by Tara Janzen
A couple of candy bars and a little rest had gone a long way toward restoring her. Her skin had lost the icy paleness of Skeeter's manga paintings. She looked warm and alive.
Her mouth so soft.
The curve of her jaw so delicate. Her cheeks. The silky fall of dark hair across her brow, the long strands sliding across the tips of her eyelashes. So female.
His chest grew even tighter, but in a different way. She wasn't just pretty. She was beautiful, and he was insane. There was no other way to account for his slow, unstoppable slide into desire. It was impossible for any sane man to feel so awful and still get turned on. He had to have some kind of major glitch in his serotonin synapses or whatever the hell was supposed to keep this sort of thing from happening.
He wanted to kiss her again, really kiss her this time, his tongue in her mouth, her hands in his hair, and that was so crazy it worried him. She was an international criminal selling a nuclear warhead on the black market, for Christ's sake. He couldn't have her. Hell, he didn't even know her, and if she was half as smart as he thought she was, she sure as hell wouldn't want to know him—and he didn't blame her. He was no catch even on a good day, and even if she could overlook the fact that he was the guy who had captured her and was turning her in, Dylan was going to take her away as soon as he got back from Washington, D.C., tonight. The CIA was probably already at Steele Street, waiting for him to show up—which would explain Skeeter's record-breaking fifteen phone calls—and that would be the end of his whole involvement with Cody Stark. If he really worked at it, he might be able to follow the government's case against her, but more than likely it would all be so classified it would be as if she'd dropped off the edge of the earth. She would simply disappear into a maw of regulations and government double-speak, and he'd never know what happened to her, or whether or not she was actually Cody Stark.
And that was the way it was supposed to be. That's the way it always was when he brought somebody in. He wasn't supposed to care, and he sure as hell wasn't supposed to kiss anybody, or want to sleep with them. Dominika Starkova, Cody Stark, it didn't matter. He was on an op, not a date.
But something about holding her in the dark, feeling her hands on him and listening to her breathe, had crossed his signals. He wanted something from her—something he had a snowball's chance in hell of getting.
Loneliness, that was probably his problem, but he was lonely all the time, and being around Skeeter never gave him a jones.
Maybe he just needed to get laid. That was the simple answer—but nothing was simple any more.
She started to move away from him, but he gave her arm a light squeeze and shook his head. Then he pointed toward the scaffolding. Lights were still shining up from the lower floors. They weren't out of this yet.
In truth, she was never going to be out of it, not ever again, not in this life. The minute he'd grabbed her, she'd lost her last shred of freedom—and why in the hell that should bother him was just one more big damn mystery to him, like why he was having to work so hard to keep from reassuring her that everything was going to be all right.
For her, nothing was going to be all right—not if he did his job.
Down in the old library, Creed heard a few books come off their shelves and land on the floor. He instantly froze, listening.
So did everyone on the main floor. Everything went silent.
After a second or two, a man spoke. “Sorry, guys. That was me.”
Other voices chimed in, teasing the guy, and Creed relaxed from full-out ready-to-rumble.
“Smooth move.”
“Way to go, Miller.”
The police had to be about through.
Outside, the wind was howling, the storm picking up in force. His car was going to be a block of ice by the time they got to it. She'd still start; Angelina always started. But the ride to Steele Street was going to be a cold one . . . if you take Cody Stark to Steele Street.
Whoa, he thought. Slow down. Of course he was taking her to Steele Street—and he was handing her over to whoever was there, Dylan or the CIA. He hadn't completely lost his mind—despite the weeks he'd spent trying, before General Grant had let him go back to Colombia and relieve Hawkins. Apparently, soaking your brain in premium tequila, even for days on end, wasn't enough to make it pack its bags and go away.
Too bad, he'd thought at the time.
After a couple more minutes of holding her and trying not to think about it too much, the library was once again quiet, the lower floors dark.
“Okay. Let's move out,” he said.
