Sleeping With the Enemy
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Jamie Denton
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1
THEY KNEW SHE WAS HIS ONLY weakness. They knew, and they hovered like vultures, waiting.
Dee clutched the single, bloodred rose to her chest, breathing in the intoxicating perfume while struggling against the instincts screaming inside her to stand up and search the crowd gathered beneath the sun-drenched southern California sky. She couldn’t. Not without risking his life. Not without letting the bastards know he was there. For her.
He should have known better than to come here. She could just imagine her brother’s determination, but the University of California at Los Angeles wasn’t some Podunk medical school. The governor would be addressing the graduates momentarily and security was tight, the campus literally crawling with federal agents and secret service men. Yet, somehow, someway, Jared Romine had taken a great risk to let his little sister know he was proud of her.
The valedictorian took the stage for his address to UCLA’s graduating class. The speech could have easily been hers, if she hadn’t intentionally thrown a couple of classes so as not to draw too much attention to herself for Jared’s sake. The Feds would’ve had a field day, she thought with an uncharacteristic flare of rebellion. And her brother would have loved the irony—rogue agent Jared Romine’s little sister, valedictorian.
She let out a slow even breath and looked in all the obscure places she possibly could without craning her neck or drawing attention to herself. Her brother wouldn’t be sitting in the crowd with the other family and friends of the graduates from one of the country’s top medical schools. No, Jared could be posing as anyone from building security to a janitor sweeping the walk, to the guy testing the sound equipment prior to commencement and no one, not even his fellow agents would know he’d been within their grasp until it was too late.
She was used to the silence from her brother. When he’d decided to join the FBI, he’d done so knowing his work in Naval Intelligence could very well place him in deep-cover assignments where contact with family and friends was as dangerous for the family as it was for the undercover agent. Other than one brief visit before she started med school, they hadn’t seen each other since parting ways in Washington all those years ago. Silence from her brother for three months at a time was still a bit unusual, albeit not completely unheard of, which was the only reason she hadn’t been alarmed by Jared’s lengthy absence. She’d figured him on an undercover assignment, until she returned from classes three months ago to find two agents waiting for her outside her dorm room.
She expected them to tell her Jared had been killed.
What they’d told her had been far worse.
Jared Romine was on the FBI’s most wanted list…as an agent-gone-bad, accused of murder. Of murdering one of his own and a top senatorial aid. The government claimed their evidence was rock-solid. Even though they wanted Jared and not her, until they had him in custody, they watched, they invaded her privacy and they waited.
Jared’s whereabouts were a mystery to her. From the work he did, she suspected he had numerous contacts, not all of them above the law. No doubt he was hiding out until it was safe for him to come forward and tell his side of the story. All she could do in the meantime was hope and pray he was safe. From the day her parents died, Jared had taken care of her and protected her. Now it was her opportunity to return the favor.
Her gaze landed on a rather spry elderly gentleman hanging out near the edge of the staging area. Dee’s heart fluttered behind her ribs, praying it was Jared dressed in a disguise of some sort. Her breath stilled as she willed the man to turn around, only to be let out in a disappointed huff when he did.
She secretly hoped the Feds would get tired of the chase, or that Jared had slipped into and assumed a new identity, starting a new life for himself. As much as she missed him, she’d rather have him safe and alive than…
The Feds wouldn’t let up, though. In the three months they’d been following and watching her, she learned just how relentless they could be. They picked her life apart, and the life of her brother who remained elusive to the government wanting to prosecute him. She was Jared’s only weakness. If it hadn’t been for the blank postcards that showed up occasionally, or the one extremely brief phone call where a scratchy, unfamiliar voice whispered he’d been framed and he had no choice but to go underground, the Feds might have left her alone. If it hadn’t been for the late-night calls with no one on the other end of the line every few weeks, they might have backed off. But Jared continued to take those small, meaningful risks just to let her know he was alive.
When their parents died, Jared had promised her she could depend on him. He’d done the best he knew how, and she loved him for it. Considering the example their parents had set, Jared’s care and support had been a vast improvement.
The day they’d gone their separate ways, Dee to Los Angeles to attend college on a partial academic scholarship and he to Quantico to work for the FBI, he’d given her a bus ticket and two hundred dollars. “To destiny,” he’d said, then handed her a single bloodred rose, told her he loved her…and drove away without looking back.
