To the Brink (40 page)

Tell her what?

He didn't know why his heart was racing. Didn't know why he wanted to shout out a denial and yet the words stuck in his throat like a fish bone.

The ring of his cell phone sliced into a tension that was mud thick and made him jump. He snagged it from the bedside table, grateful for the reprieve. Grateful that he didn't have to wrestle with why he felt relieved over the opportunity to avoid wrapping his mind around Darcy's question. Around the implications if she was right.

"Yeah," he answered, rolling to a sitting position when he heard Dallas's voice on the other end of the line.

Behind him, he felt the bed shift and knew Darcy had sat up, too.

"Wait a sec," he told Dallas when his brother started rattling off an address. "I need to find a pen and paper."

When he turned around, Darcy was already scrambling toward the desk at the far side of the room. He thanked her with a glance and sat down at the table when she set several sheets of motel stationery and a pen in front of him.

"Okay, shoot."

Darcy's eyes were wide and round when he hung up several minutes later. All of her energy appeared to be focused on the immediacy of the here and now. Their unfinished business would have to wait.

Hell, it had already waited five long years. And what faced them yet tonight couldn't wait another five minutes.

"What?" she asked. "What's happening?"

Ethan wished there was some way he could take her out of the mix. Wished he could just leave her here and get this done without her, but he didn't dare leave her alone.

"We've got to make tracks," he said, hoping he'd figure out some way to take her out of the line of fire on the fly. "I'll tell you on the way."

"I'll pack the duffel."

"Leave it." He grabbed the TV remote and dumped the tape into his palm. "We don't have time."

Then he rifled through the bureau drawers until he found a phone book. He ripped out the D.C. city map and headed for the door and what he prayed wasn't a colossal fuckup.

Cloak-and-dagger. It wasn't Darcy's cup of tea. Not that she hadn't known that from the get-go, but as Ethan filled her in on the plan of action as they hurried to his SUV, the gravity of the situation hit her with the force of a baseball bat.

Okay, fine. She could do this. She'd made it this far. She was not going to let herself or Ethan down now.

"When Jackson got back to Eve," Ethan was saying as they crossed an access road from one motel parking lot to another, "he confided that the State Department has had the CIA watching Gatlin for some time now, just waiting for him to make a slipup. Eddie Jackson wasn't the only spook on the block."

"You're not serious? There were other CIA operatives on to Gatlin?"

He nodded and grabbed her arm, stopping her when she would have walked out in front of a car.

"If they were on to him, why hadn't they done something about it? And what does this mean to us?"

The possibilities already running through her mind were numbing—and as endless as the string of traffic they dodged to get to the parking garage. Darcy knew how it worked when the CIA decided they needed to take a "stand back and wait" approach. She could end up in protective custody or even in a witness protection program. Both possibilities were unacceptable.

"Relax," Ethan said, evidently reading her mind. "The content of that tape is more than enough to move out of monitor mode and into resolution."

He gripped her elbow and pulled her closer as they walked the stairs down to the lower level of the parking garage. Their footsteps echoed in the poorly lit chamberlike stairwell.

"So they're going to arrest Gatlin?"

"In good time. First, we've got to get the tape into the hands of someone who knows what to do with it."

"And that's where we're headed now? To meet this person?"

When they reached the stairwell door Ethan opened it. "Yeah. That's where we're headed."

"Turn here. Left," Ethan said, squinting up from the map to the well-lit street. He rattled off an address.

"There it is," Darcy said when she spotted a purple facade painted with bold pink lettering and a spotlight aimed at the shop's name. "Sweet Tooth."

The ice-cream shop was located at the end of a block and boasted Georgetown's best homemade ice cream. It was also a popular summer tourist spot and one of many businesses that catered to the summer crowd by staying open until midnight on hot summer nights. It was 11:05 right now.

"Pull into that parking spot across the street," Ethan said. "We're twenty minutes early, but we'll wait inside."

"You sure we can trust this guy with the tape?"

"Ted's been with the company for as long as I've known him," Ethan said. 'That doesn't mean something won't happen to screw things up. The minute we stepped out of that motel room, we became vulnerable again."

Darcy parked and on a deep breath stepped out of the SUV. Ethan was waiting for her by the driver's side door. For a man with a bullet hole in his leg, he could sure move when he decided he needed to.

"Remember." Ethan dipped his head close to her ear as he walked her across the street. "Do exactly as I say. Exactly."

Darcy nodded and waited for him to open the door for her when they reached the shop's entrance. An old-fashioned bell tinkled when the door closed behind them.

Given that her heart was pounding so loud the sound of each beat flooded her ears, she was amazed she'd been able to hear it. She could feel every pulse beat in her fingertips, too, not to mention her legs felt like rubber.

