Читать книгу Dead Man's Curve - Paula Graves - Страница 9

Chapter Three

As plans went, waiting and hoping weren’t high on Sinclair’s list of great ones. But his burner phone had no juice left. He’d have to get to civilization to charge the phone, and even then, he wasn’t sure what, if anything, Alexander Quinn could do to help him find Alicia and her husband.

“I need to go back to the motel,” Ava said after a few moments of tense silence. “I have work to do.”

“You’re a cop?”

She gave him a strange look, then released a soft huff of breath that was almost a laugh. “Oh, right. I left the other jacket in the car.”

“What other jacket?”

He could barely make out the curve of her pained smile. “The blue jacket with the big yellow FBI on the back.”

“FBI.” Great. Of all the old acquaintances he could have run into in the middle of the woods, he had to run into the one who worked for the federal agency that had once had his face tacked prominently to every wall of every field office and resident agency in the country.

“We think you’re dead, you know. Well, everyone else does.”

“I’d love for it to stay that way.”

“Too bad. I’m not your friend, Solano. I can’t look the other way. So if you’re going to kill me to stop me from ratting on you, go for it now so one or the other of us can get on with trying to stay alive.”

“I’m not what you think I am.” He sighed as she gave him a look so skeptical he couldn’t miss it even in the near darkness. “I know you’ve probably heard that before.”

“You reckon?”

“There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Let me guess. You were really a double agent working for the CIA to bring down El Cambio from the inside.” Her sarcasm had a sharp bite.

Well, he thought. There goes the truth as a viable explanation.

Awkward silence descended between them again. Strange, Sin thought, how hard it was to talk to her now, when back in Mariposa, all those years ago, talking to Ava Trent had seemed as easy as breathing.

She’d been nothing like any girl he’d ever known, growing up in San Francisco, and he supposed maybe the sheer novelty of her had been the initial attraction. That and her curvy little figure, displayed not in a skin-baring bikini, but a trim racer-back one-piece, standing out on the Mariposan beach amid all those skimpy thongs and barely-there tops. She’d swum the ocean as if it were a sport, tackling waves with ferocity of purpose, all flexing muscles and determination.

Somehow, her lack of self-consciousness about her appearance had only made her more attractive in Sinclair’s eyes. And when she’d opened her mouth and that Kentucky drawl had meandered out, he’d been leveled completely. There had been no other word for the way she’d made him feel, as if the earth beneath his feet had liquefied and he couldn’t hold a solid thought in his head.

She’d declared he’d like Kentucky, if he was looking for somewhere new to visit. And he’d almost talked himself into going back there with her.

“How sure are you that it’s Cabrera who has your sister?” Ava’s whisper broke the tense silence filling the tent.

“Pretty sure,” he answered. “Do you have evidence to the contrary?”

She was silent for a moment. “I just got here this afternoon. I didn’t have a lot of time to investigate before I went on a ghost hunt.”

Feeling her gaze on him in the gloom, he turned his head to find her watching him, eyes glittering. “I didn’t think anyone would see me.”

“How’d you find out about the kidnapping?”

“I heard the sirens.” Reliving that heart-sinking moment when he’d realized all those lights and sirens had been headed for the motel where his sister was staying, he struggled to breathe. “I’d seen a write-up in the local paper about a visit from a previous bass tournament champion. Her husband, Gabe. There was a picture of the two of them, right on the front page of the sports section.”

Alicia had looked so beautiful in that photo, he thought. So happy. The guy she’d married seemed solid, too. Quinn had told him a few things about the Coopers, whom Quinn knew through prior dealings with the family. Gabe Cooper had been among the family members who’d done battle with a South American drug lord seeking vengeance against one of the Coopers. Sinclair prayed he’d be just as strong in protecting Alicia.

Of course, Cabrera’s men might have executed him the first chance they got. They were nothing if not ruthless.

“They’re keeping her alive,” Ava murmured. “There’s no point in killing her if they want to use her to smoke you out.”

“I may have done the job for them.”

“Three dead and we’re still at large. That’s not nothing.” Her voice had grown progressively more strained. That wound she’d suffered was probably hurting like hell by now.

“I need to take a look at your wound.”

