Cody Walker's Woman (26 page)

His lips moved slowly, kissing her eyes closed. She caught her breath when he tucked a curl behind her ear, and his lips tugged at her earlobe. One hand clenched his arm, and Cody struggled not to pull her into his embrace. “Heart, mind, body and soul,” he whispered. “That’s all I want.”

He didn’t wait for a response, just drew away from her and exited the truck quickly before he could change his mind and tell her that whatever she wanted to give him was enough. It wasn’t. It might be enough for today, for a week, for a month. But not for a lifetime. And that’s what he wanted. A lifetime. His...and hers.

He went around the back and unlocked the tonneau cover. Keira was still sitting where he’d left her in the cab of the truck, and he smiled ruefully. He’d obviously taken her by surprise, and he’d given her a lot to think about.
I just hope she won’t need to think too long.

He grabbed the computer, hefted it under one arm, and strode purposefully toward the back porch, taking the stairs two at a time. He unlocked the door with the key Callahan had given him, and went inside. He came out a minute later for the computer monitor, and froze as soon as he pushed the door open. Keira was standing at the back of the truck, but she wasn’t alone. A bearded stranger stood beside her, a gun pointed at her head.

“Stop right there,” the man told Cody, moving quickly to shield himself behind Keira, wrapping his left arm around her throat for more control. “I know you’re armed. Take the gun out real slow, and place it on the floor.”

“Cody, no—” Keira gasped before the stranger’s hand closed around her mouth.

Cody did exactly as he was bid. As if she’d screamed the words at him, the expression in her eyes told him not to, told him to keep his Glock and dash back inside the house where he’d be safe. And though his eyes answered,
Not a chance, sweetheart. I’m not leaving you out here alone,
a disconnected part of his brain registered that she was putting him first as he’d long dreamed. That she would rather die herself than risk him.
Can’t think about that now,
he warned himself as he thrust the thought aside.

“Step down, away from the gun,” the man ordered him, and again Cody obeyed. Time slowed to a crawl as his mind processed with incredible speed the data it had to work with, the same way it had when Keira had been dragged into the shack the first night he’d seen her. He knew instantly he had only one chance to rescue both of them, just as he’d known it then. It was a risk, but he’d taken bigger risks in his life before. This time, though, he wasn’t just risking his own life.

Then from nowhere a certainty settled over him, and he knew...
knew
...Keira would tell him to take the risk. He knew that her mind was working feverishly, too, weighing each option just as he was. And he knew they were on the same wavelength.

Patience,
he told her silently.
Patience.
If he could get the man to shift the gun into his left hand, and point it in his direction instead of at Keira’s head... At the bottom of the porch steps Cody stopped. “She’s armed, too,” he said calmly. “Shoulder holster under her left arm.”

She knows,
he told himself when Keira’s eyes didn’t accuse him of betrayal, just stared unwaveringly at him. But not by the flicker of an eyelash did he acknowledge that anything was coming.

A look of suspicion passed over the man’s face, and he hesitated, his eyes darting left and right as if he feared some kind of trap.
Come on, you son of a bitch,
Cody thought, easing imperceptibly forward on his toes.
Come on.

The seconds ticked away. Then the man’s left hand slid away from Keira’s mouth, across her breast, and under her arm. Cody could see the expression on the man’s face change the instant he felt the lump beneath Keira’s arm, could see the fear change to triumph, and then to frustration when he realized the angle of the holster containing Keira’s gun wouldn’t allow him to remove it with his left hand...not from behind Keira.
Exactly
as Cody had already known.

“Damn!” the man muttered. He backed away from Cody, dragging Keira with him, obviously wanting the safety of distance between them before attempting anything more. The man came to an abrupt stop thirty feet away and stared at Cody for a breathless minute. But Cody’s passive stance must have convinced the stranger he was no threat, not without a gun. Slowly, his eyes never leaving Cody’s face, the man shifted his own gun to his left hand, pointing it threateningly toward Cody. His right arm came around Keira, stretching awkwardly for the gun beneath her left arm.

“Now!” Cody shouted, and as if they’d rehearsed it in advance Keira jabbed her left elbow behind her, tearing herself away from the man’s grasp and swinging around behind him, her right hand reaching for her Glock.

