Her Secret Agent Man (12 page)

He kept pulling the trigger of his empty rifle as if more bullets would materialize in the chamber and drop the bastard. Another reflex he had no control over.

“Retreat!” Captain Folly bellowed over the radio. The din of a burst of gunfire nearly drowned him out. “Fall back. Into the jungle. Proceed due south for a hundred yards, then regroup on my position.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dutch saw his teammates following the order and moving off toward his left in a fighting retreat. His brain felt wrapped in fog. He was supposed to go with them.

“Simon…” he protested into his throat mike.

“There’s nothing we can do for him now,” Folly bit out. “Fall back.”

“We don’t leave our own behind,” Dutch snapped back.

“We do this time. We’ve got to regroup. We’ll come back for him in a little while. I swear. But we’re all going to die if we don’t get out of the line of fire and get a head count and position fix on what we’re up against.”

Simon was less than a dozen yards ahead of him now. Just a few more seconds.

And then Simon turned his head and looked at Dutch. The kid was still alive! By some miracle, his eyes were open and aware and staring straight at him. Beseeching his big brother not to leave him here to die alone.

The bastard reached for Simon’s hair. Took a handful of it and yanked Simon’s chin up. The bloody knife descended slowly toward his brother’s jugular.

Orders be damned. All in one move, Dutch leaped up and flung himself forward. He caught the fist holding the knife, twisted the weapon still in the guy’s grasp, and drove it into the guy’s throat in a lethal blow.

And then another scream caught his attention. A high-pitched keening that had to come from a female throat. His head whipped around. He swore violently. Julia. What the hell was she doing running down the front lawn toward him? She was supposed to be hiding in the gazebo, safe on the other side of the house from this fiasco!

“Stop! Stop!” she screamed over and over. She was coming straight at him. She wanted him to stop? Not a chance. Simon’s intestines might be spread all over the front yard, but he was getting his brother out of here if it was the last thing he ever did. Hell, it probably would be the last thing he ever did.

“Dutch. Julia’s coming right at you. Get her out of there.”

He blinked at Folly’s orders. Glanced down at Simon. Looked up at the panicked girl racing toward him. But his brother…

He knew his duty. Get the innocent civilian out. He knelt down. Tore off his shirt. Awkwardly bundled the slippery mass of Simon’s intestines in the cloth and set it on top of Simon’s gut. He knew better than to stuff them back in his brother’s body before they were cleaned and repaired. Otherwise, peritonitis would kill Simon for sure.

God, he looked like an angel lying there. Almost otherworldly in his pale, blond perfection. So damn peaceful. Simon opened his eyes. Looked up at him. “Thanks, bro,” he murmured.

Something hot and wet ran down Dutch’s face. Stung his eyes like hell. Burned his cheeks. His heart felt as if it was cracking in two. “Don’t you die on me, you little punk. Fight, dammit!”

Simon’s hand lifted an inch or so, then fell back to the ground. Dutch grabbed it, and Simon tugged on it so weakly he barely felt it. Dutch ducked as a barrage of lead flew close to his head and he put his ear next to Simon’s mouth. A bare whisper of breath touched his skin.

“Love…you…”

Folly’s voice cut into his other ear, sharp. Desperate. “Dutch, get the girl and get the hell out of there before I shoot you myself!”

He ignored his boss’s order and lifted up enough to look down into Simon’s clear, sky-blue eyes. Tears ran unchecked down his face, dripping onto Simon’s pale cheek. “I love you, too, little brother.”

And then Julia was beside him, tugging on his arm with frantic urgency. “Get out of here! They’ll kill you, too,” she
pleaded, close to hysterical. He heard the words, but they passed by him, not really touching his consciousness.

And then he heard a thud, and Julia toppled into him as if something heavy had just hit her and knocked her over. He caught her as much to keep her from crashing into Simon as to steady her.

“Go…” Simon gasped. A bubble of spit and blood formed at the corner of his mouth.

And that one word finally penetrated his brain. The lightning-and-thunder fury of an all-out gun battle slammed into him in a rush, along with awareness of the mortal danger that he and Julia were both in.

Julia. The innocent young girl he’d half seduced into helping them set up this nightmare. He had to get her out of here. If he didn’t, she’d be lucky if all her father did was kill her.

He glanced up at her. And blinked at the crimson stain spreading on her shirt along her right side. She’d been hit!

He glanced down at Simon, whose eyes were closed now. He looked unconscious, but just in case, Dutch called down to him, “I’ll get you out of here in a couple of minutes, Simon. I’ve got to get Julia under cover first. And then I’ll be back for you.”

