Virgin In Disguise

“Just working out the logistics.” She stretched between the bucket seats and grabbed something from the back seat before getting out.

Her vanilla fragrance still floated in the air. If it hadn’t been for that scent, he wouldn’t have made the connection between Elf’s disguises nearly so fast; the change in her appearance had been so complete.

She stretched, giving him an unexpected glimpse of her bared midriff. Was that…? She rounded the car to the passenger door and pulled it open. He got another glimpse, just before she hunkered down beside him. It was. She had a pierced navel. And a pierced nose. He wondered what other parts of her body sported nontraditional jewelry.

A handcuff closing around his right wrist broke into his ponderings. She reached over and freed his left hand, then stood, tugging him out of his seat. Her left hand, warm and slightly callused, held his right hand, and he realized she’d cuffed them together. The dark blue sweatshirt she’d pulled out of the back seat draped casually over her wrist, hiding the cuffs.

Interesting. He couldn’t wait to see what she had planned next.

The rest stop consisted of one main building and a couple of smaller structures spread across a wide, grassy expanse. She led him on a meandering path towards one of the outbuildings, which sported a Family Rest Room sign. A mother with two small boys exited the structure and Elf tugged him in, locking the door behind them.

He gave the facility a quick scan, then turned to her. She was studying the cinderblock construction of the rest room, too. “Elf?”

She shrugged. “This is the best I can manage until we get to the lake. You better not have a bashful bladder, because that window’s too low, too large and on the wrong side of the building for me to cover both exits.”

Figures she’d notice the same things he had. “You expect me to—” He looked around the large, open room. Sink, towel dispenser, wastepaper can, diaper-changing table…. No stall door. No stall. Everything was out in plain view. “This is a joke, right?”

She shook her head and glared at him. “And I’m not taking the cuffs off, so don’t even bother to ask.”

“You know, this just isn’t right, on so many levels, I can’t begin—”

“Then don’t bother. Or do, but do it while you’re…” She gestured towards the urinal.

He shook his head and crossed the room, with her a half step behind him. He began undoing the button fly of his Levi’s. Her arm moved in unison with his. She pulled the sweatshirt off their wrists and stood beside him, staring straight ahead.

“Uh, Elf?”

“What.”

“About those logistics you were working out?”

“Yeah, what?”

“I am left-handed, but for some things, I need to use my right hand.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes as they widened with realization. “You’re kidding.”

“Trust me, I’m not.”

She looked around the room. A tiny groan and a hang of her head told him she noticed the same problem he had—no exposed pipes she could cuff him to while he took care of business.

By his best reckoning, there were two options. Either they stayed cuffed together, or she let him loose.

Without cuffs on, he could use the advantages of his height and strength. Would she take that risk?

Or had she been at this job so long, she wouldn’t mind dealing with a little intimacy usually reserved for couples not held together by stainless steel bracelets?

She tilted her head from side to side, like she was trying to ease tight muscles, and heaved a deep sigh. “All right, already. Get on with it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He let loose with a big sigh of his own.

This would go down in agency history as one of the oddest situations ever. Not that he’d tell anyone about it. He’d never live down the jokes.

Chapter 3

Angel got Cabrini back in the car without incident. Traffic was light and no highway patrols were in evidence. After the bathroom incident, the rest of the trip up north seemed downright boring.

The uneventful drive gave her plenty of time to mull over the current situation and her reactions to her passenger. They were going to be in close confines for the next couple days.

She needed to get a grip… The image of them standing side by side in the rest room floated by her mind’s eye, triggering a warm shiver.

If she didn’t get her thoughts under control, she wouldn’t have to worry about the weekend, because she’d never last the first night.

Focus on Dex’s woodland retreat. That should be a safe topic, and it held the biggest concern.

“Cabin” really was a misnomer for the place. It called up images of seclusion and rustic living. The most rustic aspect of Dex’s place was the lack of a phone. Otherwise, with three bedrooms, two baths, a whirlpool tub and indoor sauna, his cabin was better fixtured than many homes. It seemed like such a waste, out in the middle of nowhere.

