by Paula Graves
His eyes widened. “You’re not going to—”
“Burn it to the ground?” A ripple of laughter escaped her throat. It sounded like madness. “Oh, yes. Yes, I am.”
WITHIN TEN MINUTES, they’d made it through the woods undetected and headed out of Thurlow Gap, driving south, leaving behind one hell of a bonfire. They’d already heard sirens heading for Amanda’s property, which meant the fire would be put out sooner or later. And, eventually, people would probably be seeking Amanda for questioning about the charred body inside.
But they could worry about that problem another day, Rick thought as he tore off a piece of his shredded shirtsleeve to get a better look at the bloody groove in his upper arm. He grimaced at the sight of the torn and friction-burned skin.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Amanda said from her position behind the steering wheel. She was keeping to the speed limit—not too fast, not too slow—although Rick could see a frenetic glow in her smoky-blue eyes that suggested it was taking all of her willpower to keep from gunning the Charger up the highway.
“I need to clean it out before infection sets in.” There were pieces of singed shirt and probably pieces of bullet shrapnel embedded in the groove of flesh, rendering the wound a fertile environment for bacteria.
“As soon as you drop me off in Chattanooga, you can go find a doctor.”
He shot her a look. Drop her off? Did she really think that was going to happen? “Doctors have to report gunshot wounds. You know that.”
She shrugged. “Tell him you gouged it on a nail.”
“There’s not a nail in the world big enough to make this kind of wound.”
“Then tell him it was a railroad spike.”
He clenched his jaw, pain from the gunshot wound exacerbating his growing frustration. “How about this instead? We find somewhere outside Chattanooga to hunker down for the night, and you help me bandage up the gunshot wound I got trying to help you while we figure out what to do next.”
She slowed the Charger as they came up to a traffic light, taking advantage of the wait to look at him. The fiery determination evident in the set of her square jaw was so familiar it made his chest ache. She had always been the most stubborn creature he’d ever known.
“There’s no we, Rick. You never should have come here. We’re going to pretend that you didn’t.”
“You were always better at pretending than I was.”
The look she gave him held a hint of hurt. Just a hint, as if the life she’d lived since they’d last said goodbye had mostly cauterized whatever wound had remained from their breakup.
He wished he’d been able to rid himself of the painful memories as efficiently as she had. She still haunted him, usually deep in the night when he was alone and pondering the mess his life had become since that day when he walked away from her for what he thought would be forever.
“It’s one night, Tara—”
“Amanda,” she said sharply. “Tara Brady’s dead. She’s not coming back.”
He clamped his mouth shut, then started again. “Amanda. Just one night.”
“I never did tell you my real name, did I?”
He shook his head.
“I guess it won’t hurt now. It was Audrey. Audrey Scott.”
“From somewhere in south Mississippi,” he murmured.
She slanted another look at him. “What makes you think that, hotshot?”
“In Kaziristan, you had your accent almost completely contained,” he said, pleased that he’d managed to surprise her. “But you’ve been living in Tennessee for a while now, surrounded by people who talk a lot like the people from where you grew up. Your accent has come out to play again.”
She pressed her lips into a tight line. When she spoke again, that subtle hint of Mississippi had been ruthlessly stripped away. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
“I like the accent,” he admitted. He’d heard it now and then, back when they were sneaking moments of passion in a Kaziristan hotel. When she’d started to lose control, her Mississippi accent had slipped out more than once. “It’s sexy.”
The look she shot his way would have been lethal if it had been a bullet.
Before he got a chance to enjoy his small victory, Amanda released a soft curse.
“What?”
“There’s a police cruiser about a quarter mile back. Coming up fast.” She spoke in a flat, grim tone.
Rick’s gut tightened, but he’d been trained by MacLear to keep his head in a threatening situation. He imagined her CIA training had been even better preparation.
