Blue Blooded (10 page)

S
HE
'
D ACTUALLY SLEPT
.

The bright sun streamed through the window blinds, hitting Rachel's face. She stared at the digital clock, shocked it was after eight in the morning. The last thing she remembered was Logan removing the bindings from her after she'd experienced an orgasm that had made all the other ones she'd had before pale in comparison.

What did that say about her?

In her head, she knew that didn't make her weak. She would never, ever associate that word with Kate, who was collared by Jaxon. During the day, Kate ran a successful law practice and battled for the rights of those discriminated against, but at night, she surrendered to her lover, enjoying the bite of the whip. Kate was the strongest woman she knew.

A twinge of remorse unfurled in Rachel's chest. She wasn't the only one who thought that about Kate. Last night, she'd ignored the fact that the man who licked greedily at her pussy was in love with her best friend, but now, in the stark light of morning, the knowledge rushed back into her like a tidal wave.

She couldn't help feeling like second best.

It didn't matter because it wasn't going to happen again.

She'd promised him her submission until they cleared their names, but if all went well, they'd figure out how to do that today when they found Leopold at the port. By tonight, she might finally have the story to catapult her career to the next step—New York. It was everything she'd been working toward for the past ten years. Every long night studying in the library, every time she'd run errands for the news producer at the station, every man she'd screwed or screwed over to get the information she needed. All of it would prove worth it when she became an anchor at a big-market news station.

She'd miss her Thursday bar nights with her friends, but she had no other reason to stay in Michigan. Hell, she lived only three miles from her parents, and she never saw them or her siblings. She had few ties and no personal entanglements to complicate her life, and that's exactly how she wanted it. No one would ever tell her how to live her life again, even a Dom as sexy as Logan.

She rolled out of bed then picked up her pants off the floor. After putting them on, she snagged a T-shirt from Logan's go-bag and slipped it over her head, tying off the bottom edge to make it fit better. Although others might consider her high-maintenance, she didn't require much. But clean clothes, deodorant, and a toothbrush were absolute must-haves she needed to survive this ordeal.

Swinging open the door to search out Logan, she found Walter instead waiting for her in the hall and crouched down to pet him. “Hey, boy. Want to take me to Logan?”

The dog turned and waddled away as if he understood her question. Laughing, she trailed him down the stairs, hearing voices and the clacking sound of keystrokes on a computer's keyboard as she neared the landing.

Following the voices, she was about to step into the room, but stopped when she heard Joe mention her name.

“You and Rachel been together long?” he asked.

She held her breath, waiting for the answer, not quite knowing what she wanted to hear. She'd already made up her mind about no repeats, but she was curious how Logan would respond.

“We're not together,” Logan said after a long pause.

“Didn't look that way to me.”

“Before everything happened, she and I fought every time we were in the same room. Now we're just making the best of a bad situation. Don't read too much into it.”

Making the best of a bad situation. Last night meant nothing to Logan but a way to get her under his control and make her sleep. If she'd been a different kind of a person, someone who allowed a man to wrap his hand around her heart and crush it, she might be upset right now. But that wasn't her. She was a realist. What Kate and Jaxon and Danielle and Cole shared was an anomaly, not the norm.

Reality was her parents. A marriage practically arranged by her grandparents. They each played their traditional roles in the marriage, but there was no passion. No spark. Her mother spent her life raising her brood of children and caring for the home. Her father owned and managed a successful jewelry store, and when he wasn't working, he was praying. When the two were together, they were cordial and friendly, but she could tell they didn't love each other in a romantic sense. When she was twelve, she overheard her mother crying with her aunt about a man whom she had lived next to as a child, someone outside their church who had died in a car accident that day. That was the first time she could remember her mother crying, and she realized, even at that age, that her mother had loved that man at one time. Rachel had never spoken to her mom about it, but she knew now her parents had both fulfilled their duties to their families. They made the best out of a bad situation.

Just like Logan.

Walter sat in the doorframe and barked, looking back at her as if inviting her inside and, no doubt, alerting Joe and Logan to her presence.

She flipped her hair and squared her shoulders then, with a smile, entered the room. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Logan said, not looking away from the computer screen in front of him. If his words hadn't been clear enough for her, his reaction upon seeing her this morning certainly were.

Joe, on the other hand, greeted her with a big, knowing smile. “Help yourself to breakfast. There should be some bacon and eggs left unless your friend here gave it all to the dog,” he said, nodding at Logan.

She silently cursed the warmth spreading in her chest. “You fed Walter?”

“Yeah.” Logan didn't stop typing as he slid her a glance. “Let him out and gave him breakfast. Didn't want to wake you. No big deal.”

She flipped her attention to the jumble of numbers, symbols, and letters on the computer screen. “What is all that?”

“The back door to the cruise line's passenger list,” Logan said. “First thing this morning, I pulled up the schedule of cruise ships arriving at the port today. There are four. I already broke into three other lines, but none of them had a passenger by the first or last name of Leopold.”

“Won't the companies be able to know they were hacked? What if they trace it?”

Joe huffed out a snort. “You don't know my boy here too well, do you? There's nothing he can't hack.”

“Now, that's not true. But if I can't hack it, I've got a couple friends who can.” Logan twisted around to look at her. “Don't worry. I'm good enough to not leave a trail.”

She curled her fingers along the back of his chair. “How did you learn how to hack?”

“I've always been into computers. By the time I was sixteen, I could hack into just about any database. While other kids were playing football and basketball, I started my own business testing companies' mainframes and making recommendations on how to tighten them, so they didn't leave any holes that would allow security breaches. After I graduated, I got dual degrees in computer science and communications and put some of what I learned in the army doing military intelligence. Now I design role-playing computer games for those in the military to practice combat tactics in my spare time.”

