Play It Safe (The Safe House Series Book 2) (4 page)

Boredom until nightfall, and escape, set in quickly.

Angela had already found an empty combat pack in the closet and stuffed it with clothes and outer-gear and medical supplies she found under the bathroom sink. She wrapped the zucchini bread from dinner in a face towel and packed it beside three bottles of water she had lifted from the fridge when she heard Samson’s shower running.

In a drawer beneath the conquest bras, Angela discovered a stash of Samson’s history—photos of a beautiful brunette in crystal frames and a Polaroid of a young African boy against red, dusty clay, gap-tooth grin, his arm around a crouched Samson in stripped-down military gear. Had Angela not just humiliated herself into a pity kiss, she wouldn’t have thought it possible Samson had as many perfectly-arranged, white teeth as he displayed in the photographs.

She tried not to dissect the kiss but her analytical mind had broken the moment down into three very distinct phases: the phase where she might have cut the embrace short but, instead, studied the sculpted lines of his features and allowed her gaze to trickle down to his firm, sensual lips; the phase where he schooled her on how
not
to kiss like her only other experience—a prof’s assistant at Cal-Tech, all cocker spaniel and leftover hamburger; and the final phase where she hoped for a magnitude-ten earthquake to take California, once and for all.

Then again, that might have been the kiss.

The litany of things wrong with kissing Samson Caine, not to mention the man, himself, would overflow an entire pad of sticky notes. He functioned on instinct, danger, life lived from the neck down. Angela functioned best around cerebral men who didn’t underestimate women and couldn’t find their Latissimus dorsai muscle if they tried. Safe, predictable men. Which is why Samson’s overpowering testosterone and the appealingly symmetrical bone structure of his face had disarmed her judgment faster than it took her to clip off every last target on the tree log.

Never again.

Angela vowed to steer clear of him until the house quieted. She would stuff the bed with pillows, exit the patio door because the front door squeaked, sprint to the main road, and, well, she had more letters after her name than alphabet soup. Getting to Los Angeles by midday wasn’t Goldbach’s Conjecture.

She reached the bottom of the drawer and a handful of elaborately-carved Jiu-Jitsu metals on colorful neck ribbons when a knock sounded on the door. Immediately, her gaze flashed to the backpack.

“Angela?”

She mustered her best sleepy, innocent tone. “Yes?”

“Can I come in?”

“I’m tired.”

“I’m not apologizing to a door.”

She had five seconds, tops, before she aroused his suspicion. The backpack or the personal items she had pilfered? She scrambled to her feet, slid the heavy pack behind the bathroom door and plopped back to a seated position.

“Come in.”

Samson entered the room all special-ops—head on a swivel, eyes cagey, focused on things like windows and doors until his gaze swept the floor. In the quiet, her labored exhales made it sound as if she had done a hundred jumping jacks or had a good ten minutes on full speed with…

“You okay?”

“Sure.”

He lowered himself on the corner of the bed as if he expected the click-set of a weight-displacement bomb. For the first time, he seemed out of his skin.

“I see your nosy nature carried you past the bras.”

“Seventeen of them, varying sizes, but only one woman in all these photos. Who is she?” The question was impulsive, rude perhaps, but it stemmed organically from an unquenchable thirst to know every challenge, from all angles.

Samson's expression softened. He surveyed the collateral damage of Angela’s curiosity. His eyes darkened, from twilight on the mountain or twilight inside, she couldn’t say.

"She was my wife."

The gravity of
was
caused Angela’s stomach to shift. The word held the finality of something far more than a split. Silence settled over the room.

Angela reached for her favorite photo—a wind-whipped day on a pristine beach, long tussles of the woman’s latte-brown hair scattered in all directions but tamed by the grip of her long fingers at the crown of her head, a coy smile over her shoulder that said she had found the secret to happiness and she would share it with all who followed.

“She’s stunning.”

“She jogged every dawn. One morning, three days after our honeymoon, she went for her morning run and never came back. Most days I went with her, but Rockwell had me on a late night surveillance. She left me to sleep in without waking me."

"What happened?”

