Shadow of Doubt

by Linda Poitevin

  What if she stopped worrying about emotional involvement, threw caution to the wind, and just—

  "It would be all too easy to fall in love with you, Kate Dexter," Jonas said. "But I can't let that happen."

  Kate blinked at his back. He couldn't have said what she thought she'd just heard...could he?

  "I don't trust myself to give you the kind of love you deserve," Jonas continued, still not looking at her. "I don't think I'm capable of it. Hell, I'm not capable of trust, period."

  Her heart twisted. "Jonas..."

  "No, Kate. I'm not looking for pity or sympathy. I'm just stating facts. My life is what it is. I've come to terms with that. I also refuse to inflict it on anyone else."

  At last he looked her way, his jaw set like hardened concrete and his gaze determined. "I could fall in love with you," he said, "but I won't. Because if we become involved, I guarantee it's only a matter of time before I hurt you, and I won't be responsible for that. I can't be."

  Kate didn't respond for long, silent seconds. She stared down at the rolled arm of the couch, tracing the faded tapestry pattern with one fingertip. She'd known for a while that she was already in too deep where this man was concerned, and Jonas’s words at breakfast had confirmed he wasn’t entirely immune to her, either. But this latest admission really took the proverbial cake. He didn’t trust himself to fall in love with her? She didn't know whether to admire him for his honesty or sock him one for being so incredibly obtuse.

  Or maybe she could just throw herself at him and see how long his ideals lasted. She wiped slick palms against the cotton of the nightgown.

  "In other words, all you can offer me is pure, unadulterated sex?" she asked.

  Jonas's eyes widened. He coughed, spluttered, made a visible effort to recover. "That wasn't quite what I meant," he said, "and you know—"

  "What if I say yes?" she interrupted.

  A host of conflicting emotions played across Jonas’s face. White-hot need warred with decency. Desire wrestled with a lifetime of distrust. Yearning struggled against resignation. Kate twisted her hands into folds of fabric.

  "What if I don't need all the rest?" she pressed, ignoring the little voice screaming "Liar!" in her head. "What if I'm okay with just this, what we have just now?"

  Blue eyes glittered at her, and corded tendons stood out along the side of Jonas's neck. Kate waited. Willed him to—

  He turned his back on her. "We'll go into town and call your ex after lunch tomorrow," he said. "You should sleep in if you can. You need it."

  She gaped at the back of his head. Was he seriously not going to—? She closed her eyes and gathered her scattered thoughts. Maybe he hadn't understood. Maybe she hadn't been direct enough. She cleared her throat.

  Jonas cut her off before she could speak. "Go to bed, Kate. Please."

  For a long moment, she didn't move, and the room itself seemed to hold its breath. Her gaze traveled the taut length of the man across from her. The rigidity of his shoulders, the way his hands were clenched into fists at his sides, the shudder of a long inhale. She knew it wouldn't take much to crumble his resistance: a touch, a whisper, a reassurance, a plea.

  Her entire body thrummed at the thought of breaking down that final barrier between them after their days of dancing around one another. The imagined feel of Jonas's hands sliding over her body. The ecstasy she knew he would wring from her, and she from him...

  But there her thoughts paused and her heart skipped a beat. Then it skipped another. Because just as she knew Jonas would give in to her, she also knew—without a trace of doubt—that he would hate her for it afterward. And that she would hate herself for doing that to him.

  With a whisper of fabric and a last, lingering look at the maddening, complicated man who claimed not that he didn't love her, but that he didn't want to love her, Kate rose and left the room.

  Chapter 35

  Kate surged awake to a hand across her mouth. Within the space of a single heartbeat, she shoved free, scrambled out of bed, and danced out of reach, filling her lungs to bellow a warning to Jonas. Her shout died in her chest as a whisper came from the darkness.

  "Kate, it's me!"

  She froze, bedside lamp poised over her head to throw at the vague shadow among shadows. "Jonas?"

  The adrenaline faded from her system, leaving confusion in its wake. Why was Jonas in her room? Had he changed his mind? Was he here to—

  "Keep your voice down," he whispered. "We have company out on the road. They just got here. If we move fast, we'll have enough time to get out the back door to the lake."

