by Karen Fenech
Normally, she would make herself presentable before facing another person. She spotted her suitcase by the front door where Burke must have left it. She’d have to walk past him to get it. So much for making herself presentable before facing him.
She leaned back against the wall and bowed her head. With the state her life was in, her appearance was her least concern.
She padded over the worn wood floor to the kitchen, following the scent of coffee and the promise of caffeine. Burke stood at the stove, cracking eggs into a sizzling skillet. The eggs made a hissing sound as they struck the hot pan.
He wore jeans again but had added a shirt. His dark hair was damp from a recent shower and combed back from his face. He’d shaved exposing the hard jaw line that seemed to always draw her eye when she glanced at him. She looked away from it, from him.
His gaze lifted from the skillet at her approach and honed on her. His jaw tensed. In reaction to her rumpled state? Was he a man who expected women to be perfectly groomed all the time? Thinking that about him, she reluctantly admitted caused a sense of disappointment. For some reason, she’d expected better of him.
He was blocking her view of the coffee maker. “Is there coffee?”
Burke stepped aside, clearing a path and revealing a three-quarters full pot. The mug she’d used the night before was washed and draining on a rubber mat. She moved closer to him to retrieve the mug and fill it. His body tensed and he took another step away from her. Well, damn, she needed some tidying up, but his reaction was getting downright insulting.
Burke’s own mug stood near the pot. He clasped it by the base rather than the ear, his large hand completely covering a decal of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Eve went to the fridge and helped herself to the milk. Burke returned to the skillet.
The aroma wafting from the pan made Eve’s mouth water. She’d had no more than a greasy burger from a twenty-four hour fast-food drive-through the night before. Burke had eaten the same and as he went about filling two plates with eggs, bacon, potatoes, and toast with portions suitable for a team of lumberjacks, it was obvious that he was famished as well.
She gained further evidence of that when he dug in and cleared his plate before she’d had little more time than to settle onto the wooden kitchen chair.
* * *
Burke forced himself to keep his gaze on his plate - and not on the woman seated across from him at his table. It was turning out to be a monumental task. She was an attractive woman, no doubt about it, and she knew how to make the most of her looks. She had the make-up and fashion thing perfected to an art. Yeah, she was pretty, and he couldn’t deny that beauty jump started his heart and his libido every time he saw her, but seeing her in his kitchen a few moments ago had nearly induced a coronary.
Here she was, straight from bed - his bed - her long, dark hair wild around her face and spilling to her shoulders. Her eyes heavy-lidded from sleep. And her scent - there was a scent coming off her that didn’t come from a cosmetics bottle. It was pure woman and unique to her. The wild hair, pouty lips . . . and that scent. He wanted nothing more than to take her back to his bed and make love with her until they both were too exhausted to move. And then, he wanted to make love with her all over again.
Of course that was out of the question. Of all the women in the world, why did he have to want this one? He’d known attractive women before. Truth be told, women who were more beautiful than Eve. But, they hadn’t made him want the way she did.
He felt a measure of disgust with himself for having any thoughts about her that weren’t professional. She was suspected of treason. She had created a weapon to kill innocent people for her own profit. If she hadn’t been found out, and by people who put their lives on the line every day to save lives - including her own - her plot would have been successful.
That thought grated. Her betrayal of her own people grated. His gaze lifted to hers involuntarily, however and his body reacted again.
“I cooked,” Burke said. “You clean up.”
He pushed his chair back from the table, got to his feet and left the cabin.
Chapter Eight
Eve watched him go. Clearly, he was angry. But about what? She felt her own temper spark. She’d had every intention of cleaning up after the meal. But if he thought he could take advantage of their situation and issue an order for kitchen duty, he could think again.
She finished the meal, which was excellent, washed her own plate and mug and set them on the drainer. She needed her insulin, a shower and then she’d feel better.
A few moments later, Eve stepped under the hot spray. Leaning against the shower stall, she stood unmoving, letting the water sluice down her skin and ease the tension from her body. She tried to clear her mind of the last forty eight hours. Was that all it had been? Since Richard’s death. Since she’d learned she was suspected of terrorism. Since two attempts had been made on her own life. So much had happened and in such a short time. She prayed that the next forty eight hours would see this mess resolved and her life restored.
When she entered the living and dining room area, she saw that Burke hadn’t come back inside. She was alone.
She rubbed her temples where a headache was building. Burke wanted her to sit idle and let the CIA find out who was behind the attempts on her life. She could not believe that her assassin was Allie. Who then? It went against her nature to sit back and wait for Burke’s associates to find the one trying to kill her. But just what was she going to do and from here?