“Let’s determine one thing right now,” he said, fighting to keep the punch of adrenaline out of his voice. “No cops get shot, no matter what happens. If we have to talk our way through the truth, it’s better than killing a cop.”
She grimaced at him. “What do you think I am?”
“A burned CIA agent without much to lose.”
“Technically, I wasn’t burned. I was relieved of duty. They didn’t cut me off completely.” Her voice didn’t hold a lot of conviction, Rick noticed.
“Just keep doing what you’re doing. Stay in the right lane and keep to the speed limit.” He pulled his jacket back on, hoping the bloody rip in the dark leather wouldn’t catch the policeman’s eye if he pulled them over.
The cruiser approached in the side mirror, moving at a clip. Rick resisted the urge to turn and look out the back windshield. Talk about drawing attention to them—
“He’s passing us,” Amanda murmured.
Rick kept his gaze straight ahead, ignoring the police cruiser until it passed. He allowed himself to breathe again.
“One threat averted,” Amanda said. “It won’t be the last.”
“You really have no idea who’d be gunning for you?”
“I have no idea who’d think I’m significant enough to pay for a hit.”
Rick leaned his head back against the headrest, trying to think his way through the chaotic mess of the past three hours. It had started, for him, with the phone call to Cooper Security from Alexander Quinn claiming to be Derrick Lambert and wanting a meeting in Knoxville. Clearly, he’d wanted Rick to be in the area when Amanda called.
He’d known Rick would recognize the voice. He’d known he couldn’t walk away without trying to see her.
“You called me. Where did you get the number?” he asked aloud, rolling his head to the side so he could look at her.
She slanted a quick look his way. “Someone left a package on my front steps. Your number was inside the package.”
“Just my number?”
“Mostly. You know me. Curious as a cat.”
Cautious as a mouse was more like it, he thought. At least these days. “So Quinn sent you my number, and he arranged for me to be within an hour’s drive from where you lived.”
“Looks that way,” she said carefully.
“And he pretty much put me in a position to deliver a warning to you. But why me? Why didn’t he give it to you himself?”
Her lips curved a little, making his breath catch. Time had given her a lean, feral look she hadn’t possessed when he’d known her three years ago, but when she smiled, he saw the ghost of the vibrant, fearless woman he’d spent a few glorious months loving in the heart of a war zone.
“Why does Alexander Quinn do anything he does?” She shook her head. “Foreign services around the globe have written books trying to answer that question.”
Rick gazed through the windshield, wincing at the growing ache in his arm where the bullet had grazed him. According to the highway sign they’d just passed, they were near Athens, Tennessee, about an hour outside Chattanooga. Once they reached the city, they could find some nondescript little no-tell motel off the highway and hunker down for a night. Clean up his wound and maybe plot their next move.
“When we get to Chattanooga, I should call my brother.”
She shot him a look of disbelief. “We’re not contacting anyone, Rick. We have no
way of knowing whether or not Quinn sent that gunman after me. And since he’s the one who sent you, he probably has your family’s phones tapped.”
Her level of paranoia was off the charts. “But why would Quinn send me to Thurlow Gap to warn you if he was in on the assassination attempt?”
“I don’t know!” Her voice rose, tinged with fear. He stared at her, barely recognizing her as the woman he’d last seen on a street in Tablis, Kaziristan, walking away with long, confident strides, each click of her high heels against the cobblestone street ripping another shred in his heart.
Tara Brady had been brazen in her sense of control and self-reliance. She’d needed nobody.
Not even him.
Amanda Caldwell, on the other hand, might share Tara’s honey-blond hair and smoky-blue eyes, but the confidence came and went. Back at the house, with the gunman breathing down their necks, she’d been all business, her training taking over with a vengeance. But now that the adrenaline rush had faded, and they were driving into an unknown future, the fear he’d seen lurking earlier behind her eyes had crept to the surface.
She was terrified, and seeing her that way was more frightening to Rick than being shot at, back at her cabin.
