Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 04]

by Over the Line

  Of which he was a card-carrying lifetime member.

  “Wow. This is gorgeous.” Janey stepped out of the SUV and joined him on the path of natural stone that led to the massive house constructed of log, stone, and glass. The house appeared to be one with its surroundings of aspen and evergreen and rock.

  “It’s damn remote,” Jase said, knowing from his field experience that the location could be a good or a bad thing from a defensive standpoint.

  Good because anyone looking for them was going to have a damn hard time finding them out here. Bad because if they were found, there wasn’t a cavalry in the world that could charge in here in time to save the day. And while he’d tried to whitewash the Grimm situation for Janey—Lord knew she needed a little relief from it—he wasn’t taking any chances. The bastard kept showing up when there was no way in hell he should have found them.

  If he turned up here, Jase was going to be ready.

  Dusk was fast approaching and a low-hanging sun glinted off a twenty-foot wall of windows. As they walked toward the house, Jase realized that the past twenty-four hours were catching up with him. They’d caught a 4:45 a.m. flight out of Chicago to Atlanta. In an attempt to throw Grimm off their trail, they’d hopped on a last-minute flight from Atlanta to Minneapolis, then on to Salt Lake City before connecting with their final flight to Jackson Hole. Damn near twelve hours in the air or at an airport.

  Try and find us now, you sick fuck.

  Frankly, Jase would like nothing better than to make a stand, call Grimm out, and get Janey out from under his reign of terror. He wanted to be the one to take Grimm down—especially after last night. He touched a hand to the lump on his temple. Grimm had some payback coming.

  If it were a case of mano a mano, that would be Jase’s choice. A one-on-one showdown. Let the bastard come. He’d enjoy the hell out of taking him down.

  But that wasn’t the case. Janey’s life was still on the line. And then there was the trail of dead bodies from Illinois to Florida to add to the mix. He still couldn’t figure tagging Grimm for those deaths. And that left one more level of threat to deal with and figure out.

  “Come on.” Once they’d cleared the steps leading to a massive porch that ran the width of the house. He hitched his chin in the direction of a double front door. “Let’s get inside.”

  As little as Janey was, she made way too big of a target for someone with a rifle and a scope. And Jase had a damn bad feeling that no matter how well they’d covered their tracks, they were going to have company of the badass variety.

  He punched the security code No had given him into the keypad and let them inside.

  “Fridge is full,” he announced after checking out the kitchen. No had told him the Kincaids’ caretaker, who lived in Jackson Hole, would stock the place for them, then make himself scarce.

  “Your boss came through.”

  “No always comes through,” Jase said, then stopped long enough to look at her.

  She looked beat. And in spite of that, she looked beautiful. Damn, she looked beautiful. Too beautiful for him to be tucked away with her in a remote mountain retreat. She was also about ready to drop.

  “You need to catch some sleep.”

  “And you should have seen a doctor for your arm and your head.”

  “I told you, I’m fine. And I need to do a little recon.” He went in search of the gun cabinet No had told him was hidden in a closet down the hall off the kitchen.

  “Jackpot,” he murmured when he found it. While he’d have preferred an M4 or an M16, the .300 Weatherbee bolt-action rifle would do. He shouldered the weapon, sighted through the scope. “Nice.”

  So was the Ruger Magnum. Shoving the handgun into the waistband of his jeans, he grabbed ammo for both pieces and headed back to the main living area.

  And found Janey sound asleep on the sofa.

  As he stood there, armed to the teeth with enough firepower to incite a minor coup, he felt a tenderness that damn near took him to his knees.

  God, look at her. For the first time in his life, he understood why men had fought over and fought for their women since the dawn of time.

  It wasn’t about testosterone. It wasn’t about possession. It was about knowing, deep down inside on a level buried under pride and posturing and the need to provide, that without woman, without the woman, man was nothing. And life was not complete.

  Talk about your life-altering moments. Jase set the rifle aside and carefully covered her with a colorful woven throw he tugged from the back of the sofa. Talk about your moments of truth.

  He understood something else now, too. He finally understood what had been confusing him from the first time he’d set eyes on Janey Perkins. He had loved Sara, yes. Because she’d needed him. Because he was a giver and she’d filled his need to give.

  But he loved Janey for an entirely different reason. He loved Janey because he needed her. It didn’t get more simple than that.

  “Why do you have to make this so hard?”

  He could still see the frustration and hurt in her brown eyes last night at the sand pit. After they’d made love. After he’d been determined to make her understand that since hell hadn’t frozen over and the sky hadn’t fallen he didn’t see the two of them making things work together as happening, either.

  “And why, exactly, is that?” he asked himself as, still watching her, he sank down in a plump, overstuffed leather side chair.

  He propped his elbow on the arm of the chair, stroked his chin, and tried to dredge up all those damn good reasons why it wouldn’t work.

  And they didn’t seem so damn good anymore.

  “When this is over,” he whispered, watching this woman who had so changed his life sleep, “we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.”

  But first, he had to get her through this. He stood, then had to wait for his head to quit spinning because he’d moved too fast. Marginally level again, he stretched out the kinks and, grabbing the rifle, headed outside to take a look around.

