Outsider (5 page)

She arched both eyebrows.

“I spent a lot of time in them between overseas assignments,” he replied coolly.

Her eyes searched over him. “It doesn't show.”

Obviously she didn't know that he wore a prosthesis, even if her daughter did. He was oddly reluctant to tell her.

“You wanted to be a diplomat as I recall,” he said instead.

She shrugged. “We make choices, and then life gets in the way. I'm happy enough with the work I do.”

He stared at her for a long moment, remembering happier times, camaraderie, even her quirky sense of humor. She was so staid now, so dignified, that he couldn't reconcile the woman he saw with the woman he'd once known so intimately.

“Take a picture,” she said with a glare.

“You were like a bonfire seven years ago,” he said absently. “Bright and glowing with life and fun.”

She looked up, the anguish of the past years in her dark eyes, visible pain. “I grew up,” she said.

He frowned. “How old are you now?”

She laughed hollowly. “What a question!”

“Answer it.”

“I'm twenty-four,” she ground out.

He stared without speaking. In his eyes was a shadow of pain. He actually winced. “You were seventeen when we married?”

His expression and the outburst were surprising. “You were in military intelligence,” she pointed out. “I assumed you knew everything about me.”

He didn't challenge her mistake about his military background. “I never checked you out, for Pete's sake, there was no reason to!” He pushed back a strand of faintly wavy black hair. “God! Seventeen! I thought you were older, experienced…!”

Her face closed up. She couldn't bear to remember the pain and humiliation of her first intimacy. She flushed as she fiddled with papers on her desk, for something to do.

“Sarina,” he began, trying to find the words to apologize. “You were in college. I thought you were in your early twenties. Considering your social status, and your background, and the age I thought you were—it never occurred to me that you didn't have some sexual experience.”

“You didn't care what I had,” she accused darkly. “You were furious that I'd, how did you put it, tricked you into marrying me by setting you up for my father to find us in a compromising situation. You couldn't do anything to him, so you made me pay for it.”

His eyes darkened with anger. “I was upset, yes. But I didn't hurt you deliberately.”

“Really?” She got to her feet, almost vibrating with anger. “It took four stitches!” she added with helpless venom.

That didn't register at first. Then it did. He vaguely remembered blood on the sheets, and had assumed that her period had started. But if it hadn't…

His face colored. He'd had a couple of neat whiskies to try to stop himself from touching her. It hadn't worked. His control had been precarious at best, and he'd blamed her for putting Maureen out of his reach with their unwanted wedding.

But he hadn't meant to hurt her physically. He drew in a long breath. Alcohol had been responsible for so much tragedy in his life. He hadn't realized it until he got into therapy and had his sins laid out by a psychologist.

His tortured expression disturbed her. Sarina sat back down, avoiding looking directly at him. “It was a long time ago,” she ground out. “Never mind.”

He searched for words to explain it, to tell her that Maureen had deserted him for weeks, for no reason that he ever knew. He'd been hurting inside and Sarina's presence was like a healing balm. Then, the very day he found himself married to her, Maureen had tracked down his friend Tate Winthrop and got his number. She'd called to tell him that she was ready to get married now. He'd been livid. Sarina had tricked him. He wanted revenge…but even so, he hadn't deliberately hurt Sarina. Or so he'd thought, all these years.

He blinked. The psychologist had told him that most of his problems had resulted from a guilty conscience, but not to do with Maureen. He drank to forget how he'd treated Sarina. The shame was so great that he'd never told anyone about her, not even his best friend, Tate.

Even now, when he looked at her, he remembered all over again how bright and lovely she'd been in those days. For one insane moment, in the midst of explosively delicious foreplay, he'd been tempted to let the marriage stand and let Maureen go her own way. The obstacles would have been impossible ones, though. He hadn't known how old Sarina really was. But he did know that she was the sheltered daughter of a multimillionaire, while he was mixed Apache-Comanche and poor, to boot. Besides that, he was in a profession that could cost him his life any day. She thought he was in the military. He wasn't. He worked for the CIA as a paramilitary contractor, a freelance agent who hired out as a counterterrorism and small arms specialist, to any government willing to meet his price. He'd been working for the American government when he met Sarina. He and Hunter had similar backgrounds, which was why they got along so well together. Sarina didn't know.

“There were obstacles you didn't know about at the time,” he said finally, jamming his hands into his slacks pockets.

She didn't answer him. She was remembering those terrible days after he walked out of her life. Her father had demanded an annulment, and Sarina had been too hurt and angry to refuse. She'd had to lie about their one intimacy. Colby hadn't ventured a single objection. After one reluctant phone call, full of recriminations and not even one apology, Colby had left her.

“You must have hated me,” Colby ventured with narrowed eyes.

She didn't look at him. “It was wasted energy. I very soon learned how to channel it into more positive areas.”

