Assassin's Promise, The Red Team Series, Book 5 (3 page)

Kelan’s legs and arms were crossed as he leaned against the wall. It was impossible not to keep looking at him. His frown never eased up. He was a big guy, powerful and intense. He filled the room with so much electricity that it was hard to breathe around him. She couldn’t believe he was hers. She could touch him whenever she wanted, hug him whenever it suited her. Best of all was knowing he wanted her to do those things.

She sighed and looked at her packed bag. “I don’t want to go.” She glanced at him. “Maybe I should quit school for a little while.”

His frown deepened. He uncrossed his legs and straightened. “Maybe you should focus and get it done so we can stop having to separate.”

She smiled. He expected nothing but her best effort, always, undiluted, uncompromising. School had been hard once her mom passed. And now, after everything that had happened with her stepdad, well, it was nice having someone believe in her.
 

She walked to him and slipped into his arms. Though he was much larger than she was, she felt they were a perfect fit. She pressed her ear against his chest.

“Do you want me to follow you down?” he asked. “I could stay overnight and see you settled.”
 

Fiona shook her head. “That would only make this parting the longest one ever. For an entire day, I would be dreading your heading back here.”

“I could stay with you and commute to work.”

Fiona pulled back to look up at him. “It’s more than two hours each way. That’s a waste of your time. I’ll be fine.” Her hand touched his cheek. “And you’ll be fine.”

He shook his head. “I’ll be hollow. My ancestors had the perfect term for that. ‘Mahasani.’ It means you are the me that lives outside of myself. When you’re not near, I’ll have nothing.”

“That’s beautiful. Was that from your Lakota ancestors?”

He nodded.
 

“Will you tell me about them sometime? I know so little about my own family. It amazes me how much you know about yours.”

“I will.” He touched the security necklace she wore. “Don’t take this off.”

“I won’t.”

“Call me if you need anything.”

“You’ve seen to everything. I’ll call you each night.”

“Call me anytime.”

His hand caught the back of her head as he bent to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered against his lips, “I don’t want to wait, Kelan.”

“We have only a little over a month to go. We’ll wait.”

“I miss you already,” she said as he eased her back to her feet.

“Go, so you can come back.”

* * *

Selena knocked quietly on Val’s door, glad as hell the other doors in his wing didn’t have peepholes. She heard no sound from inside, but a short moment after her knock, his door opened. Val stood there, shirtless and barefoot, wearing only his jeans.

“Can we talk?” she asked.

He smiled and stepped back, giving her access to his room. “Closed door or open?”

She looked up at him, hesitating long enough for the cerulean pull of his eyes to wash over her. “Closed.” She set her jaw and moved through the narrow entrance hall.
 

“S’up?” he asked, shutting the door and following her deeper into his room.

She faced him. “I don’t make friends easily. I don’t take on lovers easily, either.”

His grin widened. He folded his arms, tucking his hands by his armpits as he spread his legs. “Darlin’, if you’re gonna fire me or hire me, don’t leave me standing in this nether world.”

“I kissed Owen.”

Val’s brows lifted. “Did you like it?”

“It was nice.”

“Uh-huh.”

She shook her head. “I talked to him this morning. Told him it wasn’t going to go anywhere, since I work for him.”

“How’d that go?”

“He offered to fire me so that he could move me into his bedroom.”

Val laughed. “Bastard.”

“I have to say the same thing to you.”

He stepped closer, all humor gone from his eyes. This close, she had to look up to see his eyes, but she refused to, focusing instead on his Adam’s apple.
 

“Selena”—he touched the back of his knuckles to her cheek, drawing his hand down her neck—“give me a chance.”

She started to shake her head, still avoiding his eyes. “You’re smoking hot, Val, but you’re more than your looks. You have a big heart. You love this team.”

He bent and placed the barest of butterfly kisses on her cheek. “Don’t do this, Sel. Give me a chance. I can be the guy you want.”

