Читать книгу Wild Ways - Naomi Horton - Страница 9

“This game of musical guns is getting tiresome, Mr. Blackhorse. Can we just agree that neither one of us is going to shoot the other and enter into a dialogue that doesn’t include bullets and threats?”

Blackhorse seemed to consider it for a moment. Then to Meg’s relief he gave a snort of laughter and nodded, tipping his head back and rotating both shoulders to loosen them. “Hell, why not, Irish. I’m kind of interested in seeing where you’re going with this, anyway.”

She lowered the gun and shoved it into its holster. “The only place I’m going is Washington. With Reggie Dawes.”

Blackhorse gave another of those harsh, abrupt laughs. “And this is your idea of a ‘dialogue,’ Special Agent Kavanagh?”

Meg shrugged. The race of adrenaline had eased and she was feeling the aftermath now, her heartbeat a little unsteady as she walked across to the bed and picked up her purse. She started shoving her things back into it, trying not to think of what might have happened here tonight had Blackhorse been just about anyone else.

O’Dell was right: she wasn’t agent material. She would have been dead two or three times over had he been one of Ruffio’s men. Tomorrow, after she’d handed Dawes over to the Agency rep in Washington, she was putting in her resignation. Then she was going back to Boston and marrying Royce Packard and raising babies and busying herself with social luncheons and charity functions and being the perfect society wife, her brief foray into the dark world of secret agentry well behind her.

And Bobby? Well, Bobby’s death would stay the mystery it was. She should just be glad she hadn’t added her own to it, because her parents couldn’t go through that again. Burying one child was more than any family should suffer. Burying two—the second death as futile and meaningless as the first—was a cruelty she hadn’t even thought of when she’d started this stupid escapade. She’d done it because, of all her much-loved siblings, Bobby had been the closest. Had been her champion and her mentor and her best friend, and he was dead and she wanted to know why and now—

“Damn!” Meg clenched her teeth as her eyes filled with unexpected tears. “Damn, damn, damn!” She scythed her arm out and swept everything from the night table—water glass, clock radio, lamp and all—taking some small satisfaction as the lamp shade went flying across the room and the glass bounced off the wall, spraying cold water.

“Miss Kavanagh?” Reggie sounded tentative. “Are you all right?”

“Yes!” Meg drew a deep, calming breath, keeping her back to both men. She wiped her cheek surreptitiously with her fingers. “I’m fine, Reg.”

She turned around to find them both staring at her with matching expressions of astonishment.

It was Blackhorse who broke the tension first. He laughed—a real laugh this time, not his usual cynical bark—and then walked across to the table and started putting his weapons away. “You’re a real break in routine, Special Agent Mary Margaret Kavanagh, I’ll say that much for you. Either O’Dell’s mellowed since I last saw him, or you’re one of a kind.” He shoved the Smith & Wesson into the holster in the small of his back and gazed across the room at her, mouth tipped aside slightly in a bemused smile. “I wish I had time to hear your story, Irish.”

“No story, Mr. Blackhorse,” Meg replied wearily. “It’s been a long day, and I’m tired. And we still have a situation to resolve. I’m not giving you Reggie, and you say you aren’t leaving without him, so we obviously have a problem.”

Blackhorse shrugged amiably. “I get paid to retrieve things, Irish. Sometimes those things are people. I’m good at what I do. But if people discover that I failed to retrieve Reggie Dawes here and take him back to the people who hired me, my reputation takes a hit. Not only do I lose my money for this job, people are going to think twice about hiring me in the future. This is an assignment to you, Agent Kavanagh. But it’s my livelihood.”

Meg looked at him curiously. “So I was right. You’re not a cop.”

He shrugged again. “Sheriff Haney didn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d take to my line of work all that well.”

“That line of work being a low-rent bounty hunter.”

