Dangerous Waters

by Janice Kay Johnson

  CHAPTER 9

  While Mac talked at the pay phone, Megan waited in the car. When he at last emerged from the phone booth and walked toward the car, she knew.

  She waited until he climbed in behind the wheel and slammed his door. "The dead man's been identified."

  "Yeah." Mac wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel and looked straight ahead through the windshield. "Renato Mendoza. He's been connected with Saldivar before."

  "So now you know."

  "I knew," he said, still not looking at her. "Now I have to do something about it."

  Megan, too, gazed ahead, watching without really seeing the traffic passing on the highway. The phone booth was outside an Arco gas station. She tried to sound calm, collected. "Do you want me to stay here, or should I go somewhere else?"

  When Mac didn't answer, she turned her head. He was looking at her, his brows drawn together in a frown, his expression brooding. "Damn it, I don't know what to do with you."

  "What do you mean?" she retorted. "I'll do what you wanted me to in the first place."

  "I don't like the idea of you off by yourself."

  He said it so brusquely, she couldn't feel flattered. "What, you think I'm going to do something stupid?"

  "I don't know," Mac snapped. Then he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "No, I don't think you'll do anything stupid. You're scared enough now to behave yourself for a while. But damn it, it's so easy to screw up."

  "Maybe," she agreed, puzzled by his rare indecision. "But what choice is there? For you to keep playing bodyguard?"

  "Let me think about it."

  "Do I have a choice?" she asked tartly.

  "No." He turned the key in the ignition and took advantage of the first opening in the traffic to pull back onto the highway.

  Not knowing whether she was angry or hurt, Megan sat beside him in silence. He had changed so quickly, from the relaxed, passionate lover she awakened beside this morning, to the guarded, even cold, man she had first known. Which one was the real James McClain?

  Why did he feel differently about her being alone now? Was it because he knew her better, thought her impulsive, maybe? Or was it because he cared more about what happened to her? Megan wanted very badly to believe the last. She knew, though, that she might be kidding herself.

  It was late afternoon when they made it back to the cabin. Zachary hopped off the double bed when Mac unlocked the front door. Even though they had left the curtains drawn, the small cabin was uncomfortably hot. Megan was sweating, her hair sticking to her neck. She headed straight into the bathroom to brush her too-thick brown hair into a pony tail. When she came out, Mac was lying on the bed, both pillows shoved behind him. His hands were clasped behind his head and he gazed broodingly at the wall in front of him.

  "Do you want to go swimming?" Megan asked.

  He gave her a distracted glance. "Not right now."

  "I'm going by myself, then," she said, turning on her heel.

  When she emerged from the bathroom again, this time in her suit with shorts pulled over it, Mac frowned. "Where are you going?"

  "Swimming," she said shortly. What had happened between them? Why had they reverted so easily to their antagonistic relationship?

  His tone was flat. "I don't want you going by yourself."

  Megan bristled. "Why not? What do you think I'm going to do, drown?"

  "I just want to know where you are."

  "Well, you know," she said, grabbing a towel off the back of a chair and flinging open the outside door. "Come on, Zachary." The retriever bounded after her.

  She knew she was behaving badly, that he had good reason to be worried, but the way he snapped orders infuriated her. What was she supposed to do, stare at the wall with him? Why bother, since he'd made clear that she had no say in whatever decision he made?

  Megan swam back and forth across the cove, Zachary valiantly trying to keep up. She'd done ten laps when she saw, not at all to her surprise, that Mac had followed her down. He wasn't swimming, just sitting on the baked, red-orange slope that rose from the water. Ignoring him, she swam another ten widths before she left the water. Megan picked up her towel and wrapped it sari-like around herself, tucking the end in.

  Mac watched, his expression distant. Megan studied him, trying to imprint his image in her memory. High forehead, cheekbones that gave his face angles and planes, hooded gray eyes and a mouth that could be cruel or tender. The lines between his dark brows were more obvious than usual, the grooves in his cheeks carved deeper. He could use a shave and his dark-blond hair was shoved back without a semblance of style. He should have been suavely handsome, and instead was pure male.

