by Zoe Dawson
“Did you do more recon?”
He gave her a wry look and looked away. “We’re pretty isolated from the road,” he said, gesturing. “A lot of good cover. The town is that way and Harrisburg is the other way. Toward the south. There’s a nice little town with a pretty good night life, places to eat and a grocery store. I’ve got a good amount of cash to last us for a bit. We can stay here for at least two weeks.”
“Do you think they will give up after that?”
“They won’t give up. I know that’s hard to hear, but that’s what my instinct tells me.”
“The stuff I’m working on is classified. They could be after that.”
“I have a top-secret clearance. You can confide in me.”
“I mostly write algorithms in conjunction with sonar and radar. I’m working on a very top-secret project called Stingray. I’m the only one in the company who is working on it. My boss isn’t even privy to the schematics.”
“What is Stingray?”
“It’s a submarine that uses silent sound waves that can’t be detected by conventional sonar equipment. I’m still perfecting it.”
“Silent sound waves?”
“A sound spectrum displays the different frequencies present in a sound. Most sounds are made up of a complicated mixture of vibrations, like the fan in your computer, perhaps the sound of the wind outside, the rumble of traffic or music playing in the background, in which case there is a mixture of high notes and low notes, and some sounds such as drumbeats and cymbal crashes, which have no clear pitch.”
“That’s right, you have a degree in sound. That’s what you’re working on for the Navy?”
“Yes, sonar picks up vibrations in the water and can pinpoint where these sounds are coming from. No machine runs quiet.”
“Except your Stingray?”
“Yes, I’ve developed engines that produce minimal sound. The sub does produce very low-level sound waves intermittently that mix in with the sounds of the ocean until it’s almost undetectable.”
“Who else knows about this technology?”
“A few select Naval personnel. It’s really hush-hush.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, I am extremely careful with my research and take my top-secret clearance very seriously. I would never have spoken about it to you if you didn’t have the clearance. There’s a prototype that I helped to fit with the new engines and it’s out in the Atlantic right now.”
“I need a name.”
“Admiral Jackson Bartlett. He is my Navy contact.”
He pulled the burner phone out of his pocket and dialed. “Chris, it’s Vin. I have a name I want you to run.” There was a burst of response on the other end. “Yeah, it’s Admiral Jackson Bartlett. Could you check him out and let me know what you find?” He listened for a few minutes. “I’d rather not say over the phone.” He ended the conversation and stuffed the phone back in his coat pocket.
“What are you thinking?”
“I just have a feeling that this does have something to do with your research. You’re working on several top-secret projects, but Stingray is technology foreign governments would love to get their hands on. We’ll wait to see what Chris digs up.”
She nodded, her stomach tying up in knots, wracking her brain trying to think if there was ever a breach in her protocol.
He took her arm and pulled her to the base of a wide tree. “I brought you out here to run through the plan if this location is compromised.”
She nodded. “What’s the plan?”
He gestured to the ground at a pile of leaves. She looked back up at him frowning. “What? A pile of leaves?”
“In sniper training every recruit has to learn how to camouflage, evade and become invisible to the enemy. That’s a blind. I took the concept of my ghillie suit and adapted for this situation.”
He squatted down and grasped something and lifted. “A ghillie suit is something I wore as a sniper to make me undetectable in the woods or jungle.” The leaves rose, and beneath was a tarp. Sky studied it for a moment, then her stomach clenched. “There’s only room for one person under there.”
He let the leaves fall and stood. He set his hands on her shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes. “If we’re compromised, this is where you’re going to hide.”
“What? What about you?”
His gaze didn’t waver, his eyes a clear, cool green. She bet he was an amazing sniper—patient, accurate, calm and deadly.
“To protect you from any threat, I need to know that you’re safe, and I need to be mobile. I’m going to take them down one by one, silently, until there is no more threat, or lead them away from you. Whichever decision I make, I don’t want you to make a sound until they pass by it. Then you run for the road.”
“But…”
His hands tightened on her shoulders. “I know this scares you, but I also know you have the courage for this.” He pulled out one of the burner phones and a fanny pack. “Carry this with you from now on. I’ve already entered in the local sheriff’s number and my boss Chris Vargas’s direct number at NCIS. The number to the other burner is on this phone, as well. If I don’t answer, call those other two numbers only. Head toward the sheriff’s office if you can’t access the car or it’s disabled. It’s in the town located about three miles from here. Stay close to the road but don’t actually travel on it, just in case they are trolling for you. There’s an extra set of keys in there for my car. It has a GPS, and the address for NCIS in DC is already programmed into it. I’ll show you that in a minute. Drive straight there. There’s a map in here to show you how to get to the road and where the town and the highway are located, some cash and a few protein bars.”
She took the phone and tucked it into the fanny pack and swallowed hard. “Vin,” she said, but had to swallow again. “Don’t let anything happen to you.”
