Lie with Me (7 page)

“When you step in it, you really step in it.”

“Yeah, thanks.” He paused. “I found a picture of Gabriel.” It had been in Sky’s things, her wallet, which Cam had searched on his way to the bathroom. Gabriel had been younger, but it was him. Cam had taken a picture of the photo with his cell phone and he emailed it to Dylan even as they spoke. “I thought maybe, with the new information about the Outlaw Angel in jail …”

Another man who’d known Howie. It would probably yield nothing, just like all the others, but Cam would keep trying, even though he actually already had the leverage he needed in the next room. He was always big on backup plans.

“Good, that’s good. Look, I’ll get more information—about Gabriel and the OA lead,” his friend promised.

“I’m staying put tonight. Storm’s too bad to risk it. I’ll move out with her tomorrow, head to the first location,” Cam said. He and Dylan had carefully mapped a zigzag route that would keep Skylar off balance and everyone else off his tail. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“Could be anything. Watch your back as carefully as you watch hers,” Dylan advised before clicking off.

Cam could’ve sworn he’d heard salsa music in the background and wondered what the hell his friend was up to now. He left the phone on the counter and looked out the window. The snow was piling up already—fat flakes that came down hard enough that visibility was fucked.

It had been a night like this when he’d been arrested—driving his hog through the snow because he’d been young and stupid and distraught—something he’d stopped himself from telling Skylar. He’d been damned close, though. She was far too easy to talk to.

She understood.

Earlier, he’d watched her hands fist on the table in front of her, her voice holding a bleak despair that had cut him to his soul. That told him what she was feeling when she spoke about her work, and her father.

The night of the murders and Cam’s subsequent arrest was still vague—a shake at three
A.M
., his father whispering, “Cover for me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He’d done what his father had asked, headed two doors down with the key his father had given him and grabbed the mail off the dining room table.

And saw the two dead bodies lying side by side on the floor, the blood pooling around their heads still fresh. And then he’d backed out of the house, unable to tear his eyes away from the gory scene in front of him—and finally left. Ran, actually.

He had no idea when doing so that he’d be indicted for the death of the two FBI agents found murdered at that house. When the police pulled him over on his Harley, lights flashing and sirens blazing, Cam hadn’t argued. And something inside of him had died when he’d realized just how easily his father had set him up.

A war hero, a former Special Operations specialist, Howie Moore’d had a brilliant future … and no honor. That’s what Gabriel had told Cam in that small interrogation room at the prison.

No honor, not like you have
, Gabriel said.

In the beginning, Cam had been so grateful. Even though he’d realized that Gabriel would own him for a while, Cam had agreed, and was given a clean record, an admission to the Army, and placed on the fast track, first to Ranger School and then onto Delta Force.

After prison, it had taken him a little while to get used to the team motto. Didn’t think he could—didn’t want to—trust anyone beyond himself, but he’d learned. Struggled. Worked his ass off. And in those dark spaces he tried so hard to block from his memory, he followed Gabriel Creighton’s off-the-record orders.

The first years, the missions were similar to his Delta ones. Cam got the feeling he was being groomed, as if prepping to become part of Gabriel’s private army, his personal arsenal of tricks.

He wasn’t innocent. Not by a long shot. But as a member of Delta Force, he knew what side of the law he was on, however thin the line was sometimes. He was proud as hell of the work he’d done with his team.

With Delta Force, he knew the
why
of the missions. And even if some of them turned his stomach, he recognized ultimately, that they were for the greater good—of his country, of any country they were attempting to help.

With Gabriel’s missions, he was never privy to the reasons behind the task, never knew if he was truly helping anyone. Being at the end of someone’s fucking puppet strings like that twisted his horns, made his normally calm demeanor trigger to instant anger.

And then the jobs for Gabriel increased in quantity and grew exponentially trickier. When Cam balked, that’s when he learned the truth, that he would always be under the threat of being sent back to jail and having the life he’d built for himself taken from him.

