Safe Passage

And he was a government agent.

They had no business even entertaining the notion of a future together. But at the same time, the fact it had even entered his head shook Scott Armstrong to the core. He had not thought about the future this way for the past nine years. Not since his wife and child were killed by his enemy, the Plague Doctor.

The acrid and familiar anger seeped into his throat.

Was this woman sleeping in his arms allied with a dangerous criminal mastermind on par with the Plague Doctor?

Skye murmured in her sleep. He turned, stroked her face. And deep down, a part of him prayed to God he’d find Skye Van Rijn innocent.

Safe Passage

Loreth Anne White

LORETH ANNE WHITE

As a child in Africa, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Loreth said a spy…or a psychologist, or maybe a marine biologist, archaeologist or lawyer. Instead she fell in love, traveled the world and had a baby. When she looked up again she was back in Africa, writing and editing news and features for a large chain of community newspapers. But those childhood dreams never died. It took another decade, another baby and a move across continents before the lightbulb finally went on. She didn’t have to grow up, She could be them all—the spy, the psychologist and all the rest—through her characters. She sat down to pen her first novel…and fell in love.

She currently lives with her husband, two daughters and their cats in a ski resort in the rugged Coast Mountains of British Columbia, where there is no shortage of inspiration for larger-than-life characters and adventure.

To JoJo, Pavlo and Marlin

for being my sounding boards.

To Mu for believing.

And to Susan for keeping the bar raised.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

Scott Armstrong drove off the ferry ramp with a clunk. He felt like he’d just been spat from the belly of a vibrating metal beast.

He was back on Canadian soil. A bloody island of it—trapped on all sides by the placid, steely waters of the Pacific Northwest. He couldn’t feel more claustrophobic if he tried.

He glanced at the golden-haired dog at his side as he maneuvered the truck through congested ferry traffic. The retriever grinned foolishly at him with a lolling tongue, thunking its tail on the seat.

What in hell had Rex been thinking, giving him a dog as part of his cover? He didn’t need the stupid hound any more than he needed this lame-duck mission. He was being put out to pasture and he damn well knew it. Scott clenched his teeth. He’d bloody well show them he still had what it took, blown-out knee and all.

He tightened his hand on the wheel, shifted gears sharply, wincing as an all-too-familiar shaft of pain shot up his leg. He swore, turned onto the coast road and followed the exit signs to Haven.

The sun was dipping behind the mountains of Vancouver Island, throwing farmland into evening shadow. Beyond the fields the sea shimmered like beaten silver. The bright light made his head hurt.

Scott wound down the window, letting the crisp spring wind whip at his hair, clear the fog in his brain. Honey wriggled closer toward him along the cab seat, chomping her jaws, testing the breeze, dribbling with excitement.

“At least one of us is happy,” he muttered, elbowing the dog back over to the passenger side.

Honey’s tail stilled for an instant. Scott felt a pang of guilt. “It’s okay, girl,” he muttered. “You do what you gotta do.” The wriggling and rhythmic thunking resumed. A warm splotch of drool seeped through the denim of his jeans. Scott sucked air deliberately, deeply, into his lungs, straining for an elusive sense of calm. This might just end up testing him to his limit. And Lord knew, he was pretty much out of tolerance for life in general.

He ignored the wet drool on his thigh and tried to focus on the task ahead. Apart from skimming the facts and checking for directions to his rental house, Scott hadn’t had the time or the privacy on the ferry to study the dossier Bellona Channel boss Rex Logan had handed him the second his plane had touched down in Vancouver.

All Scott knew was that he had to watch Dr. Skye Van Rijn. Some brilliant entomologist geek with possible bio-criminal or terrorist links to a disease devastating the cattle industry south of the border, one that was rapidly spreading to humans. But the link between Dr. Skye Van Rijn and the Rift Valley Fever currently sweeping the Southwest corner of the United States was tenuous at best. Even Rex had admitted that the bug doctor had pretty much checked out.

