“I agree, but there’s a faction that doesn’t. Others are smart enough to know harming her, going after her, means blowing her extraction agreement and setting in motion whatever contingency plan she and her lawyer—”
“Bast.”
“—worked out.”
“The latter group seems too smart to be working for the agency.” All the pieces came together in Andy’s head. The brewing internal war threatened to spill out and blow back on Natalie and, by extension, Gabe.
“The intelligent group has convinced the more vocal minority to hold off on taking any action for now and send in someone to watch her,” Rick said in a flat voice.
Andy did not like where this was headed. “Which is where you come in, I assume.”
“Gabe can’t kill the guy who is about to start watching him because that person the CIA is sending to check on Natalie works for me.”
It sounded so innocent, but the history between Rick and Gabe came with a load of baggage. If Gabe tipped from frustrated to furious while he was out there with Natalie, he could lose his edge. Gabe had never wavered in his dedication to the job before, but the issues with Rick were personal. They went right to the very heart of who Gabe was and what he believed.
“Goddamn it, Rick.” Andy tried to push down the anger simmering inside him, but it spilled out. Rick’s bombshell would fuck up all of their lives, not just Gabe’s. “Are you looking for a new reason to piss Gabe off?”
“I’m trying to resolve our personal issues separate from this, but I can’t even get there if he kills one of my men. He will touch off a landslide of shit from the CIA.”
As if those two needed one more wall erected between them. That meant Andy had to step in, like it or not. “How close is your person to finding Gabe’s location?”
Rick switched from tapping his fingertips together to drumming them on the armrest. “That depends on how long it takes for you to give it up.”
“Wouldn’t even if I could.” That’s how this worked. They had emergency protocols and ways to track each other down if communication cut out, but the specific details of where a team, or in this case Gabe, took an asset stayed with the team leader. The fewer who knew the safe location, the better.
“You can point me in the right direction and I’ll ferret the rest out.” Typical Rick. He didn’t dig for details because he had to know there were none to give. So, he circled back and ran at the problem another way. “Look, the CIA wants a check-in with Natalie now. That means surveillance and proof she is upholding her end of the deal. I get why she ran, and it was smart, but her being in hiding isn’t helping to smooth over the concerns.”
On one level Andy appreciated what Rick was trying to do—handle the matter on his terms, which made it less likely Gabe would need to take action. But this still amounted to an assignment implosion. Rick might act as though officials only contacted him, but there could be others. Rick could accidentally be leading the real killers right to Natalie.
“Your job sucks.” In that moment, Andy thought they all needed to rethink their chosen career paths. Forget his war hero father. Forget the mother he lost too young. Doing this shit day after day took a toll.
“If my men do the check, we don’t need to worry about the safety of Gabe and Natalie. I can make this happen. Bring Gabe home faster and safe.”
“You owe him,” Andy said, adding the unspoken words he wanted out in the open.
“Like I don’t know that.”
That was something. Andy chalked it up to personal growth or some such shit, but still. “He’s going to fucking hate the idea of you stepping into the middle of his assignment.”
“I’ll send a man. Gabe won’t kill him. We can work together on this without the CIA really knowing.”
Andy almost hated to ask the question. “Then what?”
A shrug. An exhale. Rick worked his way through all the gestures before finally spitting out a sentence. “After the job is done I’ll work on repairing the personal damage.”
That struck Andy as a “too late” issue, but he didn’t say it. “Remind me to take a vacation during those days. Preferably one out of the country.”
“I’ll get him to listen to me.”
“It’s like you don’t know our brother at all.” After all these years, after all the fighting, Andy didn’t understand how that level of ignorance was possible.
But Rick would learn that the hard way, just like he did with everything else. For being the oldest Rick sure did screw up the concept of family loyalty pretty often. Between Rick’s stubbornness and Gabe’s refusal to even listen, Andy had just about had it with being the youngest MacIntosh brother.
“He’ll forgive me.” Rick said the words, but the rock-hard certainty of his voice stumbled on the delivery.
Andy could not imagine a world where that could happen, and he really couldn’t blame Gabe for making any truce difficult. “You know something I don’t?”
Rick shook his head. “He can’t stay mad forever.”
That sick feeling of rawness crept back into Andy’s gut. Yeah, Rick didn’t get Gabe at all.
FIVE
Gabe lifted the handle and swung the maul. The tool looked like a cross between an axe and a sledgehammer. He’d found it in the supply shed along with large pieces of wood, clearly cut by a chainsaw earlier in the season, before the snow started to fall. Cutting them even smaller seemed like the best way to burn off energy without doing it the way he wanted to do it.
He set the head of the maul in the log and lifted. It glided through the air, straight down in a vertical line through a mix of gravity, momentum and strength. He enjoyed the rhythmic thumping as he whacked into the middle of each block. The repetitive motion started a welcome burning in his shoulders.
The snow had stopped falling and the wind died down. The exercise kept him warm in his quilted flannel jacket and thick boots as he worked. So did her stare. He could feel it as the sweat rolled down his back. Natalie, on the porch, watching.
