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She heard a brisk knock on the door. Kane. She drew a deep breath, steeling herself for what lay ahead and opened the door.
He breezed past her and dropped the suitcase he carried on top of the bed closest to the door. She closed and locked the door behind him, then turned to face him.
“Ready to begin?” he asked.
No hello, no how are you. All business. If that’s the way he wanted it, fine with her. “Whenever you are,” she replied. She sat in one of the chairs at the tiny round table in the corner of the room.
He opened the suitcase and withdrew a thick manila folder. “You took care of what you needed to in order to disappear for an extended period of time?”
She nodded. “I’m on vacation with the police force and I told my partner that I was leaving town to chase down a lead on my mother and didn’t know when I’d return.”
Kane tossed the folder onto the top of the table and sat down in the chair opposite her. “Everything you need to know about Adam Mercer and everything you need to know about Jessica Sinclair.”
“Jessica Sinclair?”
“That’s your cover. You need to learn everything in that folder backward and forward. I don’t need to tell you that your life might depend on it.”
The file was thick, filled with information she’d need to know as well as she knew her own name. “How long do I have before I go in?” she asked.
“Three days. You’ll spend three days here memorizing those things, getting into character, then we’ll move you to your new living quarters and you’ll start your new waitress job at Night Life on Saturday night.”
He pulled a new cell phone from his pocket and placed it on the table. “I’ll be your only contact. Speed dial one to connect with me day or night. The phone is legit and registered under the name of Jessica Sinclair.”
His eyes were dark, enigmatic as he gazed at her. “For the next three days you’re going to be dependent on me for everything. I’ll bring you your meals and whatever else you might need while you’re here.”
She hated this part, the utter dependency on anyone and especially this person. But she also knew the necessity for it. Before she could respond to him, a knock sounded at the door.
“That must be Carolyn,” he said. He got up, ignoring the question on Cassie’s face.
He opened the door to allow in a short, squat dark-haired middle-aged woman carrying two small suitcases. She set the suitcases just inside the door and threw herself into Kane’s arms. “Kane, my darling man, it’s been too long. You’re just as handsome as ever.” She gave his cheek a playful love slap.
“Carolyn, you little bundle of dynamite, you make my heart pound with desire,” he replied, causing the plump woman to giggle like a schoolgirl.
Kane had the capacity to charm a nun into bad habits…or out of her habit when he wanted. Of course, in the time Cassie had spent with him so far there had been none of his easy charm directed at her.
And that’s the way I want it, she reminded herself. Strictly business, the way it should have been when they’d worked together before.
“Carolyn, this is Cassie Newton,” Kane said as Cassie stood. “Cassie, this is Carolyn McIntyre, makeup artist extraordinaire.”
“Oh, my, Cassie Newton, it’s such a pleasure to meet you.” Carolyn grabbed both Cassie’s hands in hers and squeezed tightly, her eyes sparkling in obvious admiration. “I’ve heard so much about you from people in the agency. You’re a legend.”
Cassie laughed with a touch of self-consciousness. “I don’t know about that, but it’s nice to meet you, too, Carolyn.”
“Carolyn is going to give you a makeover,” Kane said. “You’ve spent time on the streets in your job as a police officer. It’s her job to make you look different enough that nobody will recognize you as Cassandra Newton or Officer Newton.”
Carolyn reached up and grabbed Cassie by the chin, her green eyes narrowed in concentration as she turned Cassie’s face first one way, then the other. “Good bone structure…nice skin…we’ll have to do something about the eyes and the hair, both are too distinctive.”
Carolyn whipped around to face Kane. “Out,” she said and pointed to the door. “No good artist ever works in front of an audience.”
Kane opened his mouth to protest, but Carolyn was having nothing to do with it. She grabbed him by the arm and propelled him toward the door. She moved like a minitank, with determination and purpose, not stopping until Kane was out the door. “Come back in three hours or so and you can see the finished result.”
Three hours? What in the heck did the woman intend to do to her? Cassie wondered.
Carolyn turned back to face Cassie and rubbed her hands together in a gesture of extreme anticipation. “Now, we get to work.”
Was it Cassie’s imagination or did Carolyn have the slightly demented look of a mad scientist?
Two and a half hours later Cassie stood in the bathroom in front of the mirror and stared at the reflection of a stranger.
Carolyn wasn’t just an artist, she was a wizard and had managed to transform Cassie into someone else.
