Bad Nights (9 page)

How hot did it have to be to turn bone to ash? He pulled out his smartphone and found Google, then typed in the question. Which led him to “cremation.”

In a crematorium, the temperature was between 1600 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. But the fire in the house couldn't possibly have been that hot. There would be something left, wouldn't there?

He was watching the men methodically working the grid he'd laid out for them, when Chambers screamed, the sound fading as he disappeared from sight.

Everyone went stock-still, looking to Trainer for guidance.

From out of sight, Chambers had started to call out frantically.

“Help me. I think my leg is broken. Help.”

“Get him,” Wade ordered.

The other men began converging on the spot where their comrade had disappeared.

Hamilton knelt cautiously and looked down below the level of the floor.

“Jesus Christ, you jerk; don't just stare at me,” Chambers shouted.

“Where are you?” the man above asked.

“In some kind of hole.”

Had the floor burned through, exposing a crawl space below? Or was there something else down there, Wade wondered.

He'd stayed outside while his men searched the house, prudently leaving the salvage work to men with fewer brains than his. And now one of them had fallen through the floor. He wouldn't make the same mistake, he thought as he stepped gingerly into the blackened structure, carefully testing each footstep before he put his weight down.

When Jack didn't ask another question, Morgan shifted in the sleeping bag, conscious of his hair-roughened legs against her smooth ones. Above them were his narrow hips and his broad chest. Body heat built in the confined space. And his erection stood between them like an exclamation mark.

She told herself it was a physiological reaction to being wedged against a half-naked woman.

Physically the position was much too intimate, yet it was the only way they were going to keep warm without lighting a fire in the cave.

Closing her eyes, she let the warmth envelop her. It felt comforting. Seductive, even. But she knew there could be no real intimacy between them. They'd met by chance. Probably she'd saved his life. Then he'd saved hers. More than once, she reckoned, since those fake FBI agents had showed up at the door.

Yet she knew he was a dangerous man. Dangerous to his enemies and dangerous to her in a way she didn't want to think about in too much detail. He was the kind of man she'd never thought she'd meet, much less be lying with, half-naked in a sleeping bag.

“Did your mom have a job?” he asked, probably making another attempt to pull her attention away from the physical sensation of their bodies pressed together.

What if one of them turned around? That might be better in the long run, but it would involve a whole lot of wiggling and rubbing against each other to get there. Cutting off the speculation, she answered the question he'd asked.

“She worked for the D.C. government too, as an administrative assistant, before I was born. But she quit to stay home with me and my brother.”

“And baked cookies and led the Girl Scout troop?”

“Yes. And made our Halloween costumes and the curtains in our bedrooms. And had a wonderful flower garden. What about your mom?”

“She was less domestic,” he answered, his voice sharp, and she took the hint. He didn't want to talk about his family. His tone softened when he asked, “What about your friends?”

“When I was little, we had a whole neighborhood gang. But you know how it goes when you get older. The group breaks into cliques.”

“And you were in the popular group.”

“No. I was one of the nerds.”

“You?”

“I liked learning. That was only an acceptable occupation among a small segment of the school population.”

“You sound like a teacher.”

She laughed softly. “I am.”

“What do you teach?”

“Psychology.”

Jack barked out a laugh.

“What?”

“I'll bet you were trying to figure out what kind of psychopath I am.”

She felt her face heat, since that was exactly what she had been doing.

“You're not,” she murmured.

“In your professional opinion?”

“Yes.”

“What am I?”

She'd been thinking he was a dangerous man, but she could say it a different way. “You're a highly trained professional who saved both our lives.”

“I guess you can put it in those terms.”

“How would you describe yourself?”

He sighed. “Maybe we shouldn't turn this into a therapy session.”

“I'm not a shrink,” she answered softly.

“Why not?”

“I'm not cut out for it.”

“Okay.”

They were both silent now. Maybe neither of them was sure of what to say.

She had told him she couldn't sleep, but she was dead tired and wrung out from the past few hours. Without knowing what was happening, she slipped into sleep.

***

Jack eased his injured ankle out of the sleeping bag, careful not to wake Morgan as he cradled her in his arms, listening to the sound of her breathing change as she drifted off.

