by Lucy Monroe
Was she ready to admit to the attraction between them? If she was, she’d chosen damn awkward timing.
She crossed her arms over her small, pert breasts, pink tingeing her cheeks. “I…um…Dad…”
She wasn’t going to admit it, and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed. They had to focus on the events of the night, but one day soon he was going to find out not only what color her still erect nipples were, but how sweet they tasted.
He stepped up to the SUV, watching with both amusement and irritation as she hurriedly moved back. She gave more confusing signals than a bug scrambler.
Opening the passenger door, he said, “Get in.”
She climbed inside without a word, careful not to let their bodies make contact at any point, but that didn’t stop her female scent from reaching out to touch him. Both sweet and spicy from her earlier exertions and fear, it overrode the lingering smell of smoke on her clothes.
He wanted to pull her to him and add another fragrance to the ones she was emitting…arousal.
Knowing it would make her uncomfortable, but not really caring, he slipped her seat belt across her body and clipped it into place. He didn’t pull back immediately, but took a second to enjoy her proximity while her eyes rounded in confusion.
“What are you doing?”
He tilted his head, so their lips were mere centimeters apart. “Buckling you in.”
“Oh.” It came out a breath of sound.
He smiled. “Do you need anything else.”
“Uh…no.” But she didn’t turn her head away.
She just waited.
His arms were as good as around her in this position, and it would be so easy to take her lips, to taste them.
He did, briefly. Softly. And she let him, hanging there, her lips attached to his, but not moving against his.
He pulled back, stepping away from the car. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
She nodded, mute, but her eyes were asking questions he didn’t want to answer right then.
Soon he would, but not right now.
“Okay, what’s going on?” he asked after sliding into the driver’s seat.
She stared at him.
“Your dad, Josie.”
She gasped, her cheeks turning cherry red, and then she burst into speech. “They moved Dad a little over an hour ago. He asked for some privacy to get cleaned up, and I gave it to him. He’s wounded, confused, I thought weak. It never occurred to me he’d just disappear.”
“Tyler has his own reasons for doing the things he does, and they aren’t always comprehensible to others, but it’s a safe bet he wasn’t nearly as weak as he let on.”
“You’re right.” She rubbed her eyes. “When no one came to get me after half an hour, I went looking on my own. His room was empty.”
“Did anyone see anything?”
“No.”
“Did he leave of his own volition?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. He took the jeep and he left this.” She handed him a note.
He read it. “Do you know where this footlocker is?”
“Dad keeps it in an underground storage unit that only he and I know about.”
Of course. Some people might say Tyler McCall was on the paranoid side, but he was a damn good soldier and trainer of men. “Would it have survived the explosion?”
“I think so, but until we get up the mountain, we won’t know.”
“Are there any other leads to follow up on here?”
“No. He left nothing.” She sounded dispirited.
“Don’t blame yourself, Josie. Your dad is one of the best. He can take care of himself.” Daniel started the car.
“But why would he leave?”
“I don’t know. That’s a mystery he may have to solve for us, but right now we’ve got other things to attend to.” He pulled the big black SUV out of the hospital parking lot, noting with pleasure the dearth of cars on the road.
“Where are we going?”
“Back to the mountain.”
She needed rest, but the longer they took to get back to the compound, the better chance whoever set the explosions would have to hide or destroy evidence, not to mention maybe finding the journal Tyler wanted his daughter to read.
“What caused the explosion?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been back.”
“I didn’t think you had.” But she had a damn uncanny ability when it came to identifying bombs. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d known the type and volume of explosives used simply from the explosion itself.
She seemed to realize that and explained. “I was out walking when I felt the ground shake. By the time I made it to his room, half of the wall had fallen on him, and the place was in flames.”
“Any chance it was an accident?”
“My gut says no.”
He’d pretty much expected that answer, and he believed her. He trusted few people’s instincts as much as his own, but she was one of them. Josie was a darn good soldier. He’d implied otherwise on their last mission, and maybe he owed her an apology.
From what she’d said before, she hadn’t forgotten his frustration-induced words, but the apology would have to come later.
“Any ideas on who did it?” he asked.
“No, but I’m going to find out.”
“I’m going to help.”
“It’s not your problem.”
“It is. I’m half owner of the school now.”
She sighed. “I’d forgotten. I’m sure Dad will understand if you want your investment back.”
“I don’t. I want to help you find out who tried to kill you and your dad and who blew up my new business venture.”
“No one knew I was at the compound.”
“I knew.”
“You didn’t set the bombs.”
“Of course not.”
“What I meant was, if no one knew I was there, then whoever did set the bombs wasn’t trying to harm me.”
“Just Tyler.”
“Right. We can’t overlook the fact it happened during a hiatus between training camps.”
“Meaning?”
“Whoever it was didn’t want unnecessary deaths on their conscience.”
“Or the chance of having witnesses.”
