Midnight Fire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  Now Jack had a taste of that and he didn’t like it. Didn’t like being operational and looking after someone he cared about. It messed with his head, big time.

  The sooner they got out of Dodge the better, because right now all he could think about was Summer’s mouth and the feel of her beneath his hands. And memories of how sweet she’d been in bed filled his head so that he wasn’t calculating how many traffic cams they’d passed, even in a SUV that wasn’t being looked for. All he could do was keep his head low, Blake’s Fedora hiding his features. Making sure Summer’s face was covered, too.

  This was amazingly stressful—hiding his tracks and hers while wanting her in his bed. She was a huge distraction and yet you’d have to get bolt cutters to separate him from her. She wasn’t going anywhere without him right by her side.

  Damn.

  Jack opened the passenger side door. Man, he’d swiped a humongous SUV. He’d been able to put his boots on the ground no problem but Summer was much shorter than he was. She’d have to slide off the seat and hop down.

  Well, there was an app for that.

  “Lean forward,” he ordered.

  Jack had killed three of the four street lights at both ends of the alleyway. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where street lights were replaced often. Only one was working but it was enough to see the pale oval of her face inside the vehicle, light gray eyes almost glowing. She smiled faintly at him. She looked exactly like someone who was scared but was putting up a brave front.

  His heart gave a huge thump in his chest.

  She leaned forward until their faces were inches apart. He clasped her small waist through enough material to fashion a yurt and lifted her out and down, telling himself to let go of her once her feet hit the ground.

  The entire world seemed to have stopped. The blustery wind that had shaken the tree branches had stopped, or at least here in the back alley they were sheltered from the wind. A full moon was rising above the rooftops of the buildings around them, pure silver magic.

  Jack totally lost his situational awareness. He was aware of absolutely nothing but Summer as he stood there, hands still around her waist, so close he could feel her breathing. The only sound he heard was the roaring in his ears.

  His eyes became heavy and hers did, too. He was bending down and she was stretching up when a loud clatter sounded behind him and he was wrenched back to where he was and why.

  He was behind his safe house with Summer, who had narrowly missed dying the most atrocious death possible thanks to the fact that she was with him. He had to yank his head out of his ass, and get them inside pronto. Some very bad guys, with an agenda so huge one death among so many would mean nothing to them, were after her. And him, too. Only he’d been trained hard to win in scenarios like this. Summer hadn’t. Her bulwark against danger was him.

  And he was an idiot who’d actually contemplated standing outside kissing her. And fuck him if it still didn’t seem like a really good idea.

  Another clatter and he moved forward, taking her elbow.

  “Stray dogs?” Summer asked. She was keeping pace with him. Good girl.

  “Hmm.” Knowing the neighborhood, it was more likely rats, but he didn’t say that. He concentrated on getting them inside as quickly and quietly as possible. There was a flimsy gate that wasn’t at all as flimsy as it looked. Actually, it was made of steel with a titanium core. It had a print-activated keypad that got them quickly into the backyard. Jack pushed the gate behind him and heard the soft snick of a well-machined lock close behind them.

  The back door was much harder than it looked, too. Again, a thumbprint activated coded keypad to open the door.

  The small backyard was bristling with hidden sensors including IR, motion sensors, audio sensors. Only blank brick walls surrounded the yard. At the push of a button, a covering that mimicked a dirt yard would stretch out from side to side and from the back wall to the gate. If he needed to be shielded from a drone or a satellite, all he had to do was push that button.

  Hugh had chosen the safe house very well, but then he’d been a master of the game. For a second, Jack had a pang of pain in his chest. The fuckers after him had taken his family and the man who’d been like a second father to him.

  Well, they weren’t going to get him and by God they weren’t going to get Summer.

  Inside, Jack helped Summer shed Hector’s heavy overcoat and her own coat and helped her unwind the long scarf. He took his stolen overcoat and his own coat off and hung everything in the hallway closet.

  His mom had drilled neatness in him but he also couldn’t stand the thought of being cooped up in a small apartment that looked like weasels nested there. He’d spent way too much time here over the past six months. If he didn’t keep the space clean he’d go crazy.

  Crazier.

  It wasn’t nice like Summer’s apartment was, but it was okay. If you squinted.

  “It’s not that bad,” Summer said, turning around. Surprise was in her voice.

  “What were you expecting?” Jack asked. “Animal house?”

  She sketched a smile. “Not quite. But in thrillers, safe houses are stacked high with fast food and pizza boxes and empty beer bottles and they smell like a zoo.” She sniffed. “Doesn’t smell like a zoo, doesn’t smell of anything, really.”

  Jack shrugged. “Yeah. I try to keep it livable.”

  He tried to look at the space through her eyes. You could take the whole thing in at a glance. Living room, with round dining table near the kitchenette. Two other doors. One door open into the bedroom—thank God he’d made the bed—the other door closed. The bathroom.

  It was a far cry from his family home, a sprawling two hundred-year-old complex on two acres of landscaped grounds. His mom had turned it into a showcase and he’d taken it entirely for granted until he’d come home for the first time from college and realized how beautiful his home was.

