“No,” Jeth told him flatly. “Allyn stays here, or I don’t go anywhere.”
“Your story’ll go down easier if she’s there,” Russ argued.
“My story?” Jeth’s jaw tightened. “You can’t get the state prosecutor’s office in Tucson to corroborate my cover?”
Russ laughed harshly. “Corroborate it? They’re the ones gave you up on the alleged abduction and murder, babe. You’re on your own with the feds and the DEA, and they want you bad.”
“Because the guy in Flagstaff was supposedly a federal witness.”
“That’s what they say. My guess, there’s more to it than that, but since they’re not filling me in and neither are you…” Russ shrugged. “I got the fact you’re my brother to make me believe you and the fact I haven’t seen you in three years to make me doubt.”
“Thanks,” Jeth said tautly. “I haven’t seen you in the same amount of time. Should I doubt you, too?”
“I’m not the one with the problem.”
A muscle near Jeth’s eye twitched. He looked away, across the hot afternoon haze and the lazy rustle of cottonwood leaves.
“They tell you that federal witness was in that alley to execute a hit on an undercover investigator and his wife, then take Sasha back to Baltimore and dangle him between the Russian mob and some Colombian drug runners and see who bit first?”
Russ’s turn to clench his jaw, anger alerted but contained. “No.”
“They also forget to tell you there was another shooter in that alley, the witness’s partner, and I think he killed him trying to shoot me?”
Another clipped negative from Russ, tied to an almost imperceptible thinning of his mouth.
Hand sliding over to cover Allyn’s thigh, Jeth nodded. “Fact.” He gestured his chin at his bandaged shoulder. “S’what happened here. They shot first. I fired, but don’t know if I hit either of them. Casings from my gun were in the alley, but whether or not they took my rounds out of the guy’s chest…” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Russ swore. “Who ordered the hit?”
“No idea. Weren’t too many people knew I was undercover. Couple people at the DEA, assistant director on the FBI end, my office. Colombians could have figured I was working with the Russians when I took Sasha. Unless somebody fed the info to the Colombians, only our guys could have figured my background and where I might go soon enough to find and follow us. We haven’t seen any of the Russians, but Allyn’s pretty sure we had law with us between Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Then I didn’t notice anybody until Flagstaff.”
Russ’s mouth worked. The anger roiled, dark and hungry, behind his eyes. “You’re tellin’ me you think somebody from the DEA, the feds or your office sent someone to kill you?”
Jeth shrugged. “I don’t know what else to think. I do know the idea of bringing Allyn or Sasha anywhere near them doesn’t sit.”
Allyn covered the hand he’d left on her thigh. “You can’t go anywhere near them, either,” she said fiercely. “At least if I go with you they can’t do anything as easily because if they do, someone will find out.”
“No.”
“Especially if we call Gabriel first and—”
“No.”
“Gabriel?” Russ asked.
“My stepfather used to be a fibbie,” Allyn said. “He might be useful.”
“I don’t care what he used to be,” Jeth snapped. “He’s got a five-year-old at home, and these guys don’t stop because it’s a kid. Judas, think, Lyn. That’s what happened to Marcy. That’s how we got here, because some mobster wouldn’t give ground and they got hold of his kid.”
“You think I don’t realize that?” Allyn snapped. “Because I do, maybe better than you.”
“Wait,” Russ said, lost in the shorthand of their longer-term association. “Your stepfather was with the FBI, but you have a kid by a member of the Russian Mafia?”
“Only in a manner of speaking,” Allyn managed to say in a more or less truthful aside before Jeth interrupted.
“No other kid goes down for me, Lyn, none. Not Sasha, not Rachel, not any of your nieces or nephews or cousins, you got that?”