“It could be antiwar protestors, but the fact Dad was so clearly targeted pretty much rules that out.”
“You think they’d blow up some buildings, but stop at killing?”
“Yes.”
“With a few exceptions, I think you’re right.”
“Since it happened when no one else was at camp, I also don’t think it was targeted at the school in general.”
“It’s got a personal feel to it.”
“Exactly.”
“So, you think it’s linked directly to your dad?”
“I do, which makes his disappearance all the more worrisome.”
“Josie, if you can’t find him, you can bet his enemies can’t either.”
“But how will I know?”
“You’ll just have to trust.”
It was early light by the time they reached the compound.
It had been a quiet drive. Nitro didn’t talk much anyway, and Josie got tongue-tied around him. The kiss hadn’t helped any. Why had he done it?
He’d said he was glad she wasn’t hurt. Was it like a kiss of relief? Whatever his motives, he’d turned her inside out and hadn’t even seemed to notice. He must be used to kissing lots of women, only that didn’t ring true. Nitro was too private to sleep around indiscriminately, but even if he’d been with only one woman, and that scenario was more unlikely than the first one, he was ahead of her in experience.
However, despite that lack of experience and all that had happened in the last few hours, her first reaction to him—before he’d ever kissed her—had been violent physical need. Being next to him in the close confines of the SUV for over an hour ha
d her senses on complete overload. It wasn’t a good situation.
She was tired and likely to betray her feelings to a man who despised her.
She wished she could think of some way to get him to let her conduct the investigation alone, but he took his responsibilities seriously. And the minute her dad had become Nitro’s partner, the Mercenary Training School and Tyler McCall had become two more things Nitro took responsibility for.
She climbed out of the car, the lack of sleep making itself known in the stiffness of her limbs. She wasn’t tempted to stretch out the kinks, though, not after the way she’d reacted to Nitro watching her do it before. She could swear he had been looking at her chest, but there wasn’t a whole lot there for him to see. At least there hadn’t been until her nipples got hard.
She didn’t want to know what he’d thought when he’d seen that, but his expression alone had burned through to the core of her.
Trying to forget the peculiar things Nitro made her feel, she turned toward the decimated compound.
The fire service had been and gone. She could see signs of their obviously successful efforts to put out the fire, but she was glad no one was there to question her. The FBI, and probably the ATF too, were probably already on their way, but she hoped she and Nitro would get out of there before the authorities arrived. There would come a reckoning, but she would avoid it as long as she could.
She started toward the wreckage, her senses on full alert. Of its own volition, her hand reached out to touch a piece of charred wood, and her mind went to that place it did when she focused on a bomb, trying to feel its composition.
Daniel watched Josie go into her woo-woo mode, and damned if it didn’t turn him on.
Everything about her excited him, and it made him mad. He didn’t like being out of control, and when he was around Josie McCall, his hard-won control was under a constant state of siege. Bent over, her sweet little bottom was outlined by the fatigues she wore, and she touched the burned debris with the sensual caress of a lover. He wanted that caress on his body.
Get your mind on the task at hand, boy-o. You don’t have time to focus on that heart-shaped ass right now or the way she touches some burned-up piece of wood.
With a grimace of self-disgust, he obeyed his inner urgings to focus on the destroyed compound.
Whatever had been used, it had been effective. No walls were left standing, and the fire had destroyed pretty much everything before the fire service had been able to contain it. At least the woods surrounding the compound had not been affected. The fifty-foot expanse of dirt around the perimeter had made an effective fire barrier.
Tyler McCall was a man who prepared for every eventuality. Even someone trying to blow him up apparently. He’d been sleeping in a secret bedroom that students and faculty alike knew nothing about.
Daniel understood that kind of caution. All soldiers for hire did. Few men could be trusted in a world where money bought a soldier’s allegiance. He’d been damn lucky to hook up with Wolf and Hotwire, but they were getting out of the business, setting up some kind of security consultant firm. He wasn’t ready for that kind of stability yet. Maybe he never would be.
He picked his way across the wreckage to where partially destroyed file cabinets indicated her dad’s office had been. What had once been a computer was a melted mass of metal to one side, and the file cabinets he knew to be fire retardant had nevertheless been unable to completely withstand the temperatures of the blaze.
They were almost completely destroyed, too, but something interested him about them. The files, or whatever might have been left of them, were gone. No charred bits of paper or manila folders remained.
“It was a standard weapon of mass destruction augmented by cylinders of a highly volatile substance, probably petroleum based.” Josie’s voice came from right behind him.
He turned to face her, not even tempted to question her verdict. “Whoever did this was serious about getting rid of the compound as well as your father.”
“Yes.”
Maybe the bomb had been about the school after all, but Josie’s instincts had said not, and even in the face of evidence to the contrary, his agreed.
“They’ve been back.”
She stared at him, her expression not registering understanding. She had to be exhausted.