“But I can’t be the girl you want.” She took hold of his wrist and finally looked into his eyes. “I can’t come between you and Owen.”

“Fuck Owen.”

“It would be different if you and I weren’t on the same team.”

“I’ll quit.”

Selena didn’t hide the shock that offer sent through her, but reality quickly chased it away. “And do what? Come to resent me for burning your bridges and forcing you to leave the team?”

“I would never resent you.”

“I want to be friends, Val. I don’t want to cross this line.”

He stared into her eyes. She could almost see the doors to his heart and his soul slam shut. He dropped his hands and stepped back. “Got it.”

She lowered her head and nodded. She had not expected this to hurt—him or her—as it did. “Okay.” She flashed a look at him. “Okay.” She sighed, then headed out of his room.

Chapter Three

Greer’s phone vibrated. The caller ID showed it was the professor. “Hi, doc.”

“Greer.”

“Did you find Sally in your census?”

She took an audible breath.
“No. I’m sorry. But I did find something interesting. Can you come to my office?”

“Sure. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m camping. Up in the Medicine Bows.”

“How are you getting reception up there?”

Greer knew Owen had pulled some strings to get additional satellite relays deployed, but that was need-to-know info. “Who knows? I just am. Couple hours, doc. You gonna be there still?”

“Yeah. Call me when you’re here. I’ll let you in. They lock the building down early in the summer.”

Greer folded his campsite and loaded his things into the SUV he’d hidden in the woods. He’d been camping near the Friendship Community to observe its behavior. He wanted to see how often the WKB members came onto Friendship property, what the Friends did during the day, during the night.
 

Once he was on the road to Wolf Creek Bend, he phoned Max to let him know where he was headed.
 

“Need a shotgun rider?”
Max asked.
 

“She’s just a professor. What the hell do you think she’s gonna do?”

“How would I know? I never expected a certain blond mechanic to drop me to my knees, and yet here we are.”

“Yeah, well, you’re lucky for that, bro.” Greer listened to the silence that met his words. The bastard was probably trying to tune up his wait-for-the-right-one speech. Which was all bullshit. There was no right one for a guy like him. He had thought there was, once. But he knew better than that now.
 

Fuck, they just had to go there, didn’t they?
 

“You should get off the phone and go be with Hope.” Greer didn’t mean to snap, but it came out that way.

“Right. Anything happening at the Friends’ place?”

“Nada. They’re up with the sun and down with the dark. I haven’t seen any unexpected visitors. Just hardworking residents doing their thing.”

“Roger that. Check in after you see the prof.”

* * *

Greer phoned the professor as he walked toward her building’s stairwell door. There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot. He was glad the campus security protocols were in place. She opened the door about the time he reached it.

He nodded at her. She smiled and blinked, then stood a little longer than expected, looking up at him. Those dark green eyes of hers did something to him. If he still had a heart, it might have banged out an extra beat.
 

He raised a brow, hoping to snap her back to the moment…and himself out of it. He wasn’t looking for an entanglement. He’d loved once. That was enough. That shit was toxic.

“Right.” The doc cleared her throat and slapped the flats of her palms against her thighs like he was a dog or something. “Follow me.”

They went up a few flights of stairs. Greer fixed his eyes on her ass, which was fine—rounded but slim, filling out her jeans like they were sewn on. He imagined those cheeks in his hands, white and soft, her legs spread across his hips…
 

When they reached her floor, Remi looked back at him. His face flamed. He grinned at her by way of apology.
 

She should have slapped him for the thoughts he didn’t try to hide from her. Instead, her face flushed too. She pressed her lips into a thin line, then lifted her chin and started down the hall to her office.
 

Papers were spread out on the round table in her office. She indicated a chair. “Please, have a seat.” She took the chair next to his. Her knee bumped his thigh as she leaned forward to rearrange the papers. His eyes shot to her face to see if the touch was intentional.
 

It wasn’t.
 

