by Paula Graves
“Cooper?” Scanlon’s voice came from inside the room, barely more than a whisper.
Standing to look at him through the narrow gap between the window curtains, she tapped lightly on the windowpane. He whirled at the sound, his eyes widening.
She pushed the window upward. “Help me back inside.”
He took the backpack she handed through the window and helped her onto the sill. “Why the hell did you go outside?”
“Because I knew she’d look in the closet,” she answered, as he closed the window behind her. “And I was right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me. I wasn’t the one you went all ‘Hey, babe, don’t tie me down’ with.”
“I meant it to be harsh,” he said flatly. “We were getting to the point in the relationship where I was either going to have to score a touchdown or fake a fumble.”
“That’s the most awkward sports analogy I’ve ever heard.”
He grinned. “You know what I mean.”
“She was going to expect you to sleep with her.”
He nodded.
She feigned an indifference she didn’t feel. “Most undercover operatives would consider that a perk of the job.”
“It’s not what I want. I don’t like using people as it is. Using her that way would be damned near criminal.”
“Glad to hear it.” She handed him the satellite phone tucked in her pocket. “I put it on mute, so you’ll need to check to see if Brand called.”
Scanlon’s expression darkened. “I need to call him about your extraction anyway.”
He was pretty damned determined to be rid of her, too. For the same reasons he was shaking off Dahlia McCoy?
While Scanlon dialed the phone, Isabel sat on the bed and opened the file folder, trying to ignore his call while she ran over the notes again.
Scanlon hung up. “Still no answer.”
Isabel frowned. “Should we worry?”
“If he’s in a high-level meeting at the Bureau, he can’t drop everything to answer. But if we leave it much longer, there’ll be no way to set up an extraction by tonight.”
“So eager to be shed of me,” she murmured.
He turned to look at her, his eyes dark with feeling. “I’m dreading it. But I want you safe.”
Warmth spread in her chest and tears pricked her eyes. “We really do work better together than apart.”
Sitting next to her, he nudged her with his shoulder, a gesture she’d come to consider a sign of affection. “Maybe that’s one reason I’m trying to distance myself from Dahlia.”
She nudged his shoulder back. “Can’t handle more than one woman in your bed at a time?”
He turned to look at her, his expression more serious than she’d expected after her attempt to lighten the mood. “I don’t want more than one woman in my bed.”
Scanlon’s gaze was all smoky-blue intensity, sending a shudder of need racing through Isabel’s body, a fierce, primal longing to take him inside her, to claim him as hers just as surely as he’d brand her as his own.
The satellite phone trilled, rattling Isabel’s nerves. She looked away, feeling edgy and breathless.
“I was beginning to wonder if I needed to send someone to track you down,” Scanlon was saying into the phone. After a second, he added, “I think we need to reconsider that—it’s getting too dangerous—”
Brand must have interrupted, for Scanlon went silent again, just listening. His thoughts were hard to read in his expression, which seemed to vacillate between alarm and an odd sort of reluctant pleasure. Finally, he spoke again: “I understand. Will do, sir.” He shut off the phone and turned to look at Isabel. “He doesn’t want to do the extraction before Addie’s party tomorrow afternoon.”
She was surprised, not so much that Brand had wanted her there with Scanlon but by how little Scanlon had put up a fight. He’d seemed so determined to get her out of Bolen Bluff tonight. Aloud, she just said, “Okay,” and gave a brief nod.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” she said bluntly.
“I hope you don’t have any reason to change your mind about that,” he responded, shoving the phone into his pocket and heading for the bedroom door. “But for now, I’ve got to go out to the drop site.”
She followed him out of the room. “In broad daylight?”
“He doesn’t think we should let this delivery sit out there too long. The risk of discovery is too great.” Scanlon started to put the satellite phone into its box, then stopped, looking at her. He handed the phone to her. “Put it on mute again, but it’ll vibrate slightly. Answer it if it rings.”
She took the phone and walked with him into the front room. “What, exactly, are we in such a hurry to pick up from the barn?”
He grabbed his camouflage jacket from the arm of the futon sofa and shrugged it on. “A new way of interacting with the world outside,” he answered with a grin.
“Which, translated to normal-people English, means?”
His grin broadened. “Daddy finally got us that computer we’ve always wanted.”
* * *
SCANLON MADE THE TRIP to the drop site without incident, easily locating the plastic-wrapped devices the Huntsville FBI couriers had left hidden beneath the old corn bin. He tucked the bundle inside the camouflage backpack he’d borrowed back from Isabel and hiked back up the mountain to the cabin without spotting any signs of other humans in the woods.
She was waiting impatiently in the bedroom. “You want me to set it up for you?”
Flattering, he thought with a hint of amusement. “You have such faith in my abilities.”
“You’re not a computer expert.”
“And you are?”
She made a face. “Do we really want to examine the history of our past encounters with high technology?”
“No,” he admitted. He’d usually turned to her for help with any technological disasters he had encountered. “Brand said there’d be a note inside.” He finished unwrapping the notebook computer from the padded plastic. Also inside the same packaging was a smartphone and a couple of simple connector cables. He set them aside and opened the notebook computer.
