Chapter Nine
Caroline still slept like a rock. Jack now had proof that it was something about her that hadn’t changed.
Facedown, arms outstretched and butt naked on his bed, she’d slept all night and then through the beep of his morning alarm.
Ditto for staying sacked out during his shower and the phone calls he’d gotten and the ones that he’d made.
While Jack would have liked to let her sleep even longer, he had things to do that couldn’t wait.
So he poured a huge mug of black coffee that he’d brewed strong enough to the point of being bitter.
Just the way Caroline liked it. He added a single ice cube to it to cool it down enough for her to drink it fast—which she would do.
When he went back into the bedroom, he had to push aside the punch of attraction he got from seeing her in his bed. The attraction got another punch when he recalled in perfect detail all the things they’d done there.
Oh, man.
He really needed to figure out a way to deal with what he felt for her so he could do everything possible to keep her out of danger. That had to be his mission now because he couldn’t lose her again.
She stirred the moment Jack held the mug near her nose, and then he moved it so her flailing hands wouldn’t knock into it and spill it.
Yawning and groaning at the same time, she lumbered to a sitting position and groped to take the coffee.
Jack kept hold of it, too, until he was certain of her grip.
No sips for her. As expected, she downed several long gulps as if it were the cure for all ills, before she looked up as if just realizing he was there. She smiled until her attention landed on his clothes.
“You’re dressed,” she said, frowning now.
“Been up for a while.” Jack eased down on the bed next to her, but not too close. If he touched her, he’d be toast. “You need to slap me. I forgot to use a condom last night.”
“Uh.” Caroline repeated that sound, pushed her hair from her face. “I’m on the pill. I started it last month to regulate my periods.” She added that last part in a barely audible mumble, and continued, “I haven’t been with anyone since, well, just since.”
Judging from the way her face flushed, that seemed to embarrass her. Ironic, since she was stark naked.
Something his body had noticed, of course.
Actually, what his body wanted to do was get back in that bed with her and go for another round or two.
Not going to happen, though. But the comment that embarrassed her pleased him more than it should have.
Which was stupid. Because the reason she hadn’t been with anyone else was because she’d been hurt and not because of some unremembered commitment to him.
“Zeller still hasn’t returned my calls, but Kellan texted me,” Jack explained, forcing his mind back where it belonged, and it darn sure shouldn’t be on her breasts.
“The warrant came through on the missing girl from New Beginnings, and we have the file. Lily Terrell’s coming into the sheriff’s office with her lawyer in—” he checked his watch “—about an hour.”
“An hour,” she repeated, and she sounded a little panicked now.
“I’d like to be there to hear what Lily has to say about those files,” Jack went on, “and I don’t want you here alone. Raylene’s already gone home, but Gunnar’s her relief, and he’s waiting out front in a cruiser to take us in.”
That got Caroline scrambling off the bed and into his bathroom. Gulping down coffee and mumbling, she turned on the shower. What she didn’t do was shut the door, so he got even more of the drive-Jack-crazy peep show of her naked body behind the clear glass of the shower stall.
“I had your other things brought over from the WITSEC house,” he called out to her. “They’re in a suitcase next to the vanity.”
While she showered, Jack gathered up what little willpower he had left and went back into the kitchen to finish his own coffee.
He then phoned Teagan. It was his second call to her that morning.
The first one had been an hour ago, so maybe she had something on how the location of the WITSEC house had been breached.
“You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you,” Teagan said the moment she answered, and that caused Jack to groan.
“What happened?” he snapped, trying to steel himself for what would be bad news.
“All the WITSEC files are intact. None of them have been tampered with.” She didn’t snap at him, but there was irritation in her voice that let him know he might have preferred that to whatever else she was about to tell him.
“I think the breach came from the laptop Caroline was using, the one you had couriered to me. Did you know she has hacking skills?” Teagan tacked on to that without even pausing.
“Yeah. One of her many talents,” he grumbled. Along with picking locks, hot-wiring cars and driving him crazy. “There were filters on that laptop,” Jack pointed out.
