Sure, the bad guys had taken the bait, but Roarke knew all too well that those kind of men didn’t believe in presents dropping into their laps. They’d be suspicious and there was a chance Top Dog knew that Roarke and Alexandra possessed another set of papers.
It was almost as if the agents who’d been after them had just vanished in a puff of smoke. So why did a sense of unease keep him alert?
Was it simply Alexandra? Was he seeing danger where none existed to avoid thinking about her? Sometime during the night they’d spent at the hotel on north Jacksonville Beach, he’d admitted to himself that he’d fallen in love with her. He didn’t know why, he only knew that he had thought of her as his ever since they’d made love.
But love might not be enough to keep them together. Roarke wasn’t sure when or how, but as his feelings had grown for Alexandra, he’d gradually moved on and let go of his past. Maybe he had found closure since Sydney had died. Maybe enough time had passed for him to heal. He would always have a special place in his heart for Sydney, but he loved Alexandra with a much more mature love, a deeper love. He’d idolized Sydney and had thought her perfect. With Alexandra, he saw her faults and loved her for them.
But was love enough?
He’d like to believe so. But he knew better and the knowledge pained him. Their love would turn to bitterness and regret if Alexandra couldn’t trust him. Talking about the problem wouldn’t help.
He should just let her go from his life. But how could he? How could he wake up mornings and not have her smile to look forward to during the day? How could he go back in the evenings to the empty rooms of his small rental house? How could he sleep through the darkness without her curled up next to him?
This morning, he and Alexandra had eaten breakfast in the hotel dining room, like polite strangers, little discussion between them. She sported dark circles under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept any better than he had. And while she’d ordered two scrambled eggs, she’d played with her food, not more than a few bites passing between her lips.
“You sure you want to come with me to meet Viper?”
“I’m sure.”
“You could stay here instead.” Since she’d given up her papers, Roarke hadn’t spied any danger. Alexandra had given her pursuers what they wanted, and they apparently were lying low, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Until he knew the contents of the documents, he couldn’t be sure she was safe. Just because Top Dog had one copy didn’t mean he didn’t know about or want the second set.
“You trying to get rid of me?” she asked with an arch to her brow.
While he never dealt in certainties, he trusted his instincts in the field. No one was tailing them. Her apartment was no longer being watched. Nor was the construction site.
Yet the nagging feeling that something was wrong, that he’d missed something, wouldn’t go away. Maybe he just couldn’t believe that Alexandra’s simple solution—giving the documents away—had worked. Maybe he wanted an excuse to keep her close. And maybe he should trust the instincts that had served him so well in the past.
Alexandra looked at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “I’d like to see this through.”
This? Had she meant their relationship? Or had she referred to her mother’s documents?
“You realize that Viper could be setting us up?”
She shrugged a delicate shoulder. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“He could steal the documents. Or tell others about them. Or he could break the code and refuse to share with us what’s in them. Or he could have alerted your pursuers, who’d be waiting to kill us.”
Her almond-colored eyes locked gazes with his. “You’re still worried about danger? A double cross?”
“In my business, betrayal is a possibility one learns to live with.”
Pain darkened her eyes. “So then how do you ever trust anyone?”
He had no answer for her question. So he winked at her and made light of the topic. “It must be my optimistic nature. I plan for every possible contingency and then expect the best to happen.”
THEORETICALLY, Alexandra understood what Roarke was trying to tell her. He considered all his options and then accepted that sometimes his trust would be misplaced. While that seemed to work for him, she didn’t know if she could live that way. It was too much like building a skyscraper without referring to the plans. She didn’t want to wing it.
She needed a solid foundation so the walls wouldn’t crumble. She couldn’t reach for the sky unless each story was pinned securely on top of the last.
And yet if she didn’t take a chance, she was going to lose Roarke.
She clutched the blueprint tube with the spare set of documents, her thoughts swirling as he drove them to the meeting with Viper. She paid little attention to the route from the beach back into the city; instead, she watched Roarke drive.
She liked the way his hands held the steering wheel, gently yet with absolute control, and she couldn’t help recalling when those strong hands had explored her, setting her aflame with needs that had never been so strong. Last night, she’d almost walked through the connecting door between their rooms at least a dozen times.
All the talking to herself, all the hard facts that revealed that he wasn’t the right man for her had failed to convince her that she shouldn’t love him. She loved him from her heart because her mind hadn’t yet gotten with the program. She hadn’t chosen to fall in love. Love had chosen her, marked her, given her no choice. But if she didn’t figure out how to build a sturdy base for their love by learning to trust again, what they had together would teeter then topple, and she’d lose him before their love had a chance to solidify.
She longed for a chance. She wanted to grow old with Roarke. She wanted his children and his grandchildren. She wanted him to be there when she met her brother Jake and her sister. She wanted him there when the building inspector signed off on the final inspection of her skyscraper.
But how could she set things right?
Beside her, Jake tensed. “We’ve got company.”
His words yanked her back to immediate problems, and her stomach tensed and knotted. Looking into the side mirror as he’d taught her, she spied a police car. “Did you ask the cops to escort us?”
