Midnight Fire (16 page)

“Wow.” Summer lifted her eyes from the monster sandwich, filled with two inches of juicy, thinly sliced pastrami. “Looks good. Looks gargantuan.”

Jack wrapped a napkin around his and brought his pastrami to his nose and closed his eyes. It smelled as heavenly as it always did. “Dig in.”

Summer used her napkin to hold the sandwich, too, and took a huge bite. Meat juice spilled down her chin and she laughed.

Jack reached out and wiped her chin. “Good, isn’t it?”

Her mouth was so full she just nodded. Swallowed. “God. Fantastic.”

He finished his second sandwich a little before she did, but it was close.

“Have a pickle.” Jack held a dill pickle spear in front of her mouth and she took a big bite out of it.

For some crazy reason, it gave him enormous pleasure to feed her. She’d had nothing but shocks since he’d showed up in her apartment. In the time since he’d inserted himself back into her life, she’d lost her apartment and car and, for the time being, her job. Crazy danger had attached itself to the both of them. They were on the run and God only knew for how long. Jack had been investigating the Massacre for six months and so far hadn’t made much headway.

It might be possible that her life would be put on hold for six months, too. Longer. Maybe forever. It was entirely possible that life as she knew it was over.

He represented nothing but pain and loss for her.

So, by God, feeding her felt really good. Just like it felt really good watching a little color return to her face, and a half smile form. She had a naturally serious face but her smile could light up a room. He wanted to see her smile. He wanted that a lot.

“More,” he said and held the spear to her mouth again.

She took a big bite out of it and as he watched her luscious mouth open and close over the pickle spear, his dick gave a hard kick in his pants.

Could she feel it? Did his dick send out a disturbance in the air? Because she swallowed and stared at him, mouth a little O.

“You’re aroused.” It wasn’t a question.

Jack stopped himself from glancing at his crotch. Christ, his crotch was under the table. How the hell could she tell? Did he have a light switching to red on his forehead?

But however she knew, she knew. It was pointless lying.

“Yeah.” His voice was hoarse. “God yeah.”

“You were aroused back in Hector’s place.”

He nodded. No use denying it. Was it vibrating?

Where was she going with this? Was it her way of showing him he was the lowest of the low? Here she was, running for her life and all he could think about was sex?

You haven’t changed
, she’d told him. But that was the thing. He
had
. He had changed. Getting a hard-on, thinking about sex while he was on an op, was definitely not like him. So okay, he’d felt temporarily safe in Hector’s place and he knew this place was safe. He was not going to get a hard-on out on the streets or in a public place. But he had major wood now.

His dick had reverted back to adolescence, when it had a mind of its own.

Was he making her uncomfortable? Was he being a dick? Was his dick being a dick?

He opened his mouth to apologize and she said, “Okay.”

His mouth closed with a snap.
Did she just say what he thought she said?

“Okay?” he echoed. Okay what? Because it couldn’t be—

Summer stood up, gestured with her head to the bedroom. “I’m incredibly tense and a little bit scared and I think sex would loosen me up. I remember sex with you and it was fun and I think I could use a little of that right now.” She searched his eyes. “But here’s the deal. It’s sex and nothing else. I don’t expect anything from you and you don’t expect anything from me. We’re thrown together right now and I’m hoping to get a major story from all of this. So we have a little fun together but it won’t be more than that.”

Jack stood absolutely still. He had no idea how to answer all that. The old Jack, his asinine adolescent self would have shouted
hell yes!
Because no-strings sex was every teenage boy’s dream. Quick roll in the hay, out of bed, out of mind.

But he wasn’t the old Jack and he knew absolutely that he couldn’t do what she asked. He couldn’t keep himself separate from his emotions. Couldn’t fuck her and walk away with a wave. Couldn’t do it.

It had been a long time since he liked anonymous hookups. Sex with someone you cared nothing about was fake. Like eating cardboard food when you were hungry. He wasn’t a walking sack of hormones like back in the day. He was a person. Not a dick with extraneous meat around it.

