Paternity Unknown. Jean Barrett

      If only he could sleep. But they wouldn’t let him sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, they would rouse him. Sometimes by slapping or kicking him awake. At other times by subjecting him to those frigid showers.

      The interrogation was endless. But he hadn’t broken. He had been trained not to tell them what they wanted to know.

      “We already know the truth anyway, Ethan. Your hands told us the truth. Look at your hands.”

      He looked down at his hands. Horrified, he saw that they were covered with blood.

      “His blood, Ethan. You have his blood on your hands.”

      This time, his tormentor thrust his face down into the light. Ethan recoiled from the sight of it. Koh!

      So he had been right about the voice. But what was that monster doing here in Seattle? He had left Koh back in the bleak, North Korean cell where they had held him all those weeks of pure hell.

      “Tell me you did it, Ethan. Tell me you killed him, and then you can sleep.”

      Lack of sleep. It had him confused. Koh couldn’t be here. Not in Seattle. Whatever the explanation, he held on to his determination. He refused to talk.

      His interrogator sighed with a regret that belied his brutality. “You leave us no choice, Ethan.”

      He heard the sound of a door opening in the blackness. Then someone stumbling as he was pushed forward into the light. Ethan recognized the figure and was shocked. Hands bound behind him, the man’s face was a mess of bruises and raw cuts. They had beaten him.

      It was Zach, of course, who had been on the reconnaissance mission with him. Who had been captured along with Ethan by the North Koreans. Why had they brought Zach to Seattle?

      “Don’t tell them, Ethan,” Zach pleaded with him. “Whatever they do to you, don’t tell them anything.”

      “Oh, but he will,” Koh insisted. “When he watches what we are going to do to you, he will talk. Won’t you, Ethan?”

      Ethan had withstood it all, every punishment they’d inflicted. Was prepared to go on resisting them whatever they made him suffer. But to torture Zach while they forced him to watch—

      “Bastards!”

      Surging up from the hard stool, he struck out at them, fists swinging in an explosive rage…

      “IT’S ALL RIGHT. Ethan, it’s all right.”

      A pair of hands. He felt a pair of hands on his tight fists, striving to restrain him. They weren’t cruel hands. They were gentle.

      “You were having a nightmare.”

      The voice was gentle, too. And deeply concerned. He went still, his fists uncurling as a blessed reality replaced the nightmare. The darkness of another night had wrapped itself around the cabin where he was sitting up on the mattress. Lauren had slipped off the sofa and was kneeling in front of him.

      They had left one of the lamps burning on the table above them, its wick turned low. In the feeble glow, he could see her troubled face.

      “It’s okay,” she assured him, “you don’t have to tell me about it, but it must have been some awful nightmare. You were shouting in your sleep.”

      Awful? Yeah, just about as bad as it could get. His imprisonment in North Korea over a year ago had somehow gotten mixed up in his dream with what happened just days ago in Seattle. Only he was no longer in the service. There would be no one this time to negotiate his release.

      Another cell. He couldn’t be locked away in another cell. After what he had endured in North Korea, it would destroy him. But it could happen. It would happen if—

      “Your hands are shaking,” she said.

      She must have sensed how desperately he needed her comfort in that moment. That’s why she did a wonderful, impulsive thing. Still clinging to his hands, head bent over them, she covered their backs with slow, soothing kisses.

      He shuddered over the heat of her mouth on his flesh. She felt so good, so right. A lifeline of sanity in a world that had become demented for him. He didn’t know how he was going to bear leaving her when the time came for him to go.

      “Lauren,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion.

      She lifted her head and met his gaze. He looked into her eyes and read understanding there. She knew what he wanted, what was tearing him up inside: her. He needed her as he had never needed any other woman.

      It was wrong of him to take advantage of her just because she was receptive to that need. He realized that. But, in her generosity to offer him what would bring him relief from his anguish, however temporary, he was unable to resist her.

      With a groan of submission, snatching his hands away from hers in order to gather her into his arms, he reached for her. Hauled her softness tightly against his hardness, crushed his mouth over hers.

      Alternately fierce and tender. That’s how Ethan kissed her, and how she responded with her own kisses.

      They must have shed their clothes between those fevered kisses. He didn’t remember. He only knew that at some point they were both naked, that he was swollen with desire, his senses inflamed by the taste and feel of her.

      He should have been beyond all hesitation by then, but some shred of conscience did make him pause. “It’s not too late,” he rasped. “We don’t have to—”

      “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, we do.”

      Her own urgency robbed him of all reason then, leaving him with only one scrap of responsibility. At least he had that much, he thought, his hand groping for his wallet on the table beside them.

      Fumbling for the condom inside, slitting it open and removing it, he sheathed himself. There was no self-control after that. All the rest was a mindless, rapturous joining. Their two bodies consuming each other, straining for release and finding it in a roaring fulfillment.

      Afterwards, holding her securely against his side as she slept, Ethan knew he should regret what had just happened. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

      COLD WATER pelted his body, reviving him. He was able to think clearly as he soaped himself and turned under the shower spray.

      The first light of morning had revealed that the storm had ended. That meant the plows would soon be out clearing the roads, maybe already were.

      Ethan didn’t think there was much chance of one of them spotting his rental car down among the trees. It must be snow-covered by now. But there was always that risk.

      And if it were sighted and its presence reported, it would be investigated and identified as a rental car. Its license would be easily traced to the agency in Kalispell. The police would be told who had rented the vehicle. They would run a check on him, learn he was wanted in Seattle. And since the sedan had been abandoned, and the cabin the only nearby shelter in the storm, it was only logical…

      It can’t happen that fast. You still have time.

      Okay, that was probably true, but he couldn’t waste that time. He was defenseless here. He had to get away just as quickly as possible. How? The rental was useless.

      Lauren’s car, he thought. She had told him over dinner last night that she’d left it parked up at the mouth of her driveway where it joined the road, just as she always did whenever there was the threat of a heavy snow that made her lane impassable. He didn’t want to involve Lauren, but there was no other way. He’d have to ask to borrow her car, dig it out of the snow, and drive into Elkton.

      Things would be all right if he could just reach Hilary Johnson. He would make them all right.

      And then what? What was he going to do about Lauren? Running out on her after last night was unthinkable. But with what he was facing, how could he do otherwise? Anything else would be unfair to both of them.

      And