A groan of agony at leaving his brother’s side escaped his throat as he grabbed her left arm and took off running, all but dragging her across the expanse of lawn toward the wall of black that was the jungle and safety…

“Please, Dutch! Wake up!”

He swam up through the layers of horror still clinging to his mind. Bit by bit, a cabin took shape around him, replacing the humid rot of the jungle. Something hot and wet still burned his face. Grief tore at him, as raw and fresh as if it all had just happened. An impulse to rip the agony out of his body by main force nearly overcame him. An urge to claw out his eyes, to tear at his flesh, rocked him.

He heard a moan of anguish. Had that sound come from his throat?

A curtain of dark hair fell around his face and darker eyes captured his gaze, holding it as forcefully as the slender but surprisingly strong hands grasping his shoulders.

“You’re safe. You’re with me, now. I love you.”

Who did those eyes, those vaguely heard words, belong to?

Pain so deep he thought it would kill him seared its way through his gut. Something shifted nearby, and his head was lifted. Gently set down on something soft. Warm. A hand stroked his hair. His face. Wiping away the tears.

Oh, God. It hurt. Simon…

The lap cradling his head rocked back and forth gently. Slowly, slowly, the motion soothed him. The soft hand wiped away more tears. And gradually, meaningless murmurs of comfort eased the suffering in his heart. Not a lot, but enough for him to breathe again. He reached up. Captured one of the hands and pulled it close, tucking it against his cheek. And finally, he slept.

He woke up some time later and sat up slowly. He ached all over. Where was he? He felt wrung out. Drained to the last drop of emotion. What in the hell had happened? He looked around in the dim firelight.

The air was cold, hanging brittle around him. The fire was down to a pile of glowing embers. By rote, he got up and stacked a half-dozen stout pieces of wood over the coals. Lord, he was tired. He felt as if he’d been worked over with a baseball bat. So exhausted he could hardly stand, he stumbled back to bed and crawled under the covers.

He curled around Julia’s body heat, huddling against her reassuring warmth. He hadn’t felt this lost in years. She was the only solid thing in his life, and he clung to her like the lifeline she was.

He ought to pull away from her. Stay away… But for the life of him, he couldn’t remember why right now. She was so inexorably intertwined with his pain and its relief that he barely knew where the dream ended and she began.

He slept fitfully through the remainder of the night. He woke up once more, mumbling Simon’s name, and immediately felt Julia’s hands on him. He stumbled out of bed to pile more wood on the fire and then collapsed back into her arms again. He let her guide his head down to her chest. He shouldn’t need her like this, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He sank into her. Accepted the loving comfort she offered. The steady sound of her heartbeat was the last thing he remembered before he went comatose.

By morning, the little cabin had warmed up to a civilized temperature, and the pot of water he’d hung by the fire the night before simmered hot enough to make a passable cup of coffee.

He felt like hell, but somehow the wan light of day pushed the terrors of the previous night back to the margins of his consciousness. He had a blurry memory of Julia holding him, talking him back from the edge while he was snared in his nightmare, deep in the throes of his darkest hours. He got the distinct impression that, had it not been for her, he’d have been in serious trouble last night.

She’d said something important. But it was as lost to him as the rest of the night’s details. If he could only remember! It tickled at the edges of his mind, tantalizing him with its nearness. But it wouldn’t show itself.

Frankly, he didn’t want to remember more. If he could halt his memory’s return, he would. Better the black void and the frustration of not knowing what had happened that fateful night in the jungle than trying to live with the ghastly details flooding back into his mind so relentlessly now.

The snow let up in the afternoon. He went outside in the bitter cold to restock the woodpile and made a trip through chest-deep snowdrifts to the Jeep to fetch the laptop computer.

He wanted to touch base with Charlie Squad headquarters. He’d already tried his cell phone today, but the battery was getting weak. Charlie Squad should have moved into this general part of the country by now, and as soon as he and Julia got out of this cabin they could get her into proper protective custody and get on with the business of putting away Eduardo Ferrare once and for all.

He went inside, shook off the snow, and warmed up, then he signed online via a wireless connection and checked his e-mail quickly. No word from Charlie Squad reporting their movement yet. That was odd. Unless this blizzard was more widespread than he’d realized and had shut down travel to this entire region of the country. Nonetheless, a prickle of foreboding crawled down his spine.

Julia had been unusually subdued all day, withdrawn almost. Had he said or done something last night in his sleep to frighten her? God, he hated these nightmares and what they did to him.

