“A dozen uniforms. That many more undercovers in and around the lobby and at all the entrances.”

“They know to be looking for Panella?”

Wiley nodded. “To refresh memories, we circulated the last known photograph of him.”

“What’s my job?”

“To make yourself scarce until morning. You have somewhere to stay?”

“Plenty of flophouses in New Orleans.”

“We’ll reconvene early in my office. Hick and I will show you everything we have on Josh Bennett. Maybe you can spot a clue we’ve overlooked that would lead us to his hidey-hole.”

Shaw thought over the difficult chore ahead of them. He wasn’t typically a team player, and he wasn’t being embraced by everyone on this team, where cooperation was absolutely necessary. He looked over at Hickam, then came back to Wiley with a silent question mark.

Wiley, following both his glance and his thought, said, “He doesn’t like you.”

“I’m crushed. But is he gonna continue being a pain in my ass?”

“I’ll talk to him, encourage him to keep an open mind where you’re concerned, because your particular skills might come in handy. Hick and I aren’t fond of Josh, but we don’t want Panella getting to him before we do.”

“I want to nail Panella.”

“So you’ve said.” Wiley cocked his head to one side. “This hasn’t turned personal, has it?”

Shaw just looked at him.

Wiley sighed. “I was afraid of that.” Then he eyed Shaw up and down. “Try to stay out of trouble overnight. Don’t scare anybody. And whatever you do, don’t get arrested. I can’t take two doses of Xavier Dupaw in one day.”

Shaw gave him a wry grin of understanding.

Gwen Saunders approached them. “Mr. Kinnard, are you out of my bedroom? I need to get my things.”

“Call me Shaw, and thanks for letting me crash in your room. Did you order the food for me?”

She smiled. “You looked like you needed sustenance.”

“I did. Thanks. Where’s Jordie?”

“We got a vest for her. She’s putting it on.” She indicated the closed door on the other side of the suite, then headed toward her own bedroom.

Hickam summoned Wiley over to a table where he was conferring with the marshals over the layout of the hotel and the routes they would take for their exit. Shaw pretended to be choosing an apple from a basket of fruit on the minibar. When no one was looking, he slipped into Jordie’s bedroom and closed the door.

Without looking around, she said, “I’m coming.”

She had changed out of the pants suit into a pair of black jeans, a button-up white shirt, and sneakers. She was bent over the bed, zipping up a duffel. When done, she turned around and, seeing Shaw, drew up tall, her eyes narrowing with animosity. She pulled the duffel off the bed and walked to where he stood against the door.

“Get out of my way.”

“I had to make you believe it, Jordie.”

“I said, get out of my way.”

“There were times I hated myself for—”

“Then that makes two of us.”

“Other times I hated you for making objectivity impossible.”

“Oh, that’s pretty. Be sure to write it down so you don’t forget it. You can use it to manipulate your next hostage. That is, after you run out of cute innuendos, half truths, flat-out lies, and assorted other scare tactics.” She made to go around him, but he sidestepped and blocked her.

“Not all of it was manipulation and lies.”

She huffed a laugh. “Nothing you say will ever make me believe that.”

“Good. I’m tired of talking.”

He cupped her face between his hands, pushed his fingers up into her hair, and held her head in place as he turned them so that her back was to the door.

She went rigid. “If you don’t get your hands off me, I’ll yell this bloody place down.”

He lowered his face close to hers. “When I was lying there with that propeller sticking out of my gut, you didn’t run. You didn’t escape. Why not?”

“If I had it to do over—”

“You do. Here. Right now. You can yell this bloody place down. But I think that if you wanted to, you would have already.” His whisked his mouth across hers.

“Don’t.”

She tried to turn her head aside, but he held it fast between his hands and kissed the corner of her mouth.

“Stop it. I mean it, Shaw. I don’t want this.”

“No, you don’t want to want it. Big difference.”

Then he angled her head and kissed her the way he’d imagined, the way his drugged mind had fantasized it, the way he’d craved to from the first time he got a good look at her face.

He didn’t care how many ethics codes he was violating, or how many federal agents were in the next room, or—God forgive him—if Billy Panella himself was on the other side of this door, unless she put words into action and stopped him, he was going to get carnal with her mouth. He was going to mate with it for as long as she and time allowed.

She didn’t stop him. When he pressed his tongue into her mouth, it met with no resistence. After a slow dance with hers, he withdrew it just far enough to touch the tip of it to the center of her upper lip, just inside, just barely a flick. It was so blatantly erotic that her breaths started coming as hard and fast as his. Wanting more, he sent his tongue deep again.

She let go of the duffel bag. It dropped softly onto the toe of his boot. He pushed it aside, inched closer to Jordie and leaned into her, making adjustments in alignment that fit them together like puzzle pieces and caused her breath to catch. He hated the damn bulletproof vest that shielded her breasts from the pressure of his chest.

Her hand came up between them. She ran her thumb across the scar on his chin, then scraped it lightly with her teeth. He took a love bite of her wet, plump lower lip. Then they were kissing again, frantically. Maybe it was the mad recklessness of this whole thing that made it so goddamn good.

But he thought it was more the woman than the circumstances that had him about to combust.

He slid one hand down her front, pausing to grind the heel of it against where he approximated her nipple would be, before moving it lower, pushing it between her thighs and caressing her there. She gasped and arched into his gently massaging hand.