Yankee in the wind, p.6
Yankee in the Wind, page 6
“I look ridiculous,” she complained.
“No, you don’t. You look like a wallflower. Nobody is gonna give you a second look, which is the point.”
Jack had changed his clothing too, and now looked like an accountant. He sported a pair of glasses with metal frames and had donned a wig of thinning hair that showed an overly high widow’s peak and a bald spot on top.
“How do I look?” he suddenly asked with a Midwestern accent.
“As ridiculous as I feel.”
“Well, then, your chariot awaits.”
He winked at her, and they got in the van. This time, Lilly sat in the front cabin with him. While Lilly had gotten changed, Jack had found the address where Dr. Amy Price worked.
“It’s almost evening,” Lilly said as they drove through a busy neighborhood. “What if that doctor isn’t at the morgue anymore?”
“I also found her home address.” He gave her a reassuring look.
After fifteen minutes, Jack turned into a parking garage that looked familiar.
“Isn’t that where you changed cars earlier?” she asked.
“Yes. We’ll leave the van here and take a different car.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little paranoid?”
“Paranoid kept me alive for the last three years.”
When they exited the van, Jack ushered her down the stairs a level farther below. There, he walked along the parked cars, looking at each of them.
“You don’t remember where you parked your car?” she asked.
He gave her a sideways glance. “Oh, I don’t have a car here.” Then he pointed to a rather dusty looking silver Honda. “That one will do. It looks like it’s been here forever. Nobody’s gonna miss it.”
She stared at him, shocked. “You’re gonna steal that car?”
“Of course not.”
Before she could sigh with relief, he added, “I’m just gonna borrow it.”
She watched, in equal parts shocked and impressed, as he skillfully broke into the car and then hotwired the engine. Moments later, they were leaving the garage in the borrowed Honda and heading for the morgue.
They were hitting rush hour traffic as they got closer. There was nothing they could do to go any faster. Lilly looked at the clock on the dashboard.
“We’re almost there,” Jack said.
Suddenly police sirens blared, and the cars behind them were making space, driving as close to the sidewalks as possible, so the police car could pass. Lilly’s heart beat into her throat.
“They found us because you stole a car,” Lilly said, panicked.
“Stay calm,” Jack said and looked into the rear-view mirror. “They’re not after us. There’s an ambulance following the police car. There must have been an accident.”
When both the police car and the ambulance passed them without stopping, Lilly’s heartbeat returned to normal. Shit, she wasn’t made for a life of crime.
A block before the morgue, a police car was blocking the street. Jack saw it and turned into the closest side street.
“We’ll have to walk from here,” he said and parked in the nearest parking spot he could find.
“Are you not worried about having to walk past the police?” Lilly asked.
“The police are the least of my worry. Just act normal.”
They exited the car and walked back to where the police were blocking the street that led to the Medical Examiner’s building. Lots of curious pedestrians were already flocking to the scene.
“Can you see what’s going on?” Lilly asked Jack, who was much taller than her.
“Looks like a pedestrian got hit by a car.” He reached for her hand. “Let’s get through here.”
Jack made his way through the crowd, Lilly following him closely. Lilly glanced to the street where the ambulance was parked and police officers cordoned off the scene.
They were only about fifty feet away from the entrance to the Medical Examiner’s building now. From there, people exited and ran out toward the ambulance.
Lilly could hear a woman cry out. “Oh, no! Amy!”
Jack suddenly stopped and looked over his shoulder at the person lying on the ground in the middle of the street. He pushed through the bystanders, still holding on to Lilly’s hand, until he reached the cordon. From there, Lilly could see that the person on the ground was a woman.
“What happened?” Jack asked somebody next to him.
“Hit ‘n run,” the man next to him said.
“Do you know who it is?”
“No idea. But I think she came out of the building behind us.”
Lilly froze. The building behind them was the Medical Examiner’s office.
“Let me through!” a woman called out from behind them, and pushed through the crowd, until she reached the cordon next to Lilly. “Oh my God! Amy!”
“Do you know her?” Lilly asked the tearful woman.
The woman sobbed. “It’s my colleague, Dr. Price. I saw it from my office window.” She let out a heart-rending sob. “The car didn’t even try to stop…”
Lilly looked back at the scene on the street, where a police officer put a sheet over the victim.
Dr. Amy Price was dead.
11
Jack knew immediately that Dr. Amy Price’s death was no accident or coincidence. Somebody had killed her so she wouldn’t reveal how Thomas Reed had really died. Whether Dr. Price had been complicit in Thomas’s death, or coerced into signing a death certificate with a fake cause of death, was immaterial. The result was the same: now only the killer knew how Thomas had died.
Jack drove Lilly back to the safe house, using the same precautions as before and wiping his and Lilly’s fingerprints from the borrowed car. Then Jack contacted Ace and Fox to update them on what had happened, and to ask them to review any traffic cameras in the vicinity of the Medical Examiner’s building to see if they would provide any leads on Dr. Price’s killer.
