by Paula Graves
She felt his scrutiny like a touch, moving over her, laying her bare, attributes and flaws alike. His fingers followed, skimming over the curve of her hips, up the faint furrows of stretch marks left by her pregnancy. He knelt on the floor in front of her, pressing his lips against the swell of her lower belly, where Stevie had grown and thrived for nine months.
He looked up at her, his eyes bright with emotion. “You’re so beautiful.” His voice was shaky and soft, sending a jolt of need racing through her to settle at her core.
Dropping to her own knees, she caught his face between her hands, dragging her thumb across the softness of his lower lip. Unable to find words to answer him, she replied with a kiss, the only way she knew to impart to him the tangle of wild emotions filling her heart.
“Wait,” he rasped, drawing away for a second. “I need to get something—”
She shook her head, reaching down to pick up the bag he’d dropped on the floor. She scrabbled through the side pocket and pulled out a small box of condoms. “Like this?”
He stared at the box, then back at her. “You, too? When?”
“Remember when we stopped for gas at that place back in Arkansas, and I went in to get some bottled water?” She grinned. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared, just in case.”
The sizzling look he gave her sent another bolt of lightning shooting straight to her core. “In case you got the chance to seduce me?”
“In case you seduced me,” she countered, sliding her hand down to the button of his jeans. “Because I knew I could never say no to you.”
He stilled her fingers as she inched his zipper down. “Are you sure about this? You know there’ll be no happy ending.”
“I know,” she said, closing her fingers around his and bringing them up to her lips. She kissed his knuckles lightly, one at a time, then squeezed his hands. “That’s why I’m not going to turn down whatever you can offer. Even if this is all we ever get, it’s still something. Isn’t it?”
He cradled her face between his palms, gazing at her with such depth of emotion that she felt as if her bones had turned to liquid. “Yes,” he answered, and lowered his head, his mouth slanting across hers in a deep, hungry kiss.
THE FISHING TRIP was going about the way Damon expected. He doubted that Tris and Malcolm were having any more luck fishing information out of Jake and Gabe Cooper than he was in getting Hannah Patterson to talk. Clearly, all the Coopers had circled the wagons to protect their brother. If he wanted to find out where Luke was now and if—or when—he’d be heading home to Gossamer Ridge, he’d probably have to find out from someone outside the family.
But who? He doubted any of the Coopers would let it slip, even to friends, if they’d heard anything from Luke. They all knew the danger in loose lips. So if anyone outside the family knew anything, it would be something learned by accident.
So think, Damon. Luke Cooper’s coming home to Gossamer Ridge. He can’t stay at a motel or anywhere he might come into contact with people who know him—there’s an APB out on him and not even the Coopers can shove something like that in a drawer and forget it. So where would they stash him?
The fishing camp? He didn’t know that much about places like fishing camps—was it basically a bunch of campsites? Were there cabins?
A tug on his fishing line distracted him for a moment. He reeled in a fat black crappie and grinned over at Hannah, playing the part of the carefree fisherman.
She smiled back at him. “That’s a big one. You going to keep him? The limit’s thirty, and that one’s long enough—”
“I don’t reckon my motel would appreciate me hauling in a mess of fish to store in the room fridge,” Damon drawled, deliberately using the accent he’d left behind years ago.
“We can store it for you—just pick it up when you leave town. Or if you’re thinking about extending the trip, you might consider staying at the fishing camp. We have a camp freezer where our guests can store their catches.”
“What’s the fishing camp like?” Damon asked, hardly able to believe that the distraction of catching the crappie had led him right into the topic he most wanted to discuss. “Do I need a tent or something?”
“We do have places for people to pitch tents, but we also have some cabins. There are several small ones closer to the water, or if you wanted something a little nicer and more secluded, we have a handful of larger cabins up the mountainside.” She clamped her mouth shut suddenly. “Actually, I think all of those are booked this week, but the smaller cabins are very nice, and since you’re here to fish anyway—”
Bingo, Damon thought, not missing the sudden flush darkening her face. She’d been too quick to tell him that the mountain cabins were already occupied.
