by Lucy Monroe
She grimaced as the third one flashed onto the screen. “There are a few hundred; this could take a while.”
“I don’t mind spending time with you.” His fingers brushed her neck, and he leaned closer so that her shoulder was against his chest. “You smell good.”
“I don’t wear perfume.”
“I know. I like it.”
“The smell of unadorned woman?” she asked jokingly, but warm bubbles of happiness fizzed through her.
“Only one woman. You.”
“I like the way you smell, too,” she admitted.
“How do I smell?” he asked as another picture flashed briefly on the screen.
“Safe.” She didn’t know why she said it, but something about the very essence of this man gave her a sense of security in his presence.
It had been that way from the first, which was why she’d been so shocked by his hostile attitude toward her. Her instincts told her one thing while his actions had told her another. Or so she had believed. She now knew what she’d mistaken for dislike and anger had been him trying to rein in a passion that consumed them both completely when he let it go.
Regardless of the reasoning, she’d come to identify his unique scent with both security and sexual desire, not to mention happiness. She was beginning to wonder if that wasn’t a pretty good definition of love.
“Safe?” he asked, his voice laced with shock and another emotion she couldn’t quite define.
“Yes.” She snuck a quick sideways look at him, but his attention was fixed firmly on the slide show. “When I’m with you, I feel as if you will never hurt me or allow anyone else to either. Which, when you think about it, is really funny. I mean, I’ve been keeping other people safe my entire adult life, and I’ve never been in a situation where I relied on someone else to fight for me.”
He didn’t say anything, and she took a deep breath, plunging on with an emotional recklessness she might regret later, but which felt utterly essential right now.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I trust you on a level I’ve never trusted anyone else except my dad, and all of my senses recognize it.” It was hard admitting that, but she’d never been one to lie to get out of a tough situation, and his whimsical question had turned out to be just that.
His body shifted away from hers in what felt like a violent repudiation of her words. “I’m no white knight, Josie. Don’t weave daydreams around me taking care of you because it’s not going to happen.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He made her sound like a parasite. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, you can. You don’t need me watching over you. Remember that.”
It was impossible to keep her focus on the computer screen. She jerked her gaze back to Daniel, who apparently was having no problem continuing to watch the slide show, his face impassive.
“If you are so intent on not watching over me, why did you refuse to allow me to go outside this morning? Why insist on helping me find my dad and investigate the bombing?”
His jaw looked hewn from granite. “I already explained that. I’m part of this mission because the school is half mine now and your dad is my business partner. Keeping you from taking unacceptable risks is part of succeeding with the mission.”
“So, you’re saying that I personally had absolutely no influence over your actions in the past three days?” she asked, unwilling to believe he could be as emotionally distant as he was implying.
“No.”
Relief pulsed through her. She and Daniel were simply suffering another miscommunication, something she’d come to believe would always be a challenge for them. Their brains didn’t work the same way. His thoughts were as alien to her as if he really were from Mars, like the popular book on male-female relationships said.
“The decision to take you to bed had nothing to do with the mission. It was entirely personal.”
“But temporary,” she heard herself saying.
“You said that was acceptable to you.”
Had she, or had she agreed to the limitations he set for their intimacy because he hadn’t given her any other choice? Did it matter? He hadn’t changed his mind even if she had changed hers.
Having just convinced herself she’d misunderstood Daniel’s earlier words, his confirmation that apart from sex, she had no personal interest for him felt like a double bull’s-eye blow from a stun gun. The pain seared through her, leaving bruises that no one else could see, least of all him.
Her eyes flicked back to the computer screen, her brain screaming that she needed to focus on something besides her decimated emotions or she was going to break apart. And she saw him. Their state policeman had been one of her father’s students.
She grabbed the mouse and clicked the back arrow three times, halting the slide show and taking them to the picture that had caught her attention.
“What are you doing?”
“I think I have an I.D. on our guy.” Amazingly the words came out even and controlled, not giving away the wild torment inside her.
She’d used shaky evidence to convince herself that even though Daniel obviously didn’t love her, he did care and even shakier reasoning to convince herself his caring was more than a temporary side effect of their sexual compatibility.
“I didn’t see him.” Daniel’s voice sounded odd, but that was probably a trick of her hearing.
“He looked different.” Her own voice was starting to wear around the edges, and she made a conscious effort to rein it in. “Dad takes the pictures of his trainees when they come to the camp, before he enforces his crew cut, no facial hair rule. This guy showed up with longer hair, sporting a mustache and a beard.”
The picture was frozen on the computer screen, the man a dead ringer for Officer Devon if you took away the beard and buzz cut the hair.
“What’s his name?”
“I’ll tell you in just a sec.” She checked the number on the file and cross-referenced it with client records. “Abner Jones. If that’s not his real name, he’s incredibly unimaginative when it comes to aliases.”