Then Jack drove back to the plaza where Lilly had nearly been killed. It was dark now, and quiet, though the police had cordoned off the area of the shooting. Jack didn’t approach but remained on the opposite side of the street, not wanting to be noticed. For what he needed to do, he didn’t need to be too close. He looked around and surveilled the area. There were no traffic cameras, although there were several security cameras at the entrances and exits of the Delta Labs building where Lilly worked. However, they were pointing too low, and if Jack’s assumptions were correct, the shooter had been aiming at Lilly from a higher perch.
Judging by the direction of the bullet, the shooter had been in an above-ground parking garage. Jack went to the garage and checked all five levels for any signs such as spent casings from the sniper’s rifle, but while he found imprints of a tripod on a ledge that had a clear view of the plaza, he found nothing else. The sniper had cleaned up. This was a bust.
It was past ten o’clock when he returned to the safe house. In the garage, he rid himself of his disguise then entered the house. Jack closed the door quietly. Only the lights from the kitchen illuminated the living room dimly. Lilly lay on the couch, now dressed in her own clothes again, sleeping. The wig and glasses lay on the coffee table, and the clothes that had turned her into a shapeless woman, were neatly folded on a chair.
He tread lightly and approached Lilly. There was a peaceful expression on her face, and it reminded him of the day when he’d snuck out of the hotel room, while she was still sleeping.
He reached for a blanket, and spread it over her, when she suddenly shrieked and sat up. Jack stepped back and raised his hands. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Her eyes focused on him. “No, no, it’s fine, I just… I’m just a little on edge.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t believe somebody killed that woman just so she couldn’t tell us how Thomas died.”
“I know. But the people after me and after all Stargate agents are unscrupulous.”
She reached for his hand and motioned him to sit next to her. “I can’t imagine how you and Thomas must have lived for the last three years. It’s not even been a day for me, and already I’m a nervous wreck.”
“Thomas and I were trained for this. You’re a civilian.”
“Still, no matter the training, I can’t imagine how the last three years must have been for you.”
He noticed the look she gave him. It was one of understanding. He held her gaze. “It’s been a lonely time, I admit.” When she seemed to move her head closer to his, he added, “And every day since that night, I regretted that I had to leave you. I missed you…”
“You broke my heart, Jack,” she murmured softly. “For a long time, I was so angry with you for leaving without a word…” She rubbed her fingertips over his cheek.
He took her hand and turned it so he could press a kiss into her palm. “I’m sorry that I hurt you. I wish it could have been different… but the visions I had, the things I saw, I needed to understand them, and Henry Sheppard gave me that. I was able to save lives, to prevent catastrophes because of what I saw. Had I not accepted Sheppard’s offer—”
She put her finger over his lips. “You don’t have to justify your decision. I understand now. I understand why you had to leave. I wish I’d known back then. It would still have broken my heart to let you go, but I wouldn’t have been angry with you.”
“Thank you,” he said, his heart warming with the knowledge that she was full of forgiveness. “Not a day went by where I didn’t think of you.” He pulled back, because the temptation to kiss her was growing too strong. “And as much as I wanted to be with you, I couldn’t ask you to live like this… on the run… always hiding. You have a life. A career. I couldn’t drag you into this.”
Lilly shook her head. “That was then. But now it’s different. I’m already in the middle of it. At least with you, I feel safe. I would be dead without you.”
She nudged closer, and Jack became more and more aware of the effect she had on him. Her nearness was fanning his desire for her, his need to have her beneath him, to feel her skin against his, her lips on his, his cock inside her.
“Lilly…” He dipped his head to hers. “You have to stop me, before it’s too late, because I can’t promise you anything. I can’t offer you the life you deserve.”
“I don’t care about that. I only care about you. About how you made me feel seven years ago. We had something. And I want it back. Please don’t deny me that. Jack…”
Lilly brushed her index finger over his lower lip. Her touch felt electrifying. His brain suddenly stopped working, and all he could think of was what her lips would taste like.
“I could never deny you anything,” he whispered against her lips before he captured them and kissed her.
She tasted sweet, and only now he took in her scent fully and realized that she’d taken a shower in his absence. Her mouth was warm and supple, but so very different from how she’d kissed him back seven years ago. The woman he held in his arms tonight was more demanding, not the almost timid girl he’d taken to his bed such a long time ago, but an experienced woman who knew what she wanted. He felt it with every fiber of his being, felt the passion and desire she now unleashed as if she’d stored it up for him all these years.
His own desire matched hers, because he too had felt something special back then. In truth, he’d been in love with her even before he’d ever met her. Thomas had talked so much about her during their deployments that he’d felt he knew her. He knew about her likes and dislikes, her compassion, and her dreams. Her dream of becoming a doctor and helping people, was one of the reasons he’d never tried to reconnect with her after he’d entered the CIA. She would have had to give it all up. For him. And he hadn’t wanted her to make that sacrifice. But circumstances had thrust them back together, and neither of them had a choice now. But he didn’t want to think of the difficulties that lay ahead.
He wanted to feel Lilly. With her in his arms, with her body pressed to his, he felt that the flame they’d ignited seven years earlier had never extinguished. It had burned beneath the surface for all those years. It flared up now and grew into a massive bonfire, one that could only be extinguished one way: by stoking it even higher.
