JAIMIE: FIRE & ICE.
By Sandra Marton.
To all my wonderful readers:.
CHAPTER ONE.
Zach Castelianos reached into the pocket of his faded blue denim shirt, took out his Ray- Bans, and propped them on the bridge of his nose.
He switched the small, nondescript duffel bag from his right hand to his left as he stepped out of the JFK International Arrivals Terminal into the harsh glare of the Indian summer sun.
Jesus, it was hot. Ninety degrees, maybe more, even in late afternoon. Typical crazy New York weather. After ten hours in the chilled air of an aging 737, his reaction to the blast of heat was almost visceral.
So was the sweet pleasure of being home.
The realization still came as a surprise.
Zach was a man who had never really called any one place home. Growing up an army brat, moving a dozen times as a kid, landing wherever his father, a spit-and-polish Marine Corps Sergeant Major had been posted, enlisting in the Corps himself at seventeen, being chosen, two years later, for SOCOM-Special Forces Command which had ultimately become MARSOC-Marine Corps Special Operations Command-and, man, the service could create more acronyms that an advertising agency on steroids-had taken him around the world half a dozen times, almost invariably to countries with names that ended in "stan." Four years later, he"d been recruited into The Agency. Same story, different agenda, the kind of stuff that made for worn-out punch lines to stupid civilian questions-What do I do? Well, I could tell you, but then I"d have to kill you-though there was a degree of reality behind the joking responses.
Put all together, it meant that he"d never spent enough time in a single town or city to consider it home.
New York was the closest he"d ever come.
There was something about the city-the sense of anonymity he felt in being just one of eight or nine million people, the soaring skysc.r.a.pers and deep concrete canyons juxtaposed with the unlikely sprawl of Central Park-that gave him a sense of belonging, or as much a sense of it as a man without roots could ever imagine.
The proof?
Zach walked briskly to the car pickup area outside the terminal.
He"d gone from leasing an apartment to buying one. A condo perched so high over Manhattan that the view from its endless gla.s.s walls and wide wraparound terrace was pretty much what you"d see from a helicopter.
If anybody had told him he"d actually want to own a place of his own when he"d left The Agency four years ago, he"d have laughed.
All he"d known back then was that part of saying goodbye involved more than handing in his resignation. It also meant leaving D.C. and his rented townhouse in Georgetown.
It meant starting fresh.
He wasn"t an introspective guy. The inclination to plumb the depths of your head or your soul or what a Zen master he"d known in j.a.pan had referred to as your inner self was for people with time on their hands.
Still, something had told him that he had to move on. For him, that meant a new location. A city, a big and impersonal city where he could put the past behind him.
He"d considered San Francisco. He liked the hills, the Bay, the moodiness of its rolling fog. He"d given thought to London, too, with all those narrow streets, the taverns that had been serving dark stouts and crisp ales for hundreds of years. Paris was a favorite of his-the Seine winding sinuously through the ancient streets, the wide boulevards, the sense of history around every corner.
In the end, New York had won out.
He liked its take-no-prisoners att.i.tude.
It was the right place for a man like him.
So he"d signed a one-year lease on an apartment in Soho mostly because of its narrow streets and old buildings, but between the gaping out-of-towners and the laughably trendy shops, his fascination with the area had rapidly diminished. Besides, he needed outdoor s.p.a.ce. Green s.p.a.ce to walk in. Run in. Open s.p.a.ce where you could see trees, gra.s.s, something wilder than a pigeon.
He"d headed uptown, took a sublet near Riverside Park. It was nice, but the park was too small, too confining. Plus, by then he"d started Shadow Inc., and the time he spent traveling between the sublet and the offices he"d taken in a building just off Madison in the 60"s seemed wasteful.
Shadow took most of his time.
Not that he minded.
He loved what it was becoming, a high-tech security firm where he could utilize the techniques and tools he"d learned in Special Forces and The Agency, and add new techniques without having to wait for some Pentagon desk jockey or congressional committee to approve them.
By the end of his fourth year in Manhattan, he knew it was time to move again. He knew exactly what he wanted-a high-rise with gla.s.s walls and an unimpeded view of Central Park, and the comfort of crowded streets far below.
At that point, he also knew one more thing and it was a shocker.
