Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(10)

“Way to pick ’em, Chess,” she whispered into the empty room.

Although she had picked pretty well for the purposes of mind-blowing, body-quaking, orgasm-making sex.

“Damn it.” She thwacked the bed with the T-shirt, pushing herself up again and looking around the barren hotel room. There was no way she was staying here alone tonight, smelling the memory of the two of them on the sheets, and feeling sorry for her stupid self. She had her own room, and that’s where she belonged.

She washed up, used the new toothbrush, and slipped her panties and jeans back on in less than five minutes. She hooked her bra and looked around the floor for her favorite black cardigan that her cousin had given her last Christmas. Vivi probably hadn’t planned on the designer sweater becoming part of a sexy one-button-at-a-time striptease for a lover fresh from federal prison.

But there was no sign of her top. Maybe he took it so she’d be forced to walk around in an Allenwood prison T-shirt. A convict with a mocking sense of humor, then.

She yanked up the spread that had fallen to the floor.

There it was. She reached for the sweater, but the edge of the sleeve had become wedged into the iron rail of the bedframe. She didn’t even remember him getting the sweater off her, she thought as she bent lower to free the fabric without tearing it. No, she’d been too busy stripping him down, too, and getting her hands on all those freaking muscles.

That he built in the prison gym.

“Ugh,” she grunted, still attempting to loosen the sweater without putting a hole in the delicate knit.

The sucker wouldn’t budge. “Oh, come on.” She got on her knees, slipping her fingers behind the bedframe to carefully slide out the sweater sleeve. Under the material, she felt a little bump, like a screw trapping the fabric. She pulled a little more, but any harder and she’d ruin the cardigan. Of course, she had a nice, clean Allenwood federal prison T-shirt to wear. Wouldn’t Gabe and their grandfather have a field day with that when she showed up in Barefoot Bay?

If he found out… No, Gabe would freaking kill her for this, and then he’d call in their brothers to hunt the guy down—Marc would do that. JP would threaten him with more jail time. And then, for good measure, he’d tell their cousin Zach, who’d put his fist through the guy’s–

Something popped into the air, breaking away from the bedframe as her top snapped free.

“What the—” She looked down at the spread on the floor. A black disc lay against the cream color, making her jerk back at the possibility it was a roach.

But then a tiny red light flashed once right in the middle of it.

“Holy shit,” she whispered, reaching her hand closer but not actually touching it.

It flashed again. This was a bug, all right. But not the creepy-crawly kind.

Though every bit as creepy. Very slowly, Chessie backed away, covering her mouth as the horrific reality of this settled over her.

The room was bugged—and the light said the bug was active—and all that mind-blowing, body-quaking, orgasm-making sex she had enjoyed so boisterously?

She sucked in a slow breath as the implications piled up one by one. This could be used against her. This could be sent to her family. This could turn up on the Internet.

But this was his room. Someone could be after him. Holy hell, he could be an escaped convict! And she’d inadvertently aided and abetted him. Or had just unknowingly become an alibi in a murder.

Holy God, the list of possibilities were endless, and not one of them any good.

She stood, suddenly aware of how very vulnerable she was, uneasily looking around for the camera that might be in the room, too.

“Son of a…” She stopped herself from saying another word, silently slipping into her cardigan and buttoning it with trembling hands. She had to get out of there. She had to get out of Atlanta. And not by way of the airport, either.

A plan started to form, point by point. Check out. Take cab to car rental. Leave for Barefoot Bay tonight. She’d already checked the driving time in the airport after the flight was canceled. Eight and a half hours for regular people. Chessie could make it in seven. And a quarter. So she’d be there by eight thirty or nine at the latest.

Shit, her luggage. Plan snag.

No, no. Her bag would make it to Fort Myers because she was booked on that plane, and she could get it from the airport that afternoon.


Okay, a plan. She loved a plan. A calming, direct plan to counteract the raw stupidity of casual sex with an escaped prisoner in a bugged room.

Her hands shook as she tried to pull on her ankle-high boots.

“You are so not cut out for field work,” she mumbled, then remembered the bug and slammed her mouth shut. Shit. She had to get out of here.

Snagging her handbag, she looked around for anything else she might have left, besides her dignity and sanity.

Oh, his Allenwood federal prison T-shirt.

Should she take it? Or leave it? Instinct and self-preservation made her grab the T-shirt and stuff it into her bag.

But then there was the bug, still on the floor, still flashing a slender red beam of light. She took a step, then another, and let her boot heel accidentally crush the small device.

“That bug’s dead.” Then she scooped the pieces up, stuffed them in her jeans pocket, and hustled out the door, already reviewing her steps and loving her new plan. This could be good. Gabe would think she was heroic for driving all night. And she’d make it in time for peppers and eggs, and some good old Italian food love from her grandfather.