Hot Contract (9 page)

“Fallon, man? How fast can you run?”

Nobody said the big jerk wasn’t smart. Fallon
tipped his head in Keegan’s direction. “Why? You looking to kill
me?”

Keegan pulled Jen around in front of him.
“Liss, out on point. Fallon—no more remarks. Take Jen, I’ll
follow.”

Corlis nodded. “Time to move.”

Jen stumbled through the darkness clinging to
Fallon’s hand. She’d never imagined the Aina would attack here, of
all places. Despite what Keegan thought, Aunt Katherine had the
best security money could buy, which meant...the terrorists were
people she knew. Friends. Maybe family. She had lots of family, and
apparently no brains.

Deacon had tried to tell her, but with her
usual disregard she’d glossed it over, hearing only what she wanted
to hear. Years of effort gone because she’d been in the wrong place
at the wrong time and her family cared so little for her they’d
kill her with no more thought than she’d use to squash a bug. Damn
it! Damn
them
.

How could they do this to her? And did her
father know? What did he know?

Corlis kicked through a bank of sea lavender,
scattering the silvery leaves everywhere. The humidity pressed down
on them, piercingly sweet.

“There!” she yelled. “Behind the car—”

Fallon swore, dragging Jen like the tail on
his kite. “That’s Caravaggio!”

Jen bumped to a halt. “Rafe!” Did he know?
Could he help her? Was he safe to talk to? He was her friend—wasn’t
he?

Corlis drew her gun. “Caravaggio! Whose side
are you on?”

“My own, cara.” Rafe moved out from behind
the Stalling loaner car. He had both hands out where they could see
it, but his head tipped like he was listening to something. "Percy
is on his way back to StallingCo. Outside security went with
him.”

Keegan jerked Jen around Fallon and pushed
her toward the car. “Get in, get down, seat belt on—stay low.” He
spun. “Liss? Back seat. Try to block them.”

As he jumped into the driver’s seat, the Aina
burst from the trees, guns waving.

Fallon scrambled into the car beside Corlis
and started rolling down the window. “Move! What are you waiting
for?”

Keegan threw the car into gear, spun the car
in a tight circle and floored the accelerator. Headlights appeared
in their rear view mirror.

Jen sucked in a shallow breath, eyes wide, as
a man ran out of a small security alcove carved into the rock face,
arms waving. Keegan fishtailed into the access road. Jen braced her
legs against the floor, but there was too much give in the shoulder
harness and she banged into her still-closed window.

Keegan boomeranged around the man and swerved
out into traffic on the main road. “Get over here!”

Her hands knotted on the seat belt. “I
can’t.” Her arms felt numb, and she was afraid Keegan was going to
try some crazy stunt that would send her flying head first through
the windshield. Within seconds, they’d started out on the first of
the trestle bridges. It was worse at night because she couldn’t
see. She was surrounded by nothingness, and she didn’t know whether
to scream or throw up.

Keegan stomped on the brakes and jerked the
wheel around, the muscles in his arms standing out in sharp relief.
“They’re going to ram us.”

“Hold steady!” Fallon yelled. “Now,
Liss—”

An anonymous white pickup came up on their
left. The heavily tinted windows made it impossible to see
inside.

Keegan was losing ground. He couldn’t push
the car any faster. The pickup roared, not anywhere near their top
speed. Keegan mashed his foot to the floor and pulled hard on the
steering wheel, holding them steady as the car lurched to a
spark-filled stop.

The truck pulled ahead, overcompensated and
bounced off the guardrail, spinning around and around.

“Amateurs,” he said. “I’m dealing with
fucking amateurs.”

Jen turned in her seat to look behind them.
“Aren’t we going to stop?”

“We’ll stop the minute you’re secure.”

“They’re family,” Jen cried.

“They’re terrorists. They’ve found something
bigger than you, honey. And you don’t mean squat.”

****

Corlis got out of the car, changed places
with Keegan and drove the speed limit to one of the parking spaces
that lined the Hilo bay front. Fallon watched the rear view mirror,
holding his gun down between his knees.

This thing between them wasn’t going to work,
and not just because she had had bad role models, but because she
was scared and being scared pissed her off. She twisted her hands
around the steering wheel, nails digging into the fancy rubber
grip. Light glimmered through the ironwood trees as she threw the
car into park. The bay was flat and dark, heaving like oil in a
water jar.

