“And in exchange?”
Her eyes glinted. “In exchange, you keep the inquiry quiet, Jack. Very quiet. No leaks to the media. No disclosures to his staff. In this town, a man’s guilty long before he even knows the charges against him.”
“I can’t promise that, Angela. If the senator’s linked to HealthMark in any illegal way—”
“He isn’t.”
“If he is, he’ll face possible prosecution alongside the others caught in this mess.”
“Senator Claiborne’s only connection to HealthMark is the fact that they’re as nervous about his reform legislation as the rest of the medical community. He’s going to help you make them even more nervous.”
For the first time since they’d returned to the cabin, she threw Jack one of those grins that hit him like a fist to the solar plexus. It was all Angela, sparkling and vibrant and full of glinting challenge.
“And when this investigation’s over, you’re going to give Senator Henry Claiborne full credit for helping uncover sweeping fraud and corruption in a system that badly needs reform.”
Jack sat back, shaking his head. “I don’t believe this. An hour ago you were ready to take my head off for even suggesting your boss could be involved with HealthMark. Now you’ve found a way to make him the hero of the entire investigation.”
“That’s how it goes in politics or at the racetrack, big guy. You take advantage of every opening in the pack, no matter how small, and surge into the lead.”
She hunched her shoulders, excitement and anticipation radiating from her in almost palpable waves. Jack felt her energy arc through the air. It formed a bridge between them. Healed the hurt caused by his knifing suspicion and her divided loyalties. Bonded them together, even more closely than they’d bonded during those few moments on the Fourteenth Street Bridge.
Suddenly, they shared the satisfaction of being on the same team, of working together, as they had last night. Only this time, they were equals, instead of instructor and driver-in-training.
“What do we do now?” she asked with a touch of impatience.
He glanced at his watch. “The banks don’t open until ten. It’ll take Manny some time to gather the senator’s financial records. I figure we’ve got three hours, four max. Then he’ll arrive at our front door with a vanload of boxes, several computers and document scanners, a fax machine and a team of auditors for me to oversee. He seems to think I have special powers when it comes to crunching numbers,” Jack added.
“Do you?”
“Yes.” He held up a palm. “I know, I know. You consider number crunchers among the lower life-forms that inhabit the planet. But you have to admit we’re at least a half step up from the Browsers of the world.”
“Well...” She examined the tips of her sneakers. “I’ve been thinking about what you said on the bridge. It’s possible, just possible, you understand, that some of you might be human after all.”
“Careful, Paretti. You’re starting to sound a lot like that idiot cop, Lowrey.”
The hint of laughter in his voice brought her head up. When she caught the glint in his gray eyes, Angela’s heart thumped painfully.
How did he do that? she wondered. How in the world did this exasperating man propel her from anger to excitement to this tingling sense of awareness so quickly, so effortlessly? Granted, she tended to be a bit emotional at times. True, she believed in living every minute of life to the fullest. But she felt as though she’d been plunging down the slopes and charging up the peaks of a huge, continuous roller coaster since the moment she met Jack Merritt. Even for her, the pace was breathtaking.
So was the expression on his face at this particular moment. Angela’s heart gave another thump.
“You know,” he said conversationally, “we never finished our experiment.”
“What experiment?”
He pushed himself off the chair. “We were trying another kiss, remember? With your eyes closed. To see if I could prove just how human I can be at times.”
She scrambled to her feet. “I remember. I also remember that every time we get close to each other, something seems to explode.”
His smile started in his eyes and worked its way down to his mouth. Fascinated, Angela followed its progress. He had a beautiful mouth, she thought. Firm. Well shaped. Just right for kissing and being kissed.
“If I don’t get close to you soon,” he murmured, “something’s definitely going to explode.”
He a took a step toward her. Angela’s arms shot out.
“Wait!”
“I’ve been waiting. I’m still waiting. I don’t want to wait any longer.”
