by Susan Stoker
“Nothing. It’s just that…it’s been a really long time since anyone has cared about me like that. When I’m sick, I deal with it myself. I once tripped in my apartment and hit my head on the counter. I passed out and woke up about fifteen minutes later with a pool of blood under my head. I just…it’s nice not to be alone.”
Slade’s teeth ground together at the thought of her lying unconscious and bleeding and no one knowing she was hurt. He took in a big breath through his nose and kissed her forehead. “Get used to it,” he ordered, before helping her sit on the side of the bed.
He went into the small bathroom and turned on the taps. Fortunately for them both, hot water immediately began filling the tub. Trying to gauge the temperature and making it as hot as he thought she could stand, Slade returned to the room to see Dakota lying on her back on the bed. Her legs were still hanging off the end of the mattress and she seemed to be asleep.
“You awake?”
“Yeah,” she mumbled.
Slade had gotten a room with two beds, not wanting to be presumptuous, and Dakota hadn’t even commented on the fact that he’d rented only one room or the number of beds. He’d been prepared to argue against them sleeping in different rooms because of the danger, but as it turned out, he didn’t need to. She accepted the arrangements as if they didn’t even bother her. And it was obvious they didn’t.
“Come on, up you go,” Slade said as he grabbed her hand and pulled her to a sitting position.
She groaned and twisted her head back and forth as if working out the kinks. “I take it the water is hot?” she asked.
“Yup. And it’s calling your name.”
“Is that what I hear? I thought the mumbling I heard was the water mocking me for overdoing it today.”
Slade chuckled, but didn’t respond. He merely pulled her upright and helped her into the bathroom. He left her sitting on the toilet seat and went back out to get her backpack. She hadn’t moved by the time he’d returned. “You need help?”
She looked up then and asked coyly, “In taking off my clothes? Definitely.”
He smiled at her teasing, but said seriously, “You shouldn’t tease about something like that.”
“Who said I was teasing?” she returned softly.
Taking another deep breath, which he found himself doing a lot lately, Slade said, “If I thought you were up to it, I’d have you naked and under me before you could blink. But as much as I want to see, and hold, your naked body, you need hot water more. And food. And I need to call my friend, find out what’s been happening while I’ve been offline.”
Dakota nodded. “You’re right.”
“Of course I am.”
“But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what you promised me if I made it to Goldfield,” she said with a grin.
“And what are you gonna take as your reward?” Slade asked, not able to help himself.
“I want to sleep with you.”
He about choked, but she hurried to finish her thought, as if he might protest.
“I know you got two beds, and that was sweet of you. But what I want as my reward is to sleep next to you. I haven’t felt as safe as I did today with you in a long time. I’m not saying I want to have sex…but I’ve been snuggled up to you all day. I just…I want that tonight, too.”
“Then you’ll have it,” Slade told her, knowing he had a full night of torture ahead of him. Lying next to Dakota, holding her in his arms, was going to kill him. But it would be the sweetest kind of hell he could ever imagine. “Bathe. I’ll be back with pizza. Take as much time as you want. I’ll call Tex after we eat.”
“Why don’t you use the time away from me to call him? I’m sure you want your privacy.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide from you, Dakota,” Slade said. “You’ve got just as much right to know what’s going on as I do…more so. Besides, I want to introduce you to him.”
“You’re going to tell him about us?”
“If you mean am I going to tell him that you’re important to me and that I see us having a relationship when the threat against you is neutralized…the answer is yes.”
“Oh…um…okay.”
She was cute when she was flustered. Slade leaned down and kissed her on the lips before straightening. “Make sure you check the temperature before you get in. I don’t want you burning yourself.” Then he turned and left the small bathroom before he took her up on her offer to help remove her clothes. He shut the door behind him and headed for the exit to go see about getting them some dinner.
Chapter 8
It was an hour and a half later. Slade was lying on the bed, Dakota snuggled up against him. Her head was resting on his shoulder, one arm flung across his belly, the other bent up against her body, and she was fingering the sleeve of his T-shirt. She’d rested in the tub until she was a prune—her words—then pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. They’d eaten the meat lover’s pizza Slade had gotten from the small bar/restaurant at the motel, and now it was time to talk to Tex.
“Are you sure that line is secure?” she asked when he picked up his phone.
“What do you know about secure phones?” Slade asked with a teasing glint in his eye.
Dakota rolled her own. “It’s the twenty-first century, Slade, anyone who’s ever watched TV or gone to the movies knows about secure phone lines.”
He chuckled. “Right. And to answer your question, yes. My phone is definitely secure. It was issued by the Navy, and I guarantee Tex’s lines are all more than safe.”
“Can I ask something?”
“Of course.”
“What makes a line secure? I mean, I know abstractly what it is, but not how it works.”
“A secure line has end-to-end encryption. It prevents someone from tapping into the line and listening. As long as both speakers are using a secure line, whatever is said will stay between those two people.”
“Hmmm, so it’s kinda like talking in code. Your words get scrambled as you talk, then unscrambled so the other person can understand you.”
“Basically, yeah,” Slade told her, smiling at the simple way she put it.
“Cool.”
