Point of No Return (19 page)

His head bent and she tilted her face back. “Let. Go. Of. Me.” Her lips barely moved. Her breaths moved the hair on his face.

“If I don’t?”

Her fingers curled around his balls. Not hard enough to drop him, but hard enough for him to jerk and to force the air out of his lungs.

He squeezed the hand behind her back. “Take. Your hand. Off my balls.”

“If I don’t?”
What was she doing?
He needed time to know he could trust her. This was all wrong. She’d come here to work with him. Her fingers uncurled.

He released her, stepped back and raised his arms like a rodeo cowboy who’d hog-tied a steer. She held her ground. He locked his gaze on her. She did the same and they played eye chicken. She’d win. She could stare down a rock. He took another step back. His foot came down on the bottle. He lost his balance
and
eye contact.

Keeping her eyes on him, she righted the chair and for a moment held it between them like a lion tamer in one of those old-fashioned circus posters. O’Brien retrieved the bottle, set it on the table, and made a big show of sweeping back his hair and petting the critter growing on his face. She set the chair down in an exaggerated, slow movement, all the while hitting him with a look hard enough to leave bruises.

“Let me be very clear about this. I’ve told no one, and I mean
no one
,
about us. I have no reason to believe anyone knows. If I’d been sent here to have sex with you, there is no way . . . let me repeat . . .
no way
I’d have sex with a hairy beast. At least cover that thing hanging on your chest.”

He looked down at the light brown fuzz on his chest.

“Yeah, that thing.” She tossed him the gray T-shirt he’d left on the table

“You never minded it before.” He made no attempt to catch the shirt and it floated to the floor.

“Well, with the rest of it”—she extended her arm and made floppy circles with her hand—“it gives me the willies.”

He said nothing.

“Look, I don’t know what game you’re playing here but I—”

“Game!”
The word exploded from him and he was on her.
“My brother and his wife were murdered.”
His fingers sank into the flesh of her upper arms and he drove her backward into the bookcase with enough force to rattle the knickknacks and raise a cloud of ancient dust.
“My mother and niece could have been killed.”
He gave her a teeth-rattling shake.
“This isn’t a game.”
Rage swelled his body. The look in his eyes and the tone of his voice were not something she’d seen before. She was familiar with it.
Grief.
It broke her temper. She went still.

He let her go. “Leave.” With a gut-wrenching growl he kicked the chair, launching it across the room. He snatched the shirt from the floor, pulling it over his head as he went to the porch. A vicious kick to the no-screen door blew out the bottom hinge, leaving it swinging precariously as he stormed to the lake.

Honey realized she’d been holding her breath and sucked in a quick puff, priming her lungs as she crept to the porch. Jack paced the edge of the water, his arms folded over the top of his head. He let out a sound, a soulful half sob, half howl, that echoed across the still lake. He turned and ran at the cabin. She backed inside. Jack didn’t come in but ran past. She made it to the front door in time to see him disappear on a trail into the woods across the way. She caved against the door frame and mulled over her options. He’d demanded she leave. He was wary. Hell, she was wary. They had a right to be. The only thing they knew about each other was they were damn good in bed together. Wood snapped in the cookstove and steam rose from the pot of water. She unclipped the H&K’s holster and left it on the table.

Chapter 15

Jack came up the steps on the lake side of the cabin and stopped to examine the door he’d kicked swaying in the evening breeze. He worked it, freeing the remaining hinge, and set the frame on the ground. Inside, he found Honey sitting quietly. Without a word, he stripped away his sweaty shirt, picked up the towel he’d dropped earlier and went to the sink. He worked the pump handle a half dozen times before sticking his head under the water flow. “I thought you’d be gone,” he said, scrubbing a towel over his hair and beard.

“My job. There are a few questions. If I don’t get answers . . .” She shrugged. “You know how it works. They’ll send someone else.”

He rubbed his ears and said nothing.

She stood. “I wanted to get a few things straight, about why I’m here.
About us
.”

He said nothing.

