A SEAL in Wolf's Clothing

Chapter 8

Before Finn went to sleep with Meara, he set up his laptop and checked email messages while monitoring the camera in her living area and kitchen. Although he had meant to use the cameras to monitor whoever came to Meara’s home while she was living there, he’d continue to watch from time to time to see the new cabin renters as they came in, take pictures of them, and forward them to his associates. But he also wanted to see who was staying at her place to check in the renters. He heard movement down the hall in her home where he hadn’t placed any cameras, footfalls getting closer, indicating the person was headed for the living room.

He tensed a little in anticipation of seeing who it was. Chris Tarleton, Hunter’s sub-leader. Finn couldn’t imagine Chris would be checking in renters, not when he was a sub-leader and had the additional duty of watching that newly turned reporter, Rourke. So Finn wondered why he was at Meara’s place. Ensuring no one else was there? Or something more personal? Maybe whoever he had assigned on such short notice had to be relieved for a while to take care of other business and Chris was just filling in.

Chris peered around the room as if looking for something. Then he spied the notebook that Meara had written in and the notes she’d made about the renters. Finn suspected Chris wouldn’t like it. Sure enough, he read a couple of pages and scowled. After he flipped through the rest to find nothing else but blank pages, he tossed the notebook on the counter with a mumbled curse.

Chris stalked out of the house and shut the door. No sense in watching an empty house any longer, Finn figured. So he did some looking into Imposter Joe himself, since he hadn’t received word that anyone had been able to uncover who he was.

But after a good hour, Finn gave up the search and shut down his laptop.

Nothing. Not a known assassin. A phantom. Who the hell was he?

Bjornolf pulled into a service station, began filling his tank, and shook his head as he stared at the coast road, which was virtually deserted at this time of night. One minute he was tracking Finn and Meara and listening to them making out in the car. He figured that was a ruse, but damned if it didn’t sound like the real thing—and all he could do was envision himself in Finn’s place and ended up with a hard-on he couldn’t do a thing about. The next minute, Bjornolf was pursuing an assassin. Well, two, but they’d split forces, and he had been obliged to track down one before he could go after the other. And then?

After he’d taken care of the one, the other had vanished, only to reappear dead in his own car a couple of miles from where Bjornolf had first spotted him. Bjornolf swore the contracted assassins they were hiring weren’t half as well trained as in the good old days. Lucky for Bjornolf, the second one had been human, not lupus garou, and appeared to have died from a heart attack. What kind of idiot would hire assassins with weak hearts?

But he didn’t think that actually was the case. Someone from Hunter’s team must have gotten to the man. Worse, Bjornolf had lost Finn. His Hummer was at a dealership, where he’d traded it in for a new model. Now, Meara’s and Finn’s trails had grown cold.

Bjornolf shook his head as he again thought about the scene they’d played out for him—as if they were having sex in the vehicle. He knew Finn had to have been looking her over for bugs and found the one in her pocket. But hell, Bjornolf figured Finn wasn’t faking the way he’d sounded so hot and bothered. Bjornolf smiled evilly, sure that Finn would be ticked off to know her cabin renter had slid his hand into her pocket, and she had let him without even a reproving look.

He finished filling his tank, climbed into his car, and wondered where to go next. He’d find them. He always did. He just hoped he wouldn’t be too late this time.

A navy Dodge pickup truck drove by slowly. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it except that he was damn sure he’d seen the vehicle headed in the direction of the second assassin who’d turned up dead with a heart attack shortly thereafter. Now the pickup was headed this way again?

Through the truck’s darkened windows, he studied the petite driver, who appeared to be a woman. She didn’t look in his direction, but she didn’t have to. She could have spotted him way before he noticed the truck again. She continued on past without slowing down. The coincidence probably didn’t mean anything.

But he had no other leads to pursue at the moment, and he wasn’t ready to call it a night. He pulled onto the road and headed in her direction. If she wasn’t anyone to worry about, he’d soon learn that. If she was, he’d discover that before long also. And if she was with Finn, eventually she’d lead Bjornolf to him and Meara.

There was something intrinsically satisfying about pursuing his prey when the object of his attention knew he was following him or her. Although hunting on the sly appealed as well, he loved to see the reaction of the one being pursued when he or she realized the pursuer was hot on the trail. Good guy, no reaction. Unless she was worried he might be stalking her.

He backed off on the accelerator.

Bad guy, he’d get a reaction sooner or later. The woman would try to ditch him or kill him. Try was the operative word.

He smiled. The night was still young, as far as a wolf’s sense of timing went, and perfect for the hunt.

Anna Johnson didn’t have to look at her rearview mirror to know she was being followed. She’d suspected something was off when she’d spied the silver four-door sedan sitting at the service station. The driver—male—had already finished filling the gas tank and was staring out the windshield as if he didn’t know where to go next. Who wouldn’t know that?

