Secret Agent Heiress

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Her smile was eclipsed by the memory of Dimitri Chilton’s eyes, laughing at her expense. “It’s from the tape they used to tie me up. Chilton thought inflicting a little pain would keep me in line.”

Vincent said nothing, but she could feel the atmosphere in the truck change. He was past recovering from his knock on the head. Agent Romeo had returned. And the man who had made her body tingle with awareness, even in the face of danger, disappeared.

“Let’s get you home.” He tried to get out, but the truck frame had bent and the door was jammed.

Whitney obeyed his silent command and climbed out the open door on her side ahead of him. She couldn’t help peering up the road behind them, wondering if she could see Carl’s body. One man’s life sacrificed for her own.

The shock of the discovery hit her and robbed her of breath. The Black Order wasn’t just out to hurt her or her family. True terrorists, with a cause she couldn’t begin to understand, they possessed a ruthless determination to get what they wanted.

Heaven help anyone who stood in their way.

A feeling of absolute shame retched in her stomach, turning it sour.

She’d felt shame before.

The shame of accusations she couldn’t defend herself against.

The shame of public scrutiny damning her reputation.

The shame of hearing her parents’ teary voices filled with disappointment as they boarded her on a plane for Montana.

But none of that could match the knowledge of one man trading his life for hers.

“Did Carl have any family?” she asked.

Vincent had crawled beneath the truck to inspect the damage. When he came out, he stood and dusted his hands off on his jeans. He was giving her that crazy look again, the look that said he wondered if she had any sense. “I didn’t know him,” he answered. “He was just a voice on the radio. A contact.”

“Don’t you care that he’s dead?”

He climbed into the bed of the damaged truck and picked up his duffel bag. He tossed it over the side and climbed back down. “He was doing his job. Like I’m doing mine.”

He opened the bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper and a heavy-duty flashlight. When he knelt down and unfolded it, she could see it was a computer-generated map.

She hugged her arms around herself, feeling a chill from within far colder than the crisp mountain air. “That’s a callous attitude.”

He absorbed her accusation with no reaction other than to stand. “Dimitri Chilton has a pretty callous attitude toward life and death. He had to have heard the crash. If he has reinforcements to call, he’s doing it right now. If not, I expect him to show up here any minute.”

Whitney shivered. “If you’re trying to scare me, the job’s already been taken.” Forget trying to wheedle an emotion out of Vincent Romeo. The man had ice in his veins. The sooner she cooperated, the sooner she could get back to Jewel and Daniel and people who might actually care. “Let’s just get in the truck and drive out of here.”

“Can’t. The axle’s shot.” He folded up the map and stuffed it back in the bag.

“Great.”

“Let’s go.” He slung the bag over his shoulder and shined the light up into the woods to the east.

“What’s your plan now?”

“Call in. You’re safe for now. We’ll set up a second rendezvous for tomorrow.”

She spread her arms wide and asked him to look at the trees and rocks and nothingness surrounding them. “Where are we going to spend the night?”

“If your friend Court Brody knows this mountain the way I hope he does, there should be an old prospector’s cabin about two miles away on the other side of that ridge. You up for the hike?”

“Do I have any choice?”

He was already walking. “No.”

“You like those one-word sentences, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?” she repeated under her breath. Was that a joke? Or merely proof of a stated fact?

Whitney shook her head and pushed her weary body into step behind him. She still had another two miles to try to figure out Vincent Romeo.

VINCENT ENTERED the cabin first and scanned for signs of unwanted tenants and wildlife. The temperature was dropping rapidly outside as night deepened into midnight. The damn-fool woman traipsing along behind him didn’t have a coat. She wasn’t even wearing a heavy sweater. What kind of simpleton went horseback riding in the mountains without wearing more rugged clothes?

Probably back in Martha’s Vineyard, she had a servant to run along behind with a jacket or shawl when things got cold.

Vincent immediately regretted the unkind thought. She hadn’t asked to be kidnapped. And Dimitri Chilton didn’t care whether she suffered or not. From Whitney’s brief explanation in the truck, the bastard probably got a kick out of seeing her suffer.

