Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 06]

by Into the Dark

  She leaned over, planted her palms on either side of his head and kissed him. Soft. Sweet. Lazy.

  And took him under again. He dropped like a stone. Without a single punch.

  With a helpless groan, he pulled her down on top of him, rolled her to her back and moved between her thighs.

  Everything about her felt welcoming, riveting, lush. Her sighs. Her kisses. Her hands on his skin. Her body opening to take him home.

  Home.

  With every slow glide the word burrowed deeper and deeper into his head. Into his heart.

  Making love with this woman felt like coming home. And this time, he made sure the homecoming was slow and lazy and sweet.

  Amy forked a piece of cold steak into her mouth. “It’s actually not that bad,” she said, pleasantly surprised.

  They’d finally made themselves get out of bed. Wearing only Dallas’ t-shirt, Amy sat across from him at a tiny table in the corner of the hotel room.

  He’d slipped into a pair of boxers. In the pale light of the dimly lit room he appeared to be naked. It was a look she could get used to.

  “That’s because you haven’t eaten for hours. And for the record, it’s your fault it’s cold.”

  Amy sat back and grinned. “You just smiled.” That was definitely something else she could get used to.

  Of course, he frowned immediately. “I smile.”

  She shook her head, sliced off another bite of steak. “Not like that. Spontaneous. Unguarded.”

  He motioned with his fork, looking defensive. “Just eat your steak.”

  “Spoken like a man who’s used to giving orders.”

  He glanced up at her, then resumed sawing on his steak. “Is this conversation going somewhere?”

  Obviously, it wasn’t, she thought with a twinge of disappointment. It had been so long since she’d felt this way. Happy. Safe. Flirty and a little reckless with it. And she knew it would probably be a long time, if ever, that she would feel this way again.

  The past year had been a living hell. What lay ahead promised more of the same. But right here, right now, this moment, she felt cocooned in a protected pocket of time, where she was free to laugh, free to tease, free to love.

  And she did love Dallas Garrett. It wasn’t exactly a revelation, but it was the first time she’d admitted it to herself. The truth had been there for a long, long time. She even knew the exact moment she had fallen in love with him. It was the one moment on Jolo Island that she treasured and remembered with crystal clarity.

  She could still picture the bower where he’d hidden them from the terrorists. Orchids dripped down in lush, summer colors, sunlight slanted through the canopy trees and birdsong rode on the tropical currents. He’d apologized. For touching her. For saving her.

  And with those few, sincere words, he’d saved the part of her that needed saving most—her pride and her dignity. He hadn’t realized it then. He didn’t realize it now.

  And he was right to keep his head in the deadly game they were playing. Here, in this room was the fantasy. Reality lurked only heartbeats away.

  “I guess I was just wondering,” she said, shifting gears, “how a man used to giving orders was going to handle taking them. Specifically from Jones.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “This is his territory. We’re only as close to finding Jenna and your grandfather as we are because of him. I’ll do things his way—as long as I agree with his plan of action.”

  She nodded, wondering about Gabriel Jones. “Do you think we can trust him?”

  “About as far as I’d trust any Company man.”

  “Company?”

  “CIA. Although I’m not certain exactly what role Jones plays for Uncle.”

  “Okay. Twenty questions time. Role? What does that mean?”

  He sat back in the chair, lifted the warm bottle of beer and drank. “I don’t know if he’s on the payroll or if he’s an operative for hire. Either way, he’s our best shot. Just watch your back around him.”

  Thoughtful, Amy pushed a piece of meat around on her plate with a fork. “I got the sense he felt compelled to help me.”

  Dallas nodded. “Yeah. I think you’re right. For some reason he seems to relate to you. Plus, he’s pissed. Alejandro killed one of his men.”

  “What do you think his operation is regarding MC6?”

  He shook his head. “Hard to say. Something’s in the works, whether it’s Company sanctioned or on Jones’ own personal agenda, I don’t know.

