“I need clearance on some things before I can explain. To know which story to feed the morning papers about you and Weber, we need your decision now.”
Tunnel vision crept up on Günter, narrowing his sight. “And if I say no?”
“You go down for murder. Ainsley and Jakes do time for conspiracy.”
“That’s madness,” Jenny cried over Simon’s, “What fascist crawled up your shorts and died?”
A slice of Günter’s hand shushed them both. He needed to think.
“What do they have to do with it? Especially now you have me?” he asked when a search for obvious answers came up empty.
“Leverage.” Ian gripped the ladder-like back of the chair with his palms. “You might not care about 5, or yourself, but you’ve always cared about…something.”
Ian’s gaze flicked to Jenny then back to Günter.
If Günter’s thirst for violence hadn’t been quenched that afternoon he’d have slaked it now. As it was, he could only sit as he realized that, for the betrayal of his office, 5 was about to exact a terrible price—one he couldn’t afford to accept. Or refuse. Not if he wanted to keep those he cared about safe.
“Haven’t the news outlets already got hold of my name as a murder suspect?” Günter asked.
“Not yet,” Ian answered, the yellow overhead light making him appear sallow. Tired. “We have copy about another suspect at the ready. Say yes, and we’ll release it to the AP tomorrow.”
“You’re something else.”
Günter’s gut told him Ian didn’t want to be doing this. The fact remained, however, that he was doing it, and it would take a miracle for their friendship to withstand both this and Dublin. The two men locked gazes for a long minute. Ian looked away first.
“Our operative said she fought him off. Is that true?” Ian asked, changing the subject.
Jenny nodded and Günter took in her pale features, freckles stark against the pale skin of her cheeks. He wanted to go to her. Apologize for this sordid mess he’d inadvertently involved her in. Who knew when Tallis had asked him to follow her all those years ago he’d be sitting across from her now, holding her life in the palm of his hand?
“How?” Ian studied her slight form. “We couldn’t tell once we disengaged the infrared.”
Günter choked. He should have guessed at the beginning MI-5 had been involved in circumventing his safeguards. The uneasy feeling he’d had all day intensified. That they’d gone to this much trouble didn’t make sense. Not a whit. Why him? He was so engrossed in his musings, he almost missed Jenny’s answer.
“I grew up in rough circumstances.” Eyes downcast, she traced the patterned tablecloth with a finger. “Once I had a job, I made self-defense lessons a priority. I’m nothing special, but it’s easy for someone my size to catch people off guard.”
Günter admired her strength and self-sufficiency. She’d seen a lot of crap in her life, but she’d never let it knock her down. When she glanced up at him, he saluted her with a lift of his brow and she smiled.
“Apparently our background people don’t know as much about you as they thought.” Ian tipped his chair on two legs as he considered Jenny. After a moment he asked, “How do you feel about working for us on this?”
“Okay.”
“What?” Günter asked, thinking he must not have fully comprehended Ian’s question or Jenny’s answer. “You’re
not
bringing a civilian into an operation?”
Ian bent his leg, bringing his foot up to drape his arm over his knee in a deceptively casual posture.
“She’ll be more convincing as your moll than any of the operatives we currently have. You’ve been associated with her already, and she with Bengal.” He glanced at Jenny. “She’s going to pose as your lover and self-interested backer on this—an addict who wants a front-row seat to Bengal distribution in New York.”
That was absolutely the most absurd, half-baked idea Günter had heard yet. Considering the past twenty-four hours, that said something. It was so ridiculous he couldn’t even muster his temper enough to be angry.
“No. Absolutely not. And you.” He turned to Jenny who tossed her hair out of her eyes to stare up at him. “Have you gone completely mental?”
“I can help you,” she said with a shrug of her slender shoulders. “You don’t need to go it alone.”
This whole thing stank. The pieces just didn’t fit together. They said they needed him—which made sense only as a revenge scheme against him for the deaths in Dublin—but to involve Jenny? What would that accomplish?