“Such as working as a clerk for an oil company?” he replied, irritated.

“It pays the bills.”

“Not very well, considering that piece of salvage you call a car.”

She lifted her head and glared at him. “Don't you have something to investigate?”

He shrugged. “I suppose so.”

She turned back to her work, ignoring him.

He watched her for a few seconds, with more misgivings and sadness than he was willing for her to see. He turned and walked out.

 

H
UNTER WAS WAITING
for him in his office when he got there. The other man was preoccupied.

“Something wrong?” Colby asked.

Hunter shrugged. “Something. Cobb's just found out that the DEA's got two undercover agents in place here.”

“Who are they?”

“Damned if I know, and he won't tell me. He was hopping mad when he found out. He says they came in from another district, following a suspect who works for us. Nobody told him a thing because he told the drug task force that he had a leak in his department.”

“That's probably for the agents' safety, if there's a leak in his department,” Colby suggested.

“No doubt. There's something else. We've got an employee who's involved with the woman who took over Manuel Lopez's empire.”

“That would be Brody Vance,” Colby said easily, smiling when Hunter looked surprised. “I was with you when we invaded the warehouse with Cobb and his task force,” he reminded the other man. “Vance bailed Cara Dominguez out of jail later.”

“Yes, he did.” Hunter's lips compressed. “I should have had Cobb get a warrant to wiretap his office.”

“He's smart,” Colby replied. “He probably thinks that's already been done.”

“Could be. But we need to keep our eyes on Vance.”

“I could rig a wire in his car,” Colby mused aloud. “I can do it in a way that he'll never suspect, and stick a homing device in as well, so that we can track his movements.”

“I don't know if we can get a judge to let us do that,” Hunter said.

Colby stuck his hands in his pockets. “Suppose I do it without your knowledge?”

“Creative thinking,” Hunter replied with twinkling dark eyes.

“Do we know anybody in the office that he's close to?”

“He was hitting on Cobb's girlfriend. But he's given her up, apparently, since she's been seen so much with Cobb. Which brings to mind something else Cobb told me. He says she has great skills as a cybertech.”

“If she's that good at it, she's wasted on working for Vance.”

“True. Why don't we make use of those skills, then,” Hunter suggested. “Perhaps Mr. Vance is doing something sneaky with his e-mail. We retain the right to inspect all company e-mails here, including personal ones. It wouldn't be illegal.”

Colby smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “In which case,” he replied, turning, “I'll just go and have a word with Jodie.”

“And I'll check the employee dossiers and find out which employees came here from out of town,” the other man murmured to himself, because Colby had already left.

He did that, his eyes widening with surprise when he realized how many secrets their friend Sarina had been keeping from them. He knew that she didn't want Colby to know about her past, and he wouldn't tell. With an efficiency that would have surprised Colby, he changed the records in the master computer so that Colby wouldn't luck upon a connection that would reveal too much to his old friend. He didn't even feel guilty for doing it.

C
OLBY HAD
J
ODIE
start looking for anything incriminating in Brody Vance's e-mails, cautioning her to say nothing about the assignment. She agreed readily and seemed to look forward to the challenge.

Meanwhile, Colby waited near a canteen window at lunch and watched to see which car Vance got into. As he'd suspected, the personnel manager had just traded cars, probably to throw any interested persons off the track, since his car had been seen at the warehouse the night of the drug raid. Now he was driving a late-model Lincoln, gray in color. He thought back wistfully to the days when he had contacts at the DMV and could have someone run a tag for him anytime he liked. Now that he was working in the private sector, he was limited—especially in this new job in a new city. Probably he could have had Hunter do it for him, but his pride wouldn't let him. He felt his status keenly in these early days. He had to prove himself. That meant doing his own investigating.

At midafternoon he paused for a cup of coffee and a sweet roll in the canteen while he formulated ways and means of getting into the man's car without being seen. At least he wouldn't have to have help with that. Covert action was his stock in trade. He became aware of activity near him. It was just after school and Rodrigo walked in with Sarina's daughter by one hand, and a box of colored pencils and a small pad in the other. He seated her at a table, put the art supplies on the table, whispered something that made her smile, and left.

The child made Colby uneasy. She glanced at him with a mutinous pair of dark eyes and an expression that made him feel guilty. He didn't like it. He was sorry he'd made her cry. She didn't have to rub it in. Worse, he didn't understand his own bad attitude toward the child. He'd always thought he loved children. Perhaps it was the knowledge that he couldn't father one that affected him so blatantly.

He finished his roll and sipped black coffee, his eyes idly studying the child while she drew and colored on sheets of white paper. He wondered if Eugene Ritter knew that his workplace was being used as a day care center for his employees. Or one of them, at least. It wasn't any of his business, really. But it felt as if Sarina was making a point, at his expense; she was showing him that she could use the canteen as her daughter's private playground and Colby couldn't stop her. The thought was irritating.

