by Cindy Dees
“You’re in luck. I’m just coming on duty, so how ’bout I swing up that way right now? I can be there in a couple hours. Is that soon enough?”
“That’s perfect. And Rex, don’t tell Dad that I’m here.”
“You gonna tell me why?”
“Did you take that BIA job you were offered?”
“Nah, I’m still reservation police. Bureau of Indian Affairs cops take themselves too seriously.”
“Then, yes. I’ll tell you what’s going on when you get here. And thanks.”
“I may still shoot the boyfriend, so don’t thank me yet.”
She disconnected and headed inside. The cabin wasn’t huge, but with Jeff inside, it felt hardly larger than a shoe box. And yet, the place fit him. He lounged in jeans and a T-shirt. She joined him on the sofa for a cuddle that quickly turned into a nap. It had been a long night and a longer drive. She woke up sharply, though, when Jeff went stiff beneath her and swore under his breath.
“I think I saw a police car through the trees,” he muttered. “We’ve got to get out of here. Hide.”
She put a restraining hand on his chest. “That’s my brother. He’s bringing us supplies.”
“Your brother is a cop?”
“He’s the other black sheep of the family. But he’s cool. He won’t turn us in.”
“Are you willing to bet your life on that?” Jeff asked grimly.
“Absolutely.”
“Will he have to turn us in when he finds out the Feds are after us?”
“Family history of fugitives, remember?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Blood’s thicker than the law. And we take care of our own out here. This is Apache territory—not the United States of America.”
Jeff didn’t look entirely convinced as Rex’s SUV pulled to a stop in front of the cabin. She stepped out onto the front porch while Jeff followed more reluctantly. Immediately, her uniformed brother swept her up in a rib-cracking hug, setting her down only when she squawked in protest.
“Great to see you, sis. You’re looking good.”
“You, too.” He was going a little gray at the temples, with a few more laugh lines beside his eyes, but all in all, he looked happy and healthy.
“Rex, this is Jeff. Jeff, this is my brother, Rex.”
Her brother was not a small man, but in the presence of Jeff Winston, he looked almost scrawny.
Rex took in Jeff’s improbable physique with marked respect. “Wouldn’t want to have to take you down in a bar fight,” Rex muttered.
Jeff laughed. “Go for the taser. Drops me as fast as the next guy. And fortunately, I neither drink nor hang out in bars, so I won’t cause any trouble in your jurisdiction.”
Rex grinned. “I dunno. You know how kids can be. They’d see a guy like you and have to try you out.”
Jeff nodded in commiseration. “Good news is punks mostly bounce off me and slink away to lick their wounds without me having to hurt them too bad.”
“I’ve got a few punks on the rez I’d love to see get taken down a peg or two.”
Jeff grinned. “Next time we pass through here, I’d be happy to oblige.”
“That’s a deal.” Rex nodded over at her. “You were right. He’s okay.”
Relieved, she went over to the SUV to grab the bags of groceries in the back. She stepped inside just in time to hear Rex ask Jeff, “So what brings you out this way?”
Jeff answered smoothly, “I wanted to get to know Jennifer better. To see where she comes from. To understand her heritage.”
Rex said nothing, but threw her a look that said he smelled a line of bull.
They all sat down at the kitchen table.
“So here’s the thing,” she started without preamble. “The place where I work has been infiltrated either by a spy or electronically, and Jeff gave me the evidence to prove it.”
“You’re protecting a witness?” Rex asked.
She winced. “Not exactly. Jeff and I both are on the lamb—”
“Jennifer,” Jeff interrupted.
“I told you. He’s my brother. He’ll help us.”
Jeff’s scowl subsided but he looked decidedly tense as she continued, “We just need a place to stay for a day or two while we plan our next move.”
“The Feds got a warrant out for you, sis?”
“I doubt it. Last they knew, Jeff had kidnapped me. The warrant’s likely only for him. There’s probably only an APB out on me.”
Rex surged up out of his seat and Jeff mirrored the motion. Jennifer leaped up between the two abruptly bristling men. “Stand down, both of you!” she barked. To her brother, she said with desperate calm, “He didn’t really kidnap me. I went with him voluntarily. He made it look like a kidnapping to protect my career. He’s one of the good guys.”
“God, I hope so,” Rex mumbled, eyeing Jeff’s massive arms, which were flexed in front of him at the moment.
The men sat back down and she perched in her seat again warily.
“What’s next for you two, then?” Rex asked.
Jennifer glanced over at Jeff and took a deep breath. “Jeff and I have to figure out how to destroy the facility I work at.”
Rex said hastily, “Okay, then. That’s about all I need to hear about your plans.” He made no bones about leaving quickly after that. Clearly, he wasn’t interested in being put in any more compromising of a position than he already was. She couldn’t blame him. But as she showed him out the door, he murmured as he hugged her, “If you need anything—anything at all—you call me. Family sticks together.”
“I will.” She punched him on the arm as he let her go. “Love you, bro.”
“Right back atchya, kid.”
