Bridal Armor Read Online Free PDF Page B

bark of laughter. “How is that funny?”
    “Not funny. Absurd.” He made a show of lowering the weapon, but she wasn’t sure where he’d hidden the sedative disk. “Whatever this is about, I can’t believe you’re ready to sacrifice yourself. Just level with me. I am completely out of patience.”
    It was her turn to laugh. “As if you ever had any. You’ve never been anything less than ironclad.”
    At one time she’d thought there’d been something underneath all that stoic determination and razor-sharp intelligence. Something closer to personal concern and compassion—maybe even something that could turn into love—but she’d been wrong.
    Still, they had a history and more than that, her professional respect for him had never faltered. This investigation was nothing more than an elaborate attempt to discredit him. It had to be. He’d made some impossibly difficult choices in his career, but she would never believe he was a traitor. No matter what the anonymous informant said, if Thomas was here to sell a deadly virus, there would be a legal, big-picture reason for it.
    “Seems to me you’re holding up well enough. You eliminated that threat quickly enough.”
    “I’ll take that as a compliment and not as some insinuation that I staged a road rage incident.” She reached into her purse and withdrew a map. One of the first things she’d done after renting this car was disable the GPS so the rental agency couldn’t track her down. She wasn’t about to use a computerized navigation system that logged her progress turn by turn.
    “Would you navigate please?” She handed the map to him. “I’d like to get off the main roads.”
    “The side roads will be in worse condition.”
    “I’m aware of that. But they’re less likely to be monitored. Our destination is circled in red.”
    “Mmm-hmm. And you circled Glenstone Ski Lodge in blue. Why is that?”
    “Good skiing.”
    “You’re not making it any easier to trust you.”
    “I’ve saved your life a couple times over in the last hour.”
    “Or you’ve perfectly executed an intricate setup.”
    “Hardly.” He wouldn’t say that if he’d known about the lingerie she’d added to her suitcase at the last minute...just in case they managed to find time to indulge in another sexy rendezvous. She was tempted to tell him about the sheer black lace just to test his reaction, but she kept her mouth shut because she didn’t trust her response. This torch she carried for him should have burned out by now and it bothered her knowing she couldn’t seem to get over him, though the lingering affection was clearly one-sided.
    “Take this exit and turn left at the end of the ramp.”
    She followed his instructions, wondering if he would mislead her and try to escape. Best to nix that now. “The fact of the matter is you have the gun and the sedative because I want you to have them.”
    His doubt came through loud and clear and he didn’t have to say a word.
    Her statement might not be entirely true as it applied to the sedative, but she refused to back down. “I need you to trust me, even if you don’t trust the committee.”
    “ You are synonymous with the committee.”
    “Are you still bitter about that inquiry last year?”
    Again, his silence was answer enough.
    “That wasn’t my idea. It was a supply audit, for Pete’s sake. Nobody was going to reprimand you for having one too many sniper scopes.” His department had been the only one to show a balanced inventory sheet, but she wasn’t inclined to share that detail with him.
    “Whose idea was it?”
    “The audit?” She caught his affirmative nod out of the corner of her eye. “It’s random. The computer spits out a list periodically and we follow through.”
    “Then there are fewer shadow agencies than I suspected.”
    She wasn’t about to take that bait. “What do you mean?”
    “That was our second supply audit in as many years. At the time I assumed your committee had lost