Forbidden Touch

Chapter Twelve

Iris looked away from Maddox, heat rising in her cheeks. She should have known better than to come here.

"Seriously, what're you doing here?"

"Are you going to introduce us to your friend?" Moira arched an eyebrow at Maddox, then turned to Iris, "I'm Moira Reyes, This is my husband, Juan, Nice to meet you."

Despite her misgivings about coming here at all, she had to smile at Moira's soft drawl. "You're not from around here."

Moira laughed, "Neither are you. Iris, is it?"

Iris extended her hand. "Iris Browning, And no. I'm just here on vacation." She glanced at Maddox. He stared back at her, unsmiling.

"I bet you'd like some sweet tea." Moira said.

"No, really. You're not open yet-"

Moira waved of her protest, "Be back in a minute."

Iris was tempted to leave anyway, but Maddox's low voice stopped her. "Don't leave on my account."

She squared her jaw and met his gaze. "I have to get to the conference at the St. George."

His smile widened. "That's not for another few hours. I checked."

Now he was really beginning to annoy her, "Planning on gate-crashing again?"

"May be."

She sighed. "I thought you were washing your hands of the whole thing."

He didn't answer, his gaze sliding away from hers. Fear radiated off of him like heat, cracking his sarcastic facade. "How did you find me?"

Iris hesitated. Part of her wanted to turn around and get out of there, go back to the hotel and wait for conference time. The last thing she wanted to do was endure another rejection from Maddox.

But another part of her understood his fears, especially now that she'd read about some of what had happened to him in Kaziristan-and afterward.

Taking a deep breath, she crossed to the table where he sat and took the chair opposite him. "I asked Claudell where I might find you. This was the first place he suggested."

Maddox ran his finger around the side of his glass of tea, tracing a path in the condensation, "I wish you'd taken my advice and caught the first plane out of here. I don't think it's safe for you here."

"I told you why I can't leave."

"What good are you doing staying here? You're no closer to finding your friend than you were two days ago, are you?"

"Not really." she admitted, "But I'm hoping Quinn will have some ideas."

"Quinn?" He looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. "You're not doing anything with Quinn."

"Why not?" she countered, "At least he's willing to help me find Sandrine. You've washed your hands of it, haven't you?"

He glared at her, breathing hard.

"Haven't you?" she repeated.

He looked down at the table. "You can't trust Quinn."

"Yeah, well, my track record for choosing who I can trust is a little spotty these days, isn't it?"

He looked up at her, a muscle in his jaw twitching.

"Is there a particular reason you don't trust Quinn?" She had a pretty good idea why he didn't, but she was hoping Maddox would tell her himself.

"We have different ways of seeing the world, that's all."

Nice and noncommittal, she thought. And not enough.

She licked her lips and took a plunge. "I know what happened in Kaziristan."

His gaze darkened. "No, you don't."

"No. I guess I don't know everything." she admitted. "But I know more than I did this morning. Did you know there are Web sites devoted to you and what you did during the siege? They call you a hero."

He looked at her, horror in his eyes. "Why did you do that, Iris? I told you to let it go."

"Because you wouldn't tell me and I needed to know."

He held up his hand, one finger pointing at her as if in accusation. "You don't need to know any of it. I don't want you to know any of it."

"Well, that's too damn bad." she countered, her voice rising more sharply than she intended.

She saw Moira turn her head toward their table in response. She took a deep breath and dropped her voice. "I needed to understand where you were coming from. I want to understand you, Maddox."

He looked away from her. "Sugar, you'll be out of here one way or another by the end of the week. What difference could it possibly make to you?"

She knew he was right. She wasn't going to see him again once she returned to Alabama and her life in Willow Grove. She couldn't say she thought it so important to know what he'd been through in Kaziristan three years ago.

He shrugged before she could formulate an answer. "Hell, may be it's a good thing. You need to know what kind of sick bastard you're up against if Tahir Mahmoud really is part of al-Adar, Just remember, you can't believe everything you read." His voice dropped an octave. "I'm no hero"

"Yes, you are." she said firmly. "I read firsthand accounts from people you saved during the siege. They all say you got a raw deal from the Marine Corps after what you did to keep those people alive. You shouldn't have been forced out."

"Forced out?" Maddox's laugh lacked any sign of humor. "I wasn't forced out. I resigned. I got the hell out and never looked back. You call that heroic?" He shook his head. "I'm not that guy you read about on your little Web site."

"I know about Teresa Miles. I know what you had to do"

His expression blackened. "What I chose to do."

She tried to cover his hand with her own, but he jerked his hand away. She grabbed the edge of the table, leaning toward him. "You probably don't want to hear this, I'm pretty sure you will disagree with me. But I think you did the right thing, as horrible and hellish as it must have been for you."

"I could have stopped her murder."