Occupied by her brother and Abby Chandler, perhaps?
A vibration against his left hip interrupted his thoughts. He quickly unhooked the fish and considered whether or not it would look more authentic to keep the crappie or toss it back in the lake. He opted for the latter—no reason to kill the fish since he didn’t intend to hang here long once he found what he was looking for.
“Maybe next trip,” he said, pulling the cell phone from his pocket. “I’ve got to check this—might be from the office.”
Hannah nodded and turned her attention back to the trolling motor, moving them a little farther out into the lake.
There was a text message waiting. Damon opened it. It was from Tris.
CHANDLER BOY HERE @ BAIT SHOP. WILL SCOOP & GRAB ASAP.
Damon struggled to keep his outward demeanor calm, but inside, he’d gone utterly cold. He’d been so sure he was about to find Cooper and the Chandler woman, and now everything was about to go to hell.
He had to get to the bait shop first. The last thing he could afford to do was let Tris and Malcolm get to the kid first and use him to extract the missing files from his mother and Cooper. It would ruin all his plans.
But what if he was already too late?
ABBY GAZED UP at the ceiling, where morning sunlight filtering through the curtains painted undulating bands of light across the white expanse. Her body felt heavy and completely sated, so utterly content that she decided she didn’t want to move for the rest of the day.
Luke traced the swell of her breast, sending little sparks fluttering through her, but she felt too weak to be roused to anything more strenuous than a lazy smile. “Are you going to just lie there all day?” he murmured, nuzzling her shoulder.
“Is that a problem?”
He lowered his mouth to her breast, covering one nipple and suckling lightly. Her sex contracted, suggesting she wasn’t entirely spent.
He lifted his head, resting his chin on her sternum. “I wish we had days to do nothing more than this.”
A sliver of darkness invaded the warm cocoon of contentment their passion had wrapped around them. “But we don’t have days, do we?” she sighed, stroking his hair.
“The sooner we figure out the password to the flash drive, the sooner we can stop the people who are threatening you and Stevie.” Luke caught her hand, kissing her fingertips. “You want that, don’t you?”
Of course she wanted Stevie to be safe. She wanted to be able to go anywhere she wanted and not worry that someone was coming after her. The contents of that flash drive might give them the ammunition to take down Barton Reid and his private army.
But it would also put an end to any reason Luke had to stay around her and Stevie anymore. He could walk away, sparing them from the deadly attention of Eladio Cordero and Los Tiburones.
“Does it have to be over?” she asked quietly.
He knew what she was asking. “You know it does.”
Did she? Or did Cordero already suspect, thanks to Luke’s decision to help her with Reid’s thugs, that she and Stevie were important to Luke? Important enough to use to punish him?
Before she could voice her thoughts, Luke rolled away from her and sat up on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to go take a shower and see what I can rust
le up for lunch.” He shot her a wicked look. “Want to join me?”
She wanted to say no, to make him stop and talk to her about the future. But she knew his mind was made up. Whatever happened here, in this temporary sanctuary, might be all they’d ever have together.
She managed to smile, though a dull ache had set up residence in the center of her chest. “Race you there!”
AN HOUR LATER, they made it to the kitchen. While Abby contemplated how to bring up the subject of their future again, Luke raided the refrigerator for bread, sandwich meat, mayonnaise and mustard. “What’re you in the mood for? Ham?”
She caught his hand, removing the butter knife and laying it on the counter. “I’m in the mood to talk about what happens when this mess with the flash drive is over.”
A pained look flashed in his eyes. “You know what happens. Y’all go back to San Diego. Or Texas—you were happy in Texas. Billy and Wanda would love to have you there full-time.”
“Ross, too, I guess,” Abby said.
Luke flinched visibly.
