by Aimée Thurlo
Ripples of excitement flowed through her as she felt their lower bodies touching intimately. As he rubbed himself against her, a little cry escaped her lips. It was the sound of a woman who needed a man, and everything male in Travis recognized it.
He kissed her, sending his tongue deep into her mouth. His lips slanted back and forth, sucking and mating, alternating between exquisite tenderness and the hardness his passion demanded. At long last, his breath ragged, he drew back.
There was a wildness in Travis’s eyes as he looked down at her. She understood then that his control had been stretched to the limit The passion that drove him now was too powerful for even him to master.
“You do things to me no one has ever done before,” he whispered darkly, nuzzling her neck. “And you feel so right beneath me.” He pushed himself into the cradle of her thighs, wanting her to feel him and needing her softness.
Poised over her and balanced on one arm, he unbuttoned her shirt, then loosened her bra. “So lovely,” he said, baring her breasts.
The bones of his face seemed to sharpen as he gazed down at her. Then, moving slowly as if to savor each precious second, he lowered his head and drew her nipple into his mouth.
Pleasure shot through her and the new fire that blazed inside her made it impossible for her to draw a full breath. She could feel his body harden even more, although until that moment, she hadn’t thought it possible.
Long, heated moments passed before he kissed her again. Wild lights danced in her head as she sucked at his tongue and he gave it to her, letting her love him.
When he drew back this time, his eyes were smoldering and his body was shaking with a passion he could barely keep leashed.
“I want to feel you naked against me. I don’t want any barriers between us.” His voice was a fevered whisper as he shifted off her and began undressing her. “I want to make you mine here, in this place where Wind and Earth meet as one.”
Fox didn’t resist him. She’d given Travis, the boy, her heart one moonlit night years ago. But now, it was the man she loved.
“Is it only my body that you want?” she whispered. She knew in her heart it was not, but she needed to hear him say it.
His features were intense, his eyes glittering as they held hers. “You’re a part of me, Fox, but you’ve known that all along. I need to be inside you, to share your fire, to take everything you’ve got to give me and give you all I have in return.”
They were the words she’d longed to hear. She reached for his hand and brought it to her breast, then guided it over her heart. “Then take what’s already yours.”
He sucked in a ragged breath. “I’ll never give you reason to regret this day, Fox. I’ll love you the way a woman like you was meant to be loved.”
He released her hand and stripped off his shirt and jeans, letting her watch him. As he stood before her, naked, his manhood swollen and pulsing, she opened her arms to him.
Travis stretched out beside her and loved her with his mouth and his hands. He brought her to a fever pitch, readying her for the final joining.
“Take me now. No more games,” she begged, an unbearable pressure building within her.
“It should be slow,” he said, his voice an unsteady murmur in the shade of their small shelter. “But the gods help me, I just don’t know if I can do that now.”
He moved over her, determined to let her feel the very tip of him only and get used to his body that way. But at that moment, she thrust upward. Hearing her cry out, he froze. “Hurt?” he managed, struggling for control, though he was at the ragged edge.
“No...yes, but just for a minute,” she managed, feeling her body melt around his. She began moving again, wriggling her hips to take him deeper inside her.
“So good!” He groaned her name and held her hips steady, stopping for a moment, trying to slow things down for her sake.
Travis wanted to be tender, but her inexperienced movements were too much. He thrust inside her, riding her hard, taking her over the edge time and time again, then finally joining her and spilling his seed into her.
Afterward, as the sun went down, Fox lay in his arms. A peace unlike anything she’d ever known before settled gently over her. She’d never dreamed it could be like this; that love would make her feel so complete. It was like a fairy tale—magical and wonderful—but, oh, so true.
He cradled her tenderly, tucking her head beneath his chin. “Tell me you don’t regret what happened,” he murmured, tilting her chin upward. “I need to hear you say it, but only if it’s the truth.”
As she gazed into his eyes, she understood. She could destroy him with just a few words. His heart, laced through his plea, was reaching out to her. The toughened soldier, the loner, had taken the biggest risk of all when he’d surrendered to love.
“I will never regret today, not for as long as I live.”
Travis held her tightly. “Sleep now. I’ll watch over you.”
She closed her eyes, exhausted, but fulfilled in a way she’d never known before. Today Travis had trusted her enough to allow her to see him at his most vulnerable. Without words, he’d asked for her gentleness, knowing she’d be capable of nothing less. No promises of “forever” had been made between them, but that didn’t matter now. The future was not theirs to claim. The shadow of their inevitable parting lurked just beyond the bend. But those tears would wait. For now, secure in the afterglow of their love, they would share each other’s warmth.
Chapter Nineteen
Morning came like a thief and, as the sun’s rays bathed the tops of the distant mountains, Fox knew their night of magic had passed. Sadness encompassed her as they ate the rest of yesterday’s food, then broke camp. All the obstacles that had stood between them before were still there. Nothing had changed—yet everything had.
“I think we should head off the Reservation and lie low for a while,” Travis said as Fox climbed into the vehicle. “We certainly don’t have many options left right now and it’s better not to act without a clear plan.”
