He forced himself to let her go and move away, remembering to stay out of the window lines, but only barely. His head was spinning, his blood pounding an up-tempo number in his veins, and pretty much everything inside him was clamoring for him to go to her, kiss her again, take whatever she was willing to give.
What was going on with him? He wasn’t the kind of guy who lost himself in a kiss, wasn’t the type to forget reality in a moment of lust.
Only that was what had just happened, and it’d happened with a woman who was so far out of his present sphere that she might as well have been from another universe entirely. She was the sort of person he was trying to protect—in a general sense—when he did what he did. She was sunlight and family; he was alone in the darkness, and needed to keep it that way.
She was attracted to him, he knew, had been from the first moment they locked eyes. It wouldn’t take much for him to get her to take it further, especially after all they’d been through together in the past couple of days. She’d said it herself, she owed him her life. He could lean on that, use it to get what he wanted, what his body was demanding he take, hard and hot and fast.
And that, he thought bitterly, is the convict talking.
He’d been playing the scumbag role for so long, through a string of assignments even before the al-Jihad op, that he honestly wasn’t sure it was a role anymore. His mother used to warn him and his brothers that if they made faces too often, they’d get stuck that way.
Well, somewhere along the line he’d gotten stuck. He’d not only lost his family, he’d lost most of himself. Worse, he wasn’t really sure he minded.
He did, however, mind the idea of using someone like Chelsea for sex when he could offer nothing else but his body.
“Bad idea,” he said, voice rough. He jammed his hands in his pockets when they wanted to reach for her, and forced his feet to stay put when they wanted to move. “I don’t think—”
A knock at the door had him breaking off with a vicious curse. He’d way overstayed his limit, and was seconds away from being busted.
Eyes locked with his, Chelsea raised her voice and called, “Just a minute.” She pushed him toward the kitchen, lowering her voice to whisper, “Go. Meet me here tomorrow, and I’ll get you into the ME’s office.”
She didn’t say anything about the kiss, but it buzzed between them like a living, tempting thing.
He hesitated, wanting to tell her to forget about tomorrow night, to say there was another way. But there wasn’t. He’d already gone over all his options. Without Jane he had no backup—and the very fact that she’d dropped off the grid was a very bad sign. It suggested that al-Jihad’s conspirators had shut her down, maybe even killed her, as he’d said to Chelsea.
What he hadn’t said was that if Jane was gone, he was locked in a deadly race. He needed to find the traitors and figure out who he could trust to take them down, before they found and dealt with him. And now he was adding another layer of complication: he had to keep Chelsea safe.
He’d kissed her. There was no way he could consider her collateral damage now. He was a cold bastard, yes, but he wasn’t completely bloodless.
Unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that he needed her help.
Making the only decision he could under the circumstances, he nodded and headed for the kitchen door, and the shadows beyond. He trusted his training and instincts to get him out even if the second cop had gone around to the back of the house. With the state forest so close to the back door, it would be easy—too easy if you asked him—for him to slip away, unseen.
He turned in the kitchen doorway. Chelsea’s eyes met his, and when they did he felt a punch of heat that was sharper, edgier than it’d been when they kissed. This heat was less about lust and more about territoriality and protectiveness, which were two things he absolutely couldn’t afford on this mission.
“See you tomorrow,” he said softly. And left.
But no matter how fast he slipped through the shadows and away, no matter how fast he drove the car he’d boosted and filled with stolen provisions, he couldn’t escape the knowledge that he’d just made this operation far more complicated than it had been, far more complicated than it ought to be.
He only hoped he could pull it off, because if he couldn’t, if al-Jihad succeeded in gathering his forces and launching another terror attack, Fax knew the deaths would be on him.
BY THE TIME Chelsea arrived at work after a mostly sleepless night, with her police detail shadowing her until she was safely inside, she had pretty much convinced herself she’d gone a little crazy the night before.
She’d allowed Fax to enter her house and escape again, even though he was a wanted felon. She’d agreed to help him in an investigation that might or might not be legitimate. She’d kissed him and would’ve offered more than a kiss. But the surveillance team had interrupted to check that she was okay, having thought they’d seen a man’s shadow in one of the windows.
She’d definitely lost it.
After dumping her coat and bag in her small cubbyhole of an office and pulling fresh scrubs on over her street clothes for the day ahead, Chelsea went in search of her boss. If anyone would have a levelheaded perspective on the situation, it’d be Sara.
Sara was in her larger, windowed office, frowning over a mountain of paperwork. But when Chelsea knocked on the door frame, she looked up and smiled, her expression tinged with concern. “You’re here!”
Chelsea frowned. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Of course, I just—” Sara broke off, shaking her head. “Never mind. You’re right. I wouldn’t want to be sitting home alone after what you went through. Better for you to be here, working. Keeping your mind off things.”
“Exactly,” Chelsea said. But the strange thing was, she realized, she didn’t totally want to keep her mind off what had happened. She wanted to really think about everything that’d happened, dissecting the memories not just for the flush of heat brought by thoughts of Fax, but also so that she could think about what the other men had said and done during her abduction, and what it might mean.
