Lie with Me (4 page)

She hadn’t heard him come into the room, never mind ending up nearly on top of her.

She swallowed hard and did as he asked. It had been a stupid move anyway.

Slowly, he pulled her arm away and, still holding her, took the .38 Special out of the nightstand. “Nice piece. Dumb move.”

She stood still, her back to his chest. She turned her head to look at him, those ice blue eyes boring into hers, his fingers wrapped around her forearm. “I don’t know if anything you’re saying is true.”

“I don’t think there are too many people out there who know who your father really is. That’s going to have to suffice.” He held up the weapon. “Any more where this came from?”

“No.”

“And I’m supposed to trust you?”

“The same way I’m supposed to trust you,” she said sweetly, her heart still pounding as he brought his face closer to hers, his voice a rough growl that shot through her like fire.

“Touché. But know this, Sky—you’ll gain nothing by killing me. If I were here to kill you, you’d have been dead when you opened the front door. I was sent by your father—he’s a man of few words. I have my orders and I plan on following them.” He turned to leave the bedroom, calling, “I want to see the letter,” over his shoulder.

Sky
. No one had called her that in a long time—she’d insisted on her full name since she left college and entered the world of illness and hospitals. But something about the way Cam said it made her not correct him.

S
kylar didn’t trust him worth a damn, didn’t seem to like him much, and still Cam was pretty sure that if he kissed her she’d kiss him back.

He hadn’t expected to be blown away by her in person, figured that, if anything, the photo on the book jacket had been airbrushed.

But she was perfect, even in a pair of pajamas and an old sweater—tall and slim, with blond hair skimming straight down her back and soft green eyes that sucked him in the second she’d opened the door.

The haunted look, though … that was still there.

While she remained inside the bedroom, getting him the letter and deciding whether or not to believe what he’d told her, he took the opportunity to flip through the notebook on the table—lots of crossed-out paragraphs, nothing of substance. A closed laptop sat nearby. And her cell phone, which he noted had no signal.

Perfect, since he’d already cut the landline, ensuring the only way for Gabriel to make contact would be through Cam’s phone. If Gabriel was even around to make contact with.

Because
three months
. That wasn’t a good sign at all, not when Cam took into account what happened on the helo the night before. If Gabriel had been given a burn notice, or even killed, the powers-that-be might look into killing anyone remotely associated with him. So it might not have been Gabriel’s orders to grab him after all.

You’re getting ahead of yourself. Just because he’s not in touch with his daughter doesn’t mean anything
.

Didn’t mean the plan he and Dylan had concocted, telling Skylar there was a threat in order to get Cam in the door, wasn’t a total and complete goatfuck. Didn’t mean he hadn’t almost blown everything by not knowing how hard she’d been trying to reach her father.

It was only then he noticed the pills, set up like a row of soldiers on a side table across from the fireplace. He noted the names—recognized some as immunosuppressants and quickly made a note to check out what they were for.

If she was sick …

Fuck, if she was sick, his plan might work better than he’d anticipated, assuming he could get in touch with Gabriel. Now he had to figure out how long of a supply of meds she had.

“Here it is,” she said, walking out of the bedroom holding a single white envelope. And looking decidedly healthy, with the high flush from getting caught with the gun still marking her cheeks. “The police have the rest of them. I kept one to show my father.”

She cut her gaze to the medications and then back to his face, her eyes defiant.

“What are they for?” he demanded.

She looked pained and then annoyed. “What does it matter?”

“What are they for?”

“I had a kidney transplant, okay? I have to take the medications so I don’t reject it and die. Is that explanation satisfactory?”

Her eyes blazed, and yeah, that was a pretty damned good reason. Somehow, that major piece of news had escaped Dylan’s background checks. “You need to keep them packed at all times.”

“Why?”

“In case we have to leave suddenly.”

“In the middle of a blizzard?”

Yes, another complication—the storm had picked up steam far more quickly than the weather services had anticipated. “Stop arguing and do it.”

