AWOL with the Operative

Eve didn’t want to think about the loss of Ken Redfeather, the family he might have left behind. Didn’t want to remind herself of Charlie and how much the memory of him hurt. She’d start to bawl if she permitted herself that lapse, and she had to hold herself together if she stood any prayer of getting out of this mess.

Sam had swung his attention away from the wreckage and was gazing at her again, this time not with concern but realization. “I was unconscious. I couldn’t have helped myself out of the plane and over here on the ground. That was all you, wasn’t it?”

There was gratitude in his voice. And, yes, admiration, too.

“You are some woman, Eve Warren.”

His praise was unexpected. And recalling the Sam McDonough she had experienced before the crash, another complete surprise. That it had lit a glow deep inside her was probably not so good.

Eve covered her fluster with a hasty “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to find and rescue your gun when I recovered your coat. But you have your passport and your wallet with your FBI ID. Maybe seeing them will help you get your memory back.”

From the movement under his coat, she assumed he was feeling for the passport and wallet in his back pockets. “No, they’re not in your pants pockets,” she corrected him, remembering he had shoved them into a side pocket of his coat after showing them to the Mountie. “They’re in one of your coat pockets.”

Hands emerging from beneath the coat, he burrowed into its pockets. “No passport or wallet,” he said. “Just earmuffs, a pair of gloves and a scarf.”

“But they have to be there. Are you sure that— Oh, no!”

“What?”

“I was in such a rush I must have grabbed the wrong coat, thinking the pilot’s coat had to be very different from yours, when all along— Oh, Sam, how could I have been so stupid?”

“You weren’t stupid. Anyone could have confused them in a situation like that.”

“But your passport and wallet—”

“Destroyed in the fire. So, Eve, I guess I’ll just have to trust that I’m who and what you say I am. But while I’m doing that…” Coat sliding down to his waist, he lifted himself into a sitting position. It was apparently an unwise action. It was followed by a sharp “Whoa” and his hand going to the lump on the side of his head.

Eve was instantly alarmed. “How badly does it hurt?”

Sam felt around the swelling. “Has to be a souvenir from the crash.”

“Your head connected with the window hard enough to crack a fairly thick pane of glass.”

“Which explains my memory loss, I guess. Actually, it’s just a little tender. But I do have one hell of an old-fashioned headache.” He eyed her purse on the ground. “I don’t suppose you’d have a couple of aspirin in there?”

“I do, but I’m not sure you should take them. You could have a concussion, and taking anything like that might not be safe.”

“I’m willing to risk it. I’ll have those aspirin, please.”

Eve hesitated and then reluctantly reached for her bag, finding the aspirin inside and handing two of them to him. She watched him swallow the pills, washing them down with a handful of snow he scooped up from the ground. She was putting the aspirin container back in her bag when she spotted her cell phone in one corner. She had forgotten it until now.

“Look!” she said brightly, holding up the phone. “We’re saved!”

But they weren’t saved. When she flipped open the instrument and powered it up, the display indicated a strong battery but no signal whatsoever. What had led her to believe there possibly could be one when Ken Redfeather had complained of the scarcity of communication towers in the region?

She closed the phone and put it back in her bag. “No signal,” she reported. “And no distress call from the plane, either. The pilot never got the chance to send one.”

“Looks like you and I are on our own out here, Eve. Just where are we, anyway?”

“Canada. Somewhere along the British Columbia and Alberta border, so the pilot said. We were headed for Calgary, and from there…”

Eve was prepared to fill him in on all the rest. She figured he’d want to know everything from the time he met her at the ski lodge, but he halted her.

“Just what I’m doing here and why can wait. In case you haven’t noticed, the light is growing weaker, which means it must be late afternoon.”

“And?”

“We have to find shelter of some kind before night closes in. It’s winter, isn’t it?”

“Getting on toward late April, actually. It’s cold but not as cold as it was up in the Yukon where we boarded the plane. I suppose because we’re much farther south now.”

“Yeah, but the temperatures are bound to drop after dark. We could freeze out here.”

