Cover Me (Elite Force #1)(21)
Author: Catherine Mann

“You’ll call from here. It’ll be a video-con, so it will be like a regular face-to-face interview.”

She drew in a shaky breath. “Okay, I can handle that.”

“Afterward, I’ll make sure they give you quarters to stay in for the night.” He reached into his pocket. “You’ll need some cash for incidentals.”

“No!” She placed a hand on his arm. A jolt of awareness sparked up her fingertips, tingling all the way into her arms. Ignoring him wasn’t working, but that didn’t mean she would lose sight of what she needed to accomplish tonight. “Can we please just go somewhere else?”

“We?”

His body tensed. Their eyes locked. Heat spiked in the room. Or was it just in her bloodstream?

“Honestly, after all I’ve been through recently, I really don’t want to stay here alone.” She tried to think of a reason why she wouldn’t take the offer of a free room just because it happened to be on a military base that totally freaked her out. She downplayed it with “Gotta confess, the base is rather overwhelming. I’ve had a scary couple of days and thought… Maybe I could stay at a hotel. I’ll pay you back with interest. But I need to get off base. All the noise and people are like a steamroller to my senses when I’m used to the closest neighbor being a mile away.”

He shook his head. “Those close-by people also bring security, and until I know what the hell was going on with Deputy Smith, I’m not going to feel comfortable with you out there unprotected.”

“How about I stay with you then,” she blurted in desperation.

His eyes blinked wide for a second before his expression went neutral. “How do you know I don’t live here on base?”

“You’re not married, so you can’t have one of the base houses… Well, unless you’re a Catholic chaplain—then you could live on base alone.” She couldn’t help but grin. “Are you a priest?”

“Not by a long shot.” Leaning back in his chair, he folded his hands over his chest, his smile a hint wicked.

Heat singed her ears. “Didn’t think so.” God, she liked his smile. “And since you’re not a freshly recruited E1 airman, you can’t live in the airman’s dorms. So I can only conclude you do not live on station. Have I covered everything?”

“You know a lot about base life.”

Her insides chilled. Why was it so easy to lower her guard around this guy? She would do well to remember that around him, and without question, he was her best bet for a ticket off this base until she could figure out what to do next. So she needed to rein in the rogue attraction where he was concerned. “I had an uncle in the service. So can I stay at your place or not? I saved your butt on that mountain, after all, by showing you that cave.”

“And I saved your butt when the guy was shooting.”

“That you did.”

He angled forward again, so close she thought for a second he was going to kiss her. Which would only complicate things.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” he said simply. “Yes, you can stay at my place if you wish. It’s small, but there’s a bed and a sofa.”

A sigh shuddered through her long and hard, her relief almost overriding her body’s reaction to watching his lips wrap around the word bed. One hurdle taken care of. And if she could keep her wits about her, she had a place to stay and access to a computer that was less likely to be monitored. And although that kiss still hovered unspoken in the air between them, he’d offered a sofa rather than assuming she wanted to jump in bed with him.

Now if she could only be so sure she could hold strong against sliding into the comfort of his arms to calm her soul and fears.

***

Brett fought the urge to fling his BlackBerry across the room, smack between the eyes of the mounted reindeer head.

How in the hell had that deputy—Rand Smith—screwed up so completely? It was such a simple job. Take out two people with an entire, deserted wasteland to dispose of the bodies. He’d thought having someone from the local police department on his payroll would make things easier, not harder.

Pacing, Brett restored order to his office, to his world. He dropped a stray pen into the pewter holder, thumbed a fingerprint from a glass whale paperweight his wife had given him to commemorate their fifteenth anniversary. Everything he did was for her, and had been since the day he fell hard and fast for the flame-haired, fiery-tempered woman on a charter fishing boat.

He’d left Montana for Alaska looking for opportunity and adventure, and he’d found Andrea. Everything he did was for her, to give her what she needed.

For the past two and a half years, that tiny, secluded town had offered a perfect—and lucrative—conduit for smuggling people, intelligence, and even weaponry in and out of Russia. He could stash them there until the time was right to make the next move. And never had a package promised to be more profitable than the explosive surprise in the works three days coming.

One pacing step at a time, he steadied his heart rate and his focus. He could make this happen. He needed to make it happen for Andrea. His knuckles skimmed the top of a honeymoon photo snapped on safari in Africa. With the larger payoff in the works, he could give her a future with more magical times like that.

He set the frame in place, carefully angled in the collection lined along his windowsill. Now was not the time to draw attention to this corner of Alaska. Mistakes were not tolerated by his new business associates, and his gut clenched over the possibility of Andrea being widowed.

The most expedient way to keep a lid on this? Let Rand think he was regaining favor with a last chance opportunity to off Sunny Foster, a woman who now knew way too much about the world outside.

Then he would stage Rand Smith’s death to look like an accident, while planting some love letters from Madison on his person. Loose ends tied up neat and tidy.

He reached for the phone to call his wife. Damn right, people would do anything for love.

***

Walking up the narrow stairwell to Wade’s home, a third-floor apartment, Sunny couldn’t shake the sense that she’d missed something crucial back at base. She’d given her statement to the police about what she’d seen. She’d explained simply that she escorted small excursions leaving an off-the-grid community on the Aleutian Islands. Luckily—and a little surprisingly—the interrogator on the other side of the phone line hadn’t pressed.