Off the Grid

by Monica McCarty

  “A few more minutes. It took me more than two hours to pack to come here. You can’t expect me to do this in a few minutes. I don’t want to forget anything.”

  “We can always buy something if you need it.”

  “My credit cards are already maxed out after the last-minute trip to get here.”

  Which meant he was pretty damned sure she wasn’t going to like what he wanted her to do before they went to the freight office to send her bag to her apartment.

  “Change my ticket to the next flight?” she repeated, aghast. “Do you have any idea how expensive that is going to be?”

  “I’d pay with cash, but I don’t want to draw attention to anything.” He had a clean credit card in the name of his fake passport, but he avoided using it unless he had to. “We want anyone tracking you to think you and your bag hightailed it home.” He paused. “And your phone, too.”

  If he thought downsizing the luggage or the five hundred dollars to change to the next flight were bad, her reaction at the thought of sending her phone in her luggage was even worse.

  Millennials and their attachments to their devices. John didn’t get it. He wasn’t into smartphones or “i” anything. He probably wouldn’t have a cell phone at all if it weren’t necessary.

  He didn’t like being so . . . accessible.

  Social media of any type went into the same basket. It wasn’t just the job or that he was intensely private—both of which were true—he just didn’t think it was a good idea to have even seemingly innocuous information out there for anyone to see. If he wanted someone to know something about him, he’d tell them. Face-to-face. Not over a medium where God only knew who else could see it.

  “Do you have a laptop or tablet?”

  She shook her head. “No. I didn’t bring it with me.” She glared at him. “I was traveling light.”

  He laughed.

  She must have recognized that his plan had merit because she only put up a feeble protest before dropping her phone into the inside pocket of her suitcase and zipping it up. From her mournful expression, you would have thought someone had died as she watched the freight agent put the bag on the belt to disappear behind the black rubber curtain.

  With her backpack and duffel in tow, they left the airport and followed the sidewalk walkway to the train station. Careful to avoid cameras as much as possible, John retrieved his bag from a storage locker and paid for two tickets on the night train to Stockholm in cash.

  Last-minute train fares weren’t much cheaper than last-minute air fares, but the agent didn’t balk as the wad of Danish kroner passed under the glass.

  After a short train ride to Åre in Sweden, they caught the main line to Stockholm. Despite being exhausted, neither of them slept much on the seven-hour journey. Nor did they sleep much more over the next twelve hours as they zigzagged their way across Norway and Sweden before finally arriving in Copenhagen, Denmark, that night.

  John had been too amped to sleep. Too watchful. He wouldn’t be able to relax until they were safe.

  Brittany must have been feeling the same. But once or twice she’d relaxed enough to close her eyes, and somehow her head made its way to his shoulder.

  He resisted the urge to put his arm around her and draw her in closer. Mostly because he didn’t want to disturb her. But also because he feared how much it would disturb him and his certainty about what this was about.

  He caught himself looking down at the dark head and soft cheek resting on his arm a few times, but the resulting tight squeezing in his chest made him stop.

  She just looked so damned peaceful and sweet. And the responsibility of protecting her seemed almost overwhelming. He wasn’t intimidated by much, but this . . .

  This was different.

  He hadn’t been able to save his friend, but John swore that he would do whatever it took to keep Brittany safe.

  Even from himself.

  Eleven

  Colt had always known how to keep her guessing. When they’d first met, it had taken Kate months of sporadic dates—and very hot sex sessions—to figure out that he wasn’t as indifferent to her as he appeared. In those early days, every time he left, whether it was in the wee hours of the morning after a wild night or on a deployment, she didn’t know if she would ever see him again.

  Today was no different. She wasn’t sure he would show up until she saw him sauntering down the aisle toward her a few minutes before the gate closed.

  He was always cutting it close. It had driven her crazy when they were married. She liked to leave plenty of time. Case in point, she’d arrived at six a.m. for their eight a.m. flight this morning.

  She’d delayed this trip as long as she could with the excuse that the admiral couldn’t see them. But the clock was ticking on the week Colt had given her, and she knew she couldn’t put it off anymore.

  They planned to fly back on the red-eye to DC later that evening, so he hadn’t brought a bag and didn’t need to shove anything in the overhead before plopping down in the aisle seat beside her. Just like that the oxygen around her was gone. His size—his sheer physicality—had always overwhelmed her.

  The flight attendant immediately came by to ask him what he wanted to drink. Proving his continued appeal to the opposite sex, she gave him a lingering smile and an unabashed look of interest, which he ignored. Kate knew it wasn’t for her benefit. It was just the way he was. He didn’t flirt. He didn’t play games. If he wanted a woman, he would make the first move.

  But maybe he had changed a little. The old Colt would have ordered a Bloody Mary after a long night at the bar, but he just asked for water.

  He stretched his legs out in front of him. “Nice seats. As I’m sure Uncle Sam didn’t spring for this, Lord Percy must be treating you right.” He paused to look at her. “I’m just surprised that I’m not sitting in the last row rather than the first.”

