Tall, Dark and Lethal (6 page)

Her T-shirt was nearly dry. Disappointing. But better for their mission. This way, he had a shot at getting his raging lust under control. Having her practically sit on his lap in that canoe had seriously tested his willpower.

“Now that the view has been obscured, I’m checking out emergency supplies.”

If looks could kill, he would have been flatlining.

He glanced toward the window. “Can’t see anything through this rain. I don’t think the cops will be coming back, though.” He pulled a Beretta, three boxes of 9 mm bullets and finally a hand grenade from the hole. “Can you shoot a gun?”

“What do you think?” she snapped.

He put the Beretta back and covered the hole again. “Then you’re safer without one.” He pushed the futon into place and put the bullets and the hand grenade into his bag.

“I’m going to make some calls.” He pulled out his phone. “I’m hungry.” He looked at the bag that held the food they’d gotten earlier. “Maybe you could cook something after you change. You should really get out of those wet clothes.”

Her face turned an interesting shade of red, her pixie nose going straight up in the air, but she grabbed some clothes out of the bag and headed back to the bathroom with them.

He dialed the Colonel, a man he trusted like few others. “Anything new, sir?”

“You’ve been traced to New York.”

“Not a problem, sir.”

“I didn’t think so. Agent Rubliczky is foaming at the mouth. Any worse and he’ll need a rabies shot. Some communications have been traced to your computer. I’m working on finding out what they were about. Care to give me a hint?”

“No idea, sir.” He hadn’t been involved in anything remotely interesting in the past three months. He’d been researching possibilities for the security agency he’d thought about opening when the inactivity of retirement eventually got to him. He’d tracked David Smith in other ways, making sure that nothing would ever point back to him. He’d been careful to contact Abhi through a secure chat room, using a PC at the Newark public library in Delaware.

“So they found my laptop?” He really wished he’d been able to get that out.

Bailey emerged from the bathroom in a striped, sleeveless shirt and shorts, looking good enough to eat. He had to get his mind off her perfect breasts and the way they’d felt pressed against his chest in that canoe. She showed no sign of lingering over any of that. And she had a bra on. He came close to sighing in disappointment. She was marching off to the hot plate, muttering something under her breath.

“Melted to a blob,” the Colonel was saying.

Looking at her toned legs, Cade could relate to the concept of melting. Being around her raised his core temperature a notch—his clothes were already dry.

“It didn’t improve Rubliczky’s mood,” the Colonel went on. “But they did find another computer, which seems to have a salvageable hard drive. It’s at the local lab at the moment, being worked over by a data forensic team. I’m trying to get my hands on it.”

He didn’t have another computer. He glanced at Bailey, who was scrubbing a pot clean, managing to make even those small, repetitive motions sensual. God help him. “I better go.”

“Stay out of trouble. Check in when you can.”

He closed his phone and slipped it into his pocket, leaning back on the futon to watch her for a while. Her efficient movements, her focus on the task, her energy—he was trying to dissociate his thoughts from his baser instincts.

Linked to domestic terrorism.

He couldn’t see it. Nobody could do a cover this good. If Bailey Preston had fooled him this thoroughly, he needed to retire from the business, he thought before he realized that he already had. Retired. He’d spent the past couple of months hating how that word tasted in his mouth. He hadn’t exactly been discarded—he left willingly. And with a purpose. He’d planned on going back to Jakarta. And he didn’t want the SDDU involved. He rubbed a hand over his chest, where a scar lay hidden under his shirt, and drew a full breath, appreciating that he could. He watched Bailey. Could she be in on all this? Was he losing his edge?

He stood and reached her in a few quiet steps. He went completely still for a moment before he grabbed her arm and twisted her, putting her into a restraining hold in a split second. He waited in vain for her reflex reaction.

The pot she’d been cleaning clanged to the floor.

She did nothing. Not a single defensive move. Didn’t even try for his gun, which was still tucked in his waistband, even though he’d allowed her right hand to dangle dangerously close to it.

