Hush: A Thriller Part 19

FINN WAITED until the soft sounds of Riley's breathing told him that she was asleep. Then, being careful not to wake her, he got up, put his pants back on, grabbed his shirt and shrugged into that, too, tucked his gun into the back of his waistband, and left the room. He had his cell phone with him, among other necessary things, and used it to call Bax as he went. So he was slightly impatient as he waited for his temporary partner to haul his a.s.s out of bed and answer his soft tap on the door, which Bax finally did by pulling it open with an alarmed "Oh, s.h.i.t, what now?"

Going into Bax's room would have meant leaving the door to his own room vulnerable, and Riley unprotected-not that he expected her to be attacked while in his company, but just in case. Thus he kept one eye on the hallway as he stood in the open doorway to Bax's room and brought him up to speed. As Finn recounted the night's events, he noted that Bax slept in a full set of pale blue cotton pajamas; he apparently liked to leave the TV on mute while he slept, and, judging by the series of yawns that he kept apologizing for, he had a far harder time coming fully awake than Finn did. None of these observations were unexpected, and none of them gave him any reason to change his mind about what he wanted from Bax. Trusting came hard to him, but under these limited circ.u.mstances he was prepared to trust Bax. To get done what he needed to get done, Finn had little choice. He wasn't about to leave Riley, and he couldn't make the arrangements that needed to be made while in her company.

"I want you to head up to Mack Alford"-referring to the medium-security correctional center in Stringtown, Oklahoma, where George Cowan was incarcerated-"and set up a visit for Riley with George," Finn said. "Anytime within regular visiting hours. I don't want this to go ringing alarm bells anywhere. Make arrangements for a private area for them to meet in, and get some surveillance in there."

Bax blinked at him. "But-it's a prison. It'll already have surveillance."

"Yeah. This is private surveillance. n.o.body's going to see it but us." Finn outlined what he needed Bax to do. "I want to have eyes and ears on everything Riley and George say and do. Audio and video. Got it?"

Bax nodded. "Uh-does this mean you don't trust her?" The question sounded almost timid.

"I don't trust anybody," Finn replied with perfect honesty. "Except, right now, you. I'm trusting you to do this, and not to f.u.c.k it up."

"I can get it done." Bax sounded resolute.

"I never doubted it." He gave Bax a level look. "I'm a.s.suming that since you just filed your report with your boss, you won't need to file again for a few days. As in, after this prison visit's over and we get a chance to see what's what. Am I right?"

"I'm supposed to report everything you do." Bax looked unhappy. "That's my job."

"I know. And you can report it, just not right away. That work for you?"

"Yeah," Bax said. Then he nodded, and added more firmly, "That works."

"Look at it this way: your a.s.signment is to help me find the money. That's exactly what you'll be doing." Up until this point, Finn had humored the joint agency arrangement that had the FBI (Bax) monitoring his every move (a lack of trust between government agencies was pretty much par for the course), but now he needed to operate on his own. Just in case, as his gut kept telling him, Riley was more involved with the missing money than anybody in officialdom knew. If she was, he didn't know what he was going to do, but he did know he wanted to get a solid understanding of the situation before he played a part in throwing her to the wolves. That particular motive, though, wasn't something he was prepared to share with Bax, or anybody else. If, later, his playing his cards close to his vest in this way proved to be a problem higher up the food chain, he could always say that he'd been worried about leaks. Everybody in the Alphabet Kingdom was always worried about leaks: it was the excuse that kept on excusing.

"I will be, won't I?" Bax sounded relieved. Then he frowned. "Who gets the car?"

"I do," Finn said. "You take a taxi to the airport and get a rental. Get started right now, and you should be on the road to Stringtown within the hour. We'll probably be about five to six hours behind you." Finn reached into his pocket and drew out a burner phone-he kept a collection in his suitcase for precisely this type of situation-and handed it to Bax. "When everything's set, use this phone to call me and let me know. Don't use your regular phone." Which the Bureau might very well have somebody monitoring. "Got it?"

Bax nodded. "Got it."

"Good man." Finn clapped him on the shoulder in the kind of gosh-we're-buds gesture he knew Bax could relate to, which seemed to please him.

"I'm on it," Bax said again as he closed the door. Finn headed back to his own room.

Where he got to lie down on the floor and, instead of falling instantly asleep as he'd trained himself to do, tried to keep his mind off how much he wanted to crawl into bed with the woman he suspected of lying to him with practically every word she uttered.

It didn't help that, when he'd opened the door to reenter his room, the wedge of light from the hall had fallen squarely across the bed.

