Hot As Sin

by Debra Dixon

  He strode back toward the bar, waiting only long enough to hear the click of the bathroom door before opening Emma’s purse. Ordinarily he’d be the first one to say: If she dresses like a nun, walks like a nun, and talks like a nun, then she must be a nun.

  Emma did all of those things. She also downed whiskey like water, obviously lied about her name, didn’t need those glasses, and an evening in a smoke-filled bar hadn’t bothered her eyes.

  A quick tour of her wallet revealed nothing. As he’d half expected, the normal identification—driver’s license, social security card, credit cards—were all missing. A photograph of an older couple standing in front of a frozen winter pond was stuck in the currency section, but there were no bills. She had forty-eight cents in the coin pocket.

  Setting the wallet down on the counter, Gabe went fishing again. This time with better results. He found six tickets for departures from Boise, Idaho, under six different names. None had been used, and each was dated three days before. Emma was playing a game of fox and hounds with someone.

  When he pulled out a small gold case containing a tube of lipstick, Gabe shot a speculative glance at the bathroom door. Her halo was slipping. It finally fell all the way off when he found a receipt from a store called the Necklace Connection. The crucifix around her neck had cost nineteen ninety-five.

  “Well, there you have it, folks,” he said under his breath. “Innocent Emma is not a nun, and she is definitely on the run. But from what? And why the nun bit?”

  As he heard the faucet being turned off, he shoved the contents back in her purse. When she came out of the bathroom, she pulled something out of the side pocket of her skirt and walked toward him, holding it in front of her like an offering.

  “Patrick said to give you this as proof.”

  Gabe reached, but even before he touched it, he realized what it was—the dog tag. Patrick’s dog tag. The one neatly drilled by a bullet that had been meant for Gabe. The one Patrick kept on his key chain as a reminder that he was invincible, and as a reminder that the Archangel owed him. Archangel—a nickname from a lifetime ago and a world away.

  Gabe’s gaze captured hers, uneasiness stealing over him and leaving a coldness in its wake. “Patrick wouldn’t have given you this.”

  “If there had been any other way, I’m sure he wouldn’t have.” She didn’t let go of the dog tag even though his fingers had closed around it. “He had to move a witness. He couldn’t talk about the assignment, and he couldn’t stick around to help me. So, is it true?”

  “Is what true?” he asked, stalling for time, his mind racing. If Patrick was transporting a hot witness, he could be gone for two days. If he was on the security detail, he could be gone for two weeks. Or longer.

  “Is this dog tag a promissory note like he said it was?” she asked. The flat metal ID was still suspended between them like a bone between two dogs. “Do you owe him? Anytime, anywhere?”

  Frustration rolled through Gabe. He hated the way she’d boxed him into a corner, and he hated the debt he owed Patrick. Physically, the cold metal dog tag weighed almost nothing and yet weighed so heavily on his conscience. For Gabe the bottom line was the same now as it had been ten years ago. How much was his life worth?

  “I owe him.” The words were tight, forced out of him.

  She let go and closed her eyes for a second in relief. “Then keep your promise and don’t ask any questions. Make me disappear. Help me create a new identity”—her voice hardened—“and then forget you ever saw me.”

  “Create a new identity?” Gabe snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  “Patrick said it wouldn’t be hard.”

  “Of course not!” Gabe exploded in disgust. “Patrick was a plank owner—an original member—of SEAL Team Six! He doesn’t admit that anything is hard except his head and his—”

  His sentence hung in the air, incomplete but mentally finished by both of them in the awkward silence. Emma blushed. Gabe ran his fingers through his hair, pulling it back from his face and tugging slightly in frustration before letting go.

  “You want me to break—” he floundered for a number and finally said, “I don’t know how many laws for you and then simply forget you?”

  “You’ll be safer that way.”

  “Oh, really? According to whom?”

  “Patrick. He said to take his advice for once.”

