More Than Gold (Capitol Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  While Jack wasn't concerned about Morgan's driving, he was, however, concerned about her. She was burying her feelings, swallowing them inside and using the car as a transfer device. He wasn't sure she knew she was doing it. From the profile he'd read he knew she'd been very shrewd as a child. Spending years alone on the street had taught her to hide her feelings, to keep them inside and never allow anyone to see what she felt. The car was a safe haven for those feelings. What she couldn't talk to him about, what she knew needed an outlet, she gave it through the car, but it was a controlled giving. She looked as if she was running on automatic, like she'd set the car to drive itself and turned on her own personal cruise control to keep from feeling anything.

  Jack knew better. There was at least one time when she didn't keep her feelings to herself. She'd poured them out with long heart-rending tears while he held her in his arms. He wanted her to trust him enough to do it again. He wanted her to tell him what she felt. Despite her facade of strength and ability, she probably hadn't done anything like trust another human being in twelve years, maybe longer. He'd been there for her before. It was important that he be there again. He'd helped her through it before. Helping her again was why he'd come this time.

  ***

  "That was a pretty amazing house," Jack began. "I suppose the options we walked through won't be found registered at the city building department."

  For a long moment Morgan remained quiet. Jack didn't think she'd talk to him at all.

  "Come on, Morgan. I'm on your side. I haven't asked anything about why you had a secret escape route or a car, with an engine that purrs like a kitten, hidden in an abandoned military base. The least you could do is talk to me."

  "Why are you here?" She broke her self-imposed silence with a voice so low he had to strain to hear it.

  "I don't know. I was hoping you'd tell me that."

  "I don't need your help and I don't want it. So if it's all the same to you, I'll let you out at the nearest town and be on my way."

  Jack sighed. He wasn't used to people not wanting his help. Often when he got to someone, they were willing to follow him, assuming he knew how to keep them safe. He wasn't sure about Morgan. He had no idea how much trouble she was in.

  "Morgan, can we start over?"

  She took her eyes off the road and looked at him for as long as she could before returning her attention to the road. "I don't think so," she said.

  "Morgan—"

  "I didn't build the gym myself," she started speaking at the same time as he did. Jack allowed her to finish. "Before the Army base closed, the commander had it built for his children. He had the foundation dug and moved the house to sit over it. Once the base closed, the house was vacant for years. I got it because of. . . connections." She didn't explain any further. "So you are correct, Jack. It won't be found on any building department's plans."

  "What about the escape tunnel? Did he build that too?"

  "That was mine."

  "You did that?"

  "Don't look so surprised. I am capable of many things."

  "It's not that. It's why?"

  "Why did I think I needed one?" she asked. "I suppose that's a moot point now. I needed it, it was there."

  "And the explosives?"

  "I wasn't sure that would work." She almost smiled. "I found an old manual at the base one night. It wasn't about making bombs. I found that information on the Internet. The manual was about the techniques of disarming bombs."

  "Why would you want to bomb your own house?"

  "I didn't hurt anyone," she rushed to say. "That's why it was ten minutes after I set the timer. I left a recording warning anyone inside they had ten minutes to get out before the house was blown up."

  She hadn't answered his question. "But it was your home." Jack couldn't imagine leaving a place he'd lived in for twelve years by destroying it on purpose.

  Morgan took her time answering. "I didn't want to leave anything around that would help someone find me."

  Jack thought she'd chosen her words very carefully. He wondered if she was telling the truth. Why wouldn't she want any trace of herself left? He thought about the house she'd lived in. It was beautifully decorated, but impersonal. Morgan lived there, yet the only room that he could say he felt her a part of was the gym. She might walk through the other rooms, but her presence was invisible, everywhere except that chalk-filled air of the underground gym.

  "What's this all about, Morgan?"

  He couldn't have shut her up more quickly if he'd put duct tape over her mouth. And he could think of something else he'd like to put over her mouth. It wasn't tape.

  Jack wondered what she was thinking. It had been twelve years since they'd last seen each other. He thought that was enough time, but it was wiped away in one tumble to the floor of her hallway. He'd seen her struggling under him and he wanted to kiss her. She wanted to be unseen, unknown and untraceable.

  ***

  At daylight Morgan pulled off the main road and zigzagged through a series of secondary roads until she finally reached a narrow strip of blacktop that seemed to be swallowed by trees and bushes. The blacktop faded into a pothole-ridden, broken road and then dropped all pretense of being paved. The car's suspension system barely registered a change. Jack wondered exactly what was under the hood of this nondescript vehicle. Certainly more than he had initially given it credit for, but Morgan had planned carefully, and this car was no less outfitted than that tunnel above her gymnasium.

  "Can you tell me where we're going now?" He spoke for the first time in hours. His throat was dry and his knees cramped from sitting in one position for so long.