“Since the blast…They came and emptied out whatever was left of your dad’s file cabinets.”
Josie’s moss green eyes widened, and she spun to look at where he pointed.
“But we didn’t see anyone on the road.”
“They could have hiked in.”
“Then they would have left a trail hiking out.”
“If they were moving too fast for caution, yes.”
They found the trail and followed it, after Daniel saw that they were both armed with weapons he kept in his car at all times. The trail ended at a logging road, and fresh tracks indicated a four-wheel drive had been there recently. The width of the tires indicated a truck, but their tread was too common to get anything else from the tracks.
“Darn it.” Josie sank to the ground, letting her head rest against her knees. “The tracks are too fresh for them to be very long gone, but we can’t follow on foot with any hope of catching them.”
He said something pithy and unpleasant.
She looked up at him. “That’s one way of putting it, but I think you’ve got some verb confusion going on.”
He was in no mood to appreciate her subtle humor. “If I’d gotten to the hospital sooner, or come by here first, I could have caught their sorry asses.”
She shook her head.
“You doubt it?”
“I doubt your culpability in timing that they obviously took a lot of effort making sure was right.”
“I’d like to see whatever it is they wanted from your dad’s files.” But that was about as likely as Tyler McCall showing up to allay Josie’s fears.
“No problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just finished computerizing dad’s files. I’ve got a backup of the data on the hard drive in my apartment.”
“I don’t like computers much.”
“Hotwire told me. Don’t worry. I’ll do all the interfacing with the computer.” She yawned.
“You need to sleep before doing anything else.”
“First, we’ve got to hike back. Then we have to see if Dad’s journal survived. Then I can sleep.”
When she stood up, she wobbled, but like the trouper she was, she started marching back toward the charred buildings.
He shook his head, caught up with her, then bent down and lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry before she had time to figure out what he planned and stage a major protest. He started double-timing it back to the compound.
“What do you think you are doing?” Her words came out funny, like hiccups, because her diaphragm was hitting his shoulder.
“You’re too tired to hike back.”
“I am not.”
He didn’t bother to argue, but she wasn’t so sanguine.
“Listen here, Neanderthal man, I’m a trained soldier. A mile hike is nothing for me.”
“You’ve been awake for twenty-four hours or more, inhaled smoke, saved your dad from a burning building and tracked perps at a running jog.”
“So? I’m not a wimp.”
“No, but you are a termagant.”
“What’s that?”
He smiled as he told her.
“I do not nag and I am not a shrew!”
“But you are overbearing on occasion.”
“You can say that when you’re the one carrying me against my will?” she asked furiously. “If anyone’s a termagant here, it’s you.”
“Men can’t be termagants.”
“You use pretty big words for a mercenary,” she grumbled.
“I like to read.”
“I do, too, but the word I want to call you is one I learned listening to soldiers.”
<
br /> He laughed, something he rarely did…except when he was with Josie. How could she think he didn’t like her? She made him smile, and that wasn’t easy.
“Put me down, Nitro, or I’m going to get mean, and I don’t want to because you’re helping me.”
“Call me Daniel.” He didn’t like being reminded of his past when he was with her.
“What?”
“Daniel. It’s my name.”
“Hotwire and Wolf call you Nitro.”
“I want you to call me Daniel.”
“Daniel, put me down or things are going to get ugly.” The tone of her voice said she meant what she was saying.
They were more than halfway back to the compound, so he stopped and let her slide to her feet, his hands loosely guiding her at the hips. When she was solidly on terra firma again, he should have let go, but he didn’t.
And she didn’t move away immediately, but stood staring up at him like an accident victim. It was a look he’d gotten very familiar with on their last mission, but he still didn’t know what it meant. She licked dry lips, and his body told him what he wanted it to mean. She was too close not to notice the change, and she jumped away from him like a scalded cat.
It wasn’t the first time she’d responded that way to evidence of his desire, but his ability to deal with it rationally diminished the more he wanted her. “I can’t help my reaction. If a woman is going to press herself against me like a succubus, I’m going to get hard.”
“I didn’t press myself against you like a succubus, whatever that is…I didn’t press myself at all. You’re the cretin who insisted on carrying me and then, and then…”
“And then?” he taunted.
“Letting me down that way.” She glared at him, but her expression was wounded.
Damn it. She was right. His hard-on was his own damn fault, but his jaw locked on the words of apology he knew he needed to say.
She made a dismissive motion with her hand and spun away from him, setting off for the compound at a trot. He followed her the whole way back, letting her set the pace because of her fatigue, but anger must have given her strength because he had to jog to keep up with her.
When they arrived at the compound, he reached out and grabbed her shoulder.
She went stiff. “What?”
He wasn’t angry with her. He was sexually frustrated, and it wasn’t her fault except that she was the object of his lust, and he could hardly blame her for that. She didn’t do anything on purpose to seduce his senses.
