Midnight Fire (3 page)

For a second, the veil ripped away and she saw yet another Jack—weary beyond belief, a man who had lived on the streets for six months. Or at least in hiding. And of course the huge question was—why? Did she dare ask him? This Jack was so formidable she was almost scared of him. But her curiosity was greater than her fear.

How had he remained hidden for six whole months? He belonged to one of the most famous families in America. Had he been in Washington all this time? Had he actually been living on the streets or was that a disguise? And above all—
why
? Why let everyone think he was dead?

Was it possible that he was in some way responsible for the Massacre? The instant she thought that, she jerked it right out of her head.

No. The one thing she knew about Jack, over and above anything else, absolutely integral to his personality, was that he loved his family. The idea that he could hurt a family member, cause the death of a family member—no. Simply wasn’t possible.

But killing someone else? This Jack Delvaux looked perfectly capable of that.

Summer had never liked beating about the bush. She put down her knife—she didn’t know whether to be happy or angry that Jack didn’t seem to even notice she had a very sharp knife in her hand—and turned to face him.

“Why?” she asked. “Why did you let everyone think you were dead? Why have you been living on the streets these past six months?” And then a horrible thought occurred to her. “Did
Isabel
think you were dead? Did you let your sister mourn all these months?”

Isabel and Jack shared a special bond. Had he let Isabel grieve the loss of her entire family when her beloved brother was still alive, but in hiding?

Nothing moved on Jack’s face. Nothing. He’d had such a mobile face as a young man, flickering through ten different emotions in so many minutes. That had gone. His face right now could have been carved out of stone.

“She knows now,” he said finally. And said nothing else. If Isabel had recently discovered he was alive after all, surely...surely that must have been an incredibly emotional moment. And yet you wouldn’t know anything of that from Jack’s expression.

“
Why?
” Summer asked again, everything she was feeling in her voice. “Why disappear?”

Jack didn’t answer. He simply stood there and looked at her. So intensely his eyes were tracing her face as if they were fingers, touching every tiny muscle to trace out her intentions. She stared right back, memorizing this new Jack, with lines in his face and hard blue eyes and a grim mouth.

The entire summer she’d spent with Hector and during the brief whirlwind affair she and Jack had had at Harvard, she had never seen Jack not smiling. Right now, it felt like the face she was looking at had never smiled and never would.

“Are you going to write about this?” he finally said.

“What?”

“Are you going to write about this in
Area 8
? That you saw me, that I’m alive?”

Well of course
, she wanted to say, but held her tongue. It was the biggest story imaginable. Jack Delvaux alive.

He tilted his head, studying her. “You’d be crazy not to. Be a big story.”

She said nothing. There was a
but
coming.

He stared at her, intense blue eyes unblinking. “But I’m going to ask you to wait. An article now would ruin everything, but I can’t say more than that. Don’t run it.”

Summer blinked. This sounded very much like a command. From a very big, rough guy who was undercover. A man she realized now she didn’t know at all.

She swallowed. “Don’t run it or...what?”

An impatient gesture of one of those huge hands. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you mean. Jesus, Summer. You know me better than that.”

She slowly let out the breath she’d been holding. “I’m not a fool, Jack. Something big is at stake and it concerns a terrorist attack that claimed over seven hundred lives, including the man—your father—who was supposed to be our next president. Whatever is going on must be very serious if it forced you undercover for six months, and forced you to let your sister think you were dead.”

Those sky blue eyes were intent. “It is. Very serious.”

“And you don’t think people have a right to know?” It was the bedrock philosophy of
Area 8
.
Area 8
didn’t have a political viewpoint. She was no ideologue. The only philosophy
Area 8
followed was that citizens had a right to know what was going on with the people in power. They had a right to know what was being done in their name. And she also believed with all her heart that sunlight disinfected. Shine a light in the darkest corners and it got cleaned up. “This is big stuff. There are a lot of questions surrounding the Massacre. None of what happened made sense to me and I’ve been doing some digging of my own.”

“You have?” Jack passed a big hand over the stubble on his head. “Tell you what, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

Oh
God
.