“Yeah. Now, you got any more questions, or can I call Tex?”
Her cheeks flushed, but she said simply, “I’m done…for now.”
Slade grinned. He enjoyed her curiosity more than he could say. The fact that she wasn’t curled into a ball scared out of her mind said a lot about her inner fortitude. And he liked it.
Slade leaned over and kissed her on the forehead to reassure her before dialing Tex’s number. He clicked on the speaker button so Dakota could hear the conversation. He was honest earlier when he’d told her he had nothing to hide from her.
“Hey, Tex.”
“Cutter. Where in the hell have you been?” Tex exclaimed grumpily.
“I told you where I was going,” Slade told him without rancor. “Unfortunately, I didn’t think about the fact there might not be cell service out there in the desert.”
“Did you find her? Tell me you found her.”
“I found her.”
“Thank God.”
Something in his tone struck Slade as wrong. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Fourati knows where she is. You need to get on the move. Now.”
“We’re already on the move, and yeah, we figured he found her when one of his goons broke into the trailer we were occupying. But what I want to know is how Fourati found her. Tex, she was in the middle of fucking nowhere. There was no cell service and there are only about fifty people living in Rachel. How in the hell did he track her down? Was it me? Did I lead them there?”
“I’m not sure,” Tex told him. “She doesn’t have a cell?”
“No.”
“Could her car have been tracked?”
“Not likely, she’s been there quite a while. They would’ve been out to snatch her long before now if it was.”
“Two-way radio? Using her credit card
s? Has she been sending letters to anyone back home?”
Slade felt Dakota shake her head at his shoulder. “She says no.”
There was a pause before Tex asked, “She there now?”
“I’m here,” Dakota said in a soft voice. “It’s nice to meet you, Tex. Slade has nothing but good things to say about you.”
“Well, shit, he’s lying then,” Tex returned immediately with a hint of humor. “You all right, honey?”
Slade’s lips twitched. How like Tex to be in the middle of an interrogation, but pause to make sure a woman was good.
“I’m okay. Although I think Slade’s Harley is trying to kill me.”
Tex chuckled. “Give it time. You’ll get your biker legs in no time.”
“No offense, but I don’t think I want biker legs,” Dakota told him.
“You stickin’ with Cutter?” Tex asked her.
“If Cutter is Slade, then yeah, I’d like to,” Dakota said, blushing.
Slade grinned. He loved that she basically just flat-out confessed to Tex that she liked him. It was one thing to admit it to him, it was a whole other thing to tell someone else.
“Cutter is Slade,” Tex confirmed, then said, “so you’ll be getting your biker legs. Now…you talk to anyone back home while you were hiding out in Rachel, Dakota? Call anyone? Write anyone a letter?”
“Not really. I sent postcards to my dad, but I gave them to tourists and they mailed them for me when they got home.”
“It’s how I figured out I needed to start in Vegas,” Slade interjected. “Two people didn’t wait until they got home to mail them.”
“Hmmm. Did her dad say anyone else had visited?”
“A couple of people who claimed to be with the government. He sent them all on their way without talking with them though. He was extremely cautious with me and didn’t say anything about Dakota until he was sure of who I was.”
“So the question is, what information does Fourati have? Were his people in Vegas for months looking for her and somehow made the same connection to Rachel that you did, Cutter? Or did he somehow get to her dad after you were there. Could you have been followed? Maybe one of his people saw you in Vegas and trailed you.”
“Damn…we’ve got too many unknowns,” Slade said with a shake of his head.
The line was silent for a moment as everyone pondered the mystery.
“I honestly don’t think he could’ve known about me,” Slade mused. “I’d only gotten the assignment from Lambert recently. There’s no reason for him to have me on his radar at all or to link me to Dakota.”
“You might not be,” Tex countered. “Maybe he’s been tracking her somehow this whole time. It’s possible he had things he needed to take care of in his organization and wasn’t ready to claim her yet. But when those things were done, her time ran out and he sent someone to fetch her.”
“Pat and Connie, the owners of the A’Le’Inn, have wi-fi,” Dakota said into the silence. “I didn’t get on last night because I didn’t have access to a computer, but I’ve been on it before, searching San Diego news sites and stuff for information on the bombing. Could he have found me that way?”
“It’s possible,” Tex mused. “If he doesn’t have a tracker on you, he knows that pretty much the only directions you might’ve gone from San Diego are north and west. You could’ve gone into Mexico, but that would’ve been a long shot. So he probably had his eyes out for use of your credit cards and any suspicious internet activity. I’m guessing your searches could’ve tipped him off. He could’ve traced the IP address to Rachel. It might have simply taken him two months to hit on the searches and pinpoint your location. Which was lucky for us.”
“I’m sorry,” Dakota whispered. “I honestly didn’t think he’d be able to find me if I did searches for general news stories. I knew I’d been there too long, but I wanted to save up a bit more money before fleeing again.”
“It’s not your fault,” Tex said, before Slade could reassure her. “You weren’t using your credit cards, and stuck to cash, that was all good.”
“I guess I know what not to do next time,” she said softly.
