Toby’s heart stopped beating. “What? No.” He shook his head.
“He thinks the evidence is sufficient to convict her.”
Toby pictured Dylan’s reaction to finding herself under arrest for a crime she didn’t commit. Something like that might send her off the deep end. “Give me one more week,” he implored. “Let me find out who would frame her like this. I swear to you, someone with a political agenda is hiding behind her militia.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the table. Ike broke eye contact to consider the report under his hand. He drummed his fingertips on the tabletop. “We’ll take a vote,” he decided. “Who’s for giving Burke another week?”
Jackson Maddox and TJ Hamilton both raised their hands. Ike’s eyebrows climbed, but he shrugged in acceptance of being overruled. “All right,” he said, shutting the folder of the latest report and freeing Toby to breathe again. “You’ve got one week.”
Despite his relief, Toby’s stomach remained knotted. If he couldn’t prove Dylan’s innocence, she would be arrested and sent to trial. God knew how she’d handle something that traumatic.
Half an hour later, he exited the mammoth building with a heavy step. As if in response to his worsening mood, the sky had darkened and was now spitting cold flecks of rain. A gust of wind had him pulling up the collar of his army jacket as he led Milly past the clanging flagpole toward the parking lot. His gaze locked in disbelief on a man sitting on one of the cement blocks in front of the building. Recognizing the hawk-like features of the Sheriff of Harpers Ferry, Toby’s blood abruptly thinned.
The sheriff caught sight of him, stood, and headed directly toward him. Toby slowed his step. He felt suddenly like prey.
Oh, shit.
Cal Fallon approached with his hands in his pockets and a snarl on his scarred lip. For several seconds, they assessed each other in electrical silence.
“You followed me,” Toby accused.
“You lied to us, you son of a bitch,” Fallon said at the same time.
Envisioning the entire investigation swirling down the drain, not to mention Dylan’s deep disillusionment when she learned from the sheriff who Sergeant Burke really was, Toby opted to be fully honest with the lawman. “You need to know that Dylan Connelly is a suspect in the Defense Secretary’s murder.”
Fallon’s expression grew thunderous. “Tell me something I don’t know. But if you think Dylan’s a murderer, then you don’t know her like we do.”
“Relax,” Toby countered. “I know she didn’t do that. Unfortunately, there’s evidence that suggests otherwise.” He glanced around, relieved to find that they were still alone.
“What kind of evidence?” Fallon demanded.
“That’s classified. The bottom line is if I can’t figure out who is framing her, she’s going to face trial for a crime she didn’t commit.”
The scar on Fallon’s lip turned bone white. “Who would frame her?” he demanded.
“I was hoping you’d know that.” Briefly, Toby considered whether the sheriff himself might be the culprit. At the moment, he didn’t have much choice about including the man in his investigation. “Look, someone’s using Dylan to cover up their own agenda, and I can’t protect her unless I’m on the inside. Please. I need you to protect my identity. She’ll discover the truth sooner or later.” He quailed at the thought. “You don’t need to be the one to destroy her faith in me.”
Steely gray eyes drilled into Toby’s. “All right.” Fallon folded his arms across his chest. “I’ll keep your business to myself for now.” His eyes narrowed. “But if you Feds try to pin a crime on her that she didn’t commit, I swear to God, you’ll wish you never crossed my path. I will raise holy hell on national television. I will personally ruin you for fucking up her life any more than it’s already fucked up.”
Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry had nothing on this guy. Toby felt a grin coming. “I’ll hold you to that, Sheriff,” he replied. Noticing the taxi lurking at the far side of the lot he asked, “Is that your ride?”
Fallon followed his gaze. “Yep.”
“Do you have an hour or two? I’d like to pick your brain some. How about lunch?”
Fallon looked like he’d rather dine with the devil than with him.
“You know better than I do who Dylan’s enemies are,” Toby explained.
