by Megan Crane
“I wasn’t, actually. Until I woke up to find you looming over my bed.”
He only gazed back at her until she felt that if she hadn’t been focused on exuding indifference, she really would have flushed bright red. Averted her eyes. Curled into that ball, maybe, right there on the woven rug at the foot of her bed. Instead of glaring back at him like he didn’t get to her at all.
“They were sent to find out if you were there and cause a little trouble while they did it. The job was to compare you to a photograph, which they did earlier in the day. Then they were supposed to take a new one and send it off to an anonymous e-mail address. They were asked specifically to scare you, Caradine. Not kill you, but scare you, even if you were the wrong person.”
Caradine knew he wanted to see her reaction, so she just about burst a blood vessel keeping her expression blank. Like that information didn’t creep her out or make the back of her neck itch.
“Who do you think would reach out that way?” Isaac asked. “Complete with a bonus fire regardless of whether or not you were who they were looking for?”
“Maybe it’s my long-lost mother,” Caradine replied dryly. “Sending a little love note, like last Christmas. In Grizzly Harbor, that idyllic escape from the world where an Alaska State Trooper’s freaky relatives can blow stuff up and kidnap people to prove a point. Can any of the rest of us be safe?”
“What are the odds that your family and Kate’s family would take the same approach?” Isaac asked mildly. His expression was not mild. “Were you also raised in a cult?”
“That really depends on your position on good old American family values.” Caradine sounded like her usual self. Everything was such a joke. She was such a beacon of dark humor. But inside, she’d gone horribly cold. “Anyway,” she said with more bravado than any real conviction, “the people after me didn’t get in a Christmas kidnapping.”
His gray gaze turned forbidding. “But someone will. Sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Surely not with Alaska Force on the scene,” she retorted, with a fake smile and too much edge. “Except—oh, wait. I didn’t hire you, you’re not very good at your job, and I don’t live there anymore.”
“If I was trying to get my hands on you, I had a thousand opportunities over the past week.” His voice was relentlessly even. “You never knew I was there. How would you know if anyone else was?”
“I don’t have to know if someone’s there.” She nodded toward her weapons. “All I need to know is how to react when they turn up.”
“That’s the way a victim thinks, Caradine. The problem with relying on coffee and stubbornness to get you through is that both are going to fail. You’re only one person. Sooner or later, the coffee’s going to stop working, you’re going to have to stop running, and, like tonight, you won’t even wake up when someone comes into the room where you’re sleeping. Then what?”
She scoffed to cover the coldness that swamped her then, because he was right. Of course he was right. “You weren’t trying to hurt me.”
“You don’t know what I was trying to do, because I let myself in and hung around while you slept. Does that creep you out?” Isaac demanded when she made a face. “Good. Maybe you should listen to me for a change.”
Caradine hugged herself tight and kept her gaze level on his. “I’m not going to tell you anything, Isaac. No matter how many times you break into my room and try to intimidate me.”
He didn’t actually crack a smile at that, but she had the impression of one. “Baby, I haven’t begun to intimidate you.”
She wanted to tell him not to call her baby, ever again. She also wanted to melt. And the truth about everything was right there on her tongue, again. Always.
But she’d promised.
“Listen,” she said, with none of her trademark attitude this time. No edge, no slap. She found his gaze and held it, trying to show him that she was being as honest as she could. “I appreciate that you were worried enough about me to track me here.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
She lifted her hands as if to surrender. “I mean it. I know you can’t tell, because I’m normally all about the sarcasm, but I mean it. I do. You’ll never know how much this means to me, Isaac. But I can’t accept your help.”
“I’m not offering my help. You’re getting my help.”
“Caradine Scott doesn’t exist. You said it yourself.”
“But you do.”
That hit her. Hard. She had to blink back a sudden surge of emotion, and only hoped he couldn’t see it.
“I’m going to disappear. Again.” She shook her head when he started to say something else. “That’s what I do. There are still a lot of places in this world where people don’t ask questions. I got five years this time. Maybe next time it will be more.”
“Caradine.”
“But I can’t take you with me, even if I wanted to. And you couldn’t go anyway. You have an entire life in Grizzly Harbor.”
“You going into hiding under another assumed name is not an acceptable outcome.”
She actually smiled at that, a real smile. “You don’t get a vote.”
“Caradine—”
“Isaac. Baby.” She smirked a little when he narrowed his eyes at her, that emotional punch still echoing through her and making her want to shiver. She held it back. “It’s late. I know you can summon a thousand military-grade vehicles to do your bidding with a single snap of your fingers, but some of us aim to be less conspicuous. If you’re going to go, go.”
“What part of this conversation makes you imagine I’m going somewhere?”
“If you want to stay, you have one option available to you,” she said in the bossy, peremptory tone she’d used on him often in Grizzly Harbor. And just like all those times, usually late at night outside the Fairweather after pretending to ignore him, she watched his expression shift quickly from incredulity to something gleaming and silver that made her belly flip over. “Naked. And silent.”