Jack ripped his lips from hers. “Lilly…” He didn’t know what he wanted to say, because all he could think of was undressing her so he could feel her naked skin under his lips and hands.
“Take your clothes off,” Lilly demanded, her eyes locking with his.
“You first.” Jack started undressing her.
But she couldn’t be deterred. She opened the buttons of his dress shirt and ripped it open. When she put her hands on his chest, his heart seemed to go up in flames. He’d dreamed of her touch so many times in the past years without hope of ever having another chance at being with Lilly. He’d resigned himself to that fate. But now, he couldn’t accept it any longer. He needed her back in his life.
Jack pulled Lilly’s top over her head and tossed it on the coffee table. When his gaze fell onto the black lace bra she wore, his breath hitched. Her creamy flesh invited him to explore her. He dipped his head to her breasts, not giving her a chance to continue undressing him. He pressed kisses to the valley between her breasts, then cupped them with his hands, before sliding his thumbs underneath the fabric and caressing her nipples. They were hard little buds, responding to his touch.
Lilly gasped. “Jack…”
Impatiently, he pushed the straps aside so he could slide his hands fully beneath the cups of her bra, taking possession of her beautiful breasts. He kneaded them in his hands, loving the feel of making her moan with pleasure.
Lilly dropped her head back, surrendering to his touch, and he kissed her soft skin. The bra suddenly fell away, and Jack realized that Lilly had opened the clasp behind her back.
He pressed Lilly back so she came to lie on the sofa, then reached for her skirt, opened the zipper and pulled it off her. She wore only a pair of tiny panties. Lilly looked at him, beckoning him to take her. It took a few more moments, before he’d finally rid himself of his own clothes. His boxer briefs and her panties were the only barriers left now. He looked at her and drank in the sight, before he freed her of her panties.
Like an offering, she lay in front of him, completely naked, her nipples hard, her skin glistening. He could sense her arousal and dipped his head between her legs to taste her. She gasped, surprised, and her pelvis tilted toward him, welcoming his mouth and tongue exploring her. She tasted like a fresh spring morning after the rain, and he let himself fall into the fantasy that they would one day have a life together.
Behind his boxer briefs, his cock pressed against its prison, demanding to be freed, but he couldn’t allow it, despite his own growing need.
Beneath him, Lilly moaned and called out his name. He teased her with his tongue, swiped it against her center of pleasure and felt her arousal climbing higher. She rubbed herself against his mouth.
“Jack! Please, I need you inside me.”
He lifted his head for a moment. “Lilly, I can’t. I don’t have any condoms here.”
She lifted her head and stared at him. “Goddamn it, Jack.” Then she suddenly laughed. “I’m on the pill.”
He smirked. “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”
“You didn’t ask.”
He lifted himself off her and took off his boxer briefs. His fully erect cock jutted out.
“Hmm,” she said and licked her lips.
Before he could stop her, she sat up and put her lips around the tip of his cock, taking him deep into her warm mouth.
“Fuck, Lilly!”
For a few seconds he let her suck him and enjoyed her masterful touch. But then he pulled himself out of her mouth. “You’re playing with a loaded weapon, baby.”
“Then maybe you should use it on me.” She cast him a coquettish look.
“As you wish.”
He pressed her back onto the couch and settled between her thighs, before he nudged his cock at her pussy. He felt her wetness and warmth, while she slid her hands onto his hips and pulled him to her. He thrust into her, seating himself to the hilt. Closing his eyes, he let out a breath.
“Fuck!”
When he opened his eyes, he looked straight into Lilly’s. She smiled at him.
“I missed you,” she murmured.
“I missed you more.”
With long thrusts, he started to ride her, while he sank his lips onto hers. Their bodies moved in synch as if they’d done this a million times, when in truth they’d only had one night together. But just like seven years ago, they clicked. He’d never before experienced anything like it with a woman. He’d never felt the connection that he felt with Lilly with anybody else. She seemed to know instinctively what he wanted and needed, just like he knew how to pleasure her without her needing to tell him. Everything felt perfect, as if they were made for each other.
Lilly’s interior muscles gripped him like a tight fist, and her wetness felt like sliding into warm silk. He couldn’t get enough of it, and bit back the urge to climax. No, he needed to make the most of it, to prolong the pleasure they were giving each other, because he didn’t know whether they would have another day, or week, or month. He needed to live a whole life in this one night, and it felt like Lilly knew it too. Either one of them could die tomorrow or the next day. Life wasn’t certain, but their connection was.
He wasn’t a man of many words, didn’t know how to tell Lilly what he felt for her, but he could show her with his body.
When he couldn’t hold onto his control any longer, he looked into her eyes. “Lilly,” he murmured, not finding the words she deserved. That he loved her; that he had always loved her. But those words carried a promise, one he couldn’t make for fear he would be forced to break it one day.
Lilly shuddered underneath him, and Jack let himself go and spilled his seed in her, thrusting hard and deep. As they both stilled and their breathing settled into a slower rhythm, Jack brushed a featherlight kiss on her lips and caressed her face.
