Secret Assignment (7 page)

Considering how much her family babied her, Shannon had despaired of ever having reason to use that particular skill. But now that the opportunity was upon her, she was beginning to appreciate just what her family had been trying to protect her from.

Tension as thick as any she’d ever known. Rage at being forced to even think about drawing a weapon on a fellow human being. And the gnawing, sickening fear that she was going to have to pull the trigger and take someone’s life.

But she had no time to dwell on any of those emotions, for the front door creaked open and the large figure pushed inside, immediately swinging his gun arm in a sweeping motion.

Shannon caught his arm as it swung toward her, bringing it downward with a sharp pull while she kept her body safely out of range. She banged her knee hard against the back of the intruder’s knee, knocking him off balance. They both hit the floor in a tangle, the intruder landing atop her with a low groan, pinning her to the hard pine.

The intruder’s left hand found her weapon hand, anchoring it in place against the floor before she could bring up the GLOCK. His right hand swept up her body, pausing for a moment at the curve of her breast, his touch firm and shockingly intimate. She tried to bring her knee up between his legs, but the intruder trapped her leg between his knees, blocking her ploy. His hand fell away from her breast.

Suddenly, light filled the room, so bright she had to squint against the painful contraction of her pupils. She peered up at her captor, her body going from hot to cold to hot again in a span of seconds, making her shiver.

“You’re not much for staying put, are you?” Gideon asked, gazing back at her with amusement in his intensely blue eyes.

Chapter Five

“Are you certain you didn’t touch anything in the service room that might have repaired the connection to the foghorn?” Gideon asked from his lookout spot on the widow’s walk. Lydia had gone to her bedroom to rest, although he doubted she’d be able to sleep much after all the excitement of the evening. But Shannon had insisted on staying with him on watch from his perch atop Stafford House.

Despite the continuing danger and his lack of a foolproof plan to combat it, Gideon’s mind kept returning again and again to the feel of Shannon’s firm, softly rounded breast against his palm. He had never had quite so much trouble focusing on an imminent threat before. He didn’t like feeling out of control.

“I didn’t touch anything. I barely walked into the service room before I went out on the catwalk,” Shannon insisted. “I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I thought the connector might be on the outside, where the horns are.”

She stood at the opposite end of the front railing from him, her voice carrying lightly on the night breeze. She looked alert and businesslike, her GLOCK in its holster on her hip, the snap unfastened for easy retrieval. If she was tired from her earlier exertions, it didn’t show. Must be nice, he thought wearily, to be young.

“That must have been loud, having it go off right by you.”

“Scared the hell out of me,” she admitted with a sheepish grin. “And going out on that catwalk already had me on edge. Literally.”

He followed her troubled gaze to the lighthouse, not sure whether he should feel angry that she and his boss had ventured out into the night against his express orders or glad that she’d managed, however accidentally, to sound the alarm just in time.

“They knew the horn was a signal to Terrebonne Fire and Rescue,” he murmured. “They’ve done their homework.”

Shannon moved closer to him, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were cold. He clenched his fists on the balcony railing, quelling the urge to pull her close and warm her with the fire burning low in his own belly. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he said.

Her eyes flickered up to meet his. “In your house?”

He nodded. “I wasn’t sure who was attacking me in the dark.”

Her lips curved slightly, her eyelids lowering until she was looking at him through a veil of dark lashes. “Same here.”

“You did a good job,” he added. “Taking me down.”

She looked down at her hands where they gripped the rail next to his. “You pinned me, so I guess it wasn’t that good a job.”

“I was Marine Special Operations. There are few men in the world who could take me down hand to hand,” he said flatly. “You did it well.”

She looked up again. “Thanks. I learned from a marine.”

“Your brother?”

She nodded. “Everyone who works for Cooper Security goes through training. Jesse thinks we should all be able to acquit ourselves in a way that brings honor to the company.”

He could tell from the dry recitation that she was parroting her brother’s words. “He has a point.”

“I know.” There was a plaintive tone to her voice. “He’s just not very good at allowing people to use what they’ve learned.”

