Until the Dawn (10 page)

“And we need it soon,” Dan agreed. “Whoever sent those guys after us will come looking when they don’t report in. I’m guessing whoever’s in charge can track us to this dude ranch. We need to get out of here.”

“I’ll call Nikki,” Maddie told him. “She’ll help us figure a way to ditch the car and get back to her place.”

Her call to Nicole was brief but productive. When she hung up she felt a little of the tension drain away. She stood up and unbuttoned her blouse. “Okay. She’s on it. She’ll call back in about thirty minutes. Meanwhile I’m taking a shower. I think I’ve smelled like a horse long enough.”

“Me, too.” Dan shoved the papers into the pocket of his blazer hanging on the back of his chair, then double-locked the door and braced the back of a chair against the knob. He turned and grinned at Maddie. “Save water, shower with a friend is my motto.”

“We actually do need to shower,” she teased him. “We’re on a time limit.”

“I can be the fastest man in the state of Texas.” He skimmed out of his slacks and boxers and headed for the bathroom.

“If you say so.” Maddie tossed her clothes onto the bed and followed him.

“The water’s just right,” Dan told her, helping her into the tub that served as a shower, too. “And look.” He held up a small bottle. “Your favorite shower gel.”

Maddie sighed as the hot water sluiced over muscles knotted from the horseback ride and the tension of the car chase. As Dan’s fingers, coated with lather, skillfully rubbed her shoulders and her neck, he bent his head to nibble at her earlobe at the same time.

“Feel good?” he wanted to know.

“Mmm,” she hummed, giving herself up to the sensations dancing through her.

“Better than good.”

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His hands worked down her back, kneaded in a hypnotic rhythm that almost made her forget where they were. When he reached the slope of her buttocks he traced the line of the globes, following the curve where they joined her thighs, then lightly skipping a finger through the cleft.

Maddie shivered, her pussy quaking as it always did when Dan aroused her. Small sounds of pleasure hummed in the back of her throat.

“You are just so responsive,” Dan murmured, nibbling on her ear again. “God, it’s like touching fire.”

He stroked his fingers up and down the cleft of her ass, letting the tip of one just circle that hot, tight ring before sliding down again and then up. Up and down, around and around, the radiating sensations gripping her in a mesmerizing fog. When he turned her around she was so boneless he had to prop her against the tiled wall.

His skillful fingers worked lather into her breasts, cupping them and rubbing his thumbs back and forth against her diamond-hard nipples. She didn’t remember ever having a lover who was as clever with his hands as Dan Foreman. He plucked at her nipples and pulled at them, pinching slightly to elicit just enough pain to enhance the pleasure.

“Maddie.” His voice was rough with passion. He took one of her hands and placed it on his cock. “Feel what you do to me. I can’t seem to touch you without getting harder than a spike.”

She thrilled as she wrapped her fingers around his hot, thick length, feeling the vein that ran along the underside pulse against her touch. A small gasp burst from her as she squeezed it gently, doing her best to focus as Dan continued to play her body like a finely tuned instrument. His hands slipped down her rib cage to the slight rounding of her tummy, making circular motions as he rubbed the scented lather into her skin.

“Yess,” she hissed, as one soap-slicked finger trailed through her slit and found its way to the opening of her cunt. With each glide in and out, she moved her hand on his shaft in the same tempo.

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“That’s it, Maddie. Stroke me. Feel me swell in your hand.” Without missing a beat in the movement of his fingers he leaned his head close to her again. “Do you like to touch my cock, baby? Wrap your fingers around it? I can’t wait to put it in that delicious cunt of yours.”

Maddie could do little more than moan as his first finger was joined by a second and then a third, pumping in and out of her, his thumb rasping her pulsing clit. She tightened her grip on his erection, automatically increasing her pace as Dan increased his.

“Wait.” He pulled his hand from the grasp of her internal muscles. “Condom. Don’t move.”

She could barely breathe as he stepped out of the shower, soaking wet. In seconds he was back, already rolling the condom onto his cock. He slid his hands beneath her buttocks and lifted her, draping her legs over his arms.