Fallon’s mouth curled with scorn. “Good luck there, son. Pretty much every filthy politician and legislator despises her.”
“Maybe together we can whittle down the list. Finding the culprit may be our only way to keep her out of jail.”
At the mention of jail, Fallon seemed to blanch. “Fine,” he muttered, waving at the distant taxi. As it started slowly toward them, he added, “Just so I make this clear, I’m doing this for Dylan, whose father was a well-respected man in our town. I don’t like Feds and I never will.”
Toby had to hold back a smile. “I appreciate your candidness,” he replied. He’d take honesty like Fallon’s over the backstabbing habits of government agents any day.
***
“Why, Dylan!” Father Nesbit’s face lit up with pleasure as he opened his kitchen door. She stood on the stoop of the rectory in a cold drizzle. “Come in, please. What brings you to my humble abode in such inclement weather?”
Dylan slipped into his warm kitchen with relief. The familiar smells of chamomile tea and burnt toast assailed her nostrils. “I’m picking up Sergeant Burke at the station at seventeen thirty,” she said, shaking out of her army-issue trench coat. “I thought I’d drop by and visit you first.”
“I’m so glad you did,” he insisted, taking her coat and draping it over a chair. “Let me make you some tea.”
“No, that’s okay. I don’t have much time. I’d rather just talk.”
His brow creased with concern. “Well, of course, my dear. Take a seat, then.”
They sat across from each other at his scarred dinette table, where he laid a blue-veined hand over her chilled fingers. “Something’s bothering you. What is it, my child?”
Dylan averted her gaze. Her throat tightened and her stomach churned. Discussing her inner life had never been easy; it was harder still when there was a man involved.
“Something’s changed,” she said, speaking quickly to keep her emotions from overtaking her words. “Sergeant Burke joined my militia, and things have been different ever since.”
The priest sent her a searching look. “Different good or different bad?” he asked.
“Good.” She drew a bracing breath. “Wonderful, in fact,” she added, flicking him a look to gauge whether he grasped what she was saying.
His expression of dismay hit her like the rain that started pelting the window over the sink.
Dylan tugged her hand free and fisted it in her lap. “I know Tobias seems aloof and skeptical in church,” she added, making excuses for him, “but outside of church, I assure you, he is warm and helpful and very capable. He puts a humorous spin on everything.” She smiled as she thought about his T-shirts. “When he’s around, I find that I’m not living in the past anymore.”
“That’s wonderful,” Nesbit said, but his tone lacked full conviction.
Dylan tried again. Her parents were dead. This man was her last connection to them and to the wisdom they might have imparted if they’d lived longer. “I’ve begun to question whether I should lead the militia any longer,” she confessed.
Bushy gray eyebrows rose toward Nesbit’s sparse hairline. “Go on,” he encouraged.
Dylan sighed. She realized it was his blessing that she craved. “I nominated myself for a leadership position because I needed a reason to live, and the militia gave me that. Plus, supposedly, all that gunfire and the public protests raise my anxiety threshold.”
He nodded his understanding. “Those were all good reasons.”
“But now I picture myself doing other things—like tending the orchard, perhaps, and harvesting apples the way my parents did.”
To her
relief, his blue eyes crinkled with delight. “I think that’s a grand idea.” He beamed at her.
“You do?”
“I do. Your parents would be so pleased.”
Her eyes stung with relief. “Thank you.”
“As for this young man you speak so highly of…”
She held her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Just be careful,” he advised. “Move slowly. Don’t do anything too rash, dear Dylan. Remember that your heart is still terribly vulnerable.”
His words filled her with childlike fear. “Yes, father.”
She wished she’d sought out his counsel sooner, though she wasn’t sure it would have made any difference. She’d been drawn to Tobias as recklessly as a moth was drawn to flame. Having already invited him into her bed, it was too late to be careful now, even knowing that she relied on him for her present happiness.
What would happen if he didn’t return on the train tonight? That was still a very real concern—though after the passionate kiss he’d stolen in secret after church, that was hard to envision.