“It’s okay.”

“It needs to be cleaned out and disinfected. The longer we wait to do that, the more likely infection will set in.” It might not be possible to avoid infection even now, but it wouldn’t hurt to clean her up. “I have first aid supplies.”

“We can’t risk a light.”

“The Ghillie cover will block most of it, and the woods should take care of the rest, unless they stumble right on us. And if that happens, the light will be the least of our worries.”

She released a gusty sigh. “Okay. But be quick.”

He grabbed his bag from the back of the tent and pulled out the compact first-aid kit. Fortunately, he’d stocked up a few days ago when he’d made a run to Bentwood to charge his burner phone. Using a penlight to see what he was doing, he pulled out disinfectant, gauze, tape and a couple of ibuprofen tablets to help her with the pain. The kit also offered a bigger pair of tweezers. One look at the messy furrow ripped into the fleshy part of her hip suggested he was going to have to do some careful work to get all the singed fabric out of the wound.

“I’d offer you a bullet to bite,” he said, keeping his voice light, “but we may need to conserve them.”

“Just get it done.” She pushed down her trousers, wincing as the fabric stuck to the drying blood at the edges of her wound.

He handed her the penlight. “Can you hold this for me?”

She positioned the light over her hip, turning her head away and burying it in the elbow crook of her other arm.

He worked quickly, wincing at her soft grunts of pain. The wound was about five inches long and at least a half-inch deep, grooving a path right through the flesh of her hip. It had missed the bone, fortunately, and she had enough curves for the bullet to have also missed most of the muscle. “Looks like it mostly injured fatty tissue,” he commented as he dabbed antiseptic along the margins of the wound.

“I’m suddenly feeling less guilty about that chocolate-covered doughnut I had for breakfast,” she mumbled.

“We need to get you somewhere cleaner than these woods,” he said as he bandaged up the wound.

“I’m counting on that,” she answered. “You’ll be coming, too.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You don’t get a vote.”

He looked down at her bared hip, the utter vulnerability of her current pose. “You’re in no position to make demands at the moment.”

She moved as quickly as a cat, the grimace on her face as she whipped up to face him betraying the pain the move caused her. Still, she had her Glock in his face before he could put down the first aid kit. “Want to bet?”

He couldn’t stop a smile, even though he knew it would only make her angry. “You’ll have to shoot me, then.”

Her lips pressed to a thin line. “Why aren’t you dead, Solano?”

“Because I never walked into that warehouse in Tesoro with the rest of the crew.” He tamped down the memories—the thunderous bomb blast, the sickening knowledge that people he knew, people he’d lived with and sometimes even liked, were gone, martyrs to a cause he’d once embraced and now despised.

“The authorities in Sanselmo accounted for your body.”

“There were ten bodies. Mine just wasn’t one of them.”

“You killed someone to fake your own death?”

“He was already dead. John Doe from the local morgue.”

“You knew those men would die when they went in there. Why would you betray your own comrades that way? I never thought you were amoral. Wrong? Absolutely. Following a fool’s path? Certainly. But to kill nine men to fake your own death?”

“It wasn’t my doing,” he said, not sure how much he should reveal to her about what he’d done all those years ago. Some of it was probably still classified. He and Quinn had never discussed what he would have to tell the world if he were ever caught.

“Don’t get caught” had been Quinn’s oh-so-helpful advice.

Besides, she had already dismissed the truth as a possible explanation. What good would it do to tell her at this point?

“If it wasn’t your doing, whose was it?”

He took a deep breath. “I can’t say. There are other people involved. Some of them might still be in dangerous situations.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So you’re going with the ‘secret CIA double agent’ story after all? Really?”

He looked away from those sharp eyes, his gaze falling to her midsection, where her unbuttoned trousers were riding down perilously, revealing black panties, the luscious curve of her hips and the sleek plane of her flat belly. His body responded fiercely, a white-hot ache settling low in his groin. It had been a damned long time since he’d been this close to a woman. And this woman, in particular, had gotten under his skin in record time once before.

Clearly, in the eight years since, he hadn’t developed an immunity.

He cleared his throat and waved his hand toward her open fly. “You’re about to lose your britches.”

