He forced himself to stop, just a whisper away from the softness of her lips, and he felt a rush of relief. Another second, and he would have kissed her. Another fraction of an inch and...
She still didn't move, yet her lips brushed against his. He heard her sigh, saw her eyelids flutter closed as he kissed her again.
As he kissed her. What was he doing? Was he completely insane?
This was wrong. This was crazy. This was...
Incredible.
She tasted as sweet as he'd imagined, her lips introducing him to a whole new definition for the word soft.
Three kisses was enough. Lord, it had to be, it was three kisses too many. And he surely—well, probably— would've pulled away from her after three, if only she hadn't touched him.
But the sensation of her hands on the bare skin of his arms was one he couldn't deny himself the pleasure of knowing. And when she slid her hands up to his shoulders, and then to the hair at the nape of his neck...
Three kisses became four and five and more and he lost count, lost all sense of up and down, lost himself in the dizzying sweetness of her mouth.
He pulled her close, dying to cup the softness of her breasts in his hands, but settling for the feel of her against his chest. He kissed her longer, deeper, but still slowly, claiming complete ownership of her mouth.
She'd worked his hair free from the rubber band he'd used to hold it back, and as she ran her fingers through it, he knew the truth.
Three hundred wouldn't be enough.
He had to stop kissing her. This could have been the rightest wrong he'd ever done, but it was wrong.
Her hands trailed down his back, cool against the heat of his skin, and he groaned.
And Becca nearly jumped back, away from him. "Oh, God." She brought her hand up to her mouth, her eyes enormous. "I'm so sorry—did I hurt you?"
He stared back at her. Hurt him... ? And he realised she wouldn't have pulled away if she hadn't thought she'd somehow hurt his bruised side. If he hadn't made that strangled sound, she'd be kissing him still. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
"There's a Jacuzzi up by the swimming pool," she told
him. "Just inside the main cabana. It might help if you spent some time soaking."
"I'm okay." Mish had to clear his throat. "It's not that bad, really."
How was it possible that mere moments ago his tongue had been inside of her mouth, yet now they were talking to each other as if they were strangers?
They were strangers.
And he shouldn't have kissed her. * 'Becca, I really have to—"
The office door opened with a squeak. And Mish quickly turned toward the counter, suddenly extremely aware that he was standing there not only without a shirt, but still nearly fully aroused as well.
"Oh, yikes," Hazel said. "That must really hurt."
He could only hope she was referring to the bruise on his side.
She turned to Becca. "Sorry that took so long. Going into your closet should merit hazardous-duty pay."
"Ha, ha." Becca took the shirt from her assistant. "I've assigned cabin to Mish, at least until the end of the week. He's got some sick days coming to him, as well."
She moved behind Mish, holding the shirt open, so that he could slip his arms into it with relative ease. The soft cotton smelled like Becca. It was like being enveloped by her hair.
As if she'd been touching him forever, she gently turned him to face her. "Need help with the Ace bandage, too?"
Mish glanced at Hazel, who was back at her computer, across the room.
"I need..." What? To take off Becca's clothes? Undeniably. He lowered his voice, leaned closer to her. ' 'To talk to you. Come outside with me for a sec."
It would be private, but not as private as pulling her with him into the back room where he could shut the door and...
Becca glanced at Hazel, too. And she scooped the key to his cabin, his package and his bandage off the counter. Til walk you over to number twelve."
"Thanks, Hazel," Mish called, letting Becca open the door for him. Without the bandage, every step he took seemed to jar his side. Of course, it jarred with the bandage on, too.
"Feel better, sweetie. And don't keep Becca out too late tonight"
"Ignore her," Becca said. "You have permission to keep me out as late as you want."
Oh, Lord. Mish waited until they were both several yards away from the office. "Becca, look, I let myself get carried away back there, and I want to apologize."
She stopped short, right there in the driveway. "Are you apologizing for...kissing me?"
"No, I'm..." He briefly closed his eyes. "Yes. Yeah, lam."
