The rustic atmosphere, complete with a mounted bear head in the lobby and a sign out front with one or two letters unlit, would work well for the scenario Jonathon had in mind. Lovers sneaking away from their significant others for an illicit hop in the sack. Although Dr. Barrett shot him a dirty look when he put his arm around her, she didn’t say anything or bat his hand away and he just smiled, going with it.
“My, ah, wife is a bit nervous somebody might see us here. She made me park a few blocks away even. You know what I mean?” he confided to the clerk, signing in as Mr. and Mrs. Smith to seal the deal.
The teenager entrusted with the keys to the castle overnight nodded. “Sure, man. No problem. We’re, like, super discreet here.”
“Good. Good.” He handed over the cash for the night, less than a latte in some parts of America—okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much—and took the key, a nice old-fashioned one, not a card. The room he had requested would be the best possible one for defense, on the second floor in the very back so there would at least be a chance of hearing someone coming along the walkway. Not that he expected anybody so soon, but just in case.
It was a motel actually, not a hotel. And like most motels, all the rooms opened to the parking lot. That couldn’t be helped. Not many cars in there tonight, but he could wire any of them, and would, after they’d both gotten some rest and he figured out his next step.
He fingered the key and glanced sideways at the doctor. “You want to step away a second, honey?”
She gave him another dirty look, but this time appeared to be trying to stifle it, biting her lush lower lip and nodding. “Sure…honey.”
When she was a few steps away, conspicuously looking to the entrance, he leaned over the check-in desk and whispered, “Do you sell rubbers around here? I was hoping she wouldn’t make me use any, but she tells me outside no-go unless I do. So I told her I had some, but sad truth is I don’t. Usually, I just—well, never mind. You sell any?”
The kid grinned. “Sure. Of course, man. In a machine right next to the ice machine on your floor.”
“Whew! That’s a relief.” He took out a twenty. “You got change for this, buddy? I feel horny.” He glanced back at the doc. “I mean, isn’t she something?”
The kid, knowing quality when he saw it, nodded. “Yeah. I wish.”
With change for the twenty in hand, he tossed a smile back at the clerk and joined his girl, putting a possessive arm around her waist and leading her through the door to the outside stairway. He took in every detail as they made their way up to the room. Once he had her inside, he slipped the key into his pocket and said, “Just a minute. I have to go get something. Lock the door behind me.”
He went down to the ice machine. The important thing about any scenario was it had to be believable to be believed. It might turn out to be irrelevant, but if some bad guys did show up here later and ask the kid if he’d seen a couple, he might try to cover for them if he believed their story.
Jonathon slid the bills into the machine and extracted an impressive amount of condoms, knowing the kid was watching from below through the lobby window. Striding back to the room and whistling for effect, he made a show of juggling the condoms. Before he unlocked the door, he shoved them into his inside jacket pocket, right next to his gun.
“What were you doing?” Dr. Barrett demanded as soon as he had the door open. She was sitting on the bed, her hands folded in her lap, but she seemed anything but relaxed.
He closed the door behind him and locked it.
No reason not to tell her the truth, about this, anyway. “Getting condoms. Part of our cover story. I told the clerk you wouldn’t let me fuck you without them.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t,” she said, adding, “I mean if we were going to…I mean—”
He put her out of her misery. “I know what you mean.” She had pulled the front curtains closed, but he opened them a fraction from force of habit. He glanced at her. Her teeth were chattering and that clear, luminous skin had a cast so white it was looking bluish. “Why don’t you go take a hot shower? You’re probably freezing.”
“Not on your life. Not until you tell me what’s going on, Agent, Agent—what did you say your name was?” She held out her hand. “In fact, give me that I.D. again.”
He complied, dropping the condoms onto the table just for good measure as he fished for his agency I.D. She looked at the I.D. for a second, scrunching her face as if she could somehow detect whether it was fake. And what the hell, she was some kind of genius, wasn’t she? Maybe she could.
After a minute of scrutiny, she tossed it onto the table, right next to the condoms.
He retrieved the I.D., pocketing it again. “We kind of don’t like to leave that lying around.”
“So what? So what does that prove? Anybody could make that up.”
He glanced once more out the crack in the curtains toward the lit walkway before he came away from the window. The room was small. One bed, of course, a TV, a table, two chairs and a bathroom. He glanced in the bathroom to ensure there was no window then took off his jacket, hanging it on one of the chairs. He’d decide later where to position the gun as they slept. He was inclined toward putting it under his pillow, but that might make her too nervous. Maybe it should go on the nightstand.
“Since I’ve just saved you from two shooters, Doctor, and spirited you away to safety, do you think you could drop the skepticism and we could have a normal conversation here?”
“A normal conversation?” She was getting that hysterical tone again. The one she had used in the kitchen for a minute before she’d risen to the occasion, with the help of his threat to tie her up.
He wasn’t surprised by a little hysteria about now. In an ordinary citizen, this was when it usually bubbled up, in his experience. When the shooting and the fleeing was all over and there was nothing to do but wait for the next step.
