He couldn’t begin to sort the emotional snarl Mia had created with her quiet, brave declaration: because her
I love you
wasn’t—couldn’t—be true. He didn’t dare place any faith in it. Some women just had a tendency to attach to men they couldn’t have, and he was more untouchable than most.
With a faint sigh, he powered up the laptop. Before departing, he’d set up a forward, filtered through a number of servers, to receive any incoming mail. He suspected their enemies would make contact directly, trying to lure them out into the open.
He checked old accounts first, men he had been in previous lives. Those names were quiet like the grave. But when he pulled up the Thomas Strong file, he had five messages waiting. The first two were banal, involving company business.
We await your decision regarding the donation. Your efforts will save a life.
Too late on that one, even if he were AB negative. He hoped they’d found an alternative source.
It has come to my attention there has been potential misconduct between you and a member of our IT department. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.
That one was from Frederick Collins, the director of operations. He smiled reluctantly; he supposed tying a subordinate employee to his bed might constitute harassment in the usual course. But how did they know? That presented some interesting questions.
He set some inquiries in motion regarding Collins’s personal correspondence and then moved on to the final e-mail.
We know you’re working with Mia Sauter. Things will go badly for you unless we come to some arrangement.
“They think they can buy me off,” he muttered.
Mia tapped on the window to let him know she was there. She’d tugged his shirt over her own in lieu of a jacket, and it hurt him to look at her. “What is all this?”
“Satellite uplink.”
“Isn’t that insanely expensive?”
“Not anymore.”
“And what are you doing?”
“Finding out what they know.”
“Which is?”
It pleased him to make her mine for information, as if each syllable were encased in gold. “They think you’re in charge, and that you’ve persuaded me to help you.”
Her mouth curved into a mocking smile. “Well, how about that. So they have no idea who you are?”
“It appears not.”
“Does that help us?”
“Doesn’t hurt.”
Mia curled her hands into fists. “Are you going to be like this the whole time?”
“Like what?” He regarded her coolly.
“Never mind.” She whirled and stalked back to the cabin.
Smiling, he typed a reply:
You’re mistaken. Your trouble has only just begun.
He had ample time to come up with a strategy and respond to whatever gambit they offered. There had to be a way inside the real labs. It stung that he’d wasted that time undercover before being forced to flee, but he wouldn’t give up. It had taken ages just to find the dummy facility, after all, but he’d done it. Now he’d find a way to end this.
But Mia complicated his initial plan. Somehow he doubted she would be amenable to staying out of it while he went in to destroy the place . . . even if it killed him. Before meeting her, that had been the optimum result. He’d played the scene so often in his head that it offered near sexual satisfaction.
He didn’t know what he wanted anymore.
Søren disassembled the gear, stowed it, and grabbed a bag before he closed the trunk. Ordinarily, he would just take off, but he owed her more than that. Muttering, he tapped lightly on the cabin door. When Mia opened it, he said, “I’m going to take a walk and set some traps on the perimeter. I’ll be back later.”
“Stay here, in other words.”
“If you don’t mind.”
She was the most frustrating woman. Any other female would obsess over the revelation she’d made earlier and his response to it, but Mia had attitude to burn. Søren turned, shouldering the gear.
“You can’t run away from the real world forever,” she said.
“My reality and yours are quite different. Drop the bar when I leave and don’t open it until you hear my voice.”
“I thought we were safe here.”
He offered a faint, melancholy smile. “It’s not safe anywhere.”
Mia made a sound that might have been frustration or agreement. The clearest reply came when she closed the door and secured it. Dry needles crunched underfoot as he left the clearing. Out here, he couldn’t go high-tech. Motion sensors would be set off constantly by birds and squirrels to say nothing of the larger animals. The last thing he wanted to do was piss off a bear with an alarm.
