“Was your dad intelligence during the war?”
“No. He was LLRP, but it was enough. A lot of the soldiers that came out of the field had a hard time acclimating to normal life. I’ve never understood what sparked this particular paranoia, but for the most part, it doesn’t impact our relationship, and no way will he ever seek counseling to deal with it.”
“It’s going to make it dam—uh…difficult if not impossible to find him.”
“If you’re right about how he established his identities, we have a place to start at least.” She began walking toward the study. “We can investigate each name for activity since their deaths, things like buying property, establishing residency, that kind of thing.”
Daniel didn’t say anything, but he followed her into the study.
He indicated a pile of print-out pages beside Hotwire’s computer with his hand. “We’ve been going through the school’s files looking for some kind of anomaly, and so far we haven’t found one.”
“When you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s almost impossible to find it,” she said tongue-in- cheek.
He smiled. “That makes a convoluted kind of sense.”
She grinned back. “Yeah, it does.”
He sat down in a chair to the right of the computer desk, and she put herself in front of the monitor. She sent several search queries to databases she thought might have the information they were looking for.
When she was done, there was nothing to do but wait, so she said, “While my queries are being processed, why don’t we go through the student pictures?”
“Good idea.”
She moved her chair sideways a little. “Scoot over here, so you can see, too. We’ll have a better chance of recognizing the fake officer if we’re both looking.”
He moved his chair beside hers, and as always, the closeness of his big body affected her breathing pattern. He laid his arm across the back of her chair, hemming her in, and she had to fight the urge to let her head rest back against him. They had a job to do, and snuggling wasn’t it.
It took a few clicks of the mouse to bring up the image files related to her dad’s school. She set the entire folder up to run as a slide show. The images began playing on the screen, each lasting three seconds, enough time to study bone structure as well as take in surface features that could change.
She grimaced as the third one flashed onto the screen. “There are a few hundred; this could take a while.”
“I don’t mind spending time with you.” His fingers brushed her neck, and he leaned closer so that her shoulder was against his chest. “You smell good.”
“I don’t wear perfume.”
“I know. I like it.”
“The smell of unadorned woman?” she asked jokingly, but warm bubbles of happiness fizzed through her.
“Only one woman. You.”
“I like the way you smell, too,” she admitted.
“How do I smell?” he asked as another picture flashed briefly on the screen.
“Safe.” She didn’t know why she said it, but something about the very essence of this man gave her a sense of security in his presence.
It had been that way from the first, which was why she’d been so shocked by his hostile attitude toward her. Her instincts told her one thing while his actions had told her another. Or so she had believed. She now knew what she’d mistaken for dislike and anger had been him trying to rein in a passion that consumed them both completely when he let it go.
Regardless of the reasoning, she’d come to identify his unique scent with both security and sexual desire, not to mention happiness. She was beginning to wonder if that wasn’t a pretty good definition of love.
“Safe?” he asked, his voice laced with shock and another emotion she couldn’t quite define.
“Yes.” She snuck a quick sideways look at him, but his attention was fixed firmly on the slide show. “When I’m with you, I feel as if you will never hurt me or allow anyone else to either. Which, when you think about it, is really funny. I mean, I’ve been keeping other people safe my entire adult life, and I’ve never been in a situation where I relied on someone else to fight for me.”
He didn’t say anything, and she took a deep breath, plunging on with an emotional recklessness she might regret later, but which felt utterly essential right now.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I trust you on a level I’ve never trusted anyone else except my dad, and all of my senses recognize it.” It was hard admitting that, but she’d never been one to lie to get out of a tough situation, and his whimsical question had turned out to be just that.
His body shifted away from hers in what felt like a violent repudiation of her words. “I’m no white knight, Josie. Don’t weave daydreams around me taking care of you because it’s not going to happen.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He made her sound like a parasite. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, you can. You don’t need me watching over you. Remember that.”
It was impossible to keep her focus on the computer screen. She jerked her gaze back to Daniel, who apparently was having no problem continuing to watch the slide show, his face impassive.
“If you are so intent on not watching over me, why did you refuse to allow me to go outside this morning? Why insist on helping me find my dad and investigate the bombing?”
His jaw looked hewn from granite. “I already explained that. I’m part of this mission because the school is half mine now and your dad is my business partner. Keeping you from taking unacceptable risks is part of succeeding with the mission.”
“So, you’re saying that I personally had absolutely no influence over your actions in the past three days?” she asked, unwilling to believe he could be as emotionally distant as he was implying.
“No.”
Relief pulsed through her. She and Daniel were simply suffering another miscommunication, something she’d come to believe would always be a challenge for them. Their brains didn’t work the same way. His thoughts were as alien to her as if he really were from Mars, like the popular book on male-female relationships said.
“The decision to take you to bed had nothing to do with the mission. It was entirely personal.”
“But temporary,” she heard herself saying.
“You said that was acceptable to you.”
Had she, or had she agreed to the limitations he set for their intimacy because he hadn’t given her any other choice? Did it matter? He hadn’t changed his mind even if she had changed hers.
Having just convinced herself she’d misunderstood Daniel’s earlier words, his confirmation that apart from sex, she had no personal interest for him felt like a double bull’seye blow from a stun gun. The pain seared through her, leaving bruises that no one else could see, least of all him.
Her eyes flicked back to the computer screen, her brain screaming that she needed to focus on something besides her decimated emotions or she was going to break apart. And she saw him. Their state policeman had been one of her father’s students.
She grabbed the mouse and clicked the back arrow three times, halting the slide show and taking them to the picture that had caught her attention.
“What are you doing?”
“I think I have an I.D. on our guy.” Amazingly the words came out even and controlled, not giving away the wild torment inside her.
She’d used shaky evidence to convince herself that even though Daniel obviously didn’t love her, he did care and even shakier reasoning to convince herself his caring was more than a temporary side effect of their sexual compatibility.
“I didn’t see him.” Daniel’s voice sounded odd, but that was probably a trick of her hearing.
“He looked different.” Her own voice was starting to wear around the edges, and she made a conscious effort to rein it in. “Dad takes the pictures of his trainees when they come to the camp, before he enforces his crew cut, no facial hair rule. This guy showed up with longer hair, sporting a mustache and a beard.”
The picture was frozen on the computer screen, the man a dead ringer for Officer Devon if you took away the
