Shadow, p.10
Shadow, page 10
part #6 of Linear Tactical Series
“Oh šūdas.” Her word—Lithuanian—came in a gasp when he hiked up her knee allowing him to go deeper. “I have to let go of the headboard. Please.”
“Yes. Do it. Hold on to me.”
Her hands flew off the headboard, one hand pulling at his shoulder, the other threading into his hair. He withdrew almost completely then slammed back inside her, a groan escaping from his throat.
He picked up the pace, lifting her thigh higher, opening her to him farther. He couldn’t hold back his groan as he thrust in to the hilt, over and over, continuing to move until her soft cries became more like keens.
But it was her delicate, soft smile when he lifted his head and looked down at her that sent streaks of heat spiraling through him—driving him way too fast towards his own release.
“So damn beautiful.”
Sometimes only English would do.
Chapter Twelve
Heath woke up the next morning, a luscious, sleeping Lyn in his arms. He’d been prepared to feel some guilt over his complete lack of control. But honestly, he didn’t.
Because hell, what was Craig going to do, fire him?
It wouldn’t have made a difference even if this were Heath’s official job. There was no way he was going to stay away from Lyn. Not after last night.
At least he didn’t have to keep secrets from her anymore. Craig had been on his ass from the beginning to get this done as soon as possible. Now there was nothing Heath wanted more.
Last night changed things. He wanted to get to know this woman better without anything hanging over their heads. Oak Creek wasn’t so far from Reddington City that they couldn’t make something work.
She stretched up against him and yawned. His body got hard again like they hadn’t already had sex three times in the past twelve hours.
“I can almost hear you thinking over there. Is it the case?”
“It was until somebody started stretching like a little sexy kitten on top of me.”
She kissed his chest and stretched again. “Nobody’s ever called me a kitten before and definitely not a sexy one.”
“And you hang out with all these PhD-type people? Just goes to show that book smarts aren’t everything.”
“I’m going to take a shower. Want to join me?”
“Uh, hell yes—”
His phone chimed. He looked over and saw it was Craig. “Crap. I really need to take this.”
She didn’t seem fazed at all. “No problem. Rain check. I’ll go ahead and take the shower so you can talk freely.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her naked form as she crossed the room. Might not have been able to if someone had a gun to his head. He brought the phone to his ear without taking his eyes off her.
“Hey, Craig.”
“I’m just now getting back to my office after keeping the forensic team at Ms. Norris’s apartment all night. They’re quite sure they’ve never gotten so much overtime for what seems like an ordinary break-in.”
“Sorry for your late night. Find anything?”
“Not at the townhouse. We’ve got a usable print from the break room that I’m running now. It’ll take a few hours.”
Heath sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “The bigger question is why are they after Lyn? I could understand how the perp possibly grabbed the wrong person at the college, but ransacking an entire house? That takes time. You would make sure you have the right person’s house first.”
“Believe me, as soon as I get a cup of coffee in my system, I’m going to find out everything there is to know about Lyn Norris. Until then, we probably need to put some sort of protection detail on her.”
“That’s not currently necessary.”
“I disagree. Whether they’re mistaking her or not, she’s still in danger.”
Heath let out a sigh. “No, I mean it’s not necessary to put someone on her. I’ve already got that handled.”
A long silence. “You and I have completely different definitions of stay away from her.”
Heath chuckled. “I know. But I wasn’t leaving her alone. You would’ve done the same thing.” Well, hopefully not the exact same thing.
“Fine. Keep her stashed somewhere safe until we have a plan in place. Definitely don’t let her go back to the school. Her townhouse has been cleared, but she probably shouldn’t go there alone either.”
“Roger that. Safest place for her right now is right where she’s at.” Maybe not right where she was at, given that he was about to go molest her in the shower.
“You’re lucky you can’t be fired, Kavanaugh.”
Heath chuckled again. “I was thinking that exact thing earlier.”
“I’ll contact you with any interesting results of my search. Hopefully, Troy Powell will wake up today and give us some sort of lead.”
“Treat yourself to some real coffee, Craig. I’m buying.”
Craig muttered profanities—in boring old English—as he disconnected the call.
Heath stood, about to walk to the shower, when from the other bedside table Lyn’s phone played the Mission: Impossible theme. He chuckled, remembering her comment about watching the movie so many times growing up. She walked out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and smiled at him as he picked up the phone to hand it to her.
And saw Gavin’s face on the screen.
“Do you know Gavin Zimmerman?” The Mission: Impossible theme continued.
She rolled her eyes. “Do you?”
Heath nodded slowly and she continued, “Is it because he’s the acting sheriff of Oak Creek? Or did you do some sort of training at Linear Tactical for the FBI? They do that stuff all the time. He’s my brother.”
She took the phone from him and walked back into the bathroom, already talking.
To her brother.
Gavin was her brother.
Heath had spent half the night making love to one of his best friends’ little sister.
No, that couldn’t be right. Gavin’s sister’s name was Jackie or something like that. And her last name would be Zimmerman, not Norris. He must have misunderstood.
