CARRIE'S PROTECTOR

by Rebecca York

  “I think he still likes to stay there occasionally, but I haven’t been with him.”

  “It’s a possibility, but there’s a chance the terrorists could know about it. And I’d like to stay closer to the D.C. area if possible.”

  She nodded. “What are you thinking?”

  He looked at her for a moment. “Sometimes the army clears an area of insurgents and then there’s no reason to go back. We can use that technique in reverse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We can go back to the Butlers’ house. The one next to your dad’s.” He paused. “I wasn’t thinking about breaking in when I did my research.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to use the main house. There’s a guest cottage on the other side of the pool.”

  “Do you remember if it’s got a direct line of sight to your dad’s property?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, it’s the last place they’re likely to think we’d be, so we’ll take a look at it.”

  She sighed. “I guess breaking into the guesthouse of someone you know is better than breaking into the house of a stranger.”

  He stopped at a commercial area, and he pointed to the array of fast-food restaurants. “Italian last night. What’s your pleasure for brunch?”

  She studied the options. “Let’s go with Mexican.”

  “I wouldn’t have figured you for that kind of food.”

  “Why not? I spent a summer in Costa Rica. Dad sent me to learn Spanish. I know Mexican isn’t exactly the same, but it’s similar. Well, the rice-and-beans part.”

  “Why did he want you to learn Spanish?”

  “It was my idea. I was in high school, but I already knew I wanted to be a photographer, and I thought I’d probably travel in Latin America.”

  “That’s very goal oriented.”

  “Yeah.”

  They pulled into the drive-through line, ordering burritos and tacos along with large cups of iced tea.

  After paying for the purchases, they headed toward her father’s house, giving her the feeling that they were traveling in circles.

  When Wyatt drew near the Butler property, he kept alert for surveillance, then he drove slowly up the access road. He parked in the woods out of sight of the road and turned to Carrie.

  “Wait until I give you the all clear. We might have to make a quick getaway.”

  He left the engine running as he took a quick circuit around the house, then checked for line of sight from the guesthouse to her father’s place.

  Still, he didn’t motion for her to get out.

  She saw him inspecting the door and windows of the guesthouse, and she figured he was checking for an alarm system.

  Next he stood in front of the door, and she couldn’t see what he was doing.

  When he stepped back, she expected him to tell her to join him. Instead, he held up his hand, and she waited while he disappeared into the house. He was back in less than a minute and motioned her to get out of the car.

  She turned off the engine, pulled the keys from the ignition and joined him at the open door. They both stepped inside, and she looked around at the cozy room.

  Mrs. Butler hadn’t bothered to clean out the cottage. She’d left the room furnished, and Carrie saw a couch, a couple of comfortable chairs, a dining set and a kitchen area along one wall.

  She set the bags of food down on the table and flopped into one of the chairs.

  “Long day,” Wyatt said. “And it’s only noon.”

  She nodded.

  Wyatt set the camera and his laptop on the table beside the food.

  As they ate, he booted up the computer and attached a USB cable from the camera to the computer.

  She moved her chair around so that she could see the screen.

  “I’m going to rewind to the beginning.”

  For a moment, the image on the screen was only black dots, and she thought maybe there was nothing to see. Then it cleared up and she got an image of men on the ground. “The terrorists,” she murmured.

  “Setting things up,” Wyatt agreed.

  They disappeared, and there was a long stretch of nothing but birds, squirrels and deer—and sometimes Carrie taking pictures of the eagles’ nest.

  “They were checking up on me.”

  “Right.”

  “There was probably more than one camera, and this was the only one left,” Wyatt said.

  He fast-forwarded through the normal forest footage. Finally the men came back.

  “Is that the day I showed up and heard them?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  Before moving out of the shot, the men glanced up at the camera and at other trees where there must have been more spy cams.

  “What are they looking at?” she asked.

  “Checking to make sure everything’s in place.”

  Then she saw herself, moving through the woods, her own camera in hand as she approached the eagles’ nest.

  Her breath caught as she stopped short. “That must be when I heard them.”

  “Yeah. Which makes it a pretty good guess that they were waiting for you.”

  “Could they send those images to a remote location?”

  “Probably.”

  He stood up and paced the living room. “Your overhearing them was all a setup, I think.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Carrie moved restlessly in her seat. She didn’t want to think about what this hidden footage meant, and she found herself searching for another subject to focus on.

  She knew Wyatt wasn’t going to like her next question.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Carrie finished a bite of burrito and looked up at the man who’d spent almost every waking minute with her since they’d gotten in that town car to go downtown.

  “You told me you blame yourself for your partner’s getting killed in Greece. Why was it your fault?”

  It wasn’t until the words were out of her mouth that she realized they probably sounded like an accusation to him.