  Company?

  She lowered the table lamp to her side. "How did they find us here?"

  "Only one person knows we're here, so how the hell do you think? Come on."

  He thought Grant—? Kate blinked at the idea. Grant might be as dull as dishwater and totally lacking in imagination, but he was loyal to a fault. How else could he have continued their friendship even after she'd called off their engagement? She shook her head in the dark. No, he would never have informed on them. Not without talking to her.

  "Kate!" Jonas urged.

  Argument would have to wait. She tossed the lamp onto the bed. "I need my clothes."

  "Just wear the nightgown. I have your shoes for you."

  "I'm not wearing anything at the moment." She shivered in the cool night air.

  There was a tiny silence, followed by a muffled curse.

  "Where?" Jonas asked curtly.

  "Bureau by the door. Jeans and sweatshirt." No time for life's little niceties such as the underwear she'd dropped onto the floor. Her clothes hit her bare chest and she clutched at them.

  "Be quick," Jonas said.

  She didn't need to be told twice. She scrambled into the clothes and then felt her way across the room to shadow-Jonas and took her running shoes from him. She tied them swiftly and straightened. "Ready."

  A warm hand closed unerringly around hers. She pulled away. "Wait—my gun."

  "I have it."

  The hand closed over hers again, and she followed Jonas through the dark cabin, relying on him to steer her through doorways and around furniture until they stood at the patio door overlooking the deck and lake beyond. Jonas paused.

  "Hear anything?" he murmured.

  Kate shook her head, her hair catching on his stubbled chin.

  "Good. Me either." He slid the glass panel open slowly. Kate cringed at the metal-on-metal squeak, releasing it in a gust when there was enough room for them to slip through. Jonas went first, holding her back with one hand while he listened again to the silence. Then he tugged her after him and steered her in a path around the deck’s perimeter.

  "Shit,” he muttered. “The whole deck is out over the lake. We’re going to have to get wet again. You up for another swim?"

  Kate could think of a lot of things she'd rather do after her dip in the St. Lawrence, but she didn't see many alternatives. She nodded, trusting him and his superpowered night vision to see her. Together, they slipped over the rail and lowered themselves into the lake. As dark as the night itself, the water closed around Kate's waist, then crawled up to cover her shoulders. Sheer, bone-numbing cold sucked the air from her lungs.

  Jonas touched her arm. "All good?"

  She nodded and struck out after him. Following the shoreline, they stuck to the deepest shadows where the ripples of their passing were less likely to be noticed. Lake-bottom slime oozed over the tops of her runners and crept between her toes like clammy, vile worms. Kate suppressed a shudder. Too late now, but it would have been so much better to carry their shoes rather than wear them.

  Jonas’s shadow glided through the water a few feet in front of her, leading her away from the cabin. When they had gone a hundred yards or so, he veered back in to the shore, where the trees hung low over the water. With the help of the branches there, they pulled themselves up and out onto land. Jonas's cold fingers closed over hers again.

  "You okay?"

>   Kate gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering and nodded again. They forged ahead, picking their way through the underbrush, and every snap of a twig or rustle of leaves underfoot made Kate’s heart miss another beat. Time stood still yet again—but for all the wrong reasons.

  Then, suddenly, gravel crunched underfoot and no more branches slapped at them. The road. And if her bearings were at all correct, Jonas was headed back toward the cabin. She tugged him to a stop.

  "We're going the wrong way!"

  "We need the vehicle," Jonas replied. "It's our only way out of here."

  She hesitated, then gave a nod of capitulation and fell into step behind him again. He was right. Even if they weren't soaked to the bone, they'd never be able to walk out of here. Not unless they wanted nature to finish the job Lewis and Ramirez had started.

  The next time Jonas stopped, she nearly ran into him. He held up a warning hand and she looked past him to see the shadowy shapes of four cars parked along the road ahead—theirs plus three more. Only one of them had a light bar sitting atop it; the others were nondescript sedans. The kind driven by suits. Lewis and Ramirez? Kate's blood ran a little colder, and a knot settled in her chest. Could she have been wrong about Grant after all?

