Pandora's Box Read online

  Before Madison could make a decision, Tyler slipped in through a side door. His eyes stared straight ahead. If he hadn’t been under the chip’s influence, he would have quickly scanned the room, searching for traps and enemies, but he wasn’t himself today. His hand dipped beneath his dark jacket. He was reaching for a gun.

  Madison darted through the throng of people. She rushed to his side, desperate to stop him. Where the hell was Brett? She needed that damn second remote. Otherwise she didn’t think she could stop the inevitable. Tyler would pull his gun and the Secret Service would drop him on the spot. Just like her father.

  She blocked his path.

  Her fingers encircled his wrist and she pressed against it, keeping him from removing the gun from its hiding place. “I know you don’t remember me right now, but please listen to me. Don’t do this. You’re being controlled by a microchip in your brain. You have to fight it.”

  His cold eyes stared at her as if she were a stranger, no more important than a pesky fly. With a windmill gesture he knocked her hand off. At the same time his other hand twirled her around until she faced in the opposite direction and he stepped closer, pressed her back against him and grasped her throat with his gun hand. His fingers tightened, nearly cutting off her oxygen.

  A dangerous man without a conscience, without a memory, no past or future to worry about. That was what he’d become.

  “You don’t want to do this,” she said. She glanced around nervously, hoping no one would notice. She needn’t have worried. Everyone’s attention focused solely on the president as he began to give yet another tedious speech. If she could stall Tyler long enough, Brett would arrive with the remote. “I’m your wife. Remember? We shared our secrets. We shared everything. We even talked about having children.” His fingers loosened. Good. She lied, “I’m pregnant with your baby right now.”

  His hand dropped away.

  She turned to face him, hope shining in her eyes. Had she finally reached him? Did he remember her?

  But his eyes hadn’t warmed even a tenth of a degree. He stared at her, no emotion. He still didn’t remember he loved her. So why had he released her?

  Because he had other things on his mind. He pushed her out of the way and headed for the president, relentless. Once again his hand slipped inside his jacket. Even though she couldn’t see his fingers, she knew they were wrapping around cold steel. If she didn’t do something fast, he was going to kill the president or die trying.

  Madison clicked off her options. She could tackle him, but someone might get the right idea and open fire on him. So that was out. She could play the crazy one, place a gun at the back of his head, and threaten the president’s son. Yeah, and then she’d wind up dead. That wasn’t a good idea either.

  She decided to go with Plan C.

  Dashing past Tyler, she raced up the stairs and shouted a code word to the Secret Service Agents standing close to the president. They moved in front of him, shielding him from unknown danger. She grabbed the president, whirled him around, and pushed him through the double doors. She followed him through. As the doors closed behind her, she turned to see Tyler looked confused. He had no idea what to do. And there was the flaw with the microchips. The chips didn’t have a Plan B, let alone C.

  They took the elevator up to the room on the tenth floor that the president had used earlier. When he made a speech, he liked to have a place to relax before and after, a shot of bourbon and a few minutes alone. The president invited her inside, although he asked the other agents to remain outside. His wife had decided to stay downstairs with the vice-president. Big surprise.

  President Law walked over to the bar. He lifted a crystal decanter along with his eyebrow. “Drink?”

  She shook her head, scowling at him. If Tyler’s life hadn’t been on the line, she would have let the president die. No man deserved death more.

  “Tell me, who was trying to assassinate me tonight?”

  “I think you know,” she said.

  He sipped his liquor. “So they finally brought out the big gun.”

  “You’ve known this whole time that Tyler had been programmed to kill you.” She circled him yet kept her distance. “DeMarco was set up and you knew. You knew all about Boracci and Roxie and their plan to finish you.”

  “Don’t forget your father.” He boasted, “There isn’t much happening in this country that I don’t know about.”

  “You’re twisted.”