“And by ‘people,’ you mean you?”

She smiled sheepishly again. “Megan—that’s my sister—says he’d probably let me do more things if I didn’t whine about it quite so much. Sorry for the pity party.”

“I’ll put in a good word for you if I ever talk to him.” He couldn’t quite hide his irritation.

Her gaze snapped up to his. “You don’t trust us, do you?”

“It seems a small job for such a big company.”

“We do small jobs,” she said defensively.

He knew they did. After dinner, when Shannon had gone up to her room, he’d checked up on Cooper Security, via the internet and a couple of calls to old friends from the Corps. He’d learned quite a bit about the way the company did business. “Most of those small jobs are for people who can’t pay for the services you offer. Pro bono. Lydia Ross is no charity case. Which makes me wonder exactly what your brother hopes to get out of this job besides the paycheck.”

Shannon’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. Maybe Jesse knew General Ross personally or something.”

Gideon considered the possibility. “Unless your brother was pretty high in the Marine Corps command, he wouldn’t have had much contact with an army general,” he said.

She shook her head. “He retired as a captain. Didn’t mix much with the upper brass.”

“And you didn’t think it strange he sent you on this job?”

A self-conscious smile darted across her face. “I was just glad to get out from under a computer for once.”

He arched an eyebrow at her comment.

“Along with my archival science degree, I have a computer science degree. I’ve been Cooper Security’s head of Information Technology.”

He grinned. “You’re an IT geek?”

“You got it, big guy. Wanna see my pocket protector?” she asked with a waggle of her well-shaped black eyebrows.

She was damn cute, he thought, with her big brown eyes and infectious grin. About ten years too young for him, and eons too innocent. If he had any sense, he’d put those thoughts right out of his idiotic brain.

Right now, however, he seemed to have no sense at all, for despite the serious danger they had been in tonight—were still in, regardless of Terrebonne Harbor Patrol’s promise to keep an eye out for any further incursions—he was overwhelmed by the urge to kiss her.

“What do they want from Lydia?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts.

“The general’s archive,” he said. It was the only thing that made sense.

Her brow furrowed. “You mean his collections?”

“I suppose those would be a robber’s likeliest target,” he admitted, although it wasn’t what he’d meant. “The general owns some unique items—things he bought during overseas tours of duty, art he’s collected over the years. Mrs. Ross owns things as well that must be quite valuable.”

“But you said
his
archive, first,” she noted, her gaze narrowed.

He sighed. Cute as a button and smart as a whip. “I suppose some of his writings have intrinsic historical value.”

“Enough to warrant an armed invasion?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He looked to the east, where he’d last seen the intruders as they piled aboard a Zodiac Bayrunner motorized raft with carefully controlled haste and skimmed across the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, heading directly south. They must have had a boat anchored out there somewhere, just beyond the sight horizon. He’d been tempted to hop aboard the
Lorelei
and chase them down, but he’d had Mrs. Ross and Shannon Cooper to think about.

Not to mention, after the sabotage this morning—yesterday morning, he amended mentally, noting the first pinkish-gray lightening of the eastern sky—he couldn’t be sure the
Lorelei
was even seaworthy at the moment.

“We’re not safe here,” Shannon said quietly. “And short of ringing the island with armed guards—”

“Mrs. Ross will understand if you want to leave.”

She rounded on him, her expression fierce. “And leave the two of you here to deal with this mess alone?”

He couldn’t hold back a smile. “You and your pocket protector gonna keep us safe?”

Her chin jutted. “Don’t forget my GLOCK.”

He looked down at the sleek black pistol hugging her waist. “Don’t forget you have an actual job to do here. Your company wasn’t hired to provide security.”

She cocked her head. “And from what I understand, you were hired to help the Rosses take care of the island,” she noted. “Ferry them back and forth to the mainland, maintain the buildings and premises—”

Touché, he thought. “Mrs. Ross won’t stand for private bodyguards. She had one growing up and loathed the sense of captivity.”

Shannon’s expression softened. “So you’re most expressly
not
her bodyguard. You’re just a caretaker with a Walther P99 and the general build of an Abrams tank.”