He cleared his mind, since he obviously was the only one on that page.
 

She looked at him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find the girl you’re looking for. That might not be the name she’s using with the Friends. Or perhaps she really is not with them. I don’t know.”

“She’s from that community. I’m certain of it.”

The professor looked at him as if she was deciding something important. She took a long breath, then jumped in. “I’ve done some charting of the population changes in the community over one hundred fifty years. Some interesting things popped out.”

“Any of this have to do with Sally?”

“Possibly. Bear with me.” She pulled a graph with fifteen bars on it, showing the changes in population over the years from 1870 to 2010. The first census showed a community of one hundred twenty-five people, spread across a range of ages. It declined to barely forty people by the 1930 census. It doubled in each of the next two censuses, then halved again by 1970. In 1980, and each census after that, it grew rapidly until it was now over three hundred people.

This corroborated what Lion had told Max about the community nearly dying out.

“What drove this recent growth?” he asked the professor.

She shook her head. “Until your question, I hadn’t focused on the bigger picture of changing population patterns in the group. I’ll do some additional research to see if I can correlate the major turning points in the community to economic and/or political shifts in the wider U.S. population.”
 

She set the graph aside and looked at him. “But that’s not why I brought you back.”

Greer waited for her explanation.
 

“I dug deeper into the last five censuses. I realized that while the overall population is increasing steadily, the proportional count of adolescents is decreasing. I can’t explain this either. In each of the five censuses, the number of children fourteen years and younger is increasing at a pace I would expect as the adult population increases.”

“So what’s happening to the teenagers? And how can the adult population be growing if there are fewer adolescents coming into adulthood in the group?”

“Great questions. Really great questions. I don’t know. I need to get back to the community and dig a little deeper. As closed a community as it is, it would surprise me if outsiders are coming in.”

“Perhaps they’re swapping people from other communities like theirs. Keep the gene pool fresh.”

The professor’s eyes met his. He could almost feel the alarm he saw in them as the wheels of her mind shifted into motion. He shrugged. “Just a thought.”

“I wouldn’t have seen this if you hadn’t sent me looking for Sally. And my research would have been incomplete. So to thank you, I made this list.”
 

She moved through the jumble of documents and pulled out another sheet. This was a list of blond teenage girls in the community. Eight of them. “I couldn’t find anyone named ‘Sally,’ but perhaps that’s a nickname. I’ll be visiting with these families when I make another trip to the community. I can try to find out if any of them is your girl.”

Greer lowered the paper and looked at the professor. “Let me come with you.”

“No. I have built rapport with them. They trust me. They don’t know you. If you’re with me, then I fear they won’t talk even to me.”

Greer pressed his lips together, rejecting her decision. She reached over and touched his forearm. Her hand was cool, her fingers long, her nails neat, topped by white crescents.
 

“Please. We’ll get more flies with honey than a show of force.”

“What makes you think I have no finesse?”

“Besides the way you’re looking at me now?” She pulled her hand away. “You’re kind of scary, Greer. If you want to find out about Sally, this is the way to do it.”

He nodded and got to his feet. “May I have these graphs?”

His request surprised her. “Sure. But please don’t share them. I haven’t published them yet.”

Greer shook his head. “I’m not in competition with you, doc. You do your thing, I’ll do mine.”

The professor also stood. “And what is your thing?”

“Finding Sally.”

“And other than that? It can’t be your full-time job.”

Greer folded the sheets of paper she gave him. “I’ll tell you all my secrets if you have dinner with me.” He grinned, pleased he’d kept the offer so clean when his thoughts of her were anything but.

“Well, I am kind of hungry.” She smiled reluctantly, then frowned. “I don’t think I had lunch today.”

“There a good steakhouse around here?”

“We have several. My fav is J’s.”

“Then J’s it is. My treat.”

He waited while she gathered her papers into a neat stack, then packed them into her briefcase. She closed her laptop and added it. They stepped into the hall. She shut off the lights, then locked her office.