How Spy I Am (33 page)

“I don’t think
so.”

“Good. Then tell me
what the
hell
you were doing at the motel,” he snapped.

“I wasn’t at the
motel.”

“Then what were you
doing? I know you didn’t follow me.”

“No, I didn’t follow
you.”

“Aydan, dammit, don’t
play games with me! The manager is dead and the motel is destroyed.
Your room was the source of the explosion. Did you rig a bomb in
there and make up that cock and bull story about the dirty room so
we had reason to leave?”

“
What?
” I gaped
at him in shock. “No! I had nothing to do with that explosion! Why
would I blow up a motel? Even a scuzzy one like that?”

“I don’t know. Why
would you?”

“I wouldn’t!”
Exhaustion and stale adrenaline formed a potent cocktail of anger.
“Stop accusing me! I was just an innocent bystander!”

“Like hell. Innocent
bystanders don’t pretend to be sleeping and then sneak away to
mysteriously turn up at exploding buildings. You lied to me. Again.
And you’re lying to me now. Tell me what the hell you were doing
there!”

“Or what? What are you
going to do, beat me up? Shoot me?”

His big fists clenched
and the dappled moonlight transformed his blood-smeared face into a
savage mask. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted with cold
fear, my muscles instinctively tensing to meet an attack.

“Aydan.” His voice was
so soft I had to strain to hear. “Please.”

I swallowed my
thudding heart. It continued to batter frantically against my ribs
while I took a deep breath, trying to hide my reaction.

When I thought I could
trust my voice, I spoke. “I was supposed to be meeting my contact.
He gave me the time and address. I was across the street at the
coffee shop.”

“Did he show?” His
quiet voice betrayed no emotion.

“No.”

“Go back to the B
& B. Sneak back in. Get cleaned up. We’ll talk later.”

“What about you?”

“I have to report to
the local police department. They’ll need my statement.” He rose
and strode down the path without a backward glance.

By the time I hauled
myself in the bathroom window, my limp-noodle arms and legs could
barely manage the task. Once safely inside, it was all I could do
not to curl into a whimpering ball on the bathroom floor.

Instead, I clung to
the sink to inspect my dirt-smudged, white-faced reflection. A few
tufts of furniture padding still clung in my hair, and my skin was
artistically decorated with smears of Kane’s blood.

I stripped off my
filthy clothes and did a rough cleanup before using the last of my
energy to creep into bed.

Much later, I had
almost stopped trembling when the first of the noises began.

Oh, no. No, no, no.
Not that. Not now.

The rhythmic squeaking
from the next room told me more than I ever wanted to know. Then
the moans started. Quiet at first, but gaining volume rapidly.

I clamped the pillow
over my head.

A few minutes later, a
touch on my shoulder sent me rocketing up in the bed with a wild
cry. Kane jerked back in the moonlight.

“
John
!” The
shriek burst out of me before I could stop it, and I swung the
pillow at him in panicked fury. He fended it off with an upflung
arm and let out a grunt, waving a placating hand. Berserk with raw
nerves and unspent adrenaline, I caught him on the shoulder with
the backswing.

“Arlene!” he snapped,
and I lost it completely at the sound of the hated name.

I belaboured him
furiously with the pillow, the mattress bouncing and squeaking
under my feet, cries of effort jerking out between my lips.

“Aydan, stop,” he
hissed as he parried my strikes.

I swung wildly a
couple more times and he seized the other pillow, his first blow
connecting solidly with my ribs.

“Umph!” I redoubled my
attack, anger slowly giving way to the realization of how ludicrous
it was to attack a martial arts expert with a pillow. My grunts
turned into giggles that quickly took on a hysterical note while I
swung ineffectually again and again.

Kane dodged and
ducked, grinning until I finally landed a solid hit to his head.
Then he dropped his pillow and sprang, pinning me to the bed. The
headboard slammed into the wall with the force of his weight behind
it and I let out a little cry of dismay.

Kane stared down at me
from inches away, his eyes black in the moonlight. A moment later,
he was kissing me ravenously.

Electric need sizzled
through my body. His hand dragged down from my shoulder to find my
breast in an almost-rough caress, making me moan into his lips at
the breath-stealing jolt of pleasure. His knee pushed my legs
apart, the coarseness of his jeans igniting my skin like a struck
match.

