It was, after all, Riley’s child.
“Is this some kind of decorating trend that I haven’t heard about?” Riley asked, tipping his head to the dead ficus near the linen closet.
She had to swallow the lump in her throat before she could speak. “It’s my metaphorical attempt to put down roots. And you’re changing the subject.”
“You noticed that, huh?”
“I noticed.”
And she wouldn’t let him get away with it.
Riley opened a bottle of lavender bubble bath, sniffed it and gave a nod of approval. He poured at least six times too much into the tub. He motioned for her to undress and then made a show of clamping his hand over his eyes.
Yet another ironic gesture.
Here he was, preserving her modesty even though she was carrying his child. Of course, they hadn’t taken the normal route for conception. The clinic insemination had done what would have normally happened through an intimate act.
Riley obviously wasn’t going to let her opt out of the bubble bath, so Tessa began to shed her clothes. “I swore to you that it was okay for me to go through that insemination. You tried to talk me out of it, and I wouldn’t listen.”
“And your point would be?” he flatly asked.
“If I’d listened to you, if I’d talked Fletcher out of the procedure, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. We wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“But you wouldn’t have listened to me, now would you? A good thing, too. Because the mission would have been canceled before we could even go to the clinic, and we wouldn’t be close to getting Fletcher.”
It was a truly optimistic slant on things.
And it was pure BS.
There was no way Riley could be this undaunted by what they’d just learned. No way. While the appointment had indeed put them closer to apprehending Fletcher, the cost of that had been astronomical. Life-altering.
Naked, Tessa walked by him and stepped into the warm, bubbly water, even though she was certain the bath was yet another ploy to distract her.
“For the record, I don’t believe most of what you just tossed out there, but it was the nice thing to say,” she let Riley know. “The right thing.”
“Blind luck, I assure you.” He lowered his hand from his eyes, slowly, and when he saw that the bubbles had covered the majority of her body, he turned off the water and sat on the floor next to the tub. “We’re both flying by the seat of our pants on this one, but we’ll get through it.”
He was so good at that. The right words. The right tone. Tessa had to look beyond the cool facade of those gray eyes and see all the concerns that she knew were there.
“You’re allowed to be fragile, too, Riley.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. For a second. Then he groaned and rubbed his hand over his face. “Okay, you’re right. The idea of you being pregnant hasn’t quite made it through my thick skull. And even if it had, it would have to share brain time with the fact that I’m scared that I won’t be able to protect you.”
Strange, she’d been thinking the same thing about him. “I’m not helpless,” she reminded him.
“Neither was Colette, and Fletcher killed her.” Riley glanced in the general direction of her stomach. “And now the stakes are even higher.”
Yes, they were.
Tessa didn’t even try to deny that. She wasn’t helpless, but she was vulnerable. Because if Fletcher harmed her, he would also harm her baby.
“Oh, God,” she mumbled.
A half hour ago she hadn’t even known a child existed. She hadn’t even thought it possible.
And now, it effected everything.
Everything.
“It doesn’t seem real,” she admitted, shoving her hands through her hair. “Like I’m going to wake up and it’s all going to be a dream.”
He nodded. “I guess it’ll take a while to get used to the idea.”
An understatement. Eventually they’d have to figure out how they were going to handle all of this. No easy task, either. The possible solutions seemed as unreal as the test results.
When she’d thought she couldn’t become pregnant, she had built her entire life around being an SIU agent. All in all, it was a good substitute, one she’d learned to cherish nearly as much as she would have a child.
Nearly.
And her devotion to duty had been the one thing that her father had noticed.
Not her.
Only the job.
And the job was the very thing this pregnancy could jeopardize.
She slipped deeper into the water, hoping the heat and fragrance would loosen her stiff muscles. It wouldn’t, of course. But then, nothing could do that.
“You’re sighing,” Riley pointed out.
“Am I?” Tessa went back through her most recent responses and realized it was true. “You’ve done your share of that tonight.”
He made a humph sound. “Real men don’t sigh. We just ponder and brood while making manly grunting noises.”
Tessa slipped her gaze in his direction. “You’re trying to cheer me up.”
“Yeah. Is it working?”
She sighed again.
Riley flexed his eyebrows. “Guess not.” Using his thumb and index finger, he thumped one of the bubbles, bursting it.
Tessa closed her eyes a moment. Not to relax. That wouldn’t happen tonight. But it seemed a good time to ask what she figured was a rhetorical question. “What are the odds of this happening anyway?”
“Pretty good, actually. Fletcher obviously knew from your medical info that the timing was perfect for you to conceive a child.”
Since Riley answered so quickly, that meant he’d probably already given this some thought. It made Tessa wonder what else he had thought about. What was he feeling? And was he as poleaxed as she was?
No doubt.
“Fletcher moved up the insemination because he knew you were ovulating,” Riley continued. “That, and because he wanted to make sure he kept the element of surprise.”
