by Aimée Thurlo
“I know the perfect spot.”
“Can I go home to pick up a few of my things?” she asked.
“Not without the risk of being spotted,” Kyle said.
“I can’t keep wearing what I have on now,” she protested.
“There’ll be clothing at the safe house,” Preston said. “Take whatever you need.”
“How long will we be staying there?” she asked.
“One night, tops,” Kyle said. “We have to keep moving.” He saw her expression tighten. She wasn’t pleased, but she’d accepted it, at least for now. He’d take that as a win.
“So where’s the safe house?” Kyle asked his brother.
“I’ll send the coordinates to your GPS,” he said. “I’ll also follow and make sure you’re not tailed. On the way, I’ll call Daniel and have him put two of his people on the job. If I take someone from the department, that’ll leave a trail of its own.”
“Good thinking,” Kyle said. “Dan it is.”
“Can I ask you a favor?” Erin said.
Kyle turned to look at her, but realized she was speaking to Preston.
“What do you need?” his brother asked.
“There’s a potted plant on the windowsill next to my desk at the company office. Will you put it in a sunny spot, and water it for me?”
“You’re worried about a plant?” Preston raised his eyebrows.
“It’s a rare variety of desert rose, and I’d like to make sure it stays alive.”
Preston looked at Kyle and saw him shrug. “Sure,” Preston answered after a beat. “In fact, I’ll take it to my office. I’ve got a sunny window there, and when this is over, you can pick it up.”
“That would be great. Thank you, Preston. It may take it a decade to flower, but something tells me that when that spindly little thing finally blooms, it’ll be well worth the wait.”
“Some things are,” Kyle said under his breath.
Once they got underway, Erin kept looking behind them.
“Stop doing that,” Kyle said.
“I can’t see your brother back there. Maybe you lost him,” she said.
“He’s there. Shaking off Preston would take a lot of fancy moves, and even then I’m not sure it could be done.”
She lapsed into a lengthy silence, and he noticed she was grasping the handhold hard as he cut right, then left again on the route out of town.
“Aren’t you ever afraid?” she asked.
“Sure, but I rely on my training and make it work for me. Fear keeps my senses sharp, and that burst of adrenalin gives me an added edge.”
“Danger and you are old friends?”
From her tone, it was clear that she found the idea as appealing as sloshing through knee-deep mud. He smiled. “It suits me.”
“Until something better comes along?”
Her question hit close to the mark, and it took him by surprise.
“I don’t like to make long-term plans,” he answered. “I’ve learned it’s better to take things one day at a time. It saves me from disappointment.”
The guarded look on her face made him realize he’d spoken too freely. He’d just admitted how well suited he was for the life of a hunter. Home, to him, would never be more than a temporary refuge between jobs.
Although it wasn’t an earth-shattering admission, the fact remained that he’d lowered his guard, a luxury he couldn’t afford if he planned on staying alive. That sweet face and body was a powerful distraction he needed to shut out.
A long silence stretched out between them, then as Kyle slowed to make a turn down a narrow graveled drive, Erin sat up.
“Oh, it’s so pretty!” she said, looking ahead at the pale blue mobile home. “I love the picket fence, and the rose of Sharon around it.”
Kyle parked, and as they got out, Preston, who’d pulled in just behind them, came over. “You’ll have all the comforts of home,” he said.
“I love it,” she said and smiled.
He followed her gaze. “No, you’re not staying in there, that’s just the decoy.”
“Then where...” She looked around, but there was nothing around for miles.
Preston pointed to the water tower about fifty feet away. “Just go up the ladder, then down the hatch.”
“Wearing what, a bathing suit and a life preserver?”
Kyle smiled and nodded. “Expect the unexpected. I like it,” he said, then took her hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Chapter Eight
As Erin descended the long, narrow steel ladder behind Preston, only a string of lights along the side of the ladder marked the way. Slowly her eyes adjusted to the gloom. For someone with a passion for sunlight and the outdoors, this didn’t look promising.
She forced herself to push back the thought and keep going. The opening beneath them widened. Erin heard a muted click, and the area below them became illuminated in a soft light.
“It’s beautiful,” she said as they descended through an open hatch into a large, half-circle living area with two camel-colored couches, a bookcase filled with paperbacks, and beautiful wool throw rugs over what appeared to be tile flooring. In the other corner of the room was another open hatch, leading down to the next level. “Is it really safe in this water tower?”
“You’re safer in here than you’d be anywhere else in the state above ground,” Preston answered. “The air you’re breathing is drawn from secure, hidden inlets, then filtered. The water that comes out of the tap is drawn from the water table beneath this site, and the electricity comes through redundant lines, connected to a backup generator that can run for two weeks.
“There’s also a communications/computer room in the third level equipped with monitoring equipment that’ll give you a three-hundred-sixty-degree look at the area around you. Your satellite phone will work from here, too, Kyle, if you’re on this level,” Preston said. “Just keep it pressed against the wall. The outer shell serves as a giant antenna.”