  “What I do know,” he said after finishing off the beer, “with Jenna out of contact, Alvaro dead and MC6 on the hunt for you, Gabe Jones represents our best shot at finding your grandfather.”

  His face was grim as he studied her. “You’re walking into a hornet’s nest…you know that, don’t you?”

  Before she could form a response, he leaned forward, covered her hand with his. “You can still back out, you know. Hightail it the hell out of here, lie low until Jones gives the all clear. I can make you disappear, Amy. For as long as you need to.”

  “What I need,” she said, understanding his concern but unwilling to appease him, “is to see this through. Too much depends on it. And I couldn’t live with myself if I turned my back on Jenna.”

  He held her gaze for a long moment, finally nodded. A grudging consent. A measured understanding.

  “You look exhausted,” he said, his tone colored with a guarded intimacy that Amy suspected he really hadn’t wanted her to hear.

  You don’t know how to handle what’s happening between us, do you Dallas?

  That’s okay, she thought. That’s okay. She didn’t quite know how to deal with it either. She only hoped that when this was over, when they got to Jenna—please God, let her be alive—when she found and confronted her grandfather, that they would both be ready to talk about the future.

  A future that, because of Dallas, she found herself desperately wanting. Yeah. For the first time in months, the quest for revenge and retribution wasn’t the only thing driving her.

  “Amy?”

  She startled, realized that she’d tuned out on him. “Sorry. What?”

  “I said you look exhausted. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to shower then I’ll hit the rack.”

  Unspoken was the tag: Where I will sleep on my side of the bed and I expect you to sleep on yours.

  Okay. She got it. In spades.

  He disappeared into the small bathroom and she crawled between the sheets. She hadn’t any more than hit the pillow and she was out.

  And it seemed she hadn’t any more than fallen asleep when she awoke with a start.

  Beside her in the bed, Dallas slept. But not peacefully. His legs kicked with a restless urgency. His eyes were pinched tightly shut, his face contorted into a grimace that could only be pain as he thrashed his head back and forth on the pillow. Sweat drenched his body as he gripped the sheets at his hips with tight fists.

  “Dallas,” she whispered in the dark and touched a hand to his chest.

  He groaned and jerked, flinching away from her touch.

  “Dallas,” she said, more forcefully, sitting up beside him.

  He came awake the same way he’d been sleeping. Violently.

  He bolted straight up in bed, hyper-alert, one hundred and fifty percent defensive.

  “You were dreaming,” she whispered, and only then did he turn his head and look at her.

  Pain. My God, through the night shadows that separated them, she saw such pain in his eyes. And wretched, hopeless despair.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, winding her arms around him his neck and urged him to his back. “It’s okay,” she said again, a soft, soothing caress as she nestled up against him.

  He stiffened at the contact, his heart still beating like an endless volley of artillery fire. Finally his muscles uncoiled. Almost reluctantly, he turned into her, wrapped himself around her and burrowed into her heat.
/>   “It’s okay,” she murmured into his hair and held him. Held him close, held him to her breast as the tension in his rock-hard body slowly eased.

  She lay awake long moments after he’d given in to the pull of sleep. Loving him. Afraid for him. Saddened by the knowledge that she wasn’t the only one in this bed plagued by demons that prowled through the night.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  What’s the story here, do you know?” As they hurried along the Plaza Mayo, Dallas’ gaze was riveted on the women marching in front of Casa Rosada, the presidential palace.

  Amy hurried along beside him. Not disappointed, exactly that they hadn’t talked more about last night. Not surprised that Dallas hadn’t mentioned his nightmare that had awakened both of them.

  There really hadn’t been time. She was still dressing when he’d returned to their room with coffee and sweet rolls he’d picked up from the hotel restaurant. They drank the coffee and ate the rolls once they’d settled into a seat on the underground train. The noise from the rails had made it difficult to talk.