“What are you doing?” she challenged him as he climbed to his feet and bundled into the coat.

“Trying this on for size. Not bad. A little short and a little too roomy, but it’s plenty warm.”

“You shouldn’t be up yet.”

“You think it’s a lot healthier for me to have a wet backside on the ground?”

“But if you do have a concussion—”

“Maybe, but I don’t think I have any of the classic symptoms.”

“You have a headache.”

“So would you if you smacked your head into a hard surface. It’s not conclusive evidence of a concussion.” He looked down at her where she was still crouched in the snow, a glint of humor in his eyes. “I love you fussing over me, angel, but don’t.”

Angel. He had called her angel again. Now why on earth, in a situation as bad as this one, should she suddenly and out of nowhere recall the memory of her mother teaching her when she was a little girl how to bake an angel food cake from scratch? How, through the years of growing up that followed, her mother had taught her so many other culinary skills. A joy that stayed with her to this day. Warm, pleasant memories. Maybe that’s why she recalled them. Because at this moment she needed something that was ordinary and nonthreatening.

Sam was still gazing at her. “Have it your way,” she mumbled. “Just be careful.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Come on.”

Before she could prevent it, he leaned down from that six-foot-plus height of his, caught her by the hand and raised her to her feet. Eve didn’t need his help. She wasn’t used to men helping her. She had always been independent and self-reliant. Well, maybe not with the same certainty since Charlie’s cruel death. Everything had changed after that.

She waited for him to release her hand once she was standing. He didn’t. He pulled her against his hard length. She felt suddenly light-headed as he pinned her there to his chest, his eyes searching hers. Not only light-headed but powerless to resist his sexual charisma. And she needed to do just that.

Thankfully, it was all over in a brief moment, although Eve was shaken when he let her go and she was able to step safely away from him.

He zipped up the coat that was now his as if nothing had happened, added the scarf, drew on the gloves from one pocket and covered his head with the earmuffs from the other pocket. His suggestion that “You might want to raise the hood on that parka” was a casual one.

How could he be so confident and unconcerned when he’d lost his memory, when calamity had landed them here where their very survival was in jeopardy? Could being relieved of your conscious memory also relieve you of your cares? Was this an explanation for the drastic change in Sam’s disposition? It was a theory, anyway.

“You ready?” he asked. Eve had produced her own gloves from her coat pocket, wriggled into them and raised her hood. “Then let’s move. There’s nothing more here for us.”

Without waiting for her, he strode ahead through the trees. Snatching up her shoulder bag, Eve hurried after him. All right, she would admit it, at least to herself. Sam McDonough was a remarkable man. He could also be an exasperating one.

He might have lost his memory, but not the qualities that must have made him an exceptional FBI agent. Like leadership. Or had that simply been built into his character from birth? Either way, he took charge, and as long as he didn’t bark orders at her, Eve let him.

One thing was evident. Sam was in no way handicapped by either his injury or the amnesia it had produced. Except to check on her at regular intervals to make sure she was okay, he never faltered in his straight, southerly course through the forest, as if certain of their destination. Was it pure instinct, Eve wondered, or did the FBI train its agents in wilderness survival?

It had stopped snowing shortly after they left the site of the wreckage, which was an advantage as far as seeing through the failing light was concerned. But the fresh powder on top of the accumulation below was not so easy to navigate. At least it wasn’t for Eve, who welcomed the places under the thicker canopies of the evergreens where the white cover was thin.

The only sound was the crunch of their booted feet as they trudged through the snow. They talked infrequently and only in brief intervals, saving their wind for the trek. Even so, Eve was beginning to tire.

She was also starting to wonder if this whole thing was madness. Whatever Sam’s easy assurance, maybe they were hunting for something that wasn’t there. Maybe they should have stayed with the plane. Didn’t pilots file flight plans? Yes, of course, they did. And when their plane didn’t arrive at its destination, wouldn’t a rescue team come searching for it?

But we won’t be there when they find it.

