Secret Assignment (12 page)

“I’m—”

“Fine,” she finished for him with a frustrated sigh. “Maybe you are. But if you’re not, I’d like you to be where you can call for help and someone might actually hear you.”

He knew she was right. While he was fairly sure he didn’t have a concussion—he’d experienced no double vision and very little head pain—it would be obstinate and stupid not to take precautions. A closed head injury was nothing to mess around with.

“Okay,” he said. “Let me grab some clothes.”

She walked with him up to the porch but dropped onto the double bench that sat outside his door. “I’ll wait here and enjoy the view.” She waved out toward the moonlit water.

He followed her gaze, taking in the glittering Gulf of Mexico, bathed silvery blue by moonlight. It was beautiful. Mysterious. Full of hidden depths. His gaze slid back to Shannon Cooper’s face, realizing the same could be said of the serene, composed young woman sitting on his porch. Even though his whole body seemed to vibrate whenever he was near her—all the worse now after their brief kiss—she showed little sign of being affected by his nearness at all.

Was it an act? Or was she truly unaffected by their fleeting moment of intimacy?

Suddenly annoyed, he pushed through the front door and shoved a change of clothes into a canvas duffel. He put the first aid kit inside as well and returned to the porch. Shannon still sat on the bench, her head resting against the wall. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was slow and even.

He hated to wake her, but he could hardly leave her out here to nap all night. “Shannon?”

Her eyes snapped open, unfocused. She finally spotted him and shot him a sheepish grin that made his heart flip. “Sorry. Long day.”

“Tell me about it,” he murmured, holding out his hand to help her up.

She stared at his outstretched hand for a moment, indecision evident in her expression. But she lifted her hand, finally, placing it in his. Her gaze rose to meet his, vulnerability shining in her dark eyes.

So she had been affected, he thought, unable to fully quell a feeling of sheer masculine pleasure.

He closed his fingers around hers, careful to be gentle, and tugged lightly, pulling her to her feet. It took all his strength not to pull her closer and finish what they’d started in his kitchen earlier.

He loosened his grip on her hand, and she let her fingers slide away from his. An ache settled low in his belly as she moved forward, down the stairs, putting distance between them.

Slowly, he followed her down the garden path to Stafford House.

* * *

“
Y
OU SHOULD HAVE
come straight here last night!” Lydia’s voice was firm but affectionate as she took the plate Gideon handed her. “You could have had a concussion.”

Shannon glanced at Gideon, surprised he’d even told his employer about what happened to him on the dock at Bay Pointe Marina. Gideon’s gaze slid across hers, settling for a second, before turning back to Lydia, who sat next to him at the table and unfolded a napkin across her lap.

“I’m fine,” he said. Shannon stifled a laugh.

“Well, at least Shannon had the good sense to talk you into staying here last night. I shudder to think what might have happened had you passed out at the caretaker’s house. All alone with nobody to help you—” She paused in the middle of slicing her waffle, angling her head to take another look at the egg-size lump on the back of his head. “Does it hurt terribly?”

“Only when you touch it,” he said lightly. “So don’t touch it.”

Lydia chuckled. “Duly noted.”

They ate their waffles in silence for a few minutes, enjoying a quiet camaraderie that Shannon found soothing. Her experience with family breakfasts leaned more toward the loud and boisterous.

Gideon took their empty plates to the sink, waving off their offers to handle the cleanup. He rinsed the plates with dish soap and water and placed them in the drying rack.

“How did you sleep?” Shannon asked when he returned to the table.

“Like the dead.” He dropped into his chair.

“Don’t say that.” Lydia looked appalled.

He looked mortified. “I’m sorry.”

She laid a forgiving hand on his shoulder. “No, I’m being a superstitious old woman.” She dropped her hand away and stood. “I believe I’m going out to the garden this morning. I’ve neglected my poor babies in all this excitement.” She looked at Shannon. “Have you showed Gideon the coded diary yet?”

Gideon looked at Shannon. “Coded diary?”

Shannon had brought the book down with her that morning, spending a little time on the front porch enjoying the morning air and trying to make some headway with the cipher. She went to the coffee table to retrieve the journal, showing it to Gideon as Lydia headed out to the garden.

