Avenging Angel (14 page)

The blast never came. His heart continued to beat a strong and solid counterpoint to her ragged breath. The warmth of his body continued to envelope her like a protective shield.

“Damn,” he muttered, his embrace tightening. “Dammit. I’m sorry, Johanna.”

The door had not exploded. He’d been lying to her all along. She didn’t know whether to sob in relief or shout at him. In the end she did neither. She pulled herself together with as much dignity as she could muster, called him a bastard in a very ladylike manner under her breath, and got in the car.

He closed the door for her, and she couldn’t help but flinch. For twenty-four hours she’d been expecting the damn thing to blow up at any minute, and it hadn’t even been armed.

“I’m sorry,” he said again after he’d gotten in and closed his own door behind him. “I guess I could have told you this morning.”

“You could have,” she agreed in an affronted tone of voice, an amazing feat considering how badly she was shaking inside.

“I did it to keep you from getting hurt.”

“So you say about everything.” Her pulse was still racing, and she was afraid she might burst into tears at any moment.

They sat in the dark, in total silence, until he finally spoke.

“I was hurt pretty bad last night. I knew I didn’t have much time to get you out, and I didn’t think a wrestling match in the car would do either of us any good.”

The first tear came, unbidden and unwelcome, but Johanna didn’t know if it was for herself or for him.

“I’ve been pretty rough on you,” he admitted. “I wish . . . well, I wish it could have been different.”

So did she. Another tear tracked silently down her cheek to join the other. She wished everything could have been different—because months ago, when Austin had first introduced her to his newest employee, she had thought Dane Erickson was someone very special. Now she knew she’d been right.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dylan saw the shine of wetness on her cheeks. Wary, he turned his head to see her more fully. He’d always known there were certain levels of the female psyche he was unfamiliar with, but the depth of his ignorance hit him anew.

What was she crying about? he wondered. They hadn’t blown up. She now believed he wasn’t a complete reprobate. So much of the worst was over for her. Wasn’t it?

Her soft sob and quick inhalation told him otherwise. He had an uneasy feeling the crying business was only beginning. When she sniffled, he knew it.

He let out a heavy sigh and glanced around the parking lot. He knew how to fight with her, and God knows he’d dreamed enough about making love with her, but tears were beyond his coping abilities.

Maybe she’d just figured out that she’d made a big mistake by not giving him away to the police. He glanced over at her again.

No, he decided. She was too smart not to realize she’d done the best thing for herself as well as for him.

“The Bureau gave Dane Erickson a record,” he said, turning halfway toward her and addressing what he thought might be part of the problem. He’d heard enough of her phone conversation to know Henry Wayland hadn’t wasted any time in checking Dane Erickson’s “references,” as it were. He’d also surmised that the FBI had chosen to retain his cover—typical of the type of support he’d been getting for the last few months. “Your lawyer friend probably found out about it.”

“He did.” She discreetly wiped at her cheek with the heel of her palm, but he saw the gesture and it pulled at him in places he hadn’t known he’d possessed.

“The drug thing was also set up by the FBI,” he reassured her. “On the whole I’m a pretty law-abiding citizen.”

Johanna slanted him a disbelieving look through her tears.

“You always impressed me as a woman with good instincts,” he continued. “I guess I just want you to know that you can trust what they’ve told you about me.”

His audacity amazed her.

“What in the world makes you think that might be to your advantage?” she asked, her disbelief rising along with her eyebrows.

He shrugged and reached under the steering column. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

The wires he twisted in his fingers sparked the engine to life, thankfully overriding the necessity for her to answer. Because of course he was right. Again.

With dismay, she dropped her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. Her actions had spoken for themselves. They didn’t need her big mouth confirming everything he was thinking.

Dylan eased the gray sedan out of the parking lot, carefully watching the traffic. Maybe he’d stated his case too bluntly. He’d obviously made her angry—again—a particular talent of his, he realized. But she’d stopped crying, and for that he was truly grateful. He was too far down the line to be discovering personal weaknesses like Johanna Lane’s tears.

Miles later he pulled off the highway and followed a dirt track back into the mountains, heading for what a billboard had promised would be a Rustic Resort with Family Cabins, a Restaurant Lodge, Horseback Riding, and World-Class Trout Fishing with Professional Guides.

The sky had never looked darker or the stars brighter than they did under a crescent moon in the Rockies. Dylan wasn’t exactly sure where they were—other than someplace in northwestern Montana—but he took that as a good sign. If he didn’t know where they were, neither did Austin.

“I thought we were going to Seattle, to your friend’s,” Johanna said, shortly after he made the turn off the highway.

“We are.”

“We’re getting a little out of the way here, then, aren’t we?” she asked, echoing his own thoughts.

“That’s the general idea.”

Another mile of silence passed before she spoke again. “How long have you lived in Chicago?”

“Most of my life. I was born there.” If she wanted to talk, that was fine with him. It helped keep his mind off his pain and his exhaustion. Pace, Montana, was supposed to have been their stopping place for the night, but she’d blown that possibility with her phone call.

Hell, he didn’t blame her. He would have done the same thing.

“As a city boy, doesn’t all this bother you?” she asked, and the nervousness in her voice made him turn and look at her.

“All what?” he asked, confused. He could think of three or four different things about their current situation that bothered the hell out of him—and none of them had anything to do with being born in Chicago, Illinois. He didn’t have a clue as to what was troubling her, but his list started with her name.

She was bundled up in his coat, her back straight, her bottom perched on the edge of the seat, as far on her side of the car as she could get. That bothered him plenty, because he wanted her close to him. The more he thought about it, the closer he wanted her—close enough for their skin to slide over each other’s, for their breath to mingle, and the taste of her to become a reality on his tongue.

