by Cindy Dees
He cut off her babbling, asking quietly, “Why do you say I think you’re guilty?”
“The way you look at me. Like you’re trying to see inside my head. And...” She hesitated, and then rushed forward, “...and the way you kissed me. I felt you holding back.”
“Maybe I was holding back because I’m a decent guy, and I don’t just fall into bed on a whim.”
“And maybe you don’t trust me.”
She had him there. He changed subjects. “Are you planning to camp in the van all night? I can recommend much safer streets to do that on. Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t already been mugged sitting here.”
“Really?” She looked out the windshield as if she hadn’t noticed where she was before now.
“Any street in New Orleans that’s this deserted this early in the evening is a sure bet to be dangerous as hell.”
“Oh.” Dammit, her eyes went all wide and innocent and sexy as hell again.
Business, man. Do not think about what she feels like in your arms, kissing you like you’re some sort of conquering hero. “When I left Hubbard’s apartment about fifteen minutes ago, there weren’t any reporters camped out front. It’s probably safe for you to go home.”
She shook her head. “They’ll be back first thing in the morning.”
“Well, you can’t sit here all night.”
She nodded miserably and reached for the ignition again.
“Where will you go?” he asked quickly. “You can’t leave town.”
“I won’t leave town. Not until Gary comes back, safe and sound. I wouldn’t dream of abandoning the search for him.”
He had to give her full marks for loyalty.
“As for where I’ll go, I’ll find a motel or something.”
He winced. If her taste in motels was as bad as her taste in streets to park on after dark, he didn’t want to think about how much trouble she could land in. Reluctantly, he said, “You can stay at my place. You’ll be safe, and I won’t have to sit up all night worrying about you.”
“I don’t want to impose. I’ll just get a room—”
He cut her off. “I would end up sitting outside your hotel keeping watch anyway. This way, at least I’ll get some sleep. I insist.”
She blinked up at him owlishly. Damn, she was cute when she did that. Irresistibly so.
“I’ll lead the way out of here. You follow me in the van.” He strode away from her before she could object and jumped in his car. He moved ahead of her and waited while she pulled into the street behind him. He led her back to his place.
As he waited for the iron security gate to slide open, he caught a motion down the block that had him reaching under his seat and pulling a pistol into his lap. He chambered a round by feel. The figure melted into the shadows and didn’t move again, which only made his suspicions ratchet up even higher.
Was someone following him or following her? Could be either. He’d made plenty of enemies both as a cop and a SEAL. More likely, it was someone tailing her, though. Although reporters usually didn’t move like Special Forces operators. Maybe paparazzi were that stealthy. But still. The hackles on the back of his neck never lied. And they were standing up right now.
He waited for Carrie’s van to clear the gate before he hit the remote control and the gate started to close. He watched like a hawk to make sure no one slipped in at the last moment.
When the gate clanged shut, he proceeded to the garage and waved out his window for Carrie to follow him inside. While she parked the van, he slipped outside quickly and made a circuit around his property. He knew every possible hiding spot, where every concealing shadow fell, and he checked them all.
Who had that person down the block been? A very sharp reporter? Or someone more ominous? Could whoever kidnapped Hubbard now be after Carrie?
He even let himself out of the compound and took a quick spin around the block in search of the mysterious lurker. Whoever it was, he or she was gone.
His gut was screaming a warning that something was not right. He hustled back to the compound and Carrie. Time to put her and the whole place on lockdown.
He closed the iron security gate and flipped on the electrification. Not only the gate, but all of the decorative iron spikes atop the steel perimeter fence would now deliver a cool fifty thousand volts of get-the-hell-out-of-here to anyone who touched them.
When he stepped into the garage, Carrie was standing by his front door, with something bulky slung over one shoulder. A backpack maybe?
“Stay where you are,” he called to her.
She nodded, and he locked down the garage, turning on motion, pressure and heat sensors that covered both the immediate exterior of the building and the entire interior. He hustled over to her in the thirty-second gap before the system went live.
He unlocked the front door, ushered her inside, and then moved over to the panel in the corner, activating cameras and the house’s security alarm. No one was getting close to Carrie tonight without him damned well knowing about it.
“What’s up?” she asked nervously as he finally turned to face her.
“Just buttoning up for the night.”
“It looks like you put Fort Knox on lockdown.”
He grinned reluctantly. “Call me paranoid.”
“You don’t strike me as the paranoid type.”
He had no intention of telling her about the shadowed figure down the street. The last thing he needed was a panicked houseguest on his hands. “Hungry?”
She frowned. “I am actually. But I’m more interested in knowing why you’re changing the subject.”
“Ever had a po’ boy sandwich?”
She huffed in what sounded like exasperation, but caught the hint that he wasn’t going to answer her question. “No. What’s in it?”
“Po’ boys can have anything from roast beef to hot sausage to hamburger in them, but the classic po’ boy is fried seafood. One of my guys picked up a couple pounds of shrimp from the docks for me this afternoon. Wanna learn how to shell shrimp?”
