All was silent except for the pounding of my heart and the sound of my panting. I stared at the base of the stairs until my eyes watered.
Blink. Right. I could do that.
Minutes ticked by and I spared a quick glance at my watch. I had no sense of how much time had passed. How long would it take for Stemp’s analysts to raise the alarm, and how long would it take for help to arrive after that? Please, please, let them come quickly.
And while I was at it, I added a plea that they’d remember to identify themselves before they came downstairs. God, what if I shot one of the good guys by mistake? I gulped hard and the trembling redoubled.
My ass vibrated and I almost leaped out of my skin. Christ, I’d forgotten I’d put my cell phone in my back pocket before heading out to the garden. I fumbled it out of my pocket. Kane. Thank God.
I juggled the rifle and the phone. The phone lost.
“God-fucking-dammit...”
It hit the concrete floor and sprayed pieces in all directions.
“Goddamn-snot-gobbling-sonuvabitch-fuck-pig!” I set the loaded guns down and floundered across the floor, retrieving battery pack, case, and backing. I jammed them back together and held my breath as I powered it back on.
A creak sounded from the main floor overhead, and I wedged myself frantically back into the corner. Snatching up the rifle, I damn near dropped the phone again.
Too terrified to even swear, I stuffed the phone back in my pocket and pressed the rifle butt against my shoulder, my chest heaving. Christ, I’d be lucky to hit the side of a barn at this rate.
The unmistakeable sound of my front door opening made me jerk the gun up into ready position. The floor creaked as someone moved stealthily across it.
My phone vibrated again. A tiny silly part of my mind noted that I should have put it in my front pocket instead. At least I could’ve gotten a cheap thrill before I died.
Concentrate, dummy! I blinked hard and refocused while the vibration in my back pocket continued.
It was probably Kane, but I couldn’t spare a hand to answer. The rifle was heavy. There was no way I could one-hand it. And there was no fucking way I was going die of stupidity, talking on my cell phone instead of pointing my gun.
The quiet movement above continued. Somebody was methodically searching the house. Very soon, they’d come downstairs.
At a sound from the top of the stairs, I nestled my cheek into the stock. Show time. The crosshairs bounced crazily when I trained them on the base of the stairs.
With any luck, the intruder wouldn’t see me immediately. He’d have to turn at the bottom of the stairs before he did.
My overused muscles screamed with pain and fatigue. Come on, asshole. Hurry up. Before I fall down from sheer exhaustion.
Slow, careful footsteps on the stairs.
“Aydan.”
I gasped desperate relief at the sound of the whisper.
“I’m here. All clear,” I quavered.
I straightened out of my crouch and let the muzzle drop as Kane spoke aloud. “I’m coming down. Don’t shoot.”
I gave a shaky laugh as he came around the corner. “Don’t worry, you’re safe. I can’t hold the friggin’ gun up any longer.” Then my trembling knees gave out, and I slithered down the wall to sit on the floor.
He closed the distance between us fast and knelt beside me. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. What’s happening up top?”
“We’re securing the area. The house is clear. Germain’s upstairs standing guard. We’ll stay down here until we get the all-clear from JTF2.”
I gaped at him. “You brought in JTF2? How the hell am I going to explain helicopters and army guys with assault rifles to my neighbours?”
Kane scowled. “That’s the least of our worries. Did you get a look at the shooter?”
“Hell, no. I was too busy running. But I’m pretty sure the shots came from the northwest. And the guy had to be a lousy shot. I was a sitting duck in the garden, not even moving, and he missed me by at least six feet.”
“Either that or it was extreme range.”
“Could be. Somebody smart could probably do the math. The bullet hit, and then about a half-second later, I heard the shot.”
“It would depend on the muzzle velocity of the rifle.”
“It sounded a lot like my .22-250.”
He shrugged. “All right. Let’s take that as a wild guess. Muzzle velocity on those is around thirty-five hundred to four thousand feet per second.” He considered for a few seconds. “Somewhere around a thousand feet away, then. That’s an easy shot, so your gunman wasn’t a professional.”