Riley must have gotten too warm, because she'd kicked off the covers. Sound asleep, she was lying on her stomach with his T-shirt hiked up around her waist. The sight of her sweet, s.e.xy a.s.s in nothing but a pair of tiny pink panties. .h.i.t him like a lightning bolt to the crotch.

After years spent in the highly dangerous, highly stressful world of an undercover operative, he'd learned the art of s.n.a.t.c.hing a few hours' sleep, whenever, wherever, and however he could. Lots of times, he'd figured he wouldn't live out the next twenty-four hours, and still he'd slept like a baby. Right now, though, sleep proved to be beyond him. Why? Because he was tormented by images of a truly world-cla.s.s a.s.s in a pair of itty-bitty, silky pink panties every time he closed his eyes.

- CHAPTER -

TWENTY.

When the alarm went off on her phone, Riley sat bolt upright, startled awake. She was groggy, and it took her a moment to a.s.similate her surroundings: big, rumpled bed, not hers; gloomy, unattractive room, also not hers.

A tall, buff guy wearing nothing but a white towel hitched around his waist appearing along with a puff of steam in the lighted bathroom doorway to frown at her.

Definitely not hers.

Finn.

She blinked at him, bemused. Then, grabbing for her phone, which was chiming insistently from the night table beside the bed, she shut the sound off.

Last night, before falling asleep, she'd set her alarm for 6:30 a.m. It was, she confirmed with a glance at her phone, a few minutes past that time.

Emma. The events of the previous night came crashing down on her.

I have to tell Margaret.

Her stomach knotted. She took a quick, pained breath, drawing the air in through her teeth.

"You snore," Finn said. There was no identifiable expression on his face as his eyes ran over her.

The covers were bunched somewhere south of her feet: she must have kicked them off during the night. His too-big T-shirt had twisted around her as she slept. A downward glance told her that the white cotton hugged her b.r.e.a.s.t.s closely, molding the soft curves to the point where the jut of her nipples was clearly visible against the fabric. The hem was hiked up above the top of her thighs, giving him an unimpeded view of her bare legs and, she feared, even a peek at her panties.

"I do not." Adjusting the tee with a quick tug, she scooted off the bed. Then she remembered the screwdriver, and frowned. Against all odds, once she'd fallen asleep she'd slept like the dead. So, maybe-"Did I?"

"Like a chain saw."

"If I did, it was the vodka. So you can just blame yourself," she retorted, keeping her composure even as the intimacy of the situation threatened to render her tongue-tied. Or maybe it was the sight of Finn in a towel: heavily muscled shoulders, brawny arms, a wide, honed chest above a noticeable six-pack. A nice wedge of black chest hair that narrowed down to a slim line that disappeared beneath the towel that rode low on his lean hips. Innie belly b.u.t.ton. Long, strong legs. Bare feet.

Her pulse was picking up the pace, Riley realized. And her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were tightening and swelling against the fabric and her body was quickening.

It occurred to her that neither of them was saying anything, and her eyes flew to his face to find that he was looking at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

He must have felt the weight of her gaze, because his eyes lifted to meet hers.

In that brief, unguarded moment, his eyes gleamed with unmistakable s.e.xual intent. As she recognized that, her heart beat faster. Unexpected little darts of excitement raced through her bloodstream.

Awareness hung in the air between them, hot and steamy as the vapor drifting out of the bathroom around him.

All of a sudden, she was possessed by a nearly irresistible impulse to grab the hem of the T-shirt she was wearing and pull it over her head and let it drop to the floor. Naked except for her panties, she would walk over to him, tug at that towel...

His mouth hardened. A kind of shutter seemed to drop over his eyes. They went unreadable, opaque.

She wasn't fooled. She'd seen the fierce carnality in his gaze.

He wanted her. She had no doubt about that whatsoever. What made it so difficult was that she also wanted him.

And they were alone and half naked and there was a bed and...

Stop.

"I'm done in here. Be my guest," he said, as cool as if he'd never heard of s.e.x, as if the air wasn't thick with it.

"Thanks."

He moved to the closet and opened the door, and she walked past him into the bathroom.

And made the mistake of glancing at him as she did.

He had his back to her. A few stray water droplets glistened in his hair, and his shoulders-his wide, bare shoulders-flexed as he reached inside the closet for his clothes. His strong back, the cla.s.sic V of his torso, the slightly damp bronze of his skin, drew her eyes, made her breathing quicken and her pulse flutter.

He was so very male.

He was naked beneath that towel.

She wanted to touch him. No-she wanted to f.u.c.k him.

There it was, the truth, put in the crudest possible terms.

Forget it. There's too much at stake to-literally-screw it up.

Closing the bathroom door and shutting herself in against temptation, she found herself wrapped in the warm, steamy air from his shower. She smelled the faint scent of menthol, saw his razor on the vanity, and realized that he had shaved: his square jaw had been minus last night's stubble.

