Page 7

They’d been driving for several hours, talking, when Missy…

No. Andy. That’s who she was around Cobble—just as he wasn’t Sawyer when they were together.

Andy knew they were getting close to the destination she’d finally settled on.

Yes, she had the perfect place to stash Cobble.

But before they got there, she owed Chuck a call from her burner phone to his. She picked it up and hit his number.

“Go ahead,” he answered. “I’m in a secure location.”

“We’re all clear of the area. You can send your team in now.”

“Good. And I have a short list of places you can go next with Cobble.”

“Not necessary Chuck. I’ve already got him covered.”

“You’re sure?” he questioned, with a bite in his voice.

Chuck might eventually question her decision, but after hours of contemplating while flying to rescue Cobble—and subsequently when they’d taken to the road—Andy had grown tired of second guessing, and made up her mind.

“I’m sure,” she told him pointedly. “And this time, I think it’s best you don’t have that information right away.” Andy held her breath. “Let’s give it a few months before you get read in, just in case you’re under intense surveillance after this last attempt on Cobble’s life.”

Chuck was quiet for a moment, then sighed loudly. “Fine. I’m not happy about it, but I get it. Call me when you get back to Boston.”

“Will do,” Andy assured him before hanging up.

“So, this place is all on you?” Cobble guessed after listening to her conversation.

“Yup.” But she wasn’t going to say any more. It would be kind of fun to see Cobble’s reaction when they arrived.

As unorthodox as it was, their destination was a place Cobble would be totally safe. Indeed, without even consciously making the decision, her wheels had been carrying her in an almost predetermined direction since the moment she’d picked him up.

****

After an hour of mostly small talk; nothing more than fluff, Cobble finally asked, “Okay. I’m done playing coy. Exactly where are we going?”

Andy took a ramp off the highway in the middle of nowhere.

She’d wondered if and when he’d become inquisitive.

“You are just now getting curious?” she teased.

“Well, no. I’ve been thinking about it for a few miles,” he chuckled. “And just to let you know, I’m comfortable letting you pick our motel, hotel, or campsite, because you’re good at what you do, but this exit, it, uh, looks a little remote.” He raised a brow, quizzically. “I don’t see any lights that say ‘vacancy’, in half burned out letters.”

Andy flashed him a small, but nervous grin. “I, umm…actually thought of a different kind of place where you can hide,” she told him. “A place where I know nobody will find you.”

“Out here?” Cobble called her on her declaration. “You seem pretty sure of yourself despite the lack of…anything that looks civilized. Were we headed this way all along?”

“Sort of,” Andy admitted. “It was almost…involuntary on my part. But don’t worry. I weighed it with a bunch of other options, and settled on this being the best course of action.”

Not that he looked worried. After all they’d been through together, Cobble knew that she would take care of him. She was one of the good guys. Hell , if she wasn’t, she’d had plenty of opportunity over the last few years to kill him.

Cobble nodded. “I trust you,” he confirmed her thoughts. “So once again, where is it you’re taking me?”

Andy’s smile grew slowly and threatened to take over her face. “How about I surprise you?” she giggled.

Yeah. Giggled. And that was something she never did. It had to be nerves. Or maybe just Cobble. They’d dropped into the easy relationship they’d always had before, but now there was an added titillation to their togetherness. Even if he’d forgotten their last hug, she hadn’t. It had fueled her imagination for months and months.

Andy cleared her throat. “If you have any objections once we arrive, we can turn around and find someplace else. But for now, I believe this is our best bet.”

“Cryptic,” Cobble probed interestedly, obviously looking for more, but Andy could see right through him, and wasn’t going to give up anything. Yet.

She laughed instead. “Oh. More cryptic than you could know,” she confirmed. “You might even add…obscure.”

Andy suddenly felt extremely pleased with herself.

Cobble grunted amusedly. “Okay. Fine. Keep me in the dark. I can see it tickles you. But riddle me this. How long before we get to this place?”

Andy’s laughter died out slowly. “Just over an hour. Are you okay that Chuck won’t know where you are for a while?” She screwed up her mouth in question.

“I guess I am,” Cobble returned. “It’s comforting in an odd sort of way. If my fingers-in-every-pie cousin doesn’t know about this place, it’s got to be damned well hidden.”

“It is,” Andy stated vaguely.

Cobble, amazingly, let it be, tipping his head back and closing his eyes.

Andy was glad, at least for the moment, that he wasn’t asking more questions. That way, she wouldn’t have to give him any answers.

****

Despite the lack of street lights and the semi-overcast night, Andy drove confidently. She wasn’t worried she’d lose her way. She knew this road like the back of her hand, having traveled it off and on for years.

She grew almost giddy with anticipation. What would Cobble think when they arrived? Would he freak out, or take it all in stride?

