The Way You Are

by Carly Fall

  With all the openings secure and the blinds closed, he pulled the mattress from the bed and laid it on the floor.

  “You sleep down here tonight,” he whispered, pointing at the bed.

  She nodded and sat down. “What about you?”

  He grinned at her, his body humming from the adrenaline.

  “Oh, I won’t be doing any sleeping tonight,. I have to protect Ruby Rose McDermott.”

  Ruby huddled under a blanket in the middle of the mattress. She heard Garrett talking in the living room in low tones, but she couldn’t make out what he said.

  The thought that someone had actually fired bullets her way made her tremble. Garrett, however, seemed to have the opposite reaction. He became the hard, cold man he’d been when she’d arrived, barking orders at her. Long gone was the gentle man with the silky voice she’d come to know. The ironfisted Marine had returned.

  She rubbed her shoulder, the ache spreading from when he’d pushed her across the kitchen. Being a woman of grace, she’d slammed into the cabinets, pain radiating throughout her left side. The fear choking her had been the only reason she hadn’t screamed.

  They didn’t know who the assailants had been, or why they’d been at the cabin. Supposedly, no one knew where she stayed, so maybe they’d been after Joe or something like that? She certainly hadn’t talked to anyone but her family since her arrival, and she knew they didn’t want her dead.

  None of it made any sense.

  She pulled the blanket around her tighter, wishing she had Garrett to snuggle up against, but he’d made it very clear he didn’t plan on sleeping. She just hoped the attackers didn’t show up again. At some point, she expected Garrett to come in and explain what would happen.

  Until then, he’d made it very clear she would have to sit and wait. She didn’t foresee any sleep in her night, either.

  Chapter 33

  “They shot at the house?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah. I’m staring at three bullets lodged in the window pane right now,” Garrett said, standing in the darkened kitchen and holding the phone to his ear.

  “Thank goodness for polycarbonate.”

  “And the guy who was smart enough to install it.”

  Joe sighed. “I take it Ruby is fine?’

  “Physically, yeah, but she’s pretty shaken up.” He recalled shoving her across the kitchen, and the loud thump that ensued when she’d hit the cabinets. “She may have a scratch or two, but no holes that aren’t supposed to be there.”

  “Excellent. Well, this is an interesting turn of events. Tell me the details, Garrett, but before you do, I think you’d better activate the steel plates.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Go into the living room.”

  He did as instructed. “Okay.”

  “Now stand in front of the bookcases.”

  “Got it.”

  “Behind the bookcase on the left, there’s a security pad. The code to activate the steel plates is five-three-four-zero.”

  “Just a sec.”

  He reached behind the bookcase, barely able to fit his arm in the opening. With some effort, he was about to shoved the furniture forward and could finally see the pad. He pressed the numbers, and the whole house moaned as steel plates lowered over the windows.

  “Very cool,” he said, walking down the hall and opening Ruby’s door. She stared up at him, terror on her face.

  “It’s okay, Ruby. Just another safeguard.”

  She nodded, and he shut the door.

  “I like that feature, as well,” Joe said. “Now please, go ahead and tell me about this attack.”

  He ran through the way things had happened, leaving out the part about him wrapping himself around Ruby and kissing her neck. He also left out the sheer terror that had raced through him and the utter sickness he’d felt at the thought of Ruby being shot. Best to stick to the facts, as emotions and lust had no business in this report.

  “What’s your initial assessment?” Joe asked.

  “It was not a professional hit; that I can tell you for sure.”

  “So they weren’t after me, then. Correct?”

  Garrett considered it, but it felt wrong. If Group Nine had sent someone after Joe, the attackers wouldn’t have aborted the mission without bullets flying everywhere. They certainly wouldn’t have left for beers. “That’s correct. It was amateur hour, Joe.”

  A beat of silence ensued, with Joe obviously thinking about what Garrett had told him.

  “That means they were after Ruby,” he finally noted.

  “That’s my take on it.”

  “And do you expect them back tonight?”

  “I overheard them say it was getting too cold outside and they were going to knock back a few brews. They also said they’d be back tomorrow, so I doubt it.”

  “Amateur hour, indeed. This has me very concerned, Garrett. If they were after Ruby, that means they knew her whereabouts. If that’s the case, then there is a leak within my organization. However, if there is a leak, then I would fully expect whoever is responsible to send professionals, in which case, I would have dead bodies on my hands, but I don’t. I have a few bullets lodged in my window.”

  More silence.

  “And Ruby?” Joe continued. “She’s had no contact with the outside world except her parents?”

  “I’m positive. I questioned her, and then went through her stuff shortly after she arrived. She has nothing except an e-reader—no computer, phone, tablet—nothing.”

  “Interesting. I’m going to have to give this some thought.”

  “When do we get out of here?” he asked, feeling like a caged animal with the steel over the windows.

  “Well, I was going to call you tonight and plan for you to return Ruby to her parents tomorrow.”

  “How come?”

  “Because we’ve located the people who are responsible for Ruby’s attempted kidnapping in Dallas, and we’ve questioned them.”

  “That’s good news. Who are they?”

