“Get moving.”

  “No!”

  Above his whiskered chin and cold-reddened cheeks, Adam’s eyes flashed icy blue fire. “That’s an order, Chameleon. Move!”

  “I’m the field agent on this mission. I’m not dividing my forces, or what little firepower I have!”

  “Dammit—”

  “I’m not leaving you. Get on the vehicle!”

  Every second wasted in argument could be their last. She knew it. He knew it.

  His jaw working, Adam threw a leg over the rear of the snowmobile.

  They finally slowed to a stop at the crest of a wooded rise. Maggie kept the snowmobile idling, afraid to shut it off completely, in case they had to make a quick getaway. Eyes narrowed against the sun’s glare, bodies tense, they listened and searched the woods below for signs of pursuit. Maggie was the first to pick up the rise and fall of engines in the distance.

  “There’s at least…two of them,” she panted. “Maybe three…if…Radizwell didn’t have the S.O.B. for lunch.”

  Adam angled his head, listening intently. “They’re following the ravine. Looking for a place to cross.”

  He shoved back his sleeve. The flat gold watch nestled among the dark hairs of his wrist glinted in the morning sun.

  “Jaguar, this is Thunder. Do you read me?”

  Their breath puffed out in white clouds, rapid and ragged, while they waited for a response.

  “I read you. Go ahead, Thunder.”

  “We’ve run into a little unfriendly fire. How close is the backup team?”

  “Twenty minutes by helicopter,” Jake snapped instantly. “Give me your coordinates.”

  Anticipating the need, Adam had already dug a small rectangular case out of his pocket. Not much bigger than a package of chewing gum, the digital compass received signals from the Navstar Global Positioning System. Navstar had proved its capabilities during the Gulf War by guiding tank commanders across the vast, featureless Saudi deserts. Its current constellation of twenty-four orbiting satellites could pinpoint time to within one-millionth of a second, velocity to within a fraction of a mile per hour, and location to within a few feet.

  “Latitude, three-nine degrees, six—”

  He broke off as the distant sounds died. Maggie inched the throttles back as far as she dared to quiet the noise of their own engine and concentrated all her energies on listening.

  “Six minutes,” Adam continued. “Longitude, one-two-oh degrees—”

  A sudden burst of horsepower cut him off once more. He stiffened, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords as he swiveled in the direction of the sounds.

  “They got across!”

  Engines revved. Grew louder.

  “They’re coming straight at us!” he snarled. “How the hell did they double back and find our tracks so quickly?”

  Maggie turned a startled face to his, as stunned as he. Then her eyes dropped to the gold watch.

  “Maybe they didn’t find our tracks! Maybe they’re homing in on the satellite signal!”

  Adam didn’t waste time in further speculation. The satellite signals were supposed to be secure. Scrambled. They’d never been broken or intercepted before. But an individual who knew how to bypass the sophisticated electronic filters in the White House switchboard might well have broken into a supposedly secure satellite system.

  “Six-one, Jaguar! Six-one!”

  With that emergency signal telling Jake to stand by until further contact, Adam abruptly terminated the transmission.

  They managed to shake their pursuers once again.

  The sounds of the distant motors fell away as Maggie steered an erratic course, up one slope, down another. Dodging fallen trees and low-hanging branches, she headed for a line of low, ragged peaks to her right. From the angle of the sun, she calculated they were headed due east, away from the cabin. Given the topography, however, she couldn’t circle back. She had to follow where the mountains led.

  Her face was stinging with cold and her numbed fingers were locked on the throttles when the machine under her began to sputter and miss. Maggie glanced down at the dash, trying to find the fuel gauge. She tore one gloved hand loose and rubbed it across the snow-covered indicator. Sure enough, the red bar danced at the bottom of the frost-encrusted gauge, almost out of sight.

  Not two minutes later, the engine died. The snowmobile skidded a few feet farther up the slope, slowed to a crawl, stopped, then began a backward slide. Adam dug his boots in and brought them to a halt.

  For a few seconds, neither of them moved. They remained silent. Listening. Searching the trees behind them.

