Dangerous to Know

by Merline Lovelace

  “Adam?”

  “Yes?”

  “How long do you think we have?”

  His eyes lingered on her lips, then lifted. In their depths, Maggie caught a glimpse of raw, masculine need, overlaid with regret.

  “Not long enough.”

  She sighed. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  “They could be following the dog’s tracks and be heading this way right now. We have to contact Jaguar.”

  “I know.”

  He curled a hand under her chin, lifting her face. “Tomorrow, Maggie. We’ll have tomorrow. And forever.”

  “If we don’t…thank you for today.”

  His cheeks creased. “You’re welcome.”

  Maggie dipped her chin to kiss the warm skin of his palm. Closing her eyes, she savored his taste and his touch and his scent. Then she sighed again and moved away. With the blanket swaddled around her lower body, she began to pace the small hut.

  “Okay, let’s review the situation here. We need to contact headquarters to let Jaguar know our coordinates. As soon as we do, there’s a distinct possibility the unfriendlies, whoever they are, will glom on to the signal.”

  “If they haven’t already picked up our tracks,” Adam reminded her.

  “When they arrive on the scene, it’s up to us to make sure they don’t leave until the counterstrike team can get here.”

  Maggie felt adrenaline begin to pump through her veins in anticipation of the action ahead. She’d been in tight situations before. Not quite as snug as this one, perhaps, but pretty darn close.

  Blanket swishing at her ankles, she strode across the small room and yanked open the metal locker. The rectangular red container she pulled out was heavy and full.

  “All right. We have eight rounds of ammunition and one gallon of gasoline to hold off a possible army of bad guys armed with automatic weapons, high-powered night scopes, and every destructive device known to man.” She grinned at Adam. “I’ve done more with less. How about you?”

  He shoved his shoulders off the doorframe. “A lot more with a lot less. Let’s get to work.”

  Pillaging the metal locker, they found the makings for crude flash bombs. While Maggie poured the gasoline into the bottles, Adam tore strips from his blanket to stuff in the neck as wicks. Carefully dividing the matches, he gave half to Maggie and tucked the other half in his pocket, along with the jagged pieces of mirror he’d smashed from the snowmobile.

  Leaving Radizwell to stand sentry at the hut, they disappeared into the surrounding woods. Working silently, quickly, they gathered fallen limbs and dry timber. Within moments, they’d scattered the debris in a seemingly random pattern around the hut. After placing a few of the gasoline-filled bottles for maximium detonation, they doused the wood with the remaining fuel. A single careful shot could detonate the ring of fire.

  After that they separated, Maggie going left, Adam right, searching for just the right tree to climb to put the hut in a cross fire and make the best use of their remaining flash bombs. The temperature had dropped significantly, but Maggie didn’t notice. Her heart thumped with the realization that their time was running out. She zigzagged through the trees to find exactly the one she wanted.

  Its thick trunk provided excellent cover and a full complement of stair-stepping branches. An easy climb took her a good thirty feet up. Using both hands and her body for leverage, she bent back a couple of obscuring limbs to give her a clear line of fire to the hut. With so few rounds of ammunition, she’d need it.

  Her breath was coming in short, puffy gasps by the time she got back to the shack.

  “You set?” Adam asked tersely.

  “As set as I’ll ever be. Let’s get Jaguar on the net.”

  Maggie gave a small puff of surprise when he gripped her upper arms, his hands like steel cuffs.

  “Listen to me, Chameleon. It’s not too late. You can climb the ridge behind the hut. Take cover in the rocks until the extraction team arrives.”

  “And just what do you plan to do while I’m taking cover?”

  He gave her a small shake. “You’re the one they’re after, not me. I can stay here. Talk to them. Delay them.”

  “After that scene beside the lake, do you think they’re going to stop for a friendly chat? You took at least one of them down, remember?”

  “Dammit, Maggie…”

  “Chameleon.”

  “What?”

  “You called me Chameleon a moment ago. That’s who I am, Thunder. That’s who I have to be. I am not running for cover, and I’m sure as hell not leaving you to face the fire alone. Any more than you’d leave me.”

