Crossfire (9 page)

‘‘You’re being ridiculous.’’ Valentine continued the argument that had been going on since she and Brendan had left the police station.

‘‘Is it that American mothers haven’t taught their daughters about the fragility of the male ego?’’ he asked mildly. ‘‘Or is it just that you’d be choosing to ignore the warning? Because being referred to as ridiculous might possibly take the winds out of a lesser man’s sails. So to speak.’’

Reaching into the front pocket of his jeans, he pulled out the key to unlock the pub’s heavy door. Although there’d been a howl of complaint among his customers, he’d shut down early in order to take the letter to the authorities.

‘‘But you’re not one of those,’’ she allowed as they entered the building. Everything was just as they’d left it—glasses, some not yet empty, sitting on tables, giving the pub the air of a party interrupted. ‘‘A lesser man.’’

‘‘I like to think not.’’

He’d always kept a tidy establishment, which was why it pained him to walk past all those cluttered tables to the door leading to the stairway at the back of the room. But Caitlin had said she’d be sending a crime lab team over in the morning to check all those glasses for fingerprints, so he’d have to be waiting to clean up.

She’d admitted she wasn’t expecting to find anything useful, but had hoped perhaps they’d get lucky and at least discover that one of the would-be pirates had served in the military. Even better would be if they’d find themselves a sniper.

‘‘I’ll be perfectly safe,’’ Val insisted yet again as she walked up the stairs in front of him.

Despite the seriousness of their situation, what he’d told her in the police station was absolutely true. Valentine Snow did, indeed, have a very fine ass. World class, in Brendan’s opinion.

‘‘Of course you’ll be safe,’’ he agreed. And wasn’t he going to make sure of that?

‘‘I meant alone.’’

‘‘You won’t even know I’m around,’’ he said yet again.

‘‘Yeah. Right.’’

Her dark hair fanned out as she shook her head with seething frustration. It was not the first time he’d imagined it spread across his pillow. His chest. His thighs.

With a sigh of resignation, Brendan knew it wouldn’t be the last.

‘‘You’re not that easy to ignore,’’ she said.

‘‘Am I not?’’ he asked as they stopped at the top of the stairs.

There were two doors—one leading to his loft apartment, the other to hers. He thought about asking, ‘‘Your place or mine?’’ but decided the American cliché wouldn’t help him make his case.

‘‘Any male as good-looking as you has got to know he’s a woman magnet,’’ she said. ‘‘Or do you actually expect me to believe that you haven’t noticed that a good two-thirds of your clientele on any given night is of the female persuasion?’’

He had noticed. It would have been difficult not to when he often found telephone numbers written on the small paper napkins when he’d clear the tables. He wondered what Valentine would say if he told her the truth—that there was only one woman he wanted to attract. And she was currently standing right in front of him.

Another image popped unbidden into his sex-starved brain. One of cutting off the argument by taking her mouth, pressing her against either one of those two doors, lifting up her snug skirt, and—

‘‘Well?’’

Her annoyed voice shattered the sexual fantasy just as she’d been wrapping those long, tan legs around his hips.

‘‘Well?’’ His brain had gone to mush. Which, Brendan supposed, made sense, given that all the blood in his head had shot south below his waist.

‘‘You’re not going to deny you’ve noticed all those females who want to get into your pants.’’

‘‘Perhaps they frequent the Swan because they enjoy the step dancing,’’ he suggested.

Did she want to get into his pants? And wouldn’t he be glad to help her with that? Starting now.

The frustrated sound deep in her throat sounded a great deal like a growl. Which he found inordinately sexy. Then again, Valentine could turn him on by reading the fecking IRS code.

‘‘Which apartment?’’ he asked, getting back to the initial argument, since this second, sexual one was threatening to undermine all his good intentions to protect her.

‘‘You’re not going to give up, are you?’’

‘‘I’m Irish. We’re a people known for our tenacity.’’

‘‘Hardheadedness, you mean.’’

‘‘Aye, that too.’’

