Dark Knight: A Loveswept Romance Classic Read online

  “The show is being run just fine,” she said, keeping her jaw tight so her teeth wouldn’t chatter.

  “Just not by you.”

  Scottie didn’t react. She didn’t have to. Damn the man.

  “We still have a lot to discuss,” she said evenly.

  Logan pinned her with his black eyes. There was enough heat in that one look to keep her warm if she were standing naked in a blizzard.

  “Yes, we do.” He stepped out on the deck and pulled the door shut.

  From where Scottie stood, she watched him cross the open area behind the cabin, heading toward the trees. His progress was slow in the thigh-high snow, but his determination was such that he seemed to wade through it like water.

  Only when he disappeared into the trees did she think about following him. He wouldn’t find the trail she’d forged. Even if she hadn’t thoroughly disguised it, he was heading in the opposite direction. The timber was tall and closely packed. There was far less snowfall in the woods. But she knew that the stand ended less than five hundred feet upslope. And when he came out on the other side, the snow would likely be chest-deep. She spent another moment wondering if he was experienced enough not to end up over his head in the stuff. People died in much less snow, often within yards of shelter of some kind. She spent another moment wondering if her concern about his welfare was strictly job related.

  The answer that immediately sprang to mind was not reassuring.

  “He’s too ornery to let something as flimsy as snow kill him,” she muttered. He’d just glare at the snow, and it would melt a path for him. Still, she watched the tree line. Amazing, she thought, how one man could be such a mix of easy charm and deadly determination. The question echoed in her mind. Just who are you, Logan Blackstone?

  “And why do I care so much?” she asked herself.

  Scottie decided to use the break to do what she should have been doing all along—searching the entire cabin. Of course, the subject of her assignment was supposed to be restrained to a bed not traipsing about loose in the woods. She consoled herself with the fact that at least something was going according to plan. If she could turn up any information on Blackstone, preferably something that would support her “allowing” him his freedom, then she would be able to report something positive to Del when he contacted her.

  She also hoped Del had something positive to report to her. She wanted more background information on Logan—such as where he’d been trained and what he’d been doing besides running a bar for the last five years. Maybe apples really didn’t fall far from the tree. A fleeting thought of her father made her shudder, but she pushed past it and followed the original idea.

  Had Logan ended up in espionage of some kind like his brother had? It would explain where he’d gotten the contacts to track down Lucas. Although it appeared now that even though he’d tracked his brother to the Brethren compound, he’d had no idea of Lucas’s real reason for being in Montana.

  She scanned the interior of the cabin. She’d already checked the bathroom. She thought about doing a more in-depth look in the kitchen, but her eyes strayed back to the other open door. The bedroom.

  It was the best bet. She didn’t waste time. She checked the armoire, but there was nothing hidden there. She checked under the bed, felt along under the slat supports. Nothing. She stripped the sheets off the bed, then pulled the mattress off. Nothing in the box springs. She ran her hands over all four sides of the mattress, scanning for any new seams or slits near the edging. Nothing. Then she noticed the manufacturer’s label on the bottom, a big rectangular piece of printed silk. The adhesive used to adhere it to the mattress showed a bit more on one side than the other, as if the label had been peeled off and put back on slightly off center. She picked at one corner, then pulled it back.

  “Bingo.” Logan had cut away part of the bedding and made a small hidey-hole. She pulled out his wallet, a small envelope, another handgun, two ammunition clips, each fully loaded, and a passport. “Passport?” she murmured. To go to Montana?

  She didn’t have much time. The envelope and his wallet were the best bets for potential information, but curiosity had her picking up the passport. She flipped open the dark blue cover. There was a picture of Logan, taken at least a few years before. She glanced at the date of issue and saw that it was almost five years old. He looked dark and menacing in the photo, there was no hint of the easy smile and quick wit she knew he possessed.

  She went to riffle through the pages, to see where he’d been in the last four and a half years, when her attention was caught by the name typed next to his picture. She’d been so busy checking dates, she hadn’t thought to look. “Grant Hudson.” The rest of the info on the cover page fit the man in the photo. All but the name.

  There was no doubt he was Logan Blackstone—she had Lucas as biological evidence on that one—which meant Grant Hudson was an assumed identity. “Just a minor federal offense,” she said sardonically. She glanced over her shoulder into the main area of the cabin. She could see beyond the deck from this angle. No sign of Logan. Still, she worked quickly. He’d been gone for over an hour, but even he wasn’t tough enough to stay out in that much cold and snow with only boots and a sweater on for much longer.

  She flipped through the pages of the passport. Almost every page bore entry or exit stamps. The countries represented spanned the globe, but she noticed that most were in the Middle East, a few more were from some of the newer countries that had formed since the demise of the USSR, and a few others were from Central and South America.

  She flipped to the last page. The most recent date was less than one month earlier. Five weeks after his father had died. He was still active, so much so he took his passport with him even when on personal business. She considered the fact that he could be after his brother for professional reasons, but instinct based on his father dying so recently told her that wasn’t the case. She closed the book, her mind already spinning as she dropped it back into the nest and picked up the envelope.