  It had been lost after the Massacre. Yet another thing Hector Blake had taken from him.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  Summer turned around, wide-eyed. “You cook?”

  Jack lifted a corner of his mouth at her expression. “You don’t have to make it sound like rocket science, beyond my ability. Though, to be frank, I actually don’t cook. But there’s an excellent deli around the corner. And I happen to have four big pastrami on rye sandwiches I can nuke. And some beers in the fridge. You game?”

  “God, yes,” she breathed. “I’m starving.”

  “Danger will do that.” Jack sat her down at the round dining table, grateful that he’d swiped off the crumbs from that morning’s bagel. Max’s pastramis on rye were a wonder to behold. He put two huge sandwiches on a platter, stuck it in the microwave, put two plates on the table, two glasses, two napkins and for Summer a knife and fork if she wanted it. Personally, Jack wouldn’t let a knife and fork touch Max’s masterpiece.

  When the microwave dinged he took the steaming platter and put one huge sandwich on Summer’s plate, the other on his. He’d nuke the remaining two when they’d finished these.

  “Wow.” Summer lifted her eyes from the monster sandwich, filled with two inches of juicy, thinly sliced pastrami. “Looks good. Looks gargantuan.”

  Jack wrapped a napkin around his and brought his pastrami to his nose and closed his eyes. It smelled as heavenly as it always did. “Dig in.”

  Summer used her napkin to hold the sandwich, too, and took a huge bite. Meat juice spilled down her chin and she laughed.

  Jack reached out and wiped her chin. “Good, isn’t it?”

  Her mouth was so full she just nodded. Swallowed. “God. Fantastic.”

  He finished his second sandwich a little before she did, but it was close.

  “Have a pickle.” Jack held a dill pickle spear in front of her mouth and she took a big bi
te out of it.

  For some crazy reason, it gave him enormous pleasure to feed her. She’d had nothing but shocks since he’d showed up in her apartment. In the time since he’d inserted himself back into her life, she’d lost her apartment and car and, for the time being, her job. Crazy danger had attached itself to the both of them. They were on the run and God only knew for how long. Jack had been investigating the Massacre for six months and so far hadn’t made much headway.

  It might be possible that her life would be put on hold for six months, too. Longer. Maybe forever. It was entirely possible that life as she knew it was over.

  He represented nothing but pain and loss for her.

  So, by God, feeding her felt really good. Just like it felt really good watching a little color return to her face, and a half smile form. She had a naturally serious face but her smile could light up a room. He wanted to see her smile. He wanted that a lot.

  “More,” he said and held the spear to her mouth again.

  She took a big bite out of it and as he watched her luscious mouth open and close over the pickle spear, his dick gave a hard kick in his pants.

  Could she feel it? Did his dick send out a disturbance in the air? Because she swallowed and stared at him, mouth a little O.

  “You’re aroused.” It wasn’t a question.

  Jack stopped himself from glancing at his crotch. Christ, his crotch was under the table. How the hell could she tell? Did he have a light switching to red on his forehead?

  But however she knew, she knew. It was pointless lying.

  “Yeah.” His voice was hoarse. “God yeah.”

  “You were aroused back in Hector’s place.”

  He nodded. No use denying it. Was it vibrating?

  Where was she going with this? Was it her way of showing him he was the lowest of the low? Here she was, running for her life and all he could think about was sex?

  You haven’t changed, she’d told him. But that was the thing. He had. He had changed. Getting a hard-on, thinking about sex while he was on an op, was definitely not like him. So okay, he’d felt temporarily safe in Hector’s place and he knew this place was safe. He was not going to get a hard-on out on the streets or in a public place. But he had major wood now.

  His dick had reverted back to adolescence, when it had a mind of its own.

  Was he making her uncomfortable? Was he being a dick? Was his dick being a dick?

  He opened his mouth to apologize and she said, “Okay.”

  His mouth closed with a snap. Did she just say what he thought she said?

  “Okay?” he echoed. Okay what? Because it couldn’t be—

  Summer stood up, gestured with her head to the bedroom. “I’m incredibly tense and a little bit scared and I think sex would loosen me up. I remember sex with you and it was fun and I think I could use a little of that right now.” She searched his eyes. “But here’s the deal. It’s sex and nothing else. I don’t expect anything from you and you don’t expect anything from me. We’re thrown together right now and I’m hoping to get a major story from all of this. So we have a little fun together but it won’t be more than that.”

  Jack stood absolutely still. He had no idea how to answer all that. The old Jack, his asinine adolescent self would have shouted hell yes! Because no-strings sex was every teenage boy’s dream. Quick roll in the hay, out of bed, out of mind.

  But he wasn’t the old Jack and he knew absolutely that he couldn’t do what she asked. He couldn’t keep himself separate from his emotions. Couldn’t fuck her and walk away with a wave. Couldn’t do it.

  It had been a long time since he liked anonymous hookups. Sex with someone you cared nothing about was fake. Like eating cardboard food when you were hungry. He wasn’t a walking sack of hormones like back in the day. He was a person. Not a dick with extraneous meat around it.