Something dark flickered across his high-boned features and his eyes narrowed slightly. In the unshaded glare of the fallen lamp, his features were blade-sharp and hard, as uncompromising as stone. And he was big, she found herself thinking uneasily, remembering the solid weight of him on top of her that afternoon. There wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t muscle or bone, and he moved like a cat. If push came to shove, there was going to be very little she could do to stop him from taking Reggie.

She took a deep breath and released it slowly, trying to think her way through this. She was very aware of Reggie sitting behind her, looking more miserable and frightened by the passing minute, and thought of her promise to him to keep him safe. Thought of his wife, Honey, and the trust in her eyes when Meg had convinced her to go into hiding. I’ll take care of Reggie, she’d promised. Trust me, and I’ll keep your husband safe….

“If you take Reg back to Vegas, Ruffio will kill him, you know that.”

“Ruffio just hired me to find Reggie and bring him back,” Blackhorse said evenly. “Why is none of my business. I’m not getting paid to ask questions.”

“This isn’t a retrieval, it’s murder,” Meg said angrily. “That thug in the bar this afternoon was trying to kill Reg. He would have killed you, too, if you’d gotten in his way. Are these the kind of people you work for now, Mr. Blackhorse?” She looked at him searchingly, seeing nothing but emptiness and cold in his dark eyes. “What happened to you, anyway? How did you go from being one of O’Dell’s top agents to…to this.”

Again there was a flicker of something deep in his eyes. “You don’t want to go there, Kavanagh,” he said very softly, the chill in the words trailing frost through his voice. “I’m here doing a job, just like you.”

“Not like me. I’m paid by the Agency to bring people to justice. Or, as in Reggie’s case, to protect him from those people who don’t want justice done. From what I can see, you’re a bottom feeder. One step down from that gun-for-hire that came after us in the bar. At least he was honest about what he does. You kill people and can’t even admit it.”

She thought for one split second that he was going to come at her. Every muscle in his lean body seemed to coil and go taut, and the emptiness in his eyes vanished under the heat of raw anger. Then he seemed to catch himself and he eased his weight back and away from her, breathing quickly, teeth bared slightly.

A little surprised she was still alive, Meg took a couple of backward steps, her hand on the comforting bulk of the Beretta. “Reggie, we’re leaving. Now.” She swallowed. “Mr. Blackhorse, I may not be a very good field agent yet, but I’ve got good instincts about people. You’re no killer.”

“Willing to bet your life on that, Irish?” he asked softly.

“Yes.” Meg swallowed again, the sound loud in the stillness. “If you were, I’d be dead and you’d be halfway back to Vegas with Reggie by now. I don’t know what happened to you, but you must have been a good man once or O’Dell would never have hired you. I’m gambling that there’s still enough of that man left somewhere that I can walk out of here with Reggie, and you’re going to let us go.”

“Pretty big gamble.”

For some reason, Meg found herself smiling. “After I deliver Reggie to Washington and get back to Virginia, I’ll make sure O’Dell knows you were instrumental in bringing him back in one piece. After all, you probably saved my life in that bar this afternoon. There could be a reward in it, if I can pull the right strings. That’ll make up in part for what you lost by not fulfilling your deal with Ruffio.”

“Presuming you’re going to get out of here alive….” Rafe made it sound as close to a threat as he could manage, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore. He was weary of taunting her, weary of the sparring and banter.

He was tired and his left shoulder was aching and his knees hurt and he felt old and worn down. Kavanagh’s barbed little shots had hit closer to home than he cared to admit, and the spots she’d taken aim at with such uncanny accuracy hurt, too, as though her words had been dipped in poison.

He wanted to get away from her, he realized. Back up to Bear Mountain, where no one ever bothered him. Away from her and those unnervingly clear aquamarine eyes that seemed to see too much.

He had his mouth half open to tell her to take Reggie and get the hell out before he changed his mind and shot both of them just on principle when he heard it. It wasn’t even a noise as much as the suggestion of a noise. A scuff, maybe, like that of a rubber-soled shoe on concrete.

