by Rachel Lee
Time to learn to get through those simple courtesies without keeping his guard so high that he failed at the smallest aspects of daily life.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t know how. During his service, there had been plenty of opportunities to practice the social graces, at least to a minimal extent. Certainly the academy had drilled them into him. But then covert operations had kind of drilled them out.
Still, it was no excuse. What was going on inside him? No longer in uniform, he was feeling like some kind of sham. Because at heart he was still a long way from being a civilian.
He sighed and pressed his forehead to the icy window glass. When his career came to a close, thanks to shrapnel lodged near his spine, he hadn’t dreamed that he’d feel so much like a stranger in a strange land. Or that he’d be so ill prepared for a so-called normal life.
His old normal was no longer normal, and he needed to get his act together. Traipsing around the countryside all day, every day, might ease the need for action, at least a little, but it wasn’t moving him forward in any useful way.
He had a lot of years ahead of him, and he needed to do something worthwhile with them. If worse came to worse, he supposed he could return the call from the CIA, but did he really want a covert future where his ability to act would be hemmed in by pretending to be a diplomat? Was he even certain that he would do any good? At least what he’d been doing for the military—well, damn near all of it—had sure as hell seemed necessary.
The CIA was a whole different can of worms, one he wasn’t sure he wanted to open. At least in his former capacity, he hadn’t usually needed to lie and gain the trust of people who shouldn’t trust him at all.
There it was again, that whole lie-and-trust issue. Kind of late, he thought almost bitterly, to be developing moral qualms.
Or maybe not too late. Not too late to want to do something productive rather than destructive. The only question was what would satisfy him. What did he feel equipped to do that didn’t involve sniper rifles and C-4?
Maybe he just needed to take it in small steps. One little thing at a time.
He glanced at his watch and saw it was only eight o’clock, still early, although the winter had made it dark as pitch out there.
Maybe he could rectify one small rudeness. Just a small step, but a right step.
One foot in front of the other. That had gotten him through more than he cared to remember. One step at a time.
* * *
The ringing of her rather sickly sounding doorbell startled Allison. Her friends seldom dropped by unannounced and solicitors were rare on cold winter nights.
She dropped her red pen, tossed her reading glasses on the stack of papers and walked to the front door, rubbing her neck as she went. It hadn’t taken long for the first seeds of eyestrain to start making themselves felt from her forehead to the back of her neck. She wondered at the tension, then decided she was probably more worried about tomorrow than she wanted to admit, even to herself. Tracking down a poison so dangerous that many countries had declared it a chemical-warfare weapon would be no picnic, no matter how carefully she collected her samples. One slip might be her last. Unfortunately, she was the only one available with sufficient expertise to do this. Her fault for taking training with a decontamination team while she had been in graduate school. Curiosity had led her to this point.
She opened her door and felt her heart skip a nervous beat, even as her jaw dropped. She didn’t know what she had expected, but certainly not the enigmatic guy from next door who had barely answered her earlier greeting. Up close like this, she saw that while he was lean, he was also larger than she had thought, and both the porch and hall lights cast his harshly angled face in high relief.
For the first time, she realized he looked dangerous. But as the wind whipped snow into her door, stinging her face, she knew she couldn’t stand at the door like this for long. He might be wearing a parka, but she sure wasn’t. Should she let him in?
“I wanted to apologize,” he said gruffly.
She blinked as snow crystals melted on her face and made a quick decision, possibly a stupid one, but time would tell.
“Come in,” she said. “I’ll freeze standing here.”
He hesitated, as if he considered his purpose here completed, but then gave a slight nod. She stepped back, letting him in and closing the door against the frigid night and blowing snow.
She wiped her sleeve across her face to get rid of the wet, then caught sight of herself in the hall mirror. Her grungies. A great first impression. But as she raised her gaze again, she met eyes that looked about as black as a starless night, and just about as cold. A little shiver passed through her.
“Coffee?” she asked.
Again he hesitated. “Sure. But I only wanted a minute of your time, not to disrupt your evening.”
“Anything that takes me away from grading papers is welcome.” She didn’t know whether she was being brave or brainless, but manners were deeply ingrained.
She almost waved him into the living room, then changed her mind midmotion. Living rooms were too comfortable. They invited people to stay. She wasn’t at all sure that would be a good thing, so she led him into the kitchen. Coffee tasted the same at a table.
Behind her she heard him unzip his parka, but when she turned around as she reached the coffeepot, she found he hadn’t removed his jacket. He pulled out one of the chairs at the round oak table and sat on its very edge. A man poised to get the hell out...or to move quickly.
“How do you like your coffee?” she asked.
“Black as hell and hot as Hades.”
She blinked. “Okay. I’m not sure it’s that hot, though.”
He closed his eyes for just an instant. “Sorry. I’ve been living too long among guys. I guess I could have phrased that more politely.”