"Smacked-out parolee mugged and murdered her. She fought back like I’d trained her. If she had just handed her things over to the guy and got out of his way…" His voice trailed to nothing.

Angela didn’t know what to say or do. She wasn’t good at things beyond beakers and equations, but he seemed adrift, like maybe he had lost his gravity, too, so she stood and picked her way through the invasion of his privacy she now regretted and sat beside him on the bed. Her hands didn’t have a place, so she straightened her glasses that really didn’t need straightening and sat on her hands to warm them from the room’s sudden chill.

“I can’t imagine that kind of courage. I’m afraid of everything. All the time. I know it’s irrational. Like what could possibly go wrong when you spend eighteen hours a day in a security-clearance laboratory?”

“You didn’t look so afraid with a rifle in your hand.”

A bubble of lightness surfaced past her heavy abdomen. Samson’s shoulder gave hers a playful nudge. The bubble lifted and escaped her lips in a reluctant smile.

“Junior Women’s West Coast Long Range Champion, three years in a row.”

“I would have pegged you more for chess champ. Science club president.”

“Nah. Nothing but nerds in those.”

His mouth stretched into an easy smile. The awkwardness of the kiss, the photos, the life and death of loved ones seemed to dissolve, if only for a moment. She didn’t want to let this new, warmer minute pass, so she added, “My dad was the sharpshooting bad ass. Scout sniper, Twenty-fifth Expeditionary, Afghanistan. Mike never liked guns, but when Dad was home, I wanted to know everything about him, about his world. It became our thing.”

Samson lifted his boot heels, his knees shifting uncomfortably. “Shame that a man who served three tours comes home only to get hit by a drunk driver. No justice in that. I’m sorry, Angela.”

She wanted to say something wise, seasoned, something that would put perspective on their losses, but nothing came. Her throat constricted. She felt exposed, vulnerable, that he knew that about her parents—no doubt in her file as the reason Mike finished raising her. Loss in any form was tragic. Loss mixed with injustice stalked almost every aspect of life until it squeezed hope right along with it.

“Mike is my world. He’s all I have left.”

“I know.”

“If I lose him—”

“You won’t. And he won’t lose you, either. This isn’t just my job, Angela. It’s who I am.”

A niggle of guilt coiled in her chest. What would happen when Rockwell found out he had failed his job to protect her? To keep her at the safe house? But Julian’s threat blistered back into her awareness.
If we find out you alerted anyone…every single person you care about… trapped in their body until insanity taxes the heart.
On some level, that now included the man beside her.

Her mind was made up.

She stood and stretched and unleashed a not-so-subtle yawn to usher him from the room. He took the hint and rose to his feet.

“Extra blankets in the hall closet.”

“Hall closet. Got it.”

“Sleep well.” He filled the doorway before he paused and turned. “Angela?”

“Yeah?”

“I
am
sorry. About the kiss. I’m mean—for making you feel that way. Not for kissing you. Any guy would be…”

“Appalled?”

Her attempt to jab him with her wit-stick backfired when his expression remained grave.

“Honored.” Samson pressed his lips together in a sad sort of smile that flashed a previously undetected right cheek dimple and continued down the hall, out of sight.

Angela released an exhale she was pretty sure she had stowed in her toes from the moment he walked in. It wasn’t just the backpack or the pilfering. Never was she more
her
than when she was alone. But something about Samson tugged her away from that comfort zone. It felt instinctual and dangerous and definitely neck-down, everything that ran parallel to fear.

And staying might just be the worst mistake of all.

***

Several hours later, Samson was still awake in bed. He strained to hear sounds upstairs, listening for any indication that Angela McAllister was still awake. If she was, he would do… what? He couldn't go to her, no matter how much he was tempted to show her he meant what he said. Her snappy comeback had been nothing but a raw, exposed nerve to her deepest belief.

Angela believed she was not desirable.

Increasingly, she couldn’t be more mistaken.

He should have turned right around the minute he saw her at the bar. Somehow, he thought he was safe from her button nose and her Mother Teresa outfit. Little had he suspected that those details would turn out to be his weakness. He had hopped in and out of bed with women for years before meeting Riley and in the years following her death. He knew his type down to the skin shade, the fragrance whiff, the physicality and confidence inherent in their appearance, the way a woman would give back as much corporeal interest as he dished out.

