Darkness Before the Dawn (Maggie Bennett 2)

“Randall Carter means absolutely nothing to me. Less than nothing,” Maggie said in a flat voice. “And yes, I know him from before.”

“Aha!”

“Aha, what?” she snapped. “I can’t stand the man. He’s a sleazoid, he’s a worthless piece of garbage, he’s—”

Kate giggled. “I can’t imagine someone as elegant as Randall Carter being called garbage.”

A reluctant smile played around the corners of Maggie’s generous mouth. “You’re right. The man reserves all his emotion for his wardrobe.”

“How would you know that?” Kate asked. “Were you in a position to ask for his emotions?”

“I’ll tell you what, Kate,” she said in a friendly voice. “I won’t pester you about your convoluted feelings for Caleb, and you won’t interfere in my past relationship with Randall. Believe me, it’s very past, very old, and very dead. The only thing I feel for him is contempt.”

“It’s a deal—if you answer one question.”

Here we go again, she thought with a shudder. At least it couldn’t be as horrifying as Randall’s unanswerable question. “All right.”

“Was it six years ago that you knew him?”

Maggie looked at her sleepy younger sister with surprise. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because the whole family knows that Maggie the Indestructible self-destructed six years ago. And no one ever knew what or who caused it. Was it Randall?”

That was almost as horrifying as Randall’s question, she thought grimly. She considered denying it. She considered getting up and walking out of the room. But Kate was right—they were in too much trouble as it was. Kate didn’t need to know just how much Randall suspected. Maggie herself didn’t even know—Kate had walked into the room immediately after that bombshell of the grapefruit marmalade, and he’d been polite, charming, and distant and had left a courteous half-hour afterward without another word about Francis’s demise. But his silence wouldn’t last forever.

Maggie looked over at Kate’s sleepy face. “It was Randall,” she said. “Go to sleep.”

Kate’s muffled sound of protest deteriorated into a quiet little snore. Maggie sat watching her sister and took another sip of whiskey. It had been Randall, indeed, she thought, and gave her weary mind over to the memories that the alcohol couldn’t keep at bay.

She’d been so damned young six years ago, younger than her twenty-eight years at the time, and she still had an extraordinary faith in human beings that was downright stupid, when she looked back on it. She’d gone through a disrupted childhood that had included a mother who was feckless and charming and never there when you needed her, a father who was cold and distant, three stepfathers, and innumerable honorable “uncles.” She’d been forcibly introduced to sex by one of her drunken stepfathers, and if the psychologists that her outraged and suddenly maternal mother had provided had managed to convince her that it wasn’t her fault, she had had yet to prove to herself that she could do more than just mana

ge a physical relationship.

But still and all, she had somehow expected the best from people, despite their lapses. Maybe Granny Bennett had taught her that before she died; maybe Queenie had managed to instill it in her. She’d learned to look past her mother’s selfish irresponsibility to the very real love beneath it, and she’d learned to accept her father’s distance. She’d learned to be strong and loving to her younger sisters, generous with her mother, and accepting of human frailty—until she made the mistake of falling in love with a man who didn’t deserve her.

Why she’d ever been fool enough to work for the CIA was another matter. She’d been restless and bored and had needed a better outlet than law school for her razor-sharp intelligence and her longing for excitement. All her life she’d been torn between her need for security and her need for adventure. She needed the security to balance her disrupted childhood, and most of the time that part of her was ascendant. But her mother’s gypsy blood made her break out every now and then, longing for something more exciting, and that impractical longing had made her drop out just before her law boards and give in to Mike Jackson’s importunities and work for the Company.

Who would have thought they would both end up in a peaceful, nonprofit organization like Third World Causes, Ltd.? she thought with a lazy grimace. She’d gotten out of the CIA sooner than Mike. It had taken less than a year to become thoroughly disenchanted with the way the Company worked. She could thank Randall Carter for that, she supposed. He did have his uses.

She had still been in training six long years ago when she had met him, was still doing the myriad paper work and secretarial work that somehow was supposed to be suited to female trainees but not male ones. She’d been sent up to Jackson’s office, her arms full of secret files involving Yugoslavian terrorists, and even though she knew that the deep, rich voice that was telling her to enter wasn’t Jackson’s, she had still been unprepared for her first sight of Randall Elverston Carter. She’d almost dropped the files on the carpet.

It had an eerie similarity to today, she thought, burrowing down into her chair. He’d been alone in the office, staring out the window, and he’d turned when she’d entered. His dark eyes had narrowed as they swept over her suddenly gawky figure. He’d had the uncanny ability to make her feel too tall, too gangly, too clumsy. And yet later he hadn’t made her feel that way at all.

“There you are, Maggie.” Mike had come up behind her. “This is Randall Carter. He’s a friend of the Agency’s; he helps out every now and then in an unofficial capacity. Randall, this is Maggie Bennett.”

Randall had nodded, his elegant head inclining regally. All the while those dangerous eyes had watched her.

Jackson had continued on. “We’re sending you out on your first mission, Maggie. It’s simple enough—you’re to provide cover for an operative traveling through Eastern Europe. You’ll pose as his wife. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than a week—ten days at the most. Just a chance to get your feet wet.”

Maggie had turned to look at Randall, aquamarine eyes into stormy gray, and there was an unspoken question on her face.

He shook his head. “Not me, I’m afraid,” he’d said in that rich, deep voice that was unexpectedly delicious. “Mike’s agent is a man named Jim Mullen. He’s going to be acting as a sales rep for one of my companies. It should prove a good enough cover.”

“One of your companies?” Maggie couldn’t help but echo.

“Randall’s our quintessential capitalist pig, Maggie,” Mike had announced genially, dropping into his desk chair. “Born with a pedigree and a silver spoon in his mouth, and no matter what he does, he just keeps making money, don’t you?”

Randall inclined his head once more. “It gets boring.”