I kept walking and faded into the darkened alcove of an adjacent doorway, propping myself in a corner to still my trembling knees. Trying to distract myself from my nervousness, I noted with cynicism that our fleabag motel across the street had no cars parked in front of it at all. Good. Maybe they’d be out of business soon.
Movement caught my eye, and my heart leaped into my throat when our rental car pulled up in front of the unit that had been Kane’s. Sucking in a shallow breath, I pressed backward into the shadows. Goddammit, what was he doing here?
Kane swung out of the vehicle and let himself into the motel room. When he emerged a few minutes later, he strode past the few intervening doors to disappear into the office.
I shot a wild glance up and down the street. Worst possible timing, for chrissake! It was only a couple of minutes after nine. If Robert showed up now, Kane would spot both of us immediately.
I shifted from foot to foot, wondering whether to slip around the corner and disappear or squeeze back into the darkest shadows of the doorway. With my luck, Kane would come out of the office just as I made my move.
I decided to wait. If he was straightening out our reservation, he’d emerge any second now. Keeping still in the darkness would be less conspicuous than hurrying down the sidewalk.
Minutes lengthened. What the hell was he doing in there? Another peek up and down the street showed no sign of Robert. I jammed myself back into the deepest corner of the doorway and massaged my chest with a trembling hand, willing my heart to slow its pace. The humid evening air accentuated my clammy sweat.
Goddammit, something had to happen. The waiting was killing me.
As if in answer to my wish, the night erupted in noise and hellish light and a giant hand slapped me against the building.
Chapter 34
Stunned, I slumped against the wall behind me, gasping. I didn’t remember sitting down, but that was definitely concrete under my butt. A second blast rocked the night, and the fireball that had been our rental car jerked my mind back to reality.
An instant later, comprehension arrived with a concussive blow almost as strong as the original explosion. The end of the motel was completely flattened. Nothing but a smoking hole remained where our rooms had been a moment before. The car burned fiercely. Fluffy clumps of furniture padding floated lazily down over the splintered debris scattered across the parking lot and halfway into the street.
Completely flattened. Including the office…
I was on my feet and running. “JOHN!” The scream hurt my throat, but I couldn’t hear it. I dodged around an upturned bathtub, tripped over a piece of debris, and fell hard.
“John! Dammit John, fuck dammit!” I could faintly hear my own voice now as I scrambled up again and sprinted for the remains of the office.
I was a few yards away when a tall, broad-shouldered figure rose and stumbled from the wreckage, pushing aside what might have once been wall panelling. I flung myself on Kane without slowing, sobbing in helpless relief. His arms closed around me, and I pulled his head down to smother him with desperate kisses. My shaking hands found warm stickiness in his hair, and I pulled away fearfully to examine him for injuries.
His hand cupped my chin to tilt my face up to his. I stared at him for a moment before realizing his lips were moving. I shook my head, cupping a hand behind my ear, and he grimaced and nodded.
His lips formed the exaggerated words, “Let’s go,” and his hand closed around my arm to pull me away from the building. I held back, gesturing my concern at his torn and bloodied appearance, but he shook his head irritably and his grip tightened as he jerked his chin at the gathering crowd.
Good point. Witnesses were bad, and emergency vehicles couldn’t be far behind. I let him guide me rapidly into the darkness.
Several minutes’ walking along a convoluted route brought us to a small empty park. A short distance down the path we found a bench sheltered in the deep shadow of an overhanging tree, and I fell onto it, trembling uncontrollably.
Kane sat beside me and I wrapped my arms around him, huddling close to dispel the lingering horror of the near-tragedy. We sat in silence while the ringing in my ears slowly dissipated. When he spoke at last, I started.
“Can you hear me now?”
“Yes. It sounds like you’re talking down a long tube, but I can hear you all right. Can you hear me?”
He disengaged my arms and held me away from him, peering at my face. “Can you hear me?” I repeated a little more loudly.