  “Boracci and your father wanted to share my power.” He sat on the cream colored couch and patted the cushion next to him, silently inviting her to join him. She’d rather sit next to a cobra. He went on. “Clingers. They were nothing but clingers. I would have made it to the White House without them. I don’t owe them a damn thing, but they have deluded themselves into believing they made me what I am.

  “I am the president of the Untied States of America. I wasn’t going to share the office with a mobster and a has-been spy. So they put their heads together and decided to use the chips against me. Idiots. They fired warning shots at first, thought they could scare me.

  “But I wasn’t worried. I have a top-notch team of agents looking out for me day and night. Eventually I knew they would send Tyler after me. He was the obvious choice.”

  “So you aren’t surprised?”

  “Surprised? No.” He swirled what was left of the bourbon in his glass around and around. “Unhappy? Yes. I was hoping Boracci and your father would give up and go away on their own. When your father tried to kill me, that did surprise me. I didn’t think he had the balls to do it himself, and in front of everyone. What was he thinking?”

  “He was thinking you killed his wife.”

  Law choked on his drink. He slapped the glass down on the table and coughed into his other hand.

  Madison waited quietly for him to finish, all the while hoping he would choke to death. It would make her decision on what to do about him so much easier.

  “Whoa,” he said. “What are you saying, girl? Have you lost your mind?”

  “I know what you did. You left a hair on my mother’s body. The DNA report came back on it. That’s why my father tried to kill you.”

  “It will never go to court. The test was tainted.” He shrugged. “And no one will believe you, the daughter of a known traitor.”

  She circled around him again, checking him from every angle. She wasn’t a fool. He might look like an old man, but he was as deadly as a rattler.

  “Who said anything about telling?” She pulled her gun from the back of her pants. “I could just take care of you right now.”

  He laughed again, a weak and desperate laugh. “You can’t kill a man in cold blood.”

  “Why not? You murdered my mother in cold blood. I’m a firm believer in people reaping what they sow.”

  Law stood. He held his hands out as if they could stop a bullet. Turning as she turned, he wouldn’t let her get behind him again. Did he actually think she wanted to shoot him in the back? No. She wanted to see his lying face.

  “Tell me something,” she said. “Why did you kill my mother? Was it to get back at my father?”

  He shook his head. “It was because of you.”

  “Me?” Her insides went cold.

  “You had our first microchip,” he said. “Your mother found out. She wouldn’t listen to reason. She threatened to go to the FBI, the press, anybody in the world who would listen. She would have ruined us all. We couldn’t let that happen.”

  “We?”

  “Boracci and myself. We had already killed once for the sake of our futures. We’d killed Boracci’s father, laid him out cold. That was the plan, you know? We wanted Boracci to take over his father’s territory and inherit his money. We needed money to fund Grainger’s microchips.”

  And her father had been part of it.

  “I was a child. But you didn’t care. You murdered my mother. Admit it?” She pointed the gun at his face. It shook in her otherwise capable hand. Shock, guilt, so
rrow, each emotion battled for supremacy. “I want to hear you say the words.”

  “Fine. I killed your mother.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  “How did you do it?”

  “I made her put a knife against her wrist and then I pushed it down until it sliced through her artery while Rico stood guard, watching in case your father came home early. Your father had a blind spot when it came to her. She made him soft.”

  The bastard had no idea, but he’d just buried himself.

  “When did you have your tattoo removed?”

  He glanced down at his weathered hand. “I got rid of it before I went on the campaign trail. I didn’t want to have any ties to those imbeciles who called themselves my friends.”

  “Tyler and I worked for the CIA,” she said. “We got married. Then Roxie brainwashed us to forget each other. I don’t understand why.”

  “It was a chess game, sweetheart.” President Law shrugged. “I wouldn’t go along with Rico or your father anymore, so they arranged for Tyler to get to know you. Your father offered him the job with the CIA.”

  Had they been programmed to fall in love? Before she could voice her concerns, Law answered it.

