by Cherry Adair
The buzzer continued, overshadowing the sound of crashing cymbals and bongo drums from the CD.
Out of the corner of her eye she suddenly noticed a movement on one of the other screens. Feeling as though she were watching a particularly engrossing tennis match, she rested her behind on the back of the couch.
On the right, in the red glow, she could just see Duchess, crouched low. Three men stood talking, mere feet away from her dog.
On the left screen, Jake stripped off his wet jacket, hair damp, face ruddy from the cold. His lips were pressed into a grim line.
"Come on, Jake. Move it," she whispered urgently, switching to watch the motionless dog almost hidden by the shrubs. So close and yet so far.
Marnie figured Duchess had been on her way to Jake's cabin when the men had intercepted her. They didn't seem in any hurry to leave. Fortunately, it didn't look as though they'd seen Duchess. Yet.
"Good girl, you stay put." Her voice was a soft entreaty, but her heart pounded.
"Find a good channel?" Jake asked, coming up beside her before she even realized he'd entered the room.
Marnie dropped the cookie, stifled a scream, then dragged in a shaky breath. "Holy cow, Jake! You scared another ten years off my life. Next time, cough or whistle or something when you come in." She nodded at the monitor. "Duchess was almost here, and those creeps aren't moving."
Damn. I might have known.
She was wearing a towel.
Just a towel, by the looks of it. Unwillingly Jake's gaze followed the naked curve of her shoulder. Her skin was pale. And smooth-looking. And smelled, God help him, sexy as sin. He wanted to bend down and lick those droplets off the curve of her throat.
"Jake? What can we do?"
She had a faint dusting of freckles across her shoulders, well-defined biceps, and about a mile of silky, slender leg showing beneath the dark towel. She looked soft, feminine, and sultry.
A deadly combination.
"Nothing," he managed around the growing thickness in his throat. "I left clothes for you over there. Put them on."
"Sure."
She didn't move.
He looked at her mouth. It made him want to do things. Hot things. Wild things. Things that had nothing to do with what he should be doing.
His flannel shirt clung to his damp skin like a shroud. His boots felt too hot. His chest was too constricted and his pants too damn tight.
"I should have tossed you in the river and made you swim to the other side." His voice sounded like ground chuck.
Her eyes, with their long, spiky, childlike lashes, sparkled as she gave him an angelic look. "I would have drowned, then come back to haunt you."
She was haunting him now.
"Get some clothes on. We need to talk."
She held his gaze. "What about Duchess?"
"I don't think she can add anything to the conversation," Jake said dryly.
"Funny man."
"We aren't going to do anything." Which answered both their questions rather succinctly, Jake thought.
"But she—"
"When the men move, I'll get her." It came out more harshly than he intended. "Just because you're used to getting your own sweet way doesn't mean I'm going up there to rescue your dog and take the chance of getting shot."
"All I w—"
"I'm not going up there."
Marnie slipped her hand over his mouth. "I didn't ask you to."
Her hand felt soft and warm against his lips. This close he could see a darker ring around the clear blue of her irises, exhaustion smudged her eyes, damp hair clung to her creamy neck and shoulders. The smell of his soap on her skin gave him a hard-on. Ah, Judas.
Very gently he put his fingers around her wrist and removed her hand, then let go of her as if he'd been electrically charged.
"For now we stay put. They can't see the dog. And they don't know we're down here watching them. Relax. The dog's smart enough to stay hidden, and nobody can get to us in here."
"Hmmm." She held his gaze a moment longer. "Is that why you built a fortress? So nobody can get to you?"
"I never expected visitors. It was constructed as an exercise. A testing ground for my inventions, far away from prying eyes. The place is perfect. People rarely come up here, especially at this time of the year. I do most of the work in spring and winter. Nobody knows about its existence."
"I don't understand." Marnie gave him a puzzled look. "If you aren't hiding and you didn't expect anyone to come up here, why do you have all this?" Her sweeping hand indicated the monitors, the computer, the entire setup. She frowned. "And people do know about it and are up here."