“Your dad does background checks on his students before he admits them into the school.”
“A determined person could fake his identification and past as effectively as Dad has set up his own aliases.”
“Did Jones attend with anyone else?”
Josie checked. “His record isn’t cross-referenced with any of the other soldiers in training during the same session, but their records are probably a good place to start for possible connections all the same.”
“How will you do that?”
“Hotwire and I will compare their files and the information from their background checks for anything they might have in common. Dad’s trainees are from all over the world; even coming from the same state would be a pretty significant connection for two students to have.”
She brought up the list of soldiers who had attended the training camp with Jones and printed it off along with the individual files for each name. Thank goodness her laser printer had been left behind by the thieves. It had probably been too unwieldy to take, being larger than the small television they’d lifted from the living room.
When the reports stopped printing, she handed them to Daniel without meeting his eyes. “Why don’t you start going through these while I see what I can find on Dad’s possible aliases? You’d probably be more comfortable spreading them out on the table in the dining room.”
And she would be more comfortable with him out of the room. Her heart was still hemorrhaging, and she had to cauterize the wound, but she needed some time to herself to do it. It wasn’t his fault she’d fallen in love when he’d only fallen in lust, but having him around while she came to terms with that truth was more than she could bear.
Daniel got up without a word, but stopped at the doorway. “You never asked what you smelled like to me.”
“No. I didn’t.” What could he have said? Maybe that
she smelled like sex, or stupidity.
She recognized the thought as a bitter one, but not necessarily an untrue one.
He waited as if expecting her to ask the question she had no intention of asking. “You smell like everything a woman could or should be.”
With that he walked out, and Josie sat staring at an empty doorway in a state of incredulity.
Had she heard him correctly? Because if she had, none of what he’d said earlier made any sense, or did it? Maybe he’d only been talking about female perfection in a sexual sense. She smelled like everything a woman could or should be in bed.
She wasn’t deluding herself into believing it could be anything else. Not this time.
Daniel made coffee and took a mug of it to a quiet, preoccupied Josie before sitting down at the dining room table as she’d suggested in order to go through the records.
It was hard going, though, trying to concentrate. He’d hurt her again, and that was the last damn thing he wanted to do. When she’d said he made her feel safe, he’d felt as if someone had taken a shredder to his insides. Of all the things she could rely on him for, things he’d do everything in his power to give her, safety was not one of them. He wasn’t trustworthy with a woman’s life.
His mother had learned that the hard way, teaching him an indelible lesson in the process.
But he hadn’t told Josie that. He’d merely told her not to count on him, like she didn’t matter to him, which was nowhere near the truth. He hadn’t been honest with her, and she deserved better than that from him. In fact, he’d out and out lied to her when he implied she had nothing to do with his decision to find her father and the men who’d tried to kill Tyler.
Unlike Josie, who had told him she didn’t lie very well, Daniel was an old hand at it. He’d started young, explaining away the occasional bruises on his small body to teachers as nothing more than the result of horseplay or clumsiness. He’d been so good at it, they’d never once suspected the man who had sired him made a habit of beating his beautiful wife and small son when he drank too much.
Daniel had kept right on lying when he faked his age to enter the army at the age of sixteen. He’d been the size of a man, but as undisciplined and untrained in the art of fighting as a small child.
That had changed, but his ability to overcome an aggressor hadn’t helped his mom when she needed it. Daniel wasn’t any good at protecting women…even the ones he loved. Not that he would allow himself to love Josie. To do so would be nothing better than emotional suicide. That was another lesson he would never forget that his mother had taught him.
However, that didn’t mean he could leave her believing she meant nothing to him. Very few people knew the truth about his past, but Josie had earned the right to be one of them.
Chapter 13
Daniel didn’t get a chance to talk to Josie alone for several hours.
First, the detective from the Arson and Explosives Division of the state police showed up ten minutes earlier than expected, and then Hotwire returned from dropping off Claire. He was carrying a box with a new laptop in it for Josie. She went into raptures, and Daniel and the detective both had to sit idly by while she quizzed Hotwire on what the computer could do.
Discussion eventually got back to the investigation. After Josie showed the picture of Jones to the detective, he unbent enough to tell them that a known white supremacist group had a paramilitary compound near the GPS coordinates for the laptop.
Unfortunately, FBI intelligence revealed there were only two ways into the compound: up a narrow path that could be traversed on foot or by a small, powerful ATV, or by helicopter. A clearing suitable for landing was located near the compound, but it would be impossible for the helicopter to land undetected.
“What about parachuting in?” Josie asked.
“It would have to be a long jump for the plane to be high enough not to be suspect,” Daniel replied before the detective had a chance to. “And a drop from that altitude would make it difficult to land on target unless the clearing is fairly large.”