He’d meant it in a completely different way but the image that blossomed in Summer’s head was sexual. Him showing her his. That big, tough body, naked. From the powerful shoulders, the broad chest, the long, long legs down to the beautiful feet. She knew what he’d looked like naked fifteen years ago and he’d been dazzling, in a lean male model kind of way. Now, a naked Jack would be pure male power, unadorned and raw. Scarred and tough and mouthwatering.

Heat streaked through her—fast, explosive, unstoppable. The reaction only Jack had ever coaxed from her body. A conflagration from the top of her head to her toes because the truth was—she’d seen his. She remembered it clearly and it had been the source of blinding pleasure. She’d never known anything like that pleasure after him.

God forbid he realize that.

And what business did she have, getting all hot and bothered when he was standing there like a glowering lump of stone, surly and unshaven and he was supposed to be
dead
for heaven’s sake!

Get yourself under control
,
Summer.

The thought was unusual, because as a rule, she was nothing but control. She was a highly disciplined investigative journalist who took her work extremely seriously because it had consequences. She was not supposed to be hot-flashing on the man who had turned her on to sex, then disappeared from her life without a word, but not before seducing every female in her immediate vicinity.

He’d broken into her home for a reason. To stop her from writing about him surviving the Massacre, which was major news. He was here to persuade her and it was to his credit he wasn’t using his sex appeal, which had always been off the charts.

Though, to some, maybe now his sex appeal would be a little...faded. Switched off. If you liked youthful good looks and playful male charm, this Jack was not for you.

It was an enormous pity that the mature Summer found the mature, beaten down but clearly powerful Jack even more attractive than the golden boy of fifteen years ago.

She turned off the flame and put dinner on the table. The omelet, naan bread, a salad and four French soft cheeses on a wooden board.

“Sit down,” she ordered. “Eat.”

A corner of his hard mouth lifted as he sat. “Yes, ma’am.”

He waited until she had her fork in hand. “Eat,” Summer said again.

Maybe he actually had been homeless because he ate like it was going to disappear from his plate at any moment. Mary Delvaux had hammered manners into her kids and he didn’t spray food and didn’t use his fingers. But he inhaled the food, staring down at his plate and not making eye contact with her.

When he’d used the last bite of naan bread to pick up the last molecule of omelet, she said, “I have some homemade ice cream, if—”

“Yes,” he said, lifting his eyes to hers. “Please.”

Suppressing a sigh, Summer went to the freezer and took down a big container of homemade peach ice cream. Jack demolished it.

When he put the bowl back on the table, Summer lifted an eyebrow. She’d stopped eating half an hour ago. “We good?”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin and sighed. “Real good. Thanks.”

She sat back, crossed her arms, looked at him. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way...”

“Yeah.” Jack placed the napkin delicately next to the plate, taking his time. Gathering his thoughts. As well he should, because he was going to have to explain why she shouldn’t go with a major story. And while he was at it, explain why he’d been in hiding for six months. And what the deal was with Hector Blake.

A
lot
of explaining.

Jack flexed his jaw.

“What happened to your beard?” It came out without any thought.

He sighed. “Really? I’m not dead after all, and that’s what you want to know? What’s with my beard?”

Stupid, stupid question. But Summer doubled down. “And the dreadlocks. What happened to those?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “I wear a wig and a false beard when I go out. They’re in that gym bag, as a matter of fact.” He jerked his head to the living room and Summer noticed the gym bag for the first time. Stupid. Usually she was more observant than that. Another sign that having Jack pop up had unsettled her a lot.

“There are security cameras everywhere. And though my face has been removed from official records, I had to be careful. So the wig falls over my face and distorts the faceprint. The beard is fake, too. It would be easier to just grow a beard, but a fake beard doesn’t follow the natural contours of the face and makes facial recog even harder.”

“Someone...
removed
your image from facial recognition databases?” Summer tried to think how that would be even possible. Whoever did it had to be extremely high up in the security community. Like the director of the CIA or NSA something.

He nodded.

“Sounds like...you’ve done this before. Evaded discovery.”

Silence. “Not quite like this, but yes, I’ve done it before.”

“For?”

More silence.

