Hearts Under Siege (19 page)

“Moll—”

“I would have done
anything
,” she cut him off with a whisper, “to take that pain from you. But what she did to you—it didn’t just hurt you. It didn’t just damage your relationship with your family.”

Brady gazed at her, regret saturating his eyes. “I knew I’d hurt you. That pulling away from everyone, sealing myself off, was unfair to you. I just didn’t—”

“Think I cared that much?” Her eyes burned, but the pain went too deep for tears. “It was more than a sister losing her brother, or a woman losing her best friend,” she said, hurt crushing her voice to soft dust. “I lost even the hope of you. I knew Jessica would never, ever, release her hold on you.”

“But she has,” he told her, his tone solid with certainty. His hand lifted, palm up. An invitation. “Molly, I don’t love Jessica.”

Truth rang in his words. He believed them, Molly could tell. But that didn’t mean he loved
her
, and she wasn’t stupid enough to let him in now, so soon after his apparent epiphany. Jessica was still needy and would still turn to Brady for help. He’d never be able to deny her. She was carrying his fatherless nephew, for cripes sake. And she might not even know about Shae. How much damage would that revelation do?

Molly’s one hope, so tiny and fragile she could barely acknowledge it, was that Christopher was still alive and could return to his wife. That could finally, fully free Brady.

Maybe.

“That’s good,” she told him. “But it’s not enough.”

…

Brady let Molly escape into the bathroom this time. He had to. She’d knocked him completely off balance, revealing a vulnerability he’d never seen in her before. He couldn’t risk making the wrong move and blowing his chances with her forever.

Because for the last few days, he hadn’t quite been able to label his growing feelings for Molly. He’d questioned their origin, their reliability, even what they actually were. He’d wanted to explore them, see what happened when he tried to name them, share them with her. But every time she’d blocked his clumsy attempts…and he’d been kind of glad. It was safer, easier, that way.

Yet those emotions wouldn’t relinquish their hold. He kept coming back to poke and prod at them like a sore tooth.

But as soon as she’d implied that his feelings weren’t real, that they weren’t enough for her, they’d exploded over him in a rage of
how-dare-you?
And he suddenly
knew
what they were.

The shower came on, flashing him back to that other hotel room, the one where Molly had given herself to him because he needed her. He realized now she never would have done that if she hadn’t loved him. The depth of that love had been apparent in her outburst just now.

He was the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. And the stupidest. The question was, what was he going to do about it?

The computer beeped its completion before she came out of the bathroom. He deactivated the signal disruptor, accessed the hotel’s wi-fi, engaged basic encryption, and started downloading the updates to the software he’d bought. With nothing better to do, he lay down on the bed, hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling, wondering how best to approach Molly.

She was rational to a fault, so he could try appealing to her that way. Lay out the facts. Problem was, they weren’t all facts. And women tended to get pissed off when men tried to factualize emotions.

Or he could tell her what he’d just figured out. But what would stop her from saying the same things as before?

She didn’t believe he felt what he felt. And she didn’t trust that Jessica wouldn’t enthrall him again. And who could blame her? Twelve years of evidence was tough to argue against. And yet, he knew to the depth of his soul that it was true. Jessica was firmly in the past, his feelings for her completely gone.

Molly was his future. He wanted her, and only her.

But he’d never convince her of that with words.

So he’d just have to show her.

…

Molly took as much time in the bathroom as she possibly could. She wanted Brady to be caught up in the computer, his focus on his brother and off of her by the time she emerged. She also needed to work through her own tide of emotion before facing him again.

Her goal had been to stay in the shower until it went cold, hoping that would stem the urge to run out into the bedroom and throw herself on Brady. Her body hummed, ignoring her mind and egging on her heart. If the need had been mostly physical, she could have taken care of things herself, so she could concentrate on Christopher.

But the physical was only a side effect.

The hard part was believing that Brady wanted her, loved her, and was truly over Jessica. There was no way he could honestly assess how he felt about
anything
while they were mired in this hellish mystery. Let them get through this, get back to their normal lives, and see how he felt then.

Molly’s feelings wouldn’t change. They hadn’t in two decades. But if Brady’s did—again—she’d handle it. Again.

