by Gail Barrett
He walked with Zoe to Rider’s door and rang the bell, then caught the anxiety still clouding her eyes. “Don’t worry,” he repeated. “We can trust this guy.”
“I know.” She managed a nervous smile.
Then the door swung open, and Rider loomed in the doorway, looking like a displaced surf bum with his long, baggy board shorts and flip-flops, his unkempt, sun-bleached hair. The laid-back appearance didn’t fool Coop. Rider was a world-class sniper, cool as hell under pressure. Before he’d left the military, he’d been one of their top shots.
“Hey, Coop,” he said, but his gaze arrowed in on Zoe. His lazy grin widened, his interest clear in his eyes.
And Coop could guess what he was thinking. Zoe’s willowy legs were bare, her breasts unbound, thanks to her rush getting dressed. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she’d just rolled out of bed. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders in messy waves.
Coop’s face heated, his hands fisting at Rider’s blatant admiration. And despite his vow to keep his distance, he wrapped a possessive arm over her shoulder and sent Rider a warning stare. “This is Rider,” he said, his voice clipped. “Rider, Zoe.”
Rider tipped his head toward Coop. Message received. “Glad to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Zoe said in her sex-goddess voice, and Rider’s eyes gleamed even more.
He stepped back and motioned them inside. “Come on in.”
Keeping his hand at the small of her back, Coop followed Zoe down the hall. They stopped in a small living room with an orange plaid sofa, knotty pine paneling, and a buck head mounted on the wall. Only the big-screen television hinted at the modern times.
“I haven’t changed much in here since my grandparents died,” Rider explained. “I’m not around a lot.”
Coop didn’t doubt it. Rider worked for a private military company now, slipping in and out of the country in the dead of night, on missions that never made the news.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Rider offered.
Coop stayed close to Zoe. “I wouldn’t turn down a beer.”
“Water or a soda,” she said. “Whatever you’ve got.”
“Sure. Have a seat. I’ll be right back.” Rider glanced at Zoe again and strolled off.
She turned toward Coop and lowered her voice. “Do you think he’d mind if I use his bathroom? I didn’t have time to put on my underwear when we left. I just stuffed it into my pocket.”
Coop closed his eyes, wishing she hadn’t said that. Keeping his hands off her was hard enough. “It’s down the hall on the left.”
Unable to help it, he watched her hips swivel as she left the room. He wanted to storm down that hall, push her up against the nearest wall, and prove that she was his.
But that was ridiculous. Zoe wasn’t his and never could be. He had to remember that.
Still grappling with his unruly feelings, he strode into the kitchen to find his friend. Rider pulled two bottles of beer from the refrigerator, set them on the yellow counter, and popped the tops. “So when did you get serious about a woman?”
Serious? Coop’s heart stumbled at the thought. He scooped up one of the bottles and took a pull. He liked Zoe, even admired her. And he desired her physically, no doubt about that. The hours they’d spent in that motel room had only made him crave her more.
But he wasn’t aiming to settle down. “It’s not serious. I’m just helping her out on a case.”
Rider leaned back against the counter and widened his grin. “Some assignment.”
Coop’s annoyance flared. “It’s complicated. That’s why we need your help.”
Rider’s expression instantly sobered. “Sure, anything you need.”
Coop sipped his beer, cautioning himself not to over-react. He didn’t have many close friends. Rider was one of the few. And he was solid gold.
“We’re up against something big, involving the government or military, I think. I can’t tell Zoe, but—”
She strolled into the kitchen just then, and he took another swallow of beer. The hair around her face was damp, as if she’d splashed water on her face, and her breasts swayed less in her bra.
It didn’t help.
He handed her the can of soda, fighting another surge of possessiveness, the primitive need to stake his claim. “I was about to tell Rider what’s going on. But it’s better if you explain.”
“All right.”
They settled at the kitchen table, and Zoe told Rider about the events. Coop drank his beer as she talked, eyeing the movement of her lips, the graceful flutter of her hands, the satiny gleam of her skin.