“Oh, Daddy,
yes
!” Lurene’s booming voice sounded as if she was right in
the room with us. “Oh, Big Daddy, give it to me hard! I’m gonna
ride your wild baloney pony all night long, oh, baby, oh,
honey-pie!”

Kane jerked back and
my giggles returned with a vengeance at the sight of his
expression.

The rhythmic squeaking
from next door had turned into enthusiastic thumping. “Big Daddy
Jelly-Roll, give me all your stuffing! Give me your sweet, sticky
stuffing!”

Thump, thump,
thump.

My barely-controlled
guffaw came out as an explosive snort, and Kane’s body began to
shake with laughter against me.

Thump, thump, thump.
“Oh! Oh, Daddy! Park your big ol’ Plymouth in my love garage!
Again! Again! Oh, Daddy!”

Kane convulsed with
silent mirth. “Plymouth?” he wheezed in my ear. “If you ever call
mine a Plymouth, I’ll never forgive you.”

I gasped for breath.
“What do you want? Cadillac? Hummer?”

“Eighteen-wheeler at
least. Super B-train.”

Another gale of
giggles shook me. “Modest much?”

“Not much.”

Thump, thump, thump.
“Oh, Daddy, don’t stop! Beat me with your big ol’ sugar stick!”

I wiped away tears,
still giggling. “That is just so many kinds of wrong.”

Kane sobered, and my
urge to laugh vanished, too, as a few vestiges of common sense
straggled back into my brain. I peered up at him, my body still
begging for him while my brain blazed into red alert. Don’t make
the same stupid mistake twice…

The cries next door
got shriller and less articulate while the thumping rhythm
accelerated. “Oh, Daddy, Daddy,
Daddy
…”

Kane rolled off me and
sat up. “I didn’t come here to-”

“DADDY I’M
COMING!”

Kane winced, and we
waited without speaking until the moans subsided.

When silence reigned
again, he leaned close to whisper. “I need to know the details of
your op. If you didn’t set that bomb, then somebody is trying to
kill you, and they got too damn close tonight. It’s my
responsibility to keep you safe. Tell me what your mission is, and
we can work on it together.”

I massaged my temples,
trying to redirect my mind from what we’d almost done to what we
were actually doing. Goddammit.

“It’s not an op. I
don’t have a mission.”

His fist clenched.
“Dammit, Aydan,” he hissed. “Stop insulting me. Do you honestly
think I’m that stupid?”

I sat up, compressing
my desire for arm-waving into a short, angry gesture. “What the
hell do you want from me?” I demanded through clenched teeth,
trying to keep my voice down. “You bitch at me because you want
honesty and when I tell you the truth, you won’t believe me. This
is the truth! There is no op! I’m not an agent!”

“Bullshit!” The
measure of his agitation showed in his uncharacteristic vulgarity.
He lowered his voice to a tense whisper again. “You tell me things
that are directly contrary to every scrap of evidence I have, and
you expect me to believe you. If that’s your version of the truth,
do me a favour and lie to me!”

“Seriously? That’s
seriously what you want? What happened to Mr.
Why-Can’t-You-Give-Me-The-Honesty-You-Give-Him?”

Kane’s fist jerked as
if he’d punch the mattress, but he controlled the movement. “You
make me crazy,” he grated. “Absolutely, insanely crazy. Yes,
dammit, lie to me! Make up some completely fabricated story! Tell
me anything, as long as it makes some kind of sense for my report
to Stemp tonight. And stop… stop… being all naked and beautiful,
dammit…”

He lunged to his feet
and strode across the room to stare out the sheer-curtained window,
his arms crossed over his chest, massive shoulders blocking the
moonlight.

I stared open-mouthed
at his back for a long moment, my anger draining away into dismay.
I had completely forgotten I owed Stemp a report tonight, too. What
the hell was I going to tell him?

“Okay,” I said
faintly. “Okay, just give me a minute.” I crept out of bed on
shaking legs and pulled on my jeans and sweatshirt before perching
on the edge of the bed, my mind racing.

Kane turned to face me
again, his features shadowed into invisibility against the moonlit
window. He stood watching me in silence until I looked up with a
sigh and patted the bed beside me. He came over and sat without
speaking.