“And why have her pose as my lover?”
“She’s a Bengal junkie,” Ian’s uninjured eye stared at him pointedly. “Besides being a stimulant, you know it has an effect on the libido. We can plant rumors in the press, but ultimately she needs to be photographed by the paparazzi behaving inappropriately for her cover to stand up. It’d be better for everyone, Ms. Ainsley included, if you were her paramour.”
“No,” he said again, feeling as repetitive and defective as a scratched CD. “I’m not going to sleep with her. Not even to keep her out of jail. And since when is shagging a public act?”
“Nobody said you actually had to get physically intimate,” Ian pointed out dryly. “You came up with that on your own.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Günter kept his eyes trained away from Jenny, who’d grown stone still, as he said, “You know as well as I do our body language will give us away. We’re bloody well not lovers.”
“I’ll do it if he won’t,” Simon volunteered, and Günter barely resisted the urge to choke the life out of his second. “In fact, I’m a better choice because I’m not as easily recognizable after Dublin. You won’t have to disguise me as much.”
“No,” Günter repeated, but nobody seemed to remember he was there, much less hear him. “You’re both mad as snakes.”
“Thanks, mate.” Ian directed his attention to Simon. “We’re not going to disguise him. We need Gun’s name recognition among the celebrity circles. He’d be a high-end supplier if the Tiger could tap into his connections. Plus, he has knowledge of this organization and the history of its leadership that can get him around a tight spot if need be.”
“How about if I’m his New York connection?”
“How do you mean?” Ian asked.
“We work this from the angle that we nab the celebrity business on both sides of the pond.” Simon rubbed his hands together. “That way I can develop the initial contacts here before Gun goes in.”
“Simon I’ll accept. Leave Ms. Ainsley out of it,” Günter tried.
“No.” Ian shook his head. “She’s the most credible. Besides, three is better than one if things get dodgy.”
“Dodgy?”
Günter snorted. “The whole operation is dodgy. We don’t need a villain to bring it down on our heads. We’ll do it all on our own.”
His skin crawled with unease at the plan. Too complicated. Too many opportunities for things to go wrong.
“So what do we do?” The pink flush along Jenny’s cheekbones set off the sparkle of excitement in her eyes.
He wanted to be angry with her for playing into MI-5’s hands, but could only stare at her mouth. Even in his flummoxed state he found her irresistible. If he weren’t so flabbergasted he’d have kissed her on the spot. Instead he drew on his indignation and focused on the conversation at hand—or out of hand as the case seemed to be.
“Just a bleeding minute. Whose arse is this on the line?” he asked, belatedly. “Don’t I bloody well get a say?”
“No,” everyone chorused and Günter slumped in his chair.
“You’re still fired,” he muttered darkly at Simon, then glared at Jenny. “And you still have that smacked arse coming.”
A wicked grin crinkled her nose and made her freckles dance as merrily as her eyes. She actually enjoyed the idea of danger. Of coming up against the Tiger…and him.
“I’m serious,” he asserted even as his lust flared to life.
“I know,” she whispered and broadened her smile.
The scraping of two seats against the linoleum interrupted Günter’s staring contest with Jenny. He looked up to find Simon and Ian practically scrambling over one another to get from the kitchen.
“We’ll plan tomorrow.” Ian gave a knowing grin that spared the swollen tissue around his injured eye. “You two…uh…you can work on your alter egos.”
Simon snickered. “Yeah. I gotta go look for a new job anyway.”
With that they were gone, leaving him alone with Jenny. Günter looked around the kitchen for something, anything, to occupy his attention. Suddenly he was a school kid with a crush and a stammer. He couldn’t remember any woman who’d ever made him feel that way—unsure, out of control, lost. Not even Alona.
He’d wanted to protect Alona. With her flaxen hair and light skin she’d seemed so much more frail than Jenny. He’d never have manhandled her. With Jenny, somehow he’d always known that she’d give as good as she got. Her unpredictability and strength excited him much more than his wife’s fainting-couch disposition.