He didn't have any ice for the sprain, but maybe the cold air would serve as a partial substitute. He'd like to ease out of the sleeping bag altogether, but the cave was no protection from the cold, and he knew he'd better stay where he was if he wanted to be in shape to travel in the morning.

The morning? Was he going to put pressure on the ankle so soon? He guessed he'd find out.

He tried to get comfortable. When his arm started to fall asleep, he moved it and found that it was curling over the rounded curve of Morgan's very appealing bottom. He couldn't stop himself from being attracted to her. And not just because he liked her figure and her face.

If asked, he would have said he didn't like shrinks. But he hadn't met her in that context, and her profession had come as a surprise to him. He'd seen her as a woman who was practical, yet at the same time so damned feminine that he couldn't help responding to her. It felt like she was everything he'd always wanted—and everything he had told himself he couldn't have, because he was the only one who had walked out of that ambush in Afghanistan. He shouldn't be alive, and when he tried to relax into the rhythm of living, he always saw the faces of his old comrades in arms staring at him. Tom Lancaster. Eduardo Blaine. Phil Armstrong. Jimmy Woo. Harrison Winters. He'd been supposed to protect them. And they'd all been wiped away before his eyes.

He'd been to the required psych sessions, which was one of the reasons he didn't like shrinks. They said what they'd been trained to say. Never mind if it was true or not. Doctor Nixon had told him the guilt would fade. He hadn't been responsible for the death of anyone on the team. He hadn't done anything wrong. He knew that on an intellectual level, but he simply didn't feel it.

He'd been drifting through his life when he'd met Shane and Max. Maybe it was divine intervention. That first night in jail, he'd felt something working among the three of them. A rhythm that they all understood without putting it into words. Maybe because they all had similar backgrounds. And all had problems they didn't want to confront. It had been easier to forge ahead with the Rockfort Security Agency, to build something that none of them could have accomplished on his own.

Shane and Max had made a difference in his life. He knew that they were replacements for the friends he'd lost. He wasn't proud of using them that way, but he suspected they understood, just the way he understood them better than perhaps they understood themselves.

They'd given him the space he needed, then tried to talk him out of taking the job of infiltrating Trainer's militia. That had only made him more determined. He'd insisted that he could handle it. Maybe he'd been secretly hoping that he'd get himself killed. But when he'd been cornered, survival instinct had taken over, and he'd fought back. He'd escaped, and now he'd dragged someone into hell with him.

Morgan Rains, a woman who'd been minding her own business when he'd stumbled into her neck of the woods.

Well, he wasn't going to let the same thing happen to her that had happened to the men of his team. He was going to get her to safety, and then he was going to walk away from her, because in the long run he was no good for her.

When his foot began to feel numb, he eased it back under the covering. He would have liked to stand on it and test the injury, but he couldn't do it without waking Morgan, and he knew the best thing for her right now was sleep.

***

Wade Trainer made his way toward the place where Chambers had disappeared. Looking at Rayburn, he ordered, “Get down there.”

Rayburn stared back at him. “How?”

Trainer hated to reconsider an order, but in this case, he did.

“Okay. Wait for me.”

Still moving cautiously, he approached the spot where Hamilton and Rayburn were waiting, looking down into a ragged hole.

Pulling a small but powerful flashlight from his belt, Wade shined the beam downward and saw Chambers lying in what could have been an earthen cellar, except that the space was too narrow, and one wall appeared to be missing.

He handed the flashlight to Rayburn. “Put this in your pocket, then grab the edge of the hole and lower yourself.”

“Yes, sir.” The man awkwardly swung himself over the hole and grabbed the edge of the floor. It crumbled in his fingers and he went down.

There was another scream and a string of loud curses.

“Are you all right?” Trainer called out.

“Yes, sir. But I landed on top of Chambers.”

“Get off of him, and tell me what you see.”

He heard scrambling noises. “There's a tunnel down here.”

“The devil you say. I'm coming down.”

***

Morgan woke after a few hours of sleep. A man was lying next to her, sleeping.

