Loe raamatut: «Cody Walker's Woman»

For my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, who told me years ago that Cody deserved his own book. Tempus fugit. And for Vincent…always.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“Scream.”

Keira Jones pushed the hair out of her eyes with both hands and stared in incomprehension at the man who’d just dragged her kicking and clawing all the way from the other room into this one. His hold had been brutal, crushing her bones as he’d thrown her onto the filthy bed in the corner of this room before moving to shut the door behind them and lock it.

And then nothing. Nothing except that one word uttered in a harsh undertone—scream.

“What?” she gasped.

He held one finger to his lips, pressing his ear against the wooden door. He cast a sharp glance around the room, grabbed a rickety chair and propped it under the door handle. Then he moved purposefully toward Keira.

She scrambled off the bed and backed away from him, away from what she thought was coming. If she was going to be raped, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. She looked frantically around the room for something, anything to use as a weapon, but he was on her before she had a chance.

“I said scream, damn it!” His angry voice was pitched to carry no farther than a foot away as he plastered her body against the wall with his muscular frame.

But she couldn’t. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her breath was coming in rapid pants, but no sound emerged from a throat dry with terror she refused to betray.

He made a sound of frustration deep in his throat. He held her squirming body captive with his while his powerful hands gripped the lapels of her cotton blouse and ripped it open from top to bottom. Then she screamed. And screamed again when one hand groped her breast through and beneath the fabric of her bra while the other moved to the juncture of her thighs.

She clawed at his face. He ducked, but she had the savage satisfaction of seeing her fingernails make contact with his skin and leave four red welts before he captured her flailing hands and pinned them both to the wall over her head with one iron hand.

“Damn it, I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered in that same deep undertone.

Blood was oozing from two of the scratches on his face, but he ignored it. And to Keira’s shocked amazement he didn’t follow up on her physical helplessness. In fact, he turned away from her, listening intently to the sounds emanating from the other room.

Now Keira could hear it, too, over the rasping sound of her own breathing; coarse male laughter and guttural catcalls, as if Keira’s screams were entertainment for the men in the other room.

“What—” she began, but he covered her mouth with his free hand.

“Shh.” He pressed his lips to her ear, but not in a mockery of a kiss. “We have maybe five minutes to get out of here,” he breathed. “Unless you want me to leave you behind to be gang-raped by them,” he said, tilting his head in the direction of the other room, “or worse, promise me you’ll do exactly what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. You got that?”

She swallowed as her panicked brain assimilated what he was saying as well as what he was not doing. Then she nodded. His hand came off her mouth but hovered close, as if he didn’t trust her not to ask questions in a voice that could be heard from the next room. But Keira wasn’t stupid. She knew in a flash that instead of trying to rape her he was trying to rescue her.

She didn’t know why he was risking his life this way, but she didn’t care. Going with him was infinitely preferable to the fate in store for her if she stayed here. And if she was going to die, as she had feared from the moment she’d been kidnapped from beside her car, she’d rather die running, fighting, anything except submitting meekly to being raped and murdered.

“Okay,” he whispered. His lean, muscular body was suddenly gone, and Keira sagged for a moment, her own muscles barely able to hold her up. Then she got control of herself and watched him move across the room.

For a big man he moved with incredible stealth. He had seemed to tower over her earlier, but now she saw that, while he was well above six feet, he wasn’t a giant of a man; his strength had fooled her into envisioning him as bigger than he actually was.

He was clean shaven, and while his angular features weren’t pretty-boy handsome, they were attractive in a masculine way. His sun-streaked blond hair was close-cropped, though not in military fashion. And the snug jeans he wore left no doubt that he was in perfect physical shape. The kind of man, in fact, she thought with hysterical abstraction, most women would give a second—and third—glance at if they passed him on the street.

He was trying to open the single window in the room, but it resisted his efforts, and Keira could tell he wasn’t using his full strength because he was trying to get it open without anyone in the next room hearing, and if he pushed too hard the glass might shatter.