Andy, seeing that Cobble wasn’t really asleep, started up a neutral conversation, even though the silence that had descended within the car felt comfortable.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing since I last saw you,” she started.

Andy was curious. Cobble always had something interesting going on, and it had been two years since they’d last touched base. That was a long time.

“I thought you said you kept up with me through Chuck?” Cobble grunted, straightening his neck and peering out the front window at the darkened, treed landscape. His lips looked…pursed.

Was he pouting?

Andy snuck a definitive peek at him, and from the light of the dash, she could see that he wore a moue of disappointment. Clearly, he’d wanted her to be curious about him.

She assuaged his concerns.

“Of course I’ve asked Chuck about you,” she soothed. “But you know him. Mr. Gruff. All I’ve gotten out of your taciturn cousin is that you were working another construction job, and that you liked it. He didn’t go into detail about anything else.”

“I was part of an interesting build this time,” Cobble confirmed. “It was with a commercial crew in the city. I learned a lot.”

Andy knew that picking up new skills was something Cobble loved to do. She almost snickered. His head would probably explode with how much he’d have to learn at his next stop. Or maybe he wouldn’t blink. Cobble had a lot of layers to him that Andy had yet to uncover.

Did she want to? Uncover what really made the man tick?

Uh, yeah.

Even though she’d prevaricated earlier over her answer when Cobble had asked if she’d thought about him over the past two years, in reality, he’d never been far from her mind. And not just as a job. During the small swaths of time she’d spent with Cobble while mutually deployed, while keeping him safe in the hospital, while aiding Chuck in getting Cobble settled in several new locations, and with that hug…her one-time squad member had worked his way under her skin.

And he’d made her itch.

In a good way.

But also in a manner to which Andy was unaccustomed.

When she had, previous to being in the Army, needed to scratch an itch—irritations that had never prickled as much as when she thought of Cobble—she’d once or twice found a willing man, had a romp, then waved an easy bye-bye.

But those encounters had never really done it for her, and once she’d met Cobble, it was his face she always imagined straining above her, his longish blond hair tousled, and his brown eyes sparking fire. And wasn’t that fucked up?

Andy startled as she realized Cobble was still speaking.

“…I also took some more classes, and started an outdoor adventure club which a lot of my coworkers joined,” he continued, not knowing where her mind had gone, thank God. “It was a symbiotic relationship. They taught me how to erect steel framing, and I gave them the chops to survive in the wilderness.”

“Sounds like a good swap,” Andy agreed, trying to keep her mind on his words instead of where her brain had gone; imagining Cobble naked.

Dammit. He was just so…jacked.

But that wasn’t the entire draw. She’d also known for a long time that Cobble was smart, ambitious, artistic, and curious about new things; like a scientist whose brain never stopped questioning. Those attributes, combined with his good looks made him extremely lethal to her objectivity.

“I’m going to miss them,” he sighed, growing melancholy.

Andy immediately stopped thinking with her pussy.

“I know. It sucks.”

She got it. It wasn’t easy for a man like Cobble, who had deep familial roots and attached to people quickly, to up and move all the time. She and Chuck were asking a lot from him to stay patient. And, goddammit, it had already been nearly five years. How much longer would it take before Cobble could come out of hiding, testify against El-Umar, and get his life back?

“We’re getting closer all the time,” she tried to assure him.

But were they really? Just because they’d finally confirmed El-Umar’s identity, didn’t mean they had any concrete evidence against anyone else. And if they took the man into custody, scheduling Cobble to testify, the price on Cobble’s head would skyrocket as those unknowns who were on the FBI, CIA, and DOJ’s own federal food-chain got nervous that El-Umar would spill.

No . They had to get concrete evidence of who else was involved, and it wasn’t going to happen if she was sitting on her hands in the States. The CIA was supposedly still working things overseas, but how much of what they told her they were doing, was lip service?

Andy made up her mind. As soon as she got Cobble acclimated to his new environs, she was heading back to South Sudan. Undercover. None of the people in her office would have to know. She’d take a leave of absence if she had to, and she’d track El-Umar’s movements herself, finding out who his connections were.

In the ensuing silence, Cobble sighed loudly into the darkness. “I know you and Chuck are working this as hard as you can, and I don’t mean to be ungrateful. It’s just that… I need a life. A real life. I’m twenty-six years old, and— Hey.” He stopped midsentence. “I never asked how old you are?” he chuckled wryly.

“Does it matter?” Andy deflected. All her life she’d been functioning far above the norm for her age. She didn’t want Cobble to think she was a freak.

“No,” he assured her. “I guess not. It’s just curiosity on my part. I figure you must be older than me to have gone through college and officer training, then on to become my LT. But you don’t have to tell me if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Andy sighed. It would come out, eventually. She might as well spill, now. “I’m twenty-four.”