  Somewhere below them, their attackers were equally silent. Listening. Searching the trees above them.

  “They’re waiting,” Adam said, his voice low. “For us to signal again.”

  “Bastards.”

  “They won’t have used as much fuel as we did riding double. They’ll catch us easily.”

  “Who?” Maggie muttered angrily. Her mission had just exploded in her face, and she was furious with herself for not having anticipated it. “Who are ‘they’? How did we go from a narrow list of suspects to a whole damned strike team?”

  “Whoever knew you were going to be at the lake this morning,” Adam tossed back.

  From the rigid set to his jaw, Maggie saw that he was no happier about this unexpected turn of events than she.

  “Everyone knew,” she snapped. “It was some kind of a ritual with Taylor.”

  “And if they didn’t know, we told them,” Adam added, disgust lacing his voice. “Last night, in my bedroom.”

  Maggie struggled to rein in her anger. “We’re no longer dealing with a lone assassin here. This individual has a whole organization behind him. Obviously we need to reassess our mission parameters.”

  “Obviously.” Adam pushed himself off the snowmobile and drew in a steadying breath. “Right now, though, our first priority has to be cover. If they don’t pick us up soon, they’ll call in air support and continue the search from the air.”

  “Denise and her people will have heard the shots and found their downed man by now. They’ll be searching, too—assuming one of them wasn’t behind the attack in the first place,” Maggie finished heavily.

  “I don’t think we can assume anything at this point. I suggest we burrow in until dark. The chances of them picking us up at night after we signal Jaguar will be slimmer. Marginally slimmer, admittedly, but slimmer.”

  Nodding, she clambered off the snowmobile and surveyed the now-useless vehicle.

  “I guess we’d better see what we can salvage from this hummer.”

  While Adam used the butt of his pistol to break off pieces of one of the small mirrors mounted on the handles, Maggie pried open the storage compartment. Inside, she found a pitiful cache of survival equipment—one metallic solar blanket, so thin it folded into a plastic pouch the size of a candy bar, a small tool kit, and a spare pair of goggles. Evidently their attackers hadn’t planned on a prolonged stay in the wilderness.

  Adam knelt on one knee to bundle their small cache of equipment in a piece of fender he’d broken off. “You’d better take that off,” he said, nodding to indicate her bright pink jacket. “I’ll wrap it up with the rest of this gear.”

  Maggie didn’t need to be told that the vivid color made too visible a target. Her shiver when she tugged off the thick layer of down wasn’t due to the chill air.

  Adam removed his own jacket, as well, but didn’t offer it to her out of any misguided sense of male gallantry. He knew as well as she that the exertion of walking through the snow would work up a sweat, which had to be allowed to evaporate, or it would freeze their clothes to their bodies.

  They left the vehicle buried under a nest of branches. As she trudged up the slope, trailing a screen of branches to cover their tracks, Maggie repeated to herself over and over the principle her instructors had drilled into her during survival training. Stay dry. In the jungle. In the Arctic. Stay dry. Foot rot from wet boots while slogging through swamps was as dangerous as frostbite from sweat-dampened undergarments in cold climates.

  With that in mind, she tugged the hem of her turtleneck out of her waistband to let air circulate. Adam did the same with his plaid flannel shirt. Maggie saw that he wore the same style of high-tech long johns she did—under his shirt, at least. She didn’t see how anything would fit under those snug jeans.

  As they neared the crest, the trees thinned, as did the snow. Bare, windswept slabs of granite made the going easier, but also made Maggie feel far too vulnerable. The skin between her shoulder blades just above the bulletproof corset itched as though a big round circle had been painted on it.

  Once over the top of the ridge, they scouted for a spot that would protect them from both the elements and searching eyes while they decided on their game plan.

  “There,” she panted, out of breath from the steep climb. “Under that tree.”

  The conifer she pointed to was at least sixty feet tall and shaped much like a pointed stake. Its branches grew wide at the bottom to catch the sun and narrowed dramatically toward the top. Laden with snow, the lower limbs drooped to the ground. They’d provide both concealment and natural insulation.