The water never went cold. Lost in her thoughts, she’d also lost track of time. So once she was dressed, hair mostly dry, steam fully dissipated, she braced herself and opened the door to the bedroom. She was relieved to find Brady sitting at the desk, staring intently at the laptop screen. His fingers pounded away on the keyboard.

“Did you get to it yet?” she asked, hanging her towel over the back of a chair.

“Just about.” His eyes tracked back and forth, rapidly reading. He frowned and hit a few more keys. She started to sit on the end of one of the beds, keeping her distance, but then Brady clicked to open a file and she couldn’t help herself. She surged forward and leaned over his shoulder to read.

The file opened into a pop-up window, which held a few lines of text. An address in Washington, DC, and the words “Dix ten twelve full doc asap.”

“Dix?” Molly exclaimed. “Was he helping Christopher?” A slow burn ignited. Dix had acted as if he didn’t know anything, that he’d taken risks to get the information he’d provided them. He’d been suspended… “Oh.”

“What?” Brady half turned toward her, his attention still on the file.

“Dix didn’t get suspended because of me. Or not because of
me
.” She waved a hand, dismissing his romantic interest with a pang of regret. “He was on to something.” And now she and Brady were on to it. “We’ve got to get out of town.” She straightened and looked at the door, adrenaline flowing, half expecting someone to come through it. She’d forgotten the signal suppressor was off. Someone could be listening to them right now, and that was the perfect line to burst in on.

Yeah, in the
movies
. When nothing happened, she laughed at herself and sank onto the bed, watching Brady shut down and pack up the computer. “Did you recognize the address?” she asked him.

“Yeah.” He clicked on his little black device and leaned against the desk facing her, arms folded. “It’s a drop Chris and I have used before.” His mouth quirked up on one side. “We probably both thought we were so clever, pretending to play at spies when we really are spies, but thinking the other didn’t know it.” The wry amusement faded, his face sinking into the familiar lines of grief he’d worn all week. He rubbed his hands over it, then grabbed his stuff and stood. “So, let’s go to DC.”

…

Brady stood under a tree in a quiet DC neighborhood, pretending to smoke a cigarette while he watched the building across the street. The tree shaded what was supposed to be a grassy square where residents of the block could walk their dogs or sit on a bench on nice days. The barren patch of dirt he stood on and the scattered cigarette butts attested to a different use.

Molly was driving around in a car they rented at the airport. She would pick him up again when he sent a text he’d already typed into his phone. It was still dark, early enough in the morning that traffic was light, both vehicle and pedestrian. No one had come out of the building since Brady started his cigarette ten minutes ago, and only two people had walked by, neither even glancing in his direction. There was no reason not to go in.

Except avoidance. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out what Chris had been after. Already, his death had brought so many revelations. Not only that his brother was also SIEGE, but that Molly was, and even his father. Who seemed to be retired now but had probably been high up enough in the organization before that to get all his kids recruited.

What if the information Chris had obtained revealed something bad about their father?

“You’re being ridiculous,” Brady scolded himself. Dropping the cigarette on the dirt and mashing it with his toe, he checked the street and sidewalks again, then headed across the four lanes to the small apartment building. His shoes scraped against the worn concrete steps. The hunter-green painted door was locked. He dug out his key and winced at the creak when he went in. But it was okay. No one was inside.

He stood still in the small foyer, listening. The frayed carpet runner over warped wooden boards only muffled sound slightly. No one moved on the stairs or overhead, and Brady couldn’t detect movement in the apartments on either side of him. This was the kind of old building that telegraphed every step with creaks and groans and thumps. It was why they’d chosen it.

After a ten-count, he walked as quickly and silently as he could to the far end of the bank of metal mailboxes on the wall. The last mailbox had no name or number on it and appeared to be rusted shut. Unusable. Brady slipped another key into the tiny lock, turned it, and pulled on the door. He breathed a sigh of relief when it glided open on oiled hinges. It had been a long time since they’d used this drop. They’d come up with the idea after their mother had guessed their Christmas present for the fifth year in a row. It became a game—her guessing, them trying to come up with something she’d never guess, then keeping it secret. They’d resorted to nonelectronic means, suspecting her dim-witted approach to computers was put on. It had worked two years ago, and the new car they’d splurged on shocked her so much she reportedly burst into tears. After that, he and Chris had stopped using the drop. But they hadn’t let it go.

