by Terry Spear
Would she even remember she’d gone to bed with him that night? That she’d removed her nightgown and shifted into her cougar? Would she scream out in fright when she woke, totally disoriented? But he didn’t want to startle her awake, or intimate that this was unnatural between them.
Wind-driven rain still beat the glass patio and the six-foot square window as the tropical storm continued to wage war over the island. The air conditioner rattled away underneath the window, adding to the ruckus. He sighed deeply as he ignored the raging storm. All his concentration centered on Nicole.
With the utmost reserve, he’d kept his arms around her just enough to give her the comfort she needed to feel secure and protected.
Several times during the night, he’d fallen asleep, only to feel her naked skin and the sensation woke him suddenly. He couldn’t tamp down his worry about the predicament she was in. The predicament they were in. No way would he leave her to solve this dilemma alone. He hadn’t believed she had been in any real danger. Not if the man in the peach suit was stalking her, but then leaving her alone when Scott was with her. Not until the man in black tried to pull a gun on him in the parking lot. And then for the dead body to get up and walk away? No, she was in real trouble. Why hadn’t he had a premonition about it beforehand? Why hadn’t she?
Maybe she wasn’t who she said she was. She couldn’t be an undercover operative, could she? The more he considered the notion of who she was, the more he wanted to check her purse for identification. Still, he didn’t want to release his hold on her so she’d feel safe.
He glanced at the clock. Four-thirty. He groaned. The morning would soon end.
Trying not to disturb her sleep, he released his hold on her and slipped out of bed. He padded over to the table where she’d left her purse. With the quiet and care of a thief, he pulled her burgundy leather wallet out. In a plastic cardholder, her driver’s license said her name was Nicole A. Welsh, who lived in Killeen, Texas, twenty-four years of age. Her military ID indicated she was a captain on active duty.
He rummaged further through her purse and found her leave form. She was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas. The G-1 staff. She was a personnel officer on the general’s staff. They were in the same division. He smiled. Her apartment complex wasn’t too far from his home either.
Well, everything backed up her story. Unless she was an undercover agent. She’d probably have all the paperwork to cover her. She had to be a captain in the army. Then he’d be able to continue to date her and well, make a firmer commitment as time passed.
His fingers probed her leather purse and found a confirmation note from the hotel with Jackie Huntington’s name on it. Her girlfriend who had made the reservations.
Then he pulled out a piece of white paper folded into a wedge no bigger than his thumbnail. He unfolded the paper and read the note.
Nicole, Get over it. I just kissed the girl. Big deal. It didn’t mean anything. You and I have the real thing and you know it. Call me. I know you’re going on leave and I won’t see you back in the office until you return, but I want this situation ironed out between us before then. Love, Tom.
Well, Tom, you lost your chances with this one. Scott turned to face Nicole. He imagined Tom had been doing more than kissing another girl. He didn’t believe Nicole would be that high strung about Tom sharing a noncommittal kiss with a girl. The best thing was the guy wasn’t a cougar or Scott would have smelled his cougar scent on the note.
Scott refocused on Nicole’s purse. After rummaging a bit more, he couldn’t find anything else of interest. He hurriedly refolded the note and shoved everything else back in place.
After climbing back into bed with her, he turned the lamp off. She quickly snuggled back up to him. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. She nuzzled her head against his cheek.
He had no idea what tomorrow would bring for them, but no matter what, he planned to be there for Nicole.
Nicole sensed the danger ahead, felt the tingling in her head, the warning bells going off—she had to get into her car and leave, drive anywhere, but she just had to get out of here. It was too dangerous here for her. They were after her. The man in the peach suit and the other. The man in black. Yet he was…dead, wasn’t he? She was running through the rain, searching for her car in the half empty parking lot. Where was it? It was gone. Then suddenly it appeared, crumpled against a bridge support, like her parents’ car had crumpled into an accordion. But she wasn’t driving it. Someone else was. She moved closer to the car, had to see in, had to see who had stolen her car, who had been injured in the crash. To her horror, she saw Jackie and she was dead at the wheel.
Nicole tried to escape the nightmare and fully woke herself to discover she was wrapped securely in Scott’s arms. She realized she was totally naked. Oh. My. God.
He’d kept her protected all night though. She inched herself out of his grasp to avoid waking him. When she extracted herself from the covers, she saw her chemise on the floor. Had they made love last night? Surely, she would have remembered. But he was still wearing a T-shirt and boxer briefs when she was hugging on him. She grabbed some clothes from her bag and hurried to the bathroom, the nightmare still plaguing her. Or had it been a nightmare? Or another of her visions?
She tried to reconcile how she’d found herself naked in bed with Scott. What was the matter with her anyway? Champagne never made her that loopy. She walked into the bathroom and stared at her wet shorts and shirt hanging on the shower curtain railing. And then the memory drifted back to her. She’d been afraid Scott was one of the men stalking her and she had run out into the storm to get away from him. She’d…she’d run over a man with her car. The man in black.
