by Cynthia Eden
Thomas nodded. “A meeting that probably occurred right after our accident on the bridge.” His hands dropped back to his sides.
Yes, they had both heard the M.E. reveal the estimated time of death.
“We already suspected that the senator didn’t like to get up close with his dirty work. He sent someone in D.C. to attack Mercer, so maybe he sent someone to take care of us, too.” She licked her lips. “Only that someone turned on the senator.” Why? It was her job to find out why. Her job to understand the killers. Their motivations. Their darkness.
“You think we’re looking at a professional.”
“Of a sort, yes.”
“So...” Thomas cocked his head to the right as he studied her. “What will this professional do when he realizes that he didn’t succeed in taking us out? If, of course, he was the one who came after us.”
Well, that was easy enough to answer. “There are two choices. He’ll just cut his losses and get out of town or he’ll try to finish the job.”
Thomas’s lips curved into a chilling smile. “I’d like to see him try.”
* * *
HIS HANDS WERE SHAKING.
The killer glanced down at them. They were trembling again. And even though he’d thrown away his bloodstained gloves, he could swear he saw red on his fingertips.
Duncan’s gone.
It felt so good to be free of the jerk. Duncan had always been controlling him...warning him.
No more.
The sun had risen. The snow had finally stopped falling. It was his day. No more taking orders. No more hiding.
He’d do what he wanted.
The FBI agents were gone. She was gone.
And the senator’s body would be found at any time.
He was free.
The sound of laughter drifted on the wind. The light, musical sound caught his attention. He glanced over at the diner on the right. It had just opened for breakfast. He watched as a young girl—looked as though she was barely sixteen—tried to push back the drift in front of the entrance. She was laughing because the snow kept falling back on her. Her red hair glinted in the light.
He stared at her, remembering the past.
She was so busy at her job she didn’t even see him. The road was empty. The diner always opened first thing. It would be a while before any locals wandered into the place.
He started walking toward her. She didn’t even look up as he approached. He could see her name tag.
Jenny.
Jenny must be new at the diner. He’d never seen her there before.
Then he was just a few feet from Jenny.
Her hair was a deep, dark red. She’d braided it and the braid hung over her shoulder. He was so close to her. Close enough to touch.
Jenny looked up then, and she gasped when she saw him. A hand rose to her chest, and the shovel slipped from her fingers.
He smiled at her. “Morning, ma’am.”
She blinked, and some of the alarm faded from her gaze. That was good. That was real good. He didn’t want her scared. Not yet.
He drew even closer to her. Close enough to catch her scent. She smelled sweet. He liked that. His gaze slid toward the diner. The shades were still pulled. He couldn’t see in. That meant no one could see out.
“We’ll be open in about ten more minutes,” Jenny told him. “The cook’s getting things going now.”
The cook. That would be the big, ex-lumberjack named Henry. But if Henry was getting things going in the kitchen...
Then he can’t see us out here.
And Jenny was so perfect. She reminded him of what he’d lost.
His hand lifted and brushed over her cheek.
Her eyes widened as she sucked in a sharp breath. “Mister—”
“It will hurt, Jenny,” he warned her.
Too late, Jenny opened her mouth to scream.
She never had the chance to make a sound.
* * *
NOELLE WAS ABOUT to fall flat on her face. It took all of the energy she had to climb the steps leading up to their cabin.
This place wasn’t like the one-room shack they’d slept in before. This cabin was more like a luxury resort and as far from the place in her nightmares as possible.
The EOD was footing the bill for these digs, so Noelle was more than happy to escape to the fine lodgings.
She’d been up for over thirty-six hours, minus that one rough hour of sleep she’d gotten while she’d been in Thomas’s arms.
Her gaze slanted toward him. I want you, and unless I’m mistaken, you want me, too. His words kept echoing through her mind.
The problem was Noelle wasn’t used to taking what she wanted. She was used to closing herself off from others. Used to waking from dark dreams she could never fully remember—alone.
“We need to head back to the sheriff’s station at eighteen hundred hours,” Thomas said as he secured the front door behind them. He glanced around the cabin. A spiral staircase led upstairs. “That gives us a few hours to sleep.”
And sleep was certainly her priority because of the whole almost-falling-on-her-face bit, but...
She kept thinking about what it had been like to be held in his arms. To kiss him. To touch him.
His head cocked as his eye raked over her. “Something wrong?”
“I’m just...trying to figure out who could’ve killed the senator.” Well, she should be doing that, anyway.
He grunted as he headed toward her. “Mercer is arranging for new clothes to be delivered to us.”
Since their bags were at the bottom of an icy lake, she appreciated the arrangement.
“Get some sleep, get some food, and then you’ll be able to work up a profile.”
He sure sounded confident. But it wasn’t as if she just waved a wand and magically figured out a killer. “I’ll need to head back to Lawrence’s place. I want to search every inch of that house.”
