“Why don’t you get some sleep?” he asked her. “I’ve got to call Baker Street—he wants the details—but there’s no reason you have to stay awake, too. Not with bodyguards in the next room.”
Keira stood up. In just those few seconds her face had been wiped clean of emotion. “Maybe I will.” Her voice was flat, toneless.
Cody knew that expression. It was the same frozen mask she’d worn after the first time he’d kissed her, but now he was all too aware it was her way of hiding deep pain she didn’t want the world to see. And he knew that voice—he’d heard it before, too, the same time she’d told him it wouldn’t happen again, referring to their first kiss.
This wasn’t his Keira, this cold, emotionless automaton. His Keira was warm, animated...and a fighter. For her to shut down this way had to mean she cared so passionately she couldn’t deal with it any other way.
She loves you.
She’d said the words when they were making love earlier. And he’d believed her. But now he knew it went far deeper. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, reassure her that he was safe for now, but the presence of the other agents stopped him. He knew she wouldn’t want them to know...anything. All he could do was let his eyes tell her what he couldn’t show her. But she wouldn’t look at him, and the message didn’t go through. She slipped quietly into the bedroom, and Cody watched her go silently, wanting to call her back, willing her to turn around. But she didn’t.
* * *
Keira closed the bedroom door behind her and stood for a minute, her back to the door as her gaze fell on her bed. The sheets and blanket were all rumpled, and in her mind’s eye she could see Cody and her there earlier, their bodies entwined. She could still hear the echoes of their passion. She could still feel him deep inside her.
Then she heard Cody saying, Turn the key, step on the gas and boom. She shuddered and covered her face with her hands. All her earlier excitement and pride at solving a big piece of the puzzle—figuring out who had revived the New World Militia and how, uncovering the link between them, NOANC and the Praetor Corporation, uncovering the connection between them and the Russian Bratva—all that was gone.
Turn the key, step on the gas and boom.
Her hands dropped to her sides and formed impotent fists. Solving the puzzle hadn’t protected Cody. It was a miracle he wasn’t dead or gravely injured. It was a miracle he’d noticed—how had he put it to Callahan? Dust...that wasn’t there. Sometime while they’d made love tonight, maybe even at the moment she was confessing her love to him, someone was planting explosives in Cody’s truck. Someone who wanted him dead. And not just dead—someone wanted him to die a horrible, agonizing death by fire.
Something niggled at the back of her mind. Something to do with death by fire. But another thought crowded in, pushing everything else aside. Cody’s name is on that list, she knew with certainty. Maybe right beneath Callahan’s.
And she had failed to protect him. That was the bottom line for her. The man she loved had been in danger, and she’d let him walk out of her bedroom without a second thought for his safety. All she’d cared about was keeping him with her, not because it was dangerous for him otherwise, but because she selfishly wanted to fall asleep in his arms. And when he said he couldn’t stay, she hadn’t argued, she’d just let him go.
Turn the key, step on the gas and boom.
If Cody had died tonight, how could she live with that knowledge?
Mandy suddenly came to mind. Mandy, who had witnessed the explosion she thought had taken the life of the man she loved, the father of her unborn child. Mandy, who had attempted suicide when she lost both the man she loved and the child he’d given her—her last link to him. Mandy, who had shot Cody, thinking she was saving Callahan’s life.
When Cody had told her those stories, Keira had sympathized, but she hadn’t empathized. Now it was different. Now she understood, really understood.
Keira shuddered again, but this time it wasn’t because she could have lost Cody so soon after finding him. No, this time was because she acknowledged a primitive part of her was desperately praying she’d conceived his child tonight.