Burke’s laptop was on the coffee table. Normally, she’d ask his permission to use his computer, but she ignored what she would normally do - this was hardly a normal situation - and went to the couch.
The blanket, pillow, and sheet he’d used were heaped against one arm of the sofa. Eve sat on the center cushion and booted up the laptop. It was likely that Burke had the system password protected, but she had to try to get in.
She needed a list of the conference attendees. It was a logical place to start to try to find the person who’d switched her insulin. Burke may have all of that on his system. She and Richard had registered for the conference weeks ago and it was likely that Burke would have a record of that. He would have compiled a list of the chemists attending all of the lectures and events she and Richard were scheduled to attend. If she’d been working this case, she would have gathered that information. Someone attending the Abernathy lecture could be the accomplice and the accomplice could be the one who accessed her purse and switched her insulin.
As she’d suspected, Burke’s system was password protected. She was no hacker and had only a rudimentary knowledge of how computers worked. What would Burke use as a password? She knew nothing about the man that would provide a clue. Not even his birthday. She was finished before she’d started. There was no help for it; she was just going to have to ask him.
She was about push off the couch and go in search of him when Burke entered the cabin. Their gazes locked. He didn’t look particularly angry at finding her at his laptop. In fact, he would have walked right by her, out of the common living space, but she spoke.
“I need access to your system. I need a list of the chemists who attended the Abernathy lecture with us. That person may be the one behind the attempts on my life.”
“We’ve been through this. You don’t need to do anything at the moment except lay low.”
“This is my life. My freedom. No one cares as much about it as I do. No one will fight as hard as I will.” When Burke didn’t respond, she added. “Okay, then, I want to go to Washington. If you’re not going to do anything to find the guilty party now, I don’t need to be here. I want to hire a lawyer and a private investigator to work on my case. We’re just wasting time here. The longer we wait, the colder the trail will get.”
“Have you forgotten that your life is in danger?”
A tremor went through her but she fixed him with a steely look. “I’ll take that chance.”
“The choice
isn’t yours to make. It’s mine and we’re staying here.”
Eve didn’t respond to Burke’s comment, seeing no point in it. His mind was made up.
Since he made no move to reclaim his laptop, Eve returned to the task of trying to figure out Burke’s password.
* * *
Burke watched Eve bend over his laptop again. Shoulders hunched slightly, she gently tapped the keyboard. Her features were a study in concentration with her brows drawn together and her soft brown eyes fixed on her task.
There was no way she was going to be able to figure out his password. She’d soon grow tired of the task. As for himself, he needed to call Lanski.
Burke left the cabin. A bird chirped from somewhere nearby. It was a warm day. He rubbed the back of his neck that was knotted with tension and damp from perspiration. The lake beckoned. He cast a longing glance at it, then resigned to playing babysitter, pulled out his phone from the back pocket of his jeans.
Lanski did not pick up so Burke left a message, including that it wasn’t urgent. He was seeking an update on Alasdair McHampton. Burke closed the phone with a loud snap. He felt tense, edgy, at loose ends. He wasn’t used to being on the fringes of an investigation and sitting idle. Being at the cabin didn’t help. Usually when he was here, he made the most of the slow pace, so unlike what he was accustomed to on the job. He took time to recharge after being drained from an assignment. Part of the problem was that his haven had been breached on this trip. It was not his haven this visit. This trip it was a safe-house. He’d brought his work with him. He frowned. And who was he kidding? His problem wasn’t that he’d brought his work to the cabin, but that his work was Dr. Eve Collins.
He shouldn’t have brought her here. Hell, he shouldn’t be the one to guard her. He should have assigned another agent to that task once he realized how fiercely attracted to her he was.
He’d been a poor guard. While on his watch, there’d been two attempts on her life. Was that because in his attempt to put distance between himself and Eve, he’d been careless, overlooked something? He couldn’t deny the possibility. He was never careless on an assignment. Yet he’d never had an assignment like this one where he’d found his suspect distracting.
Burke recalled again how she’d almost died from the insulin switch. Her corpse-pale face as paramedics had rushed her to an ambulance. He rubbed a hand down his face at the memory. His hand came away wet with fresh perspiration.
And then there’d been the bomb. He went still, recalling it.
Both attempts occurred while in his care. While under his protection. There would not be a third attempt. He gritted his teeth. He’d make sure of that. He would keep her safe. He would keep her safe until he could deliver her to Washington, he added.
The telephone he was still holding remained silent. Willing it to ring wouldn’t make it do so. He rolled his taut shoulders. He needed to do something other than wait for the phone to ring. Other than think about the woman sleeping in his cabin, in his bed.
