No Rules(55)
“What about you and Jess?” Avery asked. “Did you figure out what vase Wally was talking about?”
He hated saying it. “No. Wally sent Hakim a message that he’d found better merchandise at a different shop and was canceling his order. Of course, there was no order, so Hakim assumed it referred to better information. I still think from Wally’s story that the information we need has to do with a vase. I just don’t know where to look.” He gave them a meaningful glance. “But that doesn’t mean we failed. We’ve barely started. We know Wally would have stopped by this house, so maybe someone nearby knows where he spent his time. He comes here every year, and he knows everyone.”
“But they think he’s just a college professor,” Avery said. “They don’t know anything about his work with Omega.”
“Someone does,” he reminded them grimly. “They know he discovered the hostages, and they were only one step behind him when he left. And now they know we’re looking for them.
“How did they know?” Avery asked.
Good question. He suspected it was because someone inside Omega had told them, but he said, “They must have been watching the airport, knowing someone would come. They followed us, maybe followed others, too. At any rate, they figured out who we were.”
Avery made a disgusted face. “Great. So how do we find them?”
“Something gave them away, and if Wally could find it, we have to, too.”
The unpleasant reminder of Wally’s death hung in the air for several seconds before Kyle asked, “Are we sure the hostages are still alive? Have the kidnappers made any demands yet?”
“No word from Evan.” Which wasn’t a good sign.
“Goddammit,” Kyle grumbled. He frowned at his feet stretched out before him, grinding his teeth over a situation that should have been a straightforward hostage rescue. “What’s so fuckin’ special about two archeology students, anyway? Some guys grab them, and then they don’t ask for a ransom and don’t make demands. That’s just weird. That’s not how it works.” His frustration spilled over into actions as he stood, unbuttoning his shirt impatiently, then tossing it aside, revealing an undershirt and the shoulder holster and gun he wore beneath it. “And it’s not supposed to be our job to figure it out. I rescue hostages, damn it. I don’t play hide-and-seek with them.” Taking a vicious kick at a backpack, he watched it bounce off the wall, then stalked to the kitchen. “We got anything besides water in here?”
Donovan raised an eyebrow at Avery. “You have anything you’d like to add to that?”
She sighed. “No, I think Kyle said it all. It’s been a long, frustrating day, Tyler.”
“Tell me about it.” He crinkled his empty water bottle. “Maybe Mitch will have better luck.”
…
Jess lay on the simple mattress in the bedroom and stared at the ceiling, mentally dissecting the story of the rabbit and the wolf and the beavers. Anything to keep her mind on the problem that had brought her here. Not the one that had developed since, the one that revolved around finding some private time with Tyler Donovan to explore the possibility that the dangerous wolf might be exactly what the timid rabbit needed.
Don’t think about it. She punched the mattress and forced herself to think about ancient vases and rivers and beaver lodges, waiting for the sudden insight everyone expected her to have. The lightning bolt of inspiration that would turn her father’s silly story into a metaphor for rescuing two hostages.
It didn’t happen. The only insight she had was that he’d been right about the rabbit and the wolf being able to get along, because she had a feeling they could do a lot more than that.
The wolf might even turn out to be better therapy than Dr. Epstein. And wouldn’t that be ironic. After all those years of counseling her on finding a man she felt safe with, who didn’t intimidate her, one with whom she could drop her guard and let herself feel without holding back, to have the kind of sexual experience every other woman got to have…who’d have thought that man would be the most intimidating, dangerous man she’d ever met?
It seemed impossible. According to Dr. Epstein who had heard all the humiliating details of her sex life, the main reason for her inability to climax with a man was tied to being rejected by her father at the age of puberty. That was why sexual situations raised trust issues for her, he said. Therefore, what she needed was a nonthreatening man, one who would never make her feel powerless. One who would respect her boundaries.
She couldn’t count the number of ways Donovan violated her boundaries. Dragging her from her father’s house and taking her halfway around the world on a forged passport probably ranked right up there with the worst. But she couldn’t separate that from the best—yanking her into a soul-searing kiss and boldly feeling her up, a liberty no man had ever taken without her permission, but to her utter astonishment, one that had left her hot and damp and closer to an orgasm than she’d ever been without the assistance of a vibrator. Far closer than with one of those polite, nonthreatening men rocking gently inside her.