As promised, a single sheet of notepaper lay inside. Several lines of instructions scrawled across the page.
Written in German.
Isabel had taken German in college—which Brand would certainly know. A crude but probably effective form of cryptology, in these backwoods, at least. “This is for you.”
“Hmm.” She studied the page, her brow furrowed. “First, it says to set up a password.” She looked up at him. In unison, they said, “Robert Frost.”
He smiled—one of the first things they’d bonded over as partners was their enjoyment of Frost’s poetry.
“That works,” he said, watching as she set up the password. “All one word, lowercase?”
“Yeah.” She finished and picked up the note. “The next part tells us how to set up internet access with the cell phone, but I think I can handle that.”
Scanlon moved out of the way and let her settle on the bed beside the computer. She powered up the laptop and connected the smartphone with a small cord. A few touches on the display panel later, a search engine popped onto the screen.
“The note also said to look for a file named ‘Coopon’ in the documents folder.” She slanted a look at Scanlon. “That’s his choice of a portmanteau for us? Really?”
She found the file. It contained a web address, a date and a time. “Today at 3:00 p.m.” Isabel looked at the clock. “Ten minutes from now. Brand does love cutting it close.”
“Where does the web address go?”
She typed the address into a browser window and reached a web chat portal. A dialogue box asked for a user name.
“Coopon?” Scanlon suggested.
“If it is, I’ll kill him.” She typed it in. An error message came up.
“Try the computer user name you used at the FBI.” That n
ame had been straightforward—last name, first initial.
She typed those letters in and clicked the button. The chat window came up and she was in.
So were five other chatters. Their screen names were just two letters each, each one ending in the letter C.
“Your family?”
“Early as always.” Isabel nodded, her eyes suspiciously shiny. “JC is Jesse, RC is Rick—”
“And Megan, Wade and Shannon,” he finished with a smile. He’d been an only child himself, missing out on being part of a family full of brothers and sisters. He’d never told Isabel, but he’d always enjoyed hearing about her family, even when she was exasperated with them.
Maybe especially when she was exasperated with them.
He sat back and enjoyed the family reunion, his gaze transfixed by the joy in Isabel’s face as she caught up with her brothers and sisters. Apparently her father was there, too, though he didn’t have a screen name in the chat room. Her eldest brother, Jesse, explained his dad was sitting with him at the Cooper Security office, watching everything.
By the time all the greetings were finished, Isabel was fighting tears. Scanlon rubbed her back, pleased when she leaned against him, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder.
Soon, however, the conversation went to the trouble at hand. When her brother Rick asked what was really going on with her and Scanlon, she turned her gaze to Scanlon as if asking permission to tell the truth.
He shook his head. “I know you trust them, and I trust you. But I can’t let this get out.”
The look she gave him was full of disappointment mingling with understanding. She turned back to the computer and typed in a quick message, telling them she couldn’t explain anything at the moment.
“See if your brother Rick can tell me who the guy who calls himself Jeff Munroe might really be,” Scanlon suggested. He fed her the description in as much detail as he could remember.
She typed in the details, keys rattling as her practiced fingers flew across the keyboard. Within seconds, Rick came back with a name. “Toby Lavelle. Hot-headed Cajun from Houma, Louisiana. I’ve heard rumors about stuff he did while he was in the SSU that would curl your hair.”
Scanlon wasn’t surprised by the revelation. He’d had a feeling that “Jeff Munroe” was very bad news.
As he was about to tell Isabel to ask him about the mysterious Kurasawa, she preempted him by typing, “Ever heard of anyone named Kurasawa? Someone a rogue SSU agent might want to meet with?” He couldn’t hold back a smile.
It was her brother Jesse who answered her question this time. “The only Kurasawa I can think of who’d fit the bill is Carlos Kurasawa, a Peruvian gunrunner.”
Isabel shot a quick, worried look at Scanlon. “Gunrunner?” she murmured.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he answered.
“Why are you asking about Kurasawa?” Jesse asked in the chat window.
“We’re not sure,” Isabel answered. Aloud, she added, “Could the Swains be branching out into gunrunning?”
“I’ve thought for a while that they’re interested in doing more than cooking crank and growing weed,” Scanlon admitted.
“You’re not going to tell us anything else, are you?” That was Megan, and even Scanlon, who’d never met her, could read the exasperation through the computer screen.
“I can’t,” Isabel answered. “Let’s talk about something else—how’s Amanda, Rick? You enjoying married life?”
While Rick answered his sister in a series of quick blurbs to the affirmative, Scanlon got up from the bed and crossed to the window, gazing out at the waning day. Soon night would fall, cocooning him and Isabel in darkness yet again. He didn’t want to waste a single minute of time with her, now that her day of departure was set. She’d leave tomorrow night, after he filled in at the feed store.
She’d walk out of his life again, with no guarantee they’d ever see each other again.
He turned back to the bed. “I’m going to go see if I can whip something up for dinner,” he murmured, bending low to speak in her ear. “You don’t need to stay online too much longer—wrap it up in fifteen minutes.”