She was just getting all intrigued at the thought of Finn shaving when she saw something else on the vanity: her purse.

It was a small purse, expensive, quilted black leather, discreet designer logo. A long, cross-body strap. The top closed with a zipper. The zipper could be locked closed by securing the pull with a small leather tab.

Last night, she'd taken it with her when she'd gone into the bathroom, and left it there. She hadn't thought a thing about it.

Until now, when she saw that it was zipped tight and the leather tab was snapped closed.

She never, ever used that leather tab.

Finn had gone through her purse.

Outrage flooded her, and reality followed close on its heels.

He might be protecting her, and she might be depending on him to save Emma and keep the bad guys from the door.

But she couldn't trust him.

He was still an investigator, and she was part of his investigation. The key to it, even.

The stupidest thing she could do would be to let herself forget: we're not on the same side.

If she'd been toying with the idea of laying the whole sorry story out for him, of asking his advice on how best to handle it, of throwing herself and Margaret on his mercy, she was now officially over it. Telling him that she knew where the money was could only end in 1) all the money, including Margaret's, falling into government hands; 2) at best, klieg lights of suspicion focusing on her and Margaret; or 3) the loss of any leverage she had to get federal authorities to help in saving Emma. Without the giant carrot of the missing money to keep them interested, Finn-and whatever resources he was bringing to bear to find Emma-might well disappear.

Knowledge is power, she reminded herself grimly. Once she shared what she knew, her power to get anybody to do anything would be gone, too. She would basically be at the mercy of the government.

Of Finn.

Yeah. Not gonna happen.

Blocking Finn and everything else out of her mind, she made quick preparations for what was sure to be a long and harrowing day: she took a shower, washed and blow-dried her hair, applied a minimum amount of makeup from the small kit in her purse, and popped more Tylenol. The only thing she had to wear was her dress from the night before, and it was in the closet. Wrapping herself in a towel, she stepped out of the bathroom.

Finn stood in front of the window-the curtains were open now, allowing pale, early morning sunlight to flood the room-talking on his cell phone. He was wearing one of his white shirts with charcoal-gray trousers, and, having apparently heard the bathroom door open, he broke off his conversation and turned to look at her as she emerged.

Sweeping him with an unsmiling glance, feeling his gaze on her all the while, Riley retrieved her clothes from the closet and went back into the bathroom to dress.

Even though she'd done her best to brush it off the night before, the sparkly evening dress still had dust on it. She put it on anyway: she would change into clean clothes at Margaret's. Her ruined pantyhose had been discarded the night before. Without them, the bruises on her legs were noticeable, but there was nothing she could do about that.

Slipping her bare feet into her too-high-for-daytime heels, she picked up her purse and left the bathroom.

"Ready?" Finn c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at her as she walked out into the bedroom. He was knotting his tie in front of the mirror over the chest. It was such a domestic kind of thing to be doing, and he looked so d.a.m.ned s.e.xy doing it, that her heart picked up the pace and she felt herself growing all warm inside simply from watching. As soon as she realized where her unwary libido was taking her again, she stiffened and her indignation at him bubbled up before she could put a lid on it.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked. She was standing near him, just a few feet from the chest. Her tone was polite. Too polite, as she watched him raise his clean-shaven, deeply tanned, and way too masculine chin as he pulled the long end of his tie down through the knot. He threw her a bemused glance. "What?"

"In my purse. When you searched it."

He frowned at her as he eased the knot up into position and smoothed the tie with one hand. "What are you talking about?"

"I know you were in my purse. You made a mistake: I never snap this little tab." She wiggled the tab in question at him by way of ill.u.s.tration.

His eyes as they met hers were totally unreadable. "When I went into the bathroom, your purse had fallen over on its side. Some things were spilling out. I pushed them back in and zipped it up so it wouldn't happen again."

The explanation was reasonable. It might, Riley thought as she held his gaze, even be true. Then again, it might not be. She couldn't actually remember whether she had zipped her purse closed before leaving the bathroom the night before, so she had no way of knowing for sure.

"Oh," was what she said. Kind of anticlimactic, she had to admit.

"Yeah, oh."

"I'm sorry if I was wrong."

"You should be."

His gaze swept her. She turned away, walking toward the window, and was conscious of him watching her as she stopped to look out. It was going to be another hot one. The sun was already bright and it was-a glance at the clock told her-not quite 7 a.m. Traffic was moving along the street in front of the hotel. She could see a gas station with a convenience store attached, a strip of small businesses including a pizzeria, a payday loan establishment, a dry cleaners, and an apartment building.

Somewhere out there, Emma was enduring G.o.d knew what.