by Jen Blood
“You’re saying I shouldn’t be afraid these assholes will kill my mother?” I demanded. “I shouldn’t be concerned that I might never see my father again, after I just found out he was still alive?”
“No—I’m not saying that. I’m saying you should admit to it. Jesus, Solomon, talk to me. Don’t tiptoe around me like we don’t know each other—like I can’t see every lie you feed me before you even spot them yourself. We’re in this together.”
“Stop saying that!” I finally exploded. I pushed him away, both hands on his chest, and strode across the room. “We’re not in this together. I’m in this. I’m tied to this. You can leave anytime; you can walk away. You could always walk away. And usually did.”
He shook his head in disbelief, running his hands over his newly shorn scalp. “We’re still on this? For Christ’s sake, Solomon, what do you want me to do to prove I’m in this for the long haul? I’m not the same guy I was when we were together before—”
“A few years may have passed, but we’ve done this dance before. We get close, I start to think we’re going one way, and then the second we sleep together…”
He laughed—a quick bark of disgust, glaring at me. “You think I’m just here because we haven’t screwed in eight years? That I’m just blinded by a monstrous case of blue balls? You honestly believe that?”
I hesitated, shaking with suppressed rage and this sudden release of everything I’d been holding in for… well, ever, apparently. Diggs pulled me closer with a hand at my back, his gaze heated. Hurt flickered in his eyes before it was replaced with a kind of dangerous resolve.
“Diggs—”
“What?” he said. He wrapped one hand around the nape of my neck, the other still at my back, pulling me closer still.
“What are you doing?”
“You think I’ll be gone in the morning if we do this—right?” I pulled out of his grasp and stepped away. He followed. I took another step back, then stopped when I felt the wall at my back. “Can you think of something else I can do to prove to you I’m not going anywhere, once that bell is wrung?” he asked.
He’d blocked me in, my back pressed to the wall, his body tantalizingly close to mine, but he made no move to touch me. He wouldn’t, I knew: this was up to me. My body was on fire, a deep-seated ache in my southern hemisphere as all the fear and frustration and fury of the past few days rose to the surface.
This time, I was the one who closed the distance between us. I fisted my hands in the front of his shirt and pulled him to me, leaning up at the same time. When our lips met, there was nothing soft about it—nothing forgiving, nothing remotely friendly. I kissed him so hard my teeth rattled, his hands at my sides as he pulled me closer. I was burning, melting, desperate to toss everything else aside and just feel something that wasn’t about fear or sorrow or the end of the world as we knew it.
When he pulled back and our eyes met, I answered his question before he could ask. “I’m sure. I’m positive.” He hesitated. This was the test, wasn’t it? If we did this, would I wake up tomorrow to find he’d walked out the door and vanished from my life for good?
Suddenly, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about tomorrow.
“Diggs, just… please,” I said.
He pulled me in then, slanting his mouth to mine. The kiss was urgent, furious, infused with the fear that was rocking both of us. Diggs’ tongue teased the seam of my lips and I opened willingly, gasping when he found the hem of my shirt and I felt cool hands on my bare skin.
My knuckles grazed his side, my fingers creeping toward the button of his jeans. Just as I reached it, brushing the trail of hair along the flat of his stomach, his hand closed over mine. He brought my arm up over my head and pinned my wrist there, our eyes locked. “Don’t rush this,” he whispered. “We’ve got time. I’m not going anywhere, Sol.”
I swallowed hard, caught in those eyes, aching and hot and filled with some need I couldn’t even name anymore.
Diggs pushed my shirt up—past my too-white stomach and the swell of my breasts, over my head, the knuckles of his other hand caressing every inch of newly-exposed flesh. I arched into his touch, breathless now that we’d started.