Kavanagh heard it at the same instant. He could see her eyes widen as she fumbled for the Beretta. Common sense told him she was okay, to watch out for his own hide and let her take care of hers, but instinct propelled him across the room so he was between her and the doorway, his Taurus in a two-handed grip. Dawes had reacted with instincts of his own and was curled up on the floor between the bed and the wall, both arms wrapped around his head like a kid shutting out a nightmare.

“Will you get out of my way!” Kavanagh whispered furiously. “I can’t get a clean shot with you in the way!”

“Shut up and stay back,” he whispered just as furiously, shouldering her out of the way. “You’re not ready for this!”

“And who’s paying you to play Joe Hero? Get out of my—”

There was a knock at the door and Rafe heard her suck in a startled breath. Looking pale and frightened but grimly determined, her grip on the Beretta letter-perfect, she eased herself away from him and cat-footed across to take up a position against the wall beside the door. Rafe eased himself across to the other side, moving silently on the carpet, pausing to take a swift glance through the peephole in the door.

Two men that he could see, neither taking any particular pains to hide themselves. Rafe held up two fingers so Kavanagh could see them, then indicated that there might be others out of his line of sight. She nodded tightly.

“Agent Kavanagh?” The voice was muffled by the door, but clear. “Meg, it’s me, Matt Carlson. Adam Engler’s with me. O’Dell sent us to bring you and Dawes in.”

Meg’s breath left her in a huff and she closed her eyes for an instant, knees nearly buckling with relief, then she swung the Beretta down and reached for the doorknob. Her fingers just grazed it when Blackhorse came hurtling at her and knocked her back against the wall with a thud that nearly jarred her teeth loose.

“It’s okay,” she tried to wheeze. “I know them…they’re—”

There was a sharp voice outside the door, and in the next instant it exploded inward, the doorframe splintering right beside her, shards of wood flying like shrapnel. Something large catapulted into the room and hit the floor somewhere out of the line of Meg’s sight. Blackhorse swore and shoved her against the wall again just as someone else swung through the door, gun glinting in the unshaded lamplight.

“Government agents!” someone roared. “Nobody move!”

And for a moment, no one did. In the end, it was Meg who moved first. Still trying to get her breath back, her ribs feeling bruised where Blackhorse had slammed into her, she gazed at the tableaux of men and guns spread out in front of her.

It had been Matt Carlson who’d come bursting through the door first. He’d hit the carpet on one shoulder and had come up in perfect shooting stance, his weapon trained on Blackhorse’s belly, staring at the Taurus that was pointed right at him. Adam Engler had followed him in and had his weapon trained on Meg.

He recovered first. Swearing, he swung his Beretta around so he was covering Blackhorse. “Government agents! Put the gun down! Put it down!”

Blackhorse didn’t so much as blink. “I’ve got your partner covered,” he said coldly. “Try to take me out, he’s dead.”

“Put the weapon down! Put it down now.”

They might have stayed like that for another hour, bellowing threats and counter threats at each other like the well-trained government operatives they all were until someone either backed down—which was unlikely—or got shot. Which was likely, considering all the testosterone in the room.

It would have been funny, except for the very real possibility of someone getting hurt. Meg holstered her Beretta and said very gently, “Guys, it’s okay. I’m okay. This is Mr. Blackhorse, a…cop. Rafe, these are O’Dell’s men. Now will you all please put up your weapons before you hurt each other?”

Blackhorse’s eyes narrowed. “You sure you know them?”

“Positive. Mr. Engler brings me latte every Friday morning, and Mr. Carlson and I share a passion for crossword puzzles.”

“You’ll vouch for this guy?” Carlson sounded skeptical.

Meg paused, rubbing her sore ribs, tempted for one rash moment to deny it just to pay the man back for all the aggravation he’d given her. Then she sighed and nodded grudgingly. “Yeah. I’ll vouch for him.”

It took another moment or more, but finally all three of them relaxed slightly, trading hostile glares as they put up their weapons and holstered them, still prickly and watchful.

