His mouth was clenched hard enough for the muscle below his jaw to tic. “That bastard is the least of my worries. You are wrong. It is very serious, and you can’t conceive the type of trouble this could bring. I never should have gotten involved. But I—” He stopped suddenly and stared at her. It was almost as if he blamed her. But then the flash of anger cleared, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Annie. But I can’t risk it. As soon as we are somewhere safe, I will do what I can.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Her frustration was getting the better of her. She couldn’t believe he was being so stubborn. Whatever he was involved in must be worse than she realized. First ecoterrorism and murder, and now God knew whatever he was caught up in.
She didn’t want to be involved with any of it. “Fine. You don’t need to come with me. Just drop me off and go wherever it is you are planning.”
He gave her that grim sidelong glance she was getting used to. “I can’t take the chance that someone will see us.”
Seeing his resolve, Annie felt her panic become desperate. “I thought you were joking about Bonnie and Clyde—I don’t want to be on the lam. Running will only make us look guilty.”
“I suspect you already do.”
She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Think about it,” he explained. “This is an experienced, professional terror organization. They usually operate in cells, which makes them even harder to penetrate. My bet is that all three of them were using false identities, and that they covered their trail in the event something went wrong.” He paused long enough to give her a pointed look. “The charter rental was in your name, wasn’t it?”
Annie paled, having just had the same thought. She nodded. “As was the room. Julien always paid cash. I noticed it but didn’t think anything of it.”
She knew a number of students who tried to use mostly cash to keep costs down. It was far easier to charge on a card than hand over big wads of cash. She had actually liked that about him. It made him seem responsible, prudent, and careful.
“Did Julien ever use your computer?”
She shook her head. “No. Not that I can think of.”
“Did he have access to it when you weren’t around?”
She thought a minute. “When I was in the shower or sleeping. A few times I left for class before he did.”
“Did he know your password?”
She bit her lip, embarrassed. “I don’t have a password. It’s my home computer—a desktop. You just have to hit Enter.”
Every word she said made her feel more like an idiot. She could practically hear him thinking “naive.” But it wasn’t as if there were state secrets on her computer. It was mostly just research backed up to a cloud account. She’d never had any . . . Oh no.
He read her expression. “What?”
“I had to cancel a credit card a few weeks before I left. There were a bunch of random Internet charges on it that I didn’t recognize. I assumed my number had been stolen.”
“Does your computer automatically remember your card number?”
She nodded, feeling like such a fool. Such a naive fool. “But he would have needed the three-digit code.”
“Which would take him a few minutes to find on the back of your card when you left your purse around.”
Oh God, he was right.
“I suspect some bomb-making supplies were purchased with your card,” Dan said.
She’d reached the same conclusion on her own. “I was the patsy,” she said, her voice hollow with humiliation.
“Julien probably hoped it would never come to that.”
He was obviously trying to make her feel better. Which only made her feel worse.
Now she didn’t just feel sick; she felt like crying again. What a mess. It was bad enough being tangled up with an ecoterrorist plot, but a murder investigation? “What am I going to do?”
She hadn’t been expecting Dan to answer, but he did. “Don’t worry. We’ll get it straightened out. But not from jail.”
“How?”
He paused. “I have someone who I think can help. As soon as we get somewhere safe, I’ll call. They also may be able to get the police on the right track with Jean Paul.”
“Is it a lawyer? My stepfather is an attorney. He doesn’t practice law anymore, but he has tons of contacts.”
Dan gave one of those rare curves of the mouth that she took to be a smile. “It’s not a lawyer. If we need your stepfather, I’ll let you know, all right?”
She nodded. “Where are we going?”
He pointed to an island on the map just off the west coast of North Uist. “Here, to wait it out until dark. We are sitting ducks in the daylight like this. We’ll look for a cave or someplace else where we can hide the boat. At least it’s gray and not orange or red.”
“And then?”
“As soon as it’s dark we’ll make our way around here”—his finger traced a path around an island called Mingulay at the southern end of the Lewis chain of islands—“to one of the islands in the Inner Hebrides as far south as we can go. We should have enough fuel to reach Tiree.”
He pointed at a roughly triangular-shaped island due west of the Port of Oban on the mainland. He had great hands. Big and strong with blunted fingertips and enough scars to make her think he probably worked in a shop of some kind. Although a couple of the scars looked like burn marks.
“Won’t they search there?”
“Eventually. But there are hundreds of islands in the Hebrides. We could spend months hopping between them, getting lost. It will take a while to check them all, and being this far south should give us some time.”
He’d obviously given this some thought. “Sounds like you have it all planned out.” She looked down at the bag he had by his feet. “I just hope you have a few more protein bars in there or it’s going to be a long day. I get cranky when I’m hungry.”
He winced. “I hope you aren’t one of those vegetarians who won’t eat fish.”