His SUV pulled away into the night, leaving behind deep silence.
“Decent guy,” Jeff commented. “Cares about you a lot.”
She leaned against a porch post, staring out into the black trees. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Penny for your thoughts.”
She sighed. “It’s going to be a big project to destroy H.O.T. Watch. I don’t know if it can even be done. How am I supposed to blow up an entire mountain?”
He came up behind her and drew her back against the warm wall of his chest, his arms loosely around her waist. How was it his simplest touch could make her feel so safe? Of course, it also made her think about just walking away from it all, abandoning her duty and endangering the lives of countless operatives. Good men and women, many of whom she knew personally.
As long as they were going to be working together, she probably ought to keep her distance from Jeff. If she was being professional. If she was concerned about doing the right thing.
She mumbled, “Too bad the volcano can’t just erupt. That would solve all my problems.”
Jeff stiffened behind her. “You know. That’s not a bad idea.”
She turned to stare up at him. “Surely you don’t know how to make an extinct volcano come back to life.”
“No. But we could fake it. All we’d have to do is convince the people inside the mountain that it was about to blow. They’d evacuate, right? Rip out as much equipment as they could and take it with them?”
“That’s brilliant!” Impulsively, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him soundly on the mouth. It was a mistake. She knew it the moment their lips touched.
She tried hard to argue herself out of it. Reminded herself to focus on work. That he might be using her for his own possibly violent ends. But then his arms caught her, holding her in place as she would have sunk back to her feet.
“Mmm. You taste good. I missed you today.”
“We were together all day,” she protested. She ought to put up a fight, but frankly, she had no will to.
“We weren’t naked in bed together all day,” he retorted.
She laughed in spite of herself. “We shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“We have work to do.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Jeff. Rea
lly…”
“Honey, if you want me to stop, I will. No questions asked. But I have to say, I’m not convinced you mean it.”
“I should mean it,” she responded in more than a little desperation.
He pushed a tendril of loose hair back from her face. Smiled at her a little. Trailed a finger down her neck and across her collarbone. Then murmured, “Have I told you today how beautiful and sexy you are?”
She tingled from head to foot, and her palms itched to slide over his glorious body, to take him into her and let him take her to the moon. She groaned under her breath. “Don’t tempt me. I’m trying to be good here.”
“How does that Mae West saying go? When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better?”
She exhaled a breath of laughter as she leaned her cheek into his palm.
“Be a little bad with me,” he whispered.
He backed toward the front door and she followed. It turned out Jeff took up most of the queen-size bed in the bedroom, which left her to drape herself either on top of him or beneath him. She blissfully spent the next several hours in both places.
Sometime after midnight, she dozed on Jeff’s chest while his fingers combed lazily through her long hair. She murmured, “Regretting running away with me yet?”
His stomach muscles contracted as he lifted his head to glare down at her. “Never.”
“You’re a successful business man. You stand to lose a lot if you get any more mixed up in this.”
“I’m already an accused murderer and in the United States illegally.”
She frowned. “If you’d stayed on the island, the State Department could probably have made those charges against you go away. El Mari was a violent criminal in desperate need of killing according to many powerful people in the Nigerian government.”
“There are plenty of places in the world that Uncle Sam doesn’t have extradition treaties with.”
“Jeff, I think you should leave me. You’re a civilian. You shouldn’t be mixed up in this.”
“Not a chance,” he replied forcefully.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I, Jennifer. You need help with this thing. The kind I have the skills and resources to give you.”
She pushed up to her elbows to frown at him. “You shouldn’t be so cavalier about becoming a fugitive. People like me are very, very good at finding and bringing in people like you.” His willingness to throw away his life worried her. If she’d lost a bunch of her men because someone had set them up, she’d be out for blood. Her suspicions notched up even higher that Jeff was using her to get inside H.O.T. Watch so he could find and take out the spy for himself.
Her goal was to fix the place. His might very well be able to destroy it. And yet, he was probably right that she couldn’t do this mission alone. Did she dare take him with her and risk him turning on her at the worst possible moment?
“Why the frown?” he asked, lazily smoothing a finger across her brow.
“Just thinking about getting inside H.O.T. Watch.”
“There’s time enough for that tomorrow. Relax now. Enjoy the moment.”
She smiled up at him. She had to admit the moment was pretty darned nice. Although an annoying sliver of guilt poked at her. It wasn’t right to be suspicious of her lover like this. She really did trust him with her life if it came to a fight. The question was, did she trust all the rest of her people’s lives to him?
Jeff was fully intelligent enough to run an elaborate scam on her. She’d wondered from day one if he wasn’t outmanipulating her. Nothing had changed to make her stop wondering that, darn it. Sure, they made love together more sweetly and passionately than she’d ever experienced with any other man, but was she reading too much into it?
Was she at heart aware that she was getting older and time was running out on her to find a man and settle down? Was she grasping at emotional straws? She’d always told herself that her life was just fine without a long-term relationship in it. Was she lying to herself? Or was this just the dreaded biological clock ticking? Or maybe this was all a case of her being ridiculous and paranoid, and Jeff was exactly what he said he was—a concerned citizen trying to do the right thing. Ugh. It was so frustrating not knowing what was really going on with him!