The grass on his land had grown several inches since he’d last been here and there was a leak in one of the windows that he wanted to fix. Might as well do what he could to spend the frustration and use this time on his hands to do some routine maintenance on the cabin. He headed for the shed.
Two hours later, satisfied with his progress, Burke returned to the cabin. He was parched and he needed a shower. His shirt was matted to his back with perspiration. He rubbed the back of his neck. By now Eve would have given up trying to determine his password and moved onto something else. He had to hand it to her though, she was putting on quite a show of innocence. But then, faced with the prison terms she was looking at, she would grasp at any straw to try to get herself out of the charges she faced.
Prison term . . . the thought of Eve in prison for her crime should have brought on the usual satisfaction he felt when apprehending a criminal. It didn’t.
Burke opened the door to the cabin with more force than was necessary. He wanted a gallon of water and headed to the fridge. He stopped short. Eve was in the same position she’d been in when he went outside, hunched over his computer.
She didn’t glance up from the screen at his entrance.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She looked up then, gave him a brief but steady look before returning her gaze to the screen without uttering a word.
She was still trying to break his password. Despite his efforts, Burke felt a grudging admiration for her tenacity.
“There isn’t anything on my hard drive about your case,” he said. “Gaining access to my files won’t do you any good. Remember my laptop was here at the cabin when we arrived. I didn’t bring it with me. I haven’t used it to work your case.”
She gave him that steady look again, her beautiful eyes unflinching.
“Maybe not,” she said. “But you could use it to connect to your agency’s data base. From there we could get the list of chemists who attended Abernathy’s lecture and do background checks on them. One of them is the buyer or an assassin working for the buyer.”
“All of that is being done.”
“By your people, I know,” Eve muttered.
Her gaze lowered, but before it had, he’d seen dejection in her eyes. Seeing her dejected bothered him. He didn’t like that it did. She needed something to sustain her, something to occupy her time so she didn’t feel useless and out of control. It was not his responsibility to entertain her or to boost her morale, but seeing her dejected when she’d shown such courage so far bothered him. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt to indulge her in this.
Burke took two bottles of water from the fridge then joined her on the couch. His blanket and pillow were neatly folded on one of the faded arms of the old sofa. She had positioned herself on the middle cushion, leaving him just enough room to fit between her and the arm that held the bedding. When he sat, his legs brushed hers. She wore jeans so her legs were covered, but the contact sparked the memory of the long, lithe legs he’d glimpsed following the bombing, when she’d been wearing nothing but a towel and then after that only his suit jacket.
With a monumental effort, he banished that memory and typed in his access code. He felt her gaze on him, trying to decipher his quick key strokes. He decided to give it to her. He’d just change the code later.
“Magdalena,” he said.
“What?”
“My password is Magdalena.”
Her brow furrowed. “Oh. That’s unusual. An old girlfriend or, “ she hesitated. “Your wife’s name?”
He narrowed his gaze on the computer screen as he went on entering codes that would link him to the agency’s computers. “Nothing so dramatic. And I’m not married. Magdalena was the name of a stray dog my family took in when I was a kid.”
“Oh.”
The surprise in her voice had him glancing up at her. “What? You figured I don’t like dogs or that I was hatched?”
She met his gaze. Humor glinted in her eyes now as she shrugged. “Maybe both.”
Burke laughed. She laughed too. For an instant he was captivated by her mouth. He looked away from it and returned his attention to his computer.
“We looked at all the chemists.”
Eve slid forward on the cushion. “And?”
“Nada.”
“There has to be someone.” Eve’s expression reflected her disappointment but she straightened her posture. “Who is on the list?”
He was now linked to the agency files on her case. He brought up the list of chemists who’d registered for Abernathy’s lecture.
“One-hundred-nine, including Richard Patterson and you,” Burke said.
“That many.” Eve nodded. “Then I’d better get started.”
* * *
Three hours later, they had researched all of the registrants. Eve hadn’t expected Burke to help her, but he remained with her. Nothing leaped off the screen screaming terrorist. Eve’s shoulders slumped slightly in disappointment. Really, though, what
had she expected?
She now knew more about Allie and the other chemists than she wanted to and didn’t know how she would face them again now that she’d invaded their privacy and learned personal things about them she had no business knowing. And all for nothing. She was no closer to finding out who’d switched her insulin than when she’d started.
“Ugh!” She flung herself back against the cushions of the sofa.
Burke eyed her. “You’d be hell on a stake out.”
“I never went on stake outs. My work was confined to the forensics lab, which I’m sure you know. I was hoping that my personal acquaintance with some of the chemists might give me an edge your people don’t have. That something about one of them might strike me as out of place.”