Girls Just Wanna Have Guns (17 page)

FROM THE DESK OF JESSICA TYLER (JT) ELLIS

ASSISTANT TO THE UNDERSECRETARY OF THE UNDERSECRETARY OF THE SECRETARY OF THE ASSISTANT TO THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE HOMELAND SECURITY

NEW ORLEANS, LA

Re: progress report stats

(to be filed under field notes, personal,
only
)

Textiles which originated with Marie Despré to be seized for suspicion of acting as a method of smuggling diamonds. Textiles include but are not limited to: purses, belts, shoes, and accessories. Please note that suspect’s other hobbies include sculptural art—all known pieces are to be searched, galleries plus private collections. Various offices around the country, including FBI, tasked to help.

Bobbie Faye sensed someone stirring and she woke with a start, then realized she was still in Trevor’s arms the way they’d lain together the night before. She relaxed back into his embrace as he grinned against her temple. The glowing red numbers on the bedside clock indicated it was nearing six-thirty in the morning. They’d gotten about four hours of sleep—a Godsend. She stretched against the length of him, too aware he still had on jeans and she still had on pjs. Dammit.

Trevor quietly stroked her hair, moved it away from her face, and she wished on everything holy that this day could officially not start so she wouldn’t have to get out of bed. He ran his hand over her shoulder and down the curve of her hip and the heat of his touch electrified the rest of her body and it struck her with such a force that
she wanted this man
. So very much. Not just that she was lonely, or cranked up on lust, or that he was revenge, but
choice
. The way he held her, talked to her like an equal, looked at her, teased her. It was stupid and insane. She didn’t know enough about him. Not really, not beyond the few stories she could barely remember he’d lulled her to sleep with.

She must be certifiable, because right then, she didn’t really care.

He shifted as if he sensed what she was thinking. Of course, her running a hand across his chest may have given him a clue.

“We don’t have time,” he murmured.

“It’s not even seven
A.M.
”
Plenty
of freaking time.

“When I start on your body, I’d like us to have a few hours. And a lot less . . .” he hesitated, as she slid her hand up and over his chest, “. . . audience.”

“Audience?” Um, what? He looked annoyed with himself for his word choice. Perhaps her hands sliding down to his abs had done a much better job of distracting him than she’d realized and he was just confused.

“I’m pretty sure we’ve got the Irish outside on a roof, and Homeland Security are across the street in their SUV. This isn’t counting the buyer’s people, if they tracked you, or my own men outside, and to be perfectly honest,” he kissed the line of her jaw, “I’d like our first time to be private.”

Her foggy brain just wasn’t keeping up. “Hey, I know you’re all Super Agent Guy and protective—but all of those people are in a place we civilians call the
out
side and we are on the
in
side, and there’s bulletproof glass and a security system that would keep out God, so we’re okay. Unless you think Nina’s got cameras up in here or something, but I’d kill her and she’d have had sense enough to warn me. So see?” She unbuttoned the top of his jeans. “Com
pletely
private.”

“No,” he said, but he paused to kiss her stupid as he pressed her into the bed. Every part of her body caught fire. If she could just get a little closer and a whole lot more nekkid . . .

He stopped himself, rolling away, lying on his side to face her. “Jesus, Sundance, the world goes away too easily when you’re around. But we have to stop. You don’t want to do this in front of cameras.”

Cameras? For real? She studied his expression and crap, he was serious. She sat bolt upright. “How in the hell did they get cameras in here? Past Nina’s security? And why are we still here? And—”

“Whoa. Slow down. Not
in
here, per se.” He sighed. Dammit, Trevor was not a “sigher.” “They’ll probably have thermal optics.”

“Hang on . . . thermal-whats?”

“Optics. They allow the viewer to see heat signatures through walls. Anything that generates heat will show up, glowing red, while everything else remains black.”

“That sounds like something they made up for the movies.”

“It’s very real, and some of the units are pretty sophisticated.”

“How sophisticated? What all . . .”

“People, animals . . .” he hesitated, then a sexy grin spread across his face, “. . . appliances.” She followed his glance over to the big armoire Nina had in the corner—the one they’d discovered housed all sorts of sex toys for Nina’s S&M magazine modeling shoots—and then she made the connection he implied, from Nina’s toys to her own, remembering just what was in her top dresser drawer back at her trailer. An item which generated a helluva lot of heat. Amusement lit his sinful blue eyes.

“So,” she stammered out, grabbing for a sheet to cover herself more. “You’re telling me that you used thermalwhatsits on me . . . at my trailer . . . and . . . and . . . you know all about . . .” She gestured back at the armoire, indicating the toys, not actually able to say the word “vibrator.” Oh, sonofa
bitch
. She jumped out of bed like she’d been hit with a 220 volt of electrical current, and she didn’t know what to do or where to run. Instead, all she could manage was to gape at him, open-mouthed. It didn’t help that she was standing there in front of him, dressed in skimpy pjs, with Trevor grinning at her with a dead sexy grin as if this was all funny and just—dammit! She threw the nearest thing she could lay a hand to—a candle—straight at his head. He ducked, the bastard. Laughing.

“It wasn’t
always
in your dresser drawer,” he growled. She narrowed her gaze, and he moved his SIG to the other side of where he sat, out of her reach. “Though I didn’t realize what you had gotten out of the drawer the first time—and only time—I saw what you were doing. You made my life a living hell. I had to force myself to turn off
the thermals whenever you went near that dresser. Talk about killing a man.”

Had her head spun entirely off her shoulders? Had she completely levitated, while her head rolled across the floor? Because it felt like it had. So
this
was how he always knew all of the right little things to do to seem so intuitive about her, like buy the damned chili dogs. Or exactly where Nina lived, without her having to tell him. Or a dozen other little things he’d done that made it so comfortable to be with him. Her inner fourth-grader wanted to kick him.

