Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (50 page)

But when the guard took a step into the room, she felt him shift. He was pushing her behind him, reaching for his knife.

“Is somebody in here?” asked the guard.

“No—” Faith jerked free of Jonas’s restraining hand.

But she wasn’t warning the guard.

She wrapped both her arms around Jonas’s biceps and pulled against him for all she was worth. She couldn’t let him out of this closet. She wouldn’t let him kill an innocent man.

Chapter Eight

“Dammit, Faith.” Why was she fighting him?

Jonas latched on to a wrist and a shoulder and tried to push her out of sight into the recesses of the closet.

But she had braced her feet and was shoving against him. “Sit down.”

“What?” Of all the damn dumb times to teach him a lesson on manners— “Get back—”

The guard stepped into the room and Jonas’s senses screamed into defensive mode. He hadn’t discovered them yet, but unless he was deaf, he could hear the shuffles and whispers of noise. He unsnapped the sheath of his knife.

“Sit.” Faith shoved at the middle of his chest. The backs of his knees hit something solid and he plunked down into one of the rolling computer chairs. The immediate disadvantage had him pushing to his feet. But he never got there. Faith climbed into his lap, facing him, straddling him. The shock alone stopped him for an instant. Her brazen bad timing would get them both arrested. Or worse.

“Try it my way. Please?” she begged before framing his face between her hands and kissing him.

“Fai—” His body exploded with a fiery response at the insistent urging of her lips on his. His hands that had flown to her waist to lift her off him splayed across her bottom, dragging the swell of her breasts against his harder chest. But his brain responded with an equally urgent protest. Escape.

A beam of light reflected off the radiant skin of her forehead. “Hey!” They’d been found. “What are you kids doing?”

Kids?

Overhead lights flooded the room, temporarily blinding him. But the kiss didn’t stop. If anything, her soft, full mouth took on a taste of extra naughty. She cooed something seductive in her throat and leaned in closer, wrapping her arms around the back of his head. They slid up to scoot his hat down low over their faces.

And then he understood.

Of all the crazy, misguided—

Jonas wrapped his arms around her waist and joined the charade.

He heard a man’s voice behind him, clearing his throat. “It’s after hours. I’m afraid you kids will have to leave.”

Jonas urged her mouth to open and delved inside with his tongue. She was hot to the touch and sweet to the taste. She wiggled her hips and he groaned, forgetting for the moment that this bold seduction of hers was for an audience.

But at the sharp tap on his shoulder he stilled. “I said you kids will have to leave.”

Jonas recognized the voice of authority when he heard it. And even though it was the throaty timbre of an older man, it was the tone of a man who was used to being in charge. He moved his hands back to the neutral territory of Faith’s waist and reluctantly broke off the kiss. He was a sorry son of a gun to react so strongly to a fake embrace, and Faith was one hell of an actress to make their impromptu cover look—and feel—so convincing.

“But we were just getting to the good part.”

Jonas’s eyes opened wide at the breathy sigh in her voice. She was playing this thing to the hilt. Sneaking into an off-limits room to fool around. He wondered if the white-haired guard with the still-holstered gun was buying it.

“Come on now, you two.” The man’s grandfatherly voice had an indulgent ring to it, as if they weren’t the first couple he’d caught using the facilities after hours. “Time to go home.”

With a disappointed moan, Faith finally moved. As she pulled her hands away, she slouched Jonas’s hat down over his face and turned sideways in his lap, facing the guard, trying to camouflage him. Didn’t she know? A face like his just didn’t blend in.

The guard was backing up, feeling more assured of their cooperation. “I’ll have to write this up, you know. Just give me your ID numbers and I’ll take care of it.

Enough of this game. The old guy was sly, sounding friendly enough, but working in a subtle request to prove they were who they claimed to be. Jonas stood and set Faith on her feet.

“Whoa.” The guard backed off another step, his face reflecting his concern. “You okay, miss?”

Faith flattened her palm across her heart and looked properly affronted. “Of course, I am. It’s just—” She giggled like a school girl. “Your timing sucks. If you know what I mean.”

