More Than Gold (Capitol Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  CHAPTER 3

  Outside a perfect May morning was in the making. Jack walked into the backyard noticing the area had both advantages and disadvantages. The house sat alone in the middle of a manicured yard. The landscaper had probably been paid well to clear the land and form a sloping emerald green lawn that extended from the house to the trees at its perimeter. Square-cut hedges dressed the outside of the house, broken here and there for massive flowering plants, roses, philodendron, forsythia, a holly bush whose bright red berries would contrast the snow in winter, and the ever-present bougainvillea, which must be law for every landscape architect since it appeared in most yards in the eastern United States.

  The perimeter of the property was ringed by oak and sycamore trees. The trees prevented anyone from surprising them, but conversely they had three hundred feet of open space before the trees would provide cover for escape should it be necessary. The front of the house also had the reflecting pool. Jack found pumping equipment and a fireman's hose. This far from another house or any other form of civilization, the house had its own water supply in case of fire. It also had its own emergency generator. Michelle O'Banyon must have been very well-to-do. Jack wondered about caretakers. Someone had to keep the lawn cut and the refrigerator stocked. He wondered about the road too. It was hidden from a casual driver and far enough back that when it became nearly impassable, any normal driver would assume they'd made the wrong turn and go back. It was good for hiding, Jack thought.

  Morgan had to feel comfortable to come here. He turned to look at the upstairs windows. Her room faced the open yard where he stood. The closed drapes indicated her sleeping quarters. He thought of her lying up there, oblivious to the danger they'd gone through, and he knew there was more ahead of them.

  The shot that took out her friend, Michelle, had been a Meier RD-12, a gun that shoots a spray of bullets in the form of a circle. The impact is enough to cut through bone and tissue surrounding the heart and fling it against the wall ahead of the body. The average hit man was a sharpshooter, whose weapon was as personal to him as his fingerprints. Their choice of firearm was something small, easy to carry, easy to dispose of if necessary. The bullets that had killed Michelle O'Banyon came from a weapon he knew. It was stock-in-trade for his profession, military, deadly and identifiable to terrorists.

  Jack turned back, continuing his surveillance of the area. When he reached the trees, he estimated the distance to the house at three hundred feet, the length of a football field or three Olympic-size swimming pools. Leaning against a tree, he pulled his cellular phone from his pants pocket. The small, government-issued instrument was state-of-the-art. As thick as a Hershey candy bar, it contained all the internal technology to reach any other phone or communication device on the planet. He pushed the button that called up the password screen and tapped out the memorized code onto the flat keypad, then pressed his thumb to the identification pad and spoke into the speaker. Through a massive amount of secure computer code, his verified signal uplinked to a military satellite thousands of miles above the earth and bounced his scrambled voice code back to a specific secure phone in FBI headquarters only eight hundred miles from Jack's present location.

  "What the hell is going on there?" Jacob Winston, director of the witness protection program sounded angry. Jack knew an LCD panel had lit up in Jacob's office revealing Jack's location and identity. Before Jacob even lifted the receiver, he knew who was on the phone. "I've got reports of Morgan Kirkwood's house exploding, gunfire exchanged and one dead body. What happened?''

  "I'd like an answer to that question myself," Jack replied. "I'd only arrived on the scene when the light show began."

  "Is she safe?"

  "For the time being. We escaped the house before she blew it up."

  "She blew it up?"

  "There isn't time to explain everything that happened, but she's an amazing woman, Jacob. She had a planned escape route you'd have to see to believe." He hoped his voice didn't reveal his emotions. He'd never had a problem doing it before, but whenever he thought of Morgan Kirkwood, any rules of keeping himself separated from the situation evaporated like ice on a griddle at five hundred degrees. "We drove all night to our present location." Jack was careful to keep names out of the conversation. The line was secure as far as he knew, but no system was foolproof. Jacob knew where they were and he'd been identified by both voice and thumbprint before the phone at FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital had even rung. Jacob could locate him by the signal from his cell phone if he needed an exact location.

