by Lexy Timms
“He said we have run of the house,” Luke temporized, setting a book back on the shelf and picking up the next. “What’s the problem?”
“Are you an idiot?” David finally glared at Luke. “What’re you going to do? Go in there and ask him to read us a story?”
“No.” Luke replaced the book on the shelf without looking at it. “I propose that I go in there when he isn’t, so I can look around a little. All by myself.”
“Hazard of the profession?” Katie asked. If she’d worn glasses, she’d have been looking over the tops of them to watch Luke. As it was, she managed the look quite well, staring up at him though lashes and wisps of bangs. It was almost... coquettish.
Dani fought a surge of jealousy. Was Katie seriously flirting with her pretend fiancé?
“Something like that.” Luke smiled, looking for all the world like he liked it. The rat.
“I’ll go with you.” Dani jumped in before this could go any further. Besides, if the question was between Luke and Benny, that was a no-brainer.
“I’m telling you!” David was nearly foaming at the mouth. “He’s practically living in there now! He brought in a refrigerator and a microwave, so he doesn’t have to leave.”
He reminds me of something. I’ve seen this before somewhere...
But try as she might, the idea hovered at the edge of her memories.
“So what does he do when he needs to pee?” Luke asked, and paused for effect before grinning wickedly and looking pointedly at David. “Or does he just... open a window?”
“Very funny.” David held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not going, that’s all. You want to get killed, you go right ahead.”
“David,” Dani said softly, needing to defuse this situation before the whole thing blew up any further. “We need someone we can trust to keep the coast clear.” She saw, from the corner of her eye, Luke’s expression when she said that. She glared him down, thinking the words she knew he could hear without her saying a thing out loud: Fine. I trust him!”
“Like what?” David’s eyes grew wider, and he glanced between her and Luke and Katie.
“Benny said he was going to be busy tonight,” Katie said, thinking it through, “but when he left the dining room he headed to the west wing, not to the office... meaning he probably was heading upstairs. Maybe to get ready before going out?”
“So all we have to do is wait.” David settled back on the couch, seeming suddenly much calmer. “He leaves and then you can go do... whatever.”
“We don’t know that he’s actually going out. We’re guessing.” Dani gave up on the lamp, and set the pieces on the credenza. Rising to her feet, she slapped the dust off her knees before straightening. “For all we know, he might have company coming in and wanted to freshen up first.”
Katie glanced over at Dani. “So let me go out there and ask for him; I’ll find out where he is. I can say that...” her voice lowered, and she sent a dark glance in David’s direction. “I can say that it’s my... time... and we don’t have any hygiene products.”
“Won’t he just tell you to use mine?” Dani asked, ignoring the way both men were reverting to sixth grade boys in the faces they were making.
“So? I’ll tell him you use tampons, I use pads.” She shrugged.
“Argh!” Luke said, his entire face collapsing in a kind of queasy disgust. “Why do you have to go there?”
“Because of that very reaction!” Dani pointed at him and David, who had dissolved into varying levels of embarrassment. “Works every time. Besides, no one in this frat house is going to know a damn thing about this subject.” She turned back to Katie. “That’s perfect!”
“But still risky,” Luke interjected. “Don’t forget who you’re dealing with.”
“Believe me, I never have.” Katie’s reply was so loaded and so flat it spoke volumes, but if there was subtext Dani wasn’t following. Something in the evil glances the girl was continually giving both men. Dani had thought that perhaps Katie simply didn’t like men in general, or was simply disgusted by the way neither of them seemed to have moved beyond puberty. But she seemed perfectly at ease in her continued proximity to the Neanderthals Benny called guards when it seemed to Dani that they would be the men for her to fear.
“All right.” Dani didn’t necessarily like putting the girl at risk a second time, especially after their discussion that afternoon, but what choice did they have? Lacking any better ideas, she turned to Luke. He looked at her and nodded agreement. In for a penny, in for a pound then. Whatever the hell that meant. “Take David. Find out where Benny is. If he’s not in the office, David can come back and tell us. You stall Benny for as long as you can. Just make sure you keep him away from the office.”
