Blamed (11 page)

God help her, she giggled. And then she moaned. The sheer magnitude of pleasure she received from the friction of his shaft overwhelmed her, pleasure that multiplied as he increased the pace and force of this thrusts, and then his knuckle was pressing down on top of her clitoris. The dual pressure was too much, and, crying out his name, she came in a shivering, shimmering rush. He swiftly followed, spilling into his cupped palm.

There was something to be said for knowing who you were making love to, and the intimacy such knowledge encouraged. It didn’t matter that they’d had sex already; what they had done now in the museum’s storage facility outshone their encounter in Cyprus with a brilliance that threatened to shake the very foundation of her beliefs.

She knew Vick now. And there was nothing—not even a target on her back—keeping them from being together. Nothing except her...unless she decided to let him in.

With the corner of the statue’s sheet, Vick wiped the evidence of his orgasm from his palm, then redid his pants and belt. She shimmied her skirt back into place, unable to tear her gaze from him. “You have...um. My lipstick is on your—” Hesitantly, she reached up to swipe the pad of her thumb over his lips, where the faintest hint of matte burgundy stained his skin.

He watched her with banked heat in his eyes, lids lowering in a sleepy seduction all their own. “And yet it’s still perfect on your lips.”

Her smile felt unaccountably shy. “Magic,” she murmured as she finished her task. But shyness faded as she remembered. “The phone. Check your phone.”

A bit of fumbling in his pocket produced his cell phone. He stared silently at the screen before pocketing it again. “We have to go. Now.”

“Now? What’s wrong?”

He grabbed her hand. “Tobias. Your place has been tossed.”

“
Tossed?
How could it have been—he’s there, isn’t he?” Panic buzzed between her temples. “Is he hurt? Did he—”

Vick shook his head as he pushed through the secure door, exiting the Storage Wing. “I don’t know, love, but we’re going to go find out. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” she grumbled. “I never worry.”

“Of course you don’t,” he shot over his shoulder with a cheeky grin. Damn the man, but that grin did terribly melty things to her insides, even in the midst of heart-pumping concern for the brother with whom she’d just reconciled.

After a quick pit stop at her office to collect their coats and her purse, Beth barely had the presence of mind to pop her head into Pepper’s office as Vick directed her toward the stairs, his strong fingers manacling her wrist. “Hey, Pep? I’m, uh, probably not going to be back in this afternoon—”

Pepper lifted a hand. “Say no more.” Her sly gaze lit on Vick, hovering in the doorway behind Beth. “Duty calls, yes?”

“Something like that,” Beth muttered and permitted Vick to drag her away with Pepper’s tickled laughter ringing in her ears. They buttoned their coats as they hurried up the Grand Stairs to the main entrance, her mind tripping on...something. “Tobias said no messages,” she murmured, more to herself than to Vick. “Why would he text? Why would he text
you?
”

Vick shook his head as they broke through the front doors, a wall of cold air slapping them in the face. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s in distress.”

She shook her head, securing her scarf and tugging on her gloves against the chill as they bustled down the steps. “He might look like a suit, but Tobias can handle a violent situation as easily as he can a legal one. He—” She froze as the back of her neck prickled, the sixth sense she’d gained over the years of repeatedly putting herself in dangerous situations tingling now in warning.

Something was wrong.

Scanning the crowd, the streets, the windows in the buildings opposite the museum revealed...
There.
The faintest shift of sunlight over the lens of a sniper’s scope. “Vick.”

He turned toward her, frown furrowing his brow. “What is it?”

Tension ratcheted into the pulse behind her ears, a pounding thump that seized her breath from her lungs and stung the corners of her eyes, and she knew they were out of time. She lunged for him. “Vick,
run!
”

Chapter Ten

For as long as he lived, Vick would never forget the heart-stopping fear of witnessing Beth hurl her body in front of his as shots rang out on the Art Institute steps. One second she stood motionless, studying their surroundings through narrowed eyes, the next she was shouting for him to run and lunging toward him.

Jerking unnaturally, she hissed out a curse and clapped a hand over her right arm. “Go, go, go,” she snapped, and he realized she was trying to
protect
him. From the invisible gunman shooting at them.

