and without a safety net, mistakes couldn’t happen.
After a lifetime of kicking around in the intelligence field, Joel knew he’d finally landed in a place that felt right. He’d buckled down, used his tech skills to fill in after the last tech guy left and tried to forget about her. Hope, his greatest weakness.
Now he seriously considered telling Cam to get lost for a few minutes, though he doubted the guy would budge. Not when he was staring as if he’d never seen a woman before and was hanging on every word of the discussion.
Joel couldn’t really blame Cam on the gawking part. Hope looked as good as Joel remembered. Better, even. The long dark brown hair and near black eyes hadn’t changed. From the dimple and girl-next-door hotness to the tanned legs and smokin’ petite frame, he found her almost impossible to resist.
Add in her smarts, competency with weapons and near fearless determination when she wanted something and he’d had no choice but to dump his job and move to the next state to keep from falling deeper into her. Or that’s what he’d rationalized at the time.
But right now he worried more about the danger that appeared to be haunting her. “Say that again.”
She cleared her throat. “I have a missing executive.”
Joel had no idea what that meant. “You said dead a second ago.”
She shrugged. “I’m hoping that was an exaggeration.”
Well, that cleared up...nothing. He glanced over at Cam.
He shook his head. “Got me. I have no clue.”
“Hope.” Joel reached out to touch the hand with the weapon in it and felt the subtle tremor running through her. Yeah, forget how comfortable she looked hanging around outside, something bad had happened and she was throwing off the desperation vibe.
His protective instincts kicked into high gear. He folded his hand over hers and slid the knife out of her palm. Not an easy task since she had a death grip on it.
Moving nice and slow, he eased the blade back into its case at her waist as he rubbed his thumb over the deep creases on her palm. “Where is this executive?”
“His name is Mark Callah.”
“Okay.” Joel didn’t dig too deep for details. Not yet. “Where is Mark?”
“I have no idea since I lost him.”
Cam grunted. “She’s giving you a pretty logical answer, actually.”
“I got up this morning and he was gone from camp.” She tugged free of Joel’s hold and rubbed her hands together. “I headed for this clearing to use the sat phone and realized some guy was following me. Then your helicopter—”
“Hold up.” For the second time, she jumped right past the most interesting part. “Go back a second.”
“To where?”
Stray branches crunched under Cam’s feet as he shifted his weight. “I’m guessing to the ‘following me’ part.”
She spent a second frowning at both of them. “Blue hoodie. The guy stalked me, then started moving faster and came up the side until we were parallel. He didn’t look up and stayed close. Your helicopter scared him off.”
“Stalked?” Joel didn’t hear much after that word.
“Yes, Joel.” She didn’t roll her eyes, but she looked like she was right on the edge of doing so.
She could sigh at him all she wanted because he was not letting this conversation drop. Not until he assessed the level of danger. “Could this person be one of the executives you have out here on the team-building retreat?”
This time her face went blank. “Wow, my dad really did fill you in on this job.”
“Let’s stick to your story for now.” One more diversion and Joel worried he’d never be able to pull the tale out of her. And he knew from experience any talk about her dad and his protective nature would not make this exercise go faster.
“Except for Mark, most of the Baxter Industries management talk tough but are terrified of being out here. One guy jumped around demanding to go home because he found a tick on his upper arm.” She snorted. “I mean, come on.”
Joel bit back a laugh. “Very manly.”
“Right. So, you understand why I can’t imagine any of them chasing me through the woods, being covert and ducking out of sight for no good reason.”
“You’re throwing out some scary words there.”
“So?”
She could shoot and run and build a camp from twigs, but that didn’t make her invincible. He wondered if she understood that. “My point is this story gets worse the more details you add.”
She glanced over her shoulder and deep into the woods behind her. “Anyway, I’d like to think if it was one of my guys, he would have helped or at least called out when I fell.”
The bad news just kept coming. Joel glanced at Cam. “And now we have a fall.”
She faced them again. “What?”
“You skipped that part before,” Cam said.
Joel guessed that was intentional. “Let’s just say your linear storytelling needs work.”
“I’ll run through all of it if you need me to—”
“I do.” Joel wanted her comment to stop right there.
She talked right over his interruption. “But since you’re here, you can come with me while I get my sat phone and then we can spread out and hunt for Mark.”
Joel caught her in the second before she took off. Never mind her tale about a stalker and the terror in her eyes only a few minutes ago. Now she was ready to head out. “I thought you lost the phone.”
“Yeah, but I know where.”
“Your definition of lost is no better than your storytelling ability.”
“We don’t have time for chitchat.” Her gaze dipped to where his fingers wrapped around her elbow, then bounced back up again. “I’m assuming you guys need to get out of here and head off to some other covert action-movie adventure, so let’s move.”
Nice try. “You’re my job this week, remember?”
“Yeah, we’re going to talk about that later.”
“Talk all you want. I’m staying.” That had been the plan before the knife and the story about the fall and every other bizarre fact she threw out, and he wasn’t changing it now.
But there was some good news here. Her feistiness clicked back into place with full force. While the verbal jabs about his job used to drive him nuts, he missed this side of her, too.
She
