Page 39 of Beachcomber Danger

“Let’s go then.” She eyed Dane up and down, letting her anger ride. “Right after you get dressed. I’ll be waiting in the Jeep.”

“I’m driving, girlie. Don’t get any ideas.”

She laughed. Because she had fleetingly thought of sitting in the driver’s seat to annoy him. She should drive. Then he could stew in the consequences of his professional lapse and where it got him. She squashed the speck of detail about her own role in said lapse as it floated at the edge of her defiance like a gnat.

Then she sighed. Who was she kidding. He was the professional driver.

*****

Dane drove. Fast.

“You think they’re following?”

Dane looked in the rearview.

“I thought you were watching, girlie. That’s your job. The rule is the passenger does everything else but drive. That includes checking for tails.”

“Don’t you think they’re all tied up and too busy to bother with us?”

“Sure. Maybe.”

Dane didn’t notice anyone in the rearview.

“Or maybe they trust us now that we’ve proven ourselves—”

“Hardly,” Dane snorted. “We didn’t do shit.”

“We flushed out the assassins. Exactly what they wanted us to do. They probably have—”

“Probably not.” Dane pulled into a spot two streets away from the Lucky Parrot.

“We’re going in dark? You’re being inconveniently cautious.”

They got out of the car and he followed her to the inconveniently fenced-in bulkhead and boosted her over. He climbed over himself and caught her before she sneaked down the cement stairs.

“Wait.”

She turned. He pulled her against him. He needed the stolen moment. Things didn’t seem real without her in his arms, without them being intimate. He no longer felt like himself when he held back, disconnected.

She allowed a small smile, held his face in her hands for an instant for a deep quick kiss, the kind that scalded. Then it was gone. He felt nourished.

“You’re good,” he said to her.

She laughed and pulled the heavy metal door of the bulkhead open. “As if.”

He followed her down the dark stairway to the door below. He rapped the code against the plywood enclosure. Waiting in the dark for the panel to slide open, he let his mind clear, letting her presence wrap around him without intruding. This is what he needed to keep. Intimacy with space, enough space to work, to let his mind and senses stay free from her even while she surrounded him.

The plywood slid to the right and Shana stepped inside past Acer.

“I tried calling,” Acer said as Dane walked into the narrow, well-lit space between the outer wall and the basement room.

“We were busy.”

“I got more on our couple.”

“Tell me you took pictures while you were there.”

“I didn’t stick around. Doctor’s orders.”