Willing

Chapter 11

Her mouth broke from his, a protesting moan of anguish erupting from the very heart of her.

“Not yet, sweetheart.”

She looked down at him, her vision blurred by passion, but even so, she could see the harsh cast to his features so at odds with the tenderness in his voice.

“Why not?”

He grabbed something from under the pillow, keeping her still with his other hand as she tried to move downward again. When she saw what he was holding, frustration for the need to delay roared through her.

“I’m going on the pill,” she muttered from between gritted teeth.

His slashing smile touched her like a caress. “Fine, but tonight, we don’t have any choice.”

And no way did he want her getting pregnant. She scooted backward, making room for him to don the condom, but chilled by the reality of what it symbolized. The transitory nature of their relationship and Daniel’s absolute certainty he did not want a child with her.

Of course safe sex wasn’t all about pregnancy, but she knew deep in her soul that Daniel would never have made love with her if he was putting her at risk. Since she’d never been with anyone else, he couldn’t be worried about what she might expose him to either. This was about keeping the intimacy between them physical and allowing no consequences to come from it.

No result but a heart she already felt cracking under the knowledge he would walk out of her life the same way he had walked into it. Alone.

Daniel held the dark blue foil packet up. “Do you want to put it on?”

Without meaning to, she physically recoiled from the question, her thoughts too close to the surface to ignore.

His brows drew together. “Josie, is something wrong?”

Did she really want to ruin what time she did have with him, entertaining ultradepressing musings about how much it was going to hurt when their relationship ended? No, of course not. That would be stupid.

And she wasn’t dumb.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said with what she hoped was reassuring brightness, and then she winked at him. “But I don’t think it will fit.”

His eyes narrowed and then glittered in understanding, and that incredible smile flashed again. “I didn’t mean on you, little warrior.”

She eyed his erection with blatant skepticism. “I didn’t either.”

He stared at her and then burst out laughing. She grinned in response and then remembering how successful the ploy had been in the park, tickled him. She loved the joyous sound coming from him. It made her feel special, because she knew that he hardly ever gave in to it with other people.

As it was, he laughed so hard she fell off of him. It took several seconds longer to get the condom on him than it should have, but by the time they did, they were both ready to finish what they’d started.

He flipped her onto her stomach, and she twisted to look at him. “I don’t want a massage; I want you inside me.”

“I will be.”

He pulled her hips up and slid a pillow under them, making her realize he meant to enter her from the back. She shivered nervously as his fingers separated her slick folds. This was new and for some reason felt very different, as though she was more vulnerable to him than when they made love in other positions.

“Don’t worry, you’re going to like this,” he whispered in her ear as he pressed into her from behind.

As he deepened his possession, she felt amazing inner sensations she hadn’t experienced the night before. He touched a nerve center inside her that made her grind her bottom against him.

“It’s so good,” she moaned out, needing to give vent to the feelings of sweet torment.

“Oh, yeah…” He thrust deeply into her, and she realized he was nowhere near all the way inside.

By the time Daniel’s pelvis was rubbing against her bottom, Josie was writhing under him like a woman possessed.

He kissed the back of her neck, her temple, her cheek. She felt completely surrounded by him, cherished and cocooned in his ardor. She turned her face toward him, and their lips met briefly, but she couldn’t stay that way long. She didn’t have the strength or muscle control…Pleasure had drained her, and she hadn’t even climaxed yet.

Her head fell forward against her hands, and she gasped as each thrust caressed the nerve center deep inside her from an unfamiliar angle. Her body tensed until every muscle was taut, but she didn’t go over the edge. Instead the feeling of an impending cataclysm subsided, and her muscles went involuntarily slack. The same sequence happened twice more, taking her to a peak that turned out to be a plateau. She was nearly sobbing with frustration as her body tautened once again, the feeling more intense than any of the times before.

“Daniel,” she cried out.

“What’s the matter, baby?”

“I’m so close!”

“Yes.” He thrust inside her, pulling her hips up toward him, and she thought she would die from the pleasure he gave her.

If she didn’t implode first.

He kept thrusting, his hard penis caressing her insides intimately and with purpose, but the spring inside her only grew tighter and tighter.

“I want to come,” she moaned against the bed, her hair wet with perspiration and her back slick with it.

“Okay, sweetheart.”

What did he mean, okay? Did he think just by saying it, she would climax?

