Page 75 of Midnight Secrets

“Yes,” Nick said. “Absolutely.”

Isabel got right up into his face. Nick didn’t flinch or back down. “I don’t believe you. People talk and Hector is very plugged into the national security apparatus. How are you going to investigate something this big without tipping him off? He’ll be gone at the first whiff of an investigation. I wish I could just take a gun and kill him. He’s getting away with mass murder and we can’t stop him! What can we do?”

Silence. Utter, complete silence.

“There might be a way,” the robot voice said finally.

* * *

“I don’t like it,”Joe said, crossing his arms. He put a lot of emphasis in his voice, making it deep, using his command voice. The one that had young recruits flinching. Because no way was Isabel doing this.

“I like it,” Isabel said. “Let’s do it.”

Joe heart beat painfully in his chest. He wanted to put his foot down, hard. He wanted to stop this craziness. Isabel was straining at the bit and that was dangerous for Navy SEALs who trained day in day out for years for missions, let alone a beautiful young woman whose most dangerous assignment was wielding sharp knives in the kitchen.

But there was no stopping her.

That was another reason his heart was hammering. This was an Isabel he’d never seen before. Not the gentle, wounded, grieving woman who made him want to wrap himself around her and never let go.

No, this woman was electric, sparks flying off her. Eyes wide, shiny, a flush under that ivory skin. Even her hair crackled. She walked up and down as CIA guy and the ASI team discussed the outrageous plan as if it was in any way feasible.

Which it wasn’t.

She would do this over his dead body.

The only thing was—it looked like she was willing to do just that. Step right over his stroked-out body as if he was invisible and carry out the plan to get Hector Blake, because there was no stopping her.

“Let’s go through this again,” the Senior said. He was good at strategizing, which was fortunate because though Joe was good at strategizing, too, right now his brain was MIA. Whatever electricity had fired Isabel up had been leeched from him because it felt like his very bones were weak. Like someone had zapped him.

It was terror like he’d never felt before. Because they were planning on using Isabel as fuckingbait.Bait for the man responsible for the Massacre. And she was up for it, oh yeah. No stopping her, in fact. Joe had tried, he really had, but Isabel wasn’t even listening to him.

The plan was fairly simple so Joe absorbed it through his skin because his head wasn’t working right. It was filled with images of Isabel shot, Isabel knifed, Isabel dead. Fucking Blake finishing off the job he’d started in Washington.

And then someone said something that was like a cattle prod. “Fuck no,” he said. “I’m going to be right beside her.”

Because someone had talked about the ASI guys—and that included him—being in the back and hidden behind bushes and there was no way. Just—no way.

Isabel looked at him impatiently, as if he was a few bricks shy of a load. “The only way this is going to work is if he thinks I’m alone. I mean cosmically alone. I know him down to the ground and if there’s one thing he is, it’s vain. I can get him to talk but he would only talk to me. To Isabel Delvaux, victim. The only survivor of a family he slaughtered. If I play it right—and I will—he’s going to want to brag. How clever he was, how he deceived us all. How no one will ever believe me.”

“No one will believe you because you’ll be dead.” Joe looked everyone in the eye, cool and calm, though his back was covered in sweat. “This is not gonna happen.”

It was as if he hadn’t spoken.

“Okay,” Senior said. “Let’s go through this again. From the top.” He pointed a long finger at Isabel.

She nodded briskly, made an imaginary phone out of her hand. “I call him. I call Uncle Hector. The man my father grew up with, who has been a family friend forever. I’ve called him Uncle Hector since I learned to speak. All of that will be in my voice and my demeanor. Utter trust and faith in a man I’ve known all my life. So I call him and I’m puzzled. I’m turning to him because I don’t have a father or a mother anymore and my big brother is dead.”

Her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened and something fierce passed over her face. She made a hand phone again. “So who else would I turn to but the man who had been like a father to me all my life? My dear Uncle Hector. So, Uncle Hector—you know what? I’ve been having dreams, terrible dreams. Of that night. Yes, I’d lost my memory, isn’t that sad. But what if—what if my memory is coming back, Uncle Hector? Because I see flashes of things and somehow—isn’t this crazy?—somehow you are always in my dreams. What do you think that means? What do I do?”

Isabel stopped for a moment, looked around. Everyone but Joe was nodding. Were they all fuckingnuts?

“He’s not going to go for that! He’s?—”

Isabel’s voice overrode him. “So I suggest that maybe we should meet, talk it over. I mean I know you’re a busy man, Uncle Hector, but I really need to talk to you. What? Come to Washington? I don’t know…I’m not feeling well these days. It’s a long trip. Do you think you could…you could? Oh great. Whenever you can make it. Yes—thanks so much, Uncle Hector. You’ve always been there for me.”

“After which—” Senior began.

“After which I call him about an hour before our appointment. There’s been a leak in the water mains, the house is a mess. Can we meet downtown in a nice place called Three Windows? And I go in all wired up.”

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