Tall, Dark and Lethal (11 page)

She had pulled the sheet over herself, but he snatched it away. Then he was next to her, on her, between her legs. He kissed her as he entered her in one smooth slide, all the way. And nearly went blind from the pleasure of it.

They should have done this sooner. Much sooner. Like the day he’d moved in. A much better way of dealing with the energy between them than fighting.

Hello, I’m your new neighbor. Care to come to bed?
Okay, maybe it wouldn’t have worked quite like that.

He eased out, then in again, then lost all ability to think. Their past disappeared; the shack disappeared; he couldn’t even see the futon anymore, just her violet eyes going unfocused as she arched her back and whispered his name. Her legs wrapped around his waist as he pumped deep inside, her heels digging into his backside, pulling him in. He obliged her and went deeper yet.

After they soared off into space together and came back down to earth, he collapsed next to her, his mind blank from pleasure, his breath ragged. She tried to slip out of bed.

With his last ounce of energy, he pulled her back to him. “Stay. Please.”

And at first, his dreams were pleasant. But soon he was in the rain forest, back in the killing, then in Jakarta again. Pachaimani was standing in front of the back gate of the compound. “When are you coming back?” he said.

Cade woke saying his name.

“Who is that?” Bailey was watching him. “Is he the boy you mentioned before?”

His mouth was too dry to say anything, so he just nodded.

“Friend of yours?”

He swallowed to wet his tongue.

“Your son?” Her eyes went wide.

He wished. “He used to be a connection.” An asset. He worked for a man the United States had targeted, a suspected terror financier.

“I thought you said he was just a kid.”

“Ten years old and as good a spy as I ever met.” He grinned. Boy, he was quick both in the mind and on his feet. Industrious, too. Could talk himself out of just about any trouble. Reminded him of Matthew, the younger brother he’d lost to leukemia at about the same age.

“You’re a spy?” Her eyes went wider yet, but she held up a hand the next second. “No. Don’t say ‘kind of.’ Just don’t say anything. There are spy kids, like the movie, for real?”

Hardly like the movie. There’d been no gadgets involved, no glamour. “Think Indonesia, not Hollywood. When Pachaimani was nine, almost his whole family was murdered in front of him. His brothers and sisters raped, then mutilated.” What in hell was he thinking? He shouldn’t be telling her this. It wasn’t a story fit for her ears—for anyone’s.

“What happened?”

He shouldn’t have gone on, but he did, maybe to remind himself he still needed to keep the promise he made to Pachaimani. “His father had worked for a man known only as Ruvaraj, which means ‘prince.’ Pachi’s father was accused of stealing food for his wife and seven kids. They were all put to death except Pachaimani and his six-year-old sister. Pachaimani was made to watch, then forced into servitude, slavery really, to take his father’s place. And his sister was sold.”

“How did you meet him?”

He was gathering intelligence on Ruvaraj. Pachaimani helped him, risking his own life. He lived for one reason only: to grow strong enough to avenge his family, to find his sister and kill Ruvaraj. Until Cade had promised to take care of Ruvaraj himself. He gave the kid some money and told him to forget revenge and run away the first chance he had.

But Pachaimani gave the money back and told Cade that he wouldn’t leave until he had his sister. And Ruvaraj was the connection. Only he knew where she was.

In some ways, Pachi was just like Matthew had been. Didn’t know the meaning of the word
impossible.
But he had little innocence left after living through what had been done to his family, and surviving day to day inside Ruvaraj’s compound. He had the heart of a soldier.

It wasn’t a story he wanted to tell anyone—not even Bailey. “I used to work all over the place. The world is full of tragedies,” he said and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her sweet warmth and closing his eyes. “Five more minutes,” he said.

W
HEN HE WOKE AGAIN
, the sun was high enough to shine through the window. He’d slept better and felt better than he had in a long time. He stayed still after opening his eyes, breathing in the scent of Bailey’s skin, soaking in her presence.

He’d learned to appreciate good moments like this, to stop and enjoy them. They were few and far between in a life like his. He’d fallen asleep right after they had made love, so he basked now in the late glow of those incredible moments.

He glanced down at Bailey and noticed she had a funny look in her eyes as she gazed at him. It brought him back from the edge of drifting off again. She looked…dreamy.

Very unlike Bailey. Since they’d met, for the most part, she’d been frowning at him nonstop.

Whoa.
The
look?

He snapped out of his bliss, sensing danger all around all of a sudden.

Dammit. He should have thought about that last night, before he’d gone all crazy with her body. He hadn’t lost control so completely in…He couldn’t even remember the last time.

