by Liliana Hart
Snow blew so hard into the windshield that it was impossible to see anything but white, so Archer almost hit the man standing in the middle of the road before he saw him. He slammed on the brakes and was thankful he hadn’t been going very fast to begin with. Audrey had her gun out and pointed at the windshield before he’d come to a complete stop.
Archer was about to slam the car in reverse when the man’s hands came up in front of him, palms out in a gesture to signal they stop. A heavy coat lined with fur dwarfed him, and a fur-lined hood surrounded his face. And then between swishes of the wipers, he was gone as quickly as he appeared.
“What the hell—” Audrey said, bringing her gun down.
The knock on Archer’s window had both of their weapons coming up and their adrenaline spiking. The old man’s face was all but pressed up to the glass, brown and wrinkled with age, most of his teeth missing as he smiled a jack-o-lantern smile. Snow gathered on his eyebrows and lashes and gray hair hung in long braids on both sides of his face. Archer released the breath he’d been holding and put his gun in his lap, though he kept his hand on it.
“Holy shit,” Audrey said, releasing her own breath. “That was creepy. What the hell does he want?”
“Let’s find out.” He rolled down the window and snow blew into the car, slapping and stinging against his face.
“Declan MacKenzie sent me,” the old man said, his native accent thick but not difficult to understand. He eyed the gun Audrey pointed at him with curiosity and then turned back to Archer, dismissing the threat. “I’ll ride in back and you can take me to town. This weather is a bitch, and I’m old.”
No kidding, Archer thought. The man had to be about the oldest person he’d ever seen. He sighed and hit the lock switch so the man could get in.
The man moved to the back door and Archer whispered, “Of course Declan sent him. Only Declan would send the oldest man in the universe to help us. He’s probably sitting at home, laughing his ass off.”
“Declan doesn’t strike me as the type of guy to have much of a sense of humor,” Audrey said.
She watched the man closely as he got into the backseat, and Archer noticed she didn’t take her weapon off him, though she did relax her grip some.
“Oh, Declan is a very funny guy,” the man said, nodding. “Prankster.”
“That’s very true,” Archer said. “Why did Declan send you?”
“He said you need supplies. I have supplies.” The man shrugged and threw his hands up, sending droplets of water throughout the car. “Simple fix. You will stay with me until the storm clears. My name is Chanlyeya, but everyone calls me Joe.”
Archer knew when to not argue, and he’d stopped questioning long ago how Declan knew before his agents did when they were going to need something. He had contingency plans on top of contingency plans.
“The man you are after will not get far. The storm is too bad. And the two men after him will not get far either. Plenty of time. I am wise and old. You will listen to me. You hungry?”
“I could eat,” Archer said, pressing on the gas pedal.
“You drive like an old woman,” Joe said. “We’ll not get there until tonight. Pedal to the metal, friend. I’ll be your eyes.”
Archer gritted his teeth and ignored Audrey’s snicker from the passenger seat. So now she decided to get her sense of humor back. He did the only thing he could to save face and pushed on the gas, the Jeep fishtailing once before righting itself and speeding ahead.
Strangely enough, using Joe’s eyes worked pretty well and Archer just followed his directions until they got back to town.
“Stop here,” Joe said. “No point in going further. You won’t be using a car again for many days. The snow will cover them all by morning.”
“It’s too bad Jonah didn’t choose Key West for this little adventure,” Audrey muttered under her breath. “I wouldn’t mind a little sun and sand right about now.”
“I was in Afghanistan for a while. Sand is overrated if there isn’t a beach there to accompany it. I’ve probably still got sand in places I don’t care to mention.”
“Maybe one day you’ll find a pearl in your shorts,” Joe said, grinning a gap-toothed grin.
This time Audrey laughed out loud and slapped her hand over her mouth to keep it inside. Archer could tell she’d surprised herself by the action, and if he could give her that then he’d let Joe make fun of him all he wanted.
“Is your house close?” he asked, pushing open the car door and stepping out into the wind and snow.
“Close enough.” Joe pulled the hood back up over his braids, but he didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold.
Audrey’s lips were pressed tight together as she tried to keep her teeth from chattering. She zipped her jacket up to her neck and pulled her hat low. They were going to need more gear if they were going to follow Jonah across Alaska. She hoped Joe could do as he’d promised Declan.
Archer retrieved his duffel bag from the back and realized Audrey didn’t have anything but the weapons on her. As if reading his mind she said, “I stashed my pack down by the docks and the Russians took my rifle.”
He nodded and then they followed Joe the rest of the way into town, hunched over and going head first into the wind, the snow relentless as it seemed to grow beneath their feet. They reached the end of a long narrow street. There wasn’t another person in sight—only squat buildings in various sizes with flat roofs that flanked each side of the narrow lane.
It was a surreal feeling standing on a street that felt as if it were the jumping off place for the end of the earth. The snowflakes were fast and furious, flying down the narrow lane and heading straight for them as if they were being projected through a wind tunnel. It was terrifyingly beautiful, and he took a moment to just stand and watch nature rage around him.
