Safe House Under Fire

by Elisabeth Rees

  That was when the alarm unit clipped to his waist began to bleep, relaying a warning from the agents in the house across the street.

  Danger had found them.

  SEVEN

  It was late afternoon and Lilly was dozing on the sofa while Astrid played cards when David rushed through the living room, dropping the blinds and pointing her toward the stairs.

  “Take Astrid into your bedroom and lock the door behind you.” He handed her a gun. “Don’t come out until I give the all clear. Got it?”

  She was suddenly wide-awake. “Got it.”

  “What is it?” Astrid asked, following them into the hall. “Did something bad happen?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I got a danger warning from the agents across the street, so Goldie will stay here with you while I go check it out. It’s only a yellow alert at the moment, so there’s no need to panic.” He touched Lilly’s shoulder reassuringly. “Okay?”

  Goldie appeared in the upstairs hallway, awoken from her nap. “I got the same alert, David. I’ll lock up behind you and stand guard.”

  Lilly made a grab for David’s hand, instinctively and naturally, holding it tight for a couple of seconds. She didn’t want him to be hurt, especially now that they had grown so close. Astrid noticed the gesture of affection and pinched her lips in an expression of displeasure, folding her arms and stomping up the stairs, passing Goldie on her way down.

  “We’ll talk later,” David whispered, withdrawing his hand. “Stay safe.”

  He walked to the door, turning and winking at her before leaving the house. Lilly’s belly went into a kind of free fall just at the sight of that wink, and she gently reminded herself that she mustn’t behave like a love-struck teenager. She had been a love-struck teen when she’d met Rylan, overlooking his faults and quashing her misgivings because he sent her stomach into a swirl. Now a sensible woman in her thirties, Lilly needed to behave with more maturity, to protect both her and Astrid from another letdown. There were a ton of complications associated with any new relationship.

  Skipping up the stairs after Astrid, Lilly could clearly see that the most serious complication was her daughter’s feelings.

  “There’s no need to look so worried,” she said, entering the bedroom and locking the door behind her. “David told us it’s not a high alert.”

  “I think you should let me call Dad,” Astrid said, sitting on the double bed and pounding a pillow with her fist. “If I go stay with him, you and David get to be all alone, just like you want to be.”

  Lilly knew exactly what had made her this upset. “You saw us kissing this morning.”

  “Yes, I did, and I can’t believe you would be interested in a man like him, Mom.”

  “What do you mean—a man like him?”

  “He’s so straitlaced and boring.” She punched the pillow again. “And he doesn’t like me.”

  Lilly placed the gun on the dresser and sat on the bed next to her daughter. “Oh, honey, that’s not true. I happen to know that he thinks a lot of you. You remind him of his own daughter.”

  “I already have a dad in my life, so I don’t need another one, thank you very much.”

  Lilly fought back an urge to laugh. Astrid most definitely did not have a dad in her life, and hadn’t for at least two years.

  “David and I aren’t serious about anything,” she said gently. “We had one little kiss, so don’t jump ahead of yourself.”

  Astrid turned her face away from her mother’s, her voice growing thick with emotion. “I always kind of hoped that you and Dad would get back together.” She wiped away a tear. “And now David has messed it all up.”

  Lilly put a flat palm on her chest in shock. There was no way she and Rylan would ever reconcile, and Astrid was living in a fantasyland if she thought otherwise.

  “I was happy with your father for a little while,” she said. “And you were born out of genuine love. But he moved on a long time ago and I think I deserve to be happy again too.”

  “Aren’t you happy with me?”

  “Of course I am.” Lilly stroked Astrid’s hair. “But in two years’ time, you’ll be making plans to go to college, perhaps far away from home. No matter how much I love you, I want someone else in my life.”

  Astrid’s shoulders shrank down. “But David doesn’t understand me, not like Dad does.”

  Lilly sighed. How could Astrid have forgotten all the terrible birthday presents Rylan had sent, proving that he didn’t understand her at all? The doll she had gotten when she turned thirteen and was about to start high school. The secondhand bicycle with a broken bell. A purse that was bright yellow, the color she hated most in the world. These were hastily bought gifts, sent without thought, before he gave up trying completely. Now Astrid received nothing.

  “Why don’t you give David a chance?” Lilly said. “He wants you to like him and he’s trying really hard.”

  Astrid groaned. “He’s not trying hard at all. He just orders me around and treats me like a baby. I don’t like him, and I don’t want him in my life.”

  “What if I want him in mine?” Lilly asked.

  “I’ll run away and go to California to live with Dad.”

  “Astrid,” Lilly said reproachfully. “Stop talking like that. For the time being, we have to trust David and follow his orders. I don’t care if you don’t like him. Your life is in his hands.”

  Astrid threw herself sideways onto the duvet, picked up White Bear and buried her head under the pillow. Lilly rubbed her back soothingly.

  “Leave me alone,” came Astrid’s muffled voice. “Everybody hates me.”

