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Olivia straightened, alarmed. “Quinn put information about me and my role at The Gates out there for the BRI to hear? Deliberately?”
“You didn’t know?”
She shook her head.
“See why I’m not sure we can trust your boss?” he asked softly.
She pressed her lips to a thin line, not ready to speak ill of Quinn to anyone, especially Cade Landry. But Quinn should have warned her, damn it! He’d deliberately made her a target by putting the information out there about her role at The Gates.
Was her life a bargaining chip in his plan to take down the BRI?
“He set you up as bait.” Landry’s voice was a soft growl.
“If you’re telling me the truth.”
“I am.”
She wished she could say she didn’t believe him. But the truth was, setting her up as bait without warning her was exactly the kind of thing Alexander Quinn would do. He was always, always about the bottom line. Get the job done whatever it took.
Even if what it took was putting one of his employees in the line of fire to set a trap.
“So they’re targeting me? Do they think he won’t find someone else to do what I’m doing?”
“They’re not going to kill you.”
“But you said I was a target.”
“You are. But remember when I said they were going to take you? I really meant take you. They’re looking to take you captive.”
“Why?”
“They seem to think they can use you to break someone.”
She frowned. “Someone? Who?”
Landry dropped his gaze, his expression enigmatic as he silently studied his hands for a long moment. When he finally looked up again, an unspoken question darkened his green eyes. “After listening in to Quinn’s conversation with you this afternoon, I think they’re planning to use you to get to him.”
“Why? Why do they think that would get them anything?”
He held her gaze, the questions in his eyes multiplying. “You tell me. I asked you this before, but you didn’t really answer. Is something going on between you and Quinn? Are you lovers?”
“No,” she answered bluntly. “I mean—”
His eyebrows quirked. “You mean?”
“We’re not lovers. But there have been times—” She swallowed with difficulty, suddenly overcome by the acute awareness that Alexander Quinn might have her cabin wired for sound. She took a bracing breath and continued. “There have been times I thought he wanted to be.”
“He’s in love with you?”
“I don’t think Quinn has ever loved anyone that way,” she said with a soft laugh. “But he’s a man.”
“And you’re a beautiful woman. Who seems very alone.”
She looked up at him. “I choose to be alone.”
“Why?” He shook his head. “You’re not a loner, Livvie. You enjoy being around other people. You like companionship.”
“That was two years ago. My life is very different now. For one thing, I’m too busy for relationships. My job is dangerous and thankless, and I don’t want to inflict that kind of stress on someone else.”
“Even one of your fellow agents at The Gates? They’re working the same stressful job. They understand the long hours, being on call—”
“Why are you pressing this issue? Do you want me to tell you I’ve moved on from you? I have. It was two years ago.” Her voice rose with emotion. “When I left the FBI, I didn’t look back. Are you happy?”
“No.” He stared back at her, his nostrils flaring. “No, I’m not happy.”
She snapped her mouth shut and looked away.
“I know I drove you away. To this day, I don’t know how to trust you again, but I have missed you every single moment. The smell of you haunts my dreams. I can close my eyes and conjure up a vivid memory of the sun glinting off your hair that long weekend we spent on Assateague Island. I can feel the thunder of horse hooves beneath my feet when that wild herd ran past us on the beach. I can remember the way your laugh rang in my ears like music.”
He hadn’t moved an inch closer, hadn’t reached out across the distance between them, but his voice caressed her, seduced her, until she felt a throb of desire pulsing low in her belly.
“I didn’t come here to get you back. Or ask for another chance,” he said in a deep growl that made her think of long, hot summer nights naked in his arms. “But I don’t know if I could keep on living if you weren’t.”
He moved then, rising to his feet and pacing across the room to the window. Outside, the snowfall continued, barely visible in the deepening dusk. Soon night would fall, silent and deep in the snowbound woods.
And she would be alone with the only man she’d ever let herself love.
She couldn’t stop herself from rising to join him at the window. He turned slowly to face her, his face half in shadow.
“They’re wrong,” she said. “The BRI, I mean.”
“About what?”
“Alexander Quinn might very well want to sleep with me. He might even feel some level of affection for me. But he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice my life if he believed it would serve justice in some way. That’s the sort of man he is. So if your friends in the Blue Ridge Infantry believe they can use me to control him in any way, they are sadly mistaken.”
“That won’t stop them from trying.”
She lifted her chin. “Let them try.”
His eyes narrowed as he held her gaze, studying her as if he’d never seen her before. “You’re different,” he murmured finally, reaching up to brush a piece of hair away from her cheek. His fingers lingered a moment, and she felt how work-roughened they’d become since the last time he’d touched her that way.
He dropped his hand to his side. “Do you trust me enough to give me back my weapon?”
Trust might not be the right word, she thought, but she was willing to take the risk. “Yes.”
He moved away from her to the rolltop desk and retrieved his pistol, reloading it with both speed and skill. “Any chance you have more 9 mm ammo around?”
“Of course.”
His gaze lifted to meet hers, a slow smile spreading over his face, carving dimples into his cheeks and taking a decade off his appearance. “Should’ve known.”
As she started toward the hall closet where she kept her extra weapons and ammunition, the lights went off, plunging the cabin into gloom relieved only by the dying fireplace embers.
“There goes the power,” she said with a sigh, detouring toward the hearth to coax the fire back to life.
