Page 30 of Dangerous Devotion

“What are you doing?”

He pulled a tiny object out of his pocket and held it up for her to see. She stared at the small circular item.

“A tracking device?”

The shifting light from clouds scudding across an already gray sky seemed to darken the color of his eyes from their normal bright, intense blue to the deepest sapphire of the sea she had seen off many exotic coasts.

At her question, he nodded.

She rushed to set her cup in the drink holder. “What do you plan to do with it?”

He arched a brow. “You know what I’m going to do.”

“No. I don’t.” How she managed to speak slowly and calmly was a mystery when her insides felt like she’d been grabbed by the many tentacles of an ocean creature and held above a swirling whirlpool. She gulped in panic.

“AJ, you can’t chance it!”

His hard lips twisted. Were they really as firm and unyielding as they looked?

“I’ll be back.” He reached to shut the car door.

She threw out a hand to stop him. “AJ! No!”

He ducked to peer at her. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, drive to the next rest stop and call Con.”

Her jaw snapped shut. Then opened again. “Don’t even consider putting a tracker on that truck!”

“I wasn’t. I’m going to put it on the bomb.”

In a flurry, she jumped out and rounded the car to—to what? She wasn’t going to stop a man of his size and strength.

“Stop! We’re partners, and that means we have to both agree on the plan!”

He caught her completely off guard by reaching out and stroking a callused fingertip over the corner of her lips. Before she could regain her wits, he took off in long, purposeful strides toward the military truck.

She blinked at his retreating back, the set of his broad shoulders and damn, that carved ass of his weren’t helping her think better. She still felt the warm stroke of his finger to the pit of her core.

He did that on purpose.

The touch was a distraction from what he was dead set on doing.

Butterflies sporting horns and sharp teeth hatched in her stomach and flitted up to her chest. Calling AJ back was futile. Running after him a mistake. Both would only draw attention to them, and if the kids were watching from the window, they’d be seen.

Panic swept through her. Why was she so upset? After all, it wasn’t as if AJ was defusing the bomb. He was just going to…

Break into a government vehicle and plant a tracker on the crate.

Orinsideit.

Again, her mind whirled with apprehension. She dragged in deep breath after deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. After all, the kids had driven for hours with the bomb and nothing happened. They hit potholes that did not end in a fiery blaze. Even if AJ managed to open that crate, he couldn’t do anything to make it detonate.

God, her stomach really hurt, and it had nothing to do with the greasy food. She wanted to remain standing outside the car in order to watch him, but that would make her seem even more suspicious.

She slipped inside the car and gripped the wheel with both hands.

AJ approached the truck. The rumble of an engine from the car beside her made her glance over. In the split second that she looked away, AJ just…vanished.

She stared hard at the back of the military truck. She hadn’t seen him breach the door or open it, but he was nowhere to be seen.

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