He mumbled, “I’m going to go outside and have a look around. Do you need anything from the car while I’m out?”

She shook her head.

“Okay, then. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He went outside and scouted the area. His biggest find was a storage shed behind the cabin. Or more to the point, his big find was the pair of snowmobiles inside the shed. Excited to tell Julia about his discovery, he headed back to the cabin.

He was just stomping the snow off his boots when he heard the faint sound of his cell phone ringing. He reached inside his jacket to answer it, but it wasn’t there. He patted his pants pockets. The noise stopped after the third ring. That was an
awfully quick hang-up. Everyone who had the phone number knew to let it ring seven times until his voice mail kicked in.

He heard Julia’s voice murmuring from inside the cabin. Ah. He must’ve left his cell phone inside and she’d answered it for him. Crap. He opened the door quickly and was just in time to see his cell phone tumble from her fingers, clattering to the floor. Julia collapsed into one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, her face ashen.

He was in front of her in a flash, kneeling with his hands on her knees. “What’s happened?”

Julia shook her head, her eyes black with fright.

“Talk to me,” he ordered urgently.

“Colonel Folly just called. They were too late. My father moved Carina last night. To his beach house.”

Dutch frowned. And why did that provoke such a terrified reaction from her? “And?” he asked aloud cautiously.

She gazed up at him in anguish. “There are sharks like crazy off that stretch of beach. They devour anything protein-based that gets thrown in the water.”

Okay. He was missing some major piece of information here. He frowned, confused.

Julie explained in a choked voice, “It’s where he always takes his victims to murder them.”

T
his was bad. Very bad.
Dutch leaned down and picked up the phone, putting it to his ear. He heard only the hum of a dial tone.

He thought fast. How in the hell did Ferrare know to move so quickly to kill the sister? It had to be that damn informant inside the squad. If they’d needed any more proof that this person existed, they’d just gotten it. Furthermore, they now knew the bastard had access to the team’s classified telephone logs. He swore violently under his breath.

His brain went into overdrive calculating the implications. Would Julia still testify? Could the squad get permission to launch a major rescue op for the sister? How was he supposed to keep Julia out of harm’s way with informants lurking behind every bush?

Julia interrupted his turbulent thoughts. “I can’t do it, Dutch. I can’t testify against my father as long as Carina’s life is in danger.”

“We’ll get your sister out safe and sound. I promise. And in the meantime, I need you to be tough. Stay strong for Carina.”

She reached up to stroke his cheek. She whispered achingly, “I’m so sorry I got you involved in this mess.”

He shrugged. “No need to apologize. I’m just glad to get a shot at taking down the Ferrare organization once and for all.”

Julia recoiled. She was part of that organization. The venom of his words—intentional or otherwise—spread to every corner of her soul, paralyzing her with guilt. Would that night never end? It had dominated her life for the last decade, and it wasn’t showing any signs of releasing its stranglehold on her. She’d give anything to take back her betrayal, to undo it if she could.

She’d never forget Simon’s screams. The very thought of them still made her faintly ill. He was just a kid trying to serve his country. Trying to be one of the good guys. To make the world a better place. And she’d gotten him murdered slowly and horribly.

How Dutch didn’t just kill her and be done with it, she had no idea. The depth of his pain last night had been a scourge that bloodied her soul. She’d absorbed it into herself as much as she could, but it would never be enough. She could never make it up to Dutch. Holding him through the dark hours of the night was a single drop of water in the ocean of what she owed him.

Maybe this was some cosmic evening of the scales. Her penance was to take upon herself the suffering she’d caused the man she loved.

“I’m so sorry,” she choked out.

A finger touched her chin. It lifted her face until she gazed at him reluctantly.

He said grimly, “Don’t agonize over the atrocities committed by bastards like Eduardo Ferrare. Just help me put him away and stop him from hurting anyone else.”

A shudder ran through her, of dread, and of hope at the possibility of finally ending the web of Eduardo’s threats and coercion. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been afraid of her father. In fact, Dutch was the first man she’d ever known who made her feel safe. What an irony that even he held a terrible threat to her locked inside his heart.

Poor Carina. She must be scared to death. And angry, too, if Julia knew her spirited sister. She sighed. She knew what she had to do.

She took a deep breath. And looked Dutch square in the eye. “I’m sorry. This changes everything. I can’t risk testifying.”

He stared at her incredulously. “You’re going to cut and run at the first sign of trouble?”

