Love Inspired Suspense June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Exit StrategyPaybackCovert Justice

by Shirlee McCoy

  Still, he hated to burden him with the knowledge that someone had tried to poison him today.

  And it had been poison. The only time Heidi had left his side had been for the ten minutes when she’d raced to the parking lot to give Max the almost-empty bottle of Mountain Dew from the cup holder of his car. How they’d managed to test it in one afternoon he’d never know, but thirty minutes before he was discharged, Heidi’s phone had lit up with one word.

  Atropine.

  Blake now knew more than he’d ever wanted to know about atropine. He’d especially loved the part where Heidi had told him if he’d downed the Mountain Dew more quickly, or had the second one immediately after the first, the results could have been fatal.

  Heidi planned to go to his office later tonight, remove all the bottles of Mountain Dew in his fridge and have them checked, as well. She expected to find them all laced with atropine.

  Heidi didn’t know if they’d been trying to kill him outright, or if the goal had been to incapacitate him. Either way, someone was out to get him. The obvious someone was Mark.

  “Let’s hear it.” His dad spoke with authority, and Blake knew trying to sugarcoat the situation wouldn’t work.

  “Looks like someone’s trying to kill me, Dad.” Saying the words aloud, watching the emotions race across his dad’s face, made it all so real, but he didn’t want his dad to see how worried he was. He blew out a long breath. “Heidi’s staying close, and she’s recommended I switch to water.”

  His dad smiled. “I’m proud of you, son.”

  Blake gulped. Even at thirty-three, his dad’s approval meant everything. Although in this case, he didn’t think he deserved it.

  “We will get through this. You stick close to Heidi and do what she says. I know she looks like a fragile little thing, but from what they told me, she’s brilliant and lethal. I have a lot of questions about this stuff, but one thing I know for sure. We are safer with her here.”

  What? “Who told you that?” Had he talked to Max? Or one of the other agents?

  His dad winked. “You didn’t think I was going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs, did you? I know a few people who know a few people.”

  “Dad, I don’t know if digging around into Heidi’s background is a good idea.” Heidi had told him how compartmentalized everything had to be, for her protection and to keep from spooking the Kovacs.

  His dad didn’t look worried. “We’ve never talked much about what I did in Vietnam, I guess.”

  “No.” Never.

  “We aren’t going to start now, but it happens that a buddy of mine from back then is a bigwig at the FBI. I made a call. He paid me a visit. We talked.”

  A rush of emotion squeezed Blake’s chest. His dad was always looking out for them, even while recovering from a stroke.

  “I know she made a good case, but I wanted to be sure. And I am. She’s the real deal. And you made the right call. I’ve assured him she’ll get our full support.”

  He cleared his throat. “He asked if I wanted to receive regular updates from Heidi, but I told him no. Told him my son had things well in hand.”

  Blake swallowed hard.

  “I don’t know why I’ve been sidelined, son.” Jeffrey tapped his recliner and shook his head ruefully. “But while my body may not be cooperating with me, my brain is hard at work. I’m praying for you, for Heidi. Even for Mark. All day. I wonder if that’s why I’m here, because God knew the best way for me to fight this battle was from my knees.”

  Blake stared at his dad in amazement. He could only hope he would be like him someday. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Let’s pray before we go eat that delicious dinner your mom’s been working on all afternoon.”

  His dad had been praying over him for as long as he could remember and Blake had always known it. But as he listened to his father plead for protection and wisdom, for him and for Heidi, and even for Mark to turn his heart to God, Blake thought his own heart might explode.

  He walked into the kitchen more confident than he’d been since the moment Heidi had jumped into his car eleven days ago. Maybe God hadn’t dropped the ball after all. Maybe God had been moving the pieces into the best position possible.

  His mom flipped over chicken in the cast-iron skillet. “Grab me that plate, dear.” She nodded toward a platter lined with paper towels and he slid it to her.

  “Where’s Heidi?” Had she gone while he’d been upstairs with his dad?