“You’re right.” Her hoarse reply was scarcely audible as the rain outside drummed the building. Still, the familiar whistle of the incoming train, sharp and clear, managed to pierce the sounds of the downpour. “That’s him arriving now.” She stood up abruptly. “Thank you for speaking to me, father.”
He popped up and reached for her coat. “Any time, my child. Any time at all.” He helped her to put it on.
Dylan stepped from the cozy kitchen into a chilly deluge. Icy droplets hit her scalp and raced down her neck into the collar of her coat, making her shiver as she negotiated the treacherous steps to the street below.
By the time she rushed into the station, the passengers were already stepping from the cars. Tobias stood on the platform, holding his duffle bag and Milly’s leash, clearly searching for her. His contagious smile widened as he caught sight of her. The impact of his intelligent gaze made her knees tremble as she approached him. Her spiraling joy had her fixing her attention on the dog.
Too late, father, she thought, bending to greet Milly first. With a dose of dismay, she realized she’d fallen irrevocably in love.
“You look more like a movie star than a militia leader.”
Tobias’s compliment startled her attention upward. It took her several seconds to recollect that she’d worn a skirt and applied makeup for the first time in months, in the hopes that he’d say something just like that. She felt herself blushing.
“Thank you. And aren’t you remarkably sober,” she retorted with a smirk.
He pretended to flinch. “Ouch.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she spied Sheriff Fallon hustling from the train to the parking area, just like last week. “All set?” she inquired briskly. Spinning on the balls of her pumps, she marched ahead of Tobias, through the small station toward the exit.
Before she could push out into the rain, he caught her by the arm and spun her back into his embrace. The arm banding her waist kept her plastered against him, where his enticing scent and familiar heat rushed into her senses, undermining her determination to remain strong, invulnerable.
“Not in public,” she protested, noting that his gaze was focused on her mouth. Her traitorous body, relishing the solid feel of him, tingled in anticipation.
“It’s no secret that we’re seeing each other, Dylan,” he remarked.
She drew back slightly. “What?”
“Thanks to Corbin, the park ranger, everyone knows. You don’t have to be stand-offish.”
“I am not stand-offish,” she protested. She’d been trying to take her priest’s advice and distance herself a little.
“Angry, then.”
“I am not angry!”
“Good because you’re kind of scary when you’re angry.” Laughter sparkled in his navy eyes. “I think it’s the red hair.”
Dylan felt the corners of her mouth wobble. He’d managed to undermine her distancing efforts in just seconds. And now all she wanted to do was be alone with him in some very private place—the consequences be damned.
Through the glass-paned doors, she peered at the Suburban standing in the pouring rain. “On the count of three?” she suggested.
They counted together. “One, two, three!”
Despite the mad dash through the downpour, they managed to get soaked. At last, Milly was stowed in the rear and they were seated up front with the heat blasting, shivering and grinning at each other.
“Well, that went well,” Tobias remarked, shaking water droplets from his hair. “If it were warmer outside I’d make you dance in the rain with me.”
A vision of them dancing in a summer downpour with their clothes plastered to their bodies filled her with yearning. Would he still be a part of her life by summertime? The odds were slim, in her opinion. All she had was here and now.
Determined to make the most of it and to keep whatever part of him she could, she reached out and seized his wet jacket, while sliding to the center of the bench seat. “Make love to me,” she commanded, cringing slightly as the L-word passed through her lips.
He bestowed a kiss so blistering that it curled her toes and made her throw a leg over his thighs. Then he lifted his head abruptly. “Slow down, there, Captain,” he rasped.
Holding her face in his hands, he smoothed back the wet tendrils sticking to her cheeks. For a breathless moment, he studied her face in the semi-darkness. The train in the station gave a prolonged hiss and a brief whistle. Then it rumbled away.
Dylan tried and failed to fathom Tobias’s expression. “Make love to me,” she reiterated with slightly less assurance this time.