She gave him a grateful smile and turned back to her screen to continue chatting with her family. He watched her a moment longer, warmth running through him at the sight of her obvious happiness. As much as he didn’t want to see her go, he could tell how much she missed her family.
She’d been away from them a long time while working for the FBI. Maybe being back with them for the last few months had reminded her just how much she enjoyed having family around.
As he searched his cabinets for something to prepare for dinner, he thought about his own family. His mother and stepfather were still alive, still together. Knowing his mother had George Scanlon to comfort her was the only thing that had allowed him to fake his own death. He was glad Isabel had been able to turn to her own family, as well.
He was the one who would be well and truly alone once she left him behind tomorrow evening.
He was still brooding over that thought when Isabel came into the kitchen fifteen minutes later on the dot. She was still smiling, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink with happiness. “I may have to officially forgive SAC Brand for lying to me about you.”
He made a face. “Wow, you’re easy.”
“I didn’t realize how much I missed them. We’ve really reconnected over the last few months—all of us. We were all scattered for so long, and now we’re all back home, working together—” She laughed, as if she realized she was gushing. “I’m just happy to have my family back.”
He tried not to think about what his life would be like when she was gone again. Once she was back home, back among the people she clearly loved, maybe she’d begin to see that staying with him, putting her life on the line for him, would have been a terrible idea.
Maybe she wouldn’t think much about him at all, once she was back home where she clearly belonged. He would be a memory, more pleasant now that she knew he hadn’t died a horrible death in her place—
Stop, he scolded himself. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just be glad she’s going to be happy and safe.
And he was glad. Knowing she’d be home, where her family would protect and support her, had to be enough for him.
“So, what’re you fixing for dinner?” she asked, her drawl broader than usual and absolutely charming.
“Trying to decide,” he admitted, opening the freezer. He’d bought a half chicken when he’d bought the salmon, but that seemed too big a project to tackle when his stomach was growling so loudly. He’d also bought some hamburger meat, hoping to make a pot of chili, but it would take forever to thaw.
“Really should have started thinking about dinner about an hour ago,” she murmured, a smile in her voice. She closed the freezer door and opened the refrigerator. “We have cherries, pears, grapes and mayo—I can make a fruit salad out of those. Sound good?”
He nodded. “It does.”
“We need some protein—eggs. You bought eggs, you genius! We’ll do omelets and fruit salad. And if you bought any bread, slap a little butter on it and some of that parmesan cheese I saw in the cabinet, and we’ll have cheesy toast, too.”
An omelet was one meal he could handle, so he went about whipping it up, adding chopped onion and red peppers to the mix to give it a little more zing. Isabel tackled the parmesan toast and the fruit salad, and within fifteen minutes they had a nice meal laid out on the rickety card table. He even broke out the better brand of paper plates, making her smile.
“I don’t have any hooch around here,” he admitted, “but I bought a nice bottle of orange juice. Chateau Sunshine State.” He showed her the bottle.
She made a show of checking the expiration date stamped on the bottle label. “Ah, a very good month!”
He grinned at her. “You’re an easy date, Isabel Cooper.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “Did you just call me easy?”
He sh
ook his head, handing her a fork and sitting in the chair across from her. “You’re anything but easy.”
She smiled at him. “And don’t you forget it.”
He wouldn’t, he knew. He wouldn’t forget anything about her, not if he lived a hundred years. She was permanently imprinted on him, an indelible part of his life that time and distance would never erase.
He just wasn’t sure how he was going to live without her after having her back in his life again for this brief, sweet moment of time.
Chapter Twelve
Isabel could see the uncertainty in Scanlon’s eyes when she asked him for a deck of cards. “I thought Solitaire was your game,” he said, as he dug a dog-eared pack from one of the kitchen drawers.
She gave the pack a skeptical look. “Judging by the state of these cards, it looks like Solitaire is your game.”
“Hah.” He pushed the deck toward her. “What’s your poison? Five-card stud? Blackjack? Texas Hold ’Em?”
“Do you even know what those games are?”
“Not really,” he admitted. He watched her hands as she shuffled the cards. “Why do I get the strange feeling I’m about to be fleeced?”
“This game is easy. Very straightforward. My cousins Jake and Gabe invented it, and I can’t believe I haven’t introduced you to it before now.” She tried to hold back a grin, rather enjoying his look of wary interest. It was a rare thing indeed to be able to introduce Ben Scanlon to something he wasn’t familiar with. He had an insane amount of both common and arcane knowledge stored up inside that brilliant mind of his.
“Why do you look so damned gleeful?” he asked suspiciously.
“Here’s how you play,” she continued, ignoring his question. “Each player gets half the deck. You lay out your cards at the same time, one at a time. The person with the high card gets to ask the person with the low card any question she wants.”
“Or he wants?”
“Of course,” she said reluctantly. Not that she thought Scanlon could ask her anything much that he didn’t already know about her. She’d been a lot more open with him than she suspected he’d been with her.