Becca started walking again, quickly enough so that he had to work to keep up with her. "That's funny. I didn't seem to think any of those kisses warranted an apology. I mean, jeez. If you're sorry about those, well, the ones you aren't sorry about must be out of this world."
"Becca, I—"
"That was a joke, Parker. You're supposed to laugh." She turned, slowing her pace as she walked backwards. "I don't suppose you'd want to discuss this over dinner." One look at his face and she turned around again. "Yeah, I didn't think so."
"I meant what I said about the timing being bad for
.
me," he told her quietly. "I'm sorry if I confused things back there by finding you completely irresistible."
Becca laughed as she glanced at him, shaking her head. "Well, there's the prettiest rejection I've ever heard."
"I am sorry," he said again. "I don't know what happened."
She handed him the key, the package and the Ace bandage. "The cabin's down to the left," she told him. "I'll have dinner brought to you on a tray tonight."
'That's not—"
"Don't worry," she said. "It won't be me carrying the tray. I can take a hint—particularly after it's hammered home."
Mish watched her walk away. "Becca."
She turned back, her eyes subdued.
"If it were purely a matter of what I wanted... If there was nothing else to consider..."
She smiled crookedly. "Get some rest," she said. "It's got to be tiring being so damn nice."
"It's definitely Mitch's case," Lucky said to Wes over the phone. "Remember that old leather thing he always carried? Called it his bag of tricks? Well, it's here. In bus locker number ."
Lucky had lucked out and found Mitch's bag on his fifth try. The locks had been ridiculously easy to pop open—the luck had come from the lack of bus station security guards to question why he was opening locker after locked locker.
"We're going to set up twenty-four-hour surveillance," Lucky decided. "If he's anywhere in this part of the state, sooner or later he's going to come back for his bag. And when he does, we're going to be watching."
"Sitting in a bus station for hours on end," Wes con-
templated. "Bob's gonna hate that almost as much as I do."
"You don't have to like it, you just have to—"
"Do it. I know, I know," Wes interrupted. "You've gotta stop reading those Rogue Warrior books."
"Look, since I'm already here," Lucky said, "I'll take the shift till hours. I'd offer to stay later but—"
"You've only slept an hour in the past forty-eight. Don't be a hero, Lieutenant. I'll be there at ."
"Make it midnight, Cinderella, and I'll take you up on that offer," Lucky countered, looking out the grimy windows at the street. "But first trade in the Batmobile for something with tinted windows. This place is a ghost town. We're going to get looked at if we're sitting in here, watching the lockers. We'll need to sit out on the street." They'd have a clear shot of almost the entire bus station if they parked a vehicle in the right place. "You and Stimpy can duke it out over who plays watchdog for the rest of the night. Any word from our beamish, church-going boy, by the way?''
Wes laughed. "Believe it or not, he's taking one of the church ladies to dinner. He left a message saying that we need to talk to a guy named Jar
ell Haymore. He was on duty the night we think Mitch might've been at the shelter."
"So if Bob's already found that out, what's he doing taking this lady to dinner?''
"Beats me. He gets weird sometimes."
"What'd you find?" Lucky asked, his gaze sweeping the bus station. Even when he wasn't looking directly at it, he kept the row of battered lockers in his peripheral vision. Nothing moved. Anywhere. The bus station was as empty now as it had been an hour ago.
•
"Well," Wes said, "let's see. Mitch Shaw's nickname during BUD/S training? The Priest."
Lucky laughed. "You're kidding."
"Yeah, and you're going to love this. There are still rumors floating around that Shaw either was or is some kind of, ahem, shall we say...man of God?"
"A SEAL who's really a priest?" Lucky shook his head in disbelief. "No way, Skelly. That reeks of BUD/S legend. Kind of like the story about the boat team that got so hungry they barbecued the instructor—and were secured two days early, and given shore leave in Hawaii for their ingenuity. I just don't buy it."
