Chapter 9 #2
“What the heck is that?” Shana whispered. Dane had his finger against his lips to warn her. He took the occasion to close in and nuzzle her ear as he told her about the latest bug detectors Acer had given him.
He moved around the room, pulling Shana with him, keeping her close. He whispered, “Any bet against finding at least two bugs?”
“Not counting you?” she whispered back. She smiled, and then leaned in over his shoulder as he moved through the living room, his eyes on the watch face, and into the bedroom. He stopped at the threshold.
“Very nice—if you like sleeping in a ballroom,” he spoke out loud.
“I think it’s beautiful,” Shana said. She watched over his arm as the watch face lit up.
Dane moved them into the bathroom and turned on the shower and closed the door.
“We’re not staying.” That got an eyebrow raise from her.
“Do you expect me to guess where we’re going—more importantly why?”
“Floyd has this place set up. Let’s pretend we think it’s Tavares who’s setting us up, find another place, and tell Floyd.”
“So if we tell Floyd and they still find us, then we know he’s in with them.”
“If not, we’ll work with Floyd.”
“Where are we going to find another place?”
“Leave it to me.”
“I’d rather not—I’ve seen the shack you live in.” She smiled and he pulled her in.
“Want to take a shower?” He was only half kidding. The room was steamy and Shana smelled like the goddess she was, sweet and spicy and round and gorgeous in her bright colored dress.
She gave him a look. He was good at reading her looks. Unfortunately, this one said no.
“Have it your way.” He pushed her away and toward the door.
“Aren’t you going to shut off the shower?”
“No. We’re leaving now.” He led her straight across the marble tiled floor, through the entry foyer to the door, and then halted for a look outside through the peephole.
Nothing. He cracked the door, keeping her behind him.
He felt her restlessness at his back. She wouldn’t stand for his protectiveness much longer.
“Go turn on the TV,” he whispered. She went back into the room and did so while he found the obligatory notepad next to the phone. He scribbled a note for Floyd and left it there.
Motioning for Shana to stay back, he went back to the door and ventured into the corridor. There was no activity. He waved his arm at her and she hurried up behind him as he moved down the hall, passing the elevator, and toward the exit stairwell.
“What—”
“We’re taking the stairs.” He knew he didn’t have to explain why. Pushing through the doors, he looked back at her and down at her feet, eyeing her heels.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, girlie.” He was in too much of a hurry to laugh at the spark in her eyes.
He grabbed the hand off her hip and pulled her along behind him as she attempted taking her shoes off.
He slowed enough to allow her get barefoot and braced for the hand holding the shoes. Luckily, she didn’t hit him.
They hit the street and the balmy air. Dane slid on his sunglasses and glanced in the direction of the pristine Ipanema beach, quelling a sudden urge to surf. Noting Shana’s glance that way, he took her hand and headed back to the scooter. It was still there.
“Do you think anyone is following us?”
“We’ll find out.” They jumped on the scooter and Dane took off along the beach. Dane had already spotted their tail, but knew he’d lose them.
“Don’t we have to find a place? Don’t we need to get the others?” Shana leaned forward and shouted in his ear. Her lips were close. He felt the heat of her breath on his neck. Ignoring the goose bumps, he answered.
“The others will meet us at the new place. I already texted them the address.”
Shana pinched his side and he laughed.
“Where the hell are you taking me, Dane?”
“Let’s just say you should enjoy the views of Ipanema beach now. In a minute, we’re heading inland to Tingua, Nova Iguacu.”
“We’re leaving Rio?”
“We’ll leave Rio and head for a mountain dirt—or mud—road outside the city toward a rural area. It lies northwest of Rio, in the center of the northern part of its metropolitan area, Baixada Fluminense. The Iguacu River runs through it.”
“Sounds charming.”
“You signed on for this, girlie. Hang onto your seat.” Dane turned off the beachfront road and turned the throttle up as far as it would go.
He’d managed to call Acer on the burner phone. He was hauling David and O’Keefe up to the hills of Nova Iguacu. But he was only dropping them there. Acer’s job was to get back to his copter and be ready for their extraction.
The forty-five-minute trip on the scooter ended on a mud road in a depressed area dotted with farms and ramshackle housing.
There was a small grid of rough roads and buildings and Dane angled his small bike, praying it would hold up after the beating it had taken, between a pair of two-story nondescript cement buildings.
He parked the bike behind the one with a couple of broken windows on the ground floor and grabbed Shana’s hand before she ran the other way. He dragged her inside the dark wooden back door.
“Where the hell did you bring us? This is the least safe safe house I’ve ever seen,” she said.
“I knew you would whine about it.”
She stopped short and dug in her heels when they were halfway down the back hall. She pulled her hand from his.
“Don’t you—”
“Don’t you worry, girlie. I was teasing. I’m always teasing. You’re so goddamned easy to tease and I love watching your Irish get up—”
He moved in on her to prove how much he loved it. She put her hands up to stop him, but he flattened her so that her hands were pinned against his chest and she was pinned against the wall.
“I don’t have an ounce of Irish in me,” she said, more calm and with an edgy glint in her eye—her warning glint.
“Don’t worry—this house is so safe, we could—”
“Don’t even finish that sentence.” Her voice was firm, cool and sharp as a butcher knife.
