Diamond Bay

"I need to make a phone call. I’m not going to do it from here."

Her throat was so tight she could scarcely speak. "You’re going to call the man you think you can trust?"

"I know I can trust him," Kell replied briefly. "I’m staking my life on it." Even more than that, he was staking Rachel’s life. Yes, he trusted Sullivan completely.

"I thought you were going to wait until you had recuperated." When she turned to look at him, her eyes were shadowed with a stark pain that twisted the knife inside him once more.

"I was, until Ellis came around again. It’ll take Sullivan a few days to check out some things for me and get things organized. I don’t want to push it any longer than that."

"Sullivan? That’s the man?"

"Yes."

"But you just got your stitches out yesterday," she protested urgently, lacing her fingers together to keep from wringing her hands. "You’re still weak, and you can’t" She bit her lip, halting her own desperate flow of words. Arguing wouldn’t change his mind. And how could she tell him he was too weak, when he had made love to her twice during the night and woken her that morning when he slid into her again? She was both stiff and sore, and every step she took reminded her of his strength and endurance. He wasn’t at his own personal peak of strength, but even so, he was probably stronger than most men.

She closed her eyes, hating her own weakness for trying to hold on to him when she’d known from the first that she couldn’t. "I’m sorry," she said quietly. "Of course you can. We’ll go now, if you want."

Kell watched her silently; if there was any one moment that revealed the strength of the woman, it was now, and it only made the leaving harder. He didn’t want to call Sullivan; he didn’t want to hurry the day when this would have to end. He wanted to stretch time to its utmost limits, to spend the hot, lazy days lying on the beach with her, getting to know every minute facet of her personality and making love to her whenever they wanted. And the nights…those long, warm, fragrant nights, spent tangled together on the damp, twisted sheets. Yes, that was what he wanted. Only the sure knowledge that she was in increasing danger could force him to make that call to Sullivan. His instinct told him that time was running out.

He was silent so long that Rachel opened her eyes and found him looking at her with that intent way of his. "What I want," he said deliberately, "is to make love again."

That was all it took, just that look of his and the words, and she felt herself growing warm and moist as her body automatically tightened, but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to comfortably accept him. She looked at him with poignant regret. "I don’t think I can."

He touched her cheek, his hard, rough fingers stroking the contours of her face with incredible tenderness. "I’m sorry. I should have realized."

She gave him a smile that wasn’t as steady as she wished. "Let me change clothes and brush my hair, and we’ll leave."

Because she wasn’t the type to linger in front of a mirror, they were on their way in five minutes. Sabin was alert, his dark eyes noting every detail of the countryside and examining every car they met. Rachel found herself watching the rearview mirror in case they were being followed.

"I need a phone booth off the main drag. I don’t want to be seen by six hundred people on their way to buy groceries." The words were terse, his attention on the traffic.

Obediently she searched out a phone booth next to a service station on the edge of town and parked the car next to it. Kell opened the door, then shut it again without getting out. He turned to her with a smile of real amusement on his lips. "I don’t have any money."

His smile relieved the tension inside her, and she chuckled as she reached for her purse. "You could use my credit card number."

"No. If anyone checked it could lead them to Sullivan."

He took the handful of change she gave him and went into the phone booth, closing the door behind him. Rachel watched as he fed coins into the slot, then looked around to see if anyone else was watching him, but the only other person in sight was the man at the service station, and he was sitting in a chair in the front office, leaning back against the wall with the front legs of the chair off the ground while he read a newspaper.

Kell was back in only a few minutes, and Rachel started the car as he slid onto the seat and slammed the door. "That didn’t take long," she said.

"Sullivan doesn’t waste words."

"He’ll come?"

"Yeah." Suddenly he smiled again, that rare, true smile. "His biggest problem is getting out of the house without his wife following him."

The humor, on that particular subject, was unexpected. "She doesn’t understand about his job?"

He snorted. "It isn’t his jobhe’s a farmer. And it’ll make Jane madder than hell that he didn’t take her with him."

"Farmer!"

"He retired from the agency a couple of years ago."

"Was his wife an agent, too?"

"No, thank God," he said with real feeling.

"Don’t you like her?"

"It’s impossible not to like her. I’m just glad Sullivan has her under control on that farm."

Rachel gave him a dubious glance. "Is he any good? How old is he, anyway?"

"He’s my age. He retired himself. The government would have been glad to keep him another twenty years, but he got out."

"And he’s good?"

Kell’s dark eyebrows lifted. "He’s the best agent I ever had. We trained together in Nam."

That reassured her; even more than her dread at his leaving, she feared the danger he would have to face. Not a hint of it would ever surface in any newspaper, but there would be a small war in the nation’s capital. Kell wouldn’t rest until his section was clean again, even at the cost of his own life. The knowledge ate at her. If she could, if he would let her, she would go with him and do whatever she could to protect him.