by Leslie North
“Samson?”
He checked his rearview mirror then tugged his eyes away from the road long enough to glance at her. “Yeah?”
“That macho-ego thing you have going? Thanks.”
He pressed his lips together, not quite a smile but not far off. When she thought they would travel the distance—wherever they were going, she supposed it didn’t matter much so long as it was far away from the men who had emptied rounds into his hundred-thousand-dollar hyper-car—without further conversation, Samson’s voice again rumbled through the shadows.
“Buckle up, Curie. This is only the beginning.”
Chapter Three
Samson navigated the car onto the dirt road halfway between mile markers 173 and 174. A natural break in the Autumn foliage to some. To Rockwell’s agency, the obscure cut-off to the latest safe house added to the network. To Samson, home.
Or at least as home as he could ever get again with Riley gone.
It was coastal, isolated, sandwiched between a California state park and the Pacific Ocean. In some ways like the Cape Town of his childhood—fertile, green—before it had all gone to hell. In other ways, nothing of the chaos and over-energized feel of the South African city.
Gravel crunched beneath the performance tires, the car’s low clearing forcing Samson to take the road’s dips and turns slower than he itched to drive. The absence of the steady hush of the road roused Angela from the doze she had fallen into an hour into their trip. She had asked only one question—where are we going?—to which he replied, “Somewhere safe.”
Clearly, that had been enough for her to let her guard down.
For the first hour, she had taken to scribbling something on a series of argyle-patterned sticky notes, which she then affixed to her Little House on the Prairie dress, knee to hip—a rather short distance. For the remaining two hours, she slept while he puzzled her anomalies.
She was brilliant yet naïve, tough yet vulnerable, socially awkward yet mesmerizing. How could someone so utterly forgettable create something so subversively deadly? And therein was his answer. The world had simply forgotten to notice Angela McAllister.
Until now.
Then there was the booty-call ringtone. He couldn’t suppress a chuckle. Who would have guessed that Madame Curie had a not-so-thinly veiled nasty side?
Angela stretched and yawned and rearranged her brown and pink glasses on the bridge of her nose. She picked up right where she left off, adding a hand-scratched item to the list, mid-thigh. Satisfied, she plucked them from the cotton fabric, in order, and clicked her ballpoint pen closed.
“Are we here?”
She wouldn’t have seen anything to indicate here was a thing. Simply a half-mile of tightly-packed sugar pines.
“Almost.”
“Good. I’ve worked out a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yes. All productive endeavors start with a plan.”
“I’m all ears.” He wasn’t really. He just wanted to know what words snaked up her thigh for the better part of their road trip.
She wiggled her tight ass deeper in the seat. Her spine straightened as if she was set to give a dissertation on the art of hiding out. He hoped the speech included something about her ideas being shit as compared to her protector.
“First, we contact the authorities. Federal, of course. Local and state would be zero help.”
“No.”
“Next, I make a call to my contact at the State Department. He was the liaison ambassador—or maybe some sort of sublevel diplomat to Vietnam, I can’t recall—but he would best know how to advise me on locating my brother.”
“No.”
“Then, we analyze the recording you made and break it down, digitally, into its components for clues—provided you have tech out here in such a remote area beyond, say, a toaster.”
“Hmm.”
“You didn’t say no.”
“Are you finished?”
She flipped the top sticky note to the bottom of the stack and continued. “I will make a list of every detail I can remember about Mike’s travels—contacts, his sub-organization, the structure of the charity, to whom he answered.”
Also not a bad idea. But Samson wasn’t about to tell her that. Fortunately, he navigated the last crook in the road and the sight of their destination all but halted her, mid-list. He parked and exited the vehicle.
Angela followed. “That’s your safe house?”
A spike of defensiveness dislodged and skipped up his spine. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing,” she said, too perky, too quickly. “It’s just so…”
“So…?”
“White. And Victorian-esque. And so not you.”
They climbed the veranda, largely void of any homey touches since Riley’s death. The porch had been her space. Now it was something best ignored on the way inside.
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. A giant shipping container with a retractable bridge and walls that sealed off the windows in an emergency.” She tipped her face to the primitive but vaulted entryway. Natural morning light rained down on them. “Or, at the very least, fat cabin logs and mounted moose heads.”
“I only shoot bad guys.”
Her gaze plummeted to his; her face pinched as if he had just broken wind. She straightened her glasses.
“I’m kidding.” He dropped his keys in a bowl by the door and meandered his way toward the kitchen. “Mostly.”
He tugged open the refrigerator door and took a long swig of orange juice. When he closed the door, Angela stood at the room’s arched divide, prim feet side by side, her bag cross-body style, hands fiddling with a skirt already straightened to perfection.
“Want some?” He held the juice bottle out for her to take.
“After you drank from it?”
“Yes.”
She smiled, a patronizing little number that annoyed him about as much as her lists and her SAT words. “I’ll pass.”
“You as uptight about other things as you are saliva?”
“There are six hundred species of bacteria in your oral cavity. I don’t wish them in mine.”