Palms flat against his chest, she held him off. Or herself off. At this point, she wasn’t quite sure.
“Let’s talk about this, Jack.”
“Is that what you really want to do? Talk?”
He must have read the answer in her eyes.
“We’ve got three, maybe four hours.” He reached out to brush a wayward strand of hair from her forehead. “We’ll talk later.”
His touch was so gentle, so electric, that her elbows bent. And her willpower. Swallowing, Angela made a last valiant effort to inject some stability into a situation that was fast getting out of control.
“This isn’t smart. We hardly know each other.”
His nose brushed the tip of hers. “True. But I went past smart when I donned that silly top hat last night. And I can’t think of a better way for us to get to know each other.”
He had to remind her of that hat! He’d looked so handsome in it. So smooth and debonair.
Last night, his bristles hadn’t scraped her chin the way they did now. The collar of his starched white shirt hadn’t been scrunched up on one side and down on the other. Given the choice, though, Angela knew she’d rather feel the bristles than gawk up at a Cary Grant look-alike.
This Jack was so real to her. So close and warm and real. Suddenly, desperately, she wanted the taste of his mouth on hers. Bending her elbows a few more degrees, she rose up on tiptoe.
“Maybe if we do this very slowly and very carefully,” she whispered, “the roof won’t blow off or the windows shatter.”
“I’m all for slowly,” he said. “Very slowly.”
He didn’t crowd her. Didn’t close the small space between them. Neither did she.
His head angled.
Hers tilted.
His kiss was light. Slow. Careful. Too careful, Angela decided with a shiver of need. She drew back, her head cocked, in a listening mode.
“I don’t hear anything.”
He explored the skin at the side of her neck. “No ticking time bombs?”
“No.” She hunched a shoulder as his breath warmed her ear.
“No rumblings to signify an imminent earthquake?”
“Well...maybe a few small tremors.”
He lifted his head. “Only a few small tremors? Let’s see if we can do better than. that.”
Tossing aside the last of her reservations, Angela went into his arms. They had three, maybe four hours alone together. After that, the outside world would once again intrude. For these three hours, though, there was just her and Jack and this sudden, leaping hunger she saw in his face and felt deep in her bones.
Her head went back. When his came down, Angela closed her eyes. A small, detached part of her remained on full alert, fully expecting disaster to strike. One second slipped by. Two. The cabin walls didn’t implode. The roof stayed intact. She went boneless with relief and gave herself up to his kiss.
As they had last night, her toes curled in her sneakers. As she had last night, she threaded her fingers through the springy hair at the back of his neck. His whiskers scraped her chin, adding an unexpected sting to the pleasure that zinged through her veins.
For all the icy control she’d seen Jack exercise at various times in the past twenty-odd hours, he couldn’t disguise his body’s reaction to its contact with hers. His muscles tensed. His arms tightened around
her waist. His breath grew as short and ragged as hers. Then he widened his stance, canting her into the cradle of his hips.
Angela’s eyes flew open.
She no longer had any doubts. This man was most definitely human. If the rock-solid hardness of his lower body hadn’t convinced her, the heat singeing his face certainly would have. She was trying to command her wobbly legs to step back, away from the intimate contact, when Jack tugged her arms from around his neck.
“I don’t think I can take any more experimentation,” he muttered.
“We can try another test-drive later,” she said lightly, hiding her own shakiness in the flippant reply. “With your eyes closed this time. Just to see if it makes a difference, you understand.”
“Oh, no, sweetheart. No more tests or trials. The next time’s for real.”
Her stomach did a double back flip at the steely promise in his eyes.
“You pick the time,” Jack said softly. “And the place.”
Now! she wanted to cry. Here!
Instead, she backed away. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready. There were too many unresolved issues between them. She couldn’t give in to this wild, insistent clamoring in her heart.
“I’ll, uh, let you know,” she got out.