“It’s okay.” She quickly filled two mugs, getting a fresh one for herself rather than trotting back to her office. She sat on the opposite side of the table from him, as far away as she could get. Unsure about this visit, she, too, sat on the edge of her seat.
“So why should you apologize?” she asked.
“Let me start at the beginning. Hi, I’m Jerrod Marquette. Nice to meet you. Sorry I was rude when you said hello earlier.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” she said, although she wasn’t absolutely certain about that yet. “Allison McMann. Or did I tell you that?”
“You told me, which makes it even ruder that I didn’t respond.”
Since he seemed to be making an effort, she sought for a way to make one herself. “Well, maybe you weren’t too happy to be greeted, but you were sure fast to the rescue when I fell. Thanks for the concern.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “It was nothing.”
“But it would be something for someone who isn’t too keen on meeting the neighbors.”
He looked away from her, his gaze growing distant. “Training. Instinct. All of it.”
“All of it? Which all?”
He lifted his mug, drinking several sips, saying nothing for so long she wondered if he would say another word.
But then he surprised her. “Military training,” he said finally. “Nothing I want to talk about, even if I could. But...” His gaze came back to her. “You know, it’s a devil of a time trying to become a civilian again. Sounds crazy, I know.”
“I didn’t say that.” And a picture was beginning to form in her mind. She wondered how far from the truth it was.
“Regardless, you wouldn’t think I’d have lost the common courtesies. It’s just that...”
Again he trailed off. She decided not to press him, but to let him say what he chose and avoid what he chose.
He sighed and drained his mug. “Too many years of secrecy. Invisibility. Being in a new place brings back habits. I can’t
explain more than that.”
“I think I get it. At least some of it.”
“Nobody who doesn’t do it really gets it. But that’s the way we want it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We do what we do so civilians can remain innocent.”
It was as if he sucked the wind from her between one breath and the next. She felt an unexpected piercing pain for what must have been required of him to make a statement like that. Before she could think of a word to say, he was starting to rise, preparing to leave.
She felt a desperate urge to not let him go, though she didn’t know why. Yes, he was attractive, but what she was feeling right now touched her in a much deeper way. She needed to do something. Say something. Give him the very welcome he seemed to want to avoid. But how?
“Have some more coffee,” she said quickly.
“I shouldn’t. You were grading papers.”
Man, he didn’t miss a thing.
“Consider it my excuse not to go to bed with a pounding headache.”
For the first time, the very first time, the stone of his face cracked just a bit. One corner of his mouth tipped up. “You’ll still have to get the headache eventually.”
“Sunday will be soon enough.”
She was relieved when he walked over to the pot and poured himself more coffee. He returned to the table and sat. “I should ask about you.”
“Sure. I’m an open book.” Only as she saw his face darken a shade did she realize how that had sounded. She spoke swiftly to cover the faux pas. “Nothing really interesting, no secrets, no jaunts to exotic and dangerous places. I grew up here, went to college and came back here to teach at the community college. Chemistry.”
This time he settled back into the chair, looking less likely to take flight. Although she got the feeling he didn’t quite uncoil. She wondered if he even knew how.
“Do you like it?”
“Mostly,” she said.
“But not grading papers.”
“It’s the lousy chicken scratches. I think computers have killed the fine art of handwriting.”
“So why not let them use computers?”
“Because computers give them access to information. Every exam would essentially be an open-book test then. I do it sometimes, but other times I want to know what they really understand.”
He nodded briefly, then drank more coffee. “Great coffee, by the way.”
“Thank you. But not hot as Hades.”
Again that faint flicker of a smile. “Not quite. But hot enough.”
A silence fell, but it didn’t feel as tense. Still, she decided to fill it. “The big thing in my life right now is the state has hired me to find out how far a toxin has spread. A few weeks ago, a rancher lost two cows, and tests show it was a horrible poison.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that is outlawed because it’s so dangerous. Well, it was until the USDA allowed it to be used in a few states for coyote control. But to give you an idea what I’m dealing with here, a number of countries have labeled it a chemical-warfare weapon. And the way it spreads is incredible. It doesn’t just stop where it’s applied, which is scaring the ranchers and hunters.”
For the first time she realized how intimidating it could be to have this man’s full attention. Those black eyes had looked at her before and seemed attentive enough, but now they lasered in on her. They made her think of his comment about black as hell. She had to fight an urge to pull back, knowing that he would see it and not willing to make him feel like a pariah without reason. At the same time, she felt an unexpected and unwanted tingle of sexual arousal. Dang it.
“Tell me about it,” he said. “What exactly is it? How does it spread?”
“Its name wouldn’t mean much to you or to most people who don’t raise livestock. It’s applied to bait to kill animals that eat carrion. Unfortunately, that doesn’t just mean coyotes. Well, it’s bad enough if it stops there, but it doesn’t. The contaminated animal can take hours or days to die, wandering away from the bait. It becomes toxic itself, so wherever it dies, it can contaminate the ground and water, and if anything eats it, it’ll die, too.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. So they found the bait—at least, they think it was the bait—and only two cows have died so far. They think the cows must have licked some snowmelt or eaten some contaminated grass that was under the snow. Regardless, once the toxin was identified, we had to get into high gear because we can’t be sure what appeared to be the bait wasn’t simply an animal that had eaten the original bait. The spread could be big and getting bigger.”
