by Julie Miller
He was beyond the humiliation of being trussed up like a pig, beyond resentment, beyond caring about any damn thing.
“So, sweetheart…” About all he had left was the satisfaction of rattling her cage one last time. “I’m thinking you’re definitely not an art professor.”
Chapter Six
Tori secured Cole’s Glock inside the strap of her fanny pack and cradled his Beretta in her right hand. The weapons still carried the warmth of his hard body. So did she.
Why couldn’t she shake her fascination with him? She’d never had such confusing feelings about a man before, and she wasn’t even thinking about the hypnotic voice or that incredible kiss or the fact there was just so much of him to distract her.
Which was the real Cole Taylor? The man who baited her temper and spied on her? Or the man whose desperate need for an ally spoke to some unacknowledged sympathetic spirit inside her? The man who sold out his comrades for a pricey car and a few perks? Or the man who’d charged to her rescue as if she was some sort of damsel in distress?
She could see the ulterior motive in defending her against Jericho’s inexplicable attack or Lana’s snide taunts. It was all part of the liar’s game he was playing—the image he wanted to project to the other members of the household to mask his true objectives. But why throw his body between her and two armed men he didn’t know? Why go all good-guy for her? Was there still a little bit of cop’s blood flowing through his veins? Or was he just protecting his investment in her?
And why did the answer matter?
Turning her back on the source of her confusion, Tori propped her foot up on the seat beside Bill Brady at the picnic table where she’d led him. The older agent tugged the black leather glove from his left hand and gingerly moved his jaw from side to side, assessing the damage paid for getting in Cole’s way. His moans cut right through her, and Tori grimaced.
“Anything broken?”
He pressed his fingertips to the mandible joint beneath his ear. “I’ll live. But I have a headache that’s leaking out my pores. Let me tell you, retirement’s looking pretty good right about now.”
“You’re too young to retire.” She sat down beside him and rubbed a comforting hand between his shoulder blades, wishing she at least had a couple of aspirin to offer him instead of a cautious reprimand. “Why didn’t you stay in the car? I would have approached you when it was clear. Another five minutes and we wouldn’t be in this mess.” She let her gaze slide across to the man who had his chin in the mud, and ice meant only for her in his eyes. “You didn’t spot the cherry red Mustang tailing me through an otherwise deserted park?”
With only moonlight to illuminate the distance and the darkness, she might have imagined the sudden narrowing of Cole’s eyes. While she didn’t comprehend the unspoken question, she’d add eavesdropping to his list of crimes. Tori dropped her voice to a more private whisper.
“There may be a way to salvage this yet.”
“No.” Bill’s quick answer was followed by a hiss of pain. “It’s too risky now. You should have let him save you and kept your cover intact. Now you’ve been compromised.”
“He was making toast of you and Bill. I had to even up the odds.” Cole’s loss of contact with the world outside the Meade family had hit home with stunning clarity when she’d seen how quickly and thoroughly he was taking down her own two links to the world outside her mission.
The elder Bill patted her knee and forced a smile. “Got a soft spot for us, have you?”
Tori squeezed his hand, then removed it from her knee to maintain the professional distance she was more comfortable with. “We’re a team, aren’t we? I was just looking out for the team.”
“Well, your team is the one that screwed things up. When you ran past us at the rendezvous site, we thought something was wrong.”
Wrong? Like being blackmailed into a role she was ill-equipped to play? Like finding out the Meade estate was a Gothic funhouse filled with enough suspects to populate an Agatha Christie novel? What could be wrong? Tori put her sarcastic thoughts on hold at Bill’s next words.
“I’m pulling you out. It isn’t safe.”
Failure? No way. Not yet. She could lose ground in a race, but she wouldn’t quit running until she crossed the finish line. “The Horseman is due to ship out within a few days. If we don’t get it back now, we may lose it forever.” She stood to strengthen her argument. “You have to trust me. You said I was the best person for this job. I’m only getting started. Let me work.”