  His fingers bit into her arms. Maggie could feel their tensile strength through the thick down of her ski jacket. Under its day’s growth of dark beard, his jaw worked.

  “Thunder,” she said softly, “kiss me. Hard. Then get Jaguar up on the net.”

  He kissed her. Hard.

  Then he dug in his pocket for the handheld navigational device. While waiting for the readings to display on the liquid crystal screen, he shoved his sleeve back and activated the satellite transceiver.

  “Jaguar, this is Thun—”

  Jake’s voice jumped out of the gold watch. “I read you! You okay?”

  “We are.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Both of us.”

  “Give me your coordinates.”

  Adam rapped out the reading from his GPS unit.

  Jake was silent a moment, then came back on the net. “The extraction team’s in the air. Twenty minutes away. Cowboy’s leading them in.”

  “Cowboy?”

  Maggie felt a rush of wild relief. She and the lanky Wyoming rancher had worked together before. The last time, they’d repelled an attack similar to this one, led by a scar-faced Soviet major. After Adam, Nate Sloan was Maggie’s number one pick for a partner in a firefight. The knowledge that he was leading the counterstrike team gave her a surge of hope.

  “Tell Cowboy to hover behind the ridge line due east of us,” she instructed Jaguar. “I don’t want him to scare away our game. We’ll call him in when we’ve sprung the trap.”

  “Roger. You two sure took your time getting back to me. I’ve been having to hold off the entire Secret Service single-handedly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Special Agent Kowalski’s demanded half the federal government and most of the state of California to search the Sierras for you two. I convinced the president to hold her off until I heard from you, but she’s mad. Hopping mad. Someone’s attacked her charge, and she’s taking it real personal. She doesn’t understand why we’ve kept word of the attack quiet, and she doesn’t like it.” He paused. “Either that, or she’s putting on one hell of an act.”

  “What do you mean?” Adam asked sharply.

  “The lab confirmed that the listening device Chameleon found in the VP’s bedroom is manufactured by Digicon—for the Secret Service. The Presidential Protective Unit personnel are the only ones using it.”

  Adam muttered a vicious curse. “Digicon and the Secret Service. Peter Donovan and James Elliot. Even if Kowalski planted the bug, we still don’t know who the hell’s behind this.”

  “We will soon,” Maggie promised, her mouth grim.

  Adam nodded. “Look, Jaguar, we’ve got to get into position. Tell Cowboy to wait for my signal. I’ll bring him in.”

  “Roger. Good hunting, Chief.”

  “Thanks.

  “And, Chameleon?”

  “Yes?”

  “When you catch that polecat you’re baiting the trap for, I’ll skin him and tan the hide for you. I remember how much you disliked gutting your catch during survival training.”

  “I don’t think I’ll have a problem with this one,” Maggie replied, grinning crookedly.

  Adam dropped his sleeve down over the gold watch. For a few moments, the only sounds in the small shack were their rapid breathing and the faint thump of the sheepdog’s paw on the
snow as he scratched himself.

  “You ready, Chameleon?”

  “I’m ready.”

  His gaze, blue and piercing, raked her face a final time. Maggie ached to touch him once more, to carry the feel of his bristly cheek with her into the night, but she didn’t lift her hand. The time for touching was past.

  He nodded, as if acknowledging her unspoken resolve. “Let’s get moving before our company arrives.”

  “Too late. It’s already here.”

  Maggie and Adam spun around as a bulky figure in a sheepskin coat kicked the door back on its hinges.

  “Don’t!” McGowan shouted. “Don’t reach for it! I’ll shoot her, Ridgeway, I swear!”

  Adam froze in a low crouch, his hand halfway to the weapon holstered at the small of his back.

  For long seconds, no one moved. No one breathed. McGowan kept his rifle leveled squarely on the center of Maggie’s chest. She didn’t dare go for her gun, and she knew Adam wouldn’t go for his. Not with the caretaker’s weapon pointed at her.