"And gotten a dozen other people killed." Iris shook her head, aching for him. "You know you couldn't have done that."

He slammed his hand down on the table, "Well, I should have been able to do something." Tears glittered in his eyes. "She looked at me. Right in the eye. She saw me watching."

Pain, distilled to sharp clarity, ripped through Iris's heart, so distinct, so strong she wasn't sure if it was Maddox's pain or her own.

"Maddox, don't-"

"Do you want to understand or don't you?" His voice rose, tight with rage. "This is what happened. Iris. You want so bad to look at it. You're just gonna have to gut it out, because I'm gonna tell you exactly what went down that day."

She sat back in the chair, wrapping her arms around herself. He was out of control now, trapped in a nightmare from his past. He needed to walk through it, step by step, if he was ever going to really escape, and she was just going to have to be strong enough to watch him do it.

She saw Moira start to get up and move toward them, but she met the woman's worried gaze and shook her head. Moira sat down again, gazing toward them with silent concern.

"The al-Adar terrorists hit in a series of coordinated attacks. God knows how long they'd been planning it. They took out Headley-the ambassador-and his security crew first. Brand and Headley survived the car bomb, but the terrorists shot them down while Brand was trying to get the ambassador to safety."

Iris nodded. Those details were in the Web sites she'd read. "You weren't on duty."

His lips curved in a horrible facsimile of a smile. "I'd pulled a night shift and was too keyed up to sleep yet. I was playing poker with a couple of MSGs and one of the embassy's assistant RSOs who was off duty too."

"Nicholas Darcy."

He nodded. "A third RSO, who was on duty, was killed first thing when the truck bomb hit the embassy. Nine MSGs were taken out at the same time. Only those of us who'd been off duty survived. We split up and started trying to find survivors."

"It must have been chaotic."

He gave a bleak laugh. "Ever waded through body parts? You try so hard not to step on anything-anyone-"

"Maddox-" She clutched his hand, but he jerked it away.

"Cavanaugh took over as acting ambassador when we got word about Headley and Brand. And Cavanaugh ordered everyone to stand down. Stay put. Wait for outside reinforcements."

"But you didn't."

"No. I didn't. See. I'd just found twelve people huddling in a back room. They were scared to go out, but the place was on tire. There was smoke everywhere, terrorists crawling through the place looking for survivors to murder-" A visible shudder rippled through him.

"You were right to ignore the order, Maddox. You saved those people. Your only crime was in making Cavanaugh look bad. He made you the scapegoat to cover his own backside-"

"Stop it, Iris! Stop parroting those Web sites!" He narrowed his eyes. "Don't pretend there's not more to it. If you read those pages, you know there is."

She closed her eyes against the bitterness in his gaze, but he caught her chin and save her a shake. "Look at me. Iris."

She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut.

He slid his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her across the table toward him. "Look at me"

She made herself open her eyes. He stared back at her, only a few inches away. His agony slid into her, thick and oily, making her stomach rebel. She swallowed hard to stamp down the nausea and held his gaze, knowing she'd asked for the truth.

This was the truth. It wasn't pretty and it wasn't easy, but if he could get through it, so could she.

"Teresa Miles was an interpreter. She was twenty-five. So damned young. She had short blond hair and big green eyes the color of the sea on a sunny day. She was from Iowa. A sweet little corn-fed American girl who just wanted an adventure."

He looked away from Iris, letting go of her neck. She slid back in her chair, watching him through narrowed eyes.

"She got separated from everybody else in her section. I don't know if they ever figured out how."

"She'd gone to the restroom." Iris answered quietly.

He looked up at her, "I never heard one way or the other. They were still investigating everything at the time I got out."

"I guess you haven't kept up with the findings of the congressional investigation."

"No. I testified just before I left the States. I didn't want to think about it anymore." He took a deep breath. "But I can't seem to do anything but think about it these days."

"Is this why you're so suspicious of Tahir Mahmoud? You obviously think he may have been involved."

He rubbed his jaw, his palm scraping against the day's growth of beard. "I think he killed Teresa."

Iris stared at him. "I thought you didn't see her killer. They were wearing head coverings over their faces-"

"The scar on his wrist." Maddox's voice sounded hoarse.

Understanding dawned. "You were staring at it yesterday."

"Teresa's killer had that same scar."

She frowned. "You saw it from where you were hidden?"

"We were hidden closer than you think." He licked his lips looking down at his glass of tea. "Less than ten yards away. And you know how dark his skin is. Believe me, that white scar was plenty visible."

"Ten yards away." she repeated, horror rippling down her spine. That close-

"Front row seat." he grated. "Arterial blood can really shoot across a room-"

"Stop!"

"It's okay. I'm done." Maddox pushed himself out his chair, stumbling a little as he lurched toward the exit. Iris watched him leave, her heart aching.

