by Dana Marton
But something about Troy Hill didn’t sit right with her. What harm would it do to do a little checking? Nobody would have to know.
She pushed up the window quietly and climbed out onto the roof. She lunged and jumped to the top of the foot-wide stone wall that surrounded the property, crouching so the hemlock would cover her from sight of the guardhouse and the grounds. When the van rolled through the gate, she glanced at the guardhouse—Jason hadn’t come out—then straightened and softly stepped over to the top of the vehicle. She timed it so the van was already being jostled by the speed bump that served as an extra security measure.
She squatted immediately and opened the storage unit, hanging on to it for support, found nothing inside but a couple of dusty tools. Once she folded her body into the space, she pulled the top down and hung onto the edge, leaving a small gap so she could see where they were going. The van picked up speed as it reached the end of the street.
She would stay with them until they took the turn for Langtry. Then she’d slip away at a red light unseen. She wanted to make sure that the FBI really did have the man, and he’d been just messing with her head when he’d made all those claims.
But the van didn’t head toward the FBI headquarters. It headed toward the Potomac River and stopped at the shipyard. The motor went silent. They cut the headlights, but a light pole ahead provided enough illumination for her to see the two men shove Troy toward a mid-sized fishing boat that bobbed on the water. They dragged him on board—not without a scuffle—and got the motor going.
He fought at every chance, but with his hands and feet tied, he didn’t get far. Knocking him off balance was too easy. And once he went down, the two men kicked the living daylights out of him again.
Minutes ticked by before he stopped moving.
They left him, but didn’t turn on any lights on the boat as they prepared to cast off.
The longer she watched, the more the scene looked like something out of an old-fashioned mob movie, thugs taking their target out to sea to sleep with the fishes.
She slipped to the ground on the opposite side of the van so she wouldn’t be seen, kept low as she snuck closer to the boat. Then she ducked behind a metal barrel when she reached the water’s edge.
One man took the helm, while the other shoved Troy below deck. When the guy came back up, he untied the boat. Then they were underway, and he joined his buddy by the steering wheel. Since they hadn’t turned on the navigation lights, both were probably needed to maneuver the boat.
She knew nothing about boats. Her family was Montana royalty and into cattle and horses. She’d spent the last couple of years of her life overseas, again among mountains.
She lunged forward on a spur-of-the-moment decision, ran along then jumped. If she slipped, the propellers would cut her into pieces. But her military training took over and pushed her to do what she had to do to achieve her objective.
Which was what?
Damned, if she knew.
Saving an innocent man, she supposed. If Troy Hill was that.
She ducked behind the chum cooler just as one of the men came back to investigate what had rocked the boat.
“I don’t see anything.” He peered over the side. “Maybe you hit a floating log.” He plodded down the stairs to the cabin below, came back up in two minutes. “We’re fine. She’s not taking on water.” Then he returned to the stern again.
She still hoped they would simply cross the river and dock at some secret FBI facility. Maybe everything looked strange only because the FBI had gone out of their way so that nobody would find out about the intruder at the mansion. The Congressman probably had that kind of pull.
Instead they continued downriver, moving through the city.
She fingered the phone in her pocket, not sure whom to call. Her instincts screamed that something wasn’t right, but she didn’t exactly trust her own judgment these days. There was a fair chance that she was simply being paranoid. She did her best to pull herself together.
She wasn’t in enemy territory anymore. Everyone wasn’t out to get her and the people around her. She was safe, back in the U.S. She had to find ways to fit back into civilian society.
For a second, she regretted climbing out that window. What was she doing here?
She drew a deep breath. She would stay and observe. No action was necessary on her part at this stage. If anything changed, she could make a decision at that time to get involved and how.
Minutes ticked by, then an hour as the boat cut through the water, passing through the lit-up city, passing under the bridges.
“Going home after this?” one of the men asked the other.
“To Jenny’s place. The wife thinks I’m doing the nightshift.”
They shared a laugh, then the talk turned to the money they were going to make tonight and the seedy places where they would spend it.
The river widened as they reached the deeper waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
She shifted in her spot, unease creeping up her spine. She wasn’t a strong swimmer.
Then the boat’s motor stopped suddenly, and an eerie quiet enveloped the vessel. The lit up houses on shore looked as small, and seemed as far away, as the stars above. She held her breath as the two men walked toward the hatch. One went down; the other dragged a cement brick and heavy iron chains from the front of the boat.
She had a difficult time coming up with an innocent explanation for that.
Troy hobbled up the stairs, shoved from behind. His face bled. So did his hands. His shoulder looked strange. Crooked. It almost looked like… He turned and she could see him better for a second in the moonlight. Okay, the shoulder was definitely dislocated.
That had to hurt like hell.
He tried to lurch against the men, but being hogtied worked against him. Still, he managed to knock one of them over. The other man put a gun to his head. She could clearly see the silencer, heard the soft click as the safety was released.