  “They had no idea the two of you would marry. I think you were just supposed to work closely with each other, make me nervous that maybe the two of you would figure out what we’d done, but Rico disagreed with the plan. Too risky for him. He had his daughter grab you, make you forget each other, and then they planted Tyler with the idea of killing me.

  “I have to admit, it was a good plan. They put you in Washington, assigned you to the Secret Service and gave you an ex-boyfriend. Tyler stayed with The Agency, and I pretended to think he was still in the Navy. When people started to try to assassinate me, Tyler decided to help me out. I tried to get the boy to go back to Virginia. For the first time in his life, he defied me. That’s when I knew he had been programmed to kill me.”

  Madison decided to add a piece of information he probably wasn’t aware of. “Vice-President Mercer is the one who brought Tyler to town. Not Boracci or Roxie. To them it was nothing more than a happy coincidence. Mercer wanted Tyler to pry into Pandora’s Box. He was never here to save you.”

  Malcom’s jaw tightened, so much like his son. Yet so vastly different.

  She lowered the gun.

  He blinked at her, confused. “You aren’t going to kill me?”

  “No need,” she said.

  Before she could tell him what she’d done to him, before she had the opportunity to see the look of grief on his face as he learned he’d flushed his career and freedom, satisfaction was ripped from her. The door burst open. The president’s body jumped repeatedly. Five bullets hit him square in the chest. Madison turned to see the shooter, knowing it would be Tyler. She’d failed to save him. Any second the Secret Service would kill her husband.

  But it wasn’t Tyler.

  Roxie grinned like a maniac, insanity flashing in her bright blue eyes like a neon sign. Her crazy laughter echoed with the sound of the bullets. She watched the man she thought was her father fall on the glass coffee table. It burst in to a million fragments. Then she turned the gun on Madison.

  Madison ducked.

  A bullet whizzed over her head.

  When she dared to glance up, she saw empty air where the assassin had stood seconds before. Madison spared the president a quick look. She didn’t need to check for a pulse. He was lying in a growing pool of blood and his eyes were open, blank. She didn’t need a medical team to tell her that he was dead.

  Madison raced after the assassin. The Secret Service agent who’d been assigned to the president was also on the floor, although there were no obvious wounds. Roxie had probably hit him on the head. Outside of him the hallway was empty. Roxie had left a chair in the elevator, blocking the doors as they tried to close again and again. She’d killed two birds with one stone. The elevator had waited for her and no one had ridden up in it to foil her plan.

  Roxie vaulted over the chair, grabbing it on her headlong flight. She and the chair hit the opposite metal wall. The doors slid shut. Her lips twitched in a catty smile, focused on Madison, as she thought she’d won this round.

  Madison ran to the elevator and tried to stop it. Too late. She hit the button several times, hoping the elevator hadn’t started to move yet. The next floor’s button lit up. Then the next. In a Tyler-style move, the assassin had gone to the roof.

  So Madison took the stairs.

  She hesitated at the door, got her gun ready. Madison flung the door open and went through, gun first. Arms straight out, gun focused straight ahead, the gun turned with her body. She aimed her eyes and the barrel in the same direction. No sign of Roxie. Where had that platinum blonde maniac gone?

  Madison walked to the edge and peered down over the side even though she didn’t for one minute believe Roxie would commit suicide. It was a long way from where she was standing to the street below. It was dark so she couldn’t see anything that wasn’t covered in lights.

  A soft footstep touched the cemented roof behind her.

  Madison twirled.

  Roxie struck her with a hard backhand to the face, and Madison fell sideways. She righted herself almost immediately. They both trained their guns on the other. Mexican standoff. Who would pull the trigger first?

  “I’ll drop mine if you’ll drop yours,” Roxie said.

  “Deal.”

  Simultaneously they bent at the knees and laid their guns at their feet. They stood in a flash. Roxie swung her fist first, but Madison expertly blocked it. The assassin tried again three more times, and Madison managed to dodge each one. Without realizing it, they moved closer to the edge of the roof.