“You do that,” he replied, his smile tipping into a heady, intoxicating grin. “Just be prepared for—”
He broke off, his head snapping up.
“What?” Angela demanded.
“I thought I heard something.”
She moaned. “I knew it! I knew disaster would strike the minute we kissed!”
“Quiet!”
His every sense straining, Jack listened intently. There it was again. A faint hum. A car engine, he decided. Or a plane.
Instincts, honed to a razor’s sharpness by his years on the SEAL team, took over. Without thinking, his mind clicked to the three Rs...the three basic tasks that had kept him and his fellow team members alive in more situations than he wanted to remember.
Reconnoiter.
Recognize.
Remove.
The team hadn’t included retreat in their lexicon.
Jack had already accomplished the first R. Before Angela woke up this morning, he’d inventoried the contents of the cabin’s interior for possible offensive and defensive weapons. His long walk had given him a fix on the surrounding terrain.
His task now was to identify whether friend or foe approached. If foe, he’d remove the threat.
“Get your coat!”
While Angela scrambled for the football jacket she’d looped over the back of a kitchen chair, Jack crossed the cabin in three swift strides. Yanking open the pine cabinets, he pocketed two plastic bottles of Uncle Guido’s chemicals. Then he swooped up the collection of small, sharp carving knives he’d discovered in a box beside a half-finished wooden duck. Lastly he grabbed the cellular phone that had come with Gus’s Chevy. Shoving the phone into Angela’s hand, he hustled her out the door.
The sound carried clearly on the cold, thin air. Unmistakably a car. Jack could hear the crunch of tires as they traveled the winding dirt track to the cabin. He spun Angela around, pointing her at the woods on the north side of the cabin.
“Keep under cover. Head north toward the village, and don’t use the phone unless you have to. If we’re dealing with unfriendlies here, I don’t want them to get a lock on you. If we’re not, I’ll come after you.”
“Wait a minute! Where are you going?”
“Move it, Angela! Now!”
She threw him a glare that was part worry, part confusion, and all determination.
“I can help.”
“I don’t have time to argue, and I don’t want to risk both our lives by worrying about you blundering around behind me. Move it!”
Her eyes flashed but, thankfully, she moved it. Jack didn’t wait for the trees to swallow her up. He couldn’t. Their unannounced visitor was closer now. He had to get himself in position, and fast.
He raced for the spot he’d picked out earlier this morning. Screened by the white-barked oaks and thick underbrush, it commanded a good view of the clearing in front of the cabin and an even better one of the last curve of the dirt lane. He dived behind the prickly curtain of brush mere seconds before a low-slung, cherryred sports car nosed around the bend.
He couldn’t see enough of the driver through the Corvette’s tinted windows to identify him. He waited, his pulse slowing to the curious calm that had always settled over him just before the team hit the beach or the chutes. His fingers curved around the wooden shaft of the largest carving knife.
The Corvette pulled up alongside Gus’s Chevy.
Jack’s jaw clenched as questions tumbled through his mind. Logic told him that the individual or individuals who planted the bomb last night wouldn’t drive right up to the cabin in broad daylight, but he wasn’t operating on logic at this moment.
The Corvette’s door opened. A tone individual emerged. Mirrored sunglasses and the upturned collar of his leather bomber jacket disguised his features, but Jack saw enough to know that he didn’t recognize this character as friend.
Which meant he had to be considered foe.
Reversing the knife, he slid the blade down until he gripped it at the tip. At this distance, he couldn’t miss.
The stranger took two steps toward the cabin. Jack noted the slight drag to his left leg before rapping out a low, flat order.
“Hold it right there, pal.”
The other man froze.
“I want to see your hands. Both hands. Now!”
The stranger’s hands went up. Slowly. Just as slowly, he turned around.
Jack kept the sun at his back and the shield of trees in front. “Who are you?”
“Who wants to know?”
Before either man got an answer to his question, the sound of someone crashing out of the brush on the far side of the clearing spun them both around. The unidentified visitor dropped into an instinctive crouch and Jack’s arm came straight back.
