Dare Me (9 page)

Or whip her into a whirlwind of lust and desire as Dante
had.

“Russell had the ear of the Joint Chiefs,” Macy said, unable
to voice the possibility that her name could have been sullied all the way to
the Oval Office.  “You’re saying he poisoned their minds against me because I
was sleeping with you?”

Dante turned and stretched his legs, balancing on one elbow
so he could toy with her hair with his hand.

“Yes, but he tipped his hand when he blamed you for the
information that leaked in the Boston operation.  Every agent in the field knew
that Jim Carlson had blown that deal.”

Macy’s head swam.  These were operations that had happened
so long ago.  Before she’d become a trusted agent within T-45.  Back when she’d
been nothing more than a rank beginner in the Arm.

“But Carlson died in Boston,” she argued.

“Exactly.  He wasn’t around to take the heat, so you were
the sacrificial lamb.  Even if he’d lived, he might have turned the blame on
you, too.  He trained with all the men who ran the Arm, including some of the
Joint Chiefs.  You were a young, pretty upstart who they knew would soon
surpass them all.  Russell couldn’t prove his accusations, but he planted
enough seeds of doubt to have you red-listed.”

Meaning she was an agent to be watched—an agent who might
not be trustworthy.

Dante threaded his fingers in hers, working out the sudden
attack of tension with a soft massage.  “I pulled some strings and kept you on
the Chilean project, but when you found the intelligence we needed to break the
case, I had to make a choice.”

Macy narrowed her eyes.  God, how she’d tried not to think
about that time, his betrayal, her incredible emotional loss.  The case had
been sloppy from the start, and now she knew why.  The lead operative, Russell
Rhodes, had apparently had his mind on other things.  She’d been trying to stop
an influx of cocaine from being smuggled in by Chilean freighters.  He’d been
trying to ruin her reputation and get her booted from the Arm.

All because she’d loved Dante instead of him?

She supposed men had started wars for less.

“The information was sketchy, I remember,” she said, the
recollection painful even as a chill skittered across her skin.  “I couldn’t
find a second source to verify the ties between the Chilean shipping company and
the Brazilian businessman we’d had under observation for six months.”

“The rich Brazilian businessman with ties to our President’s
re-election campaign,” Dante reminded her.  He rubbed his hand up her arm and
noting the gooseflesh, grabbed his shirt from the bottom of the stairs and wrapped
the material around her.  “I suspected Russell might have planted the intel to
discredit you entirely, so I called his bluff.  If the information proved
false, I would have been blamed for the bad data.  When it proved true and the
mission was successful, I finally had the clout to push Russell out of the
way.  Once I was in charge, I could repair the damage he’d done to you.”

She tugged the shirt closed, suddenly vulnerable and yet,
possessing a clarity that spoke volumes.

She’d thought the anger she’d felt toward Dante still
simmered beneath her surface, but not a spark of rage vexed her now.  She was
frustrated, yes.  Regretful, absolutely.  But angry?  Not any more.

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” she asked.  “Why
did you let me believe you’d betrayed me for all these years?”

Dante’s eyes reflected more remorse than she ever imagined
he could feel.

“I never had the chance.  You bolted and I had to leave to
handle a hostage crisis in Laos.  By the time I was back in the States, you
were long gone, hidden in T-45’s web of secrecy.  I wanted to be your knight in
shining armor, Macy.  For once, I wanted to take care of you.  You never
allowed that of any man.  I wanted to be the one.”

She grinned at the irony.  “Until this week, no, I never
have let a man pamper, protect me.  In my family, with four brothers, I learned
to fend for myself.”

He slipped his arm beneath her and tucked himself close, both
their bodies stretched down the carpeted stairs, the hair on his legs brushing
softly against her bare skin.  In a window just at the top of the landing, the
sunlight had begun to slide fingers of light through the slats in the blinds. 
They’d been up all night.  Together.

“I should have let you in on my plan rather than waiting
until I could ride in on my white horse,” he confessed.  “I had the ring that
day, Macy.  I was going to explain everything and ask you to marry me.”

