by Paula Graves
She buckled her seat belt. “So you don’t think his Morse code message was to me?”
“Do you? Really?” He buckled his own belt and started the engine before he turned to look at her again. “Why would he make sure that your face was plastered all over the national news if he wanted you to sneak off to Washington, D.C.?”
“But the code—”
“You don’t really know Morse code. Your father would know that.”
“But you do. And he’d know that, too.”
Jesse nodded. “He meant that message for me. And he made sure you were too high-profile to go with me.”
“So we just let him have his way?”
“His way makes sense.”
Her voice sharpened. “His way will get you killed.”
Jesse shot her a wry smile. “Win-win for him.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m not his favorite person.”
“But he’s not evil. He wouldn’t deliberately set you up to get killed.”
He touched her arm. “I was kidding.”
“I’m not. You need backup in D.C. and I can do that.”
He cut the engine and turned to look at her. “Evie, you’re an accountant. You work at a computer all day. You’re not an agent.”
“I’ve been trained like an agent.”
“Don’t get cocky, Marsh. You received basic training. Agents go through many more weeks of training, plus annual refresher courses in case new procedures and weapons come into use.”
“So give me a crash course in what I need to know.”
If he wasn’t so intent on keeping her safe, he’d admire her determination. “There’s not nearly enough time.”
“Give me a shot. I’m a fast learner.”
“Evie—” He couldn’t hold back a soft laugh. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Take me with you,” she said.
He leaned toward her, catching her face between his hands. He’d meant it simply as a way to make her focus and listen to what he was saying, but the moment she looked up at him, blue eyes smoldering, he forgot his argument.
She was really stunning, with her porcelain skin and cornflower eyes. Rita was prettier, her attractiveness more blatant, impossible to miss, but Evie was the one with depth to her beauty. It was more than the fine bone structure or the perfect skin. It was the intellect in her bright eyes, the kindness in her frequent smiles.
Rita had been like a bright light, obscuring everything around her whenever she was in the room. Somehow, her luminance had made him completely miss the deeper, quieter appeal of her little sister.
He dropped his hands from Evie’s face, feeling vulnerable and out of control. “Let’s just go shopping. We have the rest of the day to work all of this out.”
She was quiet during the twenty-minute drive to Borland. Too quiet. He ended up turning on the radio to fill the uncomfortable silence, fiddling around until he found a news station out of Birmingham.
The big news seemed to be Alabama and Auburn football, but at the half hour, the news broadcaster did mention Evie’s disappearance. “Police are looking for Marsh and her bodyguard, Alan Wilson of Southland Security, neither of whom have been seen since yesterday. Wilson, a married father of two, worked for several years as a Jefferson County jail guard before taking the job with Southland.”
Evie made a low moaning sound. “Married father of two.”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“I still feel horrible.”
The thrift store in Borland was huge, filling a space that had once been a large grocery store. Jesse stuck close to Evie while she shopped for clothes, mostly jeans and T-shirts, a few long-sleeved T-shirts and a couple of cardigans. “Will I need heavy winter clothes?” she asked quietly. “I mean, how long will I be keeping a low profile?”
“Get a sweater or two,” he suggested.
She did as he suggested, adding a lined windbreaker to the pile, as well. Shoes came next, sneakers and boots, plus a couple of dressier flats that hadn’t seen too much wear.
“You’re going to need those at the safe house?” he asked in a low tone, keeping an eye out for other shoppers close enough to hear.
She gave him an enigmatic look and moved on to a different section of the store. She grabbed a couple of large water bottles and added them to their cart. “Can never have too many of these.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “You’re not thinking about the safe house at all, are you?”
“Shh,” she said, glancing at a passing shopper. “We’ll talk later, remember?” She took charge of the cart and rolled it forward, leaving him to catch up.
They finished shopping and paid. On the way out to the car, Jesse handed her the keys. “Can you put the stuff in the backseat? I need to take a quick detour.” He headed down the sidewalk toward the drugstore a couple of stores away. Inside, he found the item he wanted and carried it to the checkout counter, ignoring the clerk’s curious look.
Evie gave him an equally curious look when he got back to the car and dropped the shopping bag on the seat between them. “What was that about?”
He nodded at the bag. “Thought you might need that.”
She looked inside, then looked up at him, a question in her blue eyes.
“You’re too recognizable,” he said. “And because I know damned well you plan to go to D.C. no matter how you have to do it, I figure you have a better chance staying under the radar as a redhead.”
Evie grinned as she pulled the box of hair dye from the bag. “You won’t regret this.”
“I already do,” he murmured, starting the car.
But if she was going to risk her neck by going to Washington, he was going to make damned sure he was there to watch her back.
* * *
THE SUPER BUDGET MOTEL near Christiansburg, Virginia, wasn’t the nicest place Evie had ever seen, but it had two things going for it—clean beds and free Wi-Fi. Jesse had made it clear, when they’d decided to stop rather than push on to D.C. Monday evening, they were going to share a room.
“We’ll find a place with two beds,” he’d said, “but I’m not comfortable with being in a separate room when there are people trying to kidnap you.”
