by Paula Graves
“Believe me, I’m no hero. I just realized, once I sobered up long enough to take a critical look at my life, I’ve done nothing in this world worth telling my grandkids about.”
“You don’t think being a rodeo cowboy is interesting enough?”
“Interesting is not the same as worthwhile.”
“And what makes you think you’ll ever have grandkids?”
He smiled at her tart-toned question. “Because I want grandkids.”
“And whatever you want, you get?”
“I could ask the same question of you, you know.”
She dipped her head, her gaze wandering back to the laptop as if she had tired of the conversation. She gestured at the computer screen. “Since we’re in this together, any suggestions about what I should say to this guy?”
Biting back a smart-ass answer, he considered the blinking cursor beneath the three word message. “He says you found him. Tell him you haven’t yet, but you’d like to.”
The look she darted his way was full of skepticism, but she typed in a terse reply. “Not yet. But I’d like to. Can we meet?”
For over two minutes, nothing happened. Then, as the tension in the room neared the snapping point, a new message blinked into view beneath Mallory’s response.
“Resurrection Point.”
Jack frowned at the screen. Why did that phrase seem familiar?
He glanced at Mallory, hoping the response meant something to her, but if it did, he couldn’t see past the stony stillness of her expression to discern it.
She shut the chat window suddenly and snapped the laptop shut.
“What does that mean?” Jack asked quietly when she said nothing. “Resurrection Point?”
“I have no idea.”
She was lying. She was a pretty good liar, really—her tone was just open and innocent enough to fool even a careful listener. But she’d already given away her agitation when she closed the laptop so suddenly, no matter how carefully she’d schooled her expression afterward.
“Then why didn’t you keep chatting?”
She turned to look at him, her smile downright sultry as she leaned a little closer to him. “Come on, cowboy, don’t tell me you never played hard to get.”
“You think he’ll contact you again if you ignore his message?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
God help him, he probably would. But he clearly had a weak spot for redheads with a wild streak, especially one who was being deliberately provocative while sitting beside him on a motel bed.
Well, two could play that game.
He edged closer to her, daring her to move away. “Resurrection Point. Sounds like a place name.”
“It does.” She didn’t move away.
He brushed his fingertips lightly against her spine, suppressing a smile at her swift intake of breath. “You’ve heard of it before, haven’t you?”
She turned her head. Her lips brushed the ridge of his jawline. “I said I didn’t know what it meant.”
With each soft whisper of her lips against his skin, tingles of pleasure shot through him, pooling hot and heavy in his sex. He’d lost control of the situation the second she turned the seduction against him, he realized. He wasn’t sure he cared. Losing this particular game of wills would probably feel a hell of a lot like winning.
She plucked at the buttons of his shirt, slipping the top two from the buttonholes and dropping a soft, hot kiss on the center of his chest. “You smell good,” she murmured.
“So do you.” He buried his nose in the cloud of auburn hair.
She unbuttoned the rest of his shirt, kissing each inch of skin she uncovered, until she reached the waistband of his jeans. As her fingers played teasingly over the button there, he caught her head in his hands and urged her back up his body until she was face-to-face with him again.
“Just how desperate are you to keep the truth from me?” His voice came out rough-textured, as if the strain of controlling himself had left every part of him scraped raw.
Hell, maybe it had. He wanted her so much right now he ached.
She closed her eyes to his scrutiny, and he felt the tiniest of tremors run through her before she answered. “I don’t take anything seriously, remember? I’m sure Mara must have told you that much about me.”
“I don’t believe that.” He eased her away from him and escaped to the other bed, bending forward to take several bracing breaths. His body raged at him for release, but for once, his brain won the battle.
Sex with Mallory Jennings now would ruin any chance of winning her trust. It would forever brand him as weak and unreliable in her eyes, because this attempt at seduction was nothing but a desperate power play, and if he fell for it, he was a fool.