The hotel room was cool. Next door, I could hear someone’s TV: garbled electronic voices that I could make no sense of. Diggs pushed my bra strap down and kissed my shoulder and my neck and beyond, scraping his teeth along the ridge of my collarbone. When I reached out to touch him this time he didn’t stop me. I set to work on his Oxford and nearly gave up. I was tempted to do the romance novel thing and just rip the damn thing open, but Nick and Dani didn’t have enough clothes to just start tearing them off willy-nilly.
Diggs stopped what he was doing. He pulled back, a flash of very welcome amusement in his eyes. “Problems?”
“Your stupid shirt has too many buttons.”
He pushed my hands away and stepped back, eyes on mine, as he finished the job I’d started. When he shrugged the shirt off and let it drop to the floor, going maddeningly slowly, my mouth went dry. Diggs has broad shoulders and a rugged chest and Celtic tattoos on both of his well-muscled arms.
Diggs is gorgeous.
My knees liquefied.
Before they buckled completely, Diggs was there to catch me. His mouth found mine, softer now, sweeter, and I felt his fingers at the front of my jeans, fumbling in a distinctly non-Diggsian way for just a second before he pulled himself together and managed to unbutton the top button. He slid the zipper down, while I ran my hands over his arms and the strong muscles of his back, his neck, smoothing my fingers over the soft bristles of his too-short hair as he pushed my jeans down over my hips. He knelt in front of me, his head bowed, trailing butterfly kisses down my belly as his hand slid higher up my thigh.
And then, just at the point when I was on the verge of completely forgetting the fact that we were about to move to Australia so we wouldn’t be killed by the psychotic survivors of one of the biggest mass murders in U.S. history; just when my underpants had pooled at my feet and Diggs’ teeth grazed my hip…
The phone rang.
Diggs groaned.
It wasn’t a happy groan.
“Don’t answer it,” he said.
It rang again. I rested my hand on his shoulder and tipped my head back against the wall, aching and still on fire. “I have to—it’s Cameron. Something could have happened.”
“Right. I know.” He straightened, his knuckles brushing up my side and over my breast, his eyes still dark. “We’re not done, though,” he said, and kissed my forehead.
I pulled my underwear back on while he fetched the phone from the other room, answering with a terse, “Yeah.” He sounded exactly like a man who’d just stopped having sex to answer the phone. Subtle.
I picked his shirt up off the floor and put it on. Einstein peered around the corner at me, checking to see if the danger had passed.
“You’re safe, buddy,” I said. “Nobody’s having any fun anymore.” Sexual frustration at an all-time high, I let out a long deep breath and pulled myself together. When I heard the TV come on in the next room, I figured Diggs and I probably weren’t going to pick up where we’d left off anytime soon. I scratched Einstein’s ears and padded after him.
Diggs stood in front of the TV with the phone at his ear, bare chested, his jeans slung low on his hips. It took a concerted effort to refocus, but the peroxide-blonde newscaster gave me a shove in the right direction once her words registered.
“…Authorities are asking for any information leading to the arrest of Daniel Diggins and Erin Solomon—two journalists currently wanted for questioning in connection with multiple bombings in Maine and Kentucky in the past month. Police say the couple should be considered armed and dangerous…”
Diggs muted the TV. I stood there with my mouth hanging open, staring at the screen as two very unflattering photos of Diggs and me appeared.
“As you can see, things have gotten a bit more complicated,” I heard Cameron say. D
iggs had put him on speakerphone.
“A bit?” I said. My voice went up at least three octaves. “Um… yeah, I’d say they are definitely a bit more complicated. Jesus, Cameron, how did this happen?”
“J,” he said shortly. “They have connections in law enforcement at every level you can imagine. Which is why I need you to do exactly as I say from here on out.”
“Because we haven’t been doing that up ‘til now?” Diggs demanded. “What the hell is going on here, Cameron? What do they think this will accomplish?”
“It discredits you, for one thing,” Cameron said. “This is their preemptive strike, until they know for certain just how much information you have. Now if you try to go to the media, you’re already the bad guys.”