  "Is she safe?"

  "Not in the long run. Twenty-four hours at best."

  "You're there to make sure she's all right." Jacob appeared to be giving him orders. "I'll send enforcements. Can you hold?"

  "I'm not authorized."

  "I'll clear it," Jacob said.

  "Copy," Jack said. "I'll still need to check in," he paused. "I need to know the situation."

  "She hasn't told you?"

  "She's got a problem with trust. One I believe is validly supported by circumstances of the past.'' Jack didn't have to tell Jacob of Morgan's Korean operation which had gone horribly wrong. He already knew most of the details. "She thought I was here to kill her and I'm not sure she doesn't still think that." He stopped short of accusations, but knew Jacob understood the implication. "Do you have anything?"

  "Nothing," Jacob said. "Other than her message about her suspicions, we can only assume it has something to do with her past. That's your ballpark."

  He and Morgan had been together on one mission, twelve years ago. What could that mean now? "I'll check into it."

  "We'll talk later," Jacob said, indicating there was more on the table than could be communicated over satellite links despite the security measures in place. "Sit tight, we're on our way."

  The phone went dead. Jack checked the state of the drapes on Morgan's windows. Nothing had changed. He hoped she was still sleeping. It was nearly time for him to sleep too, but he had one more phone call to make.

  Brian Ashleigh headed the Central Intelligence Agency. He was a great guy, a hands-off manager to his direct reports. Jack didn't report to him. He reported directly to Forrest Washington, director of antiterrorist activities in the Far East. Forrest gave his agents in the field the freedom to act. He realized the agents had to have the latitude to make decisions on their own. There was no book of rules to follow for the situations a field agent could face. It was instinct, experience and intuition that was the guidebook.

  But Forrest was away on vacation and Jack had to call the director in his stead. The problem was, Jack shouldn't be here at all. He had no rights and no protection under the law other than that of a private citizen. This was not his pool or even his neighborhood. He had no authority here. The fact that Morgan Kirkwood's life was tied to his presence and ability to protect her, or that she'd once been pivotal to a successful CIA operation, meant nothing to Brian Ashleigh. She was no longer active. She'd performed one operation and had been duly retired.

  When this call was verified and his identity confirmed, Ashleigh would burn his ass over the satellite-linked carpet.

  ***

  Where was Jack? Morgan's first thought when she woke was of the man who might be here to harm her. She checked the clock. It was afternoon. She'd been asleep for hours. Her headache was gone and she felt better. Not rested, but better. She hadn't felt rested in years. After yesterday it seemed like a lifetime. And she was hungry.

  Pushing back the blanket Jack had obviously thrown over her, she got out of bed and folded it neatly. She didn't know which of the rooms he'd chosen to sleep in, but the house had presence to it, a stillness that said nothing was moving and no one was about. No smells came from the kitchen, no coffee or television playing to disturb the rhythm of air currents. Morgan had made a study of air in the house she'd occupied. She knew any changes due to barometric pressure or the presence of living human beings. This house wasn't her dom
ain, but she could feel the quiet. Jack was here, but he was asleep, not moving, not disturbing the air.

  Morgan wanted to look for him, peep into each of the bedrooms and see if he was comfortable, see if the chiseled features in his face changed to the little boy face she imagined it could be. Jack's features were hard. She wondered what he did to keep his face so stern and serious. Through the long night of driving, his face had remained still, unchanging, immobile. At the beginning he'd sneaked glances at her, but after a while his stare was trained on the road ahead of them. She wondered at the practice it must take for him to put total concentration into a task. He probably had the same technique when he slept, but she wouldn't know that since she wouldn't look for him.