Unless he’d just broken up with his sweetheart, or received bad news or good news, and was lost deep in thought.

But the thing that had caught her eye most? His haircut.

Sure, men other than those in the military wore their hair short, but she bet he was military or had been. She would bet one of her contract fees that he was the one Finn had warned her about. Although on this mission, none of them were getting paid. It was more a rallying of the Musketeers in support of one of their own or, in this case, four of their own—a whole SEAL team.

The man had been headed in the same direction as Finn and Meara, and that made Anna suspicious. Maybe the guy in the sedan was sitting there wondering how to locate them, since Finn had successfully ditched his older Hummer at the dealership, bugs and tracking devices and all. Most of all, the man looked suspiciously like the one in the picture Finn had emailed to all the team members who were working this case.

Yeah, she’d just bet he was the one. He hadn’t looked in her direction when she came upon him at first. Wolf types, particularly those in the business they were in, were always wary, always watchful. Then he’d turned his head to look at the vehicle she was driving, and she’d quickly refocused on the road, her skin prickling with worry heat. Had he made her? She feared he had.

The telltale sign he had was when he started the vehicle’s engine and swung around to follow her instead of heading in the direction Finn and Meara had taken. All of a sudden, he had both a mission and a direction. And she was the focus.

He wasn’t being sneaky about it, either. He wanted her to know he was after her, that he knew she was with Finn. Or assumed it. Or… maybe he thought she was one of the assassins after Finn. His actions told her that he was letting her know he could take her out whenever he wanted.

He didn’t know her that well. Let him make the first mistake.

At first he was too close, his headlights pressed tightly against her back bumper. And she didn’t like it. Even if he wasn’t pursuing her and was just a man about town, she hated when someone crowded her. Probably that had to do with the time she was on a mission and had been shoved and pushed in an open market, arrested, and thrown into a South American jail on trumped-up charges. Before that, crowds hadn’t bothered her. But since then, they made her leery, afraid of a repeat performance. She meant to keep her body relaxed and her mind cool to deal with the perceived threat like she had been trained, but her skin prickled with heat and every muscle was tightly wired.

And as far as keeping her thoughts collected and unperturbed? He was rattling her, damn it, as much as she hated to admit it.

But then he backed off, as if… as if he was worried he’d scare her. Maybe just in case she was a clueless civilian who might fear that he was stalking her. Maybe he realized she might not be someone who had the military training and the wherewithal to use her programmed senses of escape and evasion. She fished out her cell phone, not intending to speak into it because he’d see her and most likely realize she was calling in support. Instead, she attempted to covertly type a message to Finn, who would disseminate the information to the rest of the team.

Joe, 4 door sliva

Shit. How could she type and watch the road at the same time, while pretending not to be typing a message? She’d never tried to do that before, and her feeble attempts were proving to be too much to handle. Her palms were sweaty as she tried again.

Silver sedan 91

Her car tires hit gravel on the shoulder, spitting the bits of stone into the grass, and she snapped her attention from her rearview mirror back to the road, yanking the car back into her lane. Her heart pounded spastically, and her skin chilled with the fear of having nearly had an accident. Hell.

She wondered what her tail thought about her actions. Probably that she was overly tired and falling asleep at the wheel, or had too much to drink or was trying to text for backup.

She wished she had eyes in the back of her head. Maybe she could pull over and… too bad she couldn’t take a picture of his license plate. His whole car at the same time. But as soon as she held up the phone, he’d see what she was doing. Even if a light didn’t show from the phone, their wolf vision would allow him to see the phone, the movement of her holding it up catching his attention. He’d know she was taking a picture to pass along to others. Although, she wasn’t sure if the camera would take a picture of anything more in the dark than glaring headlights.

Her hand shaking, she sent off the partial message, hoping Finn would get it and make sense of it. She set the phone in the console and then tried to view Joe’s license plate through the rearview mirror while still watching her driving. If she could memorize it…

She squinted. Mud covered the number on the plate. Terrific.

Where to go to next? Get a room at a hotel or a cozy little bread-and-breakfast up the road? Try to lose him? Losing him sounded like fun. But she hated to do that when, as long as he was in her sights, she wouldn’t have to track him down later. Maybe she could get word out to the team about her location and others could join her in learning who he was.

Her phone played the little jingle, “Li’l Red Riding Hood,” compliments of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. She held the phone up only so high, unable to lift it to her ear without alerting the guy on her tail that she’d contacted someone. She called out to the caller, “Shout to me!”

“Anna, are you all right?”

She’d expected it to be Finn. But Paul? Hunter’s other SEAL teammate? He was supposed to be hiding in… well, wherever he was supposed to be hiding. No one knew for sure where.

“Yeah,” she said. “Got a tail.”

“Where?”

“Coastal road, heading north.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“Get a room. Invite him in.”