“Sky….”
She covered his mouth with her fingers. “Don’t…I already know what you’re going to say. I know I’m all about facts and hard science, but right now I want the fantasy. Screw reality. I want you to tell me everything is going to be okay. We’re both going to be okay. I need that.”
He grabbed her hand and kissed her fingers, then her palm, sending sensual heat all the way through her. She didn’t think she could get enough of this man, and that was a bad thing.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his head down, planting a kiss on him that was different than what they’d shared in the past. Slow and deep, she felt as if her heart was in her lips, beating with the need for Vin. She fell completely into it, feeling him against her, so strong and sure, her protector, her warrior, her shield.
It was more than her erogenous zones in play. Her heart was all the way out there, and it was both exhilarating and terrifying to think his might be, too. What did it mean? What would it change?
She didn’t want to think about any of that. She just wanted to be right where she was, in that particular moment, exulting in the intensity of the connection they seemed to be sharing. Knowing she wasn’t in it alone made giving into to it unbearably seductive.
He broke the kiss and said fiercely, “We’re both going to be okay.”
She traced his lips, the tantalizing strength of his jawline. “Tell me you were a badass, lethal Marine.”
His mouth came down on hers in a soul-searing kiss; the chilly wind didn’t even faze her, she was so wrapped up in Vin’s heat and need. He pulled her closer, took the kiss even deeper, until she shivered with the power of him all trapped inside her. They both groaned a little when their lips parted.
He pressed his forehead against hers. “I am a badass, lethal Marine. There are no former Marines. I’m an excellent shot, too,” he whispered.
“Good. Don’t forget to kill them twice.”
He tightened his hold on her. “There won’t be anything I won’t be willing to do to keep you safe. Just follow my directions to the letter, and it’ll all work ou
t.”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and her attempts at schooling her emotions failed miserably. She nodded.
“Okay, let’s go learn about GPS and practice jumping out a bedroom window.”
She stuck her lip out. “I suppose you’re going to be a badass drill sergeant?”
“Yes, I am. Now, hup to it, missy.”
She walked with him to the car, and her heart wobbled, dipped, but held on with valiant effort. She hoped those men didn’t find them. Not because of the danger, not because of the fear, but because it would mean that Vin would be safe, too.
Chapter Twelve
Standing at the dock, watching the water swirl past, Vin was trying to work through what had happened at the blind—the sound of her voice on the verge of tears because there wasn’t enough room in the hidey-hole for both of them.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then there was that kiss. He closed his eyes. It was…beyond words.
Ever since he’d taken this assignment and seen Sky’s face on the monitor at NCIS, he felt as if he was continually trying to surface from the deepest part of the ocean. Getting involved with her was exactly the worst thing he could have possibly done in his career as an NCIS agent. Not because getting involved with a woman he was protecting was against the rules. It wasn’t. He wasn’t even sure if that would have stopped him.
He rubbed at the back of his neck. The cold wind cut across the dock, making the surface of the water ripple. What he was struggling with was that everything with Sky was simply better than good.
Profound. Primal, filling a need in him he wasn’t aware he even had. Maybe, just maybe that’s what was missing from all his past relationships?
Because there was absolutely nothing missing when Sky looked at him, touched him, joined with him. She affected him viscerally on every level.
And that was why it was the worst mistake he’d ever made.
They were in an iffy situation at best. He didn’t have enough information about who was after her or why. Yet he had to protect her.
He couldn’t fail.
That tore him up. The thought of failing. That was also something new. He never really contemplated failing when he was working a case, just as he hadn’t ever considered it as part of his thought process when he was sniping. There was only win in his head.
Losing her just wasn’t an option. It wasn’t even part of the equation. Protecting her and keeping her safe was all that mattered.
He heard her quick scrabble down the small hill to the wooden dock, then her footfalls before she wrapped her arms around him from behind.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Working shit out,” he said noncommittally. He wasn’t ready to say anything to her. He wasn’t even sure where they stood. The situation really precluded him from declaring anything.
She walked around him and gave him a soft smile. “While you were working shit out, I was practicing jumping out of a window gracefully.”
“We don’t need any freaking ballerina moves, sweetheart. Just get your ass over teakettle out the window and run like hell.”
She gave him a bemused look. “I suspect that my ass over teakettle will be unavoidable because you’ll be behind me shoving me out.”
He chuckled softly. “I don’t shove ladies. I might boost or firmly encourage.”
“Like you did this morning?”
His chest filled, thinking about having her mouth on him. “What was it that I said? I was completely distracted at the time.”
She flushed but met his eyes directly, and his heart went to mush.
“I believe your exact words were ‘Oh, yeah, baby. Use me.’”
“Really. I was that crass? That’s not like me.”
She giggled. “Oh, no, not like you at all.”