Great. Now he was really bothered,
hot
and bothered.

“All these trees, the forest, the dark, the stars,” she said, missing his problem by a light-year or two. “We haven’t passed a town in over an hour. It actually looks like there could be . . . well,
bears
out there, lurking around.”

“You’re too old to be afraid of the dark, counselor,” he said wryly. “And I’ve never heard of anybody being afraid of the stars.”

“That still leaves about eight million trees and Lord knows how many bears.” She didn’t sound at all convinced of his reasoning or her safety.

He gave her a thoughtful look before he spoke. “You can’t possibly be afraid of the trees.”

She grinned sheepishly at him, the last thing he’d expected. “Okay,” she admitted. “It’s the bears. There are bears out there, aren’t there?”

He was quiet for a moment, then he turned to hide his grin and swore, one succinct word. A second’s worth of laughter escaped him, and he swore again. “I can’t believe it.”

“What?”

“Bears?” he asked, incredulous, turning back to her. “Bridgeman is after us. Half the cops in Colorado are after us, and by now, if we’re lucky and they’re doing their job, the Feds are after us. And you’re worried about bears?”

“A bear is a dangerous animal,” she said in her own defense.

“So is Bridgeman,” he countered, not able to give up his smile completely. “Don’t worry, Miss Lane. I didn’t drag you across three states and the Rocky Mountains to let a bear get you.”

“Thank you,” she said softly, seriously.

He slanted her a quick glance. She was still bundled up in her corner of the car, but her posture had relaxed. His gut tightened, and he bit back a curse. She had no business trusting him like that.

He went back to watching the road before he got himself hurt by falling in love. Then her sigh drew his attention back to her face, to the elegant curves of her cheek and brow, to the satiny texture of her skin and the marring smudges of weariness he’d put beneath her eyes, and he knew it was too late.

* * *

The owner of the Rustic Resort was just putting up the “Closed” sign and turning out the lights when Dylan pulled up. Dylan’s first thoughts were that “lodge” was an overstatement of the size and grandness of the main building, a bit of marketing misinformation exceeded only by the use of the term “resort.” “Rustic,” however, was right on the mark.

A line of cabins curved along either side of the “lodge,” following a bend in the river, their outlines barely discernible against a backdrop of dark sky and forest. A barn and corrals were on the other side of the dirt road, their structures easier to see in a broad, flat pasture that gathered the sparse moonlight and used it to silver fence posts and shingles.

“Maybe you better come in with me,” he said, shifting the car gear into park. “A woman is harder to turn down in the middle of the night than a guy who looks like he just lost a bar fight.”

“Okay.” She slid across the seat toward him, catching her mistake halfway there. He stopped her when she started to reverse direction.

“Come on. It’s okay.” He took her hand and pulled her after him as he got out of the car. He closed the door behind her, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “Try to look tired.”

“I am tired.” Johanna fell into step beside him, wondering about their hands. The small intimacy felt both awkward and pleasant. His palm was warm and dry, comforting in the cool, dark night.

“When we get inside, I’m going to tell the manager you’re my wife. It would be nice if you’d back me up.”

“If it’ll get me a bed and a bath, I’ll tell him I married you twice.”

“Once will he enough.” He tightened his hold on her hand and his thumb stroked down the side of hers.

As a gesture, it wasn’t much. But it was enough to remind her of exactly what she’d done by hanging up on Henry. It was enough to remind her that she hadn’t left Dylan when she could have—when she should have.

He’d killed a man to save her life. She didn’t have a doubt about that. He’d arrived at her doorstep still bleeding from the fight. The knowledge frightened her the way knowledge of any act of violence was frightening, but it also left her with a deep sense of a debt owed. The men Austin had brought with him had destroyed an expensive suite of offices with an automatic weapon. She doubted less and less that they would have done the same to her. Dylan knew those men, knew what they were capable of doing, yet he’d pitted himself against them and Austin, risking his life to keep her alive.

She wanted to give him something in return, but she didn’t know what or how, not within the limits of gratitude she was unsuccessfully trying to define. Her support in a lie designed to get them a place to stay for the remainder of the night wasn’t much. Holding his hand was little more.

Inside the lodge office, the owner—Gus Orbison, he told them right off the bat—was happy to open up and rent out another cabin for the night. The older man’s eagerness to help them had more to do with financial gain and Dylan’s surprising transformation to a congenial good old boy, Johanna knew, than any amount of yawning and wifeliness on her part.

“Now,” Gus said, “I have one super deluxe cabin that I rent out for seventy dollars a night. That includes your firewood, a bathtub instead of a shower, and a scenic view window. The whole place is going super deluxe, one cabin at a time, as the boys and I get around to it.”

“Sounds like a bargain, Gus.” Dylan gave the old man a broad grin and reached into his pocket for his money. “Anything exciting ever happen around here?”

“Nothing ever goes on around here ‘cept a card game in the back. If you’re not too good, you’re welcome to join me and the boys.” He looked up at Dylan from under bushy gray eyebrows and chuckled. “Got me a couple of real smart wranglers this summer, college boys from Spokane. They’re good with the horses, but they don’t know a damn thing about poker.”

“I’m too tired to fleece anybody tonight, but maybe I can sit in tomorrow,” Dylan said, thumbing off a few .bills.

“Tonight’s your only chance,” the old man warned, accepting the cash. “The fishing guides get back from upriver tomorrow, and they’re a wily bunch. Damn wily.”

Dylan laughed. “Maybe I just better stick to fishing then.”

“Well, you came to the right place for fishing. Half a mile upriver starts the best stretch of Gold Medal water in the state.” Gus pulled a key off the board behind him. “Number nine is the last cabin on the south end.” He handed Dylan the key with one hand and pointed with the other. “You can’t miss it.”