And
then
he remembered he’d told her about Pachi. Confided in her. Women always put a lot of stock in that.

Unease skittered along his skin. Damage control, that was what he needed, and fast. He drew a slow breath. “Okay. Don’t get mad. What I’m about to say, I’m saying for your own good.”

He didn’t want her to get hurt. He was really starting to like her. A lot.

“Oh.” She pulled the sheet to her chin and drew back a few inches. “Was it that bad? It’s been a while, and I—” Pink tinged her cheeks. She looked away.

“If you were any better, I’d be dead.” He ran his hand down her arm and felt a stirring under his own part of the sheet, but repressed it ruthlessly. “Bailey?”

Her gaze returned reluctantly to his.

“What I was about to say was, don’t do something crazy and fall for me.” He paused. “You’re great. I love spending time with you. This is just not going to go that way.”

He expected her to be mad. To have to appease her. But he had taken that risk because he wanted to be honest with her.

Instead, relief washed across her beautiful face, and she laughed. “I don’t believe in love.”

She had to be joking. Women always believed in love. If anything, they were overly sentimental about it.

“Okay.” Whatever she said.

“You believe in love?” She had an odd look on her face now, like she was humoring him.

What—she didn’t think him capable of emotion? So much for that comfortable postcoital glow. She was really starting to annoy him. Again. Which was good, actually. Better than whatever strangeness was developing between them.

He moved from the bed and pulled his jeans on. “I’ll go and look around outside.”

“Do you believe in falling in love?” she insisted, with a good dose of skepticism in her voice.

“Of course, I do. I just don’t plan on doing it,” he said.

They were deep in the woods on the other side of the lake. The early afternoon sun played hide-and-seek with the leaves, the silence of the forest a palpable presence. She should have felt peace; instead, she felt out of sorts that Cade would think she would fall stupid in love with him over great sex. The best she had ever had, but still. She hadn’t grown up on romance novels. She’d spent her teenage years in court, along with her brother, the subject of drawn-out custody battles.

Cade stepped behind her, lifted his gun and pressed it into her right hand, helping her to bring it up. He moved closer, completely closing the distance between them so she could brace her back on his wide chest. The top of her head barely reached his chin. He guided her hand and the gun, aiming at the makeshift target he’d put up.

“Okay, everything’s lined up?”

Hard to say when she was feeling cross-eyed from his nearness. The peace of the small clearing seemed filled with heavy air all of a sudden. Need, passion, desire. Images of their lovemaking at dawn would not leave her mind.

His love-babbling nonsense aside, they did have great sex. Wow.

Her handful of previous relationships hadn’t prepared her for Cade. She had spoken the truth when she’d told him that she didn’t believe in love. Which didn’t mean that she was a thirty-five-year-old virgin.

She dated. As long as it was fun for both parties. When that changed, she left. She couldn’t say she had regrets, that she had ever once looked back after walking away.

But she’d never met a man who caused the kind of instant tension, instant awareness that Cade did. There had been times when she wanted to strangle her ornery new neighbor. Then there had been times when she woke from dreams of him that left her groaning with frustration. But this morning had not been a dream. And she was still wired from it. A tingle ran across her skin.

“Ready?”

Was she ever. She blinked her eyes, focused on the crosshairs and pulled the trigger.

“Not bad.” He stepped back, and she missed his steady presence. “You hit the paper.”

Barely. “Are you sure I need to learn this?”

He flashed her a “come on, now” look. “Let’s take ten steps closer.”

This time he did not hold her from behind. Too bad. She took her shot. The bullet hit much closer to the middle of the target.

“Are you going to tell me to wait until I see the whites of their eyes?” She looked over her shoulder, into his handsome face.

He smiled. “Hell, no. If the situation gets to the point where shots are being fired, shoot at anything that moves.”

He made her practice with a few more rounds, then called a halt and picked up their spent shells before taking down the old newspaper he’d tacked to a tree. “We should get going. Try not to worry about this stuff too much. You’ll be staying in the car. I’m not planning on taking you into danger.”

“Good to know. Do you—”

He answered his chirping phone. “What’s up?” He listened for a while. “Okay. Keep looking.”

“Who was that?” she asked after he’d hung up.

“They picked up your brother. He is in a safe place.” He held her gaze, and there was something in his caramel eyes that made the breath catch in her chest.

“Zak?” Her fingertips went numb. She wanted him to go on but was scared of what he might say.