She hadn’t complained about the grueling hike, the perilous rock climb, the flying bullets, the wrecked truck. Not once.

The only thing she’d criticized was his own behavior. Yeah. He hated to see a fellow agent go down. He hated the call he had to make to report his death. He hated the thought that anyone had to die. But those were the risks. Job one was keeping Whitney MacNair safe. Carl Howard would have understood.

Why couldn’t she?

When he heard her boots on the boards that passed for a front porch, he turned around. “It looks sound enough. None of the windows are broken. There’s no furniture, but we can make do on the floor.”

She pushed her way past him and inspected the ten-by-twelve-foot hideaway for herself. “As long as the roof doesn’t leak and I can warm myself up, I’ll be happy.”

Vincent closed the door behind him and dropped his bag to the floor. She had already crossed to the cobwebby stone fireplace and dropped to her knees to brush out the crumbling remains of broken plaster and charred wood.

“We can’t build a fire.”

The shock on her face when she looked up at him reminded him of the Christmas Eve when he snuck downstairs and discovered his father was filling in for Santa Claus. “No fire?”

“Chilton could spot the smoke.”

He pulled a black T-shirt and a spare set of jeans out of his bag. “We can black out the windows, though, and leave a lantern going through the night.”

She had no response to that. She stayed where she was, looking small and defenseless.

Vincent made no false promises, so he had nothing to say to cheer her up. He busied himself hanging his clothes over the windows, setting up the lantern, and pulling two granola bars and a water bottle out of his bag.

“Here. Before you fall asleep.” She hadn’t moved from in front of the empty fireplace. But when she took the offering of food and drink, she uncurled her legs and rose to her feet.

“Thanks.”

When she turned his way toward the light, he swore. Five dark bruises, fitting the span of a man’s rough hand, dotted her cheekbones. Against her pale, peaches-and-cream skin, the marks stood out like a crude attempt at finger painting.

She cowered back a step, startled by his curse. “What’s wrong?”

He remembered her wrists. She’d mentioned pain there twice before. He reached for her fingers, water bottle and all, and pulled her wrist up into the light. The duct tape had left angry welts the size of thick yarn, curling like bracelets around her bruised wrist. “Son of a bitch.”

“So you said.” She pulled her hand away, as if embarrassed by the marks.

“Get something in your stomach,” he ordered. “I’m giving you some aspirin and we’ll doctor those up.”

Her immediate protests fell on deaf ears. He spread a tarp on the floor and set out aspirin, alcohol swabs and antibiotic ointment. He could sense her fatigue because the arguments didn’t last for long. When he told her to have a seat, she crossed her legs like a ballerina and folded herself, pretzel-style, to sit on the tarp.

Vincent brought the lantern close to illuminate his work. He bathed her face with water and dabbed the bruises with alcohol. She had such fine pale skin. Clear and smooth, like cream to the eye. And down the bridge of her nose, spilling onto her cheeks, a sprinkling of dusty freckles reflected the reddish highlights in her hair.

He pushed aside the red-gold locks that fell in waves past the top of her shoulders and tended the thick bruise across her neck. He recognized that kind of marking. She’d been choked to unconsciousness. Applying that kind of pressure a few inches higher or lower would have fractured her larynx or crushed her sternum. Either wound, left unattended, could have killed her.

Damn Chilton. Vincent didn’t know Whitney beyond the dossier her father had sent. But Jewel McMurty thought the world of this woman. Daniel Austin and his men were chomping at the bit to get her back. And though she’d already complicated the hell out of his well-laid plans, she’d proved herself to be more than a pretty face or a rich bank account. She didn’t deserve this kind of abuse.

No one did.

It was Vincent’s job to stop the bastards who preyed on innocent victims. Melissa Stamos, his high-school sweetheart, couldn’t see that calling. She’d bashed his heart and his pride on the altar of Saint Stephen’s Church in front of family and friends, condemning him for putting his life on the line for people he didn’t know.