Gabriel made sure to emphasize that noncompliance would get him thrown back into his life sentences in the blink of an eye.

And so Cam lived in the prison of Gabriel’s making, year after year, praying that his time in hell would soon be done.

They were black ops missions, which meant they didn’t officially exist. If Cam was captured or jailed, no one would come to get him. And in that precarious and frightening world, he learned that he’d never really left prison.

With Delta, he had his team. Led his team. They reported to him, admired him, counted on him—and he was damned good at keeping his men alive and well. Even when the op required him to work alone, his team was always close, surveilling. They would never leave him behind as long as there was breath in their bodies. And still, apart from missions, Cam couldn’t allow himself to get close to any of them on a personal level.

Dylan Scott had gotten in under the wire with his friendship, before Cam realized just how insidious Gabriel’s reach would be. Until he began to suspect that Gabriel had been the reason he’d been framed for murder in the first place.

And now Dylan had proven his loyalty once again by giving Cam the information about Skylar. If he’d met Dylan later than he had, Cam never would’ve trusted the man enough to give him a chance to prove that loyalty. But fate had intervened, and now Cam wasn’t sure what he would’ve done all these years without his friend.

Cam had never spoken about his dad to anyone but Dylan—and even then, he’d glossed over a lot of it, hadn’t let his emotions show through. Had pretended it didn’t matter, when it had, when every choice he made in life was colored by that moment in time he’d been betrayed.

He would never let it happen again—not by Gabriel, or by his daughter.

T
he words came. She’d felt the familiar urge hit, a strange sensation Skylar nearly didn’t recognize, and she couldn’t get to the computer fast enough.

With the only light the battery power of her monitor, she typed furiously as the storm turned from snow to sleet, and hail battered the townhouse, the tap-tap of the keys keeping time with the howl of the wind as she raced the storm, as if needing to harness its power.

Her fingers ached when she was done—nearly twenty pages in a short span of time—and her body sagged from mental exhaustion.

Spent, she sat back and took a breath, well aware she’d been holding it on and off as she wrote, the words tumbling out of her. She saved her work on the memory stick as the last of her battery power wore away.
Mental note: Charge the damned thing every once in a while, Sky, okay?

She was more than satisfied. So was Violet McCabe, the futuristic bounty hunter and all around kick-ass lead character of Skylar’s latest series.

Violet, who had all the physical strength that Sky herself didn’t.
Yet
, she told herself fiercely. Soon she’d be back running and lifting weights, the way she had before.

Violet’s words at the end of the scene she’d just written echoed in her head.
Don’t count me out. Ever
.

But even as her heroine threw out those last, cocky words, Sky doubted herself. Could it really be this easy again? Would the words come back tomorrow?

The monitor flickered in warning and she shut the laptop down and closed the lid. Suddenly, with the light gone, the storm turned from her ally to her enemy, as every sound became someone scratching at the door to get in.

She almost called for Cam, then heard the running water and realized he was showering.

Instead, she reached for her BlackBerry and noted that she had a few bars of service. Spotty, but enough, and so she quickly dialed her father’s number, and got his voice mail message. Again. “Hey, it’s me. I just wanted to let you know that Cameron Moore is here—he told me you sent him. Can you please call me, though? I need to speak to—”

Dead air. Well, at least hopefully the message had gotten through.

Cameron Moore is here. And he seems to get me
.

Holding a lantern, she walked along the hallway in the suddenly too dark townhouse until she reached the bathroom.

He’d left the door open. With his own lantern on the countertop, she could look at the half-steamed mirror and see him through the clear-glass shower door.

She wanted to look away but couldn’t. Soap slid between his shoulder blades, over the ridge of his lower back, coursing down thighs, which were solid ridges of muscles, as were his calves, and his feet … yes, they were large.

Stupid wives’ tale, she told herself, even as he turned around—and no, this was definitely not an old wives’ tale.

