The Protector

by Marliss Melton

  Jackson threw up his hands. “That’s exactly why McClellan chose him to protect his daughter. Why can’t we just respect his wishes and get back to the business of catching terrorists?”

  “Why can’t you just shut the fuck up and do as you’re told?”

  Ringo stared at the Coke in his hand like he’d never seen one like it.

  “There’s no call for profanity, sir,” Jackson countered, holding Caine’s gaze without flinching. “We should be able to discuss this like professionals.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” Caine insisted, his fair complexion mottling with rage. “I give the orders. You do as I say. Get used to it, Rookie.”

  “This isn’t about me, sir.” It was all Jackson could do to keep his voice level. “This is about a former Navy SEAL. SEALs are trained to fulfill a mission at any risk. He got his order straight from General McClellan. He is not going to hand Eryn back to us without a fight.”

  “I expect he won’t,” Caine agreed, snatching up the document with which he’d blackmailed Barnes. “But last time I checked, we were law in this land, not some renegade vigilante.”

  Ringo spoke up quietly. “What about Calhoun’s security system?”

  “We’re going to use it against him,” Caine decided, smacking his open palm with the sheaf of papers. “Tomorrow morning, Rookie, you are going to hit up Town Hall for the plats of his property.”

  Jackson expelled a long, shuddering breath.

  “Give me a hard time about it, Maddox,” Caine added, thrusting a threatening finger at him, “and I’ll personally escort you to the Bureau’s back door. Ringo,” he barked, pivoting toward the sound room, “get us out of here.”

  **

  “Who lives here?” Eryn asked, holding on tight as Ike drove them through the broad, shallow creek at the base of the mountain and out the other side. He slowed to a stop before a modest mobile home basking in afternoon sunlight and backing up to a sharply rising forest.

  “An acquaintance,” Ike said. “Name’s Dwayne.”

  “I thought we were going to do laundry.”

  “My machines are here.”

  “Oh.” She reconsidered the dismal looking trailer. “Is Dwayne even home?”

  “Not yet.” Ike killed the engine and fetched the laundry bag from the back seat, slinging it over his shoulder. As he rounded the vehicle, his gaze did that unnerving, scanning thing that stirred her apprehension.

  “Hop out,” he said, opening her door.

  “What about Winston?”

  “I cracked the windows. He can wait.”

  Calling reassurance to her dog, Eryn trailed Ike to the front door. “Do you have a key?” she asked, as they mounted the rickety steps.

  He turned the doorknob. “No one locks up out here.”

  You do, she thought, remembering how he’d secured the cabin when they left.

  She found herself in the smallest living room imaginable. Shag carpeting complimented the camouflage pattern of the sofa and the deer’s head mounted to the wall. Oh my.

  “In here.” Ike led the way to a slightly larger kitchen. The cabinetry was as functional as it was in Ike’s cabin, making the brand new, heavy-duty washer and dryer set look out of place against the far wall.

  “Have a seat.” He dumped their bundle on the dryer.

  Eryn sat tentatively at the breakfast table. “Need help?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  Brushing a crumb from the table’s sticky surface, Eyrn propped her chin on her hand and watched. Ike was dumping all the clothes into the washer at once. “Umm…” She cringed.

  He sent her a questioning look.

  “You’re not going to wash those all together are you?”

  “That’s what I usually do.”

  “Well, you might want to wash the whites separately. Otherwise, my sweat suit’s going to turn your underwear pink.”

  With lightning-quick reflexes, he snatched back the colored clothing, clearly unnerved by the thought of owning pink underwear. Eryn hid a smile behind her hand.

  “Oh, hot water,” she instructed as he went to start the white load. “Gosh, I would have thought the Navy taught you some laundry basics,” she commented. “They taught you how to make a bed, right?”

  Closing the machine, he denied it. “Taught myself.”

  “What about your mother?”

  He looked away. “What about her?”

  “You had a mother, right?” For all she knew, he’d been raised by wolves.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Didn’t she teach you how to do laundry?”

  “Don’t remember.” He pushed wordlessly off the appliance and stalked into the other room. Eryn jumped up to follow.

  She found him easing into the only armchair available. He pulled down the brim of his baseball cap and folded his arms across his chest. “What are we doing?” she asked him.

  “Waiting.”

  She cast her eyes toward the ceiling. “Okay. Are you sure Dwayne won’t mind?”

  “Positive.”

  Eryn looked around for somewhere to sit. The camouflaged sofa with the deer head looming over it was out of the question. “What about your family?” she heard herself demand.

  “What about them?” His tone was as remote as Timbuktu.

  “You don’t even know if they’re still in Ohio. Why don’t you keep in touch?” The puzzle of his past was starting to frustrate her.

  But not him, obviously. He looked like he was already half asleep. “Don’t know,” he said.

  “Don’t you ever call?” If her mother were still alive, she would call her every day.