He drifted off for a few minutes, thinking about bugging Vance's car and the equipment he'd have to pick up at a local electronics store. He missed his former job. It had been dangerous, but never boring. He wondered, and not for the first time in the past two years, how he was going to adjust to daily routine. His time as security chief for Hutton had been interesting, but there were few challenges. At least bugging a car gave him a little taste of the old life.

He finished his coffee, cold by now, and popped the cup into a trash can near the door. The child was intent on her coloring, ignoring him. She irritated him almost as much as her mother did, he thought bitterly. He didn't understand why. Then he got a glimpse of what she was drawing and his whole body clenched. She really did have talent. The figures, despite their childish creator, were recognizable. She'd drawn a jungle scene, of a figure wearing dark glasses and a camouflage uniform manning what looked like a machine gun on a trail between two large trees. They were plane trees. African plane trees. Colby had more reason than she could ever know to be upset by the drawing.

He glared down at her, tall and intimidating. Bernadette looked up at him, and her former accusing gaze went into eclipse when she saw his expression. She sat very still.

“Who told you about this place?” he demanded, as he swept the drawing up in his hand. “And this man?” he added, turning the drawing toward her. “Answer me!”

He was scary like that, she thought. Nobody had ever been so harsh with her. The resentment and anger she felt translated into fear as he glared down at her. “No…nobody told me,” she said in a hurt whisper. He was really mad. She didn't know what to say.

“Nobody, the devil,” he ground out, his eyes pained as they went back to the drawing. It made his whole body tense. He remembered Sarina saying that the child had visions. He hadn't believed her. But what other explanation was there for the drawing? His arm throbbed just looking at it.

She sat watching him, gnawing on her lower lip.

His hand clenched on the drawing as he became aware of her unblinking scrutiny. “You don't belong in here, anyway. This is no day care center,” he added icily. “It's a business.”

She swallowed hard, her eyes as big as saucers. She didn't speak. She strained to get a decent breath of air in her lungs. Her eyes grew brighter with the struggle.

That made him angrier.

His dark eyes narrowed and he didn't smile. “Go to your mother's office and stay there,” he said in a cold, commanding tone.

She got up quickly, grabbing at her paper and pencils, dropping one in her haste. She scrambled to pick it up. When she turned to go quickly out of the room, Colby saw tears on her cheeks. Her breathing was actually audible.

He cursed under his breath. The child had feelings of glass. He hadn't meant to sound that threatening. He wasn't used to children and this one disturbed him. How did she know where he'd been shot? How did she know what the man who'd shot him looked like? His arm throbbed again as he stared at the scene that brought back so many painful memories of Africa. He glared at the drawing and started to crumple it. Then, involuntarily, he folded it and put it in his shirt pocket instead. The child knew more about him than anyone except Hunter and his friend Tate Winthrop, and she knew it in ways that were eerie and disturbing.

Every time he saw her, he remembered that he couldn't father a child. He felt less than a man. Sarina's presence upset him more, bringing back all his failings with a vengeance. But that was no reason to take it out on the little girl. Nor was her uncanny gift for seeing into his private life. He shouldn't have been so curt with her. He felt guilty all over again as he watched her scrub her eyes with a little fist. It was like a knife through his heart. He could almost feel the pain…

Cursing under his breath, he started toward the retreating child just as Rodrigo Ramirez came back into the canteen. He stopped dead when he saw Bernadette. His black eyes flashed angrily as he connected Colby's stern expression with Bernadette's tears. He bent and picked her up, cuddling her close. Colby could hear her rasping sobs all the way across the room. The sound went through his tall body like a bullet.

Rodrigo tucked the child under his chin and walked straight at Colby with a stride that meant business. His black eyes were murderous. The mild-mannered clerk Colby had found vaguely pathetic was suddenly somebody else.

“If you have something to say to Bernadette, you can say it to me,” Rodrigo said icily, his Spanish accent thicker in anger.

“The canteen isn't an appropriate place for a child to play,” Colby said curtly.

“Eugene Ritter gave Sarina permission to bring Bernadette here in the afternoons,” he replied. “She can't afford day care—it would take her entire weekly salary to put Bernadette in care.” It wasn't the whole truth, but it was all Rodrigo felt comfortable telling this stranger.

Colby frowned. He hadn't known it was that expensive.

“If you have a problem, I'll inform Mr. Ritter,” Rodrigo continued in a soft, threatening tone. “But if you say one word to Bernadette about her presence here ever again, rent-a-cop,” he added with deliberate insolence, “I will kick your ass from one end of this building to the other.”

“You're welcome to try, Ramirez,” Colby replied just as coldly. Like the Latino, he didn't back down an inch, even when he knew he was in the wrong.

