Survival Instinct (11 page)

Yet in spite of the bitter twist, he couldn’t quite regret it. He’d wanted her with a poignant strength that surprised him. Right from the moment he’d followed her inside the house, trapping her up against that washing machine so he could make his point. He should have known they weren’t the same person, should have listened to himself, for the real Ellen Sommers had never interested him in the least. This woman, her sister…

She’d been more to him, more
alive
to him, from the moment he saw her. He lifted his head to see her standing there on the crest of the ridge. Unyieldingly straight back, chin raised as she looked out over the land, thick, straight hair escaping from the ponytail, long waist down to tight hips that held low-rise jeans, leaving a taut athletic curve of skin.

Yeah, he still wanted to pull her in close and kiss that belly, unsnap those jeans and tug away the practical underwear beneath. Some part of him definitely still wanted it, and wanted it
now.

But those moments were past. Now he had to deal with where the situation had brought them. One man who was all about doing right by people, all about rescuing them…and one woman whose skill at deception still hadn’t quite sunk in.

He should start with an apology. Whatever his intentions, he’d walked into the middle of a fugitive’s cover situation and stomped it all to hell. But they already somehow seemed past that.

Or maybe just not ready to talk about it.

So when he finally cleared his throat and spoke, his rough-edged voice came out with, “How?”

She didn’t turn around. “How, what?”

“You said you could help.”

“That depends, really.” Her voice might have been a little huskier than normal; hard to tell. She was no longer offering him any of those glimpses of the Ellen Sommers he’d known.

Dave pushed off to his feet, uncrossing his legs along the way. “Depends on…what? You have conditions?”

She glanced back at him. “No. This is something I want to do, for my own reasons.”

“What, then?” An anxious twinge surprised him. Three days gone, and no closer to finding the boy he sought. Not even a clue. Being convinced Longsford was behind the kidnapping was one thing, and finding the boy was another.

She turned to face him then. “Whether I help depends on you. On if you can bring yourself to do things my way.”

“I don’t—”

“Look, the law’s not getting anywhere. Your feebies aren’t getting anywhere. You’re all constrained by legal niceties. What you need is a way to slip up on Longsford from the other side.”

“You?”
His voice may have been skeptical, but something in him already believed.

She dropped her head ever so slightly. It emphasized the size of her eyes, the way she could use them to say whatever she wanted to say, entirely without words.
Yes. Of course me.
Out loud, she finally said, “If Longsford’s as greedy as you painted him, I can rope him in with a layered long con. It’ll get me close. Once I’m in…” She shrugged. “I know what to look for. I’ll find Longsford’s little hidey-hole.”

“It takes a thief,” Dave said flatly, unable to lighten his tone.

“No. It takes Longsford’s greed and power thirst. Without that, I’d have nothing to exploit.”

“You want to what—make him an offer an e-mail scammer couldn’t refuse?” That was insulting, and he knew it.

She didn’t pretend it wasn’t. Her expression turned derisive—and then hard. “Whatever it takes,” she said, and looked away, back out over the farm. “It seems Rumsey taught me well after all.”

Chapter 12

D
ave thought to say no, that much was obvious to Karin. He didn’t want any part of her scheming.

She reminded him that he’d offered her the safe house. That she had to leave this little farm in any event. That he had time to think about it. If it occurred to him that he’d be making this decision while in the company of a woman who knew exactly how to get what she wanted, it didn’t show.

And so they left the farm to Amy Lynn and Karin kissed Dewey goodbye and told him to watch the property, and they drove off toward Alexandria.

Karin Sommers’s Journal on the Road, March 16

I’m getting used to the car. From the farm to the big city…lotta hours. And then there’s Perfectly Gloomy Gus, my travel companion. He thinks he’s gonna dump me in his brother’s safe house and rush on with his investigation. He thinks he’s going to sift through the same old information and find a new trail somehow. Yeah, right.

He needs the angles I can work. And dammit, doesn’t it seem only fair that Rumsey’s teachings might actually do someone some
good?
Wouldn’t he just be disgusted?

Perfectly Gloomy Gus has his knickers tied in a knot because of what happened between us. He forgets himself, responds to our
us-ness,
and then clams up tighter than a righteous virgin.

Poor guy. Mr. Straight-and-Narrow, stuck with Ms. Take-What-You-Can-Get, However-You-Can-Get-It.

It’s not like I was born that way.