Katie nodded but Dani still didn’t like it, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. The whole plan was shoddy, made up too quickly. This isn’t what she’d learned in the military. Operations weren’t created on a whim. You planned things. The problem was she didn’t have the time to plan anything just now. And there was no superior officer to tell her what to do.
Except Luke, maybe. Only he was sitting there, arms crossed, looking every bit as put out as she felt. He didn’t like it any better than her.
“And Katie?” Luke said.
“Yes?”
“Be careful. Don’t risk yourself for anything. Just stall... and say you didn’t want to say anything to the guards. That you felt uncomfortable. Maybe then mention that you want to know how your family is. He’ll buy that.”
“Okay.”
Okay, sink or swim, this was what they had. They just needed David to cooperate. Dani turned to David, looking at him hopefully, realizing that now more than ever she needed her little brother back, and she hadn’t seen that kid since before she left for active duty years ago. “David, I need you to be honest with me. You okay with this?”
He simply nodded and stood.
She guessed that was as good as she was going to get. She would work with that. They could work with that. She and Luke were a team, right?
But Luke wasn’t speaking to her now. He wasn’t even looking at her. Given what they’d been doing fifteen minutes ago, it was a slap in the face. Here she was, trying to put together an operation to get him to where he wanted to go, and he was sitting there staring at today’s newspaper.
Page eight.
“What?”
Luke shook his head. “Something isn’t right. I don’t know... just...” He looked at her and she saw in his eyes the same confusion she’d been feeling since David had come into the room. No, something was seriously off. Something they weren’t seeing at all.
“Guys?” Katie was at the doorway, suddenly tall and imperious, David slinking around her heels.
“It’s good. Just... don’t worry. Something else entirely. You’re good.” Dani waved them off, frowning.
Luke moved past Dani to press an ear to the closed door. A moment later he turned back to Dani, shaking his head. “Can’t hear a thing. Why does every door in the place have a solid core? Who has solid doors on every room? In my house the doors were made of paper.”
“Maybe because my family makes more money than yours does. How the hell should I know?”
“Something wrong?”
The very fact he was asking was answer enough. She stepped away from him, feeling the icy jolt go through her. Why? Why am I always so unlucky in love? Here he is, the perfect guy. Sex is amazing. Combat skills. Intellectually someone I can respect. And he hates me.
Nothing had changed at all.
“Forget it. I just... nothing.” She picked up the discarded newspaper. “Why is this in here?”
“I grabbed it from the table when we left.”
“You thought to grab the newspaper?”
“Benny seemed awfully fixated on it at dinner.”
While I was stupid enough to be fixated on you. Biting back words that she knew she would regret if she said them at all, she glanced down at the a
rticle and failed to see what was so interesting. “Someone he knew, I take it?” She shook her head. “I don’t see it.”
“It’s not the article, it’s what he said...”
“What did he—”
The door opened, and David appeared, a caricature of a spy. He edged around the door, darting so many glances over his shoulder it was a miracle he didn’t trip over his own feet. “If you’re going, you have to hurry. Benny’s in the bathroom. We have a few minutes, if you know what I mean. But Katie will make it last as long as she can.”
“Eww.” Dani shook her head. “That sounds so wrong. I’m assuming you mean she’s ready to offer distraction.” She’d spent too long on commentary; Luke was already halfway down the hall. Cursing under her breath she sped after him, catching up at the office door.
Surprisingly, the door was unlocked. Half-expecting some kind of trap, Dani peered around Luke’s shoulder and saw immediately that, yes, the office did look very different. Benny had definitely been living there. There was a small fridge in the corner that hadn’t been there before. A microwave on the shelf next to some fancy coffee machine that she’d only previously seen in Starbucks. A fresh shirt hung on the coatrack next to the door. A shoe shine kit was stuffed on the shelf next to the heavy law books that had belonged to her father, back in the days when he’d practiced law.
