“We’re staying until we can figure out who is after me. Or you,” he added, voicing a thought that had been idling in his mind since the Colonel had told him she was on the FBI’s list, too. “Any enemies?”
She gave him her signature glare—annoyance fused with impatience and suffering—and turned her pixie nose way up in the air. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He didn’t think it likely that the tangos had anything to do with her, but until he had proof positive who the bastards were and what they wanted, he couldn’t dismiss any possibility. And he couldn’t let her go. Couldn’t let her go, anyway, as long as the FBI was looking for her. If they had a bone to pick with him, he didn’t want them to find her and drag her into his mess.
He recognized the turnoff and took it. Ten miles later, he found himself in a maze of small, unpaved roads, gravel crunching under the tires. He’d only been to Joey’s camp once, ten years ago. The area had changed since—it was built up, with hardly any open land left. New drives and lanes had been put in.
“Lost?” she asked when he rolled down the same street the second time around.
“Canvassing the neighborhood before approaching the target.”
The look on her face told him he wasn’t fooling her. “Too bad we don’t have GPS.”
“I wouldn’t have taken the car if it did. We could have been tracked through that.”
“Do you always think of everything?” She sounded more annoyed than impressed.
And why in hell would that bother him? He wasn’t trying to impress her. He just wanted to make sure that nothing bad happened to her, especially not because of his questionable past.
“I try.” He flashed her a grin as he caught a familiar sight through the window.
Joey’s place hadn’t changed, except for a new tin roof. It was still just a shack for a weekend of beer drinking and fishing. Heaven.
“This is it?” she asked when he slowed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Home sweet home.”
“I’ll sleep in the car, if it’s all the same to you. You go in, figure out what’s going on, come out when you have it, and then we go home.”
“We have to get rid of the car.”
Pause. “Can’t we just take off the license plate? Or cover it with something?”
“There’s a chance that it might have LoJack.” Technology worked both ways—sometimes it made life easier; sometimes it made life harder.
She closed her eyes for a moment. “Okay.”
Not that he needed her approval or permission. The decisions would be made by him on this mission. Maybe she didn’t fully grasp that yet. She would.
He drove the car to a small train station just as the train to Baltimore pulled in. Inspired by a sudden idea, he bought two tickets for the next train to New York from a ticket agent, and then called a tow truck from the public phone. He told the guy to tow the car to the Baltimore harbor parking lot and drop it off there.
If it had LoJack, the cops would follow it there. If any witnesses remembered the towing service’s name and the cops asked the guy where the pickup had been, they’d go to the train station and talk to the ticket agent, who would say he’d bought two tickets to NewYork. The cops would think he and Bailey had sent the car to Baltimore as a decoy and then gotten on the train to New York. That would make sense—her brother was there. He was sure the cops and Agent Rubliczky would make that assumption. If they connected Cade and Bailey to the stolen car at all. He felt reasonably safe to spend a few days at Joey’s camp.
“And how are we going to get around?” she asked as the tow truck disappeared in the distance with a good chunk of his cash.
They were in the middle of nowhere. Next to the station was a garish gift-shop tent with “Final Sale” and “Everything $5” written all over it. He could see the lake glistening in the distance, could smell the water from here. The beach was a short walk away. People lay out on the sand and on boats. The path to the beach was clear; everyone who’d gotten off the train had already made their way down.
“We’ll have ourselves a lovely stroll.” He scanned the main road, which was just a few hundred feet from the station. “Or not,” he said as a police cruiser appeared and took the damn turnoff. If the Land Rover was discovered missing shortly after he’d taken it, if it did have LoJack…. He glanced toward the lake, which was blue and brilliant and inviting. “How about a swim?”
Her eyes went wide as she took a step back from him. “I can’t swim.”
“At all?” Everybody knew how to swim. Who didn’t know how to swim? A woman whose middle name was Trouble, that was who.
Annoyance filled her blue-violet eyes. “I work at a garden center. I don’t need to know how to swim. The biggest body of water I ever see is the indoor lily pond.”
“Take it easy,” he said under his breath, taking stock of their situation.
His bag was slung over his shoulder, covering the gun tucked into his waistband at the small of his back. Bailey carried the canvas bag with the clothes and food. With a little help, they could look like tourists.
Thank God for the obligatory souvenir tent. He grabbed a My Fish Is Bigger Than Yours baseball hat with fake blond hair attached for her and a pair of dorky-looking sunglasses for himself along with two cheap fishing poles. He paid for them, and they headed straight for the path that led to the lake.
They would blend in with the people sunning and fishing on the shore unless the cops came in for a closer look, in which case they’d just have to keep moving.
Another cop car suddenly pulled in. To continue toward the lake would mean passing right by the police officer. But they had already started out on the path. To turn abruptly around would look suspicious.
He stopped, sneaked his arms around Bailey’s slim waist and turned her to him.
She was scared enough not to protest. Blue-violet eyes searched his face. Her mouth was set in a tight line of fear. “They are going to catch us, aren’t they? I don’t know if I should hope for that or keep running from it. I don’t know you—”
“I used to work for the Department of Homeland Security.”
Her eyes widened. “Kind of?”
He bit back a grin. Yeah, kind of. His group, the SDDU, was a top secret commando team used for black ops. The unit’s existence was known only to a select few, even at the highest reaches of government. Their leader, Colonel Wilson, reported directly to the secretary of Homeland Security.
“You’re safe with me. Relax.” He dipped his head as the cop got out of his car. The man was heading toward the train station, toward them. There was only one way he could think of to cover their faces.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he warned.
She looked too petrified to protest. Certainly too petrified to enjoy it. Too bad, because he planned on doing just that. He had stared at her full lips many times since he’d moved in, and had contemplated some serious lip-locking with his shrew of a neighbor. He could be annoyed with her and lust after her at the same time. The male mind was a marvel of biology, no mistake about it.
He brushed his lips over hers—full, sweet, soft—and swallowed a moan that began to bubble up inside his chest. No sense getting too worked up with a cop heading their way.
“It might help if you look like you’re into this,” he whispered against her mouth.
She