Romano ought to be excited, knowing he was so close. But instead, as he poked around the little garden shed with a flashlight in search of a shovel, he was thinking about Lexi. As if getting inside her head—inside her heart—had suddenly become more important than finding the formula. More important than getting White. More important than anything.
Ridiculous. He knew that. But still his mind seemed obsessed with the puzzle of her to the exclusion of anything else. She'd gone from devastation to rage to something else in a matter of minutes. He still hadn't identified the final emotion. The one she'd reached as she'd stormed out into the snow. Acceptance, maybe. And a determination to leave everything, including him, behind her. To start fresh somewhere, without the emotional baggage she'd been lugging around all her life.
He was living proof it just wasn’t that easy.
Hell, when he'd heard her ranting at her dead father, he'd wanted to comfort her the way she'd managed to comfort him.
It was true. She had comforted him. She'd found a way, despite his determination not to let her. She'd reached right through his pain and held his frozen heart in her warm hands, thawing it. She'd even begun to heal some of the fractures he'd thought went too deep to mend.
He'd never known anyone who felt things as deeply as Lexi did. To cry so easily for a pain that wasn't even her own...the way she'd cried when he'd told her about his family. And he'd never known anyone with a more soothing way about her. Every time she touched him, even if it was only with her eyes—no, especially when it was with her eyes—it felt as if she was coating his deepest wounds in a magical balm.
She deserved better than what her father had given her. And in spite of himself, he knew she deserved better than what he'd given her.
Upstairs, when she'd been raging at her dead father, she'd blurted out that she loved him. Him. Connor Romano, a man so broken and battered that there was nothing left but a shell.
Or was there?
He was beginning to think there might be, because he didn’t feel like a used-up husk anymore. He felt as if maybe there was some spark of life left in him. Maybe he wasn’t quite as dead inside as he'd thought.
He located the garden tools, pocketed the flashlight and grabbed a pick and a shovel.
It was a hell of a time to be thinking this way. Because if he was about to dig up what he thought he was, it was all over. Time to get her as far away from him as possible. Time to deliver the formula to the good guys, and lay in wait for White. Time to exact the punishment that bastard so richly deserves.
There couldn’t be any fairytale endings. Not here. Not now. And not for him.
He dropped the pick and shovel onto the ground outside, half-hoping she was wrong about this, just to prolong his time with her. A stupid thought but an honest one. Maybe the first honest one he'd had in quite a while.
*****
She huddled deeper into her parka, wondering how Connor could stand to work with no coat at all. He'd started out with one, but had shrugged it off as his body heated with the effort of breaking the cold ground. He wore a T-shirt and stood in the knee-deep hole he'd dug. Lumpy brown chunks of frosty earth were scattered around him like cobblestones. He'd put an ugly brown scar in the snow's flawless face.
And then he stopped and said, “I think I found something."
He looked up at her, and the yellow glow of the kerosene lamps she’d brought outside painted his face with light and shadow.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. It wasn't caused by fear of what she might learn about her father. She'd already taken the hit of that, and it had staggered her and hurt her, but she'd survived it. Her heart was sinking now for a far different reason.
They both knew that once the formula was found, their time together would end. Connor hadn't said it out loud, but it was there, real and black and devastating. To her, at least.
She lifted her chin deliberately. This was far more important than the two of them. "Let's see what it is."
He held her gaze for a long moment, and there was something there in the blue depths of his eyes, some fire in them that went beyond the lamplight they reflected. Then he dropped to his knees in the frozen dirt. Using the shovel like a whisk broom, he scraped the rest of the dirt away. When he tossed the shovel aside, he worked with his bare hands, digging down along the square outline's edges with his fingers. Lexi kept the flashlight aimed into the hole. He clenched his jaw as he worked the small metal box free, and picked it up.
He stared at the box while she stared at him. "This is it," he said, his words so soft they were all but lost in the slight breeze that ruffled his hair. "It has to be. What else would he bury out here?"
Her throat burned. "There's a padlock."
"That's easy to fix."
"You're not going to blow it up, are you?"
It should have been funny. He should have laughed and then she should have joined him. But instead he looked into her eyes with a sad little smile. She wanted to cry.
He set the box down on battered brown earth, reaching for the shovel again. Then he hit the padlock with it until the lock broke free.
And again, he surprised her by seeming more eager to see what was going on in her eyes than what was inside that box.
He paused, searched her face. "You want to go inside for this?"
Inside? Yes, she wanted to go inside. And she wanted to throw herself into his arms and beg him not to open that Pandora's box. Not yet, at least. She wasn't ready to say goodbye.
“No." Oddly enough, her voice gave no indication of her turmoil. "Let's do it right here."
Connor nodded. He worked the misshapen padlock's hasp until it came out and then he opened the box and pulled out a simple spiral notebook, the kind you could pick up at any drugstore for ninety-nine cents. It didn't look capable of destroying the world.
