Fever (21 page)

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Authors: Joan Swan

BOOK: Fever
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“Department of freaking Defense?” she muttered. “Good thing you always love a challenge, Mitch.”
She closed her fingers around the card and refocused on the parking lot. A heavy sigh filtered past her lips creating a thick plume of smoke in the cold air.
Holding her jacket closed across her chest, Alyssa wandered through the parking lot, searching for the Jeep, but after five minutes of failure, her emotions started to play nasty tricks on her mind. She still couldn’t believe Teague had actually left her stranded. She was alone.
Finally free.
Or was she? This situation just kept getting more and more complicated. And after that conversation with Vasser, her immediate circumstances had gone from tangled mess to hopeless knot. She felt so lost. So confused. Maybe she’d developed Stockholm’s syndrome over the last few days, because she found herself wandering toward Wendy’s, hoping for a sign of the Jeep. She was cold and tired. Her side hurt. Her head hurt. And she wanted more of the TLC Teague had offered her last night. Not to mention a good shot at his ribs for holding back this information, when all she
should
want was an instant connection to Mitch’s cell and a direct flight to San Francisco International.
“I’m sick,” she muttered as she crossed into the Wendy’s parking lot. “I’m a sick, twisted idiot.” Why else would she want to go back to Teague? Why else would she put up with the abusive atmosphere of St. Jude’s? “My mother is right. There is something wrong with me.”
Alyssa rounded the corner of the fast-food restaurant and scanned the rear alley. The Jeep sat alongside the building in the shadow of a Dumpster. Excitement buzzed in her chest, followed by an immediate lick of fear, when she realized the engine was off. Something wasn’t right.
“Oh, God.” Alyssa pushed into a jog. “No. No, no, no.”
Alyssa was still ten feet away when she saw the silhouette of Teague’s figure in the driver’s seat. Her feet stopped moving, as if they had their own controls. She pushed each foot forward with deliberate effort and angled to look through the passenger’s window, peering into the driver’s seat.
Teague wasn’t moving. His head lay against the window, tilted at an odd angle. One limp hand covered his face.
A jolt of adrenaline-laden terror pushed her arm forward. She fumbled with the handle. Jerked the passenger’s door open. Lunged across to touch his face.
“Teague!”
He jumped and grabbed her arm, his eyes sharp with surprise and fear beneath a sheen of wetness.
Alyssa closed her eyes and dropped her head as relief coursed through her chest loosening all the coiled muscles. She released all her breath in a heavy whoosh, then panted quick and shallow to get a normal rhythm back.
“Oh, my God. You scared the crap out of me.” She rubbed a palm over her forehead and pressed her suddenly stinging eyes. She would not cry in relief. She would not. To force herself to obey, she opened her eyes and glared at Teague.
He released her hand and turned away, swiping at tears he obviously didn’t want her to see. “Why aren’t you halfway to San Francisco by now?”
“Because I’m as demented as you are infuriating. What in the heck are you doing? How could you just leave me there? With
him
?”
“You’re the one who walked right up to him,” Teague shot back. “I couldn’t very well waltz over and interrupt.”
“He’s been gone fifteen minutes. What happened to staying close?”
His mouth compressed at the same time as his eyes darted away. “This would be a good time for you to head home. Take care of business like you’ve been wanting to.”
“
Excuse me
? After everything ... after
this
...” she sputtered. “I’m not even going to acknowledge that asinine comment with a response.
You jerk
.” She slapped the business card against his chest. “Tell me how the Department of Defense got involved in this, Teague. And who is this Vasser guy?”
He looked down at the card, taking it from her at the same time. “He gave you his damn
business card
? Man, this guy is un-freaking-believable.
You
are un-freaking-believable, approaching him like that. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that you abandoned me. I was thinking that I’m up to my dang eyeballs in this and that my future is at stake. I was thinking that there’s a lot you’re not telling me, and I want answers, Teague. And after Tara assumed I was
one of them
”—she used her fingers to put air-quotes around the words—“and treated me like the plague, insisting she, and I quote, ‘wasn’t going to get involved again,’ I thought it best to just go to the source of all this mayhem when he walked right in front of me.”
