The Christmas Clue (9 page)

Matt skipped his turn.

And now his body was making him pay for it.

Unfulfilled need was a bear to deal with, and in his case it just kept on coming. It’d been hours since his encounter with Cass, and he’d given up good old-fashioned mental suppression and opted for the cold shower.

It didn’t help, either, but that was asking a lot from a shower.

So he stepped from the shower stall, dried off, dressed in his jeans and spare shirt and tried to figure out what the hell he was going to say to Cass. What did you say to a woman after you’d had your hands in her pants? He’d acted like a teenager, and that had to stop. He had to stay focused on the mission.

Bolstered by his mental lecture, Matt took a deep breath and came out of the bathroom.

The first thing he heard was Cass’s sigh.

Matt figured that wasn’t a good sign, especially since she was on the bed, volleying her attention between keeping watch out the window and reviewing Dominic’s security disks on his laptop.

She’d been looking at those disks for hours, since her own shower after their spontaneous make-out session. And other than those sighs, she wasn’t communicating much.

But then, neither was he.

Matt had considered apologizing. Heck, he’d even considered discussing the situation. But the truth was, there was no discussion needed. He’d violated a personal rule or two by giving her some release, but he damn sure didn’t regret it. That climax had stopped her trembling. It’d gotten her mind off the dead guy. If he had it to do all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing.

Well, except maybe finishing what he’d started.

That would have violated more than a rule or two, but with that slow hard ache in his body and the way she’d responded to it, it’d be worth some rule violations.

But since thinking about sex with Cass only made him want her more, he forced his mind back on his task, surveillance.

He grabbed the binoculars, and as he’d done most of the afternoon and early evening, he looked for any sign that someone had found the body they’d hidden in the shrubs. Or that someone was on the way to the cottage. But no one was headed their way.

It was just Cass and him.

He took his place in the chair right in front of the window, reached behind him and grabbed an energy bar from the food stash they’d bought on the drive to the estate. The bar would be dinner. He’d already had one for lunch, and since it was the energy bars or nothing, he would be having another one for breakfast.

“Any activity at the estate while I was in the shower?” he asked.

“Definitely not Molly and the nanny.”

But then, he knew they wouldn’t be returning tonight—he’d verified that by contacting the airfield that the pilot had used to fly to El Paso. He’d pretended to be someone on Dominic’s staff, and had learned that the return flight wasn’t until 8:00 a.m. It’d be at least another ten hours before he could see his daughter.

“I didn’t see any signs of anyone looking for Buck, thank goodness,” she added. “A limo arrived about fifteen minutes ago, but I think it might be a guest who came in a day early for the party.”

Matt figured there’d be a lot of limos and luxury cars arriving soon. That wasn’t a bad thing. The guests would provide good cover.

“How about you?” Matt asked. “Anything on those disks?”

“No. The dates on them are the right time frame, but there’s no footage of Dominic’s office. There’s especially no footage of Dominic shooting his business associate, Arthur Wilmer.”

“And you’re sure Dominic has surveillance in his office?” Matt asked, keeping his voice as soft as possible.

“Positive. He even showed me the cameras and said they were there because he didn’t trust his employees. He told me he wanted proof of anything and everything that went on under his roof.” She paused. “But I’m not positive that the disk of the murder still exists. Dominic could have destroyed it.”

Matt was afraid of that, too. “What about another way to verify that he killed Wilmer? Other witnesses, maybe?”

She shook her head. “I was the only semiwitness who wasn’t on Dominic’s payroll, and I don’t think Dominic would have kept the gun.”

No. But there were other ways to leave evidence. “Tell me what happened that day.”

Another sigh. She scrapped her thumbnail over a loose thread on her jeans. “Dominic brought me to the estate for what was supposed to be lunch and a tour of the place. I’d only been there an hour or so when Arthur arrived.”

“You knew him, right?”

She nodded. “We were joint investors in a project a few months earlier. It hadn’t gone well. Arthur was a crook. Dominic and Arthur started to argue immediately. And Dominic took him into his office. A few minutes later I heard the shot. I started to go in, but then one of Dominic’s guards came running out of the office. He said I killed Arthur and that Dominic was calling the police.”