“I’m no coward,” she flared. “I came this far, didn’t I?”

He sighed. “Yes, you did. And you’re in the home stretch. Just hold the course a few more days, and it’ll all be over. Don’t worry about my threats. We’ll catch your old man and you and your sister will be safe. You’ll get your life back.”

She threw her hands up in frustration, too agitated to accept the concession he’d made. “Don’t you get it? It’s not about me and my safety! It never has been. This has always been about protecting my sister, protecting the other innocents Eduardo will harm. I don’t matter at all.”

Dutch stood up abruptly and pulled her to her feet. His hands rested on her shoulders, pinning her in place before him. His sapphire gaze burned into her like a laser. He growled, “Yes, you do matter.”

She shook her head, denying his words, rejecting his message.

His fingers tightened painfully on her shoulders. “You matter to me. A lot. More than a lot, dammit.”

It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible that he returned her feelings. But there it was, clear as day in his eyes, for just an instant before he reasserted his rigid self-control. How he could shut down his emotions like that she’d never know.

“Let go, Julia. Trust me.”

“You’re one to talk! You never let go of your heart, not for a second.”

“I… But… It’s complicated,” he mumbled.

She huffed, frustrated. “You meet a girl, she’s crazy about you, you’re crazy about her. What’s so damn complicated about that?” She was completely fed up with his ever-present restraint. His withdrawals. The walls of ice locked around his heart.

His eyes blazed momentarily at her words, but still he held his cool. That infuriating, unshakable self-discipline of his. What was it going to take to get through to him?

What the heck. Nothing else had worked. Maybe going on the offensive might. “What’s the matter?” she flung at him. “Afraid of a weak little woman like me?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” he ground out.

“Then what is it? Why won’t you let yourself
feel
something? Anything!” He turned away, but she continued to batter at the walls he barricaded himself behind. “What are you punishing yourself for?”

He paced a lap around the small room but still refused to rise to the bait.

“Don’t tell me you’re beating yourself up because you lived and your brother died in that ambush all those years ago,” she declared in dawning enlightenment.

“What would it matter if I were?” he flashed.

Ah. Better. Definite anger. She pressed on. “Oh,
puhlease
.

All of you guys know the risks going in. Simon knew full well he might die in the line of duty. It was his choice to be there. Not yours.”

Dutch didn’t answer.

Agony tore through her at the mountain of pain she’d caused him. Was causing him now. All these years, all this private hell… She owed it to him to take this burden off his chest, to help him make peace with the chain of terrible events she’d helped set in motion. She stepped in front of him, into his line of sight. She reached up and took his face in both her hands, forcing him to look at her. “Did you do your best that night?” she asked.

“Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know,” he mumbled.

“Dutch, I’ve seen you react to some tough situations. And never, ever, have you done less than your utmost. It’s not in your nature to do a halfway job. You have to believe you did the best you could that night. But other forces were at work. People and events you couldn’t control.
And that’s not your fault.
”

She looked deep into his eyes and saw a desperate wish to believe her flickering in their dark, wounded depths. “You have to believe me. Let Simon go. He wouldn’t want his death to destroy you like this.”

Dutch ran a distracted hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to let go. I’ve held on so tight for so long… Aw hell. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

She stepped close and let all her feelings for him flow through her, praying they reached him. She whispered, “Let me help you.”

He stared down at her, a struggle for self-control etched on his face. Doubt warred with desperation. Fear wrestled with need. His innate strength clamored for a moment’s rest. And behind it all, she saw a lonely man tremendously in need
of love. What she was contemplating was terribly dangerous. Not only did she chance cutting loose his emotions, but also his violence. She dared not go there. Except how could she not? She knew in her heart he needed to heal. To feel again. To rejoin the human race. She owed it to him. She’d cost him ten years of his life. And that was enough. It was time to right the wrong she’d done to this man. Even his subconscious was screaming for release by sending him torturous dreams.

She reached up to stroke his cheek. “Give us tonight,” she murmured. “Forget everything else and live in the moment for once. Just one night.”

He continued to stare down at her, motionless.

She stepped closer, leaning into him with her whole body. “Can’t you feel the fire between us?” she coaxed. “How can your heart stay frozen in the face of that?”

She took a step back and reached for the hem of her sweater. “I’m not letting you retreat behind your stiff jaw and walls of ice anymore, Jim Dutcher. It’s high time you came out of your cave.”