She studied the dubious consideration in his dark brown eyes. “You’re sure?” But she could see him wavering. “I don’t want to blow my relationship with the Bureau by getting one of their agents killed.”
“You don’t want to blow your job at Customs by letting that statue get smuggled out of the country. I can do this.” She emphasized her desire to succeed. She wouldn’t let that golden knight and all he represented in her life go without her very best fight. She owed that much to the memory of her father. “I can handle Cole Taylor.”
That part was a pretty gutsy assertion considering how thoroughly she’d blundered the job so far, but Bill Brady seemed to buy it. “All right. It’s not my first choice, but we’ll give it another twenty-four to forty-eight hours with you calling the shots. What do you need from us?”
Without giving herself any time to savor the victory, Tori’s thoughts were already sprinting ahead. “Run a personal background check on Taylor. I’ve read his KCPD service and state criminal records, but there has to be something more. If there’s anything I can use to ensure his cooperation, I want to know about it.”
Bill braced himself on the table and pushed to his feet. “I thought you said you could handle him.”
Tori waved aside his concern. “It’s a backup plan, that’s all. I just want to know my options in case things get tricky.”
“Trickier than they already are?” His concern gave way to businesslike efficiency. “I’ll have the information for you by tomorrow afternoon.”
She spared a glance at Cole, who still managed to look threatening while muddy and rumpled and handcuffed on the ground. Tori exhaled a steadying breath. With the other Bill still holding him at gunpoint, there seemed to be little chance of appealing to Cole’s sense of duty or forging any kind of trust. But there was an unspoken code of honor about a man who would willingly risk his life to help someone else—no matter what his motives might be.
It was that honor she was banking this mission on. A promise for a promise. She was gambling her life that he would be as true to his word as she intended to be.
“Thanks. I’ll call you on my secure cell line for the report.” Tori thumbed over her shoulder. “You take care of hotshot over there in the meantime, okay? I don’t think we should meet again until our prearranged check-in, day after tomorrow. If something breaks before then, I’ll get word to you.”
“Be careful.”
She spared the senior agent one last indulgent smile. “I’ll be careful enough. Now go.”
Bill Brady gathered his stocking cap and leather glove and headed toward his unmarked car. Tori breathed evenly in and out her nose, centering herself on her renewed purpose before turning and striding up to Bill Backer.
She held out her hand to the younger agent, studiously avoiding any eye contact with the man lying at her feet. “Give me the keys to your handcuffs.”
His blue eyes widened. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Bill.” She waited without so much as blinking until he fussed himself into action.
“Yes, ma’am.” Acceding to her authority, he holstered his weapon, dug into his pocket and plopped the keys into her hand, grinching all the way. “I still think we should run this guy in.”
“It’ll be okay. I’ll be okay.” Having been raised an only child, Tori had no firsthand experience in dealing with protective brothers. But the two Bills were giving her a taste of what belonging to a caring, well-intentioned family might be li
ke. She hoped they understood she intended to repay the favor by bringing them the Horseman. “Now get out of here. Go find an ice pack for Agent Brady.”
Tori saluted the two Bills when they turned to give her one last, doubtful look. She felt the darkness swallow her up as they pulled onto the road and disappeared beyond the wall of trees and night.
A deep, evenly modulated voice broke the silence. “I can honestly say this isn’t going the way I expected. Plan to take me out in the woods and shoot me yourself?”
Stowing the Beretta in her fanny pack, Tori bought herself a few seconds to recapture a feeling of control. “Don’t be so crass. I have a little more finesse than that.”
“How reassuring.” The attitude in his voice was every bit as sardonic as her own had been. “You’re going to let me rot in a jail cell, instead.” His hair had come loose in the fight and masked the glare she suspected shone in his eyes as he angled his face to look up at her. “No answer for that one, huh?”