She understood enough body language to know that the move wasn’t a simple threat. They meant to kill him, and they would do it right now, right here.
She grabbed her own gun, sprung up, pushed by instinct and training, aimed as she went, double tapping the guy who held the gun. Clean shot to the heart, clean shot to the head. His fallen buddy came up, pulling his own weapon. She squeezed off two more shots and watched as the man folded to the deck.
Then she froze.
Her breath came in ragged gasps. Fear and confusion washed over her, realities blending together, battle scenes dancing in front of her eyes. She could smell the blood and the gunpowder.
She shook her head and blinked a couple of times. Swore under her breath, then she forced air into her lungs before she moved up to the pile of limbs, keeping her gun ready. The two thugs lay dead, partially on top of their prisoner.
Troy blinked up at her, surprise on his scarred face.
She lowered her gun. “Are you okay?”
He sucked in air as he pushed to sitting, rolling the bodies off him. “Been better.”
She hesitated. Did she trust him now? How good could her judgment be when she hallucinated battle scenes at least once a day?
“Not that I mind being tied up and alone on a boat with a beautiful woman under the stars, but the plastic is cutting off my circulation.” His tone was mild, his attitude watchful.
She pulled her knife from her boot, freed his legs first, then his wrists. She held out a hand to pull him up, and he accepted the help, his large hand folding around hers.
She stood ready to fight if he tried to tackle her, but he didn’t.
Okay.
She gave him a minute to get blood flow back to all his extremities before she broke bad news number one. “We’ll have to do something about that shoulder.”
She reached for his hand and gripped it tightly.
“Dare I hope all this handholding will eventually lead to romance?” he asked with a wry tilt of his lips.
She yanked d
ownward, hard, in one quick motion, and winced at the sound of his shoulder popping back into place.
His lips narrowed into a thin, straight line. A long second passed before he could say, “Thanks.”
She nodded. Time for bad news number two. “I can’t drive a boat.”
“I can.” He bent and searched the men. “No identifying documents,” he said when he was done, frowning.
“Are you really with the FBI?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Maybe you should call them.”
“Wharton’s goons took my secure phone when they caught me. I have another one at my place.” He moved to the head of the boat and she followed him. “Somebody had to have heard those shots. Let’s get out of here.” He started up the motor and began to turn the boat around.
She glanced back at the bodies, saw blood pooling on the deck and she swallowed hard.
“You okay?”
Hardly. “I’m supposed to be adjusting to civilian life, not shooting people in the night.” Frustration swept through her, quickly followed by anger. She pushed some of that anger his way. “You can’t be too good an agent if they caught you. Didn’t you pay attention in training?”
He’d turned the boat by this point, and they were now going back up the way they’d come. A few minutes ticked by before he responded.
“I was in the conference room, trying to place a bug. The room had one entrance. The only way to get to it is to walk by the outside window. I figured if anyone was coming, I’d see them.”
She knew which room he was talking about, and he was right. “So why didn’t you?”
“The housekeeper’s grandkids are short enough to fit under the window.”
The kids, a gaggle of little girls, came by every day to visit their grandmother who lived on the premises.
“I had my back to the door,” he went on, “heard the noise, and pulled my gun as I turned.”
“They screamed like banshees,” she finished the story for him.
“Then security rushed in and, at that point, the only way out would have been to open fire.”
“So you let them take you.”
“I figured there’d be an opportunity to get away later.”
“What happened to the bug?” Nick had said nothing about finding one of those.
He grimaced. “I swallowed it.”
They moved up the river quietly for a while. She kept glancing back at the men she’d killed. Maybe her mother was right. Trouble seemed to find her.
She would be out of a job, she realized. After only one week. She didn’t look forward to a police investigation. In her experience, even a justified kill could heap a load of trouble on a person’s head, even in war, let alone back here. “Do you know who they are?”
He shook his head. “I’ll have someone come and pick up the bodies. Maybe the lab can identify them by their fingerprints.”
Her shoulders sagged. “The cops and the FBI will want to talk to me.”
He seemed thoughtful. “Why did you come?”
“Saw them put you into the van. A couple of things seemed off.”
“You saved my life.”
The honest appreciation felt good, his raspy voice tickling something inside her. Since it made her feel strange, she brushed the sensation away. “No sense in getting all mushy.”
He gave a flat grin.
She felt a responding tug on her lips that surprised her. She had very little to smile about. She’d just killed two men and probably lost her job. She was not looking forward to weeks of being annoyed by law enforcement, and then months or possibly years of “told-you-so” from her mother. That last one, especially, was enough to make a girl consider tying that cement brick to her own feet and going over the side of the boat into the dark water.
~~~***~~~
Chapter Three
Troy docked at the boathouse community where he lived, just outside the city, then dragged the bodies down to the fishing boat’s cabin. He covered the blood stains on deck with a tarp, before he jumped up to the dock. Claire came after him.