Jen threw her door open, jacked up her dress
and stuck her head between her knees, breathing like she couldn’t
get enough air. “My family wants to kill me. They killed Terri,
they're…the Aina," her voice cracked. "I thought they'd be
strangers."

The betrayal must have hit like a ton of
bricks. When had she started to like the little pouter pigeon?

“You’re wheezing,” Corlis said shortly.

Jen took a long, gasping breath.
“Hyperventilating. Give me...a second.”

Damned if she didn’t admire the girl. Keegan
had succeeded in making the Aina reveal themselves and Jen needed a
second? She was tougher than she looked.

Fallon flipped her one of his hard candies.
“Good for nausea,” he said.

Corlis could still taste them, butterscotch
and heat, and Fallon’s tongue touching hers for the first time. She
pulled at her collar.

“Candy?” asked Jen.

“It's butterscotch,” said Fallon.

For a long second Corlis just wanted the
whole thing over, Jen gone, Connor back, and Fallon somewhere far
away. He turned away from her, staring out the window. Corlis
looked forward and spotted a group of men as they maneuvered an
outrigger canoe through a space in the trees. The long wooden hull
slid out of sight and down the beach with a loud swish.

“It’s a canoe club,” said Jen. She unwrapped
the candy and worked it in her mouth. “People are busy during the
day, so they practice at night. Thanks,” she said, indicating the
candy.

Fallon nodded. “I’d like to try that.”

“You want to join a canoe club?” asked
Corlis. That came out wrong. She could tell it came out wrong.

“Unlike you, I have a freaking life,” said
the man who’d once been her best friend.

Keegan leaned forward, between the front
seats, creating a barrier between Corlis and Fallon. “Did you get
the plates?”

Corlis raked a hand through her sweat-spiked
hair. “Why bother? It’ll just turn out to be stolen.”

“And if it isn’t? Just because we would have
stolen a car doesn’t mean they would. Don’t you see? We can’t get a
handle on these guys because we’re treating them like professionals
when they aren’t. They’re amateurs. We need to dumb it down.”

Fallon straightened, coming out of his
slouch. “The Aina are connected big-time. Cops, coming this
way.”

Corlis glanced at the approaching lights. “We
can take them.”

Her brother shook his head. “We don’t take
cops. We don’t even know they’re looking for you. If they have any
descriptions it’d be of Jen. Maybe me.”

“Fair haired man. Woman in a long pink
dress,” said Fallon.

Keegan met his eyes. “Yeah.”

He threw open the door, pulled Jen out of her
seat and into the back seat with him, while Fallon ran around to
take Jen’s seat. “Get out of your dress and put this on.” He pushed
his shirt at her. “That thing is a goddamned beacon.”

Jen stripped the heavy pink fabric over her
head and kicked it under the seat. She had the most incredible bra,
all satin and white lace. Keegan could see her nipples pushing out
against the thin fabric and wondered if anyone knew he was losing
his mind imagining what they tasted like.

“What if they have our plates?” she asked,
eyeing his shirt dubiously.

The soft black fabric covered her to
mid-thigh. Just what the doctor ordered, a sack. Had he really
asked her to fuck him? If he had some deeply-buried masochistic
streak, it’d picked a fine time to reveal itself.

“Then we’re screwed,” he said. “Try not to
hit me, we can’t afford the down time.”

“Sorry,” she whispered back.

He pulled her up over him, arranging her
carefully. “Get that hair thing off,” he said, tugging at her
braid.

Waves of hair cascaded over his face and
lips, soft and sweet. Oh Jesus, it was an instant turn-on with no
way to hide his reaction to her. “Part your legs,” he whispered,
eyes scrunched tight.

“Better?”

Hell, yeah.

“Stay still,” he gritted. “They’re going to
be checking out the cars, and my hair color is a dead
giveaway.”

He had to struggle not to let his sister hear
him squirm. Although from the lack of noise in the front seat,
maybe she was getting busy with Fallon. Jen must have thought the
same thing, because the look she gave him danced with laughter. A
hundred times better than the pain she’d been carrying since she
found out about the Aina. He turned his face into her palm.

