Felicity sighed. “Yes. I do. I had to follow the cell because Jacko turned the transponder off. Metal says that is a big no-no at ASI.”
“So you’ve been following his cell.”
“I have.”
“I don’t want to know where he’s been,” Lauren warned.
Felicity dipped her head. “Yeah. Got it.”
“He turned the transponder off. That means he doesn’t want anyone interfering with him.”
Felicity gave a small smile. “I consider that a gesture. Of defiance. He doesn’t care that he can be tracked; he just wanted to make it hard to do. It’s easy for Metal and the guys to track an ASI transponder, they have an app for that on their computers. The cell is harder. His is encrypted and supposedly untrackable.”
“But you can track it,” Lauren said. “Right?”
“Right.” Felicity wasn’t smug. There were very few electronic devices she couldn’t track. If it was connected to the net, whether the aboveground one or the dark one, she could track it. It was like she had a sixth sense. Or was “mistress of the dark arts,” as some of the ASI guys muttered.
“Honey?” Metal called from the living room.
Felicity stood. “So I guess the guys have finished making your house safe for today. You could survive the apocalypse.”
Lauren sighed. She really appreciated what the ASI men did for her, but she’d be glad to have them gone, too. “I’m safe from intruders, from door-to-door salesmen, from bears and from aliens. I’m pretty locked up for the night.”
“And you have a whole tarte tatin.”
“That I do. I could maybe be persuaded to share, if you wanted.”
Felicity’s eyes rounded. Her fondness for desserts—for sweets of any kind—was legendary, but she liked to eat them in company. Lauren chalked it up to the many years she’d spent closed up in her house, living at her computer without any human company at all. She had plenty of company now, not to mention living with Metal, who took up the space of two people. Lauren would hate her for eating so many sweets and remaining reed-slender, but Felicity was too nice to hate. “Oh, don’t tempt me! I can’t though,” she added, regret rich in her voice. “I’ve got a freezer full of Isabel’s offerings and Metal threatened to take my laptop away if I added any more.”
That was a threat with teeth. Felicity without her laptop…that was enough to give anyone the shivers.
Metal and Joe stood in the kitchen doorway. Both were scowling, but Metal’s face cleared immediately when he saw Felicity.
“Hey,” he said, deep voice soft.
Felicity’s pale skin turned faintly pink with pleasure. “Hey back.”
Joe scoured the kitchen with his gaze, keenly looking for things to fix. But there was nothing. He looked at Lauren. “So, I think I’ll head out.”
“More like Isabel’s preparing dinner and you want to get there early,” Felicity said, with a roll of her eyes.
A corner of his mouth lifted. “That too.”
They gathered at the door.
Felicity bent to kiss her cheek. “Remember honey, if you need anything, anything at all—”
“Call us.” Metal’s eyes were hard.
“Day or night,” Joe added.
“Except probably not at mealtimes,” Lauren said.
“If you call at mealtimes, there should be guns or blood involved.” Felicity laughed and Lauren smiled.
Metal made a gun of his big hand and pointed his index finger at her. “When we leave—”
“Set the alarm.” Lauren did not roll her eyes, but it took a heroic show of self-control. “Yes, Mom. Will do so immediately.”
It was all over the top, but she knew it was love for her and—in a roundabout, half-assed way—love for Jacko, too. They knew Jacko was coming back. They knew—as she knew—that Jacko would have to be dead not to come back, and he was a hard man to kill. They knew he hadn’t just disappeared and they knew that whatever he was doing, it was important to him. They also wanted her to let Jacko know they’d looked out for her.
The instant the three were out the door, Lauren set the alarms and sensors. It was not an easy process and for the first week after Jacko had installed it, she’d had to follow written instructions, step by step. There was a fine line, Jacko’d told her, between remembering what to do and paying attention to it. It could easily turn into a rote series of movements but when it became rote, you no longer paid attention and you could skip a step. The subtext being that the instant you let your attention drop, demons would boil up from hell and invade your home.