He smiled. “I was going to suggest we eat dinner. What did you think I was going to say?”
She shoved him off her. It was a good strong push. He didn’t push back. She had a knife and he didn’t want to test her resolve. He would have to come through with dinner now. He hoped to hell the place was stocked with something edible.
*****
Shana pushed past Dane down the hall and hoped he didn’t notice the tremor of excitement in her hands and the galloping pulse in her neck. She hoped there was food in this damn Brazilian version of his beach shack.
She found the kitchen, which contained discolored worn linoleum flooring, a wooden table, and three chairs.
There was a gas stove and a 1950s-style refrigerator—she recognized it from “Leave It to Beaver” reruns.
Dane would probably remember the show—she shouldn’t go there.
She turned and smiled at him without even a cinder of guilt.
“We’re going to miss the call from the kidnapper—unless you aim to have Floyd come here—”
“That would negate the entire purpose of coming here to get away from him—off his radar. No. We’ll meet him on neutral turf to talk to the kidnapper.”
“You think Floyd will go along with that?”
“He will if he wants his money.”
“You’re betting an awful lot that there is no kidnapper. What if Oscar—”
“He’s not in trouble. Believe me. I know.”
What he didn’t say, she knew, because it was classic Dane protect the girl from the bad stuff attitude, was that he thought it was she and Dane who were in trouble.
“No, you don’t know. You’re guessing. You have a hunch—or some such Dane Blaise voodoo.”
She probably shouldn’t have said that because his expression went wolfish then.
He loved it whenever she gave him credit for his sixth or sixteenth sense or whatever it was he had going on.
He got closer. She didn’t back up, but she did look toward the window.
The sill was too high to climb out—at least not gracefully.
He stepped around her and yanked open the bulky rounded refrigerator door with the oversized handle.
“Looks like we’ll need to go shopping.” He closed the door. “We have about twenty minutes until Acer gets here with David Young and company.”
“Call them and tell them to bring food.”
He slipped the phone from his pocket and did as she suggested. He stood a foot and a half away, watching her—like a wolf licking his chops. Then he said, “That gives us thirty minutes and we don’t need to go to the grocery store.”
His words hit her like an arrow zinging her with his special potent excitement.
Her heart roared into overdrive as if it were shot by the Goliath of Cupids.
Her tight control hiding her desire was draining, as if the arrow had pierced her willpower.
She stood mute within the circle of his heat.
She smelled his scent, the mingling of sweat and salt air.
She was aware of the shallow breaths heaving her breasts up and down because Dane’s gaze flicked there to watch.
She pulled up her ever-present armor of resentment held against men, all the men she’d fought all her life, and threw it over herself like chainmail to protect her from the threat of male dominance, of sexual conquest for its own sake.
Her chin lifted and she heaved one last breath, pushing him away from her once again.
It was hard. He was hard. He barely moved.
“What the hell, Shana?” he practically growled. Whatever weakness she’d felt a moment before, whatever magnetic, inevitable attraction she’d felt and however compelling Dane was—like her kryptonite—his sense of entitlement lit her fuse.
“I’ll tell you what the hell, Dane. I’m tired of being your convenient dalliance.”
“Convenient? Are you shitting—”
“We have no relationship. We have no commitment. We have no understanding. I do not belong to you. You do not belong to me. We have nothing but a working partnership as far as I can tell. Nothing that works or is functional besides our partnership in Beachcomber Investigations—so back off. Leave the rest alone. It’s wrong—”
“Wrong? What the hell? We have more—”
“We have what, Dane? We have nothing more than a partnership. You don’t belong to me,” she repeated.
“I don’t belong to you? That’s crazy talk.”
“Whatever you say.”
“You know we’re more than partners.”
“Do I? After all this time and all the ups and downs, the partnership is the only goddamn thing that’s solid—for either of us. Our partnership. The only thing either of us has ever committed to, the only thing either of us is sure of. So don’t ruin it.”
She pushed again and this time he backed away.
He still felt hard, but he looked stunned.
The churn in her gut as she took in his face, catching the flash of vulnerability there before it disappeared, surprised her, but she moved away from him, out of his reach, fast. As if he would chase her and as if she needed to escape him and his damned sensual he-man vortex.
“Damn, Shana.” She heard him, but she refused to turn around and look at him.
Instead, she stalked through each of the rooms in the house.
It wasn’t much of a house. There were four rooms on the ground floor.
When she saw the stairs, she headed up. There was a utilitarian bathroom and three boxy rooms with mattresses on the floor and bedding folded on top.
The rooms and mattresses looked clean. Not that it mattered.
She was too exhausted to be truly picky. In spite of what damn Dane might think.
She threw herself down onto the mattress in the third room and stared at the ceiling, willing her heartbeat to slow down while she waited for the posse.
Cap would rescue her from Dane. She didn’t know why she automatically thought that.
She could handle herself. She could handle Dane.
She didn’t need rescuing, but the notion took hold and embedded into her psyche, giving her blind comfort, enough to slow her heart so that she no longer feared it would seize up in revolt.
After seemingly only a few moments of calm, the sound of a heavy step on the stairs made her flinch, bringing her tension back in an instant.
But before Dane made it up two steps—and before her heart worked into another frenzy—the sound of a truck pulling up outside made her exhale with relief. For the moment.