  “There’s an oil lamp on the table, Ridgeway. Matches beside it. Light it. And keep your hands where I can see them, or she’s dead.”

  Adam straightened slowly. As though she were inside his head, Maggie could hear the thoughts that raced through his mind. With light, they could see McGowan’s eyes. A person’s eyes always signaled his intent before his body did. With light, they could anticipate. Coordinate. Take him down.

  Moving with infinite care, Adam crossed to the small table. Metal rattled, a match scraped against the side of the box, a flame flared, low and flickering at first, and then steady as the wick caught.

  In the lantern’s glow, Maggie saw McGowan clearly for the first time. Above the rifle, his battered face was frightening in its implacable intensity. Not a single spark of life showed in his gray eyes. They were flat. Cold. A convicted murderer’s eyes.

  The click of claws on wood jerked Maggie’s attention from the caretaker’s face to the shape behind him. To her fury, Radizwell ambled into the hut and hunkered down, as if settling in to enjoy the show.

  “Some guard dog you are, you stupid—”

  With great effort, she bit back one of the more descriptive terms she’d learned from her father’s roughneck crews. It was a mistake to let McGowan see how furious she was, and she knew damn well it was unfair to blame Radizwell. The sheepdog wouldn’t view Hank McGowan as an enemy. Hell, the thumping they’d heard a few seconds ago was probably his stump of a tail whapping against the snow in an ecstatic welcome. Still, there were two hides she wouldn’t have minded tanning at this moment.

  “Who are you?”

  McGowan’s low snarl brought her eyes snapping back to his face.

  “What?”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The dog picked up the savagery of his tone and tilted his head, as if confused by this confrontation between humans he knew and trusted.

  “Never mind,” McGowan continued. “I don’t care who you are. Just tell me what you’ve done with Taylor.”

  Maggie’s mind raced with the possibility that this man wasn’t the one they’d tried to bait the trap for. Slowly, carefully, she shook her head.

  “I haven’t done anything with the vice president.”

  His mouth curled. “I’d just as soon shoot you as look at you, lady. If Taylor’s hurt, you’re dead anyway. Where is she?”

  “I can’t tell you. You have to trust—”

  “The first shot goes into her knee, Ridgeway.” His eyes never left Maggie’s face. “The second into her right lung. How many will it take? How many do I have to pump into her until you tell me?”

  As it turned out, the first shot didn’t go through Maggie’s knee. It came through the open door and went right through McGowan’s shoulder. Blood sprayed, splattering Adam as he leaped for the man.

  It was the second shot that hit her. The rifle in McGowan’s scarred hands bucked. A deafening crack split the air, and Maggie slammed into the back wall of the hut.

  Chapter 14

  In the curious way time has, it always seems to move in the most infinitesimal increments at moments of greatest pain.

  When Adam lunged forward to knock the rifle aside, he felt as though he were diving through a thick pool of sludge. Slowly. So slowly. Too slowly.

  His mind recorded every minute sensation. He felt warm blood splatter his face. Saw McGowan’s finger pull back on the trigger in an involuntary reaction to the bullet that ripped through him. Heard the roar as the rifle barrel jerked. Tasted the acrid tang of gunpowder and fear as Maggie crashed back against the wall.

  Like a remote-controlled robot, Adam followed through with his actions. He shoved the barrel aside. Digging a shoulder into McGowan’s middle, he took him down. He rolled sideways, away from the caretaker, and was on his feet again in a single motion. Through it all, every nerve, every fibrous filament, every neuron, screamed a single message in a thousand different variations.

  Maggie was hit. Maggie was down. Maggie was shot.

  Only after he’d yanked the rifle out of McGowan’s slackened hold and spun around did another stream of messages begin to penetrate his mind.

  She was down, but not dead. She was hit, but not bloodied. She was shot, but not wounded.

  She’d been thrown against the wall and crumpled to the floor, but her eyes were wide and startled, not glazed with pain. A look of utter stupefaction crossed her face, then gave way to one of sputtering panic.

