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Just the way Ice liked it.
“You liked that?” Indy whispered to him through the turgid air between them. “I took a class in dramatic theatrical performance at Yale.”
“Very impressive,” Ice hissed back at her through his teeth. “Not the performance, but the decision.” He shook his head, gazed darkly in her direction, hoping to hell his eyes wouldn’t betray what he really wanted to do to her in that hotel room, how he wasthisfucking close to giving himself permission to make her submit in the way his body craved right now, craved in a way it never had, not for any woman, not like this, never like this. “This isn’t a fucking game, O’Donnell. You’re a hunted woman. It could be your partner or Benson or even Kaiser who sent in that wet team, which means the CIA may have already decided they don’t give a shit about who you’re covering for. They just want you gone. Erased. Wiped out. Whether you’re innocent or guilty, I am your only shot at living through this. So donotfuck with me again. This is your final warning. You pull that shit again and I walk.”
“You won’t walk,” Indy said softly, gazing at him with more warmth than Ice could handle right now without burning up from the ferocious heat raging through his body. “You’re a good man and you have a sense of justice. You know I’m innocent. You know I’m out of options. You know I’ve served my country just like you. So you won’t walk, Ice. I know it in my heart. And you know it in your heart too.” She swallowed, touched her hair, blinked up at him. “I . . . I heard it in your heart.”
Ice frowned. “Heardit in my heart?”
Indy nodded. “When I was pressed against your back on the motorcycle. I heard your heart beat.” She flashed a smile, her smooth cheeks darkening with a brief splash of color. “Fast. Furious. Frantic. Not the kind of heartbeat one would expect from a guy who calls himself Ice.”
Ice swallowed hard. Everything about this woman screamed for him to believe her, to trust her, to help her, protect her. But there was a clear physical attraction that Ice knew could be scrambling his signals. He needed to be careful.
But he also needed to be balanced.
Because if Indy really was innocent, then she was right about one thing, that was for damn sure:
She deserved justice.
She deserved protection.
She deserved to be safe.
And the only way to know for sure if Indy was innocent was to stick with her.
Which meant Ice wasn’t walking away.
Not now.
Maybe not ever.
6
CIA HEADQUARTERS.
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA.
“Youeverput one of my guys in danger like that again and I swear to hell, I will shoot you where you sit, right in the middle of CIA Headquarters!”
John Benson stormed into Martin Kaiser’s office, breathing hard from the rage surging through his body. He was relieved they’d taken his Smith and Wesson 9mm at Security Check, now that Benson wasn’t officially CIA. He would have beenthisfucking close to sticking the gun in his old friend’s face just to remind the CIA Director of what it felt like to be one trigger-pull away from hell.
Kaiser whipped around in his swivel chair, his eyebrows raised, black cell phone held slightly away from his ear. He blinked twice, then placed the phone flat on the desk and tapped the screen.
“Speak of the devil,” Kaiser said into the phone with a sigh. “Benson just walked in unannounced, Senator. I’ve got you on speaker. You can tell him what you just told me, so he doesn’t think I’m bullshitting him. It appears John’s not in a very trusting mood right now.”
Benson swallowed the vicious wisecrack that tried to leap out of his throat. He strode over to Kaiser’s big walnut desk, glared at his old colleague, then forced a long exhale and glanced at the phone.
“Hear what directly?” Benson guessed it was Senator Marcus Robinson on the line. Kaiser had been communicating with him directly for some time now—not just because Diego Vargas might be on the loose and gunning for the Senator but also because Robinson was now the Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a powerful position that had once been occupied by the late Senator Dean Morgan.
Dean Morgan’s death had in a way kicked off the entire Darkwater thing with Ax and Amy’s mission, and Benson brushed away the sickening thought of what would happen if Senator Robinson and his wife Princess Delilah ended up as casualties of another Darkwater mission.
He couldn’t let that happen.
Because Senator Marcus Robinson needed to be the next President of the United States.
Kaiser and Benson had already made a private promise to do whatever was in their power to make that happen.
Robinson and his wife Delilah were two remarkable Americans of strong character and breathtaking vision, and Benson sensed it was part of his own destiny to make sure those two got to the White House.