At first she thought it was Glenn. Then she realized it was Jack Brandt. A man who had no place in her life. As soon as they got back to civilization, she was getting as far away from him as she could.

He was nothing like her husband. Well, that wasn't perfectly true. They were both resourceful, capable men. And caring, she silently admitted, because she knew Jack must care about her in some way, otherwise she wouldn't still be with him.

But perhaps that was simply out of a sense of obligation. He'd gotten her into trouble, and he would do his best to get her out of it.

Maybe that was part of what must be a reckless disregard for his own safety. He'd obviously taken a job that had a good chance of getting him killed. She still didn't know much about it. And maybe she should stop jumping to conclusions about his motivation.

She closed her eyes, deliberately trying to stop thinking about the man lying next to her. The only reason they were together was because of circumstances.

Her best alternative for getting her mind off him was to pick a time when she and Glenn had been happy and focus on those memories. That wasn't difficult. They'd been happy through most of their marriage. But one of the best times was when they'd gone to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to poke around the quaint little towns that hadn't changed much since the nineteenth century—except for the influx of tourists.

She slipped from thinking about that trip to being back in that moment. Once again she saw herself and Glenn buying a picnic lunch, then wandering over to the little harbor of St. Michaels where they rented a motorboat to explore the creeks off the Miles River.

They motored out of town, along the river where big estates dominated the scenery, looking at the boat docks where large cabin cruisers were tied up and speculating about the lifestyle of the people who owned them.

They turned in at a wide creek, throttling down the motor, moving slowly through the green water until they found a secluded cove.

“This looks like a good place for lunch,” Glenn had said.

“And a swim.”

They grinned at each other, because they were both thinking about more than lunch and a swim.

Both of them had been wearing bathing suits under their clothing. Careful not to tip the boat, they discarded their sandals, shorts, and T-shirts and slipped over the side into the water.

“It's cold,” she sputtered.

“You'll get used to it.”

They both warmed up quickly, playing in their own private Eden. Finally they climbed back onto the deck and flopped down on a beach towel, both of them cold and wet. But she knew they wouldn't be cold for long.

Glenn reached for her, and she came into his arms, kissing him, stroking her hands over his broad shoulders. It was so good to be with him. It had been so long since she'd held him, touched him.

She stopped to question that last thought. So long? No, they'd been together every moment on this trip.

She pushed any doubts out of her mind. A smile curved her lips as she felt him harden against her. She didn't have to tell him what she liked. He knew. When she pressed her center against his erection, he slid his hands to her bottom, anchoring her more tightly against himself as his other hand cupped her breast, stroking across her nipple.

She moved closer, moaning as the blood raced hotly through her veins. Why had she thought she'd lost Glenn? He was here with her, wasn't he?

Yet something didn't seem right.

She'd been dreaming, and she didn't want to wake up. But she forced herself to raise her lids—and she found herself staring into a man's smoldering eyes. But not Glenn's blue eyes. The dark eyes belonged to Jack Brandt.

She had her arms around him. She was moving her body against him, and he was lying absolutely still, his erection rock hard against her middle and an expression on his face that told her he was fighting the physical sensations she was generating.

She pushed at his chest, and he rolled away from her, flopping to his back on the cold stone floor of the cave.

“Oh, Lord. I'm so sorry,” she mumbled as she stared at him, trying to explain to herself and to him what had happened. “I… I was… I was dreaming about my husband.”

Jack answered with a tight nod. Pushing himself up, he turned away and stood up, breathing deeply, his shoulders rigid and his back straight. She watched him walk to the front of the cave and push the vines aside so that he could look out.

In the dimming light, she saw that the rain had stopped.

He stayed there for long moments before returning to the cave and picking up the pants he'd discarded.

“Still wet,” he said. He put them back down and riffled through one of the packs they'd brought. Pulling out a granola bar, he handed it to her. “Eat something.”

With shaky hands she unwrapped the bar, glad to have something to do. Jack pulled another bar out of the pack and moved so that his back was propped against the cave wall before unwrapping it and starting to eat.

Neither one of them spoke, and she wished they'd had the option of two sleeping bags.

But like everything else that had happened in the past day and a half, there were no choices.