He seemed reluctant to answer but then opened his mouth after an endless moment or two. “He’s disappeared. Left for school yesterday but never got there. His cell is turned off.”

Her knees began to shake. The only thing she could think of was that after the first twenty-four hours, the chances of finding a missing person dropped rapidly. And Zak had been missing for twenty-four hours already, without her even knowing it. He could already be—

He was by her side the next second, a supporting arm around her waist as he pulled her to him. “Take it easy. He’s a teenager. Could be he got ticked over something and took off. He’s probably holed up at a friend’s house.”

“Or in the hands of bloodthirsty terrorists.” She blinked rapidly. She couldn’t bear to think about Zak in danger. He was her baby nephew. He’d been a little butterball of a kid at the beginning, and then a precocious toddler who’d declared Aunt Bailey his favorite. Then came school, the age of being a “big boy.” Then 9/11, after which nobody had been able to truly reach him, followed speedily by an increasingly introverted adolescence.

“The bad guys couldn’t have figured out that he was the one who sent the messages, could they?”

He rested his head on her chin. “I don’t know. But I’m going to get some answers. I promise.”

She could feel his voice vibrate up the strong column of his neck as she breathed in his masculine scent and let it comfort her. He pressed a featherlight kiss to her forehead.

“I should have spent more time with him while he was with me. I could have tried harder.” But she’d been hurt by him shutting her out almost completely. She’d felt sharply the rejection of him saying no to every suggestion she’d made, be it going to the movies, for a hike or to the Philadelphia Zoo.

“It’s hard to get to know someone who doesn’t want to be known. He was dealing with his own stuff. You giving him a place to stay helped, I’m sure.” His voice was gentle as he held her.

Their coming together in bed had been all about passion. She had understood that on a visceral level. She wasn’t sure what to do with the overwhelming tenderness he was wrapping her up in now. She wanted to fall into it, to melt against his strength. And wanting that scared her. They were still little more than strangers, brought together by circumstance.

She didn’t want to rely on him too much or get too far lost in the comfort he offered. Because when this was over, what would she do?

“We should get going. The sooner we find out more about this whole mess, the sooner we can help Zak if he’s in trouble.”

He took her hand and led her out of the woods. And she didn’t have it in her to pull away, not even when she was concerned that he might have already softened something inside her without her noticing.

“We’re in this together. If Zak is in trouble, we are going to get him out,” he said.

She squeezed his hand, unable to stop herself. He squeezed back.

W
E ARE IN THIS TOGETHER
.
Bailey was still thinking about those words two hours later when they were circling the neighborhood—for the fourth time—where Cade had lost his man last night.

Fast-food restaurants. Jo-Ann’s Fabrics. Optometrist. Hairdresser. Gift shop. Small convenience store. Furniture rental. Blockbuster. And so on and so forth, a plethora of small stores lining their way. People were conducting their business: mothers with their kids, senior citizens, a couple of teenagers. At midafternoon, the schools were just getting out. The office crowd was still firmly trapped in their cubicles.

We’re in this together.
She hadn’t heard those words many times in her life, not from her mother, and certainly not from her father. Both had looked at their kids as weapons to use against each other during and after a bitter divorce. The only person she’d ever been able to count on was her brother, Bobby. He must be going crazy with Zak missing.

“Can I call my brother?” she asked.

“Not a good idea.” Cade kept his gaze on the people and the cars. “He’s at a safe house. It’s better not to have any communications for the time being.”

She hated that but saw his point. “Okay.”

“What do you know about that place?” He nodded toward an abandoned and boarded-up restaurant. Faded lettering on the window advertised lunch specials.

“It’s been closed forever.”

“So why do you think there’s a camera above the door?” he asked.

She looked at the black security camera, which was recording passing traffic. The small electronic device blended nearly perfectly into the shadows above the door. If Cade hadn’t pointed it out, she wouldn’t have spotted it in a million years.

“It’s not a high-crime area. Why would a restaurant that’s been empty for a while need security like that?” He passed without slowing down.

Her heartbeat picked up speed. She hadn’t expected anything from today’s search. Sure, some guy Cade had followed the night before had been here. And Cade insisted that he wouldn’t have lost the guy, if he hadn’t pulled in someplace. But she hadn’t been so sure. She routinely got lost caravanning to the shore with her coworkers in the summer—it was too easy for cars to get between them, or for her to not pay attention for a second and lose the car she was following.

But Cade was right about the camera. Definitely strange.

“What do we do now?”

“Check out the place from the back.” He circled around and went down a service alley.