“Carleton may have. I asked for FBI protection.” He hesitated as if he expected her to fly off the handle. “Sorry, I should have told you. It slipped my mind.”
“It’s okay. You’re doing your job, trying to protect me. I don’t expect you to explain every little detail.”
He shot her a look of approval that warmed her to her toes. Then he glanced in his mirror and frowned. “That blue sedan three cars back has also been tailing us for several minutes.”
“What’s going on?”
He evaded her question. “Let’s make sure I’m right before we jump to conclusions.” Roarke swung a left, another left and then a third, circling the block. The cop and the sedan both followed.
“Are these the good guys or the bad guys?” Alexandra asked. Since everyone worked for a government agency, she found the situation confusing.
“Suspect everyone.” Roarke turned off the road that hugged the coast and headed west toward the city. “There’s no telling who leaked the information about our meeting with Viper. It could have been the cryptologist himself or someone monitoring his communications, or someone in ops could have bugged his office.”
Roarke picked up his cell phone and dialed. She didn’t want to distract him by asking questions, but she wondered whom he would call. “Did you get me air support?”
Air support? It sounded as if Roarke didn’t think they could outrun the trouble behind them.
Alexandra tried to swallow, but her mouth was sand-dry with fear. Beside her, Roarke was all business, his gaze monitoring the road behind them, to the left and right, too.
As they headed onto a bridge that spanned the intracoastal waterway, Roarke wove in and out of traffic. But not fast enough.
“Get out. We’ll try to cross on foot.”
Alexandra’s hands shook as she unfastened her seat belt, grabbed the blueprint tube and her purse. Roarke had leaped over the hood and practically yanked her out of her seat before she’d taken a breath.
“Come on! Come on!”
Cars and trucks on both sides of the bridge had stopped. But the bridge mechanism hadn’t yet begun to open the bridge. If they hurried, they might cross to the other side on foot and avoid their pursuers.
Roarke glanced over his shoulder once, but Alexandra kept her eyes focused straight ahead. She didn’t dare risk slowing Roarke down and forced her feet to move faster.
Then the bridge started to tilt upward beneath their feet. She would have gone back, but Roarke tugged her forward. “We can make it.”
Alexandra put all her energy into running the last ten feet uphill. She slipped. Roarke yanked her to her feet and then pushed her. They reached the rising peak, the place where one side of the bridge separated from the other.
“Come on. Don’t look down at the water. Just spot your landing on the other side,” Roarke encouraged her.
It was only a foot or two and Alexandra jumped over the intracoastal waterway far below, grateful she’d never been afraid of heights. Roarke made the leap with her, never letting go of her hand.
Now on the other side of the bridge, they were running downhill, slipping and sliding and trying to reach the bottom and level pavement before the bridge opened wider and spilled them head over heels.
She wouldn’t have remained upright without Roarke’s steady support. Her chest heaved as her burning lungs fought for air. She wanted to celebrate their success, but one glance at Roarke’s acute wariness, and she knew he didn’t think they were in the clear.
Already, the bridge had started to close, the metal spans reversing direction. By running, they’d gained a head start. But they were now on foot, those chasing them in cars.
Just when Alexandra thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, she heard the hum of a helicopter. In front of them two men exited their vehicles, weapons in hand.
She and Roarke couldn’t go forward. They couldn’t go back, since more men with guns waited behind them.
Before she could blink, Roarke was moving, pulling her toward the bridge’s railing. He’d taken his weapon out of his pocket and aimed it at the two men approaching.
“What do we do?” she asked, wishing for her own weapon.
“We have no choice. Jump!”
Chapter Fifteen
“Jump?” She looked back over her shoulder. While the bridge was still closing, the two halves remained at least twenty feet apart. No way could she clear that distance—not even with a running start.
“Over the side.” The urgency in Roarke’s voice started her feet moving closer to the railing. “Into the water.”
Oh, God.
He wanted her to jump off the bridge.
Oh, God.
While she didn’t have an unusual fear of heights, any normal person would balk. She didn’t want to parachute out of airplanes, join a high-wire act at the circus or jump off the damn bridge.
Yet Roarke would never have asked it of her if he’d believed they had another option. Holding the tube of blueprints tightly in her hand, Alexandra hurried the last steps to the railing, looked down and wet her lips. Judging heights wasn’t her specialty, but they had to be at least five stories above the water. The impact…
Oh, God, the impact…
She recalled that moment back at the spring right before she and Roarke had jumped into the water. He’d held her hand then and she imagined him holding it now, which was easy to do, since he was never far from her thoughts, always close to her heart.
She didn’t question Roarke’s judgment. She maneuvered one leg over the rail, then the other, pretending he was making the leap by her side.
“Now,” he yelled.
And she let go.
Her stomach seemed to rise into her throat as the rest of her plunged.
And plunged.
Picking up speed.
Wind roaring in her ears.
The fall took forever. Went by too fast.
Her feet smacked the water. The force of the landing ripped the blueprint tube from her hand, twisted her arm, smacked one cheek until her ears rang.