Audrey’s hand on his arm had him looking down at her, and he was struck again as he had been the first time he’d looked at her photograph. He decided it had to be her eyes that cast him under her spell. They were big and dark and exotically tilted at the corners. She wore no makeup, but her lashes were long and black and it looked as if she’d lined her eyes with liner, but he knew it was natural.
Her face was paper white because of the cold and her lips void of any color. But still she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly and then dropped her hand back to her side.
“I’m fine.” He mentally shook himself out of the trance and busied himself looking anywhere but at her. She was dangerous. And she was still an unknown variable as far as the job was concerned. “I just had one of those moments where everything lined up exactly how it was supposed to.”
She nodded as if she knew what he was talking about. Hell, maybe she did.
“Those moments are part of the reason I like working alone. When the world comes into sharp focus and you can practically feel the silence living inside of you. Moments like that are rare.”
It seemed she knew what he was talking about after all.
“Hey. Chatterboxes. Come, come,” Joe said, waving them forward.
The house was right on the corner and didn’t seem to be much bigger than an overgrown dollhouse. The roof over the wide front porch sagged dangerously beneath the weight of the snow, but Joe didn’t seem overly concerned about it collapsing on him.
Navigating the stairs to the front door was a challenge. Archer caught Audrey’s arm and held her up against his body when she stepped into the empty space between the steps.
He held on to her until she found her footing and he realized at that point that it had been much too long since he’d had a woman that close to him. His body responded despite him standing in the equivalent of an ice shower, and he was grateful all the layers hid the throbbing erection pulsing behind the zipper of his cargos. It was a fine time for his libido to rediscover itself, that was for damned sure.
He’d spent the last few years working almost non-sto
p, and he was past the age where finding any willing woman was enough. He wasn’t a monk, but he’d stopped thinking he could have a normal life outside of the agency. Audrey Sharpe was blowing those thoughts all to hell.
The siding of the house was bright green, and two square windows not big enough for a body to fit through flanked each side of a peeling wood door. Joe pushed against the door, swollen with age and damp, and they all shuffled into a cozy room with a blazing fire that took up almost the entire wall to their left.
One room was all it was, and Archer figured he could touch both sides if he held his arms straight out. A wood table and two chairs were pushed against the wall and a little kitchenette was set up in the corner.
A woman at least as old as Joe was stirring something that smelled good enough to have Archer’s stomach rumbling loudly, and her smile lit up her face as they came in, making Archer think she must have been a very pretty woman in her youth.
She hustled over and spoke to Joe quickly in their native tongue, and then Joe looked to them for introductions.
“This is my wife, Ahnah. She says to hang your coats on the pegs and take these blankets over by the fire and strip out of your clothes. She will wash and dry them for you before your journey.”
He shoved two heavy blankets at them and gave them a shove. Archer ducked his head to hide his grin at Audrey’s perplexed look, but she followed him over to the fireplace while Joe and Ahnah huddled in the kitchen area, whispering softly to each other.
Archer unfolded the blanket and saw it was more than large enough to cover him from head to toe, so he wrapped it around his shoulders and then turned his back before stripping out of his clothes and boots. The sounds of Audrey doing the same behind him weren’t helping matters below his waist. His cock was rigid and aching, and the worst possible thing he could do was let her know how attracted he was to her. She’d run like a scared rabbit. And he couldn’t blame her one bit.
He wanted to get his hands on Jonah Salt for what he’d done to her, and every time he thought about the level of betrayal it took to be intimate with someone and then shoot them in cold blood, it made him boil with hatred for a man he’d never met. And if Audrey didn’t kill Salt, then he would.
Archer wrapped the blanket so it covered him completely and turned toward the fire. Audrey looked completely uncomfortable and out of her element. She was probably thinking being naked was going to be pretty inconvenient if they’d walked into a trap and she needed to start running.
He’d already had the same thought and had made sure he’d palmed his weapons and hidden them beneath the blanket when it had been handed to him. He scooted closer to Audrey, so they stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the fire, the wool blankets itchy but warm, and he passed her an extra handgun so Joe and Ahnah couldn’t see.
Some of the tension left her shoulders and she looked up at him with a half smile as she hid it quickly beneath her own blanket.
“That obvious, huh?”
“I just figured if I was worried about it, you probably were too.”
They stood in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, the heat building between them in ways that had nothing to do with the fire. At least it was on his end. He had no idea what was going on inside her head, and he wondered if the connection between them was only one sided.
He’d never been the kind of man to hold back when he was attracted to a woman. But she was different. She’d been hurt in unimaginable ways, and he realized he’d never put himself in the position of being another person to add to that hurt.
“This would be a really awkward situation if this were a first date,” he said to break the silence.
Her eyes got bigger, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but then she said, “I’ve never actually been on a date, so I wouldn’t know.”
She’d spoken so softly he wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly, and he froze, unsure of what to say next.
“Never?” he finally asked. “In all the relationships you’ve had, none of them has taken you out on a date?”