“You call this a normal conversation?”
“No. I call this a conversation where a woman is about to get all crazy on me and I’m trying to steer it into a more sane direction.”
“For one thing, mister—”
“Jonathon. You saw that from the I.D., right?”
“Whoever! And I am not getting hysterical.” She stopped abruptly. “Was there a diet cola machine out there?”
That did surprise him. Maybe even more than her brisk trot to the hotel after she’d all but collapsed in the snow before that.
“Uh, yeah.” She was a funny girl. Woman, he reminded himself. “Right next to the condom machine.”
She stood and put a slender hand to her temple. “I have a caffeine headache. I’m going to get one. Do you have two dollars?”
“Hang on. Sit down. I’ll get you one.”
“I can get my own damn diet soda.”
“I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.” He didn’t have to tell her to lock the door behind him, either. He heard it. He just hoped she would unlock it when he came back and not decide to lock him out. He’d forgotten to take the key this time. At the last second, he worried she might have been trying to get him out of the room so she could use the phone. Too late for him to second guess that now. He couldn’t yell through the door not to do it, and she wouldn’t listen to him if she had planned to, anyway.
Of course, she had seemed very anxious for caffeine, so he had that going for him.
When he came back, icy bottle in hand, she opened the door before he even knocked.
“You were looking through the peephole, right?” he confirmed.
“Yes. Yes. I knew it was you.” When she had unscrewed the top and taken a healthy swig of the drink, she sat on the edge of the bed. “God, that tastes good,” she muttered to herself before turning the full force of those blue eyes on him. “Okay, Jonathon, tell me again what this is all about.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “And I can’t convince you to take a hot shower first?”
“No.”
“How about if I take a hot shower first?”
“Not unless you want me to climb in there with you to get my explanation.”
He laughed. “Fine with me. Who did you think I was, anyway, when I showed up?”
“You first,” she demanded.
He sat on the chair he hadn’t hung his jacket on and tilted it back a little toward the wall. “I told you what was happening. The Agency that funds your research employs me as well.”
“What agency? The CIA? The FBI? What?”
“No.” If she didn’t know she was working for them—thought her work was for the university, which very well may have acted as a middle man—she wouldn’t recognize the acronym, anyway. Agents always just called it the Agency, but it had an appropriate technical name to be trotted out now and then as necessary.
“And this supposed agency employs you as what? Some kind of secret agent?”
“Well, I don’t want to brag—”
“Oh, just get to it,” she snapped.
“Yeah. Sort of. I guess. To the extent that kind of thing exists.”
“And they want me why?”
“Your research is starting to be pretty fruitful, as I understand it. You’re a chemist, right?”
“That’s my background. But I’m using more biology than I ever thought I would.”
“Well, whatever you’re doing, the Agency thinks it could be dangerous in the hands of the wrong people.”
“And those guys back at my house were the ‘wrong people’?”
“They were shooting at us, weren’t they?”
“Maybe because you were shooting at them!”
“You’re not going to argue this point with me, are you? They shot first.”
She regarded him sullenly and slid off her parka. Her long, frumpy sweater followed and he saw she was in an ordinary T-shirt, the name of the university she thought she was working for in red letters slashed across her chest.
Her extremely nice chest, as a matter of fact. Her breasts had been pressed against him when he kissed her in the bedroom, but they were quite something to look at as well when she let them out of the camouflage of that frumpy sweater.
“No, I guess not,” she conceded. “But why should I believe you? I mean, looking at it logically, what if you’re kidnapping me and those were the good guys back there?”
He shrugged. He didn’t care if she believed him or not. He only cared that she didn’t get in his way until he got her back to safety and could turn her over. He wouldn’t be averse to a little cooperation, though. It would make his job easier. So, he said, “You don’t know. You’re right. But think of it this way. You didn’t really have a choice. And I showed up first and you’re still alive, right? So, we’re doing okay so far. Let’s just take it from here.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. None of it. My research is on—”
“I don’t have the security clearance for that.”
“You have got to be kidding! You’re flying around in helicopters and shooting at bad guys and you don’t know what I was tinkering away at in my barn?”
“It’s better that way, Doctor. Really it is.”
The Agency operated on a need-to-know basis. And he didn’t need to know what she was doing in her barn. He just needed to know the Agency wanted her. Period.
Of course, wanting her as a research scientist wouldn’t have been his first guess on seeing Veronica Barrett. With her golden-blonde hair and lovely features, without a speck of makeup on if there ever had been any, she was gorgeous. And like any guy, he had his weaknesses, beautiful blondes being one of them, trite as it was. It might have been nice to know she was so hot before he took this assignment. He could have perhaps steeled himself a little better. Or turned it down, or something.
“I don’t know how it is I’m supposed to simply take your word for it. You could be some garden variety nutcase for all I know.”
“With his own helicopter handy? I don’t think so.”
“Well, just to make me feel better, is there someone I can call?”
Good question. Not for her. For him.
