Ready (11 page)

“Thanks.”

“No problem, Wolf. She’s unique, your Lise.”

“She’s not mine.” Even if he got her into his bed, she wouldn’t be his.

Not permanently.

She inhabited a fairy tale world of heroes and White Knights. In her world, princesses gave their hearts to princes, not the soldiers who served them.

But he was going to possess her body sexually, so long and so well, she’d never forget him, no matter how many Dudley Do-Rights came and went in her life.

Lise looked up from her Dana when she heard the outside door close. Had Hotwire left?

Her gaze traveled to the clock on the wall. Three o’clock already? Her stomach growled, letting her know it had been a long time since breakfast. She stood up and did almost a complete backbend, cracking her back and stretching muscles in the process.

Writing for such long stretches left her muscles cramped and her mind wasted, but they were worth it when she had so much to show for her time at the keyboard.

Straightening, she found herself looking into Joshua’s eyes. They burned through her with such intense focus her mouth went dry.

He stood right outside of the camera’s range, his dark hair damp, wearing a fresh t-shirt and smelling soap-clean like he’d just stepped out of the shower.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he jerked his head toward the speaker with the minicam and she turned it into a yawn instead.

It wasn’t hard. Her writing jag had exhausted her.

She grabbed her word processor and barely suppressed the urge to thumb her nose at the camera. She had no idea how many pages she’d written, but the file she’d saved was sixty kilobytes in size. On a Dana, that was a lot of pages.

She allowed herself a triumphant grin at the room in general and walked out of the line of vision of the minicam.

“You ready for that break now?” he asked.

She yawned for real this time. “Yes. I could eat something, too.”

“You left your lunch sitting on the table.”

“Lunch?”

“I made you a sandwich. Nothing big. I told you about it. You said,
all right
, but kept typing.”

She felt heat steal up her neck. “I get like that sometimes. You can talk to me and I’ll respond, but I don’t remember the conversation at all. Jake gets no end of amusement out of it.”

Joshua’s smile could only be classified as pure, one-hundred-percent sex appeal, and it did bad things to her heart rate.

“I’ve got a snack made for you if you want it.”

She headed toward the kitchen. “You don’t have to tell me twice. I’m starved.”

She noticed her computer chair was empty when she passed it. “I heard the door shut.”

His expression turned wry. “The last time was about the fifth time it opened and closed today. Nitro’s been and gone. I went running and came back and Hotwire left a second ago.”

“No wonder you look like you just took a shower.”

“I went running five hours ago.”

She grimaced. “Oh…”

He chuckled. “We had a meeting and then I worked out on the floor of your bedroom while you were writing.”

“I could use a workout. My muscles ache from sitting in one position for so long.” She stopped beside the table and did some side stretches.

Joshua watched her with distracting interest and she bumped the table sliding into her chair.

She took a long drink of the juice he’d poured her and then a bite of her sandwich. It was Heavenly, and she didn’t talk again until she’d eaten most of it.

“I take it you got a lot done on your book?”

“Yep.”

“Hotwire installed an invisible firewall on your system that should trap anyone trying to get in and give us a lead to their computer.”

“Nemesis didn’t leave a trail when he deleted my file.”

“No. He did a better sweep job than a soldier in the field during war games.”

“That makes sense. When I used my firewall software to try to trace his e-mails, I came up with nothing.”

Joshua spun a chair around and straddled it, his arms over the back. He liked watching Lise eat. She was dainty, even if she wouldn’t appreciate him saying so.

“Hotwire got a little further with the e-mails, but he’s still working on it.”

“So, am I supposed to use my computer now?”

“It’s up to you. Stick with the Dana if that makes you feel better, but download to the computer every night so he doesn’t track the fact we’re on to him. Just keep a current backup of your file.”

“I always do.”

“Good.”

“Thanks for working on that.”

“Thank Hotwire. He did it. Computers are not my specialty.”

