Page 45 of Dangerous Liaisons

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Was it worth it, Jess?” Cole asked half an hour later as she glanced through the broken rear window for the dozenth time. She had climbed over the front seat and now occupied the passenger seat beside him. The country road they traveled crossed open ground which allowed sighting of distant headlights.

“They’re back there somewhere.” She scanned their surroundings for manmade light.

“Jess.”

She looked at him. “What?”

Cole took his eyes off the road and met her gaze. “Team members don’t lie to each other. That’s Lanton’s style.” He looked back at the road as if the matter was closed.

Anger replaced shock. “What did you expect? I don’t fucking know you!”

“I put my life in your hands by going with you,” he said. “I trusted you to back me up.”

“I did.”

“Come off it, Jess. It’s dangerous for one team member to keep information from another. You have your agenda, and you’re sticking to it. It’s what you do.”

She stiffened. “Read that in my psych file, did you?”

Cole jerked the wheel right, driving the Harvester onto the shoulder, and came to a screeching halt that nearly sent her through the windshield. He threw the truck into park and seized her shoulders. The full moon shed light into the interior of the Harvester like a bright street lamp, illuminating the hard set of his jaw—and a blaze in his eyes she hadn’t seen before.

He gave her a hard shake. “You’re tough, aren’t you? Right. I read your file. I read about Madrid, Cairo, Bangalore. You can take care of yourself, but you’ve forgotten about teamwork.”

“Fuck you!” she shouted.

His gaze dropped to her mouth and she startled with the impression that he wanted to kiss her.

“You lasted one year in the Core before they drafted you,” he said. “Ever wonder why?”

Jesse gaped.

“They can spot top operative material a mile away,” he went on.

“What the—”

He gave her another hard shake. “Subject’s father dies before she turns twelve, her mother, just before her eighteenth birthday. Subject is left to care for special needs sibling. Subject studied some high-minded subject in college—say, political science as it applies to information security. Subject has a series of short relationships, of which only one serious.”

Jesse slapped him.

His grip tightened for an instant, the heat of his fingers searing through the cotton sleeves to her arms, then he released her. “It’s over, Jess. You can’t do this alone. Never could.”

“But you can?” she snarled.

He shrugged. “I’m not the one trying to go it alone. I won’t jeopardize my teammate’s life by lying. If I—we—go down, I’ll have a clear conscience.”

“You bastard. You’re making me the bad guy.”

“You screwed up, Jess. If you had told me our objective was to get Menendez to contact Perez, we would have handled things differently.”

“You didn’t have to stick around.”

“You didn’t believe you’d find anything in Menendez’s office. The sniffer was your insurance policy, and you didn’t want me to know what you were doing. You made a rookie mistake and put me at risk.”

“For all I know, you’re Lanton’s bed partner,” she shot back.

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself that’s what you believe?” Cole leaned back in the seat. “Keeping me in the dark won’t protect me.”