A shaft of moonlight illuminated his frown. “Yes. Just. Are you yelling?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good. Then tell me what the hell you were doing at the motel,” he snapped.
“I wasn’t at the motel.”
“Then what were you doing? I know you didn’t follow me.”
“No, I didn’t follow you.”
“Aydan, dammit, don’t play games with me! The manager is dead and the motel is destroyed. Your room was the source of the explosion. Did you rig a bomb in there and make up that cock and bull story about the dirty room so we had reason to leave?”
“What?” I gaped at him in shock. “No! I had nothing to do with that explosion! Why would I blow up a motel? Even a scuzzy one like that?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?”
“I wouldn’t!” Exhaustion and stale adrenaline formed a potent cocktail of anger. “Stop accusing me! I was just an innocent bystander!”
“Like hell. Innocent bystanders don’t pretend to be sleeping and then sneak away to mysteriously turn up at exploding buildings. You lied to me. Again. And you’re lying to me now. Tell me what the hell you were doing there!”
“Or what? What are you going to do, beat me up? Shoot me?”
His big fists clenched and the dappled moonlight transformed his blood-smeared face into a savage mask. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted with cold fear, my muscles instinctively tensing to meet an attack.
“Aydan.” His voice was so soft I had to strain to hear. “Please.”
I swallowed my thudding heart. It continued to batter frantically against my ribs while I took a deep breath, trying to hide my reaction.
When I thought I could trust my voice, I spoke. “I was supposed to be meeting my contact. He gave me the time and address. I was across the street at the coffee shop.”
“Did he show?” His quiet voice betrayed no emotion.
“No.”
“Go back to the B & B. Sneak back in. Get cleaned up. We’ll talk later.”
“What about you?”
“I have to report to the local police department. They’ll need my statement.” He rose and strode down the path without a backward glance.
By the time I hauled myself in the bathroom window, my limp-noodle arms and legs could barely manage the task. Once safely inside, it was all I could do not to curl into a whimpering ball on the bathroom floor.
Instead, I clung to the sink to inspect my dirt-smudged, white-faced reflection. A few tufts of furniture padding still clung in my hair, and my skin was artistically decorated with smears of Kane’s blood.
I stripped off my filthy clothes and did a rough cleanup before using the last of my energy to creep into bed.
Much later, I had almost stopped trembling when the first of the noises began.
Oh, no. No, no, no. Not that. Not now.
The rhythmic squeaking from the next room told me more than I ever wanted to know. Then the moans started. Quiet at first, but gaining volume rapidly.
I clamped the pillow over my head.
A few minutes later, a touch on my shoulder sent me rocketing up in the bed with a wild cry. Kane jerked back in the moonlight.
“John!” The shriek burst out of me before I could stop it, and I swung the pillow at him in panicked fury. He fended it off with an upflung arm and let out a grunt, waving a placating hand. Berserk with raw nerves and unspent adrenaline, I caught him on the shoulder with the backswing.
&n
bsp; “Arlene!” he snapped, and I lost it completely at the sound of the hated name.
I belaboured him furiously with the pillow, the mattress bouncing and squeaking under my feet, cries of effort jerking out between my lips.
“Aydan, stop,” he hissed as he parried my strikes.
I swung wildly a couple more times and he seized the other pillow, his first blow connecting solidly with my ribs.
“Umph!” I redoubled my attack, anger slowly giving way to the realization of how ludicrous it was to attack a martial arts expert with a pillow. My grunts turned into giggles that quickly took on a hysterical note while I swung ineffectually again and again.
Kane dodged and ducked, grinning until I finally landed a solid hit to his head. Then he dropped his pillow and sprang, pinning me to the bed. The headboard slammed into the wall with the force of his weight behind it and I let out a little cry of dismay.
Kane stared down at me from inches away, his eyes black in the moonlight. A moment later, he was kissing me ravenously.