“Help me, Maddie,” he growled. “Show me the way home.”

Maddie reached for him and positioned the head of his cock at the entrance to her pussy.

“Do it,” she gasped, leaning back against the tiled wall for support.

Gripping her tighter he drove home with one strong thrust, slamming into her with such forces she had to grip his arms for support. Their soap-slicked bodies slid against each other as he hammered into her over and over. He held her at just the right angle so with each thrust forward he rubbed against her clit. Spears of heat shot through her until the only thing she could focus on was that point where they were joined.

“Now, baby,” he growled. “Come for me now.”

“Yes,” she cried. “Now. Now.”

One final plunge of his hips and he took her over the edge. His cocked pulsed inside her as her hungry pussy clenched him over and over again and her hot liquid bathed him. His lean fingers dug into her slick bottom as they rode the crest of the 75

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orgasm together. Maddie shook with the force of it, her entire being centered on the clutching tremors in her cunt, and the thick, heavy cock filling her.

The water had turned cool by the time the last aftershock trembled through their bodies and Dan slowly lowered her feet to the bottom of the tub. Maddie leaned forward against him, unable to release her grip on his arms, her breathing still choppy, her heart thudding erratically.

Dan smoothed her wet hair with a shaky hand. “We might kill ourselves, baby,” he said in an uneven voice, “but we’ll sure have a good time doing it.”

In response she licked his nipple, smiling at the shudder that ran through him.

“Mm-hmm. But right now I think we’d better get dressed. Nikki will be calling any minute.”

He turned off the water and reached past the shower curtain for two towels. “And we need to haul ass before someone shows up here looking for us.” He brushed a kiss against her lips. “But don’t forget where we were.”

* * * * *

Dan sipped at his coffee and studied Nikki Welles. Once again they were sitting in her spacious Hill Country kitchen, exploring the snake pit they found themselves in and looking for answers. Once more Nikki had whisked them from danger. Once more, he felt stymied. Once more, he was grateful to her.

As per her instructions, Dan had driven Maddie and himself to a convenience store in the center of the small town where the dude ranch was located. They’d parked at the side where a black sedan waited for them, engine purring. Fifteen minutes later, the driver had taken them to a barren field in the middle of a high desert plain where again a helicopter lifted them to safety.

“How did the CIA ever miss you and your talents?” He wanted to know now.

Nikki laughed. “They couldn’t pay me enough to work for them.” She winked. “No offense intended.”

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“I guess none taken,” he answered with a rueful grin. “But we sure could use you.”

“Ever think about coming to work in the private sector?” She slid her glance to Maddie. “Both of you?”

Dan shook his head.
If we live long enough.

Nikki’s voice was casual but Maddie got a tight feeling in her stomach. Nikki didn’t throw questions like that around casually. Was she really serious? Would Dan take the bait? Would she? It would be a much more radical change for her than for Dan, but it would be interesting to consider.

Worry about that later. Right now you have to get out of the trouble you’re in.

She cleared her throat, ready to change the subject. “Were you able to find out anything about the auto dealership in Del Rio? Or the two men whose names we gave you?”

“Let’s back up a little.” Nikki pulled her minicomputer out of her pocket and tapped it with the stylus. “You know there have to be big payoffs to get those trucks over the border to the train tracks.”

Dan nodded. “No surprise there. It’s just a matter of figuring out who’s taking the money and who’s paying for the services.”

Maddie gave an unladylike snort. “I have a good candidate to suggest.”

“I agree,” Dan said. “But this seems too big a project for just one man to organize.

You’ve got all the logistics of crews to deal with the merchandise and access to rolling stock to bring it to that spur to begin with.”

Nikki looked from Maddie to Dan and back again. “Absolutely. This is really high up on the food chain. High enough to mount a massive operation and high enough to put Dan in this kind of frame up.”

“That person is in D.C.,” Dan commented. “They had to have access to my computer to plant a file on it, and the power to sic the government on me.”

