Get Blondie

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.”

To her surprise, one corner of his lips curved upward in a half smile. It was like a gift after their grueling hours of work.

She felt herself responding to his smile, not just with a smile of her own but with a warmth that suffused her entire body.

“You did better than I expected with just a night of study,” he said as he got up stiffly from his chair and stretched his arms over his head. “I have no doubt at all that by Saturday morning you’ll be ready to go.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” she said, pleasantly surprised by his words.

“I’ve never doubted your abilities when it comes to the job.” He dropped his arms and held her gaze. She held her breath as she waited for him to say something more. There were unspoken words in his tired eyes and her heart quickened as a new tension sprang up between them.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he finally said, then opened the door and disappeared out into the night.

She locked the door behind him, then took a long hot shower and pulled on her short-sleeved nightshirt. She kept her mind carefully blank as she sat on the edge of the bed and applied the lotion to her arms, legs and throat. The scent of pears filled the air and her heart filled with a loneliness she hadn’t experienced in years.

As she crawled into bed and shut off the light, the air conditioner kicked on. As she listened to the monotonous hum, the loneliness swelled inside her.

It wasn’t an emotion she’d experienced often in her life. She could only remember two other times. The first had been on that initial day and night she’d found herself alone on the streets of L.A. At eleven years old she hadn’t understood the deep ache and in any case it hadn’t lasted as the need to survive was far more important.

The second time she’d experienced this kind of lonely had been in the days and weeks after she’d walked away from Kane and the agency that had brought them together.

Even though she’d known she’d made the best choice for herself and for him, that didn’t stop her from missing him. She’d missed his smell, the cast of his smile and the way he looked at her when he wanted her.

She’d missed him, but she’d gotten over it. She’d gotten over him.

Maybe she was just feeling lonely because she missed her house, her things and her life. Surely it was a temporary emotion and would go away once this crazy job was done. The job, yes, that’s what she needed to focus on. Getting it done without getting killed, then forgetting Kane and the agency for good.

With this reassuring thought in mind, Cassie fell into an exhausted sleep.

Chapter 5

“Go away!” Cassie shouted the words from her comfortable burrow in the bed. The room was dark and her sleep had been dreamless and she sure wasn’t in the mood to face a new day.

The irritating knock fell again on her door and she fought the impulse to grab one of her knives, throw it, and see if she could impale Kane’s fist on the other side of the door. It would be wasted effort. Even if she succeeded he’d only knock again with his other hand.

“All right, all right,” she yelled and pulled herself upright in the bed. She looked at the clock, shocked to discover it was almost ten. She’d grown quite fond of the puke-green curtains that blocked the light of day in the early mornings.

She stumbled from the bed and to the door. She unlocked the chain and bolt, opened it to see Kane, then turned and hurried into the bathroom. She didn’t want to hang around and greet him in her nightshirt.

Shock rippled through her as she saw her reflection in the mirror. She still wasn’t used to the new look.

At the moment it wasn’t the new look that startled her, it was the fact that she looked like a zombie.

Red eyes stared back at her from the mirror, eyes that felt gritty from lack of sleep. The T-shirt she’d slept in bore tomato sauce testimony of the 2:00 a.m. piece of pizza she’d both eaten and managed to slop down the front of her.

For the past twenty-four hours she’d been on a marathon cram session, but unlike college students who crammed for an exam, she hadn’t resorted to junk food and caffeine pills to keep the adrenaline flowing. As far as she was concerned pizza wasn’t junk food and massive quantities of liquid coffee beat pills any day of the week.

Yesterday had been like the day before, with Kane spending hours in the room drilling her with questions about the woman she was about to become and about Adam Mercer. He’d been relentless, cold and demanding as a drill sergeant.

Under normal circumstances, she would have protested, but she knew he was working her hard to save her life. Along with trying to stay focused on the job and the questions he asked, she had to keep her mind away from him as a man.

She’d been almost grateful when he’d finally left the night before near midnight. At least with him gone she relaxed a bit more. She’d continued to go over the file for several more hours.

By 5:00 a.m. she had crashed, falling into a hard, dreamless sleep. Groggy and cranky were the two words that came to mind as she assessed her current mood. She changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt she’d left in the bathroom the night before. She washed her face, brushed her teeth, then ripped a brush through her hair to tame the errant blond strands. There, she felt better ready to face the day.

She left the bathroom and walked to where Kane sat at the table. Before him was manna from Heaven, two large foam cups of coffee and half a dozen various kinds of doughnuts.

