by Jodie Bailey
It was Jessica’s turn to shrug. He hadn’t answered her question, but with the way he was watching her now, it seemed too personal anyway. “It’s a panfry, not anything deep and greasy like your local fast-food joint. You seemed like you could use a pick-me-up.” Great. Now she’d acknowledged she recognized his emotions and cared he had them. If he kept hanging around, she was going to get deeper until the surface vanished.
His chin lifted. “Thank you.” Before she could respond, he dug his fork in and started eating.
The words were simple, but they tugged at Jessica’s heart with an intimacy she hadn’t felt in a long time. Well, ever, if she wanted to be honest. But not toward Sean Turner. He was here to keep tabs on her and whatever was going on at her unit, nothing more. He’d be gone soon, away from any perceived emotions. She just had to keep herself in check.
Still, dinner would be awkward if nobody spoke at all. She pushed a tomato across her plate. “From your accent, I’m guessing you’re not from around here.”
“I’m a Yankee through and through.” He forked a bite of chicken into his mouth and nodded with an arched eyebrow as he chewed before swallowing. “Good chicken, Dylan. I’m from upstate New York, not far from Fort Drum.”
“And you ran around outdoors like a wild child?” It wasn’t hard to imagine him as a boy, covered from head to toe in dirt, or as a young man, all dressed in hunting camo, waiting patiently in a tree stand. The picture was knee weakening, almost as much as the image he cut in a uniform today.
Man, she needed help. Jessica shoved a forkful of pasta into her mouth to keep her thoughts from leaking out uncontrollably. She probably wasn’t the first girl to develop a crush on the guy who’d saved her life—or on Sean Turner. That was all it was, even though she wasn’t usually given to that particular ailment.
Sean slid his plate closer. “Wild child? Not so much. My mom would have none of that. But I did spend a lot of time in the woods with my dad and Ashley’s dad. If we ever go back to the Dark Ages, I can hunt and field dress pretty much all of the meat you’ll ever need.”
There was that name again. Ashley. She must be important as much as he talked about her. It shouldn’t surprise her to know a guy who looked like Sean Turner already had a woman waiting for him. And it shouldn’t make her heart sink, either. “You aced that part of training, then.”
“Survival? Without a hitch. I was the most well-fed soldier in my class. My platoon practically wrote poetry to me.”
“Yeah. Okay.” There it was again, that cocky sense of humor that was starting to grow on her. God, help me. I don’t need to fall for this guy.
“How about you?” Sean turned the tables in her direction. “What are your parents like?”
Reaching for her water, Jessica schooled her reaction. As an Army brat with a high-brass father, she’d learned long ago to be diplomatic. “My dad is a retired colonel. My mom is the consummate officer’s wife. She taught me how to cook.”
“She did a good job.”
Jessica would not blush at his praise. “Thanks.”
“Beats pizza, which is what I’d have ordered tonight.”
Well, then. Even if it meant she had to keep her feet under her chair to keep from making contact with him, she was glad she’d nixed the pizza idea. Cooking had made her feel better, and it had unlocked something in Sean that she was grateful to see. A humanity that softened him. It made her want to know more about the man across from her. “This your first mission with your unit?”
Sean opened his mouth, then closed it again. “You know, I’d prefer if we—”
A crash from the side yard dragged Sean to his feet as he threw his fork onto his plate with a clatter.
Jessica rose with him, but he’d stepped around the table, shielding her from some invisible adversary. How he’d produced the pistol in his hand so fast was beyond her. “Kill the lights and get under the table.”
Was he serious? Hide in her own house like a refugee from a bad spy movie? “You’ve got to be—”
He shoved her toward the table, away from the sound. “Don’t argue with me. Do it.” He reached for the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. “The last thing I need to do is shoot you in the dark or hesitate when the bad guy steps up.” Without waiting to see if she obeyed, probably assuming that she would, he stalked for the den where that light shortly went out, too.
SEVEN
Sean crept up the hallway toward the end of the house where the crash had originated, hoping against hope that Jessica had done as he’d told her to do. If she was half as stubborn as he thought she was, the chances weren’t good. He’d have to be double sure of his aim if he needed to pull the trigger.
With his back against the wall, he held his gun at the ready and crept toward the bathroom at the end of the short hallway, grateful he could carry his weapon off post without having to reveal his mission. On post, the hoops he’d have to jump through would compromise the unit’s need for anonymity at any cost.
If he and God were on speaking terms, Sean would thank Him for Jessica’s comments about his parents that had driven him to explore the house earlier. To his left lay a small office with a desk and a sofa, and to his right, a laundry room with a door that led to the back porch. Stairs leading up to three bedrooms were just past that. At the end of the hall, there was a full bath with a bathtub surrounded by a shower curtain. That was where the sound had come from.
He searched his mind for the contents of the room. An older house, this one featured a small window over the tub and facing the side yard, likely built to allow light into the small space. Tucked on the side of the house, that had to be the point of entry. Slight scrapes echoed on the tile as Sean crept closer, vision adjusting to the dark.