“They won’t even recognize me,” she’d argued, tugging at the now-short auburn hair framing her face.
“Not taking a chance.” His tone ended the discussion.
She wouldn’t have protested at all, she thought, if she weren’t still so bloody vulnerable to her attraction to him. Maybe it was just a crush, but knowing so didn’t change much. He was still the sexiest man she’d ever met, and if he took her face between his hands again, the way he had in the car the day before, she wasn’t sure she’d keep her cool a second time.
“I’m going to take a shower. Do you want to go first?”
“Go ahead,” she said. “Can I borrow your computer?”
“Sure.”
He didn’t hesitate, she noticed. In fact, he seemed to be going out of his way to accommodate her on this trip. It was as if, once he’d decided to let her tag along, he was buttering her up for something.
Probably about to toss some onerous ground rules her way. Jesse was big on ground rules.
“What’s your password?” she called as he disappeared into the bathroom just as the log-in screen came up on the computer.
He stepped back out, already stripped down to his jeans. “It’s jf2Rdx378. The R is capitalized.”
She dragged her gaze away from his powerful shoulders and flat belly to type the code into the computer. Jesse went back into the bathroom, and a few moments later, the shower came on.
Don’t think about him naked, she told herself as she pulled up the web browser and typed in Espera Group.
Several pages of links came up in response to her search. She scrolled through them, having read most of them before now. She was looking for something new. Something more informative than the slick, PR-oriented doublespeak she had found on
most of her searches.
She came across an anti–Espera Group weblog on the second page of links and clicked. The blog design was crude and amateur, but whoever ran the site wrote with passion, even if his style was occasionally on the clunky side and his grammar faltered now and then.
“If the Cambridge administration pushes for the treaty, and can strong-arm enough congressmen to go along with it, he’ll win the accolades of his party and the gratitude of the world,” the blogger began. “He’ll also guarantee that the world’s oil will be controlled not by individual countries vulnerable to both carrots and sticks but to an unaccountable, unleverageable group of nameless, faceless bureaucrats with no track record of wisdom, responsibility or mercy.”
Evie couldn’t argue with his point. For decades, people had been trying to figure out how to fix the oil problem. The resource was used as a bargaining tool, fought for, killed for, rationed and vilified because the countries that needed the most of it had to walk softly around the mercurial, often despotic countries that controlled most of it.
People were tired of being held hostage to the whims of dictators sitting on a fortune in black gold. The solution the Espera Group was selling would seem like the perfect answer to a whole lot of them. Sharing the oil evenly and equitably, controlling production for the sake of conservation and reducing waste, taking the reins out of the hands of people who wielded oil like a weapon—what was there not to like?
But who made the decisions? The multinational group favored by the Espera Group, handpicked by their supporters? That kind of “consensus” rarely worked out to the benefit of those who played by the rules. And the lack of transparency guaranteed that corruption would take root.
Near the end of the blog post was a link. “Think I’m overreacting to a treaty that hasn’t even been presented to Congress? Take a look just how deep the rot in the current administration goes.”
Jesse emerged from the bathroom in a clean pair of jeans, a towel around his neck only partially hiding his bare, still-damp chest. His dark hair was still wet, rivulets running down his lean cheeks. He brought the towel up and ran it over his hair, his chest muscles flexing.
“There’s still plenty of hot water left if you want to take a turn,” he said, crossing to the bed next to the table where she sat. He sat on the edge and nodded at the page she had open. “What are you looking at?”
“No Espera,” she answered, dragging her gaze back to the computer screen. “It’s an anti–Espera Group blog. He’s pretty eloquent in opposition to the Wolfsburg Treaty,” Evie said. “He may even know more about who’s behind the group than we do.”
“A blogger?”
“You’d be surprised how deep some of these bloggers’ resources go. It looks as if he’s based in Arlington, Virginia, so he’s right there near D.C. He may know people intimately involved in the decision-making process.”
“Does he give his name?”
“No. A lot of bloggers prefer to remain anonymous.”
“Probably thinks the government is out to get him.”
She frowned at Jesse’s dismissive tone. “He might be right.”
Jesse dropped the damp towel onto the bed beside him, giving her a skeptical look. “And he might be typing away in his mother’s basement, surrounded by his sci-fi action figures.”
“Jerk,” she muttered, clicking the link at the bottom of the blog post. After a brief wait, she got a “Page not found” message. “Hmm.”
Jesse moved closer, bending to read over her shoulder. “A broken link from a blogger. What a shock.”
Damn, he smelled good. Soap-and-water fresh, with a hint of pure masculinity underlying the clean scent. She dragged her mind back to the topic. “You’re an old-media snob.”
He laughed. “I just know you can’t trust everything you read on the internet. How old is that blog post?”
She went back to the blog page. “It was posted a week ago.”
“And that’s the last post on the page?” He sounded surprised. “Issue bloggers usually post at least once a day, if not more.”
“Maybe he’s on vacation or something.” She turned around to look at Jesse. He stood close, still shirtless and unspeakably attractive on a purely visceral level.