“Oh, I hear.” Allyn flung herself off the bench, stalked the porch. “Now you listen to me, you big pigheaded, lunk-headed macho numbskull. Marcy did not go down for you. She was taken. She was used. Yeah, maybe you didn’t handle things exactly right, but from what I gather you had nowhere to go to handle ’em better and you did your best to get her back. Maybe it wasn’t enough, but it was all you had at the time, right? You got more now. You got me, and I’m not lettin’ you go down for anybody without a plan and especially not without backup. You ask me, the reason you were sent into the situation in Baltimore was because somebody knew how you’d react to finding a kid in your undercover after what happened to Marcy and used her in order to use you again. So you can just stick that in your freaking pipe and suck on it!”
For the space of three heartbeats Jeth and Russ stared at her, stunned. Then they eyed each other, turned to Allyn.
“Say that again?” Russ asked.
“Judas stinking Priest,” Jeth whispered, and slumped into the bench, all the fury going out of him. He’d gotten it the first time. “When did you figure that out?”
Allyn grimaced. “Just now, when I said it.”
“But that would mean you were set up from the get,” Russ began—and stopped, at a loss as to where to take it from there.
“Why?” Jeth asked, not them, but himself. “What earthly good could using me because they figured I’d take Sasha do anyone? Especially when… No.” He shook his head, looked at Allyn. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“None of this ever made sense,” Allyn reminded him. “It just started when it started for what appeared to be a reason but no real apparent end.”
“Territory,” Jeth murmured, rising to pace stiffly, unconsciously working the kinks out of his left side at the same time. “The Russians had it, the Colombians wanted it.”
“Why pull a special investigator out of Tucson to work undercover in a territorial war in Baltimore?” Allyn asked. “Couldn’t they find someone closer to home to set up an unknown exchange program with?”
“Uh-uh.” Jeth shook his head. “Not someone as familiar with the border-trafficking problems we’ve got down here as somebody from down here.”
“The Colombians aren’t bringing their stuff into Baltimore through Miami or somewhere along the coast?” Russ asked.
“Not when it’s safer to have mules and illegals pack it across the Mexican border and any other place immigration will miss them.”
“How much quantity can they deal in that way?”
Jeth eyed his brother. “You know the answer to that.”
Russ sighed. “Yeah, I suppose. Plenty. The question remains, though. If Allyn’s right, why set you up specifically?”
“I don’t know.” The flash of near understanding that he’d reached in Kentucky became clearer. Marcy, he thought. It always came back to Marcy. To the person or persons he’d missed catching then. To the similarity between the territorial wars and the way his assignment seemed to have him caught in the middle. To the way his cover had been blown, allowing his family, his baby sister, to be threatened and used against him in the first place. How many common links were there between the cases? Not many. Only—” His features hardened. “But I think I’m beginning to guess.”
Allyn caught the unyielding determination of the look and seized his arm when he stopped near her. “No,” she said sharply. “You can’t. Not like this. You’re in no shape—”
He stopped her protests with a kiss that was deep and telling, uncompromising. “It has to be done, Lynnie,” he told her quietly. “You’re the one said we couldn’t do this forever. Well, it’s time to stop running and see if we can’t figure out what tune the piper’s playing and then make him pay.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“So I worry about you on top of everythin
g else?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, good,” Allyn said sarcastically. “Your shoulder’s bandaged, your arm’s in a sling, you don’t have your strength back, but now you get noble.”
Jeth grinned, roughed his hand across her cheek and through her hair. “Hey, a guy can’t be a self-sacrificing chauvinistic pig when he’s down, what good is he?”
She snorted, stuck her nose in the air and turned her back on him.
“Somebody mind filling me in?” Russ asked.
Allyn glared at him. “He wants you to broker a deal to take him in without saying anything about me or Sasha so he can figure out who’s behind whatever this is that’s been going on.”
Chapter 16
In the end they came up with a plan that didn’t really satisfy anybody.
