Lover, Stranger Part 30

They were on the ground at an airfield just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. Grace was in the police magistrate's office, talking with Myra on the telephone and filling her in on all the details.

Myra listened, and then when Grace was finished, said, "After all these years, you finally got him. How does it feel?"

Grace hadn't had time to deal with her emotions. She supposed what she felt most strongly at that moment was uncertainty, about her future and about Ethan's. She said almost urgently, "What's happening on your end? Have you found out anything else about the fingerprints?"

A long hesitation, then Myra said, "Turns out, the agency who flagged his prints is the DEA, Grace. Evidently they've been looking for him for a long time, and now they're demanding that we turn him over to them."

Grace sucked in a long breath.

"Are you sure? There could have been a mistake. A computer glitch."

"There's no mistake. You've got to bring him in, Grace. You don't have a choice."

ethan could tell from the look on Grace's face that the call hadn't gone well.

"You talked to your superior?"

She nodded. She started to say something else, then turned to stare across the street at a seedy-looking bar that blasted tejano music.

"Let's take a walk," she suggested.

"It's a little noisy around here."

They strolled along the cobblestone sidewalk until they reached the edge of town. The night seemed darker over the desert, with only a few stars and the moon to soften the gloom. In a few hours, it would be dawn, but right now, daylight still seemed a long way off.

Without looking at her, Ethan said, "I'm going back to the jungle.

Grace. Back to that clinic. I have to find out who I am. I have to know.

what I've done. "

"Ethan" -- He took her arms, turning her to face him. He stared down into her eyes, feeling the connection with her as he had never felt it before.

Maybe because he was about to sever it.

"That call you just made. What you found out wasn't good, was it?"

He saw the denial flicker over her features, then she closed her eyes briefly.

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does." His grip tightened on her arms. "You're a cop, Grace.

An FBI agent sworn to uphold the law. How can you say who I am and what I've done doesn't matter? "

She gazed up at him.

"Going back to the jungle may be the most dangerous place for you. If you come back with me" -- "You'll see that they go easy on me?" He shook his head.

"I'm not above the law, Grace. If I've doi something wrong, something...

bad, then I'll take ny punishment for it. But not until I find out the truth f myself. Not until I know the whole story. Can y< understand="">

What he was asking of her went against everythh she stood for, everything she believed in. A wave guilt rolled over Ethan for what he was about to d but there was no other way.

He took a step back from her, and he saw her b wilderment in the moonlight.

Then her disbelief.

He took another step away from her, backing in the desert as he leveled the gun on her.

"It's the only way. Grace. I can't ask you to gi' up everything for me. I won't. So don't try to folio me." It was more of a plea than a warning, but for 01 split second, he sensed her resistance.

"This isn't goodbye," he promised.

"Then why do I feel like it is?" she said, befo turning and walking away.

grace sat in the cubicle Myra had confiscated at the Houston office and tried to ignore the tension that fair sizzled in the room. Two huge men wearing black sui and identical scowls stood on either side of Grace will Myra sat across a metal desk from her. When Grai had first entered the office, less than twenty-four hou after her flight back from the border, Myra had intr duced the two men as her counterparts at the DE; Which meant they had considerable clout.

Myra folded her arms on the top of the desk ai said, "Please tell Agents Mackelroy and Delaney wh you told me. Grace."

Grace glanced up at first one man, and then the other. She shrugged.

"He got away."

Mackelroy, the larger of the two men, came around to perch on the edge of Myra's desk.

"How?"

"He pulled a gun on me."

She could see the disbelief in the man's eyes before he flashed a glance at his partner. Mackelroy said, "Tell us exactly what happened."

Grace complied, leaving out only the part she deemed too personal for them to hear. Some of what had gone down between her and Ethan was none of their d.a.m.ned business.

Mackelroy leaned toward Grace, his gaze intense. "Do you have any idea where he is now? It's imperative that we find him."

Grace met his gaze.

"Why do you want him so badly? Who is he?"

The two men exchanged another glance. Then Mackelroy said almost urgently, "His name is Tony Stark. He's one of our agents. For the last two years, he's been under deep cover, infiltrating one of the drug cartels down in Mexico."

For a moment. Grace thought she hadn't heard him correctly. She stared at him, stunned. Then she said slowly, "He's a DEA agent?"

Mackelroy nodded.

"The last we heard, he'd been arrested by some local authorities who were working for a rival cartel. Somehow he managed to escape, and then he just disappeared. We a.s.sumed he was dead, but then his fingerprints turned up in the computer. The rest you know."