  As Adam raced toward her, he heard a hiccuping wheeze and identified the sound instantly. He’d seen enough demonstrations of protective body armor to recognize that choking, sucking gasp. The force of the hit had knocked the air out of her lungs. She was so stunned that her paralyzed muscles couldn’t draw more in.

  He couldn’t help her breathe. She had to force her lungs to work on her own. But he could sure as hell protect her from the two white-suited figures who came bursting through the open door at that precise moment.

  Shoving Maggie flat on the floor, Adam covered her body with his. He twisted around, his finger curling on the rifle’s trigger as he lined up on the lead attacker.

  The figure in white arctic gear and goggles ignored him, however. Legs spread, arms extended in a classic law-enforcement stance, he covered the sprawled McGowan.

  Or rather she did.

  Adam recognized Denise Kowalski’s voice the instant she belted out a fierce order to the downed man.

  “Don’t move! Don’t even breathe!”

  Keeping her eyes and her weapon trained on McGowan, she shouted over her shoulder, “Ridgeway! Is she hit? Is the vice president hit?”

  Before Adam could answer, a savage snarl ripped through the hut. From the corner of his eye, he saw Radizwell rear back, his massive hindquarters bunching as he prepared to launch himself at this latest threat.

  The second agent swung his weapon toward the dog.

  “No! Don’t shoot! Down, Radizwell! Down!”

  At the lash of command in Adam’s voice, the sheepdog halted in midthrust. Confused, uncertain, he quivered with the need to act. Under his mask of ropy fur, black gums curled back. Blood-curdling growls rolled out of his throat like waves, rising and falling in steady crescendos.

  In the midst of all the clamor, Maggie’s feeble cry almost went unheard.

  “Adam! Get…off…me!”

  At the sound of her voice, the two agents froze. Then Denise transferred her weapon to her right hand and shoved her goggles up with her left. Keeping the gun trained on McGowan, she risked a quick look at the far end of the hut.

  Adam pushed himself onto one knee. With infinite care, he rolled the wheezing Maggie onto her side. She immediately drew up into a fetal position, her knees to her chin and her arms wrapped around her middle.

  Relief crashed through Adam when he saw where she cradled herself. The bullet had struck low, below her breastbone. A higher hit might have broken her sternum or smashed a couple ribs.

  “H
errera!” Denise snapped. “Get out your medical kit. The vice president’s been hit.”

  “She’s wearing a body shield,” Adam said. “I think she’s okay.”

  Maggie’s awful wheezing eased. “Okay. I’m…okay.”

  Slowly, her face scrunched with pain, she straightened her legs. Adam slid an arm under her back and helped her to her feet. Her knees wobbled, involuntary tears streaked her cheeks, and she kept her arms crossed over her waist, but she was standing.

  With everything in him, Adam fought the desperate urge to crush her against his chest. Added pressure was the last thing she wanted or needed now. She’d have a bruise the size of Rhode Island on her stomach as it was.

  Incredibly, she gave a shaky grin and tapped a finger against her middle. “What do you know! It…worked.”

  After their hours together in the snow cave, Adam had been sure he couldn’t love this woman more. He’d been wrong. Then, her passion and her laughter had fed his soul. Now, her courage stole it completely. As long as he lived, he would remember that small grin and the way she gathered herself together to shake off the effects of a bullet to the stomach.

  A grunt of pain behind them brought both Maggie and Adam swinging around. The caretaker pushed against the floor with one boot, bright red blood staining his worn sheepskin jacket as he dragged himself upright.

  “I told you not to move, McGowan,” Denise warned.

  He sagged against the wall, and he sent her a contemptuous look. “What are you going to do? Shoot me?”

  “I’m considering it. And this time I won’t shoot to wound.”

  “Too bad you took down the wrong man, Kowalski.”

  “I got the right one. The one holding a gun on the vice president.”

  His lips curled in a sneer. “Are you blind or just stupid, woman?”

  “Neither. Nor am I lying in a pool of blood.”

  Pain added a rasp to McGowan’s gravelly voice. “She’s not the vice president.”