“Your personality blows,” she muttered.

Yeah, it did. Always had, and it wasn’t changing anytime soon. She continued to mumble as she left the room, came back with a bag to dump the bottles into, and he swore he heard a curse or two with his name attached. Strangely enough, that made him hard.

To distract himself, he looked at the letter. It was dated last week. No return address. Plain, white business envelope available in ten million stores worldwide.

There was one line of computer-generated text across the center of the page.

I know who you really are
.

“They all say the same thing,” she offered. “Type’s identical too.”

“They’ve scared you.”

“Coupled with your arrival, most definitely. Like you said, my connection to my father’s not common knowledge.”

She was scared of the situation, probably even of him somewhat. The fact that she’d been so sick, that she needed all those medications, nearly made him walk out of the house, straight into the storm, and forget his entire plan.

The letter he held in his hand stopped him. He definitely wasn’t the only dangerous person after Skylar Slavin, but he was the safest of the two threats, and fuck, he didn’t want to be. He wanted to hate her. Wanted her to be as cold and calculating as Gabriel—who the hell knew, maybe she was.

Cam had looked up to Gabriel at first, had thought he’d been saved and would go on to great things. And he had, both thanks to and in spite of the CIA agent who took the skills Cam had learned in the military and twisted them for his own purposes, be they legal or not.

It’s for the good of your country
, Gabriel would say. And as much as Cam wanted to believe that, the fact was, if caught on one of the black ops missions, he’d be hung out to dry—left for dead.

“How did you meet my father?” Sky asked him after a long silence. She stood there, holding the bag with her bottles of medicine, asking for something, anything, from him.

He would give it to her. “He helped me out of a rough situation.”

The truth seemed the way to go. Partial truth anyway, but still she narrowed her eyes. “He’s not the type to mentor anyone.”

“No, he’s not. He always says, you can’t get something for nothing.”

Her eyes widened and he knew she recognized the statement. It meant that she might actually start to trust him.

Of course, trusting him would be the worst thing she could do, especially since he wasn’t sure how far he would take this—how far he’d have to. “Look, I know this is a lot to take in.”

But suddenly, Skylar wasn’t in the living room with him any longer—at least not that particular living room. No, she was somewhere far away, reliving something that made her eyes wet.

“Skylar, what’s wrong?” He kept his voice low and calm and she broke from her silent reverie and shook her head.

“Nothing.”

Yeah, that wasn’t nothing, but he’d leave it for now. There was a lot more he needed to learn about Skylar—and from the looks of things, plenty of time to do so.

First, get her to trust you
, Dylan’s voice echoed in his head, and yeah, Cam knew how to do that. It was one of the first things he’d learned in the Rangers, the most important skill, whether the person could really afford to trust you or not.

“I’m having dinner now. You can do whatever the hell you want,” she told him, and walked away haughtily, holding the bag of pills and muttering, “I’m ready to run at any moment, Army guy.”

And then get her to like you
.

That part might take a little longer. She was slamming plates around and muttering about him again.

Finally, she pointed to the stove without turning around to look at him. “I’ve got dinner here—way too much for me. And since it looks like we’re not going anywhere fast …”

She set out an extra plate without waiting for him to answer. Truth was, he was starving, and so he sat at the island stool and let her dish him out a big plate of fettuccini alfredo. He waited until she made her own plate and cut bread and got them both something to drink—water for him and some kind of juice for her—and then they ate silently for a few moments.

He’d turned on the radio and together they listened to the local weather reports, warning people to stay indoors until the worst of the storm was over. By tomorrow, midmorning, Cam would be able to get her out of here, as planned.

There were so many ways this could go down. What would happen when and if Gabriel made contact with Sky and heard Cam’s name come out of his daughter’s mouth was anyone’s guess. Whether Gabriel would let on that Cam wasn’t there on orders at all, or if Gabriel would simply play along. Cam guessed the latter. Hoped for it anyway. Prayed that Gabriel wouldn’t try anything stupid or put his daughter in the position to do the same.

