Going Dark Read online

  She should stick to her type: intellectual, cultured, and not so brutally masculine. A little more passive. Beta with a capital B. If a little voice pointed out that that hadn’t exactly worked out for her lately, she pushed it aside.

  She wasn’t going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as her stepfather liked to say. Just because Julien had turned out to be a dud didn’t mean the next guy would be. She wasn’t going to change what she knew was best for herself because she’d had great sex.

  Discovering Dan’s Special Forces past had only solidified things in her mind. Their attraction had been off the charts, but now that they’d given in to it, they could move on. She could stop thinking about it.

  Which was easier said than done. Knowing what it was like was much worse than speculating about what it would be like.

  A SEAL . . . She shook her head. Just perfect.

  She had a little more time—the computer terminal slots were for fifteen minutes—so she searched for news of the murders. Most of the stories were versions of a short Reuters article, but there was a longer, more detailed one from the local paper on Lewis.

  She gasped, seeing a picture of herself staring back at her from the screen—she definitely needed a new passport picture—along with pictures of Jean Paul, Julien, and Claude. Even though she’d known it was Jean Paul who’d killed the others, seeing the picture of him in the hospital room in Stornoway made her sad all over again. Poor Julien and Claude.

  She read through the story quickly, seeing there wasn’t much new information but distressed to read that they’d tried to contact her mother. She logged in to her e-mail and thought about sending her a message, but something held her back. Or rather, someone.

  Whatever Dan was involved with, it was serious, and she didn’t want to do anything that would put him in jeopardy after everything he’d done for her. He’d been adamant about the need for secrecy. She would explain everything to her mom in a few days when this was all over. She hoped.

  She scrolled down over four days’ worth of e-mail—she hadn’t been checking regularly on Lewis—and stopped when she saw the header from her bank.

  After the credit card problem, she’d put a Fraud Alert on her credit file. Opening the e-mail, she realized it didn’t have anything to do with that. Apparently someone had tried to access her bank account from a different computer. It was dated a couple of days ago. Could it have been Julien?

  She didn’t know, but she felt the stab of betrayal all over again.

  God, how had she not seen it?

  Just in case it had been someone else, she went ahead and changed the password after verifying the library computer with her security questions.

  Her time was up and someone was waiting, so she quickly cleared her browsing history and logged off.

  Thanking the librarian for the dictionary and the book, Annie walked back to the guest house. Now that she had her answers, she was more anxious than ever for this nightmare to be over. She wanted to go home and put it all behind her: Julien; Jean Paul; ecoterrorist plots to blow up drillships; murder charges; and too-sexy, Navy SEAL, Texan ship captains who spoke in hard truths and made her weak. While she still could.

  Twenty-three

  Dean spent the morning in the water, doing his best to put what had happened earlier out of his mind.

  It was easy to see why Tiree was such a popular place for windsurfers. The combination of white sand beaches, temperate weather, consistent waves, and prevailing westerlies made it ideal. He and his rented board had cut across the waves for hours.

  It was exhilarating, exhausting, and exactly what he needed. He felt a shitload better dragging the board out of the water than he had going in.

  Shaking the water from his hair, he thanked the kid working at the rental hut and retrieved the towel he’d borrowed from the guest house to dry off his chest and back as he walked up the beach.

  He was about halfway up when he stopped dead in his tracks.

  Ah, hell. The blood drained from his body, and whatever clarity of mind the time on the water had brought him was gone in the instant it had taken him to see Annie standing there in a bikini. As there wasn’t much of it, it didn’t take long.

  He gritted his teeth, trying not to look—stare—but Christ Almighty, it wasn’t fair. The small triangles of silky fabric that covered her breasts didn’t leave much to the imagination, revealing the perfectly round shape of the youthful flesh underneath. She was long and lean with the lithe muscles of a dancer and legs that went on—and on.

  Shit, stop staring. But a flat stomach, gently curved hips, and all that cocoa-buttery tanned skin were impossible to turn away from.

  He hadn’t exactly been in the best position to get a full look at her this morning, but all the details had just been filled in perfectly.

  He’d been right. She had a killer body. More swimsuit magazine than PhD scientist, but damn . . .

  “Is there anything you can’t do?”

  Her question snapped him out of his lust-induced daze. But his synapses weren’t firing all that quickly, and it took him a moment to realize what she meant.

  She’d been watching him windsurfing.

  He shrugged, oddly embarrassed. He didn’t believe in false modesty, but her obvious admiration made him uncomfortable. Maybe because he liked it. Usually he didn’t care.

  When he didn’t answer, she added, “I thought you were going to wipe out on that big wave at the end. You must have been five feet in the air.”

  More like ten, but who was counting?

  She was shielding her eyes against the sun with her hand, but for some reason he didn’t think he was the only one staring. She was looking at his chest. He could feel her eyes on him, and it was making him crazy. And hot.

  As his low-hung board shorts weren’t going to leave much to the imagination, either, he tore his eyes away.

  He noticed a couple of twentysomething surfers sitting nearby and obviously checking her out. His muscles flared a little as he gave them a stare that suggested—rather forcefully—that they think again. They didn’t quite run away, but they weren’t staring any longer.

  The unwelcome (and uncharacteristic) possessiveness made his reply come off a little sharper than he intended. “What are you doing here, Annie?”

  She dropped her hand and pointed to the spread-out towel that he hadn’t noticed a few feet away. “I was reading. I didn’t know this was the same beach you’d gone to until I realized the rainbow sail guy was you.” She lifted an eyebrow. “I thought real men didn’t do pink.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I figured one stripe wouldn’t do too much lasting damage.” He gave her a long look. “And I’m reconsidering. I think pink might be my new favorite color.”

  The drawl was natural; the flirtatiousness was not. But she brought out all kinds of weird shit in him.

  She blushed adorably, obviously embarrassed by his appreciation for her bathing suit, but pleased as well.

  Remembering that this—them—wasn’t a good idea, he glanced over at the open book resting cover side up on the towel. “That’s a good book. Where did you find it?”

  “The library.” She reached down to pick up another one that had been tucked under a bag that must have held her lunch. “I also picked up this.”

  It was a Portuguese-to-English dictionary. There was a triumphant grin on her face that told him she’d guessed his motive. He wouldn’t apologize, though. He was just trying to be careful. He didn’t want her to slip. “Annie . . .”

  She waved off his concern. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to blow our cover. It still won’t be easy to talk to people, and it forces me to think before I speak. But you can’t expect me not to talk to anyone for days. Speaking of . . . did you get ahold of the person who might be able to help us?”

  “Tired of me already?”