As she glanced down, he grabbed her wrist, moving the muzzle of her Glock away from his face. Her gaze flew up to meet his, her expression shifting between mortification and anger. But not fear, he noticed. For whatever reason, she didn’t seem to fear him.

Lust flared like fire in his belly.

He let go of her wrist. “I told you, I’m not going to hurt you. But I don’t like having a gun in my face.”

She jerked back from him, but she didn’t aim her gun his way again, he noticed with relief. When she spoke, her voice was soft and raspy. “How did you get out of Sanselmo without being caught? How did you make it back here to the States, for that matter?”

“Same answer to both questions. I had help.”

“From whom?”

“The good guys.”

“Good guys in whose eyes?” Her tone was acerbic.

“Interesting question, that.”

“CIA, I suppose?” She looked disappointed that he wasn’t coming up with a different story.

Too bad, he thought. You may not like it. Hell, I didn’t like it much myself. But the truth is what it is.

“I’m going to take a look outside. I think it’s dark enough to risk it.” He turned in the narrow confines of the tent and started crawling toward the exit. As he neared the flap, he felt the heat of her body scrambling up behind him. She nudged her way to his side, her body soft and sizzling hot against his. Another flare of desire bolted through him, making his arms and legs tremble.

He turned to look at her. Her small, heart-shaped face turned toward his, her eyes large and dark in the faint ambient light coming from outside. “This doesn’t require us both,” he murmured.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

She was going to make his quest to find his sister a little more difficult, he realized. Because if there was one thing he’d learned about Ava Trent during that week they’d spent together in Mariposa, it was the depth of her sheer, dogged determination. She attacked every task she took on with the same pedal-to-the-floorboard pluck.

She wouldn’t be easy to shake. And he wasn’t going to hurt her.

So how did he plan to proceed?

The easy answer would be to somehow make her an ally rather than an enemy. But short of spilling a boatload of long-held state secrets, how was he supposed to do that? And would she believe him even if he told her every little piece of the truth?

He needed to talk to Quinn, which meant heading for the closest town to charge his burner phone. And the closest town was Poe Creek, about a mile through the El Cambio–infested woods. Poe Creek, where cops still swarmed about the motel crime scene. Where Ava probably had fellow agents beginning to wonder where the hell she’d disappeared to and whether it was time to call for reinforcements to go looking for her.

“How many people are with you?” he asked.

She frowned. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

“They’ll be looking for you. Don’t want to shoot the wrong people.”

“You won’t be shooting anyone,” she said firmly.

“We’ve already shot three people trying to kill us. I’m not going to stop trying to defend myself—or you—just because you’ve decided to make your name as an FBI agent on my bounty.”

She made a low, growling sound thick with frustration. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

“Good to know.”

“But you’re a fugitive from justice, and bringing you in is my job.”

“Why don’t we concentrate on getting out of these woods alive first?” he suggested, trying to sound reasonable. The grumble that escaped her throat at his words suggested he hadn’t entirely succeeded.

But she gave a short nod toward the tent flap in response. “Think they’re still out there, then?”

“Somewhere,” he affirmed. “But now that we know they’re looking for me, we can be more careful moving through the woods. I think we can stay a step ahead of them until we get back to civilization.”

At least, he hoped they could. Because one way or another, he needed to get word to Alexander Quinn. The spymaster had warned him something like this might happen.

Every man’s sin sooner or later came back to haunt him.

* * *

HER HIP WAS burning like fire, the pain as effective as a cup of strong coffee to keep her heart pounding and her adrenaline pumping. Without the pain, she might have been tempted to hunker down and wait for daylight, because sneaking through the woods at night was harder than she remembered.

She had grown up in a rural area, traipsed through her share of woods and mountains, but rarely at night, and never with five inches of bullet-grazed flesh playing a symphony of agony with each careful step. But, as she reminded herself in a silent litany as she followed Sinclair Solano through a tangle of underbrush, each step took them closer to civilization. Closer to a clean bandage, prescription antibiotics and painkillers.

Closer to the safety of numbers.

She had come to the conclusion that Sin was being honest about one thing—he didn’t intend to kill her, even if she tried to take him into actual custody instead of this parody of custody they were playing out at the moment. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to stop her.