“Okay,” I said softly.
“Here goes.”

“We need to coordinate
our reports to Stemp,” I began.

Kane’s face hardened.
“You’re reporting directly to Stemp?”

“Oh. Yeah, I forgot to
tell you that.” The muscles bunched in his jaw, and I quickly
added, “Sorry. It wasn’t a big secret, it just slipped my
mind.”

“How long have you
been reporting directly to him?” His voice was controlled.

“This is the first
time.”

“I’m going to choose
to believe that.”

“Good, because it’s
the truth,” I snapped before I could stop myself. I took a deep
breath. “Yes, Stemp asked me to report to him at least daily. I
intend to tell him there’s something weird about this
installation.”

Kane stiffened. “When
were you planning to mention that to me?”

“I… sorry, I… For
chrissake, John, I’m tired of apologizing! I’m doing the best I
can. Would you please just believe I’m trying to protect you, and
tonight protecting you was a higher priority for me than Stemp’s
mission? I just didn’t have time to think about the damn network
until now.”

“You’ve got a funny
way of protecting me, letting me walk into a bomb.”

“I didn’t know the
goddamn bomb was there! And anyway, you weren’t supposed to be at
the motel tonight. You were supposed to be here at the B & B,
nice and safe and sound.”

“I could say the same
about you.”

“
Any
way…” I
glared at him. “There’s something weird going on here. I can’t put
my finger on it, but I want to spend some more time in the network
tomorrow. I’m going to report that to Stemp. You can, too, if you
want.”

“And the exploding
motel?” he asked. “Do you expect me to tell Stemp it was
coincidence that somebody blew up your room? Remember the part
about how I’m supposed to be keeping you safe?”

I chose to ignore his
sarcasm. “Yeah, the exploding motel…” I propped my chin in my hand
for some deep thought. “Are you sure the bomb was in my room, not
yours? What were you doing in there? I saw you go in and come out
again a few minutes later.”

Kane went very still.
“Are you suggesting I bombed the motel, killing an innocent man in
the process?”

“No, of course not.” I
frowned at him. “Jeez, that didn’t even occur to me until you said
it. Why would you blow up the motel?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Well, duh. No, what I
meant was, why were you there at all?”

Kane relaxed and
shrugged. “Just bad luck. You had gone to bed… I
thought
.” I
ignored his inflection and he continued after a moment. “I’d
already reported our move to Stemp earlier, and I was getting ready
to do my full report when I remembered I had to go back to the
motel for a refund. I was going to leave it until morning, but then
I discovered I’d left my razor in the motel unit, so I drove
over.”

“Did you see anything
unusual in the room when you went in?”

“No.” He sounded very
certain, and I believed him. Keen observation was such a habit with
him, I doubted if he even consciously realized he was doing it
anymore.

“What about the
manager? Was there anything strange going on with him?”

“Not that I noticed.
And if he knew he was about to die in a bomb blast, I’m pretty sure
I would have noticed.”

My hand crept out to
hold his without my permission. “What happened?” I asked. “Thank
God you’re okay. How could he have died while you were able to walk
away?”

“I was lucky, that’s
all. I was standing up against that big counter, and he was behind
it. He gave me some attitude, but he did finally refund our
deposit, so he was holding my credit card. Instead of handing it
back to me, he threw it onto the counter and it slid over the edge
and landed on the floor. I’d just leaned over to pick it up when
the blast hit. He got the full force of it from behind, but I was
protected by the desk.”

I squeezed his hand a
little tighter. “Thank God for bad attitudes.”

“Oh, so that’s your
excuse,” he teased.

I shot him a grin.
“I’ll take any excuse that’s going.”

“So who’s trying to
kill you?” Kane asked conversationally.

“It has to be a pretty
limited pool of possibilities. Not many people knew I’d be at that
motel. Or
thought
I’d be at that motel…” I trailed off. “You
registered under your name, right?”

“Yes.”

I bolted upright.
“Shit!”

“What?”

“They weren’t trying
to kill me. They were trying to kill you. Goddammit…”

“Who’s they?”

“I don’t know, but I
have a dirty suspicion. And if I’m right, he’s a dead man.”