Yeah. Lame-duck mission if he ever saw one. He should be where the action is, not in some bucolic village on a vague fishing expedition for a possible bit player in a game that had snared global headlines and rocked stock markets.

Scott hit the wheel, swore again.

Surveillance was a junior agent’s beat.

His beat was out there, in the international field, in the wilds of the Borneo jungle, under the relentless sun of India’s Thar desert, in the hot red sands of Namibia. Not here. Not in the stifling, dripping, cool, gray stillness of a place he’d once called home.

He didn’t have a home. Not anymore. But right now he had no choice. He’d almost lost his leg.

And his mind.

It was this, or a desk job, while he recuperated. And he’d rather die than push a pen behind a desk.

He snorted at the irony of his situation. Because his cover was that of a full-time paper-shuffler and pen-pusher. He was to be Scott McIntyre. A writer. A futurist. It would put him at liberty, Rex had said, to ask questions, to get the doctor’s views on things like macroeconomics, social trends, globalization, American imperialism.

And Honey, he’d added, would help break the ice.

Yeah. Right.

It was almost dark by the time he found the narrow farm road, picked out the house number on a faded green mailbox. Grass and weeds grew up between the rutted tire tracks that constituted the driveway. The truck jounced up to the front porch. Honey yipped with glee.

“Oh, shut up, dog!” She made him feel like a redneck arriving on the farm in his beater. All he needed was a shotgun behind the seat and load of beer cans in the back.

Scott pulled to a stop, threw open his door. Honey dug claws into his thighs and scrambled over him, promptly relieving herself in the grass. Scott scratched his head. “Okay. Sorry, pooch. Guess you gonna want food, too, huh? Let’s see what Rex has packed for supplies.”

He grabbed his old, gnarled walking stick, hesitated, fingering the ancient knots in the smooth, durable wood as if they’d somehow yield an answer. A reason for it all.

The dog yipped again, jerking him back to the present. Scott shrugged off the sensation of buried memories scratching at locked mental doors, climbed out of the truck and tentatively tested his leg on the ground. It felt okay. Better than it had in weeks. He could almost put all his weight on it. “Small mercies,” he muttered as he limped up the porch steps, pushed open the front door.

He flipped on the lights.

Honey’s paws skittered over wooden floors as she explored the premises, butt wiggling in a crazy hula of excitement.

Scott checked out the rooms. More than he’d ever need. The kitchen was big and airy. And the windows looked out onto Dr. Van Rijn’s neighboring property.

“Sweet,” he told Honey. “I can wash the dishes and watch the Bug Lady at the same time. Ain’t life grand. Come, let’s see if we can find you some doggy chow before it gets too dark out.”

Scott counted five large cardboard boxes in the back of the truck. One was marked Computer, another Books. Yet another was marked Kitchen. He sliced the tape on the kitchen box with his army knife and tore back the cardboard. In the fading light he could make out a box of cereal, some tins, and a humungous bag of dog kibble.

Then he cursed Rex.

How in hell was he supposed to carry all this crap with a walking stick in one hand?

His buddy had probably done this on purpose. Just to make sure he turned to someone for help. Just to make sure he met some locals.

“There’s no way I’m going to be reduced to begging someone to help me carry a couple of boxes,” he mumbled. Honey circled his feet with excitement.

Scott dropped the tailgate with a clunk, maneuvered the kitchen box to the end. Dropping his cane, he used both hands to grab the box. He flexed his knees, slowly lifted the box, trying to transfer most of the weight through to his core ab muscles, shoulders and thighs and onto his good leg. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and took a few steps toward the porch.

Pain sparked out from his knee, seared down his calf, shot up his thigh. He swallowed it. Jaw clenched, he made his way, step by painful baby step. And in his mind he heard the heavily accented voice of Dr. Ranjit Singh from the Mumbai hospital, rattling off dire warnings about what could go wrong with his leg if he didn’t follow the recuperation procedure, if he didn’t keep his weight off his new, fake knee. Pain, swelling, slippage, infection. He could cope with those. It was the risk of breaking the bone below the new joint on which his knee was anchored that concerned him most. Or the threat of a blood clot.

