Hush (27 page)

“I will be, won't I?” Bax sounded relieved. Then he frowned. “Who gets the car?”

“I do,” Finn said. “You take a taxi to the airport and get a rental. Get started right now, and you should be on the road to Stringtown within the hour. We'll probably be about five to six hours behind you.” Finn reached into his pocket and drew out a burner phone—he kept a collection in his suitcase for precisely this type of situation—and handed it to Bax. “When everything's set, use this phone to call me and let me know. Don't use your regular phone.” Which the Bureau might very well have somebody monitoring. “Got it?”

Bax nodded. “Got it.”

“Good man.” Finn clapped him on the shoulder in the kind of
gosh-we're-buds
gesture he knew Bax could relate to, which seemed to please him.

“I'm on it,” Bax said again as he closed the door. Finn headed back to his own room.

Where he got to lie down on the floor and, instead of falling instantly asleep as he'd trained himself to do, tried to keep his mind off how much he wanted to crawl into bed with the woman he suspected of lying to him with practically every word she uttered.

It didn't help that, when he'd opened the door to reenter his room, the wedge of light from the hall had fallen squarely across the bed.

Riley must have gotten too warm, because she'd kicked off the covers. Sound asleep, she was lying on her stomach with his T-shirt hiked up around her waist. The sight of her sweet, sexy ass in nothing but a pair of tiny pink panties hit him like a lightning bolt to the crotch.

After years spent in the highly dangerous, highly stressful world of an undercover operative, he'd learned the art of snatching a few hours' sleep, whenever, wherever, and however he could. Lots of times, he'd figured he wouldn't live out the next twenty-four hours, and still he'd slept like a baby. Right now, though, sleep proved to be beyond him. Why? Because he was tormented by images of a truly world-class ass in a pair of itty-­bitty, silky pink panties every time he closed his eyes.

W
hen the alarm went off on her phone, Riley sat bolt upright, startled awake. She was groggy, and it took her a moment to assimilate her surroundings: big, rumpled bed, not hers; gloomy, unattractive room, also not hers.

A tall, buff guy wearing nothing but a white towel hitched around his waist appearing along with a puff of steam in the lighted bathroom doorway to frown at her.

Definitely not hers.

Finn.

She blinked at him, bemused. Then, grabbing for her phone, which was chiming insistently from the night table beside the bed, she shut the sound off.

Last night, before falling asleep, she'd set her alarm for 6:30 a.m. It was, she confirmed with a glance at her phone, a few minutes past that time.

Emma
. The events of the previous night came crashing down on her.

I have to tell Margaret
.

Her stomach knotted. She took a quick, pained breath, drawing the air in through her teeth.

“You snore,” Finn said. There was no identifiable expression on his face as his eyes ran over her.

The covers were bunched somewhere south of her feet: she must have kicked them off during the night. His too-big T-shirt had twisted around her as she slept. A downward glance told her that the white cotton hugged her breasts closely, molding the soft curves to the point where the jut of her nipples was clearly visible against the fabric. The hem was hiked up above the top of her thighs, giving him an unimpeded view of her bare legs and, she feared, even a peek at her panties.

“I do not.” Adjusting the tee with a quick tug, she scooted off the bed. Then she remembered the screwdriver, and frowned. Against all odds, once she'd fallen asleep she'd slept like the dead. So, maybe—“Did I?”

“Like a chain saw.”

“If I did, it was the vodka. So you can just blame yourself,” she retorted, keeping her composure even as the intimacy of the situation threatened to render her tongue-tied. Or maybe it was the sight of Finn in a towel: heavily muscled shoulders, brawny arms, a wide, honed chest above a noticeable six-pack. A nice wedge of black chest hair that narrowed down to a slim line that disappeared beneath the towel that rode low on his lean hips. Innie belly button. Long, strong legs. Bare feet.

Her pulse was picking up the pace, Riley realized. And her breasts were tightening and swelling against the fabric and her body was quickening.

