Telling herself that she could handle this—that she was an adult, they were both adults—she grabbed the plate and sat down beside him.
The couch gave under her weight, sliding her even closer to his warm bulk. She struggled for all of thirty seconds before she gave in, leaned against him and let her head fall naturally against the arm he’d thrown across the back of the couch.
After a brief pause, he sighed deeply and curled his arm around her.
They ate in silence as the old house settled in for the night around them. Unwilling to talk about what was happening between them, about Tiberius, or about how he planned to use the intel she’d given his teammates, Sydney finally said, “I like your house.”
“Thanks.” His smile held pure pleasure, along with acknowledgment of the neutral topic. “The previous owners ‘modernized’ and ‘improved’ the heck out of it,” he said, sketching the words with one-handed finger quotes. “I bought it four years ago and have been picking away at it ever since. I’m not going all the way back to original, by any means. Outhouses are so 1800s, you know. But I’m going for the period feel.”
“You’re nailing it.” She looked around, admiring the honey-toned wainscoting and wide-pine floors. They were king’s boards, she knew, so-named because they were over twelve inches wide, and thus should’ve been saved for export to England prior to the Revolution. The staining around the sunken nailheads indicated that the boards were original, but their unnatural smoothness and high-gloss varnish were familiar signs from her own house, as were the faint encrustations of paint at the carved edges of the wainscoting. “Let me guess, they put down wall-to-wall, added another layer of paint to the eight already on the trim and pulled down the horsehair plaster in favor of drywall.”
His chuckle transmitted to her from the places where they pressed together, with her cheek on his shoulder and their torsos aligned. “There had to be a dozen layers of paint. One of them, I swear it was creosote or something. It was this nasty black color, and it took a good four rounds of paint stripper—and a couple of layers of skin—to get it off.” He shuddered. “You can’t imagine.”
“Trust me, I can.” She grinned. “Our dining room had a quarter-inch-thick layer of this awful middle-green color, like baby vomit or something.”
Deep down inside she knew she shouldn’t let herself lean. But he was so warm and solid against her, the weight of his arm such a comforting drape, that she found herself weakening and settling in, letting his warmth transmit to her and ease the places that had been so cold for so long.
While she was busy convincing herself that she could handle the attraction, that she could handle him, she fell asleep with her head tucked into the crook of his arm and her body nestled against his.
JOHN WAS IN SERIOUS trouble.
He held her close, watched her sleep and told himself he’d dodged a bullet when they’d agreed to wait, because he’d veered way out of his comfort zone and was speeding up, heading in the wrong direction.
Despite having brought her home on a whim, a compulsion, he didn’t do flings, didn’t do attractions that clicked too hard and hot, relationships that made no sense when he looked at them rationally. Worse, he wasn’t doing much of anything rationally at the moment. If he was, he would’ve left her in the safe house. He would’ve stayed the hell away from her until it was absolutely, positively imperative that they share space, and then he would’ve kept his distance, interacting with her on a purely professional level.
Instead, he was in his own damn living room, cuddled up with her like this had been a date. And not even a first date, either. Their kiss might’ve had the passion of a new discovery, but their inconsequential small talk had been…
Hell, he didn’t know what it’d been, other than so natural he’d fallen into it before he’d had time to think it through, and then once he had, once he realized he was teetering on the brink of another decision that’d fall squarely into the ‘really stupid’ category, he’d been too comfortable to move. He’d wound up watching her sleep.
And in doing so, he feared he’d already come too close to falling for her.
He knew the warning signs. Hell, he’d been in that place once before, with a woman who was at once completely unlike Sydney and very like her, and in a very similar situation—one that should’ve taught him not to go there ever again.
So why had he?
Maybe he had a white knight complex. Yeah, he thought, that was it. The others might think him too cold and unemotional, but somewhere deep inside he had a big old rescue fantasy that played out in his choice of women. Of course, being who he was, he couldn’t have a typical white knight complex, one where he fell for damsels in distress who needed a big, strong man to fix their problems. No, that would’ve been too easy. He had to be attracted to the ones who didn’t want to be rescued. Yep, that played. He was—and had always been—all about making his own life as difficult as possible.
Which didn’t do a thing to cool his ardor when Sydney made a small noise and cuddled closer.
His flesh tightened and his blood buzzed in his veins, and for a moment he imagined himself waking her up with a kiss, pulling her against him, rolling her beneath him, pressing them both into the soft, yielding sofa cushions. Worse, he could see himself with her a week from now, a month from now. He wanted to argue with her, trade barbs with her, sink himself into her and let the world go hang itself.
And none of those feelings were real, he knew. They were illusions, his own internal construct of what affection was supposed to feel like.
He’d thought he was in love once before, and had later learned it was all a lie.
“I can’t do this,” he whispered against her temple, his breath stirring the fine hairs that had fallen across her lovely face.
“Mmm?” She stirred against him, frowning as though fighting consciousness when fantasies were so much better.
He didn’t repeat himself.