“Well, he managed the surprise part. We created a baby without ever having had sex.”
“Right.” He paused. “One of the advantages of modern technology.”
Tessa frowned at the glib way he dismissed that. Judging from his somber expression, he was experiencing no such glibness. “At least I’ve had some incredibly intense pleasurable moments normally associated with becoming pregnant.” She shrugged. “Even though those moments came after the fact. You haven’t even had that.”
He laughed, but it was mixed with a full dose of weariness. “Was that a pass?” He turned to look at her. “Or are you just rubbing it in?”
She touched his arm. She had to feel his warmth. His body. Him. “It would have been a pass if I had the energy to do something about it.”
He moved closer. “That’s the other thing about men. We always have the energy to do something about it.”
But instead of giving her a hot kiss that would have initiated foreplay and bathtub sex—something she was sure she would have found the energy to do—Riley gently cupped her chin and brushed his mouth over her cheek. The chaste gesture only confirmed that he was going through his own personal version of torture.
“Will you tell your parents?” Tessa asked and wasn’t surprised that she was afraid to hear his answer. The photos in his personnel file flashed in her head. His father. His mother. People he still had a connection to. And they were also people who had been pulled into this simply because of a DNA connection.
“Sure. Eventually. I mean, they’ll need to know. Especially since your father knows.” And with that, Riley gave a loud, manly sigh.
“I’m sorry,” Tessa said.
“Don’t. We’re not going through that, because this isn’t our fault. Not yours. Not mine. It’s not as if we had wild, unprotected sex.” He glanced at her. “Even though if any more of those bubbles pop, I just might haul your naked body out of that tub—”
A clicking sound stop
ped him from finishing that.
Riley’s gaze flew to the doorway, just as the outside light slashed through her otherwise dark bedroom.
“The motion detector,” she whispered.
Someone had tripped it.
Chapter Eleven
Tessa stilled. Listening.
And praying.
Praying that the sound she heard wasn’t an indication that someone had just breached the perimeter security of her condo.
But her instincts screamed that was exactly what had happened.
Riley’s instincts were obviously right there with hers because he tossed her a towel. “Get dressed,” he whispered. It was definitely an order. One she didn’t need because Tessa already understood what might be happening.
Pulling the weapon from the shoulder holster beneath his leather jacket, Riley crawled across the tiled floor, reached up and slapped off the light switch. The sudden darkness only accentuated the outside lights spilling into her bedroom. The lights were by the French doors that led to her tiny backyard and patio. The only way they would have been triggered was for someone to be on the property.
And right at her back door.
Tessa stepped from the tub. She didn’t bother to dry off, even though she felt the soapy water slide down her body and onto the floor. Staying low, Riley crawled into her bedroom, snagged the clothes she’d left on the bed and tossed them to her.
She peeked around the door frame and tried to get a feel for what was happening. The gauzy white curtains covering the doors made it impossible to see outside, so she watched for shadows. For any sign of movement.
For anything.
She saw nothing, but there was another sound. Soft. Maybe a footstep.
Maybe not.
A sound so faint that any other time Tessa might have dismissed it as nothing. Especially since this was her home.
She pulled on her jeans and top, then hit the floor and scurried to her nightstand where she retrieved the 9 mm handgun she kept there. While she was at it, she got some extra magazines of ammo and stuffed them into her pockets. She could only hope that she wouldn’t need them, but that sense of dread that had taken hold of her stomach told her otherwise.
“Find out if that’s your father’s security specialist out there,” Riley insisted, his voice barely audible. “And if it’s not, request backup.”
Still crouching, Tessa reached for the phone next to her bed.
Reaching for it was as far as she got.
One of the doors suddenly shattered. A loud burst set off the security alarm and sent shards of glass spewing across the room.
Tessa instinctively ducked, using her bed for cover and sheltering her eyes from the dangerous debris. But her instincts didn’t keep her behind cover for long. She came up ready to fire.
So did Riley.
In all probability, the person responsible wasn’t an SIU security specialist. It was an intruder, probably sent by Fletcher. And that meant he had not only learned who they were, he knew where to find them. Their cover had failed to hold. Fletcher had broken through all those carefully erected layers that had sheltered them.
Riley and she waited, braced to deal with whatever came through the gaping hole in the door.
No one came.
The ghost-white curtains fluttered in the night breeze, stirring toward the bed, and the strangling silence closed in around them.
With each passing second Tessa’s adrenaline surged. Her heart pounded. Her muscles knotted. All normal reactions that she’d experienced every time she’d been in danger.
However, there were new reactions, as well.
Amid all of those responses came thoughts of the pregnancy. Dangerous thoughts, because this wasn’t the time to focus on anything but the intruder. Or more likely, intruders. Fletcher would have almost certainly sent a team of gunmen and not a single operative to kill them.
With his attention fastened to the French doors, Riley motioned for her to go into the living room. Tessa hesitated. Not because it wasn’t a smart thing to do.