“And since they have people on the inside, if we are arrested it’s likely someone will get to us before we’re able to prove our side of the story,” I guessed.
Diggs shook his head in frustration, rubbing the knots from his neck as he walked away. “All right, so what the hell do we do now? It’s not like we can swim to Australia, but I’m assuming our flight out of the country is no longer an option.”
“Not necessarily,” Cameron said. “This is why I picked a smaller airport for you—the security isn’t as tight. You’ve changed your appearance…”
I let Diggs continue the conversation, went to the window, and pushed the ugly drapes to the side. It was only a little past nine o’clock on a Saturday night, people still checking into the hotel. Cars sped past on the highway out front. A cluster of college-aged guys walked in the front entrance. A man in suit and tie walked out. Headlights illuminated his path as a car drove up behind him—gray, nondescript, but I’d seen enough vehicles like it to know exactly what it was. My heart stuttered.
“Diggs,” I said. He was still arguing with Cameron, but came to immediately at my tone. He stood behind me, pulling me closer as his lips brushed the top of my head.
“What’ve you got?” he asked.
I nodded toward the car. The man in the suit and tie had gone around to the passenger’s side. “What does that look like to you?”
“What’s happening?” Cameron asked.
“Unmarked cop car,” Diggs said grimly, confirming what I’d thought. Less than a minute later, two police cruisers pulled into the parking lot.
“Shit,” I said softly.
“Don’t panic,” Cameron said. “This may not have anything to do with you.”
“Or it could have everything to do with us,” I said. Despite his advice, I was panicking quite nicely, thank you very much.
“Did you do what I said: only one of you checked in? Didn’t use your new IDs... Just paid in cash. You’ve kept the dog under wraps?”
“Yeah,” Diggs agreed. “It’s not the kind of hotel where they ask questions. I didn’t say anything to them about the dog. Erin dyed her hair last night, and I’ve got a buzz cut and no stubble… We did everything you said.”
Two more police cars pulled in.
“They’re surrounding the place,” I said to Cameron. “Four police cruisers now and an unmarked police car on top of that. One of the cops from the unmarked was in the hotel talking to the front desk.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Cameron?” Diggs prompted.
“Hang on,” he snapped. “I’m thinking.”
“Screw that,” I said. “There’s no time to think—they’re coming. Now. We need to get out of here.”
“You’re right,” Cameron said, much to my surprise. “But you need to be smart about this. Right now, you can’t afford to make mistakes because you’re scared. Here’s what you’re going to do.”
Ten minutes later, I walked out the front exit of the hotel. Alone.
I reached the door at roughly the same time that one of the multitude of cops now swarming the place did.
Stay calm. Keep moving. Don’t panic. I repeated the mantra in a continuous loop in my head, trying to appear casual.
The cop was dark-haired and trim, her uniform neatly pressed. A rookie. She opened the door and held it for me.
“Evening, ma’am,” she said.
“Evening, officer.” I gave her a neutral smile and silently thanked the gods that Cameron had had the foresight to make me leave without Diggs and the dog.
In the parking lot, a stocky man in a trench coat and glasses stood beside a big, beat-up old blue car, talking on his cell phone. I walked past without acknowledging him, my sights set on our car.
Five more steps, and I was home free.
“Hey!” It was a voice behind me—male. The guy in the coat.
I kept walking.
I took out my keys and hit the button to unlock the door.
Behind me, I heard footsteps. My heart sped up. Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.
I reached for the car door handle.
“Hey—excuse me, ma’am.” A hand stopped me, solid on my shoulder. I whirled. “Sorry,” Trench Coat said when I faced him. He looked embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just, you dropped this.”
He handed me a bag of peanut M&Ms that must have fallen out of my purse.
“Oh—thank you. Wouldn’t want to go off without those.”
“Never leave home without them myself,” he said with a cheerful grin. He nodded toward the squadron of cop cars now surrounding the place. “It’s crazy, huh? Any idea what this is all about?”