"I've never seen him with a woman," Wes said. "Have you ever seen him with a woman?"
"Yeah," Lucky said. God, he was: tired. "I saw him with his tongue dragging in the dust as he followed Zoe around out in Montana. And you did, too."
"Yeah, yeah," Wes said impatiently. "Zoe Robinson could make a dead man stand up and dance. But Bob and I went drinking with Shaw a few times after we got back to Coronado. He never went home with anyone—not that I ever knew about. And it wasn't a case of no opportunity, if you know what I mean."
"He is a covert operative," Lucky pointed out. "He probably knows a thing or two about how to be discreet. Let's keep this conversation moving forward, Skelly. What else did you find out about him?"
"Medal, medal, medal. Every time the guy turned around, he was being awarded another damn medal," Wes said. "Eighteen, to date."
Eighteen. Lucky swore in admiration.
"Yeah. Won his first medal when he was—get this— fifteen years old."
What? "Are you serious?"
"Why would I make this up?"
"Maybe it was a typo, or—"
"It's too unreal, Luke. It's got to be true. Combine that with Shaw having gone into the SEAL program his first year in the navy. In fact, I think he went from the recruiter's office to BUD/S training. How often does that happen?"
"Never?"
"No, it happened at least once. With Mitch Shaw. The man won two more medals straight out of BUD/S. Since then, it's been kind of a yearly thing for him. 'Oh, it's April. Time for another trip to the White House to add to this collection on my chest.'"
Lucky exhaled a burst of air. "Well, if that's the case, I think we can pretty much assume he hasn't sold the plutonium to the first third-world country ready to hand him a suitcase filled with a million dollars in small bills."
"I don't know about that, Luck-meister. It's these su-perheroes you've really got to watch out for. When they turn, they turn bad. Guys like Shaw are lugging around a ton of resentment. You know, 'The United States made fifteen billion dollars because I saved the world, and all I got were these eighteen lousy medals...'"
Lucky laughed. "Yeah, Skelly, right. You keep on thinking that way. This is a man Admiral Robinson trusted with his life."
"That's true," Wes admitted. "Apparently Robinson tapped Mitch Shaw to join his Gray Group at its inception. In other words, Shaw was Gray Group's agent double-oh-one. You know, I'm glad I didn't know all this last year. This guy scares me."
"Anything else?" Lucky asked, rolling his eyes. Wes was the scary one.
"I've got some feelers out," Wes said. "You know,
•
asking around, looking for anyone who might've gone through BUD/S with him. But apparently not too many people survived and... Oh, my God!"
Lucky nearly dropped the phone. "What? Skelly—sit-rep! What's happening?"
' 'Bobby just walked by with..."
"What?! Who?"
"Oh, baby! Bobby's church lady looks like a supermodel! She's got long hair and a miniskirt and lo-o-ong legs and..." Wes started to laugh hysterically. "I gotta go—maybe she has a sister."
Wes hung up, and the silence in the bus station was even more complete than it had been before.
Bobby just walked by with a church lady who looked like a supermodel. Go figure.
Lucky and Wes had both made the mistake of making an assumption, while the truth was, there were no red givens in this world.
Bobby had ended up lucky, in the company of a beautiful woman for dinner, while Lucky had wound up alone in a urine-scented bus station.
Lucky would have assumed the odds of that ever happening were impossibly low.
Kind of like the odds of Admiral Robinson's top covert operative selling out his country by selling stolen pluto-nium to the highest bidder.
God, what if it was true? What if Mitch Shaw had turned?
Chapter
JVLish sat on the porch of his cabin, waiting for the sun to set.
He'd slept fitfully all day, his dreams haunted by violence. He'd awakened countless times, his heart pounding and his side throbbing. He sat quietly now and tried to pull apart the visions into his past that his subconscious had belched up, like malodorous bubbles from a tar pit. Because dreams, although sometimes imagined events, were often based on things the dreamer had seen or done, weren't they?