“Wait,” he murmured as she reached for the poker. He was much closer than she’d expected; she hadn’t heard his approach.
“What?” she asked, her voice dropping to a near whisper.
“How sure are you that the snow caused the power to go out?”
“It’s not unusual during a snowstorm—”
He tugged her away from the window. “Or during a siege.”
Chapter Five (#ulink_98ab50f8-2a12-58c8-8001-818e2719b155)
Only the soft crackle of the smoldering fire and the quiet hiss of their respirations relieved the sudden blanket of silence that fell over the cabin. Outside, snow continued to fall quietly as Landry listened for any out-of-place noises.
Olivia moved away from the fireplace and picked up the Mossberg shotgun leaning against the wall by the desk. She slanted a quick look at Landry before she started toward the front door and grabbed the thick leather jacket that hung on a hook by the entry.
He caught up with her, closing his hand around her wrist. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She shook off his grasp and turned to look at him, her blue eyes glimmering in the low light. “I’m going outside to see if I can tell what knocked the power out.”
“Didn’t you hear a single word I said about a siege?”
“If there are people out there who want to take me captive, I’d rather get the fight over now than hide like a coward in the cabin.”
“Well, you’re not going out there alone.” He chambered a round in the P-11. “I’ll go first.”
“Why? Because you’re the guy?”
He angled a quick look at her. “Because you’re the target, and the target should never be the first person out the door.”
She frowned but stepped back. “You need a jacket.”
He backtracked and shrugged on the thick fleece coat he’d picked up earlier that day at the thrift store in Barrowville, hurrying in case she changed her mind about allowing him to join her.
But she waited for him at the door, her gaze drawing him all the way in as he closed the distance between them. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as he was, and if anything, she looked even stronger and fitter than she’d been when they’d worked together in the FBI.
They’d always been a good team, right until the case that had broken them. He hoped the old instincts would kick back in for them now, despite all that had passed between them, because if there really were people out there lying in wait for Olivia, it would take all their skills and a whole lot of luck to make it out of the situation unscathed.
An icy blast of air greeted them as they stepped out onto the cabin porch. Wind had swirled snow beneath the porch roof, depositing about two inches halfway onto the porch’s weathered wooden floor.
Landry paused at the top of the porch steps and surveyed the cold white expanse in front of him. If there had been anyone moving around out here in the past little while, they hadn’t come close to the porch. The snowfield was pristine and undisturbed.
“The snow probably knocked a branch on a wire somewhere between here and the nearest transformer.” Olivia’s low voice, only inches from his ear, sent a ripple of pure sexual awareness darting down his spine.
He turned to look at her. “We should check all the way around the house before we let down our guard.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t protest as he led her down the steps into the thickening snow. Almost five inches covered the ground, even more gathering at the edges of the porch where the wind had blown the snow into rising drifts. It was a soft, wet snow, flattening under his boots as they slowly circled the cabin, looking for any signs of intruders.
But nothing had disturbed the snow around the cabin, save for a small set of tracks belonging to what he guessed was probably a foraging raccoon, looking for a meal.
“It was just the snow,” Olivia murmured, giving him a nudge toward the front of the cabin.
He trudged back through the tracks they’d left in the snow and nodded for her to precede him up the porch steps. She climbed the steps with a soft sigh he recognized as a sign of impatience and turned to face him when he joined her in front of the door.
“Fine,” he said. “It was just the snow. This time.”
Olivia shook the slush from her boots and opened the cabin door to head inside. He knocked the snow from his own boots before he followed her in.
She closed and locked the door behind him, shrugging out of her damp coat. “Are we going to do this every time you hear a noise you can’t identify?”
He tamped down a flood of annoyance. “If I think it’s necessary.”
She released another sigh as she hung the coat back on its hook. “Okay, fair enough. Let’s get the fire cranked up. I’m freezing.”
He took off his coat and hung it on the hook beside hers. “How can I help? Need more wood?”
“It’s in a bin by the back door. Straight down the hall.”
He found the wood bin and grabbed a couple of pieces for the fire then returned to the front room. He found Olivia kneeling in front of the hearth, adding newspaper as kindling to the charred logs still glowing faintly red. He added the wood to the fire and looked around for matches.
Olivia reached into a small steel canister on the mantel and withdrew a narrow fireplace lighter. “Here.”
He touched the butane flame to the kindling. It ignited with a soft whoosh, and the logs soon caught fire, emitting a delicious wave of heat into the room.
“Nice,” Olivia murmured, extending her hands toward the flames.
He pulled the room’s two armchairs close to the fire. “Sit.”
She did as he said, leaning toward the warmth. “Thanks.”
He sat in the chair next to her, holding his icy fingers toward the fire until some of the numbness subsided. “No, thank you.”
“For what?”
“For extending a little Southern hospitality to a poor, weary traveler?” he suggested with a smile.
Her lips curved in response. “You didn’t give me a lot of choice.”
“Maybe not. But I am grateful to be here in front of this fire instead of out there in all that cold white stuff.”
Olivia fell silent, her gaze directed at the flickering fire. Settling back in the chair, Landry allowed himself to study her profile, take in the lean lines of her body only partially hidden by her sweater and jeans. His earlier observation was correct; she was in excellent shape. She’d always been a curvy woman, and that hadn’t changed, but the curves were matched with toned muscles and an overall look of vibrant health.
Leaving the FBI and going to work for The Gates seemed to have been good for her, at least physically.
