Some kind of struggle had obviously taken place. A violent struggle. Broken dishes littered the counter. Chairs were knocked helter-skelter. What looked to be a bloody handprint was on the doorway leading into the hall. There was no sign of anyone, either wounded or otherwise.
“Please don’t let that be Gabe’s blood,” she whispered to herself. But just the sight of it caused her breath to stall in her throat.
Speeding up her search, Leigh slipped around the corner and climbed onto the back porch that spanned the entire width of the house. The overhead light was out. Whether by design or chance, it didn’t matter. The darkness cloaked her, and she hoped that was an advantage.
The darkness, however, didn’t make it easy for her to move around. Groping blindly, she caught onto the arm of the porch swing and used it to maneuver her way to the door. A door that she prayed wasn’t locked. Unlike Gabe, she didn’t think she had any lock-picking skills. At least not skills that she remembered anyway.
It was obviously too late to consider something so critical, but it occurred to her that she might have breached some sort of perimeter security if Gabe hadn’t disarmed it. Leigh didn’t want to think about how quickly and how aggressively someone would respond to a triggered security system at an FBI safe house. It would no doubt be more than just squad cars with flashing lights. And maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
After all, things didn’t look secure by a long shot.
Leigh heard a sound come from inside the house—something like a swish, as if someone had blown out a candle. A shot fired from a silencer, maybe?
Oh, God.
If it had been a shot, then the struggle was still going on, and Gabe was probably right in the middle of it. Since he didn’t have a silencer on his gun, that meant someone was shooting at him. Or at Frank. Either way, it wasn’t good.
She forced herself to get moving and immediately tripped over something. Struggling to hang on to her gun and to break her fall, Leigh didn’t have time to see what had snagged her foot. That is, she didn’t see it until she hit the porch and came face-to-face with it.
The obstacle was a man.
He was on his stomach, unmoving, his face turned to the side. His eyes were blank. Lifeless.
Dead.
Choking back a scream, Leigh frantically searched that face to see if it was familiar. It wasn’t Gabe. Thank God, it wasn’t Gabe.
She scrambled away from the body, keeping her gun raised in case she had to defend herself. She bolted forward only to run head-on into something else.
Not something.
Someone.
Solid, strong arms suddenly clamped around her. A hand closed over her mouth before she could even call out for help.
And she was trapped.
Chapter Eleven
Gabe barely dodged the elbow that Leigh tried to ram into his stomach. He wasn’t quite so successful avoiding the kick to his shin. Or the Muay Thai boxing move she used after that. She was in a fight-or-flight mode and had obviously chosen to fight. Too bad he was the one she was fighting.
“It’s me,” Gabe managed.
Leigh continued to struggle. She pivoted, and went after him again, but he managed to get a tight lock on her. It took several seconds for her mind to register what her eyes had already seen.
“It’s all right,” he said directly against her ear.
No, it wasn’t all right, but it was the best he could offer her in the hopes it would settle her down. Her nerves were in a million pieces. Her body, a snarl of adrenaline, fear and relief. Gabe understood every single one of those emotions because he was feeling them himself.
“Gabe,” she said as if just realizing who he was. She latched onto him and buried her face against his neck. “You’re not hurt. Thank God.”
“No.” He wouldn’t let himself be even remotely pleased with Leigh’s concern for him. Nor would he let himself be too angry that she’d followed him to the house. Even with the stern warning he’d given her, he figured she would come after him.
“But that man—”
“He was dead when I got here.” Gabe eased her around so she wouldn’t be tempted to glance at the body. And so they wouldn’t be seen by anyone who just happened to look out a window. He moved Leigh deep into the shadows of the porch.
With her breath racing, she pulled slightly away and met his gaze. When she spoke, there was some grit back in her voice. “And you went inside anyway?”
“I had to. I had to find out what was going on.”
She shook her head as if trying to understand that. “Is it Frank?”
“No. I don’t know who it is. Someone unlucky, that’s for sure. I think Frank’s still inside.”
Her eyes widened. “You saw him?”
“I heard him,” Gabe corrected. “At least I think it was Frank. Someone rigged one of the bedroom doors with an explosive device. I heard someone or something inside, maybe even a fired shot. But if I open the door, the whole place will probably go up.”
“Sweet heaven.” She pressed her fingertips to her mouth for a moment. The alarm, however, didn’t stay in her eyes long. Her FBI training apparently kicked in, and Gabe could see she was trying to work things out. “What about going through the window?”
“There are metal bars. Security measures put in by the Bureau. I don’t think we’ll get through those without a key, and the key doesn’t seem to be anywhere inside. My guess is the person who set those explosives made sure we wouldn’t have an easy way to get into that room.”
“Maybe Jinx is around here somewhere and has the key?” Leigh suggested.
Gabe shook his head. “I haven’t seen him.” Nor would he since he’d told Jinx to stay out of sight. Besides, he was positive that Jinx wouldn’t have the key. It should have been in the safe, which meant someone had taken it.
“I was about to shoot a hole through one of the walls to try to get to Frank,” he explained, keeping his voice in a whisper. “But then I heard you out here and thought someone was breaking into the place.”