“You’re in luck.” She smiled, which seemed crazy under the circumstances. “I love fish.”
“Sushi?”
“My favorite.”
“Then I guess I know what I’m doing when we get there.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “I guess that means I get to make camp.”
He grinned and she felt that bump in her heart getting bigger.
“If it won’t offend your feminist sensibilities.”
“I think I can manage this once. But if you call me Bambi again, all bets are off.”
“I didn’t think you heard that,” he said with a laugh, and then gave her a nonapologetic shrug. “It’s your fault for looking at me that way.”
“Like a stripper?”
He thought that was hilarious and laughed. “More like I just killed your mother.”
“You were going to leave me!”
He sobered, and their eyes met. “I’m glad I didn’t.”
She knew he was talking about what might have happened to her, but the intensity of his gaze made her wonder if he meant something more.
“Me, too,” she said softly.
From the way her chest tightened, she suspected she did.
Only when his gaze flickered behind her and he swore was the moment lost.
Sixteen
Old habits died hard, Colt thought. Rain or shine, the first thing Sunday morning—before coffee or breakfast—Kate went for a long run. With her multimillion-dollar town house in McLean overlooking the Potomac, it wasn’t hard to anticipate her route.
Colt sat on a bench overlooking the river path and waited. He was tired. His red-eye flight from Los Angeles had landed at Reagan National at six, and he’d come straight here so as not to miss her. She was always out the door by eight. On the rare Sunday that he’d been around to sleep in, he’d grumbled a
bout it.
Once or twice he’d made her late.
It was probably best not to remember how. Sex had sure as hell never been their problem.
Two or three runners went by—none younger than seventy (who else liked to be up this early?)—before he saw the familiar slender form approaching, thick blond ponytail swinging with every long stride.
Summer in the DC area was hot and humid, and she was dressed for the weather in a skimpy top and tight spandex capris that left nothing to the imagination. Although he didn’t need to imagine. He remembered.
She’d always had an incredible body—lean, athletic, and toned. It hadn’t changed, except that she was thinner than he remembered.
But still sexy as hell.
She was wearing earbuds and not paying as much attention to her surroundings as she should be. Something he’d warned her about countless times. She didn’t notice him until he stood.
She stopped so suddenly that she stumbled. Surprise didn’t give her time to completely mask her expression. He saw the flash of pain before it was carefully swept away behind the classically patrician facade.
With her blond, blue-eyed, WASPy beauty, she looked more Junior League and Hamptons than CIA.
That had always been part of her appeal. The stuck-up country club facade made him want to dirty her up a little on his side of the tracks.
But it was only a mask—one that had even fooled him at first. Unfortunately there was no hint of the quiet, kind of shy, heart-of-gold girl he’d married when she looked at him. It was all ice. Must be something they taught you at country clubs or cotillions. He’d laughed his head off when he found out she was a debutante. All that fanfare to be introduced into society and she’d ended up with him.
It was still hard to believe that someone who looked so icy on the outside could be such a wildcat in bed.
Her eyes were hard and unfriendly. He studied the flushed face and noticed a few more lines around her eyes and mouth. But she still looked more late twenties than almost thirty-five.
“How did you find me so quickly?” She stopped, answering her own question. “You’ve been keeping tabs on me.”
He didn’t deny it. “You made it easy—habit and routine are tricks of the trade.”
She flushed angrily. “Your tricks. Not mine. I’m an analyst, remember? I leave the dirty work to the experts.”
As the jab was well earned, he didn’t object.
“I thought I made it clear when you called that I don’t want to talk to you. You and I have nothing to say to each other.”
That was true. They’d said it all. More than they should have. Things that could never be unsaid.
Water, bridge, he reminded himself. “I need your help.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Colt. Whatever it is, I can’t help you. You . . .” She stopped, and straightened, looking him right in the eye so there would be no mistaking. “It took me a long time, but I’ve moved on. I’m finally getting on with my life, and Hurricane Colt isn’t going to blow in and mess that up.”
The words she’d uttered a long time ago came back to him. “You’re like a hurricane. You destroy everything around you and leave nothing but misery in your wake.”
She’d been crying then. Bawling. As if he’d ripped her heart out when it had been the other way around. He might have pushed her away, but did it have to be with someone he considered one of his closest friends? He’d said some ugly things to her—things he’d hoped she would deny—but she never did.
Hurricane Colt. Maybe it was true. He’d destroyed their marriage long before she’d turned to Scott. He’d tried to warn her. But she thought she could change him. That her love would be enough to wash away his sins. For a while even he’d believed her. But eventually they both realized the truth.
“I heard about your engagement to ‘Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States.’ Congratulations.”
She ignored the well-wishes, assuming he hadn’t meant them. Had he? He might have. She wasn’t the only one to move on. Although his kind of moving on didn’t involve an engagement ring. That fucking ship had sailed once. Kind of like the Titanic. All those big hopes and dreams . . . crash and burn. Or sink.