She made a disgusted face as he showed her how to strip the shell and devein shrimp, but she caught on fast, and in a few minutes, they had a pile of shrimp ready to fry. He set her to work shredding lettuce and slicing tomatoes while he breaded and fried the shrimp in his own mix of spicy batter.
They worked well together in the kitchen. Which was to say, he gave clear instructions and she followed them to the letter.
The act of battering and frying shrimp, and then slicing thin and frying French fries, calmed him, and he felt more in control of his emotions by the time they sat down to eat the crusty French loaves filled with hot fried shrimp, cold, crisp lettuce, fresh tomatoes, and his secret sauce.
Carrie bit into her sandwich and groaned in delight. The sound vibrated right through him, terminating somewhere in the region of his groin. She took a second bite and groaned again. His zipper felt tight all of a sudden as a fast, hard erection filled his pants.
Dammit, he wasn’t going to be able to stand up and do the dishes for a while at this rate.
He was tempted to distract himself by getting good and drunk. But, if that mysterious person down the street decided to get froggy and come mess with him, he needed to be on top of his game. Besides, he wasn’t sure it was possible for him to get drunk enough to not be horny for the woman seated across from him.
“What did you do today after you fled the scene of the crime?” he asked in an attempt to distract himself.
“Hey, I may have fled, but you vanished.”
He shrugged. “I can’t afford for my face to be seen in public.”
“How long have you been a SEAL?”
“I was active duty Navy for twelve years. Nine of which was on the teams. Then I shifted over to the reserves and have been there for two years.”
“How d
oes being a reserve SEAL work?”
“I mostly train active duty guys. I help out with the paperwork and coordinate mission briefings and intel reports. A few times a year, I take vacation or my annual reserve leave and go out on missions.” He added ruefully, “And then I pray I get back home in time not to lose my job with the NOPD.”
“I can’t imagine they’d fire someone with your training and experience.”
He replied, “That may be true, but I wouldn’t want to strain my welcome with the police force. I like the investigative work. It’s relaxing after a SEAL mission.”
She looked amused. And he supposed she was right. Not too many people would find police work relaxing.
She asked, “Have you always worked in missing persons?”
“So far. I hope to move up to homicide in the next year or two.”
“Why?” she exclaimed.
“More variety of cases. More stuff to learn.”
She shuddered. “Better you than me.”
He smiled, relieved that the conversation had, indeed, mellowed out his crotchular discomfort to the point that he could take a chance on standing up. Carrie helped him carry the dishes to the kitchen, and he finished cleaning up while she turned on the television to surf the news.
“I’m going to tune up your van,” he told her. “I’ll be out in the shop if you need me.”
He went out to the workshop to give her van a quick tune-up and re-gap its spark plugs. He had the engine running half-decently again and was just about ready to button up the van and call it a night when a thought occurred to him. It wasn’t exactly ethical to do it. But it wasn’t illegal. And Carrie had shown herself to be a runner.
He went over to his shelves of spare parts and pulled out a GPS tracker.
This was a bad idea.
She would never know about it.
It was just a precaution. So he could keep her safe.
Keep telling yourself that, buddy.
He argued with himself the entire time he was wiring the unit into the van’s electrical system. Good Lord willing, he would never need to use the damned thing. But if he ever did need it, he was going to be exceedingly grateful he’d installed it.
He finished, washed up in the big sink in the garage, and headed back to the house, toweling himself off as he went. He reset the alarm system and went inside.
He’d just stepped into the living room when a gasp of dismay from Carrie had him throwing down the towel and racing to her side. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.
She pointed wordlessly at the television.
The house she and Gary were living in loomed large on his big, high-definition television. A mob of reporters jostled for position, shouting questions at the NOPD spokesman. Behind the guy, a door opened.
Bass winced as Carrie appeared onscreen and the camera zoomed in on her face. He watched carefully over her shoulder and spotted a big dark shape moving backward fast out of camera range. That would be him. Thank God. His face was never visible on the television. He was in the clear.
He glanced over at Carrie in time to catch her dashing tears off her cheeks. Oh, God. Not more tears. They were kryptonite coming from her.
“Who are you afraid of seeing you?” he asked her directly.
She shook her head.
“Look. I’m a cop. A good one. I’m going to find out eventually, so you might as well tell me.”
Silence.
Dammit, why wouldn’t she trust him?
He opened his mouth to ask her real name. To inform her he had the power to get access to sealed court records and that he fully intended to do so. But the house went black as the power suddenly went out.
He counted to five. That was weird. His backup generator usually kicked in so fast he hardly knew there was a power outage. The room was still pitch dark.
Why hadn’t the emergency generator kicked in?
God dammit.
“Carrie, take my hand.” He pulled her up off the sofa and raced to his bedroom, dragging her along with him. “We’ve got a problem.”
Chapter 7
“Can you shoot a gun?” Bass asked tersely as he opened his gun safe by the glow of the tiny flashlight he kept on his key chain.