  Why in the hell hadn’t Del caught this information on his initial background sweep? She knew he’d been in a hurry because of the time frame, but with his contacts there was no excuse to let something that had so much potential to affect her assignment slip by unnoticed. Which meant Del had no clue whatsoever about Logan’s alternate life. Which also meant that whatever team it was that Logan worked for was buried even deeper in the labyrinth of secret government agencies than the Dirty Dozen. A startling thought, especially when she knew that only a handful of people on the planet knew about the Dirty Dozen.

  She dropped the envelope and quickly flipped open the wallet. Michigan driver’s license. Picture, name, and address were all the same as the information Del had given her. She slipped out two credit cards, one gold, both inscribed with the name Logan Blackstone. There was a wad of cash, mostly twenties and fifties, in the billfold, about five hundred dollars give or take. She looked behind the driver’s license and in every other slit and crevice, but there was nothing else in the wallet. She dropped it and unclasped the small manila envelope.

  A driver’s license, social security card, and a couple of credit cards slid out into her hand. All in the name of Grant Hudson. She slid them back in and pulled out a few folded pieces of paper. A photograph slipped from them to the floor. She picked it up. It was a part of a photograph, actually half of one. It was old, the black-and-white film fading to gray and yellow over the years. The picture was of a tall, well-built man with dark hair. He was wearing pleated pants and a white button-down shirt, and he was holding an infant. The smile on his face as he looked down at the child in his arms was very familiar.

  “My father.”

  Scottie startled badly, barely squelching a scream. Logan was just behind her, looking over her shoulder. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold, and his hair was wind ruffled. It made him appear a bit wild, untamed. He looked more dangerous than ever.

  “The … uh, the resemblance is uncanny,” she said, scra
mbling to regain her equilibrium. There were very few ways to handle being caught red-handed. She opted for ignoring the crime and focusing on what the act had uncovered. “I take it the child is you?”

  “No, he thinks it’s Lucas.”

  Logan’s expression hadn’t changed, meaning he still had none. She had no idea what was going on behind those flat, black eyes of his. She doubted it was anything warm or positive.

  “Thinks?” Keep him talking. She quietly stretched her fingers under the envelope until she could touch the gun. Just in case.

  “According to my father this was taken about a month after we came home from the hospital. He’s pretty sure he was holding Lucas, and my mother was holding me.”

  “Where’s the other half of the photo? I assume it’s of you and your mother?”

  “I don’t know where it is. Lucas could have it. This was the only photo taken of us as a whole family.”

  Something flickered in his eyes, but Scottie could only guess at the fleeting emotion she saw. Loss. Loneliness. Perhaps a combination of the two. Grief.

  He suddenly became all too human to her; made vulnerable and threatened by past events he had no control over. She’d seen him like this one other time. When he was dreaming about Sarah. She now understood there was grief in that history too. She wanted to ask, wanted to help. He gave her the chance to do neither.

  “My dad cut it in half when they split up. It was a couple months later. He gave the other half to her. A memento, I guess. I don’t know if she even kept it.”

  She looked from the photo up to Logan. He towered over her, but suddenly she wasn’t so afraid of him. “But you’re hoping Lucas has it. As some kind of proof?”

  “I think just looking at him would be proof enough, don’t you?”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “Proof of family then. Proof of where you came from.”

  His dark expression shuttered further, but he said nothing.

  “Do you know why they split up? Why they never told you about your brother? Or him about you?”

  He held her gaze for what felt like an hour. She didn’t think he would answer. Then he said flatly, “As a kid I was told she died. I don’t know what really happened. My father didn’t tell me until he was so far gone he could barely talk. He used what energy he had left trying to convince me to look for Lucas. Maybe he knows the truth.”

  “Did you really need convincing?”

  “I was stunned. I was angry at him for lying to me all these years.” He fell silent for a moment, his gaze unfocused, as if he were looking inward. She didn’t break the silence.

  “Later,” he continued, his tone more subdued, “after he died, none of that mattered to me, all that mattered was finding my brother, which I would have done whether or not Blackie had begged me to.”

  Scottie could tell that it did still matter to him. He had a lot of unresolved feelings about what his father had done, and how he’d gone about trying to rectify it. It told her volumes that wouldn’t be found in any report about how deeply Logan felt about his father.

  Her own thoughts turned inward. “You were fortunate to have a parent who loved you that way and allowed you to love him back,” she said quietly, not realizing she had given voice to her thoughts until the words were out.

  Instead of inviting questions or further confidences, her comment seemed to jerk him out of his reverie. His expression hardened once again. “Find anything else interesting in there?” He nodded toward the hidden stash under her hands.

  He made no move to bend down or interfere with her in any way, but she instinctively slid her fingers a little farther onto the gun handle. For those few moments she’d forgotten how they’d come to discuss the subject of his family.

  It was clear he hadn’t.

  “Just your pretty basic wallet stuff. I didn’t take any money,” she added with what she hoped passed for a dry smile. “You can count it if you like.”

