Page 38 of Edge of Danger

She fell asleep sometime during the drive and woke up with a stiff, sore neck when a car horn honked nearby. They were in a big city, albeit mostly deserted at whatever late hour this was. She surreptitiously wiped a little drool from the corner of her mouth and prayed she hadn’t snored while she was out.

“You will need to show your passport at the next checkpoint,” Ian commented as he slowed and turned into a heavily fortified driveway leading to some sort of sprawling, fenced industrial area.

The guard, in civilian clothes, was American with a thick southern drawl. He dropped ma’ams and sirs in every sentence and stood ramrod straight while he inspected their passports. If that guy wasn’t military or recently retired from the military, she was a monkey’s uncle.

Whatever this compound was, it closely resembled a military base, complete with temporary quarters along the lines of a very clean, very sparsely furnished hotel. Before long, She and Ian each had a room assigned to them. She’d kind of hoped they would stay together. She really liked sleeping with him—or not sleeping as the case might be.

“I’m going to try and scare us up some food,” Ian announced. “I’ll stop by your room in a while. You wanna take a shower?”

The mere thought of a hot shower made her shudder in delight. She hadn’t had a real shower in weeks. Even the bath at Ian’s place, although heavenly, hadn’t really steamed her clean all the way to the bottoms of her pores. “You have no idea,” she breathed.

He grinned and left the building while she made a beeline for her room. She stripped and climbed under the hottest shower the building’s water heaters could deliver up.

It was even better than she’d anticipated. It pounded out the soreness from her muscles and finally eliminated the gritty feeling she’d had ever since she hit the ground in Sudan last month. God, she hadn’t thought she would ever feel clean again.

She wrapped herself in a bath towel, turbaned her hair in another towel, and headed out to the bedroom. A white plastic grocery bag stood on the lone table. He’d broken into her room to deliver her food but hadn’t stuck around to join her in the shower? Bummer.

Frowning, she peeked into the bag. A couple of big water bottles, a box of snack crackers, some jerky sticks, a can of children’s pasta, and a pouch of dried apples were inside. And a bottle of after-sun lotion. Aww, he’d noticed her sunburn. God bless Ian.

She plunked down on the bed and picked up the TV remote. Lord, she’d missed electronics. She pointed the device at the TV and sighed in contentment as a 24-hour weather channel in English came on. It would be lovely to sit here and watch repeats of the forecast over and over for the next year or so.

She snacked on the food, downed the water, and finally declared herself human once more. Along with hydration and nourishment came alertness, and her thoughts turned back to the case. What was up with those dead mice? Would they hold the key to the research being conducted at the secret lab?

She headed for her backpack to pull out the plastic bags and refrigerate the tiny corpses. She rooted around in her stuff but didn’t spot the bags. She tried the outer pouch. Huh. Not there. Frowning, she dumped the entire contents of her pack on her bed. A whole bunch of gear scattered across the bedspread, but no dead mice in bags. They were kind of hard to miss, after all.

What the heck? She’d tucked them in the pack herself. Had they fallen out somewhere in their mad dash and hours of crawling around? She backtracked in her mind. No, she had zipped the main pouch before they’d fled the fire. And this was the first time since that she’d opened the thing.

At least she still had the thumb drive. She reached into the side pocket where she’d stowed it and froze, her hand buried inside theemptypocket. What thehell? Surely, she hadn’t lost both of the key pieces of evidence from the lab?—

Her gaze snapped to the grocery bag of food. Ian. He’d been in her room while she was in the shower. Had hestolenher evidence?

In disbelief, she searched her room from top to bottom, and after nearly ten minutes with no sign of dead rodents or any thumb drives, she could only conclude that the bastard had, in fact, stolen every bit of intel they’d brought out of the secret lab.

Fury coursed through her. She was going tokillhim.

She should haveknownsomething as up when all of a sudden he got over being mad at her in the car and had waxed all chatty with her. He must have plotted this theft hours ago, the rat!

She yanked on her filthy clothes, not even caring as grit and sand grated against her freshly clean skin. She stomped into her combat boots and didn’t bother to lace them before storming out of her room and back to the front desk.

“May I help you, Miss?” a young man with bright eyes and high-and-tight hair worthy of a marine recruit asked.

“I need Ian McCloud’s room number,” she demanded.

“We don’t have an Ian McCloud staying here, ma’am.”

She took a closer look at the clerk. He sure as hell looked like the kid who’d checked her in. “You did check me in earlier, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. At oh-one-oh-four hours.”

“The guy with me. What room is he in?”

“What guy, ma’am?”

She stared at the kid’s stone-faced expression. “Very funny. You two have had your joke. I have to talk to him right now. He took something from me and I want it back.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, ma’am.”

She planted her palms on the counter and leaned across it aggressively. She spoke low, her voice vibrating with fury. “Whatever he paid you, I’ll double it. Tell me where to find him, or else I swear I’ll bang on every door in this building until I find him.”

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