God, let this be over soon,
she prayed silently. Let everything go exactly as Ethan had told her in the SUV on the way to Georgetown: "We'll meet Ted. We'll turn over the tape and he'll hustle us off someplace to lay low until they pick up the nice men we met outside the post office this afternoon."

Simple,
Darcy told herself now as she looked around the inside of the shop to get her bearings. The place was small. A dozen white wrought-iron ice-cream tables covered with red-and-white-checkered oilcloths sat to the left of the counter. Half of them were occupied by what appeared to be students or tourists.

"Made up your mind yet?" Ethan sounded annoyingly cool and collected as he stood behind her studying the ice-cream selection written in Magic Marker on the left side of the mirror covering the top half of the wall behind the counter.

Another night, another time, she'd have found the scribbled menu charming and nostalgic. Tonight it barely registered.

"Vanilla," she said.

Ethan grunted. "Oh, come on. They have ninety-nine flavors. Go for something exotic. Live dangerously."

Live dangerously?

He was actually grinning when she glared up at him. Against all odds, she smiled—which was exactly what he'd wanted her to do.

"Vanilla will do just fine," she said, then tensed all over when the bell above the door announced that someone had entered the shop.

She glanced up at the mirrored wall directly in front of her—and swallowed a gasp when she saw the two men, one wearing a pair of Oakleys and a Patriots cap and one wearing an Eagles cap—enter the shop.

Oh God. Oh God, oh God.

So close. They'd been so close.

"Easy," Ethan whispered in her ear. "Just take it easy."

Chapter 27

As casually as possible and keeping one
eye on the men in the mirror, Ethan positioned himself directly behind Darcy and squarely in the line of any fire that might break out.

He took stock of the way the two men sauntered in as bold as brass, Oakley leading the way.

Confident as hell, aren't you, asshole?
Ethan thought with a quick glance at the freckle-faced kid behind the counter.

By this time, asshole number two had joined his partner and crowded up close behind Ethan.

"For you, sir?" the kid asked Ethan, tucking the towel he'd been using to wipe the counter beneath the register.

His eyes still on the Patriots cap, Ethan smiled like he didn't have a care in the world. "I'll have a double pistachio topped with a cache of semiautomatic weapons, please."

And that was all she wrote.

When the clerk's hand reappeared, it was full of firepower. And it was pointed dead center at the middle
t
in Patriots.

Ethan dodged left, taking Darcy with him. He dived for the floor, covering her body with his. At the same time, six stools scraped against the white tile floor as the CIA agents planted at the tables rushed the pair of would-be assassins and took them down without firing a shot.

"You knew about this?" Darcy railed as Mutt and Jeff were taken away in handcuffs.

"Eat your ice cream before it melts," Ethan said, as much to settle her down as to distract her. He'd personally gone behind the counter and scooped up a cone for her when her first one had gone sailing. "Are you okay? No bruises from hitting the floor?"

"You knew the place was planted with CIA agents and you didn't tell me?" She glared at him, ignoring his concern.

God, she was mad. He understood. It was a helluva lot easier to explode in anger than in tears when you were as proud as this woman, and Lord knows she had more than enough reason to lose it. "I didn't want to tip our hand."

"I wouldn't have tipped our hand!"

"Darcy, I'm sorry, okay?" He tugged her aside when one of the CIA operatives walked past them toward the back of the shop to pick up some equipment. "If it'll make you feel any better, it was them, not me, who wanted you out of the loop."

"It makes me feel just dandy. When I saw those two guys come in here, I thought... I thought..." Her voice broke. She swallowed.

"You thought we were goners. I know." He drew her against him. "And again, I'm sorry."

She heaved a huge breath and pushed away, hanging on tight to her arms to keep herself together.

"Now if you want me to, I'll fill you in."

With a clipped nod, she let him steer her toward an ice-cream chair and set her down.

"
Everyone
in the shop was a CIA operative?"

It was all he could do not to laugh at her pouty look. "Just listen, okay?"

"Fine," she conceded as he pulled out a chair beside her.

"All right," he began. "Once Eddie contacted his superiors in D.C. they went to work. First thing they did was stake out my SUV. Turns out it
was
bugged."

"So you were right."

He nodded. "As long as we were in my SUV, Gatlin's goons were able to eavesdrop on every word we said once we left West Palm."

"Which explains why they were waiting for us at the post office this afternoon."

"And why they knew exactly where we were going tonight."

She blinked up at him, confused. "If the CIA knew your SUV was bugged, why didn't they debug it... or whatever it is they do?"

He grinned. "They didn't
debug
it because they were using us for bait. The idea was to draw out those two hired guns, hoping they'd scramble like hell to follow us and intercept the tape before we turned it over to Ted."