Lord of the Wolfyn and Twin Targets (30 page)

Sydney’s stomach did a nasty little shimmy. “Suddenly this is sounding way too familiar.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He paused. “Her tips were good, and suddenly we were making more progress against Trehern than we’d ever managed before. After a few smaller takedowns, the task force leaders trusted her—I trusted her—and based on her information, we planned to close the net on Trehern for good. There was no way we were letting him wiggle out this time. We had everything sewn up tight. I thought—” He broke off and grimaced. “We had talked about after, about there maybe being a future for us.”

The shimmy edged toward full-on nausea at the parallels. “Go on.”

“It probably doesn’t take a brilliant research scientist to guess she double-crossed me…us. She’d been working for Trehern all along, feeding us whatever tidbits of information he wanted us to have, leading us straight into a trap. If it weren’t for the one remaining guy we had on the inside, the enforcer, William Caine, the whole thing would’ve gone to hell. As it was, I lost two good men and the total casualty count in the task force was in the dozens. We got Trehern, but the cost was high. Too high.”

And he blamed himself for the deaths, Sydney realized. As far as he was concerned, those agents had died because he’d trusted the wrong woman.

The knowledge definitely helped explain his reaction to the phony email. But just as definitely, it set off serious warning bells. “I’ve got to tell you, I’m a little freaked out by the similarities.”

“Trust me, you’re not the only one.”

“Did you…” She paused, trying to figure out what she really wanted to know. “Did you feel the same way about her that you feel about me?”

He took her hands in his. “God help me, I don’t know the answer to that.”

It wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. But one thing she knew about him was that he’d never tell her what she wanted to hear, just for the sake of placating her.

At the moment, his honesty was cold comfort.

“I wasn’t brought up with a whole lot of affection,” he continued, “and this isn’t exactly a job that encourages touchy-feeliness. Rose brought out something in me that I wasn’t used to. Something I liked. And yes, you make me feel some of the same things, but it’s different.
You’re
different.”

“Right. Because I’m not still working for Tiberius.”

He squeezed her hands in his and moved closer still. “It’s more than that. You’re…more of a whole person than Rose was. You’re out there, making things happen. Not always the right thing, granted, but you’re trying to fix what you did wrong. I admire that, even if I don’t always agree with your methods.”

“Was there a compliment in there somewhere?” Sydney asked. “I couldn’t tell.” But she felt herself softening.

She told herself not to forgive him this easily, but she could already tell it was a losing battle. He believed her. Wasn’t that enough?

“Yeah.” His chuckle sounded tired. “I think so. There should’ve been, anyway.” He crowded closer, still holding her hands. Their knees bumped together and his eyes were very close to hers, and if she’d wanted to—if she’d been ready to after what’d just happened between them—she could’ve leaned in and kissed him.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Not after what had just happened, what she’d just learned.

“Can I trust you not to knee-jerk believe the worst of me again?” she asked quietly. “I don’t want to be involved in…whatever this is, if I’m going to be constantly on the defensive. Is it enough for me to tell you, here and now, that I’m on your side? That I won’t do anything to compromise you or the team?”

“Even if it means destroying your work on the island?” he countered.

She closed her eyes on a flash of pain, but nodded. “Even if that’s what it means.” Opening her eyes, she stared into his, willing him to believe her. “Celeste did okay without me. Better than okay, really. If she has to wait another year or two for me to scrape up the funding and replicate the work, I think she can manage it. If not…” She trailed off, hating the idea of giving up on Celeste’s life, but knowing this was a battle she might not win, after all. “If not, she’d be the first one to tell me I can’t give in to someone like Tiberius in order to save her. The evil he brings to the world is too big for that. We can’t weigh it against one life, no matter how much I want to.”

He’d watched her intently while she spoke, and now nodded. “Okay.”

She paused, waiting for more. “That’s it? Just ‘okay’?”

“You want a marching band?” But he leaned in, and touched his lips to hers. “I’m sorry,” he whispered against her mouth. “I won’t assume the worst of you again.”

She leaned into his warmth and whispered in return, “Thank you.”

They stayed like that for a moment, each drawing strength from the other. Then she drew back. “What happens now?”

He looked her in the eye and said, “Within the next two days, my team and a few handpicked combat veterans are going to raid the island in an effort to prevent Tiberius from selling the bug to four very nasty people who are in the middle of four different trials with pivotal DNA evidence.”