Russ wanted Guy involved—three brothers was always better than two, he argued, especially when the extra two were also local law of one sort or another. Allyn still wanted to phone Gabriel, who’d had non-law enforcement friends in the right places to get her out of trouble in the past. Jeth and Russ both vetoed this—as did Guy when he arrived—but no longer just because of Rachel or the rest of Allyn’s large family. None of the brothers was willing to trust the phone lines, or willing to trust that Russ hadn’t been followed when he’d returned to the canyon. They were fairly certain that even the newest listening technology couldn’t penetrate the canyon’s walls without interference, but didn’t want to chance phone lines into the village that might have been tapped or phone lines outside where they could be overheard.
As Allyn pointed out to all three of them, a little paranoia was a fascinating thing, but a lot was just damned annoying.
They turned three looks of similarly mild amusement in her direction and continued planning.
She had the last laugh on Jeth, however, when both Russ and Guy agreed that it would probably be in Sasha’s best interests if Allyn was part of the deal the brothers brokered with the feds. Jeth didn’t like it at all but caved when Allyn notified him as calm as you please that if he went and left her to her own devices, the consequences could just plain old be on his head because she was damned if she was going to sit and wait for word of his demise like some merchant seaman’s wife, especially when she wasn’t one. Not when Sasha was as well hidden in plain sight as they could possibly make him and leaving her behind would likely only convince The Powers That Be that Jeth had more to hide than they wanted those powers to think.
Jeth wasn’t sure he tracked the logic behind Allyn’s contention, but it really didn’t matter; he couldn’t change her mind and he knew her well enough by now to realize she would find some way to go with him no matter what.
The sun was a red glare behind the canyon walls when Jeth’s brothers finally left to make arrangements for the morrow. The moment they were out of sight he spun stiffly on her.
“Damn it, Lyn,” he started, “what the hell—”
But that was as far as he got before she was across the porch and in his arms, kissing him and knocking the breath out of him.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Not now. We knew it couldn’t last. Tomorrow things change. Let’s don’t waste tonight.”
Tomorrow things change. Looking into her face, Jeth shuddered at the thought, pressed some distance between them without letting her go.
“Tomorrow,” he said, expression hooded. “We haven’t talked about that, have we?”
She touched his jaw. “It doesn’t matter, Jeth. If there’s anything to talk about we can talk about it after. If there’s not…I’ll still always be glad it was you.”
He bent his head, kissed her roughly. Rested his forehead on hers. “Damn, Lynnie,” he muttered against her mouth. “If there was ever anyone I could promise things to it’d be you.”
“I know.” She traced his mouth, outlined his lips, ran her finger down his chest to hook it in the front of his jeans and pull him after her into the house. “Later, okay? Tonight let’s just…” She smiled and let her voice trail off, leaving Jeth to fill in the blanks.
Which he did willingly.
She undressed him while he told her all the things he planned to do to her, starting from the top and nibbling his way down to her toes, licking his way up again.
“Later.” She eased his shirt off him, gave him a simmering look. “Right now I’m in charge and this is what I’m going to do….”
And she told him, then suited action to words by tickling his nipples with her tongue, then planting openmouthed kisses over them before working her way down his belly while her hands worked his jeans open and drew them and his boxers down his hips, his legs. Her mouth followed, teasingly, agonizingly close to the root of instant desire but never quite close enough. When she’d tugged the jeans to his ankles, she pushed him into an armless chair and knelt to draw them off his feet before she rose, dangled them momentarily from a finger, then dropped them in a heap.
Jeth didn’t know what she did to make the move seem so sexy, but his mouth felt suddenly dry, his pulse pounded, and his entire body flushed and went rigid with hunger.
“Sweet heaven.” A rasp, a groan. “Now you.”
“Soon.” She moved behind him and kissed his ear, then disappeared into the bedroom, returned a moment later with a bottle of baby oil and set it on the floor in front of him. Rose again.
He looked at the bottle, at her standing before him reaching around underneath her shirt. “Judas, Allyn, you’re making me crazy. What are you going to do with that?”
“Use your imagination.” Her voice was smoky. Undulating her hips as she did so, Allyn slid a hand inside one sleeve of her shirt, then the other, drew her bra straps over her wrists, then reached in and pulled the scrap of cotton down the front of her shirt and tossed it to him.
