Operation Willow Quest (26 page)

Sparkie
managed a wheeze of a
chuckle and awkwardly patted Del’s
good shoulder, the one that
hadn’t
just
been pulled back into joint, before leaving him to make his way carefully back
to the side of the bed.
Sparkie
shuffled off, muttering
to himself.

“Del,” she whispered, and felt traitorous
tears begin to gather behind her lashes.

“Come on, I’m okay,
shoulder’s good as new now,” he assured her gently, as he held a hand out
toward her. Willow
crossed the room and took it, allowing him to pull her down on the bed beside
him against his chest.

“What happens now?” she
asked after the steady beat of his heart reassured her he was going to be fine,
and felt some of the tension drain from her tired body.

“We lay low for a bit,
get in touch with Tate and the others and find out what the hell’s going on,”
he told her, slowly lying back to rest his back against the wall behind the
bed, taking her with him.

“Why can’t we call Tate
right now, and let him know where we are?”

“Because at this stage,
we don’t know how the information was leaked, and they’re probably monitoring
communication. Don’t worry, we’ll get in touch soon. We have a system for
contacting each other when we can’t use normal methods—it just doesn’t happen
at once.”

Spying a small bottle
at the base of the bed, Willow
leant forward and picked it up. She gave a small grunt of satisfaction as she
read the label. It was a bottle of prescription painkillers. “Well, at least
you can get a good night’s sleep before we have to sort all this out,” she told
him, moving from his side to cross the small room to a tiny kitchenette along
the far wall. She filled a grimy-looking glass with tap water and brought it
back to him. “Here—take these,” she ordered.

“I don’t need any damn
painkillers, Sheldon,” he grumbled, eyeing the bottle with a slightly offended
curl of the lip.

“Maybe not, but I sure
as hell need you to take them so I can pretend you’re not in pain all night.
Otherwise, I’m only going to lay here and worry about you. So take the damn
tablets and let me get some sleep,” she snapped, irritably.

Del
gave a small chuckle,
but reluctantly reached out for the tablets she held in her hand. “Your
sympathy is above reproach,” he muttered sarcastically.

“I know, and Summer’s
the nurse, go figure,” she added dryly as she watched him swallow the tablets
and drink the water.

She searched the
cupboards for a towel and found one, filling a small bowl with warm water and
coming back to him to dab at the blood and grime on his puffy face.

She tried to remain
detached and professional but found herself flinching, even though he remained
stoic, allowing her to clean his wounds. “Sorry,” she said automatically as she
had to rub a little harder to clean off the blood near the corner of his mouth.

“Would
you stop
apologising
every time you touch me?”

“Sorry.” She flashed
him a wince and a small shrug. “Believe it or not, I’m really not enjoying
inflicting all this pain on you.”

“Sure you are—think of
it as payback for all those years you really wanted to hurt me.” He managed to
tease her drolly without moving his face too much.

Willow
tried to ignore her
queasy stomach as she rinsed the cloth in the tepid water bowl and noticed its
pink tinge.
God,
I hate blood.

“I think it’s cleaned
enough. You can stop now,” Del
told her, his hand lifting to circle her wrist lightly. “You’re looking a
little pale and I don’t think
Sparkie
would know what
to do if both of us were out of action.”

Grateful she could
empty the water, she took it to the sink and cleaned out the bowl. Gradually
her queasiness eased and she felt a little better.

She came back and stood
by the bed. “You need to get some rest.”

“You need sleep too,”
he said, taking her hand as she went to walk away and tugging her onto the bed
beside him.

“I’ll jostle your arm,”
she protested, intending to sleep on the lounge.

“Stay,” he ordered,
closing his eyes and ending the conversation.

Too tired to argue, she
gave up the battle and lowered her head to the pillow next to him, taking the
uninjured hand that rested on his front gently.

Squeezing her hand in
response, he kept hold of it and she felt him gradually relax as the pain
killers began to kick in. As her gaze ran over his face, she
realised
just how close to losing him she’d come. Firmly
pushing the thought away, she tried to focus instead on the fact she had him
with her now, battered and bruised…but alive. With a soft sigh, she closed her
eyes and followed him into sleep.

* * * *

The sound of children
playing disorientated Willow
for a moment as she opened her eyes and looked around her. The weight of
something heavy laying across her hip was also an alien experience, but one she
knew she could learn to appreciate all too easily. Following the arm upwards,
her appreciative gaze collided with a pair of cobalt-blue eyes watching her
with lazy enjoyment, and she felt a tinge of pink touch her cheeks at the
intense scrutiny beneath those penetrating eyes.

“You look like you came
off second best to a train wreck,” she murmured, her voice sounding huskier
than usual.

“I
feel
 
like I came off second
best to a train wreck.”

“Are you okay?” In the
harsh light of day, his bruises looked even worse than they had last night.

“I’ve had worse—I’ll be
fine.”

The seriousness of
those casual words hit her full on in the chest. His life was dangerous. He
risked it every time he went out on a mission. This is what Summer went through
when Tate went off to work—never knowing if he’d turn up battered and bruised,
wounded…
dead.
“I’ll get you some more
pain killers,” she said, moving to get out of the bed.

“No. I don’t want any
more painkillers; you were doing fine for holding off the pain…until you
started talking,” he added, chasing the comment with a slow grin.

She couldn’t stay
immune to the pull of that grin any more than she could stop breathing for too
long. “So what’s the plan for today?”

“Sheldon, can’t you
just lay still and enjoy the moment?” he grumbled.