  She felt as if a tourniquet had been tied around her heart.

  With a sigh Megan sat beside him, wrapping her arms around her knees. This time she looked at the lake, turquoise-blue, and the speedboats making crisscrossing plumes. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice constrained. "I was just...frustrated."

  He nodded but didn't answer.

  "Have you decided what to do?"

  "Up to a point. It's time to bring this thing to an end. No more hiding. I want it done, one way or another." He grunted. "That's where I run into trouble. I need help, but I don't dare trust anyone who can do me any good."

  "Your partner..."

  "Could have sold me out," he said harshly.

  "Now wait a minute." Megan touched his arm. "I don't think you really believe that."

  Mac shoved his fingers into his hair. "I don't know what the hell to believe. The first thing I should do is put him to the test."

  "Do you really need to do that?" Megan asked. "Has he ever let you down?"

  His chest rose and fell on a long sigh. "No. But this time my safety isn't the only thing riding on my judgment."

  "Are you talking about me?"

  "Damn right."

  Without hesitation, she said softly, "I think in your heart you do trust him, or you wouldn't have kept calling him regularly. And I trust you."

  Mac turned his head sharply and their eyes met. She saw shock in his before he looked just as quickly away. There was silence for a moment, and then he said brusquely, "So be it."

  She nodded and sat quietly beside him. At last she had to ask. "What about me? What should I do?"

  "You know," he said, with seeming casualness, "I may pretend I'm bait, but I don't intend to get eaten."

  Eaten. Shuddering, Megan remembered her first glimpse of Mac, the two men shoving him overboard like a bundle of garbage. Could she bear it if something like that happened again, and she was off hiding her head in a hole?

  "Would I be in your way?" she asked.

  He didn't look at her. "I don't see what difference you'd make, if you're willing to follow orders."

  The decision wasn't hard. "I'd rather stay with you."

  Now he did turn his head. Their eyes met, his so clear a gray she could have tumbled in and sunk without a trace. "I shouldn't let you," he said, "but I was hoping you'd say that."

  Megan let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "Then...what do we do next?"

  "We call Norm." He rose to his feet and held out a hand. "No time like the present."

  Half an hour later they had found another phone booth. Mac wouldn't take the chance of using the resort office phone. "We're damn careful, but with technology changing as fast as it is, somebody might come up with a new way of tracing a call. I don't want to be found until I've issued the invitation."

  Megan wasn't sure she wanted to be found then, either. On the other hand, as Mac had pointed out, what was the alternative? Living on the run?

  She waited in the car this time, too. On the way back to their cabin, Mac summed up the conversation.

  "Norm's traveled the same route I have. It's got to be one of the other four agents. He's done a little asking around, figuring what the hell. They all know my troubles. They're not stupid. They'll have come to the same conclusion."

  "Must make for congenial wor
king conditions," Megan muttered.

  "Yeah."

  "And?"

  "He hasn't gotten any interesting answers. Didn't find any big debts. The only one with a lifestyle out of step with his income is Bill Marshall. I told you about him."

  "The one who married the model."

  "Yeah. Well, Norm managed to find out how much the inheritance was. It nicely paid for that fancy new nest."

  "Then . . . where do you start?"

  "Ramosa is in hot water again. He's gotten his wrist slapped so many times, this round they're suggesting he find a new career."

  "Do you really think...?"

  "Goddamn it, somebody is behind this shit!" Mac snapped. "Don't start in on me."

  Megan's voice rose. "I wasn't..." Then she made herself take a deep breath. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I'm just asking for...your opinion. That's all."

  There was silence for a moment before she saw him rotate his shoulders as though in answer to the same kind of tension she felt. "I'm sorry," he said roughly. "I don't like any of this. I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

  She swiftly touched his arm. "It's okay."