I gaped at him. “Okay, I’m impressed.”
Kane chuckled. “Don’t be. Remember, it’s just a wild guess. I could be out by fifty percent or more.”
“Still. You know the muzzle velocity of a .22-250 off the top of your head?”
As he shrugged, Germain’s voice floated down the stairs. “All clear. Come on up.”
“You go ahead,” I told Kane. “I need to unload everything and put it away.”
He frowned at my arsenal. “Not exactly convenient defensive weapons.”
“No kidding. The guy could have strolled in and shot me before I even got the stupid gun locker open.” I sighed. “I understand why we have gun laws, really I do. But I sure could’ve done without them today.”
“Mm,” he agreed, and went up the stairs.
I hunted out all the shells I’d scattered during my wild loading spree and stowed everything away again.
When I poked my head around the top of the stairs, I grinned at the sight of the blocky man cradling a sub-machine gun easily in the crook of his elbow.
“Carl! Hi again!”
“Hi, Aydan.” His good-natured square face crinkled into a smile. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“No kidding. Hey, you finally got your hair cut.”
He laughed and ran his fingers through his crisp black curls. “Yeah. This is so much better.”
“I don’t know. I liked the rock-star ringlets on you.”
“Very funny.” His two-way radio crackled, and he turned away to reply.
The ring of the phone made me jump. Kane held up a hand and leaned over to check the call display. “It’s Rossburn. You’d better pick up.”
“Shit!” I reached for the receiver. “What should I tell him?”
The phone rang again. Kane made a frustrated gesture. “Stall him. Make something up. Just answer, or he’ll be coming over here wondering what’s wrong.”
I snatched up the receiver just before the machine picked up. “Hello?”
“Aydan, it’s Tom. Is everything okay over there?”
“Everything’s fine, thanks, Tom.”
“Aydan,” he said hesitantly. “I’m not trying to butt in, but I saw a military helicopter landing at your place.”
I bared my teeth at Kane and thudded my free hand against my forehead. He rotated his hand in a ‘string him along’ gesture. I glared at him and tried again.
“Don’t worry, it’s fine.” Inspiration hit me. “I have a friend who’s in the military, and I offered to let them use my place for a training exercise. Nothing to worry about.”
“Oh.” The relief was palpable in his voice. “That explains the gunfire earlier, then, too.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, I should have let you know in advance.”
“That’s okay. It’s none of my business, anyway. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine. Thanks for checking.”
I hung up the phone and made fists in my hair. “Jesus Christ. I might as well live in a fucking fish bowl.”
“You handled that well,” Kane said with satisfaction. “It’s a good cover story, and it will explain away a lot of activity over here. Nice work, Aydan.”
I shrugged to hide my pleasure at the compliment. “Thanks.”
Germain hooked his radio back into its holster. “They found shell casing
s up on the northwest hill, about three hundred and fifty yards from the garden. Looks like .22-250. There were tire tracks leading away that look like a regular recreational quad ATV.”
“Can you trace any of that?” I asked.
Kane shrugged. “The .22-250 is a pretty common rifle in rural areas, and there are lots of quads out here, too. We’ll be able to trace it eventually, but it’ll take time.” He turned to Germain. “Which way did the tracks go?”
“Out to the road.” Germain grimaced. “They could have just run along the road, or they could have loaded it onto a trailer and driven away. No way to tell.”
“Did you hear the quad?” Kane asked me.
I thought hard. “I should have been able to,” I said slowly. “If it was less than a quarter mile away. Hell, I should have been able to see it if he was riding along north of my fence line.”
“But you don’t remember.”
“No.” I made a face. “I was absorbed in my garden, and the wind is from the south today. It must have carried the sound away. Or else I was a lot more tired than I realized.”
I sank shakily into a chair as the truth of that statement became clear to me.