Cody hit the ground in a controlled roll, simultaneously reaching for the knife in his boot. The stranger fired, but with the gun in his left hand the shot went wide. Before he could shift the gun back into his right hand, a flash of silver was winging its way through the air faster than the eye could follow, thudding into the brachial plexus region of the man’s left shoulder—precisely where Cody had been aiming.

The bearded stranger staggered back, the gun dropping helplessly from his suddenly nerveless left hand as he fell to his knees, his right hand scrabbling futilely at the blade embedded in his body. Then he pitched forward.

Her own gun drawn, Keira scooped up the stranger’s gun, then whirled to confront him. But Cody was there before her. Only then did Cody allow his rage to sweep aside every other consideration. He ruthlessly flipped the man over on to his back and put a knee on his chest, then dragged the knife out and held the blade to the man’s throat. Adrenaline pulsed through his body. A savage desire to slit the throat of the scum who had dared to hold a gun to Keira’s head swept through him, and he fought it until his muscles screamed.

Keira put a hand on his arm. “No,” she said breathlessly.

“You okay?” he asked her roughly without taking his eyes off the bearded face below him. The man was still breathing, but now that the blade had been withdrawn, blood seeped slowly high up on his left shoulder, staining the long-sleeved flannel shirt he wore. And his breath rasped in his throat. “Don’t even think of moving,” Cody told him in a voice like death.

“I’m fine,” Keira said. As if she knew the impulse he was fighting, she said, “Don’t, Cody. I’m fine.” She didn’t say anything more, just holstered her own weapon and moved quickly toward the porch to retrieve Cody’s Glock. She held it out to him with her left hand, her right hand still holding the stranger’s gun.

Dare to move,
Cody told the man in his mind as he changed the hand holding the knife to allow him to holster his gun with his right hand.
Come on, you son of a bitch,
he urged silently.
Give me a reason.
But the man didn’t even twitch a muscle.

“We need an ambulance,” Keira said after a minute, reaching for her cell phone. “We don’t want him to die.”

Yes, we do,
Cody thought, but he didn’t voice it because in the rational part of his brain he knew she was right. They needed this guy alive—able to answer questions—more than the short-lived satisfaction his death would give Cody. But that didn’t mean it was easy. Not by a long shot.

Cody’s jaw clenched.
It’s my fault,
he told himself ruthlessly.
I should have expected something like this. I should have been on my guard.
He’d let himself be distracted for those few minutes when he was talking to Keira, and she had almost paid the price of his carelessness.

How did he get here?
Cody wondered. He couldn’t have driven up after they had—no way the man could have gotten past the FBI agents at the base of the driveway, and besides, he or Keira would have heard a vehicle drive up and been alerted to his presence.
He must have come through the woods before we arrived and was waiting his chance. That’s the only possibility.

Keira was talking into her cell phone, giving precise directions to the emergency operator, when Cody heard the sound of gravel crunching beneath tires. He glanced up fleetingly and saw Callahan’s four-by-four whispering to a stop in front of the truck, before he returned his attention to the stranger.

Guns drawn, Callahan and McKinnon were suddenly there beside him. “What the hell happened?” Callahan growled.

“Ambulance is on its way,” Keira told them. “But it will take a while—we should see what we can do to stop the bleeding in the meantime.”

“I’ve got a first-aid kit in the house,” Callahan told her, heading for the back door. He returned in a minute. “Let him go, Walker,” he said in a deep voice that expressed understanding of the complex emotions driving Cody as well as concern for the wounded man. “I’ve got to see how badly he’s hurt.”

Cody drew a ragged breath. “He’ll live.” He abruptly pulled the blade away from the man’s throat. “I didn’t hit anything vital.”
But he might never use that arm again.
The thought bothered him not at all. Cody looked down, saw the stranger’s blood on his knife, and wiped it off on the man’s shirt before yielding his place to Callahan. “Watch him, McKinnon,” he said softly. “He had a gun to Keira’s head five minutes ago.”

McKinnon’s eyes changed from questioning concern to cold anger that came close to mirroring Cody’s own feelings. “That was his first mistake.” His SIG SAUER pointed at the man’s head. “Maybe he’ll make another one.” The threat...and the wish...were unmistakable.

