by Paula Graves
She looked up and found Brand’s face close to hers, his blue eyes dark and intense. “Remember Pike City?” His voice was a faint rasp.
She nodded, her heart thudding. “Those hillbillies beat the hell out of you. I was afraid I wasn’t going to get you out of there alive.”
“First time you played nurse for me.” His mouth curved, a flash of white teeth peeking between his lips. “I couldn’t tell you how damned sexy you were, trussing me up and getting me back on my feet so we could get out of Kentucky alive.”
She arched an eyebrow, trying to pretend his words didn’t send a shiver of desire skittering through her. “Sexy? I was scared to death.”
“But you didn’t show it. You were so fierce.”
She started to stand, but Brand caught her wrist, holding her in place. She closed her eyes, trying to fight the tremors his touch elicited. “Brand, please—”
“Did you think of me after you left?” His words rumbled through her. “Did you think of me at all?”
She snapped her eyes open, wanting him and hating him all at once. “For a long time, you were almost all I thought about.”
His eyes flickering with an emotion she couldn’t quite discern, he released her wrist and looked away. “I’m sorry.”
She pushed to her feet and backed away, sitting in the other armchair. She turned her gaze to the fire, trying to control the reckless emotions darting through her. She didn’t make decisions based on her feelings. She’d made that mistake once, in a snowy mountain inn in West Virginia.
She didn’t think she could survive making the same mistake twice.
For a long time, the crackle of the fire and the soft whisper of snow against the windows were the only sounds in the room, and if she hadn’t been one raw nerve, Delilah might have dozed off.
But there was no way to relax with Brand in the room. With him around she felt edgy and vulnerable, fire licking her belly and fear squeezing her heart. No one had ever gotten beneath her skin the way Adam Brand had. No one had made her feel so unraveled, so alive, so vulnerable.
And the worst part was, as much as she hated the feeling of walking on a high wire with no net below her, she found it equally exhilarating.
It had been a long time since she’d felt this reckless and on fire.
Eight years, to be exact.
“I should go change into the clothes we brought back,” Brand said a few minutes later, breaking the taut silence. He rose carefully from the chair. “These jeans are getting kind of ripe.”
“How long have you been running?” she asked as he reached the doorway.
He turned, giving her one of those long, electric looks she used to crave. “Feels like eight years,” he murmured.
Then he disappeared through the doorway.
* * *
DRESSING BY HIMSELF was proving a painful experience, and the temptation to call Delilah into the bedroom to help him was almost more than Brand could resist. But the phone had rung a couple of minutes earlier, and he could still hear the soft murmur of Delilah’s voice as she spoke to whoever was on the line.
He zipped the clean pair of jeans and went back to the living room, taking care to be quiet. Delilah was curled up in her chair, her long legs tucked under her, listening to whoever was on the other end of the call.
“Are you sure it was just a careless driver?” She glanced up at Brand as he took the chair next to her, her brow furrowed. “I don’t know, Seth. The timing sounds pretty hinky.”
Brand leaned forward, not liking the sound of her end of the conversation.
“Just call me when you’re safely home, okay? Talk to you soon.” She ended the call and laid the phone on the arm of the chair. “Seth and Rachel were nearly run off the road driving home from North Carolina.”
“Are they okay?”
“Yes, but they’re still about an hour away. They stopped at a scenic overpass where there were a few more people parked. Safety in numbers.” Delilah still looked worried.
“What do you want to do?” he asked quietly.
Her dark eyes met his. “I want to go run interference for them.”
“Where are they?”
“A few miles over the North Carolina state line.”
Going out again would be a risk. Any time he might be spotted in public was a risk. And while he was pretty sure Seth Hammond wouldn’t turn him in to the authorities, he didn’t know enough about Rachel Davenport to know whether he could trust her to do the same. Either way, he’d be asking them to break the law in order to protect him, a situation that went against everything he’d ever believed.
How had he allowed Cortland to put him in this position?
“I know you don’t want to bring Seth into this,” Delilah said.
He saw understanding in her dark eyes, a reminder of just how naked she could make him feel sometimes. She knew him about as well as he’d ever allowed anyone to know him. When they’d worked together, it had helped them create a sort of efficient shorthand, a minimal need for words that had come in handy in more than one high-risk situation.
Her perception had also damned near unraveled him.
The phone rang again, rattling his nerves. Delilah grabbed it, checked the display and answered. “Seth?”
Brand heard the buzz of Seth Hammond’s voice coming over the line, his tone quick and agitated. He leaned forward, worried by the darkening look on Delilah’s face.
“Are you sure they’re following—?”
A loud sound cracked through the receiver, audible even where Brand sat. He rose to his feet, instantly on alert.
“Seth!” Delilah exclaimed. “Seth?” She repeated her brother’s name a couple times more, then punched a button. “The line went dead,” she growled, pushing in a phone number. After a moment, she snapped the end button with a jab of her thumb, growling a curse.
“Was that—?”
