One Night More (25 page)

“You’re not running off to Paris any time soon, are you?” The sudden thought that he might leave her once this was all over filled Harper with dread. Would the SOG team call him away again once this was all over? Maybe he’d be gone for longer than a year next time. She couldn’t lose him again. It would wreck her.

“You’re in my blood, Harper.” Galen lowered his head to hers and kissed her. The barest glance of lip to lip. “If I go anywhere ever again, I’ll be taking you with me.”

“I’m in your blood?” Harper teased his bottom lip with the tip of her tongue. “Like a disease?”

Galen flashed her a smile that made her bones go soft. “No. More like the spider venom that turned Peter Parker into Spider-Man. Powerful like that.”

Harper rolled Galen onto his back and straddled his hips. He let out a low moan as she lifted her hips, brushing her core against the stiff length of his erection. “I think that might be the sexiest thing any man has ever said to me,” she replied as she reached for the nightstand and the tiny cardboard box.

Galen reached up and cupped her breasts in his hands, and Harper’s head lolled back on her shoulders as he said in a husky tone, “You haven’t heard anything yet.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Harper stared up at the ceiling, the only sound in the room that of Galen’s deep, even breaths. His arm was slung across her stomach, his palm wrapped around her waist as though afraid she might escape. She smiled into the darkness. In the past year, they’d both demonstrated they could be runners, but she wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. Their second round of lovemaking had been better than the first, and she still couldn’t believe such a feat was possible. Whereas the sex had been urgent before—the purging of need that built to a fervor—this last encounter reminded Harper of their first night together. He’d let her be in control at first, but then turned the tables on her, teasing and tempting Harper with his hands, lips, teeth, and tongue, driving her to the edge only to pull back until she begged him to take her. After tonight, she doubted she’d ever get enough of Galen.

He was in her blood, too.

The sun would be up in a few hours, and Harper thought of how they’d have to pretend that they were nothing more than acquaintances thrown together in this crazy situation. Would Galen sneak back into his adjoining room so Peggy or Curt or any of the other marshals wouldn’t be suspicious? If any of them had ears on their heads, they would have heard her cries of passion. Galen had done his best to keep her quiet, but he’d driven her to the point that logical thought—not to mention discretion—meant very little to her. Harper Allen: keepin’ it classy at the Comfort Inn.

Galen didn’t like lying. Or liars. And by keeping secrets, she was helping him become something he despised. Harper wasn’t okay with that. But maybe there was something she could do about it. Careful not to disturb him, she slid from under his embrace and out of bed, wrapping the coverlet around her body. On the small particleboard desk sat her purse and her laptop. She flipped on the desk lamp and turned on her computer while she dug through her purse for Senator Ellis’s flash drive. As she waded through the junk, Harper considered the fact that she really ought to clean her bag out. Or downsize. Probably both.

By the time her computer booted up, she found the thin silver drive. She slid it into the USB port and opened the little folder icon on her desktop. The fact that someone had tried to turn her into Swiss cheese not twelve hours ago was all the reassurance she needed that something damning was hidden in the senator’s files. And whoever had shot at her knew Ellis had given her all the ammunition she needed. Galen said they were trained to see things that she might find inconsequential. Maybe she simply needed to look for evidence in Ellis’s files by starting with the least obvious choices.

She double-clicked on Ellis’s journal entries and scrolled through the document to where she’d quit reading a couple of days ago. What she found was more of the same vague, guilt-ridden confessions without any clue as to what big secret was eating Ellis up inside. Would it have killed him to be a little more transparent?
Wow, stupid question, Harp
.

Skimming over the paragraphs and endless sentences, Harper looked out for any key words to jump out at her. Scandal. Crime. Jail. Secret. Lie. Hell, she’d settle for something small, like shoplifting at this point. A sentence caught her eye and Harper went back to the tiny entry standing alone on its own line:

Pandora . . .

