Undercover Lovers (32 page)

“
About whoever it is you
think is coming after me.”

“
I don’t think it, Cade. I
know. Frank told me you were already dead when he was kicking me in
the ribs. It was just blind luck you left town today. Once it gets
around that you weren’t in your house when they blew it up, they’ll
be after you again.”

The crack of the handle in
his grip had him juggling the mug before all but dropping it on the
table. He braced his hands on either side of it, staring down at
the dark wood, willing the rage back into the box it had escaped.
Instead, all he could think about were the numerous weapons hidden
all over the cabin, any of which would be more than capable of
tearing Frank Carter into as many pieces as he could
make.

“
When I got away from them,
the first thing I did was get to your place, but it was…gone. Just
a pile of burning concrete.” Her voice shook, just the lightest
tremor, but he felt the hurt in it. He knew then why she hadn’t
taken any time to care for herself before finding him. He wouldn’t
have rested if there was a chance she was alive either.

Every part of him wanted to
walk over and wrap his arms around her again. Reassure her. But if
he even looked at her, he was going to go to her and get
sidetracked. He couldn’t let that happen again. He’d make it up to
her later, but right now, this was too important. “You said last
night someone from the department cracked. Did Carter tell you who
it was?”

“
No, but I have my
suspicions.” Bitter ones, from the sound of it.

“
If you’re going to say
Trelane—” Rick had his faults, but he’d been Cade’s friend since
before the war. He trusted the other man completely, something
Trina couldn’t seem to do. The two of them had been at odds for as
long as he’d known her and the animosity seemed to grow
exponentially by the month.

“
Someone
gave us both up, Cade. Someone with access to highest level of
security your department has if he told them about me. Next to the
Sheriff himself, that limits things to Trelane.”

Cade shook his head. “Rick
has clearance, yes, but it’s not exactly Fort Knox over there.
There are twelve officers in that office and most of them come and
go as they like. No one would say boo if they were up to their
elbows in the files that didn’t belong to them. Knowing about your
operation isn’t proof he blew your cover. And don’t forget the
Sheriff’s secretary has nearly the same access as Rick.” Much as he
liked Bobby Jane, the woman wasn’t known for her discretion. When
her last boyfriend got arrested on a drunk and disorderly, the man
knew so much about everybody in the department and their various
failed love lives, his charges were dropped at the speed of
shame.

“
Frank couldn’t get you on
his payroll. He needed someone to check up on you, look for a
weakness to exploit.”

Cade almost sputtered a
harsh laugh at that. His biggest weakness was obvious to anyone who
ever saw him near Trina. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her and his
senses—not to mention his morals—were clouded by her. If she’d
actually been a criminal, she could easily have gotten him whatever
she wanted out of him, whenever she wanted it.

Something about that had him
stopping. Thinking.

“
Trelane’s been coming to
Frank more often than ever,” she continued from her spot on his
bed, oblivious. “I don’t know what for, but what else could it
be?”

Cade shook off the niggling
thought trying to form in his mind. “Rick Trelane threw himself on
a grenade for our squad once. Believe me, he’d die before he ever
betrayed me.”

True, he’d changed after the
war, just like Cade did, but not by that much. He’d hardened.
Become almost rigid, definitely more secretive. There’d been a time
when Rick had been the one they’d all worried about because he’d
been a joking kid in over his head. Now all the others were dead
and only he and Rick had managed to come home on their own feet. Of
course that had changed him. It would change anyone.

Unlike Cade, Rick had no
interest in fighting his way back to feeling human again. Which
meant that icy gaze of his when shit hit the fan was still as
creepy now as it had been then and on his face more often than not.
But it was that stare that actually kept Cade believing his old
friend was still in there somewhere. Why else would Rick have
contacted him about joining him in Marketta? He’d said he needed
someone he could trust and a day in the little town had proved that
beyond a shadow of a doubt. Cade wasn’t going to go back on that
trust without damn good reason. There had to be more to
this.

“
Why do you think I walked
away from you after we made love? Frank started getting suspicious
about you.”

Of course he had. It wasn’t
as if Trina had been subtle with her interest. With anything,
actually.

“
Someone had tipped him off
that you didn’t have a court date the day Shana left and he knows
you went out of town. No one else would dare stand up to him, but
there was never a way to connect you to her and I wanted to make
sure it stayed that way. Do you think it’s been easy to stay away?
To make you think I didn’t care when you’re the one thing I care
about most?”

Probably just as hard as it
was for him to let her keep that distance. Cade watched his own
hands curl into fists on the tabletop. The anger at her deception
tried to rise again, but he purposely shelved it. She’d done it to
keep him safe, however mistaken her intentions. He’d done worse to
protect strangers. There was no line he wouldn’t cross to protect
the people he loved. Especially her.

“
Frank ambushed me because
he found out we were lovers. He knows I’m an agent. That’s not
information that’s exactly flying around town. The only person who
knew either of those things was Rick Trelane.”

He finally turned to her
again. “
Rick
knew
you were undercover?”

She nodded, trying like hell
to keep an expression off her face. The look on his face went from
cool reserve to a black scowl in a millisecond.  “Not because
I wanted him to. He was my contact in the department if anything
went wrong. Well, things went fucking wrong, Cade, and Trelane was
nowhere to be found.”

Something cold and repellant
formed in Cade’s belly. Suspicion. Against his own friend. He hated
it, but she was right. No one else but Rick knew their relationship
had ever gotten physical. Still, something she’d said was pulsing
in his mind, demanding he sort it out. He just couldn’t figure out
what. Until he could, there was only one path he could follow.
Instinct. “He wouldn’t lie to me about something like that, not
when he knew how much you were coming to mean to me.” Only Rick had
known it was killing him to stick to his ethics about getting
involved with a woman he might have to arrest. A woman he wasn’t
sure he’d be able to haul into the jail.