He’d never met a woman who’d appealed to him more—in or out of bed. But a long-term relationship with Zoe would never work. She was a chemist. She worked in a lab. He was a carrier-based pilot and never stayed in one place long.
Besides, as soon as she discovered he was after her grandfather, she’d want him out of her sight.
Still, the thought of another man touching her made something go crazy inside him. He drank his beer, his gaze lingering on her long, shining hair, the mole winking erotically as she moved her lips. Her voice was like a sultry, throaty saxophone; he could close his eyes and listen to it for hours.
She finished her story, and for a long moment, no one spoke. The sprinkler swished outside the open window. The warm breeze flapped the curtains framing the sink.
“We took a photo of one of the men,” Coop added. “He wasn’t carrying an ID.”
“It’s on my cell phone.” Zoe took the phone from her pocket and set it on the table.
“I’ll run it through the system and see if we find a match.” Rider tipped back in his chair, his body relaxed, his eyes like steel on Zoe’s. “How much time until the ransom’s due?”
She glanced at her watch. “Less than four hours now. The rendezvous is at midnight at the Mesquite Wildlife refuge.”
“That’s an hour’s drive from here.” Rider’s gaze swiveled back to Coop’s. “I’ll assemble a team. I can have a couple of guys here in about an hour. You have the flash drive?”
Zoe leaned forward. “I can’t let them have it. It’s too dangerous.”
Rider frowned back. “You have to give them something. And if they’ve got any brains, they’ll bring a laptop to make sure it’s the right one.”
“I know, but—”
“Can you modify it?” Coop asked her. “And change the most sensitive parts?”
“I don’t know. Some of the files are encrypted.”
“I’ve got encryption software on my computer,” Rider said. “Advanced encryption standard. If you can figure out the password, you should get in.”
Zoe nodded. “I can try.”
“Right this way.” Rider rose, and Zoe followed him into the hall. Coop made himself stay in his seat, fighting the instinct to go with her, not wanting her out of his sight.
He was jealous. He finished off his beer, galled by that startling thought. He had no claim on Zoe. Sure they’d had sex, and he cared about her a lot. He’d even loved her once. But now…
Now he didn’t know what he felt. He carried his bottle to the recycling bin, then leaned against the counter to wait. He couldn’t possibly love her. She’d destroyed those feelings years ago. This was just sexual interest heightened by their ordeal.
Rider strolled back into the kitchen. “So tell me why you think the government’s involved.”
Grateful for the distraction, Coop pulled his mind back to the case. “We know both the FBI and Navy are looking for Zoe. That explains the Navy chopper—and why I’m here. But those men at the ghost town had military-grade equipment. And they found us too damned fast.”
Rider shrugged. “They might have contacts in the cell phone industry, someone who pinged the phone, then radioed your position to them.”
“I know.” Logically, there were two groups after Zoe—the government operatives and those Arabic-speaking men. “Something just feels off about this.”
&n
bsp; Rider leaned against the opposite counter, his eyes betraying nothing. But Coop knew his steel-trap mind was as sharp as his shots. “Any idea why you were assigned this case?” Rider asked.
That was easy. “Penance. I disobeyed orders a few weeks back in the Persian Gulf. Three of us were doing a routine recon run. The rookie, a guy named Warner, went off course and flew into Syrian airspace, got chased by some Syrian Flankers and MiGs. Pineda—he was the other pilot—scrambled with me to get him out. We made it, but the Syrians raised a stink.”
He shrugged. “As bad luck would have it, VIPs from the State Department were in the region, engaged in some high-level talks. They wanted the incident buried, and us out of sight. Pineda and Warner were ‘encouraged’ to go on leave. I got shipped to the desert to wait until the furor died down.”
And to teach him a lesson, he’d supposed. It wasn’t the first time he’d ignored the rules.