Unfortunately, his head wasn’t the only thing that was hard. Which he’d grown accustomed to. Ever since the newscaster had arrived in the city and moved into his vacant apartment, he’d been walking around semi-aroused.

‘‘Mine,’’ she decided on a huff of breath. ‘‘At least I’ll have all my things.’’

‘‘You certainly seem cool-minded about all this,’’ he said as they walked into the apartment on the left.

She’d made some changes—painted the beige walls a soft blue gray, exchanged the heavy leather furniture for a floral blue, yellow, and white sofa and coordinating striped wing chair. Framed gardens bloomed on walls that, he noticed, were lacking any plaques or trophy photos of her with all the famous people she’d interviewed over her career.

‘‘It’s something you develop early in this business,’’ she said as she went around turning on lamps. ‘‘Never let them see you sweat.’’

And she’d never seemed to. Not even during that interview in the scorchingly hot Afghan mountains with bin Laden. Of course that had been when he’d been just a run-of-the-mill terrorist. A month later to the day of that August interview the man had hit the Top Ten list.

She went around a half wall separating the living room from the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a green bottle of Chardonnay. ‘‘Would you like some wine?’’

‘‘Thank you, but I believe I’ll pass.’’ There was no way he’d risk dulling his reflexes with alcohol.

She poured the wine into a stemmed glass. ‘‘I’m sorry I don’t have any beer.’’

He smiled at that. ‘‘If I were to want a beer, I have a great deal on tap downstairs.’’

‘‘Of course you do.’’ She didn’t physically slap her forehead, but her tone suggested the gesture. ‘‘Stupid,’’ she muttered as she walked over to the huge window, which during the day flooded the loft with sunlight.

One of the reasons Brendan had bought this building was for the stunning view. Tonight, through the rain-streaked glass, the lights on the bridge looked like blurred stars.

‘‘You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.’’ He went to stand behind her and, as he breathed in the herbal scent of her shampoo, began massaging the knots in her shoulders.

Seeming to understand that the gesture was that of a friend, not an attempt at seduction, she leaned back against him as she sipped her wine. A comfortable silence settled over them, and though she’d had him nearly as knotted up as her slender shoulders since she’d moved into his building, Brendan almost felt himself beginning to relax.

‘‘That feels good,’’ she murmured.

‘‘We aim to please.’’ It was all he could do not to pull her even tighter and bury his lips in the fragrant dark silk of her hair.

‘‘You do.’’ She sighed. Took another sip. ‘‘And it’s not that I’m not grateful—’’

She glanced back up at him, and when he felt her tense beneath his palms Brendan realized she’d seen the raw desire he knew must be written all over his face.

‘‘It’s been a long day.’’ She sounded guarded. Emotions as tangled as the renewed knots in her shoulders swirled in her dark eyes.

‘‘Aye, it has, indeed,’’ he agreed.

Nine years he’d lived in this country, and he still— especially when his feelings were involved, as they were now—slid into the language and cadence of his native County Clare.

She moved away. ‘‘I believe I’ll go to bed.’’

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph save him, wasn’t that idea tempting?

Obviously a reporter didn’t achieve the level of success Valentine had without becoming very good at reading people. As she read his thoughts, her own expression closed up.

‘‘Alone.’’

And didn’t he deserve that edge in her voice? ‘‘I wouldn’t be in the habit of joining any woman in bed without an invitation.’’

‘‘Well, that’s reassuring.’’ She forced a smile they both knew she didn’t mean. ‘‘Where will you be sleeping?’’

‘‘The sofa will do.’’

It was nearly a foot too short, but the length didn’t matter, given that he had no intention of sleeping anyway.

Much, much later, as he sat in the wing chair, staring out the rain-streaked window, listening to the sound of the rain on the roof, Brendan tried, with scant success, to put the idea of the delectable Valentine Snow sleeping just a few feet away out of his mind.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough other things to ponder.

Such as how he was going to keep the woman he’d fallen in love with safe.