The blue of Teague’s eyes darkened to stormy gray. “And what did you learn from the source?”
“That he’s as cunning as a snake, as manipulative as my competition at St. Jude’s, and as heartless as Taz. That he already knows every detail about my past and in the five minutes we talked, he tried to flip me against you and all but confessed to framing you and killing Desiree.”
His eyes lowered to the card, his long, dark gold lashes sweeping down to cover the emotion within. “So colossally screwed up,” he murmured. “Kat’s okay, right? Just bumped her head?”
Kat’s bump? He was worried about Kat’s bump?
Alyssa’s blood boiled. A scream ramped up in her throat, but before it escaped, Teague lifted his hand to his eyes and swiped at them again. A fine tremor rocked his fingers, his arm, his shoulders.
All her frustration evaporated. Her heart broke open. She reached across the Jeep and squeezed his forearm. “Kat’s fine. A bump and a few scrapes. She’s fine.”
He heaved a breath and nodded. Then in one swift move, he leaned across the Jeep and pulled Alyssa into his arms. She stiffened in surprise as he pressed his face to her neck, then whispered, “Thank you. Thank you for checking on her.”
 
Teague stuffed the wicked anger of raw injustice deep inside and let a sweeping sense of gratitude wash over him. Still, nagging guilt encroached. Alyssa was the last person on earth who should have done anything for him. Yet not only had she risked her safety, she’d come back.
“Why?” he said against her neck, still holding her, smelling her, feeling her. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“I evidently have some sort of masochistic streak.”
He huffed a laugh, more relief than humor. Then the warmth of Alyssa’s hands smoothed over his head, down his neck and rested on his shoulders. He’d never felt anything so good in his life.
Teague lifted his head and looked into her eyes. He didn’t know who moved first, only felt her mouth against his. And it was so right. So perfect.
Her lips were soft and warm as she kissed him. Tentative. Gentle. Then again. And again. Her arms tightened around his shoulders. He slid one arm around her waist and cupped her face with the other hand. He wanted to devour her, drive in and take her all at once, but forced himself to hold back. And gained a huge payoff when Alyssa was the one to demand more.
She sucked his lower lip between hers and pulled his mouth open, then kissed him fully. Her tongue slipped in and touched his. Heat streamed through his chest and expanded in his groin, and Teague moaned with the feel of it.
Alyssa twisted toward him, sliding one arm around his neck and locking on. She took the kiss deeper and, oh, the feeling of being wanted—for who he was in the moment, even at his worst—made Teague lose all sense of place and time and circumstance.
When Alyssa finally pulled away, they were both breathing hard, tangled in an impossible position in the cramped Jeep. Teague’s head was swimming, his cock straining against his jeans and pounding to the beat of his heart. Before he had fully cleared his head, Alyssa took his face in both hands. One thumb slid over his cheekbone, the other over his lips, all while those smoky eyes scanned his face with a mixture of tenderness and need. He kissed her thumb as it passed.
“Wow,” she breathed. “Could this get any more complicated?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
A little voice warned.
Don’t do this. No matter how badly you want her. Don’t do this.
Teague closed his eyes, his heart heavy with resignation, and pulled back. He curled his fingers around hers and released her grasp on his face, set her hands back in her lap. “I imagine it could, but I don’t want to think about how.”
He turned away and stared out the windshield, forcing his mind back to his purpose.
“Where were they coming from?” He cleared the desire from his throat. “Tara and Kat? Which store?”
“Um. The photo shop, I think.”
Teague turned the engine over. “Let’s see what they were doing there.”
In front of the photo shop, he slammed the Jeep into park, pushed the driver’s door open and rounded the front of the vehicle, trying to get that damned kiss and the fantasies it created out of his head.
Before Teague could reach the passenger’s door, Alyssa was out, her gaze direct and focused. “Are you sorry you kissed me?”
His chest grew heavy with emotion—so much emotion. Past, present, future. All knotted and matted. He lifted one hand to her cheek, ran his thumb over the soft, blushed skin. He wanted to kiss her again. Push her against the Jeep and feast on her. Take her back to the cabin, carry her into the house, lay her down on the sofa in front of the fire and undress her and touch her and taste her.