  He reared back as though she’d come at him with a baseball bat.

  “That’s not relevant.”

  “I think it is.”

  “Because you don’t trust me?” he asked in a gritty voice.

  “Because I want to hear what’s making you so sure that you did the wrong thing.”

  He slapped his drink back onto the table and glared at her, but she didn’t back down.

  “What kind of assignment were you on?”

  “We were posing as a tourist couple traveling around the country looking at ancient sites, but we were really tracking down a terrorist cell.”

  “In Greece?”

  “Yeah, they thought it was a good place to hide out.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, she prompted him. “Did you find them?”

  “We traced them to a fishing village, and then we lost their trail.”

  “And then what?”

  “We spent the night at a little pension.” He kept his voice hard. “And we made love that night. Which we shouldn’t have done, of course.”

  “Whose idea was that?”

  He shook his head. “It was a mutual decision.”

  Getting the information was like pulling teeth because he kept stopping. And every time he did, she felt her own tension mount. But she’d started this, and she wasn’t going to let him off the hook, even if she was going to hate what she heard. “And then?” she asked again.

  “And then in the morning when I woke up, Gina wasn’t in the room.”

  “You’d told her to go out and do something?”

  His voice jolted up a notch. “I�
�d told her not to go off on her own. I’d told her to stay with me, and she didn’t obey orders.”

  The look on his face made her insides twist, but she stayed where she was and let him tell the rest of the story in his own way.

  “We’d been talking to some of the locals, and it looked like they might have some information, if we could gain their trust. I think she had some kind of idea that she could locate the terrorists and get credit for her big discovery. Instead, she was struck by a car along the road as she was walking toward the center of town. It was set up to look like a hit-and-run accident. Two years have passed and they’ve never found out who plowed into her.”

  “It could have really been an accident.”

  “I don’t think so. I think the terrorists knew we were getting close, and they wanted to send me a message.”

  “How can you blame yourself for that?”

  “I blame myself for not having better control of the situation.”

  “It sounds to me like she had made her own decision, and you couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “I was the senior agent. The one in charge!” he shouted.

  “And you felt guilty about sleeping with her. Maybe that was unprofessional. But the rest of it wasn’t your fault. She didn’t have to go out in the morning. You weren’t even there when she was killed.”

  He glared at her. “You’re making assumptions.”

  “So are you.”

  When she started to speak again, he stood up and marched out of the guest cottage. She could see him standing by the pool, his back to her and his shoulders rigid.

  She knew he was angry at her, questioning assumptions that he’d carried around for the past two years, but he meant too much to her to just keep her mouth shut.

  He was clenching and unclenching his fists, and she was pretty sure he wanted to drive away and leave her at the guesthouse. But he couldn’t do it because he had an obligation to her and her father.

  She picked up her burrito and took a bite, but the food felt like cement in her mouth. After washing it down with a sip of iced tea, she got up and went into the bathroom, where she splashed water on her face. Then she walked into the bedroom of the guest cottage, kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed. Maybe if she wasn’t in the living room Wyatt would come back inside.

  When she heard him in the living room, she tensed. His footsteps stopped, and she thought he might be wondering where she’d gone. Then he charged across to the bedroom.

  “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “I spotted Patrick’s Lexus leaving the property, and I want to follow him.”

  She jumped up, put her shoes back on and followed Wyatt to the car.

  As he took off down the drive, she buckled her seat belt. “I thought you wanted to go back to Dad’s house and get into his computer again.”

  “Yeah. It was a tough decision, but I decided that following Patrick is more important.”

  Neither of them mentioned the previous discussion, and she wasn’t going back to it now.

  She was glad they had something to focus on besides the two of them as Wyatt drove back toward the D.C. area, staying back so that Patrick wouldn’t know he was being followed. The technique was nerve-racking, because a couple of times Wyatt lost sight of their quarry, but he reappeared again each time.

  “I don’t believe he’s thinking about being followed,” Carrie murmured.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s not doing anything evasive.”

  “Yeah, unless he knows we’re here, and he’s leading us into a trap.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t have a handle on his motivation. I only know that I don’t trust him.”

  She nodded, trying to rearrange her picture of Patrick Harrison. She’d known him all her life, and she’d considered him a friend. But now she couldn’t be sure of him. Or of Inez, for that matter.

  Wyatt let a couple of cars get between him and Patrick as they merged onto the Capital Beltway, and he stayed a few cars back.

  With the volume of traffic, it was easier to follow him without danger of being spotted as he headed toward the city, but Patrick got off on the exit leading to Wisconsin Avenue.

  When Patrick reached the Bethesda business district, he turned off onto a side street, then slowed as he came to a Starbucks, peering in the window. He pulled into a parking garage, and Wyatt and Carrie drove past.

