Broken Protocol

by Eden Butler

  It was our life. It was fucking protocol and for once, I was glad it was in place.

  “Sixty seconds,” he finally said, shoving his gun in the holster under his jacket before he grabbed my bag. He paused long enough to catch my gaze and grip my shaking fingers between his hand. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, but I can’t trust Nelson and I need you safe.”

  “Why can’t you trust...”

  “Lia, please.” He grabbed my hand, squeezing my fingers before his kissed my knuckles. I knew the drill and this was it. No questions, only movement. Only hustle. Retreating from the threat before it struck. I’d find out why Nelson was the danger later.

  There was a frown tightening Cruz’s mouth and I covered it, hoping the brush of my touch would pull that hard expression from his face. “This isn’t your fault.” I didn’t like the way he winced or how desperate he suddenly seemed to kiss me. I took the kiss because I wanted it. There would likely never come a moment when I didn’t want whatever Cruz offered me. But just then, his touch, his rushing kiss scared me.

  “I have your back. Remember that,” he said, staring down at me as something loud, something angry sounded in the distance. I jolted, flinching against the shrieking explosion outside, covering my head as though something might breech the front rooms of my townhouse and blast us apart.

  Cruz didn’t flinch. The noise, the crackle of fire, and the whine of alarms going off one by one had no effect on him. Cruz just moved one side of his mouth, thumb against my cheek, and watched me before he leaned forward to kiss me.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and I did the only thing that seemed logical. I followed him through the fire surrounding us.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Cruz

  SOME SINNERS DON’T deserve forgiveness. I count myself among them. But I would do anything to keep Lia safe—even if it meant betraying my duty. Even if I had to distract Nelson with a small explosion to get her out of Waterford. He knew things had leveled up between us. That moved up the timeline in my plan. I had to act before he did.

  “Where are we?” Lia asked for what seemed like the twentieth time.

  “On a highway going north.”

  This was no random woman sitting next to me. Beyond the fact that she was the former First Lady, Lia mattered. To me. That meant there was nothing more important than her safety.

  I could still feel the tightness of her wrapped around me on my fingers. Four hours ago, I’d used my skills to make her come because it would calm her, and I needed her calm. I needed Lia to react like she’d been schooled. Getting away from Nelson and his close eye had been imperative.

  “He’s down, but not out,” Johnson had texted just as I hustled Lia out of the wreckage my small explosive device had caused to her townhouse, the waiting black SUV, with a full tank and GPS set for the Appalachian Mountains.

  “I figured that much but where will north lead us?” She moved, adjusting in her seat so she could watch me. “More to the point...why?”

  She smelled good, like always, but behind that sweet gardenia scent, I could make out the small hint of sweat. Lia was nervous. There was still a constant shake in her hands, which she tried hiding by tucking her fingers under her thighs. It was understandable. She was following me on blind faith, but Lia was no sheep. Soon the questions would start. Soon, she’d attempt filling in the blank spaces my half answers had created. She was observant. She had overheard details Harris should have kept from her. From my own observations as her agent, I knew Lia saw people that had no business being in the states, much less her husband’s office. There was no way she’d see and hear all that she had and not understand why I’d distracted her or wanted to make a quick exit.

  This was how we had to play this and being the woman she was, at first, when we high-tailed it out of Waterford, she kept quiet, didn’t riddle me with a thousand questions I knew she had.

  But blind faith doesn’t go very far when you’re scared and don’t have any answers. Now, she seemed ready for the questions to fly.

  “You know there is someone intent on finishing the job they started.” Next to me, I could feel the heaviness in her stare, the way she watched and waited, sizing me up, searching for something in my expression that would tell her what she wanted to know. Another five minutes moved by at a snail’s pace and Lia kept watching me. It was unsettling to have her that quiet, to not know what she thought or what she wanted to uncover with questions I had no doubt that would be clever and calculating.

  “If you believe I’m privy to certain details about the assassination...”

  “What?” I jerked my gaze to her, taking my attention from the highway in front of me. This early in the morning, this remote of a drive, no one would be in danger of me hitting them because Lia led with a question that felt weighed by knowledge I wasn’t sure she had.

  “Eyes on the road, agent,” she teased, head tilting when I took my time looking away from her. She moved her arm across the center console, slipping her hand on my thigh like it was something she’d done a thousand times. Couldn’t say I hated the gesture.

  “You know something you think I don’t?” I asked her, squeezing her hand when her fingers twitched against my thigh.

  “I didn’t say that, did I?” She met my gaze, but then turned back, curling her arms over her chest as she looked out at the mountain range coming into view. “Is anyone dead?” When I kept quiet, Lia glanced at me, her mouth drawn down until I shook my head. “Good. I’d hate that there was...”

  “Johnson reported no casualties, but the townhouse is a wreck.”

  “We didn’t pay all that much for it.” She leaned back with her arms still tight against her chest. “Not like that was my forever home anyway.”

  “Then where is it?” I asked, out of curiosity. I shot a look her way, shrugging when she moved her eyebrows up, likely wondering why I asked. “Thought maybe you’d wanna go back home.”

