On the List

by Patricia Rosemoor

  The deputy was nice enough to drop them off at a motel where they would be forced to spend the night.

  “Okay, the Bates Motel had nothing on this place,” Gabe said.

  “It’s just the fog,” Renata said, trying to convince him as well as herself. The place was run-down-looking; its most attractive feature was the blinking red neon sign—Water’s Edge Cabins, Vacancy. “The fog is spooky.”

  “We’re sticking together,” Gabe told her as they approached the office.

  Her pulse picked up and she asked, “To what purpose?”

  “Safety in numbers.”

  Indeed, if the killer were around and responsible for Gabe’s car doing a disappearing act, Renata didn’t want to be alone.

  She peered into the fog as if she could actually see someone staring back. Her skin crawled and the hair at the back of her neck stood at attention and she cursed herself for being so gullible before following Gabe inside.

  Even though she knew her imagination was working overtime, she didn’t argue about the accommodations. She let him handle it, knowing she would feel more secure in his company.

  Safer in his arms.

  She shook off the image that thought brought with it.

  A few minutes later, they were in the “cabin” they would call home for the night.

  “Charming,” Renata murmured.

  Cabin was a misnomer. It was simply a single room with a kitchenette. While the place looked as if it had been recently cleaned, the carpeting was stained and the curtains and spread looked old and dull. She hadn’t expected much in the way of amenities—good thing, because there were none. No table. No chairs. Only a bed.

  Her stomach dropped when she took a second look—it was a full-sized bed, barely big enough for two adults.

  It was going to be a long night.

  “At least the heat’s on and it’s nice and cozy,” Gabe said. “You want to hit the shower first?”

  “Why bother? I’m just going to sleep in my clothes.”

  “Only if you want to. It’s okay with me if you take them all off.”

  She just bet it would be. “I’ll take off my jacket and my shoes. And my gun.”

  “Thanks for that. I’ve never been comfortable sleeping with a gun in the bed.”

  “You make it sound like you’ve done it.”

  “Not for years.”

  Somehow, she didn’t think he was kidding. “Why?”

  “I was always afraid my father was going to catch up with us.”

  Renata stared. She’d expected him to make a joke of it. Instead, he’d given her an unexpected insight into his past.

  “Your father was violent?”

  “Especially to my mother. But to me, too, if I stepped between them. And sometimes just for fun.”

  “Gabe—”

  “Forget it. That was a long time ago. Another lifetime. And don’t worry, I no longer carry a gun. I don’t want to be anything like my father. And I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, that makes two of us.”

  Another lifetime…another name? Is that why Gabe knew Ned Coulter? Because he needed to stay hidden from a violent father? But that didn’t make sense, considering he was an adult. What could his father do to him now?

  “So where does your mother call home these days?”

  “At the moment, she’s in Milwaukee. But I’m hoping that someday soon, she’ll feel comfortable enough to move to Chicago so I can see her more often.”

  Which sounded like he was in Chicago to stay, Renata thought, realizing the idea gave her a sense of well-being she couldn’t explain.

  She removed her shoes and jacket, then stripped off her holster. Trying not to notice how much clothing Gabe was removing, she kept her back to him, then tried to lie at the edge of the bed. Unfortunately, her body kept wanting to roll toward the sagging middle. She tried different positions and finally found that if she stayed on her right side, she could drop her left arm over and cling to the edge of the mattress.

  “Can I turn out the lights?” Gabe asked.

  “Go ahead. We both need to get some sleep if we want to be functional in the morning.”

  Apparently Gabe was serious about taking that shower, because a few seconds after the light went off, she heard the bathroom door swing shut. And after that, screeching pipes and the flow of running water. Outside their door, lake water lapped against the dock. All of the sounds melded together and the tension of the day drained from her. Renata felt herself slipping away.

  Exhausted, she let herself drift…

  Sometime later, an oppressive heat woke her. She stirred, then realized she couldn’t move. Another body spooned her, an arm held her captive.

  Her eyes flashed open. Gabe!

  He was like a furnace—she was so warm she could hardly breathe—and he was asleep if the sounds he was making were any indication. Well, not all of him was asleep. He was hard against her. Literally. She could feel his erection solid and long against her backside.

  Her mouth went dry and her heart skipped a beat. Unable to help herself, she pressed back against him and slowly moved her hips. He made an agonized sound in his sleep and his hand moved up her belly to find a breast under her sweater. The touch lit an instant fire in her. Her body came alive, demanding she take care of it. Even as she fought with herself mentally, she couldn’t stop herself from moving against him, imagining what it would be like to feel him inside her.

  This wasn’t rational, Renata told herself. She couldn’t get too involved with Gabe. She needed to concentrate on this case for both their sakes. Sex would only complicate things between them.

  But her body wasn’t listening.

  “Gabe,” she whispered in protest.

  But he wasn’t listening, either.

  Stirring, obviously finding he wasn’t just having an erotic dream, he slipped his fingers inside her bra and his breath sent a trail of gooseflesh along her neck. Her resolve melted away like ice under a bright sun.