She appreciated that he’d trusted her with the information so soon after their tentative truce. But she frowned when the information didn’t quite line up. “If the trials are already in progress, they’ve already got the DNA evidence. Infecting the defendants won’t change anything.”

“It will if they also arrange to lose, destroy or otherwise taint the existing DNA samples, necessitating the drawing of new samples,” he countered. “And trust me, they will.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “You don’t live in a very nice world, do you?”

He seemed surprised by the question, shrugged it off. “I’m used to the scumbags. They don’t get to me anymore.”

I think they do,
she contradicted inwardly.
You just try very hard not to show it.
Iceman, indeed. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel the emotions, she was coming to realize. It was that he didn’t know what to do with them, so he shoved them deep down inside and pretended they didn’t exist.

But she didn’t think he needed—or wanted—to hear that right now, so she said instead, “Be careful on the island. It’s not a very nice place.”

In fact, the thought of him going to Rocky Cliff chilled her to her very marrow. She wanted to tell him not to go, but she didn’t have the right. It was his job. His duty.

And he wouldn’t have had to go if it hadn’t been for her stupidly arrogant decisions a year ago, she knew.

“I need you,” he said unexpectedly, and for a moment she thought he was finished, that he was talking about the two of them. But then he said, “The team needs you. Anything else you can tell us about Rocky Cliff, we need to know it. Anything at all.” When she didn’t answer right away, he squeezed her hands. “Please, Sydney.”

“Don’t make me go back there.” A whisper was all she could manage.

“No!” He nearly shouted the word. “Hell, no. You’re strictly behind-the-scenes on this one. Intel only. Okay?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Okay. When do we start?”

He stood, drawing her to her feet. “We just did.”

T
WENTY HOURS LATER
, Sydney was back on the north shore of Massachusetts, where it all began.

The team stayed in a large chain hotel farther down the coast rather than the quaint Gloucester B and B she’d used the last night before she’d departed for Rocky Cliff Island a year earlier, but that difference hardly mattered.

She leaned on the railing of the small, beach-facing deck that opened off her room and sighed, feeling as though she was right back where she’d started.

The ocean stretched to the horizon, where gray water met gray sky. It was chilly and faintly damp, and the beach was deserted save for a young man throwing a tennis ball for a wet, sand-covered black dog. In the adjoining rooms on either side of hers, Sharpe and his teammates were nailing down last-minute details. Knowing it, she should’ve felt surrounded and protected.

Instead, she felt very alone, just as she’d felt the last time she’d been here.

Then, as now, she wasn’t sure what the future was going to hold for her. Then, as now, she was making decisions she wasn’t sure were right.

A year ago, she’d been working to convince herself that the ends justified the means, that it was okay to work for a man like Tiberius if the final results would benefit the greater good. Boy, she’d been seriously wrong about that one. And that made her question whether she was doing things wrong again this time.

Sure, it was Sharpe’s plan, and it would be his decision to pull the trigger and launch the raid on the island the following day, but the entire strategy was based on her inside knowledge of the compound and the guards.

What if she’d gotten it wrong? What if she’d forgotten something or remembered something wrong?

What if Tiberius captured them?

The past few days hadn’t been the best of times by any means, but she’d grown fond of each member of Sharpe’s team. Jimmy might be a self-proclaimed computer nerd, but he had a wickedly quirky sense of humor and a girlfriend named Sue. Drew, who’d worked with her on the maps and schematics, had made her feel like part of the team rather than an outsider. Megan, new and slightly shy, brought in to cover Grace’s spot, had a dolphin’s smile that tipped up at the corners and made Sydney want to smile in return. Sydney had spent the least amount of time with Michael, but he made her think of military recruiting posters, America and apple pie. She had a feeling it would be tough to feel unsafe around him. And Sharpe…

Well, Sharpe was Sharpe. On the upside, he smiled at her in passing. On the downside, she had no idea what that meant.

His mistrust was so deeply ingrained, she wasn’t sure she could rely on him to believe her when it truly mattered. So why did her body come to life when he walked into the room, even though they hadn’t kissed—hadn’t so much as touched—since that night at his place?

And why, in the deepest darkness of the night, when she awoke from terrible, torturous dreams so vivid she could hear Jenny Marie’s screams ringing in her ears, did she find herself holding his face in the forefront of her mind as she tried to soothe herself back to sleep?

The “why” is obvious,
she told herself as she stood on the hotel deck and stared out over the ocean, which was darkening with the early-spring dusk and the threat of an incoming storm.
The question is, what are you going to do about it?

The smart answer was “nothing.”