Because of the constant back-to-back deep-cover assignments, other than a weekend visit three years ago, she hadn’t seen her brother. Now under such dangerous conditions, he was close. She could feel it and wanted nothing more than to at least catch a glimpse of him. They’d be allowed nothing else. A hug would be as impossible as five minutes alone. All she’d have to carry her through, possibly even for the rest of her life, would be a quick smile or a surreptitious wink. Despite the danger, she needed that, needed just one small token other than the rose handed to her by a stranger to hold in her cherished memories of her brother.
The ceremony continued, and still Dee could find no sign of Jared. Frustration nudged her when she spotted two federal agents posted on either side of the stage where the graduates passed once their names were called to receive their diplomas. She walked slowly toward the stage, waiting as the dean called the graduates, shook their hands and congratulated them before handing them the piece of paper that declared them physicians.
Standing, she was able to scan the crowd. She desperately wanted that new imprint for her memory. But she knew the risks. Anything other than the rose with no note attached could cost her brother his freedom, maybe even his life.
The dean called her name, shook her hand and congratulated her before handing over her diploma. She clutched the document to her chest, along with the rose, and smiled brightly for the benefit of the agent waiting at the other end of the stage as she made her way down the steps. Moving slowly toward the rows of chairs to reclaim her seat until the end of the ceremony, she finally saw him.
Her brother stood toward the back of the crowd, dressed in a dark blue suit, with the bored, but alert look of a secret service agent, complete with an electronic communications device tucked in a nondescript manner behind his ear. He looked much older than his twenty-nine years, his face more lined than she expected and his rich sable hair lightly touched by gray at the temples. Despite his aging features, his body was still as fit as she remembered and his green eyes more watchful but just as mischievous. She glanced hastily around, hoping she wasn’t being watched, but when she looked back at her brother, the barely perceptible shake of his head told her otherwise.
For his sake, she had no choice but to return to her seat. All she wanted to do was run into Jared’s arms and weep for the injustice keeping them apart, and the future they might never be able to share. She knew in her heart by the time the ceremony ended the secret service agent would be gone as if he never existed.
Just as Jared Romine no longer existed.
Dee would stoically return to her small, furnished dormitory room following the graduation ceremony and ready herself for her job at the San Vicente Medical Center where she’d interned in the emergency room six days a week. Instead of the grand celebration most of her classmates would no doubt partake, surrounded by family and friends, her solo celebration would consist of a double shift in the E.R.
She’d shed not a single tear for the brother she might never see again. Lessons taught to a young girl were hard learned and not easily forgotten. And no one would know Special Agent Jared Romine’s only weakness would go on as if her heart did not lay tattered beneath her breast.
Two Years Later
CHASE BRACKEN DRUMMED HIS pen on the yellow legal pad, staring absently at the pile of banker’s boxes containing months of work that were stacked neatly against the wall of his Manhattan apartment. The list of men who had worked on the Romine case was long and distinguished. None, however, had managed to apprehend the elusive rogue agent.
Nor had they been able to gain an ounce of information from his only living relative.
Chase planned to rectify that little problem.
He tossed the pen on the table and tipped the chair back on two legs. Using the balls of his feet for balance, he rocked gently back and forth and folded his hands behind his head, a habit he’d developed despite his foster mother’s lectures that one day he’d fall and break something, more than likely his neck.
Jared Romine was the unresolved thorn in the backside of the Bureau. A degree in rocket science was hardly a necessity for Chase to understand why he’d been given the worst assignment the Bureau had to offer. Bend-the-Rules Bracken had screwed up, big time, and his pain-in-the-backside superior officer was determined the Romine case would have Chase turning in his shield. Or worse, his boss would try to pull him out of the field and make him ride a desk until retirement. And that was just a little too long for Chase Bracken to be cooped up inside an office.
He’d find a way to redeem himself in Pelham’s eyes. He’d been on the superior’s hit list before and he usually managed to find a way off by solving the next case with as little muss and fuss as possible. The less covering up the Bureau had to deal with, the better Pelham liked it. Except after the fiasco of his last case, Chase wasn’t so sure of his continued upward mobility within the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
He had to admit he’d really made a mess of things this time, and the chance of him bringing in Romine was slim, making his likelihood of redemption in Pelham’s eyes even more scarce. But Chase had just enough arrogance to acknowledge he could be the agent to finally capture the rogue agent.