“No,” I said, too fast. I forced myself to take a breath and look him in the eye. “Not really… Maybe drugs?”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “This country’s going to hell. Used to be, this was a safe town to live in. Now you never know who’s gonna wind up in our little corner of the world.”
“Right,” I said. Was it my imagination, or was that comment directed at me? I took the candy, and waited for him to figure it out—to realize who he was talking to: Public Enemy number one. Or at least the top ten.
Instead, he just turned with an affable smile and walked away.
When I got in the car, I was nauseous.
Being a fugitive was not going to work well for me.
I started the car, popped a handful of M&Ms, and drove slowly out of the parking lot. The cop I’d met at the entrance was just coming out of the hotel when I drove past. We locked eyes for a second.
Had she recognized me?
I checked the rearview mirror with my heart racing, sure I’d see lights behind me.
There were none.
Chapter Twelve - Kat
“What the hell is going on?” Kat demanded. She stared at the TV screen, unable to get her head around what she was seeing. “How did this happen?”
“I told you,” Cameron snapped. “Jenny. The Project. I should have seen it coming.”
He set the phone down and strode to the window to look out over the parking lot. They were in North Carolina, in a five-star hotel just outside Asheville. The staff knew Cameron on sight—though they knew him as Alex Beaumont, apparently. Their suite was on the top floor, and it was gorgeous. Any thoughts about the extravagant setting had been forgotten as soon as Cameron turned on the news, however.
“So, what do we do now?” Kat asked.
“Exactly what I just did,” Cam said. “Erin has been warned—she and Diggs know what to do from here. I’m handling it.”
“Yeah,” she scoffed. “The same way you and your people handle everything. Tell me, is that what J told you when you first signed on? That they were handling things?”
He stood, his eyes flashing with an ire she rarely saw in him. Cameron didn’t really get angry, in her experience.
Cameron didn’t really get much of anything.
“First of all, I never signed on with J. It was out of my hands from the day we met—just like it was out of your husband’s hands. It was never our choice, all right? I’m doing the best I can to make things right; to keep you and your daughter safe. Which would be a hell of a lot easier if either of you listened to
a word anyone said.”
“I’ve been listening from the day you set the fire on Payson Isle. Erin isn’t my fault—she doesn’t listen to anyone.”
“Yeah, well… it’s going to get her killed one of these days. That damn dog…”
Kat flashed on that image again: Erin on the floor of her Cambridge kitchen, a bedraggled pup lifeless on her lap. How long had Kat stood in the doorway, frozen, trying to decide whether to go in, to try and help, or just to return to the living room and pretend she hadn’t seen? It seemed like she’d spent most of Erin’s life that way—forever on the sidelines, trying to decide what her role was.
It had been that way from the very beginning—from the day she’d brought Erin, kicking and screaming, into this world.
I never wanted to be a mother. That’s what she’d said, wasn’t it? Back on Raven’s Ledge, that’s what she had told Erin. It was the truth; it was reality. From the day she’d realized she was pregnant, she had known bringing a kid into the world was not a wise decision. Not for her—not for them. And sure as hell not on Payson Isle, with Isaac Payson watching their every move. Erin deserved better than the hand she’d been dealt: a father who could barely keep his head above water most days, and a cold bitch of a mother who would rather be doing just about anything but staying at home raising a willful little carbon copy of herself.
“She won’t give Einstein up,” Kat said, pulling herself back to the present. “Once she gets attached to someone, she doesn’t let them go. She’s in it—she won’t abandon him.”
“Well, she’s probably going to get all three of them killed, then.”
The thought shook her. Kat went to the window and looked out over the neatly manicured grounds: swimming pool, tennis courts, walking paths populated by neatly manicured, lily-white guests. Despite the warmth of the room, she was still cold. Her hands still shook, though she knew that had nothing to do with temperature—either internal or external.
“Will you answer a question for me?” she said, without looking at Cameron.