Outlaw Derek (15 page)

Derek, too, glanced at Shannon, an odd glance out of shuttered eyes. Then he said softly, “I’ve done that. I don’t like what I’m left with.” He shook off the thought almost visibly. “We’ve no more than a few days, I think. They should have a backup plan for shipment of the device, so they’ll move quickly. We have to prevent that—or take advantage of it.”

Alexi nodded. “I may be able to discover something.”

“We’ll meet again later today, then. Here.” He sighed and got to his feet, still holding Shannon’s hand and pulling her up gently. “Six o’clock.”

Alexi agreed with a nod. His gaze flicked to their clasped hands, and he smiled.

“Give my regards to Gina,” Derek told him.

“I will.”

S
HANNON WALKED QUIETLY
at Derek’s side as they left the gazebo and went back through the park to his car. One of his cars. She was aware, during that short walk, that he was alert, wary, that his senses probed the areas all around them.

And she felt … what did she feel? Disturbed by the meeting with Alexi. For several reasons. Because Alexi knew who she was. Because she understood a little better now the world both men lived in. A world of danger and deception, a world where some choices meant terrible
things. A world where an “enemy” agent could speak casually of plotting an innocent meeting between an unsuspecting woman and another enemy agent.

It was insane! Agents and fanatical Middle Eastern men bent on taking over the world, dangerous devices, hired killers, and secret meetings. She was so
ordinary;
things like this just didn’t happen to ordinary people.

“Shannon?”

She realized they were standing by the car, and she hastily got in the passenger side. Her hand felt cold now without his holding it, and she felt alone.
You’re turning into a clinging vine, Shannon. You’d better get used to being alone; he won’t always be here. He may not be here for much longer
.… Or she wouldn’t be. She’d run, like she always had.

Run … run … run …
It echoed in her mind, a mocking litany of failure. And with it were other echoes, rebounding in her head jarringly.
“I care about you.”
But had he made love to
Gina?
“You must have looked very much like a white knight to her.…”
Yes, she could believe that … easily, because that was what he had been to her.
Lover
. But just for one night. Wasn’t she allowed just one night? She wasn’t cherishing any illusions, she didn’t think he was hers forever.

Did she?

The homey little burrow welcomed them with its undisturbed silence. Derek hadn’t said anything at all during the ride, and neither had Shannon. She caught herself limping as she went into the living room, and hastily sat down on the couch, swearing inwardly. Always giving away her insecurities.

Quickly, she asked, “What were you and Alexi talking about at first? That about the sun setting in the west? And something about an end run?”

Derek moved to look out the front window. “Alexi’s coming over to our side for good—
that’s what he meant about the sun setting in the west. And an end run is a football play and military tactic where the aggressor runs wide around his own left or right flank while they block for him. In other words, Alexi is letting his people think he’s over here doing their work, while he fully intends to
stay
here. Rather than an open and dramatic defection, he’s just slipping away from them.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Shannon?” Derek sat down in a chair beside the couch and lit a cigarette. “You haven’t said a word about letting your mother know you’re all right.”

She started. “Oh. Well, she’s—she wouldn’t have heard about the explosion.”

“Why not?” Derek asked mildly.

“She’s … out of the country.”

Derek blew a smoke ring and studied it critically. In the same mild tone, he asked, “Don’t you think it’s time you told me who you really are, Shannon?”

She opened her mouth to answer that he knew who she was, that she’d told him, but a sudden thought made her go cold all over. What was it Alexi had said? Derek obviously had been bothered by the fact that they had been found so quickly at the loft, and Alexi had said something about eliminating the impossible … and then they’d both looked at her so oddly.

“I didn’t,” she whispered.

He looked at her, frowning. “You didn’t what?”

“Tell them. I didn’t tell them where we were. You were with me all the time, you know I didn’t use the phone, or—”

He was suddenly beside her on the couch, the cigarette stubbed out in an ashtray on the coffee table. Suddenly beside her and his expression was grave. “I know you didn’t, sweetheart.” One of his arms lay along the back of the couch behind her; his free hand covered both of hers where they twisted together in her lap.