Kane regarded me with sympathy. “Why don’t you go and lie down? There’s nothing you can do here, and it’ll take us quite a while to get everything buttoned up. You need to stay in the house until we’re done anyway.”
That sounded like heaven. I nodded gratefully and shuffled off to the bedroom. The shouts of male voices and the thumping din of the helicopter floated through the open window. I smiled and fell asleep instantly.
I opened my eyes to Kane as he bent over me in the silver moonlight. He smiled when I reached to pull him down. He lowered himself on top of me and my breath caught at the sensation of his hard body against mine. His fingers stroked through my hair while he kissed me slowly. I moaned against his lips, running my hands down his broad, muscular back.
“Aydan,” he whispered.
I kissed him hungrily.
“Aydan.”
I moaned again, feeling his touch on my shoulders and wanting him.
“Aydan.” He was shaking my shoulders gently.
That was annoying.
“Stop that,” I told him.
“Aydan.”
I jerked awake. Kane was stooped over the bed, gently shaking me. “Aydan, it’s all right, it was just a dream.”
“I know!” I snapped. “Dammit!”
“Aydan, wake up. You were moaning in your sleep. It was just a dream.”
I sighed. “I’m awake. Thanks. I’m fine.” I squinted over at the clock. “Why are you still here? It’s almost two A.M.”
“You’ve got a twenty-four hour guard now. Stemp’s orders. Germain is taking over at two. I’ll be back to pick you up at eight tomorrow morning. We have a meeting with Stemp at eight thirty.”
I groaned. “Yeah, I could see that coming.”
“Go back to sleep,” he advised. His phone buzzed in his pocket. “That’ll be Germain arriving. See you in the morning.”
“Okay. Thanks. Tell Germain not to worry if I start screaming.”
“He’ll come in and wake you if you do.”
I groaned. Guess I’d be sleeping in my clothes for the foreseeable future. I didn’t own any nightwear.
Male voiced rumbled briefly in the kitchen before tires crunched on gravel as Kane departed. I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow, not sure whether to feel comforted or smothered by the guard. Before I could decide, sunlight and birdsong woke me.
Chapter 28
Six thirty. I lay lethargically for a few minutes until my brain spun up to speed and reminded me that I could look forward to a major confrontation with Stemp this morning. Shit, he was going to be pissed that I’d known about the bugs all along.
I rolled stiffly out of bed and shuffled to the shower, trying to formulate a strategy for the meeting. How would Stemp react? He’d better not push me again.
Tension wound up in my stomach.
By the time I entered the kitchen, my hands were quivering.
“Good morning,” Germain greeted me cheerfully. His sharp brown eyes gave me a quick once-over, noting my tremors. “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” I lied. No way I was going to say anything in front of the bugs. “I’m just hungry. Do you want some breakfast?”
“I wouldn’t say no,” he agreed. “Have you got coffee?”
“That’s not my area of expertise. Do it however you like it. The coffee pot’s over there.”
When Kane arrived a little before eight, we were just finishing off the last of our toast. He stuck his head in the door, sniffing. “Is that some of your homemade bread?” he inquired hopefully.
“Sure is. Want some?”
He nodded, and I pointed him toward the breadboard. “Help yourself.”
He sawed off a couple of generous slabs and slapped on some butter. “I’ll take these with me. We need to head out.”
Kane stepped casually out the front door, sweeping the yard with his eyes. Germain brought up the rear. Kane raised a hand, and I was startled to notice the man in camouflage concealed in the band of trees that formed my windbreak. I hadn’t even seen him until he returned Kane’s salute.
“How many of those are there?” I asked.
“Two. They’ll trade off during the day so that your house and yard stays secure.”
I climbed into the Expedition with a sinking sensation in my chest. “This is a huge expenditure of manpower just to keep me safe.”
“Yes,” Kane said carefully.
“Shit, this isn’t going to work for the long haul, is it?” I clasped my hands together to hide the tremor.
