Hide and Seek (2 page)

Was she?

Lisa had asked all those things in reply, but Kyle didn’t answer back. His private cell—the number only she had access to according to him, had gone dead.

And that, more than anything else, had terrified her.

He’d always been her protector, from the time they were kids, bouncing through one foster home to another after their so-called parents had lost custody of them to the State of Ohio. Kyle had always looked out for her, kept her safe.

He’d always looked after her, even when he was on active combat duty overseas. And later, too, after his service to the country had taken on a more clandestine purpose that he’d refused to divulge to her.

All that changed about three years ago. Lisa didn’t know why. She only knew that her strong, doting older brother had suddenly stopped calling to check in on her. No more emails or texts, and no replies when she tried to reach him.

There had been no more postcards from far-flung places—silly, unexpected notes that always held the power to make her feel that no matter where his duties had taken him, Kyle was still close. Still watching over his kid sister—his Little Lisa Lizard—a nickname he’d given her when they were kids and had affectionately used with her ever since.

No, the last time Lisa had seen Kyle, he’d acted strange, paranoid somehow. He’d tried to brush off her concern, but she knew him too well. He’d been involved in something mysterious. Dangerous, she’d guessed, even then.

And now this.

Fresh fear streaked through her as she picked up her pace, running now, needing to get out of the wet and cold before she collapsed. She misjudged her step across a patch of loamy ground littered with old leaves and pinecones. Her ankle twisted as the earth gave way beneath her foot.

She slid off balance and the slippery ground took her down.

She made a flailing grasp at the branches overhead, but her wet fingers closed on nothing but empty air. She fell hard, dropping flat on her ass down a shallow, sodden incline.

Dammit.

A miserable-sounding groan leaked out of her as the rain continued to pelt her and her ankle sparked with pain from the fall. Wet leaves and pine needles clung to her everywhere. And in the distance, lightning cracked, briefly illuminating the vastness of her surroundings and what might yet prove to be a massive mistake.

And as a roll of thunder set a tremor in the earth beneath her, Lisa heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked from the top of the incline at her back.

“Move a muscle, motherfucker, and I’ll blow your damn head off.”

She froze instantly, even as the deep, dark molasses sound of John Duarte’s voice and Southern accent set her pulse racing with relief. “Don’t shoot.” She swallowed, tried to catch her racing breath. Rain pelting her hooded head, she braved a slight glance over her shoulder. “John, don’t shoot. It’s me, Lisa. Um...Lisa Becker.”

There was silence for a brief moment, then Duarte’s curse hissed out on a sharp exhalation. She heard movement behind her, heard him disarm his weapon before he started scrambling down into the sodden trench to reach her. He gave her his hand and helped her to her feet. “Lisa. Jesus fucking Christ.”

She hadn’t expected a warm greeting, but his disapproving scowl stung anyway.

Her first glimpse of him took her aback. He looked very different now, even in the dark. A beard covered part of his cheeks and square jaw. His espresso-brown hair was longer, thick waves instead of the high-and-tight Marine trim he’d always worn whenever Lisa had seen him before.

But, oh God, he was just as heartbreakingly handsome as ever. Still had those dark, intense eyes that could melt a woman right out of her panties. And that line of perfect white teeth that was so devastating when he smiled, but was currently bared at her in a snarl.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Now that she was standing in front of him, even though he couldn’t look less pleased to see her, emotions rose up on Lisa like a wave. Her words tumbled out in a breathless rush. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, anyone else to trust...”

His expression hardened even more as she spoke. “Tell me why you’re here, Lisa.”

“It’s Kyle.” She saw suspicion edge into Duarte’s level gaze at the mention of her brother’s name. Along with an instant flicker of concern. She was tempted to call it dread. “I think something’s happened to him, John. Something really bad. He tried to send me a warning today. I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do.”

Duarte ground out another low curse. “We shouldn’t talk out here.” Calm words, but there was an intensity in the way he lifted his head to scan the dark forest that surrounded them. “You came alone?”

“Yes,” she said, shuddering as a chill swept over her.