It was.
It would get her out of the line of fire, but it would also leave Riley in danger. Plus, she wouldn’t be able to back him up if anyone rushed the room.
“You’re coming, too,” she whispered.
And she made sure it wasn’t a request.
Riley motioned again and mumbled some profanity under his breath. With her gun still cocked and locked, she inched away from the nightstand, behind Riley, until she was side by side with him.
He shot her a disapproving glare, but Tessa didn’t budge. She wouldn’t leave him to fight this fight alone.
“Think of the baby,” he whispered.
The impact of the words nearly knocked the breath out of her. He couldn’t have said anything else that would have forced her to rethink all her training. To push aside what had become second nature.
But that did it.
Because this wasn’t just about her, or her need to back up a fellow agent. The baby was part of this now. And if Fletcher’s henchmen succeeded in hurting her, then, they would also succeed in hurting the baby.
Suddenly the child she carried inside her wasn’t some vague notion to be dealt with later. Not some test that she’d taken during a routine physical. And not some moneymaking scam devised by a killer. It was real. A tiny life that she was responsible for.
Oh, God.
“Get moving,” Riley ordered.
Tessa did. Because she had no other choice, she did.
While still trying to provide Riley with some measure of cover, she eased back. Slowly. Trying not to make a sound. She crawled toward the doorway that separated her bedroom from the living room.
A gust of wind, or something, caught the curtain and the limp fabric snapped like a bullwhip. Tessa didn’t let it distract her. Which was a good thing, because she finally saw a shadowy figure on her patio.
A man.
He had a gun.
That image barely had time to register when the next shot slammed through the wall just above her head. It was quickly followed by another.
Then another.
Until it was nonstop.
It was a barrage of deadly gunfire that was aimed right at Riley and her.
Tessa dropped all the way to the floor. But she didn’t stay put, she couldn’t. She was literally blocking Riley’s exit, and the bed would give him no protection whatsoever against those bullets.
Repositioning her gun so she could return fire, she dove to the side, came up on one knee. Tessa squeezed the trigger, her own shots tearing through what was left of the curtains and the French doors. It was a risk. Because each shot that she took meant there was a chance she’d hit an innocent bystander.
Or else she could be hit.
Still, she had to try to stop what these assassins had set into motion.
With her other hand, she latched onto Riley. Grappling to cover each other, they maneuvered. Repositioned. Until somehow, they made it into the living room.
Gunfire pelted the condo. Bullets tore through the walls and penetrated the interior. Not simple handguns. Not this. Whoever was shooting at them was using automatics. Nor was it just one gunman. The pattern of the shots indicated at least two shooters. Maybe three. In other words, they’d likely come to kill and didn’t care how much spare ammunition they had to use to get the job done.
Or how much attention they attracted.
“The front motion detector light isn’t on,” she relayed to Riley.
It was a little good news at a time when they could really use some. It meant the assassins weren’t out front.
Well, maybe that’s what it meant.
There was a possibility they were out there but had purposely stayed back so they wouldn’t trip the motion detector and alert them. If so, they were probably waiting for Riley and her to come running through the door.
In other words, a trap.
Unfortunately that door and the window in the dining area were the only e
xits, their only hope of getting out of this alive.
She picked through the noise of the security alarms and listened to the pattern of the gunfire. All the shots were still concentrated on the rear of the building. Not gunfire from weapons rigged with silencers, either. Which meant one of her neighbors had almost certainly called the cops by now. It also meant the security specialist that her father had positioned somewhere outside was likely dead. Murdered. If he were still alive, she would have heard the sounds of someone trying to return fire.
That was the bad news.
But as bad as it was, it didn’t mean Riley and she could stay put. The approaching sounds of police sirens might scare off the assassins, but if they were truly determined, and it appeared that they were, then they’d just kill the officers and continue with their deadly mission. So, to save themselves and possibly others, Riley and she had no choice but to move fast.
Riley must have come to the same conclusion. “We’re going out the window,” he said over the din of the gunfire and the security alarm.
It was the exit route she would have chosen. Now, she only hoped his concurrence meant it was their best chance of getting out alive.
Tessa followed Riley’s lead. Or rather, she tried. But he pushed her in front of him so that he’d be the one in the line of fire. Normally, Tessa would have objected to such kid-glove treatment. But this wasn’t normal. Under the circumstances, she was thankful that Riley’s first concern was protecting their child, because it had become a major concern of hers.
They crawled across the floor, together, and when they reached the dining room window, Riley traded places with her, putting himself at the most dangerous point of impact. He opened the window, knocked out the screen with his elbow. Glanced out. And quickly ducked back into the meager cover.
“It looks clear,” he said. “But we can’t use your car. They might have rigged it with explosives. We’ll have to leave on foot.”
Tessa nodded. Being on foot would make them easier targets, but he was right. Her car had been parked out front for nearly an hour. Anyone could have gotten to it.
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