Audrey turned those big brown eyes on him and her mouth quirked a little. “It’s not like there’s a lot of time for that kind of stuff in this line of work. You don’t just slit a Jordanian Prince’s throat and run off to the movies and share popcorn. You work and you have sex because the body needs it. There’s no time for anything in between. And I think it’s wasted anyway.”
“I’m sorry. Did you just say romance was a waste of time?” Their heads had gotten closer together and their whispers more fervent, and he realized things were heating up pretty damned fast and he was going to have to go back outside and stand in the snow to cool off. “Why do I feel like there’s an odd gender reversal going on here?”
“Is that your way of saying you’re a woman?” she asked, arching a brow.
Their bodies moved even closer, so his breath whispered across her skin, and he saw by the widening of her eyes that she wasn’t completely unaffected by the close contact.
“You want to be careful, sweetheart, about biting off more than you can chew here.”
“Did you just call me sweetheart?” Her eyes narrowed, and if he’d been less of a man, in that moment his balls would have shriveled to the size of acorns.
“Don’t even try it. You and I both know I could disarm you before you took aim. Don’t play games you don’t intend to follow through with.”
They’d gone from playful banter to something much more serious in the blink of an eye, and he moved back a step to let things cool down.
“And it just so happens I like going on dates. And I’d have no problem doing my job and then taking you out somewhere afterward.”
“Are you asking me out?” The color had drained from her face and she took another step away from him, as if she’d just realized where the conversation was leading. “Oh, no. No, no, no. Definitely not.”
“You forgot non, nein, and ne. Three of my favorite languages.”
“My job is to kill Jonah Salt. Nothing else is more important than that. He killed any possible feelings I could ever have for a man again.”
“Forever is a long time. It seems shortsighted to think you wouldn’t have those desires at some point during the rest of your life.”
“If I do, then I’ll deal with it. But I promise that part of me is as dead as Jonah is going to be.”
“That sounds like a challenge, Agent Sharpe. And if you’re so determined to have sex before going out on a date, I could probably be persuaded to accommodate you.”
“You’re bound and determined for me to shoot you, aren’t you?”
He cracked out a laugh and shook his head, enjoying their short conversation more than he’d expected. A small smile tilted the corner of her lips and he realized she might not trust him—yet—but she accepted him as her partner. The other things would come over time.
“Hey,” Joe called out. “Chatterboxes. You want to eat?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Audrey sat at the little two-person table and huddled over the fish stew Ahnah had ladled into heavy ceramic bowls. Archer sat across from her—she’d stopped trying to figure out how to keep their knees from bumping beneath the table—and she settled in and tried not to think about what that small bit of physical contact made her feel.
She’d lied when she’d told him that part of her body—the sexual urges she’d never been ashamed of before—had died when Jonah had tried to kill her. Those feelings had only been dead until she’d met Archer Ryan. And he was right, she’d bitten off more than she could chew where he was concerned.
Ahnah had gone upstairs to where Audrey presumed the bedroom and bathroom were located. At least she hoped they had a bathroom. Walking to an outhouse in this weather would be on par with walking through the fires of hell.
Joe pulled a rocking chair closer to the fire and watched them eat in unnerving silence.
“So how do you know Declan?” Archer asked. Apparently the silence was getting to him too.
“Oh,” Joe shrugged. “We go back. Secret lives and younger days. Declan’s one of the good guys. He tells me you are too, so I help him.”
“Did he tell you who we’re looking for?”
“Didn’t have to.” Joe pulled a pipe from the front pocket of his shirt and used the wood of the chair leg to strike his match. He held the flame to the pipe and puffed greedily, his cheeks hollowing as a thin plume of smoke rose from the bowl. He exhaled and a white cloud of pungent smoke filled the room.
“Men come and men go in our corner of the world. And the land eats those who are not strong enough to survive. The man you chase is strong, yes?” The rocker creaked as he went back and forth, the sound almost hypnotic.
Audrey’s spoon hit the bottom of her bowl and she realized she’d been hungrier than she thought. She was warm and full, and so she settled back against the wall to listen to Joe.
“No offense, Joe.” Archer hit the bottom of his own bowl and leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. “But if Dec has sent us to you because you’re some magical shaman who sees the future in your pipe smoke, I’m going to disappoint you and say we’re not interested.”
Joe wheezed out a laugh, his rocker coming forward as his feet hit the floor, and he slapped his hand on his thigh. “Boy, there’s nothing in this smoke except weed. The medicinal kind,” he said, winking. “Helps with my arthritis.”
Joe took another puff and started rocking again. “Truth is, my wife is from here and so were my grandparents, but I was actually born and raised in Minnetonka.”
“So why the mysterious appearing in the middle of a blizzard in the road routine?” Audrey asked.
“It freaks people out, and I find people see exactly what they want to see when they look at me,” he said grinning, showing the gaps in his teeth. As if he’d flipped a switch his speech went from the stilted English of a Native to the distinct twang of Minnesota.
Joe’s eyes sparkled with laughter and Audrey found herself smiling with him. It had been a long while since she’d enjoyed herself quite so much.