  One of Gabe’s eyebrows shot up involuntarily. Safer? Since when had Patrick cared about “safe” in relation to a SEAL? According to him, safe was for paper pushers and ship drivers, not for the men in the teams. Playing it safe ate up time and got you there a half-second too late to do more than present a nice target for the enemy. Patrick didn’t care about safe, and he never gave advice. Which meant Patrick was trying to tell him something without the woman knowing.

  All Gabe’s senses went on alert, but he said nothing to Emma. Instead, he smiled and slipped the dog tag into his shirt pocket. “That’s my boy Patrick. Always looking out for me. And for you, it seems. Refresh my memory—which order are you with, Sister?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  “God help us all.” He could hear the deliberate sarcasm in his tone as he goaded her. “Surely that’s not classified too?”

  She stared back at him without answering.

  “Look, it’s late,” he finally said. “Too late to make you disappear, and definitely too late to send you to a motel in Marysville. Which means you stay here tonight. Upstairs in my apartment. Any objections?”

  “No. Does that mean you’ll do it? No questions?”

  “You have the dog tag. I don’t see that I have any choice.” At least not until I hear from Patrick. “Have you got any bags in the car?”

  “No bags. No car either,” she explained. “I took the Community Transit bus from Everett.”

  He marked her purse and her coat with his gaze. The worn wool garment looked like something she’d picked up at a second-rate thrift store. “It’s thirty degrees out, and that’s all you’ve got?”

  “I’m traveling light.”

  No, Gabe corrected her silently, you’re running fast. “Get your stuff and come on.”

  Emily almost forgot her veil until Gabe pointed it out as he turned off the lights behind the bar. Inwardly cursing herself for the slip, she picked it up. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she followed him to a cheap veneer door in the back of the bar by the pay phone. A generic sign that was available at any hardware store read EMPLOYEES ONLY. Gabe unlocked the door and flipped a light switch to the right of the jamb. A narrow wooden staircase doubled back on itself halfway up to the second floor.

  When he expected her to go up the stairs ahead of him, Emily balked. The space seemed too small, too much like a trap. Suddenly it didn’t matter that Patrick had sent her or that he had vouched for Gabe. Because Patrick was dead, and she was alone with a man she didn’t know, staring into a future she couldn’t begin to imagine.

  For the past three days she’d been able to put one foot in front of the other because she had a goal, an address to reach, a favor to ask. But she hadn’t thought beyond that. Resentment mingled with her fear as she realized how much was gone—her parents, a chance for Olympic gold, her skating career, Patrick’s life, and now her own.

  You didn’t care about your career or the gold medal, her conscience whispered. The ankle was a convenient excuse so you could give up a dream that didn’t belong to you. Right now Emily would have gladly traded the knot of terror in her stomach for another chance at the secondhand dream she’d thrown away.

  “Is something wrong?” Gabriel asked when the silence between them grew too heavy.

  She walked past him and said, “A better question would be ‘Is anything right?’ ”

  “I usually am,” he said. When she reached the landing, he told her, “Like now. You need more than sleep. How long since you’ve eaten?”

  Emily froze without answering. She was eye to eye with the largest Himalayan cat she�
�d ever seen. He sat enthroned on the top step like a weary pharaoh surveying his minions as they came to pay homage. Bored china-blue eyes blinked in her direction before moving past her to Gabe. His fluffy tail slowly swished around to drape artfully over the edge of the stair, and then he reproached his owner for tardiness with a second pointed twitch of his tail.

  For the first time in what seemed like months, Emily smiled. She shifted her coat and purse so she could let the cat sniff her fingers as she got closer. “Hello there,” she crooned.

  The cat bumped her fingertips with the tip of his nose. The contact was quick and soft and cool. Then he made a noise that could be described only as dismissal and led the way into the apartment.

  A pool table dominated the front half of the large room. It shared the space with a couch and armchair that were more upholstered lumps than furniture. From the dishes piled on the coffee table, she’d found the dining room. A vented wood stove occupied a nearby corner, flanked by two wood bins.

  “What’s his name?” she asked as the cat circled around to rub his body against Gabe’s leg.

