“My father was military. He insisted that his daughters know how to protect themselves.” She didn’t add that it had been years since she’d used the gun he’d given her. She kept it because he’d given it to her, but she’d put it in her safe-deposit box the last time Lark had visited with her kids, and she’d never gone back for it.
“You’re no competition for Hydra.”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“No, I want you alive. I don’t think you have any idea what you may be dealing with.”
“I’m learning, Agent Taylor,” she said, forcing a coolness into her voice. She didn’t like being treated as if she were a child. Even by someone as damnably attractive as Ben Taylor.
“Not fast enough,” he muttered.
She bit her lip. “I can’t trade my safety for his.” She didn’t even try to imply it may not be a “he” now. She’d only narrowed it to fifty percent of the population.
He took a gulp of coffee, his eyes willing her to comply.
“Tell me about Hydra,” she said. “I found out what I could but it’s not much.”
“They work like a terrorist organization with cells, one unaware of the others. If one is destroyed, the members can’t implicate anyone else. It’s very sophisticated and very dangerous.”
“Why haven’t you—the FBI—been able to break it?”
He hesitated. “We can’t get witnesses to talk.”
“Because witnesses die?”
“Those that won’t accept protection,” he countered.
“What about extended families?” she asked.
He was silent.
“That’s what my source said. He can’t leave with just his immediate family.”
“We’ll see what we can work out.”
“Including lies?”
“Damn it, don’t you know both your lives could be at stake? They didn’t hesitate to kill three cops. You think they’ll stop at killing a reporter?”
She met his glare. “I’m not a fool. I know I opened a Pandora’s box. But I promised, and it doesn’t have anything to do with a story. It has to do with integrity.”
“One thing to remember. They know who you are.”
She’d already realized that. She didn’t like the menace that was settling like a boulder in her stomach.
“I’ll be careful.”
“You can ask for protection.”
“Without giving a name?”
“I don’t know whether my boss will approve it under that condition. But I’ll sure as hell try.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted it. How could she do her job with FBI agents trailing behind her?
“We don’t even know whether the burglary is connected—”
“You’re smarter than that,” Taylor interrupted, frustration clouding his eyes.
She stood there, her coffee cooling as she thought. She wanted a way out. She wanted to warn Sandy, tell him what had happened, transmit Taylor’s offer. But the only way she knew to reach him was to call him, and she couldn’t call his cell phone. Not now. That might lead both the good guys and the bad guys to him.
He paced the floor of the kitchen, then turned to her. “There’s a federal grand jury already impaneled. Chances are you’ll be subpoened. It would be much easier if you told me now.”
She’d known it might come to that. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a reality.” His voice was suddenly cool.
“The … person wanted to give you enough information to start looking in some corners,” she said. “You can do that now. Isn’t that enough?”
“He obviously knows more. A lot more. Including names. We need that information.”
“No.”
His lips thinned. “You could have been here today. The same thing that happened to Daisy could have happened to you.”
The image of Daisy lying so still came back to her. She will be all right. She has to be. She bit her lip.
And then his hand was on her cheek. Gentle. Very gentle. It was disarming. More than disarming. Alluring. Irresistible. She leaned into that hand. There was something so solid about him and at the same time … challenging. Her heart pounded an erratic rhythm.
She balanced herself on wobbly legs. His touch sent streams of sensation through her, and a warmth that overtook the chill of fear she couldn’t shake, despite her brave words.
She lifted her eyes to his and his dark eyes seemed to smolder. Electricity sparked and sizzled between them. Sex. Fear. Adrenaline. She felt she was standing in the eye of a storm. Quiet. Even breathing seemed to be trapped. Yet the calm was deceptive. She felt the surrounding storm raging out of control.
Step away.
She couldn’t.
They moved at the same time, each taking a single step toward the other. Then she was in his arms.
With a muttered oath, he tightened his arms around her. Her head came to rest against his chest, and she heard the quickened beat of his heart.
She should move away, yet her legs wouldn’t obey. Instead they inched closer to him until she felt the swelling within his trousers and knew a yearning so deep and needy that she thought she would die of it.
His mouth pressed down on hers. There was nothing gentle about the kiss. It was demanding and challenging and angry.
Her lips moved against his, responding with a need that seemed to spur his own, and his tongue played inside her mouth, searching, awakening every nerve ending. Streams of heat surged through her.
She trembled as his lips gentled, caressed rather than plundered. His hands ran up and down her body as if savoring every curve. Then he pulled her so tight against him that she felt every muscle of his body, spreading a fiery craving throughout her body. Her arms went up around his neck, her finger playing with tendrils of hair.
He stiffened for a moment. He groaned, and then she heard a catch in his breath as he stepped back. He dropped his arm and let her go. “Damn it,” he muttered. His gaze met hers. “I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened.”
But it should have. She knew exactly what she’d been doing. She sensed he wasn’t going to accept that, though.