* * *
FINALLY, Cody thought, getting to her feet as quickly as she could, about ready to jump out of her skin. She'd had some incredibly bad nights since her father had died, but this one was heading toward the top of the crazy list. Not the top of her worst-ever list, just the crazy list. The all-time worst-ever top spot had been chiseled in granite in Karlovy Vary, and it was going to take more than a dangerous but oddly nice guy named Creed Rivera to change it.
Oddly nice? She stopped moving for a second, startled into stillness.
Well, that settled it. She had lost her mind. Nice men did not shoot at a person, handcuff her, drop her through skylights, or threaten her with lifetime imprisonment.
On the other hand, nice men did save a person from her worst enemies and the cops, and nice men did give you their hats and their candy bars and wrap you in their coats when you were freezing your butt off.
Of course, it wasn't very nice when that same guy turned you over to the United States government and your butt ended up in Leavenworth.
No. Her prime directive hadn't changed in the last few minutes. She had to get away from him, but even the briefest look around proved that getting away wasn't going to be easy. They had a sheer drop on one side, with some scaffolding holding up the floor; the other side was haphazardly blocked off with stored bookcases and a few pieces of piled-up furniture.
Her gaze went back to the sheer drop. She didn't really know him, but she knew him well enough to know that's the way he was going—heedlessly, without a thought. Over the edge. That was him.
Proving her right, he took hold of her hand and pulled her with him into the jungle gym of iron bars. “Watch your step.”
It was only a couple of feet to the abyss, and when she looked down she could almost pinpoint the bank of bookcases where she'd hidden Tajikistan Discontent, the worst book of poetry she'd ever tried to read, which had been her second clue that poetry might not have been its reason for existing. That much dreck and drivel had to have another purpose, and when her father had keeled over in the mountains of Tajikistan, coerced there by Sergei's command to lead a group of Sergei's men to the nuclear warhead, she'd realized what her father had given her: the map he'd sworn he'd never made, and the absolute worst inheritance ever bequeathed. It was going to be the death of her, if she couldn't escape.
As soon as they got to the street, she was going to disappear into it. She'd been at a disadvantage with Mr. Creed Rivera so far, but her car was parked just a block away, and he had that weak left leg. One more good kick ought to put him down long enough for her to melt into the shadows, concealed by the blizzard. He wasn't going to shoot her, and she was betting that Bruno and Ernst weren't waiting right outside the front door, not with the cops all around.
She was betting her life on it.
“Here's the plan,” he said, moving to the edge of the scaffolding and leaning into the darkness.
Out of pure instinct, she grabbed for him, her free hand closing around a fistful of his coat. Then she noticed the pair of ropes he'd pulled back.
“Thanks,” he said, and she felt her cheeks burn. Damn him. She hadn't seen any ropes. And what was she doing grabbing for him? She sure as hell wouldn't have grabbed for Bruno Walmann. Pushed was more like it.
“We'll ride this down to the main floor,” he said, looping a foothold into one of the ropes.
She had to admit that it was a hell of an idea, a hell of a crazy ide
a. She followed the ropes to where they wound themselves through a series of pulleys.
“Uh, what makes you think this is going to work?” She didn't even attempt to hide her skepticism. Right off the top of her head she could imagine a hundred real simple things that could go wrong—starting with them dropping three floors like a couple of stones and hitting the library floor at just under light speed.
No. She wasn't doing it.
“These are rigged for hauling supplies. They'll hold us.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, I don't think so.” She'd had enough of hanging off things.
“It wasn't a question, and I wasn't asking,” he said, scooping his arm around her waist. Before she could protest, he pushed them off into thin air.
Holy freaking Tarzan. She scrambled to hold onto him, clutching at him, her arms going around his neck, her feet bicycling in the air, trying to find the loop he'd tied in the rope.
“Stop moving your legs,” he said.
“But I-I'm not on the rope.” He should have warned her, damn him.
