Pursuit

by ROBARDS, KAREN

That was when she quit talking, because fear closed her throat.

  17

  Yo,” Mark called out to Wendell and Fielding as he stepped out of the SUV. They replied in kind. Mark immediately started breathing easier. With what had gone down with Davenport and his secretary, it was clear that the situation was out of control. At least, out of his control. He had no doubt that somebody was pulling the strings. He just wasn’t sure who it was yet, or exactly what was going on. And while he found out, he meant to do what he had to do to keep Jess alive and well. Thus he’d texted Fielding as soon as he had put Jess in the RAV4 and before he had gotten in himself, and told him to round up Wendell and Matthews and meet him at his house. They were pulling bodyguard duty for the next few hours, or until he figured something else out, whichever came first.

  If Davenport had been coerced by some means or another to first kill Jess and then commit suicide, as Mark suspected, and his secretary had then been run down by a vehicle that, he was almost certain, would turn out to be stolen, then the safest thing was to assume he was dealing with a sophisticated assassin or team of assassins operating under a scorched-earth policy.

  One who either had orchestrated the murder of the First Lady, as Jess suspected, or was pulling cleanup duty in the aftermath of her death. Either way, it didn’t bode well for Jess.

  The thing that was proving the biggest obstacle for him in believing that the First Lady was murdered was motive. Annette Cooper’s drug addiction was a problem but not a killing one. First, the President and his people had already put a plan in place to handle it. Second, no one outside a tight little circle knew about it. Third, other politicians and their spouses had confessed to various drug-related problems in the past, and the fallout had not been catastrophic. In fact, in the case of spouses in particular, it had even made them seem more sympathetic to the public.

  If the First Lady had been murdered, there had to be another reason, a motive he was missing or knew nothing about. Alternatively, the whole thing, from Annette Cooper’s fleeing the White House to her death to the purported attack on Jess in the hospital to Davenport’s attempt to kill Jess and subsequent suicide to what happened to Marian Young, was all a series of unfortunate events that had occurred one after the other like falling dominoes. Connected but not premeditated, as it were. Kind of like a butterfly’s wings causing a hurricane halfway around the world.

  Yeah, Mark concluded reluctantly, and he believed in Santa Claus, too.

  “That the survivor?” Meeting him at the front of the car, Wendell nodded toward Jess, who appeared as just a small, dark shape huddled in his front passenger seat.

  “Yeah.” Mark walked around the car and opened her door. He meant to reach in for her, but she was already sliding her legs out. The rain had lightened up, and the cold sprinkle that was currently falling was barely heavy enough to be felt. He ignored it, and apparently she was planning to as well, because she made no effort to shield her head from the drizzle as it emerged next.

  “I take it you know these people.”

  It was too dark to see her expression, but her voice had an edge to it. Having strangers pop up unexpectedly had probably scared her.

  “Yeah. I guess I should have given you a heads-up.”

  “That would have been nice.”

  Her shoes—black high heels, which seemed an idiotic choice for a woman who was having trouble walking—made a gritty sound as they planted on the rough concrete of his parking area. He leaned in to help her out, but she shook her head at him.

  “I can manage.”

  As if to prove it, she stood up, one hand holding on to the door for balance.

  “Okay.” He stepped back, willing to let her do her thing. Wendell and Fielding immediately closed in, providing a human barrier between her and anyone who might be out there watching.

  If this was scorched earth, a sniper’s bullet was always a possibility. Although he didn’t mean to tell Jess that. No need to scare her unnecessarily.

  “Jessica Ford,” he said to Wendell and Fielding by way of an introduction. He looked at Jess. “Susan Wendell and Paul Fielding, Secret Service.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Fielding said.

  Wendell, as befitted her more taciturn nature, merely nodded. Jess nodded back. The five-eleven Wendell towered over her even in the no-nonsense flats Wendell favored. And with Fielding and himself rounding out the group, Jess made him think of a sapling in the midst of a stand of oaks.