He grunted, but his frown didn’t lessen. “Let’s get out of the rain.”

She took a step and grimaced as her ankle protested the shift of her weight.

He eyed her with a scowl. “You’re injured?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. When I slipped, I twisted my ankle a little, but I’m—”

Duarte didn’t wait for her to explain any further.

Hoisting her up onto his shoulder as if her hundred-and-thirty-odd pounds was no effort at all, he carried her out of the trench like a wounded soldier and didn’t put her down until they had reached his cabin.

3

Duarte sat Lisa down on his couch then went into the bathroom to grab a couple of fresh towels out of the cabinet. As he collected what he needed, he stole a quick glance into the other room where she waited. Huddled in her wet jacket, she shivered on the edge of the cushion, her hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks, water dripping off the shoulder-length strands.

Christ, after all this time, it really was her.

The reality of it knocked him back. Just as it had the moment he’d realized it was her lying outside in the muddy wash down by the cabin’s trail, his gun trained on her in the dark.

Lisa.

Lisa Becker, she’d said. As if he needed the clarification.

Sure, it had been a while, but she was his best friend’s sister. Duarte had known her for a few years before they last saw each other, and hell, it wasn’t like he was going to forget her.

No, he recalled every square inch of her... more intimately than either of them had planned on that day he’d brought her up to the cabin five years ago.

It had been a momentary loss of sanity—and control—for both of them. More so for him.

His best friend’s little sister, for fuck’s sake. Though even then, at twenty-three, Lisa had been plenty old enough to make her own decisions.

Looking at her sitting in his living room now, Duarte had to blink a couple of times to convince his brain that this wasn’t some twisted repeat of that other time. Five years ago, she’d sat in that very same spot. Except that time she’d been smiling and happy, wearing a strapless, pale peach bridesmaid dress and high-heeled sandals, not shuddering and breathless in a sodden, leaf-littered T-shirt and jeans, and leather flats caked with mud.

On that other night, she’d waited for him there on the couch with the jacket from his dress blues draped over her shoulders, her soft, light-brown hair swept up off her neck in some kind of complicated bun that they’d wrecked moments later in his bed.

At the memory of it, Duarte’s skin got a bit too tight, too warm.

Lisa hadn’t aged in the least since he saw her last. She was waterlogged and pale from cold and exhaustion, but damn if the sight of her didn’t kick his heartbeat up a gear.

He wanted to dismiss the sudden hammer of his pulse as leftover adrenaline from the thought of an intruder skulking up his mountainside. Or that it was just his old Marine protector instincts firing to life after learning something had scared her enough to send her racing off into the night to find him.

Anything to keep from admitting that five years and a hundred bad twists of fate later, he still couldn’t look at this woman without feeling an unwanted surge of possessiveness and need.

Which was a bad idea for many reasons, then and now. Especially now.

Duarte closed the cabinet and walked out with the towels in hand. She swiveled her head toward him, her hazel gaze hesitant, uncertain. She’d come all this way, but the look on her face said she was having serious second thoughts. No doubt, she couldn’t escape the recollection of the night they had spent here together either.

Nor the morning afterward, when daylight brought them back to their senses—back to reality—and they’d parted with a shared awkward, unspoken regret. The last they’d seen of each other in all this time.

God, how scared and desperate did she have to be, to come looking for him, of all people?

Had it been anyone else on his property tonight, he would have sent them right back down the mountain. At the business end of his pistol, if need be.

He should probably get rid of her as quickly as possible, too, but he couldn’t even think about doing that until he knew she was okay.

And not until she told him what was going on with Kyle.

Duarte set the towels on the arm of the couch as he approached her. “How’s your ankle?”

She nodded. “It’s fine. Just a minor sprain at most.” Her teeth chattered as she spoke. “Like I told you outside, it’s nothing.”

He grunted and held out his hand to her. “Stand up, but keep your weight off it. You can hang on to me while I help you out of that wet jacket.”

