Rafe Sinclair's Revenge. Gayle Wilson

was closed, her face still colorless, the features pinched with the strain of the last few hours.

      She waited until the cab had driven away before she revealed what she’d been thinking during the ride back. “I need to call Darrell. If this is what you think it is, then I’m responsible for what happened to the office.”

      “Your partner?”

      She nodded. “Semiretired. I handle most of the cases now. It’s what he intended when he took me into partnership. He’s been very good to me, Rafe. At the very least I owe him some explanation—”

      “You don’t owe him anything,” he said harshly, taking her elbow and urging her toward the room.

      “He owned that building. It was an investment. And if what you believe is true—”

      “He’ll have insurance. If he doesn’t, he’s an idiot. And if he’s really ready to retire, the explosion was probably a blessing. He won’t have to fool with selling the place.”

      “I’m not sure he’ll think that,” Elizabeth said.

      He could tell she wasn’t pleased with his lack of sympathy for her partner’s loss. He was still having trouble dealing with the realization that she was supposed to have been inside that building when it blew. Somehow, in light of that information, he couldn’t be too concerned about the fate of bricks and mortar.

      This wasn’t Jorgensen, but whoever it was had already proved that he valued human life no more than his role model. And proved that he was out to make a personal rather than a political statement.

      “Stay back,” he ordered when they reached the walkway in front of the motel.

      “You think he’s rigged something up in your room?”

      “I think we don’t know who or what we’re dealing with,” he said, “and until we do…”

      He flattened his hand to fish the key out of the front pocket of his jeans. It was the old-fashioned metal kind, which was rare these days. Of course, there was probably little cause to worry about theft in this setting.

      As little as there had been to worry about an act of terrorism. Until today.

      “You’re just going to stick that key in the lock and turn it in an effort to find out?”

      Her sarcasm was born of anxiety. He understood that. She would be feeling the same sickness in the bottom of her stomach that he’d experienced rounding the corner this morning and verifying that the fire was in her office.

      Something about her words nagged at him, however. You’re just going to stick that key in the lock…

      “Is that what you did?” he asked, turning to look at her.

      “What?”

      “Is that what triggered the bomb? When you turned the key in the office door?”

      She didn’t answer at once, her eyes again losing their focus as she thought about the sequence. “I never made it that far,” she said finally. “I didn’t get close enough to the building to put the key in the door. Not before it blew.”

      That news wouldn’t make him any less cautious. Someone like Jorgensen—someone using his methods—didn’t employ the same trick again. That was the genius of how he managed to do what he did, despite the strictest security precautions. He always came at you from a different direction.

      Reminded of that, Rafe bent to examine the lock. There was nothing to hint it had been tampered with. No scratches on the surface. And it was a standard metal door, which would provide some protection from an explosion.

      “Rafe,” Elizabeth said softly.

      He couldn’t quite read the tone, but it seemed strange. Not caution. Not anxiety. He glanced at her over his shoulder and knew immediately from her expression that she had just thought of something she knew was important.

      “I hit the autolock, and it blew,” she said. “It was keyed to my remote. They never meant for me to be inside.”

      They. The one word that was the most revealing in what she’d said. The most riveting. They.

      “Steiner.” The name sounded like an obscenity.

      “You can’t know that for sure.”

      “The hell I can’t. Damn it, I knew there was more to this. The CIA doesn’t give a rat’s ass if somebody blows you or me to kingdom come. They wouldn’t bother warning us. Not unless they thought they could get something out of it.”

      “They want you to go after whoever this is,” she said, her thinking paralleling his. Maybe because she knew them as well as he did. “That’s what this is all about. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Somebody is doing what Jorgensen did, and they can’t get to him. They think you can. You were the expert on Jorgensen. You got him. They want you to get this guy.”

      “I guess I’m supposed to be flattered at their confidence,” he said savagely.

      “You’re supposed to take care of him. Like you took care of Jorgensen.”

      Under strict congressional sanctions against political assassinations, the CIA had refused to allow Rafe to go after the German-born terrorist. He had been forced to do it strictly on his own, without any of the resources the agency could have provided.

      It had taken him more than a year to hunt down and execute Jorgensen. A year in which more innocent people had died. Now that the CIA was once more back in the game of tracking down terrorists, they were attempting to use Rafe to do the dirty work they had once professed to have no interest in.

      The only remaining question was whether or not Griff had known what was going on. Or was Cabot simply another discarded weapon the agency had decided to pick up and point at a target they hadn’t been able to get by any other means?

      “Then this should be safe as a church,” he said.

      An impulsive rage was another by-product of the day at the embassy. Another thing he was constantly forced to try to control. He didn’t succeed this time.

      He inserted the key and turned it, throwing open the motel room door. As he’d expected, absolutely nothing happened.

      After all, they couldn’t afford to let something happen to him. He was a tool they needed. Elizabeth had been as well, only she had been used to lure him into the game.

      If the trigger of the bomb this morning had been keyed to the frequency of her car remote, there was no possibility she would be hurt. Those sons of bitches had probably calibrated exactly how much C-4—or whatever the hell they were using these days—it would take to blow that building spectacularly without risking damage to someone standing where Elizabeth did every morning when she got out of her car.

      She might have been hit by falling debris. Steiner would probably have been genuinely sorry if that had happened, but it wouldn’t have mattered in the grand scheme of things.

      Elizabeth’s death would still have had the effect they were hoping for. They wanted Rafe to react just as he had reacted to the embassy bombing. They wanted him to go after the bastard who had done it. To hunt him down and kill him as he had killed Gunther Jorgensen.

      And if one of their own got injured or killed in the course of convincing him to do that, it was a loss the CIA was willing accept. Just a little collateral damage.

      Conniving bastards, he thought again, leading the way into the cool darkness of the motel room.

      All along they’d been laying their emotional traps, starting with Griff’s question. And you’re willing to stake her life on your certainty of that?

      There was nothing else on earth that would have gotten him involved in this, and Griff, of all people, knew that. Just as he’d known that once the suggestion that someone might try to harm Elizabeth had been made, Rafe wouldn’t be able to leave it alone.