“Caroline got past them, and because her skills are better than ours, it took the geeks all night to find it. Several of the sites she used to do a search on Eric Lang had a tracker on them. Something experimental and beyond my skill set to explain. It’s called Geo-Trace.
It wouldn’t have alerted her, and it was well hidden in the website codes.
But the geeks think that’s how someone found her. ”
Jack cursed, not just because he was pissed about the hacking but because this could crush Caroline. This could put her on the fast track to a panic attack and a guilt trip. Hell, she’d want to be offering to take a bullet for him because she would see this as having put him in danger.
“If it works the way the geeks think it does,” Teagan explained, “Geo-Trace would have allowed someone to track the computer without getting a warrant. And Caroline wouldn’t have known about the risk.
Like I said, Geo-Trace is still in the experimental stages.
Whoever put it on the sites was probably looking for her. ”
And had found her.
“See if the geeks can figure out who put Geo-Trace on the sites,” he suggested. “Maybe try a reverse hacking maneuver.” Ironically, it was something Caroline might be able to do, but he didn’t want to go to her with this just yet.
“I’ll try, but the Geo-Trace program corrupted itself when our techs tried to examine it. They got portions of it, but it was as if it had an encoded virus to stop someone from digging into it too much.”
A fail-safe. One that would have required some serious computer skills. That still didn’t convince him to bring this to Caroline. Even if he caught flak for it later, which he was certain he would.
“Don’t mention this to Caroline,” he added to Teagan.
Teagan rattled off a string of profanities before she said, “You’re not going to question her about it?”
“Not right now. I need to ease her into it so that it doesn’t send her into a tailspin.”
Teagan groaned. “What part of your body are you thinking with right now?”
“Probably the wrong one,” he admitted and ended the call just as Caroline hurried into the room.
She was dressed, mostly, but still adjusting the above-the-knee denim skirt and snug red top. Clothes that hugged curves on Caroline that he wished he couldn’t see right now.
Yeah, the wrong part of his body was doing the thinking, and that had to stop.
With the breach of the WITSEC location, it wasn’t a stretch for someone to figure out that she would have gone with him.
That was why he hurried when he got her out of the house and into the cruiser.
He had to concentrate on who had attacked them and stop the person from coming after them again.
Jack frowned when he looked up at the sky. The iron gray clouds were already moving on, indicating a storm was on the way. He didn’t mind bad weather, but he didn’t like the idea of it happening when he was trying to get Caroline back and forth from the sheriff’s office.
Gunnar flashed Caroline a grin that he seemed to cut short when Jack scowled at him. He knew that Gunnar didn’t have any romantic interest in Caroline. He was just being friendly, but Jack wanted the deputy in concentration mode, too.
“Did they find the shooter?” Caroline asked.
“No. The CSI team processed the car, and all the prints, fibers and trace they collected were sent to the lab. They might find something,” Jack tried to assure her.
Since she’d been a criminal profiler and had dealt with investigations for years, Caroline probably knew that was a long shot.
Anything collected from a rental car wouldn’t necessarily belong to the last person who’d been inside it.
Plus, a would-be killer had likely made sure not to leave any evidence behind.
Caroline shifted in the seat and studied him. “Is something wrong? I mean, something other than the obvious?”
There were two kinds of obvious here. The investigation and the personal.
Jack had filled her in on everything about the case except for the likelihood that her laptop had been the reason her location was compromised.
He still intended to hold off on asking her about that, which left them with the personal.
And yes, there were things about that they also hadn’t touched on yet.
Since Gunnar was only a few feet away, Jack reminded himself to keep his voice low. “I’m worried I messed up things last night.”
Caroline stared at him, her expression flat. “I’m guessing you’re not talking about the sex itself but rather the distraction it caused.”
He nodded. Neither of them was going to dispute that the sex had been good. Darn good. Heck, they couldn’t even try to pretend that it wouldn’t happen again. But in this case, there could be a price to pay.