And it’s not like I had any trouble leaving it behind. Some habits die hard, but jeez, Ellen, the most I’ve done since the accident is a little finders-keepers. And no, I’m not racked with guilt over what came before. We both took early beatings for ratting him out—such great imaginations we had, weren’t we precious!—and I still have that scar on the back of my leg. So I didn’t have a lot of choice. Not—and don’t get all guilt-racked over this, but we both know it’s the truth—not once you so dramatically opted out of the life. Me…I just opted out of high school early. Out of proms and slumber parties and sweet first dates…and a future.

Nothing comes sweet in Rumsey’s world, not unless it’s for Rumsey himself.

Dave doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get that I left that world behind. You know, I was thinking of getting my GED. Of working in criminology, even. But things don’t exactly bode well for that particular option anymore. Especially now that Mr. Straight-and-Narrow knows who

I really am. He knows I want to keep your identity; he knows it’s because of Rumsey. But the warrant—the one in my name, for who knows what except I damn well didn’t do it—is the real problem.

Gotta wonder how long it’ll take before Dave figures it out.

Karin fiddled with the radio stations, hunting for something between outright country and hard rock. Surely there’d be one little station with an independent bent, one that played music that crossed the lines…just like her.

Bored, bored, bored.
She gave up and sat back in the car seat as Dave linked his laptop to his cell phone and checked out the Front Royal Yellow Pages. “There’s a bed-and-break-fast that looks good,” he said. He disconnected the laptop and dialed the cell phone as Karin contemplated the brick restroom building not far from them. “Going for a walk.”

He hesitated, as though he might put the call through later and walk with her now. He might not like her scheming, but he fully intended to deliver her to that safe house.

What he didn’t realize was that she no longer had a reason to run. She’d already lost what she’d been trying to protect. “Dude,” she told him, “if I wanted to ditch you, I’d ditch you. And the whole escape at the bathroom thing has been done to death.”

“Dude,” he mused, one of those rare moments in this day when a genuine smile teased along his mouth. “Go, then. I’ll see if we can get a suite at this place.”

So she went, wrapped in her old army jacket and pretending she didn’t know about the tears and scuffs the cliff had wrought. Her poor stiff body sure knew about it. Her wrist ached inside the cast, and every bruise and cramp protested her movement. She walked the perimeter of the area, stopping to watch as a boy played with the family dog. She realized, to her astonishment, that she missed Dewey. Ellen’s dog had come into her life with no choice in the matter. Yeah, she missed him.

And the sheep. And even the demanding goats.

Great. She was homesick.
Farmsick.
And it wasn’t even her farm to begin with. Then again, it wasn’t even her life.

To shake herself free of the mood, she took another brisk tour around the perimeter. Hey, maybe her butt wouldn’t be asleep forever at that. She put her mind to work on the scam she’d run if she had endless resources. All the extras she needed, all the finances, the best manager…she’d be the roper. She was always the roper. She’d weave her way into Longsford’s trust, pulling him along by his greed.

Except in this case, the end goal wouldn’t be the sting itself. It would be what she could learn along the way. It would be about saving one little boy.

Dave had parked at the end of the lot, and Karin broke into a jog, stretching her legs a little as she went back to join him. First things first…clothes. Surely Front Royal would have a store or two. Would there be anyone she could trust with her hair? With her eyes?

She arrived back at the car flushed with both the minor exertion and the major buzz of the con planning. She had to admit there was a real jazz to planning a long con, a pleasure in thinking through the details and putting the pieces in place. A satisfaction when those pieces came together, especially if the grift was so seamless that the mark never truly realized he or she had been scammed.

There was, however, no sign of Dave at the Maxima. Not in it, not next to it….
Okay, so…sometimes a guy’s gotta go, too.
She waited, stretching with mini-calisthenics so as not to stiffen right up again.

No sign of him.

Huh.

She circled the car, looking for him behind the trucks, behind the buildings, along the tree line of the thick, early-spring woods.

Ah.

There he was, just inside the tree line, staring at the phone in his hand as if it could offer him much-needed wisdom. He rubbed the heel of one hand across his brow, never quite completing the gesture…just standing that way.

Huh. Again.

She walked across the spongy spring grass. He saw her and came to meet her, but there was no authority in his stride, no confidence. Karin slowed, wary even before they’d closed the distance between them, and then she got close enough to see that his troubled eyes were red rimmed, their expression…

Haunted.

By the time they stood face-to-face, he’d shuttered the depth of the emotion, but it was too late.

“Who was that?” she asked. “The FBI? You just got your walking papers?” But that didn’t seem quite right, not quite in sync with the emotion he’d shown.

“Yeah,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I did.” He didn’t meet her gaze, so unlike him.

Karin found she missed that blunt, quiet connection. “Doesn’t mean anything. You can still—”

His look was sharp enough to cut her off. With rough, short movements, Dave stabbed his cell phone at an inside jacket pocket until he found the right opening, looking at her all the while. And although he hadn’t moved back, he’d somehow put distance between them nonetheless.

