by Cindy Dees
It didn’t matter what wrong lessons in love they’d taught her, dammit. It wasn’t his job to fix her misconceptions.
Yeah, but if she offered him the assignment, he’d be hard-pressed to turn it down. He had it bad for her, all right. And the list of reasons not to let there be a repeat of tonight went on for miles. Topping the list was the fact that it went against all standards of proper military behavior. Right behind that was that the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Cari. And, surely he would if he let her fall in love with him.
One day soon, this mission would end and he’d walk away from her. The next op would beckon and he’d be out the door to God knows where for God knows how long with no guarantee of returning alive. He couldn’t ask her to wait for him. Her life was already too unstable. She needed someone she could depend on. Someone who’d be there for her every day and every night.
Hell, he’d drive himself crazy with jealousy if he left a girl as beautiful as Cari behind every time he went on the road. He’d seen so many long-distance relationships crumble between soldiers and the girls back home that he couldn’t count them all. It took a special woman to wait alone on the home front and remain loyal through all the long absences his line of work dished out.
A little voice at the back of his brain nagged at him. How could he be so sure Cari wasn’t that special a woman? She’d shown him a hell of a lot of character so far. The kind of fortitude a guy could come to believe in and trust for the times apart.
Maybe making their marriage the real deal wasn’t so farfetched an idea, after all….
Cari shifted against him, mumbling in her sleep and draping her leg across his thighs. Her arm settled across his chest. Inexplicable panic speared through him.
Trapped. He was trapped.
He had to get out of here. And where was “here,” exactly? Was he freaking out about getting away from the irresistible lure of Cari, or was his sudden and overwhelming claustrophobia a result of being trapped in his enemy’s home? It didn’t matter. Either way, he couldn’t lie here one more second.
He eased out from under Cari and breathed a sigh of relief as she slept on. Silently, he changed into the black pants and turtleneck he’d worn earlier. Time to go have a look at the basement.
He cracked open the hallway door. Thank God. No guard standing outside it tonight. Everyone must have figured that he and Cari would have the good sense to stay in for the rest of the night after their disastrous excursion earlier.
He moved quickly down the hallway. In his exploration of the house so far, he’d determined that there weren’t many security cameras in the public areas of the interior. He had found them only around doorways leading in and out of the house. He guessed that the majority of the cameras were reserved for the guest bedrooms and Cari’s room, of course. It was the great weakness of the home. The place was wired to keep intruders out but not to keep intruders in.
He paused, crouching, at the end of the hall. He watched the foyer for a couple of minutes. He knew that guards roamed the house and grounds all night long, but he had no idea what their routine was. He was working blind here. And that meant he had to go slow and be extra careful.
He waited until a guard passed through the entry hall downstairs. The guy was walking slowly, looking around, bored. Definitely the patrolling duty guard. Joe gave the guy a couple minutes to move on and then raced on ballet-dancer-light feet down the sweeping staircase.
His best guess was that the basement entry would be near the kitchen. From the blueprints that they had gotten from a classified source he recalled a couple of pantries and a small office were off the kitchen. Charlie Squad had always assumed that office was where Eduardo’s security men were based. But now that he was inside the mansion and saw the true extent of the operation here, that office wasn’t nearly big enough to house all the electronics, let alone the other monitors and gadgets that had to go with this fortress’s security system.
Besides, if he got caught by the kitchen, he could always claim to be on a refrigerator raid. In fact, he probably ought to grab a snack to act as his cover. He glided across the expanse of the commercial kitchen and opened the big stainless-steel refrigerator. He spied a plate of individually wrapped subs. Perfect. He grabbed one.
Now, to find that basement. He headed for the office next to the kitchen and stopped in front of the closed door. A faint light seeped underneath it. No noise. Impossible to tell if there was someone on the other side of that door or not. His best bet was probably just to open it right up and act like he was snooping if there was someone there.
He unwrapped one end of his sandwich and, armed only with the hoagie, threw open the door.
Nada.
There was a small desk with a newspaper spread out across it. A monitor was perched on one side of the desk. Right now, it showed a view of the dark swimming pool. This must be where the roving guard parked between circuits of the estate. And beyond the desk, bingo.
An open door with a downward staircase. Footsteps slapped on the kitchen floor behind him. The guard returning to his post! Joe bolted for the stairwell and ran most of the way down before he stopped and lay down on the steps to reduce his profile.
Whoever had just entered the little office didn’t poke his head down the stairs. Damn, that had been a close one!
He turned his attention to the other end of the stairwell and eased the rest of the way down the flight of steps. He plastered himself against the wall and stuck one eye out just far enough to peer at what lay beyond.
A long hallway. With doors opening off each side. The floor and walls were unfinished concrete, and row after row of heavy, black cable ran overhead between the wooden beams of the ceiling supports. Those electrical wires were good candidates for cutting if he ever needed to throw the house into chaos. He’d bet a good chunk of the house’s power—and probably the security system’s power—was routed through those lines. A few narrow, brightly colored lines were strung up there, as well—probably phones.