But it was not enough to stop him from carrying the box. Minute beads of perspiration pricked through the skin of his forehead as he stepped through the front door. He made it a few more paces and slumped to his haunches with a grunt of pain.

He hunched over the box, rested his forehead on the cardboard, letting wave after nauseating wave of pain flow over him. His heart thumped against his chest from the exertion. “Oh, sweet Mother Mary,” he whispered to no one in particular.

But Honey heard. She quivered, licked his face, sat beside him, watching, her liquid brown puppy eyes almost level with his.

“You know, Honey, you actually look like you understand. What is it about dogs that—” He saw the change in Honey.

She stiffened. The fur on her neck rose.

It stopped him dead.

Scott was so used to living in the wild he’d almost developed an animal’s sense of a presence himself. He could feel the hair on his own neck prickle with that awareness now.

“You drop this?”

He swiveled the instant he heard the voice.

His hand shot instinctively for the knife at his ankle. In another heartbeat he’d have thrown it.

But he froze at the sight in front of him.

The most striking woman he’d ever seen. At his door.

He swallowed.

Her stance was wide, her muscles tensed, knees flexed. She held his wooden cane across her body, one end in each hand, as if to deflect the knife he held in midair.

As reflexive as his reaction had been, hers had been more so.

Scott stared, realized he had his knife aimed at her heart.

Shaken, he slowly lowered the arm that held the blade. He slipped the knife carefully back into the sheath at his ankle, his eyes never leaving hers.

Honey snarled, head low, hackles raised.

But the woman didn’t flinch. Not even blink. Her jaw remained clenched. She stared straight at him with penetrating silver eyes.

Scott could almost see her mind computing, trying to second guess, to figure out what had just happened. Lord knew, he sure was.

She made the first move, the muscles of her shoulders visibly relaxing as he moved his hand away from the knife, safely back in its sheath.

She stepped forward, held his wooden cane out to him as if an offering of peace. “I think you dropped this.” Her voice was low, like smoke over the desert, and it came from lips that invited sin.

He stared at his cane in her hands.

Then he looked up into her eyes. They were set above strong cheekbones and they were shaped like almonds. Large and light with impossibly thick, dark lashes. There was a wildness, a recklessness, that lurked there. Something he recognized. Something that reminded him of vast spaces and untamed tribes.

The shape of her face was exotic. Foreign. Her skin was a soft olive tone. Her hair, lush and dark. It fell below her shoulders in a soft wave. The image of her burned into his brain, in the way he had trained his mind to capture the tiny details of each new face he encountered on a mission.

She wore a cream-colored sweater that caressed the curves of her breasts in a way that should be declared illegal. And her legs, in dark blue denim, were long. And slim. He noticed she wore heavy black motorcycle boots.

She had the advantage of height over him. She took another step across his threshold, into his new home.

A growl rumbled low in Honey’s throat.

“Honey, quiet.” He tried to push himself to his feet, buckled under a hot wave of searing pain, “Damn!”

“You all right?” The woman stepped further into his life.

“Yeah.” He clenched his teeth. “Fine.”

“Here, let me help.” She bent to take his arm and her hair fell across his cheek. The spicy, female smell of it sent an unbidden and long-forgotten wave right through him.

He shook her off. “Just hand me that stick. I can manage.”

She raised a dark brow, passed him his cane.

“Thanks.” He swallowed a curse, another surge of pain, and forced himself up onto his feet. She was tall, but this way he could still look down at her from his height of two inches over six feet.

He held out his hand. “Hi.”

She looked down at his hand, laughed. A smoky laugh, like sex and smooth whiskey. He could almost feel the sound of it in his gut.

“Seems a little trite after you almost killed me.” She held out her own hand. It was cool, soft to the touch. “My name’s Skye, I live next door.”

“You’re…”

The Bug Lady?

“Your neighbor.” Her lips curved into a smile that made his stomach churn.