Instead, she twisted her head to look at him, with a thunderstorm gathering in her eyes. “What are you doing? Have you gone completely mad?”

As captivating as her eyes were, his gaze dropped to her mouth, just a few short inches from his. Perfectly pink and soft-looking.

“Let me go.” She pushed against him exactly the wrong way when a simple lift-and-drop would have set her free. Clueless.

When he wouldn’t budge, her lips flattened with fury. The need to taste her again—to drag his lips over hers, to feel her open, to invade and take—was overpowering. And because it was a
need,
and not some fleeting fancy or idle desire, he didn’t allow himself to move one millimeter closer to her.

She froze and stared at him, drawing air in a little faster. Her pulse beat at the hollow of her throat. Had she guessed how badly he wanted to kiss her? That was all he needed. God only knew what she would make of that.

He let her go. When he was done with this—with her—he was going to take himself out for some serious R & R. “You need some self-defense lessons.”

“No, thanks.” She went for the pot.

He took another step back, removing himself from swinging distance, just in case. But she took the pot to the sink, rinsed it and filled it up.

Did her hand tremble for a moment? His were twitching as he fought against the need to reach for her again.

“Have you been working on anything interesting lately? On your computer?”

She flashed him a what-does-that-have-to-do-with-anything look. “Updated my Web site. Put up pictures of my latest sunflower twirlies.”

He congratulated himself for not groaning aloud and rolling his eyes. Her garden-art side business drove him crazy. When she wasn’t at work at the local garden center, she was in the garage, sawing and drilling and clanging and banging at all hours of the day and night. He hated the noise, knowing he wouldn’t hear a damn thing if any of his old enemies were moving in to take him down.

Then there were her garden flags, on various sized poles, deftly placed to block sight of the road from his windows. If she’d flown the American flag on a regulation pole, he would have been fine with that. But her flags had daises on them, and sayings like It’s Gardening Thyme.

He had to run one over so he would have a clear view of the road from his living room at least. She hadn’t been happy. He’d been trying to build himself a defendable position, but she seemed determined to render him deaf and blind.

“Anything else?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Zak accidentally deleted a couple of my programs when he was here. I’ve been meaning to call someone to fix it.”

Odd that she wouldn’t ask him, since as far as she knew, he was a computer programmer. Or maybe not so odd, given their history.

“Did Zak use your computer a lot?”

“Only twenty-four seven.” She gave a rueful smile. “He’s a good kid. He’s going through a tough time.”

“What can be so tough at sixteen?”

She hesitated, drew a deep breath and shrugged. “His mother recently left. He’s had some clashes with his dad. That’s my brother.”

That had to be hard on the kid. Cade thought back to the sullen looks the teenager had given him every time they’d run into each other outside. Had he resented being shipped off to his aunt? Could be he’d felt like his parents had got him out of the way while they were making decisions about their family’s future. Without him.

Cade had been shuttled around between various relatives in his younger days, his mother always dealing with one emotional crisis or another. He could sympathize.

He looked at her. Her arms were wrapped around her waist as she stared off into space.

“You’re worried about him.” From what he’d been able to see, she’d taken good care of the kid while he’d been with her.

She looked up, chewing her lip for a second before speaking. “You know that plane that went down en route to Madrid a few weeks ago?”

He nodded.

“I could barely get him out of his room after that. I think it really freaked him out.”

The crash and the FAA investigation that followed had been top news for the first part of the month. “Was anyone he knew on it?”

She shook her head and looked away. “My brother lives in Lower Manhattan.” Her gaze returned to his. She blew some air out, and it ruffled the hair on her forehead. “When the twin towers went down, Zak was there,” she said, with visible reluctance, her eyes dark. “He saw people jump, saw the bodies, saw the buildings collapse.” She shook her head. “He was nine.”

“Pachaimani.” The name left his lips before he could stop himself.

“What?”

He drew a slow breath. “A brave little kid I used to know. Far from here.” So Zak, too, had been traumatized. What kind of species did this to their children? Bailey’s words made him see the brooding teen in a different light—he wished he had known while the boy had been there. “There’s nothing to tie the Madrid flight to a terrorist act.”