Rider stroked his chin, his expression thoughtful. “I heard about that case.” Coop didn’t ask how. Rider’s connections ran deep. “You’ve been out of communications for a couple of weeks, right? So you don’t know about Warner.”
“The rookie? What about him?”
“He died.”
Coop blinked, knocked off balance. “What? How?”
“Hit-and-run driver. He was on leave in Bahrain.”
“Hell. That’s tough.”
“There’s more.” Rider’s expression turned grim. “Pineda died, too. Four days ago. His jet went down in the Persian Gulf.”
Coop’s heartbeat faltered. Shock fisted deep in his gut. Pineda and Warner. Both pilots. Both dead. Both had flown across the Syrian desert with him.
“You think this has to do with me?” he asked, stunned. “Something to do with that mission?”
“Either that or it’s a hell of a coincidence.”
But why? Why kill the pilots who’d trespassed in Syrian airspace? And what did that flight have to do with Shaw and Zoe?
He shoved his hand through his hair, staggered by the news. This case was complex, far more complicated than he’d imagined—and the puzzle got worse with every hour.
But he had to figure it out. Their lives depended on it.
And they were fast running out of time.
Chapter 12
Coop strode down the narrow hallway toward the study minutes later, his mind still reeling over the pilots’ deaths. Everything about this case confused him; there were too many unrelated threads—Zoe’s parents, Shaw’s supposed kidnapping, the flash drive containing nuclear secrets, and now his two murdered friends…
But those pieces had to connect. He refused to believe any of this was a coincidence. And he’d bet his Navy wings that Zoe’s grandfather held the key.
He pushed open the door to the study. Zoe sat at Rider’s desk, surrounded by computer monitors, her gaze clamped on a glowing screen. She’d switched on the desk lamp, and the golden light formed a halo in the dusk.
“Any luck?” he asked as he crossed the room.
She pulled her gaze from the computer, her frustration reflected in her eyes. “No. I still can’t break the encryption.”
He rested his arm along the back of her chair and leaned over her shoulder, trying to ignore the sweet scent of her hair. He had to concentrate, put his mind toward solving this case, instead of touching her. But it was hard when he wanted to toss her over his shoulder and whisk her to somewhere safe.
“See this?” She tapped on the keyboard, then pointed to the screen. “It’s a subdirectory, a whole group of files I can’t get into.”
She flipped back to the previous screen. “I can access these, but they don’t do me much good. They’re mostly summaries, extracts, nothing too dangerous. My grandfather hid the crucial information in the encrypted files. And those are the ones I need to change.”
Coop frowned, wishing he knew more about software encryption. “What do you need? The password?”
She nodded. “I needed one password to open the flash drive. That was easy to figure out. But he encrypted these subfiles under a different password. I’ve tried everything I can think of and I can’t get in.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” She shifted in her seat, and her soft hair slid over his hand. “I thought about copying the unsecured files to another flash drive and giving the kidnappers that. But this flash drive has a serial number. If the kidnappers know that, and I try to give them a different one…”
They might kill Shaw. “Can you delete the encrypted files and then give them this one?”
“I think so. But even that’s risky. What if they examine the flash drive before they hand over my grandfather and notice that the files are gone?”
“They’d have to know what to look for.”
“Right.” Her eyes turned bleak. “It all depends on how much they know. If I hand over this flash drive intact and they know the password, innocent people could die. But if I give them a modified copy, or if I delete those files and they can tell…”
She tilted her face up to his, her eyes reflecting her fear. “I know my grandfather’s not a good man, but I still can’t let him die.”
Coop fingered his jaw, the emerging bristles scratching his palm. “Delete the files, then give them the original flash drive. I can’t see that you have much choice.”
“But what about my grandfather? What if the kidnappers notice that it’s been changed?”
“We’ll figure something out.” He hoped.
Wishing he had a miracle up his sleeve, he sank into the leather armchair beside the desk. As he watched Zoe type on the keyboard, deleting the files, his mind wandered through the murky case, trying to make the pieces line up.