He let out a sigh and dropped the chair back on all fours. Arrogance was one thing, stupidity was quite another. Not to mention the small fragment of insecurity he’d never been able to completely conquer.
Years of combined on-the-job experience by some of the best men the Bureau had to offer hadn’t been able to capture the agent-gone-bad. What made him think he stood a chance at succeeding where others had failed?
His own damned ego, that’s what, he thought, shoving himself away from the table and heading into the kitchen. He poked his head in the fridge and winced at the barren shelves before snagging the last remaining imported beer. Leo Mitchell, his foster father, had always been fond of warning him that the bigger the man, the bigger target the man makes. Chase was a target of his own making, he decided, and bound to suffer the consequences of his own arrogance.
He swore mildly, then shoved the door closed with his hip. An unopened birthday card from his folks lay on the counter next to the registration renewal form for his Ford Expedition, both of which required his attention.
Chase picked up the colorful envelope, opened the card from his foster mother and read the handwritten note. A grin tugged his lips at the humor behind the birthday sentiment lamenting his thirtieth birthday. It’d be just like his mom to mark the day with humor instead of one of those sappy cards that made hormonal women cry and grown men shift uncomfortably. He was once again reminded of how lucky he’d been when Leo and Susan Mitchell came into his life. Yet, despite his good fortune of being raised in a loving, caring home, Chase had spent most of his life trying to prove something to someone. According to the Bureau shrink, the chip on his shoulder existed because his entrance into the world was highlighted by an addiction to his birth mother’s drug of choice. Consciously he understood he was good enough. The problem was good enough wasn’t always sufficient. For Chase, he always had to be better.
He dropped the card back on the counter and returned to the small dining area, twisting off the beer cap on his way. The Romine case was nothing short of a guaranteed failure. He knew he had only one option, to pull off what agents for the past thirty months could not—apprehend Special Agent Jared Romine, wanted for the murder of a fellow agent and the top aid to Senator Martin Phipps.
With a sigh of disgust, he dropped into the chair beside the oak table. As much as he would have liked to, he really couldn’t argue with Pelham. Not this time. He’d created a reputation for himself, and now he had to live with the consequences. It was common knowledge Chase Bracken didn’t play well with others. He took risks, calculated risks in his opinion, but still risks the Bureau had warned him about time and again. After his last assignment, Pelham had called him a cowboy. Funny how the superior officer seemed to conveniently forget Chase had the highest success rate in the New York office. At least until the Gleason case.
Psych had cleared him. So had I.A. Chase didn’t see a problem. In fact, in his opinion so long as he got the job done, there shouldn’t be a problem. Was it his fault things weren’t wrapped up all nice and tidy? He wasn’t the one who shot at innocent bystanders, even if Pelham did blame him for firing first at the perp in a less than perfect scenario. Usually by the time Chase wrapped up a case, there were fewer criminals roaming the street and the Gleason case was no exception. Because additional body bags had been involved this time didn’t mean he was getting careless or losing his edge…just that he was doing his job.
Psych and Internal Affairs had agreed with him, and that was all the confirmation he needed to continue onward under the status quo. Bend-the-Rules Bracken would still get the job done…his way.
He set his beer aside and flipped the lid off one of the boxes, pulling out the most recent file with the name Destiny Romine, M.D., printed across the tab. According to the surveillance reports, the good lady doctor was the only link to her brother.
From the first initial contact, no one had ever been able to trip her up. If she knew her brother’s location, she wasn’t talking.
A slow grin eased across Chase’s mouth. He always knew how to make them talk.
He opened the first file and spread the surveillance photographs over the table. Something deep in his gut twisted at the forlorn expression captured in Dr. Romine’s eyes in several of the FBI photographs. Still, even the hint of sadness surrounding her failed to detract from her natural beauty. Her driver’s license photo said she was a green-eyed, five-foot-seven brunette. The Bureau photographs depicted a rich cascade of sable hair that hung halfway down her slender back. The photographer managed to capture Dr. Romine right at a moment when she appeared to be staring directly into the camera. Her eyes, an intriguing shade of green mixed with pale gold, momentarily held him spellbound.
He shoved the glossy color photograph of the subject back into the file. For the next forty-eight hours, Destiny Romine, M.D., was the least of his problems. He had a series of meetings scheduled with various Bureau officials regarding his new assignment. There was one way to catch Romine, and Chase was positive that meant getting close to Baby Sister. And in order to do that, he needed to come up with a damned convincing cover.