“Without getting a guest blogger to fill in?” Jesse sat back on the edge of the bed again and picked up the black T-shirt lying on the comforter beside him. Evie bit back a sigh as he slipped the shirt over his head, covering his bare chest.
“I don’t know. Maybe he had some sort of family emergency and had to bug out for a bit.”
“Well, let me have the laptop awhile. I need to download some of my files on the SSU and the Espera Group from the Cooper Security web archive. Go take a shower and we’ll walk down to the burger joint on the corner to get something to eat.” He traded places with her, waving toward the bathroom.
When she emerged from the shower, dressed in fresh jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt she’d purchased at the thrift store, she found Jesse lying on the bed by the window, staring up at the ceiling. He turned his head as she entered the room, his dark eyes following her movements as she settled on the edge of the other bed.
His silent regard made her feel awkward. “Did you get everything downloaded okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He continued to look at her thoughtfully.
She squelched the urge to check her reflection in the mirror to see if she had a smudge on her face. “Good.”
“I’ve been thinking, though.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Is that good or bad?”
He smiled. “I’m not sure. I was thinking about your blogger friend.”
“Well, it’s not like I actually know him—”
“I did a little looking around. Found his real identity. It’s a kid named Shawn Bellington. Lived in Arlington Heights.”
“Lived?”
Jesse sat up. “I did a web search for his name and found an obituary. He was killed in a hit-and-run accident a week ago.”
Chapter Six
“Wow.” Evie looked uneasy. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Could be a coincidence.” Jesse held out his hand to help her up. “Meanwhile, there are burgers and fries to be eaten.”
She took his hand, smiling up at him. “And a chocolate shake?”
He squeezed her hand before letting go. “After the last few days you’ve had, I think you’ve earned it.”
They discussed Shawn Bellington’s death a little more over dinner, without coming to any solid conclusion about whether it was a coincidence or another notch in the SSU’s belt. Jesse was prone to think the former, but he could tell Evie wasn’t convinced.
After dinner back at the motel, Jesse called his brother Rick again to check on things at home. He was relieved to be able to tell Evie that her family was still safe. “Rita and her husband checked in from Spain. Everything’s still fine. Rick says your father relented and let Cooper Security send a couple of agents to Spain to supplement the security people who already accompanied them.”
“Poor Rita,” Evie said with a faint smile. “Honeymooning with her new husband and an entourage of nosy security guards watching their every move. Yeah, I bet they’re having the time of their lives.”
“It’s necessary.”
“I know. It’s also sort of horrifying to imagine.”
“Rick sent a male/female team. They’re posing as fellow newlyweds, so hopefully their presence will be a little less intrusive.”
Evie cocked her head to one side, studying him for a long, silent moment. He returned the favor, taking in her newly changed appearance. She looked good as a redhead, the color perfect for her pale complexion and deep blue eyes. The short, choppy cut suited her as well, though she’d already told him she was going to find a hair salon as soon as they got to Washington to get her self-inflicted haircut cleaned up by a professional.
Personally, he thought she’d done a creditable job. Her thick hair was blunt cut to chin lev
el, showing off her long, slender neck. It was a cut that should have made her look even younger than her twenty-seven years, but something about the look gave her an added air of maturity.
She definitely wasn’t a little girl anymore.
“Does it bother you?” she asked.
He realized he had no idea what she was asking. Somewhere, in his contemplation of her appearance, he’d completely lost track of their conversation. “Does what bother me?”
“Thinking about Rita being married.”
“Oh.” How to answer that? He’d gone to the wedding expecting the idea to bother him greatly, but to his surprise, he’d discovered he’d made peace with losing Rita for good. “I’m happy if she’s happy.”
Her lips curved in a crooked half smile. “That’s a very careful answer.”
“It’s true, though. She seemed happy. So I’m good with it. It’s what I wanted for her, you know. Always. I wanted her to be happy.”
“Because you love her.”
“There’s a lot to love about Rita. You know that better than anyone.”
Evie nodded. “I do know. And she is happy.”
“Then I’m glad.”
Evie looked down at her hands a moment, as if she had something more she wanted to say. But when she looked up at him again, her expression was neutral, save for a slight smile. “Can I borrow your computer again? I wanted to do a little more nosing around before bedtime.”
Bedtime, Jesse thought. Until now, the two of them had stayed busy enough to postpone thinking about what bedtime meant.
It should have meant nothing. Two friends sharing a room for the night. No big deal.
Except it suddenly seemed like a huge deal. All evening long, whether he’d been leaning over her shoulder to read the blog she’d found or walking side by side with her to the burger joint down the block, Jesse had found himself acutely aware of Evie Marsh. Not as a friend or a colleague but as an attractive, sexually tempting woman.
He hadn’t spent the past twelve years in a celibate homage to the girl that got away, but the busy days and nights at Cooper Security for the past six months had kept him well out of the dating pool. It had been a long time since he’d shared a dinner alone with a woman, even one as public as a booth in the corner of a burger joint. It had been even longer since he’d spent the night in the same room with a woman.