  Lilly removed her hand and gazed down at her daughter’s shoulders shaking slightly with her silent tears. No mother ever wanted to see her daughter in pain like this and Lilly would do anything to make it stop.

  Perhaps it was time to let that mature woman in her thirties start calling the shots. She vowed to reel in her wayward emotions before she made another colossal mistake.

  * * *

  David walked across the backyard and vaulted the fence, before emerging onto the street via the pathway of the empty house next door. He then followed the directions of the agents standing in the window of the house opposite, pointing him toward a white van parked on the corner of the street. A man was standing at the open door at the back, leaning inside, only his blue pants and boots visible.

  David unclipped his radio as he walked, keeping the other hand rested on his holstered weapon.

  “What have we got?” he said quietly into the radio.

  “A white male, about forty years old,” came the reply from one of the agents inside the undercover house. “He’s been scoping the street for a few minutes, walking up and down, looking into windows.”

  “Is it Henderson?”

  “Negative.”

  Could this man be the new accomplice? David approached the van with caution, clipping his radio back onto his belt and covering his weapon with his jacket. If this person was in fact an innocent bystander, he didn’t want to create a scene.

  “Hi there,” he said, tapping on the side of the van. “Do you need any help, buddy?”

  The man stepped away from the van and straightened up. David resisted the urge to make a grab for his gun. His senses were heightened after the experiences of the last few days.

  “Hello, sir.” The man was smiling cheerfully, wearing a navy blue peaked cap on which the words Green Fingers Florist were written in red thread. “I’d sure appreciate your help actually.”

  David did a slow and complete turn on the sidewalk, taking in his entire surroundings. All was tranquil in this new residential development, with all of the houses in their little cul-de-sac empty and awaiting sale.

  “Sure,” David said, affecting a neighborly tone. “What do you need?”

  The guy reached i
nto his van and David put a hand beneath his jacket, ready to draw his gun at a second’s notice. Yet the man simply pulled out a huge bouquet of flowers, wrapped in cellophane.

  “I’m looking for a lady by the name of Lilly Olsen,” he said. “There’s no address on the card, only the name of this estate, so I’m not sure which house to knock. And they all look empty to me anyway.”

  David’s heart rate hiked up a notch. “Lilly Olsen?”

  “Yeah, you know her?”

  David shook his head. “Never heard of her. I think you must have the wrong location. I’m the only resident on the street.” He gesticulated to the for-sale signs in the front yards along the street. “The rest of these houses are unsold.”

  The man placed the flowers back into his van. “I have no idea why the store took the order without an exact address. Thanks for your help, buddy.”

  The guy closed the doors of the delivery vehicle, took his clipboard from the roof and sat in the driver’s seat to write on the paperwork. As David turned and began walking away, he surreptitiously unclipped his radio and spoke into it.

  “Watch this guy until he leaves, and then call a florist called Green Fingers to ask them who placed an order for delivery to Lilly Olsen. Get as much information as you can, because it seems to me that Henderson might know our general location but not the actual address. This is his way of pinpointing where we are.”

  He crossed the street, hiding his radio and waving to the delivery driver, deliberately walking along the side path of the wrong house in order to cut across the backyard and vault the fence into the yard of the safe house. He gave Goldie the fright of her life when he landed right in front of the kitchen window where she was standing guard looking pensive, gun in hand.

  She opened the back door. “What did you find?”

  “It was a florist trying to deliver flowers to Lilly.”

  “Henderson found us again?”

  “He seems to know our general location,” David said. “But I have no idea how.”

  “Actually,” said Goldie. “Something weird happened earlier. I detected a transmission signal when I was doing a sweep of the house, but it was super quick, like only a few seconds. I assumed it was from a passing car, but it could’ve been something else.”

  “Could it have come from one of our phones?” David asked.

  “The signals on both of our cellphones were already visible,” Goldie replied. “But this new signal was an extra one, definitely inside or very close to the house.”

  This was a cause for concern, especially as passing cars are a rarity in a deserted cul-de-sac. “Something has given Henderson an idea of our safe house location, but he doesn’t seem to be able to identify the exact house. Keep checking for signals, Goldie. I’ll go update Lilly on what’s happening.”

  David climbed the stairs, his mind running through all the ways that Henderson might be able to track them. Goldie’s investigation had so far come up with nothing, no reason to suspect any agents of betraying them. Just what was going wrong?

  He knocked lightly on Lilly’s bedroom door, calling out the safe word. When she opened up, her face was pale and tense, as if the weight of the world had settled on her during the last few minutes. She smiled and touched his arm, sending a tingling sensation dancing across his skin.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked, leading him out into the hallway and closing the door. “Astrid is pretty upset so I don’t want her to hear any bad news.”

  He decided to keep things simple. “It’s bad news but it’s not terrible news. Henderson knows we’re in this residential development, but he doesn’t know the precise house.”

  She closed her eyes, exhaled loudly. “Do we have to leave?”

  “Let’s give it a little time. I’d rather stay inside and out of sight right now.”

  “That’s good with me. Astrid needs some quiet time.”