Blackhorse took two steps across to her, face like a thunder-cloud. He jabbed a finger into the air an inch from her face, making her blink. “Did you sleep through basic training, lady?” he bawled. “You never—and I mean never—open a door until you’ve verified who the hell’s on the other side.”

Meg bristled. “I knew who—”

“You knew squat! You thought you recognized another agent’s voice, but you didn’t verify it. He could have been out there at gunpoint. There could have been a dozen explanations—none of them innocent—and you and your man Dawes there could be dead right now!”

“Hey, fella, where the hell do you get off talking to her like that?” Carlson gave Blackhorse a shove, his face pugnacious.

Furious, Meg pushed past Carlson to glare up at Blackhorse. “Who do you think you are, anyway? You came here to take Reggie for yourself, and now you’re lecturing me on how to—”

“You obviously need someone lecturing you on how to stay alive, because—”

“Hey! Back off!” Carlson pushed his way between them again. “One more word outta you, buddy, and—”

“You want to take this outside, pal?” Blackhorse loomed toward Carlson, his eyes hot with anger.

“Enough!” Meg’s shout cracked through the room like a pistol shot and everyone stared at her, startled into momentary silence. She ran both hands through her tangled hair, tempted to start pulling it out by the roots. “You guys sound just like my brothers! I’ve spent most of my life listening to them argue over who has the right to tell me what to do, and I stopped taking it from them and I’m sure not going to stand here and take it from you!” The last word was all but a shout and she caught herself and took a deep breath to calm down. “All of you back off, understand? Just…back off!”

“Hey, Meg,” Carlson said, clearly hurt. “I never meant anything by it. I was just—”

“Trying to take care of me, I know,” she said with forced patience. “Matt, what are you doing here? How did you know where I was?”

“We were in the air fifteen minutes after your call came in this afternoon,” Engler said, eyeing Blackhorse suspiciously. “We choppered in and met with Sheriff Haney—who is not a happy man, by the way. I strongly recommend you don’t go back there anytime soon.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Meg muttered. “Although it wasn’t me who shot up the bar.” This with a hostile look at Blackhorse.

“Anyway, we tracked you here.”

Meg’s heart sank. She’d been quite proud of the way she’d covered her tracks, but apparently she’d left a trail a mile wide. “How?” she asked wearily. “Where did I go wrong?”

Engler just looked at her. “The phone call, of course.”

“What phone call?” Meg wheeled around and looked at Reggie, who was trying to make himself invisible. “Reggie, what phone call?”

He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “Well, um…when you went out to the car, I…um…found your cell phone, and…um…”

“He called your brother in Chicago, wanting to talk to Honey. Grady called the Agency, saying something didn’t sound right and wanting to know what we were doing about it.”

Meg winced.

Engler looked across at her. “Meg, what did you think you were doing, coming after Dawes yourself? O’Dell’s fit to be tied.”

She winced again. “He, uh…knows by now. I guess.”

Carlson laughed. “Oh, yeah, he knows. He doesn’t believe it, but he knows.” He laughed again. “I’ve seen O’Dell mad before, but I’ve never seen him like this. You have gone down in the annals of Agency history, Meg. I wouldn’t give two cents for your future, but they’ll be talking about you for decades. You’ve elevated the lowly computer gnome to new heights. Trouble is, now every gnome in the place will want to play field agent and the rest of us will be out of work.”

Meg flushed slightly. “Look, I…uh…”

“Gnome?” Blackhorse had been listening to all this intently, and he looked at her now, eyes narrowed. “You’re a gnome?”

“I am a Computer Information Retrieval Specialist,” she said a trifle defensively.

Blackhorse just stared at her, seemingly unable to comprehend what he was hearing.

“She’s one of the best,” Carlson said blithely. “Although after O’Dell’s finished with you, Meg, you’ll be lucky to have a job counting paper clips. Everyone thought you were on vacation, then we get this phone call from some hicksville sheriff in South Dakota—”

“North,” Engler put in. “North Dakota.”