He flashed her a hard smile. “Already on the to-do list. Mercer wants us to find evidence proving Lawrence is our guy—and if the senator was working with anyone else in the attack against the EOD, we need to find out just who that person is.”
Right. Because the case wasn’t closed, not even with the death of their chief suspect.
“There are supposed to be two bedrooms upstairs,” Thomas added as he glanced up at the winding staircase. “Pick which one you want, and I’ll take the other.”
I’ll take the one with you.
Wait, no. She had not nearly said that. She must be more exhausted than she’d realized. Noelle turned on her heel and hurried toward the stairs.
“Do you need to talk?”
Her hand curled around the bannister. His voice had been so rough. “About what?”
“About the nightmares you have.”
How could she talk about what she didn’t remember?
“You begged someone not to hurt you. Pleaded for them to let you go.” The hardwood floor creaked beneath his footsteps. “And you promised not to tell...”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I don’t remember any of that.” Her heart raced in her chest.
“You do when you let down your guard. When you sleep, that veil in your mind falls away.”
She shook her head. “I... No, you’re wrong.”
He was just a few feet away. “Have you ever thought that maybe you just don’t want to remember?”
The dead man on the floor...the blood on her hands...
“I want to remember.” Those forty-eight hours had shattered her life. Her mother had wanted to push them away while Noelle had desperately wanted to grab that time back.
His gaze held hers. “There are plenty of moments from my life that I wish I could forget.”
/>
She thought of the scars on his body. His captivity. “What if you had the scars, but no memory of how you’d gotten them?” She didn’t have scars on her body. Not on the outside, anyway. But those two nights had left deep marks inside of her. “Every time you looked at them, wouldn’t you wonder?”
He took another gliding step toward her. She tilted back her head to keep meeting his gaze.
“When I look at the scars I have now,” Thomas said, “I remember how much my captors enjoyed cutting into me. They wanted me to break.” His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t. No matter what they did to me, I didn’t break.”
No, the Dragon hadn’t. But had she? In those lost hours, what had Noelle done?
“Then I remember what it was like to kill them.” His hands fisted. “You know what I am and what I’ve done. But when I close my eyes, I don’t like seeing the bodies in my mind.”
You know what I am. She reached out to him and pressed her hand to his clenched fist. “You’re a soldier. You survived. You fought. That’s what you did.”
His gaze fell to her hand. Her skin was so pale while his was a dark tan.
“You need to be careful,” Thomas warned her. His stare was still focused on her hand.
“Careful?”
“You already know I want you, and right now...my control isn’t real strong.”
She pulled back. “I didn’t mean—”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I know what you meant, but I’m running on no sleep and the memory of you being nearly naked in my arms. So you should go to your room, I’ll go to mine, and when we wake up in a few hours, we can just pretend we never crossed the line between us.”
The line between partners...and lovers?
“I’ll stay hands-off, and we’ll keep things just business.” The gold in his eyes heated. “And we’ll get the job done here so we can head back to D.C.”
That was the right thing to do. They had to work together. But... I want him.
Noelle turned away. She climbed up the stairs. She was right at the top when she just had to look back once more.
He was still standing at the base. That hot, golden gaze was focused on her.
“When did we meet before?” Noelle asked quietly.
A mask seemed to slip over his face.
“Don’t lie to me.” So, maybe she was also running on no sleep and the memory of him being so warm and naked beside her. Because she sure felt as if she’d been pushed to the edge. “You’re familiar to me. And sometimes, sometimes...like right now, I’ll catch you looking at me as if—as if you know me.”
“I do know you,” he growled. “We’re working together and—”
“You knew me before the EOD. You even slipped up once.” Another day, another case, but the words had nagged at her. “You told me that you’d seen me, but I hadn’t seen you.”
He glanced away from her, giving Noelle his profile. “You don’t have clearance to know about all the cases I’ve worked. So all I can say is that our paths have crossed.”
There was more. “Do you always keep secrets from women you want to have sex with?”
His shoulders stiffened. “I keep secrets from everyone.” He turned on his heel, giving her his broad back. “Get some sleep. Eighteen hundred hours will be here before you know it.”
Frustration had her muscles knotting, but she spun around and pretty much stomped her way into the room at the top of the stairs. The room was filled with heavy oak furniture, and a big, wide picture window overlooked the snow-covered land around the cabin.
The bed was a massive four-poster, which waited in the middle of the room. Noelle stared down at the covers, then she just let herself fall, face-first, into them.
She wanted sleep to take her away because the look in Thomas’s gaze... It had unnerved her far too much.
* * *
THERE WERE NO creaks from upstairs. No soft rustles of clothing. Noelle had been up there for fifteen minutes, and Thomas was pretty sure the woman had crashed.
He pulled out his phone and called Mercer. The situation was about to slide out of his control, and he needed to know what to do when—
“Don’t tell me you’ve found another body,” Mercer said, his words rumbling as the EOD Director answered the call on the second ring.
