Volcano (21 page)

“PC&M?” Charlie could have fallen straight through the beckoning fields of her eyes except he heard the ring of warning in her voice.

“My employer.” Her voice had taken on a flatness he didn't recognize. “They do the bookkeeping for Jacobsen's companies, as well as financial statements and taxes.”

He wanted to kiss her. “You mean, you could—”

She cut him off. “I'd lose my job. That's confidential information. I'd lose my license as well. I could be fired just for digging into his background like this.”

That had been too lucky a break. He should have known it. “What if he had Michel and Raul murdered?”

“Then the authorities would have to subpoena the information.” She glanced down at the screen, hit a message light, and opened her e-mail. “Beth got my note about Tamara.” Penelope frowned and glanced down at her watch. “It's almost noon here. What time did Tammy's flight arrive?”

“Dawn. I had my pilot take her in. Why, what's wrong?” Charlie jerked the screen around so he could read it. “Damn,” he swore. “Where the hell is she?”

“Not with Beth,” she answered dryly. “Pilot? You have your own pilot?”

He read the message again. No Tamara. “Florida is a big state. It was taking too long to get from job to job. So I got a plane. Now I can fly crews in and out as I need them.” He couldn't look away from the screen. Where had the damned idiot gone?

“Maybe you could call your pilot?”

“He'll have hit the sack by now after flying in the middle of the night. I can leave a message on his machine. Turn this thing off so I can hook up the phone again.”

“Give me his name and number; I'll have Beth do it. She'll need to be our Miami connection.”

Charlie glared at her. “I thought you said your sister was blind. How's she reading this damned thing?”

Penelope shrugged. “Voice monitor. There are limitations, but one of the guys I went to college with is on the high-tech edge of these things. Beth tests his software.”

With a snort of disbelief, Charlie gave her the number and lurched to his feet to pace the room. He didn't need this now. Damn Tamara... He would wring her neck.

“Charlie.”

The alarm mixed with worry in Penelope's voice swung Charlie around. “What?”

She stared at the screen. “I just got another message from Beth. She says someone is trying to crack my firewall.”

“
What
?”
 
He tried not to yell, but that made no sense at all.

“I use my PC at home to network with the firm's computers. I've installed the newest software that keeps hackers like me out. Someone's trying to break through it. It shrieks a warning. Beth wants to know what to do next.”

A frown creased Penelope's forehead as she looked up at him. “I don't have that firewall on this machine yet. They may know everything I've looked up this morning.”

“Can they trace it?” Charlie demanded.

“If I were them, I'd damned well be hunting me down right now. They'll know I'm on the island server. I have no idea if the St. Lucia telephone system can sustain a wiretap, but if they have police connections, they can probably trace us through the server number.”

“Hell, shut that thing down and let's get out of here. If
I've
got police connections, you know damned well Emile does.”

“Give me a minute. I want Beth to delete the network software. I don't want them after her too.”

Charlie stared in dismay at the vulnerable nape of Penelope's slender white neck as she bent over the laptop. She'd stuck that neck out because of him, and now he had three women in danger.

Maybe he ought to sell the damned land and cut his losses while he could.

Before he could follow that thought, Penelope was standing in front of him, her eyes nearly on a level with his.

“I have the address for Beth's ex in my e-mail file. He's a bastard of the worst degree, but he's a cop. He can find Tamara and keep Beth safe. It will do him good to be useful. And we need the cops on our side, Charlie.”

He heard the warning in her voice, but he also heard the commitment. He'd never heard a more beautiful sound in his life. Miss Nose-in-the-Air Careerwoman was with him on this, even though it might cost her her precious job.

Without giving it a second thought, Charlie wrapped Penelope in his arms and kissed her. The minute his lips touched hers, he forgot to think at all.

Penelope slid her hands around Charlie's broad T-shirted back, as if she'd done it a thousand times before. Charlie might not know the meaning of the word
cautious
, but he had a good grasp on
gentle.
His mouth seduced her with gentleness, plied her with lovely, mind-bending kisses until she no longer wondered at her insanity but offered him what he wanted.

The instant she parted her lips and his tongue touched hers, a shudder swept through him, and he tightened his grip around her waist. The pressure warned Penelope she was playing too deep, that it was time to back away, but she ignored the warning she'd obeyed so often these last few years. Charlie's muscles rippling beneath her palms felt too good, too right, and the mouth covering hers obliterated any other thought.

He kissed her as if he meant it, as if he wanted just this intimacy and nothing more, as if he really cared enough to hold her and kiss her and cherish her without demanding more than she had to offer. And she fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

Lifting his head, Charlie gazed into her eyes with as much amazement as she felt. “My God,” he whispered. Apparently unable to formulate a more complete sentence, he lowered his head toward hers again.

Penelope's fingers gripped his back, torn between holding him closer and pushing him away. But the decision was ripped from her as he caught sight of something outside the window and swiftly dropped his hands.

“Cops! Grab your computer. They can't know we're here, but it's just a matter of time....” Cursing under his breath, he began pulling telephone and electrical cords and throwing them in her direction.

Glancing out the window, Penelope caught sight of a uniformed officer on a motor scooter slowly rolling by on the dirt road outside. She dropped to the futon and hurriedly shut down the program. Heart beating so fast she figured she'd fall on her face if she stood up again, she forced herself to calm down. “What are they doing? Patrolling?”

