Dark Abyss

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  Somehow she couldn’t picture it. Ian didn’t strike her as the sort of man who worried a lot about defending himself. Actually, none of them did. She didn’t think they would be watchmen if they were. But maybe it was because he was a very close friend of Caleb’s?

  She still didn’t think that was it, mostly because Caleb hadn’t tried to have sex with her since and she’d decided he just wasn’t interested. He still gave her those ‘I could eat you alive’ looks now and then, just enough to keep her quivering with hopefulness, but he hadn’t done more and never around any of the others—which meant practically never at all since there wasn’t much chance of being alone with anybody in a household like theirs. At least half the time, all four of them were in the house, the rest of the time at least two.

  Her thoughts didn’t make her particularly happy. In fact, they left her feeling less than happy and off-kilter. The only thing that seemed certain was that she wasn’t supposed to behave as if they’d just fucked each other nearly senseless and since she wasn’t sure she could carry that off very well, she decided to hide in her room until she thought she could.

  Unfortunately, Joshua tapped on her door only a short time later and told her there was food if she was hungry. She debated just skipping the meal, but she was hungry and besides that, she usually joined them. Well, she’d only been with them a few days, but she certainly hadn’t established a habit of skipping meals.

  She’d had time to calm down, she assured herself. She could do this. All she had to do was pretend nothing had happened!

  It was a lot more disconcerting to sit down with four men when she’d had sex with two of them, she discovered, than she’d thought it would be and nearly impossible to pretend a nonchalance she didn’t feel. She absolutely could not resist flicking several glances at Ian, however, just to see if he was as completely unmoved as she’d thought he might be. The second time she glanced at him, she discovered he was studying her through narrowed eyes with a smoldering intensity that set her on fire. She felt her face flood with color, squirmed in her seat, and trained her gaze on her plate when she managed to break eye contact with him. The third time she looked up, she discovered Caleb was staring at Ian—hard. He followed Ian’s gaze to her even as she glanced that way.

  She knew the minute her gaze locked with Caleb’s that he knew exactly what had happened between them. She flicked a wary glance at Simon and Joshua to see if they’d noticed and saw they were studying her and Ian speculatively.

  So much for being discreet!

  Well! It wasn’t her fault—not entirely, anyway! If Ian didn’t want them to know he shouldn’t have been looking at her as if he was contemplating tossing his plate aside and chewing on her instead!

  “How goes the case?” he drawled after a strained moment.

  The indifference in his voice seemed to antagonize Simon. “Like I said, Paul Warner died.”

  It was news to Anna. Jolted, she sent Simon a look of shock. “He died?”

  He grunted.

  “That sucks—not that there was any certainty that we could’ve gotten him to testify,” Joshua muttered.

  “Yeah,” Simon agreed grimly. “I was hoping the son-of-a-bitch would pull through so I could break his god damned neck.”

  Anna stared at him, wide-eyed at the vehemence in his voice and thoroughly confused by his attitude. “It’s … that makes it murder, though, at least. Right?”

  “Maybe. If he can convince the jury that he just fired wildly because he thought they were under attack, his lawyers might get it down to manslaughter. In Cavendish’s world, that usually only amounts to a slap on the wrist. I ordered an autopsy. It seemed damned convenient, him croaking, when the doctor thought he was improving.”

  “But that would definitely be pre-meditated murder!” Anna pointed out.

  “Except we can’t put the ‘gun’ in his hand, so to speak. He’s still being held without bond. Unless we could find proof that he ordered it, we’ve got nothing.”

  Anna shivered. “If he can arrange something like that from jail,” she said, feeling abruptly nauseated, “I’m never going to be safe.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell. Caleb, Ian, and Joshua glared at Simon in tight-lipped anger for several moments. “He’d have to go through us to get to you,” Joshua said harshly.

  Anna lifted her head and looked around at them. “But … I don’t want him to,” she said on the verge of a wail. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because it doesn’t! I don’t want anything to happen to any of you!”