“No,” Carrie answered in a quavering voice.
Damn. He jammed a clip in a small pistol by feel and handed it to her anyway. “Safety’s on. It won’t shoot until I show you how to take the safety off.”
He grabbed a pair of NODs—night optical devices—and yanked them over his eyes. His bedroom jumped into green relief. Too bad he had only one set of them. Carrie was going to be operating blind. But there was no help for it.
He announced, “I’m wearing night vision gear and can see perfectly well, so there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll see anybody coming long before they can see me.”
“Someone’s coming?” Her voice broke on the second word.
“Put these in your pockets.” He shoved two spare clips of ammunition for her weapon at her as he buckled on his SEAL utility belt, already fully loaded with spare clips for the pistol and short-range urban assault weapon he pulled out of storage slots. He shoved a KA-BAR knife in his hip holster and another in his boot holster, and he was ready to rock and roll.
“What’s happening?” she whispered, sounding utterly terrified.
“Intruder.”
He closed the safe, spun the combination lock, and took Carrie’s hand again. Heading for the front door, he talked low and fast. “I’m taking you to the parking garage and putting you in a Hummer. It’s fully armored. Do what I say when I say and don’t ask any questions. Don’t speak unless I ask you a direct question. Try to make as little noise as you can. Got it?”
“Yes,” she gasped.
Crap. She sounded like she was trying to hyperventilate. No time to stop and wait for her to catch her breath, though. They had to go. He slapped his palm on the alarm pad inside the front door and disabled the system quickly. He planted Carrie’s right hand on the left side of his belt and muttered, “Don’t let go. Stay with me.”
He didn’t bother telling her to keep her head down. She was already short enough that it wasn’t necessary.
He eased open the front door and scanned the workshop carefully using the heat sensing function of his optical devices. No human heat signatures in here. Moving fast, he raced across the open space of his shop and headed for the second garage where his car collection was housed.
Carrie stumbled once beside him as he ran, but she righted herself with only a slight yank on his belt and kept up with him. He stopped in front of the door to the parking area. It was open. He never left it open.
He hooked his left arm around Carrie’s body, pushing her behind him.
He eased into the doorway and scanned the large space. The cars would block him from seeing heat signatures, so he bent down, scanning beneath the rows of vehicles—
Four feet clustered close together. Crouched in the back right corner behind his ’63 Impala convertible. Not moving. Looked like they were hiding.
He could back out and flee with her in the Aston Martin behind him or on foot. But the Asty wasn’t armored, and Carrie wasn’t wearing Kevlar. If the bastards shot at her, she would be in mortal danger. He decided to stick with the plan and take Carrie to the Hummer. It was the second car on the left.
Placing one foot carefully in front of the next, he moved with glacial slowness toward the Hummer, giving Carrie plenty of time to keep up with him and remain quiet. Please God, let her follow instructions and not say anything or make any noises.
They made it to the driver’s door of the Hummer and he bent down to peer under the vehicle’s high carriage at the back corner of the garage. Bastards were still crouching there. Must not have heard them, then. Perfect.
Opting for speed over stealth, he opened t
he door, picked up Carrie, and swung her inside. She scrambled out of his way as he jumped in the driver’s seat after her. He reached for the keys in their hiding spot under the hinged stereo speaker cover.
He heard running footsteps as he slammed his door shut, hit the garage door opener, and started the big engine. He backed it up fast, squealing the run-flat tires as he did a combat one-eighty, spinning the large vehicle aggressively. He stomped on the accelerator, and the Hummer leaped forward, barely clearing the still rising garage door as a burst of metallic pings sounded against the rear of the vehicle.
“They’re shooting at us!” Carrie cried.
Grimly, he drove on, flying down the drive to the security gate, which was already open. A black SUV blocked the entrance enough that there wasn’t room for the Hummer to go around it.
“Hang on!” he shouted as he gunned the Hummer, aiming for the rear corner of the SUV. Quickly, he flipped off the power to the airbags.
They smashed into the SUV hard enough to spin it out of the way with a crash of breaking glass and crunching metal. The Hummer swerved, but he righted it forcefully, careening into the street. He slowed at the next corner just enough not to squeal rubber and leave tracks for the assholes behind him to follow. He flew down the next street for a few blocks and then slowed to turn again. The next turn put him on a broad avenue with great rearview visibility, and he sped south for a few more minutes until he was positive they hadn’t been followed.
He dug out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. “This is Detective LeBlanc of NOPD. I have hostile intruders at my home. I have vacated the premises, so anyone remaining at the residence should be considered armed and dangerous.” He rattled off the address and then disconnected the call.
Not that he expected the intruders to stick around long enough to get themselves arrested. They’d been expert enough to get around most of his security measures. They would be smart enough to get the hell out of Dodge once he and Carrie bugged out in the Hummer.
He slowed to something more closely resembling the speed limit. His adrenaline was still sky-high, though. Weird. He never got adrenaline hits in the middle of an op. Why this time?