The far end of the hall ended in what looked like a commercial freezer. The big, horizontal stainless-steel bar handle and insulated metal door screamed meat locker. The estate was well outside of town, a long way from the nearest market. They must keep a pretty hefty supply of food, given the number of mouths that had to be fed each day.
Joe eased out into the hall. The first door on his right was cracked open just enough for him to glimpse a wall of television monitors and the back of a man’s head seated before them. The main nerve center of the security operation. Roger, ops, we have primary target acquisition.
This was just the Achilles’ heel he’d been looking for. Knock out that room full of toys and he and Cari could stroll right out of there while everyone ran around like chickens with their heads cut off.
The guy at the video console started to turn and Joe ducked past the doorway quickly. He stopped at the next door, which was closed. He tested the knob. Locked. No time to pick it just now.
A third door revealed a storage room lined with shelves and crammed with the usual junk that houses accumulate in their basements—Christmas decorations, garden tools, assorted camping gear and sports equipment, old lamps and lots of dust. In the back, he found a large heating-and-cooling unit and a half-dozen water heaters. No surprise, a large electrical generator sat there, too. It was silent now, though. Must be the backup system for power outages.
He checked the hallway before heading out again. The coast was clear. He opened the fourth door and stepped into—
Holy crap! A torture chamber. It couldn’t be anything else. The walls and ceiling of the room were completely upholstered in thick, padded blankets, the same kind used in food-processing plants to wrap around frozen food while it was shipped. A plain wooden table and a couple of wooden chairs were the only furniture. The lights were naked bulbs behind wire-mesh cages. There was a small drain grate set into the floor in one corner of the room. Probably served as both prisoner toilet and drain when it was time to hose
away the blood. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he noticed big, dark blotches on the walls. He’d bet his next paycheck those were bloodstains.
God, what a gruesome place. He’d sure as hell hate to end up in here as a client on the receiving end of the twisted services offered within these walls.
The only door left down here was to the freezer. What the hell. He might as well have a look in it, too. He peeked out into the hallway in time to see a figure disappearing into the security office. He waited a few minutes and, when no one emerged again, sprinted down the hall to the freezer. He eased open the latch and pulled the heavy door open far enough to slip inside. A blast of Arctic air slammed into him.
Before he pulled the door shut behind himself, he checked to make sure there was a latch on the inside, too. Yup. He closed himself in, pulled out his pocket flashlight and shined it around the space, which was huge and cavernous.
He spied a light switch beside the door and flipped it on. The room was maybe twenty feet across and at least that deep. Damn. Eduardo could feed a small army out of this place. Maybe the guy was afraid of a siege or something.
Joe moved between the rows of tall shelves, stacked high with all kinds of food. In the back of the freezer, there was a large open area, maybe eight feet deep and running the width of the freezer. A long, coffin-shaped box sat on the floor in one corner. Surely, Eduardo didn’t store dead bodies down here. Not when he could dispose of them so easily by tossing them out into the ocean for the plentiful sharks to consume. Joe tried the lid on the box, but it was padlocked shut at both ends. Weird. Maybe it was just a side of beef or something. But in that case, the locks made no sense. He shrugged and moved on.
Most of the rest of the space was lined with boxes that, as soon as he got close to them, were self-explanatory. They were explosives and ammunition. Crate after crate of the stuff.
It wasn’t necessary to store explosives in a cold environment in this day and age. Not since nitroglycerin was bouncing around in stagecoaches had explosives been that unstable. Perhaps the thick cement walls and steel-reinforced ceiling of the freezer were the real reason this stuff was stacked in here. The meat locker did make an excellent ammo dump, now that he thought about it.
He took a last look at the coffin-shaped box. He grabbed a corner of it and tried to lift it. Very heavy. Maybe there were weapons in there.
The seeds of an escape plan were beginning to take shape in his mind. He’d pry open the box, grab a weapon if there were any inside, maybe snag a little C-4. He’d set up a timed charge to blow a couple bundles of those wires in the ceiling…. It could definitely work….
He headed back to the big storage room. He raided the toolbox he found, pulling out pliers, wire and wire cutters. He snagged an old windup alarm clock off one of the shelves, too, and went to work. He wired the clock to the ignition controls of the backup generator. It took several minutes, and he was careful to get it right. His life and Cari’s might depend on this rig working.
Then he added a crowbar to his cache of tools and headed back down to the meat locker. Quickly, he stashed the tools behind the crates of ammunition. When it was time to escape, he wouldn’t have to root around in the storage room, looking for what he needed. It would be right here. Now, all he had to do was pray he and Cari got a chance to use this stuff sometime soon.
In the meantime, he’d better head back to bed. It would start getting light before long and, with sunrise, the guards would perk up and be more alert.
Quickly and carefully, he retraced his steps down the hall and to the stairs. He made his way up them on his belly and stopped just shy of the little office at the top. Damn. The guard was sitting there, eating. His position on the stairs was completely exposed and he had nowhere else to go.
He lay there for ten interminable minutes. He was starting to contemplate jumping the guard from behind and knocking him out in order to get past him when finally, thankfully, the guy stood up. Joe’s heart about stopped as the guy turned toward the stairs. But all he did was pitch a balled-up sandwich wrapper in the trash can. He turned away, gave his rear end a scratch and left.