  The kitchen was stocked to the rafters. She'd known it would be. Michelle had told her there was plenty of food, and Morgan didn't expect any less than she saw. She knew Michelle had grown up poor, dirt poor. She'd come from the mountains of Tennessee, from a large family, where money was short and mouths long. For years she didn't wear shoes, didn't go to school, didn't eat and didn't see any future greater than the one in front of her face. She'd told Morgan this during her first Ladies Auxiliary Annual Tea Party. The kind of place where the society of the town congregates to socialize and plan. Michelle had pulled herself up from the uneducated muddy streets and changed her life, but her kitchen was always packed with food as if she was afraid she'd have to return to that life of hunger. Morgan understood her. They both had the same kinds of backgrounds. Morgan's had been a fight for existence and Michelle's a struggle to survive. They came from the same cloth and believed in the same things. Except for Jack they would have died on the same day. A tear slipped into the corner of Morgan's eye and she wiped it away.

  Jack had already eaten. There were dishes in the drainer that had been washed and stored. Morgan knew he had to be as hungry as she was, but her migraine superseded her need for food.

  Quickly she scanned the contents of the freezer. Thoughts of broiled steak and baked potatoes dripping with raw butter, lumped high with gobs of sour cream wafted through her mind and made her mouth water. Only there were no potatoes to bake. She could bake pork roast and couple it with warm applesauce and gravy-laden mashed potatoes from a box. There was frozen shrimp and lumpfish, a tray of baked lasagna she could cut and microwave. And for Michelle's efforts at dieting, there were packaged dinners from Weight Watchers, The Budget Gourmet and Lean Line. While Morgan would love to have a decent meal, the preparation time was too long. Her headache could return if she didn't fill her stomach soon. She wondered what Jack had eaten as she pulled the lasagna tray from the freezer.

  As the microwave sent radiation at a frequency of 2,450 MHz into the molecules of her food, causing them to move rapidly and generate enough heat to cook it in a few minutes, she stared through the kitchen window. The glass structure composed the entire wall, broken only by the huge wooden frames that sectioned it into six panes and separated the outdoors from the inside. Without the frames, the double layer of tempered glass would appear invisible. Without adornment, the window's giant panes were nearly as large as she was tall. The lawn on the other side was bright green and healthy, but Morgan's mind returned to a different time and a different pool. She saw a cool pool of water and a man swimming in it.

  Jack's strokes were strong and rapid. His shoulders rotated through the liquid, propelling him forward toward his goal of the pool's end. Back and forth he swam, switching direction with only a mere disturbance of water. He fascinated her and she found it difficult to look anyplace else while he swam. But Jack Temple had been a coach, not even a competitor. He had been within the age range, no more than twenty-five she estimated. Competition wouldn't be a problem for him. She wanted to ask him why he was coaching and not competing, but he stayed away from her. His body radiated a don't-come-near-me message. Consequently, she gravitated toward him, but kept her distance, usually observing his personal practice sessions from the far end of the audience section or through the glass observation room.

  She usually left before he completed his routine. Morgan had watched him enough to know the length of time he took before returning to the residence village and his team.

  Except for that one night.

  Maybe she had the next day's mission on her mind or her own final competition had driven her to the pool. Whatever the reason, she overstayed her timing and Jack came out of the water to find her, the only spectator, in the stands.

  Morgan's heart hammered in her chest. They'd spoken to each other once, on the plane when they'd both headed to their seats at the same time and the plane hit an air pocket, causing them to collide. His hands caught her arms and she looked into his eyes. She couldn't move, couldn't speak. Now she felt the same way watching him come toward her. She stood, wanting to run, feeling the need to escape. He was dangerous. She knew dangerous men, could recognize them in a snap. Jack was deadly. She should run from him, stand clear whenever he was around. Yet he attracted her like morning attracts the sunrise. She couldn't keep her eyes off him. Danger poured from him like the water rolling off his shoulders and chest. It shimmered down his athletic legs, glistening like rivers of black gold.

