Rebecca York (19 page)

They both slipped into the bed, clinging together, and he closed his eyes to shut out the world as much as possible, holding her, pressing his body against hers, his hand stroking over her silky skin.

It was a strange experience. He felt like he was merging with her, even as he felt his arousal build again.

This time the sexual urgency was more manageable.

He had better control of the physical sensations. Instead of being ruled by them, he could use them.

Yes, she whispered in his mind, and he knew she had picked up the thought, that they were joining again in that unfathomable mental way neither of them could explain. All they knew was that it had happened.

And it was happening again.

He felt a sense of completeness. But what if they wanted to break the connection? Would either of them feel whole again?

Not what you bargained for? she asked.

Did you?

Of course not.

He didn't want to think too deeply about what this new reality meant for himself. For Lindsay. For the rest of their lives. Instinctively he knew that this was what he had always missed—always craved. He felt like he'd found the other half of his soul. Still, uncertainty gnawed at him. At her.

It was easier to focus on the current of sensuality that wrapped them in a tight embrace.

He bent to delicately swirl his tongue around one of her taut nipples, loving the feel of that hard pebble in his mouth and knowing exactly how his caress affected her.

He sensed the heat gathering in her lower body. Felt his cock fill with blood, and knew that she felt it, too.

I see why guys think women should have penis envy. You like that feeling of your. . . thing ...

expanding.

My thing. That's a poetic way to put it. You don't like the way that feels?

I like it. But the sensation of being turned on is so concentrated in that one inflatable tube.

Yeah, you get aroused all over your body, don't you ?

Yes.

But this part is good, don't you think?

To punctuate the question, he slipped a finger between her moist, engorged folds, then dipped inside her.

I thought a woman would like the inside stimulation best, he mused.

No, the outside.

Mmm. Yeah. Like this?

God, yes.

As he focused on her pleasure, she couldn't hold back a small, moaning sound.

He wanted her hand on his cock.

She reached down, clasped him with her fist, and he sighed. He wanted . ..

She moved up to the head, circled, caressed him in exactly the way he had imagined, her finger picking up a drop of semen to use for lubricant, then swirling around the rim.

She drove him toward the point of no return. And he drove her.

They both knew the time was exactly right when she opened her legs and he eased inside her.

They lay on their sides, intimately joined. The physical bond brought them to a new level of mental awareness.

You need to come.

God, yes.

Now, please.

The slow pace was no longer enough, and he thrust in and out of her, fast and hard, driving them both toward climax.

* * *

She tried for coherent speech, as the urgency lilled her mind—and his.

"We have to get out of here," she gasped.

"Yeah. Now."

He pulled his penis from her, and they both braced for the terrible feeling of disorientation that had hit them when they had separated earlier.

This time it was less. Maybe because he'd thought to hold her hand and ease away slowly. Maybe because she was ready for the wrenching sensation.

Her breath caught.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"I guess I have to be."

"How long do we have?"

"I don't know. Not long," she answered.

She wanted to pretend that she'd made up the feeling of impending danger. She knew she'd be lying to herself.

Neither of them had unpacked. They ran to the living room, scrambled into the clothing they had discarded, and grabbed their hand luggage.

By the time they dashed to the door, she saw a pair of headlights down by the office.

THE HEADLIGHTS BEGAN moving slowly up the hill. It could be a late-arriving guest. Lindsay knew it wasn't, because she felt a wave of malevolence sweeping up the rutted roadway ahead of the car.

Panic bubbled inside her. Instinctively she reached for Jordan's hand, locked her fingers around his wrist.

"What do we do?"

She sensed thoughts churning in his brain. Plans.

We'd better not take my car. They traced me.

How?

Not sure . . . talk about it later. We've got to get the hell out of here. Give me your car keys.

With fingers that felt like sausage links, she fumbled in her purse, found the keys and handed them over.

They both climbed into the car. She prayed that the flash of light when the door opened was blocked by the cabin.

