by Paula Graves
“What was it about the blue truck that worried you, Ms. Miles?”
“The fact that it had appeared to be following me. Not just this evening but also yesterday, just before I was ambushed in Frederick.”
He nodded, but she didn’t think it was any sort of confirmation of her words. “You spoke to which detective on the Frederick force?”
She had to think a moment to remember. Though only a day had passed since the ambush at the employment agency, it seemed almost a lifetime ago.
“Detective Braun,” she answered. “I don’t remember his first name, but he gave me his card. I think it’s in my purse.” She started to get up, but Detective Miller waved her back to the sofa.
“The last name should be enough,” he said. “Did you tell him about the blue truck?”
“I didn’t,” she admitted. “At the time, it slipped my mind. I could write it off as a bit of paranoia on my part. You can imagine I’ve been jumping at shadows these days.”
“I certainly can,” Miller said in a tone that suggested he thought she might be jumping at shadows even now. Or did his tone suggest something else altogether? Perhaps he suspected she was using the tale of the mysterious blue truck to construct an alibi for herself.
Her heart sank. “I never spoke to Ken after his call this morning. When I called him this evening, I got his voice mail.”
“We believe he was probably already dead by the time you called this evening.”
“Do you consider me a suspect, Detective? Should I call my lawyer?”
“You’re not under arrest. I haven’t read you your Miranda rights.”
“I’m not stupid, Detective.”
“Is there anyone who can vouch for your story?”
She glanced toward the back of the house, where she could see Jim Mercer sitting at the kitchen table.
He looked up at her, his gaze intense.
“Jim Mercer can,” she said, suddenly glad she’d made the decision to hire him.
* * *
“SHE STAYED ON the phone with me for the duration of the drive home. And she was on the phone with me for about a half hour before that, except for twice when she was in the parking garage of her apartment building. Apparently there’s a cellular dead zone there.”
“So she told you,” Detective Miller said.
“Yes. I would think it would be simple enough to check her phone to see what cell towers the call pinged off.”
Miller gave him a look of jaded amusement. “You’d think that, would you? You’re a police officer, are you?”
“Fan of crime TV,” Jim answered, letting his own jaded amusement show. “Look, Detective, I know you have a job to do. But I was on the phone with Ms. Miles tonight. I know she was worried about the truck following her. It was enough to make her cancel her meeting, the one she’d driven for an hour into town to make. I don’t think she had time to do anything to Mr. Calvert, especially since I was on the phone with her for most of that time.”
“It takes only a second to shoot a man.”
“That’s how he died? Gunshot?”
Miller’s lips pressed into a tight line, as if he was annoyed with himself for having let that bit of information slip from his tongue. “I will check her phone records, as you so kindly suggested. And I believe I may ask a few questions about you as well, Mr. Mercer.”
Jim kept his expression composed, but inside his chest, his heart jumped with alarm. His background had held up well enough to the employment agency’s scrutiny, but if the police—or Lacey Miles herself, for that matter, with her access to a wide array of information-gathering resources—dug a little deeper into his background, they might find out that he was anything but a simple nanny.
Lacey came back into the front parlor, her posture straight and her expression cool and forbidding. “I believe we’ve both told you everything we know about the events of this evening, Detective. It’s late, and I have a small niece who gets up very early in the morning. If you have any more questions, feel free to call tomorrow, but it’s time to call it a night.”
Miller’s lips curved in the faintest of grim smiles. “I’ve heard you’re a formidable woman, Ms. Miles. I’ve certainly seen your grit in action on my television screen. Your reputation was honestly earned, I believe.”
She gave an almost regal nod, as if accepting his words as a compliment and nothing short of what she was due.
Damn, Jim thought. Formidable, indeed.
Lacey walked Detective Miller to the door and locked it behind him when he left. With a deep breath, she turned to look at Jim. Her earlier composure had slipped, and he saw worry lines creasing her forehead.
“Do you think there’s a connection?” she asked.
He crossed to where she stood, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans to keep from reaching out to touch her. “Between what happened to Ken Calvert tonight and what happened to you in Frederick the other day?”
“And what happened to Marianne and Toby.”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, either.” She moved away from the door, edging past him. He followed her into the kitchen, where she picked up a dishrag and began to clean the table. “I think that’s what scares me. I don’t know what any of this is about. If I did, maybe I could figure out what to do next.”
He took the rag from her hand, surprised to feel her fingers tremble beneath his. She looked up at him, her eyes solemn and vulnerable.
The temptation to put his arms around her and hold her close to him was intense. He resisted it, but the effort left him feeling shaken. “I get the feeling you’re not the type of woman who’d sit back and do nothing.”
Her shoulders squared, and the vulnerability in her gaze hardened to steely resolve. “No, I’m not.”
“Well, you don’t have to do anything tonight,” he said firmly, nodding toward the door to her bedroom. “Try to get some sleep. Maybe everything will make more sense in the morning.”