"So I've noticed." He was freezing his ass off and wanted a hot shower almost more than he wanted her. He knew she had trouble controlling her breathing when she looked at him, as she was doing right now. Her cornflower blue eyes couldn't hide the fact that she wanted him right back. Luckily for him, he was a master at disguising the few feelings he still had.
He returned her heated gaze with cool detachment. Without actually looking, he noticed the bead of water that trembled on her collarbone, and then saw it trail, with excruciating slowness, down the soft plumpness of her right breast. "This gadgetry is a hobby."
"You mean you invented all this cool stuff?" She gave him a droll look. "A hobby would be something like building model airplanes, Jake. This is more than a hobby."
"Some of the things I've come up with have sold. The money has come in handy for making more espionage detection and deterrent hardware."
She was incredibly appealing when she grinned like this. Hell, she was incredibly appealing anytime. Damn it. Why her? Why now?
"You mean spy toys. Lord, it must have taken you years to build all this."
"Five. Get dressed, for godsake." If he looked at her in the skimpy towel much longer…
Marnie spun on one bare foot and walked to the bed. "What you need is a life, Jake." She picked up the clothing he'd left for her and said over her shoulder, "There's a lot more going on here than a hobby, and I want to know what that is. Close your eyes."
She dropped the towel.
Close his eyes? Judas Priest. A two-by-four applied directly to his forehead couldn't close his eyes right now.
His gaze riveted on the sweet curve of her backside, on a mile of curvaceous leg and thigh, on—
He took a step forward. Something crunched underfoot.
Saved by a cookie.
While Jake took a hot shower, Marnie fixed roast beef sandwiches. Unlike the cupboards in the cabin, Jake's stronghold revealed all sorts of goodies. The fridge was filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, the freezer jam-packed with a wide assortment of meats, chicken, and gallon containers of ice cream. A man after her own heart.
Marnie managed to keep her eyes fixed on sandwich making. Most of the time.
She'd felt his gaze on her like a brand when she dropped her towel, so she figured she was entitled to a couple of sneak peeks at Jake Dolan naked. It was only fair. There didn't appear to be an ounce of fat on him, and he was tanned all over. He had a runner's legs dusted with dark hair, a tight, sexy behind, a narrow waist, and broad shoulders. The picture of him soaping his lean flanks was indelibly imprinted on her synapses. She ached inside with the need to touch him. Biting her lip, she turned back to the mundane task of sandwich making before she lost all reason and attacked him in the shower.
She almost amputated a finger with the sharp knife in her hand when he came up behind her and interrupted her mental fantasy.
"Cough, remember?" she reminded him, blushing as she handed him a plate with a sandwich on it.
"That looks good. Thanks."
He wore black jeans and a black sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up his muscular arms. Like her, he was barefoot.
Jake glanced down her bare legs. "Didn't I give you sweatpants to wear?"
She rolled her eyes. "There's a ten-foot difference in our heights. I almost killed myself tripping over the legs. Don't
worry, I'm decently covered. I have a pair of your boxers on underneath, see?"
She lifted the hem of the thigh-length sweatshirt to show him the navy cotton shorts she wore underneath. "I know it's kinda personal wearing your underwear, but necessity is the mother of invention, right?"
"You didn't invent my underwear, you took it out of the drawer." He dragged his eyes away from her legs with great reluctance. Or so it seemed to Marnie.
She gave him a curious look. "Unlike your cabin, this place could handle a year-long siege. How on earth did you haul all this stuff up here? Not just the food, but all these machines, and those huge monitors. Someone must have helped you."
"No, just a hell of a lot of trips over the years. Most of the components were brought up, then constructed here. What I didn't haul in on my back, I brought by chopper."
"How long have you—"
"Enough cocktail chitchat." Jake cut her off. "Let's sit down. We need to cover some things before this gets hairy. Then I want to get some shut-eye."