Harper backed out of the senator’s journals to the main file directory. There was an icon named Pandora, but Harper had overlooked it as a possible playlist or something. She hadn’t really thought to venture past the senator’s personal journals for information.
Way to flex those investigative muscles, Harp
. She double-clicked the file and a window popped up identifying the file as protected. Enter password. The cursor blinked at Harper and she stared at the screen, frustration roiling in her stomach.

Password? Crap. She typed in Mark Edward Ellis. No go. Elaine Ellis. Nope. His daughters, Blake and Jane, then Jane and Blake. Uh-uh. She Googled his bio and his obituary, entered his birthdate, hometown, and even his high-school mascot’s name. Nothin’. Harper tapped her nails on the keyboard as she racked her brain. She typed Jason. Then Meader. Jason Meader. The year he was elected. The year he would’ve been up for reelection. Argh! Come on, Harp. Think.

She backed out of the file.
Start in the least obvious place
. She looked at the file icons and clicked on the one named F
AMILY
P
ICS.
She scrolled through the list of pictures, looking over the thumbnail icons that depicted a pretty happy-looking family. Vacations, soccer games, birthdays, and holidays. Her stomach rolled as she thought of the upheaval Ellis’s death must have caused for his wife and daughters. Her heart ached for them. A subfolder caught her eye, nestled between
ARUBA
V
ACATION
and J
ANE’S DISTRICT SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP.
It was labeled B
LAKE
-S
WAN L
AKE
.
Holy crap
. A lightbulb flashed in Harper’s mind and she was possessed with the urge to knock her head against the desk. Duh. She’d thought Ellis’s stuttering last words were blue lake. But that wasn’t it at all. She backed out of the file and reopened the one named Pandora. The passwords screen popped up and she typed BlakeSwanLake. The document sprang to life on her screen.

Apparently she’d been barking up the wrong tree all along. She’d thought what Senator Ellis had given her was a lead to something she’d find in public records or title deeds. But what he’d given her was simply a password. The key to unlocking the door of his secrets and guilt. The amount of information contained in the protected files was totally overwhelming. It would take a week or longer to weed through it all as she made sense of the transactions that looped this way and that in an effort to cover Ellis’s tracks.

Harper had been suspicious of Ellis’s dealings with the firefighters’ union for months, but seeing it in black-and-white didn’t make it any less shocking. She’d assumed there’d been some palm greasing, favors exchanged, weight thrown around for the benefit of the interested parties, but she never would have guessed the scandal was quite so big. Or so completely unrelated to the fire service.

The scandal had nothing to do with union corruption, though the state fire marshal had his hand in the cookie jar. From the looks of it, Ellis had helped the firefighters’ union to arrange for a vote several months back that would allow them to opt out of Social Security in lieu of their own retirement programs. By doing so, the government would be required to pay back any and all Social Security payments for the past ten years to a ton of firefighters totaling close to five million dollars. As Harper read on, her jaw dropped. Half of the money recovered from the Social Security payments was supposed to go back to the individual fire districts for them to reinvest on behalf of the firefighters. But instead someone had found out a way to sneak off with almost two and a half million dollars of the firemen’s money and Mark Ellis helped to set it up.

Holy. Shit.

Ellis had obviously gotten in way over his head. According to the documents, Ellis was using a state fire program called the Mobile Hazard Assessment to embezzle the money. A program funded through the state to provide top-of-the-line technology to help firefighters assess dangerous situations as they were happening and form a plan of attack before arriving on scene. The program was funded through grants managed by the state, and since the state was also managing the Social Security refunds, it was easy to shift the money from one account to another. But when the guilt became too much for him, he’d cracked. His partners must not have appreciated the fact that he was going to blow the whistle on all of them. Harper scanned the documents. She recognized their names. Rick Kremer, Oregon’s deputy fire marshal, Melissa Swinson, an employee at the state controller’s office, and well, whaddya know. Jason Meader.