  “They’re members of an environmental group. The tattoo Ruby saw on the man’s wrist is their group emblem.”

  Garrett tried to fit the pieces together. “So they tried to kidnap Ruby because her father’s an oil guy? Save the environment from people like him, or some shit like that?”

  Joe sighed. “That’s what I thought at first, but something isn’t right. This group is new, and not organized at all. They don’t even have a business license, nor do they have an office or a bank account. They meet in one of the member’s parents’ basement. They were very forthcoming during questioning. It didn’t take much … pressure to get them to talk.”

  Joe’s methods weren’t exactly legal; Joe himself had told Garrett so. Legal, no. Effective? Yes.

  “Why? What’s the deal? What did they say?”

  “They said that they were contacted via a messenger who gave them an envelope containing a thousand dollars. With the money came instructions on how to get onto Ruby’s parents’ property at the back end of the acreage. If they could kidnap Ruby and hold her somewhere, they were promised another five thousand dollars.”

  “So they weren’t behind it?”

  “No, and they have no idea who is. We’ve interviewed the man who delivered the message to them, and he said it was received in at the home office via a walk-in client, who paid in cash. I had one of my people poke around their records to verify it, and he didn’t lie.”

  “So it sounds like you’re at a dead end about now.”

  “Exactly, and I’m extremely frustrated. This should be a simple open and shut case, and it’s not. Again, I need to rethink it. I’ve been going by the presumption that this is a professional attempt to kidnap Ruby, despite what she said in the beginning. Her father is a very powerful man, and men like him have enemies they don’t even know exist. Maybe I am dealing with an amateur as Ruby first suggested. The question is, who? And why?”

  Garrett tossed it over in his mind, and came up with
nothing. But that’s why Joe was in charge and Garrett the hired muscle. Joe had the brains; Garrett had the brawn. Not that he thought himself stupid or anything, but he didn’t have a problem admitting that others had more intelligence than he did. “I don’t know, man. It’s a puzzle.”

  “It is, and it irritates me to no end that I’m being bested by some silly little beginner.”

  He heard the annoyance in Joe’s voice, and didn’t blame him one bit. Joe played the clandestine field with the big boys, a game of moves and countermoves, of anticipating what the opponent’s next strategy would be. On this particular case, he couldn’t even identify the opposition.

  “Do you believe you will be safe there tonight, Garrett?”

  He glanced around the darkened house. He’d spent nights in worse places, under much more dire conditions. This would be a cake-walk, especially with the dumbasses getting drunk at the local bar. “Yeah, especially with the reinforced windows. We don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll have either Thomas or another agent at your door at daybreak. I’ll call the pilot right now and tell him that plane better be at that Flagstaff airport and be ready for a 6 a.m. departure.”

  “And if he can’t make it?”

  “Oh, he’ll make it, Garrett. The pilot is a trusted employee, but I also have a file on him. His past isn’t exactly squeaky clean, and I could get him into a lot of trouble if I were pass on my knowledge to the authorities.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I do what I have to do, Garrett.”

  He couldn’t help but wonder what Joe’s file on him contained, but couldn’t think of anything in his past that really stood out as illegal and worth any jail time.

  “Sounds good. We’ll be ready to go in the morning.”

  “I’m counting on you Garrett. Don’t let your guard down for a second tonight, and if you run into trouble, do whatever you need to do to keep Ruby McDermott safe. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I’d rather have to dispose of a pile of bodies than tell a father his little girl has been murdered under my watch.”

  “Got it.”

  “On another note, your friend Zachery is quite an interesting person. I’m very intrigued with him.”

  Garrett chuckled, despite his circumstances. “Most people are.”

  “I understand why. I will meet you in Dallas tomorrow, and we’ll get Ruby home to her parents’ house. Be safe tonight. With the plates over the windows, you should be fine.”

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, Joe.”

  He hung up and sat down on the couch, a single candle casting the room in a dim glow. Without any windows to look out of, he almost felt claustrophobic.

  Yet, he was made for this, for waiting long periods of time without any stimulation except the thoughts running through his brain, all his senses on high alert, tracking every sound he heard. He’d been highly trained to do exactly what would be required of him in this moment, and he wouldn’t fail.

  He heard Ruby’s soft sobs down the hall and he longed to comfort her, but he knew he couldn’t. Holding her would break his concentration and he’d let down his guard. She needed to stay in there, safe, and he had to remain out here, on alert.

  Sitting back, he laid the gun next to him and focused on the candle as he fixated his attention to every sound he heard, blocking out Ruby’s cries..

  Chapter 34

  “Ruby, get up.”

  She opened her eyes, feeling as though she’d just gone to sleep, her memory foggy. Why did she lie on a mattress in the middle of the floor?

  The happenings from the previous evening came flooding back and she sat up quickly. Garrett stood at the door, a hard look on his tired face.

  “Throw all your stuff in your suitcase. We leave in ten.”

  He shut the door and she glanced around the room, wondering about the time. With the steel plates over the windows, she couldn’t even get a hint of day or night.