  He touched Lilly’s cheek but she turned her head away, and he wondered what had changed since that morning. He thought they’d made a connection.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Astrid saw us kiss and she’s got this crazy idea that you want to take her father’s place,” she said. “I tried to talk some sense into her, but you know what she’s like. She’s stubborn and determined and she won’t listen.”

  Lilly’s posture was not inviting any affection from him, with her arms crossed tightly against her chest, her shoulders angled slightly away from him.

  “She’ll come around in time,” he said. “It’s natural for Astrid to want you all to herself. She’s very close to you. Too close, perhaps.”

  “You think she’s too close to me?” she asked. “In what way?”

  He tried to backtrack. “It’s great that you have such a strong relationship, but she makes a lot of demands on you.” His backtracking was failing. “Perhaps it’s time she learned that her mom is a person in her own right.”

  Lilly pointed to the door. “Astrid is in there cuddling a teddy bear that I gave her when she was two years old. She doesn’t know how to see me as anything other than her mother at this moment in time.”

  “She’s old enough to accept that you have a life separate from her,” David said. “She’s not a little girl.”

  “That’s kind of the problem, David,” she said. “Astrid is still a little girl in so many ways and she needs me to focus all my time and effort on her. I can’t afford to make any mistakes or I might lose her.”

  “I understand why you’re scared of hurting her feelings,” David said gently. “But it’s not fair of her to expect you to put your life on hold. Astrid will never grow up unless you help her along.”

  “You’re interfering again,” she said with frustration. “You’ve raised two wonderful daughters, but Astrid is my child and it’s my responsibility to make the parenting decisions.”

  Of course, she was right. He wasn’t entitled to tread on Lilly’s toes and behave like Astrid’s father. But he missed being part of a family, having had only a few precious years with his wife and daughters before cancer cruelly snatched Carla from him. What he saw in Lilly was a chance to experience family life a second time around, a way to be happy again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, touching the sleeve of her sweater. “This is new territory for me, getting close to another woman after losing Carla. But I sense something special between us and I guess I wanted to jump right in with both feet.”

  “I know how you feel. I’m fighting that temptation too, but Astrid is in a difficult place and I have to tread super carefully.”

  At that moment, he was glad of Lilly’s caution, pulling him back from the brink of recklessness. Was he really considering becoming part of another family, risking messing it up all over again? Or worse still, losing another woman that he adored.

  “Shall we forget about the kiss?” he asked with a sinking heart. “And pretend it never happened?”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” she said, bringing her fingertips to her lips. “But we shouldn’t let it happen again. There’s too much at stake.”

  He nodded. Lilly was a perfect voice of reason in this situation. She needed to protect Astrid, and he needed to protect his heart.

  “I like you a lot, Lilly,” he said, adding with a laugh, “in case you hadn’t noticed. But I’ll do my best to back off and give us both space.”

  She smiled, opened the bedroom door, slipped though and clicked it closed behind her. David placed his forehead onto the wall beside him, shut his eyes and let out a long exhalation of breath. This might be the lowest he’d felt since Chloe’s accident, but it was the only way forward.

  He’d often heard it said that lightning never strikes the same place twice. David had assumed that his strike had come in the untimely death of his wife, but he’d been wrong, because a second strike had hit his daughter a few years
later. He knew he had to be mindful. Why give lightning a third chance to take down someone he loved?

  * * *

  Lilly skirted around David in the kitchen, awkwardly avoiding his eye as she cleared away her and Astrid’s breakfast dishes. It had been a quiet and uneventful night, which had put her mind at rest regarding their safety, but the tension had not lifted in the house. She and David were like clumsy teenagers, recoiling when they accidentally brushed past one another, too afraid to begin a conversation for fear of betraying their true emotions.

  It was apparently left to Goldie to try to clear the air.

  “What’s going on here?” she said, putting her hands flat on the counter. “You two are skittering around each other like cats on a roof.”

  David glanced at Lilly.

  “We’re...um...working through some stuff,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”

  Goldie wasn’t easily fooled. “It’s clearly a very big deal from what I can see. I don’t know what’s happened and I don’t want to pry but the attraction between you two has been bubbling ever since you met.” She picked up her mug of coffee and backed out of the kitchen. “I’m no expert on love, but I’ve never met two people who have more chemistry than you guys.”

  Once she had left David and Lilly alone, the awkwardness intensified, neither wanting to be the first to speak. Goldie was definitely correct about the chemistry. Lilly couldn’t explain how or why, but she experienced a whole range of strong emotions when she was with David, a mixture of security, safety, familiarity and attraction. The certain click that she had never felt with Rylan was present with David, and it was almost impossible to resist. But only almost.

  “How did you sleep?” he asked, obviously aiming for a light conversation.

  “Great. Astrid didn’t have a nightmare so that’s progress.”

  “It’s good news that Henderson doesn’t seem to be able to pinpoint us this time around. Hopefully, he’ll continue to scope out the area using one of his aliases and get himself arrested so you can go home within a couple of days.”