“Get up.” She stooped down beside him, wrapped her palm around one of those imposing biceps and urged him to stand. His arm flexed and hardened beneath her grasp, and she tried to ignore the frissons of female awareness that skittered through her each time she came in contact with the very male dimensions of his body.
“C’mon.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He mimicked Bill Backer’s deference and rolled to his feet with enough balance and strength to make her suspect he’d only been humoring her by remaining on the ground for as long as he had.
Disregarding the unnerving impulse to rearm herself with a gun, she shoved him forward. “Let’s go to your car,” she ordered.
He strolled ahead of her, shaking his head from side to side. Tori followed at a cautious distance, keeping his broad back and bound wrists in clear sight.
“You know how many men have gotten the drop on me during my career?” he asked.
“How many?”
He stopped beside the Mustang’s open door. The breeze off the lake caught his hair as he spun around, snagging the loose strands across his face. Tori halted, tilting her chin so that her eyes met the taunt in his.
“None.”
Was that his idea of a compliment? Professional admiration? If so, it was one she was a lot more comfortable with than any lame line about her pale skin or nonexistent curves. In a surge of nervous energy, she touched his face and brushed away the strand of hair that had caught between his lips. She absently repeated the action with another strand, exploring the tactile contrasts of silky hair and sandpapery evening beard stubble.
“So I’m better than any man you’ve run up against?” she asked, plucking a blade of grass from his sideburn.
He dropped his chin closer, aiding her neatening up in what small way he could. “Any adversary,” he amended. “I’d hate to stand anybody up against my brothers or sister.” Before she could comment on the unexpected revelation of familial pride, she saw a teasing grin forming at eye level. “But you pet me nicer and smell better than any of them.”
“Pet…?” Oh God. She snatched her fingers away. Guilt or sympathy or inexplicable chemistry had blurred the line between helping him and helping herself. “I wasn’t petting you.”
“You were.” That grin was full-blown wicked now. “I liked it, though. Beats a kick in the back. What is that perfume you wear? It makes me crazy.”
What a waste of smooth-talking charm. Angry with herself for listening to even one word of it, Tori flattened a hand against his chest and pushed him out of her personal space. “Blissful Sunrise, if it’s any of your business. Which it’s not. Forget the sweet talk. You’re not kissing your way out of this one.”
“Honey, you’ve kicked my ass, trashed my ego and left me with a hell of a lot of explaining to do if I want Jericho to post my bail. You have to give me credit for trying.” He rolled his neck and shoulders to ease his discomfort. The massive shift of pent-up strength and barely checked ire created an invisible ripple through the air currents that raised chill bumps along Tori’s bare arms.
“So, is this the part where you read me my rights and pack me into the back seat of the car? I warn you—I won’t fit.”
But his sarcasm was easier to handle than his seductive charm had been. “No. This is the part where you listen.” She dangled the keys to remind him that she was the one making the deals now. “I want to let you go.”
“Really.” Skepticism dropped the word to a bass-deep pitch.
“Really.”
Son of a bitch. Cole’s breath caught in his lungs when he saw the steadfast resolution darkening her emerald eyes. She wasn’t kidding.
He shifted his gaze just enough to note the repetitive clench of her fist around those keys. Always in motion. Those tender touches across his face, shyly stroking him as if he were some sort of caged wild animal, had been as much about nervous energy as denied sexual attraction.
She planned to go against the law and her training and release him from custody. Why?
He’d assaulted two federal officers. By rights, she should have kept her friends around and called for backup as soon as he was cuffed. But she was after bigger game. Lana? Chad? Jericho himself? The twists and turns of what he now realized was a dual undercover op got more complicated by the minute.
Cole tested his theory. “A Customs agent, huh? And you’re just going to let me walk.”
“FBI, actually. I’m on loan. And there are conditions.”
“Of course.” He should be relieved that somebody with a badge wanted to help him. But too many months of trusting no one kept him from reacting with anything more than wary curiosity. “What is it you’re after?”