He didn't fit the image of what she assumed a hacker would look like. Shouldn't he look more like Clark Kent than Superman?

She raised a brow. “You're a computer geek?”

He shrugged. “It depends on your definition of a geek. As a kid, I made enough money to buy a car and take girls out on dates. Oh, and I was homecoming king senior year of high school.” Flashing her a bright smile, he turned back to the computer screen. “Damn it, there are no Leopolds listed as passengers or employees on any of the ships.”

Her mind went to work, cataloguing the other possibilities. She itched to do her own computer research. “What if we're wrong? What if Leopold isn't a person? Maybe it's a ship.”

Before he could respond, a loud siren wailed throughout the house. She froze while Joe burst into motion, grabbing keys from the desk drawer before opening a closet.

“Shit. Is that who I think it is?” Logan asked, pointing to the security screen in the corner of the room.

The monitor revealed a stream of black cars kicking up dust as they headed down the road leading to the fence. It had to be the FBI. They'd found them. But how?

“Son of a bitch,” said Joe, grabbing two bags from the closet and throwing miscellaneous items into them. “You must have led them straight here. Got a tracker on you somewhere. We've got two minutes tops before they create a bypass for the electric fence.”

That didn't make sense. They'd “borrowed” Willie's car, and there was no way that had a tracker on it. She'd done everything Logan had told her to do. She hadn't used a phone or a computer. There was no way to trace her, and Logan sure as hell hadn't done anything to jeopardize them either.

“How can they do that?” she asked.

“Insulated wire,” Joe said, throwing a couple of guns and boxes of bullets into the bags. “You attach it at two different points in the gate and you can cut the middle. The electric fence keeps most people out, but with the FBI, it only buys us some time to escape.”

Logan tugged her away from the monitor and down the hall, following the cursing Joe. As they came to the staircase, Joe pressed on the side of it, opening a secret panel. He stepped inside, ushering them in with a wave of his hand.

A bark came from behind her, and she whipped her head toward its owner. Walter hurtled himself at the front door, barking and snarling as if defending them from intruders. As Joe moved farther into the hidden passageway, Logan pulled on her arm, urging her forward.

She stopped in her tracks, looking back at the dog. She couldn't leave him here. Who knew what they'd do to him. He belonged to her now, and that meant he was hers to protect.

“I have to get Walter,” she said, pulling out of Logan's grasp and running back toward the front door.

Logan growled but didn't stop her. “Hurry. We're running out of time.”

Walter continued his assault at the door until she scooped him up in her arms. From behind the curtains at the side of the door, she could see at least two dark sedans driving up the road from the gate. If it had taken the FBI only minutes to penetrate the fortress Joe had spent years building, how the hell would she and Logan ever be able to escape from here?

“Come on,” Logan shouted, hurrying her back under the stairs.

Once she and Walter entered, Logan reached around her and shut the door. The dog was still barking, his heavy little body shaking with fury. She quietly shushed him, petting him gently as she followed Logan and Joe down a narrow tunnel lit only by the flashlight in Joe's hand. “Where does this lead?”

“Goes under the stream in the backyard,” Joe responded breathlessly. “About a quarter mile down, there's a shed hidden by the Everglades with a car in it. Let's just hope the battery isn't dead. I haven't had the need to start it lately.”

“I'm really sorry about this, Uncle Joe,” Logan said. “I promise to make it up to you.”

“Nonsense, boy,” Joe said. “I wouldn't have given you the coordinates if I didn't want you to use them. But you might want to figure out how they followed you here, so you don't make the same mistake again.”

Logan looked back at her, accusation in his eyes. “Did you use my phone or anything else since we've gotten here? Call into work to coordinate our nightmare as your big story?”

Seems trust went only one way with him.

And here she'd thought things had changed between them after yesterday's conversation and last night's nonconversation.

Clenching her jaw to keep from giving him a piece of her mind and holding Walter tighter to keep her fists from flailing, she took a deep breath and exhaled before responding. “No. I've done nothing since I've gotten here but submit to you, sleep, and come downstairs to find you. If one of those things was the cause of alerting the FBI to our whereabouts, then I apologize.” Nope, she couldn't do it. She added, “And I'll make sure never to do it again.”

His eyes softened. “I didn't mean—”

“Mind having your lovers' quarrel a little later? I don't think this is any of my business,” Joe said gruffly.

She didn't embarrass easily, but her cheeks heated at her oversharing. Still, she didn't regret defending herself. It was one thing to submit in bed, but hell if she'd ever submit outside it. She fought for herself as hard as she fought to right wrongs through her investigative reporting, and she wouldn't change for anyone, including Soldier Boy.

They continued down the tunnel until it ended at a ladder. Joe climbed up and threw open a hatch.

Logan started his ascent, and held out his arms out as he neared the top. “Give me Walter.” She handed him the dog so that she could use both hands to climb, and he passed Walter to Joe.

She followed Logan up the rungs of the ladder, blinking away the spots in her vision caused by the brightness of the sun. In front of them was a brown wooden pole barn, which, from the looks of it, had been slowly decaying for the past thirty years. But she had to hand it to Joe. If she'd stumbled upon it without the knowledge of what lay inside, she would walk past it, never thinking twice about inspecting the contents. Although it seemed odd to find a structure like this in the middle of a swamp.

A splash from the stream behind startled her. She whipped her head around, seeing nothing but a circular ripple spreading out from the center, and turned back to Joe, questioning him with a raise of her brow.

Joe wiped the sweat from his forehead then worked the combination on the lock of the barn. “You might want to keep the dog in your arms for now, Logan. We grow the gators big down here.”

She didn't know what was worse at this point, gators or FBI agents. “What's the plan here? We're just gonna drive away and hope they don't follow us?”