It took all his powers of reason to keep his temper in check. Furious seemed too tame a description for the emotions churning into a knot in his gut.
Yanking J.J. out of the seat, Cody hurried her from the café, ignoring the curious stares of the patrons and Ruthie alike. Martin held the door while Lara and Denise took up positions at the rear of the SUV as Cody practically tossed J.J. into the passenger’s compartment.
She looked as if she might speak. Cody quickly shot her a warning glance. “Do. Not. Open. Your. Mouth.”
Like a small child rebelling, J.J. parted her lips, but no sound emerged.
After slamming the door and instructing the team members to get in, Cody slipped behind the wheel and gunned the engine. Tires squealed as he peeled south on Main.
The acrid smell of burned rubber mirrored the fire smoldering in every cell in his body. What in the hell was she thinking?
“I wanted—”
“Do not speak.” Cody lifted a single finger in J.J.’s direction. He needed to get a better grip on his emotions before he could carry on any sort of conversation with the woman. And he wasn’t quite sure how to go about that.
And the answer didn’t present itself in the few miles back to the cabin.
He parked but left the engine running. “You guys take a drive.”
“But it’s freezing and there’s nothing around for miles,” Martin complained.
“Go back to the café. I’ll need about an hour.”
“Guess again,” J.J. said, opening the door in the process. “I’m going to bed.”
Cody was on her in a heartbeat, grabbing her arm, half-guiding, half-dragging her to the front door and then inside the safe house. “From this moment on, Agent Barnes, you don’t do anything without my express permission.”
J.J. kept up a brave front—quite an accomplishment given the menacing timbre of his voice and his death grip on her arm. So maybe she shouldn’t have ventured out on her own. Maybe it was stupid. But she needed to feel in control. She hadn’t asked for this assignment. She loathed the idea of investigating Cody and his team. As much as she would have hated him investigating her.
And J.J. had firsthand experience of just how much she hated being investigated. After her cover was blown, Internal Affairs had been on her like lint on a black suit after a visit to a cotton factory.
“Sit,” Cody commanded.
J.J. almost fell as she fumbled behind her, searching for a chair. She and Cody locked narrowed gazes and she wasn’t about to be the first to blink. Nope. It would only be interpreted as a sign of weakness and she’d gnaw off her own tongue before she’d ever admit that he was a little intimidating. Well, more than a little.
His hands opened and closed, forming fists as he paced the small living room, his strides long and purposeful. Four steps, pivot, four steps. It was methodical and, frankly, irritating. He was acting like the principal to her delinquent student. If he expected her to sit meekly with her hands folded in her lap, he had another thing coming.
“Be pissed. Don’t be pissed,” she said as she started to stand, “I really don’t care. I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”
She was half out of the chair when Cody paralyzed her with a single, pointed stare. For several moments, there was nothing but the sound of his breathing and the occasional crackle from the fireplace.
Shoving the coffee table very close to the edge of her chair, he sat on the edge and leaned forward. Countering the move, J.J. sat farther back in the seat, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of sensing her ill ease.
Cody counted to ten. Again. The sum total of his counting was probably somewhere in the tens of thousands at this point. This woman was making him crazy. She was jeopardizing the assignment. Worse yet, she was jeopardizing her life. And his, and the teams, if he let himself think about it. But personal safety was always secondary to the protectee.
Steepling his fingers, he took a calming breath and let it out slowly. Through sheer will, his pulse was normal and he no longer had an overwhelming urge to shake some sense into her.
“You know the rules, Agent Barnes,” he began, allowing his eyes to roam over her face. It was a blank canvas. Save for a single flicker of uncertainty in those incredible aqua eyes, she was a master at keeping her feelings in check. Normally he’d have considered that a plus. But he wasn’t feeling too normal.
He was noticing the way the firelight reflected against her hair. His eyes followed her fingers as she gripped the zipper on her vest and slowly pulled down, revealing just a hint of her upper body. Well, more than a hint, actually. He shook his head, trying not to allow his focus to shift to someplace it shouldn’t go.
“What possessed you to sneak out of your room?”
“I wanted something to drink.” Her gaze flickered away before returning to his face. A lie then. “I was told I couldn’t have anything until you came back from doing…whomever and I didn’t feel like waiting.”
He had to smile at the indignation in her tone. “Where did you get that idea?”
She made a little sound, one that conveyed mild disgust and moral superiority. “Personal time? Do you think I don’t know what that means? You’re the DIC, Landry. What kind of example are you setting for your team?”
Her righteous indignation was kind of sexy. “Don’t worry about my team,” he replied easily, fairly sure that his lack of reaction to her little lecture would push one of her many, many buttons.
