This time she heard the warning bells loud and clear: they said she needed to ease back and regain control of both herself and their encounter.
Before that thought could fully form, though, he rose over her, pressed his body full-length against hers, and took her mouth in a long, slow, drugging kiss that sent her floating once more, awash in a storm of sensation and desire. On some level she told herself that this was a bad idea, that she shouldn’t let it go on like this. But as his hands moved up her body, caressing and inciting with achingly slow gentleness, she melted, unable to remember why the balance between them even mattered.
So she softened against him, letting him be in charge, and felt an added frisson of excitement at the realization that she could do that with him. She trusted him that much.
As if realizing what she was giving up to him, what it meant, he caught her face in his hands, murmured her name and pressed his lips to hers in a chaste kiss that somehow said Thank you, or maybe I won’t let you down. And if the second sentiment brought a quiver of nerves, they were quickly swept away by heat and longing when he kissed her again and, without warning or preamble, positioned himself to slide into her once more.
She felt the slick heat of a fresh rubber, the hard pulse of fresh need, and parted her legs for him, inviting him inside. He seated himself on a powerful thrust that tugged at her out-of-practice muscles even as it brought new pleasure spiraling inside her. She would have moved with him, urged him on, even set the pace, but when she shifted to get a hand between their bodies, he caught her wrists, drew her arms around his neck, and said softly, “Let me love you.”
Again, a quiver of nerves. Again, lost in the heat of desire.
He kissed her over and over, and all the while moved within her, with thrusts that began as slow hip-roll pulses and built from there. As before, he absorbed her responses and used the information to bring her pleasure spiraling higher and higher still. Now, though, it seemed he was anticipating those responses because he touched her in all the right places, stroked her with exactly the perfect pressure and speed. And where with another man all that attention to the details might have seemed calculated, coming from him it made her chest ache with the knowledge that he was paying attention to her, thinking about her. Only her.
He caressed her, kissed her, thrust into her…and he made love to her, well and truly.
She had long called the act by that name, but now the two words took on a new and deeper meaning for her. On one level, she knew that should be a terrifying concept to the woman she’d worked so hard to make herself into. On another, though, she couldn’t find any terror amid the passion. She burned beneath his touch, coming alive in a second orgasm that caught her by surprise, sliding through her on a long, rolling wave of pleasure that leveled off but didn’t subside. Instead, her senses hung poised as his tempo quickened and his breathing increased, and he started to thrust in a new and determined rhythm.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yesyesyes!” Another orgasm washed through her, or maybe this one was a continuation of the last; she didn’t know. All she knew was that the right answer for her, then and there, was to tighten her arms around his neck, press her cheek to his and ride out the huge, pleasurable waves as he shuddered and came deep inside her, with an orgasm that, like the act itself, seemed somehow far more meaningful than it ever had for her before.
And this time when they lay cooling once more, she didn’t have to work at keeping her brain quiet; it just was quiet. She was content to lie there in his arms, warm, drowsy and drifting, and listening to the sounds of the night falling around them.
She was, so very atypically, content to just be.
Even later, after the lethargy passed and they got up and moved around a little, smiling softly when their eyes met or their bodies brushed in passing, they didn’t really talk about what was happening between them. And the same held true when, long after dark and working by the illumination of tiny flashlights that they used as sparingly as possible, they finished assembling the stove and cooked a decent camp dinner by the dim glow of the propane burner. They talked, of course—about the meal, the terrain, a bit about their respective childhoods, but not about them.
That was just fine with her. They had talked enough last night for any two of her other relationships, maybe three, and they had their ground rules, so they didn’t need to discuss any of it further. And she didn’t want to talk about the case or about what was going to happen tomorrow. If tonight was the only time they were going to have before their higher-ups insisted that she leave Bear Claw for her own safety, then she wanted it to just be about the two of them.
And it was. It was just the two of them as they sand-scoured the dishes and packed them away, and it was just the two of them as they sat outside the cave mouth for a while, wrapped in a blanket and cuddled together to watch the impossibly starry sky. And it was just the two of them as they returned to the air mattress, which should have seemed far too small for them both but somehow didn’t.
They dozed, woke, made love and then fell asleep for real—or at least Tori did, because the next thing she knew, she was being nudged awake, confused and disoriented to find herself wrapped around a warm, naked male body. She reared back and blinked up into lake-blue eyes that looked far more awake that she was, and were filled with warm affection and, she thought, an undercurrent of wary regret.
Memory returned quickly, and with it came a throb that wasn’t quite horror, but wasn’t all that far off.
Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Ohboyohboyohboy. She had done it; she had made love with Jack. She had spent the night with him, was waking up with him, had let him in deeper than anyone since…heck, deeper than anyone ever before. Nerves pinged through her and her heartbeat accelerated to a fast thump-thump-thump that seemed to echo in the cave, until she realized the noise was echoing in the cave, and it wasn’t her heart.
Glancing out through the cave mouth, where it was full daylight, the dawn long gone while she’d slept in her temporary lover’s arms. She couldn’t see what was making the noise, but as her head cleared, her stomach knotted on the sure knowledge of what she was hearing.