It was only then she realized he could see her watching him if he turned his face toward the mirror. And still she didn’t move, running her gaze up his body toward his face when he turned the water off.

She moved to leave the doorway and her ankle caught on the doorjamb and twisted—she cried out and went down hard.

Cam was by her side in seconds, still dripping wet, towel around his waist. “You okay?”

He’d shaved his face clean, making his blue eyes stand out in stark relief, his chiseled cheekbones striking. His hair was wet, slicked back, and he was seriously, devastatingly handsome.

Her face flushed hot. If he knew she’d been spying, he didn’t say … but something about the look in his eyes told her he guessed.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, and then, in the next breath, she corrected herself. “No, I’m not fine. I haven’t been fine for a long time.”

He remained on his knees, next to her, listening.

“But here with you, I feel like I can be fine. I want to be fine.” She reached up tentatively, slid her hands over his shoulders, feeling the slick, damp skin that was hot under her fingers.

“Sky …” His tone held a warning, letting her know she was about to push things too far with her soft touch, but she couldn’t stop now. Wanted to play with fire.

She trailed her hands down his chest, stopping midway, tracing the cuts on his abs with a finger.

When she looked up at him, he nearly lost it. He’d been hard from the second he’d caught her looking at him, but now, watching her studying his body … wanting him, his blood surged.

“We can’t do this,” he heard himself say—the voice of reason.

“I want you, Cam. Please, don’t turn me down.”

Jesus H. Christ. He didn’t say anything, and her hand moved down farther, until it rested where the ends of his towel tucked into each other.

Her next words were halting. “I haven’t … not for a long time. A couple of years.”

“Years?”

“I know—hard for a man to understand, I’m sure.” She shrugged to hide her embarrassment, but her cheeks betrayed her by flushing hot. “It’s not that I haven’t thought about it, wanted it …”

She swallowed hard and moved her hand. “I can’t believe I asked you. I’m sorry.”

She made a move to rise, but he stopped her. “It’s okay that you asked,” he said, because sleeping with her was all part of the plan.

Sleeping with her would be the worst thing he could possibly do. But right now, it was the only thing he wanted.

With that, he lifted her from the floor in one swift, sure movement and carried her into the bedroom.

CHAPTER

4

T
he bed was soft, inviting—like Sky. When Cam placed her on the mattress, a part of him said,
Leave her
.

The other, more demanding part had been fully engaged from the time he’d sensed her watching him in the shower.

He hadn’t kissed her yet, simply lowered his body to hers in a way that was far too familiar for the strangers they were.

Except they weren’t strangers any longer, hadn’t been since he’d told her about his life growing up. Willingly.

Dammit.

He realized he’d been tracing a finger along the side of her neck while she stared at him. Her hands were still fisted around his biceps, and when he shifted, his towel slipped off, remained between them, along with her clothing.

The cool air played on his still-damp back and he fought a shiver. “Has it really been that long for you?”

Her cheeks flushed. “Why would I lie about that?”

In his experience, women—everyone—lied about nearly everything, in order to get what they wanted. Sky had grown up with a professional liar. Had she known that, been able to see right through it?

Would she be able to see through him? “I don’t think you’d make that up, no.”

Two fingers, pressed to the pulse point on the side of her neck. Her pulse was fast, practically jumping against his skin.

Could he kill her? Dylan could, would if necessity reared its head; he was ruthless in all things, love and war.

Cam could be so as well, had emotion trained out of him for situations like this. And he flashed back to a different time and place with a much different woman underneath him, one as ruthless and hardened as Cam had once thought he was. One who’d planned on killing him before he killed her.

He’d thought she was innocent. Even so, he’d let his guard down too far. She’d tried to slice his throat and his balls all at once.

It had taken him a long time after that mission to bed a woman. The few times he had, he’d ended up tying their hands just so he could come and get it over with faster.

The women he’d picked hadn’t seemed to mind. And so far, the images of violence still mingled in his thoughts during sex.