She hadn’t meant to say that. She’d meant to throw him out again, the way she always did.
The way he always lets you, something in her whispered, and her belly somersaulted again.
She hadn’t meant to say it, but she had. And she was already rationalizing that decision. If she wanted to say a long, involved good-bye to this man she never should have touched in the first place, she could do it here. Secure in the knowledge that he could keep them safe enough, at least for a little while.
And Caradine could think of a lot of ways to say good-bye, all a lot better than that adrenaline-fueled sprint up the side of a mountain in the summer almost-dark.
“Well?” she demanded, because she always pushed it with him. Harder and harder, because he never broke. “Are you going to stay? Or are you going to go? Because if you’re going, go now. I need my sleep.”
Something shifted on that gorgeous face of his that foolish people believed was friendly. Caradine knew better.
And even she shivered at the look he gave her.
Like he was some kind of wolf.
Isaac didn’t speak. And the only thing she could hear was the thundering of her own heart. It pounded inside her chest. In her temples. In her wrists.
And deep between her legs.
He didn’t say a word. He crooked his finger in a silent command, because she liked to shoot her mouth off and pretend she controlled this. Him. But they both knew better.
And this was her good-bye. This was her last chance.
Her last taste.
Caradine didn’t waste any more time. She moved around the foot of the bed, determined that she would make this night the kind of night that she could live on forever.
Because she would have to.
Isaac swept her up into his arms, making her feel light and sweet when she knew she was neither, and
she loved that. God, did she love it. Then his mouth was on hers, ravishing her, and she loved that, too.
Fierce. Hot.
So greedy and wild that she thought she might scream after all.
He spun her around, throwing her down on the bed and sweeping her weapons aside with one arm. Then he came down on top of her, his body rock hard, pressing her deep into the mattress.
There wasn’t any part of this she didn’t love.
Isaac was like a fever. He always had been. Sensation streaked through her, flaring bright and hot wherever he touched her, and she gloried in it.
Because wherever she landed next, whatever happened to her, this would haunt her. He would haunt her, permanently. She already knew that.
He already did.
Caradine wrapped herself around him and kissed him with everything she had. He met that kiss, amped it up, and tossed it over the edge into something even darker, hotter, more out of control. Then he unpeeled her hands from his neck and stretched them up, over her head. She arched into him, reveling in the press of her breasts against his hard chest.
But when she tried to move her hands to dig them into his dark hair, her eyes snapped open.
Because her wrists were zip-tied together. Tightly.
Isaac was staring down at her, his face like granite.
And Caradine had the disorienting sensation that she’d actually never seen this version of him before, either.
“I’m done asking you questions,” he said, his voice darker than she’d ever heard it. And she wasn’t sure if that was fear or a thrill that shivered through her then. “And while we’re on the subject, I’m done playing games.”
“Untie me,” she gritted out at him.
But she didn’t have to see all the silver intensity glaring back at her to know he had no intention of doing anything of the kind. And while they both knew she could untie herself, given enough time, she doubted he was going to step back and let her do that just now.
Or maybe ever.
“New game,” Isaac said quietly. “New rules.”
Five
It was shockingly easy to hog-tie a person and cart them out of a cozy little inn in the middle of the night.
This wasn’t news. Isaac had actually had ample opportunity to make this discovery, and practice it in various forms, in the cordoned-off parts of his past he didn’t talk about.
But it occurred to him—when he wisely secured Caradine’s ankles after she tried to kick him in a sensitive area, then popped in a little gag, too, because she had murder in her eyes and he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t scream for the fun of it—that he should have considered this approach with her a long time ago.
Or, more precisely, he should have acted on it.
Too bad there weren’t any do-overs in this life, or that first night with Caradine would have ended a lot differently five years ago.
This is no time for nostalgia, Isaac told himself, almost entertained.
Only almost, because the fairy-tale version of Caradine in his head wasn’t real. The real Caradine had spent untold hours learning how to get out of situations like this one, always assuming she’d be in the hands of folks a lot less interested in her safety and well-being than he was. He’d watched her in class. He’d even taught her a few tricks himself.
He estimated he had about ten minutes before she freed her hands. Then used them.
But like most things in life, he knew he could get away with almost anything if he did it with a sense of purpose. If he looked confident enough, no one dared question what he did—something else he put to the test repeatedly. He gathered up her things, ignoring the furious sounds she was making from behind her gag. Then he tossed her bag over one shoulder, her over the other, and walked out.
Three minutes later, he was outside the inn right there on the harbor, hearing the lines on the moored boats dance against the masts. He belted her into the front seat of the SUV he’d used to track her across the country. He’d left it in a no-parking zone with a borrowed police shield on the dashboard, a little gift from some of his contacts in law enforcement.