Scott found his voice. “I’m Scott…McIntyre. This is…this is Honey.” Christ, he’d blown it. He hadn’t had time to go through the damn dossier.

“You always attack when surprised?” She stared him straight in the eye.

“You looked pretty primed for a fight yourself.”

Her eyes flicked quickly away, scanned the room. “You startled me. Where’re you from?”

Scott leaned heavily on his cane. He was supposed to be the one asking questions. He should be controlling the flow of information.

“I’m from…out east.” Damn. He’d thought he’d have plenty of time to go through the file, familiarize himself with his cover, before running into the doctor. But this woman with the silver eyes had him cornered.

“East? As in Ontario? Or farther east?”

Scott attempted a laugh. “Even farther. I’ve been traveling for a while.” A long while.

“Business?”

“Research.”

“You’ve come home then? Back to Canada?”

There was that word again. Home. “I don’t have a home, neighbor.”

“Hey, home is where the heart is. So they say.”

“Yeah. Like I said, I have no home. Now, you tell me something, do you subject all newcomers to Haven with the third degree?”

Something flickered through her eyes. Then it was gone. She smiled a full smile, revealing strong white teeth and a sharp twinkle in her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Naturally curious nature, I suppose. Goes with the territory. I’m a scientist. You?”

He cleared his throat. “Writer.”

“Is that what brings you to Haven?”

“Pretty much. Thought it might be a nice, quiet spot to work on my book. Close to the sea, not too far from the city, lots of space for Honey.”

Skye Van Rijn bent to pet Honey. “You’re a real pretty thing, aren’t you?” She looked up at Scott. “She still a puppy?”

“Pretty much.”

“What kind of book you writing?”

Damn. “Some call me a futurist.” The words did not come easily over his tongue. He felt anything but a futurist. Mostly he thought about the past. “I look for global trends. Economic. Social. That kind of thing.”

“You widely published?”

Hell if he knew. He’d just have to wing it. “Nope. Mostly small university presses, academic journals, that kind of thing.”

She frowned. “You’d enjoy talking to my fiancé then. He’s all into big-picture economic trends and futures. Stock market, import-export business is his thing.”

Her words blindsided him. He blinked.

“Fiancé?”

She smiled a slow smile, looked down at the dog. If he wasn’t mistaken, it was a sad, resigned smile.

“Yes. I’m getting married day after tomorrow.”

Scott couldn’t begin to identify the strange little slip he felt in his chest, the hollowness in his gut. He liked the idea of the doctor being single. Rex hadn’t told him about a fiancé. It was probably also in that damned dossier.

“Congratulations.” The word sounded inane. It hung between them.

She stepped back. “Yeah, well, I should be going. I’m really sorry to have barged in on you like that. There’s been no one in this house for a while. I thought you were the caterers. I’m expecting them. I thought they’d come to the wrong address.”

She turned. Scott watched the sway of her ass as her long legs carried her to the door.

She stopped, spun suddenly back to face him. “By the way, how’d you hurt your leg?”

Images shot through his brain. The bullet smashing his knee. The terrorist group in the Thar. The suspicious disease he’d been investigating. Scorching heat. Pain. The hospital in Mumbai. His old life gone.

“Skiing accident,” he said. “Torqued my knee.”

“Oh.” She ran those exotic eyes over him slowly. “Well, you’ve got an exquisite cane. Don’t think I’ve seen wood like that before.”

“Picked it up in Africa years ago. It’s mukwa wood, a gift from a Venda chief. Never thought I’d end up needing it in this way, though.”

“I’m sorry.” She turned to go, hesitated, turned back. “Would you like to join us for the reception Saturday? We’re having the caterers set something small and simple up at my house for after the church ceremony. I really didn’t want anything fancy.”

There was something about her demeanor that made him ask, “Why not?”

She shrugged. “Jozsef wanted to have the wedding brought forward for a number of reasons. This was the best option at such short notice.”

Scott’s curiosity piqued. “What short notice?”