Cait had spent the first twelve years of her life traveling the world as a navy brat, but the moment her father first drove the family past the sweeps of blinding spring-green spartina grass and still, black waters reflecting stark gray cypress, she’d felt an inner click.

As if she’d finally come home.

She’d been so happy when they’d moved into the sprawling white house on Officers Drive—so named because it had originally been settled by officers from the fort that had been built in the harbor to defend Somersett against a British sea invasion. Cait was one of five children, and this was the first time she’d had her own bedroom. And, better yet, the first time she wouldn’t have to wait in line for her morning shower.

Proving that life was often a trade-off between bitter and sweet, she’d also understood that the only reason Vice Admiral Michael Cavanaugh had resigned his commission and taken the teaching position at the Admiral Somersett Military Academy was because of his wife’s cancer.

Fortunately, Cait’s mother had won her valiantly fought battle with lymphoma soon after Cait entered the University of South Carolina. But the Cavanaughs had stayed in Somersett, sinking their roots deep into the southern Lowcountry.

Except for the insanity of Buccaneer Days, life in Somersett was certainly nowhere near as fast-paced as in a lot of cities where Cait’s father had been posted. It was certainly slower-paced than Virginia Beach, where she’d spent the sixth grade, San Diego, or even nearby Charleston. Whenever she drove past St. Brendan’s Cathedral and over the bridge into the marsh, Cait could feel her mind and body relax.

Usually.

But, of course, usually she wasn’t trying to apprehend a serial sniper.

Using her handheld GPS, after two wrong turns and forty-five minutes after she’d left Somersett, the two-lane road dead-ended in front of an old house.

As she climbed the steps, she noticed that someone had done an admirable job of restoring the tabby foundation—that once-popular Lowcountry building material made up of easily accessible broken oyster shells, lime, sand, and water. The roof, which she suspected had once been tin, was now copper, and hung over a long screened-in porch. Black storm shutters added hurricane protection and provided an attractive contrast to the sand-hued outer walls.

Quinn answered the door on the second ring. And although she’d prepared herself for this meeting, there was no way she could have anticipated that the only thing he’d be wearing would be a pair of khaki cargo shorts.

Heaven help her, he looked like some Renaissance marble statue of a Greek god.

No.

Not marble. Marble was too smooth. Too cold. And way too finished.

The man who was currently making her damn knees weak could have been hewn from an enormous piece of rough-textured granite.

And was that a bullet he was wearing around his neck?

She wasn’t sure how long they stood there, her looking up at Quinn, him looking down at her. Time seemed oddly suspended.

‘‘Well, hello,’’ he said finally. He glanced past her, looking, she suspected, for her partner. ‘‘Did you come all the way out here alone?’’

‘‘I did.’’ What? Did he think she was a fraidycat girl who needed a male bodyguard to venture into the marsh at night? ‘‘And we need to talk.’’

‘‘Sure.’’

He moved aside, making room for her to enter the house. Which was a direct contrast to the restored outside.

‘‘I like to think of it as a work in progress,’’ he said as she looked around at the buckets of paint, saw-horses, and stacks of lumber.

‘‘So I see.’’

‘‘The termites had been using it as their own personal smorgasbord,’’ he explained. ‘‘Even after I had the place fumigated—twice. I decided it’d be easier just to gut the interior and start over from scratch.’’

‘‘Well. That’s certainly an ambitious project.’’ So far he’d managed to get some interior framing done and some Sheetrock up, but that seemed about it.

‘‘I like a challenge.’’

‘‘Lucky thing. Because this definitely fits the definition.’’

The only furniture appeared to be an oversized couch, a chest of drawers, a desk on which his laptop sat, four wooden chairs, a table that was home to a Mr. Coffee and a microwave, and an admittedly impressive stainless-steel and black Sub-Zero refrigerator against a back wall.

‘‘I’m enjoying the work,’’ he said. ‘‘Gets the kinks out after sitting at a desk all day. Though John Tremayne, Zach’s dad, is acting as the general contractor. And Zach’s come over from the island and helped out some.’’

He looked around with what actually appeared to be pride. Obviously whatever vision of a completed home he had in his mind was a long way from what Cait was seeing.

