What was Sawyer doing here? And where was here anyway? She looked around, narrowed her eyes, couldn’t see anything more than fuzzy shapes that seemed to bounce back and forth as if the world had been set on spin cycle.
“Over here, baby.” She followed the sound of his voice. “That’s it. Yeah, I think things are working well enough for us to get started now.”
Get started? Eve had no idea what he meant. Or what was going on. But a niggling thought in the back of her mind warned, Be careful.
Metal scraped the floor. Eve focused long enough to see Sawyer’s fuzzy shape pull a chair in front of her and sit. “We’ll start with something easy. Tell me your name.”
Her name? He knew her name. “What is this? What’s going—?”
“Your name, beautiful. And where you live.”
“J-Juliet.”
“No, not your CIA cover, sweetheart. Your real name.”
Eve’s mind spun, and before she thought better of it, she said, “Ev-Evelyn Wolfe. I live in . . .” Crap, where did she live? “Monterey. I live in Monterey.” That was right. On the beach. She had this great bungalow that overlooked the Pacific. It was small and had cost a fortune, but it was so worth it. “In California.”
“Good,” Sawyer said. “Very good. Now, how about who you work for?”
Why was he asking her these questions? Eve couldn’t seem to think straight. “I work for . . . the CIA. You know that.”
“Wrong.” Sawyer leaned forward. A snap echoed in the room, followed by a whisper of air across Eve’s skin and the soft clink of something hitting the floor. “Try again, Evie.”
Eve blinked twice, tried to clear her watery vision. Sawyer was sitting in front of her, and in his hand he held something silver. A knife? Eve tried to see through the fuzziness.
No, not a knife, a pair of scissors.
Scissors? What the hell would he need scissors for? He—
She looked down, and even though everything still seemed to be moving as if underwater, she noticed the top button of her blouse was missing. Her breasts all but spilling out of her once-white top.
Her gaze shot back to his face, and inch by inch, it came into view. Dark hair in need of a trim, several days’ worth of beard on his sculpted jaw, a thin scab across his forehead, and piercing, unfriendly, more-brown-than-green familiar hazel eyes. “Try again, Evie.”
She swallowed. Hard. Tried to make sense of what was happening. Couldn’t. Couldn’t seem to stop herself from talking either. “I . . . I work for the CIA. Counterintelligence. I’m—”
“Wrong.” Sawyer leaned forward again. Another snip. Another whisper of air across her stomach. Another clink as the button hit the cement floor. “I’m not interested in your lies.”
Eve’s stomach tightened. The venom in Sawyer’s words was new. And bone-chilling. She tried to move, to get away, but her hands were locked behind her. She tried to stand but couldn’t because her legs weren’t working. Too late she realized he’d tied her to a chair.
Panic pushed in, mixed with the drug still wreaking havoc on her brain to make things seem surreal. “Sawyer—”
Sawyer leaned back and rubbed a hand over his face. “Okay,” he said more calmly. “Let’s try something else.”
Metal scraped the floor again. Eve held her breath as he stood and moved around behind her, where she couldn’t see him. “What were you doing in Beirut?”
Beirut . . . The word mixed with fuzzy memories. Fuzzy, heated memories of the two of them locked tight together. In their apartment. In the shower. In that crappy car when she’d been sure no one could see them. “I . . . my job.”
“Yeah, I know that, beautiful.” He leaned close to her ear, his warm breath rushing over bare skin to send tingles down her spine. This close she could smell him. Musk and mint and man. She’d always loved the smell of him. “But you weren’t working for the CIA then.”
She had been, though. Synapses slowly started to fire, like links in a chain firming up when pulled tight. And oh man, he wasn’t going to believe her. But the truth . . . the truth was the only thing that seemed to be condensing in her mind. Where were the carefully orchestrated covers? Where were the lies she so often rattled off without a second thought? “I . . . I was working undercover.”
“Spying.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“For whom?”
“The CIA.”
“Oh, Evie.” Snip. Whoosh. Clank. “I didn’t realize how eager you were to get naked.”
Eve gasped as her blouse fell open all the way to her belly button. Frustration, fear, and panic all coalesced in the bottom of her stomach. “I’m telling you the truth!”
Blinding pain lit off behind her eyes. Before he could ask her another question, she slammed her lids closed and groaned. “Oh God, my head.”
“You took a nasty hit on the noggin, beautiful. Breathe through it.”
She did. But not because he told her to. Because it was the only thing she could do.
“That’s better,” he said when her face relaxed. “Now, back to what we were discussing. You said you were spying. Are you implying you were spying on the CIA for the CIA?”
“Yes,” she managed, gritting her teeth through the pain that was, thankfully, now easing. “I mean . . . the Pentagon—”
“I’m not buying it, honey.” He snipped another button from her shirt. Only one remained.
A red haze lowered over Eve’s vision. He was trying to intimidate her. But this was Sawyer, not some terrorist. He wouldn’t really hurt her. Would he?
She struggled against the chair. “This is bullshit.”
“Ah, but you like bullshit. You spin it so well.”
Pain shot up her arms. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why? You tell me, Eve.” He leaned close to her ear. So close she could feel his lips brush her skin when he whispered, “Think hard. About the phone call you made to me. Just after the raid. When I was lying on the floor of that Huey bleeding out. Remember what you said?”
Eve’s whole body went cold. And that day—a year ago—flashed in her memory. Not fuzzy and watery as everything else, but crystal clear.
“ ‘I never lose.’ Ring a bell, Evie?”
