Rafe Sinclair's Revenge

“The hell I can’t. Damn it, I knew there was more to this. The CIA doesn’t give a rat’s ass if somebody blows you or me to kingdom come. They wouldn’t bother warning us. Not unless they thought they could get something out of it.”

“They want you to go after whoever this is,” she said, her thinking paralleling his. Maybe because she knew them as well as he did. “That’s what this is all about. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Somebody is doing what Jorgensen did, and they can’t get to him. They think you can. You were the expert on Jorgensen. You got him. They want you to get this guy.”

“I guess I’m supposed to be flattered at their confidence,” he said savagely.

“You’re supposed to take care of him. Like you took care of Jorgensen.”

Under strict congressional sanctions against political assassinations, the CIA had refused to allow Rafe to go after the German-born terrorist. He had been forced to do it strictly on his own, without any of the resources the agency could have provided.

It had taken him more than a year to hunt down and execute Jorgensen. A year in which more innocent people had died. Now that the CIA was once more back in the game of tracking down terrorists, they were attempting to use Rafe to do the dirty work they had once professed to have no interest in.

The only remaining question was whether or not Griff had known what was going on. Or was Cabot simply another discarded weapon the agency had decided to pick up and point at a target they hadn’t been able to get by any other means?

“Then this should be safe as a church,” he said.

An impulsive rage was another by-product of the day at the embassy. Another thing he was constantly forced to try to control. He didn’t succeed this time.

He inserted the key and turned it, throwing open the motel room door. As he’d expected, absolutely nothing happened.

After all, they couldn’t afford to let something happen to him. He was a tool they needed. Elizabeth had been as well, only she had been used to lure him into the game.

If the trigger of the bomb this morning had been keyed to the frequency of her car remote, there was no possibility she would be hurt. Those sons of bitches had probably calibrated exactly how much C-4—or whatever the hell they were using these days—it would take to blow that building spectacularly without risking damage to someone standing where Elizabeth did every morning when she got out of her car.

She might have been hit by falling debris. Steiner would probably have been genuinely sorry if that had happened, but it wouldn’t have mattered in the grand scheme of things.

Elizabeth’s death would still have had the effect they were hoping for. They wanted Rafe to react just as he had reacted to the embassy bombing. They wanted him to go after the bastard who had done it. To hunt him down and kill him as he had killed Gunther Jorgensen.

And if one of their own got injured or killed in the course of convincing him to do that, it was a loss the CIA was willing accept. Just a little collateral damage.

Conniving bastards, he thought again, leading the way into the cool darkness of the motel room.

All along they’d been laying their emotional traps, starting with Griff’s question. And you’re willing to stake her life on your certainty of that?

There was nothing else on earth that would have gotten him involved in this, and Griff, of all people, knew that. Just as he’d known that once the suggestion that someone might try to harm Elizabeth had been made, Rafe wouldn’t be able to leave it alone.

That was all the excuse he needed. It had taken him a few days to reach the decision, but in the end he had done exactly what they’d expected him to. He’d come here to find Elizabeth. And they’d been waiting for him.

Waiting to turn the screws. Waiting to up the stakes by making him believe that the explosion this morning had been an attempt on her life. Waiting for him to jump through their carefully arranged hoops all over again.

Except this time, he vowed, you sons of bitches are in for a huge disappointment.

Chapter Five

“Now what?” Elizabeth asked as they headed down the narrow two-lane that led to her house.

It had taken Rafe only a few minutes in the motel room to gather his belongings. His fury had been apparent with each motion. She couldn’t blame him for being angry, of course. He had been used. They both had.

Besides that, Darrell’s property had been destroyed and her life had been endangered. The agency would say it hadn’t been, but the more she thought about it, the less willing she was to accept that assessment.

A dozen things could have gone wrong this morning. There was no way anyone could guarantee that the explosion and the resultant fire would play out as it had. Not even the agency’s vaunted specialists.

Or if Rafe was correct in his suspicions, maybe those had been Griff’s specialists—the men she had worked with during her years on the EST. They would certainly be capable of rigging something that would work with the kind of precision demonstrated in this morning’s explosion. The question was whether they would be willing to put a former colleague at risk.

If Griff asked them to, she acknowledged. Especially if he made the reason compelling enough.

Maybe he had reminded them of the reality of the situation. If they didn’t do it, the agency would. And the CIA wouldn’t be nearly so careful as would the members of the team. If Griff had presented them with those options, they would undoubtedly have agreed to set the explosives.