She started toward him to help, but before she got there he reached down into his boot and came up with a wicked-looking six-inch steel-blade knife. He grimaced, as if he hated to sacrifice his knife in this way, then inserted the blade between the window and the frame and exerted downward pressure.

With a slight creak of warped wood, a crack opened up, then widened enough for him to get his fingers underneath. Then Keira was there, and together they got the window open far enough for them to climb through.

“Tie up your shirt,” he breathed next to her ear, and all at once Keira realized it was gaping open, all the buttons gone from when he had tried to make her scream. And her bra was awry, too, from when he’d mauled her. She quickly adjusted her bra and pulled the ends of her blouse together, knotting them beneath her breasts. It wasn’t neat, but at least she was decently covered.

“You go first,” he said in a whisper. “I’ll let you down nice and easy. Try not to make any noise when you move away from the window.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice. He put his hands on her waist and lifted her effortlessly, high enough for her to slide her feet through the window embrasure. He balanced her on the window sill for a moment while she ducked her head under the window, then his hands slid beneath her armpits and he lowered her to the ground.

Keira carefully backed away to allow him room to clamber out, trying not to brush up against anything that would rustle. Then he took her hand in his and looked down at her. There was barely enough moonlight to see a few feet in any direction, but there was enough light to see his determined expression as he whispered urgently, “Trust me.”

“I will,” she said. She knew it was crazy; they were still in imminent danger. At any minute someone might try to enter the room they’d just left and discover they were gone, and a murderous chase would be on. And she knew absolutely nothing about this man other than the fact he hadn’t raped her when he’d had the chance. But that one fact was enough, and she knew instinctively she could trust him with her life.

“Good,” he said, an unexpected smile slashing across his face. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 1

Cody Walker sat at his government-issued desk in his office in the agency’s sprawling complex on the northern outskirts of Denver Thursday morning, ostensibly rereading the revised report he’d just printed out to check it for errors before submitting it to his superiors. But instead of reading, he was thinking about the things he hadn’t put into the report.

Like the way Keira had looked at him in the moonlight, her face paper-white beneath a dusting of freckles, so scared and yet so brave, with that mop of red-gold curls no comb could tame. Like the way her brown eyes had met his when he’d told her to trust him and she’d said without hesitation, I will. Like the way her breast had felt beneath his hand when—

With a muttered oath, he cut off the memory. You’ve got no business remembering that, he told himself firmly. The fingers of his right hand brushed over the four barely visible welts on his left check where she’d branded him; the scratches were still there, but after nearly a week they were almost healed. Guess you deserved this after all.

He didn’t hold it against her. Sure, he’d been trying to rescue her, but she couldn’t have known it at the time. She’d fought him like a wildcat, and he respected her for it. Although they looked nothing alike, Keira somehow reminded him of his feisty best friend growing up. Mandy would have done exactly the same thing under the circumstances, he thought with a mixture of admiration and amusement.

Without realizing it, his hand went to the scar on his left shoulder. Beneath his shirt he could feel the raised edges of the healed bullet wound where Mandy had shot him six years ago because she’d thought he was about to kill the man she loved. Mandy hadn’t known the truth then any more than Keira had the other night.

Keira. He’d blown his assignment to hell and gone for her, but he couldn’t have done anything differently. Not and still call himself a man. He couldn’t have left an innocent woman there in that isolated shack in the mountains west of Denver with the incipient terrorist gang members he was meeting with in his undercover persona as an illegal arms dealer. They would have raped her at the very least, and probably would have killed her afterward—they wouldn’t want to leave a witness behind.

He remembered his first sight of her last Friday night when the three men had half dragged, half carried her into the shack where he’d been negotiating with two other gang members. She’d been fighting her captors every step of the way, refusing to surrender to them despite the terror any woman would have felt in that situation, struggling against ravaging hands and lewd suggestions, unwilling to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry or beg for mercy she had to have known was nonexistent.

His desperate plan had been born in an instant. He’d had leverage because they wanted something from him—Stinger man-portable surface-to-air missiles, Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles and magazines, and other sundry weapons of destruction. And he’d used that leverage to claim “first rights” to Keira, using the coarse language they’d expected in that situation. Then he’d triumphantly claimed his “prize” and dragged her into the other room, and...