She still viewed him with some suspicion. “Where are we going?”
“My place. I need to get my backup phone. My backup gun wouldn’t hurt either. Are they going to miss you at work?”
“My next shift doesn’t start until six. But I can’t go back anyway.” Her shoulders slumped with misery. “I needed that job, dammit.” She shot him a dark look.
“We’ll discuss that in a minute. What time is it?” In addition to his cell phone, they’d also taken his watch when they’d stuffed him into that cage in the basement.
She glanced at the green plastic watch on her wrist. “I have about an hour.”
Tight, but they could make it.
She kept looking back at the tarp, the muscles in her jaw drawn tight, stress etching lines around her eyes. But she followed him, checking out the old houseboat he lived on, and not looking impressed in the least.
He didn’t spend enough time at home to do all the repairs old Betsy needed. Suddenly he was conscious of the peeling paint the moonlight illuminated, the creaking boards and the mess he’d left this morning before he’d driven over to the Congressman’s mansion.
He’d never minded the lack of refinement. He liked the solitude. Being here had always filled him with peace. “She was my grandfather’s.”
He showed her his living room and the galley. Then he gestured toward the back. “Bathroom, bedroom.”
She shifted from one foot to the other. Right. She didn’t know him from Adam, and wasn’t comfortable being down below deck with him.
He washed the blood off his face and hands in the sink.
When he was clean, he opened the wall safe and grabbed his backup gun, then his FBI ID and tossed it to her. She turned it over in her hand, nodded to him and threw it back, her shoulders relaxing marginally.
He grabbed his second phone, palmed the keys to his fully restored 1967 Chevy Camero, black with white racing stripes--not exactly meant for undercover work, pretty much the opposite of low profile. But his black SUV sat a block from the mansion where he’d parked it before he’d been caught.
“What’s your full name?” he asked conversationally as he stashed everything in his pockets. “I should know the name of the woman who saved my life.” He gave a quick smile. “It doesn’t happen every day.”
“Claire Montgomery.”
“Why don’t you keep an eye on the boat we just brought in, make sure nobody goes around it.” Not that he expected trouble. The people in the other houseboats seemed to be tucked in for the night.
He pulled the bedroom door shut when she was gone, and dialed his FBI handler. He filled the man in on everything, asked for a pickup for the bodies and finished with, “I want to bring her on board. She has a free pass to go in and out of the mansion as she pleases.”
“The op is too delicate.”
“She’s a soldier, not a civilian. She’s already involved. She’s smart. She’s not going to just accept any story we make up for her.”
Silence on the other end.
“I vouch for her,” he said, desperate to see the op completed. “If anything goes wrong, I take full responsibility.”
More silence. “If she messes up, you go down with her. You’re not to let her out of your sight.” Then another pause. “I’m running a background check as we speak. If I don’t call you back in ten minutes, she’s okay.”
“Thank you, sir.” He ended the call and dragged his battered body up the stairs.
She stood in the shadows at the railing, her arms wrapped around herself as she stared at the fishing boat. She heard him coming up and turned to him. A haunted expression clouded her face.
“I need your phone number.” He tossed his own cell phone to her as they headed to his car, so she could enter her information while he drove.
He opened the door for her, which earned him a funny look. He supposed in the Army she’d gotten used to being treated l
ike one of the guys. But when he went back around, turned the key in the ignition and the engine purred to life, she actually smiled.
For the first time.
She had a great body and a memorable face to start with, but the smile put the whole package way over the top. She was ridiculously beautiful, and need sliced through him on auto response, desire that he hadn’t felt in a long time. And then he remembered his scars, the contrast between their appearances. He turned his face away, focusing on the road and the sparse traffic.
“I’m still waiting for you to tell me what’s going on, exactly,” she said.
He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. He’d tell her what she needed to know if he didn’t get that call in the next five minutes.
“So you live in D.C. alone? Your folks are still back in Montana?”
She nodded.
“No boyfriend?”
“None of your business.”
He caught the tone of defensiveness in her voice. No boyfriend. Good. “Roommates?”
“I can keep my mouth shut, if that’s what you’re getting at. And I don’t have a roommate.”
“Security clearance?”
She nodded. “Have to have that to be put on the Congressman’s security team.”
He asked a few more questions. Nothing in her answers made him wary or regret wanting to bring her on board. She’d gained his approval in record time. She’d demonstrated that she was open minded, quick to act, capable of stealth and, more importantly, knew right from wrong—even if she was a little raw around the edges. He glanced at the clock again. The ten minutes were up. They had close to another hour in the car, enough time to fill her in on the basics.
“How would you like to moonlight for the FBI for a little while? You go back to the mansion as if nothing happened. Keep your eyes and ears open and report to me once a day at a pre-agreed location.”
She considered him carefully. “I need to know what this is all about.”