“Whatever. This sheriff says he has someone in custody who claims to be one of our agents. That said agent was involved in a shootout in a bar involving a Nevada cop—” this with a distasteful glance at Blackhorse “—a thug called Pags Pagliano and a pipsqueak calling himself Reggie Dawes.” This elicited a huff of indignation from Reggie, but Carlson ignored it. “I happened to be closest to O’Dell’s office when the call was routed through to him.” He winced at the memory. “As I said, Engler and I were on a chopper fifteen minutes later and another team was dispatched to your brother’s place to pick up Honey.”

“Is she okay?” Reggie hovered in the background worriedly.

“She’s fine,” Meg snapped. “I told you, my brother’s a cop.”

“She’s fine,” Carlson echoed. He looked at Meg with a shake of his head. “O’Dell’s mighty peeved about that, too, Meg. You know how he hates it when we get civilians involved. You should have sent Honey to an Agency safe house instead of involving your own family.”

“There wasn’t time.”

“Not to mention the fact you didn’t have the authority,” Engler said calmly. “Seeing as you’re out here playing field agent games you haven’t been trained for, on an assignment that doesn’t exist.”

Meg flushed again. “The only way Reggie would come with me was if I could guarantee Honey’s safety. I knew sending her to stay with Grady was as good as putting her in any safe house. Maybe better.”

“Wait a minute.” Blackhorse held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Run that by me again? She’s out here on an assignment that doesn’t exist?”

Carlson gave him a dark look. “What police force did you say you were with? Nevada? Kind of out of your jurisdiction, wouldn’t you say?”

Blackhorse ignored him. “You’re saying you clowns let a gnome with no field training come out here and—”

“I took the training!”

“—handle this non-assignment all on her own, without adequate backup or—”

“She didn’t tell anybody what she was doing,” Carlson protested. “She was on vacation! It wasn’t until—” He caught himself abruptly. “Hey, don’t I know you? I know you from somewhere.”

Meg had her mouth open to tell Carlson exactly who Blackhorse was, then subsided, recalling the expression on Rafe’s face when he’d spoken about the Agency. Rafe gave her a quick look, seemingly surprised by her silence.

“Special Agent Rafe Blackhorse,” Engler said suddenly. He stared at Rafe in blank disbelief. “You’re dead!”

“You’re kidding!” Carlson took another look at Rafe, staring hard at him. “Well, I’ll be…it is you! But Engler’s right. You’re dead.”

“Do I look dead?” Rafe asked sourly.

Carlson flushed. “I was in the West Coast office when all that went down. I just heard that you—” He bit it off.

“Ate your gun,” Engler put in helpfully. “Guess the story wasn’t true, then, huh?”

“Guess not, Einstein.”

It gave Meg such a jolt that she simply stared at Rafe, trying to remember everything she’d heard about him. Suicide? Surely she would have remembered that. “I heard…” She frowned, struggling to haul the memory up from the depths of her mind. “I heard it was in the line of duty.”

“They always say that,” Carlson said. “O’Dell doesn’t like it when his agents off themselves. Figures it reflects badly on him. So unless you commit hari kari in front of the Lincoln Memorial at high noon with press and television, it’s kept pretty quiet.”

“You’ve been alive all this time,” Engler said quietly, as though not quite believing it. “Why all the secrecy?”

“It was a cover story of some sort, wasn’t it?” Carlson put in with sudden understanding. “And you’ve been working for O’Dell all this time. So that’s why you turned up here, helping Meg.” He grinned with relief.

Engler was still staring at Rafe. “That true? You still on the payroll?”

“Wish I’d known that beforehand, because I don’t mind telling you, I was a little scared of what we were going to find.” Carlson scrubbed his fingers through his short, brown hair. “Ruffio and Stepino have both got their soldiers out looking for Dawes. I was sure you were dead.”

“You’re hell bent on seeing someone dead, aren’t you?” Rafe muttered. “And I’m not working undercover. Agent Kavanagh and I just sort of ran into each other, is all. I quit the Agency cold two years ago.”

“But you were taking care of her.” Engler just stared at him.