Well, that part was in his report, anyway.

He threw the papers on his desk, momentarily disgusted, and swiveled around to stare at the picture on his wall—a large, blown-up reproduction of his rustic cabin and the surrounding woods in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. He wondered why he’d ever left it and the relatively easy job as sheriff back then.

He sighed. He knew why he’d left. Just as he knew why he’d taken this job. But sometimes it didn’t seem worth it.

He’d been unofficially reprimanded for compromising his assignment—no way would they have dared to make it an official reprimand under the circumstances, special rule seven notwithstanding—although what his immediate supervisor and his partner thought he could have done other than what he had done was a mystery to him.

He’d managed to electronically send the “abort mission” signal to his partner, waiting with a backup team a mile away, without Keira seeing him. He hadn’t wanted her to know she’d interrupted a covert operation, hadn’t wanted her to have any suspicions of what he was or why he was there. But he’d had a lot of explaining to do later that night about why the op had to be aborted.

He was just thankful he’d been at the right place at the right time. Thankful they’d both escaped and he’d seen her safely back to her car and on the road home. Thankful he hadn’t had to kill anyone in the process—the red tape on that would have included a mandatory desk assignment while the incident was thoroughly investigated. Not that he had any doubts he would have been cleared. But it would have been a time-consuming hassle, and he hated being chained to a desk.

Besides, he’d only ever taken one life, and he wasn’t in any hurry to repeat that experience unless he had no other option. Now if only he could get the feel of Keira’s taut, unyielding body beneath his out of his mind...

The phone on his desk shrilled. He swiveled around and picked it up automatically. “Walker,” he said crisply. He relaxed back in his chair. “Hey, Callahan,” he said, “I was just thinking about you.” He listened to the voice on the other end of the line for a second, then added, “Well, not you, exactly. I was thinking about the time your wife shot me.”

“No more than you deserved,” Ryan Callahan responded promptly. “At least from her perspective.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cody replied. “Tell that to the marines.”

That was something he and Callahan had in common—they’d both served in the U.S. Marine Corps, but at different times, since Callahan was quite a bit older. Cody thought for a second. If he was thirty-seven, that meant Callahan had to be forty-five now, close to forty-six. We’re none of us getting any younger.

They’d also both worked the same undercover operation six years ago, bringing down the New World Militia together when Cody had been the sheriff of Black Rock, Wyoming, a position Callahan now held.

They had something else in common, too—they’d both been in love with Mandy Edwards. Mandy Edwards Callahan, Cody corrected himself with a wry smile. He wasn’t in love with Mandy anymore. Well, not much, anyway. There would always be a small corner of his heart devoted to her, but once Callahan had come back into her life, Cody had known there was no chance for him. He’d left Black Rock and had joined the Drug Enforcement Administration after he recovered from the gunshot that had almost killed him.

But his work in the DEA hadn’t satisfied him somehow. He’d been restless and had needed something more, so he’d been ripe for change when he’d been approached by Nick D’Arcy to join a newly created ultrasecret agency not quite two years later. His new job was more demanding, both mentally and physically, and more rewarding, too. And it had allowed him to forget about losing Mandy to Ryan Callahan.

“So what’s up?” he asked.

There was just the slightest hesitation on the other end. “Something we both thought was dead and buried is raising its ugly head again.”

“What?” Cody sat up straight in his chair and gripped the phone a little tighter. He knew instantly what Callahan was referring to. “The New World Militia?”

“Got it in one.”

“Don’t B.S. me,” he said roughly, doing a rapid mental review of the facts as he knew them. “Pennington’s dead,” he said, referring to David Pennington, the founder of the New World Militia. Silently he added, We both killed him, though it wasn’t something he wanted to brag about or mention over the phone. “And the militia’s other high-ranking officers are all serving long prison terms. How—”

Callahan cut him off. “Don’t ask me how I know, not over an unsecured phone line.” He let that sink in before adding, “Just trust me on this, okay?”

