The scent of her freshly washed hair as she walked beside him chased away the rest of the world.

She groaned, but still kept on chuckling. “You’re bad.”

“No way. I’m entering the priesthood tomorrow. Wanna join me for one last sin?”

Her laughter turned to giggles until she hiccupped. “Okay, okay, enough already.”

“I figure if I make you smile enough, you’ll sleep with me.”

She swatted his stomach. “You’re so sensitive it’s a wonder all those women divorced you.”

Ouch. That one stung a little. But he liked the way she didn’t pull punches. And no, he wasn’t known for his sensitivity. But he was known for his ability to make a person smile in the middle of a crisis.

He stopped at the Red Cross supply station, holding up two fingers for the worker dispensing boxed lunches, complete with the little half-pint cartons of orange juice. Liam took the two stacked meals and looked at the crumbled street around them. The chaos of a few days ago had shifted into a steady grind of tackling a cleanup that would easily take years.

There weren’t exactly a lot of places to hang out by the beach and eat, so he steered her back toward their cottages. One of the porches would be as good a place as any to park it for now.

“Rachel, to be honest, I don’t get the vibe from you that you’re looking for sensitive.”

“Hmmm… True enough, I guess. Comes from the way I was brought up. Around my house there was lots of love but no coddling. My mother was an ACO—animal control officer. Like those shows you see on the animal channel.”

“Was? What does she do now?” He fell into the ease of their conversation much as they fell into sync walking side by side.

“Nothing. She’s dead now.” She looked at him quickly, then away. “She was breaking up a dog-fighting ring. The owner didn’t take kindly to having thousands of dollars’ worth of assets seized.”

Holy crap. “He didn’t turn his dogs on—”

“No! Heavens, no.” She sighed heavily, rubbing her bare arms. “The man was the killer animal—not the canines. The bastard came after my mother with an aluminum baseball bat and cracked her skull. She never regained consciousness.”

She went silent with the kind of thick quiet that couldn’t be broken with a smart-ass comment, the kind of pause that was best to wait out while she put her thoughts together on what she wanted to say next.

“I got my love of animals from my mom, but I can’t do what she did.” Rachel kicked a chunk of concrete ahead with the toe of her boot. “All of those people who hurt animals? I would go after them with a baseball bat myself.”

The fire in her voice made it clear she would have done just that, for the dogs and for her mother. Rachel Torres was the kind of woman who brought everything to the table in life. No wonder he’d missed the fact she was a foot shorter than him. Her personality, her force of will, was off the charts.

“God, woman, I think I love you.”

She snorted, rolled her eyes, and pretty much did everything to punt him in the ego except laugh at the size of his Johnson. “Okay, that line was your funniest one yet.”

“You don’t think I’m serious.” He looked forward to proving it.

“Not for a minute.” She shook her head and the topknot went a little loose and lopsided. “You can’t really be trying that high school move to get in my pants? ‘I love you, baby, really, I do.’”

“Who says I was trying to get into your pants? Okay, wait. I did say that. Getting you to sleep with me is way high up on my list of personal goals, but I can wait. Something tells me you’ll be more than worth the extra time and effort.”

She clapped a hand to her chest with the melodrama of a seasoned soap star. “You’re willing to wait to have sex with me? I’m devastated. I may never recover from the crushing disappointment that I won’t get to have you as my naked love slave tonight after work. Because heaven knows, there’s nothing more romantic than an earthquake zone.”

He stopped in front of the cottage where her search and rescue team was bunking. “You know you’re only making me love you more when you get all feisty like that. Oh, and in case you were wondering, when I fall in love, I most definitely want to have sex. Love? Big-time aphrodisiac in my book.”

Love.

Just the word rocked the ground under his feet. This woman rocked the ground until his vision fogged. Or was that dust from the earthquake? Except he wasn’t coughing.

He struggled to rationalize the memory morphing in his dream fog. He reached to hold her, pulling her closer until her naked body merged with his.

Naked?

She was clothed in her SAR gear. He clung to the dream as tightly as he clung to her. Knowing he needed to stay with her. Keep her with him. Love her and protect her against a looming threat he couldn’t identify.

A shadow stretched from behind her, over her, encompassing her. Then the shadow split in two, moving closer until he could see his mother standing beside a man swinging a metal baseball bat straight at Rachel’s head—

Gasping, Liam shot up straight in bed. His heart jackhammered in his ears.

“Liam?” Rachel called out groggily.

She was right next to him in bed.

His hand shook as he cupped the gentle curve of her hip. “Sorry, everything’s okay. No need to get up.”

Rolling to her back, she flung her arm over her eyes. “Hmmm… can’t remember when I was this tired.”

“Huh?” he grunted.

“Are you okay?” She sat up, her hand rubbing the middle of his back.

“Fine, just dreaming.” Dreaming bizarre shit Freud would have a field day dissecting. Of course with Freud, it was always about the mama. “Thought I heard something. It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure? Should we get dressed and check?”

He shook his head. “I’m certain. Go back to sleep. We need to get up in about an hour.”