It occurred to her that neither of them was saying anything, and her eyes flew to his face to find that he was looking at her breasts.

He must have felt the weight of her gaze, because his eyes lifted to meet hers.

In that brief, unguarded moment, his eyes gleamed with unmistakable sexual intent. As she recognized that, her heart beat faster. Unexpected little darts of excitement raced through her bloodstream.

Awareness hung in the air between them, hot and steamy as the vapor drifting out of the bathroom around him.

All of a sudden, she was possessed by a nearly irresistible impulse to grab the hem of the T-shirt she was wearing and pull it over her head and let it drop to the floor. Naked except for her panties, she would walk over to him, tug at that towel . . .

His mouth hardened. A kind of shutter seemed to drop over his eyes. They went unreadable, opaque.

She wasn't fooled. She'd seen the fierce carnality in his gaze.

He wanted her. She had no doubt about that whatsoever. What made it so difficult was that she also wanted him.

And they were alone and half naked and there was a bed and . . .

Stop.

“I'm done in here. Be my guest,” he said, as cool as if he'd never heard of sex, as if the air wasn't thick with it.

“Thanks.”

He moved to the closet and opened the door, and she walked past him into the bathroom.

And made the mistake of glancing at him as she did.

He had his back to her. A few stray water droplets glistened in his hair, and his shoulders—his wide, bare shoulders—flexed as he reached inside the closet for his clothes. His strong back, the classic V of his torso, the slightly damp bronze of his skin, drew her eyes, made her breathing quicken and her pulse flutter.

He was so very male.

He was naked beneath that towel.

She wanted to touch him. No—she wanted to fuck him.

There it was, the truth, put in the crudest possible terms.

Forget it. There's too much at stake to—literally—screw it up.

Closing the bathroom door and shutting herself in against temptation, she found herself wrapped in the warm, steamy air from his shower. She smelled the faint scent of menthol, saw his razor on the vanity, and realized that he had shaved: his square jaw had been minus last night's stubble.

She was just getting all intrigued at the thought of Finn shaving when she saw something else on the vanity: her purse.

It was a small purse, expensive, quilted black leather, discreet designer logo. A long, cross-body strap. The top closed with a zipper. The zipper could be locked closed by securing the pull with a small leather tab.

Last night, she'd taken it with her when she'd gone into the bathroom, and left it there. She hadn't thought a thing about it.

Until now, when she saw that it was zipped tight and the leather tab was snapped closed.

She never, ever used that leather tab.

Finn had gone through her purse.

Outrage flooded her, and reality followed close on its heels.

He might be protecting her, and she might be depending on him to save Emma and keep the bad guys from the door.

But she couldn't trust him.

He was still an investigator, and she was part of his investigation. The key to it, even.

The stupidest thing she could do would be to let herself forget:
we're not on the same side.

If she'd been toying with the idea of laying the whole sorry story out for him, of asking his advice on how best to handle it, of throwing herself and Margaret on his mercy, she was now officially over it. Telling him that she knew where the money was could only end in 1) all the money, including Margaret's, falling into government hands; 2) at best, klieg lights of suspicion focusing on her and Margaret; or 3) the loss of any leverage she had to get federal authorities to help in saving Emma. Without the giant carrot of the missing money to keep them interested, Finn—and whatever resources he was bringing to bear to find Emma—might well disappear.

Knowledge is power, she reminded herself grimly. Once she shared what she knew, her power to get anybody to do anything would be gone, too. She would basically be at the mercy of the government.

Of Finn.

Yeah. Not gonna happen
.

Blocking Finn and everything else out of her mind, she made quick preparations for what was sure to be a long and harrowing
day: she took a shower, washed and blow-dried her hair, applied a minimum amount of makeup from the small kit in her purse, and popped more Tylenol. The only thing she had to wear was her dress from the night before, and it was in the closet. Wrapping herself in a towel, she stepped out of the bathroom.