Bile rose up in Eve’s stomach. This was not the same caring man she’d once thought of leaving the CIA for. Whatever gentleness used to be inside Sawyer—no, Zane Archer—was gone, thanks to what she’d done.
“There are all kinds of ways to go about getting the answers I want,” Archer said softly in her ear. “If you cooperate and tell me what you know, I’ll try to make it . . . pleasurable. You remember how nice I can be, don’t you, Evie?”
Unfortunately, she did. She remembered everything. Every secret touch, every stolen kiss, every nip and lick and suck and thrust. And she remembered how he’d made her feel. Not dead inside as she’d felt since Sam’s death, but alive.
Only this, what he had planned for her here—something in her gut told her this was not going to end up being sweet or romantic or anything like she remembered. The man she’d once known was nowhere to be found in the one at her back. Fear—true fear—slithered into her chest. Unless she found a way to make him listen, this was going to be bad.
Think, dammit. Archer knew all too well how important control was to her, and he was taking that from her now. Exposing not only her secrets but her body in the process, using that to intimidate her. This was a mind fuck, nothing more. He wouldn’t really hurt her.
Or so she hoped.
“I-I didn’t compromise your team in Guatemala, Archer. I-I wasn’t the one who turned you over. I found out the raid had been compromised after it was too late to get in touch with you.”
“You always were good at the lies, Evie.” He snipped the last button on her blouse. It hit the floor and rolled away, leaving the two halves of her shirt to swing open and a chill to slide over her bare skin.
His boots echoed on the floor as he came around to sit in front of her again. Eve’s adrenaline amped all over. “I’m not lying,” she said quickly. “When I called you after—when you were in the chopper”—she glanced at his leg and realized he’d limped around her chair. “I didn’t call to gloat. I called to make sure you were still alive.”
“Lies, Eve,” he said calmly, way too calmly, “come so easy to you.” He opened the blades of the scissors, positioned them at the hem of her skirt, and sliced through the black fabric.
“I’m not lying,” Eve said again. “I only acted like I was gloating because I didn’t know who might be listening. Archer, there are moles in the CIA. My unit hunts them down. That’s what I was doing in Beirut. What I’ve been doing since.”
He opened the scissors and sliced again. Her skirt opened to just above her knee. But unlike before, when he’d yelled at her, there was too little emotion on his face. As if he’d already decided she wasn’t going to tell him what he wanted to hear and that nothing she had to say would change his mind. Goddammit, being caught by a terrorist was one thing. Being caught by someone who hated you and knew your weak spots was an altogether different horror.
“Archer—”
The cool blade of the scissors brushed her inner thigh, and she jumped. Panic pushed in and rippled through every inch of her body. And with it, in the background, something—a memory, a thought, a picture she couldn’t quite bring into focus—telling her there was an important element to all of this that she was forgetting. Something personal. Something from earlier. Something that would make what he was doing here seem like nothing.
Why couldn’t she remember?
“Archer, listen to me.” She swallowed again and tried to stay calm. Through a haze she fought the effects of the drug and focused on the here and now. “It killed me that I couldn’t tell you the truth in Beirut. It killed me that I couldn’t tell you on the phone that day I called. Someone inside the CIA set Aegis up to take the fall for that scientist’s death in Guatemala. Someone who wasn’t me. I swear it.”
His eyes stayed locked on her skirt. He opened the scissors and sliced through the fabric again. “It’s really too bad you chose to work in espionage. You’d have made millions in Hollywood.”
“Archer, dammit! I loved you, you son of a bitch! Why would I try to get you killed? I was trying to save you!”
The scissors stilled. His head lifted. Stormy hazel eyes locked on hers. Eyes that didn’t seem so sure anymore.
Her heart pounded hard. Her palms grew sweaty. “Archer—Zane—I-I’m not lying. I’m telling you the truth. Just listen to me. Listen to what I have to say—”
A roar of metal slicing through metal echoed from the doorway. Sparks flew into the room, spraying across the floor.
Eve swiveled in the direction of the noise so fast she knocked the chair off balance and hit the concrete. Pain radiated through her shoulder, echoing in her head.
“Fucking fabulous. Your goons found us.” Archer was at her side in a flash.
The whir of a saw continued to snarl through the room. Voices echoed on the other side of the door. Voices that sounded even more hostile than Archer’s.
“Hold still.”
Something cold pressed against her ankle, followed by pressure and release.
Zip ties. Not handcuffs. He’d zip-tied her to the fucking chair.
He cut the tie from her other leg, grabbed her arm, and hauled her to her feet. The room spun. The cement was cold against her bare toes but solid. Shoving her around, he reached for her arms, bound at her back. “If you’re lying to me again, Eve, I swear to God this will pale in comparison to what I’ll do to you.”
The cuffs released from her wrists and clattered against the floor. The roar of the saw cut off, and a banging sounded from the direction of the door. As if whoever was out there was about to blow into the room.
Fuck that.
The need to escape grew to exponential levels. But the here and now overrode her flight response. As soon as she was free, Eve whipped around and plowed her fist into Archer’s jaw. “That’s for threatening me, you bastard.”
He stumbled back a step. She hauled off and kicked him as hard as she could in the thigh of his good leg. His weight went out from under him, and he dropped to the floor with a grunt.
Temper boiling, she leaned over and added, “And that’s for drugging me, you son of a bitch.”
4
He’d underestimated her. While that thought pissed Zane off, the reality of what was bearing down on them overrode his need to retaliate.
He rolled to his side and pushed up on his hands. Ground his teeth against the pain throbbing in his leg. Eve’s hands yanking on his arm surprised him more than if she’d hauled off and kicked him in the head just for the fun of it.
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