“I should go,” he said.
She nodded soundlessly. She was still numb from the kiss, the sea storm of emotion.
She forced herself to take a step back instead of forward. “Thanks for helping me tonight.” She prayed her voice didn’t sound as trembling to him as it did to her.
But she took some satisfaction in the fact that he’d been affected as well. She saw it in his eyes. They weren’t wary now. They were as full of fire as she thought hers must be.
His eyes raked her. “Think about what I said.”
“I will. I’ll be careful.”
She looked up at him again, and the face wasn’t as hard as it had been days ago. Worry lines crinkled around his eyes, and she saw a caring she hadn’t noticed before.
She suddenly wanted to know so much more about Agent Ben Taylor. Natural journalistic curiosity, she told herself, but she still couldn’t tear her gaze from him. It was as if they were locked in some prolonged mating game. She had to fight her overwhelming need to move close to him again, to feel those unexpectedly gentle hands skimming over her body.
But if he stayed …
She walked him to the door, suddenly, desperately, not wanting him to go, not wanting to be alone.
He turned as he went out the door. “Good night,” she said.
His gaze lingered on hers for a long moment before he turned and headed for his car.
She locked the door, realizing again that someone had gained entrance earlier. She placed a chair against the doorknob, did the same with the kitchen door. A professional.
The word was cold. Unsettling.
Perhaps she should go to a hotel.
But then she would be giving in to fear. She wasn’t going to do that. Otherwise she would spend the rest of her life writing about small-town budgets.
She went to the kitchen and fetch
ed a knife to place on the night table next to her bed. Tomorrow, she would retrieve the gun, as much as she was loath to do so.
A plan of action in place, she headed for bed. She doubted she would sleep, though, and she bitterly resented the aching need in the pit of her stomach.
It had been the fear. The invasion. Nothing else. It couldn’t be.
Still, as she left a light on in the bathroom and living room, she wished he’d lingered.
chapter eleven
Robin jerked awake, startled by the ring of the telephone. She glanced at the clock. Three a.m. Her breath caught in her throat and her heart pounded.
The vet?
One of her sisters?
Sandy?
She grabbed the receiver and heard a falsely gravelly voice invade her senses. “Bitch. Your reporting could get you hurt. Bad.” Then a dial tone.
She sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the phone as if it were a cobra. No one had ever called her a bitch before, at least not to her face, though she imagined some of the subjects of her stories might well have thought it. But it was the pure malevolence of the voice that terrified her.
They’d been meant to terrify her. She knew that.
They’d succeeded. Her whole body had tightened, and fear writhed in her stomach.
Don’t let him succeed. She took a deep breath, then checked the caller ID. Unknown. Probably a throwaway cell phone. Not surprising.
Knowing she wouldn’t go back to sleep, she grabbed her robe at the end of the bed and struggled into the brace. Only a little over two more weeks now before she saw the doctor. There would be X-rays and hopefully she would leave the office limping but without the heavy brace.
Even that prospect didn’t quiet her screaming nerves. She checked the doors, then peered out the window. Nothing unusual. She made some coffee and turned on the television in the living room. She needed the noise, the company. She especially needed Daisy cuddling against her.
And a weapon. For the first time, she was glad she’d applied for a gun license when she’d moved to Georgia even though she’d never intended to use it. Nevertheless, she was a stickler for the law, and she owned the thing.
She retreated to the bedroom where she’d taken the knife before going to sleep. She felt foolish carrying it with her, but it gave her just a smidgen of control back. It was better than nothing.
She considered calling the police, but the caller hadn’t really threatened her. It had been the disembodied voice that was so frightening.
Damn it, but she wanted to call Ben Taylor. She wished for his acerbic presence. For those rare seconds of tenderness that had been so surprising. She’d felt safe with him. She glanced at the top of the table. His card was there. But the last thing she wanted to show was weakness.
She would tell him tomorrow about the call, just as she would tell the police, but she wouldn’t let him see her panic tonight.
She fetched a cup of coffee and sipped it. Work. She needed to work.
She limped to her office and turned on the computer and wrote down the few words that had spewed from the phone, then recorded her feelings on another document. This time, though, she established a password for her files, one she knew no one could decipher except perhaps her sisters.
Her life had changed today. She hadn’t realized how much until that phone call. For the first time in her life, she felt evil touch her. She shivered and pulled her robe closer around her.
God, what in the hell had he been thinking?
Simple fact: he hadn’t been thinking at all. He’d just reacted to those damn blue eyes, and that intense physical awareness between them. Maybe it had been that transparent mixture of emotions in her: the concern over the cat, then the gentle humor during their encounter with Mrs. Jeffers and her Damien.
Or maybe it was too-long abstinence from female companionship. He hoped to God that was all it was.
Ben continued to berate himself as he watched Robin Stuart’s house from down the street where he was parked, positioning the car so he could see the house but she was not likely to see him. She may not totally appreciate the fact, but he felt to the marrow of his bones that she was in danger.
