Page 57 of Poison Evidence

Yeah, he was more fun to lick than paper. Well, most things were more fun to lick than paper. But it wouldn’t be just any paper, it would be a seamless land/sea map created by CAM.

But on the Dimitri side of the equation, licking him would be simple fun. Maybe it was wrong, but at this point, she knew at his core, he was protecting her. Without him, she’d either be dead or hostage to a terrorist group.

Maybe she should feel ashamed of the attraction, but she was tired of the world telling her how she should feel. She’d had enough judgment from total strangers when Patrick was arrested.

It didn’t help that all she had to do was close her eyes and she remembered how Dimitri had felt inside her. He’d awoken her libido, and now she craved him like a drug.

She’d start with his neck and work her way down. His pecs and abs would garner special attention, but they would just be stopovers on the way to his cock.

She wondered if he’d submit to scan by RON. Dimitri’s body would be her pièce de résistance. The ultimate merge of art and chart.

And oh, how she would study his contours. The peaks and valleys of muscles and their attachment points, the rise of his broad nose, the cleft in his chin, the hollows under his cheekbones. The scar that bisected his brow. Each slope and mark told a story, just like her beloved maps.

Most noticeable was what wasn’t there, that sad lack of lines around his eyes and mouth. She loved making him laugh, because she wanted to believe he had enough time left to put humor lines on his face.

He fascinated her as much as the images on her computer screen.

Maybe even more so.

Which made her wonder who she’d become that this man who’d abducted her felt more an ally than the fine folks at the DIA who’d set her up for a nightmare without so much as a heads-up. A simple“Hey, you might run into some terrorists who are after the same thing we haven’t told you we’re sending you to find”would have sufficed.

Getting to hear a terrorist describe how he planned to rape and torture her had been a special treat.

Really, it was no wonder Dimitri felt like her only safe option. He’d at least set up a secure place for her to work and had seen to her comfort in his thoughtful provisioning of the cave.

She rolled her shoulders. She’d been sitting at the screen for too long, tweaking the data layers as only a human could. CAM was good, but she still needed to teach him how to zero in on the different plant species.

“I need to go out. Walk around a bit. Get some sunlight,” she said. “I may as well check the solar panels.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“I’d like to go alone.” Here was his chance to prove she wasn’t a prisoner.

He frowned at her, then gave a sharp nod. “Take a gun, then. Just in case.”

Yeah, if only the DIA had saidthat, she might trust the bastards to get her out of this mess. As it was, she had no intention of letting Dimitri keep the AUUV once they found it, but she at least trusted him to protect her until that moment.

Then of course, all bets were off.

She donned a holster to carry the gun at the small of her back and grabbed a water bottle before setting out. She crawled through the tunnel and stepped into the dappled sunlight. The salt breeze just reached her through the canopy.

She took a deep breath and turned her face toward the sun. She’d been on this island for over twenty-four hours now. If she could just forget the circumstances that brought her here, this would feel like paradise. But watching a man’s brains get blown out before he became shark food had a way of sticking with her.

Would she ever know that man’s name or how he was aligned with the other factions? Was he with Patrick’s cell, or had he represented Russian interests?

Was Dimitri—even unknowingly—working for the same man the dead man had been working for?

She’d known spies and assassins weren’t the same thing, having become well versed in spy terminology over the last several months as she tried to understand what Patrick had done and why. Most spies were informants, people who were recruited by agencies like the CIA to collect and pass on information about their governments. Dimitri had described his role as Parker Reeves, which had been more in the vein of the sleeper spies deployed by the old Soviet Union, but with modern technology keeping him in touch with his Russian handlers.

He’d made his life sound tame until all hell broke loose last fall.

But somehow she found it hard to believe Dimitri could settle for tame.

Ivy brushed aside branches and vines and made her way to the small clearing where the solar panels for CAM and RON were set up. After checking the power meter, she flopped on the ground and closed her eyes. If Dimitri was right about the size of the search grid, it would take three to five days—or rather nights—for RON to fly over and collect data.

Their schedule was simple: gather data until one or two in the morning. Sleep six to eight hours, crunch data for four to five, then send out RON again two hours after sunset.

It was possible this would all be over in five days. Sooner if they got lucky.

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