The guard meant,
Is the big guy forcing you to do anything you don’t want to?
“I know it’s a thrill to try to get away with something, but I can’t allow this…public display of affection to continue.”

Any chance at a distracting cover was blown. She was laying it on too thick for the old codger to buy it. Faith’s kiss-swollen lip pouted out in a frown. “I just wanted to try it someplace different.”

“I’m going to need the two of you to come down to the security office and file that report. You grad students?” He looked up at Jonas. Probably noticed the gray in his hair. Or the lines beside his eyes and mouth.

“He’s my professor,” Faith piped in.

Way too thick.

“Professor?” The old man stuck the flashlight right in Jonas’s face. Now he probably thought he was breaking all kinds of campus rules. “What do you teach?”

Forget it. The guard had already seen too much as it was. Jonas reached out and twisted the man around before he could reach his gun.

“Jonas, no!”

He pinched his carotid artery until the man passed out.

Faith was beating at his shoulder, tugging at his sleeve, as he lay the unconscious man on the floor. He stepped over the body and reached for her hand. “Let’s go.”

But Faith dropped to her knees beside the guard’s body. “You didn’t have to hurt him.”

What was she on about now? “Relax. He’s not dead. He’ll wake up in a few minutes.”

“He was just doing his job.” She had two fingers pressed against his neck, feeling for a pulse. “Danny Novotny was just doing his job, too.”

“Who’s Danny—?” Damn. He breathed in deeply. He’d lost control of this situation long ago. He took it back. He picked Faith up by the arms, lifted her over the body and headed for the door. “I’d like to be out of here when he
does
wake up.”

She fought against the grip on her arm. “He was afraid of you, that’s all. That’s why I tried to hide you. So he wouldn’t be so intimidated. We could have talked our way—”

Jonas stopped in his tracks. He grabbed her by both shoulders and pulled her up onto her toes, jamming his face right down into hers, demanding her attention. “We don’t know if he radioed in whatever suspicious noise or light brought him down here in the first place. This building could be swarming with campus and city cops any minute. Now, do you trust me or not?”

Her voice was small and quiet. “He’s not hurt?”

“No.”

Her hands came up and rested lightly against his shoulders. “Then let’s go.”

“If you insist.”

“I
F THAT SWEET
old man turns up dead after talking to me, I’m going to go straight to the police.” Faith still held the tepid coffee she hadn’t touched between her hands as they sped along the back roads of northeast Colorado toward Denver. This was getting to be too much. She was going to lose it. “Not the Saint Louis police. But somewhere. I swear, Jonas, I’ll turn myself in.”

The battered green Chevy’s engine hummed with power, the only sound besides her own voice in the dark of the night.

“It won’t come to that,” he finally answered. He drove with one big hand in a comfortable grip on the wheel, and the other resting on the door beside him. He looked straight ahead, his icy eyes focused on the road before them. “If Copperhead killed Sheriff Prince, he might have reached a dead end and is waiting for further instructions. Frye has the connections to place us in Laramie, if he’s smart enough to put the pieces together without the names. That should buy us a day or so. I’m more concerned about our descriptions being out on the wire now. Some local hotshot might try to detain us.”

“And hand me over to the FBI?”

His big shoulders shrugged, disturbing the atmosphere within the cab of the truck. Disturbing Faith’s equilibrium as well. Once she’d turned herself over to Jonas’s judgment, he’d sneaked them out of the engineering building, shuttled them off campus and out of town before campus security alerted anyone else.

“Once we expose what’s on that disk, you’ll be safe. The Bureau will be knocking themselves out to protect you. The information there is the kind of thing the government wants to contain. A bomb like that would be a big ticket item for a terrorist or third-world revolution market.”

A shiver of dread rippled down Faith’s spine. “But its design specifications are so small.”

“It’s not the type of bomb you strap onto the wing of a fighter jet. It’s the kind you sneak on board an airplane. Or smuggle into a police station. It’s not one you see coming.”

She nodded. “It looked like Dr. Rutherford was developing an alloy that could pass through an X ray or metal detector.” She set her cup in the holder on the dash and hugged herself, willing the goose bumps to go away. “I still can’t believe he would invent something like that.”