The notion chilled her to the bone as her stomach sickened. The man had a gun. She was only trying to save Scott. But what would the police say about it? Her career would be ended for sure. She was surprised she hadn’t already been questioned and arrested. Two men killed, one by using her father’s gun, the other with her car in two months’ time. Though in the first case, the body had disappeared. All she wanted was a vacation…away from her former boyfriend and the horrible office where they both worked.
She vaguely remembered having taken a shower last night, then she pulled on a pair of denim shorts and a floral shirt. After brushing her hair and adding makeup to her light complexion, she left the bathroom. Scott appeared to be sleeping still.
But then his dark eyes opened, and he frowned. “Did you sleep well enough?”
“Scott.” His name slipped out in a whisper. “What happened last night?”
He climbed out of bed. His dark hair was slightly mussed, the ends sticking up like he’d worked on a spike during the night. His tanned face was covered in a fine smattering of earthy brown whiskers. Looking more rugged than the day before, he was a veritable sexy hunk. His navy T-shirt rose high around the waistband of his black boxer briefs.
He walked over to her and took her hand, then led her back to the end of the bed. After retrieving his wallet from his shorts, he sat beside her. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m a finance officer, and a captain at Fort Hood. I was assigned there a year ago. I live in Killeen, but I’m originally from Amarillo.” He showed her his driver’s license and military ID. Then he pulled out his leave form.
She read everything, then looked back at him as his dark eyes studied hers.
He sighed deeply. “Okay, so what’s this all about?”
“I told you, I don’t know.” Her voice was edged in irritation. “What happened last night?”
“If you mean about the man in the parking lot, you ran over him.”
Her heart nearly stopped. She knew she had. The bumper struck him hard and the jolt had shuddered through her steering wheel into her body. She’d hoped beyond hope she’d just imagined it…that and the man with the gold tooth. “What happened?”
“He pulled a gun out of a holster. When he pointed it at me, you ran over him. He w
as dead. I felt his pulse and there was none.” He caressed her hand when she didn’t say anything.
Her mind was dredging up everything that had happened to her in the past few days. What about the break-in at her apartment? Was it just burglars or some more of these men?
Okay, so she didn’t believe Scott had anything to do with the whole situation. He was a good old boy from Texas like he said. She wrapped her fingers around his. “What did the police say?”
“There wasn’t a body.”
She stared at him. He wasn’t making any sense. Of course there was a body. A dark-clothed body with bumper marks all over it. Bumper marks from her Grand Am.
He squeezed her hand. “I took you inside out of the storm as you were going into shock. I had the hotel clerk call 911 and then I took you up to my room. Later, the clerk informed me the police said there was no sign of a body. They thought the man must have only been dazed and walked away. But I swear, he had no pulse and if he left the area, it wasn’t on his own two feet. Besides, wouldn’t he have come into the hotel to report that you’d run over him?”
Just like at her parents’ home. The dead man walked off. She swallowed hard. Her skin felt ice cold. “He shoved you in front of my car. He hoped I’d run over you and then I wouldn’t have you to protect me. He had a gun. He was going to shoot you. He wasn’t an innocent bystander.” She let out her breath. “I need to return home.”
“The roads—”
“I can’t stay here any longer. Whoever is trying to kill me is going to continue. I have to find out who’s behind this.”
“Who do you think is a likely suspect?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“I’m not letting you go it alone. If you want to return home, I’m following you there. But if you know something…”
She couldn’t believe Scott would risk his life to try and protect her. But what was it going to take for him to believe she didn’t know anything? “I really don’t know anything about what this is concerning.”
His gaze softened in intensity. “I’m sorry, go on.”
“I was dating Thomas Cromwell, a major, working in personnel.”
“A major?” His brows arched.
“Yes, well, things didn’t work out and I ended the relationship.”
“How did he take it?”
“We worked in the same office. But I didn’t work for him. He didn’t like the fact I didn’t want to have anything else to do with him and he began calling me and hanging up the phone.”
“Why did you call it quits?”
She shoved a curl behind her ear as her free hand rubbed her leg. “Truthfully?”
He took a deep breath and nodded.
“He was seeing another captain behind my back. I saw them going into a motel room. Then I caught them kissing at his car at a fast food place on post. That time he saw me. He tried to explain it away as no big deal. But I knew better. Yet, he wanted me back. He was totally controlling too. He’s seven years older than me, never been married. Now he wants to settle down, or so he says.”
“Is he a cougar?”
“No. I wouldn’t turn him. I just wanted someone to date. You’re the first cougar I met who’s stationed at Fort Hood. It was more than that though, my career goals didn’t include a husband. And truthfully, I didn’t feel as though Tom was looking for a total commitment either. The fact he wasn’t a cougar made the whole situation moot though.”