He gave a short, vicious curse as Angela raced right into his trajectory. With an inarticulate cry, she launched herself at the stranger.
Chapter 9
By the time Jack reached the entangled pair, he’d already realized that Angela wasn’t struggling in the stranger’s arms. Nor was she trying to drag him down, as she’d done to Jack on the Fourteenth Street Bridge. Just the opposite, in fact. She’d thrown both arms around his neck and was now embracing him with as much fervor as he embraced her with.
All right Okay. Jack could handle the sight of Angela hugging this character and planting wet, smacking kisses on his cheek.
Maybe.
His jaw locked tight, he waited for the demonstration to end. When Angela finally turned, a joyful smile lit her face.
“This is my brother, Tony. Tony, this is Jack Merritt.”
At that point, Jack didn’t need her breathless introduction. With brother and sister now standing side by side, the family resemblance was unmistakable. Both Angela and Tony Paretti possessed the same dark, curly hair. The same olive-tinted skin. The same wide, generous mouth and pointed chin.
But there the resemblance ended. Where Angela’s slender figure curved in exactly the right places, her brother was built along more solid, powerful lines. His leather jacket emphasized muscled shoulders. Well-worn jeans hugged corded thighs. If Tony had sustained much tissue damage in the crash that almost took his life three years ago, he’d worked hard to overcome it. The only visible signs of his near-fatal accident were his limp and the network of scars that ran down one side of his throat and disappeared in the collar of his jacket.
With his free hand, Tony peeled off his sunglasses. Eyes the same shade of liquid brown as Angela’s raked Jack from head to toe. They snagged on the knife still held in Jack’s hand for a moment, then sliced to his face.
“So you’re Merritt.”
Angela’s smile took a nosedive at the implacable you’ve-just-met-your-doom n
ote in her brother’s voice. She’d obviously heard that tone before.
“I’m Merritt,” he replied, meeting the hostile gaze head-on.
“I heard about you from Ed Winters. And from Gus. You and I are going to have a little talk before you leave Washington, pal.”
“Fine by me.”
With a sigh of exasperation, Angela realized that the past few adrenaline-pumping moments must have maxed out Jack’s macho quotient. Tony’s generally stayed maxed out. Valiantly she threw herself into the widening breach.
“How did you know where we were?” she asked, twisting out of her brother’s hold.
“How do you think?” His terse reply promised a no-holds-barred brother-and-sister chat later.
Angela groaned. “Mother.”
“Right the first time.”
“She activated the worldwide net?”
Her brother’s tight expression eased a fraction. “By a process of elimination, she discovered that you weren’t staying with any relatives, friends or business acquaintances, and that you weren’t at any of the hotels listed in the D.C. or Maryland directories. I had a suspicion you might head here, and decided to check it out.”
“Does anyone else know we’re here?” Jack asked sharply.
Tony’s hostile gaze slewed to him. “No.”
“Any chance you were followed?”
His mouth curled. “No. But in any case, it’s a moot point. I’m taking my sister out of here. Now. You can find yourself another hole to burrow into.”
“Wait a minute!”
Tony might have ignored Angela’s protest, but he couldn’t ignore the way Jack placed himself squarely in front of them. The two men looked each other up and down, and then her brother issued the challenge he’d obviously been itching to get out.
“You got any objections, Merritt?”
“I might, but whether Angela goes or stays is her choice.”
The deliberate drawl narrowed Tony’s eyes. “Not this time.”
“Yes, this time,” she insisted, reclaiming his attention with a yank on his sleeve. “You don’t know what’s involved here. I do.”
“So tell me.”
She shot Jack a quick glance. His still, watchful eyes telegraphed no permission to share what he’d told her about the investigation. Nor did they withhold it. The decision was hers, just as the decision to call the senator earlier had been hers.
The 14th... And Forever Page 11