"Fine. You take the plates, I'll bring the coffee." She added milk to her mug, then followed him to the couch. "Okay. Fill me in." She set the mugs down on the trunk and sat down, wrapping her arms around her drawn-up knees. "Who's who and what's what?"
His eyes on her mouth, Jake growled low in his throat, then pressed his fingers into his eye sockets.
About to reach for her mug, she shot him a startled glance. "Are you okay?"
"I'm starting to believe in mercy killing," he said in a strangled voice.
She gave him a puzzled look, then tossed some of the pillows off the couch and onto the floor to make more room. She picked up her mug. She'd made the coffee strong, and it was too hot to drink. She cradled it between her hands and waited.
The Dave Sanborn CD she'd put on while Jake showered played softly in the background.
On the monitor, Duchess remained hidden while the three men conferred, or took shelter from the snow. No one was going anywhere tonight.
Jake ran his fingers through his wet hair. "You should get some rest."
"You said we needed to talk. So let's do it. I have a right to know what I'm in the middle of. And since my need to know who the bad guys are exceeds my need to sleep, and I can talk with my mouth full, let's talk. First of all, Jake Dolan, who are you really? You live in a basement like a techno mole."
"Basement?" He gave a short, sardonic laugh. "Okay, why the hell not? At this rate I'll atrophy in my two-million-dollar basement anyway."
He rubbed a hand across his chin, obviously reluctant to tell her anything, but torn due to the circumstances.
"Those guys are here to erase me. The question is, whose people are they?"
A chill raced across Marnie's skin at his casual use of the word erase.
"Whose do you think?" Her fingers tightened around the warmth of the mug. "Come on, Jake, talk to me. I'm trapped here just like you are. And I'm not embarrassed to say the situation scares me to death. I'm not used to assassins chasing me up and down a mountain and shooting at me. The least you could do is tell me what I've landed myself in the middle of."
"You do realize," he said flatly, "if you're not who you say you are, and I debrief you, I'll have to kill you?"
She wasn't a hundred percent sure he was joking.
"I am who I say I am. Debrief me. Please." She had a quick irreverent flash of his hands skimming her hips as he "debriefed" her out of his underwear.
"I work for a covert, black-ops organization called T-FLAC. Terrorist Force Logistical Assault Command. We're the ones who go in when there's a problem with terrorists."
"You work for the government? Thank God, call—"
"Not officially, and not only ours," he said flatly, shutting her up with a dark glance. He drank his coffee in silence for a moment before he spoke again, his voice grim. "Terrorists are global and, unfortunately, prolific. We go where we're needed."
"You must be very good at your job."
"Why?"
"They wouldn't have sent a whole army to bump off one guy if you weren't."
He was good at what he did because, as she'd quickly learned, he was a man who could control his emotions. Just as she was no more than a nuisance to him, those men out there were a job, no matter who sent them.
"Killing me wouldn't make much of an impact in the scheme of things. All T-FLAC operatives are good." He rubbed his jaw. "All indications point to the assassins being T-FLAC, and that—"
"Your own team is trying to kill you?" Marnie asked indignantly.
"Judas, I don't know. I suspect—yeah. Something's been going down for several years. It escalated last month.
"T-FLAC's been around a lot of years. Good rep. Top people. Two months ago I was hauled off an important assignment in the Midwest and sent on garbage detail to a small no-name cesspool in the Middle East. It wasn't a big deal. Just a favor. I wasn't happy about it—the Omaha operation was about to pay off. I took a junior guy with me to the cleanup site.
"When we got there, the shit hit the fan. The tangos were expecting me. They killed my man. The garbage wasn't ready for pickup. It was a hell of a mess. I cleaned up what I could, and split."
Marnie looked up at him. "Did they ever find out who warned them?"
Jake looked grim. "Every indication pointed to me being the mole."
"How dare they think that!"
"The evidence was strong. No one knew where I was or what I was doing."
"Nonsense! The man who was killed knew where you were and what you were doing. The person who sent you there knew what you were doing and where you were."