Who’d killed the pilots, and why? It couldn’t have been done in retaliation. He and Pineda had scrambled to rescue the rookie and get him safely out of Syrian airspace, but they hadn’t shot anyone down. Unless they’d unknowingly flown over something sensitive… But what? And how did that connect to Shaw?
He narrowed his thoughts on Shaw—the man who had to be at the center of this thing. Zoe was right about her grandfather; he wasn’t a decent man. He’d stolen her work, tried to destroy Coop’s career, could be passing nuclear secrets to an enemy group.
Coop had disliked him from the instant they’d met. The scientist had struck him as self-absorbed, pretentious, manipulative, a man bent on bullying his way through life and controlling Zoe.
Coop slouched lower in his seat, his gaze on Zoe, and without warning, the question he’d avoided for hours came zinging back. If he’d recognized Shaw’s bad character, then why had he believed his lies? He should have spoken to Zoe directly when Shaw told him to leave her alone—or at least listened to her later when she’d come after him in the bar.
More disquiet swirled inside him, nudging him toward conclusions he didn’t like. He shifted in his seat, tempted to ignore the question and let it go. He had enough on his mind without rehashing the past. But his gaze settled on Zoe as she worked at the keyboard, her soft lips pinched with anxiety, and he realized he couldn’t keep skirting the truth.
Shaw had fired a well-aimed shot at Coop that night, hitting his weakest spot. He’d claimed Coop didn’t measure up to Zoe’s standards—a variation of the same negative refrain Coop had heard his entire life, feeding the resentment he carried inside.
And suddenly, he had his answer. He’d wanted to believe Shaw. It had given him an excuse to withdraw in anger, to accuse Zoe of being a snob. Because turning his rage on Zoe had allowed him to avoid confronting his fear—that Shaw might have been right, that he might not have been worthy of Zoe, that she deserved better than a dead-broke, thrill-seeking flyboy with nothing to offer except dreams.
His mind hurried to sidle away from that disturbing thought. But as he watched Zoe work, her brows furrowed in concentration, muttering softly as she deleted files, the cold truth caught him between the eyes. Shaw had been right. She had deserved more than h
e could give her.
She still did.
He’d come a long way since those days. He’d proved his worth, both to the Navy and himself, and carved out a good career. But even if he wanted to marry, even if Zoe would have him, what kind of life could he offer her? How could he ask this brilliant woman to sacrifice her career while he traveled around the globe?
He couldn’t. It wasn’t fair to her. He had to let her go.
The stark realization slammed through him like a Mack truck flattening his heart. And in its wake came crushing waves of emotions—regret that he couldn’t be what she needed. Loss that he had to give her up. Fury that she would turn to another man someday, as she rightly deserved.
He eyed the long, gleaming fall of her hair, the seductive curve of her cheek, the golden cast of her skin in the lamp’s low glow. And images flitted through his mind—Zoe naked, wearing nothing but that glorious hair, her sleek flesh swelling for his touch.
He shifted in the chair, wanting to touch her. But they had too little time, too much to do. Those terrorists could soon catch up.
And he still had to reveal why he was here. He had no right to suppress the truth.
But none of that quelled the raw need scorching his blood, the desperation rising inside.
She looked up then, as if sensing him watching, and her eyes fastened on his. He gazed back with brutal honesty, letting her see the hunger flaring inside.
She went still. Her lips parted, her eyes going soft with heat. “Coop?” She whispered the word like a plea, the husky sound spiking his pulse.
His body tightened, waging a furious war with his mind. This might be their last time together. They’d confront the kidnappers in a few short hours, and then Zoe would return to her world. Was it wrong to make love to her one final time?
Without breaking eye contact, he rose from his chair, strode over, and tugged her to her feet. Her eyes turned soft and hot as he pulled her against him. Her body molded to his. Then she sighed, and the erotic sound torched his resolve.
And he knew right then that he had to have her. Here. Now. Before he had to say goodbye.