Even so, with all those amenities, there wasn’t much available to keep a reluctant guest in place. She would have to rely on the remote location to dissuade Cabrini from trying to run anywhere.

For his part, Cabrini held his own counsel. He seemed much more interested in tracking their progress as the towns became smaller and the birch and pine woods closed in on the two-lane road. He made no effort to initiate any kind of conversation with her, which suited her just fine.

She made good time to the secluded tract of land, located on one of the many lakes that Swiss-cheesed the northern Minnesota landscape.

Twilight settled as she left the secondary road to take the narrow, gravel lane leading to Dex’s cabin. By the time she reached their final destination, full dark lay beneath the tall pines.

Inky shadows surrounded and filled the small clearing. The sky overhead resembled a swath of black velvet with diamonds randomly strewn across it. The new moon provided little light.

She swung the car around the curved drive in front of the cabin, stopping when her headlights shone on the door.

“Hang tight for a second. I’ll get the door open and some lights on.”

“Don’t worry about me, Elf.” Cabrini rattled the handcuffs holding him to his seat. “I promise not to wander off too far without you.”

Her jaw tightened. Ever since he’d realized she didn’t like the situation, he seemed to take great delight in reminding her how close she skated to legal lines.

Had her client been anyone other than Dex, she would have walked away from the assignment at the first hint of illegality. The car door rattled as she slammed it shut.

The summer warmth had cooled slightly with the sunset. She pulled on her navy blue zip-front sweatshirt before she grabbed one of the bags of groceries from the trunk and climbed the steps to the full-length front porch.

The same jiggle of the key she remembered got the lock open. The screen door sighed shut behind her. She left the solid wood interior door standing wide as she walked farther into the room, finding light switches from memory. By the time she deposited the grocery bag in the open, spacious kitchen, the first floor blazed with lights.

Angel made another quick trip to haul in their clothes and the rest of her supplies, but took her time returning to get Cabrini. The whole situation of having him in custody and bringing him here created a logistical nightmare.

Under normal circumstances, when she took a bail jumper into custody, she turned the perp over to the closest law enforcement agency at the first available opportunity.

She’d never taken one away for the weekend. Dex better have a very good reason for putting her in this position.

What was she going to do with Cabrini? That he hadn’t resisted in any way didn’t mean he wouldn’t at some point in the future.

She couldn’t keep drugging him, not for the whole weekend. The very idea churned her stomach.

Locking him up somewhere wasn’t viable. There was no place to tie him up, either. Her stomach did another grind.

She never should have agreed to Dex’s request. Especially when he wouldn’t give her all the details. There were just too many variables, and none of them felt particularly comfortable. Especially the fact that Cabrini seemed to be guilty of nothing more than sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.

She jammed her fists into her pockets. Something sharp jabbed her hand. She pulled the envelope containing Dex’s note from her pocket and ripped it open. The typed message was short and to the point.

New arson cases have prompted a reopening of our old arson files. Cabrini is a central figure and must be kept sequestered at this time. You’ll appreciate the need to keep details confidential for a while longer.

Well, that helped. But not much.

Her cell phone played the first notes of “The Hokey Pokey.” The screen displayed a familiar number, along with the symbol showing limited reception.

“Hello, Dex.”

“Are you someplace you can talk?”

“We just got to your cabin.”

“You made it okay? No…incidents?”

The image of standing next to Cabrini as he relieved himself, her hand in far too near a proximity to his bare flesh, flashed through her mind. “Incidents? No. Everything went…fine.”

“Where is Cabrini?”

“He’s still in the car. I haven’t quite worked out how I’m going to keep him contained until we head back.”

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

Easy for him to say. Angel began pacing back and forth in the foyer, glancing out at the car each time she passed the open door. Dex wasn’t facing forty-eight hours of close contact with a dangerously attractive stranger.

