Guardian in Disguise

Hiding in plain sight is how Max explained it to himself. The best way to defang Liza’s suspicions was to make himself available as if he had not a single thing to hide. It had always worked before.

Besides, riding on the bike wouldn’t provide a whole lot of opportunities for in-depth questions or conversations. Of course, he was planning to bring a picnic lunch for them to enjoy, but that was part of the illusion.

Because he was all illusion. Sometimes he wondered if any part of his real self still existed. Every so often, the question would rise up and sting him.

Who was he? Damned if he really knew anymore. Doing his job required learning to think like the people he associated with. He not only had to reflect their actions, but also their thoughts so he would never slip, never be caught unawares, never give himself away.

Maybe he was just questioning himself because he’d been dumped into a new role and still hadn’t learned to entirely think the part. Worse, this role was only temporary, so part of him was resisting the change.

It was, he vowed, going to be his last game. He was going to finish this and then try to find his way back to who he really was before his thinking got so messed up he needed a decade on an analyst’s couch.

Easy to think, maybe not so easy to do. Sometimes he honestly wondered.

Late that night, he got on his bike and roared along the back roads of Conrad County. He had a contact here—a name given to him by Ames—who he could turn to if he needed to. But existential questions weren’t exactly the kind of thing he was supposed to need help with.

No, he was left with his own personality disarray and his own questions to be dealt with as he wrapped up his final job.

So what exactly did he know that was real? The bike between his legs, the almost-crazy ride down dark county roads and Liza.

His thoughts persistently came back to Liza. She was real. He wasn’t so sure, though, about how he was responding to her. Yes, she was acting on him like a sexual magnet, but she wasn’t the first, nor would she be the last, probably.

No, there was something else about her. Something that suggested her greatest lust was for truth, one lust he wouldn’t be able to satisfy.

He’d had some problems with his job before, times when he had questioned himself, but never before had he felt soiled by it.

Until now. Thanks to her.

His motives didn’t matter, not a bit.

How was he supposed to deal with that?

By playing the game out, he realized as he twisted the throttle up until he was tearing down the road like a bat out of hell. By playing it out.

He had no other choice.

Far, far away in a run-down section of Washington, D.C., a woman with long black hair and a sequined tube dress beneath a baggy olive drab jacket walked swiftly along dangerous streets with loudly tapping heels. More than once a car pulled up to the curb, but when the driver rolled down the passenger window to accost her, she shot him a death look that made him peel away fast. In her pocket, she clutched a small pistol, and each time her hand tightened around it.

She made it back to the abandoned, derelict apartment house, the one with the big signs saying it was scheduled for demolition, and slipped in through a back way until she reached an apartment in the middle of the hall.

She stepped into a filthy room where a bunch of mattresses padded the floor. A kerosene heater fought off the night’s chill.

Five men waited for her, all of them dressed in various kinds of cast-off army-style clothing. She couldn’t have looked more out of place.

They all looked up at her arrival.

“I got his real name,” she said with savage pride. “It was like we thought. And if that isn’t enough, I’ve got a date with the source in two nights. The way this guy is crumbling, I’ll probably get an address pretty soon.”

The man who went by the name Jody sat bolt upright. “Give me the name. I’ll find the bastard no matter where he’s hiding.”

The woman smiled, and it wasn’t pleasant. “Maybe you can. But if you can’t, I will.” She fingered the switchblade in her other pocket. She did like to use a knife, and a certain ATF agent was going to be her next work of art.

Chapter 3

Max was waiting for Liza when she emerged from her apartment building into bright autumn sunshine. He stood leaning against his silent bike, his arms folded, clad head to toe in leathers for the road.

Max wore “bad boy biker” pretty well, she had to admit.

She herself wore her thickest jeans and heaviest boots, and a sweater beneath a ripstop nylon jacket. Not nearly as good as leathers, but she didn’t have the money or the ability to buy leathers overnight.

She noticed that Max had added a backrest to the pillion seat for her. A thoughtful gesture, one she certainly hadn’t expected.

He greeted her with a smile and held a helmet out to her. “I was half convinced you wouldn’t show.”

“I don’t do that,” she said, although she could have admitted with equal honesty that if she’d had his number she might have called him any of a half-dozen times the night before to cancel. As many times as she’d been obliged to break a date, never had she failed to call. Maybe lacking his personal phone number was the only reason she was out here right now.

No, said a merciless voice in her mind. Quit playing games with yourself. She was out here because she wanted to spend time with Max, to ride that Harley, clinging to him and see what came next. Despite all her fears of rejection, she still couldn’t resist.

She was feeling a sense of adventure unlike any she’d known in a long time. The thrill of taking a risk. Ready to cast caution to the winds, to go along for the ride, sure that it would at least be exciting.

Lately she’d felt she was in danger of getting stodgy. No way was she going to let that happen.

So she let the excitement of the moment take her, and she mounted the bike behind Max. With the backrest, she didn’t necessarily need to cling to him as closely, but she clung anyway, her head pressed to his leather-covered back, her cheek liking the feel of that leather as she watched the world whip past sideways.

In fact, she liked it so much that not until she began to feel a bit dizzy did she lift her head to look forward at the ribbon of rising road. The height of the pillion gave her the ability to look right over Max’s shoulder as they started their climb into the mountains.

With increasing altitude, the color of the leaves brightened, dotting the mostly evergreen forest with blotches of orange and gold. The air also grew colder and she wished she had put on her gloves.

Each time they rounded a bend, her thighs tightened around Max as she leaned with him, and she was getting so aroused that she started to lose track of the passing world. The rumble of the bike itself only added to her heightened awareness and as the miles passed, she gave in to it.

Why not? He’d never know.

She began to wonder what would happen if they stopped. Was he feeling the same way? Possibly. If he was, what if he reached out for her, took her without warning or preamble?

She rather liked that idea. Talking only got in the way sometimes, and her body was awakening in a way that suggested being dragged off to a cave by her hair might be the perfect outcome.

She laughed silently into the wind, amused by the turn of her thoughts even as they continued to wash over her with increasingly blatant visions.

Yeah, he could just pull her off the bike when they stopped, and toss her on the ground—pine needles and leaves would probably make a soft enough bed, although the practical reporter in her was sure there’d be a rock in exactly the wrong place. Then he’d slip his hands, probably chilly, up under her sweater and …

Her thighs clamped around his in response. Thank goodness he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head because she was sure she’d turned beet red when she realized what she had done.

“Okay back there?” he called.

“Fine,” she lied. If fine was feeling like a stew pot that had suddenly been turned on high and wanted to boil over.

“I want to stop at the old mining town up ahead.”

“Okay,” she agreed as loudly as she could manage when it was impossible to breathe. Sheesh, the guy hadn’t done one suggestive thing and she was already on her way to bed with him.