“I said it’s time to get going.” He nudged her awake. “If we’re gone much longer, Grace is going to send SWAT out after us.” That was an overstatement—he’d checked in with the computer specialist an hour ago—but they couldn’t stay where they were.
His place might be safe from Tiberius, but he was quickly learning that spending time alone with Sydney carried other, equally dangerous risks.
“Come on. Rise and shine.” He got her up and moving despite her sleepy protests, and loaded her in his car. She slept most of the way back to the safe house, which was a relief, but she’d begun to wake up on her own by the time they were a few miles out.
She yawned and stretched, the motion pulling her cheeky red sweater tight across her breasts in a way he couldn’t force himself to ignore—especially not after having experienced her body firsthand.
Their kiss was something he feared his brain would keep on instant recall for far too long.
Jaw set, John forced himself to face front and keep driving. “You should put the Kevlar back on.”
He hadn’t seen any signs of pursuit, but he also wasn’t taking any chances. This was Tiberius they were talking about, and the criminal businessman didn’t believe in losing. He also didn’t believe in loose ends.
He would come after Sydney—it was inevitable. That left it up to John and his team to try to control the when and where, and hope to hell they got it right.
He hadn’t used her as bait tonight, but that didn’t mean he might not be forced to do just that in the near future. The very thought of it chilled him, made him want to pull her close and promise her impossible things.
Instead, he waved to the surveillance team sitting in a darkened car on the street outside the safe house as he drove past, and hit the button to open the door of the safe house’s attached garage.
He’d phoned Grace from the road to check that everything was status quo, and had gotten the all-clear. He called through again once they were in the garage, using the prearranged signal, and got the proper counterpassword in retur
n, indicating that it was safe to bring Sydney inside.
“Come on.” He didn’t draw his weapon, but stayed close to her on the way into the house, just in case. Once they were inside he took the lead, heading for the kitchen. “Grace hinted earlier that she was closing in on something. Maybe she’s got something that’ll—”
He broke off at the sight that confronted him.
Impressions came to him in strobe-quick flashes: Grace bound to a kitchen chair, head lolling in a drug-induced stupor, her computer trashed and two thugs standing behind her, weapons at the ready.
Before John could react, one of them shot Grace in the temple, execution-style.
Grace! John had his gun in his hand seconds later and opened fire, his brain short-circuiting on rage and sick horror as his teammate collapsed sideways, her mouth askew, her eyes glazing in death.
His first bullet caught Grace’s murderer in the upper chest, spinning the gunman away from her and sending him to his knees in a spray of blood. The second guy ducked and bolted out of the kitchen and through the back door.
For a second John was torn between his imperative to guard his protectee, and the all-consuming need to gun down the bastard who’d just killed his teammate.
Then he heard something that made the decision for him: the crash of breaking glass sounded in the front room, followed by a thump and the sound of a metal object rolling across the hardwood floor.
Grenade, his brain supplied. He didn’t know if it was a flash-bang or gas, but he wasn’t sticking around to find out.
Walling the grief and shock off in a small corner of his consciousness, he snapped to agent mode, processing and rejecting his available choices. He didn’t dare go out the kitchen door; it was a sure bet the second gunman would be waiting, his need to finish the job no doubt fueled by the knowledge of what had happened to the last pair of killers to fail Tiberius.
That really left only one option: they had to go down.
In a reflex arc that didn’t even make it to his brain before he was on the move, John grabbed Sydney and dragged her across the kitchen, past Grace and the small blood pool gathering beneath her chair. He yanked open the door that led to the basement. “Come on!”
The lights flickered on the moment the door opened, showing a set of plain wooden stairs. He charged down them, hauling Sydney along as the seconds ticked down in his head.
Behind and above him, there were more thump-roll sounds, followed by the boom of a flash-bang stun grenade, the powerful noise muted by walls and distance.
It wasn’t the flash-bangs that had him moving fast, though. He had to assume the additional sounds were gas canisters. It only made sense, because Tiberius didn’t want to blow Sydney up; he wanted her alive, and in his power.
And that so wasn’t going to happen if John had anything to say about it. Heart hammering in his ears, jaw set in determination, he had only one goal right now: to get Sydney out alive.
After that, it was war.
The basement was a cement cube containing a furnace and water heater but none of the usual basement clutter, because nobody actually lived in the safe house year-round. In addition to the electrical panel and other basement stuff, there was a door set in the wall opposite the furnace. John yanked it open, revealing a low, cement-lined tunnel.
The air in the basement had already started to turn with the first whiff of the gas, suggesting that Tiberius’s men were using one of the newer cocktails, which readily diffused down, as well as up. Worse, footsteps sounded from above, indicating that the men had donned masks rather than waiting for the air to clear. Any moment now, they’d figure out that their quarry had gone to ground.
Muffled shouts and the quickening tramp overhead signaled they already had.
“Go!” John pushed Sydney ahead of him. Once they were both inside the tunnel, he yanked the heavy door shut and spun the lock, then urged her along the tunnel ahead of him. “Hurry!”
