Melting the Ice (5 page)

No. She yanked her mind back into the present. He was watching her. Intently. His eyes deep, unreadable pools. His lids with their thick fringe of lashes low. God, he’d been reading her mind.

Shaken, she lifted her water glass, gulped and silently thanked the waitress for her timing as she arrived with a pot of coffee.

Hannah’s hand was unsteady as she poured cream into her coffee, remembering that he took his black. Funny how little details could stick in your mind over the years.

Rex spooned sugar into his cup, still silent.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

He leaned forward, forearms on the table. His words were low, for her ears only. “Keep your voice down. Don’t whisper. Mumbling is better. The sound doesn’t carry as well. Got it?”

She nodded.

He looked deep into her eyes, searching. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I don’t want to involve you.”

“Rex, I’m in this whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t. And what I’m going to tell you has to remain between us. Hannah, I have to trust you. Lives could depend on it.”

“You’re a fine one to be talking about trust, Logan.”

She saw the slight narrowing of his eyes, the shadow that flitted through them. But he let her jibe pass. He wasn’t going to be drawn there. “You’re a reporter.”

“I can keep a secret, Rex. Believe me. I haven’t gone to the cops.”
Yet.

He took a sip of his coffee, watching her over the rim.

“Well, what did you find in Amy’s apartment?”

“Two library books and a document.”

“Oh, that
definitely
means she met with foul play.”

He wasn’t amused. “It’s the subject matter. Amy Barnes was reading up-to-date information on biological warfare.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t just biological weapons she was interested in. She was reading up on genetically engineered BW technology.”

“Okay. I’m having real trouble joining the dots here. Help me out.”

“We have reason to believe that Amy came across something here in White River that landed her in trouble. Something to do with biological weapons.”

“We?”

“Bio Can.”

“What’s a pharmaceutical company got to do with this?”

“Let’s just say Bio Can has a highly specialized division focused on developing antidotes and vaccines for bugs with a potential to be weaponized.”

Her head was spinning. “But I thought your field was more indigenous medicine.”
At least that’s what you told me in Africa.

“It is. I work in both divisions.” He stopped talking as the server arrived with their food. Rex tucked into his egg and bacon platter, savoring a mouthful before continuing.

Hannah stared at her fruit. Biological weapons? What in the hell had Amy been up to? “Maybe she was just researching something, Rex, for a story.”

He chewed, nodded. “Maybe. But there was a piece of paper in one of the books. On it is the name and number of a CIA agent, one who specializes in biowarfare intelligence.”

“Oh my God.”

He sipped his coffee. “How’s the fruit?”

The question seemed suddenly so inane. Hannah looked at the plate in front of her, picked up a fork and jabbed at a strawberry. “Fine.” She felt ill.

“And I checked Amy’s computer last night. The hard drive has been cleaned out.”

Hannah stiffened. “That’s it. The break-in. That’s what they took. Electronic data. No wonder the cops didn’t find anything.”

“Well, whoever took the data didn’t find the library books.”

“But who?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out. I’m hoping you’ll help.”

“I don’t get it, Rex. Why White River? What’s the connection?”

“We don’t know. But the forensic toxicology conference is a common denominator here. We suspect something may be going down.”

“Like what?”

“A deal. An information exchange, maybe. We haven’t got much time.”

“But what does a conference like that have to do with biological warfare, anyway?”

Rex pushed his plate aside. “There is a component on the conference agenda that covers lethal viruses and new research in the field of forensic detection. It’s that kind of stuff that draws top scientists from around the world. Ideas are exchanged. Connections made. Deals made. Most of it happens offstage. Bio Can likes to keep on top of these kinds of developments. So do a lot of other agencies.”

Hannah looked out through the little window panes at a group of young people gathered in the sun on the patio across the village square. Amy should be with them, laughing, planning her next snowboarding trip, her next surfing expedition. She had been cheated out of her future.

She turned back to face the man in front of her. “So you’re telling me you’re one of the good guys?”

“
Good
is a subjective term.”

“Is that why you don’t want the cops involved?”

“This is beyond small-town cops, Hannah. This is the big league. The global league.”

She pushed her uneaten fruit bowl aside. She felt as if all the blood had left her head.

He leaned forward as if to take her hand. Hannah braced for the touch but it never came. He seemed to catch himself, lifting the coffeepot instead. He held it up. “Refill?”

She shook her head. “What happens now?”

He poured seconds for himself. “Now, you tell me about Ken Mitchell.”

“Ken Mitchell?”

“This slices both ways, Hannah.”

“Rex, I don’t know any Ken Mitchell.”