Rafe glanced at Meg. His gaze held hers for a long moment. “She was taking care of herself just fine. I was ready to pull out when you guys showed up.”

“But…” Carlson looked from one to the other of them, clearly puzzled.

“Mr. Blackhorse is a…private investigator,” Meg put in smoothly, ignoring Rafe’s raised eyebrow. “He…um…became embroiled in the situation when Pagliano tried to kill Reggie this afternoon, and he kindly offered to…assist me.”

Reggie was looking shell-shocked. “I don’t understand any of this,” he whispered. “You mean she isn’t an agent at all?”

“She’s an Agency employee, just not a field agent,” Engler said with a disapproving look at Meg. “She had no authority to bring you in, and no business being out here without proper training.”

“I had the training,” Meg repeated heatedly. “Okay, so I didn’t complete it, exactly, but I didn’t need the underwater demolition stuff or the advanced military armament stuff or all that pilot or parachute training stuff, either. And, okay, I didn’t spend two years as an intern, playing second banana to the agent in charge. But I found Reggie when no one else could. And I convinced him to come in. And I was bringing him in just fine.”

“But…why?” Carlson shook his head. “That’s what I don’t understand, Meg. You’ve never said anything to me about wanting to be a field agent. And you know how O’Dell feels about women in the field.”

“I wanted to prove he’s wrong,” she said flatly. “The man’s twenty years behind the times! If I can prove I can do the job, he can’t keep me out. I’d been following Reggie’s case from the beginning, and when he disappeared with O’Dell’s money and no one was able to find him, I decided it was the perfect opportunity. It only took me a couple of days to track him down with our computers, and I…” She shrugged and looked at Reggie. “Reg, I’m sorry. I’ve been lying to you, but it really was for your own good.”

“So does this mean I’m not really in custody?”

“No!” Carlson and Engler exclaimed in unison, and Reggie sat down, looking gloomy.

“It was crazy,” Carlson muttered. “You could have been killed, Meg. Why not just put your application in and see if—” Abruptly, he stopped. Frowning, he blew his cheeks out, looking at her sadly. “Oh. Bobby.”

“My brother died in the field,” Meg said with quiet intensity, “and I want to know why.”

“Meg…” Engler lifted his hand, then let it fall to his side again. “Damn it, Meg, we’ve been over this a hundred times.”

She lifted her chin slightly. “And like I’ve said a hundred times, Adam, I don’t believe that Bobby got sloppy. That he lost his edge and it got him killed. Something happened out there that night.”

“I was on Bobby’s team,” Engler reminded her gently. “Nothing happened that night that wasn’t in my report. And I’ve been over it and over it with you.”

“Except you weren’t with him the night it happened.” Meg looked at him evenly. “He was set up, Adam. I know that as certainly as I know you don’t want to believe it. Bobby was a good field agent. He told me that he suspected someone on the team was dirty and you’ve admitted he talked to you about it!”

“And I told him he was wrong,” Engler said gently. “Meg, your brother had been working deep under cover for almost six months. Things…happen to a man who’s been out of touch with the real world for that long. He’s so used to suspecting everyone he’s working with that he starts to see conspiracies and threats around every corner.”

“Bobby was the most grounded, real person I’ve ever known. He was not imagining things!”

“Meg, I don’t know what happened to Bobby that night, but it was no double cross. No one blew his cover. I’m sorry he’s dead—he was a good agent and a friend of mine. But O’Dell’s closed the case down because there’s no evidence to keep it open. Good men die stupid deaths, Meg. I’m sorry, but it happens.”

“Not to my brother, it didn’t,” she said with quiet intensity.

Engler started to say something, then thought better of it and subsided, frowning.

“He was double-crossed,” Meg said savagely. “By one of our agents. Then he was murdered to keep him quiet. O’Dell won’t investigate because he doesn’t believe me, but I darn well intend to find out who killed Bobby if it’s the last thing I ever do. And if O’Dell won’t make me a full field agent, then I’ll quit and do it on my own!”