The shower curtain moved, and a figure stepped out, a dark silhouette against the dim light from the window. Sean didn’t wait but holstered his gun and drove into the figure with his good shoulder, knocking the person backward against the counter, catching the unsuspecting intruder in the lower back on the edge of the granite. The figure cried out, going limp for a moment before he fought back with a vengeance, a strong punch catching Sean in the temple.
It took all Sean had not to loosen his hold and back away, which was surely what the man wanted. Instead, he held tighter, leaned back slightly, and rushed the intruder into the cabinet again, driving one hand up to smash the man’s upper body sideways against the medicine cabinet that jutted out from the wall beside the sink.
The figure crumpled, dead weight in Sean’s arms, but Sean didn’t let go. For all he knew, the guy was playing possum, waiting for Sean to let down his guard so he could unleash a surprise attack.
When the man didn’t move for a solid minute, Sean released him to slump to the floor. Flooding the room with light from the switch, he pulled his pistol from his hip and aimed it squarely at the attacker. “Call the police,” he yelled back to Jessica. “Tell them we have an intruder in your home and you need law enforcement and an ambulance.”
To her credit and Sean’s surprise, Jessica didn’t question, and it was only seconds before he heard her relaying information to the operator.
Keeping his gun level on the intruder, Sean toed him over in the small space to get a good look at his face.
A bruise was already forming on the side of the man’s face and blood trickled out of a cut beside his eye, but it was the same man who’d hidden in Jessica’s vehicle at the ID card facility. He was younger than Sean had first thought.
Whoever these people were, they weren’t giving up easily. It had been a bold move to wait in Jessica’s car, bolder still to break into the house with Sean’s vehicle sitting in the driveway.
Sean’s breaths quickened as the adrenaline ebbed. What was the scheme that made them so desperate to silence Jessica? Too many people knew Channing’s identity already,
and they had to know she’d already handed over the cell phone. They’d taunted him specifically in the text message. His grip on the pistol tightened as footsteps came up the hall behind him.
“The police are on the way.” Jessica stepped up behind him, staying a few feet back up the hallway, an act of serious self-restraint if he’d ever seen one.
Finally convinced the man was down for the count, Sean holstered his weapon and rolled him onto his stomach to zip-tie his hands and then his feet.
“Are you always this prepared?” Jessica’s voice sounded laced with skepticism and not a trace of fear. She tended to stay calm in the moment, he’d already seen, but he also knew she’d been close to tears at some point. The red of her eyes when she’d let him in the house spoke more than words could.
“Only when I’ve already had to save an asset’s life three times.”
Jessica shook her head, then peeked around him at the man lying trussed on her bathroom floor. Her head tilted, expression darkening. “That’s the man who was hiding in my car.”
Sean gave a slight nod, watching her face. She was afraid, he could see it on her face, but she wasn’t about to give in and weaken in front of him.
She walked up the hallway, stopping at the closed door that led to the laundry room, careful to keep her back to him. Her shoulders were a straight line, a wall that kept him from stepping closer. Most likely, she didn’t want him to see she was terrified. That was nothing to be ashamed of. Three attempts on her life in two days would rattle even the most battle-worn vet, especially on home soil where it was supposed to be safe.
For the first time in a very long time, Sean felt the urge to pull a woman close and comfort her, but Jessica Dylan had made clear she wanted to keep him at a distance, and no matter what he felt, distance was necessary if he was going to put his life and his career back together.
Jessica’s shoulders rose and fell. “We’ve caught him. It’s over. You can go to your hotel now and get some sleep in a real bed and not on my couch.”
“Are you forgetting you were attacked at your company and someone tried to poison you?”
Her spine stiffened. “You don’t know that it was poison yet.”
Sean winced. He’d wanted to hold that information from her until things slowed down and the shock from everything else wore off.
She turned. “I said, you don’t know that it was poison yet.” The repeated words sounded iced with an emotion Sean couldn’t identify.
“It was. I got a verbal confirmation.” He kept his voice even and his focus on the suspect lying on the floor. He hadn’t wanted to add to the pressure by telling her, but he wasn’t going to lie. “If you need the full lab report, I can have it for you tomorrow.”
Something like fear crossed her face, chased by an impassive mask she carefully settled into place. Her chin lifted. “I still say you have your man and we can get back to our lives.”
Was she in denial? “You know better. You’re a smarter soldier than that. Specialist Channing is still out there. So is her buddy. This guy here is probably one of many on their payroll or, more likely, all three of them are on someone else’s payroll. And as soon as whoever they’re all working for finds out we have one of their men in custody, they’ll send more. This isn’t over.” He stared down at the man on the floor and pressed two fingers to his aching temple. “It’s only just begun.”
* * *
Poison.
Jessica stood at the end of the bed and held tight to the dark wood of the antique post, the grooves in the woodwork pressing the soft flesh on her palm. Downstairs, EMTs had removed her unwanted guest, and a handful of police processed the crime scene that used to be her guest bathroom. Somewhere in the house, Sean stood in the middle of everything, likely trying to direct the authorities as only he could.
