Aegis Security 03 - Extreme Measures (8 page)

He waited while Eve helped the EMT around the back of the ambulance so she could sit. From his position, he couldn’t see much of the EMT except her boots perched on the bumper. But he could see Eve, standing next to the open back doors, looking concerned and . . . stunning in that ridiculous outfit and wild blonde hair.

Blondes had never really been his type, but at the moment he wouldn’t mind taking that one for a test drive.

Dammit.
He ground his teeth when he realized where his fucked-up thoughts were going. She still got to him, after all this time. Even after everything she’d done. But he wasn’t a moron. People had died because of her.
He’d
almost died because of her. And he wasn’t about to forget that.

I loved you, you son of a bitch! Why would I try to get you killed?

She hadn’t been telling the truth. She couldn’t have been. A person like Eve didn’t know how to love. And he wasn’t falling for her fiction even if she was helping him right now.

“Do you want me to get someone?” Eve asked the EMT. “Do you have a partner deckside?”

“No.” The EMT lifted a hand toward her head. “No, I’m fine. I—wait. Didn’t you say your friend was hurt?”

“He is, but you’re in no shape to help him right now. Though if you have some bandages or gauze so I could cover his wound until we dock, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sure. Yeah. I can do that for you. Um, bandages are in here.”

Eve disappeared into the back of the ambulance with the EMT, and Zane used that as his chance to get away. Staying low, he maneuvered back around cars until he came to the RV. Quietly, he opened the door and slid inside. Dropping the materials on the small table, he pulled the needle guard from the shot, tugged down his pants, and injected the solution into his hip.

Relief would come slowly, but faster than with his pills. And maybe it made him a wuss, but he didn’t care. Between the pain in his arm from that gunshot wound and the perpetual burn in his leg from all the scar tissue, he needed some relief right now.

He dropped onto the bench, leaned his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes while the drug began to work. Minutes later, Eve tapped on the door and pulled it open. The scent of peaches reached him, and he drew it in, remembering the hundreds of other times he’d taken that scent in with his eyes closed. Just before she’d touched him, or kissed him, or straddled his lap and ridden him to oblivion.

“Looks like my plan worked.” Paper rustled as she dropped supplies on the table. “The EMT gave me extra bandages. Now take off your shirt so I can get at that wound. We don’t have a lot of time.”

He grunted as he tugged his shirt up and off. Eve’s soft fingers landed against his skin, helping him, sending tiny shivers of awareness all through his body. He leaned his head back against the wall again and closed his eyes while she knelt next to his seat and cleaned the wound, afraid that if he looked, he might not be able to look away. And if he saw her on her knees in front of him . . . forget it.

“This isn’t as bad as I thought.” She packed the wound with gauze, then began wrapping his arm in bandages. “You were lucky.”

Zane huffed. “Luck and I are not good friends. You’re proof of that.”

Eve’s hand stilled against his arm, and when he opened his eyes, curious as to why she’d stopped, he faltered because he couldn’t read the emotion lurking in her amber gaze.

Guilt? Remorse? Regret? He couldn’t be sure which. But something was there. Something he wasn’t sure he wanted to see.

“I know you don’t believe me, Archer,” she said in a quiet voice, “but I wasn’t lying to you earlier.”

Quietly, she went back to wrapping his arm, and as Zane stared at her, he took in the stubborn set of her jaw, the lock of white-blonde hair that fell across her creamy cheek, the way her long eyelashes curled outward from her deep amber eyes. He’d been with a lot of women in his life, but she was the only one who’d stuck with him, and he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t just because of her beauty—though she had that hands down over all the others he’d dated. No, she was forever engrained in his mind because of her brains and wit, and because during one of his most miserable assignments, she’d been his shining ray of light. Until she’d been his darkness.

“No, I don’t believe you.” He tore his gaze away from her mesmerizing face and looked back at the bandages on the table, only mildly concerned they were blurring against the fake wood. More than anything, he hated that feeling in his chest, those pinpricks of doubt that were growing sharper. She was a traitor, and he needed to remember that fact. Not get lost in her all over again like she obviously wanted him to do. “And this isn’t the time to get into it. The ferry’s about to dock, and we need to get out of this RV before Boy Wonder and his dad come back.”

Sighing, she finished wrapping his arm, then pushed to her feet. “You’ve changed, you know that?”

