Josh stared down at her for a long, silent moment. Was she that utterly convinced this was all a show? Had she felt nothing of the sudden, fierce fire that had so unexpectedly ripped through him when he’d kissed her before? And that had leapt to life instantly when he’d kissed her again? Had it really surprised her that he’d wanted more, that the sight of Pinky’s hand on her had infuriated him, and he had seized the chance to wipe the image out of his mind the moment the man had closed the door on them?
On some subconscious level not consumed with figuring just how they were going to get out of this without anyone from Redstone getting hurt, he’d been trying to deal with the shock of this. This was Tess, little Tess, hired when she was little more than a girl simply because she had that magic touch in the air. The girl who had become like a sister to Elizabeth, and thus to him.
But she was also the person he himself relied on. For more things than he could count, probably more things than he even realized. But it had always been a quiet, solid sort of support, never flashy or obvious, simply ever and always there.
You want to risk losing that? Just keep up on this path she obviously doesn’t want.
Was even that fierce fire worth losing this precious friendship? Were it not for the pure shock, the answer would be easy. The shock of feeling anything, anything at all, when he’d been so numb for so long.
The only bigger shock was that it was Tess.
She was looking at him so oddly he felt compelled to speak. “I’m sorry. I know that must have felt like kissing your brother.”
Her voice sounded strange to him, with a harsh edge he’d not heard before, when she said, “I have a brother. I’ve kissed my brother. This is nothing like it.”
“Tess—”
She pulled away from him, retreated a few steps. That alone made his forehead crease; he didn’t think he’d ever seen Tess Machado back away from anything.
“You’ve never been one to start something you didn’t mean to finish,” she said in that same voice. “Please don’t begin the habit now. Not with this.”
Josh wondered where all his vaunted cleverness had gone, where his ability to assess, read between the lines and the intent behind words had gone. Because he had no idea how she’d meant that.
…something you don’t mean to finish.
Was it just that—a phrase, a cliché, just a way to say stop? He was her boss, technically. At least, as much as anyone could be the boss of her free, independent spirit. But surely they’d known each other too long for that to even be a factor.
He told himself to leave it, if ever there was a time and a place, this wasn’t it. And that was a big if; was he truly willing to risk what they had in pursuit of something that might destroy it? Simply because, for the first time since his wife’s death he…felt?
It’s Tess, he told himself yet again.
That should have answered the ridiculous question right there. The fact that it didn’t made him edgier than he already was. He told himself again to drop it. And he hadn’t gotten where he was by ignoring his instincts.
Which didn’t explain why, instead of turning to what he should be thinking about, he was suddenly asking, “And if I did mean to finish it?”
She stared at him. And for a moment, the briefest flash, some thing hot and alive flashed in her dark eyes. And although it kicked an answering heat through him, all his fabled instincts couldn’t tell him what it was. The possibilities beat at him, anger at the top of the list, anger that he would risk what they had, anger that he would even think about such a thing, anger that he’d forgotten her heart had been buried with Eric as surely as his own had gone with Elizabeth.
That it might be something else, some responding echo of the fire he’d felt himself, was an idea best left unformed. When this was over—and it would be, soon; the moment when Pinky had touched her had snapped the final, thin thread of his patience—when they got back to sanity, perhaps.
Of course, when they got back to sanity, it likely would go away by itself.
That it was the situation hadn’t really occurred to him. He’d rarely been in actual danger. In the air, a few times, but at those times his focus was almost clinical as he made the decisions necessary to resolve the emergency. On the ground, only once, and it had been over before he’d completely realized there was a threat.
That once had put Reeve Westin—Reeve Fox then—in the hospital with a bullet meant for him.
And that memory accomplished everything he’d been trying to; put everything except getting out of this with no harm to anyone he cared about out of his mind. That the person he was worried about most was Tess was something he’d just have to deal with.
“Do you think that call was from whoever’s behind this?” she asked, moving to the business at hand with almost disconcerting ease; wasn’t it supposed to be men who could most easily compartmentalize?
“The weasel-out comment?” he asked, forcing himself to focus.
“Yes.”
“Maybe. Kind of hard to call it off once the guns are drawn,” Josh said, and unexpectedly Tess smiled.
“It’s good to hear that again,” she said when he lifted a questioning brow at her. “The drawl.”
And that simply she utterly disarmed him.
And made him renew his vow that she, of all of Redstone, would not get hurt.
“I don’t like this, Mac.”
“I know.”
Draven studied the man who was, oddly, pondering what to wear.
All the reasons they’d come up with why the person to pretend he was Josh could or couldn’t be this one or that one were valid. That didn’t mean he liked this any better.
“We’re committed now,” Mac reminded him. “Ryan sent the picture.”
Draven knew that. He also knew that Mac had a reckless streak, although it had been tempered, as much by his wife, Emma, as by his experience in Nicaragua. It was that experience that nagged at Draven; the circumstances might be very different, but would the memories of the time he’d been held captive and tortured beyond most men’s ability to bear make him freeze at some crucial moment?