It was the way the ASI men had operated in the field, and they carried it over into civilian life. Meticulous, incredibly detail-oriented, slightly paranoid.
So Lauren paid attention to setting the code, reactivating the motion sensors, switching on the perimeter lights, activating the IR cameras. Knowing it was overkill, knowing it was all important to Jacko. He’d lived in a dangerous world all his life. Since childhood. He took nothing for granted.
Lauren, too, had felt the rough edge of violence. For two years she’d been on the run, with Jorge on her tail, and it had nearly destroyed her. She was still feeling the effects of living in a state of adrenalin-drenched terror.
She was safe now, in the midst of a group of people who loved her, but those two years had given her an enormous appreciation for the little things in life. Like not being killed.
So she punched in codes and twisted knobs and flipped switches and closed herself in for the night.
She and Jacko had made love so many times, were so physically close, that she sometimes felt the ghost of his essence inside her. And now she was carrying his child, the closest connection possible. It was what had allowed her to remain relatively calm these past days, because she could feel him inside her. If he were hurt in some way, if he’d left her—she’d have felt it. She’d know. She felt an echo of suffering but not physical—emotional. Something he had to face on his own. She’d felt all of that very strongly.
And she could also feel that he was still very far away. She could lock herself in for the night.
Her hand touched the wall to the left of the door. She placed her palm against it, as if to absorb memories through her hand. This—this very spot—was the place Jacko had first kissed her. He’d pressed against her right here and given her the hottest kiss of her life. She’d been hoping for it but not expecting it.
There was a tiny dent in the wall where Jacko’d pressed with all his might to keep from grabbing her hard. His big, powerful hands had pressed the wall on either side of her head, encasing her in a cage of hard, powerful, aroused male. He told her that at that first kiss, he’d been so turned on, he was frightened of touching her. He’d only touched her with his mouth. Just his mouth on hers had almost been enough to give her an orgasm.
The plan had been for one hot night before disappearing completely from Portland because that evening there’d been the possibility that her cover was blown. Which was bad news, considering the psycho who was after her was a step-cousin who’d happily blow her brains out in a second to get what he thought was his rightful share of a criminal empire, courtesy of her mobbed-up stepfather.
Jorge, the step-cousin, had killed two people to get to her, and he’d have killed everyone around her if he had to. Lauren had fallen in love with her friends in Portland…Suzanne, Claire, Allegra. Even the remote chance of Jorge hurting them—she couldn’t go there.
Jacko was driving her home from the opening of a show of her artwork, which had turned into her farewell evening in Portland. The plan was to disappear the next day to…she’d had no idea where. Anywhere. Anywhere far away and remote enough to hide from Jorge. Leaving Portland, leaving her friends and, above all, leaving Jacko was breaking her heart.
On that ride across town on a snowy evening—that was when she’d decided to seduce Jacko. Jacko, the super stud. Jacko, whose sexual exploits were legendary in ASI. Jacko, who liked them hot and young and sexy and for one n
ight only.
Jacko, who was always around her but treated her like his eighty-year-old aunt.
She remembered thinking that this might be her last shot at sex for a long time—maybe the rest of her life—and so having sex with Jacko was fitting. Might as well go out in style. If nothing else, Jacko was guaranteed to give her a good time.
Though she knew she wasn’t his type—she was the furthest thing from a hot biker chick—she thought maybe she could convince him to take her to bed. Sort of like a mercy fuck. She’d be gone the next day anyway, disappeared forever. Why not? If she could only coax him into her bed, she wouldn’t ask him for anything more. One night and she’d be gone.
Turned out Jacko didn’t need much coaxing.
Turned out Jacko had been in love with her and scared of her at the same time. This huge man, a deadly sniper, who could kill a man with his pinkie, this man was terrified of her.
He confessed it later to her.