It did.
J.J. stood and planted her hands on her hips. She glared down at him, and he noted a tiny vein pulsing at her temple. “It isn’t worry, Deputy. It’s antipathy. You are responsible for this assignment and you don’t seem to realize that your actions set the tone around here. If you were more attentive to your responsibilities, your team would have been more attentive, and I wouldn’t have been able to slip out the window. Get it?”
He stood, liking the fact that he was probably one of the few men who towered over this woman. Purposefully he crowded her. Moving so close that he could feel her warm breath against his throat and smell the faint scent of soap and something floral on her skin. “I know my responsibilities, Agent Barnes.”
“And racing off to…fornicate is one of them?”
He tossed back his head and laughed. “Fornicate? Do you have a sideline going as a televangelist?”
Her lips pursed for a moment and her eyes blazed. “I was attempting to keep my description as neutral as possible. But that in no way negates the impropriety of your actions. Your lapse led directly to tonight’s incident.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders and gently urged her back into the seat. He gave himself bonus points for not urging her into his arms. Every time she got all haughty and official sounding, he was virtually overwhelmed with the urge to kiss her senseless.
When she was seated again, he allowed his palms to linger, to feel the soft strength beneath the layers of fabric. “I wasn’t off on a quickie. I went to see my family.”
He waited a few seconds for his words to register. Once they did, he dropped his hands and sat across from her.
“Family?”
He smiled. “Tons of it. As a concession to me, this detail was moved to Montana because I needed to be here for a family thing.”
Her forehead wrinkled as she seemed to process the new information. “Then why didn’t Martin just say that?”
“Because he probably never thought a well-trained FBI agent would be so stupid as to ditch her protective detail.”
A faint stain of color appeared on her cheeks and for the very first time, she dipped her head and the challenge was gone from her eyes.
“Then I apologize.”
Almost choked on that, huh? “I need to know I have your cooperation in this, J.J. I can’t protect you if you’re going to run off every time you get the chance.”
She raised her eyes to meet his. The twinge of vulnerability he saw there hit him like a slap. “This is hard for me.”
“It’d be hard for me, too,” he agreed easily. “I sure wouldn’t want to be baby-sat even if it was in my best interest. You’re a good agent, J.J. This will pass.”
There was no humor in the smile she offered. “You’re in very small company on that score. I’m not the most popular person with the bureau right now.”
“The Visnopov thing?”
She nodded, then brushed away a few wayward strands of hair. “I was this close—” she pinched her thumb and forefinger together “—to connecting Goran Visnopov to a dozen murders. I almost had the bastard.”
“Until your cover was blown.”
“Yes.”
He’d read the file, but that single syllable had more impact than the hundred-plus-page dossier. “Even more reason to bite the bullet and stay put. I know the inactivity is hard, but you can still put a hurting on them. With your testimony, the U.S. attorney might be able to flip one of the Russians.”
She shook her head vehemently. “Russian mobsters are a different animal. They are remorseless, brutal, fearless and consider our prison system a joke. I spent two years living and interacting with these guys, and I don’t think the threat of some time behind bars will be enough to turn anyone against the boss.”
Placing his hand against her knee, he gave a little squeeze of encouragement. “You never know, J.J.”
“I know that the three people who could tie Prestov and Visnopov directly to the murders are dead. All I can do is testify about their RICO activities.”
“And your attack.”
She shrugged and he thought she might have paled slightly.
“Not really. I don’t remember it.”
“Can’t that change?”
“Maybe. But the doctors weren’t hopeful. Something about my subconscious protecting me from a painful event.” She rose and walked over to the fire. Taking the poker, she shoved at the logs and embers, sending bright orange sparks up the flue.
“What do you remember?” Cody asked.
“I got a message from one of my contacts to meet her in Little Kiev at four in the morning. I remember getting out of the cab on Second Avenue….” She paused and a sad smile curved her pretty lips. “Funny, but I vividly remember thinking I would stop at the bakery on my way back to my apartment. There’s a great bakery on Seventh. Anyway—” she sighed “—I went into the alley as instructed and was there for only a few seconds before I felt my head explode. I saw a couple of silhouettes, lots of stars, then nothing.”
“Ambush.”
“Big time. The next thing I knew, I was in the recovery room with a nurse explaining what a spleenectomy was to me.”
Cody pointed toward her right cheek. “And it looks like you had a heck of a shiner if you still have a bruise after almost two months.”
She let out a breath and touched her fingertips to her face. “Yep. The gift that keeps on giving.”
Cody felt a rush of primal rage at the mere thought of J.J. being beaten. Partly because his personal code simply didn’t include men beating on women. And because it was this woman.