“Face it, John,” Mac said. “The only person you’d be happy with going in there as Josh is you.”
He couldn’t argue with that; it was nothing less than the truth. He would have been much happier if it had been only him. He’d thought about it—just showing up as the pilot they would be expecting, and taking them both down himself. But them thinking they were about to have their prey in their clutches was better, he had to admit. It would have them focused elsewhere, and maybe give him the edge he needed. Ignorance might present opportunity, but counting on your opponent’s stupidity could get you killed.
“Besides, you may be one of the triumvirate, but I’m taller,” Mac quipped.
“Fractionally,” Draven muttered. He hadn’t even met Mac when he’d hung that name on the three of them, but no matter, it had stuck anyway.
“And no one’s Josh’s six-three,” Sam put in, the first time she’d spoken since she’d teased Ryan Barton about his photo work, accusing him of airbrushing her, “so that’s a moot point.”
“If it turns ugly,” Draven began, but Mac lifted a hand.
“Just because I screwed up that once doesn’t mean I don’t remember how to fight. And nobody brawls better than a port rat, and that’s what I was for most of my life.”
Mac’s life on the sea was legend, and Draven knew what he said was true; he’d learned to survive as a kid on some of the meanest streets around the world.
And in Nicaragua, it had taken four of that brutal warlord’s men to take him down.
“Believe me,” Mac said, his voice going oddly quiet, “I understand that if one of the Redstone family is in trouble, you’re the one they want to see coming. When I was in that hellhole, even though I’d only heard the stories for years, I knew who you were the minute I laid eyes on you. Up until then, I half-thought you were a myth, a story created to protect Redstone.�
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“Maybe I was avoiding you,” Draven said dryly.
“Wouldn’t blame you,” Mac said with a grin.
Draven studied him for a long moment. Then, very quietly, he said, “I know what you’re planning, Mac. Josh will never let it happen.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Mac said, suddenly busying himself fiddling with a heavy gold ring with a large, round diamond set off-center in the broad top. Draven knew it wasn’t something Josh would wear by any stretch, but they were guessing those two would expect something like it. The ring, in fact, was something Mac had found in one of his treasure hunts. He’d kept it, he’d once said, out of amusement that even in the seventeenth century men had been into flashing their wealth, something he himself avoided as much as Josh. It had been aboard his own plane, along with the somewhat limited wardrobe—he was anything but a clotheshorse—he had with him.
“Besides,” Draven said. “I am going in.”
Mac blinked. “What?”
“They’re going to expect the pilot, aren’t they? And they’ve heard my voice on the phone.”
“Mr. Draven?”
Draven turned to look at Barton, still seated before the computer monitor. He’d tried to get the young man to drop the Mister, but so far no luck. The self-described tech-head had the headphones on so he could monitor the situation on board the Hawk V uninterrupted by their planning and preparation.
“He just got a call on that phone,” Barton said. “And he looks even less happy than when he got those texts.”
“Give us the audio,” Draven instructed, and Barton immediately unplugged the headphones. No audio came through other than background noise, but the video clearly showed the taller man with the cell phone to his ear, listening to something that clearly wasn’t pleasing him.
“‘Weasel out’?” Reeve quoted, saying aloud what they all remembered hearing a few minutes ago.
“Maybe he didn’t mean it that way,” Singleton said. “Maybe it’s just a word he uses.”
“The real point is,” St. John observed, “whoever he is, if he truly had control, they wouldn’t have dared to not answer when he texted the first time.”
No one commented on St. John’s full sentence because the truth of what he’d said hung in the room ominously.
“Why did he?” Barton asked. “Text, I mean. Why not just call in the first place?”
“Probably self-protection,” Beck answered. “You can always claim it wasn’t you who sent a text. Voice contact’s a bit harder to deny.”
“If he is trying to call it off,” Noah Rider said, “do we hold off? Wait, give them a chance to cut their losses?”
Rider didn’t sound happy about the idea of further delay, and Draven knew that sentiment was likely in all of them at the moment. They hadn’t been trained into a tight, cohesive team to sit around and wait. He’d trained them to do more than just react, and while he’d also trained them to caution, this was beginning to chafe.
“I can wait if I absolutely have to,” Tony Alvera put in rather fiercely, “as long as we take them down when Josh and Tess are clear.”
For one moment Draven let everything he was feeling into his voice.
“Oh, they’re going down, no matter what.”
Chapter 20
“Y’know,” Josh drawled—for a moment it was a relief not to worry about it—“I’ve had a bellyful of this.”
“I know.”
He glanced at Tess, who had been looking out the window on the side of the small, metal building that served as a terminal. He knew her as well as anyone, knew the tough spirit Eric had so admired was alive and well, and many times larger than her petite size.
“You haven’t?”
“Oh, I have. But I also know that John Draven has a plan.”
“Yes.”
“And, I know it’s in motion.”
That got his attention. And suddenly her position next to the window took on more meaning than simply distraction from what had become an unaccustomed and unwelcome awkwardness between them.
“What did you see?”
“Rand’s back. On the roof.”