He liked Summer. He more than liked Summer. He’d found, to his vast surprise, that there was a Summer-shaped hole inside him and she was filling it up just fine. She was beautiful, fascinating, brave, smart. She was everything he could ever want in a woman. He didn’t want to jeopardize a future relationship just because she had an itch he could scratch.

No sir.

He was better than that and so was she. He wanted to have sex with Summer in the worst way, but he wanted sex and other things, too.

He opened his mouth to refuse because he wasn’t that kind of guy, but what came out instead was, “Great. Let’s go to bed.”

Chapter Seven

Kearns woke him up at 1:00 a.m., which was vastly annoying. Springer’s wife, Anna, had been nursing a cold and she needed her sleep.

Marcus Springer thumbed the ring to silent before answering, not bothering to keep the note of annoyance out of his voice.

“Yes,” he said coldly, searching with his feet for the Prada slippers. Ah. He stood up, pulled the silk comforter over his sleeping wife’s shoulders and went out into the hallway. “Is something wrong?”

“I waited for the target and finally left some packages for her to discover.”

“And?”

Kearns was silent a moment. “I left a camera outside her door, and outside the front door of her building. Camouflaged. She did not return to the building, but...”

“But?” A cold feeling settled in his gut.

“Somehow someone tipped off the FBI. Their bio team is there right now. I’m watching them going in on my tablet.”

They were very close to completion of the Plan. Springer had wanted to send a message. A strong one.
Don’t mess with us.
We are stronger than you and we will destroy you.

“Any sign of the Redding woman?”

“No, sir. No sign.”

“She’s gone to ground.”

“Yessir.”

Springer thought. Redding was a good journalist, but she was a woman alone. She had no partner and she ran a business that was good but fragile, like all web-based businesses. Isolate and destroy, he thought.

But first intimidate. Strike terror in her heart.

“Blow up her house. Don’t even try to make it look like an accident. Wherever she’s gone to ground, she should know we have a scorched earth policy.”

“Sir.” No hesitation.

“Then destroy her office.”

“Sir. I don’t think
Area 8
has an office. I think it’s headquartered at the woman’s personal address.”

“Even better. We’ll take out her office and home at the same time.”

“Yessir.”

“Who are her co-workers?”

Springer heard tapping, then Kearns came back. “There are two people mentioned on the masthead besides Redding. The rest are freelancers.”

“Take out the two on the masthead. Where are they?”

Another pause. “In the DC area. I’ll take care of those. It’ll be done as fast as possible.”

“Excellent. Hide the bodies. They need to seem to have disappeared. It’ll keep Redding anxious, off-balance.” The Redding woman should know she had no place to turn to. They would come after her and she had no place to hide. She was a journalist, used to pressing forward, not hiding. How long could she evade them? “Full out effort on the Redding woman. Check citywide cameras, check credit card use, check her usual haunts, run her to ground and eliminate. Are we clear?”

“Yessir,” Kearns replied and signed off.

His team had access to vast resources and he could run this off the books almost forever. He didn’t need forever. He just needed three more days and then utter chaos would rule.

No one would remember Summer Redding even existed.

* * *

Summer knew exactly what she was doing. She was going to have blow-your-mind sex with a guy she knew could provide it. Guaranteed. Unless, of course, her memory was off and it had been perfectly normal sex, only she didn’t know that at the time, being so new to sex and all.

But the fact was, no other man had come close to giving her what Jack gave her.

No other man had dumped her like that, either. She’d chosen very carefully after Jack and no one dumped her. She’d never been the dumpee ever again. She was the one who dumped, as carefully and gently as she could.

Red hot sex was what she needed right now. She needed it to wipe all this destruction from her mind. She knew precisely what she needed and the only man in the world guaranteed to give it to her was right here, ready and willing, to judge by the erection in his pants, so what were they waiting for?

One thing she knew—she didn’t want an aftermath. She didn’t want anything from Jack other than a good time in bed that would make her feel strong again, not a weak cold thing. She didn’t want cuddles or words of devotion.

She’d had plenty of that the first time around. And then he’d disappeared in a puff of smoke and left her broken-hearted.

Not this time. She was an entirely different person now. Much less vulnerable. Not vulnerable at all, actually. She didn’t want him forever, she just wanted him right now, to get rid of this tension that was humming all through her body.

