Page 101 of Hot Intent

“Crud. Do we have to go back into the bad guys’ sandbox?”

“It’s my sandbox, too,” he replied grimly.

They spent the next hour getting to a car rental agency and using one of Alex’s seemingly endless supply of fake I.D.’s to rent a car. They headed out of the city at a snail’s pace as rush hour ripened into a full-blown mess.

Finally, as they inched forward, she said, “Did you have any idea yourmotherwas in charge of Cold Intent?”

“My father said as much. But I didn’t have confirmation until just now. It makes sense, though. The op is centered around screwing over my father.”

“So this has all been a feud between your parents? Are you kidding me?”

Alex rolled his eyes at her. “I suspect there’s more to it than that.”

“Well, yeah. They’re trying to destroy each other. And they’re freaking spies. That could get pretty violent.” She added wryly, “Divorce, CIA style. How appropriate for your family.”

Alex just looked grim.

They drove late into the night and stopped somewhere in Pennsylvania to sleep for a few hours. Katie could seriously have used a cuddle and some comforting after the previous day’s trauma, and she expected Alex could use a little TLC afterfinding out his mother was behind his troubles. But no sooner had she climbed under the covers than Alex stretched out on the floor beside the bed.

“What on earth are you doing down there?” she demanded over the side of the bed.

“If you busted into this room looking for a shoot out, would you expect someone to be down here?”

“Well, no. But won’t you be uncomfortable?”

“Hmm. Comfortable or dead,” he said by way of an answer.

Well, hell. She sighed. “Do I need to sleep down there, too?”

“If you want.”

“Yippee,” she muttered. She dragged her pillow and a blanket down on the hard, drafty floor beside him. “The things I do for love,” she grumbled.

“Your choice,” he murmured, already half-asleep.

She was sleeping on the floor of a hotel room with a perfectly good bed right beside her. It was a fitting metaphor for her life. She really liked normal. She liked waking up in the morning and feeling comfortable and safe…in her own bed.

Was she really up for this lifestyle, forever? Her idea of roughing it was a Holiday Inn instead of a Marriott. Who was she trying to kid? She wasn’t cut out for thefloorof the freaking Motel Hell.

Deeply conflicted, she wrestled with her choice until she passed out sometime before dawn. She woke up aching from head to foot and half-frozen. Alex was already gone from beside her. The shower cut off as she rolled over and sat up, groaning.

Alex spun out of the bathroom naked and wielding a pistol. She lurched, alarmed. “What’s wrong?” she gasped.

“I heard you moan.”

“I wasn’t in trouble,” she explained hastily. “I’m just sore from the floor.”

He made a disgusted face and retreated into the bathroom She heard the faint scraping of a razor. Huh. He hadn’t shaved in several days. She’d figured he was using the dark beard stubble on his face by way of a disguise. Why the careful toilette today? Did he want to look nice for meeting his mother, perchance?

God, how weird must that be? Today he could meet the woman who’d given birth to him for the first time in decades.

When Alex finished in the bathroom, she took his place and grabbed a deliciously hot but all too short shower. Funny how for granted she took the act of bathing until she couldn’t do it. When she emerged from the steam room she’d turned the bathroom into, Alex was distracted and uncommunicative. Obviously, his brain was in overdrive. She left him alone as they headed downstairs to the front desk.

It was almost laughable how easily Alex charmed the hotel’s desk manager into letting him use her computer terminal. Katie took a seat in the lobby to wait for him, but he wasn’t online long.

She stood when he rejoined her with a terse nod. He said merely, “I got an address.”

They hit the road, arriving in the rural outskirts of Fairfax, Virginia in the early afternoon.

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