  He felt a sudden surge of protectiveness toward her. She was under his wing now, and he meant to see to it that she got out of this in one piece, whatever it took.

  “Where’s Matthews?” he asked.

  By this time, Jess had let go of the door and was walking with slow, careful steps toward the house. Mark stayed close, ready to catch her if she needed catching. She didn’t so much as glance his way. Yeah, she was ticked.

  Women.

  “Checking the perimeter,” Fielding replied.

  Mark unlocked the side door, pushed it open, and stood back for Jess to precede him into the house. There was only one small step onto the stoop, and then another into the house itself, and she managed both with no apparent difficulty. He followed her inside, flipping on the switch beside the door as he passed it so that warm yellow light suffused the kitchen from the old-fashioned fixtures overhead. Wendell and Fielding entered behind him, and he shut and locked the door.

  Like all his locks, it was a good one: a nearly unbreachable deadbolt. It was the most up-to-date thing in the kitchen. Everything else, the harvest-gold appliances, the faux-wood floor, the fruit-print wallpaper, the red-and-gold-checked curtains, was left over from the previous owner. He’d thought about remodeling it a couple of times but didn’t see the need. He almost never cooked, and he was hardly ever home. Even when Taylor stayed with him, they mostly ate out.

  He turned to discover Jess, with one hand leaning against the round oak table in the center of the room, looking big-eyed and pale and sort of like a half-drowned kitten as she gave comparative rottweilers Wendell and Fielding a once-over.

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked, her eyes sliding to meet his. He was, he realized, beginning to know her well enough to detect, beyond her annoyance at him, an edge of wariness in her expression. Well, fair enough. After all she’d been through over the last few days, she had every reason in the world to be wary. And Wendell, with her slicked-back blond hair, chiseled, square-jawed face, and tall, athletic figure encased in a snug black pantsuit, and Fielding, in a navy suit, his cherubic cheeks notwithstanding, were a formidable-looking pair based on size alone. Add in the fact that Wendell was standing in such a way as to reveal part of the holstered gun at her waist, and he could see why Jess might be intimidated by them.

  She was a very small woman, after all. Even in her power suit and high heels, which she must have donned in honor of her meeting with Davenport, it was hard to remember that she was twenty-eight years old.

  “We hole up here, get some sleep, try to work out what’s going on,” he told her. “The key is, we’ve got enough firepower now to keep you safe from whatever while we figure this thing out.”

  Fielding and Wendell both nodded in agreement. There was the faintest of crackles, and Wendell seemed to listen intently. Then she said something into her sleeve.

  “Matthews says the perimeter is clear. He’s on his way in,” she announced, and Mark nodded.

  “Could I talk to you, Ryan?” Jess asked, straightening away from the table.

  Clearly, she meant alone.

  “Sure. Make yourselves at home, guys,” he said to the others, both of whom had been to his house before on social occasions and both of whom also knew exactly why they were there: to keep Jess alive. With a gesture, he indicated to Jess that she should precede him through the rectangular doorway that led into the dining room. Like the other rooms in the Victorian-era farmhouse, it was smallish and square, finding its charm in narrow mullioned windows and high ceilings. He neve
r used the dining room, either, which was why there were cobwebs in the corners and a fine layer of dust on the table, so he followed Jess on into the living room, which was comfortably furnished with a big flat-screen TV, a big couch, and two overstuffed chairs. The curtains were drawn. The door—the front door to the house, the second of three entrances that included a door in the basement—was closed and locked. To the right, just beyond the entrance to the dining room, were stairs to the second floor.

  Only the faintest amount of light from the kitchen penetrated here. Mark bent and turned on a lamp.

  As the small pool of light enveloped her, Zoey, the orange tabby cat, looked up from where she had been napping in a corner of the couch, meowed a greeting, and stood up, stretching and kneading the brown leather that was ragged with her claw marks.

  A few feet ahead of him, Jess jumped like she’d been shot and whirled to face him, catching the back of the nearest recliner for balance when the sudden movement was almost too much for her.