  And now the urgency of finding Gabe outweighed any “heart to heart” she’d like to have with Dallas.

  They’d ridden the underground to the crowded main square in search of the address Gabe had given Dallas last night.

  A dog walker, a dozen panting, yapping, unruly canines in tow, breezed by in a tangle of leashes and barks. Guards similar to those who guard Buckingham palace paraded stoically back in forth in front of the protesting women. High above the palace walls, the Argentina flag flew: two horizontal bands of light blue, separated by a white band, the center of which was filled with a radiant yellow sun with a human face known as the Sun of May.

  “And what’s with the white scarves?” he continued as they sidestepped the dogs, drawing her attention back to the women.

  “In the 1970s and 1980s—during the Falkland war—” Amy explained, drawing from a passage in a guide book she’d read on their ride on the underground, “thousands of people were kidnapped by government decree and never seen again.”

  “The dirty war,” Dallas said, and hiked his pack up higher on his back. “I remember now.”

  From the beginning, Amy had been taken with his intelligence. He knew something about everything. This was no exception.

  “Since the war, a group called the Mothers of the Disappeared stage weekly demonstrations in front of the palace. The white scarves are symbolic. Even though over twenty years have passed, they continue to demand justice for their missing children.”

  All around them tourists and Portenios, as the people of Buenos Aires were called, moved with lazy grace under the heat of the Argentina summer morning.

  The natives of the very busy seaport and city were known for their beauty and arrogance. Amy now knew why. The women were beautiful. The men, model perfect. She fully understood why the saying, Portenios know that God is everywhere but his office is in Buenos Aires, came to be.

  “There’s the corner,” Dallas said, grabbed Amy by the arm and hustled her toward a busy intersection.

  The traffic was heavy as they trotted across the street and were almost run down by an ancient and battered station wagon that screeched to a stop in front of them. It was a low-bellied boat with paneled doors, rusted fenders and a surfboard lashed to the roof, reminiscent of an old surfer movie she’d once seen.

  The passenger door swung open and a voice rumbled out from the driver’s seat.

  “Get in.”

  Dallas bent down, glanced inside. Without a word, he opened the rear door, guided her inside then climbed into the front seat.

  It took Amy a moment to recognize Gabe Jones behind the wheel.

  Gone was the shadowy warrior who had killed Alejandro then led them through the back streets of the city last night. Today Jones’ eyes were covered by dark glasses. On his head was a straw panama; a navy blue wife beater stretched tight over shoulders as broad as a building, baring biceps roughly the size of footballs.

  The surfer dude disguise would have been convincing as hell if she hadn’t already witnessed his deadly prowess with a knife. And if Amy didn’t recognize the bearing of a man constantly riding the edge of intrigue and risk.

  In the daylight, she could see how darkly attractive and dangerously intense he was as he maneuvered the lumbering station wagon in and out of traffic.

  “Were you followed?” Jones asked Dallas as they waited for a light to change.

  “Picked up a tail just outside the hotel.”

  This was news to Amy.

  “But we lost him.”

  Jones nodded his approval and apparent trust that Dallas knew what he was doing.

  Amy couldn’t stand it anymore. “Where are we going?”

  Jones glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Surf ’s up. We’re going to catch a few waves.”

  He was only half joking, Amy learned a little later. They drove east until the scent of the sun and the city melded with a saltwater breeze that rushed in through the wagon’s open windows as they neared the busy seaport. Jones wove his way through back streets to a small, packed marina. He parked the car in front of a ramshackle building that appeared to be a charter fishing service.

  “Wait here,” he said, and disappeared inside. Five minutes later, he emerged with fishing poles and bait and motioned with a hitch of his head for them to follow him.

  Amy scrambled out of the wagon. With Dallas’ hand firmly gripping her elbow, they trailed Jones to one of hundreds of boat slips.