  Later, Kate. Deal with it later.

  Side by side, she and Jonas waited at the edge of the woods, but nothing moved around any of the vehicles or on the path leading down to the cottage. Nothing moved anywhere. Jonas pressed something into her hand, and her fingers closed around the handle of a jackknife.

  "I'll get the radios, you get the tires," he murmured. "Leave us one of the sedans to get away in. Work fast."

  Kate did. Within a few minutes, she had slashed three tires on the state police car, three on one of the sedans, and three more on the gaudy hot rod. She joined Jonas beside the second sedan as the moon slipped out from behind the clouds. Damn. Moonlight was the last thing they needed.

  "Done?" he asked, already on his way around the vehicle to the driver's side.

  "Thoroughly," she replied. With one hand on the open passenger door, she lifted a foot into the car—and then froze at the unmistakable, distinctive sound of a shotgun shell being chambered. A powerful flashlight came on, capturing Jonas in its beam.

  "That's far enough, folks," a terse male voice said. "Move away from the car, ma'am, and put your hands up where I can see them. You, too, Agent Burke."

  Kate didn't move. She couldn't. She was too stunned. Too shocked. Too devastated. In the flashlight's harsh glare, Jonas raised his hands and locked them behind his head, resignation etched into his face. Her own hands curled into fists. Exhaustion curled through her. Cold, clammy, wet denim clung to her legs. Her sodden sweatshirt weighed her down. And she still had mud in her shoes. Her lips pressed tight.

  They'd been so close to escape, to safety, and now this?

  No. No way. She was damned if things would end like this.

  Gravel crunched as the armed man behind her moved closer.

  "I said move away from the vehicle!" he snapped.

  Not bloody likely. Her gaze darted to the side mirror on the open car door, flicked away from the brilliance of the flashlight beam reflected there, rose to meet Jonas's. Move, she silently urged. He gave a tiny, barely perceptible nod and began edging to his left, away from the vehicle and toward the trees.

  "That's far enough," the voice said. "Now down on the ground."

  Jonas took another step. And another. More gravel shifted behind Kate, signaling rapid steps. She stopped breathing.

  "Do it!" the voice barked at Jonas—closer now. Close enough?

  Her gaze fastened on the mirror again. The glare of the flashlight had become a mere glow. She turned her head a fraction to the right, just until she could see the silhouette of a shotgun in her peripheral vision, held by a man who stood no more than a few feet away.

  Close enough.

  She whirled, her right arm coming up under the shotgun barrel and forcing it up. The gun fired into the air, the sound of its blast ricocheting through the forest night. Shit. There was no way the others in the cabin wouldn't hear that. But even as the thought registered, Kate’s left hand slipped around the back of the man's neck, and her knee buried itself in his gut. The man doubled over with a grunt, and the gun flew from his hands, skidding down the road.

  His hat—a state trooper's Stetson—tumbled onto Kate's feet. She stared at it in shock, panicking licking through her veins like wildfire. Double shit. She'd just assaulted a fellow police officer. Shouts erupted from the direction of the cabin.

  "Damn it, Kate, get out of the way!"

  Jonas’s voice. Kate twisted to look over her shoulder and saw him coming at her—at the state trooper—her gun in hand. For a fraction of an instant, shock held her immobile. He wouldn't—he couldn't—

  Common sense kicked in, along with a fresh rush of adrenaline, and she jumped out of Jonas's path. The gun in his hand came down, connecting with the back of the cop's skull with a muffled thunk! Enough to put him out cold and ensure he had a nasty headache when he woke up. Not enough to kill him.

  She couldn't believe the possibility had entered her head, however briefly. The cold condemnation in the eyes now turned on her assured her it had. And that Jonas knew it.

  Instinctively, impulsively, she stretched out her hand to him. "Jonas—"

  He pulled his arm away. The shouts in the woods grew nearer.