“The computers...encrypted?” Kyle asked.
“Absolutely,” Preston answered, “like with that twenty-character code I entered in order to open the hatch. The only people who know the entry code are the governor, the mayor, and a designated department police officer, in this case, me. It would take years and a NSA mainframe to compromise the systems here.”
“Paul told me about this place a year ago when he and I met in D.C. I thought he was pulling my leg.”
“Nope. I’ve been told that every state has something along these lines, all placed away from the respective capitals. They’re meant to serve as the governor’s special refuge in case of extreme civil unrest or a terrorist attack. The parking lot outside is marked with infrared reflecting material for nighttime helicopter landings.”
“It’s like going through a high-tech version of Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole,” Erin said, amazed.
“New Mexico chose a design that resembled an ordinary water storage tank, but it’s far from that. The shell is impervious to anything less than armor-piercing ordnance. There are three levels and two exits—the way you came in or the emergency one, a subterranean tunnel on the bottom level that’ll take you to the other side of the escarpment.”
“The perfect safe house,” Kyle said, looking at Preston. “Thanks.”
“One last thing. You aren’t here officially, so unless there’s a statewide emergency, nobody’ll find you.”
“Okay, we’re good then,” Kyle answered.
“You won’t really need Daniel’s men in the area, but you’ll have them and more. If anything’s wrong, he’ll make sure you get plenty of notice and backup,” Preston said, then checked his watch. “It’s late, so I’ll leave you now so you can rest up.”
After Preston left, they climbed down all th
e way to the bottom, exploring the various areas separated by partitions, then back to the middle level. The bedroom was there with a full-size bed and a huge armoire.
“Just one bed?” she asked. The prospect was undeniably exciting—but impossibly dangerous.
“The couch in the upper level turns into a bed, and I saw sleeping bags against the wall in the lower level where the computers are.”
“So who’ll take the bed? Shall we flip for it?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and noting how comfortable it was.
“It’s yours. Tonight I could sleep on the ground and never notice.”
She sighed softly. “Yeah, I’m beat, too, but I’m not sleepy. After everything that’s happened, I’m too wired.”
“There are a lot of ways to relax,” he said, giving her a slow, thoroughly masculine grin.
“I appreciate the thought but, no, thanks,” she said, chuckling.
“Old-fashioned?”
“I wouldn’t label it that. It’s just that for me it’s got to be more than just a chance to get hot and sweaty. If my heart’s not in it, at the end all I’ll feel is disappointed.”
“I’ve never disappointed.” He held her gaze.
Her skin prickled and her heart was pounding so hard she wondered if he’d hear it. “No matter how skilled, I need more than a man’s hot body.”
“I can respect that.”
She paused. “Have you ever been married?”
“Me?” he asked, surprised. “No, no way. What woman would want a guy who’s gone nearly all the time, and whose work hours go under the category till I’m done.”
Before she could answer, he walked to the armoire and opened it. “There’s plenty of clothing here and on the shelves below. Take whatever you need. I’ll grab a sleeping bag and stay by the computers and surveillance equipment. If you need me, that’s where I’ll be.”
“Talk about changing the subject,” she said with a tiny smile. “Let me see if I’m reading you right. You don’t want to talk about anything personal, yet you’re willing to have sex. You’re a very strange man.”
“Actually, I’m perfectly normal.”
As he climbed down to the lower level for a sleeping bag, she sat on the edge of the bed and looked around. Her life had been ordinary till this morning. Now here she was with a man who should have come with a warning label.
Erin reached into her purse and brought out the tiny kaleidoscope her mother had given her before she’d passed away. As memories came flooding back, she smiled.
Her mother, an artist, had always followed her heart, no matter where it led her. George Barrett, Erin’s dad, had been her opposite, a planner, a man who looked before he leaped.
In a rare mother–daughter moment, Erin had once asked her mom why she’d fallen in love with him. Two pieces of a puzzle had to be different to fit perfectly into each other, Rita Barrett had said. That’s why opposites were so often attracted to each other.
The problem was, she wasn’t at all like her mom. She liked making plans and looking ahead. The way she was drawn to Kyle, a man she barely understood, disturbed her.
Hearing a knock on the hatch brought Erin out of her musings. “Come in.”
Kyle climbed into the room, holding a sleeping bag under one arm. “Just passing through. I need to make a call and report in.”
“Go ahead. Do whatever you have to,” she said.
He looked at the brass tube she was holding. “What’s that?”
“It’s an old-fashioned kaleidoscope. It was a gift from my mother. I keep it to remind me that although change can be scary, it can also bring good.”
“So you don’t believe that change is necessarily bad. It’s just something that makes you uneasy.”
She nodded. “Experience has taught me that it can bring some hard lessons. I got married right out of high school, and when it ended less than a year later, I needed to earn my own living, but I had no skills. Eventually I took community-college courses and got myself back on track,” she said. “That change took me to a better place, but the transition was a real make-it-or-break-it experience.”