“You were lunching with him at the Black Diamond yesterday.”

Hannah felt something slip in her stomach. “You mean Mark Bamfield, the freelance writer?”

“Try CIA.”

“I see.” Her brain was numb.

“So he’s calling himself Bamfield. What’s his cover?”

She cleared her throat. “He said he was a freelance reporter from Washington, that he was here for the toxicology conference and that he was doing a story on Amy Barnes.”

“See the links now?”

She nodded. She didn’t like what she was seeing at all.

This time he placed his hand over hers. “And, Hannah, if you go to the police now, if you tie me up with bureaucracy, you could end up getting yourself killed.”

She looked down at the large hand covering her own. She could feel its warmth, its roughness. It was the hand with the ring, the token of her love, the symbol of her naiveté. She looked back up into his eyes. She couldn’t read them. “That sounds like a threat, Rex.”

“No, Hannah. A warning. I don’t want you to get hurt. You’ve crossed the line. There’s no going back now. Now you play by new rules.”

He was right. She didn’t see how she could turn back. Her world hadn’t only shifted on its axis; she’d been thrust into a whole new one where she didn’t know the players and she didn’t know the rules. And she sure as hell didn’t know the man sitting in front of her.

She pulled her hand out from under his. “What do you want me to do?”

Something flickered through his eyes. Then it was gone. “Can you get me into the
Gazette
office? I need to take a look at Amy’s work computer, see if she left any trail there.”

“I can do that.”

“Now?”

She looked at her watch. It was early on Saturday. The
Gazette
offices would likely be empty. “Now’s good.”

He stood up. “Let’s go and see what we can find before it’s too late. And then I need a shower and a change of clothes.”

He moved around to Hannah’s side of the booth. “Coming?” He held out his arm for her to join him. He cut a paradoxical figure. A striking but unshaven British gentleman in sweats. She stood up and took his arm.

He steered her out of the bistro and into bright Saturday sunshine. “Now,” he said, “we must discuss the little matter of keeping you safe. Perhaps you could check into the hotel for a while. Your place is a little isolated on the other side of the lake.”

Chapter 5

S
he stood her ground in the middle of village square. “I will stay away from the police. I will show you around the
Gazette
office. I’ll help you because I want to find out what happened to Amy. But I will
not
move out of my house.”

He dropped his voice to a gravelly whisper. “You’re making a scene. Keep moving. For Christ’s sake act normal.” Rex tucked his arm around her waist and led her down the cobbled walkway toward the
Gazette
office. “It would just be for a while, until I can figure out what’s going on.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Yet, after her scare this morning, after what he’d revealed at the bistro, she wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

He kept her close with his arm. Solid, fluid strength, guiding her down the path.
But what path?
Where in hell were they headed?

“Rex,” she whispered. “I don’t want a bodyguard.”

“Well, you got one.”

She slipped out from under his possessive hold and climbed the concrete stairs ahead of him, pushing open the glass door with the
White River Gazette
logo emblazoned on the front.

She marched in without holding the door open behind her. She had a photograph of Danny on her desk and she wanted to make sure he didn’t see it. Not now. She didn’t want to have her precious boy play any part in this. She herself couldn’t seem to grasp what was happening.

“Hey, Hannah. Didn’t expect you in today. It’s been like a train station this morning.”

She stopped short. “Georgette?”

Hannah hadn’t anticipated seeing anyone at the
Gazette
reception desk on this weekend morning, especially not the village gossip. “I didn’t think you’d be in, either.” She turned to motion to the arrogant man in her wake. “That’s Rex.” She didn’t use his last name. She didn’t want Georgette putting two and two together and linking little Daniel Logan McGuire with this man. She had a hunch Al had already made the connection. She sure didn’t need the town windbag to do the same. “I need to show him some archived stories on Amy’s disappearance. Rex, this is our superefficient office coordinator, Georgette.” Hannah started to make for her office down the corridor, anxious to slip that photograph of Danny into her drawer.

“Archives, huh?” Georgette called after her. “That’s what Al and that freelance writer were after earlier today.”

Hannah stopped dead in her tracks, spun round to face Georgette. “What freelance writer?”

“Mark Bamfield. He met Al here this morning.” Georgette chuckled, turning her smile up a few watts for Rex. “And there I was thinking I’d have a peaceful Saturday doing catch-up.”

“Don’t worry. We won’t disturb you, Georgette.” Rex flashed that sharp white smile of his at the office coordinator, and Hannah felt something twist inside her gut.

Georgette tilted her chin and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “No problem, Rex. Take as long as you like.”