“Maybe.” She stepped away from him, and the warmth of her body fled, replaced by a wintry chill. He watched until she closed the bedroom door behind her, then sank onto one of the kitchen chairs.
He fished his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number.
A voice answered after a single ring. “Roy’s Auto Repair.”
Jim answered with the code phrase. “I’m calling about my red Dodge Charger.”
“What’s the latest?” Alexander Quinn asked.
“Everything’s gone straight to hell,” Jim answered.
Chapter Six
The snow had ended before midnight, leaving a crusty dusting over the winter-dead grass. But the streets were clear, and the temperatures had risen above freezing by midmorning, leading Jim to suggest a trip into town to stock up on groceries.
“You know I didn’t hire you to cook,” Lacey protested mildly, more for the sake of appearances than for any real objection to his taking over some of the household duties. It would certainly free up more of her time to get to the truth about the recent attempts on her life. Besides, she had all the cooking skills of the average male college student, which meant she could manage a decent omelet and a pot of ramen, but not much else.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “What do you say, Katiebug? Want to go into town with me?”
“Go!” she answered with a grin, holding up her arms to him.
He picked her up and settled her on one hip, flashing a smile at Lacey that made her insides twist with inconvenient pleasure. “We’ll be back in an hour or so. You can reimburse me for what we spend, okay?”
“Sure,” she said, dragging her gaze away from his friendly smile.
“Anything you’d like me to pick up for you? Got a sweet tooth or an addictio
n to chips?”
She shook her head. “I’m not a picky eater. If it’s edible, I’m fine.”
“Okay. By the way, is there a spare car seat for Katie? I should put one in my car so we don’t have to keep swapping back and forth.”
“Yeah, there’s one in the hall closet. I’ll get it for you.” She found the extra seat and took it back to the parlor. Jim was helping Katie into her coat and boots with enviable ease. “She’s a lot more cooperative with you than she is with me.”
“I have a way with the ladies,” he joked, smiling up at her.
She couldn’t argue with that, she thought wryly. “You want me to put the car seat in your car while you finish getting Katie ready?”
“That would be great.” He fished his car keys from his pocket and handed them to her.
She grabbed her coat from the rack by the door and headed outside with the seat.
Jim drove a black Jeep Cherokee that looked to be a few years old. It looked neat and well cared for and had a leather and faint citrus scent. So besides being good-looking, a competent cook and great with kids, he was also tidy.
How the hell was this man still single?
The car seat fastened easily in the middle row of seats. She gave the seat a tug to be sure it was secure, then walked slowly up the flagstone walk to the front porch, where Jim and Katie had just emerged through the front door.
He took the keys from her, his warm fingers sliding over hers. She ground her teeth and allowed herself only a brief glance at him. “Be careful.”
“I will,” he promised.
“Call if you’re going to be more than a couple of hours, okay?” she added. “So I won’t worry.”
“Of course.” He touched her arm lightly. “Katie and I will be fine. But you should lock all the doors and windows until we get back, okay? So I won’t worry.”
“Will do.” She eased past him, taking care not to let their bodies touch, and entered the warm house. She turned in the doorway, watching until Jim’s SUV had reached the road at the end of the driveway. He made the turn toward town and she closed the door, pressing her forehead against the thick, weathered wood.
What was wrong with her? She hadn’t had this kind of reaction to a man in years. Probably not since college.
It was embarrassing, really. She was a grown woman, near the top of her chosen field. She’d won awards and accolades for her hard-hitting journalism, earned the praise of world leaders and average citizens alike.
If anyone should be feeling flutters and shakes, it should be the nanny, not her, damn it.
She needed to get her mind on what was important. She needed to put those world-renowned journalistic skills to work on figuring out who was trying to kill her and why.
The second floor of the farmhouse still needed work, but one of the first things Lacey had done when she’d moved in with Katie was to clear out a small corner bedroom to use as her office. Morning sunshine flooded the room with both warmth and light, making it an ideal spot for her work.
Maybe, eventually, she would use it as her home office for her journalism work, but that wasn’t how she was currently using it. Instead, it had become a sort of situation room, to use a political term. Here, she’d compiled every potential lead she’d been able to come up with in the days and now weeks following the car bombing.
If she’d ever made an enemy, his or her name was up on the big whiteboard she’d purchased and set up against one of the four walls. Her laptop and a Wi-Fi signal booster sat on an old desk she’d commandeered from the attic. It had been slightly rickety when she’d found it, but an old boyfriend of hers had been the handy sort, and she’d been interested enough in his woodworking hobby to learn a few things about furniture repair. She’d shored up the table enough that now it was as sturdy as the small desk she’d used whenever she worked from the news station.
She paused at the desk only long enough to check her email, which was different from the work account she used on her phone. Deleting the spam messages, she found only a couple of new emails. Both were from friends at the station, asking how she was doing.