“At a different time, a different place ... God, I wish I’d met you years ago.” He shook his head, dropped his hand. “But I didn’t. And I’ve already screwed up your life enough, don’t you think?”
He didn’t wait for a response, just closed his hand around hers and headed into the store.
Alyssa remained unusually quiet. He’d expected her to argue or pick a fight or at least tell him he was wrong and render her own opinion. But she didn’t, which made him feel even worse. Maybe she agreed. Maybe she had her own second thoughts about their kiss, given what was at stake.
At the rear of the shop, three Asian women sat in front of large, complex machines processing photos. They didn’t look up from their work. A man appeared from behind a curtain leading to a back room and scurried up to the front counter. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, hi.” Teague searched for a relaxed demeanor. “My sister sent me to pick up her pictures. She was in earlier with my niece. Last name is Masters.”
The man turned and chattered at one of the women in Vietnamese. The two shot conversation back and forth like arrows before the woman dug in a pile of white envelopes and handed one to the man. Without asking for ID or questioning Teague further, the man rang up the sale, made change and offered Teague the envelope.
He dragged Alyssa out of the store and shook the envelope’s contents into his hand. Several two-by-two head shots of both Tara and Kat filled his palm. Teague frowned and checked the envelope again, but found it empty.
“Passport photos.” Alyssa’s voice drew Teague’s attention to an advertisement painted on the shop window for one-hour passport photos.
Teague’s stomach tightened up. “What did Tara say to you? Tell me everything.”
Alyssa’s eyes went distant as she recalled the conversation. “Ah ... she didn’t let me get much of a word in edgewise. I told you she jumped on me about being ‘one of them.’ She said she’d already talked to Vasser, called him by name. Said she’d die before anyone took Kat from her. She talked about already having done what they’d wanted, mentioned blackmail. . .”
Dots started connecting in Teague’s brain, and he didn’t like the picture they were creating. At all. “Let’s go. Vasser will have the cops here any second.”
F
IFTEEN
T
eague dialed Seth’s number as he drove the route back toward the cabin, splitting his attention between the road, the rearview mirror and Alyssa, who sat far too silently in the passenger’s seat.
After the first ring, Seth picked up, breathless and expectant. “Tara?”
“No, it’s me, Teague. What’s going on?”
“Did you contact her, you dumbass? I told you I’d set something up and call you.”
Teague’s mind hit an invisible wall and broke into several different pieces. “No, I didn’t contact her. Why would I call her? Why would you ask that? What’s wrong?”
“She got a call this morning and after that she was acting totally freaked out. When she’d been gone too long and stopped answering her phone, I got a weird feeling and looked through the house. Her stuff is missing. Kat’s favorite toys and books are gone. I can’t find the suitcases we keep in the garage. She’s gone, Teague. She’s gone and she took Kat. Why would she do that if you hadn’t spooked her?”
An ice storm of reality rolled through Teague in prickly, painful waves. Kat was out there somewhere and even the man who’d been a father to her for years didn’t have any idea of how to find her. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. But if she ran, it wasn’t because of me.”
“I called the police.”
“Wh—what?” An unexpected stab of betrayal stole Teague’s breath.
“Not on you, idiot. On Tara. For Kat.”
That didn’t help the sting much. “What did they say?”
“That if her legal guardian has her and there is no evidence that Kat is in any danger, then they can’t call her missing yet. They told me to stay home and wait for Tara to phone or come back. To call if anything changes.”
Teague nodded to himself. At least if Tara changed her mind, he’d have a link to the information through Seth. “That’s good advice. I’m already out here, looking. Believe me, buddy, if anyone is going to find her, it’s me.”
Seth grumbled something unintelligible.
“Couple quick questions that might help me,” Teague said. “Had you planned on taking a trip anytime soon?”
“What? No.”
“Any big purchases recently? Say, a new car?”
“No. Why? How is this important?”
“Call me if Tara calls you, Seth, and I’ll call you if I find them first. Deal?”
More grumbling. A few creative curses. “Find her, goddammit.”
Seth hung up on him. Teague disconnected, set his elbow on the window ledge and rested his head in his hand.