“Did you get…I left…the key?” His voice cut in and out as the reception weakened.

“Yes.” Her hand clenched around the cell phone and she stood still. “You didn’t give me very much to go on.”

“The investigation…my attention. Potential for blackmail…”

“What? Dex, repeat. I’m losing the signal.”

“Cabrini…your father. I need you to…”

“Dex? You need me to what?”

“…hear you. Trust… You’ll underst—”

The line went dead. Angel pulled the phone from her ear and glared at the display screen now showing the no service symbol. Modern technology sucked when it didn’t work.

She homed in on what portion of Dex’s conversation she had been able to hear. Arson, blackmail, Cabrini, her father. How did they fit together?

She ran her free hand through her hair, giving her scalp a good scratching. Related to Dad’s murder? The odds seemed awfully high against that possibility. Related how?

Someday, please God, let it be, she would track down the person responsible. Then, maybe, her mother could recover and they could find some peace.

Was it possible she was closer to that day than she realized? How did Cabrini tie into all this?

She paced back and forth, trying to get the pieces of the puzzle to fit, but there was just too little to work with. On one level she found it flattering that Dex had asked for her help. It was an indication of his trust. On another level it angered her that he hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her everything.

If he wasn’t family… She stopped the thought. He was the closest thing she’d had to a father since she was ten years old. He trusted her enough to ask for her help. She should trust him enough to believe he wouldn’t endanger her livelihood. Or her life.

She just wished she had her real father to turn to for advice.

Frank watched Elf pace back and forth behind the screen door. Whoever she was talking to wasn’t making her happy. Maybe it was her client.

Who was her client and what kind of hold did he have on her? She clearly hadn’t liked using drugs as a means of control, yet she had taken that risk to accomplish her assignment.

Loyalty and determination were strong motivators. In his field, those traits could mean the difference between success and failure, life and death.

She flipped the phone closed and stowed it in one of her many pants pockets. He expected her to come get him, but instead, she stood with her fists braced on her hips, staring down at the ground.

He could almost feel sorry for her. With her short, spiky hair and current costume, she almost looked waif-like. Of course, waifs didn’t normally pack snub-nosed revolvers.

She began pacing again. Something bothered her, which was only fair considering she’d been bothering him since the first glimpse he’d caught of her.

It wasn’t every day a woman got the better of him.

He’d tasted sweet revenge, brief as it was, back at the rest stop. That satisfaction had come with a price and he’d paid with a constant state of discomfort, aggravated every time his traitorous memory opted to review the image of her hand so close to his. Which seemed to happen with every mile marker they had passed in silence on their long drive to the middle of nowhere.

She’d given no indication of how long they would be staying here. He’d lay odds they wouldn’t leave until her client instructed her to do so.

Her client’s identity would be an extremely helpful detail to know right about now.

Someone had broken his cover. He wanted to know who and why. And he wanted to know how and why this woman was involved.

Elf looked up and met his gaze head-on. He could see her take a deep breath before she headed back to the car with a determined step.

“Okay, Cabrini, here’s the deal.” She pulled the passenger door open, but made no move to release him. “We’re going to be here for a couple days. Maybe longer. While this place is fully equipped, it does lack anything that resembles a jail cell.”

“I can see where that might pose a problem.”

“Especially for you. I don’t have a secure place to keep you, and my options seem pretty limited.”

“Exhausted your supply of knockout drugs, did you?” How much did she dislike holding him against his will?

In the dim light from the car dome fixture, her deep blue irises looked black. He could almost hear the crackle of anger in her eyes.

Quite a bit, it would seem. “No iron bed to handcuff me to?”

A muscle in her jaw pulsed as she ground her teeth.

“No woodshed, root cellar or pool house?” He pushed a little more.

She slapped the roof of the car as she straightened away from the door. “Having fun, aren’t you?”

“Surprisingly, yes.” He winked at her.

She stomped away a few steps, spun around and jammed her fists into her pockets. “Okay. Fine. Now that you’ve enumerated what we don’t have, would you like to make any suggestions about what would work?”