Knowledge of Alona’s duplicity broadsided him along with her memory and he closed his eyes tight against the emotion. All this time he’d thought himself responsible, but she’d been the cause of her own demise.
Not him.
The information freed him from guilt, but the twin burdens of confusion and anger bore down upon him with an even greater weight in their newness.
Old wounds ripped open and new ones simultaneously bloomed. Love died. Hatred grew. He felt ugly and evil and helpless inside his barren emotional landscape. Until he remembered Jenny… Opening his eyes he looked into the face of his momentary salvation and knew he couldn’t risk losing her the way he’d lost—
no
—the way he’d
never had
Alona.
“Why are you agreeing to do this?” he asked.
“As a kid…” She slumped in her chair and looked away. “As a kid I never had a chance to fight. It was taken away from me.”
The drip of the tap and hum of the fridge sounded loud in the silence, their only companion the labored rhythm of Jenny’s tightly controlled breathing. Günter remained quiet, knowing she had more to say and needed to marshal her resources before she said it.
“When they took my mother… I woke up the next morning. David was gone. Then there was the news of her death and his after the trial. They didn’t think I could read the big words in the paper.” Her voice lowered to a hoarse whisper he had to strain to catch. “And I always wondered. If I’d fought harder, been braver, could I have saved them?”
“You were seven,” Günter stood to pull at the tap handle, giving her some space. “You weren’t responsible.”
“David, at twelve, thirteen, helped put the monsters away. To save me.” Wide eyes a stark reminder of the frightened child she must have been, she finished, “While his troubles only grew.”
“You want to confront the monsters? To save someone?” he asked, trying to understand even as he frantically cobbled together logical arguments against her involvement. Fighting, and perhaps dying, to save a man like him was a poor bet.
Her chin came up. “Yes. I do.”
His heart went out to this dichotomy of a woman. So strong, yet so fragile. Somehow he had to make her see that demons had a way of turning on you when you chased after them. He sat again and leaned his elbows on the table, rocking it with his weight.
“Nietzsche said, ‘Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster’.” He shook his head, wondering if he was, in fact, the monster in this scenario. “You’ve known me for twenty-four hours—maybe thirty-six. You aren’t doing this for me. And there’s no good reason to do it for yourself.”
Tilting her chair back on its hind legs, Jenny blew out a breath. “You got me involved. I’m staying involved.”
She’d sidestepped his arguments entirely. He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. Stared her down. When she only stared back at him, unblinking, he took a more aggressive tack.
“You’ll get us both killed.” As effective as a slap, his insult brought twin spots of color to her cheeks. He went for the kill. “You know nothing—less than nothing—about covert operations. I don’t know what 5’s game is, but you’re a pawn. Nothing more than cannon fodder. I won’t have you bring me down with you.”
“Teach me.” She licked her lips and his eyes riveted to her mouth. “Teach me how to be your undercover lover.”
A kick to his middle couldn’t have felled him faster and he inhaled sharply at the bite of arousal.
“Daydreaming of flowers and candy hearts, Ms. Ainsley?” He issued his riposte from behind the fog of lust.
She shrugged and her bathrobe fell open to expose the creamy curve of one plump breast. “I think you’ll prepare me for the reality.”
The thrum of blood in Günter’s ears accompanied the stiffening of his cock as he thought about all the things he could teach her. He leaned in until they were nose to nose, and pulled out all the stops in a last-ditch effort to save them both.
“Do you have any memory of what your father did to your mother?”
A hard swallow accompanied her nod as all the blood left her face.
“You want me to do those things to you?” His whisper came out half threat, half regret.
Eyes wide, she shook her head haltingly, light catching the burnished copper in her curls.
“Because that’s what you’re asking for—me to pretend to treat you like dirt while I train you to be a prostitute for MI-5. What exactly about that scenario turns you on?”