He’s fallen back in time—to the days before he’d gone to prison, when he’d been digging into the source of the warehouse fire and the contents of the building that had burned too hot and too fast. Contents that had exploded and blown their team to hell. An explosion that had taken Quaid’s life.
This situation with Tara’s behavior was eerily reminiscent of the way reporters Teague had spoken to had been fired and disappeared or suddenly relocated to parts unknown. Followed by documents taken from his home, evidence stolen from Desiree’s office files and death threats on Desiree’s doorstep.
“What’s this whole custody thing about?” Alyssa’s voice brought Teague back to his ugly reality.
He glanced at her. She was resting her head against the window and looking at him from barely open eyes.
“What about it?”
“Why are Luke and Seth and Tara fighting over Kat? Luke is family, Seth and Tara aren’t. You all used to be friends. What happened?”
“Luke hates me. Blames me for Suzanna’s death.”
“Your wife? You said it was suicide.”
“It was. She overdosed on depression meds.” He pushed through the words without attaching emotion or memory. He couldn’t relive the guilt and loss all over again. “It started with hormones from the pregnancy, normal stuff, but got progressively worse. Luke doesn’t think I did enough to help her. He’s been fighting for custody of Kat ever since Suzanna died. Thinks I was a lousy husband and an unfit father.”
“Why did you choose Seth and Tara?”
“Seth’s been one of my best friends since I was a kid. He and Tara have been trying to have a baby for years, but can’t. They’re Kat’s godparents and they adore her. Seemed like the best choice.”
“Why weren’t you shocked when I told you Vasser all but confessed to framing you for Desiree’s death?”
Teague shrugged. “I knew someone did. I mean, I knew I sure as hell didn’t kill her. But I couldn’t find a trail, a motive. Never found any evidence. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done is done. I had to let it go or it would have eaten me alive.”
He pulled into the drive at the cabin just as a light snow dotted the windshield. They fell into a tense silence. No new tire tracks lay in the driveway. No changes to the house.
“Vasser said he was going to Luke’s,” Alyssa said. “He said the F.B.I. was staging there.”
Teague’s gaze swiveled toward her. He must have had a what-the-fuck look on his face because she answered his unasked question with, “He was talking on the phone when I approached him. I caught his side of the conversation.”
“Why didn’t he arrest you?”
“He must think I’m more valuable to them free.”
He wanted to ask her why she didn’t just turn him in, but his instincts told him that might start World War III. His instincts also told him that what he was about to say was going to come damn close.
He turned toward her and laid one arm over the steering wheel. “Look. This has gotten ... well, completely out of control would be a gross understatement. I took you when I shouldn’t have. I kept you when I should have let you go.” Teague ran a hand over his prickly hair. “I want you to call your brother and arrange to have him meet you in Colfax at the gas station where we stopped after the pet store. I’ll drop you there a half hour ahead. This is just beyond dangerous. Vasser knows who you are. If he thinks you have information, if he thinks you’re holding back ...”
“Um, hello.” She straightened in her seat. “Beyond dangerous? Have I not had a gun at my head? Were we not attacked by gang members? Do I not have stitches in my side? Did I not just have my career and my life threatened by a member of the government whose salary is paid for by my own taxes?”
“I know you’re pissed off. You have every right, but you don’t understand the magnitude—”
“Pissed off? Now
that
is a gross understatement.” But she didn’t sound as furious as he’d expected. Mad, yeah, but also hurt and disillusioned as she shoved the door open. Frozen air whooshed in, stinging Teague’s lungs on his next breath.
“News flash, Creek.” She glanced over her shoulder just before she got out of the car, her eyes veiled, the way she used to look at him days ago, before they’d meant anything to each other. “I’m making my own decisions now.”
“And just what would those decisions be, genius?” Alyssa muttered to herself as she lay in the middle of the bed she’d slept in the night before—or part of the night before—at the cabin. The other part of the night, she’d lain skin to skin with Teague.
The memory sent a delicious shiver along the length of her body and made her groan in a combination of want and anger.
“Jerk.” She flung her forearm over her eyes. “Didn’t leave me many freaking options.”
