My Spy (11 page)

Izzy shot her a questioning look, but she shook her head slightly. She meant to work Sam hard, right to the edge. Tiring him would help take his mind off the rest of his problems. The trick, she decided, would be to go just far enough.

She stopped him in the middle of his fifth trip. “Now you're holding that left crutch too high. Turn your wrist the way I showed you, but lean slightly to the right.” She gripped his waist, adjusting his hand as she spoke. “Like this.”

Sam gave no sign of noticing when her breast brushed his arm and their thighs touched.

Annie
definitely
noticed.

Every nerve tightened and her heart punched in her chest, leaving her awash in memories.

Sam stripped down to a pair of cutoff shorts, leaping from the deck into the churning sea.

Sam feeding her roasted marshmallows that ran between his fingers and stuck to her face.

Sam standing on the beach and brushing her hair gently from her forehead, just before he kissed her.

Why did her life seem to start the day they'd met?

She looked away, overwhelmed by thoughts of those lost pleasures. Twilight had fallen, leaving the ocean heavy and sullen. Far away near the horizon a gray whale breached, then fell back in a spray of churning foam. “I—have to go, Sam. Paperwork. I've got lots of paperwork,” Annie blurted out. “You can work with Izzy. I'll check in after dinner.”

“Annie.” The word was a rough question. “What's got you so jumpy?”

The strain was tying her in knots. Even now she felt the brush of his thigh and the rough strength of his hand. The rest of her memories were even more intimate. How could she go on pretending that they were strangers? “I'm just thinking about work.”

“You weren't like this a minute ago.” Sam maneuvered closer, his crutch tapping. “Tell me what happened.”

She couldn't face his probing eyes. Her emotions were too raw. “Let's talk about you instead. In a few weeks you'll be jumping hurdles. That's the kind of man you are. Tall, dark, and stubborn.”

His eyes hard, Sam looked from her to Izzy. “What is it you both aren't telling me?”

“What does it feel like?” Izzy countered.

“Forget the Socratic method. I want answers, damn it.”

Izzy stared back impassively. “If you want answers, then think harder. It's something you're supposed to be good at.”

Sam's hand clenched on his crutches. “What's she hiding? Why did she go pale a minute ago?”

“Because you stepped on my foot,” Annie snapped. “Now, if you're finished with the interrogation, I'm going back to work. I still have a resort to run.”

“Annie, I—”

She strode past, her body stiff. The slamming door echoed through the quiet courtyard.

“Hell.” Izzy rubbed his jaw and sighed. “Nice work, McKade.”

A
NNIE
SAT
IN
BED,
HER
KNEES
PULLED
UP
AGAINST
HER
CHEST.
Working with Sam was going to be far worse than she'd thought. Why had she imagined she could conceal their past?

She stared into the darkness, feeling trapped. She hadn't lied to her sister. What had happened with Sam had been brief and reckless and unexpected. They had never mentioned love and Annie had no illusions about them sharing any kind of future.

None of that made any difference.

The fact was, she hadn't had a lot of experience with men. Her work at the resort kept her too busy for much of a private life.

She had had a few pleasant encounters, nice while they lasted, but nothing that had outlived the eighteen-hour days and seven-day weeks that were her routine.

She lay back with a sigh, punching her pillow. Above the sea the moon was torn silver caught between racing clouds. Storm coming.

Winds from the west.

Probably rain.

Storms, she could manage. Men were something else. Particularly the tall, dark, and stubborn variety like Sam.

Annie gave her pillow one last punch, then closed her eyes, determined to put the past behind her. Tomorrow she was going to show Sam that he was just another patient.

She'd show
herself
, too.

Rain hit the glistening street. All around him, the cars were expensive and the yards were perfectly manicured.

Quiet little street.

Quiet little world.

The man crouched between a vintage Triumph and a silver Mazda. Unmoving, he watched the darkness, checking for any signs of surveillance. By nature he was patient, and his training had honed that patience tenfold.

Seeing nothing, he allowed his body to relax as he stared up at the dark apartment on the third floor.

His lips twisted.

Sam McKade, the perfect hero in his perfect little world. But not for much longer.

McKade wasn't going to be recuperating, not this time. He'd already traced the Navy's reigning hero to two possible locations. When he realized one was an upscale resort and spa on the California coast, he'd almost laughed. But his sources had never been wrong yet, so he was headed west as soon as he finished a few last details.

Starting here.

“You're damned good, McKade. Fortunately, I'm a lot better. Proving that is going to be a pleasure.” He checked his watch, made another inventory of the tools he'd need for his mission: glass cutter, lock pick, crowbar, surgical gloves. Everything the well-dressed burglar needed for a night out on the town.

The thought amused him, and he smiled as he moved away from the Mazda. Still crouched, he turned toward the small side yard.

Something glinted down the street, inside a parked Explorer. Instantly he flattened, rolled hard, crawled two cars forward, then hunkered down to reconnoiter.

He caught another glint, light on glass.

Field glasses, he decided. Maybe even a night scope, although the streetlights would make night vision hell to use.