“Can’t stand the heat, cowboy?” Her soft taunt sent a shudder through him, but he held his ground, turning a cool gaze her way. Her blue eyes locked with his, but he was beginning to understand her body language tells. Her gaze was steady, but her lower lip was trembling, just the barest of quivers. He’d noticed it earlier, when she came out of the bathroom, red-eyed and trying not to show her weakness.
“I know you’re scared, Mallory. I’m scared, too.” He ignored the look of scorn in her eyes and concentrated on that quivering lower lip. “I know you only came with me because it was the fastest way to get the hell away from Deception Lake, but—”
A flicker of recognition darted through his brain. Something about Deception Lake, something he needed to remember.
“But?” she prodded when he didn’t continue.
“Deception Lake. My brother-in-law and his wife took me fishing there this morning.” God, had it been this morning, really? It felt as if a lifetime had passed since he was out on the mist-veiled lake, watching the sun rise over the mountains as he and the others pulled fat spring crappie from the lake.
“So?”
“I don’t know if you do much fishing for crappie.”
“I don’t do much fishing of any kind.”
“Well, in the spring, you fish for crappie in the flats, near brush and cover. In the fall, crappie relate to points. So we bought a map of the lake at the bait shop before we went fishing, so we’d know where to find the flats, but Hannah also marked all the points on the map, because she was hoping to come back in the fall.”
“And?” she asked impatiently.
“One of the places marked on the map for good fishing was a place called Resurrection Point.”
There it was. Her expression turned to stone—another tell. What he’d told her had struck a nerve again.
“We didn’t go to Resurrection Point, of course,” he added slowly, his gaze never leaving her face as he searched for more clues to what she was thinking. “The flats were across the lake on the western side.”
“Is there a point to this fishing story?” she asked in a bored tone. But her gaze was sharp. Alert. She might be calm on the outside, but she was scared as hell on the inside.
“When I followed you home this afternoon, I remember thinking you were due east of where we’d ended up fishing this morning. And just now I remembered Resurrection Point was also due east of the flats. Which means that Resurrection Point is somewhere right around your pretty little cabin in the woods.” He leaned a little closer. “Isn’t it?”
“My pretty little cabin in the woods is on Resurrection Point,” she snapped, the stone in her expression shattering to reveal raw fear.
“Which means—”
“Which means Endrex may have been the one who sent the shooter to kill me.”
Chapter Ten
She’d made a mistake. Gotten sloppy. Trusted the wrong person.
Had she learned nothing in the past seven years?
“Tell me everything you know about this Endrex person.” Jack’s voice rumbled softly through the quiet motel room, like an echo of the thunder now rolling faintly in the distance.
“I know very little,” she said.
“But you know more than you’re telling me.” Jack c
aught her chin with his fingers, turning her to look at him. She didn’t want to meet his gaze, but those dark eyes compelled her. She felt a tug in the center of her chest, as if he had reached out, caught her heart in his fist and given it a little squeeze.
“I don’t know anything.”
“You suspect, then.” He rubbed his thumb lightly across her chin, back and forth, the caress mesmerizing. “I know you don’t trust easily. That’s obvious. And you don’t really know me. But—”
“But you’re all I’ve got,” she finished for him.
“Not exactly the ringing endorsement I was hoping for.” His lips turned up at the corners. “But yeah.”
Oh, hell, she thought, dipping her head away from his touch. She didn’t want to admit it, certainly didn’t want to put her life in his hands, but she needed his help. In less than the span of a day, someone had tried to kidnap her and kill her. Possibly two different people, if her brief glance at the gunman meant anything. He hadn’t seemed as burly or tall as the man who’d accosted her at her cabin.
So at least two people with bad intentions were looking for her. Who might or might not be connected to the mysterious hacker named Endrex. And if it had been Endrex she’d been speaking with on the internet, he knew where she’d lived. He might even be behind the attacks on her.
