Virgin in Disguise Read online

  “He’s already left. He got a phone call and took off a few minutes ago.”

  “Corie, take care of Mom. See if you can get her to calm down. Maybe try calling Dr. Brenna’s service to see if she can talk to Mom. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m going to find out. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can, in the morning.”

  “It would be better if you came home.”

  “I know.” Her throat ached. “And I will, as soon as I possibly can.”

  She cut the connection and dialed another number.

  “Dexter here.”

  “How dare you do that to my mother.” Anger throbbed through her voice.

  “Angela?”

  She began pacing again. “Yes, it’s me. What the hell were you thinking to tell my mother I was missing?”

  “Angela…I can’t believe it’s you. When the sheriff called to say the cabin was burning, I thought… I can’t begin to tell you what I thought.”

  “Whatever it was, it wasn’t very smart.”

  “How did you know…? Are you at your mother’s?”

  “No, she called me.”

  “Why would she do that if she—”

  “Because that’s what she does when she’s upset or has a bad feeling. She calls me to make sure I’m okay. Too bad you didn’t think to do the same thing before dropping a bomb on her in the middle of the night.”

  “Where are you?”

  Something in his voice triggered a caution alarm in her brain. She stopped pacing. “I’m a safe distance from all the action.”

  “Cabrini?”

  “He’s here with me.”

  “That’s good to know. Are you coming home, then? I’m sure Maryam will want to actually see you before she believes you aren’t hurt.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

  “Good. We’ll be watching for you.”

  She ended the call and met Cabrini’s inquisitive look.

  “He as good as told Mom I was dead.” She hated the pain that must have caused her mother. Tears burned the back of her eyes and closed her throat. She started pacing again, not watching where she stepped.

  Cabrini caught her when her narrow heel turned on the gravel shoulder. “Easy, Elf.” He folded her in his arms.

  It felt so safe there, sheltered by his strength. Since the day her father died, she’d had to be the strong one. Now, she wanted to sink into Cabrini’s protection and hide. The thought stiffened her spine and she stepped away.

  He let her go, but kept a gentle hold on her elbows. “Tell me what happened.”

  She related the Reader’s Digest version, ending with, “Something’s not right. We need to know what’s going on.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me. Who talked to your mother?”

  “Dex.”

  “How did he already know about the fire?”

  “He said the sheriff called him, but something’s not adding up.” She strode to the rear of the car and opened the trunk.

  Cabrini followed.

  She shoved a flashlight into his hand. “Here, hold this.” She moved some supplies out of the way and reached to the back of the trunk. “Got it.”

  She wriggled back out of the trunk and caught Cabrini staring at her backside. “What?”

  “Nothing.” He held up one hand in surrender. “Enjoying the show, that’s all.”

  Having him ogle her shouldn’t bother her. She used her appearance like any other tool of her trade. But the situation with Cabrini wasn’t the norm. They’d gotten to know each other as individuals. Her cheeks heated with anger and embarrassment that she had misjudged him, had thought better of him than he deserved. “Well, show’s over.”

  Cabrini wisely chose to ignore her and noticed what she held in her hands. “A police scanner?”

  “I figure, if we can’t be there, we can at least hear what the locals are saying.”

  “Any chance you have a first-aid kit in there?”

  She pulled a metal box from its corner in the trunk. “Here. Why? You get a splinter or something?”

  “Or something.” He twisted around some as he looked over his shoulder. “I don’t think it’s serious, but it hurts like the devil. What does it look like?”

  A dark stain covered a large portion of his T-shirt back. She swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Not a lot of opportunity between then and now.”

  She took the flashlight from him and gave his back a quick once-over. “Take your shirt off.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  A blush burned her cheeks. “So I can see how bad it is.”

  “This is probably not the best place. I can manage for a few more miles.” He took the flashlight back. “Let’s get the scanner hooked up, then figure out where we can hole up for the first aid.”

  He fanned the beam of light over the trunk contents. “Looks like a lot of gear.”

  She slammed the lid.

  “Was that a baseball bat?”

  “Yes.” She got into the car and hooked up the scanner, tuning into a channel that buzzed with chatter.

  “Care to share what other bags of tricks you have back there?”

  “No. Shut up and listen.”

  He did, and what they heard sent a chill crawling over her scalp.

  …arson suspects. Female, Caucasian, five-nine, bleached blond and blue. Male, Caucasian, six-four, black and blue, heavy beard. They are armed and considered dangerous….

  “That’s us,” she whispered.

  He nodded, slid into the passenger seat and snapped his seat belt in place. “Close the door and drive. First chance you get, head north.”

  “But Mom—”

  “Is exactly where they expect you to run.”

  Her heart sank to the pit of her stomach. “Which makes it the last place I can go.”

  “I’m sorry, Elf.”

  She nodded and tromped on the gas pedal. Rusty fishtailed on the gravel shoulder as she pulled back onto the road. When they hit the next county road intersection, she turned north.