He waited, certain the street was being watched, but no car doors opened and no motors kicked in. Staying low, he crawled beneath a food truck and two SUVs, then bellied his way up a drainpipe that let him out on the perfectly mowed lawn of the public library.

As he surveyed the street, the hair rose along his neck. He knew he hadn't imagined the glint of distant glasses.

Now the night's B and E would have to wait.

He took one last look at Sam McKade's silent apartment, stripped off his surgical gloves, and tossed them into the drainpipe. He smiled, just a little, at the thought of their faces when they finally understood. But they wouldn't understand for months, of course.

He cut through an alley, circled two streets over, and swung into his own transport. He actually caught the surveillance team leaving the Explorer as his own battered District of Columbia utility truck lumbered down the alley where he'd parked it several hours earlier. The truck was authentic, right down to the employee ID taped on the dash. Only the plates were lifted, and there was no way the theft would show up on any computers yet.

Humming softly, he passed the two arguing men and vanished into the night.

“T
HERE
WAS
NO
ONE
THERE, I TELL
YOU.
”

“Bullshit.” The man called Fanelli stared down the street, watching a utility truck turn around the corner. “He was there. I made him through the glasses, right next to that silver Mazda.”

“You had too much Thai food for dinner, man.”

Fanelli rubbed his neck. After twelve years on the force, he
knew when surveillance had been blown. “We better call it in anyway.” There was a lot of pressure from the chief on this one.

The two cops moved uneasily, staring up at the dark apartment, wondering who lived there and why they'd been assigned to watch both entrances, night after night.

Had to be someone damned important, but neither of them said it.

“Hell with this.” Fanelli stared at the drizzle captured beneath the streetlights. “Let's check out the premises, just to be sure no one got inside. Then I'm getting my sorry butt somewhere warm. Five minutes for some decent coffee won't make any difference. You ask me, this whole assignment is chickenshit anyway. Let the G-men do their own work.”

He turned up his collar and strode down the sidewalk, unaware that the utility truck had cut its lights and eased into a spot less than six cars behind him, where its driver had a perfect view of the whole street.

T
HE
SUN
HAD
BARELY
TOUCHED
THE
TREES
WHEN ANNIE HEARD
the scrape of metal, followed by the thunk of a falling body. Her heart raced as she sprinted toward Sam's room.

He was balanced with one shoulder against a bookshelf while he tried to reclaim his fallen crutches.

“Is there a medical name for your particular form of insanity?” Annie demanded.

“Sure.” Sam caught the edge of the crutch and pulled it up slowly. “It's called work.”

Annie guided him into the nearby chair and took his crutches. “Breaking news. Any work you do gets supervised by me. That's what the Navy is paying me for.” When he tried to stand up, she blocked him, hands against his shoulders. “Is anyone home?”

“There was no need to bother you.”

“Wrong. You're
supposed
to bother me.”

“Go back to sleep.” His eyes were hard and focused. “You need your rest. You don't sleep very well.”

She stared at him, hands on her hips, entirely oblivious to the way her worn Lakers' T-shirt flirted with the soft curve of her thighs. “Do you want to repeat that?”

Sam's gaze flickered to her legs, then quickly away. “Hard not to notice. The bed creaks, then you turn over and hit the wall. Pretty noisy.” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “You talk a hell of a lot, too.”

“I talk in my sleep? No way.”

Sam shrugged lightly. “Only two of us in here, unless you had company last night.”

Annie glared back in silence.

“Okay. Wasn't me, so it had to be you.” He raised a brow. “No one ever told you that? Not anyone you slept with?”

Aware that her T-shirt was riding up, Annie yanked it down angrily. “None of your business.”

“I'll take that as a no,” he said coolly. “Could annoy someone trying to sleep next to you. Especially if he was bone tired from—” He cleared his throat and chose his next words carefully. “From a strenuous night of world-class sex.”

“What makes you think sex with me would be world class?” Annie knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left her mouth.

He angled a lingering glance from her flushed cheeks to her bare feet. “Oh, yeah, Doc. Gotta be world class with a body like that. You're in prime physical shape, good muscle tone from all those massages.” His eyes glinted. “Makes me feel a little distracted just thinking about it.”

It was making Annie a lot more than distracted, but she refused to dwell on their last sizzling encounter, when they'd torn off each other's clothes beneath a starlit sky on the deck of his yacht.

She felt her cheeks flush again.

“Something wrong, Doc?”

“Stop calling me that. I'm your physiotherapist, not your doctor.”

“Whatever you say.”

“And my sex life is
none
of your business.”

“Too bad.” He started to say something else, but stopped himself. “Message received.” His eyes slanted toward her legs again, and he looked away. “Any other rules I should know about?”

“One, you wake me if you have a problem.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Annie ignored the challenge in his voice. “Two, any exercise you do gets done with my—or Izzy's—supervision.”

He took longer to answer this time. “How do you define exercise?”

“Anything, mister. If it's more strenuous than yawning, I want to know.”

“Bossy, aren't you?”

“You haven't seen anything yet. I've eaten two-hundred-eighty-pound linebackers for breakfast.” If there was a double meaning there, Annie didn't want to think about it.