  “Wart.” At her disappointed look, he said, “I inherited him from the previous owner. The man’s grandchildren promised Gramps the cat could live out his days here.”

  “You seem to get along.”

  “I wanted the bar, and I couldn’t have one without the other.” The cat jumped up onto the king-size bed across the room. “Gramps called him King Arthur.”

  Emily caught the connection—Wart, Merlin’s name for Arthur in the Camelot legend. More evidence that Gabe didn’t fit neatly into the humorless, macho military stereotype she’d expected.

  He was younger than Patrick. From the experience lines at the corners of his eyes, she guessed thirtysomething. His body, honed to efficient perfection by the demands of his past, looked at least a decade younger than his face.

  Wondering what other skills Gabe had honed to perfection in his past, she shot an involuntary glance at the bed. All at once the most important detail of his apartment registered. On the far side of the room sat Gabe’s big bed with its bookcase headboard. One shelf held CDs, and on the top was a stack of what looked like a week’s worth of newspapers that hadn’t been unfolded, much less read. She didn’t see a television, but computers and other electronic gadgets lined one wall along with a file-cluttered desk.

  Her eyes swept the apartment one last time, making sure she hadn’t made a mistake. The two open doors by the kitchen alcove led to the bathroom and a closet. There was no guest room.

  How could she keep up the pretense of being a nun if she was constantly in his sight? Sooner or later she’d make the sign of the cross backward.

  “It’s one big room,” she stammered.

  “Don’t worry, Sister,” Gabe promised as he pried her coat and purse from her grip.

  Emily wanted to laugh. Not worry? Not likely. Fooling strangers on the street for a minute or two was easy. All she’d had to do was smile and nod. Fooling Gabe was a different matter altogether, and maybe unnecessary. But she couldn’t rid herself of the idea that the less she told anyone, the better her chances. The better their chances.

  “I know this is close quarters for you,” Gabe apologized, “but it’s the best I can do for tonight. I’ll sleep on the couch and give you as much privacy as I can.”

  She watched him hang her coat and purse on a rack just inside the entrance. Mentally she measured the distance from bed to couch again. She knew it wouldn’t be far enough to hide her nightmares from him. Worst of all, Emily wasn’t sure she could sleep with someone else in the room. She felt the most vulnerable when her eyes closed.

  Since Idaho, every soft sound was the scrape of a shoe against carpet. Every creak was a floorboard protesting the weight of a silent gunman. She was suddenly six years old again and afraid of a real-live bogeyman. She couldn’t sleep with her back to the door or if the closet was open. She couldn’t sleep without turning on the bathroom light or until she’d checked the dead bolt at least five times.

  “Hey, Sister Emma. Come back.” When she snapped out of her reverie, Gabe suggested, “Why don’t you take a shower while I heat some soup?”

  “Oh, no. This isn’t what Patrick meant when he said you’d take care of everything. All I need is—”

  “To slow down long enough to think about what you’re doing.” As he talked he strode to the closet and paused a half-beat to make a selection. He pulled a navy blue polo shirt off a hanger.

  “Here. This ought to cover you almost to the knees. Shampoo and soap are on the edge of the tub. The towel’s been used once, but it’s the closest thing to clean that I’ve got right now. Next time have Patrick phone ahead. When you come out you can toss your clothes in the washer and your butt in bed, or you can take my advice and eat some soup first.”

  Emily didn’t move, unsure how a nun would react to Gabe’s offer. She knew how she felt—overwhelmed. Yes, she’d love the chance to stand in a warm shower until the tension knots in her shoulders disappeared, but not in his shower. Doing that would create some kind of bond. You couldn’t wear a man’s shirt without letting him inside your defenses a little. By the time she finished that shower and put on his shirt, she’d be enveloped by his scent, the textures of his life.

  Instinct that had nothing to do with survival warned that she was much too susceptible to Gabe on a sensual level. His intensity called to her hormones, and that was dangerous. Christian Gabriel was a means to an end and nothing more.

  “Don’t you have a robe or something?” she asked nervously.