He caught it and stared at her, torn between laughter and the inability to breathe, the increasing stiffness between his thighs.
“Damnation, woman, who taught you that? I know for a fact we’ve never done this before, and since there wasn’t anyone before me…”
“True,” she agreed, turned and spread her legs, bent to pick up the oil and give him a good look at her rearview. Straightened to pour oil into her palms. “But I’ve led a rich fantasy life.”
He groaned when she sashayed toward him, warming the viscous fluid in her hands. “I can tell. Damn, you’re going to kill me before you let me touch you, aren’t you.”
“No.” She moved behind him again, began massaging his neck and right shoulder, bent to slide her hands down his chest, drag them up while she ran her teeth along the vulnerable area beneath his ear, over the pulse in his throat. “I’m just going to give you a night you won’t forget.”
He tipped his head back to meet her mouth, reached to spear his fingers into her hair, relishing the rapt attention of her kiss, the taste of her tongue exploring his mouth, coaxing his exploration of hers. If this was what drowning felt like, let him die here and now, locked with her forever like this.
“I will never forget any night I’ve had with you.” The vow was fierce, soft, believable. “Ever.”
“Good.”
Her hands left him, her mouth didn’t. Then her hands came back, followed the line of his jaw, neck, shoulder, throat as she moved in front of him, naked from the waist down.
And stood on tiptoes to straddle him and the chair without sitting down. She bent her head to look at him, and her hair spread around them, a wild cloud of brown velvet with auburn highlights burned into it by the Arizona sun.
His smile was slow and appreciative, seductive and welcoming. “It’s about time.” He wrapped his arm around her waist. “Come here.”
“Not without you,” she whispered, and dipped her head to kiss him while he pulled her into his lap and fitted himself inside her.
Their loving was slow and thoughtful and lasting, took them through the long night and into the dawn before Jeth finally put his back to the bed and let Allyn take him with her over that ultimate
pinnacle where time seemed to stop and tomorrow existed only in afterthought.
The climax was long and molten, seemed to crest and rise, taper and recreate itself stronger than before until the last devastating explosion had them gasping and calling out, clinging wetly to each other for dear life, he her rock, she his life raft, while the world spun away from them and they were a new universe unto themselves.
Russ and Guy were on the porch almost too early, as was evidenced by the fact that Allyn found herself hiding behind Jeth and hastily buttoning the tangerine silk camisole she’d donned with a pair of lightweight cargo-pocket jeans after she’d helped Jeth with his shower.
The shower had gotten out of hand, then breakfast had gotten out hand, found them once again reaching for each other without inhibition, eager for one last joining, a final moment of staving off the inevitable.
One moment had turned into two, and two into…well, suffice it to say, Jeth’s brothers were here and she was pretty thoroughly mussed again. Jeth was shirtless, his jeans mostly zipped but not buttoned, his attitude one of a man who’d been interrupted in the midst of something far more vital than answering the door to greet the end of the world. He crossed his good arm unselfconsciously across his naked chest and eyed his brothers.
“You ready?” Russ asked. “We’re supposed to meet a guy from your office and a couple of feds in Seligman for a debriefing before they take you into Kingman.” His eyes slid past Jeth at the movement of Allyn’s shadow retreating toward the bedroom. “Sorry.” He sounded like he meant it.
Jeth looked over his shoulder, gut full of regret. “Yeah,” he agreed. His gaze raked his brothers. “Whatever happens today, you make sure she’s out of it, you hear me?”
“Have faith, man,” Guy said lightly. “Not that I think you have to worry about her, anyway. She seems like the kind of woman could handle an army easy. Now you comin’ or what?”
Jeth’s lip curled in sardonic amusement at Guy’s assessment of Allyn. His second oldest brother was more right than he could possibly know. “Wait.”
A Drive-By Wedding Page 21
