For long moments, they simply lay locked together, panting for breath. Eventually, he stirred and slipped away from her. A minor shaft of disappointment wafted through her, but she discovered she was simply too relaxed to have the energy for much distress.
A shiver skated through her when she’d cooled. She was just contemplating trying to retrieve the cover from beneath him when he rolled toward her again and nuzzled his face against her throat, nibbling lightly. Lifting his head after a moment, he bent lower, plucked at each nipple, and then sat up and rolled off the bed.
She pushed herself upright and stared as his back as he headed toward the door.
A jolt went through her when she saw the shadowy figure standing framed in the opening. It didn’t make her feel particularly better when she finally recognized the other man as Joshua.
She stared at them curiously as they exchanged hand signals and then Caleb turned back to her and gestured with his hand for her to follow.
Trying to decide whether she should be alarmed or not, she grabbed her nightgown and snatched it over her head, and then followed the two men. They left by way of her greenhouse, which
did alarm her since it was clear that was the way they’d entered the house
.
When they reached the edge of the yard, both men dove in. She was staring at the water when they surfaced again and Caleb motioned to her once more. She shook her head. She’d had enough of the mystery! No way was she getting in that cold water!
Caleb shot out of the water and caught her before she’d managed more than a few steps back toward the house. That time instead of simply diving in, he took her with him.
If she’d had time to scream, she would’ve. She only managed to suck in a sharp breath, however, before they hit the water and plunged beneath the surface and then she felt him pulling her with him as he moved deeper into the water away from her platform.
She struggled to break free but discovered very quickly that wasn’t an option. It took her five minutes of gasping to catch her breath when they finally surfaced. Shoving her hair out of her face, she turned to look at Caleb with murder in her eyes.
“The house is bugged—end to end. We couldn’t talk in there.”
The comment took the wind out of her. “What do you mean bugged?”
“I scanned the house while Caleb ….”
Anna felt her face redden when Joshua broke off, and a sinking sensation as it occurred to her to wonder if that had been a plan—to keep her occupied. “Scanned the house and found bugs?”
“Electronic transmitters, video and sound feed.”
Anna’s eyes widened. “Somebody’s been … Somebody …!”
“I doubt it was just somebody,” Caleb said tightly. “Did you notice any signs that anyone had been in the house when you came back?”
Anna stared at him blankly, still trying to digest the fact that someone had been watching her every move. Finally, she shook her head.
Joshua and Caleb exchanged a look. “We didn’t either, but then we aren’t familiar with the house. You’re sure everything seemed as you left it?”
Anna frowned, trying to think if she’d noticed anything at all that might have been moved or shifted. “I’m pretty sure,” she said finally.
“That means it’s been there a while. You leased the house yourself?”
“It belongs to the company,” Anna responded weakly, feeling ill.
“So … maybe they like to keep up with their researchers.”
“Or it could’ve been specifically for me. That’s what you’re saying, right?”
“Cavendish was gone when we finally got around to looking for him,” Caleb said pointedly.
Anna turned and looked back at her house. “Did you take them out?”
“That would alert them to the fact that we’d discovered them,” Joshua said.
She glanced at him. “And why don’t we want to do that?”
“It’s standard procedure. If we take them out or disable them, they know we’re on to them and then they … act.”
Anna shivered.
Caleb sent Joshua a hard look. “It’s possible they’ve been there since the previous occupant and it’s nothing more than the company keeping an eye on their investment.”
“But … he said they were everywhere! Are they in my bedroom? My bathroom?”
“I didn’t check.”
Anna pointed at the house. “Well go check, damn it!”
“Calm down, Anna,” Caleb said soothingly.
“I am
perfectly
calm!” she snapped. “I can’t stay in that house with some …
pervert
peeping at me!”
The two men exchanged a look. “We came to plant some of our own so we could keep an eye on you,” Caleb admitted.
She stared at him for a long moment before it finally sank in that it was the surveillance she’d asked for—begged for. And she didn’t like that any better!
“We can’t stay in the house and guard you,” Caleb said as if he’d read her thoughts. “The electronic surveillance is so that we’ll be alerted if there’s any threat so that we can come.”
She still didn’t like it! “You’ll be listening in and watching me? You two?
Nobody else?”
“Baby, we aren’t going to be much use to you if we don’t get some sleep sometime,” Caleb said reasonably. “Someone will have to spell us at some point.”
“Why can’t one of you sleep while the other watches and then change places?”
she asked plaintively.
“Because we’ll be stationed in the sub so we can be close and there’s no place to sleep.”
Anna hated to be completely unreasonable, but she liked the idea of one of them sleeping with her—between her and the door—a lot better. “How did you get in?” she asked abruptly.
“The same way we came out. The lock’s faulty.”
“Oh! That’s just wonderful! Is that the way you all came in before?”
They exchanged a look.
“I’ll never sleep a wink with the house wide open!
Anybody could come in!”
“Except we’ll be watching,” Caleb pointed out, “and we’re less than five minutes from your place.”
That made her feel a little better, but not much! “So I’m just supposed to pretend I don’t know I’m being watched?”
“We don’t know that anyone’s on the other end,” Joshua said. “We’re going to try to track it and see what we can find out.”
Relieved, Anna smiled at him a little tentatively. “And you’ll make sure my father doesn’t come back, right?”
“We’ll be watching for anybody that shouldn’t be there,” Caleb agreed grimly.
It wasn’t until she’d finally gotten back into her bed that it occurred to her to wonder if Caleb’s comment was merely to reassure her or if he was suggesting … a little possessiveness?