There had been a man in religious robes, standing bravely in front of a group of men with assault weapons. Terrorists. It had happened in a heartbeat. One of them had raised his side arm and fired a double burst into the man's head. And as Mish had watched, helpless as a child, so filled with fear and horror that he didn't even dare to cry out, the man had slumped, a lifeless rag, to the floor.
The image still made him feel sick.
.
He'd dreamed of gazing through a sniper scope, dreamed of sighting a target and squeezing the trigger. He'd dreamed of more personal violence as well. Hand-to-hand combat, a martial-arts free-for-all with the only rule being survival.
And he'd dreamed of a woman—his mother? It was hard to say; her face was turned away, and it kept changing. She sat, her head bowed in grief, weeping. When she did look up at him, her tear-bruised eyes silently accusing, he realized she was Becca, and he sat up, instantly awake.
It didn't take much to figure that dream out. He was trouble. He'd always been trouble, and the only thing he could bring Becca was pain.
A party of riders approached, heading out for a late-afternoon trail ride. Becca led the way, giving him no more than a brief glance, lifting a hand in a vague greeting as she passed.
True to her word, she'd kept her distance all day— except for that one brief appearance in his dreams.
Hazel had brought him both breakfast and lunch on a tray.
Dinner was going to be served in just an hour, but Becca would be out on the ride for most of that time. Mish could go sit with the guests and...
He didn't want to sit with anyone. He didn't want to do anything except get into the ranch office and look at that personnel file. He needed to find out his former address, and then he had to go there—wherever "there" was—to see if anything was familiar to him.
Frustratingly, the package that had come in the mail yesterday had held no answers—only more questions. It had contained only a key.
It was a bank key—the kind that unlocked a safe-deposit box. But there were no markings on it, no note
stuck in with it, nothing. It could have belonged to any of hundreds of safe-deposit boxes in any thousands of banks in New Mexico. Or the world. Why keep it only to New Mexico? This key could well have come from anywhere.
It was driving him mad, his complete lack of a past.
Mish had spent some time today gritting his teeth and trying to force himself to remember. Who was he? What was he? But the answers continued to elude him.
All he knew for absolute certain was this rel
entless sense of unease. Don't tell anyone. Don't talk about why he was here. Don't reveal his weaknesses...
The sound of Becca's laughter drifted back to him through the lengthening shadows, and he had to wonder— not for the first time—if maybe, just maybe he'd be better off not knowing.
"Oh, my God, what are you doing in here?" Becca jumped back from the office screen door when she realized someone—Mish—was inside. She grabbed hold of the porch railing to keep herself from falling backwards down the stairs.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." Mish stepped outside. "I was..." He cleared his throat. "I was actually looking for you."
She stared at him. "In the dark?"
"Well, no," he said mildly. "Of course not. There was a light on in the back. I knocked, but no one answered, so I went in."
Becca moved past him, trying not to notice how good he looked standing there in the soft moonlight, wearing the red shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Her heart was pounding, but only because he'd startled her. She refused to let it be for any other reason.
*
"The door was unlocked?" she asked. Inside, she turned on the lights. All of the overhead lights, not just the pleasantly dim one on her desk.
Mish squinted slightly in the glare as he followed her. "I had no problem getting in."
"I'll have to talk to Hazel. This door needs to be locked at night." She shuffled through the papers on her desk, aware that he was standing there watching her, aware that she was wearing her bathing suit under a very short pair of cutoffs, aware that she had virtually thrown herself at him and he had pushed her away.
But he'd just said that he'd come there looking for her. She glanced over at him. "So what's up?"
He had the kind of dark hair and complexion that had helped coin the phrase "five o'clock shadow." It was now after eight, and he had stubble worthy of the cover of GQ magazine. He rubbed his chin in a spot where he had a small white scar as he shrugged. "I just, um... I don't know, really. I was feeling a little better, and I wanted to..." He shrugged again.
Suzanne Brockmann - Team Ten 08 - Identity Unknown Page 8
