by Megan Crane
Another eternity rolled by.
Then she heard something.
Adrenaline and panic fused, then exploded inside of her. Her heart hurt and her stomach turned inside out, but all she did was straighten against the wall where he’d left her. It was possible she would see wooden boats and red canoes in her dreams for the rest of her life.
Assuming there was going to be a rest of her life.
The noise came again, from the back door off the kitchen, and she shifted around to face it. She lifted the gun and waited.
The door flew open.
A man she didn’t recognize stumbled in, bent in half, and she remembered what Isaac had said.
Inhale. She firmed her grip. She aimed.
But then Isaac stepped in behind the stranger and kicked the door shut behind him.
His gaze found hers, steel gray and intense.
Caradine exhaled. His gaze stayed on hers.
She lowered the gun.
She started to move, swaying toward him. But before she took a step out of the small hall, he stopped her. He didn’t actually shake his head, but he stopped her as surely as if he’d thrust a hand out. He shoved the man before him into a chair at the kitchen table, putting his back at an angle to Caradine.
If she didn’t come out of the hallway, he might not even know that she was standing there.
Isaac slapped on the kitchen light. Then stood there, unblinking, as the man before him screwed up his face against the sudden glare. Caradine felt a little teary herself.
It was the light, obviously. Not the fact that Isaac was safe and in control. Or that the man in that chair still wasn’t someone she recognized. No matter how much she frowned at him in the overhead glare, when she’d been so sure she would know who he was.
Who did you expect it would be? a voice inside asked her, but she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
Isaac widened his stance. He crossed his arms in a way that made his impressive chest seem even bigger, one hand still gripping his gun, which was far bigger and deadlier-looking than hers.
And then he smiled down at the man before him.
Not at all genially.
“I told you,” the man said, with a thick Boston accent that made Caradine’s blood run cold. Because accents like that haunted her nightmares. “This was a misunderstanding.”
“I don’t think I misunderstood you trying to break into my house,” Isaac said in his friendliest tone. It sent a shiver down Caradine’s spine, but that wasn’t where the sensation pooled. “Just like I didn’t misunderstand you following me here, on back roads, through rural Maine in the middle of the night. You want to tell me why? Because I have to tell you, much as I like to be pursued, a girl does like to be asked to dance first.”
“I thought you were someone else.”
The man’s voice was surly, and Caradine studied the parts of him that she could see now that he was glaring straight at Isaac. He had a flat buzz cut that showed off that extra, angry roll to his neck. It made her think of steroids. And of sitting in church, a thousand years ago, looking at the necks of the men who sat with her family as they rose around her like a red wall, angrily displayed above their Sunday collared shirts.
But this was no time for a trip down memory lane. Especially when, though she knew what kind of man this was, she really didn’t know him personally.
Is that a relief or a letdown? she asked herself. And found she didn’t have an answer for that, either.
“Who did you think I was?” Isaac asked, as if this were a casual chat with one of his buddies—which made her want to reevaluate every actual casual chat she’d ever seen him have. “Do I look like a friend of yours?”
“What you look like is a dead man,” the man replied, with a snarl. “If I were you and I wanted to live, I’d back away from this situation.”
“You’re in my house, friend.” Isaac sounded cheerful. “And I’m the one with the gun, remember? Yours took a swim.”
The man growled. “You don’t want the kind of trouble you’re bringing on yourself, friend. You hear me?”
“Convince me,” Isaac suggested. Cheerfully.
The man in the chair studied him, and Caradine could see his deep-set eyes narrow. He sat back in his chair, one hand on his thigh like he was in control. Like he was lounging there, holding court.
Not for the first time, she wondered how anyone could look at Isaac and imagine that he was something other than a predator. A warrior at the very top of his game.
The red-necked man was nothing but a garden-variety thug. She’d known dozens of him back in the day, but even if she hadn’t, it was stamped all over him. How could a man like that, who had to be cunning enough to survive as long as he had—to his midforties, by the looks of it—actually look like he was relaxing when faced with an ex–special ops master of warfare? Isaac was so much more powerful and dangerous than a penny-ante thug from Boston that it was almost laughable.
But she’d seen it happen again and again. Isaac smiled, used that friendly voice, and everyone believed it.
She reminded herself that she never had.
“Let’s just say that I represent certain interests,” the thug told him grandly. “You had some moves out there, I grant you. You got the drop on me. Kudos. Then it turns out that you and me, we don’t have the business I thought we did.”
Isaac smiled again. “You mistook the rug I was transporting for a body.”
The man nodded, his eyes still narrow. “A misunderstanding, like I said. It can end right here, or it can turn into a bigger problem. For you.”
“From where I’m standing, I don’t have any problems,” Isaac said idly. “Can’t say the same for you.”
“How much of a problem you’re going to have depends on what you do right now,” the man said, his voice getting harder. “Shooting me would be a mistake. A huge mistake.”
Isaac didn’t look convinced. “Would it?”