“So you avoid getting caught off guard by the unexpected by planning for as many contingencies as you can,” he said. “I get it, but for whatever reason, that doesn’t work for me. Every time I make plans, they result in a dead end. There are too many variables in my life that get in the way.”
“The difference between us is that you have family you can count on in times of trouble. There’s no one I can depend on except myself,” she said.
“My brothers will always have my back. That’s true,” he said.
“Tell me more about them, or is that off-limits?”
He shook his head. “There are six of us. We all grew up in foster care, busy getting into trouble, until Hosteen Silver found us,” he said. “Mr. Silver—hosteen is the Navajo equivalent of mister—was the kind of man who could scare you stupid with just one look. He never took any nonsense from any of us, but he was fair. Tough love, some might call it. Either way, he saw us as his sons and helped shape us into a real family.”
“You were lucky life brought you together,” she said.
“You’re right about that. I’ll tell you more about him someday, but for now I’d better get to work. I’ve connected my cell phone to the surveillance system and we’re fine outside. The cooler upstairs is empty, but we’ve got plenty of MREs and packaged energy bars. Here’s one,” he said, tossing it over.
“Thanks, right now I’m hungry enough to eat it—and the wrapper.”
“We’ll be leaving here at daybreak, so if you want, we can stop at Pancake Heaven on the way to Hartley.”
“Daybreak? Why so soon? I thought you and your brother agreed this place was safe.”
“No place is completely secure. Things have a way of going wrong when you lower your guard.”
“Your job’s taught you that the hard way, hasn’t it?” she asked softly.
His expression hardened in the blink of an eye. “Let’s just say I’m a good man to have beside you if you want to stay alive.”
“What’s it like to be a federal agent?” she asked, then added, “Not the IRS baloney—the guy who hunts down criminals and terrorists.”
He smiled. “Would you be terribly disappointed if I were IRS?”
“Amazed would be more likely. I have difficulty believing an IRS agent who specializes in tax dodgers is so incredibly skilled at defusing bombs and shooting it out with killers,” she said. “Since we’re in this together, why not try a little honesty?”
He considered it, then at last nodded. “I’m an agent in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. I’m involved because Hank Leland was working for the navy when he was seen associating with terrorists. Hank was also a naval reserve officer, which means we have jurisdiction in a case like this.”
“Hank, working with terrorists? No way. Hank loved this country. There was no way he’d ever betray it.”
“I believe you, and he did ask for our help earlier this morning,” he said. “I went to find him right after I got word, but by then it was already too late.”
“So now in addition to searching for his killers, you’re looking for more detonators like the one you found in the box in Hank’s office, right?”
“You saw what I took?” he asked, surprised.
“Yes. But why would Hank mail a detonator back—” She stopped and nodded. “They’re hard to get here in the States without licenses and paperwork, but maybe not so much in Spain,” she added, answering her own question.
“Exactly.”
“Since it’s not likely Hank mailed back just one, he must have hidden the rest somewhere. That’s got to be what the men wanted when they came to the office. Now you have to find those detonators before th
ey do.”
“That’s it in a nutshell. Good deductive reasoning. Now get some rest while you still have the chance,” he said.
Kyle climbed up the ladder to the opening in the ceiling and closed the hatch behind him.
Erin took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. Kyle was unpredictable and dangerous, but those were great qualities for a bodyguard.
The problem was with her. Whenever she looked at him, she just couldn’t keep her mind on business. Kyle was hot and edgy. He made her yearn for things she had no business wanting—a caress in the dark, the heat, the passion.
She’d prided herself in being strong, and had pushed back those longings for more than the feel of the hot New Mexico sun on her skin. Now the same strength that had fueled her pride whispered another truth. Sometimes a person’s greatest loss lay in risks not taken.
* * *
IT WAS COMPLETELY dark in her room when the loud thump overhead woke her. The blackness was so encompassing it was frightening. At home, she usually left her bedroom curtains open a crack. She liked seeing the stars and the moonlight playing on the leaves of the cottonwood just outside her window.
Erin lay still, trying to figure out what she’d heard. It could have been Kyle moving around, or maybe some routine mechanical function. Several more minutes of silence went by. Finally, convinced it was nothing, she was about to doze off again when she heard a faint thump. In the stillness of their hiding place, two distinct and separate sounds were unnerving, and she had no idea where the second noise had come from.
She tossed the covers back, blinking and hoping her eyes would adjust quickly, but it remained pitch black to her. Fumbling for her purse, she found a penlight she kept in there for emergencies. She aimed the beam around the room, but no one was there, and both upper and lower hatches were closed.
She should go down and wake Kyle, then they could take a look around together. She thought about turning on the light, but if someone were roaming around in the facility, the glow might alert them.
Erin opened the hatch in the floor, then crept down the ladder. She could see without the penlight here, thanks to the computer screens and communications gear just beyond the partition. Kyle had said he’d be sleeping in the communications room, so he had to be around somewhere.