  He’d already hopped down into a twenty-foot fishing boat and stood holding a hand up to help Amy on board. They were casting off and heading out to sea to the roar of a 200-horsepower outboard before Amy had a chance to shrug out of her backpack and sit down behind the windshield.

  Then it was nothing but engine roar, sun, and the splash of salt water over the bow as Jones sped out of the harbor and headed south along the shore.

  She glanced at Dallas, sitting behind her and to her right. The sun shone down as he stared into a wind that whipped his hair around his face—a face that never failed to make her heart rate alter. A face that reflected a dark passion and intense determination to protect her. A face she had loved from the first moment she had seen it, covered in cammo paint and sweat and resolved to save her even then. Even when he hadn’t known her, he’d been ready to give up his life to save her from certain death.

  Miles of ocean and shoreline passed. A little over an hour later, they slowed down to a crawl. Jones prowled the edge of a small secluded bay while a stout westerly wind rocked the relatively small craft around in the water like a cork.

  Evidently satisfied with what he saw through a pair of binoculars he’d had pulled out from under the dash, Jones piloted the boat into the shallows and beached it on a wide expanse of sand in what appeared to be the edge of nowhere.

  A man of few words, he cut the engine, hauled himself into the knee-deep surf and motioned for Amy to follow.

  Dallas helped her over the side and followed her into the water, carrying both of their packs. As they waded toward shore, Jones shoved the boat back into the water and without a backward glance headed up the beach at a fast jog.

  “Okay, is now the time to be nervous that our ride back to the city is drifting on the currents to Africa?” she whispered to Dallas, chancing a glance over her shoulder to see the boat bobbing and rocking on an undertow that was sucking it out to sea.

  He didn’t have a chance to answer. Jones had disappeared over a hill ahead of them and they had to move to catch up.

  The sputter and grind of another kind of engine commanded all of their attention.

  They trotted over a rise to see a sandy landing strip twenty yards away. Sitting on the strip, like a piece of tarnished metal deteriorating in the sun, sat a small twin-engine plane. Jones had already climbed aboard and sat behind the yoke in the pilot’s seat.

  Both propellers revved sluggishly to life, coughing and hacking like a tuberculosis victim.

/>   “Oh, my God,” Amy said, even as Jones shouldered open the cockpit door, stepped out onto the wing and motioned them to hurry the hell up.

  As she stood there in shock, surveying the dinged-up fuselage, chipped red and white paint and—oh God, was that bailing wire hanging from the open door—Jones yelled, “Get the lead out!”

  “Please, please tell me he’s kidding,” she implored.

  “Doesn’t strike me as a jokester.” Dallas hustled her toward the battered plane.

  “Is it…do you think it’s safe?” she stammered, dragging her feet.

  “Look at it this way. If he’s willing to ride in her, he must not be too worried.”

  She didn’t find Dallas’ logic all that comforting. From what she’d seen of Gabriel Jones, whether he lived or died didn’t make a whole lot of difference to him one way or the other.

  But the bottom line was he was the only one who could take her to Jenna, to her grandfather. So she swallowed back the urge to upchuck her breakfast and climbed on board.

  She fastened her seat belt as Jones fed the twin engines fuel and the plane bumped along down the makeshift runway.

  “Where are the parachutes?” she asked in a small voice.

  Jones angled her a look. And for the first time since she’d met him, he smiled.

  Amy didn’t exactly sleep, but Dallas was glad to see that after the first hour in flight and her initial white-knuckle reactions to the numerous air pockets peppering the lower currents, she was a least resting.

  Dallas had enough broad-stroke knowledge of the older model Piper Seminole to know that although the cabin wasn’t pressurized, they could still cruise at around 10,000 or 12,000 feet. Jones, however, kept the bird low to the ground, humming along between 600 and 1000 feet with the air speed steady at around 175 knots. He figured it meant one of two things. Jones needed to stretch the fuel capacity of the craft—which Dallas estimated to tap out at around 700 nautical miles—or he wanted to fly below radar.