She stared down at his hand, and a laugh
emerged shakily. “That would have been devious, wouldn’t it? If I had come to you pretending to ask for your help, but really just trying to lead someone else to you—”

“Stop it, Shannon.” His hand tightened around hers. “Stop expecting to be blamed for what happens. None of this has been your fault.” After a moment, he added softly, “Now, why don’t you tell me who you are so it won’t worry you anymore?”

She sent him a quick glance. “It doesn’t worry you?”

He smiled. “No. Based on what Alexi said, I can guess. He didn’t know about Governor Franklin’s influence, but he knew somebody had pulled strings to get you into Civatech. He also knew that Brown was an assumed name, and yet you had security clearance at the company. And he believed that, because of who you really are, it wouldn’t have been likely that you could be turned traitor. So, when he looked into your
background, he found a great deal of political power and/or wealth.”

Shannon was gazing at him in fascination. “Um … both,” she murmured.

Derek nodded, unsurprised. “And I can also guess that you broke completely with your family, to the point of taking a different name and struggling to make it on your own without any help from them.”

She took a deep breath. “My mother and stepfather live in a very high-powered world. I didn’t fit. And my mother just couldn’t understand that. It seemed to her I wasn’t trying hard enough. But I did,” she added softly.

He waited quietly, watching her delicate face, thinking how wrong and dangerous it was to force a fragile spirit into an unyielding mold.

In the same soft voice, she went on. “My father—my real father—was a diplomat. He died when … he died in the crash. My mother wasn’t in the car. A few years later, my mother
married Marshall Burke. You’ve probably heard of him.”

Derek had. The Burkes had been political and financial powers in the world for a long time. Marshall Burke, Derek remembered, was now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And no wonder Alexi had come to the conclusion that Shannon would hardly turn traitor; her background was filled with the kind of wealth that made treason highly unlikely and political realities that made it virtually impossible.

“Did Burke adopt you?” he asked.

She nodded. “So my real name is Burke. I … I’m sorry I lied to you, Derek. I just didn’t want—”

“I know.” He smiled at her. “And now that it’s out in the open, you don’t have to worry about it anymore. I suppose William knows who you really are?”

Shannon bit her lip. “No. When he got me the job at Civatech, he vouched for me; there wasn’t a security check. He thought I didn’t want them
to find out about—about being arrested that time.”

“I see.” Derek’s smile went a bit crooked.

“Now will you please relax and believe that I never, for one moment, suspected you of being on the other side?”

She managed a smile. “If you say so.”

“I do.” He leaned over suddenly and kissed her.

The movement was so quick, the kiss so brief, that Shannon didn’t have time to stiffen. She just looked at him, uneasy at this reminder of what else lay between them.

But Derek was still casual, his calm voice belying the heat in his dark eyes. “Definitely those big eyes. It doesn’t seem to matter what you’re wearing.”

She blinked, remembering. And as color rose in her cheeks, she tried to change the subject. “Um … how do you think they’ll get Cyrano out of the country?”

“On the tanker,” he murmured, smiling a little.

Shannon was trying to think clearly. “But he—Alexi—said the tanker had been turned back.”

Derek nodded, but not as if his mind were completely on the subject of tankers. “Sure. But it won’t go far. Outside U.S. waters, it’ll wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For Civatech’s ship.”

Shannon felt bewildered, and knew it was largely because of those warm eyes fixed on her so intently. She was finding it almost impossible to think clearly. “Civatech’s ship … oh, I remember now. They do have a ship to transport up and down the East Coast. But if that’s the case, why do they need the tanker at all?”

“To transport Cyrano to the Middle East. Civatech’s ship won’t go near the place—it would look too suspicious to our military ships out there. No, they’ll transfer the device at sea, far from watching eyes.”

She cleared her throat. Why did he keep looking at her like that? She felt hot. “So their backup plan in case the tanker couldn’t reach port was
to use their own ship innocently? You said it would only be days—”

“You’re still on the loose,” Derek reminded her. “I’m betting they were pretty confident that the tanker could reach port. Since it couldn’t, they’ll make use of one of their regular shipments out of—Norfolk, I believe. I don’t know the schedule, but Civatech ships their stuff out pretty regularly. They can’t afford to look suspicious by shipping out early, so they’ll stick to their schedule.”