Sinking into the chair opposite him, she reached for one of the coffees at the same time. He didn’t say a word to her until she’d taken a couple of sips. Smart man.

“Good morning.”

“I think it will be once I get about a gallon of this coffee in me,” she replied.

“You were never much of a morning person,” he said and reached for the only chocolate frosted doughnut in the bunch.

“If you take that one, I’ll have to kill you.”

He quirked a dark eyebrow up in amused indulgence and grabbed a glazed instead. “Drink your coffee, it will make you human.”

The problem was at the moment she felt far too human. Seeing Kane again, spending time with him brought to the surface memories of the often playful, always hot sex they’d shared years before.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked, needing to keep her mind focused on the present and not on the past. That’s the way she survived all the pain and hurt of her childhood…day by day.

The half smile that had lifted one corner of his mouth disappeared and he leaned forward, his eyes glittering as he studied her intently. “The plan is up to you. If you need a day or two more to prepare that can be arranged.”

Cassie shook her head. “No.” She gestured toward the thick manila folder on the nightstand next to the bed. “I know the material backward and forward. You know that. I didn’t miss a single question yesterday when you were grilling me. Another day or two won’t make me any more prepared. I’m ready now.”

Kane reached for another glazed doughnut, then apparently changed his mind and dropped his hand on the table. “You realize you’re going in utterly alone. No wires, no cameras, and no real backup. If things go south you’re on your own unless you can contact me and, depending on the situation I might not be any good to you.”

An edgy adrenaline rush pumped through her veins, a rush she hadn’t felt since the last time she’d worked for the agency. “Things won’t go south,” she said with a touch of bravado. “But if they do I can take care of myself.”

For a moment their gazes remained locked, their past a haunting specter between them. She broke the eye contact. “I can take care of myself,” she repeated.

“Then we proceed with the plan.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “This is the key to your new set of wheels.”

“I don’t suppose it just happens to be a Jaguar.” She already knew it was that crappy old blue car in the parking space in front of her motel unit.

“Dream on. It’s a ten-year-old Ford Escort with a hundred forty-five thousand miles on it.”

“Des Moines, Iowa plates?” she asked, even though she knew it was a dumb question. Of course SPACE would see to it that every aspect of her new identity held up.

Kane nodded. “Licensed and tagged to Jessica Sinclair.” He held up the next key on the ring. “The key to your apartment. You already know the address from the file. This third key is to a safe house. I’m staying there. It’s a fifteen-minute drive from the safe house to your apartment. I can make it in seven.”

“You must not be driving a ten-year-old Escort,” she said dryly.

“I’ve got news for you. Not only are you driving an old clunker car, your new apartment isn’t exactly the Ritz, either.”

“Somehow I figured as much,” she replied and once again reached for her coffee cup.

Kane pulled a small spiral notebook from the breast pocket of his navy shirt. He ripped off the top sheet of paper and handed it to her. “This is the address to the safe house. Memorize it.”

She took the paper from him and looked at it: 7207N. Oak. The safe house was only a couple of miles from her home address. Home. She hoped her neighbor wouldn’t do anything to her property before she got back to her home base.

She gave the paper back to him and watched as he placed it in the ashtray then struck a match and lit it on fire.

“A bit dramatic, don’t you think?” she asked as flame transformed the paper into ash.

He grinned, the first full grin she’d seen from him. “You know I love this covert stuff.”

She laughed, unable to help herself. The grogginess that she’d awakened with was gone, swallowed by the rush of anticipation. Although she would never admit it to Kane, she still loved “this covert stuff.”

“You start your waitress job at Night Life at eight tonight.”

“Don’t remind me,” she groaned. “Nothing Adam Mercer can throw my way can possibly be more dangerous than me trying to juggle a tray full of drinks and serve them to patrons. It’s been years since I did any waitressing.”

“You’ll be fine,” he assured her, then stood. “You can leave here whenever you’re ready.” She stood as well. “You have the cell phone to get in touch with me if necessary.”

She nodded and walked with him to the door. Once there he turned to face her once again. “Take care, Cassie. We don’t know for sure what Adam Mercer is capable of, but we do know that nobody has seen his last girlfriend for a little over a month.”

“Nice of you to leave that little tidbit of information until now. Why wasn’t that in the files?”

“We were hoping to locate her whereabouts before we handed the file over to you. But so far that hasn’t happened. I just want you to remember that Adam Mercer is a crazy man on a mission and that makes him dangerous. Get in, get the information we need and get out.”

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