God, her head hurt. Her eyes felt gritty and her gut rolled with a sensation somewhere between hunger and nausea. She needed sleep. Then maybe she’d have the brainpower to figure out some answers.
But how was she supposed to sleep when she felt as hunted as a mouse in a snake pit?
“Trust me, MJ.” Jack caught her hand in his, caressing her knuckles with his thumb. “You’ve been afraid a long time, haven’t you? You look so tired and hopeless.”
“I want to trust you. I do.” To her chagrin, her voice cracked.
“Then just do it.” He came to sit beside her on the bed, his fingers twining with hers. “If you don’t want to talk yet, fine. But don’t bail on me. Let me keep watch tonight. You try to sleep. By morning, the storm will have passed and we can hit the road. Go wherever you want us to go.”
Us, she thought, hating the word and clinging to it at the same time. It had been a long time since she’d felt anything but alone.
“Lie down. Close your eyes. Let me take care of you. Just tonight.”
She found herself following his instructions, lying back against the pillows and sliding deeper beneath the bedcovers.
Jack pulled the blanket up, tucking her in as if she were a child, his expression so gentle she found herself wondering what kind of father he’d be. One who played with his kids, read them stories and dried their tears when they skinned knees or lost a ball game, she decided, comforted by the thought.
It was hard to reconcile the man sitting beside her on the motel bed with her mental image of Mara’s faithless cowboy suitor.
But Mara hadn’t been a liar. What information she’d withheld had all been to Jack’s detriment, she was sure. Every bad thing Mara had told her about Jack, the man himself had admitted, right?
But he’d also tried to make amends. Tried to pay back the money he’d stolen. He’d put his life on the line today to help Mallory, just because he felt he owed something to Mara’s memory. The hard-drinking, womanizing cowboy of Mallory’s imagination would never have done such a thing.
So which Jack Drummond was the real man?
* * *
ALEXANDER QUINN WAITED impatiently for the hotel room door to open to his hard knock. He heard the faint sound of movement from within, then the door opened a few inches and Riley Patterson’s lean, weathered face appeared in the narrow gap, his blue eyes narrowed to sleepy slits. “Oh. It’s you.”
“May I come in?”
Riley peered at his watch. “It’s after midnight.”
“It’s important.”
“My wife and kid are asleep.”
“Not your wife,” came a grumpy female voice from the darkness within the hotel room. Hannah Patterson’s pretty face appeared behind her husband’s shoulder. “What do you want, Quinn?”
“I think you know.”
Hannah grimaced. “Have I told you how much I hate that cryptic hogwash you fling around?”
“I’m looking for your brother-in-law.”
“Yeah, good luck with that.” Riley started to close the door.
Quinn stopped the door with his boot. “Jack is in danger.”
“From you?”
Quinn suppressed a sharp reply, though Riley Patterson was starting to annoy the hell out of him. “There’s something you need to know about the woman your brother is trying to protect.”
The bored expression on Patterson’s face shifted subtly, his blue eyes sharpening with interest. “Who?”
“You think her name is Mara Jennings. You think she’s the woman your brother-in-law was seeing in Amarillo, Texas, four years ago.” Quinn lowered his voice. “You’d be wrong.”
“She’s an imposter?”
“Of a sort.” He nodded toward the door. “If you’ll let me come in, I’ll be happy to elaborate. I don’t think this is a conversation that needs to take place in the middle of a public walkway.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, let him in,” Hannah growled. “Let’s get it over with, because I know him. He’s not going to go away.”
Quinn suppressed a smile at Hannah’s frustrated drawl. “She has a point.”
Patterson stepped back and let Quinn enter the hotel room while Hannah crossed to check on their sleeping son. Tucking him more tightly under the covers, she turned to face Quinn and her husband. “Keep it quiet, okay? He had an exciting day, and it took forever to coax him to sleep.”
