Page 25 of Dangerous Liaisons

Chapter Eighteen

A tingle raced up Jesse’s thigh when Cole’s fingers flexed against her skin. He shifted her leg. She tensed, uncomfortably aware of the warm hands and gentle pressure against her skin.

“That hurts,” she said. “Just wrap it up.”

He looked up, hurt in his eyes. “It’s going to scar if you don’t get it restitched.”

“Won’t be the only scar I have.”

“Stop being stubborn. I’ll be done in a minute, then you can go back to hating me.” He ripped open another box of gauze, withdrew the roll, and continued wrapping her leg.

“So tell me now the diner wasn’t a setup,” she said.

“Like I said, Jess, they found you when I found you. We simply hadn’t shaken them. How much did you hear?”

Her heart sped up. This was damage control. “I heard you're getting a lot of money to hand me over to Lanton.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “A hundred thousand for my trouble.”

“You haven’t seen trouble yet.”

The smile lifted the other side of his mouth. “You’re a handful.”

“You’ll never get the money now.”

“I never said I wanted it.”

“You didn’t refuse it.”

He paused and looked at her. “No one owns me, any more than they own you. He wants me to get a confession out of you.”

“By any means necessary,” she said.

Cole nodded, then ripped a foot-long strip of tape. “That’s not OIA style. If he was working within the organization, he would have attempted to bring you in. There’s no doubt he’s working on his own. What have you got that has him so scared?”

Cole wrapped the tape around her leg, pressing and massaging the bandage snug. She tried to ignore the play of muscle against shirt-fabric across his shoulders. Her belly did a flip. Damn him. She pulled her leg from his hands. Cole placed the medical supplies on the desk before he spoke. Jesse grabbed her pants and slipped them on.

When she stood in front of him dressed again, she said, “Lanton’s been dirty a long time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ask Tom about Madrid. Then check out Hong Kong—” the laptop emitted a high-pitched beep. “What the—” Jesse opened the laptop lid.

An error dialogue box covered the middle of the screen. At a glance, she saw the transfer of funds from the third account into the fourth had been interrupted. She closed out the dialogue box by selecting ‘Retry’. The progress bar appeared and the cursor became a spinning hourglass. The progress bar began filling left to right. At the halfway point, everything froze, including the hourglass. She pressed the escape key, but the computer didn’t respond.

Cole stepped up beside her. “What happened?”

“Don’t act innocent,” she snarled. “Acting as if you let me have the hundred grand. You couldn’t stand for those kids to benefit.”

“What kids?”

“Stay back,” Jesse warned as she typed furiously to tear down the connection and start from scratch. “You’d better hope I can get the connection back because, if I can’t, I’m taking the funds out of your ass.”

Cole leaned forward and Jesse whirled. He leaped. She fisted her hands and threw her leg for a sidekick. He ducked, but she grazed his nose.

“Jess, let me—”

She dropped to a crouch and fell back on her hands, kicking with both feet. She caught him in the gut and he staggered back.