*
Jackson was watching his windshield wipers make fan patterns as they swept the snow from side to side on his windshield and feeling pretty good around himself. He’d seen a few wrecks since he’d gotten on the road. But his vehicle was equipped to deal with snow and ice. Nasty night. Not a good night for man nor beast. But he was FBI. The post office had nothing on an FBI agent on the job.
The chime of his cell phone lit up the panel on his four-wheel-drive vehicle.
“Jackson.”
“Glaser hasn’t called back in, sir.”
Jackson gripped his steering wheel. Maybe the shit had hit the fan. “How far out are the people on their way down here?”
“That’ll be difficult to ascertain. A major pileup at the intersection of Interstates 64 and 81 has all area roads backed up for miles.”
“Find a way to scramble them. I got a bad feeling about tonight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“David!”
Yardley turned and tried to push past Kye.
He didn’t yield. He gripped her shoulders and pushed her back into the darkest corner against the wall, holding her there with the weight of his body.
Her hands came up, palms braced against his chest as she pushed, her voice adamant. “Let go of me, dammit.”
“No. Yard. Think.” Kye spoke quietly, a tone at odds with the thunder of his heart under her right palm. But he knew the best way to manage fear was to slow things down. Think and act methodically. “Where’s your gun?”
He couldn’t see her face but he felt her stop struggling. “David has it.”
“Okay. Good.” Kye was thinking as fast as he could. So far, no more sounds. That was neither good nor bad. Just knowledge. “Maybe David was scaring off an intruder.”
“He’s so weak.”
“He’s tougher than you think. He got this far, didn’t he?” Strangely, he meant those words. It didn’t make him like the man any better but he did respect him. He was beginning to understand why Yard chose him in the first place.
He heard Yardley draw in a long breath. Felt her shudder and then release it. She was trying to get command of her nerves. “What about Lily?” She was whispering but it sounded to his ears like a shout. “Oh, Kye, do you think she was shot?”
“No.” He struck away the image of Lily being wounded. “More likely she’s under a bed upstairs.” The gunshot alone would have been enough to frighten her into emitting those cries. She was trained to track and save, not to hunt. Without her handler to reassure her, she would be confused and worried. When anxious, a toller hid.
“David’s protected and Lily can take care of herself. We need a plan before—” He swallowed the last of the sentence. Before he moved one step back toward the house. He didn’t want her anywhere near the fight to come, whatever shape it took.
She stiffened. “Where’s Oleg?”
That was a good question. One that Kye had been considering when he’d gone out the back door of the house. The self-starter Czech wolfdog might not separate friend from foe, or even care, if he was frightened or “self-deployed.” So far the K-9 had been lying low, for what purpose Kye couldn’t begin to guess. But he was out there, in the mix, somewhere.
“Would he track an intruder, Yard?”
“If he’d picked up on my anxiety about him, certainly. On yours? I don’t know.”
Kye thought about that. He and the wolfdog hadn’t exactly come to a meeting of the minds. But Kye had been sweating bullets once he saw the footprints in the snow. And Oleg had been right there beside him, staring at something even before that. Now that he thought about it, the trained K-9 had seemingly divided his attention between two points in the distance. Maybe Purdy had brought more than one snake to the hunt.
From far away a sound broke the silence, something between a grunt and a groan.
“Kye?” Yardley twisted against him, trying to free herself from his grip.
“Shh.” He leaned harder against her, stilling her urge to push him away. It wasn’t exactly the best time to notice things like her chest rising and falling rapidly under the pressure of his. The last time they’d made contact like this, there were no clothes between them. Just her lush soft skin on his.
His dick stirred. No. Not the right time at all. Next time. If there was a next time.
He levered away from her and dropped his hands. “Go and open the ordnance room. Bring me half a dozen flash bangs. Then we’ll take the fight to them.”
“Them?”
He could feel her breath on his face. And for the life of him, despite the danger and thrill of the fight rising in him, all he wanted to do was kiss her.
Reward for deeds done.
So far, he’d earned nada.