The detective shook his head. “None of you are parachuting in anywhere, undetected or otherwise. This is an official federal investigation at this point, and while they are cooperating with state authorities, the FBI and National Forest Service aren’t going to take kindly to a bunch of mercenaries stepping on their toes.”
“I’m no longer a mercenary,” Josie informed him.
“You’re not FBI either. Stay out of it,” was the detective’s uncompromising response.
Josie’s mouth set in a mutinous line Daniel had learned meant she was about to get stubborn. “These people tried to kill my father. I want to know why.”
“You would do better using your resources trying to locate Mr. McCall than the assailants.” The officer stared Josie down, which was quite a feat in Daniel’s opinion. “If you interfere in a federal investigation, you could be facing charges.”
“I have no intention of interfering,” she said in a tone that would have shriveled most men.
The state police detective merely nodded. “I’m glad to hear that. Stay out of airplanes and we’ll be just fine.”
Glaring, she opened her mouth, and Daniel thought the time had come to interfere. “Why would this group target Tyler McCall?”
Detective Johnson met Daniel’s eyes. “You recently bought in to the school, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“That could be the reason right there. This group is ideologically opposed to Caucasians going into business ventures, or any other legal tie, with non-Caucasians.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Josie’s moss green eyes shot derision at the detective.
She was still mad he’d told her to stay out of his investigation.
“I agree, ma’am. I was only giving you a possible reason for their aggression toward your father.”
“But why target Dad out of all the businessmen in the U.S. who have non-Caucasian business partners?” She frowned in fierce thought. “That’s too flimsy a connection. Besides, we know at least one of them was a student. It has to be something to do with the school itself.”
“What type of training camp did he attend?” the detective asked.
Josie looked through the papers Daniel had left on the table and pulled one out, then handed it to the officer. “One that focused on high-level explosives and the more sophisticated forms of warfare. The particulars are here.”
He took the paper and looked at it, his expression freezing into disapproval. “This is just the type of information we don’t need domestic terrorists getting their hands on.”
“Dad is very particular about what students he takes on. If their background checks link them to domestic or foreign terrorist groups even remotely, he refuses their applications.”
The detective looked unimpressed. “You can fake a background. There’s no way your dad can guarantee the character of the men and women he chooses to train.”
Her gaze shot to Daniel’s, and they shared a moment of perfect understanding, both remembering their discussion along a similar vein earlier. But then she turned back to the officer, deliberately breaking the link. “Neither can the army, but no one has proposed shutting its doors down.”
Stone’s lips quirked. “You have a point, but the fact is, your dad obviously did train some domestic terrorists, and I’m guessing they aren’t wild about there being any record of them learning this stuff.” He waved the paper at Josie.
“You think they blew up an entire compound, tried to kill my father and broke in to my house all just to stop other people from knowing what type of specialized knowledge and training they had?” Josie asked incredulously.
The detective shrugged, looking resigned and weary with the knowledge he had of human nature. “We’re talking about fanatics here. The kind of men who would blow up an elementary school if it was in the way of their agenda.”
Josie was still reeling at the thought of her father unknowingly training domestic
terrorists and being attacked because of it when Hotwire left to pick up Claire from her classes. The local police had gotten rid of the reporters, but the more stalwart had returned and were making a nuisance of themselves on the sidewalk.
They’d come into the yard again, but moved to the sidewalk after Daniel went outside and made his presence felt with silent but palpable anger emanating from his every pore. He was back inside now, going over the records she’d printed earlier despite the detective’s injunction to leave that part of the investigation to the authorities.
He’d taken her jump drive, but had no authority to require her to delete the records she’d already transferred to Hotwire’s hard drive. Not that she’d mentioned them to him.
She was still trying to track down her father’s possible aliases. It required meticulous research and reading through a lot of records that ended up having no information of use, but she’d read the phone book for every major county in the U.S. if it meant finding her dad.
Checking her e-mail, she opened up an automated reply from one of the databases she had sent a query to. It listed the purchase five years ago of a piece of property in the Nevada desert under the name of one of her father’s Vietnam buddies, Andrew Taylor. The man had been dead for almost a decade. Excited at the breakthrough, she narrowed her search on that name to the area surrounding the property and came up with some other interesting pieces of information.
She wrote it all down, her heart lighter than it had been since her father walked out of his hospital room, his ability to remember still in question.
“I’m thirty-two.”
She was so focused on what she was doing that the sound of Daniel’s voice from behind her made her jump. She spun around in her task chair, her heartbeat accelerated. “What?”
He leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossed, black hair framing his taciturn features. “I’m thirty-two.”
“I’m twenty-six. Is there supposed to be something significant about that?”