Eve was about to tell Sam this. She didn’t, because she understood something else then. It could be hours before anyone realized the plane was long overdue and an air search was mounted. And days after that before they located the wreckage, if ever. Long before that, she and Sam would have died of exposure. He was right. They had to find shelter of some kind, even if it was a cave.

As miserable as tramping through this endless forest was, there was one thing Eve did enjoy. The sight of Sam in front of her with his steady, long-legged gait and erectness of body, almost military in its bearing. Not to mention his tight, sexy backside, what she could see of it, anyway, in that coat.

She tried to tell herself it didn’t hurt to look, though she knew her interest was a mistake. Another attraction she should be resisting. But she couldn’t seem to help herself.

Even that sight, however, was no longer entertaining when her legs started to ache and her weariness had her stumbling over half-buried logs and rocks. Fearing that darkness would overtake them out here, Eve was about to break their silence and ask him just how much farther he expected them to travel when he halted abruptly.

“Look,” he said, moving aside so she could see his discovery.

Light just through the trees! The last of daylight that seemed bright after the gloom of the forest. It had to be a clearing, maybe not natural, maybe man-made. And that could mean some form of civilization.

It did disclose itself as a form of civilization when they reached it a moment later. But it was no longer occupied and hadn’t been in years, probably even decades.

Eve could see in the fading light that the once-sizable clearing was being reclaimed by the forest. Young pine trees were everywhere in the tall, dry weeds that long ago had likely been a field and a garden. Subsistence farming, she thought, and it had failed. Not surprising out here in the middle of nowhere.

“I think I can make out a kind of track over there leading out of the clearing,” Sam said. “If so, we’re in business. It must lead to a settlement somewhere. But tonight…”

“We need a shelter.”

Not that she could see anything resembling one. There were the remains of a small log cabin and an adjacent outbuilding at one side of the clearing, but they offered no shelter. Their roofs had collapsed long ago, and their walls threatened to soon follow, leaving both structures wide open to the elements.

“Has to be something we can use,” Sam said. “Let’s look for it.”

The light was fast leaving them as they crossed the clearing, but Sam seemed to have the eyes of an owl. He found that something near the cabin.

“What is it?” Eve wondered, peering through the twilight at a snow-covered mound.

“I’m betting it’s a root cellar.”

He was right. There were crude stone steps leading down to a plank door that was still intact.

“Better let me go first,” he said, his booted foot scrubbing aside the snow piled on the steps as he descended to the door. “Could be some unfriendly animal has taken up residence down there.”

Not an impossibility, Eve thought, since the door at the bottom of the steps was ajar by a few inches. The door was sagging, which meant Sam had to put his shoulder to it to scrape it open. Eve waited nervously at the top of the steps as, head lowered for what was presumably a low ceiling, he disappeared into the cellar. Seconds later she heard his muffled curse.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just knocked my head against something hanging from a hook in the ceiling.”

Great. As if he needed another lump on his head.

“Hey, I think it’s a lantern. And it still has oil in it. There’s a tin of safety matches, too, on a ledge just below it.”

It had to be black down there. How could he possibly make out anything?

“Let’s see if they still work.”

They did. A moment later the lantern bloomed with light that glowed through the open door.

“Come on down,” he urged.

Eve joined him in the root cellar. The light of the lantern that Sam had placed on an overturned crate revealed a small room with a hard-packed earthen floor, the low ceiling she had anticipated and stone walls against which were ranged wooden shelves.

Sam was pleased with his find. “It’s okay, huh? Belowground like this, and with that mound over it, the temperature down here must never dip below freezing. The lantern puts out some warmth, too.”

“Home never looked better,” Eve agreed.

Sam found an abandoned can in one corner. He took it outside to fill with snow, which he intended to melt over the heat of the oil lantern. By the time he returned, Eve had placed two of the wide, loose shelves on the floor to serve as seats for them.

“Cozy, right?” Sam asked a short while later as they sat side by side on the boards, legs outstretched.

Eve couldn’t deny, with the door now tightly shut and keeping out the worst of the cold, that the cellar made a snug refuge for them. The snow had melted in the can. He passed it to her. She drank from it and handed the can back to him. It tasted flat, but it was water. She was grateful for that.