While she turned on the bedside lamp, casting a warm glow over the hotel room, Quinn pulled up one of the two chairs flanking the small table by the window and sat. Patterson and his wife settled on the edge of the bed, close to each other. Both were dressed for bed, Patterson in boxer shorts, no shirt, while Hannah had donned a simple cotton robe over whatever she was wearing underneath. Her shapely legs were bare from the knee down, including her feet. Her toes were neatly manicured and painted neon green, the sight making him quell another smile.
“What’s the big secret about Mara Jennings?” she asked impatiently. “If she’s not the woman Jack knew, who is she?”
“Mara’s sister.”
Patterson frowned. “Jack said Mara’s sister died four years ago.”
“Her twin sister,” Hannah said, her green eyes sharpening as she made the mental leap. “Identical twins, right? DNA profiles would probably be indistinguishable without specialized testing—”
“Mara died, and her sister took her place?” Patterson looked at Quinn for confirmation.
He rather enjoyed dealing with people who didn’t need things spelled out for them, Quinn thought. Such a rarity. “Yes.”
“Why?” Patterson asked.
“Because whoever killed Mara was gunning for Mallory,” Hannah answered for Quinn, her sharp mind racing ahead, as usual.
“And still is?” Patterson guessed.
“If you know how to reach your brother-in-law, do it. Contact him and let him know what he’s up against. Because I can promise you, Mallory Jennings trusts no one. She’s not likely to tell him the truth.”
“Which means he may not even know what kind of danger he’s in.” Hannah finished the thought for him.
“Can you reach him?” Quinn asked, looking pointedly at the cell phone lying on the table between the two beds.
“Thank you for the information, Mr. Quinn.” Patterson rose from the bed and gave a dismissive nod. “Good night.”
Tamping down a burst of annoyance that burned like fire in his chest, Quinn rose and let Patterson see him to the door. He didn’t need to be here in the room to monitor phone communications between Patterson’s phone and his brother-in-law’s.
He hadn’t been a spy for years for nothing.
Nicholas Darcy wait
ed for him behind the wheel of a sleek black Mercedes-Benz car. Quinn slid into the passenger seat and looked at the former Diplomatic Security Service agent, who was the only of his agents besides Anson Daughtry who knew the truth about Mallory Jennings. “Any luck?”
“They’re smart people. They understand the risk to Drummond.”
Darcy glanced at the recording equipment set up in the backseat of the sedan and tapped the earpiece in his right ear. “Right now they’re discussing the wisdom of trying to contact Jack.”
Quinn finally let himself smile. “They don’t trust me.”
“Who does?” Darcy shot him a wry look.
“Fair enough.” He pulled out a set of earplugs and plugged them into the recorder to hear what the listening device he’d planted under the hotel room chair was picking up.
In the hotel room, Hannah and Riley Patterson had gone momentarily silent. The light in their room window went dark. Over the strong signal from the bug, Quinn heard the creak of bedsprings and the rustle of fabric, then Hannah Patterson’s soft, sleepy query. “Do you want to try another part of the lake tomorrow? Someone at the bait shop said the crappie have really been biting in the flats on the southern end of the lake.”
“Sounds like a plan.” There was the soft, unmistakable sound of a kiss; then the room settled into silence again. Then, softly, Hannah Patterson murmured, “Good night, Quinn.”
Darcy began to laugh softly.
* * *
A SOFT HUM roused Jack from a light doze. He felt a vibration against his chest and pulled his phone from the chest pocket of his T-shirt. There was a text message from an unfamiliar name. The message itself was short and to the point. R and I must go radio silent awhile. Take care. She’s not who you think.
Hannah, he thought. Probably using some sort of unlisted cell phone—she had cousins in the security business, and even her own side of the family had dealt with more than their share of supersecret skulduggery, if Riley’s stories were to be believed.
So. Someone had gotten to her and warned her about Mallory. Had to be the boss, right? The ex-spy Mallory didn’t think she could trust.
What kind of game was the man playing? Was he trying to get a bead on their location through Hannah and Riley?