Instead, he made do the old-fashioned way with rope snares and trip wires. If he wanted to spend hours, he could dig a few pits, but he didn’t think it was necessary. They’d given no indication they knew his real identity, and without that connection, they wouldn’t know to search for property once owned by Søren Frost. Names were powerful things, and he had sown so many of them; Foster, Strong, and Winter comprised only a small minority.
The silence gradually calmed his emotions as he worked. Knots were reliable; you could count on them. If you twisted the rope the same way, you got the same result each time. Life was never so neat and tidy.
And he was tired.
Tired of sleeping poorly, tired of knowing the men who were ultimately responsible for destroying his life were out there somewhere, eating well, buying Christmas presents, and laughing at bad jokes. A wave of fury rose up inside him, so fierce and sudden it was all he could do not to howl.
Nothing he did mattered.
Nothing would bring Lexie back.
Gritting his teeth, Søren slammed his fist into the trunk of a tree. The pain felt good, cleansing and cathartic. He did it again, eating the agony until physical pain blotted out old heartbreak. When the storm passed, he leaned his head against the grainy bark, feeling its whorls bite into his brow. He didn’t think his hand was broken, and even if it was, he could still do what must be done. This injury wouldn’t stop him.
He hated being out of control, and things had been spiraling that way ever since Mia waltzed back into his life. It wasn’t fair to blame her for his current predicament, but the break in routine bothered him more than he’d let on. Søren liked things tidy, and lately life was anything but.
His plans weren’t yielding the same predictable results.
He was no longer able to separate himself from his outcomes, moving people as if they were pieces on a board. Everything had changed when he first made love to Mia. And he didn’t know what to do about it.
Cradling his wounded hand, he went back to the cabin. The silly woman hadn’t closed the curtains, and it was getting dark. He could see her moving around inside, silhouetted in the candlelight. He stood for a moment, utterly transfixed, and his heart felt as though it might beat its way out of his chest.
This feeling—having someone waiting for his return—he didn’t know what to do with it, but it hurt, almost as much as his hand. Confusion and misery warred within him when he craved certainty most. His course should be dead clear; nothing had changed.
Find the way in. Kill them and let it finally end.
She turned then and saw him standing there. Mia left his line of sight, and then he heard the door being unbarred. Stepping into the twilight still wearing his dress shirt over her tee, she looked warm and tousled. Perfect. She extended a hand; Søren stared at the lovely contrast between her skin and the snowy fabric folded up over her forearms. He’d never wanted anyone in such a way before: visceral, almost crippling.
Her prosaic words came as a relief. “I heated up some beans.”
“Good. I need the protein.” At least he sounded calm, business as usual.
“You’re hurt.” Her voice reflected an exasperated tenderness.
He didn’t know if he could bear her sympathy. Then Mia reached for him, and he realized it wasn’t about his hand at all.
CHAPTER 23
Mia bandaged his
injury without calling him a dumbass.
She thought that was pretty kind, considering how he’d been acting. But maybe she’d miscalculated. Maybe he wasn’t ready for emotional entanglements. Whatever, there was no help for it. She was committed. It wasn’t like she could say,
I love you
, and then two hours later change it to,
I was kidding, relax. I just like banging you a lot.
So instead, she dished up the beans and pretended she wasn’t worried. Pretended everything was going to be okay, and that one day soon her life would return to normal.
After they ate, he went back outside to tinker with the computer some more. It was full dark, and she was feeling trapped. At this point, she should be grateful that nobody would worry about her, nobody except—
Kyra.
Shit.
They’d chucked her phone back in West Virginia, so there could be no triangulation. But now she had no way to get ahold of Kyra, and if her friend couldn’t get in touch with her, she’d worry. If it went on long enough, she’d come looking.
“I need to send an e-mail,” she told Søren when he came back inside.
“Kyra?” he guessed.
It was stupid, but his knowledge warmed her from head to toe. “Yeah. I’ve already missed one call since we’ve been gone.”
“Is tomorrow soon enough?”
“That will do. Otherwise, if I miss a second call, she’ll come looking.”