“Lydia said it’s definitely the general’s handwriting,” she told him as he thumbed through the pages. “Does the code look at all familiar to you?”

He gave her a wry look. “If it looks familiar, it’s not good code.”

She smiled. “I have some books at home on cryptography—” At his perplexed expression, she added, “It’s a hobby.”

His dimples came out to play. “I suppose you also do open heart surgery and build cold fusion reactors in your spare time?”

“I’m a computer geek, remember? Code is my life.”

“Not quite the same sort of code.” He frowned as he looked down at one of the pages.

“Did you find something?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It’s just—this word looks familiar.”

She went around the table and looked over his shoulder. His index finger was pointing to a series of five letters.
VETCA.

“Vetca?” she said aloud.

“I’ve heard that term used before. I’m just not sure where.”

“Could it be a foreign word?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. This book is definitely in code, not a foreign language.”

His brow furrowed as if he were in pain. She reached across the table and put her hand on his arm, trying not to notice the crisp hair tickling her fingers or the way his sinewy muscles flexed at her touch. “Are you sure you’re fine?”

He looked up at her. “My ribs hurt like hell.”

She smiled. “Must be really bad for you to admit it.”

“Probably should have taped them up last night.” He handed the book back to her. “I’m not sure what this is about. I’ll give some thought to where I’ve seen the word
vetca
before.” He stood from the table, moving a little gingerly. “Yeah, definitely should have taped them.”

She rose with him. “I can do it for you.”

He slanted her a wry look. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

The air between them heated immediately, supercharged by his frank admission. “Because of what happened last night?”

“I’m not looking for that kind of entanglement.”

“Neither am I,” she said quickly, wishing she sounded a little less tentative. “It’s hard enough trying to convince my brother I can handle a field assignment without complicating it with—” She faltered, searching for the right word.

“A complication,” he supplied wryly.

“A complication,” she agreed.

He just nodded, as if they’d said all that needed saying. “Lydia doesn’t remember, because of all the chaos, I guess, but she has a hair appointment in Terrebonne later this morning.”

“You remember her hair appointments?” she asked with surprise. Talk about taking a caretaker’s job seriously.

“It’s written on the calendar next to the fridge,” he said with a dimpled grin that almost made her forget their recent agreement to ignore their attraction. “Do you want to stay here and go through more boxes or come with us?” His tone was almost wheedling, as if he was consciously tempting her to play hooky from work and come play.

And she
had
gotten through more of the general’s papers yesterday than she’d thought she could accomplish in that short time….

“Why not?” she asked with a grin. “Let’s go to Terrebonne.”

Chapter Nine

“Have you ever been here before?” Lydia asked Shannon as they walked the short distance from Terrebonne Marina to the marina’s rental garage where she and Gideon kept their vehicles.

“Just through town to get to the marina,” she admitted. “But my cousin spent some time here a while ago. His first wife grew up here, and his new wife, Natalie, used to work here as a sheriff’s deputy.”

Lydia gave her a quick, interested look. “Natalie Becker?”

“Yes. Natalie Cooper now—she and J.D. married up in Gossamer Ridge a few months ago.”

“Becker Oil Becker?” Gideon asked with a low whistle.

“I believe so,” Shannon said. Her cousin-in-law came from family money, she knew, though neither J.D. nor Natalie talked about it.

Gideon unlocked the padlock on the garage unit and pulled open the large, wide doors, letting daylight illuminate the dark interior. Side by side in the well-maintained garage, a cream-colored Cadillac and a big black Ford F-150 made an odd pair. No question who drove what, either, although it was Gideon who unlocked the Caddy and slid behind the wheel, apparently willing to play chauffeur to Lydia as well as take care of Nightshade Island.

Shannon sat in the back, behind Lydia, and watched with interest as they pulled onto Terrebonne’s tiny, oak-lined main drag and drove into the center of the small coastal town.

