Читать книгу Armoured Attraction - Janie Crouch - Страница 9

Chapter Two

Liam listened to the voice-mail message for the umpteenth time.

Vanessa Epperson.

He could honestly say he’d never expected to hear her voice ever again. After all, she hadn’t even cared enough to leave him a voice mail eight years ago when she’d decided he wasn’t good enough to marry.

Or a letter. Or an email. Or a face-to-face explanation.

But evidently she’d gotten over her phone aversion. Good for her.

Liam played the message again.

She needed help and was contacting him because she thought he was still DEA. He hadn’t been DEA for more than five years, since Omega Sector’s Critical Response Division had recruited him to lead their hostage rescue team.

Fortunately for Vanessa, since Omega Sector was made up of agents from multiple different law-enforcement agencies—FBI, Interpol, DEA... Hell, Liam had worked a mission with a damn Texas Ranger last month—her message had been recorded and immediately forwarded to him.

She didn’t mention what sort of trouble she was in, just wanted Liam to drop everything and help her. Like how she’d always wanted everyone to drop everything to do what she wanted. Some things didn’t change.

He listened to the message one more time.

Liam should call one of his many friends from the head DEA office in Atlanta and have them send someone to Nags Head. Or he might even know someone at the FBI field office in Norfolk he could call.

It was the logical thing to do; probably the most professional answer to this situation. He could have someone there handling Vanessa’s problem in three or four hours.

But who was Liam kidding? He wasn’t going to make those calls. He was already walking down the hall of the Critical Response Division’s headquarters to his boss’s office.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to tell Steve Drackett. Just that he needed some time off to help an old friend. God knew Liam had enough time off saved up.

He knocked on Steve’s office door, his back office door that led directly to Steve himself, rather than pass through the main office entrance guarded by Steve’s four assistants.

Four young, attractive, quite competent and intelligent female assistants.

Liam knew them all, flirted shamelessly with them all. He’d spent so much time in the office with those women that Steve had threatened to fire him several times.

Not that Liam dated any of them—he knew better than to date anyone who might have his life in her hands—but at any given moment he’d be leaning on their desks chatting, and keeping them from their work.

Liam smiled. Steve’s main office was one of his favorite places in the world to be.

But not today. Not right now. He could not go in there and flirt with those beautiful women with Vanessa’s voice still filling his head.

Steve’s door opened.

“Hey, Liam. Come on in.” Steve said, still reading from a file in his hand as he returned to his desk. “I didn’t even think you knew this door existed. Hell, I wasn’t really sure you knew any offices existed outside those belonging to my assistants.”

Derek Waterman and Joe Matarazzo—both Liam’s colleagues and good friends—were sitting in chairs across from Steve’s desk. They held similar files.

“Hey, Goetz,” Derek murmured. Joe muttered something unintelligible without looking up from the file in his hand.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, Steve,” Liam said.

“It’s no problem. What’s on your mind?”

“I’m going to need a few personal days.”

Now the guys looked up from their files. Liam was pretty sure he’d never taken personal days except to go on actual vacations planned well ahead of time.

“Everything okay?” Steve’s concern was also evident.

“Yeah.” Liam shrugged. “Everything’s fine. I just have a friend who called needing some help back in the Outer Banks. My friend said this might be a little sticky with the locals so wanted some outside help.”

“You grew up there, right? You haven’t been home in a long time.”

“Yeah, not since my grandmother died. Not much there for me.”

Steve nodded. “Is your friend’s trouble serious? Do we need to send in a team?”

“Nah. I’m sure I can handle it.”

“What sort of trouble?”

Liam sighed. “To be honest, I’m not exactly sure. My friend called my old DEA contact number. They forwarded it to me.”

“Has anybody else noticed Goetz’s complete lack of pronoun usage?” Joe said, leaning back in his chair.

Damn it. This was about to become a thing.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Derek responded, grinning. “So are we to assume this friend is of the female variety?”

Liam realized he should’ve just mentioned that from the beginning. “Yes, she is.”

“Um, Joe, do you ever recall Liam being shy about mentioning a female friend to us before?” Derek quipped.

Liam knew his reputation. He’d worked pretty hard at making sure everyone knew he was a ladies’ man. Girl in every port. Shameless flirt.

At times he almost believed his own press. Because it was a hell of a lot easier to believe that he was some sort of modern-day Casanova than that he still pined over a woman who’d left him cold eight years ago.

“A female from his hometown, no less,” Joe responded. “I’ve never heard him mention any such creature before.”

“Very curious, indeed.” Derek waggled his eyebrows.

“All right, enough, you two,” Steve cut in. He turned to Liam. “Like I said, is there anything we need to know about your friend or her situation?”

“Not as far as I know,” Liam said. “She didn’t provide much detail. If it looks like something I can’t handle, I’ll let you know.”

“You’re not going to call her first? Get more details?”

“No, I’m just going to go.”

Thankfully none of the three men in the room pointed out what Liam already knew: dropping everything and traveling from Omega headquarters in Colorado Springs to the Outer Banks of North Carolina because of a vague phone call from someone he hadn’t talked to in nearly a decade was overkill.

But from the first moment he had heard Vanessa’s voice, figured out she was asking for help, Liam knew he would be doing just that.

“Okay, I think one of the Omega jets is heading out to DC in the next few hours if you want to catch a ride there,” Steve responded. “Be safe and keep me posted as to when you’ll be back.”

Joe and Derek didn’t say anything, although they were both staring at Liam with mouths slightly agape. Liam ignored them.