Jeff murmured sleepily, “We won’t know if the facility can be saved or is a total loss until we take a look at it. But given the quality and quantity of material that’s been coming out of it, I think we should plan for the worst.”
“Plan-for-the-worst is my middle name,” she replied much more lightly than she felt. “It’s why I’m good at my job.” But she also knew she had never come up against a worst-case scenario anything like this before. This might just be the worst-case scenario that killed her. And Jeff, too, if she couldn’t talk him into leaving. And soon.
Chapter 12
Jeff leaned over Jennifer’s rough sketch of H.O.T. Watch and the island containing it. “How does the place get its electricity?”
“Nuclear power.”
“Nuclear generator creates heat. Use heat to turn water to steam. Use steam to run turbines. Turbines put out electricity. Yes?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, pleased.
“What?”
He grinned at her impatience. “There’s steam. We can divert it to have it come out the top of the mountain. Make it look from the outside like the volcano is active.”
She laughed in delight at the notion. “There’d need to be seismic activity, too,” she added. “We’d have to set off some explosions in the deepest parts of the facility to shake the place a bit.”
“Now you’re getting the idea.”
“Problem,” she announced. “I don’t know my way around the lower cave network. We didn’t use those for the H.O.T. Watch facility, and I’ve only ever seen one map of them. The geologist who explored the caves in the first place showed it to me. That was years ago.”
“Who’s the geologist and how do we get in touch with him?” Jeff asked.
“Her. And she lives on the island with her husband. He’s the one who recommended the island as the location for the H.O.T. Watch facility. The two of them supervised the building of the place, in fact.”
“Sounds like we need to talk to them.”
“They’re totally loyal to the U.S. government. They won’t help us.”
Interesting how quickly she’d shifted to thinking of the government as the enemy. “Honey,” he said gently, “you and I are totally loyal to the U.S. government, too.”
She looked up, startled. “Right.”
“How hard will it be to approach this couple?”
“About as hard as knocking on their front door. Although,” she added, “they travel a lot at this time of year. I don’t know if they’ll be home.”
He frowned. “But we’ll have to get to the island undetected, right? How hard’s that going to be?”
Jennifer grimaced. “No vessel, above or below the surface of the Caribbean can get within miles of that place undetected. Sensors and cameras ring the island.”
“How close are civilian boats allowed to approach before someone challenges them?”
“Three miles.”
He nodded. “We can work with that.”
She shook her head. “The underwater buoys will pick up divers approaching the island. Their metal scuba gear or their metal self-propelled vehicles will trigger the alarms. And three miles is a long way to snorkel in the open ocean. The currents around the island are vicious. Particularly if we’re hauling gear of any kind.”
“Metal’s the trigger for the sensors, then?” Jeff asked thoughtfully.
“Yep.”
“Can you walk three miles?”
She snorted. “I ran the Marine Corps Marathon last year.”
He laughed. “Well, then, I’ve got our approach to the island covered. We’ll walk.”
“On water?” she exclaimed.
“Exactly. One of the Winston compan
ies makes a giant plastic bubble that holds a person inside. It’s a novelty item. You can roll down a mountain in one, or you can walk on water. I’ll have two sent to us. We can wear backpacks with whatever gear we’ll need on the island.”
A slow smile unfolded on Jennifer’s face. “You are handy to have around in a pinch.”
“That’s what I keep telling you.”
Her smile faded. “But I still don’t like the idea of you participating in this mission—”
He stepped forward to stop the rest of that comment with a gentle kiss. When he had her thoroughly distracted he said, “We’ve already been over this. I’m going with you. End of discussion.”
“But—”
“No buts. I’d worry too much about you if you went alone. I insist.” That was his story and he was sticking to it. The first step was to convince her she needed him with her. The second step would come later—figuring out how to find the mole so he could kill the guy.
“Jeff. We’ve known each other barely a week. You don’t owe me anything. This could get really dangerous, and I don’t want your blood on my hands.”
Irritation chafed him. “I know we haven’t known each other that long. But we’ve been through a shoot-out, saved each other’s lives, been to Hell and back with my withdrawals, fled government surveillance and now we’re fugitives together. We’ve crammed a whole lot of getting to know each other into that short time. Not to mention, you see a person’s true stripes when they’re under stress. I’d say I have a pretty good feel for who you are at this point. How about you? Don’t you feel like you know me pretty well?”
She answered cautiously, “I know you can handle yourself under pressure and you won’t hesitate to kill someone you believe is evil enough to deserve killing. I know the limit of your pain tolerance. Which,” she added hastily as he opened his mouth to protest, “is extraordinary.”
“And we’ve established that I’m loyal and smart and strong,” he added.
“Well, yes.”
“And that the two of us are reasonably compatible at sex.”
A smile flickered across her mouth. “Reasonably,” she allowed.