She had spent days working on the tunnels, breaking loose the packed dirt, scattering it here and there, one tunnel at a time, and checking for footprints.
Second day and bingo. Her luck was looking up.
This was escape day, she told herself. Today, she was getting the hell out of there and finding the nearest phone. Jonas would be waiting on her call now; he would know something had fucked up bad.
She pushed back her sorrow at the thought of leaving Tanner. Especially like this. But she had to find Jonas and give him the information she had; then she would deal with Tanner. First things first. She couldn’t trust this easily. She refused to let herself trust this easily.
Once she got out of the caves, she could get her bearings and avoid the Coyotes. They were around the cabin, and she had studied the area where that cabin was located extensively over the years. The caves would have to be located away from the general area of the cabin, because it took Tanner much too long to return after his excursions out of the caverns.
And if they weren’t…She breathed in deeply. She would solve that one once she got her bearings and figured out the location she was in.
Biting her lip, she followed the trail, faint though it was. She nearly lost it more than once, and each time found her heart in her throat as fear rushed through her.
She had to get out of there and find Jonas because she was caving bad where Tanner was concerned. She could feel it. She was within days of giving him anything he wanted; however he wanted. And risking everything.
She was falling in love with him.
Accepting that was one of the hardest things she had done. Because it wasn’t like loving Chaz had been. With Chaz, there had always been something missing, something not quite complete within herself.
There was nothing missing with Tanner, and that terrified her. Because she knew if he had used sex to question her, then she would have caved. She would have folded and told him everything he wanted to know.
All he would have had to do was withhold one orgasm. Made her wait, and then asked her anything. The lives she would have betrayed could be gone forever, because she was weak.
Her father was right the last time he had buried her. She was too weak to live. Too weak to survive in the world she had been born into.
Breathing out wearily, she kept her gaze on the faint impressions of Tanner’s hiking boots through the tunnel, until they turned and stopped right at the stone wall.
Her eyes narrowed. He couldn’t walk through a wall, dammit.
Reaching out, she ran her hands over the wall, frowning at the feel of it. It looked like stone, it almost felt like stone, but with a difference. Moving her hands from side to side, her fingers finally found the faint depression on one side. Hooking them into it, she tugged, surprised at the faint scraping sound as a rock-lined panel slid open.
This was the scraping sound she’d heard when he left. A false wall opening, and she hadn’t been able to find it. It was narrow, short, barely five and a half feet tall and maybe three feet wide. Tanner would have had to tuck and turn to pass through, but he could have easily done so quickly.
She paused there, knowing she would find an exit on the other side, somewhere. And she had to force herself forward. Force one foot in front of the other as she tightened her lips and moved into the next tunnel.
She felt the regret tearing at her now, a sense of loss. Had she ever felt as safe, as secure as she had felt cocooned in those caverns with Tanner?
She knew she hadn’t. She had found a haven in his arms, below the earth, and letting go of it was surprisingly difficult.
She felt as though she were letting go of Tanner. As though by finding that hidden panel, she had betrayed him. Hadn’t trusted him.
Shaking her head, she had to force herself to keep going. She wasn’t betraying him, she assured herself. She was saving him. If he wasn’t the spy, she was saving his family and his pride nephew. She wasn’t betraying anyone but Cyrus Tallant, and God above knew he deserved the betrayal.
Her hand flattened at her lower stomach. There was a slight burning sensation, a warmth that had begun to become noticeable the day before and didn’t seem to be easing.
Of course, she and Tanner had been fucking like minks; that could explain it. Her body wasn’t used to the pounding it had taken. The pounding it loved. Craved. Needed.
A bitter smile touched her lips. She had never known pleasure as she had known it with Tanner—fierce, hot as hell, and all-consuming. She hadn’t had sex with him. She hadn’t fucked him. She had made love to him, and she knew it.
Each touch, she memorized. Each taste, each of those growly little sounds he made, she loved. Like a cross between a snarl and a purr, sometimes when he was irritated with her, mostly when he found pleasure with her. And she knew he found pleasure with her.
Her suspicions that he could be in league with her father always faltered there. She knew he needed to be with her. She could feel it in him, see it in the hard, corded strength of his body each time he held back and let her touch as well.
God, what was she doing? She was convincing herself, even as freedom was so close, that maybe he loved her. Just a little bit?
She was willing to trade her life, and the lives of so many others, on a maybe.
Her taste in men sucked and she knew it. Her first lover, Chaz, had been an assassin. The second hadn’t been much better. The only difference was he wasn’t part of her father’s organization. He just wanted to be. The third. Oh, there was a real winner. The lover she had become acquainted with at one of the clubs she frequented had actually been an undercover federal agent. Actually, a married undercover federal agent.