“Why did you leave the CIA?” he asked. She hadn’t yet given him a satisfying answer to that question, had she?
He saw her jaw set like concrete. “Got tired of it.”
“Just like that?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I asked questions about you. Back in Kaziristan.” After the debacle that had been the beginning of the end of his career with MacLear.
Losing Amahl Dubrov to the terrorists had been the worst error he’d ever made on the job. God only knew what the al Adar rebels had done to Dubrov once they got their hands on him.
Rick never should have listened to Salvatore Beckett. He should have trusted his instincts and bugged out of Tablis with Dubrov before al Adar found them.
“Asked questions?” Amanda said when he didn’t continue.
He’d wanted to see her one more time before he headed back stateside, he remembered. He had been due back in Atlanta the next evening to attend a debriefing with Jackson Melville, MacLear’s CEO. Melville wouldn’t be pleased. Rick had known losing Dubrov might cost him his job. “It was a few weeks after we last met. I was heading back to the States. I just wanted to see you one more time before I went.”
Her expression closed like a door. “I wasn’t in Tablis anymore. You wouldn’t have been able to find me.”
“Nobody had any answers for me. So I left.”
Her gaze focused on the road ahead. She said nothing else.
He sank back against the seat, resting his head against the window. In the side mirror, traffic behind him was as light as it was on the road in front of them. They’d hit the road at just the right time—
In the mirror, a vehicle that had been just a dot on the road behind them had grown several sizes larger in the span of the few seconds his gaze had settled on the mirror.
Next to him, Amanda uttered another low oath. He looked up to find her staring at the rearview mirror, her brow furrowed. “Vehicle, coming up fast.”
“I know.” He checked the side mirror again and saw the black dot was a large black SUV bearing down on them, moving at alarming speed. It looked familiar. “I think that’s the Toyota Land Cruiser I saw at the gas station back in Thurlow Gap.”
“Great,” she muttered tersely.
He pulled his Walther from the holster at his waist and checked the clip. He’d transferred a couple of boxes of ammunition for the Walther from the trunk of the Charger to his glove compartment before they hit the road, and he’d seen extra guns and rounds in Amanda’s duffel bag, as well. But if the person in the fast-approaching SUV had backup and bigger weapons, all their firepower might not be enough.
“If they’re up to no good, I don’t think we can shoot this thing out,” Amanda said.
“How are your defensive-driving skills?”
“Rusty,” she admitted, “but I still remember a few things.”
Rick checked the back window. The SUV was about four car lengths back. “This Charger will do 140 miles an hour. I bet we can outgun that land boat back there. If they try to run us off the road or start shooting, just floor it.”
She gave a brisk nod, her gaze flicking back and forth between the light traffic ahead and the rearview window. He saw her shoulders tighten. “Weapon!” she barked.
He turned and saw a large-caliber handgun extending from the passenger window of the Toyota. “Duck and gun it!”
Dropping low in his seat, he held on as the Charger bolted forward, the engine singing with the power surge, and sent up a quick prayer of thanks that his sister Shannon had talked him into buying the muscle car instead of a less expensive, more practical sedan.
Amanda weaved the Charger through traffic, the SUV staying with her for about a mile before it started to fall back.
“I love this car,” she declared, sounding like the Tara Brady he remembered. A rush of pure male hunger surged through him, badly timed but strangely welcome. For the first time in a long time, he felt like the Rick Cooper who’d fallen hard for the sexy American spook.
It was about damn time.
Chapter Four
At least it wasn’t a tent in the Sudan, Amanda thought as she surveyed the shabby facade of the roadside motel a few miles outside Chattanooga. After the scare on the interstate, they’d taken side roads and backtracked now and then, which turned their hour’s drive to Chattanooga into five long and tension-filled hours.