Cody thought about it for all of half a minute. Callahan had once trusted him with his life six years ago, even though he’d known how Cody felt about Mandy, had known other things, too. Despite that, Callahan had saved Cody’s life after Mandy shot him—wasting precious seconds to apply a makeshift pressure bandage to the wound, even though both men had known Mandy was out there somewhere, in danger from Pennington. If he hadn’t done that, Cody wouldn’t be alive today.

“Okay,” Cody said, but he knew that one word was enough—Callahan got the message. “We need to talk.”

“Not over the phone.”

“Where, then?”

“Can you come to Black Rock? I’d come to Denver, but...”

He didn’t have to finish. Cody knew Callahan would never leave Mandy and their three children, not if danger threatened them. And if the New World Militia really had been resurrected, Callahan, and anyone close to him, could be in grave danger.

You, too, he thought for a second, before brushing it aside as immaterial. He’d been undercover himself for four years in the New World Militia before he and Callahan had killed Pennington and smashed the anarchist paramilitary organization that had also had its fingers in gunrunning and drug trafficking, as well as other illegal activities. If Callahan was in danger, so was he.

“I’ll have to tell my supervisor, not to mention my partner.”

There was a long, pregnant pause while Callahan considered this. “Isn’t Nick D’Arcy still the head of the Denver branch of the agency?”

“Yeah.”

“How about telling him first? This octopus could have tentacles everywhere,” he said, referring obliquely to the New World Militia. “I trust you and D’Arcy, and maybe one other person, but...”

Cody’s first reaction was to hotly defend his colleagues, especially his partner, but then he remembered how insidious the militia had once been. If Callahan was right, if new life had been breathed into the organization, there was no telling where the infection had spread.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll try to get in to see him as soon as I get off the phone. I’ll let you know what he says.”

“Don’t call my office,” Callahan warned, referring to the Black Rock sheriff’s office. “And don’t call the house. I haven’t told Mandy yet, and if you call there, she’ll suspect something. She’ll kill me when she finds out I’ve kept her in the dark this long, but...”

Cody knew the other man well enough to know he was shrugging his shoulders. Neither of them had ever wanted to put Mandy in danger, so they’d both kept secrets from her. That hadn’t always been a good idea, and Cody had the scar to prove it.

“And don’t call my cell phone, either,” Callahan added.

“Then how am I—”

“Call this number,” Callahan said, rattling off ten digits, and Cody jotted them down on a scratch pad. “That’s a throwaway cell. I probably don’t need to tell you this, but it would be a good idea to call me from a pay phone or another throwaway cell.”

“You’re right,” Cody responded drily. “You don’t need to tell me that.”

He hung up when Callahan did, then sat for a moment staring at the cell-phone number he’d just written down, memorizing it. “Damn it!” he cursed under his breath.

He ripped the paper into tiny shreds, got up and strode toward the elevator, dropping the scraps of paper into the slot of the locked “burn barrel” nearest the door. He rang for the elevator, waiting impatiently until it arrived, his mind taken up with what Callahan had just told him...and what he hadn’t.

“Damn,” he said again, but it didn’t relieve his feelings one bit.

Cody walked into the outer office and addressed the executive assistant who guarded Nick D’Arcy from unimportant interruptions like a dragon. “I need to see Baker Street,” he told her, using the nickname everyone in the agency used when talking about D’Arcy, and sometimes even when thinking about him. He was omniscient—so much so it was scary at times—and every agent who worked for him had experienced that omniscience at least once. So it wasn’t surprising he was known by the sobriquet of “Baker Street,” a tip of the hat to Sherlock Holmes.

The executive assistant assessed Cody, noting the determined, set expression on his face. She picked up the phone and pushed a button. “Cody Walker to see you, sir.” She listened for a couple of seconds, then said, “No, he didn’t tell me what it’s about and I didn’t ask.” She hung up the phone. “You can go in,” she told him.

“Come in, Walker,” Nick D’Arcy said when Cody entered and closed the door behind him. He indicated a chair in front of his desk and said, “Have a seat.” He sat down himself, and after Cody was sitting, he said, “Is this about what happened last Friday?”

“No, it’s—” Cody broke off. “How do you know about that already?”