  Morgan swung the car sharply around a bend and a house came into view. The road changed from packed earth to gravel. The house wasn't what he'd envisioned. With all the trees around them he expected a log cabin or some hidden away building with crumbling walls and in serious need of a paint job. What he saw was a sprawling three-story mansion with high white columns and a veranda and balcony that appeared to ran the full circumference of the building. In front of it was a large man-made lake. They drove around it, along an oval driveway outlined with deep red stones that led up to the wide porch and double front doors.

  Morgan stopped the car and got out. Placing her hands on her lower back, she arched it, then raised her hands to the sky and stretched. She gave a reviving cry, reminiscent of the first stretch of the morning. Hours of sitting had taken a toll on her too. She rotated her shoulders. Then, pulling the backpack from the car, she started for the house.

  "Do you own this house?"

  "No."

  "Are you sure we'll be safe here? I didn't see any gates around it."

  She continued walking. "I've only been here once."

  "You seemed to know exactly how to get here."

  "I know a lot of things."

  Jack let that go. He needed to determine their immediate safety before delving into her education, street or otherwise.

  "Who owns the house?" he asked.

  "It belongs to a friend of mine. I have permission to use it anytime I want." She opened the screen door and punched a memorized code into an electronic lock. Morgan's world seemed to be populated with electronic locks, gates and doors.

  And now assassins.

  Jack didn't doubt the people after Morgan weren't amateurs. They knew who she was and exactly where to find her. The fact that she was so well-prepared for them is a story he wanted to hear.

  "This friend of yours," Jack spoke. "Is he here?"

  "No."

  "How do you know he won't decide to come up for the weekend?"

  "Because we left her splattered all over my foyer." Jack was smacked by the cryptic comment. He knew Morgan was hurting inside and trying to deal with it. There wasn't time for grieving, not even time to do the right thing for a life that was so suddenly ended. He understood her grief. He'd seen it before, even experienced it himself when he lost a friend during a raid in Lebanon. He had seven men to think
about. He couldn't stop when one of them went down. But Remy hadn't been shot. He'd been caught, not killed. At least not right away.

  "There's a bathroom down that hall and several others upstairs."

  "Morgan?" She hadn't stopped moving since she got out of the car. She walked quickly from room to room on the first level. Another familiar action for someone grieving and trying not to let anyone else know. He went to her and took her arms. He turned her to face him. "How do you feel?"

  "I'm fine." She tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold. She winced, but he knew he wasn't holding her too tight. He loosened his hold anyway.

  "You're not fine. You're remembering. You're no longer driving. Your concentration isn't on anything and that leaves you time to remember. Tell me. Don't go through it alone. You don't have to."

  She looked at him then. Eyes that had been avoiding his shifted to stare straight at him. Her brown irises were huge and bright. Then she slapped his hands away.

  "I said I was fine." She stepped away as if she were back on the streets, scared, alone and fending for herself. "There is food in the refrigerator and plenty of entertainment if you want it. If you're tired, there are eight bedrooms on the second floor. I'll be in the last one on the right. You can use any of the others."

  She disappeared, leaving him alone.

  ***

  Morgan needed some down time. Her nerves pulsated fire. Red and raw, they spewed flames, licking at the backs of her eyes, until she wanted to scream. Her eyes were blurry from the intense pain in her head. The headache had begun last night, but she'd staved if off while she drove, wishing she had her medication handy, but knowing it had gone up in flames with the house on Wild Meadow Lane. She had a small bottle in the first-aid chest, but that was in the car's trunk. The road had been practically empty for most of the drive. She didn't have the beams of other cars' headlights stabbing her with illumination, and the steering wheel acted as an anchor, keeping her sane.

  Her kind of life didn't come without a physical manifestation of the abnormalcy that was all but tattooed on her forehead. What a normal life was like she had no clue. She'd traded the streets for what she thought should be normal. It had the promise of normalcy, but it had been temporary, only letting her glimpse the good life. She could be part of it for a price and that price was time. For a short period she could live like the rest of the world, but then she would trade one set of circumstances for another. Some people tried to cope by disappearing into bottles of Jack Daniels or pints of Boone's Farm Apple Wine, an elixir so cheap it burned through tissue on the way to the stomach. Others escaped the world through slow forms of suicide like crack, heroin or one of the psychotropic drugs with long names and short initials. With her it was stress-induced migraines. She wasn't sure her own methods of coping weren't as potentially dangerous and suicidal as daily doses of cyanide.

  The headaches began the winter after she'd moved to St. Charles. At first she thought they were normal headaches, but their constancy made her realize headaches were generally symptoms of some other physical problem, and that her body was telegraphing her a message so loud she couldn't ignore it. Morgan visited her doctor for a complete physical. It rendered nothing organically wrong with her. The doctor determined, from her description of head-exploding, light-sensitive pain, that she suffered from migraines. Morgan understood the stress and worked to provide physical outlets for it. The first was an exercise program that resulted in her building the escape tunnel. She hadn't begun thinking of it, but later thought her headaches would be less frequent if she knew she could hide or escape the house if someone came looking for her. For a while this had helped and she felt better, slept better. Then Austin Fisk entered the picture with his constant questions and implicit threats of bringing the world to her door. The headaches returned with a vengeance so forceful they could rival any switchblade stab.

