Chapter Sixteen


I didn't think it would be so hard working with Patrick now that we've ended our affair, but, god, it is. It's not that he's throwing other women in my face or being difficult like in the past. In fact, he's being nice and respectful. Which makes it not only hard, it makes it weird. What's so hard is that I long for him. It's no one thing, it's a lot of little everythings that I never really stopped to categorize before. There's his hands, his magical, amazing, healing hands. Something about them just drive me wild. His wrists, especially when he wears a watch. The way he tilts his head when he reads a file. His neck when he's angry or passionate about something, the way that vein pops out that I want and have run my tongue over. His hair – I've haven't seen a guy who changes his hair so much since the guys I took dance class with in Paris. Every day I wonder what it's going to look like and how much product he's going to shove in it. Then there's the line of him, he's thin, but it doesn't make him seem weak. He's strong. A lot stronger than a lot of men I've known. Except when it comes to his heart. Not that I mean love, or anything, I meant about emotions, feelings, in general. Not that I particularly have feelings for him either. I mean I care. It's just that I…It's just hard. But I'll get over it, over him, soon. I'm sure. What choice do I have?


"You sure about wanting to do this?" Anna asked Brenda as she continued to glue small transmitters to her torso. Most would pick up sound and one would act as a homing beacon if need be. All were wireless.

"You don't even need to ask that, Anna. You know that. And other than you I look the most like Robin and, frankly, I'd rather have you covering my back."

Anna and Brenda were alone in one of the bedrooms of the new house they had moved to in the middle of the night after Sean Donely had shown up, proving that their location had been compromised.

"I'm worried about her, Anna." Brenda whispered as she buttoned up the blue-button down shirt she was pairing with fitted black slacks and low, for her and Robin, black heels. Herlls she could run in over the cobblestone streets if need be. "I've never been so worried."

"Which is why you're out there verbally sparring with Robin's Patrick," Anna said matter-of-factly as she tested the homing beacon GPS.

"I hate what he put Robin through." Brenda sighed and sat down on the bed next to the equipment. "And this…I trusted her with him. I trusted him to take care of her."

Anna looked up. "If he had been there they likely would have killed him. They wanted her, plain and simple. This isn't his fault."

"I know. I know." Brenda pulled her sleeves over her wrists and grasped them in her hands and nervously toyed with them. "He's good for her. He loves her. I just…"

"Want to blame someone. Then blame the people who took Robin, not Patrick." Anna raised her eyebrows at Brenda, waiting until she nodded. "She's alive, if she wasn't alive the WSB wouldn't have bothered to hide you so that you couldn't be used against Robin."

"So, they got Robert instead. I'm sorry, I know you're worried about them both." Brenda put her hand on Anna's arm and the two women shared a knowing look. Then Brenda stood up and grabbed her black suit jacket. "Enough of that." She buttoned up the coat and nodded her head. "Let's get this show on the road. Where's that devastatingly sexy nephew of yours?


Brenda toyed with the hat that Aidan handed her. "Robin would not wear this. No one with taste would wear this." Her lips pursed into a moue of disgust.

"We're fairly certain the person you're meeting with has no knowledge of Robin's taste in hats. We want to disguise your face as much as possible for as long as possible." He took the hat and plopped it on her head. "Besides, this is not a fashion show."

"What did you think of the fashion show? All those models?" Brenda straightened the hat as Aidan ran the electronic wand over her body to make sure the signals were properly masked in case she was scanned during the meet. When he was done she straightened her posture, made it less girl-like than her normal pose; more Robin. "Now, do I look like Robin from a distance?"

Aidan stepped back a couple of feet and ran his eyes up and down Brenda's body a couple of times. She felt a surprising frission of arousal at his gaze and frowned.

"You'll do," Aidan said.

"Great." She looked down, pretending to straighten her jacket so that she could compose herself before she looked into those sharp eyes again.

"Let's run through it again."


"You sure we can rely on her to do this?" Patrick asked Aidan as he drove them to a bus stop on the south side of the city where they were going to get on one bus that took them past the meeting point so that they could circle back around to it and scope out the area. Sean and a couple of his trusted men and Noah, Anna and Alex were doing the same from other directions. Brenda, meanwhile, had checked into a hotel as Robin Scorpio using the false identification Sean had procured. She was going to be going to the meeting site seemingly alone in a taxi from the hotel, except that the taxi driver was going to be an armed Patrick in a wired car made up like a licensed taxi.

"She loves Robin."

"I'm not challenging that. She just seems flighty and shallow. I can't even imagine her and Robin being friends."

"And you and Robin were an obvious match."

"No. I guess we weren't." Patrick looked out the car window.

"You know what they say, opposites attract." Aidan glanced at Patrick who didn't respond. "Brenda is going to do just fine, she's a smart woman. Any new emails?"

Patrick took his Blackberry out of his pocket and scrolled through Robin's emails. "Nothing new." He put it back into his pocket, making sure first that it was on vibrate. "You don't think they're on to us by now, do you?"