It’s me,
she realized quite suddenly. He’d gotten news of her warrant, and there was no way he wouldn’t take her in—

But he cut those thoughts off as easily as he’d cut off her words. “The search is over. They found him.”

By then her thoughts were so tangled up that she could only stare at him, unable to take in the significance of his words. Her expression got stuck on full
duh.

“Rashawn,” Dave said bitterly. “Dumped.”

From
duh
to disbelief. “But—you said you had time!”

He laughed, a harsh, short sound. “So I thought. Turns out my persistence got some attention…the Feds poked around in Longsford’s life. That’s what brought Longsford’s men to your place.” He shook his head, his eyes gone unfocused.

She had no trouble following his thoughts this time. She walked right through the barrier he’d erected since he’d learned her true identity, her hand landing on his elbow. “Hey,” she said. “Not your fault. None of it.”

He didn’t even look at her. Didn’t react to her touch. Lost somewhere.

“Call it
my
fault,” she said. “If I hadn’t asked Ellen for help, she’d have been in touch with you a year ago. When Rashawn went missing, you would have been ready. You wouldn’t have wasted your time with me in Blue Ridge country.”

He gave her a wry glance, then. “I only had to believe you three days ago when you said you couldn’t help. I could have been back in Alexandria before that day was over.”

“Not once the geek boys showed up. You wouldn’t have left me to face them alone, not after they focused on me. Well, focused on Ellen.” She moved a step closer, bringing her hand up to brush at the dampness shining faintly on his cheek.

He closed his eyes at her touch, emotions flickering across his face. The reluctance to accept her touch…the inability to resist it. “I don’t want this,” he said, even as he put his hand over hers. “You know I don’t want this. Can’t trust you. Can’t understand you. Can’t even approve of you.”

“Look on the bright side,” Karin suggested. “Wouldn’t it give Owen fits to think of us?”

That got a smile from him; he took her hand and kissed the palm, then enfolded it in both of his and put it to his chest, holding it there. “We aren’t an us,” he said, but the wry little smile had reached his voice.

“For right now we are, and you know it. Being angry at who I really am doesn’t change that.” She’d spent the car ride believing that part of him to be lost to her, but in the wake of his gentleness, she suddenly knew otherwise. She dropped her head to look up at him from beneath her brow, her voice deepening. “Sometimes it just
is.
For however long it lasts.”

“Voice of experience?” He met the intensity in her own eyes and blinked.

“Voice of observation.” She moved in closer, right up next to him. “You and I…we’re still us, all right. The definition and duration of that us…it doesn’t matter. Not right now.”
Take what you can get. Enjoy it.
“What matters is
we’re not stopping now.
”

He heard the change of tone in her voice, realized she wasn’t talking about them anymore. Not personally. “Ell—” He closed his eyes again, very briefly, this time to rein in his annoyance. “Karin. I’m off it. They’ve stirred up too much trouble with no results, the boy is dead…someone’s got to lose their head. That, in case you hadn’t noticed, would be me.”

“I’ve seen you lose your head. I rather liked it, and I think we should do it again sometime.” She leaned closer, close enough to kiss his jaw right where it met his neck and where his pulse pounded visibly. Then she stepped back. “But you’re an investigator with or without them, right? You can get this guy—before he does this again. While he’s still basking in the glow of thinking he’s gotten away with it.”

He shook his head; regret shone through in those piercing eyes. “It’s not that simple—”

“In my world, it is. You do what you have to do. You take what you can get.”

He stiffened; he understood her perfectly. An exchange of impeccable honor for the results he craved. Probably not something he’d ever even considered. He shook his head. Then he put a hand on either side of her neck and drew her in for what turned out to be a startlingly thorough kiss, one that baffled her, but which she didn’t hesitate to allow to deepen. When he pulled away he still held her close, and after a moment gave her one last gentle kiss on the lips…and then he stood back. He shook his head again. “I can’t do that.”

“You wouldn’t have to do all that much of it,” she pointed out. “That’s my gig.”

“Thank you.” He straightened his jacket, though it didn’t need straightening. “For trying to help, I mean. But…no.” He took her hand, starting them back toward the car.

She waited until they reached it and said, “You’ve got the night to think about it. If we’re going to do this, I need to start preparing before we reach the city.”

He stopped her with that same grip on her hand, hanging back until she turned around to face him. “Just to be clear,” he said. “By ‘if we’re going to do this,’ you mean using one of your scams to get close to Longsford so I can find what I need to nail his ass to a cell wall.”