He slid his hand under her and cupped her mound—a statement of possession, but also an incredible source of delight. She pressed against his hand, instinctively seeking more. He slipped his forefinger and middle finger between her slick folds. Catching her clitoris between them, he rubbed up and down, squeezing his fingers together to increase the pressure and sensation on her sweetest spot.

She splintered apart, her sense of reality shattering as her entire body convulsed with unbelievable bliss. Grinding her bottom against him, she sought deeper penetration until no rational thought remained while wave after wave of sensation crashed through her.

Daniel rammed into her from behind, driving for fulfillment and holding her hips up when she would have collapsed onto the bed. Suddenly, he buried his face in a pillow she’d shoved to the side earlier, his body going taut, his hips forcefully pressed into hers.

The pillow muffled his hoarse shout of satisfaction, but she reveled in his uncontrolled reaction to her. He was rigid with orgasm for the longest time, his sex, big and oh so hard, inside her as he erupted in a series of convulsions that left them both limp and spent.

She was barely aware of him climbing off of her and leaving the bed and only registered in the periphery of her mind when he came back and pulled her into his arms for sleep.

Curled up on one end of the couch, Josie absently drank her coffee while reading one of her dad’s journals. He had some odd thoughts, that was for sure, but everything he wrote made sense if you looked at life from the perspective of a man who had seen too much brutality to trust in the goodness of human nature.

She felt uncomfortable at times reading his most personal thoughts because his emotions ran more deeply than she had ever thought they did. But he’d been the one to tell her to read the journals in the first place. Well, he’d said journal in the singular, but how was she to know which one had the information he wanted her to glean out of his writings?

“Josie…”

She looked up to find Claire standing over her, dressed for exercise in a pair of Lycra shorts and an oversized T-shirt that had been washed so many times the athletic logo on the front was barely discernable. However, her running shoes were one of the best brands on the market and almost new.

“Going jogging?”

“Uh-huh.” She pulled her hair up into a scrunchy, taming the wild curls in a slightly less wild ponytail. “I thought I’d ask if you wanted to come, but you look pretty engrossed. And come to think of it, Nitro would probably have a male mercenary’s version of a hissy fit if you tried to go outside without him anyway.”

Josie had to agree. “It’s weird. I mean, he knows I can take care of myself, but he still acts like a mother hen about some stuff.”

Claire smiled, tightening her ponytail. “Don’t knock it. It’s pretty great to have someone watching out for you.”

“Even if it’s a little confining?”

“So’s a seat belt, but given the option of going through life without one, I’d vote for safety first.”

Josie laughed, shaking her head at Claire’s analogy. “I won’t tell Daniel you think he’s an oversized seat belt. I don’t think he’d understand.”

Claire’s smile was rueful. “I appreciate that. Nitro is not a man I’d be comfortable offending.”

“I’d say he’s a pussycat under all that male bravado, but I’d be lying.” The iron in Daniel’s character ran bone deep, as if it had been forged early and tempered by life since.

“No kidding. Better you than me, is all I’ve got to say. Not only is the man as immovable as a stone wall, but he’s got a possessive streak a mile wide, too. He looked ready to kill somebody every time you smiled at Hotwire last night.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“Says you, but then you were busy looking at Hotwire and not your boyfriend.”

“I wasn’t flirting or anything.” Even if she’d wanted to, which she hadn’t, she didn’t know how.

Claire headed for the door, talking over her shoulder as she went. “You’re not the type to make eyes at one guy while being intimate with another, and Nitro will figure that out. Eventually. Until then, you might consider smiling less at Hotwire.”

Claire might have a point. Daniel had reacted with unexpected insecurity toward Josie’s friendship with Hotwire. It was probably one of those guy things she didn’t get. She might have spent most of her life surrounded by men, but she didn’t pretend to understand how they related to the women in their lives. It hadn’t been part of their soldier training, and her father had never had a girlfriend around.

She didn’t know how long she had been reading when the sound of slamming car doors caught her attention. Her mind more on what she’d been reading than what she was seeing, she looked out through the sheers covering the big picture window in her living room. It took a second for her unfocused brain to interpret what her eyes were telling her.

A news van and two cars were parked in front of her house. A woman had gotten out of the van, and the driver came around to open the back panel doors. The occupants of the cars got out, too. A couple of them had cameras. One was carrying a tape recorder with a microphone.