‘‘I’ve never owned a house before,’’ he said.

‘‘No offense, McKade, but you don’t exactly own one now.’’

Though now that she looked more closely, she could appreciate the outer walls, which appeared to be local Somersett brick. And the hand-hewn cypress ceiling beams were wonderful.

A deep laugh came rumbling up from his remarkably cut dark chest. ‘‘Ah, ye of little faith. Now you’re stuck.’’

She lifted a brow.

‘‘You’re going to have the honor of being my first dinner guest. So I can show the place off to you.’’

‘‘Great. I’ll bring my grandchildren to your housewarming party. And although I hate to rain on your HGTV parade, I feel the need to point out that unless you plan to nuke a stack of Hungry Man chicken pot-pies, you’ll need an actual kitchen in order to cook that dinner.’’

‘‘The range is on order—ETA, if all goes according to plan, next Wednesday. Meanwhile, we could always send out for pizza.’’

Oh, hell. She wondered if he was remembering that room-service pizza they’d shared in bed, amid those tangled sheets, at some point during that sex-filled night.

He was. Cait could see it in the way his eyes darkened as they roamed her face for an unnervingly long time before settling on her lips. She could feel it in the dangerous sexuality radiating from him, like the hum of the ground beneath your feet just before lightning strikes.

‘‘We need to talk,’’ she repeated.

‘‘I thought that’s what we were doing.’’

‘‘This is law enforcement business.’’

‘‘Why does that not surprise me? Especially since you seem to have changed into your official special agent uniform.’’

The suit was the first she’d bought when she’d come to work at the Bureau. Both the severe cut and the color—known around the bureau as ‘‘Hoover blue’’— were designed to give the wearer a no-nonsense image.

‘‘I am a special agent,’’ she reminded him.

‘‘So you keep telling me.’’ He sighed, plucked a T-SHIRT off the back of one of the chairs and pulled it over his head. ‘‘Since I seem to be lacking proper guest furniture, let me get you something to drink and we can go sit out on the porch.’’

‘‘I don’t need anything to drink,’’ she said. ‘‘This won’t take long.’’

‘‘Efficient as always, I see,’’ he murmured. ‘‘How about some water?’’

‘‘That’d be nice.’’ It was hot as a sauna outside. Despite the open windows, even hotter inside. She hoped, for Quinn’s sake, that he was planning to install central air-conditioning. ‘‘Thanks.’’

‘‘My pleasure,’’ he said dryly, as he took a plastic bottle from the refrigerator and snagged a beer for himself.

When he laced the fingers of his left hand with hers, Cait remembered, all too well, him doing the same thing as he’d led her into the Wingate Palace Hotel elevator. The elevator where, as soon as the door had closed, he’d pressed her against the mirrored wall, taken her mouth, and kissed her senseless.

Not wanting to reveal that the casual touch had her reliving that scene in full Technicolor detail, Cait resisted the urge to tug her hand free.

There was a traditional rope hammock at one end of the covered porch, a wooden glider at the other. Cait chose the glider.

‘‘I need to know everything about snipers,’’ she said.

‘‘Do you own your own home?’’ he asked.

‘‘I have a year’s lease on my apartment,’’ she said, not understanding the non sequitur. ‘‘Why?’’

‘‘Because you might want to call up your landlord and see about breaking that lease. Because you’re going to be out here for a long time.’’

‘‘All right.’’ She exhaled a frustrated breath. ‘‘Perhaps that was a bit of a sweeping statement. I need to know what makes someone who’d hunt human beings for sport tick.’’

‘‘I see.’’ Instead of sitting down beside her, he leaned back against the porch railing and folded his arms. ‘‘And you believe I’d know that why?’’

It had begun to rain. Cait was grateful for the clouds that had moved in from the coast to cover the full moon that had been hanging low in the sky while she’d driven out here. They kept him from seeing the flush darkening her cheeks.

‘‘I’m sorry. Bad choice of words again. Of course I understand that you didn’t shoot the enemy for sport, but . . .’’