His phone chirped in his hand, and he looked down to see an email from Craig.
You are right. Don’t have to worry about Ms. Norris being one of the bad guys. Thanks for the coffee offer, this was much better.
He opened the attachment to find the brief on Lyn.
The first few lines confirmed everything he needed to know. He was going to get his ass kicked.
Jacquelyn Norris-Zimmerman. Known aliases: Jackie Zimmerman, Lyn Norris.
Keppima. Ficken. Jebati. Tā mā de. Faen. He didn’t need Lyn—Jackie, Jacquelyn—here to give him any curse words. He was so, so, so, so, so screwed.
What was he going to do?
His phone chimed again, and he almost dropped it like it would burn him.
It was Noah this time.
Lyn’s cousin, for crying out loud. Another person who was going to kill Heath.
Powell is awake. I think you should get over here and talk to him right away.
Heath could hear Lyn having some sort of heated discussion with Gavin in the bathroom.
Settling this, explaining this to Lyn, was going to take more time than he could give right now. If Powell knew something, and there was some sort of sale about to happen, time could be critical.
Lyn stormed out of the bathroom and threw her phone on the bed. “My brother pisses the hell out of me sometimes. Most of the time, actually.”
Heath had no idea how to handle this. “Did he hear about your townhouse?”
“No, thank God, or he’d already be here. This was just his weekly”—she dropped her voice two octaves to do an impression of Gavin—“ ‘there are bad people in the world and don’t forget to take your medicine’ call.”
“Your anxiety medicine?” No, Gavin had said something else about her, but Heath couldn’t remember what.
Lyn pulled on her clothes. “No, I have a heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. I take daily medication for it and sometimes have to take more if my heart is beating too fast.”
Oh God. “Crap, Lyn. We really need to talk.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I guess I should tell you that my full name is Jacquelyn. Most of my family calls me Jackie, although I prefer Lyn.” She walked over and stood up on her tiptoes, planting a brief kiss on his lips. “I wasn’t trying to keep secrets from you. And I guess I should tell you that my dad is the governor of Wyoming.”
Heath scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d known Gavin’s father was the governor, so, of course, yeah, that meant Lyn’s dad was too.
Dréckt. What a damned brouhaha.
He gave her the tiniest smile. “We really need to talk, but I can’t do it right this second. I’ve got to go to work.”
“Janitor work or other work?”
“Other work. Actually, I’m going to the hospital to question Troy Powell. He woke up this morning.”
He expected concern or even distress. What he didn’t expect was for Lyn to flush and turn away. “Oh.”
He had no right to know what that was all about, especially since she didn’t know he was a Linear Tactical employee and had known Gavin for years.
But fuck that. “Oh?”
She shrugged, pulling her shirt over her head. “It’s nothing.”
“Is there something between you two?”
“No.” She turned away, then sighed and turned back. “Really, no. It’s just, before you got to the restaurant on Thursday, Troy kissed me.”
Now it was Heath’s turn. “Oh.”
“But he didn’t kiss me because I wanted him to. He was acting all weird.”
She wasn’t telling him all of it. In light of everything he’d learned in the past five minutes, her kissing someone else shouldn’t even matter in the slightest.
And, yet . . . “I see. Did you like it? Is that what you’re all flushed about?”
“No!” The word squeaked out of her immediately. “I just . . .”
“Yes?”
She sighed. “I hadn’t been kissed in years and then was kissed by two men in the same night. Not my normal Thursday evening.”
Heath relaxed a little. She wasn’t interested in Powell, just a little overwhelmed by the attention. Still shouldn’t be important. But . . . it was.
He hooked an arm around her. “I’m amazed complete strangers aren’t coming up to kiss you all the time, as appealing as this mouth is.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
“You try to hide behind glasses and books, but it doesn’t take much to see how sexy you are. I think most men are intimidated.”
That adorable nose crinkled. “By me?”
He grinned. “By the fact that you can sometimes be so caught up in your books, or papers, or whatever you’re doing that you don’t even really see men who might be interested in you. You’re focused on other things. Competing with that concentration can be intimidating.”
“I saw you.”
“Thank goodness.” He pulled her closer. “We’ll continue this later, okay? I’ve got to deal with Powell first. And I’m glad you don’t like him. Because it looks like he’s probably one of the bad guys.”
“Really?”
“Unfortunately. Someone is setting up a sale of the microchip the bad guys keep thinking you have. Powell would be a good candidate.” Heath didn’t want to mention Veronica or Professor Hudson as suspects in case he was wrong.
“But someone attacked him.”
“And I’m about to find out why.”
She nodded. “I guess I should go home.”
“No, I think you should stay here. Nobody knows where I live, so you’ll be safe. And we really do need to talk when I get back.”
She gave him the sweetest smile that had him cursing the fact that he knew Gavin Zimmerman at all. “Hurry back.”
Chapter Thirteen
Heath shook Noah Dempsey’s hand outside of Powell’s hospital room.
“Good to see you again,” he said. “I appreciate you coming out to help. We need people we can trust.”
