Pawn

by Carla Cassidy

  Nick knew it was somebody local and he knew it had to be somebody who had power and influence in the small town, but damned if he could figure out who it was. Eventually he'd know, unless his cover was blown and he wound up dead.

  "Container 57322 cleared." Lynn's voice pulled him from his inner thoughts.

  He checked his watch. Twenty minutes left and four containers to go. She needed to be out of there by three o'clock because of the shift change that would take place at three-thirty.

  And he needed to be out of here so he could get back to Raymore well before dawn. He didn't want one of his fellow thugs to drive by his house, see his car gone and wonder where in the hell he was.

  "Nick? I hope you aren't going through my underwear drawer or drinking all my beer while you're cooling your heels in my luxury apartment."

  He smiled, knowing she was attempting to alleviate the tension of the situation. The only way his tension would be eased was when she walked back through the door.

  "Come on, get those last containers checked and get the hell out of there," he said.

  He got up from the table, unable to sit as the next few minutes ticked by. "Come on, come on," he muttered as he paced in front of the window, checking his watch every few seconds.

  "Container 57323 clear."

  He heard the faint sound of the door closing on the container.

  "Oh shit." The two words were uttered in a whisper filled with dread.

  Nick froze and stared at the speaker. His heart nearly stopped as he heard the low, unmistakable sound of a dog growling.

  Chapter 7

  The dog stood about four feet away from her, barely visible in the night except for the pair of glowing gold eyes and gleaming sharp teeth that gnashed the air.

  As a batch of clouds moved away from the moon, a faint illumination reached the ground and let her see that the dog was a Doberman. A big Doberman. He stood waist-high, ears alert and sharp teeth bared.

  Terror ricocheted through her and all the blood seemed to leave her head, making her both nauseous and light-headed. She closed her eyes, fighting against the overwhelming, near-incapacitating fear.

  Show him who is boss, stare him down.

  No, don't meet his gaze. Staring at him will be a direct challenge.

  Stare at him.

  Look at the ground.

  Lynn remained frozen stiff as she tried to remember everything she'd ever heard about encountering a mean dog. He growled again, a low, throaty sound of menace.

  Hadn't she read somewhere that dogs could smell fear? God, could he smell the fear that climbed up her throat, twisted in her stomach? The stench of terror had to be rolling off her.

  At least he hadn't barked. Barking would bring more trouble in the form of guards with guns. At the moment the dog seemed satisfied just growling and keeping her from moving.

  But, she couldn't stay here forever. Seconds were ticking by. It was time for her to get the hell out of the yard.

  The dog had her backed up against one of the containers so she couldn't back away from him. Nor could she go through him. She was fast, but she wasn't sure she could outrun gnashing teeth.

  Sweat once again trickled down the center of her back, along the hairline of her brow. She'd never forgotten the sting of that childhood bite from the poodle, with sharp little teeth. She couldn't imagine what the Doberman's huge teeth would feel like biting into her tender skin.

  Dawnie should be here. Although Lynn would never wish her sister in harm's way, dogs didn't like Dawn. She frightened them. The sisters had all speculated that dogs sensed Dawn's genetic healing power and didn't know what to make of her. As a result they cowered away from her as if unsure of her species.

  Unfortunately, dogs didn't have the same reaction to Lynn. Rather than cowering, the Doberman looked wickedly eager with the anticipation of enjoying her as his next savory meal.

  She slowly drew in a breath through her nose, trying to steady her nerves, trying to figure out exactly how to get out of this particular predicament.

  The only way out was up. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she tilted her head back to look up at the roof of the container directly behind where she stood.

  The growling grew louder and the dog took one step toward her. She could smell the fetid heat of his breath as he tensed his haunches and she knew their impasse was about to come to an end.

  Not giving herself time to think she whirled around and jumped, gasping in relief as her fingers grasped the top of the container. As her fingers made the connection, she drew her legs up beneath her, not wanting anything to dangle low enough that it could be eaten.

  The dog hit the side of the container with enough force to create a tin echo. The minute she was up on the roof, the dog began to bark. Sharp, piercing barks split the silence of the night. Lynn knew she had only seconds before somebody came to check out what was causing the dog's agitation.

  She moved fast, jumping from the roof of one container to another and another. Her breaths came in sharp gasps that caused a pain in her side, but she kept moving.

  When she reached the container closest to the corner where she had entered the yard she realized the dog had been left behind, confused as to her whereabouts.

  Afraid of catching a bullet in the back, frantic with the need to get out, she leaped to the top of the concrete enclosure and fell to the other side.

  She picked herself up and ran like the wind for three long blocks and only then did she slow to catch her breath. "I'm out," she managed to gasp and slammed her back against an abandoned building as her legs threatened to buckle.

  Leaning forward at the waist, she drew in deep breaths of air, focusing on breathing through her nose instead of gasping from her mouth.

  At least she'd managed to get most of the containers cleared before the dog had found her. God, that had been too close. The flash of those awful snarling teeth still filled her head.