“But I don’t want to be with Ross. I want to be with you.”
He clasped her hands in his, pulling her closer. “I want to be with you, too. But you know it can’t happen.”
“What if it can?” She slid closer, flattening her breasts against his chest. “We can find a way to make it work—”
He caught her arms and gently pushed her away. “How about we concentrate on finding out what’s on that disk?” He edged past her, ignoring the food he’d laid out, and headed into the great room, where his laptop computer was already set up, with the flash drive in place.
Disheartened by his refusal to consider other options, she put the food back in the refrigerator and joined him on the sofa. “You have a bad habit of having your way with me, then walking away,” she muttered.
He looked at her, his mouth trembling open as if he wanted to respond, but he clamped his lips shut and turned back to the computer. He typed the word Tesoro in the prompt box. A response flashed up on the screen. “Incorrect Password.”
“Try the date Matt and I married—June 11,” Abby suggested.
Luke typed in several variations of the date, including the year, excluding the year, excluding the day. Nothing worked.
“I tried our birthdays earlier, with no luck,” he told her. “How about Janis Meeks?” she murmured, surprised that she didn’t even feel a twinge of hurt anymore at the thought of Matt’s infidelities. Maybe the pain of knowing she’d have to walk away from Luke all too soon was enough to eclipse the humiliation of her husband’s lies.
Luke typed the name in as one word, no spaces. A few seconds passed without anything happening.
Then a folder flashed onto the screen, filled with a series of image files.
“They’re encrypted,” Luke said a few minutes later, “but I’m pretty sure I know the program he used.” He opened a program and started dragging the files into the decryption queue. Slowly, thumbnail images began to pop into a second box. When the program finished, Luke opened the first file.
It was a scan of a ledger. Abby read over the notations, trying to make sense of what they revealed. “It’s a record of payments,” she said, “but what do those letters mean?” She pointed to a series of capital letters listed by each number.
“Those are acronyms for the weapons they were providing to El Cambio,” Luke answered. “Grenade launchers, anti-aircraft missiles, all kinds of service rifles—” He frowned darkly. “Son of a bitch!”
“I thought they were trading arms for drugs, not money.”
Luke looked at the next few files. “They were. The money seems to denote the street value of the drugs they were handing over to Voices for Villages in exchange for the guns.”
“Why would they keep such detailed records of illegal activities?”
“So nobody got cheated. They had to be able to produce proof that the deals were equitable or El Cambio might have used force to get what they wanted.” Luke sighed. “I think Matt got these files from Janis Meeks somehow.”
“I bet that’s where he was going all those nights—” Abby sighed. “Before his last tour of duty, he’d always left his overseas dalliances behind when he came home. At least, before then, I’d never had any reason to doubt he was staying faithful to me while he was home.”
“He was seeing Janis Meeks stateside?” Luke frowned.
“He was seeing someone,” she answered. “Going out at all hours, not telling me anything about what he was doing—his behavior during those last weeks at home was what eventually led me to find out about all the other times he’d cheated.” She’d asked a lot of questions after his death. She hadn’t liked many of the answers she’d found.
They pored through the rest of the files, which were far more thorough than even Luke had seemed to expect. There were names, dates, exchanges that would be easy for prosecutors to verify, even if the original files had been destroyed. There were also copies of e-mails from Barton Reid, establishing his direct knowledge of the illegal arms-for-drugs trade.
“This will bring down Reid for sure,” Luke said as he copied the information onto his hard drive before removing the flash drive. “We just have to figure out which government agency we can trust not to sweep the information under the rug.”
“We should make another copy. Just in case.”
“I’ll let you do that,” he said, motioning for her to come with him. Abby followed him to the hall closet, which he had apparently already unlocked, since he opened it without a key. Inside, she saw a couple of rifles with several ammunition magazines stacked nearby, and a gun box which must contain the Smith & Wesson Aaron had mentioned.