Upstairs, Jessica leaned against the bedpost as if it was the last solid thing in her world. For all she knew, it was.
Poison. It wasn’t surprising. In light of a man in her car and in her house, it wasn’t even the most frightening thing that had happened in the past forty-eight hours, but it was enough to wake her up from denial.
Someone wanted her dead.
She pressed her forehead against her knuckles and stared at the polished hardwood floor. How was she ever going to get out of this one?
“Care to tell me what’s going on here?” Angie stepped through the door into the bedroom.
Jessica stepped away from the railing and shoved her hands into her sweatshirt pockets, unable to tell if her roommate was amused or angry. “Wish I could.”
“I had to show my driver’s license to get into my own house. I haven’t seen that many police since... Well, ever.” Angie sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at Jessica, a rare seriousness settling around her. “What happened?”
Jessica had no idea how much she was allowed to say, but she owed her roommate something. “Someone broke into the house tonight and, long story short, the staff sergeant who jumped in yesterday at the company caught him.”
Angie tugged at her earring and seemed to try to read Jessica’s mind. Finally, she sighed. “It’s a good thing you have my trust, because I know that’s not the whole story.”
“It’s the whole story I can tell you right now.”
“Well, then, it’s also a good thing I’m leaving in the morning to go spend Thanksgiving with my parents, or I’d move us both into a hotel.” She smoothed her skirt and stood, giving Jessica a sympathetic hug. “You’re sure you’re going to be okay?”
Before Jessica could answer, the rapid-fire trumpets of reveille blasted through the room. Jessica jumped, adrenaline surging into her fingertips. Why now? Did God really think she could handle all of this at one time, because she had news for Him... She couldn’t. Of all the things that had happened today, somehow hearing her father’s ringtone felt like the final straw.
Even Angie knew what was coming. She tossed a wave and backed out of the room. “I’m going to go hide out in my room and pretend none of this is going on.”
Jessica wished she could leave right along with her roommate. Pulling herself taller, she pressed the screen to answer and pulled the phone to her ear, waiting for the volcano to erupt. “Hello.”
“Jessica Maria. You tell me right now why I just got pulled away from the dinner your mother cooked for General Alan Marks. You had better have a very good reason for the police officers currently swarming your house.” Her father, Colonel Eric Dylan, never disappointed. She should have known he’d be on the line as soon as the first sirens wailed.
Jessica sank to the edge of the bed and flipped on the light that perched on the nightstand, desperate for some cheer to push back the darkness. It’s been an unbelievable two days, but I’m fine, Dad. Thanks for asking about my welfare first. “How did you find out?”
“Does it matter?”
Not really. There was only one person who could have played tattletale. Her neighbor down the street, Retired Major Dan White. Her father had grown up with Dan, had served with him in Iraq in the early nineties. For some reason, the major felt the need to keep her father apprised of Jessica’s every move, likely to prevent her from soiling the precious Dylan military legacy. Emergency personnel at the house would definitely merit a code red call since lights and sirens were a concrete indicator Jessica had made a mess of something.
Jessica pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. It was probably better to give her father as little of the story as possible. If she told him everything, they’d be here all night while he picked apart each incident and let her know how much she’d failed him and her entire country. “Just a break-in. Everything’s okay now.”
“A break-in.” The colonel’s voice fell flat, heavy with disappointment. Jessica could see him pacing the back patio of their massive house in upstate Virginia, fist clenched,
veins bulging in his forehead. “Someone broke into your house.”
“Yes, but I’m fine, and they didn’t—”
“Jessica. You can’t even protect your own property. How do you ever expect to lead even the smallest team of soldiers? You have to be vigilant at all times, ready for anything. Security is a top priority. If this had been on a forward operating base and that burglar had been a terrorist, you’d have dead soldiers right now. Pay attention to your surroundings.”
“I was. We stopped him just after he made it through the window. He didn’t even make it out of the bathroom. And the police have him in custody now.”
“Who is we? Certainly not you and that flighty roommate of yours. The two of you couldn’t stop a spider from spinning a web in the corner of your kitchen.”
Jessica winced. The disgust was expected, but the word we was a pronoun she never should have used. Her father would jump on Sean’s presence like a rabid dog. “I had a friend over.”
“Well, I hope your friend is a more competent soldier than you are. Sounds like it, if the burglar’s been subdued.” The phone muffled for a moment, then her father was back. “I have to go. The general thinks he can put in a good word for your brother and get him a position at the Pentagon. I don’t appreciate this call interrupting that discussion. Try to keep yourself out of trouble. The last thing we need is for you to jeopardize your brother’s future with your incompetence.” The call ended, just like that, the same way it always did.
Jessica threw the phone at the burgundy pillows on the head of her bed and clenched her fists, shaking them out just as quickly. Her mother always said she looked like her father when she did that. Long ago, Jessica had managed to eradicate his mannerisms from her nervous habits, but whenever she was angry, he somehow seemed to crop up in her stance.
“Bad news?”
The voice from the doorway jerked her head up. Sean stood there, leaning against the frame, arms crossed over his chest in what must be his typical pose.