“You’re already skating on thin ice, buddy. And me, I’m a forgiving guy. I’d be inclined to let it go. But the people I work for?” The man shook his head. “They don’t let anything go.”
Isaac’s head tilted slightly, very slightly, to one side. “What makes you think I let anything go?”
And Caradine watched, holding her breath, as it occurred to the guy in the chair that he was dealing with something a little more treacherous than a trained and unusually well-armed homeowner. He dropped that hand from his thigh. He went still.
“Who are the people you work for?” Isaac asked.
To Caradine’s ear, he didn’t change his tone of voice. He sounded the same as he had this whole time. But it was suddenly obvious who he really was, because the thug before him looked uneasy.
“You think you’re a tough guy?” the man in the chair demanded, getting loud, no doubt to cover that unease. “You don’t want to know what happens to tough guys.”
“Let me guess,” Isaac said. “You dispose of them. But that’s not where this is going. Buddy.”
And then, the way he had when he’d taken her gun away from her, Isaac moved so fast that Caradine almost wasn’t sure she’d seen him move at all.
She had the impression of explosive action. His hand reaching out.
Her brain told her that he’d hit the guy in the chair, but there was no sound of impact. And the man didn’t shake, the chair didn’t fly backward, or any of the other things she might expect to have happen if a man as strong as Isaac actually hit something.
It was only when Isaac shifted that gray gaze of his to hers again that she realized that the man in the chair was unconscious.
“What did you do to him?” she asked, and was too unsettled to care that her voice was uneven.
Isaac wasn’t smiling any longer. “I’m not in the mood to play twenty questions with a dirtbag.”
He shoved his gun in the back waistband of his cargo pants, then set about fastening the man to the chair itself with more of the handy zip ties he apparently carried around with him. Something she felt she should have known about him. But hadn’t.
When he straightened again, Caradine must have had some sort of look on her face, because his brows rose.
“Problem?”
“You have a lot of zip ties on hand,” she pointed out. “I’m sure that’s totally normal. For a psychopath.”
His mouth curved into something that had nothing in common with that genial smile of his. “They have a lot of uses.”
And to her horror, she felt the tug of that, everywhere. Worse, she felt herself flush.
She jerked her eyes away from his, back down to the gun in her hands. She kept staring at it as he made a call, muttering out instructions to what she assumed was yet another combat team, though he wanted this one for cleanup.
Caradine figured she knew what that meant.
And no matter that it was over and she was supposedly safe now, she could still feel the panic surging through her. The fear like a solid weight. Wooden boats and red canoes, and trying to fight off images of the worst-case scenario.
She hated how close she’d come to breaking here, and worse, how much of that he’d seen.
And he might have neutralized one guy in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn’t over. It was never over.
“Trash collection is scheduled,” Isaac told her when he finished his call. He shoved his phone into his pocket. “But we’re not going to wait around.”
“Aren’t we?” she heard herself ask.
And without meaning to, really, without fully understanding what she was doing—or maybe she understood all too well that it had always been coming to this—Caradine raised her gun and pointed it straight at him.
Again.
“This time, with feeling,” she said quietly.
But Isaac only laughed.
Seven
“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Caradine snapped at him, her usual scowl on her face. And that gun aimed at his head. Her version of a love letter, Isaac thought—and that notion only made him laugh harder. “I’m not kidding around.”
“Whatever you think is about to happen here,” Isaac said when he could contain the laughter, “it’s not.”
“You think I won’t shoot you, but I will.”
“Okay,” he said blandly. “Right in the face? Are you going to kill me, Caradine? Because if not—if you’re thinking you’ll wound me to slow me down—you should probably aim for a knee. And make sure you take it out with the first shot. Otherwise, chances are, you’re only going to piss me off.”
She dropped her gaze to his knee, and that scowl turned to more of a study. It should have curdled his blood, but it was Caradine. A big, loud, consistent bark, but no bite. Or not a deep bite, anyway.
Then again, she didn’t lower the muzzle of the gun.
“You say that like I wouldn’t happily wound you, Isaac.” Her blue eyes gleamed. “With great pleasure. Joy, even. Maybe a song or two.”
“Joy and singing are great, obviously,” he pointed out, still not entirely finished laughing, but trying hard to keep it off his face. Unsuccessfully, if her expression was any guide. “But I’m a better shot than you, and I don’t know that I’d be waving that gun around this tiny kitchen. Just throwing that out there.”
“You don’t know what kind of shot I am. Because I’ve always thought it was in my best interests to keep that to myself.”
“It doesn’t matter if your secret hobby is being an amateur marksman. You weren’t a marine.”
“I’m something far more dangerous than a marine, Isaac,” she snapped. “I’m a determined woman who has no intention of being trussed up and carted around again.”
“You telegraph your moves, baby.” And he could see her temper and a hint of uncertainty flutter over her face, but she didn’t lower her weapon. “That gives me about three seconds to react. And guess what? I only need one.”
“Do you want to test that theory?”