Grace felt as if she had just been sucker punched. She couldn't breathe, much less talk.

Myra said throatily, "Of course, we'd like to coop rerate as much as we can, but Grace has told you everything. Stark is down in Mexico somewhere, wandering around without a memory. If he were one of my agents, I wouldn't waste time in getting down there to find him."

by the end of the week. Grace was back home in Washington. She'd filed the last of her reports and attended one final debriefing before leaving the J.

Edgar Hoover Building in a downpour.

She stood at the window of her apartment, and stared out at the city.

It was Friday, past eight o'clock, and the city was coming alive. The streets were still clogged with government workers and officials wending their way southward, to the suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.

The ones who lived in the city were finding little pockets of shelter in the hundreds of bars and bistros scattered throughout Washington.

The rain had stopped a little while ago, and a breeze drifted in from the Potomac River. The heat of the day gave way to a crisp coolness of evening, and the sky deepened to violet.

Grace had never felt more at loose ends after wrapping up a case, because this had been no ordinary case. Trevor Reardon was dead, and for the first time in fourteen years, she felt the weight of her guilt begin to ease. She knew she could let go of the past now, say goodbye to a family she would never stop missing.

But in some strange way, the emptiness inside her had deepened. The lonely years of her life stretched before her, and Grace suddenly realized how much she'd given up to her dedication. A home. A family.

A man she could love.

A future that made her want to get up in the mornings.

Ethan had done this to her. Grace thought without bitterness. Ethan had made her realize what she was missing, what her sacrifices had cost her. He had reminded her that she had once been capable of love.

Might still be.

She closed her eyes briefly, resting her forehead against the cool gla.s.s.

She wondered where he was now, if he was safe, if he had been found by the DEA and told who he was. What he was.

She had known all along there was goodness in him.

Grace turned when the doorbell sounded and reluctantly left her place at the window to answer it, figuring it was Myra trying to talk her out of the resignation Grace had tendered after her last debriefing.

But it was time for a change. Time to try her hand at being a lawyer, which was what she'd always wanted to be.

She pulled back the door.

"I'm not changing my mind, Myra" -- Ethan stood on the other side, dressed in jeans and a dark cotton shirt, a raincoat slung over his shoulder. His dark hair glistened with moisture as he gazed down at her uncertainly.

"I wasn't sure this was the right place," he finally said.

Grace stepped back to let him enter.

"How did you find me?"

"Some of my friends at the DEA office in Houston helped track you down."

Grace's heart quickened.

"Then you know?"

"A couple of agents were waiting for me at Hunter's clinic down in Mexico. I guess they somehow figured out I'd be going there to find some answers." He gave Grace a pointed look, and she quickly turned away.

' "It would seem a logical place to start searching for you," she said, leading him into the living room. Shf glanced around at the dismal atmosphere of her home Come Monday morning, she was going to start redecorating. Grace decided. A new career, a new apartment a whole new life.

Where would Ethan fit into her plans? she wondered Or would he want to?

She motioned toward the sofa, but they both remained standing.

"I've been wondering about you, yot know. Where you were. How you were doing. There'n a lot of things we've left unsaid, Ethan."

He smiled, and Grace caught her breath. He lookec different all of a sudden.

Like a new man.

"My namt is Tony."

She smiled, too, her heart pounding inside her. " know, but that'll take some getting used to."

He watched her move toward the window. She stooc with her back to the glow of city lights" and the was she looked almost took his breath away.

He walked over to stand beside her, and they boil turned to stare out at the glistening night.

"I don't havt my memory back," he finally said.

"Not all of it, but bits and pieces are starting to come back.

And pv( been told quite a lot. " He turned to her.

"I've seen pictures of myself, the way I looked before. Unless agree to more surgery, I guess I'm stuck with thi; face."

"It's a nice face," Grace said softly.

"You don't think of ... him when you look at me' You don't feel revulsion?"

She reached up and touched his cheek very briefly with her fingertips.

"I see you. No one else. It doesn't matter what you look like. Appearances are only skin deep. It's who you are that counts."

He gazed down at her, resisting the urge to touch the fiery strands of her hair, to let the softness sift through his fingers.

She turned back to the window, but he could see that she was watching his reflection. After a moment, she said, "It must seem so strange, finding out about yourself like that. You must have had a million questions."

His gaze met hers in the window.

"There was one question in particular I was anxious to find the answer to."