Shiver (43 page)

“Do you love me?” he asked.

Sam’s eyes widened. She searched his face as her pulse started to pound. “Yes,” she said, because she did.

He blinked. “You do?”

Not
the response she had been hoping for. Her brows snapped together. “Are you telling me that that was a rhetorical question?” Her tone was acerbic. His hand tightened on her arm when she would have pulled away.

“No,” he said hastily. Then a smile just touched his mouth. “Maybe. But guess what, baby doll? I love you, too.”

Her heart lurched. She felt vulnerable suddenly. Exposed. She didn’t like it. She couldn’t deal. Unless—he was telling the truth.

“Really?” She searched his eyes suspiciously. Maybe there was a hint of insecurity in that look somewhere. If so, maybe it was because she was feeling slightly insecure.

“Yes, really.” He slid a hand along her cheek, unsmiling now. Then he bent his head and kissed her. It was a sexy kiss, hard and hungry, and she closed her eyes and kissed him back for all she was worth. Her arms were still around his neck when he lifted his head to nuzzle her cheek, then straightened to look down at her. Opening her eyes, she smiled at him.

“I love you, Sam. This whole fiasco has been a nightmare from hell, except for the fact that I found you.”

After the
I love you
part, she barely registered a word he said. She was standing there smiling up at him, stupidly, with flowers blooming in her heart and stars blazing from her eyes, when he sighed and added, “Keep that in mind, would you? Because there’s something I need to tell you.”

That did not sound promising, but she was too dazzled even to frown. “What?”

“Let’s walk and talk, shall we?”

Not even worried about whatever horrible deed he was about to confess to—she knew the worst about him, right, and loved him madly anyway—she withdrew her arms from around his neck and fell in beside him as they resumed their trek down the slope.

“So tell me,” she said.

He sighed again and said, “I am not Rick Marco. My name is Daniel Panterro. Danny.”

“What?”
Sam heard that with a sense of shock. Her eyes flew to his face. She would have stopped walking, except he caught her arm and urged her on.

“I’m an FBI agent. This has been an undercover operation. I’ve been pretending I’m Marco—there really is a Marco, and he really did do all the bad things you’ve been accusing me of—while he spills the beans on all the Zeta cartel’s secrets, including its distribution channels and the corrupt law-enforcement agents who work for them.”

He told her the whole story.

“Oh, my God,” she said when he had finished. As he had talked, it had started to occur to her that if he were not Rick Marco, then he would not be going to prison or to witness protection or wherever. She would
not
never see him again. Unless . . . “It’s all been a big lie?”

He took one look at her face and shook his head. “Not all of it. Not you and me. Not Tyler, either. Everything between us was real.”

Sam frowned suddenly, remembering. “You made me cry. I never cry. But I thought I was never going to see you again.”

“I know.” At least he had the grace to look slightly sorry. “I never meant for that to happen. I was dying to take you to bed, but I was going to hold off until this was over and I could tell you the truth about who I was. But you came on to me last night, and I lost my head. You were way too sexy to resist.”

She was indignant. “I came on to you?”

“Oh, yeah.” He grinned at her. “You made me hotter than I can just about ever remember being, too.”

“The way I remember it,
you
were coming on to
me.
This whole time.”

“Well,” he said. “There’s that.”

Sam frowned at him, he grinned at her, and all of a sudden she realized she could have him if she wanted him. A real relationship. With nothing to take him away.

The very idea made her wary; she had learned a long time ago not to believe in happy endings.

“So what now?” she asked, a little gruffly. By this time they’d walked a long way, and the first pink fingers of dawn were stealing over the eastern horizon.

“First things first: we get off this mountain.”

She made a face at him. “After that. You know what I mean.”

“Well, let’s see. Probably you want to go grab Tyler, and then—” He broke off abruptly as a low pulsing sound filled the air. They both looked around. Sam was excited to see a helicopter soaring over the woods toward them. It was big and black and official looking, and she grabbed Marco’s—no, Danny’s; that was going to take some getting used to—arm excitedly.

“We’re rescued,” she said happily.

“Yeah, so you’d think.” He sounded grim suddenly. “I want you to walk away from me straight into the woods. Go right now.”

“What?” She looked at him in bewilderment.

“Sam,” he said. “Just do what I say. Please.”

After one look at his face, she did. She turned and left him and walked into the woods as the helicopter soared above the clearing she’d just left.

As he watched the helicopter land, Danny was resigned. He’d hoped against hope that he was wrong, but he’d known he wasn’t. Ever since Veith had said he hadn’t blown up the town house, Danny had known who his real enemy had to be.

He’d made his plans. Back there when he’d taken Veith out of their lives for good, he’d set them into motion.