  “No,” Lia said, not bothering to explain why she’d decided against moving back to New Orleans. Instead, she pulled on a string at her sleeve, seeming calmer than I had expected of her. “Where’s your forever home?” she asked, looking back out the window.

  I didn’t hesitate. “There’s a little town outside of Austin. It’s got a proper town square, gazebo and everything with some mom and pop shops circling the square and a diner on the corner that uses the stock from the farmer’s market. I stayed there with a buddy of mine on leave a while back. It was nice. It was quiet.”

  When I looked up, Lia stared at me, a slow twitching smile moving her bottom lip. “Texas? Really?”

  “I’m not so New Orleans that I shun Texas, mami.” I looked back at the road, catching the yawn she tried to hide behind her hand. “Not like I said I like the Cowboys.”

  “I damn sure hope not,” she said, throwing me a mock glare before she smiled. “I like small towns,” she said again, leaning back against the headrest. “You can hide in plain sight in them.” She was tired, that much I could tell by how often she’d yawned, and the circles forming under her eyes.

  “You can sleep. We still have another hour.”

  “Until we get...where?” She turned, moving her eyebrows up as though expecting me to misspeak.

  “It’s not a secret you know. Not to you.” I waved a hand around the SUV, shrugging when she kept watching me. “You never know who’s listening, right?”

  She got me, that much I knew. Lia had spent six years in the White House. She hadn’t been given any national secrets, and her security clearance wasn’t as high level as mine once had been. But she understood the way the game was played. She’d been a JV player, not on the first string. Lia had an idea at least on who got monitored—every damn one—and where it was safe to speak openly. Johnson had checked the SUV for tracking devices, something I’d bet money Nelson had installed himself. But he’d left any surveillance devices where they were in the cab of the vehicle. Didn’t want to raise too much suspicion until it was time.

 
“You should sleep,” I suggested, smiling back at her when she shook her head. “Stubborn ass.”

  “Guilty.” A lull came then as Lia watched the mountains grow closer and closer. She seemed intent on watching the peaks and arches of the tops and the landscape that separated the road from the mountains. Then, when she seemed to have her fill of grass and clusters of woods stretching up to the Appalachians, she sat back, still awake, focusing on the world passing us as we drove. “My father has a new wife. He has two young kids. Ten and eight, if you can believe that.”

  “You never mentioned he remarried.”

  Lia laughed, head shaking at something she kept to herself. “Not like I’ve been in the mood much for catch up since you picked me up at the White House.” She glanced at me, mouth opening like something had occurred to her. “Cruz, God, I haven’t even asked how your father or Mya or your other sister is. Or your niece and nephew!”

  “No worries, mami,” I told her, grabbing her knee for a squeeze when she kept on frowning. “Mya is in remission and my father passed three years ago.” That grip on her knee tightened when she held onto my forearm. “No need for the condolences. I know you’re thinking that.” I shrugged, dismissing the sadness she let fracture her relaxed expression. “He was a drunk with liver failure. We all knew it was coming. I made my peace and that’s all I needed to do.”

  “It’s still sad,” she said, her voice low, then lighter, a smile splitting across her mouth before she spoke. “And your little sister Anna and her kids?”

  “Miquel and Selena. They’re in high school now.”

  “No! Oh, God.” For once the laugh she released wasn’t forced, her smile seemed genuine. It was the most honest expression I’d seen Lia wear in years, not counting last night’s open, raw orgasmic happiness.

  “We’re getting old, I suppose,” she said, head shaking as though the thought of my sister’s kids being a freshman and sophomore was beyond belief.

  “Speak for yourself, ma’am.” Lia poked in the side me, and I grabbed her hand, loving the fact that I could touch her, kiss her, and separate the moment with her in that SUV from the reason we were in it. It was a place and time I’d be happy to be locked inside—just me and Lia alone, running from the world that threatened to topple us.

  The moment didn’t last and though I kissed her knuckles, loving how easily she came to rest against my shoulder, how we moved together like our time together had been for a lifetime without any separations, like we hadn’t just walked through the wreckage of fiery townhouse to make a clean escape, my head cleared and I remembered the lies I’d told to get us here. I remembered the truth I’d continue to withhold long enough to see Lia out of the country and out of the reach of the people who’d taken down her husband.

  I’d do that shit if it was the last thing I’d do and, God help me, it just might be.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lia

  SAFETY, IT SEEMED, came in the form of a tiny cabin in the deepest wooded area ten miles up a rocky path in the mountain. The place was old and had no electricity, but there was a stocked woodshed near the back of the property and Cruz made use of it, loading his big arms with stacks of wood that would keep us warm through the night. It wasn’t until the fire was roaring and he’d checked and double checked the cabin before I finally got any answers. Of course, that came with a lot of glaring from me, and even more procrastination from Cruz.

  The air thickened with tension as he moved around, seeming antsy, unsure what to do with himself for the first time in his life. I watched him, irritation building inside me as he rummaged through a duffle on the floor near the make-shift wood counter.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, nodding to the duffle. “There’s supplies here...”