Noah didn’t look a lot like his cousin. Gavin had a more of lean swimmer’s build—quick and deadly— where Noah was more muscular. Gavin was darker, Noah more fair. But Noah definitely had the same awareness and heightened senses as the rest of the Linear Tactical team.
Noah had served in the Special Forces but had gotten out a few years ago. Heath knew the man struggled with PTSD, though not nearly as badly as Dorian, who had spent five weeks being tortured in Afghanistan. But Noah had his own demons.
Still, he could be trusted, and that’s what mattered.
“I’m glad to be here. I’ve been reading Franklin’s brief on what happened yesterday at WCU and the apartment break-in. Interesting stuff.”
“Yeah?”
Noah held up his phone so that Heath could see the picture on the screen.
Lyn.
Noah raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to assume none of my cousins know that Jackie was at the center of both incidents. If so, Gavin would already be here. Tristan and Andrew too, if they were in the country.”
Heath already knew Gavin was going to kick his ass when he found out what had happened with Lyn. He hoped he wouldn’t have to fight Noah too.
“I knew Gavin’s sister went to school here, but he told me she was a hospitality major. This person”—Heath tapped the phone screen—“who goes by the name Lyn Norris, with no Zimmerman anywhere in sight, is a linguistics doctoral student. I just found out she was related to you guys this morning.”
To his relief, Noah laughed. “Good for Jackie. Sometimes the only way to deal with Uncle Ronald is to go around him. Let everybody think she’s doing what they want when she really has her own plan. They never liked her studying linguistics, especially when she first started talking about traveling overseas for jobs.”
“Her whole family thinks she’s studying hospitality?” It made sense.
“Yup. She was smart to use her mom’s maiden name on her official school stuff. The Zimmerman name is too well known to get away with much. But is she okay? That shit had to have scared her.”
“Yes, actually, she’s at my place.”
Heath tried to keep his face neutral. The fact that it was early morning and Lyn was at his apartment didn’t necessarily mean something had gone on between them.
Noah wasn’t fooled for a second. He chuckled, shook his head and put his phone back in his pocket. “Gavin’s going to kill you.”
“It’s not like that.”
“You didn’t sleep with Jackie?”
Heath scrubbed a hand down his face. “I slept with Lyn Norris. Who I had no idea was related to Gavin in any way. Jesus, man, Gavin made her sound like she was one step above invalid.”
Lyn was very definitely not an invalid in any way. Heart condition, okay, maybe—which would explain the pills. They weren’t anxiety meds, but medication for her heart condition. But she definitely wasn’t anywhere near as frail as Gavin had made her sound.
“They’ve always been too protective of her. Gavin, the twins, her dad . . . none of them could see how much it was stifling her.” Noah shrugged. “Gavin’s still going to kill you though. Sorry, man.”
“She might kill me first. I only found out who she was two minutes before I walked out the door. Didn’t have time to explain that I worked for Linear Tactical or that her brother is one of my best friends. So, let’s talk to Powell and see if we can get any useful information so I can get back to Lyn.”
“The guy is definitely scared.” Noah reached for the door handle. “I talked with him for a minute, in case he woke up wanting to spill his guts. To be honest, I think he feels like he’s in over his head.”
Heath pitied the younger man. “Fine. Then I’ll get whatever info I can from him, and hopefully the bureau can help him get out.”
“I’ll stay out here and keep anyone else away.”
Heath nodded and entered the room. Powell, twenty-four years old and with a good future ahead of him until he’d gotten greedy with these buyers, looked much worse than the last time Heath had seen him on Wednesday.
Someone had done a number on him. No wonder he was scared.
One of his eyes was completely swollen shut, the other side of his face covered with scrapes from where he’d been held against some hard surface. One arm had been broken and rested in a cast.
Powell obviously wasn’t expecting Heath to walk through the hospital room door. And, because he hadn’t seen Heath in his street clothes on Thursday, Troy didn’t place him right away.
Heath walked over and stood silently beside Troy’s bed. “Do you know who I am?”
Despite the beating and the painkillers in Troy’s system, it didn’t take him long to place Heath. “Wait, aren’t you the janitor?”
“Among other things, yes.”
“You’re a cop.”
“I’m working with law enforcement. Yes.”
“When that other guy came in here, I thought he was just fishing for information. I didn’t think the cops were actually onto me.” Troy shifted and winced in pain. “I guess you know a lot more than I thought if you’ve been working undercover as the janitor.”
“We know you’re in way over your head. You need to tell me what you know and how deeply you’re involved. Let us help you.”
Troy looked away for a long moment before finally turning back to him. “Last year, when I finally was given full access in the lab, a man contacted me who wanted to know if I was interested in making a little side money.”
“Who?”
Troy shrugged, then winced. “I don’t know. We’ve only ever communicated via phone or email, never face-to-face.”
Heath wasn’t surprised. “What did he want you to do?”
“Nothing terrible. Bits of information here and there. Nothing that was of critical importance or top secret.”
“And you gave it to him?”