  “She’s in the dining room. Why don’t you take her those napkins?”

  Blake did as he was told and found Heidi walking around the dining room table with a hand full of knives and forks. “Mom said you needed these.”

  She grinned. “Thanks.”

  He followed her around the table, folding napkins and sliding them under the forks. “Mom put you to work, huh?”

  “She volunteered!” his mom called from the kitchen.

  Heidi scrunched up her cute little nose and grinned. “I like your mom,” she said in a whisper.

  “She likes you, too,” he whispered back.

  Maggie burst through the door. “Daddy!” She ran straight for him and he swung her around. Everyone had agreed Maggie did not need to know about his trip to the ER. She’d become clingy since his car “accident” and no one wanted to add any more worry to her world.

  After a few moments of cuddles, she dashed to Heidi and didn’t leave her side. Heidi didn’t seem to mind her little shadow.

  Caroline arrived as they took their seats and as his father asked the blessing, Blake glanced around the table. Heidi sat across from him and somehow, her presence made their family circle feel more whole than it had in a long time.

  By the time dinner ended, his mom had secured a promise from Heidi that she would celebrate Thanksgiving with them and even though he knew it was crazy, he liked the idea of spending more time with her outside the office.

  He walked her home an hour later, and when Maggie ran along ahead of them, she nudged his arm with her elbow.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with me being around on Thanksgiving? Your mom’s invitation caught me off guard, but I can come up with an excuse…”

  His stomach flipped. “I don’t mind, but I hate to take you away from—” He ran out of words. Did she have anyone to spend the holiday with? He scrambled to come up with someone. “Uncle Frank? Maybe Max? Or your boyfriend?” He held his breath.

  “Uncle Frank and Aunt Ginny usually travel to Florida over Thanksgiving, so if I’m not working, I spend the day with Sara. If I am working, I spend it with Max.”

  “Sara is your college roommate?”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  “So there’s Max and Sara—”

  She laughed.

  “What?”

  “You’re nosy tonight. I’m going to have to add this symptom to the list of effects from atropine poisoning.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you aren’t.” She laughed again. “The answer to the question you’re trying to ask is no. I don’t have a boyfriend. Haven’t in a long time. Something about my charming personality repels men. Or maybe it’s my electric-socket hair.”

  “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

  She grinned and shook her head, but then the smile left her face. “This job doesn’t lend itself to relationships. Too much time away, too much baggage, too many scars.” She took in a long breath and blew it out.

  “As for the other question you aren’t asking, Max and I were teamed up straight off the Farm and have worked together ever since. We hit it off immediately, but never in a romantic way. He’s the brother I always wanted.”

  He didn’t bother to pretend he hadn’t been curious. He almost pointed out that Max needed to have his head examined if he’d truly never considered asking her out, but caught himself. Time to switch gears.

  “What does Sara do?”

  “She’s a psychologist. Specializes in PTSD and works as a consultant for the Bureau and o
ther agencies.” She left out the part about how having a roommate with PTSD had helped Sara choose her specialty, or how often she called her friend for an unofficial consultation.

  She shook off the serious direction of her thoughts and grinned at Blake. “Anything else you want to know while you can blame it on an overdose?”

  He wanted to know more about her, but he needed to remember the promise he’d made to himself after Lana. His first priority was to protect Maggie, even if it meant giving up something he wanted. Besides, if he was reading her correctly, Heidi Zimmerman had no interest in having a relationship with anyone. Certainly not him.

  He decided to pull the conversation back to the issue at hand. The one he woke up thinking about and went to bed praying about. “Do you think he’s going to kill me?”

  Heidi grabbed his arm and pulled them both to a stop. “You listen to me, Blake Harrison. I don’t know why he’s trying to hurt you, but I’m not going to sit back and let him have you. We will figure this out. He’s going to mess up and when he does, we’ll nail his sorry hide. I know we haven’t known each other long, but you have my word. I will not rest until we’ve caught him.”