And that, Josh knew, meant only one thing. Rand Singleton had an artistic eye when it came to photography, a passion he’d always had. But that same eye for composition, detail and the scene before him gave him a different skill when necessary; he was the best sniper on the entire Redstone Security team.
The voices from the main cabin filtered through the door again, raised again, as Brown Shirt and Pinky argued. Odd, he thought for an instant, that here, literally inside the scene of the crime as it were, they were the ones out of the loop, while Draven and his crew were hearing every word.
“They’re close,” Tess said.
He knew she meant to breaking. “Very,” he said with a nod.
“If it is being called off…” she began.
“They’re in the same boat they’d be in if it wasn’t, except without the running money they’re counting on.”
“We’ve seen them, would know them instantly,” Tess said.
He’d known she would figure that out on her own, that they were a distinct liability on the scale of these two’s chances for long-term survival.
“We have to assume,” she said, “that when they realize they’re trapped they’re going to feel cornered.”
“Yes.”
“They might not actually want to kill us, but they may have no choice.”
“And hoping they won’t isn’t good enough.”
“So unless we get a chance earlier, we move when Draven does?”
Josh nodded. Tess nodded in turn, short, sharp, decisive. There was no fear or hesitation in her demeanor, just a trace of relief that they were through with the endless waiting. That was his Tess, all right.
His Tess.
As she stood there looking outside for any further signs that Redstone was on the move, Josh found himself staring at the slender nape of her neck beneath the sleek wedge of thick, dark hair. And wishing he could press his lips to the warm, creamy skin there.
A sudden urge swept him. His entire life had been a matter of imagining and then testing designs, concepts, plans, systems. The testing was as crucial as the imagining, and always had been. Only when the results had been consistent enough for long enough was he certain enough to proceed.
He wanted to test these hot, dangerous waters again.
“Tess,” he said, and barely recognized his own voice when he did.
She turned, but for a seemingly endless moment didn’t look up at him. It was so unlike her—avoiding his gaze—that he knew what he was feeling was what had changed his voice. No wonder she wouldn’t look at him.
And then she gave a small, halfshrug that made every instinct he had take notice. If he was in a boardroom or a tricky negotiation, he would have read it as a sign of surrender, of resignation, and known Redstone was going to get what he wanted.
What he wanted….
The images that went with those words stunned him, and no amount of reminding himself she was the girl he’d practically watched grow up didn’t change them. He had the brief, odd thought that he should know her as well as she did him, but somehow he didn’t feel right now like he knew her at all.
At last she looked up at him, and what he saw in those familiar, loved, dark eyes startled him. A distinct echo of that unexpected fire glowed there, and he realized that this was why she’d avoided looking at him. She’d known he would see it.
Did it mean she didn’t want this, that reluctance to let him see?
“Maybe it was a fluke,” he murmured, almost unaware of speaking out loud.
“Circumstances?” she asked, her voice tremulous in a way he’d never heard from her before in all the years he’d known her.
“Only one way to find out,” he said, taking another step toward her.
“Testing,” she said, as if she’d heard every word of his earlier thoughts. Or, he amended, realizing it was
more likely as if she knew him so completely, knew how he thought, how he worked so well that she simply knew exactly what he would be thinking.
Tess always knew.
The old axiom of the third time being the charm ran through his head the moment he pulled her into his arms. And then he had her mouth under his, her body pressed against his, and he knew that charm was much too small a word for this.
He heard her make a small sound, a sound that mirrored that gesture of surrender. And then, with the same fierceness with which she flew, she threw herself into this kiss with full, headlong intent. He felt the shift, the change, in the instant be fore the inferno she kindled engulfed him.
Kissing Tess had been a surprise. Tess kissing him back was a shock beyond his current capacity to measure, and the jolt was no less than if those wires he’d been toying with had been live and he’d been the last link that completed the circuit.
Her mouth was soft, warm and irresistible. Sensations made even more intense by their long absence swamped him, and he tightened his hold on her, unwilling to allow one bit of space between them.
The impossibility of this woman being the one who brought that part of him that had been so numb for so long back to life was only matched by the sudden feeling of inexorability that swept him.
Tess? Insane. She was like a sister.
Tess? Inevitable. Indispensible. Imperative.
Essential.
He felt her tremble and unwillingly broke the kiss.
“Tess,” he began, then stopped, not knowing what to say.
“Some test,” she said, sounding as shaken as he felt.
“Last chance,” he said in turn. Her eyes widened as she read his meaning. He wanted more, he wanted much, much more, but there was no way he was going to get it, not now. He’d had enough, more than enough of this stupid game, and he was ready to put an end to it. Draven would just have to cope.
A movement outside—within view of the stateroom window—made them both glance that way. And what they saw snapped them back full force to the situation at hand with shocking suddenness.
Gabe Taggert stood there again, holding a pair of the signal paddles used to guide airplanes on the ground and looking, for their captors’ benefit, like he could work at any airport any where. But he was wearing, Josh noted, a yellow vest. He leaned forward to look more closely, as did Tess. For the briefest of moments Gabe looked up, and they made eye contact.
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