Engler exchanged a quick look with Carlson, and Meg bit back an angry oath, knowing they were thinking the same thing everyone else at the Agency thought. Word had it that Bobby had slipped up and gotten himself and another agent killed, and that she couldn’t accept the truth. That she’d come up with this preposterous idea that it had been another agent who had double-crossed and ambushed Bobby and his partner. Conspiracy plot, they called it behind her back, smiling knowingly amongst themselves. Even O’Dell was tired of listening to her.

She shook her head angrily and stalked across to the bed, starting to shove her things willy-nilly into her small suitcase. “Reg, saddle up! We’re leaving.” She shot Engler a cool look. “I presume you two are here to escort Reg and me back to Washington.”

“Well, actually, Matt’s going to take Reg to Washington.” Engler managed to look mildly embarrassed. “My orders are to escort you back to Virginia ASAP. From this room to O’Dell’s office, no stops between.”

“I’m not going back to Virginia until I know Reg is safe. I gave my word.”

“No problem. There’s an Agency jet sitting on the tarmac out at the airport with its engines hot and two more agents aboard for backup. I’ll let you walk on and buckle him in, if you like.”

“How are you and I getting back?”

“Military chopper.” Engler smiled slightly. “O’Dell’s private stock. You’re getting the royal treatment.”

“O’Dell’s little joke, giving me the royal treatment to my own firing squad.” Meg mustered up a rough smile. She looked at Rafe for a moment, then walked across and held out her hand. “Well, Mr. Blackhorse, it’s been…instructional. I won’t say it’s been a pleasure, exactly, but I appreciate your help. And I’m sorry about your…arrangement with the other party. Give him my regrets, will you?”

To her surprise, Rafe actually smiled. His hand folded around hers, warm and incredibly gentle. “It has been a pleasure, Special Agent Mary Margaret Kavanagh. Like I said, you’re one of a kind.”

“CIR Specialist Mary Margaret Kavanagh,” Meg said with a sigh. “And I meant what I said about appreciating your help, even if it wasn’t exactly what you intended. I’ll keep all your advice in mind. In case I ever need it again. You ought to think about billing O’Dell for your in-field training services.”

His fingers tightened slightly, encasing hers in gentle warmth. “You take care of yourself, Agent Kavanagh.”

Then he drew his hand from hers slowly, letting his fingers linger on hers for a moment before releasing them completely.

She nodded again, then just smiled and gathered up her suitcase, glancing around the room to make sure she had everything. Carlson was helping Reggie get his things together in the other room, and she could hear them squabbling already.

She walked outside with Engler, taking a deep breath of night air.

“Hey. You. Engler.”

Rafe’s voice caught Engler just as he was opening the door of his rental car for Meg. He stiffened and Meg saw his hand move fractionally toward his weapon.

She looked around sharply. Rafe was just standing there, tall and calm-eyed in the moonlight, hands loose at his sides.

Engler turned slowly. “What?”

“Tell O’Dell she did just fine out here. Handled herself better than most men I’ve seen with twice the training.”

Engler looked as surprised as Meg felt. She stared at Rafe in amazement.

“She stayed one step ahead of me for almost a week, and when I did catch up to her, she drew down on me like an old-timer, cool as water. Tell him that.”

“Yeah, okay.” Engler looked at Meg with renewed respect. “I’ll tell him that.”

Rafe nodded, then touched his forehead in a lazy salute, his eyes holding Meg’s. “S’long, Irish.”

“I…yeah…” she stammered, feeling suddenly flustered for no reason. His gaze was as warmly intimate as a caress, as though they’d been sharing a lot more than barbed threats half the night, and she sensed more than saw Engler look at her curiously. “I, um…so…long.”

“Well, if that doesn’t beat everything.” Carlson had joined them in time to hear the whole exchange and was standing there with his mouth open, watching Rafe stride away. “Meg, you just got a five-star recommendation from a legend! Man, wait’ll O’Dell hears about this!”