She obeyed, her hands warm on his shoulders as she let him pull the jacket off one of her arms, then the other. She wore a small backpack, which felt almost as soaked as the rest of her. He took it off and set it down on the couch beside her.

Dressed in a business-casual gray button-down and black pants, Lisa was quiet as he wrapped her in one towel, then dried some of the rain from her hair with the other.

Duarte worked robotically, the way he would if he was in the field taking care of a wounded comrade. Except this wasn’t a fellow Marine.

Against his will, he registered the vanilla scent of her warming skin and the sweet smell of her wet, honey-brown hair. He tried like hell to stifle his awareness of her, but his body’s reaction was faster than his reason.

And shit, wasn’t that always the case when he was near Lisa?

Duarte cleared his throat. Definitely not the time or place to be reacquainting himself with her curves and her scent, or his instinctual response to having her so close to him again.

He put the towel aside and eased her back to a seat on the couch. “Tell me what happened.” His voice was a dry growl in his throat. “You said you talked to Kyle today?”

Lisa shook her head. “I’ve only seen and talked to him once in the past three years. Until I got his text today.”

She reached into her backpack and took out her cell phone. Turning it on, she handed it over.

Duarte read the one-word text message and frowned.
What the hell?

The text was troubling, but that didn’t mean it was from her brother. It could have come from anyone. It could be a prank or some idiot kid’s idea of a joke. It could be a text sent to her by mistake.

Or it could be something else. Something worse, that he didn’t want to consider when the prospect of something worse involved Lisa.

“If you haven’t heard from him in so long, why do you think this is from him?”

“It came from Kyle’s phone number. A number he gave me the last time I saw him. He told me it was a secret number, one only the two of us would know about.”

Fuck. Some of Duarte’s skepticism faded as Lisa spoke.

He didn’t like where this was heading. Every covert operative in the Phoenix program had received explicit instructions to cut all ties to the people in their former lives should the highly classified program ever be compromised. Kyle knew the importance of those orders as well as Duarte did. Kyle knew it as well as the others in the program who’d all learned three years ago that its founder, Henry Sheppard, was dead and Phoenix itself betrayed by lethal, unknown enemies who intended to see the rest of the operatives terminated, too.

What the hell was Lisa’s brother thinking, putting her at risk by giving her an active connection to him—even a secret one?

Duarte never would have taken that chance. Then again, he’d never had family worth worrying about, so he was the last person to try to understand that kind of bond.

“Do you know where Kyle is now?”

“No.” Lisa stared at Duarte, worry filling her gaze. “I texted him back right after I got his message, but he didn’t respond. When I called the number a minute later, it was out of service. It’s as if he sent the message, then vanished into thin air. I’m scared for him, Johnny.”

Duarte steeled himself to the sound of his name on her lips like that. No one called him Johnny. No one else would dare.

But Lisa... she’d christened him with the diminutive nickname the first day they were introduced by Kyle on the base at Camp Lejeune. He, the big badass Marine just out of boot camp, and she the bubbly, freckle-faced sixteen-year-old sister of the second-toughest son of a bitch Duarte would ever know.

“Any idea where your brother’s been these past few years?”

She shook her head. “I was hoping maybe you could tell me that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t have that answer.”

“Would you tell me if you did?” She studied him for a moment, as though weighing her words. Torment and thinly held fear clouded her light hazel gaze. It killed him to see her so distressed, looking for answers she would be better off not knowing. “If you feel like you have to protect me from the truth, don’t. I know Kyle got involved in something classified while he was in the Marines. Something covert.” When Duarte neither confirmed nor denied it, she exhaled a short sigh. “How dangerous was it for him, John?”

He held his careful expression in check. “I can’t tell you anything about that either, Lisa. I’m sorry.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?” When he didn’t respond, she glanced away from him. “What about Alec? Would he know how to find my brother?”

Duarte reflected on the third member of his former posse. The trifecta. The three musketeers. The bond that cemented their friendship and went beyond their service to their country. “It’s been longer than three years since any of us have been in contact. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t tell you where Alec or Kyle is now, or what they might be doing.”