“How can we find out when the ship will leave?”

“That’s the easy part,” Derek said dryly.

Shannon thought about it.
Tried
to think about it. “Um … then the hard part is getting Cyrano?”

His gaze was moving over her face slowly, as if he were memorizing her features, and the look alone was a caress. “They can’t afford to use unusual security,” he murmured. “It has to be a
regular shipment, overland, to Norfolk. Probably in a semi, or a big van of some kind.”

Shannon pulled air into her lungs slowly, wondering when she’d last breathed. A minute? An hour? “You said—there would have to be a trick of some kind to get Cyrano out?”

Derek shook his head, still obviously somewhat detached from the subject. “To get Cyrano in our hands. I thought about it on the way back here. If they were transporting the device secretly and surrounding it with security, they wouldn’t have panicked and moved against you so fast—there wouldn’t have been a need for that. They feel vulnerable. That means their plan is wide open to possible interference.”

“So what do we do?” Such a small room, really, filled with his presence. She looked down at the hand covering hers and fought a sudden wild urge to throw herself into his arms.

“First, we find out when the next shipment leaves Civatech. It’ll have to be the next; that tanker can’t hang around outside U.S. waters for
long without being challenged.” He drew a deep breath. “Shannon—”

The doorbell rang.

Shannon jumped, startled, only dimly aware that the bell rang with an odd rhythm, as if the visitor was deliberately using the bell as a signal. And obviously she was correct about the signal, because after a fleeting moment of tension, Derek relaxed and rose from the couch with a frown.

“Now, what the hell—” he muttered, going to the front door with the confidence of a man who knows only too well what’s on the other side.

Shannon couldn’t see the door, but gazed toward the foyer, half relieved and half annoyed by the interruption. What had he been about to say to her?

“I just put two and two together, that’s all,” Raven Long said as she strolled into the living room, looking, just like last time, as if she could have fit into any situation. “Hello, Shannon. It wasn’t that I knew where to look, Derek, it was
just that I knew
how
to look. Shannon, this is my husband, Josh. And a friend of ours, Zach Steele.”

Shannon looked at the two men. One was dark, lean, and curiously both elegant and tough in his casual clothes; the other was equally dark, massive and dangerous and graceful. Josh Long possessed a handsomeness that was a bit hawklike, his blue eyes penetrating and intelligent. He was, Shannon thought, a man who would make a very good friend and a dangerous enemy. And Zach Steele was a large man of obvious physical strength who, like Derek, handled both his size and undoubted power with a casual grace that was riveting.

She gazed at them as the three visitors settled casually into chairs, and she felt distinctly unnerved until Derek returned to her side and took her hand.

“Out with it,” he said, directing the command to Raven. “I want to know how you found us.”

“You forget.” She smiled merrily. “Unlike
your enemies, I know all about your lurid past. It wasn’t very hard to track down your attorney in New York and—um—persuade him to tell us what properties you owned here in Richmond, whether your name was on the deeds or not.”

Derek stared at her for a moment, and then eyed Josh Long somewhat severely. “You leaned on him, dammit.”

Josh, lighting a cigarette, sent Derek a bland look over the flame of his lighter. “Nice to have clout,” he murmured.

Wincing slightly, Derek said, “I knew that comment would come back to haunt me.” He gave Raven a painful look.

Unrepentant, she shrugged. “Josh had already figured out that you weren’t a garden-variety agent, pal. I just filled in a few of the blanks for him.”

“Fill them in for me,” Shannon said suddenly, her earlier unrest disappearing.

Raven looked at Derek with lifted brows, and he sighed as he turned his gaze to Shannon. “It
isn’t important. They just mean that I inherited, through an accident of birth, a company that makes me—financially independent.”

In a polite tone, Josh said, “One might put it that way.”

Shannon understood the burrows now, and the cars and elaborate security systems. It didn’t really surprise her to learn that Derek was a wealthy man, but she didn’t know how she felt about it. It didn’t seem to matter.