What she’d taken as indifference to her as a woman had been intense interest, and fear of rejection.
Well, in a way, he was right. Under anything but those precise conditions—life under threat but feeling safe with Jacko—she wouldn’t have entertained the idea of him as a lover. He was rough-edged, but above all, he was frightening. In her former life, Lauren would not have been able to distinguish between him being a threat to others and him being a threat to her.
Now that she knew him, she knew he could never hurt her, ever. He went out of his way never to use his strength against her. But BJ—Before Jorge—when life had been normal, she wouldn’t have taken the trouble to look beyond Jacko’s rough exterior. Beyond the shaved head and the tats and the piercings and the oversized muscles.
She would have missed the fact that he was an amazingly intelligent and observant and patient man. He was a man who’d taken the worst life could throw at him and had prevailed. He was a man who loved how she introduced him to fine art and classical music. He reacted instinctively to art, this man who’d been brought up in a semi-feral state.
So in a roundabout way, Lauren was grateful to that monstrous cokehead of a step-cousin, because without him threatening her life, she’d never have met Jacko, and would certainly never have appreciated him.
She ran her palm over the wall next to the door, surprised at the lack of scorch marks. Jacko’s first kiss had been that hot. The hottest she’d ever had, bar none. It was a wonder her head hadn’t exploded.
In that instant, for the very first time in two years, she hadn’t felt hunted and alone and afraid. She was being kissed by the strongest man she’d ever seen and Jorge had simply disappeared from her head.
Ah, that night had changed her life forever.
When they’d talked about it afterward, Jacko made fun of the difference between men and women. Everyone knew he was hot for her, except her. She hadn’t understood that he was “dragging his dick around after her,” as he so colorfully put it. She hadn’t got that, no clue at all.
Smiling, Lauren made herself a cup of hot milk and drifted into the bedroom. Their bedroom. Though it was full of frills, with silver potpourri holders and flower vases, and a lovely fragile nursing chair that Jacko never, ever sat on, and flowered curtains and a big, ornate chest of drawers, he never complained. It was the furthest thing from a Jacko-room possible, but he had adapted. Took it like, well, a man.
They’d made love countless times in this room. It was their secret bower. She’d been incredibly happy here with Jacko and she would be again.
She’d grown addicted to feeling his huge body next to hers under the covers, generating immense heat. This summer she was going to have to put in air conditioning because she’d be damned if she’d give up sleeping holding on to him.
As Lauren slipped between the perfumed sheets, she caressed her belly and thought of Jacko. He’d shown his love for her over and over in this room, in this bed.
And that first night—
Her eyes closed and she gave a long sigh.
They’d undressed in the dark in her bedroom, just the light from the streetlamps outside casting a faint glow. He’d undressed her slowly, confessing later that he’d had to clamp down on himself to keep from tearing all her clothes off and tossing her on the bed.
That first time, Jacko was all about control. Every line of his body was restrained. The tendons in his neck had been taut, forearm muscles so tight she could see the overlay of musculature as he unbuttoned, snapped open.
The thing she’d noticed that betrayed his tension had been that his hands trembled. A famous sniper’s hands were trembling. It hadn’t been visible but she’d felt it when he’d covered her naked breasts with his big hands.
Later he’d told her he was not only frightened of somehow hurting her in his excitement, but scared he might rip her underwear. Quite right. She’d been wearing a La Perla bra and panties. But she’d been frightened too. That Jorge would come after her, that she was going to have to leave her wonderful life and wonderful friends in Portland. That she would live the rest of her life keeping her head low, never making friends, constantly on the run.
And frightened that however many precautions she might take, she’d one day make a mistake and he would find her and kill her. And she would die alone and unloved.
Lauren smiled. Jacko, that night, had loved her right out of her fear and panic, had filled her head and body with heat, with power.
She remembered undressing him. He’d let her undress him so she’d feel she had power. But she’d felt that anyway. His entire body—strong and powerful—had been placed at her service. He didn’t make a move until she initiated it.