“There isn’t going to be a next time,” Slade said fiercely, squeezing her shoulders tighter. He looked down into her eyes and willed her to believe him. To trust him to keep her safe.
“What’re your plans, Cutter?” Tex asked, interrupting the emotional moment.
“To get to San Diego as soon as possible,” Slade said.
“Dakota, you gonna be able to handle the bike that long?” Tex asked.
Before Dakota could answer, Slade grumbled, “You think I’d push her past what she can handle, Tex?”
“It’s okay, I can—”
Tex interrupted. “Just making sure I’ve read the situation right.”
“I got this,” Slade told his friend.
“Good. Once you get home, then what?”
Slade could feel Dakota staring at him, but he ignored it for the moment. “I’m going to call Wolf tonight. I’m hoping we can crash in his basement. I don’t want to go back to my place in case that fucker has clocked me.”
“You gonna let Wolf in on what’s happening?”
“Yeah. I’m not supposed to, but I don’t give a shit. He has a right to know, since I need him to help me look after Dakota,” Slade said.
“He’ll have your six.”
And he would. Slade knew that. It was why he didn’t hesitate to consider his place to crash while they figured out how to get to Fourati.
“What about my dad? Is he safe?” Dakota asked.
“I’ll talk to Wolf. See if he can get some eyes on him. If needed, we’ll hide him until Fourati is out of the picture,” Slade told her.
She stared up at him with big eyes. “You’d do that?”
“He’s important to you, so of course I would. I’m not going to sit back and let anyone hurt him, because hurting him would hurt you. So yeah, Dakota, I’m going to do everything in my power to keep him safe.”
“Thanks,” she whispered, clearly overwhelmed.
“You’ll let me know what you find out?” Slade asked Tex, but his eyes were still on Dakota.
“Of course. You’ll have your phone on tomorrow?”
“Yeah, although since I’m on the bike, I won’t be able to answer it.”
“I’ll leave a message if I need to,” Tex reassured him. “Be careful out there. I don’t have any information on the guys who showed up to escort Dakota to their boss. I’ll see what I can do to find them, but if Fourati is even a little savvy with technology, and it seems he is, it might not be as easy as I’d like.”
“I will. Last I knew one is probably on his way to lock up, at least until he bonds out, and any others were stranded in Rachel, but I wouldn’t put it past them to steal a car.”
“They’ll definitely improvise,” Tex said dryly. “Dakota, it was great to meet you. And for the record, you couldn’t have found a better man. Cutter has saved my life more times than I could tell you. If my wife and children were in trouble, there’s no one I’d want looking after them more than him.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Talk to you later,” Tex said, then hung up.
Slade clicked off the phone and hugged Dakota. “Don’t worry about the wi-fi thing. You’ve done so many things right over the last couple of months, I’m impressed with just how well you’ve been able to stay under the radar.”
She sighed. “I knew being found was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m just glad it happened when you were there. They would’ve had me if you weren’t.”
“Look at me, sweetheart.” Slade waited until she met his eyes before continuing. “If for some reason, everything gets FUBAR’d, I want you to—”
“FUBAR’d?” she asked before he could finish.
“Sorry. I keep forgetting you don’t know much about the military. Fucked up beyond all repair. FUBAR.”
She giggled, but gestured for him to continue
.
“If something happens and you somehow end up with Fourati, do not, under any circumstances, give up. I don’t care what he does or what happens. You. Do. Not. Give. Up. Don’t antagonize him into hurting you. Don’t take crazy chances to try to escape. Because I’m coming for you. I’ll get the entire US Navy to come for you if that’s what it takes. But I need you to hang on and do whatever you need to do to stay alive until I can get there. Okay?”
Dakota bit her lip. “I’m really not brave.”
“Bullshit,” Slade countered immediately. “You’re one of the bravest women I know. You didn’t sit at home and wring your hands when the shit hit the fan. You didn’t hide out at your dad’s house and cry. You didn’t stay at your job when you knew the kids could be in danger. Even without having the expertise, you managed to evade capture for a fuck of a long time.”
“I ran. That’s not brave,” Dakota insisted.
“The hell it’s not. Sometimes running is the smartest thing you can do. You got out of the situation you were in and bought yourself some time. Where do you think you’d be if you hadn’t?”
“Probably chained to a bed in a basement, forced to do whatever that jerkface wanted me to do,” Dakota mumbled.
“Exactly.” Slade’s voice gentled. “I made you a promise to do whatever I could to keep you safe. And I will absolutely uphold that promise. But shit happens. Unfortunately, I know this better than a lot of people. All I’m asking is that if shit happens to you, to us, you try to stay calm. Don’t antagonize Fourati, but don’t be a doormat either. Whatever happens, you hold the fuck on until I can get you out of there. All right?”
“Okay. But you’ll…hurry, won’t you? I can fake being brave for a while, but eventually I’ll break.”
“I’ll do everything in my power to get to you as soon as I can and not a second later.”
Dakota nodded, then looked down at his chest. Her finger made little circles there and she asked, “So…Cutter?”
He grinned and decided to go with the PG version of his name for her. She definitely didn’t need to know about his throat-cutting skills. “My last name.”