Kiss and Tell (12 page)

It was hard to talk with her heart still lodged in her throat. "There's no animal?"

"Nope."

The "no animal" growled low and long.

Marnie mentally strung together several of her brothers' favorite curse words, then said reasonably. "Would you mind terribly much unplugging your imaginary pet? He's giving me the willies."

"The growls were a nice touch, don't you think?"

"I was thinking that whatever was in here would take ages gnawing on your tough hide, so I would have had plenty of time to get the hell out of Dodge."

Jake shifted. The next minute he turned on a powerful flashlight.

Marnie squinted against the sudden glare. "Where did that come from?" she demanded, leaning weakly against the jagged rock wall because her legs had turned to water.

Still smiling, Jake held up a nasty-looking gun. "Same place as this."

"Wipe that smile off your face this instant," she snarled, her hand covering her still frantically palpitating heart, "or I'll use that thing on you. What's going on? How did a flashlight and a gun suddenly appear out of thin air?"

Jake shone the powerful beam on a control panel faux painted to look like rock and all but invisible against the wall. He opened the housing and deactivated his pet. Silence echoed down the tunnel.

"I didn't want anyone in here but me. I figured the audio, coupled with the bones outside, would make an effective deterrent."

"Trust me, Jake, it's
very
effective. Even knowing it's pretend, I
still
don't like being in here."

Jake closed the control panel and resumed walking, the flashlight illuminating the narrow, roughly hewn corridor.

She didn't grab the back of his jacket again, despite the urge to do so. Apparently the most dangerous animal in this tunnel was Jake Dolan.

At a fork Jake turned right without slowing. The ceiling, a couple of feet above his head, looked solid enough. It was repulsively softened by cobwebs, which, by the size of them, housed Godzilla-sized spiders. There was no sign of the occupants, thank heavens.

"What kind of spiders make such huge webs?" she asked, trying to sound casual as she came up beside him.

"
I
made them."

"You are one strange man, you know that?" Marnie ignored the webs to shoot a skeptical glance at the heavy wood beams, which presumably supported the entire mountain resting above the mineshaft. The image of an elephant sitting on upright toothpicks didn't instill her with confidence.

"So this creepy mine shaft is just for effect? You have nice strong steel supports holding everything up?"

"Nope, the beams are the originals."

"I'm sure the historical society would be thrilled to know that." A few of the cross struts they passed looked to be in fairly reasonable shape. Insects, animals, or time, however, had chomped on the rest. The air, while considerably warmer than outside, was stale and damp.

Jake walked so fast Marnie almost had to run to keep up. "They won't find this place, will they?"

"In the unlikely event they do, I have a few more tricks up my sleeve."

"Duchess couldn't find her way inside here, either."

"Your dog's a whole hell of a lot smarter than a lot of humans I know. She'll find us."

When the light illuminated a sturdy metal door, Marnie wasn't surprised. Dully she watched Jake flatten his hand on a pad embedded in the rock. Seconds later the door slid open without a sound.

Marnie followed into another long passage that sloped steeply downhill. As the door whooshed closed behind them, small, dim bulbs every ten feet or so lit up to illuminate their way.

Jake deposited both gun and flashlight on a shoulder-high ledge beside the door. He gave her a searching glance before striding off again.

Wet boots dragging, Marnie followed. The air seemed fresher, not as cold, and the rock walls were smoother, too. Exhaustion dragged at her like a drug.

She'd had a tree fall on her cabin, hiked a zillion mountain miles, been shot at, survived a perilous near-death experience under a tsunami, and braved a woman-eating, computer-generated wild beast. It was enough.

Other than the crunch of their footsteps, there was nothing but throbbing silence. Marnie found it unnerving. Her boots weighed a ton. Her eyelids felt scritchy, and she wanted to lie down so badly, she was prepared to do so on the sandy floor.

"This is a nightmare, isn't it? It's that canned chili I ate for breakfast."

"Almost there." Jake turned to get a good look at her. It wasn't surprising that she was about to keel over. She was crashing from the adrenaline high. He couldn't believe she'd made it this far. Her hair had dried into a wild tangle around her parchment-pale, mud-streaked face. Her shoulders were hunched; her eyes were glazed, and bruised by fatigue.

