Unleashing the Storm (6 page)

“I’m
only looking out for you.” He moved to his dresser, took a pair of handcuffs
from the top drawer. “Let me show you something.”

“Ooh!
Cool! I’ve been cuffed before.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why do you have
handcuffs?”

“Personal
reasons.”

“Whatever
floats your boat, I guess.”

“Hold
out your hands.” In two fluid strides, he closed the distance between them.
“Why have you been cuffed? Or do I want to know?”

“Personal
reasons.” She winked, hoping he’d buy the lie. The truth, that she’d been arrested
more than once, was something she liked to keep to herself.

“Hold
your hands like this”—he turned her wrists—“it’ll make the cuffs looser once
they’re on.” He snapped them into place.

“Am I
interrupting something?”

Tom’s
voice, calm and cool, floated into the room. Kira grinned and looked over her
shoulder at him. “Derek was just giving me some tips on how to make cuffs more
comfortable.”

“I’ll
bet.” His mouth curved, but if his smile was genuine, she’d eat a burger. Raw.

“I
came to see if you two wanted dinner—Oh, crap! Dinner! It’s burning.” She
shoved her wrists at Derek. “Take them off.” His smile didn’t fade, but his
gaze never left Tom’s.

Men.
Morons.

Once
free, she darted out of the room. “Come on, boys. Dinner’s ready. You’ll love
it. Sautéed asparagus with curried tofu and tomatoes.” She rolled her eyes at
the two men who stood there watching each other like rival roosters.

Babs,
who hadn’t gone downstairs, gave her a look that said it all.

Males
are dumb.

Ender
ignored Derek’s smirk, patted Babs on the head and turned to follow Kira. The
whole never-turn-your-back-on-the-enemy thing was overrated. So was Derek. And
sometimes, turning your back gave the enemy enough time to screw up, or to show
them that you didn’t give a fuck.

But
Ender did give a fuck, and it looked like Derek was planning something for
tonight. And with the way Kira acted this afternoon, and again in Derek’s
handcuffs, he ran a real risk of getting the rug pulled out from under him.

He
could almost guarantee that Derek had called in backup. Almost. But this was
the delicate balance involved in an Operator who acted as Convincer and killer.

On
one hand, he needed to keep Kira safe and out of the enemy’s grasp. But she’d
already lost two farmhands, and killing Derek right now, which would be his
first, most natural instinct, would cause too much suspicion on her part. Then
again, it could bring them closer together, force her to turn to him for
protection.

Part
of his plan also involved discovering just what uses Itor had for her. He’d get
that out of Derek later. And then he’d kill him. Because killing him too soon
would bring out the dogs, literally. I-Agents had a virtual worm implanted in
their brain that transmitted back to the home compound, let them know that
after twenty-four hours of no brain activity an agent had died.

Ender
needed a little bit longer than twenty-four hours, and he had a plan to buy him
that time.

The
kitchen was hot as hell even though the sun had already started to go down, the
heat from cooking raising the temperature enough so that Ender wished he could
strip down to his shorts and take a long swim in the lake that ran along the
back of the property.

He
moved close to Kira, close enough so she needed to touch him to move past him,
the bare skin of her arm brushing his, and he waited to see if he got the same
vertigo-like sensation he had earlier out in the barn. When he led with the
wrong head. There had been nothing in the files about a latex allergy, or any
other, and she hadn’t even bothered to check to see that the condom was
lambskin. Although with her militant animal rights stance, that wouldn’t have
gone over well anyway.

He
inhaled, taking in the freshness of her skin, the honey-cloves mix that drove
him up a wall, and his dick stirred, but that was a normal response.

Babs
wouldn’t leave his side, a gray, Velcroed, touch-seeking bundle of energy. “Bet
she’s a beauty when she runs,” he said.

“Feel
free to take her anytime you want. She can always do with more exercise,” Kira said.
Derek sidled to the counter and took the hot dish out of her hands and brought
it to the table.

“Tommy,
can you grab the lemonade, please?” Kira asked.

Tommy.
Fuck me.
“Yes, ma’am.”

Putting
the sedative in the drink took all of three seconds in between giving the
lemonade a final mix and pouring it into the glasses. Ender took a sip first,
then drank about half his glass because Derek watched him suspiciously.
Finally, the guy followed suit.

Ender
took the seat on the far end of the large, antiqued farmhouse table, back to
the wall. Derek sat diagonally across the table from him and smirked when Kira
slid into the seat next to him, leaving Ender alone. Like Ender was supposed to
give a shit. This wasn’t the dating game, but if it was, he would’ve already
been far in the lead.

He
sat back in his chair, stretched his legs out under the table so they locked
around the legs of Kira’s chair possessively. Even pulled it enough toward the
table so that both Kira and Derek noticed.

He
sent a good ole boy smile Kira’s way, and yeah, her eyes lit. Then she flushed
slightly and started dishing out heaping helpings of something that was
supposed to resemble food.

“What
is this?” he asked.

“It’s
asparagus, tomatoes and curried tofu. You’ll love it.”

He
looked at the pile of tofu and vegetables in front of him, knew nothing in
there was going to satisfy him well enough—he was going to need some red meat,
and soon.

Maybe
Deb would be good for something, after all.

“Kira,
this is amazing. Makes me think about coming over to your side,” Derek said as
he dug in enthusiastically.

Ender
snorted and Kira looked over at him.

“You
don’t like it?”

“Tofu’s
not really my thing,” he said. He grabbed a piece of bread from the plate in
the middle of the table and loaded it up with margarine.

“Most
people usually try it, just to be polite,” she said.

“I’m
not most people,” he said, took a bite of bread and washed it down with
lemonade.