Another glance around, another pause to listen, because this was the crucial part. If someone discovered him looking in the mailbox, he’d say he was apartment-sitting for his brother. But if they discovered him working at something
under
the mailbox…

He pried up the metal floor of the narrow rectangle and leaned to look beneath. Something white gleamed deep in the cavity. He reached in. It was a smooth packet, like a large envelope around a half inch–thick sheaf of papers. Feeling a little paranoid, he probed around the envelope and touched the bottom of the cavity, making sure nothing was wired or rigged. But it was empty except for the packet. He pulled it out. On the outside, his name was written in black Sharpie. Chris’s scrawl was obvious. Unexpected tears burned Brady’s eyes for a few seconds before he could blink them back. He quickly secured the mailbox’s loose floor and locked the rusty door.

Down the hall, blocked from his view until now by the open mailbox door, stood a motionless figure. He was a silhouette in the dim light, legs braced wide, hands in jeans pockets, a big coat and stocking cap blurring the body and head shape. But still—

Brady blinked, hard, his free hand reaching for a weapon he wasn’t carrying, much slower than his trained reflexes should have had him reaching. Half his brain reeled from the truth of who stood there. The other half rebelled, claiming impossibility. Then the figure spoke.

“Took you long enough.”

Chapter Thirteen

Molly couldn’t believe Brady really thought she would circle the block endlessly in the rental car and let him go to meet Dix at the drop site by himself. Sure she’d agreed to his plan, but hadn’t bothered taking the time to advise him of hers. She did drive around for a few minutes while she called Dix and ordered him to the park two blocks up the street. Once she spotted him approaching, she double-parked—you never got a parking space at this time of night in a residential section—and hit the flashers. On her last pass, Brady had still been “smoking” while he cased the building he needed to enter. She figured she had five to ten minutes before he texted her. Brady had wanted to retrieve Chris’s package before they talked to Dix, but Molly felt a weight of urgency on the back of her neck and thought they should do both at the same time. Brady would never have agreed to let her meet Dix alone, but instinct told her he was not their enemy.

Dix stood behind a bench, hands in his pockets. The streetlight hit him square in the face. No skulking for her handler. She let two minutes go by before getting out, but nothing moved for a block in any direction, except one car that passed, full of club-hoppers judging by their revelry and shiny clothes.

Dix didn’t move when Molly opened her car door. He must have known it was her sitting there. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out. She hurried over, her attention still split between their surroundings and Dix.

“What did you find?” he asked as soon as she got close enough, his low voice cutting through the cool, clear air.

“We found out that you haven’t been truthful with us.” She tried not to sound accusing, but stopped well out of his reach. “You didn’t simply discover what Chris was after.”

“What makes you think that?” His tone was wary but resigned. He didn’t move out of the light into shadow, though, so Molly assumed he wasn’t trying to hide. Either that, or he was a very good agent. One or the other.

“Chris sent Brady a message with your name on it.” It was all she was going to give him.

It was enough. Dix’s shoulders fell an inch. “What did it say?”

“I don’t know.” She held her tongue about the fact that Brady was retrieving it as they spoke. “What do you expect it to say?”

Dix sighed and rubbed a hand over his forehead. A couple of days ago, she’d have said he was a happy-go-lucky guy who was exactly as he portrayed himself. But now she saw the toll this had taken. Whatever “this” was. He’d been carrying it for a while, and that meant he had a better poker face than he’d allowed her to think.

“I sent Christopher on that mission,” he confessed softly.

As shocks went, that one was lighter than just about every other one she’d had recently. “Why? And how?” Handlers didn’t assign missions, they only helped make sure they were completed successfully. They were communicators, not decision-makers.

“The how was easy. Handlers have access to the mission software. No one really had to know he was on a mission, especially when an approved request in his personnel file said he was taking the week off.”

Dix had to have been Chris’s handler to fake a vacation approval, but Molly asked the question anyway.