The engine roared in her ears like an uncaged lion. Could the men in the other car hear it?

Men. She pictured their hard faces and gimlet eyes. Had they killed Dr. Lucas? And Todd Hamilton and Glenn Barrow?

And now they were coming for her and Jordan—two more loose ends in the Maple Creek affair.

She tried to calm herself down. The U.S. wasn't some totalitarian country where the secret police stamped around doing whatever they wanted. That's what she'd always believed, until the government had started holding people for months and years, using the Patriot Act as an excuse.

"Yeah. We're not going to try and make nice with them," Jordan muttered, apparently following her line of thinking.

He didn't turn on the lights as he drove around the back of the cabin, then kept going up the access road.

Her heart blocked her windpipe as she looked behind her and saw the other car closing in on them.

Jordan tried to speed up. The right front tire hit something solid. Cursing, he slammed on the brakes, reversed, and made a course correction.

As his vision adjusted, he picked up a little speed, keeping the car in the tire ruts.

They reached the top of the hill and started down. Maybe they had a chance to escape.

She had just breathed out a sigh of relief when she saw headlights in the rearview mirror and heard the roar of an engine right behind them.

"Shit," Jordan muttered, ramping up his speed to the dangerous range.

Without even stopping to check the traffic, he barreled onto the highway with his lights off. She gasped as they narrowly missed an oncoming pickup truck.

Swiveling around, she saw the vehicle in back of them shoot from the access road. But another car was coming up fast. To avoid an accident, the pursuers cut sharply to the right—and nose-dived into a ditch.

"They're out of commission," she cried.

"Thank God."

She kept her gaze to their rear as they sped on into the night, passing secondary roads leading into small communities.

"We have to get off the highway," she whispered, "in case they get back on the road."

"Not yet. I don't want to get trapped on a dead-end road."

'Turn on your lights before we get arrested—or killed."

"Right." He kept going into the nearby town before he made a left into a sleeping neighborhood, then took several more turns, ending up on a residential street where he pulled around back of a convenience store, then cut the engine.

She slid into his arms, burying her face against his shoulder. Feeling her whole body shake, she struggled to keep her teeth from chattering. "Who are they?"

"You mean—like what government agency?"

"Yes."

"I don't know. But somebody knows I'm poking into Todd Hamilton's death—and the break-in at Maple Creek."

"The dirty-tricks department?"

He laughed. "Yeah."

The laugh sent a shiver traveling over her skin. "How did they find us?"

He sighed. "I paid for the room with my credit card. When you use plastic, you announce where you are."

She winced.

"Let's hope to hell this didn't come from your office. Did anyone see you when you pulled that file with Todd's letter?"

"Not that I know of"

"But you asked Bridgewater about Maple Creek. Because Sid wanted information." His jaw tightened.

"The senator could have turned us in—if he thought your knowledge of secret installations was a threat to national security."

"I'm sorry."

"You didn't know. You were just doing a favor for a friend."

The comment triggered another frightening thought, and she turned haunted eyes to Jordan. "If they came after us, they could be after Sid. We have to warn him."

"We can't. Not on the phone. It's too easy to tap into a cell phone. If we use it, they might find us."

Grim-faced, he added, "Or they could have traced his call to you!"

She made a small strangled sound. "You mean like one of those spy movies where they listen in by satellite?"

"Yeah, like that." He dragged in a breath and let it out. "Maybe they just want us for questioning," he said, trying to sound reassuring. "Too bad we can't send your friend Sid a telepathic warning signal—because we sure as hell can't call him."

"Maybe we should try." She reached for his hand and held on tight. "Like when you told me to go to the Bishop's Garden. And I went."

"We can try. But I don't think it's going to work. The reason I could sort of communicate with you was that we had already started forming a bond."

"Yes." Her fingers clenched his more tightly. "But we have to do what we can. Let's sit here and send him a message—that storm troopers came to our cabin in the woods to scoop us up. We got away, but he should be careful."