She didn’t want
anyone
for forever. Not doing that. The only couple she’d ever seen that wasn’t sick or temporary or had an expiration date stamped on their foreheads had been the Delvauxes. Jack’s parents. They’d been a
couple
. A real one. Two people who loved each other and shared their lives. But other than them, Summer hadn’t seen anything that really tempted her out of her single state.

Why would she give up her life? She had a great apartment, a great job, great friends.

Of course—the apartment was gone and probably
Area 8
too, since she couldn’t just surface and report things, carry on as if nothing happened. Also—it was entirely possible the shadowy forces after her would go after her friends, too, so she needed to stay off the grid.

With the only other person she knew who was off the grid. Jack.

He stood there watching her as she worked it all out in her head.

“Well?” He cocked his head, studying her.

“Well, what?” Those blue eyes, sharp as a laser...they made her feel almost too seen. Too understood.

“We’re going to have sex. I’m down with that. But there seem to be ground rules. No expectations, no happily ever after. Is kissing allowed? Or are we just going to grind genitals together?”

Summer drew herself up in outrage. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”

Jack reached out a long finger, drew it slowly down her cheek. Over her jaw, down her neck, reaching under her shirt with the back of his finger. It made her shiver.

“I didn’t say that, sweetheart, you did. Me? I’d be perfectly happy having sex the old-fashioned way. Kissing, face to face, cuddling afterward. You’re the one who’s setting boundaries.”

He was putting words in her mouth. Her teeth ground. “I wasn’t setting boundaries for sex itself! I was setting—” She drew in a deep breath, let it out in a long, controlled stream. Good yoga technique for stress. “I was setting emotional boundaries. Keeping our expectations in line. And I was also saying that sex does not imply a relationship. That’s something you can relate to. You never seemed too keen on sticking around, if I recall.”

Jack’s face suddenly hardened. It was amazing to see. He dropped ten years when he teased her, clearly thinking about the sex. Returning to the younger Jack who roped women in by the handful, delighted them, then let them loose again into the wild. They staggered back out into the sun, blinded by pleasure, wishing it could have lasted longer.

This Jack was...something else. Someone else. Harder and more focused. Still sexy but in an overpowering way, not a seductive way.

“Wait,” he said. He still had his finger inside her open shirt, but it was to hold her shirt, just in case she wanted to bolt. “Let’s get one thing straight here. I don’t care what goes on in that complicated and beautiful head of yours. Tell yourself anything you want to. But the fact is that after we have sex on that bed in there” —he jerked his head toward his bedroom—”you are not getting up and leaving. And neither am I. No way. Don’t even think about it. You were in shock and didn’t hear what I said back at Blake’s place. You are sticking close to me and tomorrow we’re going to go to the safest place I can think of, where we will have a team around us. Portland.”

Her jaw dropped. “What?”

“Tomorrow we’re going to Portland, Oregon. I told you my sister has fallen in love with a former Navy SEAL. He works for a company made up of former Navy SEALS. It’s the coolest company on earth, made up of super competent people and if we come out of this alive, I might go to work for them, too. They’re the best of the best. There are two things here you can take to the bank. Whatever happens to me, you are going to survive. These guys will keep you safe. And so will I. So you can toss me away like a used Kleenex after sex if you want, but you will still be sticking close to me. And by close I mean
close
close. Like glued together.”

Summer was trying to put this together. While trying to handle in her head the idea of having hot sex with Jack and then not walking away. Having hot sex with Jack and sticking
close
close to him. She latched on to the only thing that sounded rational. “We’re going to Portland? But how? Won’t they be watching airports?”

“Yes. ASI, the company, will be sending a private plane. There will be no record of us crossing the country, arriving in Portland. And I’ll make sure no cameras catch us.”

“But—but—” Summer’s head was still whirling. It was really hard to focus. The idea of sex with Jack on that shadowy bed she could see through the bedroom door was like a black hole, bending all light and reason into it so that there was no room for anything else. “But I have a business to run! People depend on me.”