But Angela? Fucked if he knew why her brainy, sarcastic and inexperienced package made him want to disregard his code of ethics. It wasn’t charity; it couldn’t be the urge to write on a blank slate. Strip away all the things she used to distance herself from the world—the eyeglasses, the unruly hair, the off-putting clothes and orthopedic shoes—and
God, almighty,
he had to get some rest.

Samson had just sunk into something deeper than consciousness when a noise on the stairs brought him back from the fringe of sleep. He sat up and listened until he was certain of what he was hearing: Angela McAllister was tiptoeing down the stairs.

His pulse kicked up, double-time. He anticipated her coming into his bedroom, telling him she was afraid, all the time, about everything, the moonlight silhouetting her matronly pajamas, hiding yet-to-be-discovered treasures beneath. The familiar stirring in his groin he thought he had alleviated in the shower came back full-strength.

Sharper re-enforcements of rational thought ambushed his lazy brain. There was no way a woman of her size would make the floorboards creak that much without additional weight.

Christ
, she was making a run for it.

Samson threw off the covers and moved soundlessly to the door of his bedroom. He had left it ajar, just a sliver, and he slipped past it now in panther-like silence, a fundamental skill for a SEAL. The stairs and foyer were empty.

He knew exactly where she was headed.

He crept toward the storage room where she had spent hours organizing his gun collection. A slight shadow played against the steady blue light from the motion detectors he had deactivated for the night. He waited in the kitchen shadows for what he knew was to come. She reached the sliding glass door and was two paces out into the lawn when he caught up to her, hands locked around her waist. He yanked her back inside.

Angela gave a low cry of dismay as he pulled her back into the living room. She struggled against him briefly, but any attempt to fight him was encumbered by his forty-pound Navy-issue rucksack. Samson stripped it from her shoulders and tossed it to the floor before picking her up bodily and carrying her deeper into the house, away from escape.

"Hey!" Angela protested.

She squirmed in his arms, but Samson locked his biceps around her thighs. He considered taking her into the kitchen, but the chance of her slipping free out the front door was too great; instead, he hauled little miss afraid-of-everything-but-going-AWOL into his bedroom. Any forbidden fantasies he had been entertaining earlier were quickly put to rest as he flung the woman down on his bed.

"Not tonight," he growled. He didn't shut the door behind him but kept himself planted firmly between the woman and her only remaining route of escape. She scrambled up on the mattress, looking flushed and furious.

"Don't make me hold you down on the bed," he warned. He would do it, and he made no promises that he wouldn't enjoy it.

"We can’t stay together," she insisted. "They’ll kill him."

“You’re playing right into their hands.” Samson sat on the bed beside her.

She didn't shift away.

Attempting a conversation was better than portraying himself as the obstacle to her freedom. The bed sagged beneath their combined weight. Samson crossed his arms. He always slept shirtless, and tonight was no exception. It didn't escape his notice that Angela shot frequent, dismayed looks at his bare chest. Either she finally realized just what a formidable opponent he was, or she was mad at herself for taking a moment to appreciate the view.

She reached for her glasses and straightened them.

"Is this because I kissed you?" he demanded. "If it is, then you're justified. I crossed a line, and I was completely fucking happy in doing so at the time. I’ll call Rockwell tomorrow morning and tell him what happened. We'll have you moved to another safe house, and I'll take whatever punishment he decides is appropriate."

Angela leaned forward, surprising him, even though he had kept himself on high alert all along in the event that the woman made another move. She planted a soft, quick kiss on his lips and drew back.

Samson met her eyes warily. His abdominal muscles tensed. He tried not to pay any attention to the actions of his lower muscles.

"It wasn't the kiss." Her fingers twisted together in her lap as if they were an interlocked brainteaser she worked out while other more riddling problems of attraction played out in her head. "I have to go after my brother, Samson. With or without you."

Beneath his scrutiny, Angela’s eyes closed.

