Dark Memories (The DARK Files Book 1) (8 page)

Seeing pity and rejection in other people’s eyes had cut her deeply. Seeing them in his would kill her. She would endure his suspicions. He knew she wasn’t giving him the whole story.
Single people adopted children all the time. She’d made appointments at three agencies, but witnessing murder abruptly cancelled them.

She’d had two serious relationships after Cole, and both ended after her admission. A man wanted his own progeny.
Cole especially.

He’d left, grim-faced and strung tight. A while later, he reappeared. No more bivouacs in the woods, he said, plopping his duffel on her living room floor. By tacit consent, they avoided any further mention of the past.

And now he was snoring on her sofa.

The bathroom faucet sometimes shrieked like a teakettle. So if she wanted water, could she sneak by him to the kitchen without waking him?

Awareness of his presence kept her so tense that her muscles and her temple ached. When he’d showered, she tried to think of anything but his fit, muscular body dripping with soap — her soap. After he settled down, she tried not to listen to every creak of the wooden frame, tried not to wonder if he slept in his underwear. Or in nothing at all.

Surely he slept soundly. Didn’t spies and soldiers, like doctors, learn to sleep anywhere, anytime?

He slept, but she lay awake until exhaustion finally overtook her. Then the nightmare strobed her mind’s screen and woke her. The waking memories were no less torturous.

She didn’t usually close her bedroom door, so she didn’t know if it squeaked. Drawing a deep breath, she twisted the flimsy metal knob slowly.

Silence.

She pulled the door open.

Silence.

Relaxing a bit, she eased barefoot across the threadbare carpet into the living room.

“Are you okay?” He clicked on the table lamp.

SHE STARTED, AT his sexy, sleep-thickened voice as much as at the bulb’s glare through the stained paper shade. His liquid drawl tempted her to curl up with him on the couch.

He was propped on his elbows, his bare chest above the sheet and light blanket. Whorls of dark, curling hair sprinkled the muscled planes of his chest. Denser than in his youth, but not so heavy a woman’s fingers couldn’t reach the firm, warm flesh beneath. On his flat stomach, the ebony hair arrowed downward to disappear beneath the thin coverlet.

She couldn’t swallow. Her mouth was the Sahara. “I’m fine. Just thirsty.”
Drat. All she wore was a T-shirt and boxers. She scooted sideways to stand behind the only upholstered chair. Not much cover, but most of the room lay in shadows.

“You sure? I heard groans. It’d be a miracle if you didn’t have nightmares. The murder attack or the car crash?”

She reeled from the pain of his perception. How did he—

But of course he meant this morning’s crash. Not the other one. He didn’t know about that one. She hoped.

She exhaled slowly, aiming for nonchalance. “All my disasters seem to involve vehicles. Maybe in a previous life I was a race driver.”

“Or a bad mechanic.” He cocked his head at her. “When this is over, you might want some help with PTSD.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder. She knew much more about PTSD than he imagined.

“You a psychologist now?” She shouldn’t let him see her irritation at his bull’s-eye. She was handling the stress just fine. Except for the nightmares. And the odd panic attack.
She fluttered a hand. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

A smile flickered and vanished. “You getting water?”

Tugging the T-shirt down to cover as much as she could, she hustled to the sink. “Would you like some?”

“Sure, if you’re buying.”

The warm resonance of his voice flip-flopped her stomach. Her unwanted reaction was a warning. She mustn’t let down her protective barriers. She had to fight the attraction. Trying not to stare at his chest, she handed him a glass and turned to go.

“Sit down. You’re not going to sleep anyway. We need to talk about your extreme driving … adventure.”

Cole sprawled, one arm stretched along the back, the other propping the glass on his flat belly. Rumpled and heavy-lidded, he looked sensual and decadent.
Replace the jelly glass with a wine goblet and bring on the Roman orgy.

Grabbing one of the pillows he’d kicked onto the floor, she held it in front of her bare legs. She sat in the chair that had hidden her from his burning gaze.

“Impressive control up there, babe. Worthy of NASCAR. How’d you learn those moves?”

She shrugged. “I took a defensive driving course a few years ago.” Her counselor had suggested it might cure her fear of driving after the accident. It helped.