“A gunshot?” She nodded, already grabbing her jacket from the back of the sofa, her face pale and pinched. “Yes, it was.”
He knew all the perfectly logical reasons he should stay put, safe from discovery. But Delilah’s brother wouldn’t have been in any of this trouble if Brand hadn’t pushed him into the Davenport Trucking investigation.
He’d be damned if he’d leave a man in trouble to fend for himself, whatever the consequences.
Chapter Six
The phone call came about twenty minutes into Delilah’s gut-wrenching drive down Little River Road, a dark and twisty mountain road with few turnoffs and almost no way to escape someone intent on doing a person harm. She grabbed the cell phone and punched it on Speaker. “Seth?”
“We’re okay,” Seth said quickly, sounding breathless. Delilah felt more than heard Brand’s faint exhale of relief in the seat next to her. “But we’re hiding down a dead-end road. So far, we think the guys who shot at us didn’t backtrack to look for us, but once they figure out we’re not ahead of them—”
“Which road?”
“It’s just off the big switchback that crosses Little Pigeon River. We’re off the road, in case they come back, but there’s no good place to hide the car back here. We’re out in the woods right now.”
“In the snow?”
“Yeah, in the snow,” Seth answered flatly. “And it’s cold as hell. How far out are you?”
“Fifteen minutes. Ten if I push it.”
“Push it,” Seth said tersely.
“Ask about the vehicle,” Brand whispered, barely audible even in the close confines of the Camaro.
“Seth, did you get a look at the vehicle that ambushed you?”
“Black Ram truck, one of those big extended-cab jobs with the double tires on the back.”
“Ram 3500,” Rachel’s voice interjected. She sounded cold and sc
ared.
“Got it,” Delilah said. “I’m nearly there, Seth. Y’all just hold on.”
“Will do.” He hung up.
Brand pushed the off button on the phone for her. “You watch the road. I’ll watch for that truck.”
The snow was starting to stick, making for a slick and terrifying drive through the mountain passes. More than once the Camaro started to fishtail, but she kept it on the road, drawing on the driving skills she’d learned at Cooper Security. God bless Jesse Cooper and his obsession with training his agents for any eventuality.
About ten minutes later, Brand asked, “How far are we from the turnoff?”
She peered ahead, trying to remember. She’d traveled this road into the mountains hundreds of times in her childhood and teenage years. The big loop in the road was just ahead, and the river crossing wasn’t far after that. “We’re about two minutes away.”
“So why haven’t we seen the truck?”
Brand’s question sent ice skating down her spine. “Maybe we passed it farther back, before we talked to Seth?”
“Maybe.” Brand sounded doubtful.
He was right. The truck wouldn’t have reached them by the time Seth called. But they should have passed it by now.
“They’ve doubled back to look for them,” Delilah growled.
Brand reached into his jacket and pulled out a gleaming black Ruger SR9, his weapon of choice. Her own Sig was tucked behind her back in the pancake holster. When the road straightened out for a few dozen yards, she drew the P229. She held it out to Brand. “Check the mag.”
He confirmed the pistol had ten rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. “Locked and loaded.” He held on to the Sig. “You drive. I’ll hold the weapons.”
They rounded a curve and the turnoff came into view. The road was paved but little more than that, disappearing into the woods. Delilah pulled the Camaro into the turn, her headlights splashing across the snowy woods.
At the end of the road, taillights glowed red in the winter gloom.
“That’s a dually truck,” Brand said.
She nodded. “What do we do? Try to draw their attention to us?”
“If it’s Cortland’s people, they may not even know what I look like,” Brand answered. “If Liz was right about how he did business—and everything I know about him supports her theory—he runs his underlings in tight, self-contained cells. He’s the only one who knows who all the players are—the people in each cell know only each other and any breach of security within the cell will earn them instant, brutal punishment. It doesn’t take much to merit the death penalty in Cortland’s organization.”
“So this pair in the truck may know only about Seth and Rachel?”
“They’d know as much as they needed to know and no more. Fewer chances of an operational breach.”
“So for all they know, we might be a pair of horny lovers looking for a snowy place to get our freak on?” Delilah asked with a huff of grim laughter.
“We’ve played that role before, sugar,” he answered in a gravelly drawl that made her insides squirm. “What’s the layout ahead?”
“The road ends right at the edge of the woods, in a circle. There’s room enough for about three or four vehicles to park there. It’s a sort of mountain make-out spot, though not usually in this kind of weather.” She eased the Camaro down the road, pulling close enough to the truck to confirm it was a black Ram 3500 with dual wheels on the back.
“That’s our truck,” Brand said.
“And that’s Seth’s Charger.” Delilah slipped the Camaro into an empty place behind the Charger. The truck hadn’t moved, idling in the middle of the circle with its bright lights shining on the side of the Charger. There were a couple of bullet holes visible in the side panel over the right rear tire, she saw, swallowing a rush of anxiety. There was also a spiderweb of cracked glass in the back window where another bullet had hit.