  TEN

  As far as Blake could tell, Heidi never rested. The night of the atropine poisoning, she’d left his parents and gone to HPI to recover the remaining Mountain Dew bottle from his fridge, and the lights hadn’t come back on in the cabin until after midnight. For the rest of the week, she was gone until at least 10:00 p.m. every night. She told him she spent some of her time at the house the FBI had rented for the rest of her team, but he doubted she was napping there. He had no idea when she’d come home on Saturday night. All he knew was that the plan to enter Mark’s home had fallen through. The team had been ready to go, but Mark and Katarina had never left the house. Then, despite the fact that he suspected she’d gotten no sleep, she’d gone to church with them on Sunday.

  No trace of fatigue lined her face when he saw her on Monday morning. At 10:00 a.m. she made a presentation to him and the entire engineering staff where she outlined the changes she wanted to make to their quality control procedures. It was an impressive accomplishment for a “consultant” who’d only been on-site for two weeks. It was downright astonishing considering her extracurricular activities.

  He didn’t know how she worked two jobs and stayed sane, but he was grateful they had a four-day weekend ahead of them. He prayed it would be a calm one.

  The Thanksgiving holiday passed uneventfully. Well, if you count having an undercover FBI agent join you for turkey, dressing and skeet shooting while you recover from poisoning as uneventful.

  When the family was around, Heidi was a good, but not great shot. She appeared comfortable with the weapons, but was quick to give the others a turn. He almost asked her about it, but she silenced his question with a nod in Maggie’s direction.

  Ah. Little eyes and ears that saw and heard everything. The last thing they needed was Maggie going to school and telling everyone Heidi was good with a gun.

  When his mom took Maggie back to the house, Caroline and his dad went with them. That’s when Heidi started showing off. After a few minutes of impressive marksmanship, she’d given him some tips. To his surprise, she made an excellent teacher. He ended the afternoon with a few shots he’d never imagined he could make and Heidi grinned like a proud parent at a spelling bee.

  She promised to give him lessons with a handgun later and Blake planned to hold her to it.

  The Monday after Thanksgiving, Blake opened his office fridge out of habit and found two bottles of Mountain Dew.

  He poked his head into Heidi’s office. She pulled the sleeve of her shirt over her elbow as she looked up. She did that a lot. He’d noticed because Caroline never left her shirtsleeves down, she always shoved them up on her arms.

  Heidi seemed to want to keep as much of her skin covered as possible. Scarves, long sleeves, pants. Was it to hide her weapons?

  He eased into her office and took a seat in front of her desk. He leaned forward and kept his voice low. “I need to ask you a question.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Go ahead.”

  “Do you have any idea who put the Mountain Dew in my fridge?”

  She grinned. “I did. I brought them from my fridge this morning. I feel confident they are safe. Well, as safe as any yellow carbonated beverage can be.”

  “Wow. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He hopped up and ran back to his office, grabbed the Mountain Dew and returned to the chair in front of her desk. He took a long drink and then got down to business.

  “There’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

  “Okay.”

  “We have an annual Christmas party.” He waited for it. Yep. She took in a slow breath, set down the paper she’d been studying and leaned back in her chair. He’d had a feeling she wouldn’t like this idea.

  “Mom insists we have it this year. Dad’s doing great, and she wants everyone to carry on as normal. She thinks it would look suspicious to cancel it.”

  Heidi dropped her head against her chair and groaned. “I love your mom, but she’s going to be the death of me.” She shook her head a few times and sat forward. “Tell me about this party.”

  “It’s at Mom and Dad’s house.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Inside and outside.”

  She dropped her face into her hands.

  “Food, presents, live music.”

  She pretended to bang her head on her desk.

  “We have a huge bonfire, roast marshmallows, sit outside on logs and drink hot chocolate…”

  Heidi hadn’t lifted her head off her desk.

