that. “How are you holding up, son?”

Brady shrugged and wrapped a hand around the hot mug. “How do you expect?”

“I expect you’re probably struggling with a lot of stuff.”

He grimaced impatiently. “I had this conversation with Mom already.”

“I doubt it.” His father drank, implacable. “Your brother died before you could reconcile with him, his widow is nearly incapacitated and playing on all your old feelings, the family is relying on you to take care of everything, you’re falling for your best friend, and you don’t know where Chris’s body is.”

As his father talked, Brady endured a needle to the heart, a pang of old longing, a rush of resentment that had him opening his mouth to protest, then a bigger rush of shock that left it hanging open. He didn’t know what the hell to say first. Not even first—at all. His mind had gone horrifyingly blank. This was not how he’d been trained to deal with surprises.

“I’m not falling in love,” came out of his mouth. He snapped it shut before it could say anything else stupid.

His father chuckled and drank more coffee. Brady mirrored him, because what the heck else was he going to do?
Stay silent. Wait for the other person to fill it. Don’t respond to accusations—that gives them credence.
He recited the frigging training manual to himself, but his father just sat there, drinking coffee, waiting.

Oddly, Brady calmed instead of panicked. He sat back and watched his father watching him. As he did, an awful suspicion began worming its way into his head.

Rick chuckled again. “You’re good. Even with that slip. So you want to talk about Molly first, huh?”

“I don’t want to talk about anything, but you seem to. So what’s on your mind, Dad?” He clenched his jaw and told himself to shut the hell up.

“Whatever’s on yours. Something’s got you all tangled up.” His father’s dark eyes held warm sympathy.

Brady swallowed and shook his head a little. His mother thought he’d done enough damage with Molly, shutting her out along with everyone else. He knew that would be well within her capacity to forgive—if he hadn’t used her so heinously when he first heard about Chris. Yeah, she’d blown it off, and he had no doubt she’d understood, but the more time he spent with her, and the more he thought about what they’d done and why, the more he regretted it. What if they’d done it without the haze of grief and agony? What if he’d made love to her, instead of trying to lose himself in her?

He wasn’t so sure he deserved forgiveness.

“So where’ve you been hiding yourself all week?” he asked his father, who gave a knowing look at his deliberate change of subject.

“I’ve been around. You know your mother. The more of us feeding her flitting, the worse it gets. I just stay out of her way.”

“Mom doesn’t flit.”

His father snorted. “You haven’t been paying attention. Then again, you haven’t been here to notice much the last couple of days.”