He opened the file and looked at the photo again. She didn’t look like the sister of a murdering FBI agent. She did look like a woman with secrets.
Secrets that Bend-the-Rules Bracken had every intention of learning, using whatever means at his disposal.
Three Weeks Later
DEE RELUCTANTLY FORCED herself out from under the downy softness of the comforter she hadn’t bothered to remove from her double bed before climbing between the silky, cool sheets. She’d barely managed to keep her eyes open long enough to shower before dropping into a dead sleep.
It had better be good, she thought, tossing back the comforter as the doorbell chimed a second time.
She slipped into her robe. It couldn’t be an emergency, or else her phone would have been ringing instead of her doorbell. Especially following the difficult breach delivery of Cole Harbor, South Carolina’s newest resident. She’d placed the baby boy into the exhausted arms of his parents only three hours ago and if some complication had arose, Lucille, the clinic’s nurse, would have called her. The birth had been long and difficult, and Dee had very nearly had to perform an emergency cesarean section right there in cranky old Doc Claymore’s clinic. However, by using a few techniques shouted at her by her crabby nemesis, she’d managed to turn the baby enough to perform a vaginal birth.
The bell rang again by the time she reached the living room of her small triplex apartment. “I’m coming,” she grumbled, managing to avoid the rented sofa and cocktail table without jamming her bare foot as she so often did.
She had no idea who could be standing on her doorstep so blasted early on a Monday morning, but she suspected it was nothing life threatening. Since Doc Claymore’s semiretirement, she was the only physician on-call for the quaint seaside town nestled between Georgetown and Charleston on the Carolina coast. The ringing doorbell rather than a frantic phone call from George, Cole Harbor’s answer to law enforcement, or Ed the ambulance driver, meant a fishhook was more than likely the reason for her interrupted, and desperately needed, slumber.
She tied the sash on her pale blue cotton robe. Cole Harbor was probably one of the safest places she’d ever lived, but that didn’t stop her from latching her door or having a peephole installed. Crime wasn’t her concern. No, it was the alleged good guys that had her worried.
She peered through the lens in the center of the door to determine the identification of the visitor. She wasn’t sure what or whom she thought she’d find on the other side of her door, but the last thing she expected was the gorgeous sight awaiting her.
Even through the distortion of the peephole, she had no trouble classifying the man standing on her doorstep as more handsome than sin. Tall and powerfully built, he had wavy hair blacker than midnight that was a fraction too long for a label like clean-cut. The soft sea breeze teased the rebel strands brushing the collar of a navy polo shirt he wore tucked into a pair of blue jeans. Jeans she was positive would be faded to a well-worn white in all the right, interesting places. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes, and before she could stop herself from being silly, she had the fleeting hope they were blue. She’d always had a weak spot for dark hair and blue eyes, especially when they came in a package as athletically fit and so well put together as the gloriously handsome stranger ringing her bell.
The last vestiges of sleep were nudged aside by the return of her customary common sense. The gorgeous male specimen was probably her new upstairs neighbor. She’d recalled seeing a moving van two days ago, but although she’d been too busy at the clinic all day Friday, she recalled hearing Netta and a couple of the younger, single Cole Harbor residents speculating on the social, and marital, availability of the Cougars’ new football coach.
Still, she hesitated and did another quick once-over as he turned around, his back to the door. He didn’t have that spit-and-polished FBI look, she decided. At least not through the fish-eye lens of the peephole he didn’t. In the flesh could be a different story.
She ran her hands through her hair in a vain attempt to smooth the tangles, then opened the door. The peephole didn’t do him justice. As up close and personal as the safety chain allowed, she couldn’t help noticing his blue jeans were exactly as she’d imagined them, hugging a masculine posterior she found way too intriguing to be written off as her professional medical opinion.
“Can I help you?” she asked, managing to keep her tone cool and remote. The last thing she needed was for him to suspect she considered him a mouthwatering example of masculine perfection.
He turned around and locked the clearest, most startling gaze she’d ever seen on her. Maybe it was the exhaustion, but she could swear this man, a total stranger, with the sexiest pair of lilac eyes she’d ever had the pleasure of gazing into, could see clear down to her soul.
Dangerous, she thought the second he flashed her a breathtaking grin. Way too dangerous, especially for a woman with something to hide.