“You could just ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“To cooperate.”

“Of course.” She smacked her forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? The clientele I deal with is always cooperative and trustworthy.”

“I thought we established that I’m not your usual kind of target.”

She crossed back to the car, rested her hands on the roof and leaned down to look him in the eyes. “Mistah Cabrini, suh?”

Oh, hell. Southern.

“Would you all be so kind as to behave yourself while we’re all alone out here in the middle of nowhere?” She batted her long, black eyelashes at him.

“Sure.”

“Yeah. Right.” She pushed away from the car again but didn’t move.

That put him eye to belly button with her again. The tiny red crystal beads dangling from the gold ring piercing her navel winked at him, teasing him with intimate images. His fingers itched to slip under her clothes and explore her vanilla-scented skin.

He cleared his throat. “You could try trusting me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“We’ve established there’s no legal grounds for you to hold me.” He shrugged. “Have I done anything to make you distrust me?”

“No. But then, you’ve been restrained most of the time.”

“True enough. How about this? How much do you trust your client?”

“What do you mean?”

“Would he ask you to kidnap someone and take them out of town if he thought that person was dangerous?”

“That may be exactly why he asked me to bring you here. I do this for a living. He knew I’d be safe and that he could trust me.”

“Is that what he just told you?”

Her hand brushed across the pocket holding her phone. “The signal kept breaking up. I couldn’t make out everything he said.”

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough to know you’re in the middle of something.”

“That’s a lot of help. Any idea what?”

She studied him through narrowed eyes. “What do you know about arson?”

His heart skipped sideways for a beat. Did she know about his investigation, or was she fishing for information? “Enough to know it’s not a good idea.”

“Blackmail?”

He shook his head. His agency’s client hadn’t mentioned blackmail, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it did crop up somewhere during his investigation. “Same thing. All around bad idea.”

“Who are you, really? What do you do?”

“You’ve been following me for a week. Why don’t you tell me?” He wanted to hear how much she’d learned while shadowing him.

“You live simply, which is probably a good thing since you have no visible means of support and you don’t seem to be in any hurry to find a job. You don’t seem to have a circle of friends, either, so you’re probably new in town. You don’t eat out much and seldom have more than one beer. More often than not, when you went to the bar you drank straight tonic water. With a twist of lime.” She paused, then added, “And you like clothes that fit well.”

“That’s it?” It might sound like an impressive list, but there was nothing in her recitation to indicate she had stumbled onto anything of significance.

“You drive a Taurus, which seems a bit odd.” She gave him a once-over. “But, the tags are going to expire in a few months. So you may have picked it up cheap at a police auction or something. More often than not, you take the bus to the library, where you spend a lot of time. What are you researching?”

Scratch the part about nothing significant. “You’re sure it’s research?”

“It’s not porn sites and it’s not day-trading. Mostly you’ve been visiting newspaper archives, with old property records and court reports thrown in for variety.”

“I like to get to know a city when I arrive.” He shrugged it off, pretending it held little importance.

She shook her head. “Maybe, but my instincts tell me there’s a lot more beneath the surface.”

Her instincts were good. Damn.

His investigation was still intact—there was no way for her to pinpoint exactly what he was digging into—but she knew more than he’d expected.

His best course would be to control how much more she uncovered. With a little luck and a lot of skill, he could lead her where he needed to go.

“Gut reactions can be pretty reliable. Maybe you should trust yours.”

“Why?”

“You mentioned arson. I’m digging into some cold cases that have been ignored for too long.”

She squatted beside him, bracing her hands on either side of the door frame, and stared at him with rounded eyes. “What?”

That surprised her. Good. “You’re interfering with an ongoing investigation.”

She stood in a rush and stumbled back a few steps. “Where are you from?”

“Washington, D.C.” Let’s see where that leads her.

“FBI?” She took another step back. “ATF?”

He didn’t want to outright lie to her, so he tilted his head and let her draw her own conclusions for now.