“I've got you.”
“Yes, but . . . but—”
“I've got you.” His voice was quiet, firm.
And he did, she realized. His arm was tight around her waist, holding her close—close enough for her to feel his breath against her cheek. They hadn't dropped like a couple of stones. They were actually swinging in a long graceful arc. At the end of it, they hung in the air for a second before swinging back toward the scaffolding—and all the while they were slowly descending toward the main floor, belayed by the rope he was holding at the small of her back. She looked up and saw his left arm stretched out above them, his hand wrapped around the other end of the rope.
He was strong.
Very strong, she realized—strong enough to hold the two of them in midair, strong enough to carry her around half the night without breaking a sweat, strong enough to take down Edmund Braun in five seconds flat.
Who in the holy hell was he? she wondered for about the millionth time. And what were the chances that he would betray his country to make a deal with her?
Damn slim, she decided. He probably wasn't a traitor. That would have been too easy, and nothing had been easy for her lately. He was definitely a professional, highly trained. The truth of it had been in every move he'd made. She hadn't known it at the time, but he'd been in control of the situation from the minute he'd sat down in the reading room. Bruno showing up had just given him an opportunity to prove it. He was used to thinking fast on his feet, taking action, and coming out on top. He knew how to protect himself and others. He was skilled at evasion but not adverse to combat when evasion failed. He had weapons and knew how to use them.
In truth, he was a warrior, a warrior who won at any cost.
In fact, he was exactly what she needed.
The realization hit her hard, all of a sudden, like a thousand watts of halogen quartz snapping on at the end of a long dark tunnel. She needed help staying alive, help evading Sergei and the men like Reinhard Klein that Sergei would never stop sending after her until he'd recaptured her. She needed another new identity, and sanctuary if she could find it. She needed some breathing room, a place and the time to think—and she needed it all yesterday. She'd been on the run for weeks. She wasn't sharp anymore. She'd made a mistake somewhere, to have been found so quickly—but if she could win Creed Rivera over to her side, she'd have someone to watch her back. She could catch her breath.
All she had to do was get him to slow down, keep him from turning her in.
All she had to do was sweeten the deal.
She lowered her gaze, letting it drift over the tangled length of his sun-streaked hair, the short dark lines of his eyebrows, over the hard, wide curve of his jaw. He was the ultimate surfer boy all grown up, ocean blue eyes washed through with green and faded by the sun to a pale silvery sheen, his face tanned and carved in classic lines—which was, she admitted, all beside the point. But he was also rock-solid against her, which wasn't beside the point, all corded muscle-and-sinew-wrapped testosterone honed to a razor's edge. Despite the underlying prettiness of his rough-boy looks, everything about him said “switchblade” more than “surfboard.”
He was more than a match for her nightmares. She was sure of it. The only remotely soft-looking thing about him was the slight fullness of his lower lip. It fascinated her, the one sensual touch in a face that could easily have been described as too hard by half.
And he'd kissed her on the roof. A smart girl would use that to her advantage.
She was a smart girl.
But maybe not that smart.
Hell. She'd spent too much of her time the last three months avoiding just that sort of complication, avoiding it at all costs, determined not to let herself be used like the bimbo she'd been pretending to be—and for the most part, she'd been successful.
So could she use him?
Of course she could, she told herself. Get a grip, take a breath, and grow up.
The deep shadows of the stacks suddenly rose up around them, signaling the end of their descent. It was now or never. She either ran and took her chances with Bruno and Ernst, or she took Creed Rivera for all she could get and let him be the one to make sure she got out of downtown Denver in one piece.
She didn't doubt that he could, and once he'd helped her escape downtown, she wouldn't have any trouble escaping him, especially if she could get him on her home ground.
He stepped off the rope onto the floor, and with all the enthusiasm she could muster on such short notice, she slowly slid down the front of him until her feet touched the ground.