“So what do you do?”
“Take soil and water samples to try to figure out the impacted area. At the very least to let the ranchers know whether their grazing land and water is safe, but also to try to home in on the dangerous areas.”
“Does it break down? Disperse?”
“Everything does, but you wouldn’t believe how little of this stuff it would take to kill a grown man. In theory, it’s supposed to be used only in livestock collars. So, for example, if a coyote bites a collared ewe on the neck, it’ll get a fatal dose of poison. But there’s enough poison in that one collar to kill six grown men or twenty-five children. If collars get lost or punctured, the poison gets into the environment. And by the way, if a collar is discarded, it’s supposed to be buried at least three feet deep in the ground.”
He nodded. “Okay. But if it’s lost...”
“Yeah, if it’s lost, the poison can leech into the environment. And even if it doesn’t get lost... Well, I painted the picture of what happens when an animal gets poisoned. It wanders away, dies an agonizing death and something else eats it. And there isn’t any known antidote.”
“That could be bad.”
“It is bad. It’s the cascade effect that makes it so awful. If it killed just once, no big deal. But it doesn’t. So until the poison dissipates to safe levels—and even sublethal levels can cause brain damage and so on—you’ve got a big-time problem that’s spreading randomly.”
“I can’t think of a worse scenario. Do you think you can trace it back to its origin?”
“Probably not. I wish I could. If someone wasn’t using it in an authorized collar, then they’re breaking the law in a lot of ways. Law enforcement is looking into that part, but without any success so far. But I’m sure I won’t get that far, and it’s not what I’m out there to do, anyway. I’m just supposed to take samples for the state to identify any areas that present a threat. I hope I don’t find a single one. Maybe it’s all dissipated now. Maybe it was an isolated incident. I hope to God it was.”
“Helluva problem.”
“Yeah.” She propped her chin on her palm and sighed. “If the weather settles down, I start tomorrow. Slowly circling out from where the dead animals were found. With any luck I’ll be able to tell at least one rancher his grazing land is safe.”
“But others?”
“That’s the question. Was that bait the primary kill? Or have other animals died and spread the poison? I guess I’ll find out.”
“Why is this stuff even still in use?”
“Because it works.” She straightened and threw out her arms. “They use it in Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania. To get rid of rodents and other vermin. They’ve had some unexpected consequences, but they got the dose calibrated to do the job without killing too many other things, like the birds. The problem is these collars aren’t low dose. And someone using it illegally would probably overuse it. People have a hard time grasping just how little of this poison is needed.”
“That seems to be a common human failing,” he remarked. Then he rose, went to the sink and rinsed out his mug.
“Thanks for the coffee. See you around.”
She stood to
walk him to the door, but he moved fast and by the time she got to her small foyer, there was nothing left of him but the blast of cold that had entered when he opened the door to leave.
“That was fast,” she said to the empty house. She wondered what was riding his tail.
“Military,” she murmured to herself. That probably explained a whole lot more than she could even imagine. But at least he had tried to be polite. She gave him marks for that.
It probably hadn’t been easy for him, either, judging by his initial response to her greeting.
A glance at the clock told her it was still early. Back to grading papers. It was only as she sat at her desk with fresh coffee that she realized something.
That man had gotten her motor running for the first time in years. For all he was a cipher, he’d still kicked her hormones into overdrive and she didn’t know why. Like she needed that? In fact, it was the last thing on earth she wanted from any man.
She squirmed a little in her chair as her most feminine parts insisted on reminding her that she was a woman with very real desires. They happened. It only mattered what she did because of them.
Right. With any luck, the chicken scratchings on the stack of papers in front of her would drive him right from her mind. And her rebellious body.
Chapter 2
Usually, walking and jogging over rough countryside for hours on end made Jerrod sleep well. That night he didn’t sleep well at all, and he wasn’t sure why.
His thoughts kept straying to that pretty brunette next door, her soft sherry-brown eyes, her bright smile, her nicely curved body. She may have thought her assets were hidden beneath those baggy sweats, but whether she knew it or not, those loose clothes enhanced her appeal. It was almost like playing peek-a-boo to watch her move. There was something to be said for not flaunting it.
Was a woman getting to him? It wasn’t as if he’d been doing without sex for very long. Sex came easy to a man like him, especially when he’d still been in uniform. He also knew that he could do without it for long periods. He wasn’t a kid anymore.
He’d been attracted to Allison. No question of that, but maybe what was troubling him was that he’d been attracted to her in other ways than sexually. Something in her personality engaged him, even though they’d had only the briefest of conversations.