“What is your specialty?”

“Tactics and warfare.”

She didn’t flinch as he’d expected, but watched him with eyes he swore saw into his soul. “You said you’d done a lot of things you wouldn’t want put in your memoirs.”

“Yes.” He’d lived as a mercenary for ten years and his six years in the Army Rangers had been only marginally better.

“Everyone has things in their past they aren’t proud of.”

“Would everyone do them again?” Because he would.

He’d made a lot of tough calls in his life, but the few regrets weren’t about the warfare he’d waged on behalf of the people who had needed his help. That didn’t mean things didn’t weigh on his conscience. It didn’t matter how many times a man had to kill, he never learned to take it in stride.

At least he hadn’t.

“Few people have lived lives so full of heroism that they’d want to.”

“I’m no hero.”

She waved her hand, dismissing his words. “Tell me about what y’all discussed while I was writing.”

He didn’t feel like arguing with her to disillusion her, so he went with the change of subject. “I read through the letters you keep in your ‘weird letter’ file.”

“I did that, too, right after the stalking started, but I couldn’t see a correlation between any of the letters and what was happening to me.”

“You can’t limit yourself to linking like events. Five of those messages were written from prison, four of them by men who have since been let out.”

“Some of the letters were really disgusting.” She shivered. “Have you looked into the men’s whereabouts?”

“One is doing parole in the Midwest and from all accounts hasn’t left town since getting out. Another is doing time again, but in a county jail, and the other two skipped parole and no one knows where they are.”

“Do you think one of them is my stalker?”

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly, wishing it could be that easy, suspecting it wouldn’t be. “One of the men was in for sexual assault.”

Her face blanched and he reached out to touch her before thinking better of it.

“No one is getting near you.”

“Thanks.” She licked a crumb from the corner of her mouth and he wanted to follow her retreating tongue with his own.

He forced his thoughts away from that dangerous path. “There were a few more letters I thought we should investigate.”

“Which ones?”

“You’ve had two letters from a right-wing conservative group that claims to have discovered the new way to salvation. They’ve got major issues with women, especially assertive and strong ones.”

“You think I’m being stalked by a cult?” She sounded incredulous.

“No, but one of the cult’s followers might have fixated on you. It’s something we’re going to have to look into.”

“This isn’t going to be straightforward, is it?”

There was no sense lying to her. She was too smart to believe him, anyway. “No.”

The apartment intercom buzzed.

“Are you expecting anyone?”

“No.”

He followed her into the hall and she pressed the black button on her intercom. “Yes?”

“Miss Barton, this is the security desk. A package was delivered for you today that wouldn’t fit in your mailbox.”

“I’ll be down shortly to collect it.” She snagged her keys from the hook. “Be right back.”

Joshua put his hand on the door, preventing her from opening it. “How often do you get packages?”

“Quite a lot, actually.” She patted his arm as if trying to reassure him.

It was a strange sensation. No one but his mother and sisters believed he needed that kind of thing.

“This is nothing new, Joshua. My publisher sends me manuscripts for proofing, author copies of my books, and I order a lot of books online, too.”

“That doesn’t mean this package is innocent.” His gut was telling him things were escalating. There was no overt proof of it, but he knew it all the same.

“You can’t go with me.” She hugged herself in a way he’d learned meant she was feeling threatened. “For all we know, Nemesis is one of the apartment building’s security guards.”

He liked the way her posture put her breasts into prominence, but he didn’t think he’d mention that.

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” he said instead. “Security here is pretty damn lax.”

“The Realtor who helped me find my apartment said the security here was very tight.”

“I got in without any problem.”

“It may have escaped your notice, but most burglars aren’t former mercenaries.” A smile twitched on her lips and he got the distinct impression she was laughing at him.

Another new experience for him.

“I’m not a former anything.” He was still a soldier for hire and neither one of them had better forget that fact.