He could only imagine what J.J. would think of him feeling so much as an inkling of personal interest in her.
Do I? he wondered. Or, more importantly, why would I?
Cody raked his fingers through his hair. It wasn’t as though he’d had a positive history with the woman. He wasn’t even on her radar. Maybe that was the very reason he was interested. Pretty feeble, he knew. Nothing was quite as pathetic as a man who was interested in a woman specifically because she had shown no interest in him.
“Anyway, it’s history,” J.J. continued. “If you’re finished calling me on the carpet, may I go to bed now?”
With me? Sure. “I want your word, J.J. No more antics.”
She shrugged her slender shoulders and held up the wrong number of fingers to validate the Girl Scout Pledge. “Swear.”
“We need trust here, J.J., mutual trust if this is going to work out.”
“You can trust me,” she insisted.
“Then get some sleep.”
J.J. went to her room and immediately noticed that her window had been nailed shut. From the outside. So much for trust. Still, she smiled. If he’d thought ahead enough to secure the window, he was more competent than she’d initially given him credit.
Competent and cute.
A dangerous combination.
And a definite problem if she was to maintain her objectivity. “Tough to investigate a guy you wouldn’t mind seeing naked,” she grumbled as she dug into her suitcase for her pj’s.
She’d locked the door, so she felt comfortable leaving her gun and cell phone on the bed. After changing into well-worn, flannel drawstring pants and a form-fitting T-shirt decorated with little stars, she pulled her ponytail free of its holder and ran a brush through her hair as she surveyed her surroundings.
The room was stark but homey. The rustic wooden bed was large—a real bonus for a tall woman—and the comforter looked handmade and warm. Definitely a plus, since she could hear the wind picking up outside. Aside from the bed, there was a simple wooden nightstand and a mismatched, five-drawer dresser with an oval mirror hanging above it. The frame around the mirror was painted the same awful crimson as the dresser. Finished brushing her hair, she walked over to her suitcase and felt along the inside until she found the curling iron.
She returned to the bed and shoved her weapon under the pillow, then sat down and spent a few seconds removing parts from their concealed places inside the heating tube. After a couple of adjustments she had constructed a charger, which she connected to the cell phone.
A small icon flashed, indicating she had a message waiting.
Enjoy your run and your tea?
J.J. scoffed, expecting this as much as she resented it. Obviously the FBI was keeping close tabs on her. She tried to guess which one of the café patrons was a plant. One of the men was her shadow, but which one? Given what had happened in the alley in Little Kiev, she should have been grateful that the FBI had her back. However, she knew full well that if Landry or any of the other deputies found the plant, her assignment would be blown. Something she couldn’t afford to happen again.
She typed, her fingers flying over the keypad.
Just doing my job.
She sent the message and was a little surprised when she got an instant reply.
Update?
Landry disappeared for several hours tonight, she wrote.
Explanation?
Need to verify. Background information would help.
Local boy. Six brothers. Raised in Jasper.
Local boy? Associate Director Andrews didn’t usually speak in such colloquial terms. Must be the time difference.
Prominent family. Financials clean. Service record clean.
Great butt, she thought, amusing herself. But she typed,
Can’t be eliminated yet. Too soon. Barnes out.
Sending new contact info. Out.
Her boss was probably being overly cautious, but she programmed the new number into the phone.
Using her discarded sweats, she covered the phone and the charger before crawling into bed. It felt warm and wonderful and she was all too ready to sleep when she reached for the light switch.
The room went black. The wind rattled the window-panes so loudly, she almost missed the sound of the slowly approaching car.
Pressing a button on the side of her watch, she marked the time. Fifty-five minutes since Cody had sent the team members away and now they were returning. “Very punctual,” she whispered in the darkness. “Cody has you all well trai—”
Darkness. No headlights!
Her brain registered the danger a split second before semiautomatic gunfire began to perforate the room.
She felt for her gun just as the door splintered open and Cody grabbed her off the bed, rolling her to the floor and covering her with his heavy body.
The rat-tat-tat continued. J.J. smelled cordite and felt plaster raining all around her. She couldn’t breathe. And she definitely couldn’t move. Not with Cody on top of her.
Then there was silence. Eerie, deafening silence as the echoes faded.
“Are you hit?” Cody asked as he crouched above her, running his hands along her head, shoulders and sides.
“N-no,” she finally answered when her lungs reinflated.
“Stay down,” he commanded as he crawled over to the window, gun drawn. Slowly he pressed himself against the wall and slid up, checking outside in a series of jerky glances.
“Clear,” he shouted, frustrated.
He looked over as she flipped on the light, and she saw his face go incredibly pale.
“You’re bleeding.”