“Relax, McAllister. You don’t have to worry about my oral cavity coming anywhere near yours.” He brushed past her. “Come on. I’ll show you to your room.”
She padded after him, the quiet soles of her ugly shoes stealth against the wood floors. He would prefer her barefoot—noisier. At least that’s what he told himself. But he couldn’t deny a part of him wanted to see what she was hiding beneath her opaque white hose and all those layers of proper. Purely to complete the mental puzzle, of course.
Halfway to her room, she paused at the art on the wall. Her intake of breath was audible.
“This is extraordinary. Reminiscent of Cholley. His folk statements, not his nudes.”
Samson loved the way that the mere mention of Cholley’s unrepressed images of nude males and females made her blush. More, he loved that she knew Cholley, one of Riley’s favorite artists.
“It’s a little known artist from Cape Town. He captured the suffering in the posture of the three men. Similar to Cholley, I suppose.”
“I had no idea. I thought I detected a faint accent, but I never would have placed it South African.”
“Yeah, well, that was a long time ago. Umlando wasendulo.” He continued into her room, effectively shutting down the tumultuous memories that always seemed to surface along with the good. Besides, he had calls to place, arrangements to make. This wasn’t a saunter through The Met as it may have been for her. This was life and death. Angela and her brother and countless others at the mercy of her scientific breakthrough of a sensitive diplomatic nature, as her file called it. All of them rested on his shoulders.
The shoulders of a man who lost his will to live on his honeymoon six years earlier.
***
Angela evaluated herself in the spare room’s full length mirror.
Skank. Her clo
thes definitely read skank. To the point where she considered sliding back into her own dress then thought better of it. It smelled like beer and cigarettes from the bar, sweat, leather from the Spyder’s interior, and—impossibly—him. Samson had only touched the dress once to Neanderthal-handle her back into his plan. How was it possible that her clothes smelled of him and she didn’t mind it? Not entirely.
The sparse wardrobe awaiting her in rolling luggage outside the bathroom door when she emerged fit her perfectly, except not at all. She had never owned a bra that wasn’t utilitarian, in nude or white, never had underwear that didn’t graze her navel and never—never—worn shorts. She settled on a short-sleeved blouse in crisp white, buttoned all the way to the collar, and a floor-length knit skirt with a salacious slit up the back, to which she promptly affixed staples from the mini office supply kit in her bag to fasten it closed. She washed her dress with sink soap, hung it over the shower rod to dry, and emerged from her bedroom, determined to extract a plan from the well-proportioned man who seemed diametrically opposed to thinking beyond his next exhale.
And find her cell phone, which had mysteriously gone missing since her shower.
She toured the house—no more than twelve-hundred square feet. But what the living space lacked, the visual depth more than made up. It was rustic, not out of place for the wilderness, but embraced the wilds of Africa in the chosen woods and the subtle fabrics that brought to mind blazing sunsets on the Serengeti. Almost every room contained handmade art—nothing expensive, but entirely challenging in content and statement. Art of struggle and famine and family. Angela wondered how much of that reached beneath Samson’s formidable skin to the man beneath.
And where the richness of Africa left off, his duty to country emerged. Medals, SEAL honors, certificates of valor and photographs depicting the kind of comradery that only happens when men surrender control over their lives to their brothers-in-arms. Of course he was a SEAL. She’d witnessed his iron physique up close in the phone booth. Her father had been a Marine. Mike would know some survival skills from the earlier days when their parents were alive. Would it be enough to keep him alive until she could undo what she began?
The thought of Mike tortured because of something she created incited a self-contempt so fierce she had to brace herself against the kitchen counter. Nausea stirred her mid-section. While she eeked out a moment to judge the clothes that had been left for her, Mike might have been burned or near-drowned or any of the other appalling tortures used to extract information.
With Guinness…your brother becomes a casualty…
She couldn’t stay.
The reality of what she had to do settled around her bones like a cancer. Without Samson, Mike stood a chance. She knew what his captors wanted, had known this possibility since she perfected the formula. That was the reason she had done final tests alone, with no recorded data. In the history of chasing warfare using chemicals, JNXN was next-generation atom bomb devastation. What had started as a quest for the environment had turned into a bid for ultimate control over entire regions of the planet. She alone knew the exact formula. She alone would buy enough time, give them just enough, to free Mike.
She alone.
Alone.
Her fingertips trembled against the polished, chilled granite. She considered a trip back to her room to retrieve her pills, two-hundred milligrams of the finest courage science had to offer. But the morning sun slashed through the kitchen window and she heard her protector just beyond the sliding glass door, his rich, baritone hum a quiet dose of calm more tempting than medication. Still, she had not found her phone. She wiped her slick palms against the soft pleats of her skirt, straightened her glasses, and shuffled to the patio door.
Samson sat cross-legged in the sunshine, ball cap sheltering his downturned face, cleaning a Winchester, Model 70. Beyond, at a range of five hundred yards, perhaps more, laid a fallen tree with a motley assortment of items for shot practice.