She’d answer them later.
Moving to the whiteboard, she looked at the options she’d listed. There were eleven names, but most of those she could probably eliminate as people with grievances too petty to generate the sort of homicidal rage that would drive a person to set a car bomb.
She didn’t kid herself that the bomb itself would eliminate anybody on her list. The internet was full of sites explaining how to build an improvised explosive device, how to place it at the most advantageous place in the car to create maximum destruction and even the variety of ways to trigger the detonation.
Detective Bolling of the Arlington County Police hadn’t shared the details of the bomb with her, but she had seen the gruesome aftermath of detonated IEDs during her time in the Middle East and Central Asia to be able to imagine the last seconds of her sister’s life.
She forced those images to the back of her mind with ruthless ferocity and focused on the names on the whiteboard. After a few moments of consideration, she erased eight of the names, leaving the three potential enemies who best fit the profile of a homicide bomber.
Top of the list, based purely on their past methods of murder, was the rebel group al Adar. At the time of their inception during Kaziristan’s move toward democracy, they’d claimed to have a religious impetus for their protests, stirring up anxiety and unrest among the country’s conservative religious communities and throwing up roadblocks to the government’s efforts at liberalization.
But after the group had taken the US and British embassies under siege nearly a decade ago, the group had transformed into a political entity that sought power and, along with it, control over the lucrative oil and natural gas resources of Kaziristan.
In concert with US, British and other Western allies, the democratic government of Kaziristan had solidified their position in the country, and al Adar had for a while been relegated to the sidelines.
But there had been rumblings over the past year or so that al Adar was trying to rebuild itself by taking a page from the playbook of ISIS, the Islamic State in Syria, and expanding their activities to other countries. There had been al Adar operatives discovered in Europe and Africa, and an email Lacey had received shortly before Marianne’s death had come from an old, trusted informant in Kaziristan, who claimed that there were also al Adar sleeper cells in South and Central America, as well.
Could al Adar have already made its way into the United States?
Stupid question, she thought, using her dry-erase marker to draw a line under the words al Adar on the whiteboard. The United States would always be a target of any group wanting to make a name for itself.
She had meticulous files saved outlining al Adar’s power structure, operational tactics and purported goals. She would open those files and give them another read, see if she could find anything she’d missed that might give her greater insight into just what that group was capable of doing.
If al Adar was, indeed, involved, she had no doubt she’d be one of their primary targets for retribution, given the hours of news time she’d devoted to their operations over the years.
Unfortunately, al Adar was just one of the possible threats to her, based on her reporting.
Walking back to the whiteboard with a sigh, she moved on to the second possibility.
* * *
SMALL TOWNS WERE the same all over, Jim thought. Friendly on the outside, suspicious on the inside, at least until you’d proved yourself. The scrutiny had begun at the grocery store and continued when he’d stopped at the coffee shop on Main Street to grab a coffee for himself and apple juice for Katie.
The tall, broad-shouldered woman covering the front counter smiled at Katie. “Well, hello there, Miss Katie. Your usual this morning
?” Her smile flickered down a notch when her brown eyes met Jim’s. “Don’t tell me you’re the new nanny.”
“Guilty as charged,” he said, flashing her an easy smile. The badge on her blouse read Charlotte.
“Mind if I ask what Katie’s usual is, Charlotte?”
“Apple juice,” the woman responded, her smile still wary. “Can I get you something, as well?”
“Hot, strong coffee. One creamer, one sugar.”
“For here or to go?”
“Sadly, to go. I have to get the groceries back before all the frozen food thaws.” He added a touch of flirtation to his voice. “But I’ll make sure I have time to sit a spell next time.”
Charlotte’s smile warmed up several degrees as she poured his coffee in a to-go cup. “You’re a Southern boy, aren’t you? We don’t get near enough of those this far north in the state. I grew up in Roanoke, myself. I do so miss a good Southern drawl.”
“I’m from High Point, North Carolina,” he said, which wasn’t the exact truth. High Point was just the closest town to the tiny mountain hamlet where he’d been born and raised.
Cooley Cove, North Carolina, wasn’t on anybody’s map.
“I have cousins down that way,” Charlotte said, handing him the coffee and reaching into the cooler beneath the counter to retrieve a bottle of apple juice for Katie. “You got a sippy cup or something? I can pour it straight in for you.”
Definitely warming up to him, he thought with a hidden smile. “That would be great. Thank you.” He reached into the diaper bag slung over his shoulder and retrieved a clean cup with a sipper lid. As Charlotte poured half the bottle of apple juice into the cup, he took the opportunity to scan the small coffee shop, taking in the layout, as well as the handful of customers sitting at the tables and window booths around the room.
Five people. Two men, both over the age of sixty, and three women. Two mothers with children, who gave him curious looks, and an older woman sitting by herself in a corner booth, reading a novel.