Hannah stalked off to her office, leaving Georgette batting her eyes at Rex. So he had a way with the ladies. Little did they know he was a love-’em-and-leave-’em cad who sneaked off in the dark. The sooner they got to the bottom of this business, and the sooner he got out of her life, the better.

Hannah scooped Danny’s picture off her desk and slipped it into her purse.

“What’s the big rush?” She heard Rex behind her and jumped. The newsroom seemed to shrink in his presence.

“Uh, I’m worried that Bamfield…Mitchell whoever, has gotten to the files.” She spoke quickly as she booted up the computer and seated herself in front of the terminal.

“Well, no amount of rushing now is going to change that.” Rex pulled up a chair and squeezed it in beside Hannah’s.

He was invading her space again. Her chest felt tight.

“Perhaps you could shift over just a tad, or do you plan on doing this yourself?” he said.

She glared at him and edged her chair over an inch. He pulled his seat in, bringing his arm almost into contact with hers. They sat side by side looking at the computer screen as it crackled to life. She could feel it, the intensity, the energy mushrooming warm between them. It raised the fine hair along her limbs in little goose bumps. She rubbed her arms.

He said nothing. The silence was thick.

She cleared her throat. “Where do you want to start, Rex?”
Where did one start after six years?

He turned to face her. He was so close. She could feel her heart rate increase, her breathing become more shallow. His glacial gaze held her. She couldn’t look away. She watched as the light in them shifted from crystal to dark, the center starburst of indigo radiating out with the heat of his gaze. It knocked her completely off guard. She felt herself being drawn in, being physically pulled, her body leaning imperceptibly toward his.

She swallowed.

He turned and looked back at the screen, clearing his throat. “So, where are Amy’s files stored?”

Hannah felt overwhelmingly relieved to have a clear task. A defined road. “This was her terminal,” she told Rex. She needed to refocus. “It’s basically what I inherited when she went missing. It’s a Macintosh system. Most small newspapers use Macs.” She was babbling.

Hannah clicked open a file and showed him where Amy’s work had been stored. “This is not the morgue. This is…was, her personal working stuff. I didn’t delete anything, just filed it here. Amy’s notes are in here.” She clicked. “Her interviews, contacts and stories.” Hannah moved the mouse. She could feel the heat emanating from the body almost touching hers.

“Um, once Amy completed a story she would have filed it here.” She clicked on network folder that was shared by all the computers in the office. “This is where Al would have picked it up for editing before dumping it into another folder where production would access it for layout.”

His fingers brushed over hers as he gently took the mouse from her hand. Her breath caught in her throat. Those long, gently tapered fingers that had once stroked slowly up the inside of her thigh touched hers. Hannah felt warmth pool, unwanted, delicious in her belly.

Her hands were trembling.

This was ridiculous.

She jerked off her chair, stalked over to the large newsroom windows. There were tufts of white cloud over the granite peaks. She could see the lift lines, chairs winking as metal caught sun, and she could see Grizzly Bowl, where Amy had lost her life.

Hannah turned back to face him. “Take a look and see what you can find in there, Rex. If you have any questions, I’ll be in the next office.”

His blue gaze bored into her. “Don’t go anywhere, Hannah, I might need you.” The timbre of his voice was low, rough.

She stared at him, a battle of emotions raging in her brain and in her heart.
And where were you, Rex, all those years ago when I needed you? Where were you when I went into labor with your child? Where were you when he got his first tooth? Where were you, Rex, when he asked if he had a daddy?

She wanted to shake him. Strike him. She wanted to ask him why he deserted her that night. Why he’d left the warmth of their sleeping bag and stalked off into the African veldt. She wanted the touch of those hands on her skin. Heaven help her. She wanted him. And she hated him.

“Fine. I won’t go anywhere.”

From where she stood she could see the small muscle pulsing on the right side of his jaw, just near his ear as he watched her. She knew by the look in his dark-rimmed sky-blue eyes that he felt it, too. That unspoken frisson, that undeniable seductive pull. It was that same sensual vortex that had sucked them down together in Marumba.

Silence stretched thick and elastic between them. She could think of no words to break the spell that held them.

The light from behind her played unforgivingly on his features but did nothing to diminish them. God he was striking. More rugged than beautiful. And hard, as hard as this unforgiving terrain, this mountain playground she called home. She watched the white sunlight catch in his eyes.

They made her think of a pool. An ice-cool pool that lay still as glass under summer heat. But when a swimmer plunged with breathless delight into its cold depths, the surface would shatter into refracted, laughing light and dancing crystal.

She suspected swimmers didn’t play there often.

His eyes held her prisoner as he slowly pushed his chair back and moved over to her. She was incapable of backing away, like a small mouse mesmerized by the hungry stare of a serpent.