Samson considered her for a long moment. He knew one way to distract her from escape… at least, for tonight. Tomorrow, he would ship her off, and she would be someone else's problem. But tonight, he could keep her wrapped tightly in his embrace and indulge in a million different fantasies to exhaust her before dawn. It seemed a better solution than using force.

He sighed and rose, crossing once more to the bedroom door. "Since you won't stay put in your own room, you're staying with me tonight."

The delicate seam of her mouth opened in protest, but Samson shut and locked the door, flipping the light off before he returned to the bed. She sat with her back against the headboard, arms crossed. Samson slid beneath the sheets and mimicked her councilwoman-going-over-legers-in-bed pose. In the scant moonlight through the window, her cheekbones appeared hollow, as if she had just sucked a lemon.

“Who was the boy? In the photo?”

“His name is Emmanuel. Manny.”

“And he is…?”

“My biggest regret.” He punched the pillow at his lower back into submission. “Might as well get some sleep. I can stay up for days on end. This is nothing."

"I hate you," Angela muttered as she slipped beneath the covers. She turned from him, resting her head on his favorite pillow. Though she was silent after that, Samson thought he heard the occasional plop of tears as they fell from her face and hit the cotton sheet.

She wasn't going to give up; he knew that much. Contrary to what he implied, he couldn’t stay awake forever—certainly not weeks—and he knew that the moment he let his guard slip, she would be off again.

Could he really blame her?

Samson settled in to think, watching the irregular rhythm of her shoulder rise and fall, until she finally drifted off into uneasy sleep beside him. Only when he was certain she was unconscious did he allow himself to reach over and tuck her more comfortably beneath the covers to protect her from the night chill.

He couldn’t let her endanger herself, not even on behalf of imperiled family members.

Not even if he knew firsthand exactly how she felt.

***

Angela awoke in the morning without knowing where she was. Mike rushed to the forefront of her mind. As she stirred and sat up, the events of the previous day came back to her.

She was alone in Samson Caine's bed—Samson Caine, who, inexplicably, had become his own magnetic field, an irresistible force with the power to dictate her electrical impulses. No less than four hundred minutes had passed since he commandeered her into his bed—four hundred opportunities to escape. Yet, she remained. As much as she wanted to get to that road, to the Third Street Promenade, to her brother, Samson had become her drug of choice. He represented knowledge of this foreign cloak-and-dagger world, confidence in the face of overwhelming realities. Most of all, he represented safety. And during at least a dozen or so of those four hundred opportunities, the impulse to slip free of the covers, of his warmth, died a slow and self-loathing death.

And now, her chance to leave was gone.

She gripped the feather pillow to her mouth and let loose a silent scream. Hot tears threatened, but she put effort into controlling her breathing and steadying her spiked pulse. Samson’s scent—forest-like, sandalwood or dry birch mixed with clean mountain air—lingered on the bedsheets. One deep, lung-expanding inhale later, his trace softened the edges of her frustration.

She shouldn’t be here, in the middle-of-nowhere California, away from her time-sensitive experiments and ledgers and a team that counted on her. She
told
Mike that enrolling in a lesser-known doctor relief organization was dangerous. Why didn’t he listen? He had assured her the physicians had their own security team in addition to those supplied by the local government—two layers of protection, should things go south. That, more than anything, made her wonder if protection was a dangerous illusion that derailed natural human instincts of survival.

Angela breathed in Samson’s sexy, masculine perfection once more and slipped from the covers. At his bedroom door, she heard his voice beyond.

“How many Julians can there be? Look into it will you? I sent you his voice file. Run it.”

He stood in the foyer, barefoot and shirtless, cellphone pressed against his ear, steaming mug in his other grip. Angela lingered in the doorway to observe him. She was treated to a morning view of his sleek, tan pectorals, his taut abdomen, and a sculpted six pack that made her wish she had paid better attention in anatomy class. Every one of those ridges had a name, and she wanted to know them all. Intimately. He was magnificent in a surreal sort of way. Men like him just didn’t pass into her sphere.

“Come on, Rockwell. She looks nothing like her.” His tone was pitched, confrontational.