Two minutes after that, they were mobile. Isaac took a roundabout way out of the sleepy little vacation town, driving away from the water to pick up the state road that would take him south to Portland. He would have removed her gag as soon as he started driving, but she’d handled that herself.
“This is a surprise,” he said after, as he drove through the dark in a furious silence. “I figured the minute you could yell at me, you would.”
“What’s the point?” she asked in that flat voice that he’d always considered Caradine at her most emotional—a description he was pretty sure would make her head explode if he said it out loud. “I can plot your death silently.”
“I gave you the opportunity to cooperate. You didn’t take it.”
“What’s funny to me is that you honestly consider yourself one of the good guys.” He glanced over at her to find her holding up her bound wrists as punctuation. “Maybe it’s time you reconsidered your life, Isaac.”
“Someday,” he promised her, maybe a little more darkly than necessary, “you and I are going to sit down and have a nice, long discussion about life. Yours and mine.”
“That sounds about as appealing as a spot of meningitis.” She sniffed. “Or the average girls’ night out.”
“One of the things we can talk about is how you pretend you’re not girlie. Even though you go to such trouble to keep your nails painted at all times. But black and chipped, of course, so no one can accuse you of any stray traces of femininity.”
He didn’t have to look at her to feel the way she glared at the side of his head. And when she made an anatomically impossible suggestion, he laughed.
And didn’t release her wrists, the way he could have. And should have.
But then again, she could have done the same, and didn’t.
So instead, he called in.
“Report, jackhole,” answered Templeton, his big voice booming over the SUV’s sound system. And then he laughed. “I’m not going to lie. I understand your power trip now.”
“Pull it together,” Isaac suggested. “You’re supposed to be a professional.”
“Ten-four, Dad,” Templeton retorted, unrepentant as ever. “Is the target acquired?”
Caradine stiffened with outrage. “I’m not a target. I’m a hostage. And I want to come back to Grizzly Harbor and rebuild the café just so I can ban you for life, Templeton.”
“Oh yeah.” Isaac sighed. “Fully acquired.”
Templeton laughed again. Caradine made some more improbable suggestions regarding anatomy. And select livestock.
Isaac was biting back his own smile when he turned onto Route 90, heading away from Camden, and realized that the car in his rearview mirror had taken the last three turns right along with him.
It could be a problem. Then again, it could be someone headed out of town toward Portland and points east and south like he was. He maintained his course.
“What’s the situation in Juneau?” he asked Templeton.
“Nothing new or interesting.” Templeton shifted back into seriousness seamlessly, one of his greatest skills. “We found the guy who hired those two idiots, but he’s just some local wannabe big shot. He got a phone call from a guy who knows a guy, all blind. We tried to pull on the thread, but there’s nothing there.”
“My takeaway is that’s a lot of layers and risk for a picture and some arson.”
“Too much of both,” Templeton agreed.
Isaac didn’t like that, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He and Templeton ran down the rest of Alaska Force’s active missions in the abbreviated code they could use when civilians were listening, and when he was done, Isaac wasn’t surprised to find Caradine scowling at him.
If one day he loo
ked over and she was smiling at him, he’d probably have a heart attack.
“You sound suitably busy and important,” she said after a moment. “I have to think you have better things to do than act as a glorified taxi service. For someone who didn’t want a taxi in the first place.”
Isaac shot her a glance, but his attention was in his rearview again. Fifteen minutes from Camden and the car behind him was maintaining a steady pace. Never catching up, never falling behind, no matter what he did with his own speed. He picked up Route 1 in Warren and then, for fun, looped around in a dramatic U-turn in the middle of the two-lane rural highway. Then headed back on the road to Camden.
Because anyone who’d been following him to get to Route 1, which stretched from north of Portland, up the coast of Maine, to the border of New Brunswick, certainly wouldn’t do the same. It was two thirty in the morning.
And for a moment, speeding back down the dark, rural road toward Camden again, he thought he was being paranoid after all.
But then, as he went through the first stoplight, he picked up the same headlights in his rearview mirror again.
Interesting.
“Why are we headed back the way we came?” Caradine asked after a moment. “Have you had an attack of conscience? Or better yet, is this all some terrible nightmare? Will I wake up in my hotel bed at dawn and wonder if any of this even happened?”
“I’m pretty sure we have a tail. Maybe you find that more entertaining than I do.”
“A laugh a minute.” But she looked in the side mirror as she said it. Then turned to glare at him again. “Mind you, I’ve had a tail for the past week, so I’m probably used to it by now. I’m guessing big, bad Rambo types eat tails for breakfast or some such deeply boring—I mean, deeply manly—thing.”
That sarcastic tone of hers could strip paint off a boat, and normally, Isaac liked it. Just then it dug at him. But he refused to give her the satisfaction of snapping at her—and besides, in fairness, he still had her restrained at the wrists and ankles.
