The Perfect Scandal, page 19
Andy shrugged in exasperation, pulling back. It was clear that she’d been wondering the same thing herself.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I think it might take a while.”
“Maybe,” Jessie said. “But what if things go south? Maybe over time, I begin to resent the forced nature of all this even more.”
“How do you propose we prevent that from happening?” Andy asked earnestly.
“What if we tried something else?” Jessie suggested. “What if we started fresh tonight?”
“What do you mean?”
This was where Jessie desperately wanted to ask her to call whoever was in charge of Operation Z and ask them to put a hold on it as a sign of good faith. But she knew she couldn’t. Andy would see through it. They hadn’t built a strong enough bond yet for her to even consider such a move.
“What if we tried this?” Jessie whispered as she leaned forward hesitantly, keeping her hands at her sides.
For a second, Andy seemed to hesitate too, but then she leaned in as well. Suddenly they were kissing. Jessie could feel the intensity coming off the other woman, knew that she’d been imagining this moment for years.
She took the lead, pressing her lips against Andy’s before pulling back suddenly.
“I want to touch you,” she whispered, “but I’m worried that you’ll think I’m trying something sneaky.”
“That’s okay,” Andy said, leaving her seat and coming over to Jessie’s, “I’ll touch you.”
Andy was on her knees in front of her. Jessie closed her eyes as she felt the other woman’s hands investigate her tentatively. She delicately ran her fingers through Andy’s hair, making small ecstatic sounds, even as she tried to gauge how much farther to let this go before making her move.
She waited several minutes, allowing Andy to explore her more ravenously, hearing the other woman’s breathing get faster and shallower. She almost felt guilty for her lack of genuine reciprocation. She knew this was a powerful moment for Andy, but for her it was mostly a performance.
Even if she hadn’t been in love with Ryan, it was nearly impossible to give herself over to the physical sensations Andy was trying to provide. Her insides were a knot of nerves, and her senses were focused on the task in front of her. Everything else was a distraction. It was just as Andy began kissing her stomach and started to lift the Barry Manilow shirt off her that she decided the time had come.
It was still risky, but she couldn’t chance waiting until after they had consummated something. She needed Andy anticipating the deepest throes of passion, but not yet there, when she made her decision.
“I need to ask you for something,” she whispered breathily.
“Anything,” Andy said, licking the skin just below her navel.
“I need you to call off Operation Z.”
Andy stopped licking. Her head popped out from under the shirt. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes were wild.
“What?” she said.
“Andy, for me to feel comfortable doing this, you need to call it off.”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Andy was torn.
Part of her was filled with a voracious desire to rip Jessie’s shirt and pants off and ravage her. But another part was on high alert, sensing that this was a piece of a long con that Jessie had been conceiving for hours.
“Why would I call off the operation?” she asked.
Her brain was trying to catch up to her body, which was prickling with excitement. She knew she was in a dangerous place, where passion might trump good sense, and was tempted to shut off the former completely. But she was reluctant to do that. She’d waited so long to get to this point.
“Andy,” Jessie told her, looking down at her with those green eyes that always made her quiver slightly, “you know why. I can’t fully embrace…whatever this is…if the people I care about are in danger.”
Andy looked at the belly button she’d just been licking longingly, before tearing her eyes away to study Jessie’s face again. She didn’t appear deceptive. She was simply stating a truth.
“But I told you that as long as you stayed here, they’d be safe,” she reminder her.
“You know that’s not enough,” Jessie implored her. “What if something happened to your burner phone one day and you couldn’t get through to tell your contact that you were alive? Or what if she just got tired of waiting for her big moment and decided to take matters into her own hands? Not everything is in your control, Andy. But that’s not even the point.”
“What is the point then?”
Jessie bent down, cupped her cheeks in her hands, and kissed her gently. As she did, her handcuff rattled slightly.
“The point is that I can’t fully give myself over to this if I know other people are in danger. It’s one thing if I’m out here with you. That’s me, making a conscious choice to let this happen. But those are people I care about, not to mention all the other innocents throughout the city that you said would pay as well. I can’t be open to whatever this is while knowing that they could be at risk.”
Andy leaned back, away from Jessie’s lips and her sweet scent. She shook her head.
“You’re asking me to give up the only thing I have keeping you here,” she said. “Do you really expect me to do that?”
“No, I’m not,” Jessie insisted. “Look, I’m here. I’m chained up. I’m in a frickin’ abandoned mine, Andy. Where am I going to go? You said it yourself. It’s too far for me to walk anywhere from here, and that’s even if I knew where I was going, which I don’t. I’m not going anywhere.”
Andy stood up. For a second her vision went dark, and she thought she might pass out, but the feeling subsided.
“I want to believe you,” she said quietly. “Obviously, that’s why I brought you out here in the first place—to build something together. But how can I trust that once I make that call you won’t try to kill me or make a run for it?”