  “The entire HPI family is invited. Some people have other parties to go to and they stop in early or late. Some will be there all night. There are kids running around everywhere…”

  Heidi sat up and he couldn’t get a read on her expression, but he knew she was not happy. “Did you try to talk her out of it? Did your dad?”

  “Yes. But Mom—”

  She lifted her hands in mock surrender. “I know.”

  He didn’t say anything else as he watched Heidi process this news.

  “How have I not heard about this yet? I would think this would be on everyone’s calendar way in advance.”

  “It is. It has been. I think everyone assumed it would depend on dad’s health.”

  She shoved the stack of papers she’d been working on to the side and pulled out a clipboard with a legal pad stuck on it. “I need every detail you can give me.”

  For the next hour they talked about everything he knew about the party. The name of the caterers, the band, the party rental store, even where they got the gifts.

  “This is not going to be easy.” She tapped the pen on the diagram she’d drawn of the house and yard. She’d even included stick figures.

  “If you can think of a way we can convince my mother to cancel it, I assure you we’d be fine with that. Well, Mom wouldn’t, but she’d survive.”

  “It’s okay.”

  But it wasn’t. He could tell from the shuttered flatness of her eyes, the tension in her shoulders, even the way she took in one long deep breath after another. She didn’t like this. And he got the strange sense that there was more behind it than the nightmare security would be for that kind of event.

  She gave him a quick smile. “Let me talk to my team. We’ll see what we can do.”

  *

  Two weeks later, Heidi stood at the edge of the woods behind the Harrisons’ home. She’d managed to avoid going outside most of the evening, trusting her team to handle the party out there.

  But she didn’t have a choice now. Maggie Harrison had begged and pleaded for her to roast marshmallows, and she’d run out of excuses. She held her stick and tried to smile for Maggie as she crammed marshmallows on the end.

  “Come on, Miss Heidi.”

  Blake stood on the other side of the fire talking to none other
than Markos Kovac. A group of kids stood nearby licking marshmallow and melted chocolate off their hands as they devoured their s’mores.

  Giving TacOps another opportunity to get into the Kovacs’ house had been the deciding factor in allowing the party to go on. To everyone’s disappointment, Katarina Kovac hadn’t attended the party tonight.

  Blake had promised to ask Markos about Katarina, and Heidi couldn’t decide what she wanted to do more, hear their conversation or keep Maggie as far away from Markos Kovac as possible. She decided on the latter. Blake had an excellent memory and he’d fill her in on what they’d discussed later.

  They approached the bonfire and it took every ounce of willpower Heidi had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. When the heat began to warm her face, she paused.

  “You can do it, Z,” Max said in her ear.

  Heidi rubbed her lips together. It was a bonfire. A simple, safe, controlled bonfire. This morning’s showers had left the surrounding area soggy and they’d had to work hard to get the flames going in the first place. If a stray spark managed to escape, ten fire extinguishers encircled the area.

  No one was in any danger here, certainly not her.

  She let Maggie take the lead. “Haven’t you ever made s’mores, Miss Heidi?” Concern wrinkled Maggie’s face.

  Heidi tried to hide the fear flickering through her veins. “It’s been a while, Maggie. Why don’t you show me your technique?”

  Maggie accepted her response and explained how she liked her marshmallows toasted to a light brown, but if they weren’t hot enough, they wouldn’t melt the chocolate right so it was important to heat them slowly. She sounded so much like Blake when she talked and Heidi’s eyes sought him out across the fire.

  He was still talking to Markos, but he was watching Maggie. Or was he watching her?

  “Looking good, Z.” Her team knew she avoided fire, but only Max knew the whole story and he alone understood how hard this night would be. Maggie kept her marshmallows over the hot coals at the edge of the flame, which helped Heidi keep a decent distance from the fire.

  As soon as their marshmallows reached the appropriate level of toastiness, she led Maggie to the table where graham crackers and chocolate candy bars waited. Once they constructed their s’mores, they walked toward Blake, Heidi keeping as much distance as she could manage between herself and the fire.