Before Benny, Dani thought as she entered the room. He stopped practicing law when Benny offered him a chance to invest in those resorts.
I wish he’d never done that. Why hadn’t he said no?
“David,” Luke called over his shoulder as he stepped further into the room. “Keep your eye on the door; let us know if you see anyone coming!” David looked unconvinced, but stood where he was told. Luke nearly leapt over the desk to get to the computer.
He dug into his pocket and pulled out a USB stick. Dani blinked. Not A stick. THE stick.
“You had it all along?” Dani asked, realizing that if Luke had kept this from her that maybe been keeping a lot of things from her.
Her stomach lurched. She was seriously going to be sick.
Luke nodded. “Jimmy should have searched me properly when I got back.” He laughed.
He actually laughed.
It was Luke’s reflexes that moved the stick a half second before David grabbed it. So intent was her brother that he launched himself over the desk and scuttled after it, like a pit bull on a steak even as Luke raised his hand over his head, keeping it out of his reach.
“DAVID!” Dani cried, reaching to restrain him.
“MINE!” David screamed like a small child denied a favorite toy. No, it was more than that; there was terror warring with hope in his open expression. Dani was more afraid of that than any other abnormality she’d seen in David lately.
“Go watch the door!” Luke grunted. David’s nails were digging into Luke’s fist, trying to get the stick out of Luke’s hand.
“It’s mine! Father left it for me!”
“Then what’s the key?” Luke demanded.
“Give it!”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Katie stepped through the door and hissed so hard it had to have burned the back of her throat. “I can hear you all the way across the house!”
“That stick!” David cried, and opened Luke’s hand enough to expose the device. Both of David’s hands were on Luke’s hand and wrist; Luke was pressing him back with his free hand, and Dani was trying to pull them apart.
“It has enough information to put Benny away for life!” David was sobbing. “I was supposed to use it, I was supposed to have it, and HE stole it. It’s mine!”
Katie strode over to the wrestling match and plucked the USB stick from Luke, holding it up the light to see it better. “That’s what’s on here? Evidence?”
Then, before Dani could figure out what she had in mind, Katie turned and simply walked over to the microwave and threw the stick inside. She hit a single button, and within seconds the stick exploded in a shower of multicolored sparks that bounced off the walls and window like a spastic fireworks celebration. It jumped, twisted, and finally a small, resentful fire popped and slowly burned.
Dani stood helplessly, hand outstretched toward the conflagration, halted mid-leap in what was supposed to be a desperate attempt to save it.
The door opened. In walked Benny.
“I destroyed it,” Katie said, turning to welcome him with a cheerful smile.
“Good.” Benny smiled, and called over his shoulder to the first thug through the door: “Jimmy, tomorrow, go out and get another microwave.”
Luke and David let go of one another slowly, standing and straightening. Dani put her hand down. The room filled with smoke.
No one looked anywhere else but at Katie.
For her part, Katie’s eyes never left David. In her eyes was hate. It absolutely radiated from her.
There was small beep from the microwave. Apparently it was done.
So were they.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I told you,” Katie seethed. “I told you I would make you pay.” She poked David in the chest and then smiled up at him. It was the same sort of smile a cat uses to greet a mouse. The way David was wrapped up in himself, it seemed an appropriate analogy.
Luke blinked once in surprise. Some stuff was clicking together, but not fast enough.
“Katie, what the hell’s going on?” Dani asked. Luke put his arm around her. She was shaking, though she was doing everything in her power not to show it. He tried to draw her back, away from the others. Wanting to protect her.
Being Dani, she resisted.
He looked around for something to use as a weapon, something they could use for cover, whatever they could conceivably use. The room was too crowded, and there weren’t a whole lot of options. Diving under the desk would get them nowhere. And against hardened killers, all of whom have guns? Yeah, throw a stapler at Benny.
