Free Aegis Security 03 - Extreme Measures by Elisabeth Naughton

small steps, and when his head hit the ceiling, she bit her lip to keep from laughing.
    “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, rubbing the spot. “This is the worst fucking day ever.”
    “Tell me about it.” Eve knelt up on the mattress above the cab. “Watch your head. The ceiling’s low.”
    “Now you tell me.”
    Yeah, he was a breath of fresh air, this man. She should totally ditch his ass, but she couldn’t. At least not until she got him out of Seattle.
    He grunted and grumbled as he got situated on the mattress, and when he was finally lying on his back, he breathed out a long sigh. “I’m just . . . gonna close my eyes for a minute.”
    Eve looked down at him and had a memory flash. Of him sound asleep on his cot in Beirut. Of her slinking into his room in the middle of the night when Carter had been on watch and thought both of them were catching a few winks. Of stripping him of his pants and taking him into her mouth. And the satisfied groan that had echoed from his chest when he’d finally awakened.
    Her chest grew tighter, and she turned quickly away, hating the lump forming in her throat. “I’m getting something to close your wound. I’ll be right back.”
    “Don’t go far, Evie,” he slurred. “We’re not . . . done.”
    No, they weren’t done. Eve blinked back the sting behind her eyes and drew a deep breath. They’d never truly be done, at least not for her.
    A quick scan of the camper gave her nothing useful. In a cabinet, she found a metal coat hanger and a screwdriver and figured that would have to do. The car deck was empty of people when she stepped out of the RV and softly closed the door at her back. Just rows and rows of empty vehicles. Breathing easier, she maneuvered through the lanes until she came to the ambulance.
    Her heart rate ticked up, but relief filled her chest. The ambulance was old, which meant it likely didn’t have an alarm system. She moved around the passenger side and peered inside the window. Then jerked back.
    One lone EMT sat in the driver’s seat, reading a book.
    Shit. Shit . . .
    Eve’s mind spun, and she bit her lip, contemplating. The coat hanger trick was never going to work now.
    Quietly, she peeked through the window again. The EMT was so engrossed in her book, she didn’t look up. Eve’s gaze slid over the interior of the vehicle and locked on the fob hanging from the key ring. A remote locking system she could work with.
    She moved back to the camper and gently eased the door open.
    Archer pushed up on his elbows and peered in her direction. “That was fast.”
    Dammit, he was just as handsome as ever—more so now, all rumpled from their run across the waterfront and scruffy from days without shaving. She faltered coming up the two steps into the camper, and more questions raced through her mind, but these had nothing to do with what she needed to do next. They had only to do with him—where he’d been this last year, what he’d been doing, and with whom.
    She knew his background, not because he’d told her long ago in Beirut, but because she’d investigated him thoroughly before being stationed there. His father had never really been in his life. His mother had come from old Southern money. He’d been raised primarily by his mother and maternal grandparents in Savannah, though his mother had instilled a strong work ethic in him and taught him what it meant to be successful without the help of her parents’ wealth. He had no siblings, had excelled in school, and in the summers, instead of hanging out on his grandparents’ estate with his friends, he’d manned the register in his mother’s small bookstore. He’d gone to college on an academic scholarship, and after graduating from Duke University at the top of his class, he’d joined the CIA.
    Their backgrounds weren’t the same, but their single-minded focus on success was. He was a lot like her, she realized now. A loner who’d been more fixated on his career than on marriage.