Fax had said al-Jihad had people inside federal law enforcement. What if she could actually do something to help identify the traitors, and prevent al-Jihad from launching the terror attack that Fax seemed convinced was on the horizon?
Or conversely, what if none of that existed and he was just using her for some other purpose? Horror spurted through her veins at the sudden thought that he could be somehow using her to plan the very terror attack he was claiming to want to foil.
But how could she know which was the truth when there was nobody she could ask?
“Chelsea?” Sara leaned forward in her desk chair, looking concerned. “Are you sure you should be here? Your color’s off.”
To be honest, she was dizzy and on the brink of nausea, but she wasn’t going to admit that to her boss, who would send her home, or, worse, to the hospital. That was probably where she should be, only she couldn’t bring herself to believe she’d been suckered. She had to believe what Fax had told her, not the least because his explanation fit perfectly with her rescue from the cave. Surely that was evidence that Fax and Jane Doe were real?
Maybe, maybe not. But if what he’d told her was true, then it was her responsibility to help, even though her inner wimp wanted to run and hide.
She took a deep breath and forced her voice steady when she said, “I’m fine, really. What’s on the docket for today?”
Sara gave her a long up-and-down look, but eventually nodded, seeming to accept her decision. She ran down the day’s pending autopsies, all of which sounded fairly routine.
Chelsea frowned. “What about Jerry and the guards?”
The very thought of cutting into a friend made the nausea spike hard, but she didn’t want to be shut out of the investigation because Sara and the others thought she couldn’t handle it. She’d find a way to deal.
“They’re being taken care of,” Sara said tightl
y, her expression a mix of irritation and sorrow.
“They were turfed somewhere else?” Chelsea supposed it made sense, given that the Bear Claw ME’s office was directly involved in the crime. She could see that the decision had wounded Sara, though her friend’s expression made her suspect there was more to it than just the autopsies being sent elsewhere.
Something bad was going on behind the scenes. But what? Chelsea wondered. Did Sara know something more about Rickey’s involvement? Was she somehow involved in—
Stop it, Chelsea told herself sternly. Just stop it now. There was no way Sara was involved with terrorists. Absolutely not.
“The bodies were kicked up a level to the feds,” Sara said with a grimace. “The good news is that Seth got permission to sit in on the autopsies, so we’ll have some information flow.”
FBI evidence specialist Seth Varitek was married to another of Bear Claw’s finest, forensic evidence specialist Cassie Dumont-Varitek. Although Chelsea wasn’t as close to the couple as she was to Alyssa and Tucker, she knew and trusted Seth. That meant she could add another name to the list of trusted people who were involved in the investigation.
Which got her wondering whether Fax would take her word on that and let her involve a few other people in his investigation. He’d have to believe that there wouldn’t be any leaks, but added cops would spread out the work and the risk, and exponentially increase their chances of success.
It would also mean she wouldn’t have to lie to her closest friends.
Chelsea decided she’d talk to Fax about the idea that night. Which, she realized, meant that she’d fully committed inwardly to meeting him and sneaking him into the office, despite her myriad misgivings.
Not wishing to examine that decision—or the reasons behind it—too closely, Chelsea said, “How is the acting mayor handling the situation?”
Sara made a face. “About how you’d expect. Proudfoot is launching a media blitz designed to convince the locals and tourists that it’s safe to come to Bear Claw for the big party on Sunday.”
Chelsea frowned. “Party? What’s—Oh, right. The parade.” Each year, Bear Claw hosted its own take on Oktoberfest, designed to kick off the ski season. “I forgot.”
“You’ve had a few other things on your mind,” Sara said wryly, then continued, “In addition to his media campaign, Proudfoot is also doing a Riverdance-worthy two-step, simultaneously taking credit for our successes, while making sure everyone knows it was the former mayor’s hires who either messed up or were actively engaged in criminal behavior.”
“What a prince.”
“Yeah, well.” Sara’s shoulders slumped. “Unfortunately in this case he’s not the only one thinking along those lines. I’m expecting another invasion from Infernal Affairs any minute.”
Taking that as a hint, Chelsea said, “I’ll go look busy, then. Catch you later, and don’t let IA get you down.”
She had a feeling that it wasn’t IA in general, but rather one particular internal investigator who got on Sara’s nerves, but she’d learned early on not to ask about Sara’s combative relationship with Romo Sampson. That was one of the few topics pretty much guaranteed to put her friend in a bad mood.
It took a while, but eventually Chelsea managed to get back into the swing of her work. She cranked through several routine cases with minimal fuss, labeling and packaging the samples that would be sent out to an off-site lab for testing, and preparing the bodies for release to their families.
She worked efficiently, but compassionately, handling the dead with as much respect as possible under the circumstances, knowing that her work helped bring closure, if not always comfort.
All the while, she was thinking about what had happened two days earlier and the night before. She was definitely feeling more settled than she had the previous afternoon; it helped immeasurably to know—or to at least think she knew—that Fax wasn’t the sort of man the media had portrayed him to be.