He was rich.
h.e.l.l, he was rolling in money, meaning he could have the high rise, the gla.s.s walls, the view.
Shadow had taken off like a rocket. No advertising. No gimmicks. Just a few quiet words to a few people and clients were stacked up like planes in the landing pattern over JFK.
Zach made some phone calls to people he"d worked with over the years, people he"d learned to trust not just in theory but in b.a.l.l.s-to-the-wall practice, and Shadow was no longer a one-man operation but an elite team.
With an elite clientele.
If you ran down the Fortune 500 list, then checked out the Forbes list of the hundred wealthiest individuals in America, you were looking at an amazing number of names on Shadow"s very hush-hush client roster.
Zach"s baby had grown up fast.
He"d known that he needed legal counsel not just from someone smart but from someone he could trust. Not always easy, based on things he"d seen. Plus, it had to be someone who would take one look at what Shadow was and understand that it had nothing to do with installing nanny cams or trailing cheating husbands.
There was only one lawyer he"d even considered contacting. It was a guy he"d known at The Agency, someone he"d actually worked with a couple of times. They"d left The Agency within months of each other; Zach had headed north, Caleb Wilde had headed west and opened a law practice in Dallas. Zach did some quiet investigating. Caleb"s practice was not only world cla.s.s, it was also discreet. In fact, Zach and he shared some of the same clients.
What better recommendation could there be?
Zach phoned him.
"I need some legal advice," he said.
Caleb flew to New York. They met for drinks and dinner and talked well into the night. They went to Zach"s office; Caleb pored over all the data he needed to see. At dawn, over coffee, bacon and eggs at a diner on Tenth Avenue, they shook hands and Caleb became Zach"s attorney.
A week later, another handshake, and Caleb"s brother, Travis, became his financial adviser, though adviser was too simple a term. Travis Wilde was a financial genius. Under his guidance, Zach watched the enormous amounts of money Shadow generated turn into a serious fortune. What else could you call it when you could plunk down cash for a four-bedroom, five- bath condo on the fiftieth floor of a new gla.s.s tower at Fifty-Seventh and Fifth?
So many changes and all at blistering speed.
Now, he had a new life...except for the times he let the old one intrude.
On this hot October afternoon, he was back from just such a situation. Idly, he wondered when The Agency would stop using such a monstrously stupid word for a mega screw-up.
The Director had contacted him. They"d flown him into a place people were frantically flying out of, and he"d done what had to be done. He had no doubt about that, but it had been tough, even brutal; it had reminded him of what he"d grown up knowing.
The world was filled with lies, liars, and deceit.
A smart man never trusted anybody.
His father had told him that and taught it to him the hard way. It was probably the only thing he had to thank the old man for and if he ever had the misfortune to see him again, he"d have to tell him so.
Dammit.
It was too late for second-guessing and too hot for cheap philosophizing. And where in h.e.l.l was John? Frowning, Zach peered the length of the pickup lane where his driver was supposed to meet him. He"d called him on his cell as soon as the plane had touched down.
"I"m here," Zach had said, as if that weren"t self-evident, and John had said yessir, he"d be right there, but if this was his idea of five minutes...
Zach swiped the back of his hand across his forehead.
It was like this each time he returned from handling a "situation" for The Agency. He came home pumping adrenaline, nerves jagged after being reminded, as if he needed reminding, that the world was not necessarily a good place.
The heat didn"t help.
Zach pulled off his denim shirt, unzipped the duffel and stuffed the shirt inside. Beneath it, he had on a black T-shirt that was a couple of days beyond not just needing a visit to the laundry but crying out for it.
He suspected he didn"t exactly smell like a field of flowers, but it wouldn"t matter; he wasn"t going to be around people from this point on.
It had been different on the full-to-the-last-seat airplane, where the shirt had been a small blessing, keeping the fat guy to his right and the even fatter one to his left as far from him as possible. After the past ten days, he"d had had enough of people to last a lifetime.
The plan had been that he"d have a cargo plane all to himself on a secondary runway at what remained of a still-functioning airport somewhere east of Istanbul and west of Aleppo, but the plan had been aborted, no reason given, and a contact had come up to him and said that someone would meet him at the entrance to the main terminal and walk him through immigration.