She ran her hand over the bedspread. “Then there were my parents’ deaths a little over two months ago. I don’t know why this would have anything to do with anything. They were killed in a single-car accident. No witnesses, road conditions were clear, no sign that my father had a heart attack or anything else that could have caused him to lose control.”
“Could he have fallen asleep at the wheel?”
“In the middle of the afternoon? He never fell asleep while driving the car. Now with Mother, that was another story.”
He frowned at her, appearing deeply concerned. “But you still suspect foul play.”
“There was no reason for them to die like they did.”
“Who received the inheritance?”
“I did. I was an only child.”
“Who did your father work for?”
“The post office in Austin.”
“Prior military service or anything else?”
“Navy. A submarine crewman.”
“Job?”
She knew he might take her father’s past military service as suspect, but it had nothing to do with her. “Listen, he retired when I was twelve years old, fourteen years before the accident. It had nothing to do with his death.”
Scott tilted his head to the side. “Nothing seems to have anything to do with anything, but someone seems to want you dead.”
She took a deep breath. Her father’s job had nothing to do with it, she was certain. “He intercepted Russian radio communications. Twice, after he retired from the military, men in suits questioned him about the messages he’d translated. That’s all. They wanted to be sure he didn’t say anything about the translations to anyone. And Dad didn’t. I hadn’t even known anything about it until about a month before his death.”
“Why then?”
She moistened her lips. “I don’t know.”
“Why did he finally tell you about it if he’d been so cautious not to tell you any of his secrets before?”
“He thought he was being followed.”
Scott couldn’t believe the woman who had slid all over his body in the sand, then had cuddled with him in bed that night could be anything more than a great catch. Now he figured they were in a dung heap of trouble and he had no idea who to turn to.
“What former job did your old boyfriend have?”
She looked up at him, her eyes worried again. “Military intelligence, but he wouldn’t have had anything to do with what my dad did. And Tom’s working for the G-1 right now. Besides, that was too many years earlier, different branches of the service too.”
“I thought only personnel types worked for the G-1.”
“Well, sometimes other types work for the G-1 if it’s a major’s slot and they need someone to fill it. The G-1 himself is a combat arms officer.”
“And Jackie?”
“She works in the same personnel office with me. We’re both action officers of the G-1.”
“The general’s staff. Okay, well, I’m not sure what to think. I examined the dead man’s clothes for ID. Of course there was none. I wasn’t entirely surprised at that.”
“There’s something else.” She hated to tell him about the man in her parents’ home. But if they were to discover what was going on, any clue, no matter how insignificant, had to be explored. “I shot a man in my parents’ home.”
Scott didn’t say a thing, just waited patiently to hear the rest.
She looked down at her lap, then explained what had happened.
“The body with no pulse got up and walked away, just like our man in the parking lot. It’s got to be the same people, Nicole, honey. If they broke into your parents’ house, it appears they were interested in your parents or their property, not you. You inherited their things, right? So what if your parents had something the men were looking for, except now they’re convinced you have it?”
“The police said they figured the man had come to steal, since my parents were dead. But then again, before I began my vacation, someone broke into my apartment. The police said there was a ring of thieves who broke into several apartments and homes in the area.”
“Yeah, two of them broke into my place. Wrong move. They’re in jail now.”
“You’re not the one who caught them, are you? The guys who were still wearing nametags on their BDUs?”
He smiled, still totally pleased with himself for getting the upper hand on the two lawbreakers. “Yep. Well, they got away, but I gave their description to the police and it didn’t take long for them to catch them.”
He was glad she was including him in her plans. He took her hand and squeezed. “Return to my home in Killeen. We’re both on leave until the end of the week. We can use my internet service to contact some folks I know, see if we can make any sense out of all this. It’ll just take a minute for me to shower and get dressed.” He rubbed his hand over his morning beard. “And get a shave.”
“I’ll pack my things and watch the weather channel and see which roads will be safe to travel.”
“Good deal.” He leaned over and kissed her soft lips. They tasted minty fresh.
She touched his scratchy beard and shook her head. “We should be going.”
Yeah, well she was right, he hated to admit.
Nicole flipped the channel to the local weather station. The brunt of the storm barreled into Houston. After the 1900 hurricane that had practically wiped Galveston out, they had built the town on a raised island of five feet of sand. Drainage was good and the water poured back into the Gulf. So luckily there were no problems with flooding on the island.
But the steady rain showers over Houston had soon waterlogged the already rain-saturated ground and now the bayous were overflowing their banks. Stranded city dwellers and tourists were trying to make it to higher ground or out of the city and suburbs entirely.
A reporter’s camera zoomed in on a man on the golf course clinging to a tree while others were waiting for rescue from their homes’ rooftops. It was hard to tell if the roads Scott and she would have to take were underwater or not from those they had listed on the screen and those they pictured from real life photos. The tops of eighteen-wheeler cabs were all that was exposed buried under tons of water. She’d never seen such a disaster before in her life so close by.