Page 20 of Delta Force Defender

But like most things in life, he knew he could get away with almost anything if he did it with a sense of purpose. If he looked confident enough, no one dared question what he did—something else he put to the test repeatedly. He gathered up her things, ignoring the furious sounds she was making from behind her gag. Then he tossed her bag over one shoulder, her over the other, and walked out.

Three minutes later, he was outside the inn right there on the harbor, hearing the lines on the moored boats dance against the masts. He belted her into the front seat of the SUV he’d used to track her across the country. He’d left it in a no-parking zone with a borrowed police shield on the dashboard, a little gift from some of his contacts in law enforcement.

Two minutes after that, they were mobile. Isaac took a roundabout way out of the sleepy little vacation town, driving away from the water to pick up the state road that would take him south to Portland. He would have removed her gag as soon as he started driving, but she’d handled that herself.

“This is a surprise,” he said after, as he drove through the dark in a furious silence. “I figured the minute you could yell at me, you would.”

“What’s the point?” she asked in that flat voice that he’d always considered Caradine at her most emotional—a description he was pretty sure would make her head explode if he said it out loud. “I can plot your death silently.”

“I gave you the opportunity to cooperate. You didn’t take it.”

“What’s funny to me is that you honestly consider yourself one of the good guys.” He glanced over at her to find her holding up her bound wrists as punctuation. “Maybe it’s time you reconsidered your life, Isaac.”

“Someday,” he promised her, maybe a little more darkly than necessary, “you and I are going to sit down and have a nice, long discussion about life. Yours and mine.”

“That sounds about as appealing as a spot of meningitis.” She sniffed. “Or the average girls’ night out.”

“One of the things we can talk about is how you pretend you’re not girlie. Even though you go to such trouble to keep your nails painted at all times. But black and chipped, of course, so no one can accuse you of any stray traces of femininity.”

He didn’t have to look at her to feel the way she glared at the side of his head. And when she made an anatomically impossible suggestion, he laughed.

And didn’t release her wrists, the way he could have. And should have.

But then again, she could have done the same, and didn’t.

So instead, he called in.

“Report, jackhole,” answered Templeton, his big voice booming over the SUV’s sound system. And then he laughed. “I’m not going to lie. I understand your power trip now.”

“Pull it together,” Isaac suggested. “You’re supposed to be a professional.”

“Ten-four,Dad,” Templeton retorted, unrepentant as ever. “Is the target acquired?”

Caradine stiffened with outrage. “I’m not atarget. I’m a hostage. And I want to come back to Grizzly Harbor and rebuild the café just so I can ban you for life, Templeton.”

“Oh yeah.” Isaac sighed. “Fully acquired.”

Templeton laughed again. Caradine made some more improbable suggestions regarding anatomy. And select livestock.

Isaac was biting back his own smile when he turned onto Route 90, heading away from Camden, and realized that the car in his rearview mirror had taken the last three turns right along with him.

It could be a problem. Then again, it could be someone headed out of town toward Portland and points east and south like he was. He maintained his course.

“What’s the situation in Juneau?” he asked Templeton.

“Nothing new or interesting.” Templeton shifted back into seriousness seamlessly, one of his greatest skills. “We found the guy who hired those two idiots, but he’s just some local wannabe big shot. He got a phone call from a guy who knows a guy, all blind. We tried to pull on the thread, but there’s nothing there.”

“My takeaway is that’s a lot of layers and risk for a picture and some arson.”

“Too much of both,” Templeton agreed.

Isaac didn’t like that, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He and Templeton ran down the rest of Alaska Force’s active missions in the abbreviated code they could use when civilians were listening, and when he was done, Isaac wasn’t surprised to find Caradine scowling at him.

If one day he looked over and she was smiling at him, he’d probably have a heart attack.

“You sound suitably busy and important,” she said after a moment. “I have to think you have better things to do than act as a glorified taxi service. For someone who didn’t want a taxi in the first place.”

Isaac shot her a glance, but his attention was in his rearview again. Fifteen minutes from Camden and the car behind him was maintaining a steady pace. Never catching up, never falling behind, no matter what he did with his own speed. He picked up Route 1 in Warren andthen, for fun, looped around in a dramatic U-turn in the middle of the two-lane rural highway. Then headed back on the road to Camden.

---