Operation: Reunited. Linda Johnston O.
he was looking at her, not the lake.
Alexa pretended not to notice. “Yes, it is.”
Her blessed solitude had been abruptly terminated. But to her surprise, she didn’t mind.
He joined her at the rail, clasping his hands together and leaning on his arms. She was aware of his closeness. The warmth from his body radiated toward her—or was it her own sexual awareness of this gorgeous, sensual man that caused her to burn?
She was also aware of how he stared deeply into the darkness, as if trying to see into the myriad shadows between the trees and the house. What was he looking for?
“You can’t sleep?” he asked without looking at her. Another of his many questions.
She shook her head. “I’ve a lot on my mind. And you?”
“The same.” He glanced at her, but only momentarily. “I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours.”
“Tell you what?” She felt suddenly jittery. What did he want to know? And why did he stare at the neighborhood like that, as if expecting to see something that didn’t belong?
“Whatever’s keeping you awake.”
She made herself laugh. Attempting to regain the teasing familiarity they had shared as they had worked on the dinner dishes, she answered flippantly, “A guilty conscience.”
John turned to her so abruptly that she took a step backward, her hands up for protection. In the faint light from the neighboring properties, she had no trouble making out the sharpness to his glare.
“And just why would that be?” His wide lips softened just a bit at the edges, as if he struggled to smile, to soften the harshness of his question.
Her attempt at levity so obviously unsuccessful, Alexa shrugged beneath her robe. She lowered her hands and looked out again over the shimmering water of the lake. “Just a figure of speech,” she replied softly.
Why had he gotten so upset?
John suddenly grasped Alexa’s arms, turning her to face him. His grip was firm, insistent, just short of hurting her. His hands released her quickly, but his gaze didn’t. His eyes seemed to glow in the faint light on the balcony, as if they had a source of illumination of their own.
“Alexa,” he said in a surprisingly soft and sympathetic voice, “I…I sense something here. Something not quite right. If you’d like to talk about it, I’m a good listener.”
“You’re imagining things,” she said quickly.
“Am I?”
For a brief, crazy moment, she considered blurting out everything. What had happened two years ago. How the terrors of the past had somehow been resurrected right here, at the haven she had turned to in an attempt to put it all behind her.
How she feared what Vane was up to. How alone she felt, how responsible and scared.
How badly she missed Cole Rappaport.
She bit her bottom lip to prevent it all from spilling from her. She looked up into John’s curious and kind gaze.
He was a salesman. A people person. He seemed outgoing, yet full of empathy.
Could he help her?
No, shouted a voice inside her. You’re still mistaking him for Cole. He’s not here to save you.
You have to do that yourself.
She was alone here, in the midst of all these people. And she didn’t dare forget it.
“There’s nothing,” Alexa said firmly, though she glanced away from the inquisitiveness and sympathy in John’s eyes. “Nothing at all.”
“If you change your mind,” John said, “all you have to do is—”
“Alexa!”
She turned to the glass door to the house. It slid open, and Vane stood there, fully dressed, as if he had been out somewhere.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, his tone almost accusatory.
“Sorry,” she said. She glanced toward John, intending it to be firm but apologetic. Hoping, for her own sake, to see in his continued stare the sympathy she had noticed before.
Instead, his glare had turned furious. But why? Alexa shivered as she turned to accompany her fiancé back into the house, but it wasn’t the night air that chilled her.
Chapter Four
Cole got out of his borrowed car and stretched his jeans-clad legs.
The area around Skytop Lake lived up to its name today. It was August, well into summer, and the mountaintop community that extended high into the air was baked by the brilliant sun.
Resting one arm, bare beneath his T-shirt, against the vehicle’s roof, Cole squinted, using the opportunity to glance around the Skytop Lake Village shopping center—including the entrances to the blacktop parking lot.
He recognized no one, saw no familiar vehicles. Good. That was no guarantee he hadn’t been noticed, that he wasn’t being followed, but he would remain alert.
He glanced at the calm, sparkling lake, visible between buildings, then entered the convenience store where he’d checked out the pay phone the day before. Its air-conditioning was working overtime so the entire store seemed as cool as the inside of the glass-fronted refrigeration units lining the walls. The place was nearly empty, and the phone was not in use. This must be his lucky day.
He made a skeptical noise that only he, and not the long-haired teenage girl behind the register, could hear. Luck? He had run out of it at least two years earlier. Now, he operated on instinct and wiles.
He shunned all feeling. Feeling meant pain.
Pain for the loss of the man he had once considered a brother: Vane.
Pain at seeing Alexa again. Knowing what she was. Wanting her, anyway, with a deep, gut-wrenching desire.
He strode single-mindedly toward the pay phone, punched in the numbers for his credit card and waited.
“Bowman.”
“It’s me, Forbes. I’m on a pay phone—not secure, but unlikely to be tapped.”
“Good. What have you found out?”
Cole could picture his friend and mentor sitting at his desk in his office in Washington, D.C.
Not the Pentagon, though their elite counterterrorist detachment had evolved as a Special Forces Unit that incorporated agents from all military branches. It was smaller, sleeker and more secretive than the elusive Delta Force, with the mission of infiltrating terrorist groups to terminate them. Despite being military, its members were constantly so far undercover that they seldom wore uniforms.
They called their group, simply, the Unit.
Forbes had insisted on a small, inconspicuous rented office for the Unit along E Street, between the areas that housed the FBI and the White House. “The better to keep us humble and alert,” Forbes had said when he had first shown it to Cole.
“I haven’t found out much yet,” Cole replied now to his boss’s question. “I’m still getting the layout of the place. The inn is fairly small. I’ll need to hack into the computer to get information about the guests, but I suspect it’s all a cover, anyway.”
“How many are there?” Forbes’s voice was gruff and in-your-face, as always. Cole’s silver-haired mentor was nearing retirement age, though he was likely to be hauled from the Unit screaming and kicking—using the most injurious of self-defense maneuvers. As old as he was, he would do damage to guys much younger. Forbes was a large man—nobody’s fool, nobody’s wimp.
“Sixteen, I think,” Cole said. “At least, that’s how many appeared