She lifted her sweater over her head and tossed it aside. She kicked off her shoes and shed her turtleneck shirt, only breaking eye contact with him when the fabric passed over her face. His hooded gaze revealed nothing of his thoughts. Determined to break through his emotional fortifications, she reached for the zipper on her jeans.

She shimmied out of the soft denim and felt his gaze sweep down her body. Clad only in her lacy underwear, she straightened, silently daring him to take what she was offering.

Blue fire flared in his eyes, tinged by a hint of savagery. Trepidation whisked down her spine, touching her with a chill that had nothing to do with the cool air. But there was no turning back now. Once and for all, she was going to break down the walls around his heart or make a complete fool of herself trying.

She reached behind her back for the hook in her bra. The lace gapped away from her skin, and she pushed it down over her arms. The scrap of fabric dropped to the floor.

She stepped forward and reached for the hem of his sweater. She tugged it over his head and he didn’t resist. But neither did he respond. His cotton turtleneck followed suit, and then she reached for his belt. He sucked in his breath as her fingers touched the hard slab of his stomach, but he gave no other indication that she was affecting him.

The leather belt slithered from around his waist. Girding herself to continue in the face of his stony silence, she reached for his zipper. The backs of her fingers rubbed a massive swell of hard flesh as she tugged the zipper down.

The man of steel wasn’t completely impervious to her, after all! She slipped her hands inside the waistband of his jeans to push them down, and abruptly, her wrists were encircled in the twin vises of his powerful grip.

“Enough, already,” he growled.

“No, it’s not enough. I meant it. I’m sick and tired of you bottling up all your feelings. One of these days your head is going to explode. Tonight’s the night you let go.”

“By what right—” he spluttered.

“By this right,” she interrupted, standing on tiptoe and wrapping her arms around his neck. Oh Lord, that felt good. Skin on skin. Silk on satin. The heat and hardness of his chest against hers almost brought her to her knees. She tugged his head down to where she could kiss him, pausing an inch from his mouth. “If not me, then who? Who else cares about you enough to break down your walls? Let me do this for you.”

He stared at her for a long time. He was so close she could see the individual flecks of silver within the sea of midnight blue of his eyes. She palpably felt the battle raging inside him.
She murmured, “Stop fighting yourself. You and I were meant to be, and you know it as well as I do.”

He held out for another second, and then without warning, his arms swept around her, lifting her completely off the ground. His mouth descended to hers, and he kissed her almost violently. Passionately. Overwhelmingly. And she was lost.

She ought to make him admit she was right, ought to make him admit his capitulation. But as his hot mouth moved across hers and his strong arms plastered her against his body, she didn’t care. All that mattered was this moment. The electricity zinging back and forth between them, scorching her from the inside out.

Maybe it was the recklessness of living outside the law. Maybe it was the danger of knowing that any second Dutch’s emotional control could shatter and transform into violence. Or maybe he just drove her out of her mind with lust. But his touch lit a fire in her that raged completely out of control. She kissed him voraciously, his face, his eyes, his mouth.

His lovely mouth. So mobile and expressive, be it clamped shut against the emotions churning inside him, or moving restlessly across her lips. She searched out the fire blazing beneath the icy surface of the man, plunging her tongue into his heat, slanting her mouth to fit more closely to his.

Their lips and tongues clashed as they devoured each other, his ice to her fire, his yin to her yang. She tore at his jeans, frantic to feel his skin, to taste his flesh, to wrap herself around him, to take him inside her body and her heart.

He ripped her panties off, and they stumbled to the bed together, kicking aside shoes and laughing as they tripped over clothes. They fell in a heap onto the mattress. He disentangled himself long enough to fish a foil packet out of his wallet and slip on a condom, but she gave him no mercy, kissing
her way across his body while he did so. He gathered her close in a tangle of heated limbs and loomed over her, pushing her hair back. He captured her gaze with his. “Is this what you want?” he asked roughly.

“No. I want a great deal more than this from you,” she replied, dead serious.

Frustration flickered in his beautiful eyes. “I don’t know if I can give you more.”

She reached up and tugged at the back of his neck, pulling him down toward her. “I want it all. I want all of you.”

She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him close with her entire body. He stole her breath away with all that magnificent, naked flesh against hers. Where the blazing glory of his body stopped and hers began, she had no idea. She just knew that she wanted him inside her. Now.

Thankfully, he was as impatient as she. He plunged into her softness, burying himself to the hilt. She gasped at the glorious sensation of being impaled upon a fiery sword and arched up into him, seeking everything he had to give and more. He groaned and surged again, and she arced in a tightly strung bow of ecstasy.