She rested her cheek on his shoulder blade. “I’m already awake. We could hit the road early.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He scrubbed his hands over his close-shorn hair, wishing they could hang out here all day and make love. Being with Rachel in a rat trap motel beat having anyone else in five-star accommodations.

“You can have the shower first.” She swung her feet to the ground. “I should probably get dressed and take the dogs out anyway. Poor puppy is probably ready to explode—if she hasn’t already. If nothing else, she’s gotta be going stir-crazy.”

She padded across the room naked, and God help him, he went hard in a way that had nothing to do with morning wood. The swish of her hair along the sleek line of her spine hypnotized him. And the curve of her bottom… Damn. Just damn. She grabbed his T-shirt off the top of the television and tugged it over her head. The sight of her in his clothes was almost as hot as seeing her naked. Almost.

At the bathroom door, she stopped sharp, clapped a hand over her mouth. Then sank to her knees. “No Fang. No!”

What now? He rolled out of bed and lumbered over to the bathroom door. “What’s wrong?”

She rocked back onto her butt, playing tug-of-war with the puppy and the prepaid cell phone. Liam sank to one knee, met the puppy’s large brown eyes, and snapped, “Drop it.”

Fang’s mouth snapped open on command. The cell clanked onto the tile floor.

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Figures the dog would recognize the biggest alpha in the room.”

He cradled the phone in his hand, wiping off the dog spit with a dry washcloth. “She doesn’t appear to have done any permanent damage.” He polished the slobbery LED screen, and damn it, the missed call light was flashing. When had that happened? “Did you hear the phone ring?”

She placed a finger on the light. “Of course not. I would have told you. And we’ve been with the phone the whole time.”

His eyes slid closed as the realization crept over him. “Except for when we went to get supper in the bar.”

After that, they’d been too distracted to think straight. He had been too distracted and he should have known better. He thumbed quickly through the commands to find the phone number that had tried to contact them, and there couldn’t be many, since he hadn’t been passing the number out on any street corners.

The screen scrolled a number he recognized all too well. He looked from the cell to Rachel. “It was Cuervo. He must have found Brandon Harris.”

***

General Sullivan strode down the corridor, taking in the update from Captain Bernard and Agent Cramer. Sullivan focused on steady breaths, projecting calm. For now, they’d been able to keep the base commander, Colonel Zogby, out of the loop on this. More importantly, the center commander—the only person to outrank him here—was still clueless.

Although how in the hell had Brandon Harris figured out what was going on?

Ted locked down his anger. He needed to keep this situation as contained and low profile as possible until the satellite summit. Just a few more days to hold back the tide.

A few more days until he leaked top-secret military information on U.S. satellite positioning and taskings to Internet news outlets. The world would label it a cyberattack. They would pin it on some foreign agency. A faceless crime. Damaging to the United States in the short term, but of great personal advantage to him.

But the center commander would take the fall for such a critical security breach happening on his watch. The man would lose his job, retire quietly—opening up a primo promotion for General Ted Sullivan. His career path straight to the top of the U.S. space community would be secured.

Yes, those leaked secrets would cost a few lives in the military communities. Having a foreign country learn the locations and taskings for intelligence-gathering satellites would be costly. But they were casualties in a bigger war.

He had plans for this command and could save so many more lives once he eliminated his competition. The space community needed him more than the guy currently in charge. The country needed him at the helm, guiding national policy on satellite-defense programs. Any fallout from the leaked data would be minor in comparison to what only he could offer.

If he could find Brandon Harris and shut him up. Sullivan had been lucky to get wind of the lieutenant’s attempts to contact the OSI, thanks to an inside connection. But he couldn’t count on that kind of luck again before someone actually took the unstable lieutenant seriously.

Cramer kept pace, her BlackBerry in hand as she walked past framed photos of missiles, spacecraft, and airplanes throughout history, each image a part of something larger than the gofers who scurried around giving updates. “McCabe’s leave paperwork is all in place. No one will question him being gone. No one will be searching for him except our people.”

“Excellent.” Sullivan nodded, his mind already churning through the ways he could tank McCabe’s career once that bastard resurfaced again. Going rogue on Cramer’s watch? On his watch? Unacceptable. “I don’t want any backlash staining us because you allowed him to get away.”

He was walking a tightrope here with Cramer and Bernard, both unaware of his plans. They appeared loyal to him, but he couldn’t afford to test that. The problem with butt-kissers is that they shifted loyalties when a higher-rank butt presented itself.

For now, he could play this out by making them think he was helping cover their mistake. He was saving their careers. They would owe him.

Captain Bernard pushed open the door into Sullivan’s temporary office for use during his short-term duty assignment here to oversee the summit. A large wooden desk, flags, two chairs, and a couple of stock framed airplane prints on the wall rounded out the decor. Not much, considering his stature, but he was biding his time. He would have his walls of awards and personal memorabilia shipped here when he became a permanent fixture. For now, he made do with a space like this, adding only his brass nameplate and a framed family photo on the desk.