She was as aware of him as he was of her, but
the light filtering into the car reflected her knowledge that they
were stupid to even think about their mutual attraction. Her
intelligence was a given, but her nipples were hard. Logic had
nothing to do with it. He wanted her, she wanted him, and he was
going to explode if he didn’t touch her. Light flashed into the
car, catching him by surprise.

He tightened his arms around her, pressing
his lips into the hollow of her throat. Her ass jerked up in the
air, and it looked like she was about to go down on him. She
couldn’t have made a better move if she’d rehearsed it. The cops
moved off fast. No voyeurs there. Thank God.

“Keegan?” Corlis poked his leg. “Get up.
They’re gone.”

Keegan sat up slowly, letting his hands slid
down over Jen’s back to cup her hips. He was not going to touch her
ass. Not. Going to touch.

“Yeah,” he said, gathering his thoughts.
“You’d better, uh...get dressed.”

He pulled Jen’s dress out from under the
front seat and shoved it at her with fingers that didn’t want to
move. She handed him his shirt in exchange and tugged her dress
back over her head. This whole fatal attraction thing he had going
was all up in his head. She might want him, but it was obviously
something she could control.

“You suspect the police?” she asked.

Fallon slung an arm over the back of his
seat. “We suspect everyone and anything.” His eyes glittered pale
and hot behind a tangle of black hair. “Terrorists are people, and
they have connections just like everyone else. That they’re
homegrown makes it more likely they’ll corrupt the people around
them.”

Jen squeezed over on her side of the seat.
“How can you protect me if you don’t know who you’re protecting me
from?”

“That’s why we get paid the big bucks,” said
Corlis. Her lips were swollen and there was a faint flush on her
pale cheeks. “We don’t just protect you. We find the bad guys and
eliminate the threat.”

“As in kill?”

“Hopefully it won’t go that far,” said
Keegan. He watched the panic ease out of Jen’s eyes. He’d never
felt anything remotely like what he was feeling for her and he
didn’t like it. He’d planned to stir up trouble, but shit—he’d
never expected a link right back to StallingCo.

“Jen’s right,” said Fallon. “We’ve got to
ditch the car.”

“Suggestions?” asked Keegan.

Corlis turned in her seat, hands locked
around the headrest. “We go back to her house. Grab the rental.
It’s generic enough. Dump this tank. I created backup just in case.
Campground in the park. Cabin. Some weird name. Duck crossing?”

Jen nodded. “Goose crossing, I know where it
is. There’s a sinkhole near the entrance to my subdivision. We can
hide the car in it.” Her smile came and went all too fast. “Maybe
it’ll buy us some time.”

****

Jen leaned back in her seat, letting the
headache play out across her forehead. It was painfully apparent
that Corlis had control issues. She'd dumped the car, drove the
rental and stopped for groceries with all the efficiency of a
machine. Anyone who tried to get in her way was slated for a messy
removal.

A public service announcement broke into the
death-metal programming, explaining eruption etiquette.
“...visibility from...HVO geologists ask that spectators please
remain...”

Corlis swerved to avoid a group of tourists.
The flash of white athletic socks jogging across the road toward a
cluster of lawn chairs pushed in among the tightly-packed trees
obviously startled her.

“What the—”

“We’re on the outskirts of the park,” said
Jen. “The land falls away just through those trees. Six of the ten
active vents are visible from the shoulder.” She rolled her head
back and closed her eyes. “All adults were children first.”

Fallon grunted, “You mean they like
fireworks.”

Jen shivered. The night was cold, and her
cotton gown was no match for the high-altitude chill. “You
read?”

He made a noncommittal sound, pulled his hood
up over his eyes, and sank back in his seat. She wondered how he’d
feel if she asked to borrow his coat, if old blood smelled, and how
on earth he’d managed to get through her aunt’s cordon without
drawing attention to himself and his partner.

“St. Ex,” said Fallon. “Yeah, I like
him.”

Corlis drummed her fingers on the steering
wheel. “There are a bunch of terrorists after us and you want to
talk philosophy? Get a grip.”

Fallon didn’t move. “Could be why we don't
talk.”

The temperature in the car dropped below the
freezing point. “Fuck you.”