She scanned the scene, trying to make sense of it, and saw Claire approaching at a sprint, running in a direct line to the house across the grass. She didn’t slow as she crossed the street either. One of the men from the cars tried to stop her, but she brushed him aside and ran straight to the door. Josie rushed to open it and let her in.

“Claire?”

“There are more of them.” She bent over and panted, her hands on her thighs. “I was across the park, and I saw two more news vans headed this way.” She sucked in air and tried to catch her breath. “I was listening to the radio while I was running. It’s all over the news.”

“What’s all over the news?”

“The explosion at your dad’s compound.”

“For heaven’s sake, why?”

“They’re saying it was done by ecoterrorists. The FBI is involved as well as the State Police and National Forest Service.” She straightened, still breathing hard, which showed how fast she’d been running because Claire was in good shape. “It’s that Homeland Security Act thing. All the federal agencies are in an uproar, and the media is already speculating on who might be responsible for the destruction of the compound.”

The doorbell rang. Josie and Claire both turned to stare at the door as if it would spontaneously combust any second.

“Ms. McCall? This is Alison Spencer from KYTO News. I’d like you to answer a few questions.”

Claire sprang forward and pushed the door lock, then twisted the deadbolt into place with an audible click.

Someone started pounding on the window. Josie couldn’t believe it, but several reporters were trying to peer in through the sheers, and one had a camera up to the window. The utter audacity of the action astounded her. The doorbell rang again, and Josie gave up shock for anger.

She headed to the door, ready to blast the reporters and throw a few people off of her property, when her tank top was grabbed from behind. She was pulled up like a dog on a short leash.

“Hold on, sweetheart.”

Someone knocked on the door while the doorbell rang again.

She glared over her shoulder at Daniel. “Let me go. I’m going to tell them to get lost.”

“You’re not opening that door.” His voice held the implacability of command.

He was not the officer in charge on this mission, and she was more than ready to set him straight. “I’m not?” she asked with interest and no small amount of fury.

“No.”

“We don’t know who all is out that door,” Hotwire drawled in a more placating tone, but with no less firmness.

She turned her defiant stare on him. “A bunch of reporters who have no respect for my privacy, that’s who.”

“Maybe, and maybe one or two of them are involved with the guys who blew up your dad’s compound.”

Daniel hadn’t let go of her shirt yet and actually started reeling her in. “Opening the door and letting you stomp outside in a rage is too risky.” He pulled her around to face him. “We don’t know if the enemy wants to get rid of you and whatever you might know permanently.”

“Like they tried to with Dad?” she sneered. “We McCalls aren’t that easy to kill.”

His mouth quirked as if he enjoyed her feistiness. “I’m glad, Josette, but I’m not letting you risk it.”

“Letting? You’re not going to let me go outside? You’re not going to let me risk it?” she asked, transferring her outrage at the rudeness of the reporters to his autocratic behavior. “Who signed the order papers to make you Major General?”

“Josie, he’s right,” Claire said for the second time in two days, earning a frown from Josie. “Even if ecoterrorists weren’t involved, you can bet they’ll be trying to get some media coverage out of this. You don’t want to become one of their targets either. I read this article on the Internet and—”

“Ms. McCall, we know you’re in there. You owe it to the public to answer a few questions,” a strident voice shouted from outside, interrupting Claire midspate.

“Ms. McCall, can you confirm your father received threats from the Earth Liberation Front before his death?”

She felt the color leach from her face as an appalling thought assailed her. What if they had been looking at this whole thing from the wrong angle—she, Daniel, Hotwire and Claire? What if ecoterrorists were angry about her father’s school in the middle of national forest lands, angry enough to do something about its existence?

They’d considered and dismissed the possibility the attack had been spurred by antiwar activists, but had not even given first thought to it being ELF sympathizers.

Privately held property was always at risk, and her dad had been forced to clear old growth timber to establish the compound before the timber controversy had become such a big deal. Only that had been so long ago.

“Josette, if it were ecoterrorists, why break in to your house and steal the school’s records? It’s possible the real culprits tipped off the press to throw up a smokescreen, but my gut tells me that the people trying to kill your dad aren’t doing it because of his views on the environment.”

She looked up at Daniel, feeling disoriented by how closely his thoughts ran parallel to hers. “Are you reading my mind?”

“Maybe I just know how you think.” He massaged her shoulders, his eyes warm on her in a way that made her feel very special.