He dropped the box and stepped out of the hole, up onto the level, snowy ground nearer the kerosene lamps she’d lit while he’d been digging. He flipped open the cover. Lexi moved closer. Her flashlight illuminated the white pages, and her eyes scanned line after line of numbers, words and symbols, some of which she understood, and others she'd never seen before.
She knew enough, though, to realize that this was a formula. A recipe for death, right there, in Connor's strong hands. It had to be that. What other reason would her father have to hide it like this?
"Well. Seems I've arrived just in time."
She gasped, whirling at the grating voice she’d heard only once before. Her surprise at seeing the pale man standing there in the snow paralyzed her for an instant.
White, the man who’d murdered Connor’s wife and little boys, stood too close, his feet planted on either side of the shovel, pointing a gun at them. “I’ll take that notebook, Romano."
"The hell you will.”
White shook his head, smiling, chilling her with the evil that seemed to glow from his pink eyes whenever he looked at her. "You have two choices. I shoot you and take the book. Or you give me the book—" his grin broadened "—and then I shoot you."
Lexi must have moved, though she wasn't aware of it, because White's alien eyes jerked toward her all of the sudden. "As for you, pretty lady, you just stand perfectly still. You surprised me last time, but I won't make that mistake again."
She nodded in absolute obedience, then lifted her foot and stomped down hard on the business end of the shovel. Its handle shot upward, right between White's legs, slamming him hard, and he fell to the ground howling.
Only it wasn't just an agonized howl. He was howling... a name, a command. Connor slammed the notebook into Lexi's chest and jumped on White.
Lights blazed in the distance as a mutant-monster truck, fitted with tracks instead of tires, bounded toward them. Its path vaguely followed the dirt road, crushing the snow that covered it. Its spotlight swung left and right, finally stopping when it illuminated the two men tangled in combat, fighting for the gun.
Lexi made a mad dash for the snowmobile they'd left parked near the front steps, praying there would be enough gas for it to start.
The second she stepped away from their boss, the men in the huge pickup started shooting at her. Puffs of snow appeared in front of her feet where the bullets hit. She stuffed the journal inside her coat and ran faster. The truck turned a little, caught traction, then lurched, then turned a little, then lurched, making its way ever closer.
She swung onto the snowmobile, almost shouting in triumph when it started on the first try. The gauge was on E. Gunning it, she shot easily over the snow. And when she reached the spot where Connor and White still wrestled for the gun, she jerked the handlebars and hit the brake, skidding around sideways.
“Connor!”
He landed a blow to White's chin that snapped the bastard’s head backward. Then he sprang to his feet, and jumped on behind her. One of his arms wrapped around her waist, and his body bowed over hers, shielding her while she gunned the throttle. They shot off into the forest, running on fumes and a prayer, with bullets zinging after them.
*****
Romano was frozen half to death by the time they reached the little town. Not that it mattered. His shivering was nothing compared to what would happen if White and his goons caught up to them.
The snowmobile had choked and died only a quarter mile from the main road, though, and they’d hiked the rest of the way.
He'd thought that the two of them would be going their separate ways. But White had arrived early and ruined his plans.
Why was he so glad about that?
The general store came into sight up ahead. And only then did it occur to him to ask, “Where’s notebook?"
She patted the front of her coat. "Right here. Don't worry."
As she said it, she turned to look at him, and he had a sudden urge to kiss her. And then he asked himself why fight it?
He leaned down, drew on her tender lips for a moment. He wanted more, but…it wasn’t the time. He lifted his head and looked around them.
"There's a car in that driveway across the street,” he said softly.
“Don’t tell me. We’re going to steal it.”
“Borrow it. Come on." He took her hand and together they ran across the road to the car. He glanced in through the driver's side window, and smiled when he saw the keys dangling from the switch. "Romano catches a break," he muttered. He nodded to Lexi and she went to the other side.
When he opened his door, she did the same. They landed simultaneously in the front seat, and when the two doors slammed, there was only one bang.
And as they drove farther away and safety seemed almost within reach, he felt like he ought to say something or do something to let Lexi know …something.
But what?
That he wanted her to stick around, maybe? Yeah, that he wanted her to stick with him a little longer.
He opened his mouth to try to vocalize that, and he'd already said her name before he realized how stupid it would sound.
He realized something else, too. This wasn't over. And he had no business even thinking about involving her in his future—if, indeed, that was where this train of thought was leading—until he knew he had one. The formula wasn't safe yet. Beyond that, White was still breathing. Until he killed the bastard, there was no reason to think about anything else. Because there was a good chance he could die trying. And that wouldn't be fair to her.
She was looking at him, waiting for him to finish what he'd started to say. Those big, dark eyes of hers were drinking the heart right out of his body and into her own. She made love to his soul when she looked at him like that. How did she do that?
"You were fantastic back there,” he said.