  Maggie and Adam scrambled down the slope, brushing away their tracks as best they could. Squatting, he peered under the sagging branches.

  “Perfect. I’ll tunnel us in. You gather some branches.”

  She smiled wryly at his ingrained habit of assuming command, but decided not to take issue with it. In this instance, it didn’t matter who dug and who gathered, as long as the tasks got done, and fast. Besides, she didn’t have enough breath right now to argue.

  Using the fender from the snowmobile, Adam knelt on one knee and set to work scooping a shallow trench in the snow under the drooping limbs. He worked quickly, but took great care not to disturb the thick layer of white coating the branches.

  When Maggie came back with the first armload of pine branches, she stopped abruptly a few feet away. Adam had shed his plaid shirt to keep it dry. His thermal undershirt showed damp patches, attesting to the strenuous effort physical labor required at this elevation. It also attested to his superb physical condition. The silky white fabric clung to his body with a loving attention to detail that made Maggie’s mouth go dry.

  His upper torso might have been sculpted by Michelangelo. Broad and well toned at the shoulders, narrow and lean at the waist, he was basic, elemental male. When he bent forward, his jeans rode low on narrow hips. A curl of dark hair at the small of his back drew Maggie’s fascinated gaze. With each scoop, his muscles rippled with a primitive, utterly beautiful poetry.

  At the sight, something wrenched inside her, and she knew she’d never view Adam the same way again. The image of the cool aristocrat that she’d carried for so long in her mind and her heart shattered.

  “Want me to dig the rest?” she asked, dumping the prickly pine branches beside the entrance.

  “No, I’m all right. We’ll need more branches to line the interior walls, though.”

  She nodded, stooping to check his progress. “Better not make the opening too narrow,” she advised him with a wry smile. “As Lillian is so fond of pointing out, I’m not quite a perfect size eight.”

  Adam rested an arm on the bent fender and watched her retrace her footsteps in the snow. A tantalizing snatch of conversation he’d overheard between her and Lillian the night of the Kennedy Center benefit came back to him. Maggie had protested then that she wasn’t a perfect anything, and he’d silently agreed. He hadn’t changed his opinion. If anything, the past few days had reinforced it.

  Fiercely independent didn’t begin to describe this woman. Her adamant refusal to follow his orders today came as close to insubordination as he’d ever allowed an OMEGA operative. Only her acid reminder that she was the field commander on this mission had stopped him from shredding her to pieces on the spot. That, and the fact that Maggie Sinclair wasn’t particularly shreddable.

  But Adam knew he’d never erase from his mind his stunned fury when she’d sprung up out of the snow and dashed for the snowmobile. Or his sudden, swamping fear. He’d expected a bullet to slam into her body at any second. To see her thrown back by the force of a hit. He’d kept his mind focused and his hand steady as he provided covering fire, but a silent litany had reverberated through him with every step she took.

  No more talk.

  No more waiting.

  No more denying the raw need that gripped him. And her.

  That same refrain echoed in his mind now as he bent to scoop fenderful after fenderful of snow out of the shallow trench.

  No more talk.

  No more waiting.

  If they lived through this day, neither of them would ever be the same. Soon had become now.

  While he dug, Maggie rounded up enough pine branches to construct a thick, springy mat that would keep them off the snow. More feathery branches provided insulation for the walls Adam built up around the depression. Above these walls the sagging tree limbs formed a natural sloping ceiling.

  Within a remarkably short time, their hidden lair was complete. While Adam crawled inside to spread the lightweight solar blanket over the springy mat, Maggie gathered their meager gear.

  She handed him the items one by one, still panting a little from her foraging trips. Pine needles stuck to her white turtleneck, which in turn stuck to her back and shoulders.

  Adam got to his feet and dusted the snow from his knees, frowning as he took in the damp hair curling around her face.

  “You crawl inside. I’ll brush the rest of the tracks and seal the entrance.”

  Maggie nodded and dropped to her knees.