Samson turned, alerted to her presence despite his apparent distraction with his phone call. At her perusal of him, an amused twitch played at his lips. He raised the mug to his lips without breaking eye contact. Always with the bulldozer eye contact. She knew she was the topic of morning conversation.

“It isn’t the hair. The wig and glasses and outfit are fine, the height is good. It’s just not her.”

“What’s not me?” asked Angela.

“Start with the chest. Bind her if you have to.”

A vein at Angela’s temple pulsed, total simultaneity with a tingling jolt of awareness that he had studied her breasts. She crossed her arms. “What?”

“And no makeup, but to play up the lips.” His scrutinizing stare ascended from her chest to her mouth and the sweet ache in her breasts tenderized and slipped lower. “They’re fuller up close.”

His frank objectification should have incited her to revolt, but it had quite the opposite effect. Women like her just didn’t get noticed in his sphere. Plus, she needed more information. Fast reactions were silver nitrate and sodium chloride, the explosion of hydrocarbons, not level-headed scientists who made lists about lists.

He ended the call and took another casual swig of his hot drink as if he hadn’t just called her tits small, her hair wig-like, and her lips plump. She pushed past him to the kitchen to pour a glass of water she didn’t want.

“Morning…” His voice was dip-your-toes-in, hope-it’s-not-flesh-eating-acid.

“Ordering up your next conquest? Oh, wait, I forgot. Your sweet spot is the range between double-C to double-D.”

Samson rolled his eyes. “A cyber-crimes specialist out of the L.A. FBI office vaguely matches your description. We’ve got a makeup artist with her to turn her into you for the meet-up.”

Angela’s body went rigor mortis-stiff. No.
No-no-no.
That wasn’t part of her plan.

“You can’t send someone else. Julian will know. Hell,
Mike
will know the moment I speak to him. I have to be the one at that flagpole or they will kill him.” Her voice pitched high, unnatural, helium-like. She paced the tile floor to try to chase it back to normal.

“You show up at that flagpole, you’re both as good as dead.”

“The team destroyed all documentation of the formula. Julian knows that. As long as I have that formula in my brain, he won’t kill me.”

“And once you give it to him?”

“I won’t. I’ll make it something close. Something harmless.”

“And when Julian realizes it’s the wrong formula?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead.” She glanced around for a pen and notepad, her recording device—anything to tether her hands, her spiraling thoughts.

“Angela, this woman is a highly-trained agent on a team positioned to flush out Julian’s contacts. We squeeze the contacts to talk and we find Julian.”

“By then, Mike’s already dead.”

“Giving into terroristic threats never ends well, Angela.”

She felt her options slipping away, like a rockslide into a vast ocean of hopelessness. Getting to that meeting was paramount, if she had to approximate a lie to do it.

“I want to meet with the agent first.”

“No.”

“How can she be expected to pull off
me
if she hasn’t met me?”

“Too dangerous.”

“For me? What about Mike? He
is
the goal, isn’t he? Or is he already a casualty of the intelligence-gathering process?”

“Extracting him
is
a goal, Angela. But he’s not
my
goal. My objective is you.”

Despite her absolute intent to storm the guy who stood before her and clobber her fists against his chest for forsaking her brother, his words landed against her heart like a mallet on a bass drum—deep, resonating, absolute. She wiggled a few breaths past the beginning stages of tears and paced away to think. She had to get to that meet-up, but she would have to hustle him, yet again, to do it.

“The agent will have an earpiece, right?”

“Most likely.”

“If I’m there, close-by, watching, I can tell her what to say. They ask her a scientific question or something only she would know about Mike, she could blow everything with her answer and no one accomplishes their objective. We can bring my dress—the one they observed me in at the bar. Please, let me do
at least
this to save my brother’s life.”

She tossed everything she had at the wall of reasoning, hoping something would stick in the logical part of his brain. In the contemplative set of his jaw, she saw consideration. In the critical lines of his brow, she knew he weighed risk-reward. In his unwavering stare that captured and held hers, she felt hope.

“Ten minutes. Gather your things. Purse and the clothes you had on at the bar. Nothing else.”