Another round cracked into the step inches to his left, loud and visible enough for the milling morning crowd to notice and the screams to begin. As he rushed down the remaining steps in her wake, he saw her briefly lift her hand from her upper arm. The palm of her leather glove gleamed wet and dark. “You’ve been shot.” Jesus Christ, she’d been
shot.

Pain evidently brought out the sarcasm in her. “Brilliant deduction, but let’s save the obvious for when we’re not running for our lives, mmk?”

He glanced down at her stilettos. “You can’t run in those shoes.”

“Just watch me, jackass.” A third shot rang out, smacking into concrete a couple of meters away and spurring her into greater action. Grabbing his arm with her free hand, she dragged him after her, dashing through the blinking crosswalk to get them to the other side of Michigan Avenue before releasing her grip. “Now run like a track star, old man.”

As much as he wanted to spank her for the dig, now was not the time. But she’d get her comeuppance eventually, of that he had no doubt. He let her lead them away from the museum, zigzagging over one block and down another, the pattern of it nonsensical and therefore unpredictable to any pursuers.

“Someone’s got a killer hard-on for you,” she panted, heels clicking rapidly across the concrete sidewalk, dodging pedestrians left and right.

“Who’s to say that shot wasn’t for you?” But he cursed himself for even mentioning the possibility. That she was hurt while under his protection...there’d be fucking hell to pay, mark his words.

“I was a sniper for a decade, Vick. I moved
in front of
the shot. Deduce from that, Sherlock.” Her lip curled as she tossed a glare over her shoulder. “T-16, I’m assuming.”

“More than likely. You’re thinking I should feel flattered, yes?” The wound in his side burned with every stretch, tug and jounce as he chased after her, looking this way and that, determined to cover her as she had so literally covered him.

After another few minutes of bobbing and weaving through the city streets, Beth slowed to a walk, ducking beneath the metal stairs leading up to an El platform. Her steps were shaky, knees wobbling as she leaned against a graffiti-covered support post. Yes, the woman could run in her fancy shoes, but her legs were obviously paying the price.

He stripped off his gloves and reached beneath the hem of his sweater to test the bandage over his wound for fresh dampness. To his relief, his exertion didn’t appear to have torn open the healing flesh. Confident he remained in one piece, he worked to steady his breathing. “Show me your arm.”

She smacked his extended hand away. “It’s a scratch. I’ve had worse.”

Frustration simmered. “Oh, have you, then?” The idea of an injured Beth had fists forming at his sides. “When?”

“A few assignments got sticky. No big.” Gesturing above her to the raised CTA track, she fixed him with a sober stare. “We need to get off the street and back home, like,
yesterday.
I’m not waiting around to watch you get shot at for a third time, got it?”

Biting his tongue against the need to know more about said “sticky” assignments, he snagged her elbow before she could head for the stairs leading up to the platform. “Got it, but this time we take a cab.” When it seemed like she would protest, he raised a hand, staving off any argument. “It’s faster than the train, and we need to get to Tobias, yes?”

“Yes.” She attempted to shrug out of his hold, wincing slightly at the pressure the move put on her injured upper arm. Vick’s mood darkened further at the evidence of her pain, a feat he hadn’t believed possible given the myriad foul-tempered factors already at play. Releasing her, he stepped to the curb and raised his arm, flagging down a taxi in mere seconds. For a brief moment, her hand rested in his as he helped her into the back seat, and then the contact was gone.

He exhaled slowly before following her into the vehicle. He liked touching her. He
missed
touching her. He wished he had the right to touch her.

Silence reigned as the cab sped toward Lincoln Park. Beth stared determinedly out the window while Vick kept his eyes moving, from the driver to the rearview mirror to the passing sidewalks to Beth. The air hung heavy with tension, but Vick refused to permit any more distance between them, physical or otherwise.

Beth, however, beat him to the punch. “Ugh. You are so much like Casey right now that I’m actually feeling a little nauseous about what we did in the storage area.”