  How was she going to get through the next week or two without once again encountering one of the guard dogs? She shoved off from the building and headed home.

  The bar at the corner across from her apartment building was closed and she encountered nobody on the streets. She checked her watch and saw that it was ten minutes until three. If it hadn't been for the dog she would have managed to clear all the containers she was supposed to for the night.

  As it was she'd have two to add to her list for tomorrow night.

  The only lights on in the apartment building were a dim one in the lobby and the one that shone from her window where Nick would be waiting for her.

  As she rode up in the elevator to the third floor she tried to calm down, but the adrenaline that had spiked through her at the sight of that dog still rode through her veins like liquid energy.

  When she reached her apartment door she raised her hand to knock, but the door flew open before her hand could connect with the wood.

  "Are you okay?" Nick asked as she swept past him.

  "I'm fine." She dropped the scanner on the table, then added the phone and the tiny transmitter, as well.

  "That was tense." He raked a hand across his jaw, stress deepening the lines in his face.

  "If you think it was tense from here, you should have been there. Jesus, I feel like I just outran the hounds of hell." She plopped down on the sofa and tried to still the trembling that threatened to take control of her limbs.

  He sat next to her, some of the stress leaving his features. "What happened?"

  She quickly told him about the dog and how she had managed to get away by taking the high road over the tops of the containers.

  "You did a good job tonight."

  She frowned. "I left two containers unchecked. Damn that dog."

  "You managed to get through eleven without being caught. I'd say we can count this night as a success."

  She got up from the sofa, wound too tight to sit still for any length of time. It had been a long time since she'd felt like this. She felt high, pumped with energy
she didn't know how to diffuse.

  "Are you sure you're all right?" Nick checked his watch and also got up from the sofa.

  "I'm fine. I'm just pumped and trying to figure out if maybe I got sloppy, got noisy and that's what made the dog find me. Some of those doors on the containers squeak and creak as they're opened." She frowned thoughtfully. "I'll just need to be more careful tomorrow night."

  "I wish I was the one out there searching the containers." His gaze was dark, brooding. "I wish anyone else was doing this but you. I don't like the danger this puts you in."

  "It beats the alternative, which would probably be twenty-five years in prison," she replied.

  Torment filled his eyes. "I wish things were different, I wish they'd left you alone."

  There was no denying the caring that she saw in his gaze, the protective tenderness she felt emanating from him. "There have been a lot of times in the past year when I wished things were different."

  She took a step closer to him, the surge of adrenaline transforming into something quite different. Desire. It struck her hard and fast in the very center of her being. She wanted to be in his arms. She wanted his mouth hot against hers, his body taking full possession of hers.

  He must have read her desire, for his eyes blazed darker than ever and she recognized her want mirrored in him. "Do you still own your beach cottage?" She took another step closer. The air between them sizzled, taut with tension.

  "Yeah." The single word whispered out of him as his chest rose and fell more rapidly than it had only moments before.

  "I wish we were there now…just the two of us like it was before."

  A muscle ticked in his jaw and she knew he was remembering the time they'd spent there making love.

  To her disappointment he took a step back from her.

  "Lynn, I don't want you to get hurt again."

  She frowned. "Are you…are you in love with somebody else?" Just because she hadn't been with anyone since him didn't mean he hadn't found a new love.

  "No." He took another step backward, as if not trusting himself to be too close to her. His gaze held hers intently. "I've only been in love once in my life, but we can't do this. Not now, not while we're in the middle of an assignment." He checked his watch again. "Besides, I've got to get out of here now."

  "Where do you go when you leave here? To your cottage? Are you living there full-time?" She realized she had no idea what his life was like now. When he'd worked for Jonas he'd split his time between his cottage and a high-rent apartment near Jonas's house.

  "No, I'm living someplace else." He frowned. "Don't ask me questions, Lynn, because I can't answer them right now. If I tell you anything at all about what I'm doing, where I go from here, then I put other people at risk."

  It was easy for her to surmise that he must be working another job and in that instant she was afraid for him. "Am I putting you in danger?"

  A knot appeared in his jaw. "I can handle it."

  "Nick, I could work with somebody else if this is going to bring trouble to you."

  His eyes flashed. "I said I can handle it. We'll see this through together." He walked over to the door and opened it. "I'll see you tomorrow night."

  She locked up after him, then went to the window and stared out. Three stories below she watched him leave the building and get into an old clunker parked across the street.

  When his car had pulled away from the curb and disappeared around the corner, she moved away from the window and sank down on the sofa. It was as if, when he'd left, he'd sucked the adrenaline right from her body and all she felt now was sheer exhaustion.

  He'd confused her. His warm gaze had spoken of desire, but his actions had said something quite different. She roused herself from the sofa and removed the cushions to pull it out into a bed.

  Sleep. That's what she needed now. She'd think about Nick in the morning.

  SHE DREAMED of gnashing teeth and exploding bombs and Nick. She woke up at noon, stiff from the too-thin mattress and hard springs and haunted by her dreams of death and destruction and a sense of unfinished business where Nick was concerned.