“Being on the street for months, you must have developed a sixth sense for danger. Wasn’t there a brake fluid warning light on the dashboard? I drove you home once because you ignored the low-gas indicator.”

A heated flush crept up her cheeks at his reminder of her infamous neglect.
But this time was different.

“I bought the car third or fourth-hand in New Jersey at Trusty Tom’s, a shark’s den where neither buyer nor seller asks many questions. I barely made it to Maine. I’ve been having trouble with the dashboard lights, but repairs cost money I don’t have.”

He swallowed the rest of his water in one gulp. Her pulse quickened at the sight of the Adam’s apple moving in his strong throat.

“I can’t get over you living underground like this. How’d you get to Jersey?”

“I hitched.” His brows shot northward at that. Enjoying his reaction, she went on. The topic was a safe one. “Truckers were very helpful. Sometimes I went Greyhound.”

“Winter must’ve been tough in Maine.”

He was fishing now. He had no idea where she’d been before Passabec Lake. Unaccountably, that pleased her. “I spent the winter in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, delivering pizza and hooking plastic covers on dry cleaning.”

“New skills for the anthropologist.” He saluted her with his empty glass.

“Survival skills. I learned a lot about people. Most were kind. A pawnshop owner in Trenton helped me change the name on my driver’s license from Rossiter to Murphy.”

“Most were kind. Not all. Guys hassle you?”

An involuntary shiver quaked her shoulders as his question triggered a memory. “Some men were pretty crude. I left the dry cleaners because the boss had wandering hands. But there was only one time when I was in real danger. I was on the way to buy the car, all my savings in cash in my purse. Two men came out of an alley and tried to mug me.”

He leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “You got away?”
The blanket slipped to show the black waistband of his briefs. Equally black hairs continued their journey downward beneath the edge.

Cheeks heating, she smiled at the appropriateness of black briefs on Cole, but she averted her gaze to her glass. “They were drunk and not too steady on their feet. I knocked a couple of trash cans over in front of them and ran.”

In shock or in tribute, he gave a low whistle. His face somber, he set the empty water glass down on the low table between them. “Your toughness amazes me.”

“I did what—”

“What you had to do. I know. Blows me away.”

Desire burned in his eyes, tempting her to forget all caution. She imagined she could feel his body heat on her skin, but she was probably still warm from her battle with her nightmare demons.
She swallowed.

Before she allowed his magnetism to erode her resistance further, she should put the bedroom door between them. She could survive his presence for the night.

He’d be out of her cabin tomorrow. He had to be.

The questions she’d wanted to pose earlier glued her to her seat. “So, my junker from Trusty Tom is kaput. I have no transportation. It seems Markos has found me, and DARK has agreed to use me. I have nowhere to run to and no way to run. What’s next?”

The vulnerability of her falsely light tone stung Cole like salt in a wound. He wished to God he had a different answer to her question. Wished he could win her confidence, draw out what she was still reluctant to share.

He bent forward, catching her scent. Were those her nipples he glimpsed through the thin cotton, or only shadows?
Hell. He was too damned susceptible to her, to her courage and determination, to the gentleness in her eyes and the curve of her mouth.

And to the livid scars above the T-shirt neck.

“You don’t have to do this. No one will force you to be a target. We can go on with the plan of a safe house.” He’d hide her himself if DARK wouldn’t go along. The hell with protocol. Fear for her was eating him up.

She squared her shoulders. “No. The trap is the best idea. If it helps catch Markos and finds New Dawn’s leader, I’ll paint that bull’s-eye on my back.”

The steel in her words punched him in the heart.
He’d seen this mission as another step up in DARK, but the personal side of it outweighed whatever its success — or failure, but he wouldn’t consider that — meant to his career.
Setting their rock-strewn history aside, he would protect this courageous woman with his life.

Leave the past out of it.
Leave the personal crap out of it.

“What’s next, you ask?” Hell, he had nowhere to run, either. Run to me, he wanted to say. “My bivouac on your couch is permanent.”

Her scowl could have curdled milk. “What do you mean?”

“I’m moving in permanently, Laura. As far as everyone’s concerned, you and I are lovers.”