Then again, she was one of the dumbest smart people she knew.

“See something out there?” a deep, masculine voice said from behind her. She didn’t need the fine shimmer of nerves and heat to tell her it was Sharpe.

She shook her head, not looking at him. “Just thinking.”

“Must not be very good thoughts. You were frowning.” He moved up beside her, leaned his forearms on the deck railing in a position that mirrored her own and stared out across the water.

Their forearms barely brushed, but the light contact sent liquid fire through her veins.

“Do you blame me?” She figured that was a neutral enough response. Let him interpret it however he wanted.

“Of the two of us, I’d say I have more of a reason to be uneasy. I’m the one going to the island tomorrow.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I wish you weren’t.”

“It’s part of the job.”

“I’ll worry.”

He slanted her a look. “I should tell you not to.”

“Are you?”

“No.” He shifted closer, so they were touching at hip and shoulder as they both leaned on the railing, staring off across the sea, which was growing choppy with the turbulence of an incoming spring squall. “Partly because you’ll do what you want regardless of what I say, and partly because I think I like the idea of you being back here, thinking about me.”

“I will,” she said softly.

The question that loomed unspoken between them was what sort of relationship would they have when he went? It would be easy to say they were friends of a sort, with the promise of so much more, but the kindling heat inside her, and the pressure of grief and fear in her chest, warned that it wouldn’t be enough for her. She wanted more. She wanted him.

When he left the next day, she wanted him to take a piece of her along, not because she wanted to go to Rocky Cliff, but because she wanted him to come back safe. If she hadn’t been escaping toward Celeste, she never would’ve made it off the island. Was it silly to think the same might work for him, that maybe he’d be a little more careful if he was coming back to something other than the job?

They hadn’t settled anything between them, not really. He’d promised to trust her, but that trust hadn’t yet been tested. She’d promised to be on his side, but that hadn’t been proven, either.

Still, they might not have another night. They had tonight.

She held out her hand. “Come inside.”

He took her fingers in his but stayed put, looking down into her eyes. “Are you sure?”

There was no need to discuss what the invitation meant. The need for sex, the promise of it, spun out in the air separating them.

“I’m sure,” she said, and willed him to see the truth in her eyes, willed him to believe her. “I don’t want to wake up alone tomorrow.”

They both knew what she was really saying was,
If you don’t come back from the island, I don’t want us to have missed this chance.
She didn’t know if it’d last past tonight, didn’t know if either of them were ready for it to continue onward. She did know, however, that she didn’t want to live with the regret of not having taken this one night together with him.

She wanted him to have something to come back to, even if it was an illusion that dissipated once the danger was past.

“Come inside,” she said again. “Please.” As if in answer, the wind picked up, blowing between them, around them, and bringing the scent of the sea.

He lifted their joined hands. “Are you trying to save me, Sydney?”

Her laugh caught in her throat. “You’re not a lost cause yet.”

“That, sweetheart, is a matter of opinion.” He closed the distance between them, and kissed her, and that was when she knew for certain. She wasn’t in danger of falling for him.

She’d already fallen. She just hadn’t hit bottom yet.

J
OHN DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER
trying to talk himself out of following her into her hotel room—he’d passed the point of no return. Hell, maybe he’d passed it days ago, while he’d sat on his own couch and watched her sleep.

Then, as now, fierce protectiveness welled up inside him. All-consuming possessiveness. She was his in a way he’d never known before, never wanted before. But now it was all about want as he slid the glass doors closed, shutting out the night. Shutting out the storm that had come in so quickly, and now announced its arrival with a sharp splatter of rain against the glass slider.

Knowing that the others were out but not how long they’d be gone, he locked the connecting doors to the rooms on either side of Sydney’s. Then he turned to her, their hands still linked, and lifted his free hand to touch the ends of her dark hair and trace the soft curve of her cheek.

Her luscious brown eyes were shadowed and wary, and as fierce as they had been the first moment he saw her, dripping wet and spitting mad as she crouched on the deck of the coast guard cutter
Valiant,
ready to fight the world. Yet at the same time he saw a layer of vulnerability beneath. She was afraid for him, cared for him, and the knowledge resonated. It mattered, probably more than it should.

He needed to be focused when he led his team to the island the next day. He needed to be in charge, needed to be the Iceman, but that man seemed very far away as he leaned in and touched his lips to hers, and the layers of defense were stripped away, leaving only the man behind.

