He’d found what he’d needed to find, and made a hasty exit before being discovered, but upon leaving the cottage, he’d seen her again.
The tide had caught her off guard, and she’d been perched upon a cluster of rocks, clearly frantic at the water that had been sloshing around her shins and growing higher and higher.
He hadn’t even bothered to take off his shoes, just ran out through the rising water and plucked her off the rocks. She’d been crying and clung to him so hard she’d nearly strangled him by the time he’d carried her to shore.
Sobbing, she’d thanked him for saving her life.
He’d considered telling her the water hadn’t been waist high, but that had only been a part of it. The currents of the tide could have easily tripped her, and all the rocks made the water dangerous no matter how high it had been.
The first glance he’d gotten of her hadn’t prepared him for how pretty she’d been up close, even while crying. Her delicate features, dark blue eyes gazing into his, and her rosy lips had nearly taken his breath away.
Much like it had tonight.
As she’d started to explain what had happened, he’d seen a car pull up to the beach cottage.
At a risk of being caught, he’d acted quickly, and had done the only thing he could think of. Kissed her. A long, deep, passionate kiss that would convince anyone who might have noticed them that they were merely lovers taking advantage of the secluded beach.
They’d kissed until they’d both been breathless, and then they’d sucked in air, and kissed again.
By the time he’d lifted his head a second time, the men, having found the cottage empty, were climbing back in their car. He’d released her then.
She’d been gasping for air again, much like when he’d hoisted her off the rocks.
He’d told her to be more careful in the future, and to go home. Then he’d walked away, up the beach, to where he’d parked his car behind a cluster of trees. From there, he’d watched her hurry up the trail that led away from the beach, the opposite way of the cottage, and onto the road that curved around the hill and led to several houses.
Another woman had met her on the road. He’d driven away then, to report his findings and set up the capture of the counterfeit ring, which hadn’t happened that night. Someone had tipped them off. The crooks were eventually caught a week later.
In Oregon.
Tasting those lips again brought everything back like it all had happened yesterday.
Coincidences didn’t happen in the intelligence world. He should have paid more attention to the fact she’d been at the beach next to that cottage.
She could be one of the missing pieces he was searching for.
Perhaps the piece.
The sounds behind him, although muffled by the walls, still entered his ears. The laughter, the music. He weighed his options, and the chance of Lane recognizing him was too great. The outcome of this case was too great. There was a mole in the agency. An agent who was tipping off criminals, gangsters, about busts that were imminent and leaking other aspects of vital information that only few knew.
That was why he was undercover right now, pretending to be Rex Gaynor, a train robber who had been offed while in prison. Someone had snuck bootlegged whiskey into the prison. That wasn’t unusual. Things, all sorts of items and contraband, were smuggled into and out of prisons on a daily basis. But Gaynor had been given widow-maker juice. The first cup of shine out of a still was a deadly concoction of pure methanol.
A dead inmate who’d been tried and convicted usually wouldn’t raise awareness, but this case was different. It had been seven years since Gaynor had robbed that train, and though Gaynor had always claimed there had been someone else involved, someone he didn’t know, there hadn’t been any proof of that.
Back when he’d been working that case, Henry had suspected there was either a piece of information left uncovered, or, what he truly thought, was that it had been covered up. He suspected that train robbery had been the mole’s first crack at leaking information, and because it had worked, the mole had continued doing so.
Henry had been assigned to investigating Gaynor’s death because he’d worked on the case seven years ago. He’d had no reason to suspect another agent back then of covering up information, but because that feeling had stuck with him, he hadn’t stopped looking. He’d found what he’d been looking for. A manifesto of passengers on the train, one that had supposedly been thoroughly examined seven years ago to attest that all passengers had been accounted for, and whoever had examined it back then had also covered up the truth. Henry had suspicions about who had covered that up.
All the passengers hadn’t been accounted for. Another man had been on that train. Vincent Burrows, a two-bit member of a crime family from New Jersey who had bounced back and forth across the county but had never been involved in anything big enough to have the Bureau looking into him.
Until now.
Gaynor hadn’t known who Burrows was seven years ago, so why would Burrows have him offed now? Someone had put Burrows up to it, and Henry was certain it had been the mole. He just wasn’t sure why.
The prison had kept Gaynor’s death a secret. Other than the warden and the guard who’d found Gaynor, only intelligence agents knew Gaynor was dead. Burrows might have ordered Gaynor’s death, but the only way he’d know for sure if his order had been followed out, was if an intelligence agent had told him. The ploy Henry and his supervisor had established was to let the public, and others, believe that Rex Gaynor had escaped, and for Henry to pretend to be Gaynor, in order for Burrows to seek him out, whereas in reality, the true mission was to