Thomas’s gaze stayed locked on the staircase. “Pairing me with Noelle was a mistake.”
Silence.
“She wants me to tell her how I know her.” He hated looking right into her eyes and lying. The lies were cutting him up inside.
“You’re in Alaska to track down the man who hired the Jack of Hearts to kill me...and to destroy the EOD.”
“Yeah, well...” His hand raked through his hair. “All signs indicate that guy is on a slab in the county morgue right now. We’ll do recon work after we’ve had a little time to rest, but Noelle is pushing, and I want to know just how much—”
“You can reveal?” Mercer’s tone was measured.
“It’s been fifteen years. She still has nightmares.”
“I thought she might.” It almost sounded as if sympathy was in Mercer’s voice. Obviously, they had a bad connection. Mercer felt sympathy for no one. “And that’s why she’s paired up with you.”
“I’m not following you.”
“If anyone can help her to remember, it’s you. After all, you were there, right?”
He swallowed. “You put us together—because you thought she’d remember me?”
“Well, I’d hoped Noelle would remember you the first time she saw you at the EOD. Maybe get a flashback. Something. That didn’t happen, so I figured we needed to step up the game.”
Only Mercer thought playing with someone’s life constituted a game.
“She’s not a victim anymore, she’s an agent.” Mercer’s voice hardened. “Fifteen years ago, we had to protect your cover. You had to vanish from the scene.”
But he’d left her behind, and she’d been...shattered.
“Come now, Agent Anthony, I know you’ve seen her since then. You’ve watched over her all these years.”
Damn it. Mercer and his all-knowing intel. “What I do on my own time is none of your—”
“You should be thanking me. I mean, at least you don’t have to sneak off to check up on your profiler on your rare off days. Now you get to be up close with her, 24/7.”
This was insane. “She doesn’t remember me.”
“She will.” Flat. “I think it’s possible that Noelle will discover a whole lot while she’s in Alaska.” A pause. “I want her to rip apart Senator Lawrence Duncan’s life. She’s just the woman for this job.”
Thomas’s brows pulled together. “Have you told me everything about this mission?”
“Oh, son, I never tell anyone...everything.”
Hell.
“I know you’ll guard Dr. Evers. That’s your job right now. To make sure that nothing happens to her while she’s in Alaska. If I’m going to get to the bottom of this mystery, I need her.”
So, Noelle was the brains while Thomas was the killing power. He’d always been a weapon, of one kind or another. From the time he’d turned eighteen...
I have my memories, and sometimes, I hate them. “I’ll keep Noelle safe.”
“Of course, you will.” Now Mercer sounded certain. Almost smug. “It’s what you’ve been doing for the past fifteen years, isn’t it?”
Mercer had been watching. Far too much.
“Even when she became an FBI agent, you couldn’t let go. You thought she still needed you.”
No, Mercer had that part all wrong. It wasn’t about what Noelle needed.
I need her.
There was so much death in his life. Everywhere he turned. But Noelle, she was the one bright light in the d
arkness that always seemed to surrounded him.
“This time, she does need you,” Mercer’s voice held an edge. “So stay close, no matter what happens.”
Thomas ended the call. He took his time climbing those stairs. When he got to the top, he saw the door to Noelle’s room had been left ajar.
His fingers pressed against it, opening it just a few more inches. Noelle was on the bed. Her thick hair was a curtain, spilling down her back.
Would nightmares come to her again?
If they did, Thomas hoped she would come to him.
Chapter Four
Senator Lawrence Duncan had believed in surrounding himself with the finer things in life.
Noelle put her hands on her hips as she studied the senator’s closet. The massive closet was easily the size of her D.C. bedroom and living room and filled with designer clothing.
“He was ex-navy,” Thomas said. “This place sure is a long way from his life on the ship.”
She knew all about Lawrence Duncan’s background. He’d grown up poor in Camden, Alaska. He joined the navy when he was eighteen. He’d been an enlisted man for eight years, and when he’d gotten out of the service, the guy had seemed to skyrocket to power overnight. He’d come out of the military with some incredible connections, or else he’d obtained some very deadly secrets during his time in the service.
“He was married twice,” Noelle murmured as she studied the closet. Each item was perfectly in place. “Both women left him citing irreconcilable differences.” But she’d interviewed those ladies before coming to Camden. Fear had flashed in their eyes when they spoke of their husband.
Dominating. Controlling. Their voices had become whispers when they talked about the senator.
“He was sleeping with his assistant.” Thomas propped his shoulder against the bedroom wall.
“Her and plenty of other aides.” She turned away from the closet. She’d searched in there, twice, and found nothing of any real value. But...something had to be in the house. This place was Lawrence’s sanctuary. After he’d left the navy, he could have started over any place. But he’d returned to Camden. He’d torn down his old house and had this mansion built right in the same spot.