Of course, that’s if Gabriel wasn’t MIA. Because, fuck, that seemed like a real possibility.

If there were problems, he could bring Skylar to Dylan. Dylan would be able to take care of it without the gut-churning guilt Cam was experiencing.

Dylan would sleep with her
.

That thought made his teeth clench so hard his jaw ached.

“Was your father an agent too?” she asked.

“ATF,” Cam said shortly because, fuck it, why shouldn’t she know? Her future hung in the balance because of what went down between their fathers. Whether he’d ever tell her that much of the story remained to be seen.

“So you grew up without your dad too.”

He didn’t answer that, continued to eat the pasta she’d cooked. “This is great,” he said finally.

“Thanks. It’s about all I can make.”

She smiled then, accentuating a deep dimple on her left cheek, close to her lips. Her face was slightly flushed, her body relaxed enough that the sweater she wore had fallen open to reveal her tank top and the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She didn’t need one—her breasts were of the most perfect variety, on the smaller side but still round and soft, ones he could imagine himself palming … tasting.

He needed to call Dylan ASAP, to remind himself why the hell he was here, risking everything.

He was doing it because he’d already risked it all when he’d killed that suit on the helo. Gabriel or no Gabriel, he was in deep shit.

Skylar was his only way out of the pit.

“My dad was never around,” he agreed finally, realizing that she was ferreting information out of him and she was dangerously good at it. Easy to talk to.

She wouldn’t get anything he didn’t want her to know.

“He went on an extended deep undercover op when I was fourteen and he never came out of his role,” he continued. “He successfully infiltrated one of the more well-known motorcycle gangs on the East Coast.”

But in doing so, Howie Moore lost his entire identity and fucked up any chance he’d ever had of getting into the CIA.

“Once he patched in, which took two years, it was all over.” His father had watched as another agent was killed in the line of duty trying to earn his rocker to become a full-fledged member of a rival gang. It hadn’t stopped Howie. He’d lived as a motorcycle gang member for so long, had absorbed the culture and the mindset, there was no getting him back in the end. His parents had divorced and Cam and his mom had lived in a tiny house in the same neighborhood where his father’s gang reigned supreme.

“So you weren’t hidden, then?” she asked.

“After my mom died, I went to live with my dad. He had to keep up the cover and he didn’t want me going into foster care.”

She leaned forward, elbow on the counter and chin in hand, listening intently, and yeah, a sixteen-year-old boy living among one of the most notorious motorcycle gangs was a pretty fascinating story. Even more so, considering his dad’s ATF contacts hadn’t tried to keep Cam out of the situation. “Dad threatened to pull out of the op if I wasn’t allowed to live with him—he’d been a month away from getting patched in after years of work and the ATF didn’t want to risk blowing an entire operation that was supposed to bring down a huge portion of the gang on firearms and drug charges.”

“Was the investigation a success?”

Was it? The evidence garnered a lot of convictions, but it also got Cam his two years in jail. Howie Moore vanished into thin air, and here Cam was, sitting across from the daughter of the man responsible for it all. “Yeah, you could call it that.”

He stared down at the spot where his gang tattoo had been, remembered sitting with his old man at midnight in one of his buddies’ houses,
Getting my boy’s first ink
.

The only good thing was that because of his association with the gang no one fucked with Cam, at least not before his incarceration. Cam was always big and broad and tough—his father hadn’t been the type to coddle anyone and his son had learned early how to defend himself, to handle weapons. To kill, if necessary.

He’d come close to having to do that in prison.

“Where’s your dad now?” Sky asked.

He looked into her light green eyes and said, “I lost track of him when I was seventeen. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

Cam hadn’t realized he’d been clutching his glass as if it was someone’s throat as he spoke, but Skylar had noticed. He let it go, but it was too late. She now watched him, eyes wide with revelation, the way they had been earlier.

“You’re angry at your father, aren’t you?”

He didn’t deny it. Couldn’t.