Despite the bulk of her jacket, she looked fragile. He remembered vividly why that should totally nullify any arousal he might feel for her. Might? Hell, he imagined what she'd look like naked. Warm and naked. Under him naked. Satiated and naked.

Damn it. I'd better get a grip here.
He cleared his throat.

She frowned. "Are you all right?"

He craved his bottle of Crown Royal. The whole bottle. No glass. No ice. "Couldn't be better. You?"

She didn't answer.

He strode back to her. She just stood there, her eyes heavy-lidded and sleepy, her arms hanging limply at her side.

"Want me to carry you?" he asked gruffly.

"Yes."

Surprised by her easy acquiescence, Jake picked her up. She wasn't as light as she looked. Marnie wrapped her arms about his neck, and her head flopped onto his chest.

"Run out of juice?" Impossible. She'd still be chatting if she were fast asleep.

"Yeah, somewhere between extinction by drowning and termination by your imaginary friend."

He grunted and continued walking. Her hair tickled his nose. Her heavy hiking boots thumped his thigh with each step he took, and despite the bulk of her jacket, he could feel the underside of her breast.

"Mmmm, this is nice."

Yeah. It's great. Just freaking great.

She stroked a light finger along the ridge of scar tissue at the base of his throat. The fairy-light touch shot like a rocket to his groin.

"Who did this to you?" Marnie whispered, her breath warm, and annoying, on his neck. "Someone like those guys out there?"

"No."
Thank you, God, for the reminder
. "Someone a lot more dangerous. A sweet-faced blonde with big, innocent blue eyes and a wicked knife with her initials engraved on the hilt." Long after the physical wound had healed he'd felt the sharp bite of betrayal.

"A
woman
did this to you?"

I did this to me
, Jake reminded himself. "Oh, she wielded the knife. But I was the dumb bastard who let her get close enough to use it."

"That's terrible."

"That's freaking terminally stupid."

"No, I mean that it was—"

"No talking." Jake cut her off as they came to a dead end. In the unlikely event anyone got this far, they'd find it the end of the line. The door before them contained an impenetrable titanium shield.

It was fortunate the elevator utilized a retinal scan, as his hands were full of woman. Jake paused just long enough for the device to recognize him. The door slid open soundlessly, then just as silently closed behind them.

He thought she'd fallen asleep, but she said quietly against his throat, "We aren't moving."

"We're going down."

"Is that a Bond, James Bond thing?" she asked, voice slurred by exhaustion, eyes closed. "Like in the movies?" She deepened her voice. "We're going down, Guido, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it."

Jake couldn't help the chuckle. Damn. She never ran out of juice. "We're in an elevator."

"Ah. How far dow—"

"Phoenix two-two-one-two-zero clear." Jake waited a beat for the door to glide open, then stepped into his lair.

He'd never brought anyone down here. No one even knew of its existence. Too late now for second thoughts.

He was taking a risk. A huge risk. If it was the wrong choice, one of them would end up dead.

He welcomed the immediate sense of sanctuary, the dry warmth, the smell of home.

"We're here," he said unnecessarily.

She opened her eyes. "Holy cow! Put me down."

Marnie wriggled out of his arms like a 120-pound blue marlin, eyes wide, curiosity on full alert.

"Oh, wow. This is
amazing
."

Jake's underground lair consisted of an enormous living space, with a vaulted ceiling, pale gray walls, and tile the same color on the floor. The indirect lighting, as natural as outdoors, had an undetectable source, yet was bright enough to read by. The room reminded Marnie of the bridge of the starship
Enterprise
with its countless monitors, state-of-the-art equipment, and the backdrop of a low, electrical hum.

The elevator door whispered shut behind them.

"Guess we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

While she spun around to take it all in, Jake walked over to a wall unit and turned on the stereo. Something smooth and bluesy filled the room. The rich sound was loud enough to eliminate the buzz but soft enough to remind her of the attraction she felt for him. In the process of removing her jacket, she raised a brow.