He stopped fighting the inevitability of kissing her. Just like from the beginning. He fought a battle in vain. Even as he took her mouth with his, he was still waging that losing battle inside him.
Her mouth was too irresistible, too sweet. The tiny hitch of her breath at the back of her throat unraveled him just a bit more. He figured if he could find some balance, some solid ground, then he might have a fighting chance at focusing on the job at hand and not on how he couldn’t get enough of her.
But that little hitch in her breath was a hard push that kept him unstable. And those incredibly soft lips beneath his. He was affecting her defenses, which made him feel a little bit better.
That little hitch sounded again, and he immediately found himself gentling the kiss, soothing rather than conquering. She tasted so damn sweet. She felt fragile and vulnerable, and damn if he didn’t want to save her.
He kissed the corners of her lips before taking her mouth once again. He was unhurried in his tasting of her, reveling in the moment, knowing it could end at any time with no guarantees of a future. He kissed her with a gentleness he didn’t typically express, and carefully avoided examining any further why that particular side of him had surfaced now, of all times. The fragility he sensed was probably temporary at best, no matter what his libido wanted him to believe. But he quickly discovered kissing her like this wasn’t just soothing her; it was soothing something deep inside himself, too.
When she sighed into his mouth, urging him on with a little moan deep in her throat, the part of him that was almost out of control for her wanted to take her back to the cabin’s bedroom and let her use him again.
But the man who was falling for her found a different kind of contentment, skimming his fingertips over her cheeks, sliding them into the long, sleek strands of her hair, loosening her soft ponytail so he could feel that silken wave cascade over the backs of his hands, all the while taking in her breath with his own.
She was no longer just that beautiful face on a monitor or a brilliant scientist with her life neatly summed up in a file. She was a flesh and blood woman who had yet to bare all of herself to him. Something he craved. A woman whose plight should matter to him only in the strictest professional sense. She shouldn’t otherwise matter to him at all.
But she did, and there was no going back to impartiality, if he’d ever had it in the first place.
He broke the kiss, and they stared at each other for a few moments as the wind played with her now loose hair.
“What exactly do you do out here when you and your buddy come up here together?”
“Not the same thing I do with you.” He grinned.
She laughed and shook her head. She rolled her eyes. “I’m serious.”
“So am I,” he assured her.
She laughed again, pushing at his shoulder. “Vin…”
He chuckled and nudged her back. “We fish, drink and cut wood for the winter. But mostly fish and drink. Okay, maybe a little more drinking than fishing.”
She snorted. “Get in touch with your good-ole-boy self?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you eat these fish you catch, providing you do actually catch something?”
“Of course, we do. I do the cleaning and my buddy does the cooking. What do you do for fun?”
“Fun?”
“You know, when you’re not doing something that makes you a living.”
“I don’t really do much but work.”
“No vacations?”
“Um, I present papers at conferences. Does that count?”
He gave her a wry look.
“I don’t really have anyone to travel with, and I’m so busy….”
Now he gave her a skeptical look. “Seriously? You don’t take vacations or any time off?”
“Not really.”
“Not even to the Philippines?”
She bit her lip and looked away. “I’ve never been to the Philippines.”
“What? Okay, that seals it. Before we leave here, you have to do something spontaneous.”
“What? Why?”
“Practice for when you go back to your job. Sky, life was made for living, not working all the
time. I saw my father do that, and I didn’t want that for myself.”
“Tell me about…”
“No, why don’t you tell me about your father? I think I jumped to some conclusions the last time we talked about your family. I’m sorry. I want to understand your culture. Your mom was American. I know all about Americans, but I don’t know much about Filipinos.”
For a moment she stared at him, then she looked away. She swallowed, waited a few seconds, then, her voice thick with emotion, said, “It’s getting on toward dinner time. Aren’t you hungry?”
He had a sister, a mother and had been in a relationship for two years, and he totally understood that when a woman was ready, she would talk. There wasn’t anything he could do to get her to open up. But he was impatient. He’d never felt this way before. Sky didn’t know him that well, and he’d been looking at things through his own eyes and not trying to understand them through hers. After his revelations this morning, he wanted a closer connection with her.
He nodded. “I got steaks when I was in town yesterday. Do you eat beef? I didn’t even think to ask.”
“I don’t eat red meat.” She smiled at him.
“I’m such a typical guy. But, hey, I got chicken, too.”
“That will work. I can make some fried rice.”
He turned to head toward the house, and she grabbed his hand. He looked at her, then looked away, smiling to himself, his grip on her hand tightening. They walked up the stairs and into the house.
She went to the kitchen, then turned to look at him. “Do you have my hair tie?”
He’d forgotten about that. It was around his wrist, and he walked up to her. She held out her hand, but he just turned her slightly and started to braid her hair. She made a soft noise of surprise in her throat, and when he tied it off with the elastic, she twisted to look at him, her eyes softening.