Jack sighed and his face took on a sad cast. He just looked at her and she could almost see the wheels spinning. He clasped the back of her neck, kissed her cheek, then leaned his forehead against hers. If she thought they were going to start having hot sex right now, she was wrong.

He was close to her, his forehead against hers as if he could transfer his thoughts into her head. This wasn’t sex. This was communion.

“Sweetheart,” he said, then stopped.

His eyes were fixed on hers and all she saw was sadness in their blue depths.

“What?” she whispered. What could make a man who’d seen his family slaughtered, his boss killed, who’d been on the run for the past six months look that sad? She’d have thought all the sadness had been knocked out of him.

“Summer, I don’t know how to tell you this, but someone has to.
Area 8
is gone.”

It was like an electric jolt to the system. She shook, stood straight, moving away from Jack. “What?
Area 8
is
gone?
What does that even mean? I mean, I know I’m not going to post anything today, maybe not this week, but...gone?”

Area 8?
Her brainchild? The thing she’d dedicated years of incredibly hard work to? It couldn’t disappear overnight.

Jack pulled her in his arms. Instinctively, she turned her head so her ear was against his chest. He rested his cheek on the top of her head. “Think about it, Summer. These people have somehow latched onto you. They think that you know something that can hurt them and they are scared of you. Further, you personally have one of the biggest sounding boards in the US. Everyone who is anyone reads
Area 8
and your articles are picked up by major news services and a million bloggers. Anything you reveal would go viral in a minute and they know that. Not only that. Anything you post will be proof that you are
alive
and about and investigating. You already have a target on your back. This will make that target big and red. Right now, you have disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to you. For all that these guys know, you inhaled the sarin and got sick and died somewhere else. They don’t know if you are alive or dead and that’s how it’s going to stay.”

Jack pulled away for a second, looking down at her, his face fierce.

Very little of what he was saying penetrated. All she could think about was the death of
Area 8
. Her baby. What she’d dedicated her life to.

Jack’s face changed, from fierce to something else. “Ah, honey.” He embraced her again. Held her tightly, one arm around her shoulders, another around her waist, keeping her close. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

Summer needed him. That deep cold that came from somewhere within her, not the outside temperature, was back. Inside she was freezing, even her bones felt chilled. She clung to Jack who seemed to be the only source of heat in the entire world.

The walls tilted, the ceiling moved. Jack was carrying her into the bedroom and she turned in his arms, burying her face against his neck. His entire apartment was completely quiet, a hush that seemed to extend all over the world. No sounds from outside penetrated, it was just the two of them. Their breathing—his calm, hers harsh. She was seconds from bursting into tears and tried desperately to rein herself in.

Summer didn’t cry. She never cried. Tears had never served her as a child, they only alienated her parents. She’d learned never to cry at such a young age it was part of her, like her hair or eye color.

She wasn’t crying now. She couldn’t cry, she didn’t know how. Water was leaking from her eyes, that was all. She swiped her face against Jack’s tee, which looked dirty but didn’t smell dirty. He reached his bedroom and gently put her on her feet. Summer kept her face averted, and he didn’t try to turn it.

His bedroom looked like the rest of the house—plain, not attractive, but not dirty.

Summer shivered again. She needed heat. The closest source was Jack and the amazing sex she knew for a fact he could provide. The cold was eating her up. Though her muscles felt stiff, like she’d been out in a snowstorm, she threw her arms around his neck, lifted on her toes and kissed Jack on the mouth. She missed.

He was so freaking tall. He hadn’t been quite this tall in college. She distinctly remembered having to reach up but not having to stand on tip-toe. Well, if she had to... She rose on her toes.

Her kiss landed awkwardly again, on the side of his mouth. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted one of those amazing kisses you could sink into, lavish and luscious, open-mouthed, tongues touching. Oh yeah. That kind.

She opened her mouth and moved greedily toward his. He opened and yes, there it was. That kind of kiss. Pure heat bloomed in her mouth and she wanted it all, now. All that heat, against her bare skin, chest to breasts, feeling his heavy weight on hers, anchoring her, his sex in hers, moving hard, generating friction. Giving her an orgasm that would nearly knock her out.