  “No, I don’t,” Gabe answered. “Think of me as your brother, or, better yet, a Jesuit. The only thing they care about is a good argument, being right, and the search for truth and knowledge. Hit the shower, Emma,” he ordered, tossing the shirt at her. “No disrespect, but I don’t think we need to call any more attention to you than necessary,” he added. “So I’ll drop the ‘Sister’ for now, and tomorrow we’ll get you new clothes for the same reason.”

  “But you don’t understand. I can’t—”

  “Tomorrow. Let it go until tomorrow.” He herded her toward the bathroom, flipped on the light, and closed the door after he nudged her in.

  When his footsteps faded away, Emily locked the door and leaned heavily against it. Her breath rushed out in an audible sigh of frustration. He wanted her to ditch the habit because he thought it drew too much attention!

  He had no idea how wrong he was.

  The drab gray outfit had become a uniform of invisibility, a crutch. Without it and the glasses, she might be recognized. Emily’s heart stopped as she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

  She’d forgotten to put back on the glasses.

  Gabe didn’t waste time. At most he had ten minutes to figure out how much rope to give Emma. In that same ten-minute time frame he had to produce dinner and send a fax to Patrick. He grabbed cans and pans and managed to get dinner squared away and heating on the stove in record time.

  The fax took a bit longer because he was walking a very fine line with no solid information to guide him.

  FACT: Patrick had sent her.

  FACT: She was scared.

  FACT: Emma wasn’t a nun.

  FACT: If Gabe wanted to, he could help her disappear.

  He had the skills, but that’s what bothered him most about the situation. If all Patrick wanted was to help her vanish, he certainly didn’t need Gabe’s help. There were plenty of people he could have called on. So why hadn’t he? Why waste the dog tag on something like this? Why plant all those clues?

  Simple, Gabe realized. Patrick didn’t want Emma to vanish. He was trusting Gabe to baby-sit until he could shake this assignment and handle it himself.

  “So what the hell am I supposed to do with her while I’m waiting for you to show up?” Gabe mumbled. If Emma suspected he was trying to slow her down, she’d try disappearing on her own. “And what the hell is your connection to Emma?”

  Conscious of t
he fleeting time, Gabe made some quick decisions. He dialed into a large oil corporation’s computer system and logged on. Computer technology was a hobby of his, another leftover from the military. The SEAL teams, especially Six, which was the counterterrorist unit, had wonderful collections of toys. His private gadgets weren’t quite in the same league with Six’s, but they’d do.

  He wrote out a cryptic message on a piece of paper, using a phrase that he’d said every time he’d fallen victim to one of Patrick’s plots. The fax wouldn’t mean much to anyone else, but Patrick would figure it out.

  Well, Patrick, old buddy, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into. As you might have guessed, the special Christmas present you ordered has finally arrived. Instead of forwarding it to the final destination, I thought I might hold on to it until we can get together and decide how to wrap it. Call me.

  He took a few seconds to reprogram his fax machine so the originating phone number would be omitted and sent the message through. As soon as his message showed up on the oil company’s computerized fax log, he opened the file, keyed in the fax number for Patrick’s office, and rerouted it to the send queue. For all intents and purposes, this document would look like it had been created on a computer in New York.

  Shower curtain rings jingled against the metal rod as the curtain was flung back. Gabe was out of time, and so was Emma. He positioned the mouse pointer and clicked the send button.

  THREE

  Behind him, Gabe heard the whoosh of the bathroom door opening but kept his attention on the soup. His fax was tucked safely away in his files since he was leery of leaving it in the trash. Clanking a spoon against the edge of one of the pans, he said, “The washer’s in here. I set the detergent out.”

  “Thank you.” She padded almost noiselessly across the linoleum.

  He resisted the temptation to turn around until he heard the rustle of her clothes as she stuffed them into the washer before he sneaked a peak. All he could see was her back. That was more than enough to make him recant every curse he’d heaped on Patrick’s head for this mysterious baby-sitting detail.