That first sight of him naked—wow. Amazing. He worked out but he didn’t have those swollen, artificial-looking muscles bodybuilders sported. He just looked like he’d been born strong and had kept himself in shape. And those tattoos…God. She knew he had tattoos—barbed wire tats around his wrists. They’d been sexy enough. But he had a huge tribal tattoo covering one shoulder, flowing down over his chest, a swirl encircling a nipple.
Her vagina had contracted when she’d seen that, a totally involuntary reaction of her body to this amazingly strong and virile man. His body had reacted too. When her gaze raked down over his chest down to his groin, to his amazingly large and erect penis, her look alone had made him bigger, thicker. He’d swelled impossibly when she confessed she hadn’t had sex in a long while.
Being on the run for your life would do that.
And the first thing he’d said was that he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d been as gentle as possible that first time. Gentle and tender and loving.
After which they’d had sex so hot, it should have been illegal.
God.
She missed him so much. With anyone else, she might have pleasured herself into sleep. It was what she’d done those two years hiding from Jorge. Sometimes when she was particularly lonely or particularly afraid, with no one to hold her, she’d touch herself until she had a short orgasm. Like a little blip on radar. Nothing like what Jacko gave her.
She couldn’t touch herself now, not even missing him so very much. It was as if her body belonged to him.
But she was attuned to him, and she felt something change, like a change in the molecules of the air. A lodestone shifting. The center of her universe aligning.
Jacko was coming back to her. She could feel it. Soon, he would be back with her and her world would be complete. Smiling, Lauren slipped gently into sleep.
In a Motel 6 outside Fresno, California
Jacko’s eyes opened suddenly. Like all SEALs he’d been trained to be instantly alert and aware upon awakening. He lay still, as he always did. In the field, making noise when waking up could be fatal. More times than he could count he’d waited in a hide for days to take a shot. Once, he’d hidden in a tree for three days. So he’d trained himself to wake up and remain still.
There was something about waking up now…he looked around, moving only his eyes. A motel
room. Motel, not hotel. He could hear highway noises right outside his window. The room smelled clean, looked entirely anonymous by the lights of the streetlamps outside filtering in through the thin curtains.
Nothing strange about the room.
He hadn’t dreamed. That was it. These past nights his sleep had been restless and he’d had nightmares every time he’d closed his eyes. Monsters killing Lauren, Lauren dying, blood and pain. He’d woken up sweating and terrified. He was never terrified, not while awake anyway. These dreams—these nightmares—caught him by surprise, with creatures boiling up from the depths of his subconscious, representing his deepest terror. The terror of losing Lauren.
Right now he felt…fine. More than fine. He’d slept enough to feel rested, and he was ready to get back on the road.
More than anything else, though, he felt happy. Happier even than these past months of living with Lauren, which had been just amazing. Because, well, there was going to be more of that. The rest of his life, in fact. And there was going to be a child.
For the very first time, panic didn’t fill his head at that thought.
A kid. His kid and Lauren’s kid. Man.
A girl. A little girl. A ferocious desire for a little girl rose up in him, fierce and unstoppable and huge. A little girl. Small and delicate, like Lauren. Beautiful and smart. Oh God, he’d get to watch her grow up. Love her and protect her, make sure she was raised by two loving parents. And the ASI family—she’d have a billion affectionate aunts and uncles. Cousins coming out of her ears because Joe and Isabel were already talking about having kids, as were Metal and Felicity. It was early for Jack and Summer, but Jack had grown up in a big, loving family and he’d want kids. A lot of them.
Jacko could see it. A passel of kids, swarming in and out of each other’s houses.
Before Lauren, none of this would have held any appeal to him, none at all. Kids were liabilities, walking pieces of your heart right out there in the open, subject to life’s violence and pain. Like having hostages just waiting for enemies to use against you.