Dix nodded. “He was doing me a favor, Molly, and I got him killed.” Torment roughened his voice. “I need to get the information he found. I have to know—”

“It was worth it?” Molly finished for him. She flexed and curled her hands, shifting her balance onto the balls of her feet. The answers were almost within reach—at least some of them were. But when Chris had gotten close to answers, he was killed.

The sense of a burning gaze on her made her suppress a shudder. She twisted to look behind her for Brady. Stupid move, because anyone watching would read her movements and know she was expecting someone else. But the need to see what Chris had sent him overwhelmed her caution.

The night remained silent and unmoving. She didn’t even know which building Brady had gone into. She turned back to Dix.

“What was Chris investigating?” she asked again. “Someone dirty on the inside?” Dix nodded but didn’t speak.

“Who?” she demanded, but he didn’t answer. Didn’t even move.

That wasn’t going to cut it. “Someone high up, I assume.”

He nodded again, his eyes intent on hers. The dread in them reminded her of how she’d felt facing Chris’s casket. “Someone…close to you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “That’s why I asked Chris to check into it. I don’t know if I’d have been brave enough—” He swallowed. “I don’t know if I’d have had the courage to look into the discrepancies if I didn’t think my father was the one responsible.”

…

Brady turned and leaned against the bank of mailboxes, a casual pose totally belied by the slamming of his heart against his ribcage.

“What took me long enough? Coming here?” He pretended the taunt had come from a stranger, one of the goon types he frequently dealt with on the information trail. When the figure dipped his head—Brady assumed it was a nod—he shot back, “I was a little preoccupied. I don’t know if you heard, but my brother is dead. Don’t say it.” He threw up a hand, not wanting to hear the “greatly exaggerated” line. “I went to your fucking
funeral
today. I don’t know whether to hug you or break your jaw.”

Chris pulled his hands from his pockets and held them out at his sides. “It’s a no-brainer, bro.”

Brady strode down the hall, his right fist clenched, the edge of the envelope digging into his left. A definite no-brainer. But instead of hauling off and slamming his fist into his brother’s face, he halted a foot away. “Do you have
any
idea what you’ve done to Mom? To
Jessica?
”

“God, yes.” The wry amusement disappeared, replaced by anguish that sounded familiar. “It was the last thing I wanted to do to any of you. Almost the last thing. The last thing was really dying.”

Brady shoved a hand through his hair. “How did you do it? The police report—”

“I’m not going to tell you. Most of what I did was very illegal, and if I’m lucky, no one will ever find out the details.” He jerked his chin toward the envelope in Brady’s hand. “You need to give that to Conrad Dixson. No one else. He’s—”

“I know who he is. He’s Molly’s handler, too.”

Chris’s body jerked. “
Molly’s
handler?”

Brady took perverse pride in shocking his brother. “Yeah. You didn’t know she was SIEGE? She knew you were. And me.” Chris didn’t react to that one, so he must have known Brady was, dammit.

“What’s her job?” Chris demanded. “Not an agent.” It was more a statement of hope than certainty.

“Conduit.”

His brother nodded and looked down. “So she—”

“Look, we can’t shoot the shit all night. I could spend an hour asking you questions, and I haven’t decided not to hit you yet.”

A ghost of a smile slid across Chris’s mouth.

“Why did you even show yourself to me? I already knew you wanted Dix to get these.” He raised the envelope. “Something you need to tell me about what’s in here?”

“No. I just—needed to see you. It’s been—” He seemed to think better of describing what it had been like, but Brady imagined it wasn’t much better on his brother’s side of things than it was on his.

“I get it. When can you come in?”

“Dix will tell you. You can signal me the same way I did you.” He started to fade back into the dark hall.

Brady was going to let him go, but at the last second, he lurched forward, grabbed his brother’s arm, and pulled him into a hug, his fist twisting the back of Chris’s jacket and his eyes screwing shut against the prickle of relieved tears. His brother was
alive.

An instant later, chips of plaster flew off the wall and pelted Brady in the hand. Chris jerked out of the hug and touched his face, his eyes going unerringly to a fresh hole in the wall.

A fresh
bullet
hole.