Gone was her trademark long ponytail. Instead her hair had been cut to shoulder length and feathered around her face in a sort of long shag.
Contact lenses changed her eye color from blue to deep green and the makeup Carolyn had applied had subtly changed the shape of her face, giving her higher cheekbones and a slightly exotic look.
While Carolyn had worked, she’d chattered nonstop about skin and hair care. “Never sleep in your makeup,” she said. “No matter how late it is, no matter how tired you are, always clean your makeup off to let your pores breathe.”
Cassie was about to go undercover on an assignment where the stakes were high and a mistake could mean her life and Carolyn was worried about her having clean facial pores.
Still, even though the woman had chattered like teeth on an icy night, she knew her business. Cassie didn’t look like Cassie, but she had to admit, she liked the new look.
The bathroom, on the other hand, looked like a war zone. Carolyn had pronounced herself an artist, and apparently her palette was not only Cassie’s face but also anything in a ten-foot radius.
Base powder speckled the sink, along with an array of various eye-shadow colors. A contact lens hung on the faucet, like an errant eye glaring askew. It had taken Cassie twenty minutes to finally get the hang of putting something foreign in her eyes.
The remnants of her hair littered the floor, looking one-dimensional and boring compared to the silver highlights Carolyn had added to her new do.
Yes, Carolyn had done a heck of a job, but apparently cleanup wasn’t in her job description. Cassie had managed to tidy up most of the sink when she heard the door to the motel open, then close.
She turned and saw Kane entering the room. He walked to the doorway of the bathroom, stopped abruptly and stared at her. “Amazing,” he said softly. “You look absolutely amazing.”
For just a moment his gaze felt hot…hungry on her and heat ignited deep within her. But as quickly as it had appeared, the look in his eyes disappeared and a cold, hard darkness took its place. “At least nobody should recognize you unless they know you pretty well.”
He turned and walked over to the bed and once again opened the suitcase he’d brought in with him earlier in the evening. “You’ll find everything you need for the next couple of days here…pajamas, clean clothing and toiletries. If there’s anything else you specially need or want, let me know and I’ll see that you get it.”
“All right.”
“It’s late. I’m going to get out of here and let you get a good night’s sleep.” He motioned toward the folder on the table. “You have a lot of work ahead of you.” He moved to the motel room door and opened it. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning. And Cassie…welcome back.” With these words he turned and left the room.
Welcome back, indeed, she thought. She walked to the door and locked it then peeked out the heavy, puke-green curtains. What was it about motel rooms and that particular color of green?
Her car was gone, magically taken away to erase any connection between Jessica Sinclair and Cassandra Newton. In place of her sweet little red Mustang was a banged-up blue Escort. She’d miss her little muscle car, just like she had a feeling she would miss her old life before this was all over.
She turned away from the window and sat on the bed next to the suitcase. She didn’t want to think of Kane, but she couldn’t help it. His familiar scent still lingered in the room, haunting her with memories of their shared past.
They’d begun their relationship as partners, two committed people working for the good of the country. They’d flown to exotic locations, worked both in squalor and in splendor. By the end of that second year of their partnership, their relationship had become personal.
It had been a tumultuous affair, filled with the danger of their jobs and an explosive passion neither had been able to deny. The most difficult thing she’d ever done in her life was walk away from him. But she was determined that she stay personally removed from him.
The air-conditioner unit in the wall clicked on and began a loud hum. She opened the suitcase to see what was inside. As Kane had said, she found clean, comfortable clothing, the usual toiletries and a cotton nightshirt. All in her size. In the bottom of the case she found a tube of pear-scented moisturizing body cream.
He’d remembered.
She clutched the bottle to her heart and closed her eyes. A well of emotion pressed tightly in her chest. One of her nightly rituals was to apply the sweet-scented cream to her arms and legs. It touched her more than she cared to admit.
She tossed the tube on the nightstand and stood, eyeing the folder that sat waiting for her on the table. Better to focus on work than on her softening resolve to keep her work with Kane strictly professional.
“Where did you go to high school?” Kane barked the question from his position in a chair at the table.
Cassie paced back and forth in front of her unmade bed, thinking that he sounded like a drill sergeant. “Lincoln High school,” she replied.
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Mary…Mary Sinclair and my father was Joseph. They died in a car accident when I was eighteen and my brother, Jimmy, was eight.”