Thank God.
All Joe had to do was make it to the kitchen. From there, he could stroll upstairs with his trusty hoagie in hand, without the slightest need for secrecy. He darted into the kitchen. Safe.
He unwrapped the sandwich, took a big bite and headed for bed. Tomorrow night, he and Cari would blow this Popsicle stand once and for all and get on with their lives. A little voice whispered in the back of his head, our lives together.
He narrowly avoided bolting for the front door in panic.
Chapter 13
Joe must have fallen asleep after he slipped back in beside Cari because he experienced a definite moment of waking up later that morning. A moment of registering a soft, warm body plastered against him from shoulder to knee. A moment of roaring response by his own body, and an infinitely worse moment of chagrined realization that there was no way in hell he got to roll over and relieve his rock-hard need on the sumptuous female form beside him. Yeah, he could wake up to her every morning for the rest of his life and not complain about it a bit.
He lay there for a few minutes, soaking in the intensely feminine vibe of white lace all around him. A month ago, he’d have said a room like this would drive him crazy. But, now he had to admit, the fringe benefits weren’t bad at all.
Asleep, Cari looked even younger than he knew her to be, and even more innocent. Hell, downright angelic. He tried to slip out from underneath her without waking her up, but she opened her eyes and smiled up at him sleepily as soon as he moved his arm.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
Her mouth curved up into a smile. “Mmm, I’m not tired.”
She made no move to let him up, no move to roll away from him and relieve his suffering. If anything, she was snuggling even more tightly against him. He closed his eyes. Strength, man. Fortitude.
Her hand crept up to his neck. Slid into his hair. And brought her naked breast into unabashed contact with his bare chest.
Fortitude, be damned. He angled his head down and captured her mouth in a full-contact, wet-tongued, tonsil-probing good-morning-to-you kiss. And, Sweet Lord, if she didn’t taste good. Like peaches. How did she do that? He probably tasted like mouth surgery gone putrid. And that was the only thing that caused him to drag his mouth away from hers and come up gasping for air.
“More,” she panted.
He squeezed his eyes shut. He shouldn’t do this. It was such a bad idea. He’d seen more than one of his own teammates dragged to hell and back by a woman during a mission. He’d regret it for the rest of his life….
And he’d regret it more if he didn’t kiss her this very second. He surged up over her, kissing her like there was no tomorrow. He all but inhaled her, sucking at her mouth, groaning as their tongues scraped together. He couldn’t get enough of her.
“More, Joe. Oh, please. More….”
Her hands were straying again, skimming downward toward places that didn’t need any attention right now.
“Easy does it, princess,” he gasped. “We can’t—”
“Says who?” she grumbled, kissing her way down his neck.
Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God. Her mouth was following the path of her hands—down, down toward parts of him that ached to have her taste him. And he wasn’t stopping her.
He. Had. To. Stop. Her.
It was worse than running in thigh-deep water with an eighty-pound pack on his back, but he managed to drag his hands downward, forced his fingers to wrap around her wrists. He reached deep for the last dregs of his willpower and pulled her hands gently away from him. So that would be what shooting yourself in some vital organ felt like. It sucked, plain and simple.
She moaned in frustration.
“Honey, I know your pain,” he half laughed, half groaned.
“Then why do we have to stop?” she demanded.
“Because
I’ve got work to do and—” another gut check and deep reach for discipline “—and it’s not right.”
Her hands came to rest on his chest once more. “What’s so wrong about this?” she murmured. “It feels pretty darn right to me.”
His gut was ablaze with need. He really shouldn’t. Except he didn’t want to further scar her when it came to men and rejection. Yeah, that was it. That was his story and he was sticking to it, dammit. That was why he leaned forward and planted another searing kiss on her mouth, lest he let those luscious lips wander where they willed, surrounding him and sucking at him, licking and teasing…
“What work do you have to do?” Cari asked.
“I beg your pardon?” He could barely remember his name past the pounding pulse in his crotch.
“Work. You said you had work to do,” she said breathlessly.
At least she had the good grace to sound hot and bothered, too. “Uh, right. Gotta ask your father about an outing for you and me. Gotta have a look at the perimeter security along the fences,” he whispered in her ear.
“Outing?” she repeated, sounding nearly as distracted as he was.
He sat up. Swung his feet over the side of the bed. Stared at the white carpet between his feet and did his damndest to form complete sentences. “Right. Outing. Like shopping. Or dancing.”
“Sounds good.”
“Which?” he mumbled.
“Either,” she mumbled back, sitting up as well.
“I’ll get on it, then.”
Except when he finally managed to get dressed and stumble downstairs, he was informed that Eduardo was absent today. Out of the house this morning on a business errand. That news cleared his head fast. Was Ferrare out collecting the names and addresses of him and his colleagues in Charlie Squad already, perhaps? He had to get the word out to Folly about this latest development.
After breakfast, Joe headed back to Cari’s bedroom or, more accurately, her bathroom to see how she was making out with reconfiguring his cell-phone signal. She’d skipped the meal to get to work on it for him.