…

Molly was still trying to figure out what to say to Dix’s revelation that he thought his own father was dirty when her subconscious caught a faint, familiar-yet-not sound. She wouldn’t have even paid attention to it except that Dix stiffened and stared straight at the building Brady had gone into.

“What?” Molly spun and stared, too. Why hadn’t she positioned them so she could see the building and Dix couldn’t? Her conscious caught up to what they’d heard. “Was that a—”

“Suppressed gunshot? Sure sounded like one.” He glanced down at her. “Fitz in there?”

She nodded and swallowed. Maybe she couldn’t trust Dix—he’d lied to them, and even what he’d told her could be false. But
he
hadn’t fired a weapon.

A weapon
. Brady was in there. He could be shot.
Oh, God, no. Not Brady
. Déjà vu held her paralyzed for a few seconds.

Molly was a conduit, Dix a handler. Neither had field experience, no matter what their training. She was certain the last thing they should do was run into that building. But it was also the only thing she wanted to do. “We have to—”

But Dix had already started forward. She was a few steps behind him when two people ran out of the narrow brick apartment building. She recognized one of them immediately as Brady. The other was—

She gasped. Dix halted in the middle of the street, but she kept going, fueled by joy and fury and fear.

“No!” Brady shouted, throwing up a hand to make her stop. Another person came out the door, arm raised, and Molly threw herself behind a car, her mouth glued closed in sudden terror. She wanted to yell at Dix to get down, but didn’t want to call the gunner’s attention to him. She wanted to scream for Brady and Christopher—dammit, he
was
alive!—to get away. Scream for police, for the killer to stop. Just to scream. It built in her chest, jumping in size every time she heard the ever-louder, but still muffled pops of the gun.

Pop. Pop. Pop pop pop
.

She covered her ears and buried her face in her knees, more terrified and helpless than she’d ever been in her life. This was nothing like South America, and everything like hell.

And then suddenly it was silent. Heavy now, not the anticipatory, sleepy silence of before. The kind of silence that meant horrifying things. She loosened her hands and lifted her head the tiniest bit. The lack of sound rang so loud she didn’t trust it. Maybe she’d gone into shock, and chaos surrounded her. When she opened her eyes, though, there was nothing. Dix wasn’t where he’d been standing, not even lying in a heap on the ground.

Twisting, she got to her feet but stayed low, eyes skipping right past where she’d last seen Brady and Chris and zeroing in on the position of the shooter. He was gone. She couldn’t see a single person anywhere.

Taking a chance, she stood. That brought them into her line of sight, and as soon as she could see them, she could hear them. Moans. Pleading in a gaspy, pain-filled breath.

She ran to where Brady knelt next to his brother. Chris lay in the gutter, the ground moist around him, glistening under the streetlight.

“Hang on, bro,” Brady begged. He had one hand against his right shoulder, the other pressed hard on Christopher’s chest. Chris was the one moaning.

Molly dropped down next to Brady and elbowed him out of the way, replacing his hand with both of hers. “I’ve got it. How bad?” She asked it of Christopher, to give him something to focus on. His head rolled toward her, his eyebrows furrowing as he tried to focus his vision. “Wha—? Two. One flesh. One still in. Brady—shoulder.”

“I know. Call 911,” she ordered Brady. Her terror had subsided, oddly, once she knew their status. She wadded Chris’s T-shirt with one hand and shifted it to press harder on the wound and stem the way-too-fast flow of blood.

“Dix already did. They’re on the way.”

She looked up at him again. “How bad?” she repeated.

“I don’t know.” He wouldn’t take his eyes off his brother, had only moved back far enough to give her room to apply pressure. “Bad.” She must have made some kind of panic noise, because Brady turned to her. “No, not me. I’m—I don’t know. Not dying. But Chris— Molly—”

“I know.” She looked down into the scarily blank face of her surrogate brother. “Hey! Look at me! We are
not
losing you for real, you hear me? You have a lot to answer for, mister.”

Chris actually managed a smile. “Thank you, Molly.” He gripped her wrist with his left hand, and its strength encouraged her. Until he added, “Take care of my brother,” and the hand fell limp to the ground.