***

The next morning Cole stood to one side as she locked her door. She smelled of sunscreen and insect repellant, and underneath, Laura. “How many kids are in this sailing thing?”

She stuffed her key in her shorts pocket and picked up the travel mug she’d parked on the step. “Eight, most about eleven years old. Kay is thirteen going on twenty-five.”

He fell into step with her. “You never used to drink coffee.” He clinked his mug with hers, then drank.

She sipped from her mug. “It’s an acquired taste.”

She looked down her elegant nose at him like he was a taste she’d resist acquiring. Yesterday he’d pushed her too hard. No one ever accused him of diplomacy, but he’d learned patience in his work.
Doing his job of protecting her meant waiting to find out more about the past.

And, if he was honest, more about the woman she was today. Was the chasm of their differing backgrounds still between them or was it something else? The craving to know more warred with his fear of knowing and tightened his chest.

Her comment about wanting justice for the man who’d died at Markos’s hands came back to him. And as wary of him as she was, she’d offered him comfort about his old man. In the midst of danger and her own grief, she thought of others. Compassion flowed automatically, part of her nature.
Regardless of the past, protecting her was personal as well as duty.

And regardless of the present, he longed to taste her skin. To bury himself inside her until the rekindled passion burned all the lost years to oblivion.

But to do his job and remain alert he needed emotional distance. Neutrality. Guarding Laura would be more torture than the New Dawn Warriors could dream up.

“The class is held over on the east shore of Passabec Lake.” She pointed toward a cluster of rambling outbuildings that included a bathhouse and boat shed. All gave a good view of the rental and private cabins on the west side.

They continued past the beach to the docks and the boat shed, about the size of a one-car garage.

“The boat shed’s really an equipment building.” She shoved the old-fashioned door. The heavy wood squeaked in protest on its metal runner, but yielded and slid to the right. “And before you ask, no, we don’t keep it locked. This is Maine, not D.C. or New York.”

He nodded, chalking up one more spot a killer could hide. Or a DARK officer for surveillance. Knowing he had backup downshifted the pressure to manageable.

Only the sunlight streaming inside illuminated the boating gear. Oars, odds and ends of lines and ropes, sail bags and life vests lined the walls of the musty interior. A Coleman lantern and its fuel can sat atop a wooden stool, and an old rowboat lay in a corner beside a motor and red plastic gasoline containers.

He whistled softly. “You’d better hope a big storm doesn’t come along and blow this shed away. Rotten boards all around.”

She darted about the cluttered space, sorting sail bags and life vests. The sway of her hips and the silken fall of her hair snagged his gaze. “The regular handyman was going to repair it, but he hurt his back.”

“I hope this place doesn’t get struck by lightning.” The stuffing from a pile of discarded life vests bled through ragged holes onto the dirt floor. Busy mice.

“Eliminating the junk would help.” Laura prodded a fist-size hole in the white dinghy’s bottom. “I’d like this out of here too. It’s identical to mine. A guest ran it up on the rocks last summer. Jake was fiber glassing it. With him out of commission, Burt has his hands full with all the normal maintenance and gardening.”

Heat erupted in his gut. It must be concern at an unknown factor like that kid. Cole had no real reason to resent him. Relieved he’d kept his anger spike to himself, he swallowed the rest of his coffee. He set the mug on the floor when she shoved an armload of life vests at him.

“Here, make yourself useful. Put these out on the dock.” She picked up a couple of sail bags and headed outside.

He followed into the brilliant sunshine as the novice sailors began arriving. Some wore T-shirts, others shorts over their swimsuits.

No chance of missing the going-on-twenty-five Kay. Wearing makeup heavy enough to require a neck brace and a cutoff T-shirt that displayed her budding attributes, she was dressed for a street corner rather than a sailboat. She gyrated onto the dock to the beat from whatever was playing in her earbuds. A chunky boy, likely her younger brother, trailed behind.

Six more youngsters trooped onto the dock chattering and laughing. Wreathed in smiles, they eyed him with curiosity.

“None of the kids I’ve been around lately looked this well fed or well kept,” Cole said, struck by the openness he saw. “They were ragged and thin, wary of the Americans asking questions. Or big-eyed orphans desperate for affection.”