chapter Three
Jenna clutched Gavin to her body as the car seemed to leap from the road. Any second she expected bullets to shatter the back window.
“What’s going on? Are they coming after us?”
“Keep down.”
The car took a curve and it felt as if it were balancing on two wheels. “My God, what kind of car is this, the Bat Mobile?”
“Close. It’s designed to outrun any cop car in the nation.”
“And is it fulfilling its promise?”
“Just about.”
Jenna strained her ears but couldn’t detect the sound of a siren over the roar of the car’s engine. “Are they after us?”
“Sort of.”
“Why would they be looking for me?”
“You sure ask a lot of questions. I’m in the middle of a car chase here.”
“Should’ve asked a few more questions in Vegas.”
“We got this. Although they’ll probably call ahead for backup, so we’re going to have to ditch the car.”
“Now?”
“Not right this minute. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? You’re kidding, right?”
The car turned off the highway, and Jenna lifted a corner of the blanket. The lights of the highway had disappeared and the car skimmed through the darkness.
“Where are we going, Cade?”
“An abandoned warehouse. The car will fit and no one will be the wiser, especially those cops I just left in my dust.”
“We’re spending the night in an abandoned warehouse?” She threw off the blanket and pulled Gavin back onto the seat. How he’d slept through the Bat Mobile’s flight over a barely paved road, she had no idea.
“Would you rather be in a jail cell with no protection?”
She would’ve scoffed at the notion that she had no protection in a cell at the police station, but she knew Cade’s foes better than that. They’d probably been the ones who’d notified the police to look out for a woman and child in connection with Marti’s murder.
She peeked out the window at the black night. The stars sparkled in the clear sky, but the sliver of moon cast only a stingy glow on the snow.
The stealth car cruised down the unplowed road, its back end fishtailing here and there when it hit a patch of ice it couldn’t handle.
A hulking shape loomed ahead, and Jenna shivered instinctively. It wasn’t exactly the Hotel del Coronado, where she and Cade had spent one glorious, sun-washed weekend.
The car jerked to a stop and Cade rocketed from the front seat, clutching his gun in one hand and a set of keys in the other.
He unlocked the front door of the warehouse and rolled it open as it squealed in protest. He slid back into the car and eased it through the gaping entrance. Then he made a U-turn and parked the car facing the doorway. Ready for blast-off.
Jenna scooted out of the car and hugged her new jacket around her body. “Why did you happen to have a key to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Lovett Peak?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Oops, I forgot.” She hunched her shoulders. “It’s freezing in here.”
“I’ll get the heat going in the car, and I have a second blanket in the trunk along with some water and snacks.”
“Is being a spy sort of like being a Boy Scout? You’re always prepared?”
“Something like that.” A grin split his impossibly handsome face, a face she’d never been able to vanquish from her mind. “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“You think I’m joking?” She shook her head, but the truth had slapped her in the face like a snowball. She hadn’t felt this alive in three years. Even before Cade had been recruited for Prospero, his crooked smile and flashing dark eyes had spelled danger and she’d fallen hook, line and sinker.
Her wealthy parents had spoiled her, with stuff not attention, and she’d spent her childhood and teenage years acting out, trying to get them to react. They never did.
But she wasn’t a spoiled, flighty girl anymore. She had Gavin, and she couldn’t afford to live dangerously...or any more dangerously than she’d already been living.
Cade crouched by the open door and tucked the blanket around Gavin. “I can’t believe he slept through that.”
“He’s accustomed to upset and upheaval.” A second later she felt a stab of regret at her words and tone, as Cade’s face, full of wonder over his son, darkened and creased.
“It’s no way for a kid to live. He needs stability and Little League games and a best friend.”
“Are you going to tell me why we’re in danger now? More danger? You owe me that much, Cade.”
Cade squeezed his eyes closed and pinched the bridge of his nose, looking older than his twenty-nine years. “They think I have something, Jenna, but I don’t.”
She squeezed past him and sat on the backseat, her legs dangling out of the car. “Who are they, Cade?”
He shrugged as if the they didn’t matter. “An arms dealer named Nico Zendaris—the same man who put a target on my back after my first mission with Prospero. A band of engineers from nations hostile to the United States got together and developed something that’s very bad news for us. Zendaris laid claim to the plans for the weapon’s prototype and now those plans are missing. Zendaris thinks I have them.”
“What are the plans for?”
“I’ve told you too much already.”
She’d get that out of him later. “Why does this arms dealer think you have the plans?”
“Because I did have them.”
She pressed her hands against her bouncing knees. “What happened to them?”
“Someone stole them.”
“And he doesn’t believe you?”
“Not a chance.”
“He will when the person who stole them makes a move. The thief stole them for a reason—money, power, influence. He’s going to tip his hand soon.”
“But right now it’s better for that person to let everyone believe I still have those plans.”
“And now Zendaris knows about Gavin.”
“That’s right.”
“He’s leverage, isn’t he? I’m fairly dispensable, but if they get their hands on your son, they have you right where they want you.”
“I wouldn’t call you dispensable, Jenna.” He brushed her cheek with his knuckle and she shivered for a different reason than the chill in the warehouse. “Unfortunately, I can’t give them what they want.”
She snorted. “You wouldn’t even if you could.”
“I’d do anything for Gavin.” He tweaked the blanket around his son’s legs. “I gave him up to keep him safe.”
“You wouldn’t give up your job for the same reason.”
Cade clenched his jaw and the easygoing man she’d fallen in love with in San Diego morphed into the tough-as-nails Navy SEAL she’d caught rare glimpses of once they’d gotten married.
Had she pushed him too far?
He shoved away from the car and the cold air rushed in. Despite what her mind screamed, her body craved the warmth of his touch, his nearness, his protection. Because she was tired of doing it all on her own.
The car bounced as Cade opened the trunk. He strode back to the gaping door and dropped a blanket into her lap. “You two huddle up back here. I’ll run the car intermittently. Don’t want to die of carbon monoxide poisoning in an abandoned warehouse.”
And just like that, the precariousness of their situation stabbed Jenna right through the heart.
“What about you?”
“I’m good up front.” He slammed her door and crawled into the driver’s seat. Thrusting the second blanket between the two front seats, she said, “You can have this. Gavin and I can share, and we have body heat to warm us up.”
Cade’s dark eyes glittered, sending butterflies to her belly and warmth to her cheeks. Just mentioning body heat had them both thinking about the warm summer days in Coronado when they’d made love on the beach, in their private hot tub and in an intentionally stalled elevator.
“Keep it.” He turned on the lights over the rearview mirror, placed his weapon on the console and dragged a crumpled magazine from beneath the front passenger seat.
Okay, maybe she was the only one thinking about those warm summer days.
Sighing, she pushed her new brown hair out of her face and curled up next to Gavin, pulling the extra blanket over both of them. She’d never get to sleep with her husband flipping pages of a magazine two feet away from her.
She shifted Gavin’s head onto her chest and dabbed at a line of drool on his cheek. Yanking the blanket over her shoulder, she rested her chin on top of Gavin’s bristly hair and closed her eyes.
She couldn’t sleep but drifted into a land of daydreams where she, her husband and her son lived in a small house with a white picket fence and a dog stationed in the front yard. A smile played across her lips as she indulged in the impossible scenario.
Just as she began to think she might actually doze off, sedated by happy, if unlikely, dreams, a loud thwacking noise had her bolting to an upright position.
“What the hell is that?”
Cade tossed his magazine to the floor of the car and grabbed his gun from the console. He aimed the barrel at the roof of the car and grimaced.
“It’s a helicopter...and we’ve got company.”