He turned his attention back to her, noting the easy-to-miss hole in the upper sleeve of her black peacoat, the hint of plum silk, warm skin and drying blood visible when she shifted under his scrutiny. He hoped she wouldn’t require stitches where the bullet grazed her, but until he got her home and peeled the layers of clothing off her delicious body, he just had to pray the pain wasn’t too terrible. His internal rage cooled as he let the fantasy of tending to her wound—with acute thoroughness, of course—unwind in his mind. “How am I like Casey?”

Beth rolled her eyes, tapping her fingers anxiously atop her thigh. “Taking the most defensible position possible. Eyes on the mirrors, windows, streets. On me.” She lowered her voice. “You’ve got your foot propped against the middle console to give you easy access to your ankle holster.” Shaking her head, she twisted in her seat to face him more fully. “Just like Casey.”

Bemused by her good-natured tirade, he studied her expression, marking the tight set of her mouth and the faint, anxious lines at the outside corners of her remarkable eyes. “Tell me something, Beth Faraday.”

Her gaze narrowed thoughtfully. “I’ve decided I stepped in front of that bullet for you as a thank-you for the orgasm earlier. There. That’s something.”

Surprised laughter burst from him, overloud and drawing unwanted attention from the cabbie. He breathed in through his nose, giving himself a moment to calm down, because the word
orgasm
on her lips was nearly as potent as an orgasm itself. “Good to know,” he said, clearing his throat as a flush worked its way up his neck. You wouldn’t think a man in his late thirties could be reduced to revealing the heat of barely checked desire on his skin, but with Beth there was no taming his reactions. Not now that she knew more of him than ever before. “However, I was curious about the Faradays, and Faraday Industries.”

“Check the Library of Congress if you want family history. We’re shelved next to
War and Peace
,” she smirked, and hell if that smirk wasn’t as sexy as her every other expression—she wore her feelings on her face, her heart on her sleeve, and if she wasn’t careful, someone was going to come along and punish her for her dangerous honesty.

Someone like Vick. “I’ve done my homework on your family. I know Faradays have been inventing and manufacturing weaponry since the late seventeen hundreds, and I know Faraday Industries is currently the number-one military-grade weapons manufactory in America. Your family’s company caters its elite products and services solely to the United States—specifically to the associated armed forces and federal protection agencies.” He dared to reach out and tap the back of her hand, wanting to linger but knowing he shouldn’t. “No one bleeds red, white and blue quite like a Faraday.”

Her fingers flexed over her thigh, but she didn’t pull away. “Your point being...?”

“What was it like, pretending you were a real part of the family business, only to sneak around doing the messy behind-the-scenes work not even the U.S. government could bring itself to do?”

A fierce frown settled over her pixie-like features. “I
was
a ‘real part’ of Faraday Industries. I had a paycheck direct-deposited every other week. I paid my taxes, contributed to my 401k, and, yes, had an annual performance review with my boss.”

“Except your boss was your father.”

“Sometimes. But sometimes it was Casey, or Tobias, or Gillian. So what? I was an employee. An employee with a...specialized skill set.”

His curiosity was a rabid thing when it came to Beth. Surveilling her for months hadn’t yet revealed everything there was to know about her, and his obsession demanded he know all. “What was your title within the company?”

“Weapons Testing Field Specialist.”

“Quite a mouthful.”

She smirked, humor momentarily lighting her gaze. “You would know.”

That fast, he was hard. Shifting to alleviate the growing pressure in his groin, Vick settled his hands in his lap, fighting the urge to drag her there, yank apart her blouse and bra, and find out what a delectable mouthful she truly was. “So you don’t see yourself as having been on the outside? A step apart?” The idea of her, alone but not alone, had haunted him for years, and now he found he was desperate to know exactly how lonely those years had been for the woman he’d loved far too long.

Her gaze flitted from his. “Well, sure. I mean, it’s not like I was around for office parties or whatever. I was out in the world, doing my job.” Her fingers ceased their fidgeting. “And I was good at it—my job. I was really damn good at killing people.”

“Yes, you were.” A superior marksman, Beth Faraday had been one of the most in-demand contract wet-work assassins for a select clientele for close to a decade. Certain death disguised as a college coed. “Do you miss it?”