  “Whose place is this?” I said, realizing no amount of frowns from me would get him talking. Instead, I looked around, amazed that he’d found this cabin. The trail was overgrown and thick. There were brambles around the entrance that led to this cabin. Even for the most skilled tracker, it would be a hard place to find.

  “Safehouse,” he said, rinsing a pot he pulled from the duffle under the only running water in the cabin which came from what looked like a small PVC pipe and a metal faucet one jutting from the wall and into a galvanized bucket that I supposed was meant to be used as a kitchen sink.

  “Safehouse?” He nodded, still rummaging as I watched him. He focused on the rustle of supplies in that pack as I waited for him to elaborate, though I knew that wouldn’t happen. “If we’re running from whomever it was that assassinated Lincoln...” He glanced at me, holding a can in each of his hands. “And this whomever person is clearly intelligent enough to expose a breech in White House security to shoot the president, then why are we at a safehouse that the whomever could easily trace?”

  “Didn’t say whose safehouse it was, mami. Just that it was safe.” He challenged me with a smirk that, for once, I didn’t find charming enough to quell my irritation with him. Cruz stood, waving the cans at me. “Chicken noodle or veggie beef?”

  “Chicken noodle,” I said, getting up.

  I crossed my arms while he lit the Coleman stove, using a hand can opener to get the soup into the pot. He didn’t acknowledge me at first, seeming content to busy himself with the work of making a subpar meal, but Cruz could only take silence from me for so long. It was a weakness I’d only had to take advantage of once or twice since I’d known him.

  He was stoic on his best days and he’d preached to me countless times about need-to-know information. Lincoln was my husband and I’d gotten the better end of the bullets that rained around us that night, but that didn’t mean Cruz would be free and easy with information. Not if he thought it might put me at a disadvantage or have me in harm’s way. He’d go mute before he let that happen. Still, I had a right to know details. I’d push him hard enough to get more out of him if I could.

  When one minute of silence became five, Cruz sighed, scrubbing the back of his head before he turned, mouth drawn down when I tilted my head, like I had all the time in the world for his explanations.

  “Fine,” he finally said, arms crossed, head in a small shake. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything...” He shook his head again, this time an outright refusal and I amended my answer. “Tell me what you can.”

  He scratched his nose, inhaling before he moved his attention to my face, lashes blinking as he looked me over, like there was some silent debate buzzing in his head before he answered. “The people who killed Harris...”

  “There’s more than one?” I asked, hands dropping to my sides when he nodded. “You’re saying there’s a...conspiracy?”

  “Definitely a conspiracy.” He reached for the tablespoon next to the boiling pot of soup and stirred it, shifting his gaze between it and my face.

  My chest felt heavy and I didn’t know what to make of the sensations working through my body. Conspiracies were for pasty forty-year-old dudes living in their mom’s basements sporting aluminum hats, studying the stack of hardback books with titles like “We’re Not Alone” and “The Real Twilight Zone” sitting on their TV trays.

  The room felt hotter than it had minutes before and that pressure in my chest went suddenly cold, leaving me dizzy. It was more than the shock of truth coming at me that made me lightheaded. It was the recall of that night, the blood and terror, the abject fear that hadn’t completely left me—now Cruz was saying I could lay all that at the feet of several people? Who?

  I sat on the floor right where I’d been standing, and Cruz followed, kneeling in front of me, his hands holding my elbows. “Mami,” he started, moving his hand to my face as he watched me. “You alright?”

  He wore an expression I’d only seen on him once—the night of the supposed bombing. He’d been so sick, but had pushed back his own health to make sure I was safe. He’d sported the worst kind of expression that night, like his greatest fears were coming to life.

  “Who...” I started, holding
onto his free hand. “Cruz, who did this to us?”

  His face lost all expression. There was no worry pinching his features, no dips and lines that made him look older. Cruz pushed away all emotion. He flushed anything that might cause him to give any hint of what he felt in the amount of time for me to ask my question. It was a tactic, one he’d learned from years of being a good soldier. I didn’t think anyone could best him when he went stony and silent like that.

  “You need to eat,” he said, instead of answering me. And then left me sitting on the floor to dish out the soup, coming back in front of me to offer a bowl. “Don’t argue.” He moved his chin, an insistent gesture when I only started at him. “Lia...”

  I didn’t argue, realizing he had more patience than me. He’d outlast my silence, or the death stare I gave him with little effort. I took the bowl, sipping the soup quietly from a plastic spoon, not saying anything at all while Cruz sat across from me, tearing into his bowl with his own spoon and half a slice of bread. The other part, he gave to me and the minutes drifted until there was no other sound in the room but the scrape of plastic against the tin bowls, then the din of noise Cruz made as he cleaned up the pot and empty cans.

  I moved back to the fire, unable to shake the chill in my limbs as Cruz busied himself with the duffle again, pulling out a thick sleeping bag and two pillows. The cabin had no furniture other than two wooden chairs in the kitchen. Any comfort we’d have would come from whatever accommodations Cruz had planned for with that giant green duffle.

  He was unzipping the sleeping bag when I finally worked up the nerve to keep at my questions, too tired, too weary to worry about irritating him.