Which did not mean she was going to let him give her commands like a raw recruit, but it was possible he’d been right about not going outside just yet.

“It takes a soldier to know a soldier,” Hotwire said, his voice laced with amusement.

“That’s all well and good, but what are we going to do about the zoo in our front yard?” Claire asked acerbically.

Josie’s mouth set with resolve. “We can call the police.”

“Do you think that will do any good?” Claire asked. “There’s the whole freedom of the press issue.”

“It will get them out of my yard. If they want to stand yelling on the sidewalk, that’s their business, but I don’t have to listen to it through my front door.”

Daniel leaned down and kissed her right on the lips, shocking her thoughts right out of her head. “Don’t do anything yet. Let me and Hotwire go around from the back and scope out the scene. I want to see if any of the reporters are acting like maybe they aren’t reporters.”

“How would you tell?” Claire asked while Josie’s brain was still adjusting to Daniel’s public display of affection.

Daniel turned to her. “They messed up breaking in here by not taking the CDs and DVDs. Unless they make better reporters than fake thieves, they’ll give themselves away somehow.”

“I should go out, too,” Josie said as her thoughts started stringing together in coherent patterns again. “I might recognize someone.”

“No,” Daniel said.

“It’s too risky,” added Hotwire.

“I don’t intend to let anyone see me.”

“Do you really want Claire left in here alone while we all go outside to recon?”

“Hotwire can stay inside.”

“She’s got a point, Nitro,” Hotwire said. “If she stays out of sight, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to find out if she recognizes any of the gaggle outside.”

“I don’t need a baby-sitter,” Claire said, sounding as irritated as Josie by being managed.

Hotwire smiled charmingly. “Even if you weren’t in here, someone would have to stay to make sure none of the reporters gained entry.”

“I can handle that.”

Hotwire’s smile disappeared. “Not if the person gaining entry isn’t really a reporter.”

“He’s right,” Josie said, taking petty satisfaction in throwing the words back at her friend and then feeling instant remorse. “I mean—”

Claire’s eyes filled with understanding humor. “Don’t worry about it. I know what you mean, and you’re both right.” Then she sighed, looking out the window, and bit her lip, her expression turning worried. “I’ve got class in an hour and a half.”

“I’ll take you,” Hotwire offered, “and I won’t let any of that mob get at you on the way to the car.”

Claire nodded, her curly ponytail bouncing and her relief palpable. “Thank you, that would be great.” She turned to Josie. “If you don’t need me to hold the fort, I think I’ll take a shower and get ready for class.”

Josie and Daniel’s recon netted exactly nothing, and no adventurous reporter tried breaking in while they were outside. Which didn’t mean they wouldn’t make the attempt later, Daniel pointed out, taking the opportunity also to comment again that if Josie had a decent security system, there would be nothing to worry about.

She ignored the barb and made the call to the local police, who told her they could come by and get the reporters out of her yard, but there was no way of guaranteeing they would stay out once the officers left again. She got off the phone feeling frustrated, not only by that, but also the realization that Claire still didn’t have a computer for her class work and her first class that day was an on-line lab.

Josie would be missing classes today, but there was nothing she could do about that. She had meant to do something about her roommate’s lack of a computer first thing that morning, but had gotten caught up reading her dad’s journals.

“Darn it.”

Daniel watched as Josie’s hands curled into fists at her sides and her pixie face creased with a fierce frown.

She’d made her phone call while looking out the window at the steadily increasing melee in her front yard. Eventually, the reporters would have to leave—out of boredom or the need to cover another story—but he was pretty sure they’d come back and keep hounding Josie. He didn’t like it.

Maybe they needed to consider changing locations.

“Did the cops refuse to come out?” he asked.

“No. They’ll come, but they said they can’t promise any lasting results.” She sounded resigned, which did not explain her tension. Sitting on the arm of the couch beside him, she ran her fingers through her chin-length brown hair. “Claire doesn’t have a computer, and she needs one. Badly. I meant to take care of it this morning. She hasn’t said anything, but she’s got an on-line lab first thing.”

“I brought two laptops with me,” Hotwire said from his position by the window, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to travel with two computers when Daniel could never remember traveling with even one. “I’ll give her one of them. They’re both fully loaded with killer speed CPUs. They’ve even got GPS devices on them, not that yours did you any good.”