  Caleb covered her hand on the table, squeezing it with his.

  “We’ve put together a reasonably solid case for the territorial Attorney General,” Simon said a little gruffly. “We’ll make it stick. And, regardless of his money or his power, he’ll find it damned hard to run his organization from Atlantis’ maximum security prison.”

  Anna studied him hopefully and finally nodded, more reassured than she’d thought she would be, maybe even than she should have been. She couldn’t help but think it was the truth, though. Miles Cavendish wasn’t likely to have any friends among the Atlanteans and, after his attempt to blow up the territorial capital, the security would be much tighter, she knew. It wouldn’t be as easy for any of his men to infiltrate.

  She wasn’t as certain she would be safe once she left, but, if he couldn’t communicate with the outside world, then he couldn’t send anybody after her. That didn’t mean she was entirely safe from retribution by some of his fanatical followers, but she doubted they would focus on her long without him to keep her in their sights.

  “How goes our … other project?” Ian asked after a moment.

  The four men glanced at her and then one another and Anna felt her spirits perk up at the suggestion of a secret that might involve her.

  “The … uh … acquisition?” Joshua asked cautiously. “Or the other?”

  Ian shrugged. “Either—both.”

  “Some progress,” Caleb drawled, stretching and then getting up to carry his plate to the sink.

  They weren’t going to discuss it around her, whatever ‘it’ was. Intrigued in spite of her best efforts to convince herself it might not have anything to do with her at all, Anna got up and followed him. It caused a general exodus from the table to the sink.

  “I’ll do the dishes,” she volunteered, then added when all of them looked at her speculatively. “It’ll give me something to do.”

  Shrugging, they left the kitchen. She thought they all had, anyway, until she felt a hand settle lightly on her elbow.

  When she looked up, she saw that Ian was studying her. There was concern in his eyes that warmed her. “You alright, baby?”

  She nodded, uncertain of whether he was referring to their interlude or the recent discussion.

  His gaze moved over her face. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  Heat lit up her cheeks, but not all of it was discomfort. The question resurrected memories that made her warm all over. “I’m ….” She stopped, debated a moment, and discarded the trite ‘fine’. “Good, actually.”

  Amusement danced in his eyes. He leaned closer. “Baby, you’re a lot better than good,” he murmured near her ear, lifting a rash of goosebumps.

  She flicked a glance at him, struggling with the airy, inflated sensation his comment had produced, and the insane urge to giggle like a little girl. “You weren’t so bad, yourself,” she whispered back at him.

  He chuckled huskily. “Now, I’m on my metal. I’ll have to see if I can’t wring a little more praise than that out of you.”

  Oh! Promises, promises!

  It was just as well he left it at that. Heat was wafting off of her in waves when he strode from the kitchen.

  She forgot all about her intention to see if she could overhear the discussion between them when the men headed back into the living area. She was so focused on what he’d said to her and the
happiness it had evoked that she’d finished washing everything before she hardly realized it. Leaving the dishes to dry in the rack, she debated whether to join them in the living room and finally decided against it.

  She’d had trouble enough behaving before. She didn’t think she could sit down with them and not grin like an idiot every time Ian glanced at her.

  She could read a while, she decided. Simon had loaned her his reader—the one she’d thrown at him. He had a surprisingly extensive library. She’d found plenty of books to interest her.

  There was just no getting around it. The man had unsuspected depths.

  She yearned to plumb those depths, but she was beginning to think that was a hopeless case.

  * * * *

  Ian discovered he was still smiling to himself when he reached the living room.

  The three pairs of laser eyes he met brought him up short, though. Wiping the expression from his face, he continued to the couch that had been his goal and sprawled on it, casually crossing his legs when he realized his cock was still tenting his robe.

  No one said anything or even seemed to realize they were all poised tensely on the couches, listening to Anna in the kitchen.