Callahan was already unbuttoning the man’s shirt and pulling it open to reveal an ugly gash that still bled sluggishly. He whistled tunelessly between his teeth. “I think you’re right,” he told Cody. “It’s nasty, but it doesn’t look life-threatening.”

Cody bent and slid his knife into the sheath in his boot, then reached beneath the stranger, looking for identification. He found a wallet in a back pocket and, after a little difficulty, managed to extract it without interrupting Callahan’s work.

“Ted Danvers,” he read from the driver’s license, along with a Buffalo address. “Either one mean anything to you?” he asked Callahan, who already had a pressure bandage in place.

“No.” Callahan applied another strip of tape.

Cody rifled through the other items in the wallet: a couple of credit cards in the same name and some gas receipts. And almost four thousand dollars in cash—mostly large bills. Cody went through each bill carefully, making sure there wasn’t a piece of paper hidden between the bills. There wasn’t, but he noticed a couple of the hundreds had reddish-brown stains.
Blood?

An idea occurred to him, and he moved toward Keira, who still held Danvers’s gun. A detached corner of his brain noted the way she held herself so straight and unyielding after what she’d just gone through. Any other woman would be shaking. But not his Keira. He was so damned proud of her, his heart came near to bursting from his chest.

He held out his hand for the gun, but she must have known what was in his mind, because as she handed it to him she said softly, “It’s a .357.”

Just as softly, he said, “There are bloodstains on some of the money in his wallet.”

“You think...?”

“It’s possible. We need to get the gun and the wallet to the lab as soon as we can.”

He went to the back of the truck, searched for and found evidence bags. He had just finished sealing each item up and marking the bags with his initials and the date when he stopped short, a realization sweeping over him.

His gaze moved to Keira, standing with her back to him.
Maybe you don’t know it yet, sweetheart,
he told her in his mind.
But you trust me, all the way down to the soles of your feet. You knew I had a plan...and you trusted me to execute it with your help.
Heart, mind, body and soul. She trusted him...the way he needed her to.

He headed toward her, intent on only one thing. Keira’s gaze traveled from the stranger’s face to Cody’s as he approached her, and she asked in a level tone, “Do you think we should carry him into the house?”

“No!” the man on the ground gasped before he could stop himself.

Cody froze, then turned and stared down at Danvers in sudden comprehension. Before he could say anything, Callahan put his forearm across the man’s throat...and pressed. “That’s my home, you bastard,” he said in a deadly voice. “If there’s something you want to tell me, you’ve got ten seconds to speak. Otherwise, we’ll tie you up, carry you inside and leave you there...alone.”

Cody remembered the firebombs that had almost taken the lives of Mandy and Callahan six years ago, the firebombs that had destroyed Mandy’s house, this very house that Callahan had rebuilt himself for Mandy and their children. If Cody and Keira hadn’t returned when they had, if they hadn’t accidentally prevented this man’s escape, Keira would have been inside...

Rage, burning hot and icy cold, flooded his body again, the same way it had when he’d seen Danvers with a gun to Keira’s head. “Don’t wait,” he told Callahan, matching his deadly tone. “Just do it.”

Callahan nodded and said, “There’s a rope in the back of my four-by-four, Walker.” Cody took two steps.

“No!” the man croaked from fear and the pressure across his throat, but managed to add, “Bomb! Beneath the house.”

Cody heard Keira’s quickly indrawn breath. Callahan rose, and stood looking down at the man, a cold and deadly expression on his face that Cody understood and agreed with completely. Before Callahan could do or say anything, Cody jerked the man to his feet in one powerful motion. “In that case, you’re going to crawl under there and pull it out.”

Terrified, his left arm hanging almost useless, Danvers looked from Cody to Callahan to McKinnon. All three faces wore the same implacable expression. The man swallowed hard, then glanced at Keira.

“I’ll get the rope,” she told Cody, heading for the four-by-four.

“No!” The hoarse cry stopped Keira in her tracks, but she didn’t turn around. “I’ll do it,” Danvers said. “Just let me go,” he told Cody desperately. “There’s not much time left.”