Damn that kiss. He sure as hell knew better. He could be taken off the case for that stupidity. And he didn’t want to lose this case. He’d been waiting for it for years.
Kissing a witness. More than kissing. He’d nearly consumed her. What in the hell had got into him? He’d never done anything like that before. Not with someone involved in an investigation. And especially not with someone so determinedly headed for trouble.
He hadn’t been able to stop his wife’s headlong rush into disaster.
All the pain resurfaced as Dani’s face appeared in his thoughts. Unlike Robin’s blue eyes and short honey brown hair, Dani’s eyes were dark like his own, and she had long dark hair. Young. Eager. Intense. And, like Robin Stuart, consumed with ambition. Ambition that had killed the person Dani once was. Her soul, if not yet her body.
He couldn’t do that again!
He would be taken off the case if Robin Stuart reported it. Hell, if he had any integrity, he would report it himself. But he didn’t want off this case. If they closed down Hydra, he could make one hell of a dent in drug trafficking in the Southeast. Payback for Dani … something he could do for her he’d been unable to do as her husband.
And Robin Stuart? She had no idea of what could happen … what might well happen. He didn’t want to leave her standing alone, but he doubted that his boss would provide the protection she needed. The FBI had manpower shortages; a burglary and uncooperative witness wouldn’t qualify for its limited resources. Not yet. Probably not until it was too late.
He saw a light go on in a room, then another. A figure paused at a window. Then the shutters closed and all he saw was diffusion of light. He fought his instinct to go to the door. He suspected if he returned, he might not be able to leave again.
He took out a thermos, full of coffee he’d bought at a convenience store. The thermos was with him always. Then he settled back, thinking both of how he could get her to cooperate and how to ensure her safety. How could he convince her that one relied on the another?
He suspected that until tonight protection of a source had been a moral and intellectual decision on her part. He needed to take it to a more primal level.
And do it before she stumbled into depths she didn’t comprehend.
The voice on the other end of the phone was cold. “I told you to find the name of her source and do it without her knowing. The place was crawling with cops tonight.”
“It must have been the damned cat.”
“What cat?”
“Goddamned cat jumped on my arm and clawed the hell out of me. I tossed it off and it ran. I tried to find it but it just disappeared. I couldn’t hang around to try to find it.”
“What did you get?”
“I have photos of her address book and files from the hard drive from her computer. I also photographed some notes about Hydra.”
A silence. Then, “Didn’t I tell you never to use that name over the phone?”
“It’s safe. I have a disposable phone.”
“I don’t care what you have. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Leave the film at the usual place. There’ll be a sum of money there. Take it and leave town.”
“But …”
“I don’t tolerate clumsiness. I told you what I wanted. I wanted discreet. You were not discreet. If I hear you’re still around, or that you said anything to anyone, you’re a dead man.”
The phone went dead and the man, still holding the receiver, swore long and hard. He had a girl here. A house. He didn’t want to leave. He thought about trying to go underground in the city, then changed his mind. He knew only too well what happened to people who irritated the Hydra.
He would get the hell out of town.
Robin called in the next morning, said she would be late and told Wade about
the break-in.
He paused, then asked: “What do the police think?”
“At first, I think they thought it was my imagination since nothing seemed to be stolen. Daisy apparently injured herself. But then Ben Taylor—”
“Taylor? The FBI agent who was here yesterday?”
“Yep, that one.”
“How in the hell was he involved?”
“He came to my house. He said he wanted me to know about Hydra, and what we were dealing with.”
“Officially or unofficially?”
“Unofficially.”
She heard him muttering under his breath.
“It’s okay,” she said. “He was there when I found Daisy, and he called the police. They wouldn’t have paid any attention if I had called.”
“He was told to go through our attorney,” Wade said.
“He didn’t ask any questions. He was there when I found Daisy injured and he took me to the vet, then called the police.” She hoped that none of her other, more personal, reactions reflected in her voice.
Silence. “Did he ask you for your source?”
“He implied it would be safer for the source, and for me, if the FBI had it.”
“What do you think?”
“He’s probably right,” she said. “But he also admitted that a recent witness and his family were killed. That’s what my source fears.” She paused, then added, “There’s something else. I received a call in the middle of the night. It was … threatening.”
“What was said?”
She repeated the words. She’d memorized them.
“The voice?”
“Metallic. Like someone on a television show that uses a gadget to mask the voice.”
“Have you told the police?”
“Not yet. I called you first.”
“Call them. Call that agent. I think you should have protection.”
“I don’t think they will give it unless I become a witness. Besides, it might have simply been a crank call. Someone offended by the story.”
“We’ll talk about it when you come in. Do you think you can make it by two?”
“Yes. Probably by noon.”
“Take your time. Call the police, the FBI. Get a security system, for God’s sake. We’ll pay for it.”
Tempting the Devil Page 12
