Under Fire

“Sit up carefully and hold on to the steering wheel.”

Um, what? She inched upward warily. “Are you nuts?”

“Hold. On.” He grabbed her hand and placed it on the wheel.

He let go.

Sitting up fast, she held on tight, her shoulder pressed to his. “This really isn’t the time for you to find your sense of humor.”

“No games. I’m calling for help.” He arched off his seat to pull his cell phone out of his pocket.

A quick glance in the rearview mirror showed her the SUV was three cars back. “I would have been happy to do that, you know.” She gripped the steering wheel, easier said than done with the Jeep barreling along the bridge. Humor seemed like a good idea after all, anything to steady her freaking-out nerves. “Nine. One. One. Try it. I learned it back in preschool.”

“My help is a bit more intense than that, and they’ll want to talk to me. You need code words and crap like that to get through.”

“You have connections?” She narrowly avoided a slow-moving truck with stacks of orange crates.

“You could say that.”

“Of course you do. That’s why I’m here. I just didn’t expect… Forget it.” She didn’t dare look at him, just held the vehicle steady as—thank God—they cleared the bridge. “Tell your connections those goons back there are driving my car, which means somehow they got on base.”

The highway was marginally wider, at least. Except for the oncoming traffic on one side and a steep drop-off into the water on the other. Risking a look in the rearview mirror, she bit back a scream as the image filled with the car still hot on their tail. Her car. With two men in front, blurry shapes at such a high speed. Liam’s curse hissed low and long, riding the wind whipping through the shot-out windows.

Bluetooth headset in place, he took the wheel back. “I’ve got it now.”

He whipped past a Mack truck, then… nothing. No one followed them except the truck. For now. The hammering of her heart grew stronger in the aftermath. Her heartbeat?

No. His.

She still had her hand over Liam’s chest, taking reassurance from the steady beat. Betraying a little too much about herself. She wasn’t the clinging-vine type, damn it. She snatched her arm away and twisted her fingers in her lap.

People told her she had nerves of steel. She’d worked earthquake-ravaged regions, walking in rubble shifting with aftershocks. She’d trekked up a rugged mountain trail, searching for a missing child, with wolves howling in the wind. There had even been times she’d helped the police track an escaped convict. But sitting here while Liam’s life was at risk because of her? That was threatening to send her over the edge faster than any jolt from a car. She shouldn’t have come here. She should have gone from cop to cop to cop until somebody listened to her…

Listened to her say what? Bottom line, she knew so little. How could this bring down such a firestorm onto her life?

Dimly, she registered Liam speaking cryptically into the phone, lots of alphas and bravos and other code-sounding talk. And then an end to the conversation, roger and out.

He tossed the phone back into the cup holder between them and checked the rearview mirror again. “Looks like we’ve lost them. You did great, keeping your cool.”

“Thanks, but I really don’t deserve any praise. It wasn’t like you left me any choice.”

“Plenty of people still would have panicked. You’re a good wingman.” His eyes held hers in the rearview mirror.

Her stomach did a tumble that had nothing to do with fear. She looked down and away. Her gaze landed on his cell. “Your phone? May I use it, please?”

“Sure.” His hand fell to rest on it. Nicks and scars shone along his knuckles. “But first I need to know, who are you contacting? You have to be careful who you speak to.”

“Brandon deserves to know what’s going on, even if I just leave a message. Maybe I shouldn’t tie up your phone after all. I’ll just fish my bag from the back.” She started to twist around, the seat belt cutting into her neck. She reached to unbuckle—

Liam’s hand shot out and stopped her with a light touch on the shoulder. Just a simple brush, but electric and immobilizing.

His hand slid away. “Stay put. Use my phone, since we’re certain it’s secure. If you reach your friend before we can get one of our people to pick him up, tell him to come straight to base, to the OSI. Once we get there, you won’t be able to use your cell phone in the building.” His brow furrowed. “On second thought, I think you should get your phone after all and pass it to me.”

“Why?” But she was already reaching into the back even as she questioned him, careful not to ditch her seat belt even though it pinched like a son of a gun. She wrenched and yanked the backpack from beside her panting dog.

“If what you say is true about tapped phones, they could have been tracking you through your cell.”

“Oh God.” She unzipped her bag fast and tunneled inside. She handled her iPhone like it was a snake.

He snatched it from her hand and pitched it out the window, into the ocean. She felt the plop in the pit of her stomach. Had she lured these people directly to Liam? To Brandon too?

Damn it, she refused to let fear take over. She had to find her old calm under pressure. She may have brought this trouble to Liam’s doorstep, but she would do her best to hold up her end of things. “Your phone, please? I need to call him and warn him now more than ever.”

He scooped it up. “Here. Even though my phone’s secure, keep it brief, just in case.”

“Thank you…” For the phone and so much more. She really hated herself right now for all she was asking of Liam.

As she dialed, police sirens whined faintly in the background along with the ringing phone, ringing, ringing, until finally Brandon’s voice mail picked up again.

Hell. Her hand fisted around Liam’s phone.