“Go right ahead,” he dared her.
And this was Caradine. So he wasn’t surprised at all when her chin tipped up, stubborn and strong. Or when her shoulders squared.
He saw the exact moment she made her decision. Her eyes flashed a darker blue, she held her breath, and he was damned lucky she really did telegraph everything.
She aimed again, but he was already moving.
By the time the shot rang out, it was done.
Caradine was bent over, cradling her hand. Isaac had possession of her gun. And there was a nice bullet hole in the wall behind where he’d been standing. At thigh level.
“Do you feel better now?” he asked her, gruff and low. Deadly calm while she panted for breath.
“No, I don’t feel better,” she seethed at him. “I think you broke my wrist.”
“I didn’t break it. If it was broken, you would have heard it crack. And you’d be in a lot more pain. Meaning you wouldn’t be whining about it.”
“You hurt me.” She straightened and glared at him, another thing she wouldn’t have been doing if he’d really hurt her. “And now you’re calling me a whiner?”
“You tried to shoot me, Caradine. Do you know what I normally do to people who shoot at me?” He grinned. Broadly. “I’ll give you three guesses, and none of them involve hanging around talking about it afterward.”
“Is that supposed to make my broken wrist feel better?”
And maybe it was because she’d made him feel like a giant rampaging stampede of bulls in all the china shops, again, when he’d done his best to disarm her without really hurting her. The way he could have, and easily, when there was a bullet with his name on it stuck in the wall behind them. And when he knew she was hardly the fine china in that analogy. Not his scrappy, forever-tough-talking Caradine.
Whatever it was, he wasn’t as completely in control of himself or his emotions as he should have been when he reached over and hauled her toward him, with one hand wrapped around her upper arm.
“Are we pretending you feel something?” he bit out, his face in hers, his grin long gone. “Are you sure? Because I was under the impression that if a single emotion dared poke up its head around you, you’d implode.”
Her gaze was much too dark. “Let me go, Isaac. Let me drive away and don’t follow me.”
“Not happening. Because I don’t know if you noticed, but this has all gotten more intense. Who was that man?”
“I don’t know.” She tried to pull her arm away, but he only tightened his grip. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t recognize him.”
“But you know who he works for.”
Caradine made a frustrated noise. “I have theories, that’s all.”
“I have theories, too,” he retorted. “About you. Because I couldn’t help noticing his accent, and that narrows it down nicely.”
“Great. Theories upon theories and none of it matters. You still need to let me go. This has nothing to do with you.”
“What exactly were you planning to do?” he demanded, and there was no getting around it then. He was definitely losing his cool. “Explain to me how you thought this was going to go. Whoever you called sent this guy. Did you think he was going to ask you out for coffee? Sit down, have a nice chat? Does he look to you like the kind of guy who could be reasoned with?”
Her blue eyes were filled with storms and fury. “I was perfectly happy to shoot you, Isaac. I don’t know what makes you think I had a coffee date in mind for someone I like even less. I wanted to see who it was. I wanted to see if I recognized him. I wanted to see if it was my—”
She didn’t finish her sentence. She gulped down whatever she’d been about to say.
“Your what?” he demanded. Edgil
y.
“Like I said. My nightmares. I have a lot of them. Some are more specific than others, and I wanted to know which this was.”
“You’ve never struck me as an idiot before,” he growled at her. “But now it’s like you’re going for the world record.”
She yanked on her arm, and he finally released her. Grudgingly.
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” she threw at him, and he was slightly gratified by how ragged she sounded. As long as it wasn’t just him. “I don’t want you here. I don’t need you here. Your interference is not required.”
“Do you want to get killed?” Isaac was almost loud then. He barely sounded like himself. And the part of him that wasn’t much too close to losing it couldn’t help but note that she was the only one who could do this to him. The only one who dug beneath his skin and drove him crazy. The only weakness he hadn’t excised. “Is this some death wish you’re acting out here?”
That vulnerable, uncertain expression moved over her face again, but her voice was cold. “I’m not an Alaska Force client, Isaac.”
“No,” he said. “You’re really not.”
And that electricity that was always between them flared, so hot he was surprised the cottage didn’t ignite.
Finally, she looked away, which for Caradine was a major surrender.
“We’re leaving now,” he said shortly. “We’re driving down to Portland, where there’s a plane waiting. I’m taking you back to Alaska.”
“I don’t want to go back to Alaska.”
“I didn’t ask you what you want,” he belted out at her, and took it as a minor victory when she jolted at the sound. “I told you what’s going to happen.”
“I’m not your client, and I’m certainly not one of your Alaska Force subordinates, ready and eager to do your bidding.” She held his gaze, and whatever hint of vulnerability or surrender he’d thought he’d seen on her face was gone. “I’m not going to tell you anything, no matter where we go. I promise you that.”
Isaac wanted to put his hands on her, desperately, so he didn’t. He stepped back instead, before he lost it completely. He was too hot. Too affected.