  "We need to go." Jonas shoved the gun at her, and she accepted it automatically, her brain still trying to recover from the chaos of the past few moments. From the unforgivable leap it had made. Jonas rounded the vehicle and slid behind the steering wheel. He pulled down the sun visor, and a key dropped into his lap. The small part of Kate’s brain that still functioned thanked the sloppy, overconfident cop who’d left it there.

  The engine turned over. Caught. Headlights illuminated the road and the canopy of trees above.

  "Kate!"

  Kate cast a last glance at the flashlights bobbing along the path from the cabin and got into the car. She slammed the door shut as Jonas jammed his foot down on the accelerator and the car surged forward in a spray of gravel. In the side mirror, the flashlights broke free of the woods. Two pops sounded. The mirror exploded.

  "Get down!" Jonas's hand snaked around Kate's neck, forcing her head down. She didn't need to be told twice.

  Wrapping arms around knees, she tried to stay in her seat as the car slewed first left, then right. More pops followed, growing fainter. A sharp turn pressed her rib cage against the door handle, and then the vehicle straightened out. She ventured a peek at Jonas from between straggly strands of wet hair.

  "Are we clear?" she asked. In the glow of the dashboard lights, she saw him check the rearview mirror.

  "For now."

  She straightened in her seat and fumbled for her seatbelt with fingers numb from cold. A metal-on-metal clunk made her pause. Freaking hell. She was still holding the gun Jonas had given her, her fingers clamped around it so hard that—now that she'd noticed—she could feel the bite of the grip against her palm. A bubble of laughter rose in her chest, and she clamped her teeth together to keep it from erupting. She and Jonas may have laughed together once over a narrow escape, but there would be no repeat of shared relief. Not after—

  A navy trench coat dropped into her lap.

  "Change into that." Jonas stared stonily ahead. "I'm not up to another bout of hypothermia."

  "I'm okay."

  "Just do it, Kate."

  She flinched from his flat tone. "Jonas, about what happened back there—"

  "Forget it."

  "No. It wasn't what you think. It was—"

  "Save it, Kate." His mouth took on a bitter twist in the pale green glow from the dashboard lights. He didn't look at her. "It doesn't matter anyway."

  She scowled at him. "It does matter. At least to me. Yes, the thought crossed my mind—for about a hundredth of a second. I was in the middle of assaulting another co
p, for God's sake. I wasn't exactly at my most logical!"

  His lips pressed tighter. "I told you, it doesn't matt—"

  White-hot anger flared in Kate. "Screw you, Burke," she snarled. She slammed the gun onto the console between them, heedless of safety precautions, and started peeling off her wet sweatshirt. She was naked beneath, but she didn’t care about that, either.

  "You don't want to be a reasonable human being?" she continued, her voice muffled by the soggy fabric as it caught around her ears. "Fine. Go ahead and believe what you want. You will anyway, because heaven forbid you run out of reasons to keep me at arm's length, which is what this is really about."

  She gave the sweatshirt a final, vicious tug, and it slipped off with a suddenness that made her hand smack his shoulder. The car swerved on the gravel road. Shivering at the chill against her wet skin, she tossed the balled-up shirt into the back seat. She'd hit the proverbial nail on the head with her words—she had no doubt about it. She also had no earthly idea what to do about the realization, and she was too goddamned exhausted to even care anymore.

  Tomorrow she'd care again, but not tonight.

  Tonight, Jonas Burke could go pound sand.

  "I'm not capable of trust," the memory of Jonas's voice reminded her as she picked up the trench coat that had slid to the floorboards.

  "No shit, Sherlock," she muttered under her breath. If Jonas heard, he didn’t let on, and Kate unsnapped her jeans, lifted her hips from the seat, and commenced the near-impossible task of separating wet denim from skin.

  Chapter 36

  Damn it to hell and back. Jonas's jaw ached from being clenched, but he couldn't relax it. Not with Kate wiggling in the seat next to him like that. Every time she lifted her hips up to coax the wet jeans down a little further, the trench coat she'd put on fell wide open. So far he'd managed to refrain from outright gawking, but he could still see the pale glow of her skin from the corner of his eye.