Page 22 of Delta Force Defender

Not to mention the fact he didn’t have all the information. Or any information at all.

Still, he let himself enjoy the fact that she was standing there, a warm presence beside him. He could smell her shampoo and what he thought was body lotion, though he’d never seen her apply it. And he could hear her breathe.

He knew better than most that it was the little moments a person clung to, later, when they were gone.

A breath after that, sure enough, came the headlights in the trees.

Then stopped at the top of the hill, the light eerie in the midst of so much darkness.

“Well,” Caradine said brightly. “That’screepy.”

“I think we can assume that they’re going to come all the way down the drive. Then the question is, Will they keep coming? Or will they stay there and wait us out?”

Caradine shifted around to stare at him, and he took her wrists in his hands, using the knife he kept on his belt to cut her free. She didn’t jerk her wrists from his grasp, which he should have liked.

“Why didn’t you take these off yourself?” he asked gruffly. “We both know you could have. I thought it would take you ten minutes, tops.”

“Why would I do that when I can make you feel bad about it instead?” She didn’t even smirk to take the sting out. “The way you should.”

“News flash. Keeping you safe is what matters to me, Caradine. Not your feelings.”

But despite what he said, the way she studied him made him feel guilty.

You mean guilti-er,something in him corrected him.

“Are we a team now?” she asked, her voice as dark as the thick Maine night outside. “I’m finding it hard to keep track. One minute you’re bodily removing me from a bed-and-breakfast, against my will. Now you think we should work together like I’m one of your military buddies?”

“You tell me. Are those your friends out there?”

“Isaac. Please. You know I don’t have friends.”

He reached over and smoothed his hand over the hair she so rarely left down. It was as silky and soft as it ever was, and he expected her to swat his hand away. But it made his chest feel tight when she didn’t.

“I guess it never occurred to me to ask a critical question,” he said, his voice rougher than it should have been. “Are you running from something—or toward it?”

“That sounds like a philosophical dilemma.” She smiled, though it wasn’t a real smile. It was much too tight. “I don’t do those, either.”

“It’s only a dilemma if you don’t know the answer.”

He studied her face in the gloom of the dark front room. That stubborn, pretty, clever face of hers, which had been keeping him guessing for years now. He was sure he could see something like regret. A kind of longing. And around and beneath it all, that stubbornness that might get them both killed. Possibly tonight.

“I’m not running to or from anything, Gentry. Iwason a lovely New England vacation. I’m not sure why that led to kidnapping and careening around the countryside in the middle of the night, but here we are. I blame you.”

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Isaac replied, tracking the headlights as they bumped their way down the hill. “No one was tracking you for the entirety of the past week. I know, because I was there. Alone. How did they find you now?”

“Is this really a good time for a chat? The bad guys will be at the door any minute.” She peered out the window, where the car had made it to the waterline. “Literally.”

“Is that why you went to Camden in the first place? Were you planning to meet someone there?” He braced himself. “Please don’t tell me that you really did blow up your own place.”

“Of course I didn’t blow up my own place. I wasin it.” She blew out a breath, but she kept her gaze on the car as the headlights winked out, there on the other side of the narrow bridge. “I’m not meeting anybody. Not the way you mean. Not exactly.”

“Then what, exactly?”

He tilted his head in the direction of the dirt drive as the car began to move again, slow and dark, creeping closer every second. He eased the blinds back down into place, leaving him with no eyes on their visitor. But at the moment his attention was on the woman before him.

“I get it, Caradine. You have a deep, dark past. That’s not exactly a secret. But if I’m about to get in a firefight, surely you can give me enough details to know whether or not I can expect you to shoot me in the back.”

She looked as if he’d hit her. “I would never shoot you in the back.”

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