A SEAL in Wolf’s Clothing by Terry Spear Page B

of his pocket and punched the button. The garage door opened and he drove inside, then quickly closed the door again.
    “I made arrangements to use it when I located Hunter and thought I was rescuing the two of you. It’s a safe house of sorts. While no one knows where we are, it’s safe.”
    “What if the guys were part of your secret society? Wouldn’t they know where your safe houses are?” She shoved the car door open.
    “No. This place isn’t on the list of safe houses. It’s strictly a friend of a friend of a friend’s.”
    She eyed the oversized two-car garage: neat and orderly, but obviously in use as evidenced by the tools hanging on a wall, all neatly organized on pegboard. She was certain the owners would be unhappy if she and Finn messed the place up. On the other hand, they probably had maid service and gardeners, if they could afford a place this fancy on the coast.
    “Now that we found the bug, do you think Imposter Joe was the assassin?” she asked, as she followed Finn across the garage, carrying her bag while he carried his duffel bag and her rifle.
    “No.”
    She joined him at the door leading out of the garage to what she assumed was the house. “How can you be so sure?”
    “He wanted you.”
    Her lips parted, and then she laughed. “Right.”
    “Yeah, he did.” Finn sounded a little more disgruntled than she would expect him to be. “If he’d been a real assassin, he would have attempted to kill the both of us. No. This guy was someone else. As soon as I can get one of our men to check out the other Joe, we’ll try to uncover just who this other guy really was.” He opened the door, which revealed a sparkling tiled kitchen.
    Everything was sunny yellow, from the floor tiles to the walls. The table and cabinets were all in a honey-oak wood, and the countertop had gold and yellow streaks running through the faux marble. A bay window offered a panoramic view of the ocean, and she paused to take a look at the pines rising far above the house from way down below and the frothy waves hitting the sandy beach and striking boulders scattered along the shore. Her scenic view was different—the beach smaller, the trees framing the house even more, which she preferred because it gave more of a woodsy feel—but she liked the bay window.
    “He did lie about who he was. Then the other Joe ended up dead. I just don’t see how the imposter could have been the good guy,” she continued, wanting to explore the beach, to look for seashells, to feel the sand between her toes.
    She watched with fascination the way the water swirled in little eddies at the edge, pulling the sand out and tossing it back inland again, exposing precious seashell treasures in its wake.
    Finn glanced over his shoulder at her. “What I want to know is how he got the bug into your pants without you knowing about it.”
    She felt her face heat up all over again. “I was distracted.”
    “Oh?”
    She couldn’t believe Finn didn’t realize that he had been the perfect distraction.
    “Yeah. Some naked guy had just taken a shower in my bathroom. And Imposter Joe, I believed , was my protection. He sort of swept his hand over my back pocket, and I thought it was a gesture aimed at reassuring me.”
    Finn snorted. “The guy palmed your butt, and you don’t think he’s interested in you?”
    “Right! He stuffs a bug in my pocket, and that shows how much he’s intrigued with me?”
    “If he didn’t care for you, or if this was strictly a job, you would never have felt his hand on your ass.”
    She took a deep breath, trying to settle the way her stomach had tightened over Finn’s irritation with her and what Imposter Joe had done. She would have argued with Finn further, but she suspected he would probably know better about matters like that. And that made her feel even more uncomfortable about Imposter Joe.
    She glanced at the sunny living room off the kitchen, with its large picture windows letting in light and the