  That’s what Gabe felt like…a bright sun…. Renata had never been so hot.

  She turned in his arms and faced him as his eyes flickered open. She read surprise along with desire. He was just waking up. It didn’t take him long to get in rhythm with her thoughts. Closing his eyes again, he covered her mouth with his and plunged his tongue inside. She closed her eyes, too, and savored the sensations.

  His hands were all over her now, smoothing and teasing. They wrapped around her back and she felt the constraint around her chest lift as he undid her bra. Then his hands cupped her breasts, his fingers found her nipples, and a pleasurable sensation spread through her and intensified until she needed to touch him in return.

  Her hands dipped down his washboard abs, finding his quickening flesh through his briefs. He groaned her name against her mouth.

  She was so hot she couldn’t stand it.

  When she plunged both hands down along his skin inside the material, he came alive. Her fingers surrounded him, and he filled her hand.

  Imagining him filling her in other places, she could hardly get her breath.

  Hot…she was so hot…couldn’t get hotter.

  But when he got into her pants, his fingers cleverly spreading her and dipping inside her, sliding in with ease along the wet, slippery path, she did get hotter.

  He stroked her and she helped him, angling her hips so he could deepen the thrust of his fingers. But it wasn’t his fingers she wanted to pleasure her.

  Opening her mouth to tell him what she did want, she felt a burning sensation at the back of her throat and coughed instead. Suddenly, she realized how hard it was to breathe. And why. Rather than air, smoke filled her lungs.

  She flashed her eyes open and realized the room was thick with smoke.

  “Fire!” she choked out.

  “You’re on fire, all right.”

  “No, the room!”

  Opening his eyes, Gabe swore and let go of her. “We’
ve got to get out of here.”

  They both rolled off the mattress in opposite directions, he pulling on his pants, she finding her shoes as she got to her feet. She felt for her holster and slung it on.

  “Come on!” he urged her. “No time.”

  As they moved across the room, she slipped into her jacket. But the smoke was billowing in from under the door, as if the porch were on fire.

  “Can’t go that way,” Gabe said.

  “The roof is on fire!” Smoke and cinders were descending on them and she saw a flame in one corner. “There’s no back door. We’ll never get out of here alive!”

  Inhaling too much smoke, she started coughing.

  “Then a window.”

  Gabe grabbed the bed covers and dragged her into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

  “What are you doing?” she coughed out.

  “Wetting the bedding.”

  He held the spread, blanket and sheet under the spray, then quickly opened the bathroom window. Smoke immediately filled the small space. Renata futilely tried to hold her breath but the coughing intensified.

  “Okay, bad idea,” he said, coughing, as well, and slammed the window shut.

  It didn’t matter, she continued to cough, frozen to the spot, until Gabe propelled her back into the other room.

  “We have to go out the front way,” he said, heaving the wet bedding over them before hooking an arm around her waist. “Ready?”

  She coughed in response. She couldn’t stop coughing. Couldn’t move. Even though she was tented against the smoke, it had already gotten to her. The room started whirling around her and her legs felt like they were ready to collapse.

  Gabe steadied her and swept her forward, saying, “Get ready to run like hell.”

  She heard the last in a vacuum. Woozy, she tripped over her own feet and would have fallen to the floor if not for Gabe, who picked her up.

  “Hang on to my neck!”

  Renata managed to get her arms up as Gabe grabbed for the door. He threw it open and plunged head first through smoke and flames so fast that Renata felt as if she were flying.

  And then she realized she was flying—they both were—as the freezing lake water came up to greet them.

  Chapter Twelve

  With a burst of flames and a shriek of tearing wood, the roof collapsed, disappearing inside the burning walls.

  They’d made it out just in time, Gabe thought, as he got to his feet in thigh-high water and realized other people, most dressed in nightclothes, were running their way to see what was going on.

  Renata, still clinging to him and coughing, was trying to stand, as well.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, helping her. “Don’t try to talk, just nod or something.”

  She nodded and gasped. “Fine,” she gritted out, the sound hoarse and raspy. “Thanks to you.”

  “Let’s get to dry land.”

  He felt her shiver against him and pulled her closer. They were both wet and the night was cold. He heard shouts and realized people were running to help them. Several had dry blankets they piled onto the two of them. Even so, he looked around at the dozen or so people surrounding them and wondered if one of them was the arsonist.

  There was no doubt in his mind that the blaze had been purposely set.

  That someone wanted them dead was no big surprise, not after the truck incident. So did that truck belong to Hank Oeland? Had Oeland felt threatened and come after them on his own turf? Or did they have an invisible enemy that even he couldn’t fathom? Gabe wondered.

  A siren split the night, followed by the sound of emergency vehicles arriving. It had taken the fire department long enough, but Gabe supposed in a town this size, the team was made up of volunteers.

  “The killer is here,” Renata rasped out, her mind apparently in tandem with his.

  They were in tandem in so many ways, Gabe thought, pulling her closer and flagging down the ambulance that showed up just before the fire truck.