  Ian felt his face heat when she started humming to herself. As pleased as he was that she seemed happy, the moment she started humming, he came under fire again and nobody seemed to share his amusement. He cleared his throat. “So … who’s on watch today? And who’s scheduled to go in?”

  Simon narrowed his eyes at him. “You were scheduled to be on witness watch,” he said tightly, “but I think I’ll switch with you today.”

  Ian felt his face tighten with a mixture of anger and guilt. As tempted as he was to argue with Simon, however, he decided it would be more discreet to simply accept the inevitable. It wasn’t likely Simon would change his mind anyway. That being the case, he shrugged with as much unconcern as he could muster. “No problem. I guess I’ll be off then.”

  Joshua joined him as he left the house. Ian glanced at him a couple of times as they swam side by side, but it seemed pretty clear if the way he was grinding his teeth was any indication, that neither he nor Anna had been nearly as discreet as he’d hoped.

  On the one hand, he was inclined not to give a fuck, to think it had been worth it if the world blew up around him. On the other—well, there was a very real possibility that it could. It would’ve been a lot easier to be flippant about it if that wasn’t the case.

  He began very quickly to feel a mixture of remorse and resentment. He was aware that he wasn’t nearly as sorry that he’d made love to their one and only witness as he knew he should be, but there was no getting around the fact that guilt put a damper on his mood. And that gave rise to resentment.

  Unfortunately, there was no one to aim it at but himself. It was bad enough that he’d lost control, however understandable it was considering the circumstances, but what he’d done afterwards was almost worse. He’d made promises he didn’t dare keep, not in the foreseeable future.

  That was exactly why Simon had ordered them to keep things professional—emotional entanglement that Cavendish’s lawyers could use against them. If it was obvious they’d become emotionally involved, the defense could claim it had been used to manipulate the witness.

  “Shit!” he muttered, disgusted. It was going to be hell trying to keep his hands off of her now. He’d just thought it was hellish before!

  “I don’t know what you’re so damned pissed off about,” Joshua muttered through his communicator. “Simon wouldn’t have bumped you if it hadn’t been as plain as day what you’d been up to with Anna.”

  Ian slid Joshua a narrow-eyed glare, but he had no intention of being sucked in by the comment and asking just how it had been as plain as day. He didn’t have any intention, in fact, of discussing it with Joshua at all. It was his business—between him and Anna, and they could go fuck themselves. “Where are we on the extraction project?” he asked, as much because he wanted to know as to distract Joshua.

  “Still trying to get things set up,” Joshua responded tightly. “Getting in isn’t a problem. Getting in and out again is a different situation entirely, especially into the evidence room. Fortunately, there was so much of it they moved it to a warehouse to sort. It’s possible it hasn’t made it to the evidence room even if it survived the blast.”

  He was silent for several moments. “The security isn’t as tight at the warehouse, but that presents another problem. We’d have to get in and take the time to search through all the rubble ourselves and even knowing what we’re looking for could take more time than we could manage.

  “I think we’re going to have to wait and let them search it and then go through the trash to see if it was overlooked and thrown out and go from there.”

  “They aren’t going to just throw it out,” Ian said dryly.

  Joshua sent him a look of irritation. “You know what I mean—downgrade the importance. Once they bag and store it, they won’t be watching it as closely. We’d have more opportunity, and more time with it.

  “I think the chances are slim that they’d overlook it, though.”

  “So we still need to figure on getting into the evidence room.”

  “That can be arranged,” Joshua said, “but it would have to be a quick in and out, which means we’d have to know beforehand where to look for it.”

  Ian nodded. “I hope Caleb had better luck with the other project.”

  “Yes and no,” Joshua responded as they finally reached their destination and emerged from the pool.

  “Meaning this isn’t going to be easy either, I gather,” Ian drawled as he climbed out and moved to the dryer.