She wasn’t naive enough to think he wasn’t capable of doing what they said he had. He was capable of all that and more. But her instincts said he’d been telling the truth about Jane Doe, his allegiance to the U.S. and his hatred of terrorists.
After so many years of reading about them, she’d finally met an actual spy. Under the circumstances, it seemed silly to find that exciting, yet her excitement built through the course of the day, thinking of him and of the kiss they’d shared.
Then it came to quitting time and reality returned with a crash, warning her that the excitement had been nothing more than her mind’s way of not dealing with the fear, of not thinking about what she planned to do that night.
She was putting her career on the line for a guy who’d escaped from the ARX Supermax and taken three convicted terrorists with him. A man who claimed to be one of the good guys, but didn’t have a damn thing he could show her to back it up.
Suddenly, the psych ward didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.
Dressed in another snazzy wool coat—this one a deep burgundy that flared at the hem—Sara paused outside Chelsea’s cubbyhole office and said, “You want to get something to eat, maybe hang out for a while?”
Nerves skimmed just beneath the surface, flowing alongside guilt at lying to a friend, but even in her preoccupied state, Chelsea could see that Sara looked done-in. She shook her head. “We both know you’re hoping I’ll say ‘no thanks, I’m good.’ So I’ll say it. No thanks, I’m good.”
Sara scrubbed a hand across her face. “It’s that obvious? Sorry.”
“You’ve had a rough few days. We all have. It’s only natural to want some alone time when you’ve got half the city breathing down your neck.”
“I’m here if you need me, though.”
“I know.” Chelsea rose and moved around the desk so she could press her cheek to Sara’s. “Same goes.”
After Sara left, Chelsea fiddled around for a few minutes longer, then started closing up the morgue for the night, powering down the computers and lights, and the nonessential machines. When she set the security system, though, she deliberately took the back door off-line, so her reentry later wouldn’t alert the officer on duty at the main desk of the PD, which had a hardwired feed from the security system at the ME’s office.
Deliberately rigging the security system gave Chelsea serious queasiness. If—or rather when—IA figured out that someone had been inside the morgue after hours, it would be ridiculously easy for the investigators to figure out that she’d been the inside woman. But that didn’t stop her. She had to believe she was doing the right thing, even if it might not look that way to the people who knew her best.
If everything went right, she’d be a hero. If not, she’d be unemployed and unemployable. It was her call, her choice.
Stifling the little voice that said she should go straight to Seth and Tucker and tell them about Fax’s visit to her house, she collected her police escort and headed home. After the two cops checked out her house and refused her offer of coffee, they left her and went across the street to their cruiser, considering her tucked in safely for the night.
In reality, she was waiting. And jittering.
Amped up, both by the risk she was about to take and by the promise of seeing Fax again, knowing now how he tasted and how his body felt against hers, she moved from one room to the next, unable to settle. Having seen him do it the night before, she avoided the windows, not wanting the cops to see her pacing one minute, gone the next. She tried to copy his movements, too—the way his footsteps had been almost silent, and how he had seemed perfectly balanced, ready to fight or flee at a moment’s notice.
Or rather, ready to fight, not flee. He wasn’t the sort to back down from any challenge.
Stop it, she told herself. He’s not a character from some book or movie that you’re free to have a crush on. He’s a real guy, and he’s not yours. Which was true, she knew. Fax might have asked for her help because he had nowhere else to turn, and he might want her physicall
y, but he’d never stick around or ask her to come away with him. She knew that like she knew her own name, her own weaknesses.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t indulge for the duration, though, she thought, imagining him naked, remembering the taste and feel of him, the—
“Chelsea.”
She gasped and spun, and there he was, standing in her darkened kitchen doorway with the night at his back. He was wearing dark jeans that fit like they’d been made for him, along with heavy hiking boots and a sweater the same blue as his eyes. He wore the lined leather jacket he’d had on the night before, along with black gloves because the night was crisp, the air hinting at more rain, or maybe wet snow.
She imagined he had his gun tucked at the small of his back, and found that dangerous detail to be staggeringly sexual.
His eyes locked on her and went hot for a second, flaring with the same heat that slammed through her, warning that the rest of it was all rationalization, that her first and best reason for doing what she was about to do was because he’d asked. Because she wanted him.
The kiss they’d shared the night before resonated in the air between them, almost a tangible thing. Electricity sparked, sizzling a wordless question of what they were going to do about it, where they would go from there.
Then his eyes blanked back to icy cool, and he said only, “You ready to go?”
She took a deep breath and nodded, and when he turned and glided out into the night, she followed him into the forest behind her house and didn’t look back.
Chapter Five
Fax cursed himself inwardly as he led Chelsea along a short loop through the woods to where he’d stashed the nonstolen, properly registered car that al-Jihad had procured through his network of area contacts, none of whom Fax had met yet.
This is a really bad idea, he thought. He should’ve stayed back at the hideout, working on getting Muhammad to trust him. Instead, he was following a lead he didn’t have nearly enough manpower to do justice to, one that would most likely threaten Chelsea’s job, if not her life.
Manhunt in the Wild West Page 6