“How do you entertain the other women you bring up here?” she asked, the amusement obvious in her tone.
Just the sound of her voice sent a flush of warmth racing through him. “This is a safe house, not the back of a Chevy.”
He lifted the maul again and brought it down with a heavy thwack. Sending the quarters flying brought a kick of satisfaction. Gave him something to focus on besides her, and God knew he wanted to look at her.
“It was an innocent question,” she said with that soft southern lilt.
Sexy-sounding or not, he somehow doubted that. “Uh-huh.”
This woman thrived on intel gathering. She knew how to drill down, ask the right question. Set someone off and test his patience. He didn’t think she’d turn those skills off in her private life, which totally sucked for him. He’d been interrogated, soft and hard, and didn’t need a repeat of either.
Thwack.
“Are you immune to the cold or something?” she asked.
He stopped before he could lift the maul for another swing. “No.”
“Ah, we’re back to curt responses.”
“Never left them.” He made the mistake of looking at her then. Forget yelling at her to get back inside. She stood there, leaning against a post, wearing his thick down jacket and wrapped in two blankets with an oversized hat plopped on her head. Only pink cheeks and those big eyes peeked out. “I’m not a big talker.”
But he was a fucking goner. One quick glance in her direction and his common sense fizzled. He couldn’t even see skin, and what few brain cells he had left blinked out as images of her, under him, over him, filled his head.
“You must be a joy on a stakeout.”
She seemed a little confused about the difference between an Army sniper and a detective. No way she made that mistake except on purpose, which meant she’d carefully crafted the questions to get at something else.
He balanced the head against the chopping block and leaned against the handle. “I
don’t really do those.”
Her head fell to the side and that soft blond hair, now dry, slipped over her shoulder. “What do you do?”
“Now?” He followed the direction of the question but couldn’t figure out where it led.
“Other than swing that axe, I mean.” She pointed at the handle as her gaze wandered across his shoulders and down to his stomach.
“Maul. And I think you know the general gist of my job.” Not that he could or would explain more. His clients deserved confidentiality. He extended it to her just as he did all the others.
She made an exaggerated show of dropping her head forward and sighing. “Honestly, this is going to be the longest few days of—”
“Weeks.”
“I’m ignoring that.” She pinned him with a serious glare. “Can’t really imagine not killing you if we stay up here for weeks and don’t say or do anything.”
She’d basically summed up the reason he stood outside in the frigid weather chopping wood when they already had piles of it stacked up under tarps in the dry shed. Not that they had a lot of choices for activities that didn’t include the bed or the outdoors. Other than a pile of mysteries with torn covers, a deck of cards and an old laptop loaded with a few movies and nothing more, they were on their own for entertainment. Next time he picked a safe house, he’d pick one with Internet service. “You want to go to a movie?”
“What?”
She clearly missed the sarcasm. “This is about keeping you safe.” When she continued with the narrow-eyed frown, he skipped right to the point. The one he thought he’d made when he dragged her under that shower spray. “Hell, I don’t even want you outside.”
Instead of getting the hint and heading back in, she pushed away from the post. Took a few steps then started down the stairs. “I’m assuming you set up a perimeter.”
Now that was insulting. As if this was his first damn day on the job. “Of course.”
“Don’t you think you should tell me where in case I accidentally walk into it? While you’re at it, I need the locations of those two emergency drop sites. Just in case.”
A trained operative turned handler turned administrator. While he intended to fill her in and would, he couldn’t quite see her racing around without a care. “There’s less chance of any trouble if you stay inside.”
She stopped on the bottom step. Didn’t venture into the snow this time. “I’m not someone who just sits around.”
“I can appreciate that.” Neither was he. He worked hard and played even harder. He didn’t hover or sit around watching one game after another in a recliner until his ass fell asleep. He got up and did things.
She shrugged. “Then entertain me.”
His mind went blank. Totally fucking blank.
“Oh my God.” She burst out laughing. “You should see your face.”
The sound echoed around him, wiping out every dark thought and the last of his frustration over her refusal to just follow his directions without question. “Do you know your accent comes out when you do that?”
“What?”
“Smile.” There, in the background. The southern melody. The way she hit certain words. The light that brightened inside her, if only for a second, while she sparred with him and let the rest fall away.
She held his gaze for an extra beat before glancing away. All of a sudden, something in the sway of the towering trees held her attention. “Back to my point.”
“You want me to keep you busy.” A list of possibilities filled his head, each one dirtier than the one before. “Right.”
“Then entertain me.”
The handle dug into his palm as he tightened his grip. “You’re playing a dangerous game here, Natalie.”
A whooshing sound had them both turning to the side. Snow dropped off high branches in large clumps and crashed into a pile at the edge of the small open area around the cabin.
Nature provided the diversion. Gabe jumped on it. Whatever coursed through his veins likely hit her as well. He didn’t buy into the idea of men being more sexual than women. The one looking at him right now, picking each word for maximum impact on his senses and taking his nerves to the snapping point, was no shrinking violet. But he had his limits, so he went with safe.