The four of them had managed to keep their secret until Ellis had cracked. But the thing about keeping a secret: once more than one person was in the loop, it wasn’t a secret anymore. When Harper turned this over to Curt or Agent Davis, they’d investigate, continue to keep Ellis’s dirty dealings on the down-low while they ferreted out all of the guilty parties and their associates, down the line until the last man or woman was arrested. It could take months, maybe even a year for the FBI to conclude their investigation. Nothing would change. Her life would still be in danger, she and Galen would have to sneak around and keep their involvement from everyone, and she’d be living out of a duffel bag at the Comfort Inn for months or until they decided to throw her fully into witness security. And if that happened, she’d lose everything: her family, friends, job, even her name. There’d be nothing left. Maybe not even Galen.

She refused to let a bunch of murdering, embezzling assholes dictate the course of her life. Harper had already gained national attention being caught up in this mess, and she was going to make good use of the spotlight while it was shining. By the time she was through, there’d be nothing to cover up. Everyone would know the truth. Obviously Meader and his cronies didn’t read comic books. You should never, ever piss off Lois Lane.

Galen had never much thought about his sex life. He wanted it. He went out after it. He got laid and moved on. But with Harper . . . Holy. Fuck. Her mouth, her body, the tight, wet warmth that enveloped him, the sound of her passionate cries as she came. Even now, the memory of being with her made his cock as hard as stone. The memory of their night together a year ago paled in comparison to what they’d shared over the past couple of days.

Galen lifted his head off the pillow. The morning outside was gray and gloomy, but he figured they had another hour or so together before the world joined the weather outside to rain on his parade. It violated his sense of honor to lie to his superior. To keep secrets of any kind. Though Galen found that, when it came to Harper, he was more than willing to throw his convictions out the window and stomp all over the smashed remains. Was that what it felt like to love someone? After living through the drama of his parents’ relationship, Galen had abandoned any notion of love. But the way he felt about Harper . . . the way he wanted to protect her and shelter her. To never be away from her for even a moment. Warmth blossomed in his chest when he thought of her brilliant smile, the softness of her skin, or her fiery personality. Did loving Harper mean that he could easily become a compromising man as long as the only thing he was
un
compromising about was her? Yes, he decided as he held her in his arms. That’s exactly what it meant.

He was in love with Harper.

Harper rolled onto her back and Galen propped himself up on an elbow so he could look down at her. The sheet slid away from her body, revealing one supple breast. He itched to touch her, to take her dusky pink nipple into his mouth and tease it with his tongue and teeth. Instead, he blew lightly on her skin and her flesh puckered tight. The sight of it made his balls grow tight and he rolled his hips into her, swallowing down a moan when the engorged head of his cock brushed against her silky soft bare skin.

“Just what do you think you’re doing, Deputy Kelly?” Harper asked sleepily. Her eyes remained closed and her face soft as though still asleep. But her hand wandered between his thighs and Galen sucked in a breath as she took him in her hand and stroked his length. “Doesn’t it violate some code of honor to seduce a woman before she’s fully awake?”

He bent down and kissed right above her collarbone and over the swell of her breast. Harper arched into his touch as she continued to stroke him. “You said yesterday that I had no honor.” He took her pearled nipple into his mouth and sucked, eliciting a low moan from Harper. “I’m simply living up to your expectations of me.”

She opened her eyes and put her palm to his chest, urging him back. “You know I didn’t mean that, right?” Had it only been yesterday that they’d argued in her apartment? It felt like years. Her expression grew serious, her brow furrowed. “I was being stupid and immature.”

Galen hushed her with a kiss. “Everything that happened yesterday before I got you naked is a little fuzzy in my memory,” he murmured against her mouth. “And I want you naked as often as possible from here on out.”

He rolled Harper onto her back and settled himself between her thighs. The ridge of his cock brushed up against her sex and her legs fell open as she thrust her hips up to rub her already wet and swollen sex against him. One more motion like that and Galen wouldn’t be the honorable, prepared deputy he proclaimed himself to be. Before he could reach for the cardboard box on the nightstand, Harper turned the tables on him, wrapping her legs around his torso and rolling him on his back. She bent over him and placed a slow, soft kiss on his mouth before venturing farther down, across his jawline, down his neck and chest, over his abs, as she worked her way down his body.