“Close call,” Brand murmured, turning to look at her. “Operation Snuggle?”
She bit back a bark of nervous laughter. “I could still kill you for that moniker.” Nevertheless, she crawled over the gearshift and into his lap, trying hard not to look out the window toward the idling truck.
She felt the cold steel of his Ruger where his hand rested against the small of her back. She curled her hand over her own weapon, taking it from his left hand. Keeping the pistol carefully concealed by the side of the bucket seat, she pressed her forehead to his. “Do you think they’ll shoot at us anyway?”
His breath was warm against her chin. “I hope to hell not.”
She was too scared to feel anything but terror, a lesson she’d learned years earlier on her first “Operation Snuggle,” as Brand jokingly called any undercover session requiring the agents to pretend to be lovers. Even the times she’d had to pretend with Brand, to whom she was wildly attracted under most circumstances, her body didn’t have the capacity to feel anything but a wild rush of adrenaline.
It was afterward, when the danger had passed and the adrenaline faded, that hormones took over.
But even now, with the knowledge that the truck growling beside them contained at least one armed and dangerous person, Delilah was surprised to feel a flicker of sexual hunger low in her belly. A reminder, perhaps, of just how long it had been since she’d touched Brand this way.
Brand’s left hand, now pistol free, slid under the hem of her jacket and crept beneath her thermal sweater until his cool fingers played over the hot skin of her waist. “Kiss me.”
She lowered her mouth to his slowly, her heart pounding. His lips were warm and dry, soft at first, but hardening as her mouth met his. She threaded her fingers through his dark hair, slanting his head so that their mouths fit together more completely.
Kissing him still felt like sin and salvation, contradictory and irresistible. She knew she couldn’t let herself want him, but she was powerless to resist the pull of attraction. Nothing—not their present danger or their past betrayals—could stem the tide of her desire.
The sound of the truck shifting gears dragged her back to reality. She pulled away from the kiss and slanted a sideways look out the window. The truck was backing out of the cul-de-sac.
Bending to press a kiss to Brand’s forehead, she kept her eyes on the truck’s headlights as it pulled a three-point turn and headed back toward the highway, its taillights filling the Camaro’s interior with a bloodred glow. The glow faded as the truck disappeared around a bend in the road, out of sight. Delilah dropped her forehead against Brand’s.
“They could be waiting to ambush us on the way out,” Brand warned.
“I know.” She didn’t move out of his lap, giving herself permission to enjoy the feel of his body beneath hers for a few moments longer.
“I think we wait about five minutes before contacting your brother.”
She pasted a sly smile on her face, even though her heart was still pounding from the adrenaline rush. “You want to wait in this position?”
His blue eyes glittered up at hers in the glow of the dashboard lights. “Is that a serious question?”
She shook her head, settling herself more firmly in his lap. “No.”
His hand had never ceased doing shivery things to the skin of her back. “I never could resist you when you were in a flirty mood.”
“Bull. You resisted the hell out of me for years. I know, because I think I spent the first three years of my assignment to your team trying to get you to look at me as something besides that smart-mouthed rookie agent you had to put up with.”
His voice lowered to a growl. “I wanted to throw you across my desk about two seconds after you walked into my office that first day, Hammond.”
Heat flooded her insides. “What a coincidence. I wanted the same thing.”
Smiling, he sh
ook his head. “An old, stuffy guy like me?”
“You were thirty-four. Hardly geriatric.”
“Old enough. You were still a kid.”
“I hadn’t been a kid since I was fourteen years old and my daddy tried to trade me to a pseudoephedrine dealer to get supplies for his meth lab.”
Brand froze. “You never told me about that.”
She shook her head, wishing she hadn’t brought it up. “There’s a lot I never told you about.”
“What did you do?”
“I got my daddy’s shotgun and threatened to kill them both if either one of them touched me.”
He flattened his hand against her back. “I just bet you did.”
“There’s not a lot I’m scared of anymore,” she said quietly. “Once you’ve faced down things like that—”
He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and drew her close, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“How much time has passed since the truck left?” she asked, drawing away when she felt tears stinging her eyes. She blinked them away.
“Five minutes,” he answered with a glance at the dashboard display.
She sat back on his knees, reached for her cell phone in the dashboard holder and dialed her brother’s number.
He answered on the first ring. “Please tell me that was the truck we heard leaving, not you.”
“That was the truck you heard leaving,” she answered. “But I can’t be sure they’re not lying in wait closer to the highway.”
“I’m not sure we can drive out of here. I thought one of the rounds might have hit the left rear tire. Can you tell from where you are?”
She twisted around to get a look at the back of the Charger. “I can’t really see the tire from where I am, but the car does seem to be listing toward that side.”
Seth muttered a profanity. “I’m going to have to take the backseat of that stupid sardine can of yours, aren’t I?”
“Afraid so,” she answered. “I’m parked right behind the Charger. Hurry, but try to keep a low profile, in case anyone’s watching.”