“Okay. Thanks, Steve.”

Liam just left. He didn’t want to explain himself to his friends, especially when he could hardly understand what he was doing himself. All he knew was that he had to see Vanessa.

He wasn’t really surprised that she was still living in the Outer Banks. The two-hundred-mile stretch of land, a string of barrier islands running along the northeast coast of North Carolina, held a great deal of prime property and the Eppersons owned a good chunk of it.

And Vanessa was princess of it all. She had been her whole life.

Liam had found out the hard way that her love for her pampered way of life outweighed any promises she might make to any poor sap fool enough to fall in love with her. Fool enough to believe her when she said she loved him, too.

Did she think of him when she felt the sand of the Roanoke Sound on her feet? On her back? Think of all the many hours they’d spent there together?

Did she ever think about him asking her to run away and marry him right there in that sand? About saying yes?

About not showing up where they were supposed to meet? About refusing to talk to him at all when he’d come by to see why she had changed her mind?

Probably not.

The address she had given him in the message was not her family mansion in Duck, which was slightly north of Nags Head and the preferred location for million-dollar mansions. It was some hotel he didn’t recognize at Mile Marker 13, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

Liam drove to his apartment and packed his things. He’d try to catch a ride with the team going to DC as Steve suggested. If not, he’d drive to Fort Carson, the army base in Colorado Springs. Omega worked pretty closely with the military when needed, and Liam had lots of contacts there from his days in Special Forces.

The commanding officers might lock their daughters away when Liam was in sight, but they would gladly welcome him on board an aircraft to give him a lift wherever he was going.

The thought brought a quick smile to Liam’s face. His playboy reputation was well deserved. He’d certainly earned it since he’d been in Colorado.

Except for the past couple of years when he seemed to have lost his taste for fun, fast hookups. Yeah, he still flirted with all the gals—young or old—and kissed just about every woman he came across. But he wasn’t particularly interested in more than that.

The thought of pseudo intimacy with another woman whose face he’d fondly remember but name he’d probably forget? Not as interesting anymore.

Maybe it had something to do with watching two of his best friends—and fellow Omega agents—fall in love with strong, beautiful women over the past few months. Jon Hatton and Derek Waterman’s love for the women in their lives was downright palpable. Liam wanted something authentic like that for himself.

Then it struck him. That was why he was going to Nags Head. Because until he could put what had happened there behind him, he was never going to be able to have something real with any woman.

It was time. He was going to lay the ghost of Vanessa Epperson to rest once and for all. Her call was finally the excuse he needed.

* * *

LIAM WASN’T GOING to call.

Vanessa had accepted that reality when she woke up this morning, sleeping in a pretty dingy hotel, a traumatized teenager curled into the tightest of balls in the bed next to her. He’d had all evening, all night and some of this morning to respond, but hadn’t.

Maybe he hadn’t gotten the message. Maybe he was off on some important mission with the DEA or something.

Maybe he still hated her.

The reasons why he wasn’t contacting her didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that Vanessa was on her own in helping Karine.

That was okay. Vanessa had learned in the hardest way possible that she was capable of handling on her own almost anything that came her way. This situation was no different.

But Liam’s lack of contact still stung a little bit.

She dragged herself out of bed, careful not to wake Karine. She knew from the girl’s whimpers and cries throughout the night that she couldn’t have gotten very good rest.

Karine needed help. Probably medical and definitely psychological—both more than Vanessa could provide. If the hospital and police weren’t safe around here, then Vanessa was going to have to talk her into leaving the Outer Banks, at least for the day.

Vanessa poured water into the cheap four-cup coffeemaker on the bathroom vanity. Once she had coffee, no matter how bad it was, she’d be able to figure out a plan.

While she waited she turned on the local morning news. Although she doubted it, she was curious to see if there was any mention of Karine.

At first nothing, just weather and tides—an important part of life on a string of islands. But then the breaking news...

The sheriff’s office had set up roadblocks at the bridges on both sides of Nags Head. They were looking for a federal fugitive—considered armed and very dangerous—and were stopping all cars leaving the island to search them.

Since there was only one road leading off Nags Head at the north and south bridges, she knew the police could, in essence, search every car attempting to leave the island.

The rest of the news report was about the traffic havoc the car-by-car search was creating. No one from the sheriff’s office seemed willing to comment.

Vanessa turned the television to mute and just stared at the screen.

Dangerous federal fugitive, her ass. Vanessa was one hundred percent certain the “dangerous federal fugitive” was curled up on the bed whimpering in her sleep every few minutes. But it meant that it would be impossible to get Karine off the island, at least today.

Not to mention that it confirmed that someone, at least one person pretty high up in the sheriff’s department, was definitely a part of what had happened to Karine and the other girls.

The thought made Vanessa downright sick.

She grabbed her coffee, looking around. They weren’t going to be able to stay here all day. They would need food—God only knew when Karine had last had a decent meal—and some other supplies. She’d given the girl a pair of shorts and a T-shirt she’d grabbed from her house, but they were too big.

She couldn’t leave Karine alone while she went to get food, so she’d have to wait until she woke.

Vanessa needed to come up with a plan pretty darn quickly. But right now her options were limited.

A soft tap at the door startled her. She rushed to it but didn’t say anything. She put her ear against the door. Maybe whoever it was—housekeeping?—would go away. She’d put the do-not-disturb placard on the doorknob.

“Vanessa, it’s Liam. Open the door.”