"There's no way to know. I know the waiting is hard."

"Hard." Patrick leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "Doesn't even begin to describe this." He swallowed. "Let's run through my part one more time."


"Race car driver, hmmm?" Brenda said from the backseat of the fake taxi Patrick was driving.

Patrick, his heart still in his throat from his first sight of "Robin" standing with the doorman who hailed him, just grunted.

"If you're any good at this cab driving Robin and I will have to take you to Milan with us while we do our retail therapy."

"Wonderful," Patrick intoned.

"Of course, you'd probably want to do your shopping in another city entirely." Brenda grinned, enjoying getting a rise out of Patrick. At least, she rationalized to herself, it kept him annoyed with her and kept the too serious look of worry off his handsome features. It was a kindness, really.

"I'm not much of a shopper." Patrick shook his head and reminded himself that this was to save Robin and slamming on the brakes to send her flying could really injure her and damage the mission.

"Oh come on, don't tell me that in your formative horn dog years you didn't go 'window shopping' in Amsterdam." Brenda snorted.

"Honey, I never had to pay for it."

"Personally, I don't see the attraction." Brenda turned her head so he couldn't see her smile in the rearview mirror.

"Somehow, I think I'll recover," he said dryly. "Do you think you can concentrate on the matter at hand now, instead of torturing me?"

"Torturing you relaxes me so that I can carry out my mission."

Patrick grunted and decided to ignore the back-seat nuisance and keep an eye out for the landmarks Anna had pointed out on the map.

Brenda smirked and ran through her lines in her head.


"She's getting out of the taxi now," Aidan reported over his wireless as he watched the petite, well-formed brunette make the simple activity look provocative. "Less catwalk, more clandestine meeting, Barrett," he murmured for her ears alone.

"Purrrrr."

"Barrett!"

She stiffened up into a more close approximation of her best friend. "Ten paces this way and I wait," she recited.

"Right. And I watch."

Brenda nodded at him, under the pretext of straightening her hat.

"Got it. I see you fine. I have you covered."

Minutes ticked by. "Robin" pretended to study a guide book as they waited, but Aidan could tell from the angle of her head that she was watching the people around her closely. He could tell the moment she clocked a woman coming towards her.

"All right folks, this could be her." Aidan gave a reassuring pat to his sidearm and put his binoculars to his eyes to watch. Something about the shape of the woman niggled at him as he watched her get closer to Brenda.

As soon as the person reached Brenda he realized what it was that was bothering him. "That's no woman!" he exclaimed over his wireless to Sean and Anna and moved in closer to his next mark.


Patrick sighed, his eyes darting to the car's clock every few seconds. He was stuck driving in an endless virtual loop around the area where the meet was set to happen. He wasn't allowed to have a wireless tuned in to what was going on in the ground in case they were being monitored or it accidentally crossed "wires" with another taxi or cop communicator. He hated being in the dark. And he hated driving this crappy sedan. At least they let him have a gun this time. Before he could let out another frustrated sigh his beeper went off.


"Dr. Robin Scorpio?"

Brenda looked up, her face deliberately in the shadows.

"Dr. Renee Laurent?"

"I'm as much Renee Laurent as you are Robin Scorpio." The aforesaid imposter grabbed Brenda and stuck a sharp point against her ribs. "Call off whoever is watching you!" he ordered.

Brenda struggled and gasped when the point was jabbed against her side, almost breaking skin. Her gasp echoed in Aidan's wireless as he leapt over the wall separating him from Brenda. Before he got there he heard the familiar woosh and the man in the dress holding Brenda captive clapped a hand to his neck where Anna's dart stuck him. Brenda pulled from his grasp just as Aidan grabbed the collapsing "woman" and put his arm under armpits and then his other arm around Brenda to make it look friendly.

He walked them over to the edge of the square and shoved the guy into the Patrick's taxi which had pulled up.

"Let's go!" Aidan grabbed Brenda in behind him and pulled the door closed behind her.


"How do we wake him up?" Brenda asked as Patrick shined the pen light in "Dr. Laurent's" eyes. She had shed her coat and unbuttoned the top buttons of her shirt and had put her glossy hair into a pony tail.

"He'll wake up himself in a few minutes. If not, we'll inject him with something," Aidan said. He put his hand on Brenda's back. "Why don't you go…"

"Uh uh. I'm not going anywhere, Aidan. I want to hear what this creep knows about Robin." She crossed her arms and tilted her chin up at the tall Englishman. "This asshole tried to stab me!"

"Fine, but let the professionals do the questioning. Both you and Patrick are on a short leash here, one word and I kick you both out."

"Don't lump me in with her," Patrick mumbled under his breath. "He's already starting to rouse. He'll need water."

"Taken care of." Sean put a glass of water down on the table next to the chair that the unknown man was tied to.

"Wow, look at you being so helpful," Patrick muttered under his breath, ignoring Aidan's threatening glare.

TBC