  When Joshua had finished drying and pulled a robe on, he continued the subject as they headed into the center. “The good news is that he located a modular addition that would give us half again what we have now—room for a garden and lab for Anna plus enough space for two or three more bedrooms and it has two baths. It’s within our budget and it wouldn’t take much to fix it up—money or time.”

  “And the bad news is?”

  “He checked with a local marine biologist to get an idea about what sort of equipment she’d need for a lab. It’s way the hell out of our grasp.”

  “Well hell!” Ian said irritably as they entered his office and he moved to his desk to check the reports he had waiting. “That’s no good. Any options?”

  “We might be able to track down some secondhand equipment that we could afford, but the biologist told Caleb he’d be willing to time-share with his equipment.”

  Ian looked at Joshua in surprise. “You don’t sound very enthused about it.”

  Joshua shrugged. “She’d have to go there to use it—not very convenient—but doable, except Caleb didn’t like the man’s looks.”

  Ian studied him for a long moment before that sank in. “I take it he’s single?”

  “Not happily,” Joshua said dryly. “He was hinting around pretty broadly about buying in.”

  Ian gaped at him in dawning outrage. “But he hasn’t even seen Anna!” he growled, knowing even as he said it that that didn’t mean a damned thing. She could have looked like a walrus and he might still have been interested. Beyond that, she’d been in the hospital. Even with the guards there was plenty of hospital staff that had seen her, plus the men who’d taken part in the raid. Anna was pretty enough to have aroused a lot of interest … and talk. It chilled him to think about the number of men that might be just waiting for them to cut her loose.

  Joshua uttered an irritated huff. “Actually he has. He went to school with her.”

  Chapter Twelve

  There was no way to keep their purchase a complete secret until it could be presented shiny and new. None of them were happy about it. As much as it had cost them, they knew it wasn’t going to look like much to Anna before they’d had time to refurbish it.

  Caleb’s i
nquiries had made them all extremely uneasy, though. His discovery that a local scientist, who might be supposed to have a lot in common with Anna, was interested it reacquainting himself wasn’t the only unpleasant discovery. Everyone, or so it seemed, had at least heard of her and knew pretty much her entire situation. She was a heroine to the men who’d taken part in the raid, because it was her intuition that had saved them from being blown to bits, and they hadn’t stopped at heaping gifts on her.

  They’d been singing her praises to anybody that would listen, and there weren’t many that didn’t. She was beautiful. She was brilliant. She was brave and heroic. And above all, she was not taken.

  There were a lot of men who saw their purchase as a clear sign that they were taking advantage of the situation to fix Anna’s interest before anybody else had a chance—which they were—and they were pretty pissed off about it—enough that the governor had heard a number of complaints. He’d summoned Simon and raked him over the coals about behaving in a manner unbecoming an officer, unprofessional, and potentially dangerous to their witness. She was supposed to be in protective custody and, although they hadn’t actually tried to keep it secret and couldn’t have, she still shouldn’t be the target of so much discussion and interest, or, to put it in the governor’s words ‘what the hell did they think they were doing fucking around with their witness?’.

  He’d accepted Simon’s boldfaced lie that they’d just decided to renovate their place and it just happened to coincide with Anna’s presence there—but with patent disbelief. The governor had finally dismissed him with a warning—If the case fell through because of their mishandling of the witness, they were all going to be looking for new jobs.

  Simon supposed if they hadn’t all had their heads up their asses—or more accurately, up Anna’s—they would’ve noticed before that they weren’t by any means the only Atlanteans that had cast hopeful looks in her direction. As torn as he was between his duty and his desire, though, he was as anxious to try to fix Anna’s interest as everyone else—especially when it was born in upon him that none of them were likely to get a chance after the case was tried. They finally agreed that they really didn’t have a lot of options. The purchase had set them back enough that they couldn’t afford to pay to have it remodeled and refurbished. They were going to have to do it themselves, and a little at the time.