“Maybe he was forced to. Or he stumbled upon the formula accidentally, and someone else came up with the idea of using it for a bomb housing.”

Faith yawned through her smile. He really was trying to say nice things, to carry on a conversation to distract her from the terrible fears that dogged her every waking thought. He’d talked a lot for a man who didn’t like to socialize. She should give him a break. Except she liked it when he talked. His deep, resonant voice, his intelligence—it made him seem so human. So normal.

“My dad used to work with metals and plastics.” She moved on to a lighter topic. “He’d take me to his lab in the summers when I was off school and let me do a few experiments of my own. I poured molds and built models. I guess that was my inspiration to go into engineering.”

Jonas reached down and adjusted the heater, which was running with the same top-notch efficiency of the engine. “Your father sounds like he was a good dad.”

“He was.” Faith settled back into the seat, feeling a moment of contentment as she remembered some of her favorite experiences with her father. “What about you?” she asked, after several miles had passed. “What was your dad like?”

A long beat of silence passed. “Not like your dad, I’m sure.” He scrubbed his free hand across the stubble that lined his jaw. “I think my friend, Murphy, knows the right people in Washington who can help us. We’ll catch a flight out of Denver tomorrow. I can pay cash and get us fake IDs.”

The awkward shift in their conversation was hard to miss. But if he didn’t want to talk about his father, she wouldn’t press him. Maybe there was a conflict or loss there that had helped steer him toward the hard man he’d become.

“And then it’ll be over?” she asked.

She’d like to meet this George Murphy from The Watchers. Maybe he could shed some light on Jonas’s past, his personality, his future plans. She’d like to meet anybody who could help her understand this giant enigma of a man whom she was learning to appreciate and enjoy spending time with. Who made her feel a little less lonely and a whole lot safer. And who stirred things inside her that no man had ever touched before.

“It’ll be over when Frye and Copperhead are in prison or dead.” He surprised her by reaching across the seat and catching her hand up in his. “But that’ll be soon. We’re going to get them, honey. One way or another. I promise.”

Honey.
There was that word again. Sometimes it rolled off his tongue as if he hadn’t given its significance a thought in the world. And other times, like just now—in the warmth of the truck and the cloak of the night—it felt very, very significant.

It scared her how off-kilter, how feminine, how treasured this man could make her feel.

But before she got too deeply in touch with emotions she wasn’t sure she wanted or was ready to feel, she squeezed his hand and then released him. She snuggled down into his jacket, which she wore draped around her shoulders, and stared out her window into the passing shadows of the autumn night.

Lord, she was tired. It seemed she’d been spending her whole life driving, running, hiding. For the sake of her conscience and a good night’s sleep, she needed this nightmare to be over.

“Are you sure that old guy you did the neck thing to will be all right?” she asked, rehashing a topic that still worried her.

Jonas shook his head, his mouth curved into something almost like a smile. “That old guy was a retired cop or military man. He might have snow on the top, but he was in good shape. He’ll recover just fine. Probably well enough to be pretty pissed that I got the drop on him.”

“Really?” He’d looked more like someone’s grandfather to her, someone who should be playing with grandkids and going fishing. “He wasn’t anything like the cop who interviewed me in Saint Louis. He didn’t look like he could defend himself.”

“The cop in Saint Louis?”

“No. The campus security guard.” A clear image of Jermaine Collier was emblazoned with fear on every memory cell in her brain. “Detective Collier could definitely defend himself. Even against you, I think. He was almost as tall as you, built like a streamlined tank. And the gun he carried was right out of a
Lethal Weapon
movie. Of course, he groomed himself to look intimidating—shaved head and a mustache and goatee.”

Jonas glanced her way. “He was a detective?”

“Uh-huh. Slick suit, badge and everything.” She glanced back. Was he just making more conversation? Or had she said something important? “Why?”

He returned his attention to the road. “It’s just unusual for a detective to wear facial hair—unless he’s working an undercover assignment. Most departments have dress codes.”

“Come to think of it, I guess none of the other men there did.”