“But I was already gone.”  She reached out and touched his
cheek, the bristle of his hair on his face rough and wonderful against her
skin.  “I should have trusted that you wouldn’t have hurt me without having a
damned good reason.  But T-45 had already been wooing me and I’d been passed
over twice for promotions, now, I know, thanks to Russell.  I shouldn’t have
let my anger get the best of me.”

He smiled.  “You have always been a passionate and impatient
woman, Macy.  We both made mistakes.”

He leaned forward and kissed her gently, rolling closer so
she eased onto her back and wrapped her arms around his neck.  While her lips
engaged in the sweetest, most sensual kiss of the morning, her eyes seemed
obsessed with the dawn reflected in the mirror that hung on the slanted ceiling
above the stairs.  A long pink ribbon of light filtered over the reflective
glass, creating an opaque cloud of color.  She was staring, entranced, when
shapes seemed to form in the glass, lines and curves, then, disappeared.

Lines and curves.

She blinked, trying to bring the images back into her
sight.  Nothing.

Lines and curves.

Numbers.

“Good God, Dante,” she said, pushing away from him.  “The
code.  I think I’ve found it.”

In less than an hour, Dante had every mirror in the house
assembled in a line on the floor of the parlor, cradled on a cushioned tarp. 
Dressed in his crumpled slacks and buttonless shirt, he ignored the stares of
his forensic chemical analysis team and continued to pace behind them as they
worked their magic.  Macy marched into the room moments later, dressed in a
sweatsuit and looking incredibly sated and satisfied.  In the rush since Macy
saw the numbers in the mirror, they hadn’t had a chance to finish their
conversation, but her tiny, private smile said everything he needed to hear.

But their personal needs would have to wait.  They had a few
million lives to save.

“Anything?” he asked.

She handed the computer print out to him.  “The housekeeper
claims none of the mirrors were original to the house and that nearly every
one, so far as she can remember, was shipped here special from Russia.”

“They’re not Russian.”

Sean Devlin strode into the room and immediately grabbed a
pair of protective gloves from a nearby box.

“Devlin, what are you doing here?”  Dante asked.

“Heard there was a breakthrough.”

Dante and Macy eyed each other with equal amounts of
suspicion.  He hadn’t called Sean in, and judging by the annoyance clear on
Macy’s face, she hadn’t either.

“We know they’re not Russian,” Macy snapped.  She and Sean
had never gotten along.  Macy’s body naturally produced an antidote to the
former agent’s killer charm—a condition Devlin resented.  “They were all
produced here in the U.S., then shipped to Bogdanov’s home in the Russian Swiss
Alps.  Then, a few months later, they were returned to the States.  The entire
process seemed to take about two years and the timeline coincides with
Bogdanov’s work on the counter-code system in the silos.”

Devlin leaned down and looked at the mirror closest to him. 
“Have you tried smashing them open?”

Macy had Devlin backed against a wall in two seconds flat,
the tip of her firearm shoved just beneath his chin.  “Why are you here?  You’ve
gone rogue.  Are you working for the terrorists now or just trying to be a pain
in the ass?”

Dante didn’t move.  Macy had a point about Sean’s sudden
appearance, albeit an unlikely one.  His old friend was a lot of things, but
mercenary wasn’t one of them.

“Macy, leave him be.  He’s probably coming around because
this is where the action is.”

Sean’s expression was entirely innocent, which meant he was
up to something.

“Or not,” Dante said, his blood running cold.

Sean rolled his eyes.  “I’m only here to deliver a message. 
A private message, to Dante.  I didn’t have any idea about the mirrors until I
snuck inside and overheard.”

“Snuck in?”  Macy said, throwing an accusatory glance at
Dante.

Sean clucked his tongue.  “Cut the guy some slack, Rush.  I
designed nearly every security system and protocol the Arm uses.  Trying to
keep me out if I want in would be a lesson in futility.”

“Here!”

One of the techs working on a small mirror taken from the
kitchen raised his hand in triumph.  “I’ve got the right formula to dissolve
the coating.”

Macy released Sean and the entire group gathered around the
tech while he painted a clear, foul-smelling compound across the glass.  He
then lifted the glass and adjusted a sunlamp positioned above him.  A
combination of two numbers and a letter became clear.