“Floozy up, pretty mama.” Rick straightened his jacket, grimacing with pain as the leather rubbed his wounded arm. He unbuttoned a couple of buttons on his shirt, glancing at her. “Come on, if we’re going to sell this one-night stand, you’re going to have to look a little trampier.”
She slanted a look his way, not missing the gleam of amusement in his eyes. He was enjoying himself, the jerk. She wanted to be angry at him, mostly because anger was a lot easier to deal with than what she was really starting to feel, a flicker of the old excitement that used to grip her right in the chest every time she spotted him coming her way.
Their time together had been so long ago. So much had happened since then. Things he didn’t know about. Things she didn’t want to remember.
It’s a job, she reminded herself. If anyone in the world knew how to become someone she wasn’t, it was the little girl born in McComb, Mississippi, who’d hidden from her series of drunk “daddies” and browbeaten mama by pretending to be someone—anyone—she wasn’t. She pushed her jeans down around her hips and started to pull up her T-shirt to tie it into a knot over her belly, stopping just in time.
She shot another quick look at Rick to see if he’d noticed her sudden hesitation. He was scanning the area outside the car, making sure they hadn’t picked up a tail somewhere along the detour route.
She tucked the shirt into her jeans, hiding the scars across her lower back where the al Adar rebels had made her pay for her insolence. Exposed midriff was out. She’d just have to go the more obvious route. “Do you have a knife handy?” Hers was packed in the duffel bag.
Rick pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and handed it to her with a curious look. “Is this about to get kinky?”
She opened the sharpest blade and sliced through the neckband of her T-shirt, tearing the fabric down the front until the tops of her breasts, cradled in a lacy blue bra, were exposed. She glanced his way. “Trampy enough?”
His gaze settled on her breasts. The air between them felt like a furnace blast, thick with heat and tension.
“That’ll do.” He cleared his throat and looked away.
The manager’s office was a tiny room at one end of the one-story motel. Just outside, Rick threw his good arm around her shoulders, tugging her close to his side. An overwhelming sense of familiarity rocked her, sending a tremble through her legs. He was hard and lean-muscled, m
asculine to the core despite his outer veneer of sophistication. She’d always known there was a hard-loving, hard-fighting Alabama country boy lurking beneath the surface of the urbane charmer.
It was one of the things she’d loved most about him.
At the front desk, a balding man in his early fifties sat behind the counter, reading a Zane Grey novel. Knights of the Range. One of her favorites. He didn’t look up immediately.
Rick caught her chin in his hand, drawing her face up to his. As his lips descended, she felt like a fly trapped in a web, watching the spider’s inexorable approach.
His lips met hers. Soft at first, then fierce and hard, as if fueled by an impatient hunger he was desperate to sate. The world around her reeled, forcing her to clutch him with both hands to stay upright.
He dragged his lips away and turned to look at the desk clerk. He’d finally looked up from his book at their public display of hormones.
“One hour, two hours or the night?” he asked, his gaze dropping to Amanda’s breasts.
“The night,” Rick answered, bending his head to suckle the skin at the base of her neck. Electricity shot through her, heading straight for her sex. Her knees wobbled again.
“That’ll be forty bucks. Phone and TV extra.”
Rick licked the curve of her collarbone, his tongue rough-textured and hot. Heat settled low in her belly as his voice rumbled through her. “All we need is a bed.”
The clerk laughed, his gaze still firmly affixed to the front of Amanda’s ripped T-shirt. Rick pulled his lips away from her neck long enough to hand the clerk two twenties and retrieve the key the man handed him.
He walked outside with his arm still around Amanda’s shoulders. She knew, as they moved down the breezeway toward the room, that she should move away from him, but her body wouldn’t listen to the warning bells clanging in her head.
Rick handed her the key when they reached the room. As she unlocked the door, her hands trembled violently. She tried to tell herself it was delayed reaction from the day’s events, but that attempt at self-delusion didn’t last past the first step inside the motel room, when Rick slammed the door shut behind them and flattened her against it with a hungry growl.