“What the hell was on that USB?” Katie yelled, shaking David hard like a terrier with a rat. Also not a bad analogy. Poor David’s head rocked back and forth so violently it was a wonder it stayed on. Luke almost felt sorry for him.
“I don’t know!” David wailed, flailing at her uselessly. Trying to get away.
She was interrogating him. She didn’t know.
Suddenly everything clicked. Luke realized when he’d seen David at the party, he was arrogant, self-assured. Later when they had gone climbing, he’d been an ass, then...
“You sent the note,” Luke blurted. Everyone stopped as though the projector had broken, and the film stayed in place.
“What are you talking about?” Dani turned to Luke, hurt and confusion in her eyes.
“At the party. ‘Boom, you’re dead’. It was you who placed that on his jacket.”
“Just a little love letter,” Katie purred, preening a little as though she’d been complimented. Her grip released on David’s shirt, sending him to the floor, hard.
“If it wasn’t you,” Luke asked David, trying to force pieces into place, “then why didn’t you get worried when it happened? You took that awfully calmly, as I recall.”
David shrugged. “The jacket? Father said that one of my friends from college was playing a gag. I thought he knew. I figured the car was the same thing. I was getting pissed, and then Father vanished.”
“The coward,” Benny cursed under his breath, adding something that Luke couldn’t quite hear but that seemed to involve a whole lot of four-letter words.
“But how did you key the car?” Dani looked back and forth between Katie and David. “You were with us the whole time.”
Katie smiled and looked over her shoulder.
Benny shrugged, extending his hands in a helpless, what’re-you-gonna-do kind of gesture. “Ms. Linnear was in my employ. She only needed to call. I had a man go and deliver her message in her place, while she kept all of you busy.”
While she established an alibi taking the long way back around to the car, giving every
one else plenty of time to discover the message with her nowhere near, Luke realized. He frowned. “And the empty box.” Luke added after a minute. “The bomb that wasn’t...”
Benny smiled. “I thought that would be a nice touch.”
“But what was on the STICK?” Katie yelled, bringing the attention back to her by kicking David hard in the shins. David whimpered, and scrambled backwards out of her reach, coming up against the couch, and half-climbing, half-falling onto the cushions.
“It no longer matters,” Benny said as he lay a proprietary hand on her shoulder. “it’s destroyed. Tell me, Agent Milligan, or whatever you go by, how many copies are there?”
Luke had seen that coming for a while. He figured Benny would catch on sooner or later; being a vicious killer didn’t mean you were stupid. When Katie came into the picture, it had to happen. He was a little surprised by Dani’s reaction, as she should have seen it coming, too. She stood there, her eyes wide, looking for all the world like the Easter Bunny had just torn apart Santa Claus.
“None,” David piped up, sounding forlorn.
Dani turned to him, her mouth opening and closing as though she couldn’t get the words out that she sorely needed to say. Luke was beginning to worry; if she kept swiveling her head around like that she was going to get whiplash.
“It was encrypted,” David sighed, plucking at a couch cushion. “Encryption adds the device to the files and considers it all one piece. You can’t copy an encrypted drive.”
“Well, then,” Benny stated, clapping his hands like he was dusting them off, “it doesn’t matter what was on the thing—it’s gone now. Besides, we have a more immediate issue. We have a wedding in two days.”
Dani’s attention was squarely back on Luke. “Two days?” she mouthed to him without talking.
Luke shrugged. What were they supposed to do? Keep playing the farce? Hope dear-ol’ daddy returned in time. The man was clearly gone, had clearly taken his money and run. Didn’t give a toss about his kids.
“...and you are not allowed to maim the bride and groom.” Benny smiled at Katie, who looked more than a little upset. Her hair had come loose from her ponytail, and her face was red and blotchy with rage. She was not a pretty girl when angry.