  Madison changed from defense to offense. She jumped in the air, kicked high, and Roxie went flying backwards as the foot hit her in the chin. Madison spun in a tight circle, swung her right fist and followed it with the left. Each blow connected with the intended target.

  Roxie threw a hard punch and Madison caught the woman’s arm between one of hers and her body. She locked down on the elbow. Roxie couldn’t move. The woman screamed in outrage. Madison struck her hard, backhand. She released her hold on the other woman’s arm as she hit her, and Roxie sailed through the air, closer to the edge.

  The assassin howled like a wounded animal. Angry, Roxie lost control and turned from pro to amateur, becoming sloppy. Her hands went to Madison’s upper arms. Madison had no choice but to return the wrestling hold. They struggled, each trying to throw the other to the ground or worse—off the building.

  One of Roxie’s high heels went off the edge. She teetered, grabbed onto Madison tighter, and tried to pull Madison with her. Insane laughter poured from Roxie’s red slash of a mouth. She purposely took a step backwards, going over the edge. Her claw-like hands dug into Madison’s arms.

  Madison tried to shake free.

  Roxie smiled, blood on her teeth. “I knew we would end up like this.”

  Roxie fell and tried to take Madison with her.

  Strong hands grabbed Madison from behind and jerked her back against a hard body. Her captor didn’t say a word. He steered her through the door, down the stairs, and into the elevator. Roxie went silently to her death. She didn’t even scream. Once the steel door slid shut, those same hands turned Madison, pulled her into equally strong arms, and she realized Tyler was with her.

  She squeezed him tight, needing him more than ever. A sob burst through her parted lips. She pushed her grief down, trying to hold it back.

  “I remember now, baby.” He cupped her face between his hands as if she were made of expensive crystal. Gently, he caressed her damp cheeks. They both shed a few grateful tears. “I love you so damn much, and I’m sorry as hell for everything I put you through. I am so sorry I hurt you.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” She stroked the sides of his face. She was afraid to blink, afraid he would disappear. “No one will ever come between us again.”

  She kissed h
im.

  He kissed her.

  The familiar taste of him made her heart soar. Never again, she vowed, would they be separated. She’d lost too many people in her life already. She wouldn’t let Tyler go.

  “How could I forget this?” He pulled her close with a sigh. “How could I forget you?”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” she said. “I didn’t remember you either.” She smiled against his chest. “Although, I think we remembered deep down. I recall something about you feeling like we’d worked together before. Our minds forgot, but our hearts, our bodies, and our souls remembered every moment.” Something occurred to her. “Wait a second. How did you get your memory back? Did Brett use the remote and tell you to remember?”

  He shook his head. “He couldn’t get the remote to work, so he tasered me. The shock returned my memory.”

  “Seems a bit extreme, but I’m glad it worked.”

  He bit off a curse word. “I can’t believe your father is gone. In hindsight I can see how he tried to protect us, keep an eye on both of us.”

  She wasn’t so sure. Later, she promised herself she would tell Tyler everything she’d learned about her father. The lies. Her father’s consuming need for power. Everything.

  “Go ahead, honey,” he whispered against her hair. “Cry. Let it all out. I’ve got you.”

  She shook her head fiercely. “I have no reason to cry. I have you back in my arms.”

  Madison gently pushed him away. She straightened her spine, chin held high. The elevator opened and they exited together. The ballroom was as chaotic as the penthouse and hallway. People were demanding to know if the president was going to come back down and finish his speech.

  Tyler tried to lead her to the nearest exit.

  Madison shook loose from his well-meaning hand. She went straight to the podium where the president had been giving a speech minutes earlier. She placed two fingers in her mouth and whistled loud. A hush fell over the crowd. Curious eyes turned in her direction.

  “Fifteen minutes ago the president was assassinated.”

  Gasps of shock thundered through the building. A couple screams and a few wails of misery were added to them. Madison waited for them to fall silent again before she continued.