  “I think he’s meeting someone there,” Wyatt said. “I’m going to find a parking place. You follow him, but don’t let him see you.”

  “Right.”

  She got out and pretended to be inspecting the handbags in the window of a specialty shop.

  Patrick came out of the parking garage and walked rapidly back to the Starbucks, not paying attention to anyone around him.

  He went inside, and she wondered what she should do.

  A few minutes later, a woman came up the block, heading for the same coffee shop. Carrie blinked, wondering if her eyes were giving her the correct image. She kept staring, unable to believe what she was seeing.

  Patrick was meeting Rita Madison.

  The idea blew her mind.

  Once Rita was inside, Carrie edged closer, moving to the window where she could peek inside. Rita and Patrick had their heads together, speaking to each other.

  When Rita started to look up, Carrie pulled back so that she was no longer visible through the window.

  At that moment, she sensed someone behind her and froze.

  “It’s me,” Wyatt whispered. As she relaxed, he asked, “Who’s he meeting?”

  “You won’t believe it. Rita Madison. And she looks more like her old self than last time we saw her—at least the way you described her.”

  “What do you mean?

  “She’s got on makeup. And she must have had her hair done.”

  “Interesting. Like she’s out of mourning real fast.” He waited a beat and put his hand on Carrie’s arm, drawing her away from the window. “If I leave you alone here for a few minutes, will you be okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “Stay out of sight. I’ll be back as quickly as I can. If they come out, go into the shop next door.”

  She nodded.

  * * *

  WYATT FELT HIS stomach knot. He was leaving her in a vulnerable position, but there were two urgent pieces of business, and he couldn’t take care of both of them at the same time. Praying that nothing would happen to her while he was gone, he sprinted down the block, hoping he could accomplish his mission in time. Lucky for him that they were near the same electronics shop where he’d picked up the USB cable earlier.

  He rushed through the door and stopped short when he saw several customers waiting in line.

  Pushing his way to the counter, he said, “I need a GPS tracker.”

  “You have to wait your turn, buddy,” the guy to his right said in a loud voice.

  “This is an emergency,” he said.

  “What? Your wife is hanging out with another guy?”

  “Something like that.”

  The clerk pointed to a section of electronics devices hanging on the wall.

  Wyatt strode to them, grabbed a package and looked at the price. He also scanned the directions and found the batteries he needed. He came back to the counter and threw down two fifty-dollar bills.

  “Hey, wait,” the clerk called out.

  “In a hurry,” he shouted over his shoulder.

  He was out of there two minutes after he’d entered, and he didn’t know if he’d taken too much time.

  His next stop was the garage where he’d seen Patrick pull in. He started jogging up the ramp, looking at the cars, opening th
e package as he ran. He found Patrick’s Lexus on the third level and stood panting while he opened the GPS and shoved in the batteries. When a green light went on, he knelt down and stuck the thing under the front bumper, hoping that this ploy was going to work.

  Again he sprinted back the way he’d come, heading for the Starbucks and wondering if he was going to bump into Patrick or Rita on the way.

  He got back to find Carrie where he’d left her.

  “They’re still in there?”

  “Yes.”

  She stepped back, and he took her position, watching the man and woman talking inside. It looked as though they knew each other pretty well. What the hell was going on with them?

  Patrick broke off to get in the coffee-order line, and Rita sat down at a table, her back to the window, presumably so that she could keep an eye on Patrick.

  There were several people in line in front of him, and he moved slowly to the front.

  Behind Wyatt, Carrie asked, “Where were you?”

  “Tell you later.”

  “Let me see what’s happening in there.”

  He and Carrie exchanged places again. After a few minutes, Carrie backed away.

  “They’re pushing their chairs back. I think their meeting is over.”

  He took her hand and hurried her to the next shop, which turned out to sell handbags.

  “Can I help you?” the clerk asked.

  “I want to find something special for my wife,” Wyatt said.

  When Carrie gave him a questioning look, he wondered why he’d used that word. But it had just come out of his mouth unbidden.

  Carrie picked up a leopard-print purse and pretended to be interested while Wyatt kept his gaze on the street.

  “Isn’t it pretty?” the clerk said. “It’s on sale for twenty percent off.”

  Carrie nodded, dividing her gaze between the purse and the entrance to the coffee shop. First Patrick came out and walked back toward the parking garage.

  A few minutes later, Rita emerged and hesitated. For a moment, Wyatt was afraid that the woman was going to come into the purse shop, but she kept walking down the street.

  “Come on,” Wyatt said to Carrie.

  As he started to leave the shop, the clerk called out, “That purse is a closeout. I can give you a better deal.”