She shook her head and straightened. “I couldn’t leave without apologizing. I didn’t mean to imply you . . . I’m sorry for what you and your family are going through. I meant what I said. I’ve told no one about us.”

Hell.
He hadn’t expected an apology. He’d expected she’d be long gone. And he did know how it worked. If he sent her away, he’d lose his chance to find out what she knew. The thought of her working him and suggesting he had anything to do with Lee’s death made him so freaking mad he couldn’t think straight. Keeping her here was the right move. After he’d showed his ass, she might not stay even if he begged. He gave her a hard look. His bosses had sent women,
honey traps
, to test him twice before. If she was the honey trap Neuberger warned him about, she’d stay no matter what he said or did. Damn. It was a major mind fuck to think of her like this.

“I understand you want me out.” She paused, looking at the sofa, then her gaze went outside to a rapidly setting sun. “If you’ll answer a few questions, I’ll be out of here. It’s getting dark fast and that road is funky in the day.”

In the fading light she looked . . . He turned away and pinched his eyes shut. Now was not the time to think about the past or with his little head. He rubbed the towel slowly across his chest then let it fall. “It does get dark fast and the road is a bitch in the dark. Stay the night. You can have the sofa.”

“Thank you. If you’re not comfortable with me inside, I can stay in the car.”

“Sofa’s fine. I’m not that big of an asshole.”

She gave him a nod and a sad smile that sent a fiery pain into his chest.
Crap.
He
was
that big of an asshole. Talking to her like she was a stranger who’d wandered in instead of someone he’d spent hours making love to was not easy. He needed a beer to keep his mouth occupied before he said something else dumb. On the way to the fridge he caught sight of a pot steaming on the stove and lifted the lid. “Huh.”
Rice.
He clapped the lid back.

“That rice is ready,” she said. “I put the fish in the fridge.”

He snagged a beer, swallowed a good third of it, then brought out the iron skillet with the filets. He tossed in a stick of butter, sprinkled seasonings and banged the pan on the stove. He wasn’t much of a cook. What he fixed suited him. He glanced around the cabin. He wasn’t much on keeping the place clean either. He used his forearm to sweep an area clear on the table, then went back to the stove to tend the sizzling fish.

“Come on and get what you want.” He opened a cabinet and pointed to the blue-green plastic dishes that had been in the cabin since he could remember and stood aside so she could serve herself.
And serve herself she did.
She took half the rice and fish. He’d never seen a woman eat as much as Honey and make no excuses about it. During one of their
meets
, she’d ordered two room-service dinners for herself and eaten every bite of both.

He scraped what was left onto his plate, snagged a couple of beers and went to join her. “Don’t wait for me,” he said, watching her put a forkful of fish in her mouth.

She briefly closed her eyes and chewed slowly. “This is excellent.”

He settled in across from her. The last rays of the sun dropping behind the Tennessee hills filled the room, giving her a golden glow. She took on the softness of the woman he knew. He gave in to memories. The crazy places they’d met. Images of her laughing, naked under him, over him, flooded his brain. He thought they’d been good together. Avoiding being sucked in by the past was no easy thing.
Jeesus, he had to get on task.

Like a human TSA scanner, he examined Major H. K. Thornton, intelligence officer, trying to get a read. Her blue eyes were like ice on a car windshield in winter, clear and cold. She was quiet. Expressionless. An unknown. The fact she could hide away the part of her he knew was unsettling. He turned his attention to the food. The rice was perfect, not chewy like his efforts. He didn’t even know she could cook.

“The rice is good. Thought you said you didn’t know how to use a wood stove.”

“Thank you.” Her smile reached her icy eyes and for a moment he thought they’d warm. “You said you didn’t need any help unless I was an expert on a wood stove. I’m no expert.”

“Yeah.” He remembered she was literal. He guzzled the rest of his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. In the last few days he’d learned she was good. Knew how to play the game they were in and was on a promotion fast track. Something he’d half-consciously considered bloomed fully in his brain. Was she using their arrangement as a way to pick his brain and help her promotion along? He didn’t like the idea he was that wrong about her. About them. He watched her tongue swipe a fleck of fish from her upper lip.
Fu . . . ck.
A shiver ran through him at the memory of the pleasure her tongue and lips had given him. The fork slipped from his fingers, clattering against the plastic plate.