"Okay," he agreed, but she knew he didn't think they had much chance. She slipped one hand under his shirt and kept hold of the other, then closed her eyes and pressed her cheek to his. She felt their thoughts merge, heard the words of warning echo in her head. They sent the message ten times, and when they finished she didn't know if it had done any good.

"Can't we call him on a pay phone?" she whispered.

"Closer to D.C., maybe. Somewhere we can make a quick getaway if we have to. But we can't head back there yet. In case they're watching the highway."

As if to emphasize their precarious situation, a car pulled into the parking lot in front of the convenience store, and they both went rigid. Apparently it was the guy opening up in the morning.

"Maybe he'll think we were here for a make-out party," Jordan said as he started the engine. "What we don't want is for him to tell the cops someone suspicious is hanging round."

Jordan drove away from the store, then down the street at moderate speed, this time with his lights on, since other people were out and about.

The rural neighborhood had large wooded lots, with the houses spread far apart. He slowed when he came to a long driveway where several newspapers were lying on the blacktop.

"We can hide up there for a while."

She gulped. "You mean break in?"

"No. We'll go around back and stay in the car." He headed up the driveway, then around to the rear of a clapboard house, hidden from the road by pine trees.

"I'm a congressional researcher. You've written about bad guys. What do they do when the law is closing in on them?"

"Mostly, they get caught," he said in a gritty voice.

KURT MACARTHUR SNATCHED up the phone on the first ring. "Do you have them?"

"It looks like they were expecting trouble. They cleared out just ahead of us."

"They?"

Swift answered with clipped syllables. "There's a woman with him."

"How do you know, if they aren't there?"

"Telltale sheets. They were going at it in bed." Jim laughed. "Well, the living room rug, too, I suspect.

And— for a homey touch—there are boxes of groceries on the kitchen counter—like they were planning to spend the weekend burrowed in there."

"So Walker took his girlfriend away for the weekend to have a good time. That's not so strange."

"He doesn't have a girlfriend."

"He met someone. And they got close—fast. Maybe you didn't find them because they decided to go out to dinner." Even as he said it, the observation sounded too quick.

"They went down the driveway with their lights off. We were in hot pursuit—and ended up in a ditch to keep from getting rammed by another car. We're looking for them. But they had a fifteen-minute start on us."

"Find them. I want Walker. And meanwhile, I want you to round up Sid Becker."

"You want to talk to him?"

"If possible. But do what you have to do to keep him from talking to anyone else."

"I'm already on it."

Kurt hung up, then scrubbed a hand across his face. He'd been with the CC for a long time, and he'd devoted his life to the organization. His methods might not match the conventional norms. But he'd been sure of his values, sure of the mission, sure of how to accomplish what he thought was best for the country.

Maple Creek had shocked him into quick action, and maybe he'd made some hasty decisions about the cover-up.

In retrospect, he should probably have used something besides the drug from Granite Wall to terminate Todd Hamilton and his friend, Glenn Barrow. But he'd had it on hand at Maple Creek. He'd thought it was untraceable. Then it had shown up in that damn pathology report from Dr. Lucas.

He hoped that bit of information wouldn't go any farther—now that Jim had wiped the computer files.

But he'd feel better when they had Mark Greenwood back in custody—or dead. And anyone else who got wind of what had happened at Maple Creek. Including Leonard Hamilton, who had ordered the pathology report. From his phone records, it looked like Hamilton had gotten Jordan Walker on the case. He just hoped he hadn't talked to anyone else.

He pressed his palm against the desk. The team in D.C. would find Greenwood. Maybe through Sid Becker. And Jim would find Walker and his girlfriend. Too bad for her—getting caught in the middle of a flap. But he'd always had a philosophical attitude toward collateral damage. You did what needed to be done to accomplish the mission, and you didn't sweat the civilian casualties.