Actually, the skinny geek who"d sidled up to him looking as nervous as a cat at a dog show had not walked him through anything. They"d walked around it instead.
Once the guy got him past the building, he"d handed him the small duffel Zach had left at the safe house days ago. Everything that said he had a life back in the real world was inside it. A wallet stuffed with bills. His cell phone. His driver"s license. His beautiful Born-in-the-USA pa.s.sport.
"It"s all there," the geek had said in a voice as thin as a thread.
Zach had ignored him, zipped open the duffel, nodded at the sight of all his stuff, then scribbled his name on the receipt the guy held out. Receipts, even in the middle of "situations." Typical Agency c.r.a.p.
They"d started walking toward a vehicle that might have been a Jeep in another life. They got in and the geek drove him across the field to a commercial jet that bore a logo Zach had never seen before. He"d climbed the steps to the cabin and stepped into an aluminum tube crammed with people wearing the desperate faces of those who aren"t sure they"re actually going anywhere until the instant they do.
Zach understood that.
It was the way you felt when you were lucky enough to find a way out of what was rapidly becoming a war zone.
The cabin had filled with murmurs of relief when the plane finally trundled down the runway and lifted off.
Now, half a world and ten hours later, he was in a place where pa.s.sengers b.i.t.c.hed if a flight was delayed by an hour.
Man, he was not in a mood fit for humans, but why would he be?
And it wasn"t only what he"d lived through during the past ten days; it was the bitter knowledge that the Director had, after all, been right.
"You can leave The Agency, Castelianos, but it won"t leave you."
That was what he"d said when Zach had marched into his office, tossed a one-line letter on his desk and said, "I quit." Then he"d leaned forward, his green eyes fixing on the Director"s mild hazel gaze. "And you"re wrong. I"m done with you. With this place. This life. You got that? I"m done!"
A truth when he"d said it, but a lie when he"d tried to live it.
The question was, why? How come he couldn"t leave it all behind? The Director was so G.o.dd.a.m.ned smug, so certain, so full of anecdotes about all the boys and girls, as he called them even when they were in their thirties and, h.e.l.l, their forties, all of them who learned they needed The Agency, its discipline, its purpose...
"Stop it," Zach muttered.
A white-haired woman standing nearby looked at him. He worked up what he hoped was a polite smile. Evidently not. Her gaze swept over him, she went a little pale and moved away.
Great. What wonderful claims to fame. Scaring old ladies and doing dirty jobs D.C. would never acknowledge.
Zacharias Castelianos, unsung hero.
Where was John, G.o.ddammit?
Zach stepped off the curb and checked the oncoming cars.
Why had he accepted that first mission? He was not an egotistical man; he was a practical one, and that meant that six months later, when he got the first call that said there was a job to be done and only he could do it, he"d laughed off the attempted flattery and disconnected while the Director was still speaking.
After a couple of hours of pacing, while he went over and over the few details he"d been given, he"d called himself a name that was not respectful of motherhood, reached for the phone, dialed the number and code he"d never forgotten and said, OK, he"d take the a.s.signment this once. Only this once.
Right.
He should have known there was no such thing as once.
A pair of suits, busy talking to each other, jostled him. One of them looked at him as if to say the mild collision had been Zach"s fault.
And changed his mind.
"Sorry," he said quickly, grabbed his pal by the elbow and hustled him away.
Zach bit back a laugh. This time, he hadn"t even had to talk to himself to rate that reaction.
Maybe there were advantages to smelling as if you hadn"t showered in weeks, or to having days of stubble on your jaw, or needing a haircut badly enough that your hair curled on the nape of your neck. Maybe it wasn"t a terrible thing to wear a grimy shirt, stained jeans and ankle-high work boots splattered with dried mud and probably worse, at least if you wanted people not to bother you.
Or maybe it was just him, six-three of leanly muscled male with what was probably a do-not-f.u.c.k-with-me look on his face. That was what they"d called it in his Special Ops unit and then in The Agency, that been-there, done-that, definitely-do-not-want-to-talk-about-it glacial stare that glittered in a man"s eyes like frost on a window pane after he"d seen things better left unspoken-and done some of them, as well.
Zach felt a muscle knot in his jaw.
OK.