Forbidden Fantasies Bundle(145)
“You can’t do that,” Ryder said. “He’ll have you arrested on the spot.”
“You wouldn’t even make it to lockup,” Gage added. “He could claim that you tried to escape.”
“I agree,” Bailey said. “You can’t meet with him.”
Three beats of silence followed.
Zoë was careful not to meet Jed’s eyes. It was the other people she had to convince. “I’m the best person to meet with Hadley Richards. I won’t worry him as much. At this point, he doesn’t know I have any connection to Jed Calhoun, and in his opinion, I’m gullible and easily manipulated. So he’ll be less likely to think I’m wired.” She smiled again. “And he’s much more likely to make a mistake that will end his career if he’s with someone he thinks he can easily manage.”
Once again there was silence, but Zoë noted that the expression on the faces of her colleagues had changed.
“She’s right,” Bailey said with a smile. “Hadley will feel confident that he can handle her. Pride goeth before a fall.”
“It gets a green light from me,” Ryder agreed finally. “We’ll just have to make certain that Zoë doesn’t get hurt.”
JED STILL DIDN’T LIKE the plan. Zoë had been right about Hadley agreeing to meet with her. He hadn’t even put up a fuss about joining up with her at the Lincoln Memorial. Ryder had chosen the site because he could put a lot of agents in the area. From Jed’s current vantage point on the smooth steps of the memorial, he could see that Ryder had made a good choice.
At ten in the morning, the place was already thronged with tourists, some pushing strollers and others clicking pictures. Some had gathered in the memorial chamber to get a close-up view of the nineteen-foot-high statue of the sitting Lincoln. Others were sitting on the steps, just resting, as he was.
Except for Zoë, they’d each donned a disguise to blend in with the crowd. He’d changed himself back into Ethan Blair, and then added dark glasses and a Seeing Eye dog that Ryder had provided. Fifteen feet to his right, Gage, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, sat in a wheelchair enjoying an ice-cream cone. Behind him was his “nurse,” Bailey, in a black wig and what he supposed was casual wear for a nurse, snapping pictures of the memorial’s facade. The camera boasted a telescopic lens. Ryder was serving drinks at a beverage cart to Jed’s right.
Everyone but Zoë was armed. And she was sitting on a bench directly in front of him, scanning the steps.
So far there’d been no sign of Hadley Richards.
They’d hammered out the details well into the night, but Jed knew from years of experience that something could always go wrong. And something usually did.
He couldn’t let anything happen to Zoë. Just looking at her brought on the same mix of panic and restlessness that he’d been feeling since…the first time he’d met her? Could Ryder be right? Was this what love felt like?
He barely had time to consider the questions or try to analyze the feeling of joy that had blossomed inside of him when Bailey’s voice sounded in his earpiece. “Our quarry has just started down the steps.”
IGNORING THE NERVES jittering in her stomach, Zoë kept her gaze on the steps leading down from the Lincoln Memorial. Hadley Richards would be here at any moment.
At ten o’clock, there was a faint breeze blowing, but it did little to alleviate the sticky, moist heat so characteristic of September in D.C. Already perspiration sheened her skin and she took a minute to wipe her palms on her jeans.
It helped that she wasn’t here alone. As they’d worked into the night to square away all the details, she’d been made to feel very much a part of a team. The camaraderie, the teasing, the approval—those were new experiences for her. Thanks to the sheltered way she’d been raised, she’d never had much chance to develop easy relationships with others.
If she’d been more outgoing and made more friends during her brief stay at the CIA, would she have been such a ripe target for Hadley Richards? She would never know the answer to that question, but she intended to use Hadley’s opinion of her against him.
She glanced over to where Jed, or rather Ethan, sat, his hand resting gently on the dog beside him. Just seeing him settled some of her nerves. She was almost getting used to the fact that he was Jed, Ethan and Lucifer. What she wasn’t getting used to was the knowledge that she was in love with all of him.
And he would walk out of her life soon. Unless she stopped him.
A week ago she’d been a mouse hiding away in her office buried in a pile of sex research, and her only lover had been a fantasy that she’d created in her notebooks. Now, she was actually having real sex—great sex. And she was playing a central role in a sting operation that was going to bring down her old boss. This was exactly the kind of work she’d dreamed of doing when she went to work for the CIA.