“A stolen artifact believed to be in Jericho’s possession. It’s a priceless statue of gold and jewels, dating to the Middle Ages. Customs has information that it’s about to be shipped overseas to a foreign buyer. Someone going by the name Sir Lancelot.”
She was FBI, all right. There was a confidence to her words that had been absent from their other, more personal, conversations.
“My assignment is to retrieve it and hopefully get solid evidence to implicate whoever is responsible for the theft.”
“Lancelot?” That name rang a very dangerous bell. “That’s the code name for a guy in Eastern Europe that Jericho does business with. He runs an arms pipeline to rebels and terrorists, buys whatever Jericho can supply him with. I don’t know anything about smuggling artifacts, though.”
Tori’s green eyes sparkled with excitement. “Do you know who Lancelot is?”
Cole shook his head and watched the sparkle die. Good God, she was just like a rookie cop, too anxious to make a difference, primed to make costly mistakes. It was bad enough that she’d gotten mixed up with the Meades, she didn’t need to be stirring up the interest of an international player like Lancelot.
“Do you know what a man like Lancelot does to people who poke around in his business? What happens to cops and Feds on either side of the ocean who get in his way?”
“I’m aware of the dangers of my job.”
Aware? How about death in your face twenty-four/seven? “You mentioned the hit on Jericho two weeks ago. You want to know who I think ordered it?”
“Lancelot?” She was sparkling again.
“Yes, dammit! He probably took out Daniel, too.” He chafed his wrists against their steel bands, desperate to free himself and shake some sense into her. “The shooters were foreign. They shouted something about their homeland.”
Now she was frowning. Thinking. All business. Frustrating the hell out of him.
“You said someone in the house was poisoning Jericho. Do you think Lancelot has someone on the inside?”
“I’ve considered it.”
“Why would Lancelot order a hit on Jericho if he’s the one supplying him with arms? Unless he reneged on their deal—couldn’t fill an order? demanded more money?” She snapped her fingers and pointed at Cole. “Maybe Jericho refused to deliver something that Lancelot thinks bel
ongs to him. Where is this ‘homeland?’ The Divine Horseman was forged in Eastern Europe.”
They were back to that damn statue. It was a good thing her cover had been compromised. It played hell with his plans to lose her, but she would be safer far away from this mess. Cole took a deep breath and schooled his patience. She liked to negotiate. Maybe she’d listen to logic.
“I don’t know where he’s from, or his real name. But, believe me, as Jericho’s bodyguard I’m definitely trying to find out everything I can about the guy so I can stop him. I’d be happy to fill you in on anything I find out.” But his hands were still tied, literally and figuratively, unless he played this right. “Is that why you’re letting me go? You expect me to exchange information for my freedom?”
“I expect you to keep my secret.”
Cole squinted, studying the underlying meaning of her request. “You want back in that house yourself.”
“You were so determined to have us work together as a team. I can put up with your groping hands and goofy endearments to get the job done. We’re both after the same guy. It seems a logical solution.”
“That’s your big plan?” Negotiating gave way to a burst of emotion that was fiercer and more frightening than anything he’d felt in a long time. “It’d be a suicide mission. There are a half-dozen people in that house willing to kill you if they find out you’re a Fed. Not to mention Lancelot breathing down our necks.”
“Then, don’t let anyone find out.”
He tipped his face up to the night, trying to think of numbers to count, arguments to make, anything rational that would dissuade her from this crazy, gutsy idea of hers. “Tori, I—”
But she’d circled behind him. Her long fingers brushed against his as she reached for the cuffs. Cole ignored her willingness to free him and spun around to face her.
“Take me in,” he offered. “Arrest me. I’ll deal with the consequences.”
“Cole.”
He had her trapped against the frame of the car. Her hands came up between them, bracing against his chest. But he didn’t back away. “Your friends made a mistake and I found out who you are. Someone else could—”