  He took one hand off the steering wheel to cover her hand, but didn't say anything.

  After a moment Megan said, "So you're going to start with this Ramosa."

  "It's a case of eenie, meenie, minie, moe. Norm says he's damned bitter. My gut tells me it's not him. My head isn't so sure."

  Megan only nodded. "So what's the plan?"

  Mac told her. It sounded so simple. Norm would find a way of letting Ramosa know where Mac was. Mac and she would actually rent a room elsewhere, as well as a second car, and stake out the cabin which they'd leave looking occupied.

  If nobody came hunting them, in six or seven days they would move to a new location and Norm would drop the word to the second suspect. Then they'd wait again.

  Sooner or later, as Mac said, someone would take the bait. It was the waiting that would be hard.

  *****

  In the days that followed Mac changed. Maybe she did, too, Megan wasn't sure. But the easygoing man who teased her, whose voice was amused as often as it was husky with passion, had turned into someone else. During long stakeouts of their beachfront cabin he was endlessly patient, silent for long stretches, his few comments brief to the point of taciturnity. When she tried to argue about the vantage point he'd chosen to watch the cabin from, he wouldn't rise to any bait.

  "This is best. With the angle of the morning sun, nobody'll see us."

  "But it's uncomfortable," Megan said, hoping she wasn't whining. "Couldn't we move behind those trees..." But he wasn't even listening.

  When they weren't watching the cabin, Mac was physically restive; while she read or watched TV, he would prowl the small confines of their hotel room. The few times he let her swim at a deserted cove, he waited on the beach, his watchful gaze traveling nonstop over the shoreline and boats that approached within half a mile. Megan felt as if she was accompanied by one of those blank-faced Secret Service men she'd seen on TV, who always seemed to wear dark glasses to hide whatever vestiges of emotion remained.

  Oh, he made love to her, but differently, almost grimly. The night he decided it was time to leave Lake Shasta was typical.

  They had found a hotel room in a big place just off the highway and rented the second car, while ostensibly holding onto the cabin and the first car. There was no way they could keep the cabin under surveillance twenty-four hours a day, but Mac spent ten to twelve hours every day watching it. Catching the hit man wasn't the object, as Mac pointed out; the fact that an attempt on their lives was made at all would put a name to the traitor in his office.

  "But I sure wouldn't mind catching this SOB, too," he said, in a voice that chilled her.

  Usually Megan went with him, but sometimes he left her in the hotel. Those times alone made her nervous, and she thought he felt the same, that there was relief in his eyes when she opened the door at his voice.

  It was nearly ten that night when he returned. He sank wearily onto the queen-size bed and said, "They'd have shown up by now if they knew where we were. It's time to make our next move."

  "Could they have been watching and...and guessed we weren't really there?"

  "That's always possible, but I don't think so. I've driven in and out, ducked out of the back door, turned lights on at different times. The place is busy enough that they wouldn't take a chance of being seen peeking in windows." Mac shook his head as he stripped his grey sweatshirt off. His voice was muffled by the shirt. "Saldivar's not a patient man."

  "We can't stay here?" Megan asked uncertainly. It should have made no difference to her where they were; Lake Shasta wasn't home territory anyway. But it had become familiar and, therefore, safe. She knew the beaches, the grocery stores, the highway. Change was always scary. She'd known too much of it.

  "You know we can't," he said, hardly glancing at her. "When somebody strikes, we've got to be damned sure where the leak was. If we stuck around here, how could I be sure whether Ramosa or the next guy had passed our locale on?"

  She didn't argue. What was there to say? Megan didn't even ask where they were going.

  "We'll turn the first car in," Mac said. "Make sure we're not followed. We can rent another when we get there. I think we'll head over to the coast. The resort here was perfect. I want to find another one like it."