She meant only to duck out for a moment, ask Samson if he had confiscated her phone, her lifeline to Mike, but the tepid air wrapped her bare arms and stirred her damp hair and the soles of her feet sank into grass that had spent the entire summer growing to supple perfection. She no more wanted to leave this spot than she wanted to go rogue on terrorists. If only she hadn’t relentlessly pursued the top biochemistry lab in the world. If only she had listened when Mike worried about the security checks, the level of clearance, the red flags inside Podium Biotech.
If only she hadn’t viewed this project as the safest use of her talents.
Safest.
Huh.
Samson looked up from polishing the gun’s sight with a rag. Something on her snagged his attention. His focus remained on her, shoulders to bare toes. She wondered if the skirt staples had ripped free in the wind.
She tried not to look at his broad, muscle-crowned shoulders, the sparse dusting of tattoos on his exposed skin, or the way his eyes staked her like a specimen he planned to study, long-term.
Never had she had a man look at her for so long who didn’t want calculations or answers and never, ever, a man this distractingly beautiful. She feigned interest at a random spot in the clearing to recapture a stasis pulse. Her mouth went dry.
“Do you have my phone?”
“Yes. I did a fast-charge while you were cleaning up. Had it with me since.”
Angela pressed the pad of her thumb to her front teeth and worried the skin with her bottom teeth.
“He hasn’t called back,” added Samson, as if such a man was capable of reading her next thought. But he had.
She glanced up at the tree canopy. What of reception out here?
“The signal is strong on this mountain.”
Again with the mind reading. She had never felt more exposed. Not even alone, in her bedroom, sans clothes. God, did he ever break eye contact once he had it? She wanted him to go back to cleaning his rifle so she could draw a normal, healthy breath.
“We’ll be ready, Angela. I have a script in my pocket.”
Script. That was good, right? He would think her compliant. After he fell asleep, she would go.
“I have to know what’s going on.”
“It’s best if you don’t.”
“I function better with plans and logical next steps.”
“Rockwell has men all over this.”
“With all due respect, Rockwell’s loved one isn’t the hostage.”
Samson stood. In a mesmerizing display of brushing grass and leaves from the red-tab jeans that hugged his backside, he set the weapon down with the precision of someone who held great respect for human life. “Rockwell has been a hostage. Budyonnorsk, Russia. 1995. There’s no one better, with more real-world connections, diplomatic and otherwise.”
A strong breeze ripped leaves from the white alders surrounding the grassy knoll, a foretelling of winter. She fastened a persistent lock of hair behind her ear. “I need more.”
“You won’t get it from me. Your safety is inversely proportional to how much intelligence I give you.”
“My father told me of a…diversion…in which he used to partake with his fellow Marines. Boredom, I suppose, during all those hours of waiting. A shooting match of sorts. One of confessions. Whoever shoots the best can ask anything of the others, be it a favor or a truth.”
In the light of day, Samson’s bearded stubble and the chestnut hue of his skin popped out in full-relief against his immaculate white teeth. His smile disarmed her, and she wasn’t yet equipped. She had to equalize the playing field before his charms turned her into one of his helium-brained conquests.
“You want to challenge me to a shooting competition?”
She shrugged, afraid words might give her away.
“If I make the better shot, you confess any truth I ask?” said Samson.
“And if I make the better shot, you tell me what I want to know about the plan to save Mike.”
This time his smile was already that of a ch
ampion, first-round knockout. No contest.
A strange vibration circulated her stomach and journeyed south. From the game, she told herself. From besting his ego. Nothing more.
“Ladies first. Choose your weapon.” He gestured wide to a small collection of rifles propped against a log bench in the house’s shade. “The featherweight on the far right might be best for your…arms.”
A Remington 700. Sacrificing weight for accuracy would never get her answers. Only the most precision piece would do.
“I like the black one with the long thingy on top.”
“The sight?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure about this?” Samson retrieved the bolt-action Mark V and placed it in her outstretched hands.
For show, she lifted the wrong end up. “Positive.”
“Whoa.” His wide, callused palm was on the barrel, angling it to the ground before she had time to blink. “First rule of gun safety—always assume it’s loaded.”
“Loaded. Got it,” she echoed.
He selected a .300 WSM. The recoil on that gun, alone, would give her everything she wanted to know inside of ten minutes.
“Rules?” he asked, placing one headset over her ears, another over his.
“Clean shot. Nothing left on the log. Opponent chooses the target.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I choose the rubber duck.”
Angela squinted. Even with 20-15 lenses, she couldn’t tell the bright yellow object was a toy duck. Didn’t matter much. She had no intention of hitting this one.
She nestled the butt of the rifle against the wrong hollow of her arm and pressed her cheek to the wood. The crosshairs locked onto a grayish, widow-maker branch. She squeezed the trigger.
The Mark V felt clumsy, unresponsive to her taste. The rush of firing, however, was still there.
One old branch crashed to the forest floor.