  “Strip off as much as you can. I’ll help you with the body shield when I’m done here, so you can get out of those damp long johns.”

  She paused halfway through the narrow tunnel. Bottom wiggling, she backed out again.

  “Let’s just review the situation here. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Two, possibly three stalkers are searching for us as we speak. We don’t know who sent them, we can’t contact headquarters for help, and we have no idea at this moment how long we’re going to be stranded here.”

  “That about sums it up.”

  “Not quite.”

  She eyed his chest, which was damp from exertion. Her fingers dug into her thighs with the need to stroke its broad planes. Dry them. Curl into their warmth.

  Lifting her gaze to his face, she grinned. It wasn’t much of a grin, more a grimace than an expression of mirth, but it was the best Maggie could do at the moment.

  “If we crawl into that hole and get naked together, I’m not going to be held responsible for my actions.”

  He smiled at her then. Not the smooth, easy smile he’d given “Taylor” the past few days. Not the cool half smile he allowed himself on occasion at OMEGA headquarters. This was a slow, satisfied, devastatingly predatory twist of his lips.

  “Maggie, my darling, when we get naked together, responsibility is the last thing I want from you.”

  At her start of surprise, his smile lost its razor’s edge. “Go on, get inside. You know as well as I do that the next few minutes could make the difference between life and death.”

  Chapter 11

  Mind racing, heart pumping, Maggie crawled through the narrow tunnel.

  Okay. All right. It was a matter of survival. Hers and his. They had to strip off. They had to stay dry. In the Arctic. In the jungle.

  She was a professional. She’d been trained for situations like this. It was a matter of survival.

  Yet when she entered the chamber Adam had carved for them under the spreading boughs of the majestic fir, her chaotic thoughts centered on a different kind of survival. The kind that had to do with the continuation of the species.

  Her blood rushed through her veins, bringing with it a heat that added to the moisture dewing her neck. Breathing hard, she made herself sit back on her heels. While she waited for her pulse to slow, she admired the fruits of their labors.

  Both the size and the warmth of this subterranean nest surprised her. The tree’s massive trunk formed a solid, rounded back wall. Mounded snow defined the rest of the area. Overhead, drooping, snow-laden branches slanted down at an angle from the base of the tree to the outer walls. The fragrant pine boughs Maggie had gathered lined the interior walls and made a thick mat for the floor, adding an extra layer of insulation.

  Amazing. They’d constructed a tight, neat lean-to using nature’s own materials, with no tools or modern implements except a fiberglass fender scoop. Adam had spread the thin Mylar blanket over the mat, but Maggie knew they could have survived without it.

  Survival.

  The pulse that had slowed a fraction leaped into action again.

  It was a matter of survival.

  And, as Adam had said, the next few minutes could make the difference between life and death.

  Settling cross-legged on the shifting mat, she pulled off her gloves. Carefully she placed her weapon atop her folded pink ski jacket to keep it both dry and close at hand, then went to work on her bootlaces. Within moments, her brown pants hung from one of the overhead branches. She was just reaching for the hem of her white turtleneck when Adam backed into the chamber.

  Suddenly the pine-scented nest didn’t seem nearly as spacious as it had a moment ago.

  Maggie edged over to make room for him. The springy mat shifted under her and tipped her sideways. Her elbow dug into his thigh. His shoulder thumped her chest. It took a bit of doing, but they finally maneuvered themselves back into sitting positions. He laid his weapon next to hers and glanced around the interior. A half smile curved his lips as he surveyed his work.

  “The hole seemed a lot bigger when I was digging it. It’s kind of tight in here.”

  “At least it’ll be warm.”

  He nodded, eyeing the mounded walls. “When the snow sets, this cave will be as well insulated as any house. Better than most.”

  Maggie believed him. She already felt the extra heat his presence generated in the small chamber. He’d brought a musky warmth into the dim interior, which combined with hers to drive off the chill. The trapped air warmed perceptibly around them while he unlaced his boots. And when his hand went to the zipper of his jeans, Maggie could have sworn the temperature shot up another dozen degrees or so.