“It’s my business to know everything, didn’t you know?” D’Arcy chuckled, his dark-skinned face breaking into a broad smile. “But seriously, you did the right thing. Oh, yes,” he said, holding up one hand, palm outward. “I know there are those who are upset your cover was blown and that we’ll have to start all over from scratch with that investigation, but...I’d have done the same thing under the circumstances.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s good to know not everyone thinks I blew it.”

D’Arcy smiled as if he knew something Cody didn’t. “So if this isn’t about last week, then what is it?”

“The New World Militia.”

That wiped the smile from the other man’s face. “How’d you hear about that?” he asked sharply.

“Ryan Callahan. He called me a few minutes ago.”

“Damn.” The word held no heat, but Cody could tell D’Arcy was not pleased. “I was hoping I was wrong, but if Callahan is involved...” He bent a narrow-eyed gaze on Cody. “What did he tell you?”

“He wouldn’t tell me much over the phone,” Cody said, then repeated the conversation nearly verbatim, including Callahan’s statement about who he trusted...and who he didn’t.

D’Arcy didn’t say anything after Cody finished, just sat there contemplating the pencil he picked up off his desk. He seemed to reach a decision, because he looked at Cody and said, “I’ve heard rumblings of this before today. I’ve already got a team working on it.” He leaned over and pressed a switch. “Can you see if you can locate McKinnon and Jones for me? If they’re in the building, I need to see them right away.”

“McKinnon?” Cody asked after D’Arcy cut off the connection. “That wouldn’t be Trace McKinnon, would it?”

“Yeah. You remember him from six years ago, don’t you? I’ve got a feeling he’s the third man Callahan was referring to, the other man he trusts.”

“I remember him, but I thought he was still a federal marshal. I didn’t know he worked for the agency.”

D’Arcy let out a bark of laughter. “Compartmentalization. I guess it does work sometimes.” He looked at Cody from under his brows. “McKinnon was the first person I recruited after I was recruited. He’d worked for me for years before I came here—I’d trust him with my life. I knew he’d be perfect for this agency, just like I knew you would be, too.”

The corner of Cody’s mouth curved up in a rueful smile. “Not so perfect—on my part, that is. Last week—”

D’Arcy waved his hand. “I already told you to forget last week, didn’t I?” He hesitated. “I wasn’t going to tell you until all the paperwork was processed, but there will be a commendation in your personnel jacket if I have anything to say about it.”

That means it’s a done deal, Cody thought, knowing how highly respected Nick D’Arcy was by the head of their agency in Washington, D.C. “Thank you. I appreciate it.” He thought for a second, then confessed, “I couldn’t have done anything else, but...I’m glad it won’t be a mark against me.”

“Not to worry.”

Then Cody remembered the other thing D’Arcy had said, and he asked, “Rumblings? You said you’ve heard rumblings about the New World Militia?”

D’Arcy grimaced. “The FBI has been keeping a watchful eye on certain individuals for years,” he said. “But even after all this time since 9/11, we still don’t have the interagency cooperation we should have. They don’t tell us everything they know, and we’re not much better.”

“But if they aren’t telling you what they know...”

“I have my own sources within the FBI...and a few other places” was all D’Arcy would say.

The phone buzzed, and D’Arcy pressed the intercom button. “Yes?”

“McKinnon and Jones are here, sir.”

“Send them in.”

Cody stood up as the door opened and Trace McKinnon walked in. Cody recognized him immediately, even though it had been almost five years since he’d last seen him. Along with Callahan, Cody owed his life to this man, who’d given him first aid before the medevac chopper had airlifted him to the hospital in Sheridan. He had thanked McKinnon afterward, but except for seeing him at the trials that followed the arrests of the upper echelons of the New World Militia, their paths hadn’t crossed until now.

Cody started forward, his hand outstretched. “Good to see you, McKinnon,” he said. Then he stopped as abruptly as if he’d been shot. Following McKinnon into the room was the woman with the mop of red-gold curls no comb could tame. The woman he’d blown his assignment to rescue. The woman he couldn’t get out of his mind.

Keira.