“And if we don’t want her trampling the playing field, you have to get in touch.”
“Yes.”
“Does she know you worked for Micor?”
She flushed at the implied criticism. “Yes. We’re not all lone-wolf types who feel like we have to hide our movements.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s in your eyes. Anyway, I like having someone know where I’ll be. It means they give a shit. If something happened to you, who would come looking?”
“No one,” he said quietly.
God, he could be such an idiot, for a smart man. “I would. I’d come. Dumbass.”
That surprised a rough laugh out of him. “Sorry. I forgot. You love me.”
Mia managed not to flinch at the scorn in his voice. She wanted to punch him. “Do you think if you push hard enough, I’ll recant? Or do you just not care if you hurt me?”
“I don’t want to. In fact, that’s all I’ve been thinking about tonight—what if something goes wrong, what if they find us? What if something happens to Mia? Anxiety is driving me nuts.” Søren looked faintly surprised at the confession, but he didn’t disavow it. “I’m not used to having anyone to worry about.”
Progress? Oh, I think so. The iceman melteth.
“You’re forgiven.”
In companionable silence, they piled the dishes in the sink to be dealt with in the morning, and then, in concert, they began readying the futon. He shrugged at her look. “There’s precious little to do at this hour. I have some feelers out, but it’s a waiting game. For obvious reasons, there are few people I can trust. But . . . I can turn on the radio if you want. There should be some battery life left.”
Lying in the dark in his arms, listening to soft music, sounded pretty damn good to Mia. If she had any sense, she’d start trying to build some emotional distance between them, but she couldn’t. Didn’t even want to, really. She couldn’t seem to stop reaching for him, no matter how many times he recoiled.
“I’d like that.”
Mellow country music filled the cabin. She didn’t ordinarily care for it, but what other station would be in range in the Smoky Mountains? The singer’s soft twang made Mia smile, as he sang about a man who loved a woman until the day he died. She wasn’t sure she even believed in that anymore. Forever. Happy endings.
She’d take what she could get. A day, a week. Maybe she wasn’t the woman to whom men wrote love poems or whom they remembered through the years. Maybe not. But this man—well, the heat in his eyes made her feel as if that were true.
His eyes were avid as she stripped. It was a silent show, his motions mirroring hers. Mia found the slow revelation of his bare chest almost painfully erotic. His muscles were lean and compact, giving his naked body a powerful elegance. She ate him with her eyes, savoring his obvious pleasure. The man liked being looked at more than anyone she’d ever been with, but then, who could blame him?
By the time they climbed beneath the covers, he had an erection. She wondered if she was supposed to pretend she hadn’t noticed. Smiling, Mia lay down on her side and turned over, facing the window. She wouldn’t make it easy for him this time; he needed to suffer for being careless with her emotions—and him being rusty was no excuse.
The covers rustled as he settled. The mournful music shifted to an upbeat tune; she could envision people line-dancing to this in cowboy boots and tight jeans. Deliberately, she exhaled as if getting ready to fall asleep.
“Mia?”
“Hm?”
“Are you angry?” God, he sounded so adorably confused.
“Why?”
“Because you’re over there.”
“Where should I be?”
“Here.” With that, he drew her against him.
She didn’t roll over, which left them spooning. Despite his bewilderment, his erection hadn’t gone down, and she wiggled back. “Better?”
Søren groaned. “God, nothing in the world makes any sense but you.”
Restraining a shiver of pleasure at the heat near her ear, she closed her eyes. “Is that supposed to be dirty talk to get me in the mood?”
He choked out a laugh. “Hardly. Woman, you’ve got me so I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.”
“If you were coming, you’d know.” Mia shifted her hips.
“Mmm. Do that again, and we’ll see.” His right hand wandered down her belly, teasing over her abdomen.
She did, tilting so that his cock slid between her thighs. He hissed when his bare skin met hers, nudging toward her core. Then she tightened her legs to hold him still.