"The guy I took with me had a low security clearance. He didn't know where or what until we were there. The man who sent me in is the head of T-FLAC. No way, nohow would he put two of his operatives in that kind of danger. The only one it could have been was me."
"What evidence?" she asked indignantly. Then, without waiting for him to answer, she said crossly, "I don't care if they found you pushing up marigolds with soil on top of your head and the roots in your teeth. You're no mole!"
She might not know much about Jake Dolan, but the little she did know indicated that he was an honorable man. And an honorable man wouldn't sell out his own team no matter what anyone thought. She was irrationally furious on his behalf and narrowed her eyes when he chuckled.
"Don't laugh. You know what I meant. And what kind of organization doubts you when you're their best spy guy and have worked there for—How long?"
"Sixteen years," Jake muttered. "There's more. A hell of a lot more. Before I was pulled out to go overseas, I'd been control for an ongoing assignment in Omaha. When I hit stateside it was to discover that all our people on the inside had been massacred. They'd worked for two years undercover, and a month before the bust, every last one of them died. And I was conveniently out of the country at the time."
"But they sent you."
"Men and women killed. Good people." His tone didn't change, but his body stiffened as taut as a violin string.
"Too many screwups, too close together. The price tag was too damn steep. Our organization isn't huge, but we sure as hell are the best at what we do. If our people believe I was responsible for the screwups and the deaths, you bet they'd off me in a heartbeat."
"I don't get it. Why would they believe the worst of you?"
He paused for a long time. "They know I've become single-minded in my need to pursue one man." Jake looked at her, his eyes dark and dangerously fiat. "Revenge can make a man sloppy."
"Against whom?"
"A terrorist named Dancer. I've been after the son of a bitch for six years. Everyone knows I won't stop until I find him. They think I've been distracted, careless, because my efforts to find the rock he's hiding under have been relentless."
"Have you been?"
"Careless?"
"Relentless."
"Dancer is the driving force behind the Shining Path of America in Omaha, where my people were murdered last month. H
e was the reason I was selected to do the Middle East cleanup. Because I'm the one who knows Dancer best. I didn't give a damn about his disciples, his army, or his chemical plant," Jake said bitterly. "I wanted Dancer. And Dancer had fled to the Middle East. He was the only thing that could have gotten me to leave so close to the end. So my single-mindedness did kill my people in Omaha, and the kid who went with me to the Middle East."
Jake raked his fingers through his hair, his face gaunt, his eyes haunted. "Dancer was responsible for the death of one of my closest friends six years ago."
Obviously exhausted, he was also frustrated and majorly ticked off. Marnie wished there was something she could do to help Jake.
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and stared at the intricate patterns on the area rug at his feet. His dark hair fell forward, so she couldn't see his face.
"People tend to think of terrorists as a handful of Middle Eastern or leftist fanatics, bent on achieving ideological goals through death and intimidation. The reality is terrorists are more obscure. Groups of fanatics pursuing sometimes hard-to-understand agendas, with random violence as their common denominator. Some of them are doing it for money, some for political gain, others because of ethnic conflicts.
"We have no damn idea what the hell Dancer's agenda is. He's number three on the U.S. State Department's 'dirty thirty' list.
Jake's dark blue eyes met hers. A shiver of fear climbed Marnie's spine at the look in his.
"He's number one on mine," he finished flatly. "And everyone knows it. Things have escalated. We caught Dancer's people with eighty pounds of typhoid bacteria cultures they planned to dump into the water of midwestern cities two years ago. We stopped them. That time. But we don't know where he'll hit next.
"After the massacre in Omaha, he disappeared like smoke. Again. In the meantime, I've been suspended awaiting a full inquiry. And while I'm pinned down here by the guys topside, God only knows what the son of a bitch is doing. Or where he's doing it."
Marnie drained her cup, needing more coffee but not wanting to get up. The story was riveting. She would have preferred reading it to actually living it, but she had wanted a grand adventure. And this was certainly that and more.