“If they're looking for us, they've got a list of Jacques's naturalist friends. The ecologists have been a thorn in the government's side for years. But it doesn't look like the cops are in a hurry to get out and beat the bushes yet. What can they charge us with anyway? Existing?” Charlie stalked to the back room and shoved clothes into their bags and backpack.

Obviously, men recovered from earthshaking kisses faster than women. Or the earth hadn't moved for him as it had for her. Penelope's fingers actually shook as she shoved the laptop into its case. Maybe she'd refrained from sex too long and this craving was the result. If so, she'd damned well better get Charlie out of her system before she began thinking this need meant anything.

Love on the run, she thought grimly as she draped the strap over her shoulder and hurried to grab her sack of clothing. She should have had a sensible backpack too, but stumbling through jungles hadn't been on her itinerary.

“Where do we go now?” she asked in exasperation as he checked out the wide front window. “We can't get anything done if we keep picking up and running.”

Charlie glanced around the neat little room with a half- crooked smile that nearly took her breath away, then fixed her with a look that shook her clear down to her shoes. “Yeah, I was just beginning to like this place. I could have stayed awhile longer.”

Which didn't answer her stated question but certainly answered one or two others. He wouldn't have stopped at kissing. She should have known. She had known; she'd just fooled herself into thinking otherwise. Damn the man. Women probably fell all over him. It meant nothing to him. She'd better keep that thought firmly planted in the forefront of her mind, right after staying alive.

“Let's just get out of here, okay?” she demanded anxiously.

“Righto, it's into the hills we go. Pity they burned Raul's shack.” He shifted his backpack, snagged the laptop from Penelope's shoulder, and hooked it over his own. “Out the back window, my fair lady. Got your climbing shoes on?”

She didn't own climbing shoes. She wore the cheap Keds she'd intended to wear for walking on the beach. But they were better than heels. With a sigh, Penelope threw her sack of clothing through the window and followed him out under the camouflage of a fern tree. Charlie's hands catching her waist and helping her down didn't ease her jumbled thoughts, only increased her awareness. She had a sudden mental image of Charlie's impressive chest, naked and leaning over her. Just the image took her breath away. She'd probably faint if it ever became reality.

Get a grip,
she muttered to herself as she trudged in Charlie's footsteps through the thick greenery behind the house.

They had to take only a few steps before the cottage disappeared entirely behind the curtain of trees and vines. Penelope prayed Charlie knew where he was going, because any sign of civilization disappeared along with the cottage.

“Do you think we should head back to Miami?” she asked. From this angle, she could see no more than his broad back. She hadn't learned to read him yet, but she judged by the way he was stomping down the undergrowth that he wasn't in an amiable mood.

“I need to be in two places. Hell, I need Raul.” He shut up again, ripping a massive vine out of his way and forging a path of his own through what could be someone's backyard, as far as she could tell.

“Beth will start looking for Tammy. She's learned to really manipulate the computer and telephones. If her ex gets my message, he can help. It's not much, but it's better than nothing until we get there,” she offered.

“If she's done this on purpose, I'll strangle her myself.”

That wasn't helpful. Penelope threw Charlie's broad shoulders a scornful look. That was the problem with men his size. They thought brute strength would solve everything. Her stomach did a little jig at the fleeting thought of just what men of his size could do. “We have to figure out what to do next. We can't play Tarzan and Jane forever.”

He threw her a look over his shoulder that involved a lifted eyebrow and a half smirk she should have kicked him for, but Penelope allowed him his little nonsense. He had reason to be half out of his mind.

“This Tarzan has no more fondness for jungle than Jane,” he admitted, turning back to the task at hand and beating his way through banana leaves. “If I knew who on the island is on Jacobsen's payroll, I might make some progress.”

“If that's all it takes, we just need to search for his local bank account. I doubt he pays vandals and murderers by check, but I wouldn't think he'd be stupid enough to send cash through the mail. Someone has to be taking drafts from a bank account here.”

“And I suppose you can locate his bank account with that little box.”

Penelope shrugged even if he couldn't see her. “I can create whole new identities with this ‘little box.' I'm amazed that authorities haven't caught on to what can be done out there in cyberspace. I've known kids who can break into banks, past the most sophisticated of firewalls. I probably can't do that, but I bet the island bank has a standard software package I can get through without much problem.”

He stopped and looked back at her. “Could you empty Jacobsen's bank accounts?”

“Here, easily. Back there? With a lot of work.” Penelope shifted her sack to the other hand and glared at him. “But I won't.”

She almost thought she saw admiration in his expression before he returned to hiking ahead of her.

“I'm gonna have to get me someone like you when I get back,” he announced without preliminaries.

“Good luck. It'll cost you,” she muttered. “And the authorities eventually catch on, so if you have crime in mind, be prepared to pay the price.”

“Crime isn't what I have in mind at all.” He didn't elaborate but studied a telephone pole emerging in the field ahead. “They usually keep extra wire out here in case of emergency.”

The jump from crime to wire took a minute, but Penelope followed the path of his thoughts as easily as she did his path through the undergrowth. She stared upward at the low wires crossing the forest into the open field beyond. Civilization was never far away in this place.

“We can't camp out here in the middle of nowhere,” she protested. “I don't care how many wires you can run or how much electricity you can steal. I'm losing my job because of you, Charlie Smith; I'll not become a criminal.”

“I bet you don't even cheat on your income taxes.” He shot her a rueful look and continued their march to nowhere.

“That's the way I was brought up,” she replied stiffly.