She dragged her hand through her hair. It was not often that Cait felt flustered. She didn’t like it. She especially didn’t like it that Quinn McKade was the one making her feel that way. But she was admittedly grateful when he seemed willing to help her out.

‘‘You want to know what makes a man be able to put another human being in his rifle’s crosshairs and squeeze the trigger without remorse.’’

‘‘That’s it exactly. And the reason I’m asking you is because I suspect my sniper is using your book as a how-to guide.’’

Cait had never known it was possible for anyone to go absolutely still. Once again the statue image came to mind.

‘‘Why would you think that?’’

‘‘Because he sent Valentine Snow a pair of tarot death cards. The same as the sniper in Kill Zone.’’

‘‘You read my book?’’

He seemed surprised by that revelation. And, Cait thought, a little pleased.

‘‘Is there anyone on the planet who hasn’t?’’ Damn. That came off as too defensive.

Despite the seriousness of the topic, his harshly cut lips quirked, just a bit, at the corners. ‘‘I suspect a few.’’

If it had been anyone else asking him about this, Quinn wasn’t sure he’d have been willing to share his feelings. But this was Cait. And he realized that the shooter might have just supplied him with the golden opportunity to overcome the animosity she’d inexplicably had for him since they’d first met.

He’d been going out over the holidays with her roommate at the time, who’d refused to leave Cait alone on New Year’s Eve, so since he and Zach had both been in town on leave after completing BUD/S training together, he’d talked his best friend into taking her out on a double date.

Zach and Cait had gotten along just dandy. While it had been more than a little obvious that she’d hated Quinn’s guts.

Which shouldn’t have pissed him off, since her roommate was not only nice but really, really hot to boot. But, dammit, it had.

A few years later, when they’d coincidentally met again at that same roommate’s wedding reception, she’d proven a whole lot friendlier. Until she’d run out on him the next morning.

‘‘Just because he’s tossing around tarot cards doesn’t necessarily mean he’s using my book as a murder manual.’’ Christ, that was not a fun thought. ‘‘It’s not like it’s a brilliantly original idea. There’ve been other killers who used death cards as a symbol. The Zodiac Killer, for one. And didn’t those D.C. snipers leave one behind?’’

Quinn might have been out of the country during that time, but he would’ve had to have been on Mars not to read about the two men who’d terrorized Washington for so many weeks.

‘‘Hell, the military itself came up with those Deck of Death playing cards of wanted terrorists in Iraq. In fact, I saw a Marine sniper wearing a patch with a picture of Saddam as the king of spades card in the crosshairs.’’

‘‘So, the sniper in your story isn’t a real person?’’

‘‘The book’s fiction.’’ Quinn had lost count, during the promo tour the publisher had sent him on, of how many times he’d had to explain that. ‘‘Did some of the events portrayed actually happen? Sure. There were also lots of stories about snipers in Vietnam leaving tarot death cards behind on their victims. Maybe your guy’s heard some of them.’’

‘‘Maybe he was one of them.’’

‘‘I suppose anything’s possible. Though it seems odd that he’d wait all these years to go off the deep end.’’

‘‘I’d agree if I hadn’t read that news reports of the current Iraq war have begun triggering some deep-seated PTSD issues among Vietnam vets.’’

‘‘Yeah, I’ve heard the same thing,’’ Quinn allowed. ‘‘But I still don’t believe you’re looking for an actual sniper.’’

‘‘Maybe not. But maybe the guy’s a wannabe sniper. Or a wannabe SEAL.’’

‘‘Yeah.’’ He’d certainly met a lot of those over the years. In fact, an organization committed to exposing fake SEALs had even put up a Wall of Shame on the Internet outing impostors. ‘‘I suppose that could be.’’

‘‘But what are the chances of the quote?’’

‘‘What quote?’’

‘‘The Bible quote he ended his letter to Val with.’’ She took a notebook out of her purse, flipped it open, and read the David versus Goliath line, including the ‘‘one shot, one kill’’ ending.