Honey looked up.

He was getting aroused.
“Fuck.”
This time he said it out loud.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He retrieved his fork. “Forgot something. I’ll get it tomorrow.” He went back to eating.

“I was hungry,” she said fifteen minutes later, dropping her paper towel napkin on the plate.

“I remember that as a normal condition for you,” he said. “And before you ask, I don’t have any ice cream.” She loved ice cream. Perhaps getting familiar would draw her out.
Shit.
She didn’t even smile. He pushed to his feet and snagged his plate, taking it the counter. Honey came to stand beside him.

“Scrape the plates,” he said before she could ask and moved to put distance between them. “I’ll wash.” He’d left a metal bucket of water on the stove to heat and transferred it to the sink, squeezing in a good amount of detergent.

Honey brought out the plastic bucket from under the sink. “Scrap in here?”

He nodded.

“Can I get the glasses from around the room?”

He looked around. The place looked like he was a beginning hoarder. “Might as well. The bottles go in the bin on the porch.” He dropped the dishes into the bucket.

Time for some truth or lies. “When did you find out I was involved in this?” he said as she handed him the glasses.

“A week ago.”

Quick and to the point. Truth.

“What did they tell you about me?”

“You were up here possibly doing an off-the-books investigation into your brother and sister-in-law’s murder. I received no explanation of how you were accomplishing that.”

Another truth.

“What about
me
? What kind of a file on
me
did they produce?”

She stopped, fingers of both hands wrapped around the necks of empties. “It was nothing. Half a page. Your name. Date of birth. No picture. Declared you’d been an operative for an unnamed agency. Now a contractor. There’s probably more info on your driver’s license.”

His internal lie detector went wonky. Partial truth?

She took in a long breath. Her chest rose and then fell as she let it and maybe a lie out.

“I was given your brother’s file first.” She paused. “You look very much alike. I thought it was you who’d died.” Her voice faltered slightly.

Truth with emotion.

“I had no idea you were a part of this until then. I was able to put together more info about you from Lee’s file.”

“Such as?” He’d have to get Lee’s folder scrubbed.

“Son of a career agent.” She went outside and dropped the bottles in the bin and he followed. “There’s barely eleven months’ difference in your ages. It’s reasonable to think you were close in more than age.”

He sat in one of the wicker chairs and put his feet up on the railing. “We were close.” He tipped the chair back on two legs and clasped his hands behind his head.

“Jack.” He said nothing. Didn’t even look her way. She sat on the top step. Whatever she was going to say, she changed her mind.

“It’s nice here. Are you doing the repair work alone?”

“Not doing any of it. Lee and Becca were. They wanted to fix it and come here as a family.”

• • •

Ten minutes of listening to night sounds was all Honey could take and she broke the silence. “I want to help you figure out who is behind this and why.”

“Sure you do. It’ll score a lot of points. Get a star on your collar a lot faster.”

That stung but she pushed on. “I get you don’t trust me. I had moments of doubt myself.” She swallowed. This was fucking weird. During their time together the only disagreement they’d had was choosing a wine. “I wasn’t sure where you stood in this.”

The front legs of O’Brien’s chair clunked and his feet hit with a thud, rattling loose boards.

“You. Thought. I had a part in killing my family.” He stood.

“No.” It was close to a yell. She went to her feet. “No.” Much softer this time. “Inside Lee’s file was a photo. You look so much alike. I thought it was you. I thought Lee was you. I thought . . .
Damn it.”
Her head throbbed. “I thought you were dead. Then I thought you were married. I thought you’d lied about being married.” A tremor worked its way through her as she remembered the moment. “All that fucking training about never trusting . . . took over. It’s ingrained. We have to doubt, be suspicious. Our lives depend on it.”

“Exactly.”

She looked into the evening dimness and heaved a sigh. One more try from another angle. “From what I saw on the table you have notes and records from your family. We can help each other. I have—”