“Too bad,” Sam said after satisfying his own thirst, “they didn’t leave any food behind on those shelves. Not that it would be any good by now.”

“You hungry? I am, too, so…” Opening her shoulder bag, Eve produced two granola bars from its depth. “Like the Girl Scouts, I believe in coming prepared. Or is it the Boy Scouts? Doesn’t matter.”

She extended one of the bars toward him. Sam grabbed it with a heartfelt “Angel, you are an angel.” He started to tear off the wrapper and then stopped. “This is no good.”

“Why? What are you thinking?”

“If we eat both of these bars tonight, it leaves us nothing for tomorrow. Unless you have some more goodies down there.”

“I don’t.” He was right. They needed to save something for tomorrow. Maybe even beyond tomorrow, much as she hated to think of that possibility.

“Here,” he said, giving his bar back to her. “Take temptation away from me before I weaken.”

With his strong will, she doubted he would. But she accepted the bar, tucking it back in her purse before she unwrapped the other bar, divided it and handed him his half.

They were silent for a moment, munching on their spare rations. Sam had asked her not to fuss about his health. She had obeyed that request while they were on the move, but now that they were safe and settled she felt a need to question him.

“Your headache—”

“Is no longer a problem. The aspirin took care of that. And please don’t make an issue of the lump I’m wearing up here, either. It’s still a bit sore from that hard whack against the window, but it isn’t giving me any real trouble, I promise.”

“Good.” She hesitated before asking a cautious “Your memory, Sam. Is anything coming back?”

He thought about it for a few seconds before answering her. “There have been a few images, just these quick flashes that come and go before I can hang on to them, never mind make any sense of them. Maybe it’s time we got working on that.”

“You’re ready to have me tell you what you’re doing here and why I’m with you?”

“Might help if I can start connecting some dots.”

He listened patiently, without question or comment, as Eve started from the beginning. She made her story as brief, but complete, as possible, telling him how she and Charlie Fowler were on holiday together at the Yukon skiing village. That they had traveled separately up to the village where he had left her at the end of the week to fly back home. And died on the road to the airport in Dawson, a death that the Mounties were unable to determine was accident or murder and which still had her in its emotional grip. But this last bit she kept to herself.

She did explain, however, that the Mounties had agreed on behalf of the FBI to keep an eye on Charlie Fowler. And since he’d apparently had some connection with organized crime back in the States, the RCMP had promptly contacted the bureau following his death. The bureau had sent Special Agent Sam McDonough to escort her to Chicago. Their bush plane had been shot down en route, allegedly at the orders of crime boss Victor DeMarco.

“That’s everything, Sam.” It wasn’t. There was something more, but Eve had no intention of sharing it with the FBI. They didn’t need to know it. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything about your life before you met me at the lodge. But maybe what I have told you is sparking your memory.”

Sam shook his head. “It isn’t. We’ll have to give it time.” He was quiet for a moment. “This DeMarco character. Why is he trying to kill you?”

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully.

“Okay.” Having accepted that, he was thoughtful for another minute. “So, whatever the reason, we were going home to Chicago where I was to deliver you to my squad supervisor.”

“Well, home for you, I suppose, but not for me. I live in St. Louis.”

“And what do you do in St. Louis, Eve Warren?”

“I’m the senior editor for a regional magazine.”

“Huh, impressive.”

“It’s not like one of the big New York magazines, Sam. We just cover the St. Louis metropolitan area—openings and restaurants and what’s trendy on the local scene. Things like that.”

“Family?”

“Not anymore. I just had my mother, and I lost her two years ago. My dad died when I was a teenager.”

Sam murmured his sympathy. Before she could thank him for that, she felt a yawn coming on. She smothered it, wondering what time it was. She checked her watch. Well after nine o’clock already, even though some light had remained in the sky not much more than an hour ago. But then she’d forgotten how long the days were at this time of year.

“I’m exhausted.”

“We could both use a solid night’s sleep,” he said.