T
HE MOMENT THEIR LIPS
touched, Sydney felt a shudder run through his big frame, as though something was changing within him. Then he slanted his mouth across hers and applied gentle suction, teasing her lips apart. His tongue touched hers, softly at first, and then with increasing pressure, and she knew she had him. He’d made his choice, and he’d chosen her.

Reveling in the knowledge, glorying in it, she lost herself in the kiss.

Fisting her hands in the fine cotton of his shirt, she leaned in and opened to him. Heat exploded inside her, muting the buzz of nerves at the thought that she was doing this, really doing this. With Sharpe. Or rather,
John.

He pulled away and looked down at her. “What?”

She flushed when she realized she’d said it aloud. “I was practicing your name. It seems silly to think of you as Sharpe now.”

“You can call me whatever feels right,” he said simply, and the open invitation from a man as guarded as he was meant far more than it should have, sending a spear of emotion through her to join the heat.

She swallowed hard against the lure of affection—or more—and tried to keep it light, saying, “I’m all about doing what feels right.”

Shifting her grip to the lapels of his suit jacket—navy today—she drew him down for another kiss, one that started with their lips curved in pleasure and quickly morphed to an openmouthed, searching exploration that detonated bombs of sensation in her fingertips, in her core, in all the neurons between.

Murmuring something—maybe appreciation, maybe a suggestion—he slid his hands up her ribs, skimming the outsides of her breasts and causing her nipples to tighten with anticipation.

She lit up, humming with the electricity that had flared between them from the first. Her mouth turned greedy, and she tugged the tails of his shirt from his waistband and ran her hands beneath. His stomach was warm and hard beneath her fingertips, dusted with the faint irregularity of masculine hair, and though he wasn’t a bulky man by any means, everywhere she touched she found muscles that coiled in hard, ready knots beneath her hands.

Sliding her fingertips higher, playing across the hard ridges of muscle and man, she found her exploration blocked by the straps of his shoulder holster, so she reversed course, stroking down along his ribs to bracket his hips with her hands, then reaching up to tug at the holster. “You’re going to need to lose this.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.” He stepped away from her, unhooked the holster and shrugged out of it as raindrops blew in from the sea and hit the sliding glass doors with the hard rat-tat of a spring storm.

Placing the holstered gun on the dresser top, beside the hotel-standard entertainment center, he clicked off the wall lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Then he crossed to her and urged her to the glass doors, pressing her against him and wrapping his arms around her so they were aligned back-to-front, both watching the night.

He grazed his lips across one of her ears, sending a shimmery sensation straight to her core, and whispered, “Listen to the storm.”

The wild fury of it raged inland, whipping the waves to frenzied whitecaps that hurled themselves onward, only to die on the beach. The wind howled off the Atlantic, rattling the windows and making the glass bow in its frame. But Sydney felt safe in John’s arms. Protected. Like they were cocooned together in a moment outside of normal time, where nothing and no one could touch them.

It was an illusion, she knew, brought by the night and the storm and the feelings that bound them together.

The danger was still out there, waiting.

For tonight, though, she was safe with him.

“Will the storm change your plans if it keeps up?” she said softly, not sure what she wanted the answer to be. Part of her wanted him to say yes, for them to have another day. But that would only prolong the inevitable.

“It’ll pass,” he said with quiet assurance. “We’ll sneak onto the island tomorrow, as planned.”

They had the loan of a boat bristling with the newest in stealth technology. The Renfrew brothers, along with a half dozen coast guarders and combat-trained men, would move in on the main dock as a distraction, allowing John’s team to make it to one of the less patrolled beaches of Rocky Cliff Island. That was the theory, anyway.

In reality, so many things could go wrong, it made Sydney sick to think of the possibilities. So she let the storm beat in her blood, in her heart, and she turned in John’s arms, leaned up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.

Finally, she eased back and said, “Then let’s not waste the hours we have left.”

One corner of his mouth kicked up and his eyes turned sad, as though he’d read more into her words than she’d intended, but he said nothing, simply leaned down and kissed her. Then, without breaking the kiss, he swept her up into his arms and carried her the few steps to the bed.

The mattress yielded beneath their combined weight, and she gloried in the solidness of him pressing her down as she wrapped her legs around his, hooked her arms around his strong shoulders and gave herself up to the moment, to the spring storm, to the man.

Their kisses grew hotter and harder as the wind slapped stinging pellets of water against the glass barrier that was the only thing separating them from the maelstrom outside. The air in the small room heated with passion, with the mingling of their scents and the torturous rub of far too much clothing.