Looking up, she let her arms gradually fall from around his neck. “I have something in my apartment you need to see,” she said, adding just the slightest hint of breathlessness to her voice.
CREED looked down at her, wary as hell, with every cell in his body telling him she suddenly, for whatever reason, had just decided to set him up. She'd slid down him like hot on a Dreamsicle popsicle—and he'd liked it, a lot.
And that, he knew, was why Dylan always did any “girl work” that came SDF's way, because Dylan Hart was a cold-hearted, by-the-book, take-no-prisoners and give-no-ground kind of guy who would never fall for such a cheesy come-on, especially when it was delivered by a gamine-faced waif with boy-cut hair dressed in at least two layers of the baggiest clothes God had ever put on the planet.
I have something in my apartment you need to see. Of course she did, and it was probably a .357 magnum or a boyfriend the size of King Kong.
Dylan would never have taken such obvious bait.
But Creed remembered how soft her mouth had been beneath his, and even though he was absolutely positive this was one more sure step down the road to self-destruction, a real shit-for-brains idea, he was damned if he was going to say no. All she'd really done was give him the excuse he'd wanted. She had something in her apartment he needed to see, and if it bought him an extra hour of Cody Stark's company, he was going to take it. Maybe she'd show him the maps—or maybe she'd show him something else. And he'd be lying if he said a small, totally irresponsible, and undoubtedly crazy part of him wasn't hoping for something else.
“Okay,” he said and hoped to hell his brain kicked in sometime soon, before he did any serious damage to the operation. “I'll take you home before I take you in.”
On the other hand, it would save them all a few hours of detective work to have her show him where she lived. Dylan was going to want to go over the place with a fine-tooth comb, and he'd want to do it without the CIA on his ass. One of the basic truths of SDF was getting paid for getting results where other people failed. General Grant kept his office, next to the boiler room in the underbelly of a hell-and-gone annex, because his guys got the job done, every time, ahead of the pack. Without them, old Buck would have been put out to pasture a long time ago.
With his hand on her arm, he started toward the front door. Then it opened. The heavy handle rattled, the hinges
squeaked, and a gust of frigid air blew inside.
He and Cody Stark froze in place. When the door closed, they heard two men whispering and the sound of footsteps crossing the foyer.
It didn't take Creed more than five seconds of listening to the voices to realize she'd been in danger from more than just the Braun boys blasting away in the stairwell tonight. Damn, she was starting to look like a friggin' magnet for trouble.
From the look on her face, she realized it, too. Without a word, they backed deeper into the stacks. The bookcases loomed up around them, deadening the sound of their retreat. After a few steps, he turned her around and they made a beeline away from the foyer. When he couldn't hear the men whispering any longer, Creed pulled her to a stop.
Making their escape through the front door was out of the question now. Bruno and Ernst were undoubtedly watching it, but he'd figured he could elude Reinhard's brigade. These new guys, though. Hell, they added a whole new dimension to the night. He didn't want to get caught on the Plaza with bad guys in front of them and bad guys behind them.
He looked around. They were at the south end of the building, which wasn't so bad. He'd parked Angelina on Bannock Street. All they needed was a way out. There had to be a back door somewhere.
In the end, he found a partially blocked fire exit behind the outdated encyclopedias onto Thirteenth Avenue. It took him all of thirty seconds to dismantle the alarm, and then they were squeezing out onto the street, right into the heart of the storm.
The wind had increased in velocity, blowing the snow sideways and causing the temperature to plummet. Goddamn, it was cold. Bruno and Ernst might be holding up in the wild weather, but the men inside the old library had to be desperate to have come out looking for her in a blizzard.
Of course, there was nothing like trying to pump up your country's nuclear capabilities to add a little incentive to your agenda. Having the Bomb was big on the world stage. Only eight countries could produce a mushroom cloud on demand—and every rogue state that had managed to pull themselves out of a Third World economy wanted to be number nine.