“You mean the one in my car?” Josie asked. “It worked just fine before my car was destroyed by an arsonist’s fire.” The grim set to her mouth left Daniel with no doubt what she felt about losing her little car in the blast.

But Hotwire shook his head. “The one in your laptop.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t use my laptop for GPS. Even if I hadn’t had a unit in my car, that would have been too inconvenient while driving.”

Hotwire came away from the window, his expression alert. “I meant the GPS unit inside your laptop. The one used to track its location if the computer gets stolen.”

“Her laptop had a GPS?” Daniel asked. Then, “And why do you know about it, but she doesn’t?”

“Hotwire helped me pick out my computer when I started taking classes at PSU.”

“And the one we picked out had a GPS unit.”

Josie twisted her body so she could look squarely at Hotwire. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember that. I’m not even sure I ever knew it, and I should have. It was my computer, for crying out loud.”

“Like you’re going to read the computer manual after you buy.” Even he didn’t do that, and Daniel was a lot less proficient with computers than Hotwire and Josie.

“Yes, but—”

“Are you saying we can track Josie’s computer?” Daniel asked his friend, cutting in on her self-recriminations.

“If the GPS unit hasn’t been destroyed, yes.” Hotwire smiled then, his eyes cold with purpose. “If Josie didn’t realize it was there, I doubt the thieves have either. It’s a relatively new safety feature in mobile computer technology.”

“So, how do we track it?”

“We call the manufacturer and report it as stolen. They do a satellite search which will result in a three-point coordinate location.”

A three-point coordinate was pretty damn precise. “How long will it take?” Daniel asked.

“A few minutes.”

“How accurate?”

“Within ten feet.”

“It sounds too easy.”

“It is.” This from Josie. “The position can be as accurate as we want it to be, but there’s no guarantee the laptop won’t be moved before we can get to it.”

“And if the location isn’t at a known address, like out in the middle of the desert or something,” Hotwire added, “we still have to track it.”

Which was exactly what ended up being the case, although it couldn’t be as easy as being in the middle of the desert and easily accessible by helicopter or plane. According to its GPS, the laptop was currently in an uninhabited area of the Rocky Mountains with no known public or private roads within fifteen miles of its location.

Before they could discuss what to do with that piece of information, Claire came out of her room, dressed and ready for class. Josie brought her up to speed, and then the phone rang. Looking over her shoulder, Daniel read Oregon State Police on the caller identification.

His gut clenched for no discernable reason, and he said, “I think you’d better take that call, sweetheart.”

Josie held the ringing cordless unit in her hand, wishing she could just ignore its impatient summons.

How much should she share of what she knew? She didn’t know why her father and his school had been targeted for destruction, and bringing in the authorities might harm him more than help him. On the other hand, maybe the authorities had information that would help her and the others find her dad’s enemies before they found him.

The phone shrilled again, and she pushed the talk button before lifting it to her ear. “Josie McCall speaking.”

“Ms. McCall, this is Detective Johnson with the State Police Arson and Explosives Division. I’m investigating a fire that occurred two nights ago on property owned by Tyler McCall in the Coastal Range. I would like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Can you verify your father, Tyler McCall’s, whereabouts on the night of July twelfth?”

Having already gone through this with Officer Devon, she was more prepared to answer that question at least. “My dad was at his paramilitary training compound.”

“Are you absolutely certain of that?”

“Yes.”

“Did he call you from there, or in some other way confirm his presence on the mountain to you? Perhaps you were there with him at some point?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“His entire compound burned to the ground, Ms. McCall.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“I see. Do you mind telling me how you learned of the fire, Ms. McCall?”

“It’s hardly a state secret. It’s all over the news,” she said, hedging around the truth, and then added, “and one of your officers came by to tell me of my father’s death yesterday.”

“A state policeman came by your house to inform you of your father’s death?”

“Yes.” Surely that wasn’t such a surprise, unless the departments didn’t speak to each other—which, when she thought about it, wasn’t all that farfetched of an idea.

“Do you have the officer’s name?”

“Barry Devon.”

“Thank you.” He paused as if taking the time to write the name down. “Apparently the fire started with an explosion.”

“Yes.”

“Did the officer tell you that as well?”

“He did.” She wondered why the detective was asking her about what his colleague had said. Why not simply ask the other officer? “He also said the Forest Service believed it was an accidental explosion. Is that still the case?”

“Can you hold on for a moment, Ms. McCall?”