His gaze shot to her. “
I’ve
changed? That’s rich, sweetheart. I’m still the same guy I was in Beirut. I just wised up to your game.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared down at him. “Not everything’s black-and-white, Zane. Sometimes there are shades of gray. But you’re too bullheaded to see them.”

“The only gray I see is you trying to color the situation so I’ll drop my guard around you.” He pushed to his feet, needing his height advantage so he could intimidate her. Which was a lame idea because Evelyn Wolfe was never intimidated by anyone.

He swayed on his bad leg and caught himself with a hand on the back of the bench seat before he went down.

“Zane—”

He pulled away from her reach, knowing if she touched him he might forget what was at stake here. The RV swirled in front of him.
Son of a bitch
. Either that dose of Dilaudid was too strong, or he was seriously weak from the loss of blood.

Gripping the back of the bench seat, he said, “Once we get off this boat, I’m calling Carter, and you’re turning yourself in.”

Her face drained of all color, and she dropped her arms. “The hell I am.”

“The hell you aren’t.”

“Archer—Zane,” she said more softly, “I wasn’t responsible for that bombing in Seattle.”

He pushed past her and peered through the curtain toward the car deck beyond. “My gut says otherwise.”

“Your gut is as bullheaded as your brain.”

“It might be, but it’s not falling for your shit anymore.” He pushed the door open. “Come on. People are starting to come back down. We need to go topside.”

She didn’t move, and as he stepped outside the RV, he realized if she wanted to kick his ass and run, she could do it now, no problem. He was weak, in pain, and not operating on all cylinders, and she was clearly none of the above.

He glanced over his shoulder. She stood in the doorway of the RV, staring at him, that white-blonde hair like a halo around her head, and those emotions he didn’t want to acknowledge reflecting deeply in her rich amber eyes again. But there was also something else lurking in her gaze now. Something that tightened his chest like a drum and made him wish he’d never looked back.

Something that seemed a lot like fear.

“Archer,” she said quietly, “if you were smart, you’d let this go. You’d let me go. You left the CIA for a reason. You don’t want to be involved in this.”

He steeled himself against the sudden burst of tenderness he felt in his chest and reminded himself that retribution was all that mattered. “You made me a part of this the day you sabotaged my mission in Guatemala. Sorry, sweetheart, but you’re not going anywhere but where I say.”

E
ve looked over the display of fish antibiotics toward Archer on the other side of the small pet store where he was tinkering with his waterlogged cell phone.

The ferry had docked on Bainbridge Island, and they’d stepped off without anyone looking twice at them. She’d been a little nervous about the deck cameras, but the Mariners cap and oversized sweatshirt she’d snagged from the back of the RV hid her from view. And the fact that Zane’s phone was dead put a little of her anxiety to rest, knowing he couldn’t call anyone this minute. But right now she was focused on making sure that wound in his shoulder didn’t get any worse. The light jacket he’d found in the RV’s closet covered the bandages on his upper arm, but she was worried about infection setting in, even if he wasn’t.

She looked back at the choices in front of her and wished—again—that she wasn’t so damn gullible. Yeah, she could have gotten away from Archer at any time, but the way he kept swaying on his feet wouldn’t let her. It was because of her he’d been shot. Because of her he was now weak and pale. She was still pissed at him for the way he’d treated her in that warehouse, but before she ditched him for good, she needed to make sure he didn’t pass out or—God forbid—die because of her.

The key was getting him someplace he could get off his feet. He still had his wallet, and she hoped he had enough cash for a motel room, because she didn’t want to risk using a credit card, even if it was his.

Grabbing a bottle of erythromycin tablets, she rounded the end aisle and headed in his direction. A bell above the door jangled, and a rumpled woman in her midfifties with salt-and-pepper hair rushed in and headed for the front counter.

“Mabel,” the sixty-something man behind the counter said, looking away from the wall-mounted TV where coverage of the explosion in downtown Seattle was replaying. “Are you okay? You weren’t in the city today, were you?”

Mabel waved a finely manicured hand. “Nothing like that. Just frustrated. This mess in Seattle is already eating into my business. I just had a cancellation on the Walker Road home. They’re shutting the ferry system down tonight, and the renters have decided it’s too much of a hassle to drive all the way down to Tacoma then up and around for their vacation.” She sighed. “I hate these damn terrorists. First Boston and now us.”