He grinned at her description. “Exactly.”

“Then I guess I’m an archivist with a GLOCK and outstanding self-defense skills.” She smiled back at him, looking so damn adorable that his gut tightened with unwelcome longing.

He forced his gaze back to the eastern sky, nodding at the first rosy streak of daybreak. “Guess we made it through the night, more or less unscathed, huh?”

She followed his gaze and released a soft sigh. The cool morning breeze off the Gulf lifted her dark hair, sending a few strands dancing against his cheeks. She smelled like a fresh morning rain, despite having traipsed through the sea grass, climbed up and down a thirty-foot lighthouse and taken down a special forces marine twice her size with her bare hands.

She was formidable, he thought, rolling the word around in his head, savoring it.

Fearing it.

He’d known the second he saw her waiting on the pier at Terrebonne Marina that she was going to be trouble for him.

He just hadn’t realized how much.

“Go get some sleep,” he told her.

“I’m fine,” she said with a shake of her head.

“I’m going to need you awake later today when I have to crash,” he said firmly. “Get a few hours of sleep and then you can be on guard duty. Besides, don’t you have an actual job to do here? You need to be rested or you’ll fall asleep over all those papers.”

She eyed him suspiciously, as if she suspected him of making up an excuse to get her to do what he wanted. And maybe he was in a way. He certainly wanted her to take her sweet smile and bright brown eyes and leave him in peace, if only for a little while.

But he meant what he said about spelling him. Even when he’d been on active duty in war zones, where sleep had been a precious commodity, he’d taken advantage of any chance to rest.

He was fortunate that Shannon Cooper was here, armed and apparently trained to anticipate and deal with danger. The timing of her arrival couldn’t have been better in that one way.

And if having her around created other, unexpected problems for him, he was a big boy. He’d learn how to deal.

* * *

S
HANNON HADN’T EXPECTED
to fall straight to sleep, but she’d barely stripped off her clothes and slid beneath the covers of her bed before she was asleep and dreaming.

Dreaming of the lighthouse.

In her dream, all was dark. Fog rolled in, dense and chilling. Fingers of moisture writhed across her flesh, sending shivers tumbling through her. She stood on the catwalk, her back to the open doorway of the service room. The foghorn moaned a low warning of impending danger, rattling the metal mesh of the catwalk beneath her feet.

She felt more than heard movement behind her. Slowly, she turned around, the motion sluggish, heavy with dread.

The doorway to the service room was a gaping maw, a gaze into the belly of a cold and ruthless beast. Even as the catwalk shimmied beneath her, a stark reminder of her precarious position, the very idea of entering the service room filled her with abject fear.

Something—someone—was inside the room, waiting. And there was no way to escape, no way to get away from the lighthouse but through that black and waiting doorway.

A shrill bell clanged, making her jump. The catwalk shifted beneath her feet, dropping precipitously. She leaped forward, into the blackness, no options left.

The bell echoed in her head as she groped her way through the darkness, seeking out the tiny pinpoint of light that glittered, miles and miles distant. If she could make it to that light—

With a flash, the darkness became molten daylight, pouring across her face and warming her skin. Shannon opened her eyes to the blue room at the top of Stafford House and the discordant clamor of her travel alarm.

She shut the alarm clock off, her heart still racing from the fast-vanishing remnants of her dream. Something about the lighthouse—

Once dressed, she headed downstairs and found Gideon sitting at the kitchen table, the Remington rifle propped against the counter beside him. He was cleaning the Walther, the pungent smell of gun oil filling the room. “I usually do this at the caretaker’s cottage,” he murmured as she approached. “Mrs. Ross doesn’t like the smell in her kitchen. But I wanted to stick close to the first point of attack.”

She pulled out a chair and sat across from him. “Is Mrs. Ross still asleep?” Lydia had not yet risen for the day when Shannon took Gideon’s advice to get some sleep.

“She’s up. She made some cheese croissants for breakfast if you’d like something to eat. They’re still warming in the oven. There’s milk and orange juice in the fridge.”