Electric need sizzled through my body. His hand dragged down from my shoulder to find my breast in an almost-rough caress, making me moan into his lips at the breath-stealing jolt of pleasure. His knee pushed my legs apart, the coarseness of his jeans igniting my skin like a struck match.
“Oh, Daddy, yes!” Lurene’s booming voice sounded as if she was right in the room with us. “Oh, Big Daddy, give it to me hard! I’m gonna ride your wild baloney pony all night long, oh, baby, oh, honey-pie!”
Kane jerked back and my giggles returned with a vengeance at the sight of his expression.
The rhythmic squeaking from next door had turned into enthusiastic thumping. “Big Daddy Jelly-Roll, give me all your stuffing! Give me your sweet, sticky stuffing!”
Thump, thump, thump.
My barely-controlled guffaw came out as an explosive snort, and Kane’s body began to shake with laughter against me.
Thump, thump, thump. “Oh! Oh, Daddy! Park your big ol’ Plymouth in my love garage! Again! Again! Oh, Daddy!”
Kane convulsed with silent mirth. “Plymouth?” he wheezed in my ear. “If you ever call mine a Plymouth, I’ll never forgive you.”
I gasped for breath. “What do you want? Cadillac? Hummer?”
“Eighteen-wheeler at least. Super B-train.”
Another gale of giggles shook me. “Modest much?”
“Not much.”
Thump, thump, thump. “Oh, Daddy, don’t stop! Beat me with your big ol’ sugar stick!”
I wiped away tears, still giggling. “That is just so many kinds of wrong.”
Kane sobered, and my urge to laugh vanished, too, as a few vestiges of common sense straggled back into my brain. I peered up at him, my body still begging for him while my brain blazed into red alert. Don’t make the same stupid mistake twice…
The cries next door got shriller and less articulate while the thumping rhythm accelerated. “Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy…”
Kane rolled off me and sat up. “I didn’t come here to-”
“DADDY I’M COMING!”
Kane winced, and we waited without speaking until the moans subsided.
When silence reigned again, he leaned close to whisper. “I need to know the details of your op. If you didn’t set that bomb, then somebody is trying to kill you, and they got too damn close tonight. It’s my responsibility to keep you safe. Tell me what your mission is, and we can work on it together.”
I massaged my temples, trying to redirect my mind from what we’d almost done to what we were actually doing. Goddammit.
“It’s not an op. I don’t have a mission.”
His fist clenched. “Dammit, Aydan,” he hissed. “Stop insulting me. Do you honestly think I’m that stupid?”
I sat up, compressing my desire for arm-waving into a short, angry gesture. “What the hell do you want from me?” I demanded through clenched teeth, trying to keep my voice down. “You bitch at me because you want honesty and when I tell you the truth, you won’t believe me. This is the truth! There is no op! I’m not an agent!”
“Bullshit!” The measure of his agitation showed in his uncharacteristic vulgarity. He lowered his voice to a tense whisper again. “You tell me things that are directly contrary to every scrap of evidence I have, and you expect me to believe you. If that’s your version of the truth, do me a favour and lie to me!”
“Seriously? That’s seriously what you want? What happened to Mr. Why-Can’t-You-Give-Me-The-Honesty-You-Give-Him?”
Kane’s fist jerked as if he’d punch the mattress, but he controlled the movement. “You make me crazy,” he grated. “Absolutely, insanely crazy. Yes, dammit, lie to me! Make up some completely fabricated story! Tell me anything, as long as it makes some kind of sense for my report to Stemp tonight. And stop… stop… being all naked and beautiful, dammit…”
He lunged to his feet and strode across the room to stare out the sheer-curtained window, his arms crossed over his chest, massive shoulders blocking the moonlight.
I stared open-mouthed at his back for a long moment, my anger draining away into dismay. I had completely forgotten I owed Stemp a report tonight, too. What the hell was I going to tell him?
“Okay,” I said faintly. “Okay, just give me a minute.” I crept out of bed on shaking legs and pulled on my jeans and sweatshirt before perching on the edge of the bed, my mind racing.