It was a helicopter. Morning had come, and with it, their rescue. It was time for them to return to reality.
She looked back at him, met his eyes and saw the knowledge there that they weren’t going to get a chance to postmortem what had turned out to be the best night of her life. They were just going to walk away from it, from each other, no harm, no foul.
Then again, there was no need to prolong an ending that they had both agreed was inevitable. For the first time, though, she had a feeling it was going to hurt like hell to walk away.
“WE HAVE A PROBLEM.” The Investor’s voice was an annoyed rasp on the other end of the line, sending a shiver down the back of Percy’s neck. “Or should I say that you have a problem?”
The shiver stayed put even though the thermostat in the mayor’s office was set to seventy-eight except when there were eco-lobbyists in the vicinity, which there weren’t today. He was still wearing his suit jacket from an earlier on-camera appearance, although he’d lost the tie. And, as he sat at his desk and covered his eyes with one hand to block out the too-bright sunlight coming in through the window, he started to sweat and the smell of his early lunch instantly went from tempting to puke-inducing.
“I did it,” he whispered. “Is that what you want to hear? I did it. I went up there and punched holes in the lines myself. I didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.” Or to stay quiet about it.
He hadn’t anticipated the guilt, though, or how he kept seeing the way the steering lines had bled bloody red, glistening in the feeble beam of his penlight after he stabbed them. He smelled the ooze when he closed his eyes, and he’d dreamed of the way it had felt to cut them—initial resistance followed by an easier give once the blade bit through the outer covering of each hose, making incisions small enough that the vehicle would be miles away from Station Fourteen—t
he last station at the edge of beyond—when it failed.
Guilt, yeah. That was the heavy pressure on his chest that wasn’t letting him breathe. He had killed Williams and the woman himself rather than just turning his usual blind eye while his business partner did the dirty work. And he hadn’t even had the guts to do it cleanly.
“You did it yourself so it wouldn’t get screwed up? That’s rich, because guess what? It got screwed up. More accurately, you screwed it up. I said to make it look like an accident, not give them every damn option to survive…and come close to blowing my operation right to hell.”
Percy’s head came up and his hand slapped flat on the desk. “What?”
“You heard me,” the Investor snarled. “The detective and his little tree doctor survived the crash. What’s more, they somehow made it out to the processing site, sneaked into the lab, disabled the DB-Auto and sneaked out again.”
“They… Oh, hell.” The sweat was flowing in earnest now, making Percy feel oily and desperate.
The Investor gave an inarticulate snarl of fury. When the other man regained his voice, he grated, “What’s more, nobody I’ve talked to knows how to undo what she’s done to the DB. It’s got some sort of personal code attached to it, and if we don’t use the right one, the whole damn system could shut itself down and take the refinement protocol with it.”
“Can’t you buy another machine and upload the protocol?”
Dead. Silence.
“Oh,” Percy said, guessing too late what had happened: namely, that the scientist who had developed the drug must have fouled all the backup material somehow, probably as a way of ensuring his own survival. The researcher, Dr. Ervil Howard, had started out a willing partner, but had balked once he realized the drug was being field tested in Bear Claw. He had disappeared a few months ago, and Percy hadn’t asked about him. He’d just taken it as an object lesson in what happened to people who crossed the Investor. Like him.
They survived the crash. The ominous words replayed themselves in his mind, taunting and jeering with the knowledge that although he might have been thinking only moments earlier that he’d give anything to go back and not sabotage the SUV, now all he could think was that he was totally screwed. “I’m sorry. You said to make it look like an accident.”
“I said for you to make them go away. You didn’t. But as much as I dislike second chances, I’m going to make an exception in this case.”
Meaning he wanted Percy to go after them again. Which, if he wound up caught, would be one-hundred-percent political suicide, and in an election year. The mayor’s fingers tightened on the phone. “But…”
There was a hesitation before a deadly-sounding “Yes?”
“There’s an election coming up, and already rumors that there’s going to be a real candidate this time. That ranger, Matt Blackthorn. He was a poli-sci major, did ten years as a cop and another eight as a ranger. He’s perfect for the job.” Not to mention perfectly upstanding. If he got even a whiff of how fast and loose the mayor had been playing with city finances, Percy wouldn’t just lose the election, he’d also stand a good chance of landing in jail. “I can’t do this right now. I just can’t.” Surely the man on the other end of the phone would understand? The mayor’s office was one of his investments, after all. “Can’t you just…take care of them?”
“I’ve done entirely too much of that over the years, which is why we both find ourselves in the current predicament.” The Investor paused. “Face it, Proudfoot, both of our tenures in Bear Claw are almost over. At least mine is. For you, it’s decision time. You can either man up, take care of this problem you’ve created, and come with me when I move my operations someplace bigger and better…or you can stay behind.”
Quailing at the idea of being stuck in Bear Claw without his investment adviser—mentor, business partner, whatever—Percy locked on to the important part of that. “What do you mean, bigger and better?”