Leigh took a step toward the door. “Then let’s go inside. I’ll help you shoot through the wall.”
He stopped her from taking a second step. Gabe caught onto her shoulder and held on tight. “I don’t plan to start shooting at anything until I take you back to the car.”
“The car is the last place I want to be.” She gave a frustrated huff and mumbled something under her breath. “Gabe, I’ll be in danger no matter where I am. At least if I’m with you, we can watch out for each other.”
He gave that some thought. It sounded right, until he remembered the least safe place was inside the house. Well, maybe. Maybe there was no such thing as a safe place with Dayton’s accomplice running around loose. A bullet was a bullet no matter where it was fired.
Gabe dodged her gaze and tipped his eyes upward to seek divine guidance. Or at least to get a grip on some common sense. Unfortunately, he didn’t get either. “I’m positive I’ll regret this,” he heard himself say.
“Maybe. But if so, we’ll regret it together.” She raised her weapon. “Let’s go.”
Cursing himself and the mess they were in, he opened the door and stepped back into the kitchen. “Watch our backs,” he reminded her. “I’ll take care of anything else.”
He led her through the L-shaped room, stepping around the overturned chairs and debris. “I wasn’t in here when this happened,” he let her know when he heard her start to mumble again.
“Thank God. Whose blood is that?”
Gabe glanced at the handprint on the wall before they went into the living room. “I don’t know. Maybe the guy on the porch. Frank might have managed to get off a few shots before someone put him in that room.”
“But why wouldn’t they just kill Frank? Why go through all the trouble to rig that door so it would blow up?”
He didn’t have time to answer her. The noise stopped him cold. There was a crash at the far end of the room. The glass exploded, the shards
flying through the air toward them. Somehow, Gabe managed to haul her behind him.
And then he saw it.
A fist-size gunmetal-colored canister landed on the floor.
“Get out of here!” he yelled.
With hardly more than a glance at the canister bomb that was only a few yards from them, Gabe shoved her back into the hallway that led to the kitchen.
“What is that thing?” she asked. “God, is it a bomb?”
He grabbed Leigh and tried to get her to safety. He wasn’t fast enough. They’d barely made it to the entryway of the kitchen when the deafening blast tore through the living room and the hallway.
The impact knocked Leigh to the floor, and Gabe followed on top of her with his body. Fragments of the canister flew through the air and pelted against the walls and ceiling. He thought of Frank trapped in that room. But there was no way Gabe could get to him. The place suddenly looked like a war zone, and his first instinct was to protect Leigh.
When the fragments stopped raining down on them, Gabe rolled off her. In the same motion, he forced her to her feet and got them moving into the kitchen. They’d hardly had time to take a step when there was another crash through the other window in the dining room. He heard a second canister land on the floor.
He pushed Leigh on the other side of the refrigerator, praying it would be enough to protect them. Gabe braced himself for the next blast.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Like the first, the impact shook the house, and debris and glass shot everywhere. A chunk of ceiling just above their heads gave way. It would have crashed on them if they hadn’t scrambled across the floor toward the back door.
Gabe forced himself to put a chokehold on his rage, but it took every ounce of his self-control.
Damn the person responsible for this.
Damn his twisted, evil mind.
And while Gabe was doling out damns, he added a harsh one for himself. He’d been a damn fool to allow Leigh to get anywhere near this house. To this. In doing so, he’d underestimated his opponent’s capabilities, and it had almost gotten her killed.
That wouldn’t happen again.
Knowing he had to get them out of the house before it collapsed around them, Gabe pushed Leigh toward the back door. Even in the dark, dust-filled room, he could see that her face was the color of skim milk. She wasn’t just scared. She was terrified.
With reason.
Even if they made it out of the house, there was no guarantee that the person who’d fired those canisters wouldn’t be waiting for them.
He knew that.
Apparently, so did she.
Unfortunately, it was a chance he had to take.
He shoved open the door and maneuvered himself onto the back porch just ahead of her. There was another crash of wood, metal and glass. Then another.
Gabe didn’t wait around. “Run!” he ordered. He grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the back porch.
Probably because he didn’t give her a choice, Leigh kept up with his pace down the steps and across the yard. Like Gabe, she kept her gun raised. And ready. He prayed it would be enough if someone fired at them.
“Where to?” she asked.
Gabe couldn’t answer—he kept them running. Behind them, a vicious blast ripped through the house. The glass left in the windows burst outward, sending flames and jagged shards right out at them. The house exploded into a fireball. Black coils of smoke rose, smearing into the night sky.
Hell. If Frank was in that house, then he was a dead man.
“Keep running, Leigh!” Gabe shouted.
He caught a glimpse of the shadowy figure then. And the gun. It was drawn and ready to fire. Gabe pulled up quickly, trying to stop their forward motion, but he couldn’t.
It was too late.
Chapter Twelve
Gabe must have seen the gun and the shadowy figure at the same moment Leigh did. He tried to step in front of her, but she wanted no part of that. He’d already risked his life too many times to save her.