She was about to agree and didn’t. She had remembered something. “You can’t go to sleep, not if you do have a concussion. At least not for more than an hour or two at a time. I think that’s what I’ve heard.”

She was afraid he would oppose her argument and was relieved when he agreed.

“All right, I’ll take the first watch. When I can no longer keep my eyes open, I’ll wake you for your shift.” He leaned forward, lowering the wick on the lantern until its glow was reduced to a faint gleam. “Still plenty of oil, but it might be smart to conserve it.”

Huddled together, with their backs against the wall, Eve was prepared for that solid sleep Sam had prescribed. She didn’t get it. The cellar might be above freezing, but it was anything but warm. Even with the door tightly closed, she could feel currents of cold air seeping through the cracks between its planks. And although she was so tired she couldn’t help dozing off, it was a fitful sleep. She kept waking up, shivering against the icy drafts that stirred around the floor.

He didn’t object when, in desperation, Eve scooted against the man at her side, seeking his warmth. Sam McDonough, offering security and comfort with his presence. She valued these along with a surprising gentleness and a sense of humor, both of which had miraculously surfaced from under a brittle crust.

Eve didn’t want him not to find his memory. To wish otherwise would be unthinkable. Still, she sighed, she would regret trading this caring man for the hateful one he’d been before his amnesia, when he’d been nothing but impatient with her.

She could imagine by the way he had treated her then what he must have thought of her. Probably some kind of mercenary wanton willing to go off with an older man for what she could get out of it. If so, his judgment couldn’t have been further from the truth. Eve was certainly no nun, but she did like to think she was a principled woman with decent values and she was in no way promiscuous.

This was no good. Even pressed against him like this, she was still cold, unable to drift off.

She must have made him aware of her discomfort, alerted him with her restlessness. He startled her with a softly growled “The hell with this.” Zipping his coat down, he held both sides of it open to her. “Come on inside here with me.”

Eve didn’t hesitate to accept his invitation, unwise though her action might be. Heaven, she thought when he’d folded the sides of the coat around her and she was sprawled practically on top of him, snuggled against the welcome heat of his body.

It was more than that, though. His effect on her—all right, admit it—was downright sexy. With her face buried against his hard chest, she could hear the beat of his heart, smell his masculine aroma. It was almost more than she could bear.

He must have found it equally arousing. “If you go on squirming against me like this, something is going to happen here that one of us might not want to happen.”

Oh, lord, he was right! She could feel it now, even through all the layers of their clothes. The rigid shaft of a male erection. “Sorry,” she muttered.

Eve fought the temptation of him and immediately stopped wriggling. After another moment, lulled by the reassuring sound of his breathing, she managed to fall into a deep sleep.

Sam had no trouble keeping that first watch. With Eve in his arms like this, it was impossible to relax long enough to so much as drowse. Not when he was so intensely conscious of his desire for her. How soft and warm she felt nestled against him, the seductive scent of her russet hair just beneath his nose and those sweet, feminine curves. Damn, when she’d strained against him like that, he’d wanted nothing more than to bury himself deep inside her. He had almost lost it then.

Face it, McDonough. You’ve got the genuine hots for the lady.

Not smart. Not smart at all with this predicament they were in that had him instinctively needing to protect her. Wanting to protect her. It wasn’t just duty, either. It was something much stronger than that, something beyond lust which included his irrational jealousy of a dead man he found himself battling.

Charlie Fowler. Had he been her boyfriend? It was only reasonable to suppose he must have been since they were alone together in that skiing village. And if Fowler hadn’t been her lover, maybe there was someone special waiting for her back home. Hard to imagine there wouldn’t be with a woman as alluring as Eve Warren.

This was nuts. He had no right to feel frustrated like this over a woman he’d known for only a few hours. Wasn’t he frustrated enough by his memory loss? For all he knew, he could have someone special himself waiting back in Chicago, maybe even a wife and kids. No, he was pretty sure he didn’t. He couldn’t say why he was so certain, only that he sensed on some deep level he was unattached.