  He knew very well that she didn’t need Percy’s money, and the jibe about him being a lord wasn’t funny the first time. Colt was just trying to make Percy seem stuffy and pompous, which he wasn’t. Usually. “If you’d rather, I’m sure someone would be happy to switch. You were doing a favor for me, so I thought I’d try to make it as pleasant for you as possible. But if you want to sit somewhere else, please don’t let me stop you.”

  She turned to look out the small window, studying with fierce intensity the guys loading the luggage into the plane next to theirs. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest. How could he still get her so angry so quickly?

  “Hey.” He put his hand on her arm. She was so surprised by his touch that she flinched. He removed it immediately. “I shouldn’t have said that. Thanks for the seats. It’s a hell of a lot more comfortable up here than it is in steerage.”

  That hurt more than it should. Her heart squeezed. Steerage had been an inside joke between them. It had started on their honeymoon, when her godfather had lent them his private plane. Colt had had only a couple days off, and it had enabled them to eke out as much time as possible in Cabo.

  On boarding Colt had taken one look around at the luxurious leather bucket seats and shiny wood and quipped, “I’m going to have a hell of a time going back to steerage after this, Kiki.” They’d done one of those “what’s your stripper name?” games, and guess what hers came out to be? “The manner I’ve grown accustomed to has just gotten a little pricier for you in a divorce.”

  It had been funny then. But maybe joking about divorce on their honeymoon had said a lot more than she realized. He was already setting them up for the fall.

  Ironically, as much as he’d given her a hard time about “steerage” and the lifestyle in which she’d been raised, he hadn’t wanted a penny of her money in the divorce.

  Her godfather had been furious when she’d married Colt without a prenup. But she’d been right: she hadn’t needed one.

  Of course, she’d
been mistaken about the reason. Once she’d finally sold Colt on the idea of marriage and gotten him to the altar, she’d been sure it would be forever.

  Forever hadn’t even lasted to their fifth anniversary.

  He was studying her so intently, she wondered if he was remembering as well. But it wasn’t likely. If there was one thing she could say with certainty about her ex-husband: once Colt was done with something, he never looked back. He just cut it off. She was as good as dead to him.

  Kate acknowledged the rare apology with a nod. “You’re welcome.” She paused, hesitating. It probably wasn’t worth it, but she would at least try. “Do you think you could put aside how much you hate me until this is over? I don’t want to spend the rest of the day fighting with you or exchanging veiled taunts. Can we just try to be . . . ?” She didn’t know. What could they be together after all they’d been through? “Professional, maybe? I know you’re good at this kind of thing, and we both want the same thing here, don’t we?”

  He stared at her so long without saying anything after her little speech that her cheeks started to heat.

  “What is it you want, Kate? We can’t bring them back.”

  There was more emotion in his voice than she’d heard in a long time. She knew how much the deaths of the men in Retiarius must mean to him, and the fact that she was keeping the knowledge of six survivors from him turned that self-conscious flush to a guilty one. “An answer. Justice.”

  “There is no justice in this world, Kate. I thought you might have learned that by now. But we’ll do it your way. I’ll play along. You’ve got four more days before I leave. Until then, we’ll see what we can find out and I’ll be on my best behavior.” He held up his hand. “Scout’s honor.”

  She shook her head. “You were never a Boy Scout, and it’s three fingers, not two. In your line of work, mistakes like that could get you killed.”

  She was surprised when he smiled and gave a small laugh. It had been so long since she’d seen him do that, it caught in her chest and stuck there, jamming everything.

  How could she despise someone so much and still feel regret? When he smiled, she could almost remember the man she’d fallen in love with before everything had turned so dark and ugly.

  “You’re right. That was sloppy. They threw me out of Cub Scouts after one meeting.”

  “What did you do? Burn down a forest trying to earn your fire badge?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She waited patiently, as she’d done in the old days. He would tell her if he wanted to or not tell her if he didn’t. Nothing she did would make a difference.

  He shrugged. “The scoutmaster thought that a nine-year-old foster kid was fair game. The pocketknife I put through his hand told him otherwise.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly it took her a moment to realize what he meant. Colt had never sat down and told her about his past, but piece by piece over the years, with little tidbits like this, he’d painted a horrible picture.

  She knew better than to feel sorry for him. He despised pity. But she couldn’t hide her revulsion. “He touched you?”

  “Once.”

  “And you didn’t tell anyone what happened?”

  He did laugh this time, but it was devoid of humor. “I tried. But this was in the days before stuff like that was acknowledged. I was the one who was punished for making up such ‘horrible lies.’ But the truth eventually came out. I hear he put a bullet through his head.” A cold smile turned his lips. “Maybe there is a little justice in this world after all.”

  Clearly disappointed to see him talking to Kate, the flight attendant told them to get ready for takeoff, and it wasn’t until they were up in the air that Kate spoke again. In truth, she didn’t know what to say. When they’d been married, she would have put her head on his shoulder and silently cried for him, wishing she could make it better.

  But her heart wasn’t his anymore. It was firmly shut no matter how tragic and horrible his childhood. He didn’t want or need her comfort or understanding.