But
Kira wasn’t going to give up. She just looked at him with those wide amber eyes
that reminded him of a contented panther lying in the afternoon sun and then
she looked back down to his plate.

“I
went to an awful lot of trouble,” she said.

“Didn’t
ask you to. Ma’am.”

“I’ll
take his share,” Derek said, as he continued to shovel in the tofu-curry crap.

“You’re
not welcome to anything of mine,” Ender told him, then let one bare foot linger
against Kira’s calf under the table even as Derek turned to her and dabbed at
some tofu-shit that had spilled onto her chin.

“Let
me get that,” Derek said. Ender upped his foot action against her calf,
satisfied when he got a response from her.

Kira
seemed to be enjoying the whole two-men-vying-for-her-attention routine. Which
meant it was time to rotate the game right back on her.

Easy
enough. He didn’t have to pretend to play hard to get because he
was
hard to get. His longest relationship of note was forty-eight hours in Fiji on
a private beach with a married twenty-four-year-old heiress who didn’t mind the
fact that he fucked her brains out and didn’t remember her name half the time.

“So,
where does Deb stay?” he asked, figuring two birds with one stone and all that,
then reminded himself he probably couldn’t say shit like that out loud around
Miss Militant Vegan. Kira’s eyes widened slightly. Derek just shook his head.
“What? Did you want a piece of her?” he asked Derek.

“You
haven’t changed a bit, have you, Tom?”

“I
think Deb will get in touch with you if she’s interested,” Kira told him.

“I
think she’s interested.” He stabbed his fork into the tofu and took a few reluctant
bites as per his plan, ignoring Kira and Derek as they chatted about the day’s
work and the refuge and chores to be done the next day.

He
looked up when he heard a small crash, saw Derek’s lemonade spilled across the
table. One of the cats leaped to investigate, but Ender grabbed the animal and
mopped up the mess fast. That’s all he needed was to hurt her babies.

“Derek,
you look kind of pale,” Kira was saying as she leaned to touch Derek’s arm.
Derek groaned in response and looked at Ender, his eyes fuzzy. He mumbled,
“Ender,” but it came out more like “under.”

Ender
pushed his own plate of tofu away and grunted. “Something’s wrong with this
shit.”

“It’s
not shit. And I’m fine,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,
for now.” He put his head down on the table and Babs licked his face. “Christ,
get this mutt away from me.”

Babs
completely ignored him, probably because she knew he didn’t really mean it.

“I’ve
got to go upstairs,” Derek mumbled, pushed away from the table unsteadily.

“I’ll
help you,” Kira offered, but Ender was already behind Derek. No fun if the guy
fell down the stairs and broke his own neck. He made sure he put an extra sway
in his step.

“Do
you really think it’s the food?” she asked him.

“How
do you feel?” he asked as he made a show of grabbing his stomach like he was
doubling over in pain.

“I
feel fine,” she said as she stood. She took two steps and he noticed that her
gait was slightly off, that she held on to the back of the chair a little too
tightly. But she wasn’t nearly as bad as Derek.

Speaking
of, there was a clatter on the steps as Derek lost his footing. Ender grabbed
him and half pushed him up the stairs, even as Derek lost consciousness by the
time they reached the top.

“Everything
all right?” she called upstairs.

“It
will be once this crumble crap gets out of our system. Dump it,” he called, and
then he smiled when he heard her mutter,
“Fuck you.”

He
shoved Derek through the door of his bedroom, got him to the bed and checked
his pulse. Guy was out cold, and would be until morning. Which gave Ender
plenty of time to decide his next move.

He
reached into Derek’s pocket and pulled out the cell phone he knew Derek had. It
would be password protected, of course, but Ender had never known Bryan not to
break a password.

He
took out his own cell and connected the two, dialed a line to Bryan and beamed
the information from Derek’s phone to Bryan through his. Didn’t even have to
talk to the guy—the magic of spy-shit capabilities. Within the hour, Bryan
would let him know the times Derek would need to check in to Itor, and the
special codes Ender would need in case he’d have to be the one to do it for
him.

Normally
agents only had to check in once every forty-eight hours, if not less. Things
like making a suspicious phone call could severely compromise any undercover
operative’s mission, and he doubted Itor worked any differently than ACRO with
that pattern.

Once
the file transfer was complete, he wiped the cell clean of his prints out of
habit, stuck it back in Derek’s pocket and did a quick sweep of the room to
make sure nothing had changed, especially the small monitor he’d rigged earlier
that day.

More
spy-shit. Ender preferred good, old-fashioned guns.

He
shut Derek’s door behind him, just in time to hear a loud crash come from the
kitchen. Dogs began barking and Babs was on her way up the stairs to get him
when he blew by her.

“I’ve
got her,” he said, and wondered when the hell he’d started talking to animals.

KIRA
LOOKED DOWN at the mess of dishes she’d dropped and wished she could peel
herself off the side of the fridge. Her feet seemed to have stopped working.
Her sense of balance had also become a casualty of whatever had affected Tom
and Derek. Maybe the curry had gone bad.

And
dammit, she couldn’t feel her face.

The sound
of pounding footsteps rattled in her head, and she smelled Tom before she saw
him.

“What
happened?” He skidded to a stop before he plowed into the dinner dishes and the
dogs helping themselves to the scraps.

“I’m
feeding the dogs,” she said, and blinked because her vision had gone fuzzy. “I
think the curry went bad. Need to throw it out.”

Tom
bent to pick up some of the plates. “Could have been anything. How much
lemonade did you drink?”

“Lemons
don’t go bad, silly.” She bit her lip. “Well, I guess they do…” She dragged
herself along the fridge toward the spice cabinet. Feet still wouldn’t work. “I
only had a sip.”

He
craned his neck to peer up at her. “A sip?”