  “This is wrong,” she said. “Just plain wrong.”

  “Right now, we don’t have a choice. We can’t go back to Minneapolis yet.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s everything else. Nothing adds up quite right. How did the fire department get there so quick? Who called it in and why didn’t they stick around? How did Dex find out so fast?”

  “All good questions. I have one of my own. Who is Dex?”

  “I told you.” She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “He’s a family friend.”

  “It’s time to come clean, Elf. Everything that’s happened seems to circle back to him. Why?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “No?”

  She drove in silence, wrestling with the implications and wishing she could talk through the situation without betraying client confidentiality.

  “Come on, Elf. You’ve got to level with me. If we’d opened that cabin door, we would be toast right now. I don’t think it was an accident. Do you?”

  “Vandalism.”

  “You don’t really believe it was random, do you?”

  “I can’t believe it’s anything else.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because anything else… No.”

  “Say it.”

  “Because if it was deliberate, Dex is in danger.”

  Cabrini turned in his seat, a look of disbelief on his face. “How do you figure that?”

  “It’s his place. If he’d been there, he might have been killed. Since he wasn’t—”

  “No, we were.”

  “Since he wasn’t there, maybe it’s just to warn him off something.”

  “That doesn’t explain the bulletin we just heard.”

  “The sheriff saw us there. If he suspects the fire wasn’t an accident, we’re the logical starting point.”

  “You’re forget
ting…a lot of things, actually, but one in particular.”

  “What?”

  “Right now, you have long, black hair and brown eyes, not that the sheriff was close enough to make out eye color.”

  She touched the wig she still wore, then pounded the steering wheel in time to her muttered, “Fridley, Fargo, Fresno.”

  “I agree. Who is Dex?”

  “A family friend.”

  “Not good enough. Who is he? Full name.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. He hired you to find me.”

  She scowled at him. “What makes you think that?”

  “Two plus two, Elf. Dex is your client and he wants us out of the way for some reason.”

  She shook her head in denial.

  “Us, Elf. That Attempt To Locate bulletin listed us both as suspects. Someone set the sheriff in that direction. I’m pretty sure I know who. I want to know why, and I want to know now.”

  “Not Dex.”

  “Fine, not him. There’s some other logical explanation for how he got a call from the sheriff, went to your mother, told her you were missing and left. How long had we been driving before your mother called? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?”

  A chill curled in her belly, sending tentacles out to wrap around her heart. It can’t be.

  “You said it yourself.” Cabrini didn’t let up. “Nothing adds up. And it never will as long as you keep Dex out of the equation.”

  Bits and pieces shifted, taking on new form and meaning. “He sounded surprised when he heard my voice.”

  “I’ll bet he did.”

  She struggled with the possibility that Dex wasn’t the intended victim of the cabin explosion. If she believed Cabrini… “No. You’re wrong. There’s something more here. Someone else is involved and is using me to get to Dex.”

  “Why? What’s he into that warrants an attack like that?”

  “Politics.” She spit the word like a curse. “There are some people not too pleased with his intentions.”

  “To do what?”

  She shook her head.

  “Supposedly, I would have met him tomorrow. If he was really going to come to the cabin. So why still try to keep his identity secret? It’s not like there’s a whole lot I can do with the information under the current circumstances.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Who’s your client?” If he wanted her to break confidentiality, he better provide something of equal value in exchange.

  “You know I can’t tell you that. Not yet.”

  “Well, there’s your answer.” She turned up the volume on the scanner and drove.

  Frank settled into his seat and waited. Sooner or later, she’d have to face the reality. He had a pretty strong suspicion of who Dex was and it didn’t give him any warm fuzzies about her family ties.

  The scanner broke into the silence with another bulletin. Update on prior arson ATL. Suspects seen fleeing the house fire on Quay Lake are driving a ’73 Mustang, red with Minnesota plates, MBW733. Do not approach without backup. They are considered armed and dangerous.

  “I didn’t happen to notice, Elf. What’s the number on your car plates?”

  Her hands flexing on the steering wheel gave the only indication that she’d heard his softly voiced question.

  “Any idea where we’re going?” He kept his tone casual.

  “You said turn north. I turned north.”

  “So…you don’t know where we’re going?”

  “Hell, most probably.”

  “Cute. Maybe you’d consider pulling over so we can discuss what we’re going to do?”

  “Soon as I find a place. As you said, the shoulder of the road probably isn’t the best place for what I have in mind.”

  What did she have in mind? Probably nothing along the lines of what he’d been hoping for prior to the rude interruption of an exploding building.

  Dark pines and ghostly birch trees flashed by in the night, giving the impression they were driving through a living tunnel. Their surroundings were isolated and intimate. No side roads branched off, and the woods just grew thicker.

  “Might be easier to find something if you slowed down.”

  She shot him a look that left little doubt of her appreciation of his observations. She also let up on the gas, and the speedometer needle dropped below sixty-five.