He’d been at this fugitive thing a long time. Clearly, he was good at it.

So the ball was in her court, she supposed. He might not be willing to kill her to maintain his freedom, but was she willing to kill him if he resisted her attempt to keep him in her custody? Was she willing to let Cade Landry shoot him? Or one of the local cops?

This shouldn’t even be a question, Trent. You’re an FBI agent. Taking criminals into custody is part of what you do.

But Sinclair Solano had saved her life. Put his own life at risk to do it. And when he swore he wasn’t the man she thought he was, he seemed to believe what he was saying.

Her boot tangled with a thick root somewhere beneath the mass of vines, scrub and decaying leaves underfoot, tipping her off balance. She stumbled forward, grabbing for something, anything to break her fall.

She slammed into the hard, solid heat of Sin’s chest as he moved quickly to catch her. His arms roped around her body, holding her close, lifting her back to her feet.

He didn’t let go immediately, his breath hot against her cheek. Despite the pain in her side, despite the adrenaline still flooding her body, she felt an answering rush of heat racing through her veins to settle, heavy and liquid, in the juncture of her thighs.

She wasn’t twenty and carefree, enjoying her last taste of freedom before law school and the FBI career she’d chosen for herself. These woods weren’t the cool, lush rainforest surrounding the soaring peak of Mt. Stanley.

And Sinclair Solano had long since ceased to be just some sexy, brooding fellow tourist who’d made her pulse race and her toes tingle with a few hot kisses under the Mariposa moon.

He let her go slowly, his hands sliding down her arms, his fingers brushing hers lightly as he released her. “You okay?” he whispered.

Her voice felt trapped in her throat. She nodded without attempting to free it.

For a long, electric moment, he continued gazing at her. Apparently, Poe Creek had not yet folded up its streets for the night, for faint light glowed in the west, edging his features with a hint of gold. He had tawny skin and dark, dark eyes, and eight years past their brief entanglement, his compelling magnetism still tugged at her unwilling heart.

“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, and she realized with a shiver those exact words were echoing in her own troubled mind.

“Tell me the truth.” She couldn’t stop herself from taking a step closer, as if he’d tugged an invisible cord between them. “If you tell the truth, I’ll know it. And I’ll know what to do. Why did you join El Cambio? And why did you leave?”

For a tense moment, he stared at her, his expression unreadable. Then, as he opened his mouth to answer, a loud crack sounded from close by.

She dropped, grabbing his arm and dragging him down with her. Adrenaline spiked, sending her heart into a wild gallop as she tried to find cover in the underbrush, her gaze darting around the darkened woods in search of the intruder.

“That wasn’t a gunshot,” Sin whispered, his face close enough that his breath tickled the tendrils of hair curling on her forehead.

“What was it?”

Before he could answer, a flurry of sound and movement broke the tense quiet of the woods. Thirty yards to the north, two men burst into view out of the underbrush, scrambling and stumbling as they went, throwing fearful looks behind them.

A few yards behind them, a large black bear loped after them, moving with surprising speed.

“I thought black bears didn’t attack unprovoked,” she whispered, watching the animal crash through the forest after the two fleeing men.

“She may have a cub around here somewhere.”

One of the men seemed to finally remember he was armed. He swung his gun hand toward the bear and fired a shot. It missed the bear, the bullet whipping through a thicket only ten yards away from where Ava and Sin crouched.

Sin grabbed her around the waist and hauled her with him behind a nearby tree trunk. The sudden movement pulled at her injury, and she hissed with pain.

“Sorry!” he whispered in her ear, sliding his hand up to her rib cage.

But he didn’t let her go.

Another gunshot rang in the woods. Another bullet missed the bear and whizzed harmlessly past their hiding place by a dozen yards. The next time Ava peeked around the tree trunk, the bear was circling back around, heading away from where they crouched. The men were two diminishing shadows in the woods, still on the run.

Ava released a long breath. “That was close. Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait,” Sin murmured, catching her arm as she started to move.

She looked up at him, jerking her arm free of his grip. “What?”

He met her gaze, his eyes burning with fierce intent. “We have to follow those men.”