Finn stood in front of the window—the curtains were open now, allowing pale, early morning sunlight to flood the room—talking on his cell phone. He was wearing one of his white shirts with charcoal-gray trousers, and, having apparently heard the bathroom door open, he broke off his conversation and turned to look at her as she emerged.

Sweeping him with an unsmiling glance, feeling his gaze on her all the while, Riley retrieved her clothes from the closet and went back into the bathroom to dress.

Even though she'd done her best to brush it off the night before, the sparkly evening dress still had dust on it. She put it on anyway: she would change into clean clothes at Margaret's. Her ruined pantyhose had been discarded the night before. Without them, the bruises on her legs were noticeable, but there was nothing she could do about that.

Slipping her bare feet into her too-high-for-daytime heels, she picked up her purse and left the bathroom.

“Ready?” Finn cocked an eyebrow at her as she walked out into the bedroom. He was knotting his tie in front of the mirror over the chest. It was such a domestic kind of thing to be doing, and he looked so damned sexy doing it, that her heart picked up the pace and she felt herself growing all warm inside simply from watching. As soon as she realized where her unwary libido was
taking her
again,
she stiffened and her indignation at him bubbled up before she could put a lid on it.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked. She was standing near him, just a few feet from the chest. Her tone was polite. Too polite, as she watched him raise his clean-shaven, deeply tanned, and way too masculine chin as he pulled the long end of his tie down through the knot. He threw her a bemused glance. “What?”

“In my purse. When you searched it.”

He frowned at her as he eased the knot up into position and smoothed the tie with one hand. “What are you talking about?”

“I know you were in my purse. You made a mistake: I never snap this little tab.” She wiggled the tab in question at him by way of illustration.

His eyes as they met hers were totally unreadable. “When I went into the bathroom, your purse had fallen over on its side. Some things were spilling out. I pushed them back in and zipped it up so it wouldn't happen again.”

The explanation was reasonable. It might, Riley thought as she held his gaze, even be true. Then again, it might not be. She couldn't actually remember whether she had zipped her purse closed before leaving the bathroom the night before, so she had no way of knowing for sure.

“Oh,” was what she said. Kind of anticlimactic, she had to admit.

“Yeah,
oh
.”

“I'm sorry if I was wrong.”

“You should be.”

His gaze swept her. She turned away, walking toward the window, and was conscious of him watching her as she stopped to look out. It was going to be another hot one. The sun was already bright and it was—a glance at the clock told her—not quite 7 a.m. Traffic was moving along the street in front of the hotel. She could see a gas station with a convenience store attached, a strip of small businesses including a pizzeria, a payday loan establishment, a dry cleaners, and an apartment building.

Somewhere out there, Emma was enduring God knew what.

Her hands, which had been casually resting on the windowsill, clenched into fists.

Finn said, “You always dress like that for work?”

Her brows twitched together. She swung around to face him. “Like what?”

He was shrugging into his shoulder holster. Who would have guessed, she thought semi-bitterly, that she apparently had a thing for men with guns?

“Like you're on the hunt for rich husband number two.”

“What?” That was so outrageous that she glared at him. “For your information—not that it's any of your business—I had no idea Jeff was rich when I met him. He was just this really sweet, cute, kind of lonely guy. And as for husband number two”—she laughed—“that's a joke. You couldn't give me one on a platter, rich or not. And yes, I always dress like this for that particular job. Don expects me to.”

“Oh, yeah. Don.” Finn was in front of the closet now, pulling on his jacket, solid charcoal gray like the trousers. “Mr. Cowboy Hat with the five kids who can't keep his hands off you. He who you're after?”

Sparks shot from Riley's eyes. He met her furious glare blandly. She was just about to let fly with a suggestion for what he could do with himself and his dirty mind when something about his expression, about the quirk at the corner of his mouth, about the way he was watching her, clued her in to the truth. Her anger dissipated like air escaping from a balloon. Her expression must have changed, because he lifted his eyebrows at her and said, “What?”