“There is one place we haven’t searched for that list of numbers,” she said. “And it’s possible that it’s been there all along, hidden in something from my past.”
“Where’s that?”
“The school. I know that Mom kept some of my baby stuff as mementos in her office. It’s possible she inadvertently stored away more than she’d intended. Nobody was looking for numbers when Ashe and Casey checked out the place weeks ago.”
“We can’t go to the Johnsons’ school,” he said flatly. “The people who are after you may have gotten the same idea, and it’s too easy a place to stake out”
“Then we’ll have to arrange to meet Casey and Ashe there. They can be our backup, and also speed up our search because they can rule out places they’ve already looked. It’ll give us a chance to get an update from them, too, and see if they’ve turned up anything new. We have to let them know about McNeely catching up to us, anyway.”
“Just because Casey and Ashe will be there doesn’t mean we won’t be in the line of fire,” he warned. “Keep that in mind.”
Ninety minutes later, after breakfast in the parking lot of a fast-food place, and a quick call from a pay phone, they arrived at the school. Casey and Ashe were waiting by the doors. They’d brought a set of keys.
Ashe led the way inside. “Let’s divide this place up.”
“We can search Mom’s and Dad’s classrooms,” Fox said, “their offices, and whatever places we can think of that only they had complete access to. And keep in mind that one of the best ways to hide numbers is to put them with other numbers. We’re going to have to check any list that looks even the slightest bit suspicious or out of place.”
TWO HOURS PASSED. Fox glanced at Travis as he checked Nick’s file cabinet. He obviously didn’t like doing this. To go through the possessions of the dead was offensive to him as a Navajo. But these days, he made no effort to disguise it. He had accepted the part of himself that was, and alw
ays would be, Navajo.
After an exhaustive search, Casey sank down in one of the empty chairs. “We’ve looked everywhere. It’s time to call it quits here.”
Fox sat at a secretary’s desk a short distance from Casey, determined to hide her disappointment. “What about your prisoner? Did you ever get anything out of him?”
“Not yet, but we will.”
An eerie silence fell over them as they accepted that they’d reached the end of the line, and still had no answers.
“The people after me are convinced I have those account numbers or, at the very least, know where they are,” Fox said at last, thinking out loud. “They must have either some solid evidence or a very good reason to believe that. They wouldn’t be doing all this solely on a hunch.”
She saw the others nod in agreement, and continued. “For a long time I kept thinking that Chance, the bear, was the link, but that was off base. There’s nothing in Chance. We checked him out.”
Casey nodded. “I could have told you that. After the murder, the police took it in, looking for trace evidence. When they discovered that your parents were living under an assumed name, they searched through everything, including the bear’s stuffing.”
“Then what are we missing? As far as I can tell, I only have one other thing from my past life, and it’s this locket.” Fox reached up and curled her hand around it. “But I’ve already searched it, and there’s nothing in there.”
“I took a look at it, too. There’s no inscription on either the metal or the photo,” Travis added.
“Refresh my memory. Tell me about the photo,” Casey said.
“It’s just me as a kid holding Chance,” Fox answered.
“Can I see it?” Ashe asked.
Fox undid the clasp, then flipped open the lid. “It’s just as I said—” Fox stopped speaking abruptly as she looked down at the photo.
“What’s wrong?” Travis asked.
“The photo... It looks different.”
Travis came up and took a look. “It’s the same photo of you and Chance. How’s it different?”
“There’s something about the eyes....”
“Let me see.” Ashe took the locket from Fox’s hands. As he started to pull out the photo, a black dot slid downward toward the bottom of the locket. “Something’s weird here. It looks like part of Chance’s eye is coming off.”
He placed it under a desk lamp, taking a closer look. “This isn’t part of the photo. It’s something that’s been carefully placed over the photo.”
“A microdot of some kind?” Fox asked.
“Maybe, but I can’t be sure until we check it out.”
“Let’s go down to the science lab,” Fox said. “There are microscopes there. I may not be able to verify what it contains if it is a microdot, but what I can do is make sure that it’s not just a piece of the image cracking off because of age.”
At the lab a few minutes later, Fox used tweezers to place the dot between a cover slip and slide, then put it on the stage of the microscope. “I can see numbers. This is no dirt spot. I have a feeling we’ve just found what we’ve been looking for.”
“I’m going back to the police station and have the local experts tell us exactly what’s on this,” Casey said, carefully taking the photo, then placing it and the slide with the microdot in an evidence pouch. She sealed that inside another pouch, then labeled it.
“Wait, slow down,” Fox said. “This may be our only chance to catch the inside man at the Marshals Service. But to do that we’re going to have to set things up carefully. We’ll need to work with another agency that the inside man at the Marshals Service won’t be able to infiltrate.”
“We can go to the FBI office in Albuquerque,” Casey suggested reluctantly. “But, first, I need to know exactly what you have in mind.”
“It’s a great plan,” Fox said, ignoring Travis’s groan. “All we’ll really need is luck and little ingenuity.”
KEEPING THEIR OPERATION a secret from everyone in the Marshals Service, they took a commuter flight from Farmington to Albuquerque and went directly to the Bureau offices there. Four hours later, they had what they needed.