“No.” Jaw clamping shut, she turned to face the window, her body language screaming just how done she was with the subject.

His hands turned to fists. “No? Just ‘no’?”

“Yeah.
Just no.
”

“See, I’d think it would feel like a piece of me had gone missing if I didn’t have the regular rush from a mission.” Even the monotony of the past six months’ undercover work had given him the fix he’d needed, after rotting away at a desk, clicking through various files on one terrorist or another and putting his multilingual skills to use decoding and translating communications for T-16. He couldn’t imagine what sort of hole existed inside Beth, after a lifetime immersed in the business of violence.

“That must be the difference between you and me, Vick. I’m not an adrenaline junkie, and they were never missions, not to me.” She snorted derisively, head tipping back against the seat as her eyes fluttered closed for a too-brief moment. “‘Mission’ is such a stupidly romantic word for killing people. They were jobs. Work. Toil and labor. Not missions.”

They pulled to a stop in front of Beth’s brownstone, and she was out the door like a shot, handing the cabbie enough cash for the fare and a generous tip before he could even pull the wallet from his pocket. Standing on the sidewalk, outside the garden gate, she peered up at the third-floor window belonging to her flat. “Tobias said the apartment had been trashed, right?”

Vick popped the collar of his coat against the cold. “Right.”

“Did he mention calling the cops in that message?” She turned to stare out at the street.

“No.” He followed her gaze and immediately picked out the undercover Dodge Charger with the dual mirrors and gleaming black paint job. Definitely a cop car, and right outside her building. Too much of a coincidence to be ignored. “Seems counterintuitive to involve local authorities at this stage, don’t you think?”

She gave a slow, measured nod. “As a matter of fact, I
do
think. Something’s up.”

Something was indeed up, and Vick intended to get to the bottom of it. “I’m going to run a perimeter. Wait here.”

“You’re going to run a perimeter,” she repeated, suspicion tingeing her words.

“Yes. Now wait here. With your gun. Shoot anyone who’s not me.”

“Including Tobias?”

“I’ll leave that to your discretion.” His quip finally elicited a smile, and he carried that smile next to his heart as he hurried around the corner of the house into the side alley. He didn’t blame Beth for being suspicious; she had every right where he was concerned.

Pausing at the end of the alley, he glanced right toward the rear garden of the neighboring three-story, knowing precisely what—who—awaited him to his left. Positioning himself to keep an eye on the mouth of the alley, he glared at the duo standing in the shadow of the second-floor balcony of Beth’s building. “You weren’t supposed to shoot Beth.”

Chandler McCallister lifted a jacket-clad shoulder in a careless shrug. “Not my fault she stepped in front of you.” A short, athletic-looking blonde, the MI6 agent eyed him speculatively. “Honestly, I thought you’d be angrier over Nash here putting a bullet in your gut, then leaving you to bleed out in your bathtub.”

The man in question, a nondescript agent in his early forties, leaned against the rough brick. His steady exhalations clouded the cold air. “Didn’t hit anything vital, and it did the trick—got the little girl running over quick as you please to save his lazy arse. Jolly Rolly’s fine, aren’t you, mate?” John Nash grinned, knowing the degree to which Vick hated that nickname, bequeathed unto him by Nash during their early days in the Service.

“Fine,” Vick agreed lightly, though inside he felt anything but casual. The heavy knowledge of the game Section T-16 was playing with Beth and the Faraday family weighed on his chest like cinderblocks. Toss him in a shallow pool and he’d drown for sure. “I take it you’re responsible for the mess upstairs?”

Nash ambled forward, hands tucked into the front pockets of faded black jeans. “You know me, Jolly. I’m aces at mucking shit up.”

Yeah, Vick knew, all right. He and Nash and McCallister had been working as an active field-team unit for the past five or six years, and during that time, Vick noted his partners’ bad habits. As he felt certain they had taken stock of his. For instance, McCallister remained one of the few T-16 agents who maintained ties with her family, thick as thieves with her twin sister, an interior designer for London’s aristocratic set.