So, it’d been a setup. “What’d you do then?”

“I tried to do what any reasonable person would do—talk to Dominic because I thought there was some kind of misunderstanding. But I heard him actually call the sheriff. His head of security came down the hall, grabbed me and shoved me into a room. He locked the door. When I realized what was happening, that I was about to be framed for murder, I managed to escape through the window.”

“Dominic probably wanted you to escape,” Matt mumbled.

The only illumination was coming from the outside light and the computer monitor, but he had no trouble seeing that info register in her expression. “Because if I escaped, it made me look even guiltier. Plus, I wasn’t there to give my side of the story.”

Matt nodded. “If it’s any consolation, Dominic would have found a reason to kill you before the sheriff got there. According to Ronald, Sheriff Medina isn’t in Dominic’s pocket, so Dominic would have gotten rid of you before the start of an investigation.”

She groaned, scrubbed her hands over her face and then winced when she made contact with her bruised cheek. “I was really an idiot to ever trust Dominic.”

“Ah, that hindsight stuff again.” Matt picked up an energy bar and was about to toss it to her, but she declined it with a head shake. “There’s a bright side to this. You need to look for a surveillance disk of the hall outside Dominic’s office. Because that’s where you were when the shooting occurred, and the disk will prove it.”

She smiled, but it quickly faded. “If Dominic didn’t destroy that one.”

“We’ll know when we get back in there tomorrow.”

“Yes. After Molly returns.” She set the laptop on the nightstand, and slipped her legs and feet under the covers. She rubbed her obviously chilly hands. “We might not have time to look for the disk and take Molly, too.”

“We’ll take Molly,” he insisted. He tossed the energy bar back into the equipment bag.

“We will,” Cass agreed. “Even if it means not getting the disk.”

Matt stared at her. Oh, man. That was what he wanted her to say, but he wasn’t necessarily glad to hear it. He knew the implications, and those implications were huge. “Does this have anything to do with what happened between us earlier?”

“No.” But she dodged his gaze as if she weren’t so certain of that
no.
“We can’t leave her in there any longer. I wish there was a way to intercept the nanny on the way home from the airport.”

“Too risky.” Matt had already given it plenty of thought. “Those guards will start shooting, and I can’t risk Molly being hit. Our best bet is to take her from the nursery, get back to the car and drive out of here before anyone knows she’s missing.”

A lot of things could go wrong, but he wasn’t going to dwell on that. Tomorrow, he would have his daughter. And Cass still might not have the evidence to keep her out of jail.

Of course he would do what he could to help her. Matt only hoped it would be enough.

“You’re dreading going to bed, aren’t you?” she whispered.

Because he was mentally going through tomorrow’s rescue, it took Matt a moment to figure out what Cass said.

And what she meant.

There was only one bed, and it wasn’t big enough for both of them. Heck, a whole furniture store of beds wouldn’t be big enough because they just kept finding their way into each other’s arms.

Not good.

They had the mother of all missions ahead of them.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he let her know.

She pulled the cover up to her chin. “That tile and the room are cold. There’s only one blanket. You’re not sleeping on the floor. You’re sleeping here on the bed with me.”

“You think that’s wise?”

“No,” she readily admitted. “We just have to be adult about it.”

Matt felt himself frown. “It’s because we’re grownup that we can’t be adult about it.”

She laughed. Actually laughed. And it made him wonder how long it’d been since that had happened. Probably over a year ago before Dominic turned her life upside down.

That riled Matt.

Dominic hadn’t just taken his daughter; he’d taken away a year of Cass’s life. Even if she was exonerated and cleared of all charges, she’d never get back that year, and she’d never be the same.

Dominic would pay for that.

Matt glanced at the cold floor. Then at Cass. She was sitting there, in bed, waiting. She certainly wasn’t dressed provocatively. She was wearing a dull gray flannel shirt and jeans. No makeup. And her hair framed the delicate features of her face.

She didn’t look like a pampered heiress. She looked hot and welcoming.

