Page 17 of Delta Force Defender

Try indifference, she ordered herself now.

“What exactly do you plan to do?” she asked him, keeping her voice flat. “There are other people staying in this bed-and-breakfast, you know. It’s booked solid. All I have to do is scream.”

His mouth curved. “You won’t.”

He was right, she wouldn’t have. She didn’t want that kind of attention. But it irritated her that he was so confident, so she pulled in a deep breath as if she planned to get operatic.

“If you do,” Isaac said, very calmly, “I’ll let you. And then you can explain to all the other guests that you were having a nightmare while fully dressed with a pile ofweapons on your bed. Because there won’t be anybody but you in this room when they get here.”

“That sounds like... exactly what I want.” She made a shooing motion with one hand. “Don’t let me keep you from disappearing.”

“And they’ll remember you forever as the lunatic who woke up half of a tourist town at two in the morning. Not the best way to keep a low profile.”

Caradine shrugged with elaborate unconcern. “They’ll get sunburned and drunk tomorrow, overdose on lobster, and forget it ever happened.”

“I tracked you for a week and you didn’t notice,” he pointed out, his bland voice at odds with all that thunder in his eyes and all over his face. “Just like you didn’t notice me breaking into your room tonight. Do you really think a little scream is going to change anything?”

“It might make me feel better.”

“If you wanted to feel better, Caradine, you would tell me who was chasing you. And let me do what I do best.”

“It sounds like you’re the one who’s chasing me, Gentry.” That steady gaze of his made her want to curl up into a ball, so she stood straighter instead. “You could try stopping.”

“The two idiots who did the deed were hired help. Local talent, contacted in Juneau, and they didn’t have much to say about the person who hired them. Another intermediary, if I had to guess.” Isaac’s voice was like steel now, to match the storm in his eyes. “But their orders weren’t to kill you. They weren’t even supposed to grab you, if you were worried about a kidnap attempt.”

“I wasn’t, actually. Until I woke up to find you looming over my bed.”

He only gazed back at her until she felt that if she hadn’t been focused on exuding indifference, she really would have flushed bright red. Averted her eyes. Curled into that ball, maybe, right there on the woven rug at thefoot of her bed. Instead of glaring back at him like he didn’t get to her at all.

“They were sent to find out if you were there and cause a little trouble while they did it. The job was to compare you to a photograph, which they did earlier in the day. Then they were supposed to take a new one and send it off to an anonymous e-mail address. They were asked specifically to scare you, Caradine. Not kill you, but scare you, even if you were the wrong person.”

Caradine knew he wanted to see her reaction, so she just about burst a blood vessel keeping her expression blank. Like that information didn’t creep her out or make the back of her neck itch.

“Who do you think would reach out that way?” Isaac asked. “Complete with a bonus fire regardless of whether or not you were who they were looking for?”

“Maybe it’s my long-lost mother,” Caradine replied dryly. “Sending a little love note, like last Christmas. In Grizzly Harbor, that idyllic escape from the world where an Alaska State Trooper’s freaky relatives can blow stuff up and kidnap people to prove a point. Can any of the rest of us be safe?”

“What are the odds that your family and Kate’s family would take the same approach?” Isaac asked mildly. His expression was not mild. “Were you also raised in a cult?”

“That really depends on your position on good old American family values.” Caradine sounded like her usual self. Everything was such a joke. She was such a beacon of dark humor. But inside, she’d gone horribly cold. “Anyway,” she said with more bravado than any real conviction, “the people after me didn’t get in a Christmas kidnapping.”

His gray gaze turned forbidding. “But someone will. Sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Surely not with Alaska Force on the scene,” she retorted, with a fake smile and too much edge. “Except—oh, wait. I didn’t hire you, you’re not very good at your job, and I don’t live there anymore.”

“If I was trying to get my hands on you, I had a thousand opportunities over the past week.” His voice was relentlessly even. “You never knew I was there. How would you know if anyone else was?”

“I don’t have to know if someone’s there.” She nodded toward her weapons. “All I need to know is how to react when they turn up.”

“That’s the way a victim thinks, Caradine. The problem with relying on coffee and stubbornness to get you through is that both are going to fail. You’re only one person. Sooner or later, the coffee’s going to stop working, you’re going to have to stop running, and, like tonight, you won’t even wake up when someone comes into the room where you’re sleeping. Then what?”

She scoffed to cover the coldness that swamped her then, because he was right. Of course he was right. “You weren’t trying to hurt me.”

“You don’t know what I was trying to do, because I let myself in and hung around while you slept. Does that creep you out?” Isaac demanded when she made a face. “Good. Maybe you should listen to me for a change.”

Caradine hugged herself tight and kept her gaze level on his. “I’m not going to tell you anything, Isaac. No matter how many times you break into my room and try to intimidate me.”

He didn’t actually crack a smile at that, but she had the impression of one. “Baby, I haven’t begun to intimidate you.”

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