He was less worried about the men following through the tunnel, and more worried that they’d quickly figure out where it led.
The lights had come up when he’d opened the door. The thin fluorescent strips, which were hung on either side of the low cement tunnel, lit the way as they scrambled along. They had to crouch down, bent nearly double as they moved as fast as they could on their feet, hands, knees, whatever part of them could keep the forward momentum going.
Sydney didn’t say a word, just kept going as the walls closed in on them and the air started to carry a whiff of gas that had John’s head spinning. Her jaw was set, her skin very pale and he had a feeling her brain was jammed—as was his—on the sight of Grace tied to a kitchen chair, shot dead with a bullet in her brain.
How in the hell had that happened?
He’d checked in regularly. Hell, he’d even checked in from the garage. What had gone wrong? How had Tiberius found the safe house? How had his men gotten past the security system, and the surveillance teams who were supposed to be keeping watch from the outside?
Knowing that the others teams might also be dead, John felt his heart chill in his chest, felt something wither up and die within him. He stumbled and went down, the gas-tainted fumes sapping his strength, but he forced himself to struggle up and keep going, shoving Sydney ahead of him.
“There should be a door,” he said, hearing his breath rattle in his lungs.
“I don’t—” she said weakly, then gave a low cry. “There’s a turn up ahead. Maybe that’s it.”
It wasn’t, but once they made the turn they could see the door at the end of the tunnel, which sloped slightly upward until it ended in a metal slab that was twin to the one they’d entered through. Shuffling in their awkward crouches, laboring to suck tainted air into their cramped lungs, they hurried to the door. Sydney fumbled to unlock it, and for a frozen second John feared it was jammed on the other side, that Tiberius’s men had already beaten them to the neighboring house, which was also owned by the government for use as a safe house and as an escape route.
“Got it!” She finally got the lock open, twisted the handle and moved to shove open the door.
“Wait.” John grabbed her. “Me first.” He couldn’t let them make a foolish mistake in the mad rush to escape the bad air. Crowding past her so he led the way, weapon at the ready, he tried to gather his scrambled brain cells and cracked open the door.
For a second there was nothing but blackness. Then the swing of the door triggered the basement lights and they clicked on to reveal…nothing.
The basement was as empty as the one they’d just left. Even better, he didn’t detect movement on the floor above, and the air was clean, though faintly humid with typical cellar dampness.
“Come on.” Moving fast, he got her out of the tunnel and shut the door, then crossed to the stairs. He put a finger to his lips to caution silence, and they crept up the stairs with him in the lead and her breathing down the back of his neck, both of them trying not to make a sound.
Tension hummed through him. Fear, not that he’d be hurt—that was part of the job description—but that he might not be quick enough or good enough to keep the woman behind him safe.
He’d failed Grace. He didn’t want to fail Sydney.
Tightening his grip on his weapon, he paused at the top of the stairs and flicked off the lights.
Sydney stiffened behind him. For a second he thought it was because of the darkness, or the shock settling in to her system. Then he heard it, too.
Footsteps.
He had a split second to consider his options, which were seriously slim. They couldn’t go back into the tunnel because of the foul air, and because Tiberius’s men could block them in from either end. There was another way out of the basement—a set of stairs leading to a traditional bulkhead—but odds were good that if Tiberius’s people had discovered the second empty house, they had the grounds covered, too. That left him with going through the house itself.
The layout was identical to that of the house Sydney had b
een staying in, the furniture and placement nearly identical, as well. The footsteps were coming from the left of their current position. To the right, there should be a short hallway that dead-ended in a bathroom, with a spare room to the right. To the left of the basement door, there was another entryway leading to the kitchen, which ran the length of the back of the house.
The only thing that was different about the two houses was the garage placement. The first house had an attached garage on the left from the street-level perspective. The second had an almost identical garage, but on the right.
It was, perhaps, their one advantage.
Thinking fast, John put his lips very near Sydney’s ear, and breathed, “When I open the door I want you to turn right and head through the kitchen. There’s a door next to the refrigerator—go through it, and close and lock it behind you. You’ll be in the garage. There should be a car in there. The keys are under the visor, along with the door remote. Get out of here.” He palmed his cell phone and handed it to her. “I’ll call you when it’s over.”
“But—”
“Don’t,” he interrupted. “Don’t try to be a hero or back me up or anything. You’ll just be in the way.”
He could see the arguments in her eyes, could see the indecision, the desire to be brave warring with basic self-preservation. “Okay,” she said finally. Then she turned her face so her lips touched his. “Please be careful.”
The brief kiss shouldn’t have warmed him, shouldn’t have soothed him, shouldn’t have mattered to him. But because it did warm and soothe and matter, he drew back, going for cool and in control when his heart was hammering in his chest.
“Take care of yourself,” he said urgently. “Keep driving until I call—stay on busy roads where people can see you. If the men see you and follow you out, they’ll be more likely to hang back if there are witnesses.” He hoped. Right then, it was the best he could do.
She nodded, then stiffened.
Lord of the Wolfyn and Twin Targets Page 29