  He didn’t respond to her attempt at levity. Instead he crouched down. She could feel the chill emanating from his clothes. It was the one emanating from his eyes that truly froze her in place.

  “You got any other questions you want to ask me, Detective Commander?” His voice was black-silk slick and just as cold.

  She worked hard to maintain even a semirelaxed posture. “I thought we’d already established that there are some things I’d like to know.”

  His gaze dropped directly to the passport, then cut back to her. The light that came into his eyes was faintly mocking. “Yeah, I just bet you do.”

  “Let me clean up here and we can talk in the living room.” She didn’t phrase it as an offer. Without waiting for a reply, she slipped the photo and papers back in the envelope. He had to have been spying on her long enough to know she hadn’t seen what was on the papers. It was unlikely he’d show her now. She put the wallet and the envelope back in the hole on top of the gun and passport.

  She pushed the mattress off her legs and moved to stand up, only to find herself unceremoniously hauled to her feet by a hand latched around her upper arm. She came up flush against him, tilting her head back in order to see his face, a face which presently appeared to be carved from granite. She found herself looking at his mouth and remembering his wide, easy grins. At the moment, it seemed almost impossible to believe he was capable of producing those grins, just as it seemed impossible to believe those lips had been intimately involved with her own.

  “Keep looking at my mouth like that and I might get the wrong idea about why you want to talk to me.”

  His voice was a low vibration that made her shudder … and not with fear or revulsion. “I—” She tugged at her arm. It might as well have been trapped in a vise. “I … let me straighten the room up. Thanks for helping me get off the floor.”

  He continued as if he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. “You know, talking is highly overrated. There are other, more effective ways to communicate.”

  She thought of the mattress lying literally at their feet. She remembered lying beneath him with broken shafts of wood poking her back and his chains digging into her stomach. Even then he’d “communicated” just fine.

  “Communicating like—” She broke off and cleared her suddenly tight throat. “Communicating like that would effectively end my career.”

  “Is your career in that much jeopardy?”

  “Do you always seduce and interrogate at the same time?”

  He surprised her with a soft laugh. “It worked for James Bond.”

  She pulled her head back and looked him in the eye. “Is that what you are, Logan? Or should I call you Grant?”

  His smile remained, but the teasing light that had just returned to his eyes winked out. She shouldn’t have regretted it.

  “Cleanup time is over,” he announced abruptly. Without warning he stepped over the pile of sheets, out the door, and yanked her along behind him. She barely kept herself from tripping over the corner of the mattress and had to hop over the linens.

  By the time she regained her balance and could make a move designed to free herself, she found herself flung onto the couch. He hadn’t done it harshly, but it earned him the expected result.

  She rubbed her newly released arm and aimed a pointed look at him, but stayed where she was, watching him as he paced in front of the couch. “A simple, ‘have a seat’ would have been sufficient. If you recall, I was the one who suggested we talk. You were the one who suggested that we—”

  He spun around, nailing her with a heated look the instant she stopped herself from finishing. “That we what, Scottie? Say it.”

  “Listen, we’re two people, stuck in a cabin, there’s a lot of tension and some of it’s sexual. Okay, I admit it. That’s normal. It doesn’t mean we have to do something about it.”

  He stopped and planted his hands on his hips. “I think it would beat the hell out of what we’ve been doing so far.”

  “Well, you’ll have to pardon me if I don’t strip naked and jump on you becau
se it’s more fun than doing my job.”

  The anger and frustration left his expression. All that remained was the heat. “As far as I can tell, your job is to make my life miserable for the next few days. So yes, I can damn well guarantee that it would be a whole lot more fun doing it my way.” He stalked toward the couch. Scottie pushed back against the sagging cushions. What exactly was he planning to do? And did she want to stop him from doing it?

  Her thoughts came to a halt when he stopped in front of her and bent over, placing his hands on the back of the couch, on either side of her shoulders. His face was now inches from hers. She’d spent a lot of time being close to him. For some reason this time was different from any of the others. Then she realized what it was.

  This time he wasn’t chained up.

  “What is it you’re really afraid of, Scottie? Losing your job? I don’t think so.” He dropped his gaze to her lips, then back to her eyes. “You know, there’s more than one way to chain a man to a bed.”

  She swallowed, a difficult task on a suddenly dry throat.

  “Hell, a few days might not even be enough. Mission would be accomplished, job saved. And we all know how important it is to you to get the job done, don’t we, Scottie?”

  Scottie scrambled to keep her thoughts focused. He’d asked what she was afraid of. It was a question she did not want to answer, not even to herself. Because it had nothing whatsoever to do with her career.

  No, her fear centered on giving in to the thoughts, needs, and wants that had been plaguing her lately. Somehow they had all come together and were embodied by the man standing in front of her, offering her something she shouldn’t take. She couldn’t take. She wanted it too suddenly, too badly, too much. After half a lifetime spent never wanting at all, these feelings were confusing the hell out of her.

  Whatever her reasons were for feeling this way about him and what he offered, they were certainly not the same reasons he had. Oddly, it was that conclusion that gave her the strength she needed.