  “What . . . ?” she gasped.

  Mark realized that Zoey’s small sounds had spooked her, and he had to smile. He gestured at Zoey, who headed his way as usual, finally balancing on the rolled arm of the couch as she butted her head against his thigh, wanting attention.

  The cat operated under the delusion that she was his.

  “You have a cat?” Jess looked at him with obvious surprise.

  He scratched behind Zoey’s ears. True to form, the cat started purring and shredding leather at the same time. The sad thing was, when he’d bought the couch he’d paid a lot for it because he had expected it to last forever.

  “She belongs to my daughter.”

  “You have a daughter?”

  He nodded. “Taylor. She’s fifteen. She’s not here right now. She lives with my ex-wife in McLean. I get to keep my daughter’s cat because her mother has allergies.”

  Or so Heather claimed. The truth was that Heather didn’t want a cat in her house—a McMansion she shared with her banker third husband and Taylor—clawing her furniture and shedding on her rugs. So when soft-touch Mark hadn’t had the heart to make Taylor return the kitten she’d brought home from a neighbor’s one sunny Saturday two summers ago, he got sole custody. Of the cat, not the kid.

  Which worked. At least it gave Taylor a reason to want to come and visit. With her busy social life, she was ducking out of their weekends more and more. Who needs a dad when you’ve got the mall?

  For a moment Jess looked like she wanted to ask more questions. Then she frowned, straightened away from the chair, and looked past him toward the dining room.

  Mark realized that she was checking to see if Wendell or Fielding were in sight.

  He quit scratching the cat and immediately moved away from the couch, thus evading Zoey’s attempt to climb him like a tree. Stopping just a short distance from Jess, he stuck his hands in his pockets and met her gaze. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

  Jess looked tense all over again. Reaching out, she caught his arm, pulling him closer.

  “Why did you call them?”

  He realized she was referring to Fielding and company. Her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder, so he had to tilt his head toward her just to hear her properly.

  “Because I need backup. I can protect you from a lone killer, maybe even two—as long as I’m awake. But I have to sleep. And what if there are more than two? What if they take me by surprise?” He watched her brows fold into a forbidding V above her eyes and added, “Hey, it’s your ass I’m thinking of here.”

  “Nobody knows where we are.” Even as she said it, she looked unsure. Then she looked waspish. “Or at least, they didn’t until you called in the cavalry in there.”

  His eyes narrowed at her. “We could have been followed. I—or we—could have been caught on video somewhere in or around that building. I was keeping an eye on you while you were in the hospital, so somebody could make a good guess as to where you are from that. Let me put it to you this way: I wouldn’t have brought you here unless I knew I had the personnel in place to keep you safe.”

  Her lips compressed. “Yeah, well, who keeps me safe from your ‘personnel’?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?”

  There was a commotion in the kitchen. Mark frowned, glancing around, only to feel the flare-up of reflexive adrenaline caused by the sudden noise die down as he heard Matthews say, “So what’s up with this chick again?”

  Wendell replied—he recognized her voice—but in too low a tone for him to make out the words.

  Clearly, Matthews had been admitted to the kitchen. Nothing any more alarming than that. He looked back at Jess.

  She started talking at him before he could so much as get his mouth open to attempt to reassure her some more.

  “Do not tell those people what I told you. About the wreck. About what I remember. Any of it.” It was a low but fierce command. Her eyes—looking more green than hazel at the moment, thanks to, he supposed, some combination of the dim lighting in his living room and how mad she was—blazed up into his.

  They were really pretty eyes, he registered. Feminine, flirty eyes. Or at least, they would be if they weren’t glaring at him.

  “I wasn’t going to.” His tone was mild. She was scared, and with good reason, so he wanted to be sensitive to that. “Look, you’re safe here. You don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll take care of this.”

  She looked skeptical.

  “Ryan?” Wendell called from the kitchen before Jess could say whatever it was she looked like she wanted to say. “We’re not doing you a whole lot of good stuck here in a clump in the kitchen. We need to spread out.”