  So she didn’t say anything.

  Professional, she reminded herself. With that in mind, she spent a good part of the flight preparing Colt for the meeting with the rear admiral.

  Colt would lead the questioning, taking the role of bad cop—no surprise—and she would intervene if necessary to be the voice of understanding.

  The six-hour flight landed early, and they had some time to grab lunch at the airport before hopping in the taxi to meet the rear admiral at his home at the appointed one p.m.

  As much as Kate had been dreading spending time with Colt, the morning flew by with remarkable speed. After all they’d been through, she was surprised at how easy it was to be around him again and how well they worked together.

  They hadn’t exactly gotten off to the best start the first and only time they’d worked together in Afghanistan. She probably would never have gone out with the darkly sexy SEAL chief at all after that CIA Barbie comment if he hadn’t saved her life.

  Not long after she’d arrived at the “safe” (relatively speaking) base, local insurgents had sent a suicide bomber in a car to ram the gates and detonate as soon as he was inside, hoping to take out the guardhouse. She’d been standing too close and probably would have been killed if Colt hadn’t jumped on top of her. He still bore scars from the shrapnel he’d taken for her that day.

  Even the “this isn’t the way I had planned to get you under me” line that he said when he was still bleeding on top of her hadn’t turned her off. The bluntness had actually made her laugh. Her willingness to go out with him might have also had something to do with her not being completely unaffected by having a really good-looking guy with a body as hard as a rock on top of her. The physical appeal had always been there. The saving-her-life part hadn’t hurt either.

  But once they’d become involved, they’d been careful to avoid any appearance of conflict or fraternization by making sure their ops didn’t overlap. If she worked with Team Nine, it was through Scott. That was how she’d gotten to know him so well.

  She’d forgotten how insightful and smart Colt was. Not book smart like Percy but savvy—especially about human nature. Street smart, she supposed they’d call it. But he also had an almost photographic memory and was good with numbers. He went through the spreadsheets she’d put together of the rear admiral’s complicated finances and found the discrepancies far quicker than she had—and she had an accounting background. Before she’d been recruited for the CIA she’d thought she wanted to be a CPA.

  He could have made a fortune on Wall Street. But he’d put his skills to good use in the military. He was one of the best—and not just because of his mental quickness, his physical strengths, or his skill with weapons. He was also cold, methodical, ruthless, detached, secretive, and at times deceitful. The problem for her was that those qualities might make him a great covert operator, but they made him a horrible husband.

  By the time they arrived at the rear admiral’s home—she’d stressed that it was better not to meet at the base when she’d called last night to set this up—and were shown into his office by his wife, Kate was wondering if this might be more than a wild-goose chase to stop him from going to Russia as she’d first thought. Could Rear Admiral Morrison be responsible for what had happened to Scott and his men? She had thought it was a long shot, but after going through everything with Colt, she couldn’t deny the motive.

  She watched as Colt tossed the file on the desk in front of the rear admiral and leaned over with just the right amount of anger and threat to start questioning him. She was about to find out.

  * * *

  • • •

  Colt had spent enough time in San Diego to be familiar with the ritzy Rancho Santa Fe neighborhood, where the rear admiral lived, so when they were shown out about an hour after they’d been shown in—with a decidedly less friendly slam of th
e door from the rear admiral’s wife that made him wonder whether she’d been listening—he suggested they walk to a coffee shop that was near the golf course on which Morrison lived.

  It was a typical San Diego day. In other words, a perfect seventy degrees, slightly breezy, and sunny blue skies. Since they had time before returning to the airport to catch their flight back, Colt needed to burn off some energy.

  He wanted to think his agitation was from the meeting that had just taken place, but he knew that wasn’t all of it.

  Having been pent up with his ex all day was having more of an effect on him than it should. He’d forgotten how much he used to like her. The attraction hadn’t been all of it. Not by half.

  Despite her heels, Kate didn’t object, and they walked along the treelined street of mostly Mediterranean “residences” (apparently calling them homes wasn’t distinguished enough) toward the shopping center that was just outside the gates.

  Kate was quiet and thoughtful. Probably, like him, processing the meeting that had just taken place. She was playing with the single strand of pearls at her neck, as she tended to do when she was lost in thought.

  He’d never seen another woman under seventy or who wasn’t named Barbara Bush wear pearls, but on Kate they looked right. “Chic” is what he’d heard someone say about her once—which about covered it.

  “What did you think?” he asked.

  Despite the sun beating down on her fair head, she looked as cool and crisp as she had when he’d sat down on the plane seat beside her in one of those linen sheath dresses she wore when she wanted something more casual than a suit.

  He had on his typical T-shirt and khaki cargo shorts. That was his dressy.

  Even their clothes had never fit right together. What the hell had he been thinking? They’d never been in the same league.

  She glanced over at him to answer, a wry smile on her face. “I think that if the goal was to push the rear admiral’s buttons, I couldn’t have picked anyone better to go with me. You really know how to go for blood, don’t you?”