“What?” Cobble snapped upright. “You’re only…?”

Yup. Cobble’s voice had cracked and he sounded incredulous.

“How is that possible?” he strangled.

Andy sighed, becoming pragmatic. “Well, I was home-schooled and graduated high-school at sixteen. Then I went to college where I joined the ROTC and earned my undergrad degree in three years. Already knowing what I wanted to do for a career when I finished, I signed up with the Army, went through officer training, and got my commission.”

“Wow.” Cobble sat back in his seat and let that digest. “I knew you were smart, but… Man. That sucks that your career was derailed because of me.”

“Not because of you , Cobble. Don’t ever think that,” she bit out. “It was because my squad, our friends were murdered that I took the job Chuck procured for me at the CIA.”

Cobble nodded, then because the emotional scars were still too deep, he changed the subject. “Do most people seem dumb to you, then?”

It was a valid question, and the answer seemed to really matter to Cobble, so Andy took it seriously.

“No. Not at all. Diversity in humans is awesome. Every person has their niche. For instance, Chuck is far more experienced with computers than I am. Oh, I use them, but I’m not all that great with technology on the whole.”

Cobble nodded.

Andy continued. “And then there’s you. You have a way of looking at things through an almost artistic eye, where as I’m all pragmatism. You see the beauty in building structures. I see shelter. You create food masterpieces and take art classes. Me?” She shrugged. “I eat fast food, prefer organizing things, solving mysteries, and sussing out what’s in an adversary’s brain.”

“I don’t think that makes us so different,” Cobble mused. “The elegance I see in construction is because of its symmetry and practicality. The same with cooking and painting. Without rules, none of it would work. And of course, we both have a love of being outside, challenging ourselves in the roughest of climates and terrains. I saw that during our one and only deployment.”

Andy instantly felt better. She’d revealed a small bit of herself to Cobble that not many people knew, and he hadn’t categorized her as an oddity. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I have something in me that’s creative. Do you think I should take up pottery or something?” she asked satirically.

Cobble ignored the edge to her voice and took her query at face value.

“I could teach you. It would be…fun.”

His voice had dropped into a low register. Was he…flirting?

Andy sucked in a breath and before she could chicken out, replied in kind.

“You mean like in Ghost ?” she managed, thinking immediately of her body being surrounded by Cobble’s; his woodsy scent filling her nostrils. Her panties dampened.

“Maybe,” he allowed, his eyes hooded as he regarded her.

A few seconds passed before he shook himself, as if coming out of a stupor to steer things away from what might be a dangerous precipice for them both. “But I prefer not to be dead.”

Andy snorted, letting him get away with his segue. “I’d prefer that, too.”

The conversation waned. Not in a bad way as she traveled miles down a thin, winding road until…

There . She finally slowed and took a left hand turn onto a dirt drive that wasn’t much more than an old cow path.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Cobble asked, reaching for the “oh, shit” handle as the car jounced around in a plethora of ruts.

Andy cursed as they hit a particularly bad bump.

This clearly wasn’t the place for a small sedan.

“I do. And I’m sorry about the rough ride, but we’ll be there soon.”

“If only I knew where ‘there’ was,” Cobble muttered under his breath.

The closer they got to their destination, the more anxious Andy became. She hadn’t really thought this whole thing through. Arriving here was either going to go really well, or really badly. She had no way of knowing which.

High beams ahead suddenly lit up the road; illuminating the woods far better than those emanating from her little car.

Yeah . That’s because the massive amount of lumens came from what Andy knew was a tricked out, armored, four-wheel-drive SUV that had been made specifically for rough terrain.

Obviously, and as expected, the occupants had been alerted when she’d turned onto the dirt drive.

“Friendlies?” Cobble asked, stiffening beside her.

“They will be, once they know who we are.”

Andy put the car in park, swiftly pulled a flashlight out of the glove compartment, then opened her door. “Stay here,” she ordered.

Gaining her feet outside, Andy stood strong and held up her light. She gave two long bursts, followed by two short ones, then a pause before she sent a couplet of three shorties, ending with one long, one short, and two longs. Her name. In Morse Code.

Of course, Cobble, being the alpha male that he was, hadn’t followed orders. He’d opened his door, come around the back of the car, and positioned himself at her side.

“Are you armed?” he asked, leaning in so his breath tickled her ear.

“Not necessary,” she assure him.

And, dammit. Now was not the time for her nipples to harden.

Andy ignored her interested girl-parts, and instead felt Cobble brace beside her as the door to the massive vehicle blocking the road, opened.

A figure rose to stand on the running boards, and an incredulous voice rang out.

“Missy? Is that you?”