He came closer. Closer.

Breathe, Hannah.
She seemed to have lost the ability to do what came so naturally.
Breathe.

He lifted his hand and hooked a knuckle under her chin, tilting her face up to him.

There were dark fathomless depths lurking in those glacial blue pools now. Swirling undercurrents. They mirrored the dark passion that swam warm inside her.

He softly traced the outline of her lips with the roughened pad of his thumb. She felt the world around her recede, her vision blur.

She allowed her lips to part slightly as he pushed against them, and she let the tip of her tongue test the salt of his finger.

In response the pressure of his finger became a little more urgent, more forceful, parting her lips wider. The sensation of wanting to take his whole finger into her mouth, to suck him into her, was overwhelming as she felt the rivers of warmth in her body threaten to overrun their banks.

Her legs were unsteady.

“You feel it, Hannah.” His voice was throaty, rough with want. “You feel it, too, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes.” He ran his finger forcefully along the edge of her teeth. His other hand found the small of her back and he started to pull her in close to his hard body. She felt her breasts push up against his chest.

She wanted him. All of him, deep inside. She wanted to wrap herself around him, drink him in. Six years had not dulled the edge of her hunger for him. It was sharper. She ached with a raw need she thought she had buried all those years ago.

No. She couldn’t go there. Couldn’t repeat it. Her drugged brain scrambled to pull at threads of rationality. “No. Rex, please. No!”

He backed away instantly. For what seemed an eternity they just stood, close. Trying to compute the depth of what still existed between them.

Then he reached up and gently brushed a lock of hair from her cheek.

The retreat, the tenderness of the movement as he touched her hair was too much for Hannah. What had been locked inside spilled out in hot silent tears onto her cheeks.

“Damn you.” She pushed against his chest. “Damn you, Rex.”

She felt his muscles brace solid against her hands as she tried to shove him away.

It had happened in Marumba. She had let passion override reason. It had been a mistake. She was not going to make that mistake again. Especially not now. There was too much at risk. There was Danny.

She turned her back on him to face the timeless peaks. She held her arms tight about herself, trying to hold in the ache, the pain, the need.

“Hannah.” He put a hand on her shoulder.

She jerked out from under his touch. “Leave me alone, please, Rex.” She swiped the back of her hand across the wetness of her cheeks and turned to face him. “I’ll be in the next room.”

She forced her knees to bend, she made her legs walk across the newsroom to the door. Her limbs felt like rubber.

Rex stalked down the concrete stairs from the
Gazette
office, following Hannah into the village streets. He battled to hold his raw anger in check. He was used to being in complete control of emotions. It was a requirement of the job. But this woman had power over him. The power to turn off his internal controls. He was furious he’d stepped over the line. He wanted her. He’d wanted to take her right in that office. Sweet Jesus. How could he do that to her? How could he hurt her like this?

“Where are we going?”

He took Hannah by the elbow and steered her down the walkway. The afternoon sun had turned a soft yellow but it did nothing to mellow the naked emotion that seethed between them.

Rex had found that CIA agent Ken Mitchell had indeed accessed the office files. Mitchell now knew what they knew, that Amy had demonstrated an unnatural interest in biological weapons and urban terrorism and that she had a file of information devoted exclusively to the topic, along with Website addresses.

“I said, where are we going?”

“My hotel. I told you I need a shower.”

“Well, I don’t.” She pulled free. “I’m going home. If you need me you can call me there.”

“No.” He grabbed her arm. “I need you to make a phone call to the Vancouver library, find out about those books—when Amy took them out, what else she may have borrowed. You can do that from my room.”

“You expect me to jump at your command? You’ve got the social grace of a military despot, you know. Didn’t your parents teach you anything?”

She was lashing out at him. Good. It was better that way. “You’re right, they left my education to the military. Everything I learned about life, I learned in the army.”

She seemed to halt at his words, her eyes flared briefly in question. But she said nothing.

“Come.” He ushered her up the wide stone stairs of the White River Presidential Hotel.

The doorman snapped to attention as they approached, and held open the door. Rex gave his thanks with a curt nod and escorted Hannah into the cavernous hotel lobby.

She said nothing as he ushered her into the elevator and pressed the button for the sixth floor.

The doors closed them in. Just the two of them, alone, as the elevator started to hum. It threw their predicament into stark relief.

After six years of nothing, no contact, they were now trapped together. But the feelings between them were no different. Only deeper, darker, more convoluted. He had to try to stay clear of that abyss. He had to keep his head and keep her safe. He had to clear this case and get the hell out of here. Leave before they destroyed each other.