Redbrick city buildings filled one side of the central square, across the street from a small green park, where oaks, hickories and magnolias dripped with Spanish moss, setting a picture-postcard scene of somnolent Southern charm. Gideon parked the Caddy in front of a small store a block down Main Street, with a plate glass storefront sign, crimson letters outlined in white, proclaiming Pamela’s Style Salon lay inside.

“Pam and the other ladies will take good care of me,” Lydia said firmly when both Shannon and Gideon showed signs of sticking around the salon to wait for her. “Go show Shannon around town.”

Shannon thought about arguing because the last thing she wanted to do was spend the day trying to pretend she didn’t find Gideon Stone maddeningly attractive. But she also had a fascination for small towns, taking any chance she got to explore them.

“Okay, but you stay right here.”

Gideon added. “Don’t budge from here until we come back.”

Lydia’s exasperation shone from her bright eyes, but she agreed to stay put. “No need to hurry—I have a lot of catching up to do!”

Shannon followed Gideon outside. They left the Caddy locked in front of the hair salon and walked up Main Street.

“Terrebonne was originally a French settlement, stragglers who left Fort Louis before the flood and struck off on their own,” Gideon told her, his tone almost formal, as if he took his role as tour guide seriously. “In the early eighteenth century, most of the settlers fell in a battle with the Choctaw Indians, who took over Terrebonne for a while. Then, after the French abandoned flood-prone Fort Louis and built Fort Conde, more Frenchmen came through, this time armed and ready, and drove the Choctaws out.”

Shannon looked around the pretty town. “What was the appeal?”

“Good fishing on Terrebonne Bay. Good hunting in the woods north of town.” He quirked a smile at her. “Great place for smugglers to land by sea, unnoticed by the bigger settlement in Fort Conde.”

“Ah,” she said with an answering smile. “Filthy lucre.”

“Not so filthy when it stands between you and starvation, I suppose.”

They walked a half mile or so down the main street, coming eventually to a small bookstore tucked in the middle of nowhere down a side street. “They probably won’t have cryptography books here,” he warned as he led her under the green awning over the front door, “but it won’t hurt to look.”

Inside, the bookstore had the delightfully cluttered air of a real bibliophile’s lair. Old books, new books, tiny old rare books tucked into locked glass cabinets and large picture books for children lying open on tables, inviting little book lovers to browse.

They looked around without luck for a book on cryptography, although the helpful clerk offered to order one for her. Shannon declined, but she made the clerk smile by picking up a couple of thrillers she’d been meaning to buy for weeks. They left the shop behind, dropped off the books at the Caddy and headed back to the hair salon to check on Lydia.

Lydia was still waiting for her turn in one of the salon chairs, but she was clearly enjoying the chatty atmosphere of the salon, in no hurry to leave. “Take the Caddy and drive down the bay road,” she suggested to Gideon, who shook his head with a long-suffering smile and did as she asked.

Shannon buckled herself into the front seat next to him, checking her phone for messages. She’d turned it off that morning because the office was apparently experiencing some IT trouble, and all the agents felt the need to copy her on any texts or emails they sent to her assistant. The constant beeps had been driving her crazy.

She thumbed through the older messages, deleting most. When she reached the most recent, a text from her brother Rick, the stark message caught her by surprise. “Call me,” it said. “Important.”

She hit her brother’s number on the speed dial. He answered on the second ring. “Shannon, where have you been? I messaged you an hour ago.” Rick’s gravelly voice was more impatient than panicked, making her relax a little bit. At least there didn’t seem to be a family emergency.

“I was getting a boatload of texts about an IT problem I can’t deal with from here. Tell everyone to stop copying me!”

“Okay, will do. Listen, Jesse told me about that boat Gideon Stone found at the Bay Pointe Marina.”

“Right,
Ahab’s Folly.
” Gideon looked up at her words. The intensity of his gaze was unnerving. “Did you find out anything about it?” she asked Rick.

“The registration number you sent is phony. It’s a Texas registration number, but not one in their system.”

“Who’re you talking to?” Gideon asked, sounding suspicious.

She covered the receiver. “My brother Rick. I sent the information about the Azimut to my brother Jesse to look into.”

“You might have asked me.”