Luke pulled a small key ring from his pocket and opened the gun box, extracting a Smith & Wesson M&P Compact 9mm pistol. He checked the clip. Abby saw it was full.
He handed her the pistol. He knew she knew how to use one.
She took it from him, let herself get used to the weight and the shape. Luke and Matt had both taken her to the firing range now and then, so she could stay in practice. She hadn’t been back since Matt’s death, but she thought she’d be able to hold her own if the worst happened.
Now that they’d found the flash drive, maybe the worst wouldn’t have to happen at all—
The phone in the great room rang, making Abby jump.
“Nobody would be calling here except family,” Luke murmured, moving past her into the great room. He picked up the phone. “Yeah?”
As Abby joined him at the table, his forehead creased in a deep frown. He looked down at her, his expression odd.
“Who is it?” Abby whispered.
“It’s Hannah,” he answered, confusion wrinkling his brow. “She says her fishing client insists on speaking to you.”
Chapter Sixteen
Abby stared at Luke, confused. “What?”
“Hannah said it was important. I trust her. I think you’d better talk to the man.” Luke handed her the phone.
Abby’s hand shook so much she almost dropped the phone. “This is Abby Chandler.”
The voice that greeted her was male, deep and familiar. It was the second man from her apartment, she realized immediately. “Mrs. Chandler, my name is Damon Sanford. I’m connected with the people who are after you, but I am not on their side. I met you before at your apartment.”
“I remember.”
“It’s very important that you believe what I’m saying to you. I know you have every reason to doubt me, so I’m going to give you a name. Alexander Quinn. I want you to ask Luke Cooper if he’s ever heard of the man. Ask him now.”
She looked at Luke. “Do you know an Alexander Quinn?”
Luke blinked with surprise. “CIA handler. Worked in the American embassy in Sanselmo when I was there three years ago.”
“He says Quinn is a CIA agent,” Abby said into the phone.
“Quinn will be calling him in five minutes. He needs to listen to what Quinn tells him to do. We may
already be too late to stop the abduction of your son, so it’s vital that we have a plan to get him back. Understand?”
Knees buckling, she fell to the sofa. “They have my son?”
“They sent me a text message, telling me they’d spotted him. I believe they were on their way to take him, and now Hannah Patterson can’t get anyone to answer at the bait shop.”
Luke’s cell phone rang, making Abby’s nerves jangle. He took it, stepping away from her for a moment.
“What’s going on?” Damon asked.
“Luke just got a call.” The thundercloud expression on Luke’s face made her fear the worst.
“On my way,” he said into the phone, then rang off. He turned to Abby, his voice hard. “Who are you talking to?”
“One of the men who’ve been following us. He says his name is Damon.”
Luke grabbed the phone from Abby’s nerveless fingers. “Hello, Damon. This is Luke Cooper. The sons of bitches you work with have taken Stevie.” His voice grew cold and hard. “I hope you weren’t attached to them.”
Abby’s heart stuttered. “They have Stevie?”
Luke hung up and grabbed his jacket. “Riley and Aaron have both been shot. Dad got there just after the ambush.”
“Are they—?”
“They’re alive. Ambulances are on the way.”
“What about your mother?”
“Shaken up and mad as hell. Once they took out Aaron and Riley, they knocked her around and grabbed Stevie.”
“Luke, no—” She stared at him, her heart stuttering.
“I’ve got to go.” He crossed to the table and took the flash drive out of the laptop’s USB port. “If this is what it takes to get Stevie back, then it’s what it takes.”
She rose to her feet, nervous energy overcoming her earlier shock. “They’ve got to know you’d make a copy.”
“Lock the laptop in the closet and take out whatever you need to hold off intruders. I’ll call as soon as I know anything.” He closed his hand over the back of her neck and pulled her to him, covering her mouth with a hard, fierce kiss. “Stay alive,” he murmured, then let her go. “I’ll call soon.”