Jake caught her eye and scowled slightly, then changed the music selection to something heartier, with lots of drums. He ignored her grin and strode across the room, shedding his own jacket as he went. He tossed it over the back of a worn brown corduroy couch.

One end of the couch was piled with multicolored pillows, none of which reflected the colors in what looked to be an extremely old and very valuable Persian carpet. A paperback cowboy book lay facedown beside a coffee mug and half a package of Oreo cookies on the battered seaman's trunk he used as a coffee table.

"Get out of those wet clothes," Jake said without turning around.

"In a second." Marnie snagged a couple of cookies while she checked out the rest of Jake's personality via his domain. The place had an efficient, comfortably lived-in feel. The temperature in the room was comfortably warm, and her adrenaline rush was subsiding. She didn't, however, feel like getting naked in front of Jake Dolan just at the moment. "Did you do all this?"

"Yeah." He walked over to adjust something on a panel above a long white counter across the room.

On the left, an unmade king-sized bed trailed a brilliant yellow-and-red Chinese silk throw. She scanned the orderly bookcases, filled with everything from Asimov to Zane Grey. His CDs, many of which Marnie had in her own collection, ranged from classical to jazz. A man with catholic tastes.

She ate another cookie; the sugar helped sweep away some of her exhaustion. Then she walked up behind Jake as he scanned the bank of monitors on the wall above an L-shaped, futuristic workstation. Twelve three-foot-by-two-foot flat-screen monitors embedded strategically in the walls around the room gave the appearance of windows.

Jake looked tired and frustrated, his expression intent. The temptation to run her hand over his hair in a gesture of comfort was nearly overwhelming. Instead she curled her fingers into her palm. She had a lot of things to worry about right now; Jake didn't need to be one of them. She rested her fingers on the pulse at her wrist. Fast. But fine. Just fine.

"Infrared?" she asked rhetorically, trying to make out what they were looking at. Each screen showed a different aspect of the surrounding woods in a dim, murky red glow.

She hoped to see Duchess, but there was no movement other than the wind in the trees and the steady fall of snow. Trying to identify each view, she moved down the length of the workstation to face the monitors head on.

"At night, infrared. During the day, normal view."

"Hmmm. You don't, by any chance, have any aspirin around, do you?"

"No." He gave her a piercing look. "Shoulder hurt?"

"Oh, my shoulder's fi— Yeah, it hurts a little."

"Can't hurt too badly if you can't figure out what hurts." Jake turned back to the screen.

Marnie stuck her tongue out at the back of his head. "What do you do if you get a headache? Bite down on a bullet?"

"I didn't used to
have
headaches."

One of the monitors showed the interior of Jake's cabin.

"Hmmm," she tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice. Moonlight through the window in the kitchen illuminated the edges of her sketch pad with its message to Jake. It was still propped up on the kitchen counter, where she'd left it this morning. It seemed a million years ago.

"How far away is that?"

Jake moved closer to see what she was looking at. "The cabin's directly above us."

Beneath the screen was a panel consisting of a series of flat buttons. As he punched out instructions the camera slowly panned the interior of the cabin. "Doesn't look like they've been in yet." He glanced at her. "With any luck the dog will get there first."

"But the entrance is miles away."

"The way we came isn't as far as you think. But she won't have to go that far. As long as she returns to the cabin, she'll be fine. There's another elevator behind the pantry."

She closed her eyes, thankful that the cabin and her things were this close.
There
, she told herself.
You were starting to get panicky for nothing
.

"Can I go up and get my backpack?" Marnie asked, casually, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice with difficulty. "There are a couple of things in there I need."

Jake narrowed his eyes. "You don't need your lotions and potions. I'm not risking that they've already inventoried your cra— Yes! I see you, you son of a bitch," he said under his breath, gaze intent on the screen.

A blurred shape moved in a crouch toward the cabin twenty feet above their heads. "Come on in," Jake snarled as the figure was joined by another. He manipulated the camera.

The zoom motion didn't produce a clearer image, he zoomed back out again.