“Exactly what I said. What do you want to be next, a member of the state senate? A congressman? More? If you do this for me, if you commit yourself to me fully, I can make that happen. You’ll be an important man, a successful one. Doors will open, women will throw themselves at you, men will want what you have.”
The sweat was trickling down Percy’s spine now, simultaneously hot and cold as he alternated between horror and excitement. But what choice did he have, really? He had committed himself to the devil years ago; it was far too late to turn back now and they both knew it.
He took a long look around the glossy office, noticing for the first time in a while that the woodwork was stained pine, the gloss a couple of layers of polyurethane. “Okay, I’ll… Okay. Whatever you want. Just take me with you.”
“Good. You’ve made a wise choice, Mr. Mayor. Now, here’s what I need you to do…”
Chapter Thirteen
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Chondra’s eyes radiated concern from the computer screen. Behind her, thanks to the uplink’s clarity, Tori could make out the organized chaos of desks and the black borders of several motivational posters—and one joke demotivational one—about working hard and saving the environment.
Normally, Tori didn’t much care where she was as long as the work was interesting and she was making progress, and maybe having a little fun during her downtime. Now, though, she found herself wishing she were back in the lab, separated from the rest of the world by a layer of academia. She and Jack had gotten back to Bear Claw City mid-morning, and he’d almost immediately been whisked off by his boss, Tucker McDermott. Jack had looked back at her and sketched a wave as he was being hauled off, and she couldn’t stop wondering if he’d been trying to say he’d see her later, or goodbye, or what.
Not that she was going to tell Chondra that because she would know that the situation had to be really bad for Tori to be stressing over a guy. Her friend would see it as a sign that she was transferring her other fears on to something that usually wouldn’t matter to her, and maybe she would be right.
Because she wanted her friends to worry less, not more, Tori gave an “everything’s cool” shrug and said, “I’m perfectly safe. I’m working out of the city’s crime lab, which is in the basement of the main P.D.”
It was a well-appointed basement, she thought with a quick look around at the computer space of the multi-room lab space, which had top-notch if slightly dated equipment, well-organized workstations and cheerful artwork on the walls. It was still a basement, though, and she was the only one down there, and had been for most of the day.
The crime scene analysts—all high-powered, self-confident women—had been in and out when she first arrived, showing her around and offering her any help she needed as she continued to analyze the fungus, not only looking for a way to cure the forest now, but also a way to treat the Death Stare addiction, maybe even prevent death in the case of an overdose. The analysts had been friendly and welcoming, and had made the lab come alive. As the morning wore on, though, and the department mobilized to work the new connections Tori and Jack had discovered, the others had disappeared, leaving her alone.
Chondra’s lips pursed. “I’m glad they’ve got you under lock and key, but it’s not what I was asking about. What’s wrong?”
The good news, Tori thought, was that she was back down in Bear Claw with access to a real network and functional uplink. The bad news was that she was back in Bear Claw with access to a real network and functional uplink…because the speed and clarity of the data feed not only gave her access to all the databases and files she needed, it also made it impossible for her to dodge her friend’s concern with excuses about bad connections and fuzzy video.
She started to brush it off, but the honest worry in her friend’s expression had her sighing instead. “I’ll be fine, I promise. And I appreciate your concern, but…not now, okay? Right now I’d really like to focus on the work. We can catch up on the other stuff later.” As in way later, once she’d gotten some distance in time and space, and with
it, some perspective. “How are you doing on figuring where this thing came from?”
Chondra hesitated momentarily, as if to say I know you’re changing the subject, and I’m going to let you get away with it, but only for now. But then her eyes took on a triumphant glitter. “We got it.”
“You got it.” Tori closed her eyes and breathed a “Thank you,” then opened her eyes, feeling her spirits start to lift. “Talk to me.”
“Meet Dr. Erwin Howard.” Chondra clicked her mouse a few times, and a small window popped up in the corner of the video screen. It showed a mug shot–type ID photo of a middle-aged guy wearing glasses and showing a lot of teeth. “He was a tenured prof at one of the big universities in North Carolina, with a big lab and some serious grant money behind him, both private and federal. As you figured, he was working on bioengineering an organism that could be used to pull dispersed metals—either contamination or natural reserves—out of large patches of soil. Actually, the fungus was part of a symbiotic process, paired up with a fast-growing, deep-rooting plant that did the actual mining, with the fungus concentrating the metal for harvesting.”
“I vaguely remember the project, but it seemed like it petered out after a while.” Or folded up entirely, Tori realized. “You keep saying ‘was’…what happened to him?” Unfortunately, she had a pretty good guess.
“He disappeared a little over two years ago, along with copies of his notes and samples of all his work. At the time, everyone thought he would turn up working for one of the really cutting-edge metal-refining companies. He never did, though.”
The confirmation put a queasy shiver down the back of her neck. The shimmies only got worse when she combined that with the abandoned-looking workstation and the fact that the last programming in the DB-Auto had been time-stamped several months earlier. Granted, Dr. Howard might have moved on from the mobile lab setup, or been paid off and gone on to spend his ill-gotten gains. She had a feeling, though, that wasn’t the way the militia worked, and that the scientist might very well be dead.
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