“That’s classified.” He sighed. “It’s crazy. I’m no longer operational. As a matter of fact, I’m dead. But I took an oath and I took it seriously when I did.”

She digested that, thinking it over. “Okay. Let me tell you what I think. Word had it that you were making money and chasing girls as an investment banker in Singapore. But I’m guessing that’s not what you were doing. If whoever you work for has the power to wipe your photos from official databases, I’m guessing you’re in some intelligence service. But you were never really sharp at analytical courses at Harvard, so I’d say not in the analysis department. You’d be an operator, not an analyst. Not to mention the fact that you cut right through my building’s security and my apartment’s security, which is top of the line whatever you might say. So—not special ops because they don’t operate with official covers. My guess would be CIA. How’m I doing?”

Jack’s face gave nothing away. But he wasn’t saying no.

Summer looked at him, really looked at him. Seeing him as he was now and remembering him when he was a boy and then a young man. She’d been so in love with him she’d made him an object of study. She’d had a PhD in Jackology, though she’d made sure no one knew anything about her obsession.

But she’d known him pretty well back in the day and some things did not change in people.

“Like I said, you’re not particularly analytical. You were smart but it was a gift that you never polished. I’m guessing you got into Harvard as a legacy and because you were a gifted athlete, not because of your grades. Your grades sucked. So I’m ruling out the Directorate of Intelligence. You liked your gadgets but you weren’t a nerd so I’d rule out the Directorate of Science and Technology and I definitely do not see you in the Directorate of Support, fussing about with logistics and supplies. That leaves the National Clandestine Service. And if you’re pretending to be an investment banker that would leave you plenty of time to go on missions.”

The silence stretched for a full minute.

Jack stirred. Blew out a breath. “I got decent grades,” he said mildly.

Bingo. She smiled.

“Any good grades you got were strictly because you charmed the teachers. I never saw you open a book all that summer I came back to the US. And not once while we were—”

She stopped. Fought a blush. She was about to say he’d never cracked a book while they were dating but they’d “dated” for about a week. Enough to stoke her infatuation and introduce her to world-altering sex before he disappeared.

So
dating
wasn’t strictly the right term.

And this walk down memory lane had had the unfortunate effect of reminding her that they’d essentially spent that one week in bed, having sex so incredible it should have been classified as a controlled substance.

“You’re blushing,” Jack said.

“Am not,” she answered sharply. And then, because she’d sounded like a child, she said, “So—how close did I get?”

“Nailed it. Except I’m not CIA anymore.”

“No. Because you’re dead. So let’s hear this story and I need to know why it has to remain secret because there’s been more than enough secrecy around the Washington Massacre. I’ll hold off if there’s a really good reason, but not for long and you’d better be pretty convincing.”

Jack drew in a deep breath and for a moment she was startled at how wide it made his chest.
Focus
,
Summer!
She told herself. This was important and she couldn’t be distracted by a gorgeous male chest. She wasn’t eighteen anymore.

Jack leaned forward, shifting away the plates with one strong forearm. “Why were you at Hector Blake’s funeral?”

He wanted to ask questions first? Okay. “Well, he was sort of a relative. For a little while, anyway. Remember? But mainly because the whole thing stinks to high heaven.”

His face gave away nothing, but his fingers curled up in a
gimme
gesture.

She sighed. “First of all, the reports state that he drowned in the Potomac but everyone is real vague on exactly where in the Potomac. And it is unclear whether he was in a vehicle or just sort of fell in. Like you’d trip and fall into a pond. It’s really hard to do that. Either he committed suicide, diving in from a bridge, or it was homicide and he was thrown in, or it was an accident and he drove off the road into the river. The coroner’s report is unavailable, which is the first time that’s happened to me. The authorities didn’t exactly invoke the Patriot Act, but they might as well have. I applied for a copy of the report and got a sharp email from the coroner’s office. The office, not the coroner herself. She’s on indefinite leave. Starting yesterday. And no one has been appointed to replace her. And the DC morgue itself has been closed for ‘scheduled repairs’ though no such schedule has ever been published. I can’t figure out what happened to Hector but something did and it wasn’t what the reports say.”