  The next half hour was filled with noise and confusion. As men doused the fire, paramedics checked him and Renata over. They decided he was fine but that Renata needed to take a trip to the emergency room so she could be more thoroughly checked out by a doctor.

  “Sir, you’ll have to take your own car. You can’t ride in the ambulance,” one of the paramedics told him as they got Renata inside.

  “Someone stole my car. And try to stop me.”

  Gabe climbed in after Renata. He wasn’t about to leave her alone.

  Who knew if the killer lurked nearby, just waiting to finish the job on her?

  The paramedic looked as if he wanted to argue, but after meeting Gabe’s cold stare, he looked away and shut the doors. The fifteen-minute ride to the closest hospital felt like an eternity. He held Renata’s hand all the way there and wanted to protest when they placed her in a cubicle where they would further examine her and asked him to wait down the hall. Knowing they would work faster without him around to get in the way, he went quietly.

  After being given a pair of scrubs to replace his clothes until they dried, Gabe paced the halls of the hospital while waiting for an update on Renata. When word came a half hour later—that she seemed to be fine other than having a raw throat, that the medical staff merely wanted to keep her for observation for several hours—he was shocked at the depth of his relief.

  Of course, he wouldn’t want anyone to be hurt so recklessly, but, despite himself, he had extra care for the woman he’d grown so close to in a matter of days. The woman he’d almost made love to barely two hours before.

  When he was allowed in to see her, Renata was sitting up in bed. She was dressed in a shapeless hospital gown, her face was stripped clean not only of soot but of any makeup, and her hair was still crusted with soot. And Gabe thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful.

  “They tell me you’ll live,” he joked, disappointed when he didn’t get a smile out of her.

  “So it seems. That was a close one.”

  From her dour expression to her fingers plucking at the sheet, he figured she was blaming herself for not being watchful enough.

  He sat next to her on the bed and said, “Too close,” then placed his hand over hers to reassure her. “But neither of us is to blame, Renata. The killer might be right behind us, but we don’t even know who to look for. We just have to watch each other’s backs.”

  “You did watch mine.” Her soulful gaze met his. “You saved my life.”

  She looked so serious, he wanted to kiss away her frown. But he dared not. He shouldn’t even be touching her. Or sitting so close.

  “I guess we’re even, then,” he said with a shrug far more casual than he was feeling, “which is good, because I don’t like owing a debt that big.”

  Renata did smile then, and Gabe’s heart thumped against his ribs as if he’d been exerting himself. A warmth spread through him, warning him that he was in big trouble.

  Heart trouble.

  Uh-oh…

  Damn if he hadn’t gone and fallen for a government agent!

  SOME NICE SOUL in the hospital laundry had dried their things. Renata was appreciative. She hadn’t looked forward to dressing in damp clothes. Nor had she looked forward to taking public transportation or getting to some place to rent a car to get home.

  Now they didn’t have to.

  The Embry Lake authorities had shown up earlier, and not only had they taken her and Gabe’s statements, but they’d returned Gabe’s car. It seemed that whoever had stolen it had abandoned it within sight of the motel office. So they’d had it dusted for fingerprints and then one of the deputies had driven it to the hospital.

  Renata signed the release papers and a nurse wheeled her to a hospital door, where Gabe took over.

  “You don’t need to help me,” she protested in a hoarse voice, though as usual, he didn’t listen to her.

  As he guided her to the car, his hands were all over her, reminding her of what had almost happened betwee
n them. She got a quick flash of the way he’d looked when they’d almost made love…followed immediately by a flash of the fire.

  Thankfully, the torture was short-lived and they were on their way.

  And thankfully, Gabe didn’t insist on keeping up a conversation. No doubt he was trying to be thoughtful of her throat. She simply was too distracted with her own thoughts about the case—about their almost dying—to engage in the banter he seemed to savor.

  The closer they got to Chicago, the more sure she was of what she had to do.

  Pulse humming, knowing Gabe wasn’t going to like her plans for the afternoon, she said, “When we get back in the city, take me to my place.”

  “You think that’s wise?”

  “I think it’s necessary. I need to clean up and put on fresh clothes before going into the office.”

  “Office?”

  He sounded shocked, Renata realized. No doubt he figured she should keep her distance from all things S.A.F.E. for as long as possible.

  “As much as I hate having to do it,” she admitted, “I need to talk to Mulvihill.”

  “Don’t.”

  Startled by his vehemence, she said, “I have to, Gabe. Mulvihill has to know about the Embry Lake connection.”

  “If he believes you.”

  “I have to take that chance.”

  “You’re going to put yourself in more danger.”

  “You don’t know that.” And why he thought that puzzled her. She might be putting her job in more danger, but not herself. Even so… “I get paid to be in danger, you don’t. I almost got you killed. Again.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I’ve probably done everything wrong, even though my intentions were the best.”

  Her voice was going, so Renata took a sip of the water she’d brought along with her to soothe her throat. She wasn’t working on impulse; while waiting to be released from the hospital, she’d had plenty of time to think about how to proceed.