Jessie smiled at her with an unexpected patience and warmth.
“There are two ways to look at this,” she said. “First, let’s be practical about it. I understand that my request is a big one. That’s why I’m not asking you to release me from the handcuff. I know that would be too much. So that means I’m still tied up. I can’t get to the handcuff key. I’m not going to make a run for it because I can’t run anywhere. So, killing you wouldn’t do me any good. I’d just end up sitting in this patio chair, or maybe on a cot, slowly withering away from lack of food. That doesn’t sound fun. That’s the practical way to look at this. But there’s another way. Would you like to hear it?”
“I’m listening.”
“I just made a confession to you, a pretty raw one,” she said. “I admitted that I didn’t love the man I was about to marry and that I have feelings for you, the woman who once tried to kill me and who just kidnapped me. I consider that a pretty big step. But I guess I was just tired of denying the feelings that were eating away at my insides. I reached out to you, even though it made me vulnerable, even though it put me in an emotionally precarious place. Now I think it’s your turn.”
Andy wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It sounded almost like an accusation.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I took a step toward you by being honest about something really difficult for me,” Jessie said. “If this is ever going to work, you have to take a step toward me. If we’re going to build something together, you have to show some kind of trust in me. And this is how I’m asking you to do it—by calling off the operation.”
“You think that’s going to just wipe the slate clean between us?” Andy asked, fighting back a bitter laugh.
“Of course not,” Jessie said. “But it would be a huge step. Think about it. If I knew that you had given up this thing that you’re holding over me, that would tell me that you’re willing to give this a real chance. It would also earn you a hell of a lot of goodwill. If I knew that my sister was safe, that Ryan was safe, and that the people of Los Angeles were safe, it would tell me a lot. It would say that having me is more important than punishing them. That would go a long way, Andy. Remember, my job is to help people, to keep them safe. Do you think I’ll ever be able to genuinely commit to being here with you if I’m constantly worried about what might happen to them? If it’s just you and me, then I can find a way to feel okay about however things turn out because there’s nothing else in the way.”
Andy sat with that for a minute, trying to calculation the different permutations. Eventually she gave up.
“If I did that, how could I ever know you’d keep your word?” she asked. “If I don’t have that over your head, how do I know you won’t try to bail when we have an argument?”
Jessie laughed, but not in a mean way.
“I could ask the same thing of you,” she said. “If we had an argument and you got especially upset, how could I be sure you wouldn’t have my sister killed? That’s the whole point, Andy. In a mature relationship between two adults—two equals—you never know when one of them might bail. That’s the risk you take when you offer your heart to someone, that they might leave it in shreds when they walk out the door.”
Andy couldn’t think of a comeback for that one. She’d never actually been in a mature, adult relationship, not with anyone, certainly not with a woman. She averted her gaze, slightly embarrassed that this person was treating her like someone worthy of this conversation.
“Luckily for you,” Jessie continued. “We’re not exactly equals because I can’t physically walk out the door. Even more, I’m telling you I won’t even try. I’m not asking you to uncuff me or release me. I’m not asking to go. I’m just asking you for this one thing, to remove the threat to other people. If you want this to work, if you want us to have any chance at a future together, this is the leap you have to take for me.”
When Andy finally looked up again, she saw tears streaming down Jessie’s face. The profiler made no attempt to hide them or wipe them away. Her expression was one of pleading, of longing, of hope. It was everything Andy had dreamed of when she first put this plan together.
“I’ll make the call,” she whispered.
Jessie nodded but said nothing, instead finally wiping her face with the sleeve of her shirt. Andy turned and headed back to get the burner phone from the duffel bag on the counter. It was late at night to be reaching out to Zoe, but this was important.
How would she explain it? Did she even need to? All she really had to do was speak the phrase, “The day has ended. Let us all sleep peacefully.” That was the official indicator that Operation Z was to be permanently shut down and that Zoe should resume a normal life. Nothing more should be necessary.
But Zoe would surely be disappointed. She knew that her fellow acolytes had all gotten to complete their tasks. Of course, those tasks had been in the service of getting Andy out of prison so that she could be in this very moment now, with Jessie. There was no need for further missions. Zoe would just have to accept that. In an ideal world, she should be thrilled that Andy was getting her happy ending.
She picked up the phone, then glanced back at Jessie, who was still sitting in the patio chair, looking back at her with a mix of pride and affection. It was perfect. Maybe too perfect.
Am I making a mistake? Am I being played? Think about it. This woman’s job is to reach into my psyche and use it against me. Was what just happened real, or did she just try to seduce me to fuzz up my brain? What’s to stop her from breaking my neck once I make that call? She endured three days tied up in a snowy cabin with her dead mother’s body. Why would she be afraid of being stuck in a mine with me rotting beside her? She’d chew off her own arm if she had to in order to survive. And if she knew the truth—that there was actually a road less than two miles from the entrance of this mine, she’d crawl out of here in a second. Jessie Hunt isn’t to be trusted.