“Oh, I will,” he promised. “Just not here. If you find a deserted road on the way home, I won’t protest.”
Needing no more motivation to start driving, Dylan pulled away, sliding back behind the wheel to tug on the gear shift and started driving. She knew just the place for a stolen moment.
By the time she nosed the Suburban down the rutted track leading to an abandoned farmstead, she was trembling with expectancy, her panties as wet as the rest of her. In the midst of a dark pasture, with heavy raindrops making music on the roof of the car, she braked, doused the lights, but kept the motor running in order to heat the vehicle.
Tobias unbuttoned her damp blouse, unhooked her bra and slid a hand up under her skirt. “I’ve never seen you in a skirt before,” he said, breathing hard. “You should wear them all the time to show off your gorgeous legs.” He drew her panties slowly down them.
Dylan’s chilled skin grew feverish at the compliment. “It’s hard to lead a militia in a skirt,” she replied.
“So drop the militia,” he quipped.
Of course, he had no idea she was already considering doing just that, but with his blessing, the idea seemed to have more merit than ever.
With rising anticipation, she freed the erection straining against his zipper, rolled up on her knees, hiked her skirt, and sat in his lap. As she kissed him, she funneled her hands under his long-sleeved shirt, loving the warmth and breadth of his furred chest. Pushing Father Nesbit’s advice to the back of her mind, she tipped her hips so that that the head of his sex nestled her opening. The need to feel him deep inside her goaded her to sheathe him in one desperate stroke. Tobias’s gave a helpless groan. Crushing his lips to hers, he kissed her deeply.
“Tobias,” she cried against his mouth. Rolling her hips, she rode him with abandonment, unable to get enough.
I love you. I never thought I’d love anyone or anything again. But I love you.
Through a fog of passion, Toby remembered the condom in his wallet. Son of a bitch.
“Have to stop a minute, sweetheart,” he protested hoarsely. God knew he didn’t want to stop. It felt like heaven what she was doing to him. Her ass cheeks filled his palms like cool, velvety globes, and every time she ground her hips against his, she engulfed him in tight heat and catapulted him closer to heaven.
But it was bad enough that he couldn’t tell her who he was; he didn’t need to impregnate her on top of everything else.
“Stop.” He caught her by the waist, lifting her reluctantly off him. “Just give me a second.”
Straining to reach the pocket of his jeans, he found what he was looking for, tore it open with his teeth and started to cover himself. Dylan finished the job for him, her touch sure and delicate. He wondered how he’d ever imagined those tender fingers building a pipe bomb.
“Hey,” he said, catching her against him as she assumed her dominating stance.
“What?”
Even in the dark, her hair shone like a fire’s embers. Her lips glistened, moist and swollen from his kisses. She looked so aroused and so beautiful that he wanted to kill the motherfucker using her to cover up his own twisted agenda.
“I’m here for you,” he said, wishing he could simply be candid with her, striving to say something, anything that would reduce the blow she was bound to experience when she found out who he really was.
“For how long?” she demanded, gripping his shoulders. Her short, blunt nails dug into his deltoids.
His heart ached to offer her assurance. But as long as she was still a suspect, as long as he was working undercover, that confession would have to wait. “As long as you need me,” he swore.
With a whimper of what sounded like relief, she crushed her lips to his while guiding him back into her silky warmth. She proceeded to love him with all the depth of feeling he knew she kept locked inside for fear of being hurt.
Her head fell back and her full breasts, dangling like ripe fruit before him, enticed him to suckle her beaded nipples.
His climax started out as a simmer that bubbled harder and harder until it flashed to a boil. Just when he feared he would spill over prematurely, Dylan gave a keening cry and drove herself down on him, consuming him so completely that he came close to blacking out. Christ.
She fell limply against his chest, where he could feel her heart thudding out the same frantic tempo as his was. Their torsos, damp with sweat, stuck together.
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