Doranna Durgin - Survival Instinct

She arrived back at the car flushed with both the minor exertion and the major buzz of the con planning. She had to admit there was a real jazz to planning a long con, a pleasure in thinking through the details and putting the pieces in place. A satisfaction when those pieces came together, especially if the grift was so seamless that the mark never truly realized he or she had been scammed.

There was, however, no sign of Dave at the Maxima. Not in it, not next to it… Okay, so…sometimes a guy’s gotta go, too. She waited, stretching with mini-calisthenics so as not to stiffen right up again.

No sign of him.

Huh.

She circled the car, looking for him behind the trucks, behind the buildings, along the tree line of the thick, early-spring woods.

Ah.

There he was, just inside the tree line, staring at the phone in his hand as if it could offer him much-needed wisdom. He rubbed the heel of one hand across his brow, never quite completing the gesture…just standing that way.

Huh. Again.

She walked across the spongy spring grass. He saw her and came to meet her, but there was no authority in his stride, no confidence. Karin slowed, wary even before they’d closed the distance between them, and then she got close enough to see that his troubled eyes were red rimmed, their expression…

Haunted.

By the time they stood face-to-face, he’d shuttered the depth of the emotion, but it was too late.

“Who was that?” she asked. “The FBI? You just got your walking papers?” But that didn’t seem quite right, not quite in sync with the emotion he’d shown.

“Yeah,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I did.” He didn’t meet her gaze, so unlike him.

Karin found she missed that blunt, quiet connection. “Doesn’t mean anything. You can still-”

His look was sharp enough to cut her off. With rough, short movements, Dave stabbed his cell phone at an inside jacket pocket until he found the right opening, looking at her all the while. And although he hadn’t moved back, he’d somehow put distance between them nonetheless.

It’s me, she realized quite suddenly. He’d gotten news of her warrant, and there was no way he wouldn’t take her in-

But he cut those thoughts off as easily as he’d cut off her words. “The search is over. They found him.”

By then her thoughts were so tangled up that she could only stare at him, unable to take in the significance of his words. Her expression got stuck on full duh.

“Rashawn,” Dave said bitterly. “Dumped.”

From duh to disbelief. “But-you said you had time!”

He laughed, a harsh, short sound. “So I thought. Turns out my persistence got some attention…the Feds poked around in Longsford’s life. That’s what brought Longsford’s men to your place.” He shook his head, his eyes gone unfocused.

She had no trouble following his thoughts this time. She walked right through the barrier he’d erected since he’d learned her true identity, her hand landing on his elbow. “Hey,” she said. “Not your fault. None of it.”

He didn’t even look at her. Didn’t react to her touch. Lost somewhere.

“Call it my fault,” she said. “If I hadn’t asked Ellen for help, she’d have been in touch with you a year ago. When Rashawn went missing, you would have been ready. You wouldn’t have wasted your time with me in Blue Ridge country.”

He gave her a wry glance, then. “I only had to believe you three days ago when you said you couldn’t help. I could have been back in Alexandria before that day was over.”

“Not once the geek boys showed up. You wouldn’t have left me to face them alone, not after they focused on me. Well, focused on Ellen.” She moved a step closer, bringing her hand up to brush at the dampness shining faintly on his cheek.

He closed his eyes at her touch, emotions flickering across his face. The reluctance to accept her touch…the inability to resist it. “I don’t want this,” he said, even as he put his hand over hers. “You know I don’t want this. Can’t trust you. Can’t understand you. Can’t even approve of you.”

“Look on the bright side,” Karin suggested. “Wouldn’t it give Owen fits to think of us?”

That got a smile from him; he took her hand and kissed the palm, then enfolded it in both of his and put it to his chest, holding it there. “We aren’t an us,” he said, but the wry little smile had reached his voice.

“For right now we are, and you know it. Being angry at who I really am doesn’t change that.” She’d spent the car ride believing that part of him to be lost to her, but in the wake of his gentleness, she suddenly knew otherwise. She dropped her head to look up at him from beneath her brow, her voice deepening. “Sometimes it just is. For however long it lasts.”

“Voice of experience?” He met the intensity in her own eyes and blinked.

“Voice of observation.” She moved in closer, right up next to him. “You and I…we’re still us, all right. The definition and duration of that us…it doesn’t matter. Not right now.” Take what you can get. Enjoy it. “What matters is we’re not stopping now.”

He heard the change of tone in her voice, realized she wasn’t talking about them anymore. Not personally. “Ell-” He closed his eyes again, very briefly, this time to rein in his annoyance. “Karin. I’m off it. They’ve stirred up too much trouble with no results, the boy is dead…someone’s got to lose their head. That, in case you hadn’t noticed, would be me.”

“I’ve seen you lose your head. I rather liked it, and I think we should do it again sometime.” She leaned closer, close enough to kiss his jaw right where it met his neck and where his pulse pounded visibly. Then she stepped back. “But you’re an investigator with or without them, right? You can get this guy-before he does this again. While he’s still basking in the glow of thinking he’s gotten away with it.”

He shook his head; regret shone through in those piercing eyes. “It’s not that simple-”

“In my world, it is. You do what you have to do. You take what you can get.”

He stiffened; he understood her perfectly. An exchange of impeccable honor for the results he craved. Probably not something he’d ever even considered. He shook his head. Then he put a hand on either side of her neck and drew her in for what turned out to be a startlingly thorough kiss, one that baffled her, but which she didn’t hesitate to allow to deepen. When he pulled away he still held her close, and after a moment gave her one last gentle kiss on the lips…and then he stood back. He shook his head again. “I can’t do that.”

“You wouldn’t have to do all that much of it,” she pointed out. “That’s my gig.”

“Thank you.” He straightened his jacket, though it didn’t need straightening. “For trying to help, I mean. But…no.” He took her hand, starting them back toward the car.

She waited until they reached it and said, “You’ve got the night to think about it. If we’re going to do this, I need to start preparing before we reach the city.”

He stopped her with that same grip on her hand, hanging back until she turned around to face him. “Just to be clear,” he said. “By ‘if we’re going to do this,’ you mean using one of your scams to get close to Longsford so I can find what I need to nail his ass to a cell wall.”

“From what I understand, that particular activity will be someone else’s pleasure,” Karin said sweetly. “But yes. I mean scamming to get inside his world. That’s what you haven’t been able to do, isn’t it? See his world from the inside out?”

Reluctantly, he nodded. “We’re on the outside looking in. We can’t even get disgruntled ex-employees to talk.”