“I know. But we were watching the news and the pictures came on of the plane burning. And it was like…I can’t explain it. Like he went into some lockdown mode. He went to his room and barely came out after that. And then he went home early. He was supposed to spend the whole summer with me.” Her voice was barely audible over the rain as it drummed on the roof.

He’d been happy about Zak’s going. The kid had hacked into his wireless system and tried to snoop around his files. But he hadn’t gotten very far. Cade’s laptop was beyond secure, his protection designed by Carly Tarasov, the SDDU’s computer expert, the best of the best.

Which meant it wasn’t likely that the FBI could trace anything back to it. Whatever they traced to the house had probably come from Bailey’s PC. He couldn’t picture Zak involved in domestic terrorism any more than he could picture Bailey, although there was no limit to the trouble a smart kid with nothing to do could get into just through sheer dumb luck. He could vouch for that.

But whatever the information was could have come from outside the house just as easily as from within. There were ways to remotely hijack someone’s system. And there were ways to trace such an intrusion back to the source. Definitely worth a look.

“Want me to help with the food?” he asked her, noting the dejected slope of her shoulders. He liked her better when she had that storm brewing in her eyes, even if the thunderbolts were aimed at him.

“No,” she said too quickly.

Scared her, had he? Everything he’d done so far, he’d done to keep them safe and free. But if she was scared of him, that was good. Really, just fine. It meant she would keep her distance, which was excellent, because he wasn’t sure he could keep his. Their situation was already messed up beyond all repair. They didn’t need any further complications.

He glanced at the futon and then away from it. Definitely not.

He walked to the window and scanned the lane and the rows of fishing cabins. The rain was still blowing around outside, the weather showing no sign of abating. “We’ll eat, rest some, and then go take care of business.”

“What business?” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion as she looked back at him from the hot plate.

She hadn’t lied. She really did not trust him. Smart woman.

Smart and gorgeous. Tough, too. She’d handled the day pretty well so far. He resented the grudging admiration that was taking hold of him. He couldn’t start liking her now. Lusting after her was bad enough. He was a professional. He needed to find that professional distance—fast.

“I have a bad feeling about whatever plan you’re hatching.” She dumped some dry noodles into the boiling water. “We could just lay low until the authorities figure out what’s really going on. I don’t think we should go out and do our own investigation. Don’t you think that’s too dangerous? Let’s just appreciate that we survived the day so far.”

The very voice of reason. He bit back a smile. “I’m not a wait-and-see type of person.”

She rolled her blue-violet eyes. “No. Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

The moment to disclose some further information had arrived. He needed to tell her his plan and get her on board because he couldn’t leave her here. She might take off and get herself into more trouble than she could handle or worse—the people who were after them could catch up with her while he was gone.

“I need a partner.” Maybe getting her involved in the mission would help her work up some enthusiasm for it.

“Partner in crime,” she mumbled.

“Things would probably go easier and faster if we worked together.”

She held up a hand, palm out, as if to separate herself from him. “We are not a team. I did not steal any cars. I take no responsibility for whatever felony you’re plotting next.”

“Glad I have your full confidence.”

“Confidence has to be earned.” She glared. “You jumped off a balcony with me!”

“Did you get hurt?”

She pressed her lips together. “You took me out on the lake in the middle of a storm, knowing I can’t swim. Without a life preserver.”

“Did you drown?”

“Do other people often fall for this the-end-justifies-the-means bullshit of yours?”

“First, the end rarely justifies the means. Second, when it does, I sure as hell don’t stop to ask permission.” Part of his job was to make judgment calls. Sometimes he had to choose between a terrible option and outright tragedy.

She waited a full minute, searching his face before she spoke again, her tone a tad more reasonable this time. “If it gets us out of this insanity—” she weighed her words “—maybe. Reluctant partners.” She drew a deep breath that pressed her breasts against her shirt in a way that was most distracting. “So what’s your latest brilliant idea?”