He passed the vial to the tech next to him, who applied it
to the mirror she’d been working on.  Again, an invisible layer of silver
dissolved and symbols came into focus.  This time, one number and two letters.

“We’ve got it,” Macy waved her arms until all the agents had
backed away.  “Apply this to every mirror in the house and then get me all the
numbers and letters.”  She speared Dante with a look that said,
Get rid of
this guy,
meaning Sean.  “I’ll get the decryption software down here and
we’ll have the code in no time.”

His operatives hesitated, but with a nod, they obeyed Macy’s
directive.  The room suddenly swarmed with activity and when Macy disappeared
to retrieve her equipment, Sean and Dante were left alone with nothing to do
but wait.

They retreated to the kitchen.  Sean poked around until he
found leftover crab and sun dried tomato ravioli in the refrigerator.

“Why are you really here?”  Dante asked, crossing his arms
over his chest, which was visible since his shirt had no buttons to fasten,
thanks to Macy.

Sean popped a large, cold pasta square in his mouth.  “I
thought I saw Macy on the monitor the other day.  Did some checking around,
realized what was going on.  You wanted her back.”

Dante frowned.  “This surprises you?”

“After you nearly died, no.  Have you told her?”

A lump formed in Dante’s throat.  Talking about his near-death
experiences didn’t come easy to him.  In fact, except for Sean, he’d discussed
the incident with no one outside the official debriefing and the mandatory
consultation with the department psychiatrist.  “There’s been no time.  Maybe
when this is all over.”

Sean nodded, but didn’t look convinced.

“Why do you care?” Dante asked.  “You gave up the spy game. 
Why aren’t you getting drunk on Bourbon Street or taking off to surf some
pipeline somewhere?”

Sean chuckled, but ignored Dante’s rhetorical question—the
one that really meant he wished Sean would keep his nose out of his private
life.

“If the mission was deemed classified, you can’t tell her
about what happened to you and still keep your job,” Sean pointed out.

Dante cursed.  He’d broken so many rules already—well, more
like created his own to serve his own needs.  His own desires.  He was so close
to getting Macy back—but he knew if he withheld something so important as the
moment he’d realized that he had to win her back, she might never trust him
again.

So far, he’d avoided revealing any classified information to
her, an agent from a rival organization.  If he did, he could kiss his career
with the Arm goodbye.  And rightly so.  But if he wanted her back in his life
for more than just this one week, he’d have to tell her everything.

The whole unvarnished truth.

Even if it meant his career.

He’d known the situation might come down to hard choices.  Macy
hadn’t yet said the words, he knew she was close to forgiving him, if she
hadn’t already.  They’d made love in their old, hot, wild style, but somehow
the passion had run deeper than either of them ever imagined.  She’d listened
to his explanation.  She’d trusted that what he’d said was the truth.  That
alone told him that her heart was opened.  He wasn’t going to let something as
insignificant as his job stand in the way of their future.

“I’m willing to sacrifice what I have to, Sean.  I love her.”

With a smile, his friend finished off the last of the
ravioli, wiped his hands on his jeans and then clapped him on the shoulder.  “I
thought you might be thinking along those lines.”  He dug into his back pocket
and pulled out a tiny purple velvet bag, one Dante instantly recognized.

“Where did you get that?” he said, swiping the small sack
out of his hand.

“From your place.  The minute I saw Macy on that monitor, I
figured you’d need it.”  Sean grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator,
gave his friend a salute and then let himself out the backdoor.  “Call me when
you set the date, okay?”

Once he was alone, Dante untied the gold string and turned
the contents of the sack into his palm.  Part of him couldn’t believe that he’d
kept the ring after all these years.  Part of him was terrified Macy would say
no.  But for the first time in his life, he knew one thing throughout his
entire body and soul.  He wanted Macy as his wife, even if he’d have to save
the world to accomplish his task.

When he heard footsteps down the hall, he pocketed the ring.

“I have the counter-code,” Macy announced, her face flushed
with excitement.  “I just transmitted the series to the T-45 operatives at the
Russian Central Command.  The system will be down in minutes and from their
remote location, there is no way the terrorists can launch the missile.  We’ve
won!”