She wasn’t naive enough to think that it necessarily meant anything at all that he’d had sex with her—beyond the fact that he found her attractive—but that by itself was enough to make her feel wonderful. It eased her spirits enough that she was able to fall asleep despite the niggling anxiety that someone was watching.
* * * *
Caleb didn’t seem happy to see them, Simon thought wryly when he and Ian surfaced between the two men he’d sent to watch Anna and the house they’d been heading toward—hers. “Going somewhere?” he asked grimly.
Caleb eyed him angrily for a moment. “We just decided to take a quick swim to get rid of some of the kinks from being cooped up so long.”
“Is that what you two were doing out here instead of inside the sub?”
Joshua studied him uncomfortably. “Like he said ….”
“Well, you can stretch all the way back to New Atlanta. Ian and I came to spell you.”
Caleb looked for several moments as if he would argue. Finally, after flicking a last glance toward Anna’s place, he turned and headed back to the sub. “It’s been quiet,”
he reported when everyone had climbed aboard. “Were you able to trace the signals coming from her place?”
Simon shook his head in disgust. “No luck with that. Someone’s bouncing it off of a satellite.”
“Any luck on anything?”
“We identified the mansion Anna described,” Ian said dryly.
“Let me guess, it belongs to a company that belongs to another company, etcetera, etcetera.”
“Something like that. His name isn’t tied directly to it.”
“I spoke privately to the governor regarding our suspicions about the new councilman. He was inclined to dismiss it, but he didn’t tell me to back off.”
“That’s helpful,” Caleb said in disgust.
“This little operation is backdoor, by the way. That’s why I didn’t send anyone else.”
Caleb studied him for a long moment, wondering if the comment was merely a warning not to mention it or if he was trying to make excuses for sitting in on the stakeout. Not that he had to. He was High Guardian. He could pretty well do any damned thing he wanted to.
“You think he suspects?” Joshua asked uneasily when they left and headed back to the city.
Caleb uttered a snort. “You bet your ass he suspects. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to have come himself specifically to throw a wrench in our plans!”
* * * *
Ian glanced at Simon, who was standing at the starboard viewport, watching the two men head back toward New Atlanta. “You think they broke protocol?”
“As soon as they got here,” Simon said tightly.
Ian was studying him when he finally turned away from the porthole. He shrugged. “It isn’t the typical stakeout or I’d suspend both of them.”
Ian lifted his dark brows. “It’s just a hunch anyway,” he pointed out. “You don’t know that they did.”
Simon didn’t argue with him. Instead he moved to one of the chairs that had been swiveled to face their target site and settled in it. He was bone deep tired, a hell of a way to feel starting surveillance, but Joshua and Caleb had been overdue for a relief. It wasn’t just out of consideration for them, however, that he’d come. A few days and nights of staring at nothing, cramped quarters, bad food, and very little sleep dulled reflexes and if a situation arose the watchers might or might not be able to respond as fast or effectively as they should.
He wasn’t entirely sure of his own motives for keeping the stakeout under wraps.
No one would have quibbled with his decision to initiate one since it could easily be put down to the ongoing investigation into the HFH organization. It actually wasn’t logical not to watch Anna when she’d been contacted by Cavendish so recently, particularly when it was clear he was trying to enlist her.
Doing so would have painted cross-hairs on her as a person of interest in connection with one of the most heinous terrorist acts in a decade, though, maybe permanently, and it didn’t take much searching to realize why he didn’t want to risk that.
Partly, it was because he believed she was a complete innocent in this mess and he didn’t want to be responsible for ruining her life. Partly, though, his motives were purely selfish. He wanted her as badly as the others did. Painting her as a terrorist or even a sympathizer wasn’t going to make it any easier for any of them to try to form a marriage pod with her. It wouldn’t make her life any easier to adjust to in the territory, if it came to that, assuming Caleb could convince her.
He was pretty damned sure about all
he could manage to convince her of was to run the other way. He’d considered it long and hard after the conversation he’d had with Caleb and decided the best he could do was keep a low profile since he seemed to have a knack for rubbing her the wrong way.
Aside from that, and as bad as he hated to admit it, even to himself, Caleb was right about Roxanne. She hadn’t just cleaned him out. She’d undermined his self-confidence where women were concerned to a degree that he couldn’t bring himself to relax his guard. He hadn’t been near the marriage mart since, and he sure as hell wasn’t easy in his mind about opening himself up to a woman who hadn’t shown even that much interest.
Caleb was the only one of the three of them that could be said to have a ‘way with women’ anyway. Ian was nearly as hopelessly inept at wooing a woman as he was, and for pretty much the same reason—having been kicked in the teeth one time too many.
And Joshua didn’t have
any
damned experience to draw from. The closest he’d been to a woman was the brothel, and two or three half hour sessions with a prostitute, which he knew had to be the most Joshua could ever have afforded on his salary, wasn’t experience.
If what he’d heard about Caleb was true, though, several prostitutes had actually been known to offer him discounts to entice him up to their rooms. He didn’t think he would’ve swallowed it if it had come from Caleb himself. It was hard to discount it, though, when he’d had to break up several brawls in the brothel because some of the men had overheard the offers and set out to rearrange his face.
Anna appeared at the door of her house almost on the heels of that thought, glanced around guiltily, and headed for a tiny, two-seater paddle boat he saw moored at the edge of her yard. He narrowed his eyes, certain, at first, that he must be mistaken.
From what he’d seen of Anna thus far, she could be a little on the ditzy side on occasion, but even she wouldn’t totally fuck up their cover by coming to them!
“You may have been right after all,” Ian said sardonically. “Unless I’m mistaken, that’s our little pigeon paddling this way.”
“Jesus!” Simon growled. “She wouldn’t!”
“I’m afraid she would.”