“Aw, sh—boygan!” She began pacing.

“Sheboygan?”

“My mother doesn’t like it when I swear.”

“Sheboygan?” he repeated. “You’re a bounty hunter and you don’t swear?”

“Profanity shows a lack of imagination.”

“The folks in Sheboygan probably wouldn’t appreciate having their town taken in vain.”

“They can get in line with the folks from Keister.”

He laughed.

He sat there, north of who knew where, handcuffed to the seat of a rusting shell that hid a high-performance engine. A two-month investigation was in jeopardy. He’d just manipulated the assumptions of his captor, a woman who had drugged him and held him at gunpoint—and managed to look too damn sexy doing it, even punked out like she was.

And she made him laugh.

Laughing felt good. It had been a long time since he’d laughed. “Come on, Elf. Trust me. What have you got to lose?”

“Only my self-respect.” She kept pacing, kicking at the gravel drive. “I don’t suppose you can prove who you are? No official ID or anything like that?”

“What kind of undercover agent would I be if I carried proof of my real identity on me? Before you ask—” he held up his free hand when she opened her mouth “—you won’t find proof in my room, either.”

“Any suggestions on how I can verify who you say you are?”

“Unfortunately, it’s Friday night and even my boss, workaholic that she is, leaves the office for the weekend.” No need to let on that his boss was always reachable—not yet, anyway.

“Convenient.”

“True, nonetheless. We could try calling her. She might have her line forwarded.”

“No phone in the cabin and the cell phone is intermittent, as I just learned. This doesn’t make sense. Why would Dex—” She interrupted herself. “This is crazy.”

Dex? Her client? “It’s up to you, Elf.”

“What guarantee do I have that you won’t rabbit the second I turn my back?”

“None. Except my word.”

“Oh, that’s real reassuring.”

“Look. I’m from the east coast. I’ve never been to Minnesota before this assignment. I have no clue where we are, where the closest town might be or if there even is a town within hiking distance. All I know is that we’re near a lake and the mosquitoes—” he smacked a specimen trying to suck his neck dry “—are hungry little buggers. Could we at least go inside?”

She stopped pacing and approached the car. “You’re keeping the cuffs on, at least until I figure out…something.”

“You’re the boss.”

Her Yeah, right sideways glance at him made it clear just what she thought of that statement’s credibility. “Sit on your right hand.”

He obeyed, sliding his free hand under his leg. She pinned his leg in place with her knee, putting more weight than necessary on it, as she leaned into the car and released the handcuff from the seat frame. Her warm scent surrounded him, filling his head with all sorts of imaginings better left for late nights and soft beds.

She backed out of the car, but kept a firm hold on his handcuffed wrist. “Let’s see if we can do this nice and easy. Swing your legs out of the car, stand up and turn around.”

He followed her directions, hesitating for a couple heartbeats when he stood at his full height. She was close. Close enough he could feel her warm breath fanning the exposed skin of his throat.

Close enough he could see her swallow and watch the dawning awareness in her eyes.

Close enough she’d notice exactly how…aware he was in a couple seconds. He turned his back to her.

A soft breeze brushed the back of his neck.

Or maybe it was her sighed release of a held breath.

Blood heated low in his belly. If he didn’t watch out, this attraction would get out of hand way too easily. He’d already broken one of his rules by talking to a civilian about his assignment. He stood dangerously close to breaking a few more.

Angel snapped the handcuff into place around Cabrini’s right wrist. Beneath her fingers, his pulse beat with a heavy rhythm that matched her own heartbeat. She forced out a calming breath and, along with it, the memory of the hungry desire she’d read in his eyes.

Was he really a federal agent? If he was telling the truth, what the devil was Dex up to and why had he involved her?

Anger bubbled up and she embraced the emotion. Anything was better than the desire Cabrini’s proximity generated.

Another mosquito landed on Cabrini’s neck and she slapped it, maybe a little harder than necessary, judging by his startled glance over his shoulder at her.