  He tugged the brim of his cap even lower and tucked his chin to his chest.

  He couldn’t make it any more obvious that he was done talking. Eryn propped her hands on her hips. She glared at his unresponsive figure. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she announced, retracing her footsteps.

  Thumping down at the table, she fumed over Ike’s refusal to make general conversation. With a shrug and a defeated sigh, she gingerly crossed her arms on the sticky table, laid her aching head on her arms and shut her eyes. Another poor night’s sleep followed by a second day of intensive training had taken its toll. Her limbs grew slack and weighted. She tumbled into oblivion without meaning to.

  **

  Elkton Motel was an all-brick relic from the 1950’s. From its tin roof to the used campers set up on the perimeter to provide overflow during peak tourist season, it looked like a haven for biker groups touring the Blue Ridge. The FBI’s Mobile Command Center, large, sleek and silver, looked as out of place amidst the campers as a Ferrari in a lot full of Volkswagen Beetles.

  Scooping up the plats of Calhoun’s property from the seat beside him, Jackson got out of the Taurus and approached the RV with leaden feet. He was really starting to dislike his boss.

  As he stepped up and in, Ringo put a finger to his lips and gestured toward the sound room. Their supervisor was talking on his cell phone, a finger stuck in one ear.

  Jackson could tell by his “Whatever you say, sir” that he was kissing up to Bloomberg, again. He turned to the beverage bar for an iced tea, needing to cool his simmering resentment.

  He hadn’t taken more than a swallow when Caine called them back. “We’ve got a new suspect,” he announced, dropping in front of a monitor. “Our asset was approached by a young man desiring to know where McClellan’s daughter was taken.”

  Pleased that someone in D.C. was still working the investigation, Jackson watched as Caine opened an attachment displaying a grainy photo of a vacant-eyed youth.

  Jackson frowned. Not another one.

  “Another kid,” Ringo exclaimed. “How many more are there?”

  “Eight extremists meet online, Ringo, so you do the math,” Caine retorted. “But this is the first time Mustafa’s been approached in person. This one’s not too bright. Left our asset with a cell number registered to a twenty-three-year-old Pakistani named Shahbaz Wahidi.
He’s an auto-mechanic, still lives with his parents.”

  Jackson frowned at the photo in puzzlement. “Why did this kid expose himself? He could have made the same request of our asset online.”

  “Maybe they suspect that we’ve stumbled on their chat room,” Caine suggested.

  Ringo pushed his glasses higher. “So what are we going to tell this Shahbaz Wahidi?”

  “We’ll tell him Eryn McClellan is staying with a friend of her father’s,” Caine answered. “We’ll make it a city address, somewhere convenient for the terrorists, since we’re tight on time.”

  Jackson pinched the ridge of his nose and shook his head. Why hadn’t they offered up a false address in the first place, instead of putting Eryn at risk?

  “Oh, one more thing.” Caine opened a second attachment showing the image of a badly decomposing body with a ravaged neck. “Pedro was found in his shed under fifty-pound bags of Weed and Feed. As you can see, his throat was slit like Itzak’s.”

  Goosebumps sprouted on Jackson’s forearms. “Same weapon?”

  “Forensics says it was the same six-inch blade. Severed his vocal chords before he could scream.”

  Déjà vu mushroomed in Jackson’s brain. Suddenly, he was back in Iraq, hearing the news that several of his missing Marines had been found with their throats slit. He swallowed hard. “Sir, this isn’t the work of a rebellious teenager,” he whispered.

  Caine didn’t even look at him. “You got another theory for us, hotshot?”

  One neatly slit throat was a fluke. Two of them meant someone out there had learned a lethal skill. “Ever tried slitting someone’s throat, sir?” Jackson asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, I have.” He let himself remember the sneak attack on Mosul. “It takes hours of training to finesse. For that matter, so does building a pipe bomb.”

  Caine leaned back in his seat. “What are you saying, Maddox?”

  Jackson deliberated risking Caine’s wrath by going out on a limb. “I think we’re dealing with a non-native threat, sir,” he ventured.

  Caine gave a bark of laughter. “The problem with you, Rookie, is that you’re still jumpy from your last tour. The Brotherhood has claimed responsibility. We don’t need to start inventing suspects.”

  Jackson looked back at the grisly picture. Fine. All he could do was make suggestions. But he couldn’t shake his conviction that Eryn’s would-be killer had come across the ocean to avenge her father’s actions.

  “Ho, sir!” Ringo exclaimed, pointing at Jackson’s laptop which stood open on the console. “Our client’s not on the mountain anymore.”

  **

  Ike was amused to note that Stanley’s princess drooled. As he folded his briefs and T-shirts into neat little squares, he watched saliva trickle from the corner of her slightly parted lips toward the wet spot on the table. The dryer hummed with the second load, but Eryn slept on, oblivious.