“You
spied
on me. Gathered . . . data? And probably made reports.”

“Not about that,” he said, nodding toward the armoire, indicating the vibrator they had managed not to name thus far. “Never about that. But pretty much everything else, yes.”

She couldn’t believe how nonchalant he was. Who in the hell was this guy? Where did he get off?

Oh, baaaad word choice, and she blushed all of the way to her ears.

“Sundance,” he said, sitting forward, closing into her space where she stood beside the bed, “you were the focus of the attention of a master money launderer—he had your name as the owner of that tiara a long time before he put your brother’s kidnapping into play. You were a big variable, and it’s my job to know the variables. My job was to investigate you while I was working for him; we had to know where you stood, ethically, what kind of person you were, especially if you could be bought.”

“Like I’d betray my own brother.”

“You’d be surprised how many people would. Look,” he said, standing, “I know you’re uncomfortable with this. I know how much your privacy means to you.”

“Well, I guess you would, now, wouldn’t you?”

“I was going to tell you.”

“When? When you had me in bed, knew all of my secrets while not telling me any of yours? You’ve used information to make me comfortable. To manipulate me. How
am I supposed to know if all of this”—she gestured between the two of them—“isn’t just so you can keep track of me and the diamonds. Keep me close, get your hands on them.” And then a realization dawned on her. “Or that guy, MacGreggor? You knew he was here, looking for the diamonds! So you conveniently show up, all sexy and hot and romancy and Jesus! I fell for it.”

“You’re pissed off.”

“Well, isn’t that a firm grasp on the obvious. You should look into being a spy or something.”

“This,” he said, gesturing between them as she’d done, “is not about this case. Or
any
case. I want you.” She blinked, shocked at his bluntness. “I want you for
you
. Not for any other reason. And I think you know that.”

“How in the world do I know that?
I don’t even
know
you
.”

“Like hell, you don’t.” He stepped closer, inches away. Had she done it again? Believed in smoke and mirrors, believed in something that was just, simply, not true. Of
course
he was arguing his position—he still needed her for the case. If there was a reality TV show for the World’s Worst Judge of Men, she’d win, hands-down. “We,” he said, leaning into her, “are nowhere near done. I care about you more than you know.”

“Very pretty words, Trevor. Well rehearsed. They almost sound real.”

His cell phone rang from the nightstand, shrill, and she jumped from the noise. He glanced at the screen, then back to her. She could tell he wanted to say something, but he pulled on his t-shirt instead, grabbed the phone and, just when she thought he was going to leave without saying anything else, he spun, yanked her to him, and kissed her.

Hard.

She tried pulling away, but he held her tighter, and holy Mother of God if the man didn’t know exactly how to make her completely insane with lust. Even though she hated him. (That’s when Hormones piped up with the
argument that they were perfectly okay with being a slut while hating him.)

She pushed him away. “I am so not falling for you.” Shit. For
that
. She meant to say falling for
that
.

He raked her with a gaze, up and down, and watched her blush again. “Wanna bet?”

He left the room, and she sank down on the bed, her head spinning. Fact, fiction, everything blurred. It was Alex, the gunrunner’s web of lies, all over again. Wasn’t it? She sat there for a few minutes in a fog of fury when she heard someone pounding on the front door. He must’ve gone outside and forgotten the code to get back in, and she realized she actually wanted him to come back so they could finish that argument. Because now that she’d had time to adjust to the fact that their entire relationship was based on lies—or omissions, rather—she was ready to tear his ass to pieces. The sonofabitch had
spied
on her.

She jumped up, dropped the sheet, grabbed a robe, and hurried to the front door, only to see it opening. She slid abruptly into the sofa, trying to scramble backward as she realized the hair of the man coming in her front door was much darker than Trevor’s, and shit, she needed Maimee’s Glock from her purse, and it was over on the table. . . .

And then she realized she was looking at Cam, who was about as livid as she’d seen him in a long, long time. Which probably meant he was going to be awarded a
Guinness Book of World Records
entry for “most pissed off in one person.”

Just perfect. Apparently, sometime in the middle of the night, she’d taken the express elevator to the second level of Hell, Know-It-All Asshole Division.

Cam wasn’t sure how long he’d stood there just inside Nina’s front door when a hand smacked him in the chest and he realized Bobbie Faye was standing so close he could smell the shampoo in her hair, that stupid fruity stuff he’d liked so much. He could tell she hadn’t blown her hair dry after her shower because it was curly, framing her face as
she looked up at him expectantly.
Jesus
, this was a bad idea. He should have sent Benoit. Or hell, even Jason from dispatch would have been better at questioning her without being distracted, especially with this freaking headache, which would have made normal conversation strained, and just added a layer of refried pain on top of their conflict.

“Cam?” There was panic in her voice. “Is something wrong with Stacey?”

“No.” He shook himself out of his stupor. “No, she’s okay. I checked on her before I left for work. Mom said she was a little wired last night—after you called, Stacey wrangled too many cookies and didn’t want to fall asleep, but she’s having fun.”

She pulled her hand away, and he could feel the heated imprint through his cotton shirt as if she’d branded him. Then he felt something at the back of his neck, almost like a wisp of smoke, and he had his gun out as he spun to face the kitchen archway; Trevor stood leaning against the door frame, arms crossed, gaze narrowed at Cam. The bastard hadn’t even flinched when a gun was drawn on him, and Cam and the agent stared at each other over the barrel of Cam’s gun.

“Nice to see you, too, Detective,” Trevor said.

Cam lowered his gun. “What the hell are you doing here?”