Kane turned to face me again, his features shadowed into invisibility against the moonlit window. He stood watching me in silence until I looked up with a sigh and patted the bed beside me. He came over and sat without speaking.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Here goes.”
Chapter 35
“We need to coordinate our reports to Stemp,” I began.
Kane’s face hardened. “You’re reporting directly to Stemp?”
“Oh. Yeah, I forgot to tell you that.” The muscles bunched in his jaw, and I quickly added, “Sorry. It wasn’t a big secret, it just slipped my mind.”
“How long have you been reporting directly to him?” His voice was controlled.
“This is the first time.”
“I’m going to choose to believe that.”
“Good, because it’s the truth,” I snapped before I could stop myself. I took a deep breath. “Yes, Stemp asked me to report to him at least daily. I intend to tell him there’s something weird about this installation.”
Kane stiffened. “When were you planning to mention that to me?”
“I… sorry, I… For chrissake, John, I’m tired of apologizing! I’m doing the best I can. Would you please just believe I’m trying to protect you, and tonight protecting you was a higher priority for me than Stemp’s mission? I just didn’t have time to think about the damn network until now.”
“You’ve got a funny way of protecting me, letting me walk into a bomb.”
“I didn’t know the goddamn bomb was there! And anyway, you weren’t supposed to be at the motel tonight. You were supposed to be here at the B & B, nice and safe and sound.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“Anyway…” I glared at him. “There’s something weird going on here. I can’t put my finger on it, but I want to spend some more time in the network tomorrow. I’m going to report that to Stemp. You can, too, if you want.”
“And the exploding motel?” he asked. “Do you expect me to tell Stemp it was coincidence that somebody blew up your room? Remember the part about how I’m supposed to be keeping you safe?”
I chose to ignore his sarcasm. “Yeah, the exploding motel…” I propped my chin in my hand for some deep thought. “Are you sure the bomb was in my room, not yours? What were you doing in there? I saw you go in and come out again a few minutes later.”
Kane went very still. “Are you suggesting I bombed the motel, killing an innocent man in the process?”
“No, of course not.” I frowned at him. “Jeez, that didn’t even occur to me until you said it. Why would you blow up
the motel?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Well, duh. No, what I meant was, why were you there at all?”
Kane relaxed and shrugged. “Just bad luck. You had gone to bed… I thought.” I ignored his inflection and he continued after a moment. “I’d already reported our move to Stemp earlier, and I was getting ready to do my full report when I remembered I had to go back to the motel for a refund. I was going to leave it until morning, but then I discovered I’d left my razor in the motel unit, so I drove over.”
“Did you see anything unusual in the room when you went in?”
“No.” He sounded very certain, and I believed him. Keen observation was such a habit with him, I doubted if he even consciously realized he was doing it anymore.
“What about the manager? Was there anything strange going on with him?”
“Not that I noticed. And if he knew he was about to die in a bomb blast, I’m pretty sure I would have noticed.”
My hand crept out to hold his without my permission. “What happened?” I asked. “Thank God you’re okay. How could he have died while you were able to walk away?”
“I was lucky, that’s all. I was standing up against that big counter, and he was behind it. He gave me some attitude, but he did finally refund our deposit, so he was holding my credit card. Instead of handing it back to me, he threw it onto the counter and it slid over the edge and landed on the floor. I’d just leaned over to pick it up when the blast hit. He got the full force of it from behind, but I was protected by the desk.”
I squeezed his hand a little tighter. “Thank God for bad attitudes.”
“Oh, so that’s your excuse,” he teased.
I shot him a grin. “I’ll take any excuse that’s going.”
“So who’s trying to kill you?” Kane asked conversationally.
“It has to be a pretty limited pool of possibilities. Not many people knew I’d be at that motel. Or thought I’d be at that motel…” I trailed off. “You registered under your name, right?”
“Yes.”
I bolted upright. “Shit!”
How Spy I Am Page 25