When the helicopter was on the ground and Crittenden stepped out, Danny waved and walked toward him like he was expecting to be rescued.

Crittenden was regulation FBI today: dark suit, white shirt, dark tie. His salt-and-pepper hair was blowing a little in the breeze cast up by the rotors.

“Where’s the girl?” Crittenden greeted him. He sounded tense.

Danny jerked his head at the woods behind him. “She had to take a tinkle.”

“We need to get her back.”

“She’ll just be a minute.”

Looking past Crittenden at the man who’d descended from
the chopper on its other side, Danny got a surprise. Crittenden had Rick Marco with him. Danny had seen his picture, read his file, knew who he was instantly. In fact, the man felt like an old friend.

The kind you love to hate.

Both men drew on him at the same time. Bottom line, as far as Crittenden was concerned it was clearly game over; he wasn’t even going to bother to pretend anymore.

Danny didn’t even reach for a gun.

“Nine million dollars worth it, Crittenden?” he asked his boss.

“Four and a half million,” Crittenden corrected with barely a pause. “Marco and I are splitting it. How’d you find out?”

“A little bird told me.” Danny looked at the man he’d worked for for the last four years with a mixture of sadness and anger. “You sent Army Veith after me for real. You blew up the town house I was staying in. You shot down the damned plane I was in last night.”

“It wasn’t anything personal.” Crittenden sounded almost apologetic. “You just happened to be the best stand-in for Marco. When I busted him for being a crooked agent, and he told me about the money, it just seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. Nine million dollars in cash! You just don’t get that coming your way every day. I knew that the only way we were going to be able to keep it was if the Zetas thought Marco had hidden it someplace where they couldn’t find it and then he was killed. So I hid him, and the money, and got you on board. I had to use you because you were one of mine, and since
this wasn’t going to be a real operation nobody else in the chain of command could know anything about it. I needed somebody who reported to me, and no one else. The reason I chose you instead of one of the other members of the team isn’t because I don’t like you, you know. It’s just that you look something like him”—he nodded at Marco, who was standing silently with his gun trained on Danny, Crittenden’s perfect henchman—“which made it easier. So I got you into witness protection, put the word out on the street that Marco was going to sing his little insides out about the inner workings of the cartel, and waited for them to kill him. Uh, you. Only they kept screwing up.”

“Sorry about your luck,” Danny said.

“You always were a lucky son of a bitch.” Crittenden regarded him almost with affection. “So how did you figure out it was me?”

“When the town house blew up I knew something was wrong. Veith didn’t want to kill me until after I told him where the money was. Blowing up the town house wasn’t something he’d do.”

“I thought blowing up the town house might be a little strong,” Crittenden admitted. “But I started getting antsy about Veith. Once he started talking to you about the money, he worried me. So I thought, why not tip him off about your whereabouts, then wait until he came to kill you and kill you both in one fell swoop? Plus, I started thinking that it would be better if your body weren’t so recognizable, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I got that.” Danny’s voice was dry. “But it was shooting down the plane that did it. I remember your military record:
you did that in Afghanistan all day and all night. You should have known I’d catch on after that.”

“I had to do it. That damned Veith was taking you to José Calderon. He’d know you weren’t Marco the minute he set eyes on you. Anyway, you were supposed to be dead.”

“Again, sorry about your luck.”

Crittenden glanced toward the woods. “Where the hell is that girl? How long does it take her to pee?”

“I think I see her coming right now,” Danny said, and lifted an arm in a big wave.

Almost immediately, an army of FBI agents in black covert attire came out of the trees, their weapons trained on Crittenden and Marco. Directing them was Mayhew.

“Drop your weapons!” came the roar. “Hands in the air!”

“Surprise,” Danny said gently as the agents advanced.

Crittenden and Marco dropped their weapons and put their hands in the air.

“How the hell did you get them here?” Crittenden growled.

Danny put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the cell phone Crittenden had provided him with.

“I made a call,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A
few days later, Tyler was practically hanging out the window of Kendra’s second-floor apartment. Watching him, Sam felt a wave of thankfulness so strong that it almost brought tears to her eyes. When she had been brought down off that mountain—Danny had stayed behind to do whatever it was FBI agents did—she’d had the agents escorting her take her straight to Tyler. He’d been with Sanders and Groves and O’Brien in a back room in the FBI office in Pocatello. When she had walked in, he’d yelled, “Mom!” and rushed into her arms. Hugging him like she was never going to let him go, Sam thought about how close she had come to never seeing him again and sent a profound
thanks
winging skyward.

Sometimes, apparently, prayers were answered after all.

“We looked out for him,” Sanders told her, and she smiled at him as she finally let Tyler go. “He’s a smart kid. He came right to us, told us what had happened. Otherwise we probably all would have died trying to pull you guys out of the damned fire.”