  He could sleep later. Right now, he needed to scout the lay of the land and check in with No.

  “Jesus,” he said after he’d hung up half an hour later; his mind reeled with Dallas Garrett’s latest update. “Jesus. What in the hell is going on?”

  21

  It was dark when Janey woke up. She stretched and rolled to her back, opening her eyes to the soft glow of the table lamp at the end of the sofa and to the wonderful scent of something cooking.

  Yawning hugely, she sat for a moment, waited for the fog of sleep to dissipate, then rose and walked barefoot toward the kitchen. The delicious scents that greeted her sent her stomach growling.

  “Wilson?” she said softly when she didn’t find him in the kitchen area of the open and spacious house constructed of interior log walls, open beamed ceilings, a huge stone fireplace, and acres of glass.

  She flicked on a light switch. Honey-gold wood flooring shined beneath her feet. Unable to resist, she peeked inside the oven; it was filled with crisp bacon and a fluffy cheese omelet.

  “And he cooks,” she said with a smile, and, because she was suddenly ravenous, helped herself to a piece of bacon.

  “Thought we’d already established that,” a dark voice said from behind her.

  She turned around, more stunned by his words than by surprise when she saw him standing just inside the back door, a rifle cradled in his arms.

  She wasn’t sure which affected her the most. His obvious decision that he needed to carry that much firepower or what he’d said. And the way he’d said it.

  “Thought we’d already established that.”

  Flirting? Was he actually flirting? Maybe his head injury was worse than she’d thought.

  “We absolutely have,” she agreed when she found his eyes were clear and alert.

  She was intrigued all over again by the sudden flush that stained his cheeks, a flush that told her they were both thinking about the cookin’ they’d done together in a little pool of wat
er and on a tiny sand beach back in Iowa.

  God. Had that really been just last night?

  “There’s fruit in the fridge,” he said, breaking eye contact. He walked across the kitchen and set the rifle in the corner within easy reach of the table.

  “You’ve been busy,” she said, choosing to dwell on the idea of him loosening up enough to flirt instead of dwelling on all the implications of the rifle. Could it be that Baby Blue had been thinking things over?

  “Help yourself.” He dusted off his hands, then joined her. “Catch up on your sleep some?”

  “Some. Obviously you didn’t. How’s the head? And your arm? Maybe I should take a look at it.” His mother, horrified by the blood and the real story that Jase had been forced to tell his parents, had dressed it properly before they’d left for Chicago.

  “For the last time, the head is fine. The arm is fine. The dressing is fine,” he insisted. “I’m fine.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t take this wrong, but you don’t look so fine.” Actually, he looked like he always did. Delicious, decidedly conflicted, and dead beat. “Why haven’t you slept?”

  “I’ll sleep tonight.” He nodded toward the table. “Let’s eat. Then we have to talk.”

  “About?” she asked carefully.

  “I spoke with Dallas a while ago.”

  She studied his face, then felt her stomach knot before he turned to the cupboard and pulled out a pair of plates. “I know that look. That’s the ‘other shoe is about to fall’ look.”

  The grim set of his mouth when he turned back and set the plates on what appeared to be a hand-carved table confirmed it.

  All of her good spirits deflated. “What’s happened now?”

  “After you eat,” he said, looking very domestic wielding an oven mitt as he set the plates of food on the table. “That’ll be soon enough.”

  “Afraid I’m not going to have much of an appetite after I hear what you’ve got to tell me?”

  He didn’t say a word. He just dug into his food like it was a job that needed doing. Which told her she was right. The other shoe was about to drop—and the weight of it was probably going to crush her.

  Okay. Let’s have it,” Janey said after they’d cleaned up the kitchen and settled in the living room.

  She curled a leg up under her on a corner of a chocolate leather sofa that matched two overstuffed side chairs.

  Jase sat in one of those chairs instead of sitting down beside her. It had been hard enough being so close to her in the kitchen. He needed his head on straight while they talked through Dallas’s news. Somehow, they had to make sense of it.

  And somehow, he had to break it to her—without breaking her.

  “Dallas did some checking on your mom’s financial situation,” he said, biting the bullet. “Seems that from the time you were little, she never had a steady job. Did you know that?”

  She shrugged. “More or less. I reached a certain age and figured out we were probably living off welfare.”

  “Well, that’s the thing. Dallas checked on that, too. He couldn’t find any evidence of that in the public records. What he did find,” Jase continued when her delicate eyebrows drew together, “was that right up until the time she was killed, someone was making deposits into her bank account. Every month, just like clockwork.”

  He watched as she sat up a little straighter, gave a little shake of her head—like she was trying to make sense of this news. “From who?”

  “That he couldn’t find out. Whoever was making the deposits buried the paper trail deep and wide. Dallas ran into one dead end after another.”

  “So,” she said after a long thoughtful pause, “someone was keeping my mother.”

  “Yeah,” Jase agreed, hating the barren look on her face. “It looks that way.”

  “Someone who didn’t want to be traced.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Lemans?” she suggested after a moment. “Or whoever the hell that was at the bank?”

  He nodded. “Possibly. And to add to the mix, the payments had increased substantially over the last six months.”