  He liked Summer. He more than liked Summer. He’d found, to his vast surprise, that there was a Summer-shaped hole inside him and she was filling it up just fine. She was beautiful, fascinating, brave, smart. She was everything he could ever want in a woman. He didn’t want to jeopardize a future relationship just because she had an itch he could scratch.

  No sir.

  He was better than that and so was she. He wanted to have sex with Summer in the worst way, but he wanted sex and other things, too.

  He opened his mouth to refuse because he wasn’t that kind of guy, but what came out instead was, “Great. Let’s go to bed.”

  Chapter Seven

  Kearns woke him up at 1:00 a.m., which was vastly annoying. Springer’s wife, Anna, had been nursing a cold and she needed her sleep.

  Marcus Springer thumbed the ring to silent before answering, not bothering to keep the note of annoyance out of his voice.

  “Yes,” he said coldly, searching with his feet for the Prada slippers. Ah. He stood up, pulled the silk comforter over his sleeping wife’s shoulders and went out into the hallway. “Is something wrong?”

  “I waited for the target and finally left some packages for her to discover.”

  “And?”

  Kearns was silent a moment. “I left a camera outside her door, and outside the front door of her building. Camouflaged. She did not return to the building, but...”

  “But?” A cold feeling settled in his gut.

  “Somehow someone tipped off the FBI. Their bio team is there right now. I’m watching them going in on my tablet.”

  They were very close to completion of the Plan. Springer had wanted to send a message. A strong one. Don’t mess with us. We are stronger than you and we will destroy you.

  “Any sign of the Redding woman?”

  “No, sir. No sign.”

  “She’s gone to ground.”

  “Yessir.”

  Springer thought. Redding was a good journalist, but she was a woman alone. She had no partner and she ran a business that was good but fragile, like all web-based businesses. Isolate and destroy, he thought.

  But first intimidate. Strike terror in her heart.

  “Blow up her house. Don’t even try to make it look like an accident. Wherever she’s gone to ground, she should know we have a scorched earth policy.”

  “Sir.” No hesitation.

  “Then destroy her office.”

  “Sir. I don’t think Area 8 has an office. I think it’s headquartered at the woman’s personal address.”

  “Even better. We’ll take out her office and home at the same time.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Who are her co-workers?”

  Springer heard tapping, then Kearns came back. “There are two people mentioned on the masthead besides Redding. The rest are freelancers.”

  “Take out the two on the masthead. Where are they?”

  Another pause. “In the DC area. I’ll take care of those. It’ll be done as fast as possible.”

  “Excellent. Hide the bodies. They need to seem to have disappeared. It’ll keep Redding anxious, off-balance.” The Redding woman should know she had no place to turn to. They would come after her and she had no place to hide. She was a journalist, used to pressing forward, not hiding. How long could she evade them? “Full out effort on the Redding woman. Check citywide cameras, check credit card use, check her usual haunts, run her to ground and eliminate. Are we clear?”

  “Yessir,” Kearns replied and signed off.

  His team had access to vast resources and he could run this off the books almost forever. He didn’t need forever. He just needed three more days and then utter chaos would rule.

  No one would remember Summer Redding even existed.

  * * *

  Summer knew exactly what she was doing. She was going to have blow-your-mind sex with a guy she knew could provide it. Guaranteed. Unless, of cour
se, her memory was off and it had been perfectly normal sex, only she didn’t know that at the time, being so new to sex and all.

  But the fact was, no other man had come close to giving her what Jack gave her.

  No other man had dumped her like that, either. She’d chosen very carefully after Jack and no one dumped her. She’d never been the dumpee ever again. She was the one who dumped, as carefully and gently as she could.

  Red hot sex was what she needed right now. She needed it to wipe all this destruction from her mind. She knew precisely what she needed and the only man in the world guaranteed to give it to her was right here, ready and willing, to judge by the erection in his pants, so what were they waiting for?

  One thing she knew—she didn’t want an aftermath. She didn’t want anything from Jack other than a good time in bed that would make her feel strong again, not a weak cold thing. She didn’t want cuddles or words of devotion.

  She’d had plenty of that the first time around. And then he’d disappeared in a puff of smoke and left her broken-hearted.

  Not this time. She was an entirely different person now. Much less vulnerable. Not vulnerable at all, actually. She didn’t want him forever, she just wanted him right now, to get rid of this tension that was humming all through her body.

  She didn’t want anyone for forever. Not doing that. The only couple she’d ever seen that wasn’t sick or temporary or had an expiration date stamped on their foreheads had been the Delvauxes. Jack’s parents. They’d been a couple. A real one. Two people who loved each other and shared their lives. But other than them, Summer hadn’t seen anything that really tempted her out of her single state.

  Why would she give up her life? She had a great apartment, a great job, great friends.

  Of course—the apartment was gone and probably Area 8 too, since she couldn’t just surface and report things, carry on as if nothing happened. Also—it was entirely possible the shadowy forces after her would go after her friends, too, so she needed to stay off the grid.