He swerved toward the approaching gunman, and Leigh pulled up by his side, aiming her weapon as well. But it wasn’t exactly the threat her body had braced itself for. Well, maybe it wasn’t. It was Jinx, and he was making his way across the yard straight toward them.
Leigh didn’t lower her gun even though Gabe did.
“Are you all right?” Jinx shouted over the noise of the fire and falling debris.
“What do you think? Someone just tried to kill us,” Leigh icily informed him. And for all she knew, Jinx could have been the one to do it. Of course, she knew he was supposed to be somewhere in the area—Gabe had told her that. But that didn’t give Leigh any reassurance.
Gabe caught onto her arm again. “We can’t stay out here in the open.”
He was right. With the men on each side of her, they began to run again. Where, she didn’t know. Gabe didn’t head in the direction of the car, which was just as well. It probably wasn’t safe to go there.
“Did you see who fired those explosives?” Gabe asked Jinx. He stopped just behind a row of tall hedges near the street and looked around.
“No, but I think it must have come from one of those trees.” He pointed to a cluster of towering oaks in the park area where they’d left the car.
Gabe glanced in that direction. “Yeah. The person probably climbed a tree and used some kind of modified artillery tube to deliver the canisters.”
If so, that meant Jinx wouldn’t have had time to fire them and then climb back down to run to the house. But Leigh wasn’t about to buy that tree-climbing scenario. A modified artillery tube could be fired from anywhere, including the front lawn.
Gabe turned her toward him. “I need to get you out of here while I try to find out if Frank is still alive.”
She was already shaking her head before he finished. “I’d rather stay with you.”
“I can’t—”
The sudden movement at the end of the row of hedges cut him off. All three shifted toward the person who rounded the corner.
“Mind telling me what the devil all of you are doing here?” Teresa Walters snarled. The woman looked harried. Not at all like the composed agent she’d seemed back at the clinic. Teresa gulped in her breath as if she’d just run a long distance.
“I might ask you the same thing,” Gabe calmly remarked. “Did you just happened to be in the neighborhood?”
Teresa fired a tight glance at Jinx before she answered. “No, I was looking for you.”
“Well, you obviously found us,” Leigh confirmed. “I don’t suppose you know who just tried to kill us?”
The other woman shook her head. “No. I didn’t see anything or anybody.”
If Gabe had any doubts if that was the truth, he didn’t voice them. He tipped his head toward what remained of the house. “Frank Templeton might be dead in there. There’s another body on the back porch, and you didn’t see a thing. That’s not a good endorsement for your skills of observation.”
“I just arrived a few minutes ago,” Teresa quickly assured him, obviously not bothering to address his sarcasm. “Now, perhaps you’d tell me how long you’ve been here and what happened?”
The sarcasm stayed in Gabe’s voice. “Funny you should ask that. Leigh, Jinx and I arrived just a couple of minutes ago, too. No one answered the door, so we went inside to have a look around, and that’s when someone started to shoot canister bombs at us. We were just about to call you and report it.”
Teresa didn’t look as if she bought that fish story at all. “Tell me what’s going on, Gabe. Who’s responsible for this?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” he answered. “Frank called and asked me to meet him.”
“You actually saw him?” Teresa volleyed glances between Gabe and the house.
“No, but he asked me to meet him at midnight.”
Leigh didn’t want to put off the most obvious question any longer. “So why’d you come, Agent Walters?”
Gabe took up where Leigh had left off. “And you just happened to be in Grand Valley, Texas?”
“No. I accessed your messages and heard the one Frank left on your machine in your apartment in New Orleans.”
“But I erased that message,” Gabe informed her.
Teresa shrugged. “There are ways, as you well know.”
“Ways,” Gabe repeated. “I guess you had to come up with plan B when I found that transmitter you’d planted in Leigh’s bandage.”
Leigh stared at the woman, waiting for her to deny it, but Teresa didn’t deny anything. “That was my insurance that I’d be able to find you if you didn’t follow orders. And I don’t think I need to point out that I was right.” She pulled out her phone. “Why didn’t you and Leigh make your way to a safe house earlier?”
“But we did,” Leigh said with sappy innocence. “We’re standing in front of one now.”
Again, Teresa didn’t seem to react to that except to check her watch and take a surreptitious glance around the street where neighbors were starting to gather to watch the blaze. In the distance, Leigh could hear approaching sirens. Obviously, someone had alerted the local authorities. That didn’t surprise her. Those explosions had jarred the entire neighborhood.
“I never thought you’d do something this stupid,” Teresa mumbled. “You shouldn’t have run from me.”
“Well, someone didn’t do a great job of providing security at the clinic, did they?” Leigh pointed out. “We had to fight our way past four gunmen and barely made it out of there alive.”
“That was still no reason to stay on the run. Security failed,” Teresa stated firmly, “and now we’re trying to figure out why. We’ll have answers soon.”
“Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen,” Leigh retorted.
Teresa stared at her a moment. “We’re on the same side, Leigh. Don’t forget that.”
A Man Worth Remembering Page 11
