uninjured side, keeping him from grinding into her body.
Pulling away from her was more than difficult. He desired her with a fierce hunger he didn’t understand. But he did. Pull away. It was hard to catch his breath. Hard to relax…everything.
She turned her back to him, but he noticed how her hands shook trying to zip her windbreaker back to her neck. So why had she stopped?
The sparks flying between them could catch the cabin on fire. If she hadn’t hesitated, they would have been in bed two minutes ago. More likely only making it to the lounger a few feet away. The picture his mind conjured of her sitting on top of him made him shudder.
Hell and high water!
It was going to happen. He’d never wanted a woman so badly and it
“I think I’ll hit the local store and grab us some food.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Erren, you know we can’t.” She shook her head, dropping her eyes to the floor.
“No telling how long we’ll be here. Makes sense to buy supplies.”
“What? We can’t stay here,” she said. “My brother could be in danger.”
“Your brother has two armed police officers guarding him. This place is safe. No one knows about it.”
“If it’s one of Pike’s properties, someone will eventually find it. They may be on their way right now.”
“Naw.” He tugged the T-shirt back over his head.
“That’s your explanation?” Her voice was beginning to change octaves, higher, more stressed, angry. “This place is safe and I should take your word? Whoever is out there looking for us has been one step ahead the entire time. They ambushed you, tried to kill me, ransacked Pike’s house. They seem to know about everything.”
“Darby, don’t worry about it. No one knows about this place.” He patted his pockets—keys were still there. His gun was still at his belt in the small of his back.
“We’ve been shot at twice. Men are trying to kill us. My brother’s in a coma. Pike is dead. And I shouldn’t worry?”
“The cabin isn’t in Pike’s name. It’s mine.”
“TIME TO EAT,
But fair was fair. She hadn’t answered his question regarding the scribble around the map to her house either. And she’d started the note-taking again.
During the past hour, she’d removed the pictures of Pike from their frames and replaced each on the wall. She’d stood in front of the same photo since he’d heated the baked potatoes.
“Food’s ready,” he said again to break her concentration. Concentration on what?
“I know this woman’s face. The twelfth recruit.”
“Who?”
“Twelve pictures over from yours. The twelfth person recruited.” Her slender finger tapped her chin. “I think she was killed two months ago in the line of duty.” She switched her focus. “And the fifteenth recruit… This guy is an assistant district attorney, one of the better ones. He has a phenomenal conviction rate.”
“Barbecue’s ready.”
At least she was talking to him again. He didn’t care much for the silent treatment he’d received before leaving for the food. He’d thought about eating on the screened back porch, but it was much cooler inside. As much as he wanted Darby hot again—and writhing in his arms—he shouldn’t.
What was he thinking? He glanced at the twelfth recruit, as Darby called her. It was possible someone had taken her down as well as Pike. Was it connected?
Sandra Baker had been a good cop. More experienced than Darby. These guys definitely knew Darby was involved, either before or after he’d led them to her house, but involved enough to want her dead. He’d made a mistake bringing her into the mix and couldn’t compound that by sleeping with her.
“There’s an extra nail,” she said and joined him at the small dinette. “I didn’t notice it earlier.”
“That’s probably where your brother’s picture hung,” he answered. “I can only assume why Pike took it down. Either it was to get a message to Michael, or to one of us
“What sort of message?”
He shrugged, taking a bite of the barbecue. He could avoid a direct question, too. “You seem to accept what I’m saying about Pike now.”
“The jury’s still out.” She shrugged, the gesture not escaping his attention as an imitation of his movements. “Have you worked with any of these men or women?”
“Pike brought me in once or twice.” He lied. They spoke all the time. “Mainly when he needed me to help with something they were working on.” He lied again. He knew how the operation worked. “He bragged on your brother though. Said he was as good as me.” Impossible or Michael wouldn’t have been shot. “Do you like the barbeque?”
“For the record,” she said, taking a bite of the meat, “I still have my doubts about your explanations. Where did Pike get the funding? What did he do with the information he collected?”
He shoveled a fork full of food into his mouth, and then another, to keep from answering her questions. Evading seemed easier than lying about Pike. Whatever happened to the organization, it wouldn’t—and shouldn’t— involve her. If she found out much more, she’d never be able to go back, and he wouldn’t be able to protect her from what he knew about the dark side of being one of Pike’s Guys.
“Being one of Pike’s secret men would explain why a kid who had never been in trouble a day in his life could one day be at the top of his Academy class and the next resigning to avoid prosecution.” She pointed her fork at him while she spoke. “Then it was an arrest for drugs with a girlfriend we’d never heard of who supposedly got him in with the wrong crowd. It wasn’t him.”
He’d never thought about the lies before. They came so naturally now.
“It’s all part of his cover. Attempting to determine the why behind everything will only drive you crazy.” He watched as Darby chowed down on the pulled pork. For someone who said she wasn’t hungry approximately every ten minutes, she wasn’t afraid to put it away.
“It shouldn’t upset me. I’ve had more than a couple of years to get used to the idea. The harder I tried to get him to fly straight, the less he came around.”
Behavior he understood well. “The last few years my grandmother was alive, I saw her only on special occasions. It was rough transforming back into the kid she knew. It was easier to be the undercover. At least as the doper, I knew the rules.”
The look on her face wasn’t pity. Nor was it envy. Curiosity, maybe? She seemed to be holding back a question. Her eyebrow arched and the unusual look was gone.
“Something’s been bugging me since Pike’s house. Why was the food cleared out of the fridge? They must have been looking for something small. Something that could have been hidden even in ice cubes…” The fork stopped bouncing around her fingers and dropped to her empty plate. “Erren, we’re looking for digitized files.”
“The old man never liked technology. He liked paper. Real files. An actual photo.” He took another bite. “Thinking he put everything on a CD is pushing it. Walter was totally lost when you mentioned thumb drives, WiFi or electronic mail boxes.”
“But not my brother. Don’t you see—” she placed her hands on the edge of the table “—Michael loves everything new. The smaller the better. Except guns.”
He had his doubts that Pike would switch his standard exchange of information for this one operation. She