Hero Under Cover

“I expect you not to goad him on,” Pete said, his own eyes glittering chips of obsidian. He stood with his hands on his hips, effectively pinning Annie in against her desk.

She wanted to move, but in order to do that she’d have to push past him, or climb over her desk. So she stayed where she was and tried to hide her shaking hands by sticking them into the back pockets of her jeans.

Pete picked up a pad and a pen from her desk. “You have to tell me what he said to you,” he said brusquely. “Word for word.”

Annie shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t.”

“If you don’t remember exactly—”

“That’s not it,” she said. “I can remember. I just…can’t repeat what he said. It was too awful.”

She tried to meet his gaze challengingly, but her eyes suddenly welled with tears. She swore softly and blinked them back. “I’m having a really bad day,” she said.

Pete turned away, shocked at his emotional response to the tears in her eyes. He wanted to pull her into his arms, tell her everything was going to be okay and kiss her until her hands shook for an entirely different reason. He wanted to tell her he’d take care of her, protect her.

But he couldn’t tell her that, and he certainly couldn’t protect her without her cooperation.

Annie took the opportunity to move around to the other side of her desk and sit down. She wished that Taylor would leave her alone. God, wasn’t it bad enough that she’d been subjected to that obscene phone call? She wanted to forget about it. The thought of having to tell him exactly what that creep had said to her made her cheeks burn.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Taylor pull up a chair across from her desk. He sat down, then looked over her head, across the room to where Cara sat. Annie glanced at her friend, who was watching them both with unabashed interest.

“Would you mind…?” Pete said to Cara.

Cara stood up uncertainly.

“Set up the final test for that copper bowl, please, MacLeish,” Annie said. “I’ll be out in the lab in a minute.”

Cara hated being left out of anything, but she went out of the office. Pete stood up and closed the office door behind her.

Annie looked up at him as he sat back down across from her. To her surprise, his eyes were soft, kind even.

“The reason I wanted to record this call,” he said quietly, “was to help us track the caller. And I’m not just talking about locating him—most of these people call from public telephones, so that doesn’t do much good. But the FBI can use their computers and try to match phrasing or word choice or even sentence structure, in the event that this is a repeat pattern offender.” He pushed the pad and pen toward her. “And that’s why I need to know what he said to you. As exactly as you can remember. Maybe it would be easier for you to write it down.”

For a long time she didn’t move. She just stared at him. Then, suddenly, she picked up the pen and paper and began to write.

Pete sat back in his chair, watching her.

Sunlight was streaming in the window, and it lit her from behind, creating an auralike glow around her. Pete remembered the words he had overheard her saying to Cara. He distracted her. He distracted her? Not half as much as she distracted him, he was willing to bet.

He was carrying around this tight feeling of need all the time now, Pete realized. It no longer was triggered only by her quick smile, or her walk, or her low, sexy laugh. All he had to do was see her…. Man, all he had to do was think about her and, whammo, he wanted her. And when he wasn’t with her, he sure as hell was thinking about her…. This could turn out to be one hell of an uncomfortable two months.

Annie finished writing, put the pen down on top of the paper and stood up. “I’ll be in the lab,” she said shortly and left the room.

“Thanks,” Pete called after her.

She didn’t respond.

He reached across the desk and picked up the pad she’d written on. As he read the words that the phone caller had said to her, his jaw tightened. The threats had a horrific, nightmarish quality to them. They were all violently sexual and graphically explicit.

He read it over and over, each time his sense of uneasiness growing. It was entirely possible that these were not idle threats meant only to frighten Annie. It was entirely possible that her life really was in danger.

He reached for the telephone and dialed Whitley Scott’s number.

“ONE OF US HAS TO RUN OUT to the airport,” Cara said to Annie as they finished up the test on the copper bowl. “We’ve got that package from France coming in.”

Annie looked at her blankly.

“Remember, the package coming in to Westchester Airport?” Cara said. “The job you aren’t going to get to for a decade? Subject of a conversation we had two days ago?”

“Right, right,” Annie said. She had put her hair back into a ponytail while they were working, but now she pulled it free, and it swung down around her shoulders. She sat down on one of the wooden stools that were scattered throughout the lab. “MacLeish, when’s the last time we took a vacation?”

Cara pushed her glasses up higher on her nose and frowned. “You mean, like a trip to Easter Island and two weeks of crashing through the underbrush and staring at giant rock heads from some distant, ancient culture? Or are you talking about Thanksgiving at the parents’ house? Or do you mean Club Med—lying on the beach in bikinis while handsome men bring us daiquiris and margaritas?”

“I mean Club Med. I definitely mean Club Med.”

Cara chewed her lip as she thought hard. “I’ve worked for you for…how long now?”

“Forever,” Annie answered.

“Right. And the last time we took a vacation was…Never?”

“That decides it,” Annie said. “We need a vacation. When we’re through with what we’ve got—when’s that gonna be?”

Cara shrugged. “End of December, beginning of January?”

“We’re taking January off,” Annie said. “Don’t accept any more work unless the clients can wait until February for us to start the project.”

“Thank you, Lord,” Cara said to the ceiling. “Club Med, here we come! Bless you, master!”

Annie stood up. “Back to work, slave,” she said. “I’m heading for the airport.”

She quickly ran upstairs and grabbed her jacket and car keys. “See you later,” she called out to Cara as she ran lightly down the stairs.

Outside, the air was crisp and cold, and she buttoned her jacket, thinking it was time to dig her scarf out of her closet—

Pete Taylor was standing next to her car.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

She looked at him blankly.

“I’m your bodyguard,” he said patiently. “That means when you go someplace, I go, too.”

Annie closed her eyes. Please, God, she thought, when I open my eyes, make him be gone. Make this all just be a bad dream….

He was still there. Damn, damn, damn.

“I’ll drive if you want,” he said.