“That day may come sooner than you think,” Rodrigo said in a soft, dangerous tone.

Colby's eyes narrowed. “Gee, see me shaking with fear!” he drawled contemptuously.

Rodrigo bit off a word in Spanish that made Bernadette's eyebrows lift. He flushed when he realized what he'd said to Colby, his lips making a thin line as he turned abruptly to carry the child out of the canteen.

Colby watched them go. He hadn't expected such a threatening stance from a man he'd considered one step below a filing clerk. Colby wondered again why Ramirez seemed so familiar. That scene Bernadette had drawn, quite competently, was a landscape in South Africa. Colby remembered the location well. It was where he'd lost his arm. There was no way on earth the child could have known that. So how could she have drawn it?

He couldn't get the sound of her raspy sobs out of his mind. It was unnatural, the way she sounded, and familiar. He'd had asthma as a child. He'd outgrown it, but there had been many trips to the local clinic before then, especially when he was upset.

He went back to his office in a daze of misery. He sat down behind his desk and stared blankly at the wall. His arm hurt like hell. The doctor who made the prosthesis said that the phantom pain was incurable. He could still feel his hand, even though it was no longer there. The doctor explained that the nerve endings in the brain that controlled that hand were still intact. So to his brain, he still possessed his hand. It was something he'd had to learn to live with. It hadn't been easy.

The door opened and he looked up into Hunter's dark eyes.

“Ritter wants to see you,” he said.

Colby got up. “It won't take much imagination to know why,” he said heavily. “I didn't mean to make her cry again.”

Hunter's eyebrows arched. “Excuse me?”

“Bernadette,” he said, seeing again the small face covered in tears. “I said the canteen wasn't a day care center. She didn't even fight back this time, she got up and left.” He grimaced. “Sarina's friend Rodrigo said that Ritter gave her permission.”

Hunter nodded. “He did. For more reasons than I can tell you right now,” he added. His eyes narrowed. “Just a word of advice. You don't want to give Rodrigo an excuse to make an enemy of you. He's not what he seems.”

“I noticed that. He's not my idea of a liaison officer. So, who is he?” Colby asked shortly.

Hunter hesitated. “I can't tell you that, either. I know.” He held up a hand when Colby's lips thinned. “It's frustrating for me, too. I trust you. But Cobb and Mr. Ritter don't know you as well as I do.”

“How the hell am I supposed to work security here when I don't know what's going on around me?”

“You'll have to trust me to keep you pointed in the right direction until I can fill you in. But stop picking on Bernadette or even I won't be able to save you,” Hunter added firmly. “You used to be able to recognize a hornet's nest before you stuck your head into it.”

“I used to have a real job, too,” he returned with impotent fury. “When I was faster, younger, stronger…when I had two arms!”

Hunter let out a long breath. “It wasn't easy for me, either, at first,” he said in a softer tone. “I had hell fitting into a private sector job. But I managed, because I had to. You'll manage, too. Just try not to take everything so seriously. One child in a canteen for a couple of hours isn't going to bring down the corporation. Is it?”

Colby grimaced. “She throws out challenges without saying a word. She knows things she shouldn't know. It occurred to me that her mother might have sent her into the canteen on purpose, to get under my skin. She's antagonistic.”

“Sarina isn't petty,” Hunter replied. “She fights face-on, not behind your back. She's had a hell of a hard life. Cut her some slack, Colby.”

Colby glowered. “Some hard life! Her father was a multimillionaire…”

“Her father,” Hunter said furiously, “put her in the street when she refused to have an abortion,” he bit off, noting Colby's sudden stillness. “He didn't want a mixed-blood child to dilute his perfect bloodlines. He cut her off without a penny. Later, when she had complications and wasn't able to work, he refused any help, knowing that she couldn't even afford food and rent and had nobody else to turn to! She almost lost Bernadette. It's a miracle she didn't die in childbirth!”

Colby stared at him blankly. The revelations shocked him. “There are government agencies that help people in trouble,” he argued.

“Right. A millionaire's daughter whose face is familiar to people on the street walks into a welfare office and asks for financial aid and they're going to cut her a check,” Hunter scoffed. “They laughed her out of the office. They thought it was a joke.”

“Then, what about the child's father?” Colby persisted.

Hunter hesitated. He averted his eyes. “The father wouldn't do anything. He denied that the child was his. He told Sarina never to call him again.” He wasn't supposed to know that. Sarina had told Jennifer in confidence. But Jennifer had no secrets from Hunter. Hunter could have bitten his tongue. He shouldn't have told Colby.

“The cold-blooded son of a bitch,” Colby breathed harshly. “Why didn't she file charges against him? A simple blood test would have confirmed paternity. At least he owed her child-sup-port!”

“Nobody could find him.”