Dark, briny water surrounded her.
She heard a boom, felt pressure and wondered dizzily if a bomb had gone off, then slowly realized Roarke must have landed in the water nearby. She kept plummeting deeper into the water. She had instinctively held her breath, but already felt the need for air.
At this depth, her eardrums started to hurt. She could barely see sunlight on the surface. Her shoes and clothing weighed her down.
Bubbles escaped from her mouth and she suddenly knew she wouldn’t make it to the surface. She lacked the strength to fight through all that water weighing her down, lacked the air to make her arms and legs pull and kick.
ROARKE HAD LUNGED over the side the instant Alexandra had jumped. He’d focused on her in the air and started angling toward her the moment he struck water.
Fear made him use up his oxygen, but he knew one thing for certain. He wasn’t coming up without her. No way would he lose another woman he loved.
Frantic, he felt around for her, forced himself deeper. His hand moved into some grass and he almost pulled away.
Not grass. Alexandra’s hair.
He reached for her hand, found her shoulder. Terror shot through him at her lack of movement. Had she landed on her side? Busted her insides? Snapped her neck as Sydney had?
No.
Panic had him yanking her to the surface, kicking with all his strength, hoping his long swims in the spring would give him the power and stamina to overcome his dizziness and need for oxygen.
The light overhead grew brighter, but his vision blurred to two narrow tunnels. He kept going through sheer determination. Alexandra wouldn’t drown. Not on his watch. Not ever. She was going to live to be an old lady and he would be there to watch her mellow.
Roarke’s head broke the surface and he gasped for air. Overhead, he heard a gun battle. And the helicopter hovered directly over the bridge. Apparently Carleton and the cavalry had arrived.
Beside him, he propped Alexandra’s face out of the water. She looked too white, her eyes glazed, and he was sure she’d stopped breathing. He couldn’t do mouth-to-mouth while treading water; he had to get her to shore. But he’d come up in the damn middle of a very wide section of the intracoastal. Even if he could make it to shore with her, she’d be dead long before they arrived.
Holding her head between his hands, he kicked with all his strength and breathed air into her parted lips. Again he sucked air into his own lungs, then blew into her mouth, knowing her nostrils should be closed, knowing he wasn’t doing it right but he needed three hands, two to keep her head up, one to close her nose. “Breathe for me. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.”
No response.
He twisted her in the water until her back rested against his chest, her head lolling on his shoulder. Placing his hands around her rib cage, he squeezed, performing a modified Heimlich maneuver.
He heard a slight cough. Her body shuddered and then she spit water out of the side of her mouth.
Thank God.
She was going to be okay. She hadn’t been without oxygen long enough to suffer brain damage.
“You hurt anywhere?” he asked, still concerned over internal injuries from the force of smacking the water.
Dazed, she moved weakly. “I’m just tired. So tired.”
“Hang on sweetheart, and I’ll get
you out of here.”
He didn’t know how he’d fulfil his promise. He looked up at the bridge, hoping to flag down help. He’d drifted from their position directly underneath and he could see men taking cover behind cars. Men shooting. Those in the chopper raining down bullets, right in the middle of civilian traffic.
Suddenly Roarke spied a familiar silhouette, hanging over the railing searching the water. And a bald man coming up fast behind him. Top Dog!
“Carleton! Behind you.”
Carleton spun, ducked and threw Top Dog off the bridge. Then he leaped over the side of the bridge himself. Seconds later, he popped to the surface and swam over to Alexandra, leaving Roarke free to swim to where he’d seen Top Dog plunge beneath the water.
Top Dog surfaced almost next to Roarke with his weapon in his hand. Roarke knew the gun hadn’t been in the water long enough to prevent the bullets from firing.
While Carleton and Alexandra swam away toward the bridge piling, Roarke lunged for Top Dog’s weapon. The gun discharged but Roarke threw off his aim by smacking his wrist.
Top Dog dropped his gun and lunged, his hands clasped around Roarke’s throat. The bald man might have twenty years on Roarke, but he also outweighed him by forty pounds. Forty pounds of muscle.
Roarke concentrated on finding the man’s pinky, then bent it straight back until he felt the bone snap. Top Dog let out a screech underwater and bubbles of air emerged from his mouth.
Still Top Dog didn’t let go of Roarke’s throat. Roarke’s lungs burned and he badly needed air. He jammed a foot into Top Dog’s stomach and reached for the gun in his ankle holster at the same time. But he’d lost the gun during the plunge into the intercoastal.
Desperate for air, Roarke slammed a knee into Top Dog’s chin. He caught the stronger man by surprise and snapped his neck. Roarke yanked the dead man’s fingers from his throat and clawed his way to the surface. Gasping for air, he searched for Alexandra and Carleton, spotted them by the bridge piling and swam over.
“We’re okay,” Carleton assured him.
Alexandra swam beside Carleton, and she appeared to have recovered some strength. Roarke hoped the only damage she’d suffered was having the wind knocked out of her. She was mostly swimming on her own, but he noted that Carleton kept her within arm’s reach.
Hidden Hearts Page 18