“Maybe if I wasn’t
wanted dead or alive by every man and his damn dog.”

“Well, you will go
around
pissin
’ people off,” he pointed out calmly. “
Sparkie’ll
have contacted Tate by now and let him know
we’re okay, so there’s no need to do anything right at the moment. In fact, the
less we do, the safer we’ll be. They can’t track us if we don’t make contact
with anyone and we need time to figure out what the hell’s going on.”

It made sense but it
felt wrong to do nothing. The sounds like those which woke her earlier floated
in the air in the silence between them. “Which brings me to my next question,
where
are
we?”

“A
small outer island. It would take someone a long time to search every island in
the area, so there’s no need to worry about them landing on our doorstep any
time soon.”

“Don’t tell me this is
another
 
one of
Sparkie’s
private islands?”

Del
chuckled, then winced.
“No—he has an on again, off again romance with a woman who lives here,” he
said, groaning in agony as Willow’s
incredulous expression made him laugh once more.

“
Sparkie
?”

“The man’s a bona-fide
Romeo. He has women scattered all over the Asia
and Pacific oceans.”

Images she quickly
shook off flooded her brain and she cringed at the thought. “You have got to be
kidding me.” He certainly wasn’t her idea of a romantic companion.

“I kid you not, my fair
Sheldon,” he said and smiled.

“
Sparkie
?
a man-whore?” she repeated, unable to digest this new, and somewhat disturbing,
information.

Del
’s hiss of pain as he
clenched his ribs again shocked her out of her confusion. “Stop laughing for
goodness sake, you’ll crack another damn rib,” she snapped, and slid from under
the arm still resting on her hip. “You stay there, I’ll find something for
breakfast,” she ordered.

* * * *

“I gather that didn’t
go well?” Willow asked as Del disconnected the call and tossed the
mobile phone onto the bed with a snort of disgust.

“Not particularly.”

After talking with
Sparkie
and getting in touch with Tate, Del
had called in to check in with the FBI agents assigned to the case. Leaving
them in the dark was apparently not how it was done, and they’d spend a night
in a tizzy, having lost touch with their bait.

“The good news,” Del said, taking a soft
drink from the ice cooler near his feet, “is that the Colombians are now out of
the picture.”

Willow
watched the beads of
moisture run down the outside of the cold can, before dragging her gaze back up
to meet Del’s.
“What’s the bad news?”

“We still don’t have
any clue who the assassin is, and we haven’t finished with the job.”

“So we have to go
back,” she finished hollowly.

“Not if you don’t want
to. They don’t know where we are—I can go back and tell them it’s over. You’ll
be safe here until we get this guy out in the open and put an end to this,” he
said. The gaze holding hers was deadly serious.

Shaking her head, Willow straightened her
shoulders. “No, I want to go back and finish what we started.”

“I thought you’d say
that,” he said and sighed, taking a long pull of his drink before reaching for
a clean shirt
Sparkie
had provided for him. “We have
to get back before he loses our trail and tries a different target.”

Thoughts
of her sister and baby niece flashed through her mind and panic gripped her. Del must have read her
thoughts because he immediately shook his head. “She’ll be safe. Tate won’t
take any risks with Summer and the baby.”

She gave a nod and
forced a confident smile to her lips. “Let’s go.”

* * * *

The flight back was all
too fast, and before she knew it, Willow
was whisked into the back of a dark-windowed car, discovering Agent Graham in
the front passenger seat.

“Glad you’re safe, Miss
Sheldon—you had us all worried there for a while,” he said, and somehow the
words came out sounding more like an reprimand, making her bristle with his
implication.

“Well, if it wasn’t for
Del, I’d
probably be dead right now. No thanks to your men who were supposed to be there
in case we got in trouble,” she snapped, too tired to be diplomatic.

She saw his face tense,
and was certain behind his dark glasses his eyes would be hard chips of ice.
“You have every right to be annoyed; we were caught unaware of the Colombian
angle. It won’t happen again.” His clipped reply sounded more than a little
frosty.

“Let’s hope not. I’m
pretty sure I’m no damn cat—I don’t have nine lives,” she muttered, turning to
look out the window. She felt Del
next to her in the back seat—his solid warmth a comforting presence. “And we
need someone to look over Del’s
ribs to make sure they aren’t broken,” she added, seeking out the agent’s dark
glasses in the mirror.

“Certainly,” he
answered shortly.

“Wow, this dominant
side of you is turning me on, Sheldon,” Del
murmured, just low enough for her to hear as his soft chuckle was followed by a
small meow of pain.

* * * *

With an all clear on Del’s ribs, they were
free to return to their motel room.

As Willow
paced the floor in front of the bed, a frown creased her face and Del gave up trying to
watch the news. “Sheldon, would you sit down already?”

“I can’t. How can you
lay there when there’s a lunatic out there somewhere, waiting to kill us?” she
demanded.

“Will…” He sighed.
“Tate, Maloney and
Tupp
are out there. No one’s going
to get by them tonight; come and sit,” he coaxed gently.

“Tate’s out there?” she
asked, raising her voice in alarm at his wary expression. She crossed to his
side urgently. “Then who’s with Summer?”

“Calm down, the house
is surrounded by enough federal agents to warrant an assault on a small
country—she’s safe,” he soothed.

“Oh.” This was at least
good news. The thought that at least three Force Recon Marines were out
watching over her and Del was also reassuring—but she still couldn’t shake the
pent up energy inside that refused to let her think of anything except the fear
she’d felt when she’d watched as Del had been attacked in the car park.

“Come on, let’s get
some sleep,”