He glanced at the landline in the room. It looked as if it had come from the seventies, olive green and push button. It reminded him of the Agency-issued cell in his jacket pocket.
He wondered if he could chance contacting his direct superior O’Reilly to get the man’s take on the ambush he’d walked into back at her house. He’d swear O’Reilly was solid, but he had no way of knowing if somebody who had access to him wasn’t. So he passed on calling him for either a best guess or backup, at least for now. As nice as it would be to have the cavalry come charging in on them, that wasn’t the way it worked. At the Agency, each man—and woman—was their own personal cavalry.
“No,” he said.
“Can I at least call my friend Mattie? She’ll be worried about me. I was supposed to—”
“No. No way.”
“It’s starting to sound like I’m your prisoner.”
“Look, Doctor—”
“Stop calling me Doctor. It’s Veronica. Ronny to my friends.”
“Okay, Ronny—”
“Veronica,” she shot back.
“Veronica. Fine. If I let you contact someone you know, Veronica, you’d be putting that person in a lot of danger. Whether you believe me or not, what happened back at your house happened. Right? Do you want to take the chance those kind of people could show up at your friend’s house, too?”
She watched him resentfully. “She’s not at her house. Apartment, actually. But no. Of course not. But eventually Mattie probably will call the police if I don’t call her. They’ll send someone to my house.”
“That’s fine. All I’m interested in is keeping you under the radar until I can get you safe.”
“But those men, those bodies—”
“Look, if I have to tie you up to keep you from contacting anyone, I will, Veronica. But I think you’re smart enough to realize that, implausible as it seems, what’s happening here is exactly what I told you is happening here. Once we have you safe, we’ll call your friend. Okay?”
After a second or two, she nodded.
“So, your turn now. Who did you think I was when I showed up? Or do you drag every guy who wanders out to your neck of the woods up to your bedroom?”
She stood. “All right. I’ll take a shower.”
He heard the water a minute after she closed the bathroom door on him.
Even though he had been kidding about them taking a shower together, he did feel ice cold and his mouth tasted horrible. He got up and took a swig of her diet cola, swishing it around, but it didn’t do the trick and he set it down.
He tried the bathroom door. She had locked it, of course, which was sort of ridiculous. The kind of lock that was on this door was so simplistic and ancient that he barely needed his lock case to open it. In fact, if he pushed hard—
Yep, there it was. Opened just like that. It didn’t bode well for the lock on the front door, but if the enemy ever made it that far without him being waiting for them, gun in hand, he was probably dead, anyway.
He glanced inside the steamy bathroom. There was one of those disposable toothbrush things and a small tube of toothpaste on the sink. Dr. Barrett’s clothes were folded on the closed toilet—she was apparently going to put them on again, damp or not—but the shower curtain was opaque so it wasn’t like he could see anything.
The toothbrush was too tempting. Maybe he’d wash up a little, too. No telling if he would decide to take a shower after her and risk leaving her alone while he did. It probably wasn’t such a good idea. She might bolt.
“It’s just me,” he called out as he came into the bathroom so that she wouldn’t freak. The slipping and muttered swearing from behind the shower curtain meant that effort hadn’t been too successful.
“I locked the door,” she called out accusingly.
He laughed—her innocent assumption that any kind of lock would keep him out was kind of cu
te—and swiped at the mirror over the sink, fogged up from the steam.
“I’m just washing up,” he assured her loudly enough to be heard over the pounding stream of water. Good water pressure by the sound of it. He wished he could take a shower. “You stay in there for a minute or two and I’ll be out of your way.”
Grabbing a washcloth, he ran it under the water and swiped at his face and armpits and chest, just wiping underneath the shirt. Then he squeezed the toothpaste onto the little toothbrush and went at it, glancing into the now cleared mirror.
The sight he saw made him almost swallow the toothbrush whole.
In the top corner of the mirror, somehow caught by the angle of the shower curtain, he could see the pulsing stream from the shower head pounding down on Dr. Barrett’s very fine ass. He remembered how it had felt under his hands as they kissed. She twirled around under the water and he caught the front view. Her breasts were large and nicely shaped and her waist looked tiny in comparison. She was soaping herself in a no-nonsense way—he could’ve used a little more of the Penthouse pet in that action if he’d been in charge of the show—and he could imagine stepping into the shower and helping her out with that.
The boner he got at the flash was kind of inappropriate. But hell, he was human, secret agent crap or not. And she had made out with him after all, or made out with whoever she thought he was at the time.
He looked away, rinsing his mouth, and left the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
By the time she came out later, she was back in her clothes, her long hair still wet, but starting to curl.
She left the bathroom door open. “Shower’s free now.”
Though the bed had looked tempting, Jonathon didn’t want to chance falling asleep while she was in there so he was back in the chair. It wasn’t that it was so late that he would normally be tired—his body didn’t work on a regular clock, anyway—but hiking through twenty miles of snow in just a few hours with only a little gunplay and some piloting for respite would take its toll on anybody. He needed to sleep. But not quite yet.
Alone With an Escort Page 4