Matt knew that was a bad combination. He grabbed his gun and the infrared scanner and put them on the metal nightstand next to their cell phones. That way, he could at least watch out for approaching
visitors
while he tortured himself with what he was about to do.

And what he was about to do was get in that bed with a woman that he wanted more than his next breath.

Definitely torture.

But that didn’t stop him. When Cass lifted the covers, he climbed right in.

Matt had been right about the size of the bed. Not big enough for both. So, he stayed on his side. Not facing Cass. She stayed on her side, too, facing his back. Snuggled together, because there wasn’t room to have even a sliver of space between them.

“About what happened earlier…” she whispered.

“Don’t finish that.”

“Why?”

Matt opted for a nonverbal, crude explanation. He grabbed her hand and put it over his aroused body. Just as quickly, he moved it away.

“Oh,” she said. And Cass repeated it, causing her warm breath to brush over the back of his neck. It was almost as effective as her touching him. “My body’s doing the same thing. I could take your hand and show you the proof, but—”

“Don’t finish that, either,” Matt snarled. “Look, I haven’t had sex in months, and I’m in bed with a woman I find very attractive. I have to keep reminding myself why it wouldn’t be a good idea to strip you out of those jeans and sink deep and hard into you.”

Somehow, she managed to snuggle even closer. “And remind me why we can’t have sex?”

He groaned. “Because it would be a distraction, and in this bed, possibly even suicide.”

“Well, I could do to you what you did to me earlier,” she volunteered.

It was tempting. But he couldn’t even consider it. “It’d still be a distraction, especially for me.”

“Thinking about having sex with you is a distraction, too,” she mumbled. And it sounded a lot like an invitation.

“A little one. Trust me, if I do to you what I’d love to do, it wouldn’t be a little distraction. Plus, we don’t have a condom.”

Cass cleared her throat. “There are several in the equipment bag.”

He groaned again. Yes, there were, but he didn’t want to be reminded of them. They weren’t just tempting, they were adding to his torture. It wasn’t unusual for agents to have them in the equipment bags, along with toothpaste, soap, bug repellant, painkillers and even extra underwear, but Matt wished that Ronald had taken the time to remove the condoms.

“Try to get some sleep,” Matt told her. Then he thought about sleep, and the bed. “I’ll try not to roll over, either, or we might accidentally have sex.”

She laughed again, and he smiled at the sound.

But not for long.

Cass’s cell phone buzzed. Before he could reach for it, she crawled over him, answered it and clicked the speaker function so they could both hear the caller.

“It’s me,” the man said.

Hollis.

It probably wasn’t a good thing that he was calling this time of night, so Matt automatically reached for his gun.

“What’s wrong?” Cass immediately asked the man.

“Some guy named Timothy St. Claire arrived a little while ago. Annette and he are pen pals. They met on the Internet.”

Cass made a sound of concern. “You know this man?”

“No. And judging from their conversation, tonight’s the first time Annette has met him. Don’t know how long they’ve been e-mailing or how close they are. I listened in on what they had to say, and St. Claire’s going to help Annette sneak Molly out of the house tomorrow evening just as the party is in full swing. That way, they think they can get past Dominic.”

Matt processed that. It didn’t change his plan to rescue Molly ASAP, but it did mean they had someone else to watch since Timothy St. Claire might be on the lookout for potential glitches in their plan to take Molly out of the country. Either St. Claire was a complete idiot or else he didn’t know about Dominic, because he was taking his life into his hands by helping Annette.

“If you want a look at this guy, he’s in the garden room,” Hollis added, and he hung up.

Matt did indeed want a look at the man he was up against. He also wanted to run a background check on him. After all, Dominic could have hired St. Claire to test his sister’s loyalty.

And if so, his sister was about to fail big-time.

Annette had to be truly desperate to get Molly out if she was willing to trust a man she’d met over the Internet. She must have believed that Dominic’s new business partner could provide a real threat to Molly’s safety. Or maybe it was just a matter of the possibility that the unpredictable Dominic could on a whim take Molly from her. Of course Matt understood that desperation. He was willing to let Cass risk her life to help him.