“I know, but my point is,” she said with exaggerated care, “there are only a handful of people in the world with your skill set. If Nemesis was one of them, we wouldn’t have any concrete information on him at all.”

On that point, Joshua had to agree, but he didn’t agree with her going to the lobby alone. “I’ll call Nitro and have him in the lobby when you come down. He’ll follow you to the elevator since his and Hotwire’s temporary apartment is only one floor below.

She didn’t argue and he hadn’t expected her to.

L
ise was too nervous to chat with the security guard like she normally did when picking up a package.

But that was going to get her nowhere, which was where running away to Seattle had gotten her, so she didn’t do it.

Taking the box, which felt light for its size, she thanked the female security agent and then headed straight for the elevator. Nitro came along beside her, but did not betray by a flicker of an eyelash that he knew her.

Once they were on the elevator, he kept his eyes straight ahead and she examined the package. Wrapped in brown paper, it was about the right size for a book delivery, but too light, unless there were only a couple of books and a lot of weightless packing. The return address was smudged beyond recognition and the postmark was from Seattle’s city center post office.

While Amazon.com was Seattle-based, deliveries from the bookstore had the company name emblazoned on the boxes themselves and she couldn’t remember making a recent order. Though that didn’t mean a great deal. She’d often surprised herself with book orders when they got delivered.

Talking wasn’t the only thing she did with her mind fully engaged in her book.

The elevator stopped on Nitro’s floor and he stepped out, stopping just on the other side of the open doors, but not turning around to look at her. “Don’t open it until I’m up there.”

He didn’t wait for her agreement before leaving and the doors slid shut almost immediately after.

Both Joshua and Nitro’s attitudes weren’t doing much for her nerves. She’d thought she had mentally prepared herself to live under the siege mentality that being stalked induced, but she realized she’d been trying to hide from reality again. Yesterday, she’d used her work to do it, typing away while Joshua and his friends discussed her plight.

She should have been in on that, taken an active interest in their plans, but she’d lost herself in the fictional world she’d created. A world where the heroine always triumphed and the bad guys got theirs. It wasn’t a new defense mechanism. She’d used the stories in her head to hide from her father’s rejection and her focus on her writing had effectively masked the cracks in her marriage until Mike’s request for a divorce had plunged her into painful reality.

Here she was, trying to hide again. She didn’t
want
to believe the package was from her stalker, so she kept trying to come up with an alternative. She hated knowing that everything coming into her life was suspect now. However, not wanting to face reality was a far cry from being able to get rid of the prickly feeling she got every time she looked down at the nondescript box in her hands.

Joshua waited impatiently for Lise to return.

He didn’t like that walk down the hall by herself, even if he knew Nitro would not have left the elevator if there had been anyone else on it with Lise when it stopped at his floor. Knowing his friend’s competence didn’t stop Joshua from picking up his mobile to call and see if Nitro had returned to his own apartment, but as he went to dial, the door opened and Lise walked in.

She put a plain brown box down on the hall table and hung up her keys, her expression troubled.

He flipped his phone shut again and attached it to the clip on his belt. “What’s the problem?”

Biting her lower lip, her eyes skittered to the package and then to him. “I can’t read the return address and the postmark is from the post office here in Seattle.” She glared at nothing in particular. “I hate feeling like this.”

“Like what?”

“Besieged.”

Joshua knew what she meant. Thus far, all of her actions in regard to her stalker had been defensive. You couldn’t live large behind a defensive shield. It was a simple reality of combat. Taking the offensive could be a huge risk, but it also freed a person to act instead of react.

“Has he sent you anything before?” She hadn’t mentioned it, but he had not interrogated her on all the events leading up to her current situation.

It shamed him to acknowledge it, but he’d been too busy fighting the ungovernable desire that plagued him whenever he was with her. Sixteen years as a professional soldier and a tiny woman laid waste his defenses. It was damn embarrassing and not something he would ever willingly admit to.