“Sorry to hear that,” the clerk said. “Tourism here’s gonna take a big hit because of this.”

Mabel frowned. “Any update on the victims?”

“No.” The clerk crossed his sun-freckled arms and looked back at the screen. “Fifteen so far sent to the hospital. But they’re not listing fatalities yet. Supposed to have a press conference at nine.”

“Such a bad day.” Mabel sighed again. “I need a couple bags of Pro Plan for Millicent. That dog is going to put me in the poorhouse, I swear.”

Eve’s stomach clenched, and she tuned out the conversation, not wanting to hear too many details about the bombing. If she did, she’d get lost in them and forget what she needed to do next. And right now all she could focus on was getting Zane settled, then disappearing and calling her department chief at Langley to let him know what she’d seen this afternoon.

She paused at the end of the aisle and had a memory flash. Of sitting in that outdoor café in the city, of her contact looking familiar and smug and victorious. Of a cell phone he’d passed to her, the image on the screen . . .

The image on the screen of
what
?

Her brow furrowed, and she tried to remember what he’d shown her, but she couldn’t. The only other thing she remembered was the explosion that had knocked her off her feet and sent her sailing. Then waking up to Zane’s familiar voice.

“You look about as pale as I feel,” Zane muttered.

His words snapped her out of her trance, and she shook off the strange feeling trying to suck her under. “Just tired. Some asshole drugged me earlier.” When he glanced her way with a raised brow, she straightened her spine and sighed. “Look, I’ve got a bead on a place we can rest.”

“I don’t need rest.” He grasped a bag of zip ties from the shelf.

She eyed the bag in his hand, then plucked it out of his grip and set it back on the shelf. “Don’t even think about it, Archer. And if you don’t want to rest, fine. I will. You can continue to be a jackass. It’s a vacation rental that’s not being used.”

“How did you come by this info?”

She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “That woman’s a rental agent. She’s bitching about the status of her business, thanks to what happened in Seattle.” When he glanced toward the counter and didn’t say anything, Eve added, “Look, whatever you plan to do with me can wait until we both have a chance to regroup. Carter will still be there in the morning, and odds are he’s so busy with fallout from the bombing right now, you won’t be able to get through to him anyway.”

He stared at her, and in his dark eyes, she couldn’t read his thoughts. Did he believe her? Did he think she was lying? Or did he not really plan to turn her over to Carter like he’d said?

Unease filtered through her stomach. The dark Archer, the one who wanted revenge, who’d tied her to that chair and slowly cut away her clothing, was still in there. She could see it in the flash of distrust in his eyes. But the one she remembered, the one who’d freed her when they’d been found, who’d been worried about her safety on that roof, who’d made love to her so slowly and thoroughly in Beirut, was also in there. And he was the one she needed to draw out if she planned to get away from him with no drama.

“Where?” he asked in a low voice.

Victory pulsed in her veins. “I’m not sure. But it can’t be far. I know the street name. We just need to find a pay phone and look at a map.”

He glanced at the bottle in her hand. “You’re not planning to poison me, are you?”

“Only if my luck’s improved.” He frowned, and she felt her spirits lifting. “Relax, Sawyer. Fish diseases are treated with human antibiotics. The only thing they lack is a prescription.”

“Running an aquarium these last few years between leaking national security secrets?”

“No, I read it in a book.” She checked her temper. He obviously hadn’t reconsidered his first opinion of her, though why she thought he might left her feeling like an idiot. “A hot and steamy Joan Swan novel. You should try one. You might learn a thing or two about women by reading romance novels.”

She turned for the counter, and he snorted at her back like he didn’t agree. “Romance was never my problem. Trust? Yeah. Thanks to you.”

He was right. Romance had definitely never been his problem. When Zane Archer turned on the loving, he could make a woman go weak at the knees. Thank God she wasn’t in any danger of having that happen.

“Don’t get any smart ideas about running,” he mumbled at her back.

Eve tamped down the urge to show him just what kind of smart ideas she really had. God, he was a jackass. She shouldn’t be helping him. What the hell was she doing? Then, from the corner of her eye, she noticed his limp.