  She’d stayed up for hours last night, wondering if Garrett would come into the room. He had, once, after letting her know all was well when the steel plates had come down. During the second visit, he had been as gruff as the first time, telling her under no circumstances was she to leave the room unless he specifically ordered her to. She longed for him to comfort her, to hold her and tell her everything would be all right, but he didn’t. Eventually, she’d cried herself to sleep.

  Standing, she pushed the mattress up against the bed so she had room to move about the room. Wearing the same clothes as yesterday, she slipped on her sneakers and then opened the dresser drawers and threw her clothes into the suitcase. Moving to the bathroom, she quickly gathered her toiletries. Glancing at herself in the mirror, she saw she looked awful, and she tried to run her fingers through her hair.

  “Don’t worry about looking pretty, Ruby,” Garrett said, coming into view in the mirror, his mouth a hard, flat line. “Get your shit and let’s go.”

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” she mumbled, but got no response.

  She followed him out of the bathroom and dumped everything she carried into the suitcase. He snapped it shut and pulled it off the dresser in one fluid motion, and she trailed behind him down the hall.

  As they approached the front door, he turned.

  “Stay right here,” he said. “When I tell you it’s safe to come, do exactly as I say, okay?”

  She nodded, searching his face for the gentle man she’d come to know. For a second, his features softened, and he gave her a chaste kiss.

  “What happens when we get back to Dallas?” she blurted.

  “You go to your parents’ house until the kidnappers are caught.”

  That’s what she’d thought, and she cringed at the idea.

  Pulling his gun from the back of his waistband, he opened the door, and she stood on her tip-toes to look over his shoulder. A van sat parked in the driveway with the sliding door open, Thomas standing toward the rear bumper with a gun in his hand at his side. He glanced around and then looked up at Garrett and nodded.

  “Come on, Ruby.”

  She stepped forward, and he shut the door so the van disappeared from view. “This is the way it’s going to work—since it’s still dark out, we should be fine, but I’m going to walk out in front of you, get you into that van, and shut that door. You stay right behind me, got it?”

  She nodded, her heart thudding in her chest.

  He palmed her cheek. “I think we’re going to be fine, Ruby. Just do what we say, okay?”

  “Okay.” His touch felt so reassuring and comforting.

  He opened the door and pulled her right behind him. She slipped her fingers into his waistband. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, one of them would have made some sexual innuendo and laughed about it. Instead, the room rested in silence.

  “Pretend you’re my second skin, Ruby. Let’s go.”

  She followed him, watching his feet and falling in step with him so she didn’t trip him. That would certainly be something she would do if she weren’t careful.

  She trailed him down the stairs and before she knew it, he’d pushed her into the empty van and growled, “Make sure that front door to the house is locked, Thomas.”

  Pulling her legs in, she scrambled for the bench seat facing backward, thinking the space seemed larger without Joe’s presence.

  Seconds later, she heard the passenger door slam, and a moment after that, the driver side. The van lurched forward and she lost her balance, landing on the floor again. She cringed as her body hit the metal slab. It seemed her rescue would cause more bodily harm that her actual kidnapping, and she braced herself against the bench, happy that she wore her sneakers for traction against the metal.

  The fifteen-minute ride to the airport went by speedily, and she could tell by the jerky stop-and-go that Thomas drove quickly.

  The door flew open, the rising sun blinding her. She put her hand up to block it and took a few sec
onds for her eyes to adjust.

  “C’mon Ruby,” Garrett said, gripping her elbow. “We need to move.”

  She allowed him to lead her the short distance to the private jet, his gun at his side, hard, angry gaze scanning the area and never landing on her.

  He escorted her up the stairs and finally let go of her once they reached inside the plane.

  “I understand this is a Code Red?” the captain said.

  The guy had greying, wavy hair and a mustache, a pudgy face, and a round belly, as well as eyes a kind sky blue. If his hair had been a little longer, she would have pegged him for Santa Claus.

  “I don’t know what the fuck ‘Code Red’ means, but if that translates into getting the fuck out of here, then yeah, this is a code fucking red,” Garrett snapped.

  Ruby sat down in the first chair on the right, and Garrett took the chair directly across from her, keeping his gun in his hand until they were airborne. He never said another word, and closed his eyes once they flew high in the sky.

  Chapter 35

  Ruby stared out the window at the blue sky and white, puffy clouds the whole way home. Even though she watched the sun continue its ascent over the horizon, she had the flight attendant bring her a shot of whiskey with her omelet to calm her nerves. Her hands still shook, and she took some deep breaths. Thomas sat a few rows back and Garrett’s head lulled to the side, his lips slightly parted.

  He obviously hadn’t slept last night, and this made her feel protected, as well as bothered her. She supposed he had the training to go twenty-four hours without sleep, but in the end, she selfishly wished he’d been curled around her.

  Their time together had come to such an abrupt end, and she didn’t know where it left them. Actually, scratch that. She knew exactly how this ended. He delivered her back to her parents in one piece, and then he walked away.

  She, however, couldn’t do that, even if he had been an asshole since the attack.

  Thinking it over, she surmised she needed more time with Garrett—one more night to be with him before they parted ways and she went back to her old life. The idea made her stomach curl as she relived the past few days of feeling like a wanted, sexy woman instead of a dull, drab slob that fit in nowhere.