Moira got up, reaching out for him, but he shook her hand off his arm and continued out the door.

Maddox didn't know how he'd ended up sitting in the third-floor hallway of the Princeton Hotel, waiting for Iris Browning to show up. Hadn't he left her at the Poseidon because he didn't want to talk to her anymore? Hell, hadn't he thrown her out of his house to keep her from knowing all his secrets?

Well, it was too late. She knew.

He should've known she wouldn't give up. But she didn't understand. She bought into that garbage on the Internet, the poor deluded souls who thought that just because a guy managed to get a dozen people out of an embassy siege alive, he was some kind of hero.

But heroes didn't watch a sweet kid from Iowa have her throat cut without raising a finger to save her.

There'd been a way to save her. There had to have been. He'd just been too stupid or scared or gutless to figure it out, that's all.

If only he'd been on duty that morning, and one of the guys who'd died at the gate had been the one at the poker game when it all went down, maybe Teresa would still be alive. Maybe Parker or Hunt or one of the others would have seen how to save her where he hadn't.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Some days, it seemed that maybe was the only word in his vocabulary.

"How did I know I'd find you here?" Alexander Quinn's gravelly voice jerked Maddox's focus into the present. The CIA agent stood halfway down the hallway, leaning against the wall. Maddox hadn't even heard him coming.

He stood. "You must be psychic."

"I take it she's not here." Quinn said.

"Nope."

"So what happened between last night and this morning, Heller?" Quinn pushed away from the wall and walked slowly toward him, curiosity etched in the fine lines around his eyes. "To bring the lovely Ms. Browning here to a hotel, I mean."

"None of your business"

"Trouble in paradise?"

"Shut up, Quinn."

"The course of true love-"

"I said, shut up."

Quinn smiled. It made him look even more sinister. "She was out of your league any way."

"She's not going to work with you."

"That's not a decision you can make." Quinn disagreed.

"No, but Iris has been doing a little Web surfing, man. She's learned just how trustworthy you double types are."

For the first time since she'd mentioned it, Maddox was almost glad Iris had done the Web search into what had happened in Kaziristan. At least she'd taken a cold, sober look at the lengths a government would go to in order to cover its backside when something went all to hell.

"Then she knows about you."

Maddox looked down at the herringbone carpet that lined the hotel corridor, counting the rows out of habit. Anything to keep from thinking too hard about what Iris Browning now knew about him. "Yeah."

"That's good. Maybe she'll be able to knock some sense into you."

Maddox looked up, frowning, "Some sense?'

Quinn shook his head, the look of pity in his eyes making Maddox's stomach twist. "You really have no idea what most people back in the States think of you, do you?"

"I don't care what they think of me."

Quinn laughed. It was worse than his smile, "Why didn't you stand and tight, Heller? You let Foggy Bottom roll over you and you didn't even raise a stink. Why? Did you really buy that garbage those diplomats were peddling to cover their own backsides?Cavanaugh blew it. You didn't."

"I didn't need the State Department PR machine to tell me I screwed up."

"You're not God, Heller. You couldn't save everybody."

"I didn't even try."

"And that was a damn good thing for those twelve people you got out of there alive."

Quinn stepped forward, suddenly in Maddox's face. "You know what your real problem is? You're arrogant. You think you're so damn perfect that you should have been able to save everybody."

Maddox grabbed the front of Quinn's shirt. "You don't know what you're talking about." he growled.

"May be you should listen to him."

Maddox and Quinn both turned at the sound of Iris's voice. She stood a few feet away, watching their confrontation with her arms crossed over her chest.

Maddox let go of Quinn's shirt. "You don't know what you're talking about either, Iris."

"Probably not." she conceded, her voice desert dry, "I take it you're both here to see me?"

Quinn smiled at her. Maddox wondered if she found the expression as creepy as he did. "I heard you'd moved out of Maddox's house, I wanted to check on you, see if everything was okay." Quinn said.

"Because he only has your welfare at heart." Maddox added, barely keeping his eyes from rolling.

Iris didn't respond to either of them, walking to her hotel room door and unlocking it. "As much as I'd normally enjoy being the belle of the ball, I'd like to order lunch and have a few minutes to myself before this afternoon's session at the conference. So can we just get to whatever you want?"

Maddox followed her inside, Quinn at his heels. Iris took the only chair in the room, an uncomfortable looking rattan armchair that matched the small table by the window, leaving Maddox and Quinn to make do with the bed.

Her lips curved as they sat side by side on the floral bedspread, taking pains to keep their distance from each other. Maddox shot her a warning glare, and her smile widened.

"Have you given any more thought to what I asked of you?" Quinn asked.

Iris glanced at Maddox. He shook his head slightly in the negative as he held her gaze.

She looked away from him and back at Alexander Quinn. "I have."

"And?"

"I'll do it."