Kane apparently wasn’t fooled. He glanced at my hands before meeting my eyes. “We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry. One thing at a time.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Stemp might just shoot me today anyway. That’d solve all my problems right there.”
“Except for the problem of being dead.”
I shrugged. “Not my problem. I won’t be here to worry about it.”
Kane eyed me with concern. “You say that like you don’t care.”
“At this point, I don’t.”
At Sirius Dynamics, I struggled to fasten my security fob. My perfidious hands shook and I breathed deeply, trying to calm down. I honestly didn’t know whether I’d leave the building alive. Despite my words to Kane, I kind of hoped I’d survive. The idea of being dead didn’t scare me at all, but the dying part didn’t sound like much fun.
I gave a mental shrug as I followed Kane’s broad shoulders down the hallway. What the hell, I’d died a couple of times already in the sim. Same old, same old.
I marched into the meeting room and took a seat beside Kane with my back to the wall. Holding my body language open and casual, I repressed the urge to fidget. Slow, even breathing. Calm.
My heart sped up when Stemp appeared in the doorway, his face impassive as always. He took a seat facing us and we locked eyes for a few seconds. Stemp spoke first.
“How long have you known about the bugs?”
“Since the day you put them in.”
“Who told you?” He shot an expressionless glance at Kane.
Fear rushed through me. Keep Kane out of it.
“Nobody told me. I smelled the guy you sent to install them, so I went looking.”
Stemp’s impassive mask faltered. “You smelled him?”
“Yes. He was a smoker who wore cologne.”
“Oh.” The mask was back in place. “And how did you know that the bugs were ours?”
“I didn’t. But the timing was just too coincidental.”
“That was a dangerous risk to take,” Stemp said. “You should have reported them right away. What if they hadn’t been ours?”
I shrugged. “Then whoever it was would’ve heard exactly what you heard. Which was nothing.”
“Until last night. What if Fuzzy Bunny had showed up instea
d of us?”
“If Fuzzy Bunny knew about me, they wouldn’t be wasting time bugging my house. They’d just walk in and snatch me.”
He pinned me with his reptilian gaze. “How can I trust you to keep your word when you deliberately conceal knowledge from me?”
I swallowed a wave of rage. He was accusing me of being untrustworthy? That was the funniest fucking thing I’d heard in a long time.
“Actually, speaking of deception, you do realize that as soon as you placed those bugs, you were in breach of our agreement,” I said calmly.
Kane shifted suddenly in the chair beside me, and Stemp’s eyes darted sideways. “Nonsense.”
“Not nonsense at all. Our agreement was that I would have the final say in any and all measures you used to protect me. And I’m being generous in allowing you the benefit of the doubt that the bugs were installed to protect me. You failed to inform me. You deliberately breached our agreement.”
I let the silence lengthen.
Stemp was too good a poker player to squirm, but his eyes twitched sideways again. “So what do you intend to do?” he asked finally.
“We had an agreement. You clearly understood the consequences of breaching the agreement. And you breached it less than twenty-four hours later.”
“Aydan...” Kane began. I glanced over to see the warning clear in his eyes.
I swung my gaze back to Stemp. “If you were in my place, what would you do?”
He leaned back in his chair, watching me. “I’d balance the seriousness of the breach against my loyalty to the other party in the agreement.”
I snorted. “Sadly, there is no loyalty to the other party in the agreement. The agreement existed solely because I can’t trust the other party. So in my place, what would you do?”
Stemp went still, and I could see the wheels turning. There was a short silence before he spoke again. “In your place, I’d consider my loyalty to the team and to the country, and balance that against the importance of making sure that the agreement was followed to the letter.”
“Really.” I stared into his snake eyes. “And, in my place, do you think it would be a good strategic decision to ignore a blatant breach of the contract, thereby giving the other party reason to believe the agreement had no teeth? How long do you think it would take before the other party decided to test the agreement again?”
Reach For the Spy Page 16