“Leave me be, Colt. I’m happy. For the first time in a long while, I’m happy.”
She started to walk away.
“Get me in to see the general, and you’ll never hear from me again.”
She stopped. He thought the temptation would be too great. Not for the first time, he overestimated himself in her eyes. “I stopped caring what you do a long time ago. Do what you want as you always have. I pity anyone who thinks they can have a say in anything you do. But whatever it is you want with my godfather, leave me out of it.”
In other words, she didn’t care enough to get rid of him.
Had he really expected anything else?
He was nothing to her. Whatever hold on her he’d once had was long gone. She’d cut him out of her heart forever. Just as he’d wanted.
His fists clenched, anger and resentment burning hotter than they should. But he knew how to get to her—how to force her to help—and it pissed him off.
He wanted to grab her arm as she ran past him and break through that ice-princess facade. But he knew better than to touch her. Instead he said the one thing guaranteed to stop her in her tracks. “It’s about Scott.”
Seventeen
Dean cursed, seeing not one but two large boats on the horizon ahead of them. The dots of orange told him everything he needed to know.
Coast guard.
Which meant two things. The island directly opposite North Uist that he’d been headed for was out, as was taking the longer and less risky route around the chain of islands from Barra to Lewis that made up the Outer Hebrides.
Change of plans. He was going to have to chance cutting through the Sound of Harris, the narrow five-mile-long channel that separated Harris from North Uist, and hope to hell they could take shelter on one of the small islands before anyone saw them.
Because of the size and color of the inflatable, Dean didn’t think the coast guard boats had sighted them—assuming no one had been using binoculars.
He cranked the wheel, quickly turning the inflatable around in the direction from which they’d come. After about a half mile, he veered east toward the sound.
He’d been keeping the speed moderate to try to conserve fuel, but that was now secondary to getting the hell out of there.
He opened up the throttle and the inflatable tore across the waves. As he had to keep his focus on the seas in front of him, he shouted at Annie to hold on tight and watch behind them to see if they were being followed.
Even if she couldn’t hear everything he said, she’d heard enough to get the gist.
She held on to one of the handles—not the one with the taped seam—and kept her eyes peeled on the seas behind them as the boat thumped across the waves.
“Anything?” he shouted above the roar of the motor.
“Not ye—” She stopped. “Wait. I think I see one.”
Dean swore again. He was pushing the boat as hard as he dared—almost full throttle. One bad move on his part and they could easily flip. The inflatable was too light with just the two of them to go this fast in these kinds of waves.
“Keep an eye on it, and let me know if it changes direction or speeds up.”
Adrenaline shot through his veins, but he’d been in fucked-up situations too many times to panic.
But getting caught wasn’t an option. His fake identity was good, but it wouldn’t hold up under the scrutiny of a murder investigation.
Dean didn’t even want to think about what the LC would say. If Lieutenant Commander Scott “always-have-an-ace-up-his-sleeve” Taylor didn’t already regret pulling Dean from the explosion in Russia, he would if Dean blew their cover.
“Go dark. Do what you’ve been trained to do and disappear. Keep your head down and wait for my orders.”
Disciplined and always under control, Taylor would blow a fucking gasket if he knew about Annie. Rightly so. Dean never should have gotten involved with her. But given what had happened, he couldn’t regret it. She would have been forced to go along with Jean Paul’s plan, or the bastard probably would have killed her.
Dean doubted that foiling an ecoterrorist plot and possibly saving a young woman’s life would impress the LC.
But Dean couldn’t just leave her—then or now. He would try to help her before he disappeared again.
Taylor was going to be pissed when he heard what Dean wanted to do. Assuming he got out of this, that is.
Which was a big assumption.
“They’re still heading this way,” Annie said, fighting the wind that had her hair blowing in thousands of different directions. “But I can hardly see them now.”
Dean hoped that was a sign that the coast guard boat was just heading in this direction and hadn’t actually caught sight of them. He didn’t usually like coincidences, but he would sure as hell welcome one now.
The coast of Harris on the left and North Uist on the right appeared ahead of him. In between he could just make out the dark forms of one or two of the islands that dotted the channel. Boating through the sound could be precarious with its small islands, reefs, and rocks—especially at low tides.
But low tides actually worked in their favor with an inflatable. It had a very shallow draft compared to a coast guard boat.
He slowed the boat as they neared the sound, not wanting the blare of the motor to draw attention. Fortunately it was still early enough and no one seemed to be around. Although this probably wasn’t the most populated place even in the middle of the day.
Annie said it at the same time he was thinking it. “Where is everyone?”
He had no idea. The coasts were desolate, and there didn’t appear to be a single boat in the water.
All of a sudden it hit him. Finally some good luck! “It’s Sunday.”
She gave him a look that said, So?