  Maybe I’m pushing her too hard, he considered with a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t like she’d signed up to take his course. Leaving her as vulnerable as a baby, on the other hand, would be a huge disservice to her. Teaching her to shoot, to think through her fear, made perfect sense.

  If he could just do it without wanting something more, without getting sucked back into the War on Terror. Extremists weren’t his problem anymore; they were hers. The most he could do was to teach her to defend herself. His job would be a hell of a lot easier, though, if she’d stop insisting that they get better acquainted.

  It was none of her business what kind of family he came from, whether he called his mother or not. He didn’t need to hear her dismay, which only made him feel ashamed and then cheated. Hell, not everyone had parents who adored them.

  The only people who’d ever treated Ike like family were Stanley and his brothers in Team Five. They’d lived through glory and hell together, day in and day out for years. They knew each others’ secrets, weaknesses, and strengths. Hell, they could practically read each others’ minds.

  A sudden pain lanced Ike’s chest. Damn it, he still missed them—the ones who were gone forever and those he hoped still lived. He leaned against the dryer, racked by grief.

  Where was Spellman recuperating, he wondered, after stepping on that mine?

  It came as a relief to hear Winston barking out front. Counting on the dryer noise to keep Eryn unaware of what was going on, Ike hurried from the kitchen to intercept Dwayne Barnes in his front yard.

  He found the thickset mountain man sitting in his F150 just looking at Ike’s Durango. Seeing Ike step out of his trailer, Dwayne pushed slowly out of his truck and approached him with a less-than-enthusiastic step. “Hey, LT.” He stopped about three yards away and gave his bushy beard a scratch. “What’s new with you?”

  Usually Dwayne was all boisterous handshakes and claps on the back. Ike searched his guarded expression. “Not much. You?”

  “Oh, same ol’, same ol’.” Dwayne rocked for an awkward moment on his feet. “I see you got yourself a dog,” he observed, jerking his thumb at Winston.

  Ike acknowledged the comment with a nod. “You just come from work?” he asked.

  “Naw, I’m takin’ the day off.”

  “You go into town?”

  “Yep. Had to buy lumber for my new deck.”

  Ike glanced toward the planks filling the back of Dwayne’s Ford. “Happen to see a large silver RV anywhere?”

  The man stared down at the grass. “Can’t say I did,” he answered unconvincingly.

  Ike’s sixth sense told him Dwayne was lying. The mountain man shuffled his feet. He cleared his throat. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. “You got something to tell me, Dwayne?” Ike invited, softly.

  “No,” said Dwayne, just a little too quickly.

  “That right? Maybe you need me to jog your memory.” The threat was accompanied by a widening of his stance.

  “All right!” Dwayne threw up his hands. “I’ll tell you what I know.” He sent Ike a tortured look. “There’s some FBI guys in town, LT, and they’re askin’ all about you.”

  The confession wasn’t altogether unexpected, but it struck Ike squarely in the solar plexus. He took a step closer, pitched his voice low. “What are they asking?”

  “They wanted to know what you were like, if you were right in the head, and all. They wanted me to list the weapons you have.”

  Dwayne’s words made Ike’s blood boil. “You told them,” he guessed.

  “I had to!” Dwayne took a precautionary step back. “They knew something about me. Something that would’ve cost me my job.”

  “You sold me out,” Ike accused, incredulous.

  “Aw, hell, you got nothin’ to hide!” Dwayne protested. “You’re a freakin’ war hero, LT.”

  “I want to know exactly what you told them,” Ike hissed.

  “That you had a security system,” Dwayne admitted. “That you’d know they was comin’, and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell they’d catch you, if you didn’t want to be caught.”

  “Just like your favorite movie, Rambo,” Ike elaborated.

  “Exactly,” Dwayne agreed.

  Shit!

  Ike thought of Eryn still sleeping in Dwayne’s kitchen. If the man got a look at her, there was no telling what kinds of rumors would start to fly. No one needed to know who she was, let alone where she was located.

  Planting a hand on Dwayne’s massive chest, Ike propelled him toward his vehicle. “I think you’d better take a drive, Dwayne, before I break your fucking nose.”

  “I’m sorry, LT! I’ll make it up to you, I swear it.”

  “Go,” Ike ordered.

  With a resigned look, Dwayne slumped back to his truck. He stepped in, revved the engine, and took off with a spray of gravel.

  Good riddance, thought Ike, but then he felt his nape prickle. Turning, he found Eryn standing on Dwayne’s front stoop, staring in astonishment at the retreating Ford. “Was that Dwayne?” she asked.
/>   “No,” he lied, stalking back to the trailer.

  As he hustled her inside, she shot him a reproachful look. “Why on earth did you chase him off?” she demanded.

  “Time to leave,” he said, ignoring the question and continuing into the kitchen. There, he scraped the colored clothes out of the dryer and stuffed them into the laundry bag on top of the whites.