  As she waited for the coffee to brew she wondered what kind of operation Nick was currently working. When she'd requested him as her partner she hadn't considered what else might be happening in his life.

  The last thing she'd want to do was put him in a position that compromised his safety. She'd rather work alone than put him in danger.

  It felt rather decadent, to be in her red silk nightgown at noon. She'd always been an early riser and it felt odd to look at the clock and see afternoon arriving with her first cup of coffee.

  She was still seated at the table enjoying a second cup of coffee when she heard a knock. She froze, wondering who it could be. Before she could rise, a second knock resounded.

  "Just a minute," she yelled. Maybe it was Nick telling her there had been a change of plans, or Blake, calling off the whole operation. Even as she thought of these scenarios she knew they weren't probable.

  Making sure the chain was secured, she unlocked the dead bolt and eased the door open to see a huge man with a headful of unruly black hair and a tattoo of a teardrop at the outside corner of one of his eyes.

  "The name is Tiny," he said. "I live in the apartment next door and I came to welcome you to the neighborhood." His voice was deep and graveled, like a man who had smoked for many years.

  He wasn't your average kind of welcome committee volunteer and Lynn certainly wasn't looking to make new friends, especially with men who looked as though they'd just as soon rip your head off as talk to you.

  Still, she didn't want to be rude or piss off a man who lived next door, a man who looked as if he could make her life here miserable if he so chose.

  "It's nice to meet you, Tiny." She offered him a tentative smile even though she kept a firm grasp on the door. "I'm Lynn."

  His gaze slid down the length of her, then back up to meet hers. "You a working girl?"

  "Well, currently I'm unemployed but…oh, oh no," Lynn protested as she suddenly realized what he meant. He must have caught a glimpse of her nightgown and thought she might be a hooker.

  "I just wanted to introduce myself and leave this flyer for you." He passed a folded green sheet of paper through the crack in her door. "If you feel the need for a little ministering, come see me. The church is located just a block east from here."

  "Thanks," Lynn said, relieved when he moved away from her door. She carried the flyer back to the table and opened it. It was advertising the Christian Ministry under the leadership of Reverend Tiny Taylor, with services every night at seven.

  So, the big, tough-looking man was a minister. Interesting. A jailhouse convert? She'd heard that the teardrop tattoo next to the eye meant the person wearing the tattoo had killed somebody. So who had the good Reverend killed? An unrepentant acquaintance?

  She shoved the flyer aside, finished her coffee then went into the bathroom for a quick shower. Half an hour later, clad in jeans and a sleeveless red blouse, she once again sat at the table and booted up her computer.

  She'd work awhile on the Chastain Web site, then spend the rest of the afternoon on the Spider files. She loved building Web sites, using her creativity to give birth to something colorful and stimulating. But, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on Web building, thoughts of Nick kept intruding.

  That there was still a huge amount of desire between them was evident. But, that didn't mean she should allow her heart to get involved with him again. If she'd learned anything in the past year and a half it was that blind trust was a bad thing.

  Even though she had once trusted Nick with her life, her heart and her soul, that didn't mean things could ever be the same again between them. She still sensed secrets in him, secrets beyond whatever assignment he was working on separate from her.

  A year could bring a lot of changes in a man and she had no idea what influences, what circumstances Nick had faced in the last year. Even th
ough she wanted to trust him wholly, blindly, she didn't.

  She couldn't.

  But, that didn't mean she didn't want to sleep with him again. Even now, just thinking about being in his arms and tasting the heat of his mouth, she was filled with a desire that she hadn't felt since the last time she'd seen him.

  She wanted him and she was determined to have him at least one more time before all was said and done. He'd been a piece of unfinished business in her past and one way or another this time she intended to finish it.

  She reached a good stopping point with the Web building and turned her attention to the Spider files. She had a dozen programs for decoding and decrypting files loaded onto her laptop. Yesterday she had only managed to run one of them. Today she hoped to get through a couple more and hopefully discover the key to whatever code had been used.

  It was tedious work, but kept her mind off both Nick and the task she'd have to undertake in the wee hours of the morning.

  By six o'clock, having no success with the files, she turned off her computer and fixed herself a large salad for dinner.

  After eating, she paced the floor of the studio apartment with restless energy. It was still hours before Nick would arrive and the night would unfold and she was bored and felt the need to get out of the confines of the small apartment.

  She wasn't used to so much alone time. At home her phone rang often and Leo drifted in and out to break the monotony.

  Her gaze fell on the green flyer and she walked over and picked it up. Maybe she could waste a little time at the Christian Ministry listening to Reverend Tiny. It sure beat watching the roaches party in this dreary place. It also beat sitting around here ruminating about Nick.

  Decision made, she changed out of her jeans and into a long black skirt, even though she assumed that at a church in an area like this the dress code was quite lax.

  At quarter to seven she left the apartment, grateful to be outside despite the fact that the night air was filled with unpleasant scents and the faraway sounds of a car alarm beeping. In the distance a dog barked, adding to the sound of the music that drifted from the open door of the nearby bar.