“
How many times do I have to
tell you? He’s been lying to you since day one. He lied when he
called you to help him in this town, not telling you that he was on
Carter’s payroll. He lied about how we knew each other and he lied
again when he didn’t tell you what I was really doing
there.”

He knew what she was going
to say, but he couldn’t make himself believe her.

“
He’s not the man you
remember, Cade, and now he’s sold us both out.”

“
You don’t know that he
did.”

“
You can trust him if you
want, but I’m not taking that chance with your life.”

It was his turn to cross his
arms. “I trusted you, when every one of my instincts told me not
to.”

Stubbornly, her chin jutted
out at him.

They’d just see how long
that lasted.

“
I trusted you and you were
using me the whole time, weren’t you?”

Fuck, fuck,
fuuuuuck!

“
Cade—”

“
Weren’t you?” He had no
right asking that, looking so clean and comfortable in a pair of
worn jeans and a green t-shirt that molded its faded fabric over
his chest like paint. She could just make out the dark gray letters
that had once spelled “USMC Pendleton” over his heart. His dark
hair gleamed, still wet from whatever shower she’d slept through.
No right at all, not when she was barely covered in his rumpled
shirt, her legs tangled in his still warm sheets. She didn’t want
to imagine what her face looked like, not with the bruises she knew
now had to be much darker. And her hair. Ugh, her hair… She felt
more than naked this way, at a distinct disadvantage. But no one
ever said life was fair. He was asking the questions directly and
he deserved the answers. All of them.

“
Yes,” she answered, hating
how her playful lover had gone back to the blank stoicism that felt
as if he were hiding from her.

“
That’s it? Yes. No
explanations, no protestations of innocence?”

Trina shrugged. “I think I
gave up
innocent
when I deep throated you.”

The muscle under his eye
ticked, but that was it. Damn it, he was going to make her tell
him. She could tell because he was braced in front of his little
dining room table like a stone sentinel. Nope, he wasn’t going
anywhere.

“
Frank only let me in
to
Wheels of Pain
because I was pretending to be a bad girl wannabe with a
trust-fund who had a thing for bikers. One of his oldest friends,
Ripper, rolled on him when he got busted with ten kilos at the
Calexico border. It was a pretty simple transaction, really. Ripper
sold him the heroin and threw me in as part of the deal. Frank
figured I’d be the dutiful fan girl just looking for some wild
times with money to burn his way, so he allowed it. It took a while
for him to treat me like anything but a nuisance, but after he
caught me talking to Trelane, I had to come up with something fast.
So I told him Trelane seemed to like me, which is so far from the
truth, it doesn’t even register as a joke.”

Cade gave a tiny,
acknowledging nod. Trelane hated her; it was no secret to either of
them. Their interactions over the years when she ran into trouble
were more like snake fights, with insults hurled at lightning speed
and deadly accuracy.

“
Anyway, since Trelane
wasn’t under his control, Frank saw an opening. I was supposed to
seduce him and get him to look the other way, like the rest of the
department and most of the judges in this county. He makes almost
as much from his extortion ring as he does his drug running. Then
you came along and everything got tangled up.”

“
How? Sounds like you and
Rick had things going pretty well.”

“
Rick
is not a team player.” Trina gripped the edge of the bedsheet
in her hands, wishing it was a certain burly officer’s neck. “I had
to pretend I wanted him and he took advantage of that more than
once.”

At Cade’s stiffened posture
she waved her hand at him. “He never did anything to me sexually,
he just used his supposed connection with me to get in with Frank
on his own. Suddenly, he was on the take too. I never saw what he
did for Frank, so I can’t tell if he’s actually breaking the law or
not. I have absolutely no idea what he’s doing and no matter what I
say to him, he treats me like I’m the threat instead of an ally.
Every interaction he had with Frank put my operation in jeopardy
and he had interactions just about every week. I couldn’t keep
letting him put me at risk.”

“
So you changed targets to
someone both men were interested in.”

If she could just see some
kind of emotion in his eyes, she’d feel better about telling him
all this. But she couldn’t. Miserably, she nodded. “Frank wasn’t
really happy about it. He thought he needed me as leverage to
control Trelane. Since he still needed the money I was fronting, he
didn’t treat me like the other women with the crew. As long as
Trelane stayed in line, I could do what I wanted. I came after you
to get separation. To save my case and my ass.”

“
And when Carter needed
someone to exploit me—”

“
I volunteered.” She
swallowed, wishing her mouth wasn’t so dry. “I’ve been reporting
your every coming and going to Frank almost since the beginning.”
Never sure if what she said might put Cade in the wrong place at
the wrong time. Editing as carefully as possible to keep them all
safe while she scrambled to find the evidence she needed. Evidence
she could never get her hands on. Using Cade to buy herself time,
to shape her case back into her control, to maneuver Frank and
Trelane both. Worse, she knew she’d do it again. In a
heartbeat.

“
Because you wanted out from
under Rick.”

No. And yes. Oh, who the
hell knew anymore? After a few silent moments she nodded, finally
looking down at her fingers.

“
Woman, you are so full of
shit.”

Trina lifted her head to
protest, but he was already crossing the planked floor to reach the
side of the bed, all but diving on top of her to meld their mouths
together. He kissed her almost ravenously, his hands in her hair
and holding her in place until he was satisfied she had no bones
and no will to speak of.