Leaving a message felt like a pitifully inadequate option, with buildings blowing up and a high-speed chase on a bridge. She couldn’t even bring herself to entertain the notion that he wasn’t picking up because whoever had been threatening her and Liam may have already gotten to Brandon.

***

Twirling a sprig of honeysuckle vine between her fingers, Catriona leaned a hip against the chain-link gate and watched Brandon, in his truck. He’d been sitting there for at least twenty minutes. But then he did that sometimes. Zoned out, thinking.

Except she wasn’t doing much else either. Just standing here. A little pathetic actually, watching and drooling over him.

Although, who was going to rat her out? Her staff was made up of a couple of college students, neither of whom was here now. Her only real buddies weren’t particularly verbal, sticking to barking or howling. While she understood every nuance of their sounds, the rest of the world wasn’t going to pick up on any hint from them that their caregiver had a serious crush on a guy who barely knew she was alive.

A guy who sometimes seemed to doubt he was still alive himself.

Across the yard in the parking area, Brandon slumped in the front seat of his truck. She could see his fists clench tighter as if he was resisting the urge to pound the steering wheel. Instead, he gently—carefully—reached for his dog. He buried his fingers in the dense fur.

She couldn’t pry her eyes away from how the sea breeze played with his dark hair, thicker than usual, since he’d let it grow while on leave. His face was bristly, just unshaven enough to be scruffy. Manly.

She knew he was on leave from the military after a rough deployment overseas and he had one of Rachel’s therapy dogs, so he must be suffering from some kind of trauma. But beyond that? He was a mystery to her.

One she really wanted to solve. She tucked the honeysuckle into her pocket.

Unlatching the fence, she angled through sideways, careful not to let any dogs out. She secured the lock after her and walked gingerly toward his vehicle, slowly, crunching gravel to give him an advance warning that she approached. He had one elbow crooked out of the open window, country music drifting from the radio.

Still, he jolted when she cleared her throat. “Hey, uh, didn’t see you coming.” He stepped out of the truck, the engine still idling, radio humming. “Is there some kind of a problem?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.” She cocked her head to the side, late-night breeze caressing her cheek. “You look angry, and you haven’t left.”

“Rachel isn’t answering. And so far, she hasn’t left a message.” He waved his cell phone, green LED panel glowing in the dark. He tapped the roof of his truck, music from the radio drifting softly through the open door. “I was just searching my iPhone and listening to the news for more details on that explosion. Shit, it sounds like it was really bad—Uh, sorry for cursing, Cat.”

Cat? No one had called her that before. Except him. Now. “I’ve heard worse, but thanks for the apology anyhow.”

“From what I can tell, the explosion wasn’t just on Rachel’s block. It was her building.”

Her heart leaped up to her throat. “Oh, God. When did you last speak to Rachel?”

“This morning. And you?”

“When she dropped off the dogs, nothing more after that.” She reached for her cell clipped to her belt, dialed… listened. Darn it. “Straight to voice mail. Her phone must be off.” Or worse. “I’m sure she wasn’t there. Who pays a dog-sitter and goes home?”

Still, something was very wrong here. Rachel never, never disappeared without leaving concrete contact info. She was too devoted to her animals.

He scratched his head. “I have a couple other numbers I can call, people who train the dogs with her. Maybe they’ll know something.”

Nodding, she pressed her cell phone to her chest. “You go ahead and call them then. I’ll just take deep breaths so I don’t hyperventilate.”

She used to do that all the time as a kid, before she’d gotten her asthma under control. Inhalers. Not sexy.

Not that Brandon would find her sexy when they were worried about Rachel. Or even if they weren’t neck deep in worry, why would he notice her in her baggy dog-lady clothes, covered in canine slobber? But she couldn’t change who she was. She hadn’t been able to do it to please her parents. She wasn’t going to do it to win over some guy.

Even a guy as muscular, smart, intriguing—and strangely vulnerable—as Brandon.

His rumbling voice rode the breeze. Each time he spoke, her hopes rose, only to fall as he left yet another message or thanked someone for their time, even though nobody seemed to know a thing about where Rachel had gone today.

Cursing, Brandon stuffed his cell in his pocket. “Sorry, Cat—uh, Catriona, I mean. Sorry. Just distracted. Nothing from anyone on Rachel.”

“No need to apologize. You can call me Cat. It’s easier. My full name’s unusual, to say the least.”

Her name even made her laugh sometimes. Her parents had chosen it months before she was born, obviously expecting great things from her, with a flamboyant name to go with a grandiose future. But she hadn’t been outgoing or particularly pretty no matter how much they paid to dazzle her up. Hair highlights and lowlights. Manicures and spray-on tans.

Underneath it all, she was still just herself.

She wanted to sit on the beach and read. She forgot her hat and wrecked the latest hair color her mother chose for her. She got sunburned and peeled.

The boys she had liked—the ones who’d liked her back—usually freaked out when they saw her million-dollar home and met her unmistakably pretentious parents. No one had been able to accept her for herself… until she’d stumbled on two stray puppies in a Dumpster when she was sixteen. They were starving, and the female bit her.