Paul didn’t say anything for a while, then spoke again. “Need a bedmate?”

She chuckled. “Think I might already have one.”

“I won’t be there for another three hours or so. Can you sit tight?”

“Depends on what his next move will be. I don’t want to lose track of this guy.”

“I’ll join you. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“You mean like rash?” When the guys did something that she considered rash, they considered it heroic or necessary; they had no other choice. When she did something that she felt was heroic, they called her rash. “I’ll watch myself. See you soon.”

She disconnected and started to look for a place to stay, while Joe stuck to her like a shark after his next meal.

Initially, she’d thought Joe was trying to unsettle her. Normally, she wasn’t the unsettled type. She still needed to get her nerves under control, which she attributed to the near accident, but if he wanted to play predator stalking prey, that was fine with her. Only she fully intended to be the predator.

Tension filling every muscle, Finn held his cell phone in hand, waiting for another text from Anna while he lay squished against a bunch of lace-trimmed, silk pillows on the guest mattress that formed a wall between him and Meara.

The phone jingled, indicating he had another text message, and he looked at it.

“Hmm, Finn,” Meara sleepily muttered, her tone annoyed. “If you’re going to have your phone jingling all night, find another bed to sleep in. You shouldn’t be in here with me anyway. Or you should have left me on the couch in the first place.”

Finn ignored her, his back to her. As soon as he’d woken her while checking his emails, she’d stuck the bunch of decorator pillows between them, clearly stating: your side, my side. And in case he hadn’t gotten the point, she’d also told him.

The damn pillows took up so much room on the queen-sized mattress that he was getting ready to toss them.

He read the message from Paul, not liking Paul’s explanation of Anna’s situation, which he described in more detail than Anna’s cryptic text message had. But Finn wasn’t about to jeopardize Meara’s safety by leaving her alone so that he could help Anna. She usually knew what she was doing. Meara wasn’t trained to protect herself the way Anna was. Plus, this Joe didn’t know where he and Meara were, and if Finn went to help Anna, this guy would know Anna was with him. And that would make it easier for Imposter Joe to locate Meara again.

Finn had texted Paul with the news about Anna and had asked how close Paul was, in case he could give her a hand. Paul had responded quickly that he was coming to the rescue, but he was three hours out. Hell.

Paul texted: I worry about her doing something stupid.

Finn responded: I know. We just have to trust her. I’ll keep in touch.

Finn set his phone aside, his body protesting that he was attempting to sleep on the edge of the mattress and close to falling off at any moment. To hell with that. Meara was just going to have to put up with not having a barrier between them. He grabbed two armfuls of silky decorator pillows and tossed them over the edge of the bed. Two more handfuls to go, and no more barriers.

He smiled at Meara as she gave him a grumpy look over her shoulder. The way her dark hair fell over her bare shoulders, the tiny strap of the silky tank top dangling precariously down her arm, and with her tantalizing lips parted in surprise, she looked like an open invitation to sex.

That’s when he knew he should concede and leave the bed, the room, and the sweet temptation behind.

But he had a job to do, and he was staying put.

She turned away from him, jerked the covers over her shoulder, and didn’t say another word. He watched her and knew she wasn’t sleeping, despite the way she was so still. He assumed she was wondering what all the text messaging was about. Questioning what the problem was.

He sighed and folded his arms behind his head, staring at the sparkly ceiling and wanting to get back to sleep, but he couldn’t. Not until he knew Anna was safe and Paul had arrived to watch her back.

“Well?” Meara said, cranky as could be, her back still to him.

Knowing she couldn’t leave well enough alone without asking what was up, he chuckled. But he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of telling her straight out. In fact, he was fairly sure it would be best for all concerned if he didn’t say what was going on.

“Well, what?” he asked, as if that was a perfectly acceptable response to her query. And to him it was. Anna was his business, not Meara’s.

He didn’t see her reaction coming. Not in a million years. And he’d thought he was damned good at judging character. Meara moved so quickly that it didn’t even register that the pillow her head had been resting on was now slamming into his face until it socked him.

In lightning-quick response, he jerked the pillow to the floor and tackled her. Before she could react, he pinned her on her back against the mattress, straddling her waist, his hands restraining her wrists on either side of her head. Her stomach was bare, as the soft pajama shorts she wore were slung low and the matching aqua tank top had ridden high during the flip. Her hair draped over her throat, and her breasts in the skimpy tank top rose and fell as her heartbeat quickened. Both straps were negligently resting halfway down her arms, pulling down the top edge of the top to expose more of her creamy breasts than he should be able to see.

Looking away from all that tantalizing skin, he focused on her flushed face, with eyes narrowed and lips provocatively parted as she breathed fast and hard. He should have talked to her—told her she didn’t need to know the details of what was going on with the team, or told her something of what was going on to appease or reassure her.

But instead he did what his body willed him to do and kissed her.