Andy felt something inside her break. It was almost audible, like a small twig, but she knew what it was: the last remnant of her hope and faith that this experiment could work, along with her heart. Jessie Hunt had snapped all of them in half with her lies, her manipulations, her attempts to twist Andy’s brain into a pretzel of base, venal desire.
“I changed my mind,” she said, turning around.
“What?” Jessie asked, clearly stunned. “Why?”
Andy dropped the phone back in the duffel bag and stared at the woman across the room. Then she picked up another item from the same bag—a grenade—and put it in her jacket pocket. Right about now, she was tempted to shove it in Jessie’s mouth. But she’d have to settle for scaring her with it when the time was right.
“I thought about it,” she said, “and it occurs to me that the brilliant profiler may be trying to mess with my head. First you start telling me how you want to have a relationship with me. You make me think that’s what I want too—some kind of domesticated lesbian fantasy. Then you start getting all hot and heavy, using my urges and my vulnerability against me, so that my judgment gets clouded.”
“Wait,” Jessie said, holding up her uncuffed hand. “I’m confused. Your urges and vulnerability? Domesticated lesbian fantasy? You kidnapped me. You brought be here to be with you. I finally open up and admit that I’m not appalled by the idea, and this is your reaction? Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“You’re manipulating me, Jessie, using what happened to me as a girl to make me think I should be with you now.”
“Why are you suddenly rejecting your true feelings, Andy?” Jessie asked. “There’s no one here but us. You don’t have any image to live up to. You’re not disappointing anyone. Your father is dead. Your horrific uncle is dead. You can be honest about who you are and what you want. I’m not sure where this sudden denial is coming from. You’ve already shown me how you feel.”
Andy shook her head violently, refusing to let the profiler play her games, get in her head.
“You’re trying to make me go soft so that I give up the one tactical advantage I have. You’re playing me.”
Jessie pushed on the armrests of the patio chair and stood up. She looked hurt and defeated.
“I don’t know what to say,” she replied quietly. “I feel like I shared my deepest self with you and now you’re throwing it back in my face. But you know what hurts the most? That you think it was all an act.”
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way,” Andy said. “If I misjudged you, you’ll have many months to prove me wrong. Now sit back down.”
“I can’t,” Jessie said. “My leg is cramping up and standing up is the only way to stop it, unless you have a Gatorade or something in that fridge back there.”
Andy was inclined to let her suffer through the cramp but some small part of her still couldn’t bear the though of Jessie’s green eyes cringing in avoidable discomfort.
“Hold on,” she said.
She walked to the back fridge and was rummaging through it when she first heard the banging sound. At first, she thought it might be the initial stage of a cave-in, but the sound was too regular and clean. She turned around.
Across the open space, Jessie Hunt was slamming her patio chair against the rock next to her. It only took a fraction of a second for Andy to understand what Jessie was doing. She immediately sprinted back toward her captive.
She didn’t know if Jessie was actually close to getting free or if this was just the desperate move of a trapped woman, but she didn’t care. It had to be stopped.
Andy closed the ground between them quickly, making her way toward the treacherous, backstabbing bitch in mere seconds. Jessie saw her coming and gave one last whack at the rock just as Andy launched herself into the air.
She slammed hard into Jessie’s chest and they both fell backward with a thud. As they did, Andy heard another, less welcoming sound. The metal plate holding the ring and handcuff that kept Jessie attached to the rock snapped with a loud thwack that echoed throughout the cavernous mine.
Jessie Hunt was free.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
12:01 a.m., Monday morning
“Clear!”
With that last shouted phrase, Ryan saw their latest lead dry up, just like all the others had.
Along with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s department and help from the Phoenix FBI field office, they’d just conducted a raid of the Gold & Silver Mine bar that turned up absolutely nothing. He was about to call Decker and the others to inform them when Agent Bland came over to him and Valentine.
“We just got word that the 911 call about this place came in on a burner phone,” he said. “My guess is that it was Robinson calling to throw everyone off again.”
Susannah Valentine shook her head in frustration.
“At this point why would she do that?” she demanded. “She’s just rubbing our faces in it now.”
“No way to trace it?” Ryan asked, though he knew the answer already.
Agent Bland shook his head.
“No,” he said. “The call was too short.”
Ryan nodded in resignation. He could feel tendrils of hopelessness reaching out for him, telling him that it was time to give up, to accept the inevitable. Glancing over at Valentine, he saw that she was on the verge of giving in to the same feeling.
He forced his face into a mask, refusing to let her see his doubt. If Valentine saw it, that made it real, something he had to deal with, talk about. He wasn’t ready for that. In his heart, he knew he would never be ready for that conversation.
He cleared his throat, hoping to hide his despair. Something about hearing the hitch in his own voice filled him with disgust. Jessie would never give up on him. What was he doing, even considering doing the same to her?
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