  “How substantially?”

  “Doubled.”

  She shifted her weight, set her feet on the floor. “And you’re thinking?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Maybe she convinced whoever it was that it would be in their best interest if they upped the ante.”

  He felt bad for Janey when she put it together. “You think she was blackmailing someone?”

  “If I had to guess—and guesses are pretty much all we’ve got at the moment—yeah, blackmail’s at the top of the list. It’s one of the oldest motives for murder on the books.”

  Still absorbing and sorting, she ran a hand through her hair. “What about the car? Did he find out anything about her driving record?”

  “Nothing. She was never involved in a vehicle-related accident.”

  She sniffed, sat back. “So, there goes the notion that someone might have used a Pontiac Lemans for retaliation.”

  “Pretty much, yeah. Look, Janey,” he said, reluctant but determined it was time to tell her the rest. “There’s more.

  “It’s bad,” he added, and watched her physically brace herself. “Those names . . . the four women on the list?”

  “You found them?”

  “Dallas found them.” He’d located the fourth woman just this morning. Jase met her eyes. “They’re dead. All four of them.”

  Her face drained of all color. “Oh, God. When?”

  “Within a couple days of your mother.”

  She swallowed, closed her eyes. “H-. . . how?”

  “At first glance it appears they were all accidents. But like I said last night, there’s no such thing as coincidence. We figure there’s a good chance they were murdered.”

  “Like my mother.” Her voice was so soft he barely heard her.

  She rose, hugging herself, and walked toward the dormant fireplace as if she were turning toward it for heat despite the July night. “Jesus. Jesus. What kind of an animal goes around killing people at will?”

  It killed him to see her so tormented. And he wasn’t finished with his grisly revelations yet. He rose. Went to her. Turned her into his arms.

  “You need to be strong, now. Because it gets worse.”

  She stiffened, stopped breathing.

  There was nothing for it but for him to tell her.

  “Janey . . . they found Sanders. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” He hugged her hard against him. “He’s dead.”

  When Jase woke up, it was dead-of-night black. He was stretched out on his side on the leather sofa. Janey was wrapped in his arms.

  And he knew instinctively that he was the only one who’d been sleeping. He kissed her temple, then pressed his forehead there. “How you doing?”

  “I’m okay,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

  He yawned, stifled a whole body stretch, and shook the cobwebs out of his head. “I’m good. Just needed a little combat nap.”

  And she was going to need a shrink before this was all over, Jase thought when she turned onto her side to face him, wedging her knee between his thighs and snuggling close.

  Her knees had buckled after he’d told her about Sanders. That was how they’d ended up on the sofa. He’d laid her down and wrapped himself around her, then reluctantly answered the rest of her questions.

  Sanders’s body had been found in an alley not far from the hotel. His throat had been cut.

  If she had cried, Jase wouldn’t have been as worried about her as he was. But she hadn’t cried. Not one tear. She’d just started trembling. Trembling so hard he’d been afraid she’d splinter into a million little pieces.

  So he’d held her. Just held her. And then he’d had the balls to fall asleep. While she’d been wide awake hurting.

  Some hero he was.

  “It’s okay to cry, Janey,” he said, stroking her hair.

  “It won’t solve anything. It
won’t bring my mom back. Or Neal. And it won’t make this all go away.”

  “No. But the release might do you good.”

  “This is doing me good.” She tilted her head back so he could see her face. “Feeling you. Being held by you.”

  How did a man fight words like that? How did a man deny the implied request? How did he resist the “please make love to me” look in her somber brown eyes?

  Maybe a better man could. This one couldn’t. This one didn’t want to.

  He lowered his head to hers. Kissed her. With less fire than feeling. With more emotion than need.

  He undressed her slowly then. Learned things about her body in the candlelight that he hadn’t taken time to appreciate in the dark.

  Learned with his lips that the twin dimples on her lower back were sensitive, that licking her there made her shiver. Learned that the skin on the inside of her upper arm was baby soft, that the tiny strawberry birthmark on the inside of her thigh tasted sweet.

  He kissed her face. Kissed her throat. Kissed every part of her that needed special attention. Beneath her eyes. Between her breasts. Around the bruises on her ankle.

  And then he made love to her with his mouth. Soft and gentle. Easy and slow. Building her pleasure with each calculated glide of his tongue over her clitoris. Heightening her sensation with finesse instead of speed, with giving instead of greed. He took his time with her, made it all about her as he guided her over the top in a slow and sensual ride that had her melting into his mouth and destroying him with the sensual abandon in which she let him take her.

  So. This really was love, he thought as he held her afterward and her heart beat like crazy against his chest.

  This was love.

  Now he just had to figure out what to do about it.

  Sunday, July 23rd

  Janey woke up in bed. Alone. Feeling relaxed and limp as a noodle and a little sore between her legs.

  Blissfully sore, she thought with a dreamy smile, remembering the way Baby Blue had made love to her last night.

  Remembering and aching to have him love her that way again. And knowing what had provoked him to be the way he’d been. So tender and giving. So unrelentingly determined to destroy her with the most exquisite pleasure she’d ever experienced.