He masked it well, but she could tell his leg was bugging him. Her mind flicked back to the empty syringe she’d found on the table in the back of the RV. He was supposed to be looking for antibiotics in the back of that ambulance, not narcotics, but when she’d first seen the syringe, she’d assumed he’d snagged it for his shoulder. Now she rethought that assessment and wondered if it was really his leg that was causing the most pain. A stab of guilt rushed through her when she thought of him injured in that raid in Guatemala.

She forced back the “if only” closing in. Her whole life was a combination of “if only” this and “if only” that. If only she’d convinced Sam not to get on that plane . . . If only her life hadn’t been flipped upside down because of that night . . . If only she hadn’t been assigned to that house in Beirut . . . If only she hadn’t met Zane . . .

She shook off the thoughts as she waited next to Zane and he paid for their items. She’d learned long ago that playing the “if only” game did no good. All it would do was leave her wishing for a past she couldn’t change, and she needed to keep her wits about her if she planned to get away before she put Zane’s life in more danger.

Darkness had settled in by the time they stepped out of the pet shop. Spotting a pay phone, Eve pushed down her excitement so it wouldn’t show. For the first time in hours, she had hope that things were finally going her way.

She grasped Zane’s sleeve, tugging him after her. Once they got to Walker Road, she’d be home free.

At least she hoped she would be.

NO SERVICE.

Zane frowned at his cell phone, then powered it off. He’d been surprised when it had popped on, but little good it did him without a signal.

He shoved the phone in his pocket and glanced toward Eve, busy at work on the back-door lock of the rental house. Finding the place hadn’t been easy, but since it was the only dark house on the street, they’d decided this had to be it. And honestly, even if it wasn’t, he didn’t care. He wanted off his feet for a few hours. After he’d rested, then he’d figure out what to do next.

He watched Eve work the lock and frowned. “Where the hell did you get a screwdriver?”

“From the RV. I found it when you were sleeping. Snagged it just in case.”

“Just in case you needed a weapon to jam through my carotid artery?”

She smiled in the dim light. “Something like that. I think I almost have it.”

A click echoed through the quiet air, and then the door popped open with a groan.

“Got it,” Eve said in a victorious voice.

Moonlight reflected off the peaceful water of Puget Sound, and off in the distance, the lights of Seattle lit up the sky, but all Zane could see was Eve. The set of her determined chin, the lock of hair falling over her cheek, the way her whole face lit up when she smiled. And the longer he stared at her, the stronger the buzzing in his head grew, telling him he needed to park it for a few hours before he did something really insane. Like tie her to another chair so she’d stop fucking with his mind. Or kiss her until she fucked with something else.

Turning his back on the view, he followed Eve into the one-level home. The kitchen was dark, but he could just make out a long island, a small breakfast nook, and to his left, a great room filled with plush furnishings.

Relief filtered through his veins. Three hours of shut-eye. That’s all he needed. Just enough time to regroup.

Eve moved to the refrigerator and pulled it open. Light spilled over her, highlighting her long, shapely bare legs, the soft line of her jaw, and her tousled hair, framing her face like a halo. She frowned. “Nothing. We should have grabbed food in town. I can head back and find something for us to ea—”

Zane closed the refrigerator door with a snap. “No food. I just need sleep.” He grasped her arm at the wrist and pulled her along behind him. “Come on.”

She didn’t jerk back on his grip, and he was thankful for that, because he wasn’t sure he had enough energy to fight her right now if she tried anything.

“I need to look at your shoulder again before you lie down,” she said at his back.

He didn’t answer, just found the closest bedroom and pulled her inside. Closing the door with his boot, he tugged off his jacket and tossed it on a chair to his right, then did the same with his T-shirt and pulled her toward the bed.

“Impatient, aren’t you?” she mumbled. He set the bag of supplies they’d picked up on the bed beside him while she shrugged out of her sweatshirt, dropped it on the ground, and then began gently peeling away his bandages.

Zane closed his eyes. “I’m a man, darlin’. We’re always impatient.”

“I remember. This actually looks pretty good. I’m just going to change the dressing.”

He didn’t want to think about what she remembered. He had enough memories pinging around in his brain for both of them—and most were the X-rated variety. He sat still while she removed the soaked bandages, added antibiotic ointment, and covered the wound again. But his stomach clenched every time her soft fingers grazed his skin, and with every breath he drew, a whiff of that sweet peach scent bombarded him, amping his awareness and sending blood straight to his groin.