  She was right, he knew.

  “We good?” he asked Jess.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  She didn’t mean it, which her sarcastic tone made clear. Too bad. He was taking her response at face value anyway. The bottom line was, he didn’t have time for this right now. Keeping her alive was his number one priority. Keeping her happy fell further down the list.

  “We’re done here,” he called back. “Come on in.”

  Jess’s glare got downright ferocious.

  “I don’t remember anything after the car pulled away from the hotel,” she hissed as footsteps headed their way. Her hand tightened on his arm. If she’d been any bigger, her grip might actually have hurt. “You got that? Nothing. That’s what you tell them.”

  “Jess . . .”

  “Got it?”

  With what he considered a truly heroic effort, he managed not to roll his eyes. “Fine. I got it.”

  Her hand dropped away from his arm. Her expression changed as if by magic, the frown vanishing, the tension transforming itself into vaguely pleasant nothingness.

  Wendell walked into the living room right on cue, followed by Matthews, who was about six-one with medium brown hair, wearing a dark suit like the rest of them. Typical Secret Service agent. Mark nodded at him, introduced him to Jess. Perfunctory greetings were exchanged.

  “Do you think I could take a shower?” Jess’s tone was considerably sweeter now as she looked at him. “And maybe get some dry clothes?”

  He remembered that she was wet. And had been shivering. And had had a hell of a bad day. All things considered, she was hanging in pretty well. Actually, damned well.

  “There’s a bathroom and bedroom upstairs you can use,” he told her, even as he watched Matthews go over and test the front door, then push the curtain aside to take a peek out the window.

  Wendell settled down in one of the chairs, her eyes on Jess as she headed for the stairs. Jess’s back, which was turned to them, was ramrod straight. Her head was held high. She walked slowly, but her gait was surprisingly steady under the circumstances. He was guessing that it cost her to keep it that way.

  “You have an alarm system?” Matthews
turned away from the window, attracting his attention. Mark caught just a glimpse of the obsidian blackness beyond the glass. At just after eleven p.m., there was still a lot of night to go. A lot of hours in which anything could happen. The thought made him antsy.

  “No,” he answered.

  “That would be us.” Wendell’s voice was dry.

  “Any other means of egress?” Matthews asked.

  “Basement door.”

  Matthews said something back, but Mark missed it, following Jess with his body as well as his eyes now over to the stairs, which were narrow and steep. Mark came up behind her as she paused with one hand on the newel post before attempting the ascent.

  “Want some help?” he asked in her ear.

  She shook her head, didn’t give him so much as a glance. “Nope.”

  Okay, she was clearly still feeling waspish.

  Squaring her shoulders, she started to climb. Mark stayed where he was in case he was needed, watching her plant one foot after the other on the treads with steely determination. The effort it cost her was apparent in her tight grip on the handrail and her slight hesitation between each step. His instinct was to run up behind her, pick her up despite what he was sure would be her protests, and carry her to the top of the steps, but he resisted. She would be angry. And embarrassed. While he didn’t mind making her angry—she was cute when she was angry—he didn’t like the idea of embarrassing her in front of the others.

  But his eyes never left her.

  Despite the business-like suit, she looked delicate. Fragile even.

  Narrow shoulders, tiny waist, slim calves above the idiotic high heels.

  The thing that struck him most though, hit him as kind of a revelation.

  She had a nice ass.

  High and tight and round as a basketball. With just enough of a feminine sway as she climbed the stairs to really catch his attention.

  Sexy.

  That was the thought that was ping-ponging through his surprised brain when Fielding walked into the room and said, “So, Ryan, you want to give us an overview of what’s happened?”

  “Yeah,” Mark answered, even as Jess paused and stiffened. What was going through her head was as plain as if she had turned around and yelled it at him: Don’t tell them what I told you. Which he had no intention of doing, if for no other reason than she’d asked him not to. Anyway, he believed in erring on the side of caution. He trusted these guys, but . . .