  The tension wasn’t doing the pain in his back any good. He forced his muscles to relax. Riding in the passenger seat was an unfamiliar sensation, and not one he found particularly comfortable. Much as he would have preferred it, he didn’t even try to convince Elf to let him drive.

  The headlights flashed off a series of roadside signs. One indicated a curving road, another showed the silhouette of a leaping deer.

  The car continued to slow. Elf muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Stay away, little deer.”

  Another sign came into view. The weathered lettering advertised a campground. An arrow pointed down an overgrown track. Elf spun the wheel and followed the barely visible path.

  Frank braced his hand on the roof as they bounced over the washboard ruts. He considered asking her where they were going, but didn’t want to risk biting off his tongue. They jounced over another bump and his teeth snapped together. Silence was definitely the best plan for the moment.

  The joke of a road curved and opened into a clearing. Elf stopped the car. The headlights blinked out and she turned off the engine.

  He waited for her to say something. Silence wrapped around them in the velvet darkness. The sweet scent of grass and trees washed over him on a warm breeze as he rolled down his widow.

  The soft click of the dome light switch caught his attention. He turned back to look at the woman who was driving him in directions he wasn’t entirely comfortable going.

  Her glance skittered away from his. She wasn’t comfortable, either. He couldn’t blame her. When you were used to working alone, it was unsettling to find yourself shackled with an unwilling partner.

  Even more unsettling was finding himself with a partner whose skills perfectly matched his.

  Adding to his discomfort was his awareness of her as a woman. He hadn’t come close to getting to know the real person beneath all the disguises. Intellectually, that set off more than a few alarms. Physically, it didn’t make a bit of difference. His body responded to her presence with a hunger that left him aching. Judging by her reactions, they were well-matched on that front, as well.

  They had better get it out of their systems soon.

  Chapter 8

  Angel pulled off the wig and ruffled her hair. Time for another disguise. She stretched cramped muscles, reaching to the star-studded sky as she walked to Rusty’s trunk.

  Cabrini stood by the passenger door, watching her.

  Awareness of his presence tingled along her skin. She lowered her arms and tugged at the hem of her skirt. The lack of length hadn’t been a problem as long as they were in public. The quiet seclusion of the woods presented her with an altogether different sensation.

  Getting Cabrini off her hands couldn’t happen too soon for her taste. Letting down her guard around him was a mistake, regardless of how good it felt to just relax and be herself for a change.

  Be herself. Sometimes it was hard to remember what that meant. She lived most of her life in one disguise or another. That’s how she’d structured her method of operation.

  When was the last time she’d been herself anywhere other than within the walls of her mother’s home?

  Forever ago. The time with Cabrini at the cabin had been an aberration.

  No matter. She opened Rusty’s trunk. The middle of the night, in the middle of an abandoned campground, was no place to start soul searching. She couldn’t afford to let the man disrupt her peace of mind. Not when they were the object of an ATL.

  Every town cop, highway patrol and county sheriff would be watching for them. They needed to disappear.

  Lucky for them, that’s
what she did best—disappear behind disguises.

  Cabrini came around the end of the car as she draped the wig over the trunk lid, then dug out the flashlight and flicked it on. “Let’s get your back cleaned up.”

  She worked slowly, peeling the shirt away from his wound. He never made a sound as she used the peroxide from the first-aid kit to clean the area. “It’s not as bad as it looked.”

  “Glad to hear it. How much longer do you plan to torture me?”

  “A few more minutes should do it. I want to make sure I got everything.” She picked up the light and inspected the wound, probing with a gentle touch. “It looks like whatever hit you scraped off skin more than anything else.”

  She dug through the first-aid kit and pulled out an antibacterial cream. “This is going to sting.”

  He sucked in a breath at the first contact. “That was an understatement.”

  “I’m sorry.” She swapped the cream for gauze and tape. His skin felt firm and warm beneath her fingers. Smoothing the tape into place came dangerously close to becoming a caress.

  She slapped the lid back on the first-aid tin and grabbed the flashlight.

  “Make yourself useful.” She pushed the flashlight into his hands.

  The brightness shining directly at her almost blinded her. She raised one hand to shield her eyes.

  “Sorry.” He lowered the light. The beam trailed down her body, an extension of his hand, caressing her without touching her.

  Their eyes met.

  She read hunger in his look. An answering hunger for his touch flashed through her, drew her a step closer. The night whirr of crickets blended into the rushing of her pulse.

  In spite of his rough facade, Cabrini held more partner potential than any guy she’d ever dated.

  No. She caught herself and stepped back. That path led to disaster. The last thing she needed in her life was a man complicating things. This man, especially.

  Whatever his assignment was, it had brought him to Minnesota on a temporary basis. As soon as he completed his job, he’d leave and she’d be alone. Just like she’d always been.

  If nothing was going to change, it made no sense to invest any of herself into a relationship that was doomed before it started.

  She turned to the open trunk and blindly pushed at the contents.