“What was your address in Des Moines?”
Cassie stopped her pacing, frozen as she drew a blank. She stared at Kane with frustration.
“Bang, you’re dead,” he said.
He was right. It was the kind of lapse in memory that got you killed when you went undercover. She sank down on the edge of the bed, exhausted both mentally and physically. They’d been at it for the past three hours, Kane firing questions and her answering.
“You’re right,” she said tiredly.
“We’ll take a break, eat some dinner, then start again.”
She wanted to protest. What she really wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep for about ten hours. She’d stayed up most of the night studying the information in the file, then had gotten up before dawn to study some more.
“I feel like a college student cramming for finals,” she said.
He rose from his chair. “Yeah, but in this case if you flunk your final, you might lose your life.”
“I know…I know.”
“So what are you hungry for?”
“I don’t care as long as it isn’t another hamburger.” He’d brought her a burger and fries for lunch. “Surprise me.”
She immediately wanted to call the words back as a muscle in his jaw ticked and his eyes darkened.
“I’ll be back,” he said and left the room.
Cassie rubbed the center of her forehead where a headache threatened to take hold. Surprise me. How many times in their past relationship had they said those words to each other…a hundred? A thousand?
“If we get out of this alive, want me to tell you what I’m going to do to you?” he whispered when they’d been trapped in a cooler on a ship smuggling explosives to the Philippines and left to die.
“No, don’t tell me. Surprise me,” she’d replied.
“Want to know what I’m going to do with you when we get back to your place?” he’d asked, his eyes lit with fires that had burned her from the inside out.
“Surprise me,” she’d whispered breathlessly.
She now got up and began to pace once again in an attempt to erase the past from her mind. So far, Kane certainly hadn’t acknowledged that they’d shared any kind of a past. He hadn’t asked her why she’d left. He apparently had moved on.
It was important that she do the same.
All she had to do was get through these three days in the motel room. After that she’d be undercover and immersed in the job. There would be no time for thoughts of Kane, no time for entertaining any regrets that might plague her even temporarily.
He was back within twenty minutes, bringing with him Chinese takeout. He opened the containers as she got out the paper plates and chopsticks.
Moments later they were seated at the table across from each other, eating in silence that quickly became oppressive and heavy.
“Has the agency kept you busy in the last couple of years?” she asked, unable to stand the silence any longer.
“Fairly busy.” He speared a piece of sweet and sour chicken with one chopstick. Cassie swallowed a smile. He was adroit at almost everything else, but had never mastered the art of chopsticks.
“Domestic or foreign?” she asked, trying to draw him into something that resembled a normal conversation.
“Both. Did you follow the Brahm’s case?”
“The guy in New York selling arms to Iraq?”
He nodded. “We were in on that. It took almost a year to build the case.”
“Tell me about it,” she urged, eager to keep the silence at bay.
To her relief, he did. As he told her the details of the operation that had taken place two years before, his eyes lit with animation and he appeared to relax.
Cassie found herself relaxing as well as the tension between them disappeared at least for the moment. As Kane explained the various operations he’d been a part of for the past five years, Cassie asked questions to keep him talking.
She had always enjoyed Kane when he spoke with passion and conviction, and that’s what he exhibited whenever he talked about the job. The darkness left his eyes and his features softened.
Clad in a pair of tight jeans and a black T-shirt, there was a look of danger about him. His dark hair was carelessly mussed, but that only added to his attractiveness.
As he filled her in on his work over the last five years, she found herself wondering about his personal life. He told her where he’d been and what he’d done for the job, but he didn’t mention anything about the days, weeks and months that he wasn’t working on an operation or in recovery from his bullet wound.
When they’d been together, they’d spent much of their off time in Hawaii indulging in their passion not only for each other, but for scuba diving.
“You still diving on your downtime?” she asked.
With that simple question she shattered the mood. Shutters dropped over his eyes and he shoved his plate away from in front of him. “No, and that’s enough idle chatter. Time to get back to work.”
If she thought he’d been relentless in his drilling of her before, there was a new intensity now. He fired question after question at her, his expression revealing satisfaction when she answered and disapproval when she faltered.
He was a hard taskmaster, pushing her harder and harder until she finally cried uncle. “Enough,” she said and collapsed on her bed. “That’s enough for tonight. I’m exhausted and my brain shut off about an hour ago.”
“Actually, an hour and a half ago according to my assessment.”