  Morgan stood up and moved to the floor. Her gym bag hung on her shoulder. Her brain told her to leave. Her preservation depended on her getting out of the room, but her feet took root in the cement flooring. Jack's eyes pierced through her, holding her in place. Morgan couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to. Her feet had nothing to do with her former street mentality. She wasn't trying to protect her turf or stand up to the neighborhood bully. There was something about Jack that drew her. It was visceral, mysterious, magical even. She had no explanation. It was as if they had to be together, but coming together would mean fire and perishing. There was no way to stop it. It was destined. She could only stand and wait, watch while doom reached out for her. She would embrace it, knowing it was forbidden, that nothing good could come from it, but helpless to do anything to change the forces that had already been set in motion.

  Morgan wore her leotard and tights. She could explain she was heading for the gym to practice when she saw him. Jack gave her no need to explain. Neither of them spoke a word.

  He walked directly to her, his gait easy, unhurried, his weight balanced. She had to look up as he approached. Morgan watched him, a dark Poseidon, a devil-God rising from the sea, advancing toward her, the light of the water in his eyes. Her heart beat so hard she was sure he could see her chest moving. Yet they continued to stare, one at the other. The room about them shrank, bringing the humid air closer and making it hard to breathe. Heat escalated, growing hot enough to boil the pool water.

  He stopped in front of her. Too close. He breathed hard from physical exertion. Morgan felt the same although she had done none of the work that he'd performed while she watched his efforts. His body heat grew, enveloping her in its flames. She could almost see the red-gold color of the encompassing wave as they teased her with their all-consuming power.

  Her eyes rose to Jack's. Gone was the coldness she'd always seen there. Gone was the hostility that normally greeted her when she found herself in his line of vision. His eyes were liquid, large brown circles that spoke to her without language, without tongue or teeth or movement. She heard his mind, his heart, his need for her already knew the words.

  His short hair glistened with pool water, bright, caught by the ceiling lamps that bathed him in a soft gold glow. Morgan watched a drop of water roll over the curve of his ear. It caught the lobe and hung there like a star, its light captured and sparkling bright. More drops joined it until the tiny weight became too heavy and burst in an exciting explosion.

  Morgan gasped. Jack's hands reached for her waist, aligned their bodies, engulfing them in the dual heat of furnace-hot generators. Her gaze came back to his. For a moment she saw a question in the depths of his eyes. Then his head dipped and his mouth captured hers in a searing kiss. An ageless, timeless communication of man to woman. A fire-h
ot, molten revival of life. A circling, waving tsunami of need pouring from one to the other and back in a ceaseless wave of desire, passion, rapture.

  Morgan had secretly dreamed of him. She'd imagined this kiss in the darkness of her bedroom, never thinking it would ever be a reality. He lifted his head to reposition his mouth over hers. Morgan grabbed his arms to keep from falling and Jack's arms embraced her, deepening the kiss. She melted into him, her arms encircling his neck, his arms caressing her back.

  Jack's hands moved to her hair, combing upward from her neck over her crown, anchoring her to him in a frontal full nelson.

  His mouth grazed hers, like a burning prairie fire, dry and coarse, and moving out of control, pushed along by the wind. Morgan tumbled like the bush into him. Going up on her toes she made room for Jack to pull her closer as if he were the fire and she the life-giving air it fed on. Long ancestral caravans of relatives rushed into Morgan. A sweeping panorama of her own female ancestry rushed in a ghostly progression, making her realize the force from which she'd come, the women who'd slaved and toiled to bring her here to this life and this man. A desert of hope in a sprawling mirage of spewing fountains.

  They hung like that, supporting legs and arms and torsos. Bobbing heads switched positions like the ticks of a clock. They dodged, danced and connected. Two complementing souls finding each other over a planet full of people, knew their joy, the wonder of being alive, the height of a thousand yesterdays and the singularity of one frozen moment in time.

  ***

  Jack broke contact just as he'd begun it. He shifted Morgan's head to his shoulder, letting her rest there while they both hungered for air and each other. Nothing so cataclysmic had ever happened to her before. There were no words to describe it, not now, not in the past, the present or the future. Only the perfect tandem communication between two souls.