She laughed. “Now who’s giving the third degree? Good night, Scott McIntyre.”

She slipped out into the dark and the house felt suddenly empty.

“Nice to meet you, Dr. Skye Van Rijn,” Scott whispered to the black night that had swallowed her.

Scott spent the rest of the night pouring over the dossier. Suddenly this mission wasn’t looking so lame. The bug doctor was not what she seemed. He sensed it in his gut. She was too quick with her reflexes, primed to react to physical threat in the way of no ordinary citizen.

And behind her smooth, smoky voice, her bold, unflinching gaze, she was guarded, hiding something. He knew it. Scott had spent years reading slight gestures, nuances of movement. He’d lived with tribes who communicated by tuning in to nature. He’d survived only because he was constantly poised for the slightest hint of danger, the mere intuition of imminent attack. Scott had lived the life of both hunter and prey. And there was something about this woman that made him feel she knew exactly what it was to be both. But which was she now?

And which was he?

He flipped over a page in the dossier, new energy humming softly through his system. And he told himself it had nothing at all to do with female curves that invited sin.

Skye pushed a button and her computer screen crackled softly to life. She scanned her e-mail before punching in her code and logging into the Kepplar lab system. She opened her work files, then rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t sleep, either. An edginess zinged through her veins. Maybe it was wedding jitters. But deep down she knew it was more than that. It was the man next door. He’d unnerved her. She didn’t like the knife strapped to his ankle, his gut reaction to surprise.

She didn’t trust him.

There was something wild about him. Something she recognized. Something that had slipped past her guard and made her ask him to her wedding reception.

She stood, paced over to her window and stared out across her yard. The light was on in his kitchen.

His shadow moved momentarily against the shade.

She jerked back in reflex, told herself he couldn’t see her through his closed blinds. She edged forward, studied the shape of his silhouette as he moved around his kitchen.

Scott McIntyre. She tested the name in a whisper over her tongue, found she liked the feel of it.

He dressed like a writer in that knobbly wool sweater with leather patches at the elbows. His body, however, did not belong to a man who spent his life hunched in front of a computer terminal. She’d seen the way his jeans were faded in the most eye-catching places, how the worn fabric strained over the thick muscles of his thighs. She’d noted the power of his wrists, the latent strength in the shape of his broad shoulders, the arrogance in the line of his wide and defined jaw. A jaw that needed a shave. His face was rugged, rough, but with an air of intelligence, a hint of compassion.

And his lips. They hadn’t escaped her notice, either. Sculpted. Almost harsh.

She laughed at herself. Yeah, as if a writer had a certain kind of lips.

Yet, as she watched the hulk of his shadow in the kitchen next door, she couldn’t pull her thoughts away from the hot image branded into her mind. He certainly looked as though he’d traveled recently. His skin was sunned a rich brown that contrasted startlingly with the deep jewel-green of his eyes. And his hair, thick and mahogany-brown with sun-bleached tips, needed a trim. But she liked the look of it. She liked the look of him. Wild. Dangerous.

And there was something about his eyes that made her want to look into him. To find out more about him. Not only because she was intrigued, but because knowledge was strength.

It could mean life over death.

She yanked her drapes shut, turned to her computer, her mind ticking over. He said he was published. A futurist. She sat in front of her terminal. With a few quick clicks she logged into the Internet and pulled up a search engine.

She punched in the letters of his name and a few keywords.

Scott sipped his second mug of tea, flipped over another page in the dossier the Bellona Channel, the international nongovernment agency dedicated to researching and fighting bio crime and bio terrorism, had prepared on Dr. Skye Van Rijn.

According to the file, Bellona’s Canadian headquarters had received an anonymous tip that Dr. Van Rijn, research and development scientist with Kepplar Biological Control Systems, had recently traveled from Kenya to Mexico where she’d crossed the border into the United States. Within weeks of her visit the first cases of Rift Valley Fever were being reported in Texas cattle. Devastating news. International borders had shut instantly, killed the American beef industry. The stock market reeled.