  And now Jack.

  She could do nothing with Jack around. He threw her equilibrium off big time. In this state she was too aware of him as a man. She could use his arms around her, protecting her, for the moment keeping her fears at bay. But that was a door she could not open. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. She still hadn't come to terms with his presence. Why did he show up now? Although he'd saved her from exposing herself too soon when they were in the tree, he could still be her assassin.

  She went to the bedroom and closed the door. Pulling the drapes shut the soft green tones of the guest room disappeared, and the furniture melted into shrouded shadows. The darkness eased the throbbing pain somewhat. Closing her eyes, Morgan massaged her temples a moment then went to the bathroom in search of aspirin. She thought of Michelle lying back in her house. It was doubtful anyone would find anything of her after the explosion. Poor Michelle, who never hurt anyone, and never had a headache judging from the contents of this medicine cabinet. Closing the mirrored door, she went back into the bedroom and lay across the bed.

  It was too far to go back to the car for the medicine. Sleep would have to do.

  ***

  Jack didn't pursue Morgan. He understood what she was going through, and even though she didn't have to go through it alone, she was insistent on not allowing him to help her. Jack didn't know if he blamed her. He'd come to see her because he'd been there when her message came through. Jacob Winston was his friend and they were meeting for lunch. Her message interrupted their departure and Jack told Jacob he'd check it out. He wasn't authorized to work in the United States. His area of concentration was overseas, the Middle East and Asian countries, oil-producing areas and places where nuclear weapons could become an immediate threat. After the Soviet Union collapsed and each of the states became its own country, the threat increased with bureaucracy in chaos. There was little or no accounting for medical research, viruses and super-viruses, or weapons of mass destruction. Paperwork and missiles fell through cracks as wide as superhighways. Some of them found their way to Middle Eastern countries and that's where he came in. With his coloring and ability for language, he was less likely to stand out than some of his contemporaries.

  Jack surveyed the house as he thought of his job then and now. The downstairs was clean of electronic bugs and the kitchen was fully stocked with food. Both the refrigerator and freezer were filled to capacity. The cabinets bulged with every type of dry goods. He wondered if Morgan was telling the truth. She said she'd only been here once, but she moved through the house as if she were a swimmer moving through water.

  Jack checked the locks downstairs on the doors and windows before going upstairs. Bedroom by bedroom he checked them for anything out of the ordinary. They were all clean. At last he got to the door where Morgan told him she was going. He knocked lightly. She didn't answer. Gently he turned the knob and opened the door. The room was in complete darkness. She lay across the bed, asleep. Her feet dangled over the side and she still wore the tennis shoes she'd had on for more than twelve hours.

  She couldn't sleep that way. Jack knew she was exhausted, but her feet would swell and she wouldn't be able to walk. He went in and closed the door to keep the light out. The room suddenly seemed much longer than it had when he looked inside. He felt as if he was intruding on her. Feelings toward her made him warm and he felt himself becoming aroused. She looked so peaceful in sleep. When she was awake she was always on guard. He'd seen it twelve years ago and he saw it yesterday when she came into her house. Sleep was her only refuge, the only time she could let her guard down, drop all the masks she held firmly in place, the barriers that kept the world away from her, kept her safe from needing another person. There was only one time he knew of her need, of the fire she kept encased inside her. He remembered it still, as if it had happened yesterday and not twelve years earlier.

  He'd kissed her. A kiss that moved him, changed him so he never forgot it, but also scared him so badly he could only turn and leave. He walked away from her, but he wanted to run. She'd altered his reality, jolted it as surely as if she'd taken a tire iron and beat him a
bout the head. And there was nothing he could do but stand and accept the pain.

  Jack took Morgan's legs and lifted them onto the spread. He unlaced one shoe and eased it off. She sat up.

  "What. . ." Her eyes were wide and afraid.

  "Shhh," he said, reaching out and pushing her down. "Go back to sleep. I'm here."

  She lay down and closed her eyes. Jack stared for a moment. He'd never seen anyone as beautiful as Morgan Kirkwood. Even at nineteen when he'd viewed her on the film in the CIA headquarters building, she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and she was barely more than a child. She was still as beautiful, but no longer a child. She was a woman and he couldn't help being aware of it. Jack stood there for another moment before forcing himself back to his task. Quickly he removed her other shoe and pulled a light blanket over her. The air conditioning had been turned on and he didn't want her to get cold.

  He looked down at her, wanting to kiss her forehead, wanting to curl her body into his and hold her, the way he'd held her in the tree, but he couldn't trust himself to stop there. He brushed his knuckles down her face and left the room.

  The door clicked quietly closed.

  Morgan Kirkwood opened her eyes. She raised her hand to her cheek and slowly caressed it against her skin.