“I was talking about a game of Twenty Questions.” Not that they hadn’t studied each other’s files . . . or at least the information that other people, even people with clearances and access, could unbury. The stuff she kept hidden, the information locked inside her and in unmarked files somewhere, did interest him.
“You won’t know if I’m telling the truth.”
The woman had a good point. Not that he’d conceded that just yet. “I will.”
“You’re some kind of human lie detector?”
He fought to keep his mind on the mundane conversation and off the hours that lay ahead. The night he had to get through. “Possibly.”
She rubbed her boot over the salt he’d thrown on the step after clearing it off. “Indulge me.”
The scraping sound screeched across his brain. “I thought I was doing that when I agreed not to tie you to the bed.”
Her foot slid to a stop. “Is that your thing?”
“Actually, yes.” She just stood there. Not quite what he expected. Hell, he deserved for her to tell him to fuck off, but she didn’t. “No comeback to that?”
“You don’t scare me.” She tightened her grip on the edges of the blanket. “Having sex with you doesn’t scare me.”
It scared the piss out of him for some reason. “So that we’re clear, what I’d do to you in bed would be about pleasure, not pain.”
Silence roared between them. The creaks of the cabin and regular thuds of the snow dropping off trees blended into nothingness as they stood there, a few feet apart, with the words hovering between them.
She broke the spell with the muffled clap of her gloved hands. “Back to the game.”
Damn but he liked her style. She didn’t back down from a challenge. “You have to earn it.”
She snorted. “I almost hate to ask what that means.”
He held up a finger and waited until her eyebrow lifted in response. He’d piqued her curiosity. Good. A quick jog to the shed and he was back with a hatchet in one hand and a roll of red tape in the other. Using the chopping block, he balanced an extra piece of wood against another.
“I give up. What are we doing?” She came the rest of the way down the steps to stand beside him.
Before answering, he used the tape to create a makeshift circle on the log balanced and facing them. More of a hexagon, but close enough. He tapped the center. “If you hit the target, you get to ask a question.”
Her gaze bounced from the red tape to the weapon in his hand. “Hatchet throwing?”
“You told me you have a lot of skills.” He’d bet this woman could adjust to most situations, including this one. And if not, fine. He wasn’t really in the mood to unload about his life anyway.
She shot him a sexy smile. “I meant the indoor kind.”
The ground crumbled beneath him. He was amazed his knees didn’t buckle from the force of the need driving through him. But he somehow forced his arm to lift and held the hatchet out to her, handle first. “Unless you want me to take you inside and test both of our control, you should think about throwing.”
She took the hatchet and spun it around in her hand by the handle, looking far too comfortable with the lethal instrument as they moved back. “One of these times I’m going to accept your not-so-subtle offer before you rescind it again and hide behind your moral code.”
The back-and-forth, the flirting . . . so dangerous. Every time he let his mind wander and slipped in a bit of innuendo, she rose to the challenge. One of these times he’d lose the will to walk a line back, then the real fun, and all the trouble he feared, would start.
He kept guiding her back until they reached a distance that guaranteed this wouldn’t be an easy task for either of them. Unless she ha
d experience with this. He didn’t. Other targets, others games—yes. Not this particular one, but he guessed the skills would transfer. “I’ll look forward to that.”
“Not very professional of you.” While walking, she turned and dropped the blanket on the steps before looking at him again. “I thought you said you didn’t fuck on the job.”
Hearing the harsh word in her soft voice shoved him right to the edge. She was playing with him now. Playing and winning. “One hit and you get a question.”
“I think I’m familiar with the rules.” She let out a low whistle. “You are a man who likes his rules.”
When she finally reached the start line he drew with the toe of his boot, he moved around her. Let his lips travel over her soft hair as their arms touched and he shifted to stand behind her. His mouth lingered by her ear. “Oh, and when I hit the target I get to ask one of you.”
She kept her focus on the target a rough twelve feet away. “Most of what I know is classified.”
“Spare me the theatrics.” He hated to pull back. Had to mentally order his muscles to obey and put some room between them. “You get three chances. Yes or no?”
She spared him a quick glance that let him know she’d accepted the challenge before stripping her gloves off and dropping them by her feet. “What you mean to say is I’ll get three questions. Because I will not miss.”
“I like the confidence.” Hell, he was starting to like everything about her. Even those times when she got all haughty and demanding. He definitely liked her now, when her playful competitive side came through. “Hot.”
She aimed. Really aimed. Lined up her feet then shifted her weight right before taking a step forward. Her arm rose over her shoulder and ended empty as if she’d just shaken someone’s hand.
Gabe’s gaze went from her wrist to the target. The blade wedged into the log, cutting right through the tape. Of course she could throw a hatchet. Why didn’t that surprise him? “Even hotter.”
“That will teach you to underestimate me.”
“Yes, it will.” He walked over and jimmied the blade out of the log.
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