She could stay here with a man she wanted, but shouldn’t want. For a million reasons. Or she could go home to allegations that would cause a troublesome immediate future at best, very well change the course of her life at worst. And if Vasser wanted to get nasty, he could wipe out her career with the same ease he’d stolen Teague’s freedom.
Mitch had more pull, more power than Vasser gave him credit for, but there was merit to the power structure Vasser had eluded to. An attorney could only get so far fighting the all-powerful government.
The mere idea that someone had that type of supremacy infuriated her. The fact it was her government, agents the people had placed in a position of power, twisted her with an injustice that gnawed deep in her belly. And maybe for the first time, Alyssa had a sense of the blinding passion that drove her brother to do what he did for a living.
Mitch was her safety net. Her go-to guy. He would be the one to give her answers, to guide her through the mess that had become her life. She could trust him with her reputation, her career, her life. And she would. When the time was right. When she had more information.
Alyssa pushed up on her elbows and stared at the wall. She knew about Desiree’s death. Teague had told her a little about the warehouse fire. She could work with that, take the information and tap deeper sources as she had during college or while performing research, but she had no resource—no library, no Internet. Just Teague, and he liked talking about his past about as much as Alyssa liked working with Dyne. She could call Mitch, but she wasn’t willing to deal with his overprotectiveness yet. She’d rather try to get Teague to tell her more on his own first.
Alyssa turned into the hallway, her gaze drifting to a door that was cracked open, leading to a room she hadn’t noticed before. She peered around the doorjamb and scanned the space—an office, with an eight-foot map of the United States covering one wall and encyclopedias and reference books lining another. That was enough to have Alyssa’s mouth dropping open. Then she saw the giant flat screen computer monitor on the desk, its blue glare shining on Teague’s quickly lengthening crop of deep gold hair as he ran his fingers through it over and over again, his head tilted down, elbows planted on the desk blotter. To his left sat an all-in-one fax-scanner-printer.
“What in the heck ... ?” Alyssa muttered.
Teague’s head came up. “I thought you were going to get some rest.”
“And I thought this was a hunting and fishing cabin.”
“It is.”
She shot him a don’t-even-start look.
“Doesn’t mean it has to be archaic,” he added.
“Whose cabin did you say this was?”
“I didn’t.”
“So, whose is it?”
Teague let out a long breath and sat back in the black leather chair. “It belongs to the father of a friend. A man who’s been like a surrogate father to me. He’s a history professor at U.C. Davis.”
“What happened to your father?”
Teague shrugged, his gaze locked on the spinning hourglass on the screen, indicating that the system was still booting up. “Never knew him. Ditched me when I was little.”
“And who is the friend?”
“His name is ... was Quaid.”
Something connected in Alyssa’s brain. “The firefighter who died at the warehouse?”
Teague nodded.
“Friend to Seth and Luke, too?”
Teague’s jaw pulsed. His eyes darted to hers, then back to the desk, where he picked up a pen and slid it through his fingers. And nodded.
She tipped her head to the side. “And you don’t think the cops are going to figure out where you are?”
Teague rubbed at his eyes. “I know they’ll find me here,
eventually
.” He dropped his hand to the desktop and glared at her. “That’s why the sooner I get this research done, the better.”
“What are you researching?”
“Not what, who—Tara. Trying to figure out where she’d go.”
“Mexico?” she offered. “Europe?”
“Canada, more likely. She grew up in Banff. Her mother and stepfather lived in British Columbia for a while. Her brother moved to Anchorage to work in the fisheries for several years. The stepfather died about seven or eight years ago and her mother and brother moved to Oregon.”
“How do you know so much about them?”
“I asked. I wanted to know the person raising my daughter.”
“Canada seems like an obvious place to go if she’s trying to hide.”
“The thing you learn quickly about Vasser and his group,” he said, his voice flat and serious, “is that there is no limit to their reach. They can find you anywhere. They can get to you anywhere. So if Tara was trying to feel safe, it would make sense to go somewhere she knows people, where she would have a community that might rally around her.” He shrugged and met Alyssa’s eyes. “She’s not exactly your typical criminal mastermind. She’s just a woman afraid of losing her only child.”

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