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The tightness in Maddie’s stomach morphed into a big knot. “We’re almost in a nowin situation here. We don’t have the depth of organization to battle a crime that’s getting bigger and bigger. The only way out of danger for us is to take it down.”

“You have at your disposal all the resources of Nemesis,” Nicole assured them.

“You know that.” She looked at Dan. “And trust me. They’re a lot more extensive than you might think.” She tapped her little screen again. “So let’s see what else we’ve got here. Those two idiots who chased you? You are right, Gabrian did work for that gun auction house for a few months. But he and his buddy work regularly—or did—as mechanics for Norseman Auto Dealership. So you can bet the owner, whoever it is, is in it up to his neck.”

“What do you mean, whoever it is?” Dan asked. “Couldn’t you learn his name?”

Nikki shook her head. “We’re working on it. The dealership is owned by a holding company so there are a lot of layers to this, another suspicious factor. But here’s something you can chew on.” Her lips curved in a wicked grin. “That same holding company owns another one. Norseman Import-Export in Galveston.”

Maddie lifted an eyebrow. “Same name as car dealership. Same owner?”

“From what we can find so far, it seems that way. I’ve still got my people working on learning who owns the holding company.”

“What do they import?” Dan wanted to know.

“Textiles.”

Dan had picked up his mug again, and he stopped with it partway to his mouth.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. They import bolts of cloth made in factories in Mexico. This they then sell to manufacturers in this country who can put labels on the garments that say

‘Made in the USA’ even though the fabric comes from Mexico.”

“Well, shit.” Dan drained his mug and got up to refill it. “This is someone who has enough money and brains to run an operation as complicated as this. To get railroad 78

Until the Dawn

cars down to that clearing to meet the trucks in the desert. To import fabric and ship it over the States? It’s easy enough to hide weapons in crates of fabric.”

“This has to go higher than a local importer,” Nikki pointed out. “Like I said, the operation’s going to turn out to be massive.”

“Okay.” Maddie got up to refill her own mug. “So weapons are smuggled into this country in crates of fabric, with bribes paid to Border Patrolmen at the crossing. Then loaded onto railroad cars and sent…wherever. They don’t even have to go to the import-export shop first before distribution. The network’s already in place.”

“And then,” Dan went on, “the guns are given away to like-minded friends.”

Maddie nodded. “Or sold to terrorist groups or whoever well under the radar.”

“Guys.” Nikki set her little gadget down on the table and folded her arms. “I’d say we’re still not thinking big enough. You caught the news bulletin about the president and vice president falling ill at a private luncheon, right?”

Dan nodded. “We saw the report before we left the dude ranch.”

“The president is in critical condition. He’s been so ill the past few months from his heart attack. The vice president seems a little better, but he’s got a bad ticker, too. And if they both die, I ask you, Maddie, who’s next in line?”

The knot in her stomach morphed into a ball of lead. “Trask,” she whispered.

“Nikki, you think he’s involved with this? How could he be? I mean from what we heard the president and vice president suffered from an intestinal bug. Salmonella or—

” She saw the skepticism on Nikki’s and Dan’s faces. “That’s a tall order to have someone in the White House kitchens purposely put a toxin in the president’s meal.

Why would you think that’s possible?”

Nikki shrugged. “We don’t have tasters like kings did in the Middle Ages. So what’s possible might not be probable.”

“Or provable,” Dan pointed out.

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Nikki agreed. “I’m just saying we can’t overlook any possibility. But if what we’ve learned about the importing of weapons is true, then it would certainly make sense to have someone in Trask’s position pulling the strings. And cutting red tape.”

“But
why
?” Maddie frowned, torn between defending a man she’d worked for and trusted—and suddenly knowing him capable of such a heinous crime.
To gain more
power.
“What does he get out of it?”

“A takeover of the government,” Dan said in a flat voice.

“What?” She seemed deaf and blind to the logic.

“Maddie, remember what we talked about at your house?” Dan reminded her.

“About the papers retrieved from the trucks that burned?”

She nodded.

“Okay. What if all these weapons aren’t just going to a bunch of different groups, but a well-organized private militia that will be part of a treasonous takeover of the government?”