Casey stood with Travis, Ashe, and Fox in the outer lobby of the facility, just east of downtown. “The Bureau will keep the real microdot and the account numbers they extracted from it. What I’ve got here,” she said, holding up an envelope, “are two new microdots with phoney information in them. We’re ready to roll. But from this point on, things are going to get nasty.”
“I’ve been preparing for this moment ever since the day Prescott came into my life,” Fox said. “I’m ready.”
Casey gave her a nod, then looked at Travis and Ashe. “I’m going to independently give one of these microdots to Carl Andrews and the other to Marc Gray. I’ll tell each of them that the other man is our suspect, and I’ll insist they keep the information completely confidential until we figure out what the numbers represent. The moment either of them tries to access the phoney accounts, we’ll know who the inside man is, since each microdot has a different set of account numbers leading to a separate account.”
“It’ll be a great sting operation,” Ashe said. “If they don’t access the accounts right away, they’ll risk losing all that money. Good thinking, Fox, and a great job, Casey.”
“It’s a matter of having the right plan and the right contacts,” Casey said. “But now we’ll be under fire from all sides. I’ve gone out on a limb by getting authorization directly from Washington and getting the Bureau involved.”
“And we still have McNeely and his companion to contend with,” Travis added. “But that’s where I come in. I know how McNeely thinks, so I can use that to reel him in.”
“You’re our point man, then,” Ashe said. “Go on. What’s your plan?”
“McNeely found, and then lost us the other night outside Cuba, but that’s a situation he intends to rectify. What he’ll do is backtrack to where we’ve hidden out before. There’s only one place left standing on the Rez we all have ties to—the lodge by Rock Ridge. I’d be willing to bet he’s got that place staked out, hoping we’ll show up there sooner or later.”
“But we can’t count on that, because the bad guys are really short on manpower, now that two of them are out of the picture,” Casey said. “It could take forever. And if we happen to corral the inside man at the Marshals Service first, it’s likely McNeely will cut and run. We need to stack the deck more in our favor. We have to find a way to lead him exactly where we want him to go.”
Travis nodded thoughtfully. “Leading him to the lodge purposely is going to be tricky. It’ll have to be done subtly, or he won’t fall for it. The only way I can think of doing this is to somehow let him know we’re on our way up there. He’ll either try to follow or ambush us. But if your people give us backup, we’ll be able to turn the tables on him before he even knows what hit him. I know that area like the palm of my hand.”
“How can you make sure word gets to McNeely with any degree of certainty?” Casey asked.
Travis considered for a long moment. “McNeely has a cousin who works at the Last Stop Café, which is on our way. They’ve always been tight, and I bet she knows exactly what McNeely has been up to. We can stop by long enough to pick up some food and, while we’re there, drop a hint or two about our destination. McNeely’s cousin is sure to recognize us and pass on what she overhears to him.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Casey said. “Now we have to come up with a timetable. We’ll all have to work in unison and on a variety of fronts. I’m also going to need to make sure we have trustworthy backup,” Casey added. “You and Ashe know the area around Rock Ridge better than anyone else. I want you two to work out the details of the trap we set for McNeely.”
“The first thing is to lead him away from the lodge itself into the surrounding terrain, which will give you the advantage,” Ashe said, then began discussing possible strategies with his brother. At long last, they settled o
n a plan. “Get a flight back, pick up your vehicle at the Farmington airport,” Ashe told Fox and Travis, “then head back to the Reservation. It’ll take Casey and me at least two hours to get things rolling.”
As they left the building, Fox’s thoughts were racing. She knew that the next part of the battle belonged mostly to Travis. He needed to settle the score with McNeely. He wouldn’t rest until that was over.
They drove to the airport in the rental car and then, sometime later, the small commuter plane took off toward the northwest. Looking out the aircraft window at the ground dropping away, Fox remained locked in the privacy of her own thoughts.
They’d both changed so much. Through Travis, she’d discovered that the home she’d longed for was in reality something other than a particular place. Home was a place the heart could find rest.
Her feelings for Travis had awakened an entirely new world to her—one filled with gentleness and kindness, even in the midst of violence. But love had to be welcomed and accepted by two people, or it would never find the fertile ground it needed to grow. And, above all, love had to be believed in before it could overcome whatever stood in its way.
Chapter Twenty
After landing in Farmington, Travis and Fox picked up their vehicle and began the drive back to the Rez. She sat quietly beside him, but he was certain her silence was temporary, much like the calm before a storm. Soon, she’d come up with another plan, and do her best to force him to follow it, assuring him it was better than his. She was a constant challenge, and not an easy woman to live with. Yet the thought of a lifetime with her, trying to tame her while she tried to tame him, made a stream of raw and reckless excitement course through him.
It was precisely because he did care about her and because he loved her that he knew he had to end it. What could he possibly give her? After his time in the Rangers was over, he wouldn’t reenlist, he knew that much now. But that meant finding a new career and building a new life. She deserved a man who was settled, who had a nine-to-five job and would come home every night.