They identified the back of the restaurant by its name printed on the brick wall that separated it from the alley. She stared at the new-looking barbed wire on top of the wall. This was Chadds Ford, a ritzy, historical district where people had maids, gardeners and nannies. You didn’t see all that much barbed wire around.

“They want to keep people out. I’m thinking it’s not just to protect some secret recipe.”

She was beginning to think the same.

A dark van appeared at the end of the alleyway, coming head-on. Cade kept on moving, then pulled all the way to the shoulder so it could pass them. They watched in the rearview mirror as the van stopped in front of the restaurant’s back gate. The gate slid open, and the van disappeared behind it.

“Closed restaurants don’t take deliveries.” Fear balled in her stomach. It was one thing to say they were going after the bad guys—it was another to be arm’s length from them.

There were terrorists. In her hometown. Who had blown up her house and had possibly taken her nephew. Seeing the van brought the point home, made it feel more real than before. All this time, she’d been hoping this whole fiasco was just a series of accidents and misunderstandings. Denial was such a comforting place to be. She hated to have to let go of it completely, but faced with these latest developments, she had no choice.

“That’s the van I saw in front of the house just before it blew.” Cade’s lips flattened into a grim line.

The ball of fear expanded in her stomach.

“Should we call the police now? Or the FBI?” She was rapidly losing confidence. This was already a lot closer than she’d ever wanted to get to this kind of business.

Cade parked at the end of the alleyway and pulled out of sight from the restaurant’s back entry. “You stay here. I’m going in.”

Their plan to go after the bad guys suddenly looked like a real bad idea. “Are you sure?”

“I have to look around.”

“At least take your stash.”

He had his bag of tricks in the trunk, along with weaponry from Joey.

“This should be enough.” He patted the handgun tucked into the back of his waistband. “You got your weapon ready?”

She nodded. Unlike him, having a weapon didn’t make her feel any better. Made her feel more nervous, in fact.

“Use it only if you feel that your life is in danger. But if it is, don’t hesitate. Otherwise, no heroics.” He pressed a quick kiss on her lips, then was gone the next second.

Gone, gone. Over a fence. So no one driving down the alleyway would see him, she supposed. He was going to sneak through the backyards of several local businesses. And she was going to sit here and go quietly crazy.

Except that she couldn’t, not beyond five minutes. She had to at least get out of the car and move. She would walk up the side street. He hadn’t said she couldn’t. She was in a shopping area. A woman walking around shouldn’t rouse anyone’s suspicions.

She double-checked her weapon to make sure the safety was on, then tucked it into her waistband like she’d seen him do. It felt funny, carrying that big lump at the small of her back. She checked in the side mirror when she got out. Not too bad. The folds of her shirt covered it fine.

She walked a few tentative steps, expecting the gun to fall down her pant leg any second, then walked more securely once she realized that wasn’t going to happen. She glanced into the alleyway as she passed it. Nothing. She couldn’t see Cade scaling fences. Could he be at his destination already?

She’d reached Jo-Ann’s Fabrics, but she could barely see what was in the window. Her mind couldn’t focus on anything but what Cade might be doing and where Zak could possibly be. He had disappeared in New York. The police were looking for him. She didn’t want to think of all the children who disappeared in New York City in any given year and were never found.

She heard a car door slam behind her and spun around to look at the Avalon Cade had boosted for today’s mission. Nobody there. Had the noise come from the alleyway? She strolled back that way, as if she’d forgotten something in her car.

Another van stood in front of the back gate of the restaurant, this one white. She couldn’t see anybody. Whoever had driven it must have gone in.

She wished she could warn Cade. She looked at the van’s New Jersey license plate and memorized the numbers. There wasn’t much else she could do at the moment. She walked back to the Avalon, got in and rolled her window down to make sure she could hear any noise coming from the restaurant.

It wasn’t long before she did. A pop. A car back-firing? A gunshot? It didn’t sound like the shots she’d fired when she’d been target shooting, but back then the gun was going off right next to her. She had no idea what a gunshot would sound like from a distance.

She made sure her weapon was secure, then got out of the car again and walked up the line of shops. She walked all the way this time, passing the restaurant. She could see nothing through the darkened window, no sign of life inside.

Except the door was ajar a fraction of an inch. Had it been that way when they’d driven by? She might not have noticed, but she had a feeling that Cade would have. He was a man for detail.

What if it
had
been a gunshot? What if he was in there, in trouble? She walked on, but turned at the next corner and came back. This time she hesitated in front of the door. She could just push it open and stick her head in. If anyone was in there, she would pretend that she wanted to know if they were reopening.