  She knew what he meant. He'd liked the fact that their cabin was separate enough from the others that nobody else was likely to be hurt accidentally. It scared her even more than she'd already been, to be in love with a man who assessed hotel rooms by how vulnerable they were to attack instead of how comfortable the bed was.

  Silently Megan went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth and changed to her nightgown. When she came out, Mac gave her one comprehensive glance, then without comment went into the bathroom himself. By the time he came out, she was already in bed, her reading lamp turned off.

  She was tired, bone-tired, and desperate to be held. Not in passion, but for comfort. She wanted reassurance, understanding, tenderness. And she wanted them from Mac, who was as tired as she and unlikely to understand her needs.

  She heard the shower running, and at last Mac came out of the bathroom naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist. His hair was wet and spiky, and though he had obviously shaved, weary lines were carved deeply on his face.

  He turned off lights as he came, finally settling heavily down on the edge of the bed, where he tossed the towel onto a chair and pulled the covers up. Mac switched off his bedside lamp, and in the darkness Megan thought for a minute that he wasn't going to touch her at all.

  Then he turned suddenly and slipped his arm under her neck, gathering her in. On a sigh she snuggled up to his warm strength and closed her eyes, glorying in the feel of his embrace. His other hand brushed hair back from her face.

  "Sitting around waiting is hard, isn't it?" he said in a low voice.

  She was surprised that he'd read her mind. She nodded, knowing he could feel the motion.

  "It's not so different from anything else you're not looking forward to," he said. "You just want to get it over with."

  One way or the other. The phrase popped into her head, but she stayed silent. She didn't even know what most frightened her. Was it herself she feared for? Or Mac?

  "I need to kiss you," he said gruffly.

  Megan lifted her face willingly. Mac's big hand framed it, and then his mouth found hers unerringly. No gentleness here, she recognized immediately. Perhaps this raw desire was the masculine counterpart to her own need for simple contact. Whatever drove him, she responded to. Her lips were bruised, her tongue took part in a duel, his teeth bit her neck sharply enough to hurt for a fleeting instant. But something feminine in her reveled at being the object of such desperate hunger. This wasn't the way a man took a woman who didn't matter; this was the way he made love to one he was afraid of losing.

  He entered her alm
ost roughly, too, after wrapping her legs around his hips and gripping her buttocks in large hands that held her steady as he thrust deeply. She cried out, as much in pleasure as shock, and Mac's fingers clenched tighter as he held himself still with an effort that had him trembling.

  "Please," Megan whispered.

  "Stop?" She hardly recognized his voice.

  "No." She ran her fingernails over his back. "Make love to me."

  It was as though she'd unchained him. He groaned something she thought was her name, and then drove hard into her, again and again, faster, deeper. Sex had always been a mutual coupling, pleasurable but not an act that branded her as his. This time, she thought with what little part of her that could still reason, he was claiming her.

  And at the end he did something else he never had before. He gave a guttural cry that could have been ripped out of him just as he shuddered with the shock of climax.

  Afterward Megan held him as he lay heavily on her. His muscles were slick and hard under her caressing hands. He didn't roll away as he usually did, and she was glad.

  How many more nights would they have? she wondered. If they survived this trap Mac had set, then what? Would she ever see him again?

  *****

  The Oregon coast was as beautiful as Megan remembered it. She hadn't been here in years. The narrow highway climbed on cliffs above the Pacific. Thickly forested land ended abruptly in the rocky cliffs, and stacks worn by the pounding waves stood sentinel out in the ocean.

  Right now Megan could just see a gravel beach below, the cove protected by the arms of forested points, one crowned by a white lighthouse. The day had begun gray, with mist curling over the highway and softening the outlines of passing cars while dulling the deep green of fir and cedar. Megan was glad that they were going north instead of south. She wouldn't have wanted to be too close to the guardrail and the abrupt drop-off. Her memories of the battle to stay on the Devil's Lake road were too fresh. If someone tried the same thing here...

  She wouldn't let herself think about it.