by Alice Sharpe
“I know you must have a lot to do,” she said as she reached into the crib and picked up her daughter. She turned to face him and said, “Thanks for the help tonight.”
“Cut it out,” he said.
“Jack—”
“We’re going to talk. I’m not going anywhere until we do.”
She sighed heavily. “I have to nurse the baby. You could wait in the living room—”
“No, you do what you have to do. I’ll turn my back if you want, but we’re going to talk now.” He turned his back and crossed his arms.
After a few seconds of rustling sounds and the creak of rockers, she said, “I’m not going to talk to your back, Jack. Go ahead and turn around.”
He did, leaning against the doorjamb. Hannah was modestly draped in a pink blanket. All Jack could see of Aubrielle was one tiny foot and an equally tiny hand. Determined to set things straight, he said, “You need help, Hannah.”
“No.”
“Whatever is going on is over your head.”
“If you mean I don’t understand why anyone would want to hurt me, yes, you’re right.”
“You know what I find kind of puzzling?”
She looked at him as though worried what he’d say next. “What?”
“You didn’t call the cops about the window.”
“What could they do?”
“Investigate. Take the note and try to trace—”
“White paper and cut-out words? A rock?”
“Ever heard of fingerprints? Tire tracks out on the drive? Neighbors who saw something?”
“Jack, what do you suppose is the first thing the police would do?” When he shrugged in response, she continued. “They would investigate you. You’re new in town. Why are you here, how do you know me, etc. Maybe your false identity would hold up under closer scrutiny, maybe it wouldn’t.”
“That concerns me, not you,” he said.
“Because you’re at my house, it concerns me, too, and what concerns me concerns my baby.”
“Your grandmother can’t file a claim with her home owner’s insurance if she doesn’t report the attack,” he said reasonably.
“She’s afraid to make a claim on her insurance because she’s afraid they’ll cancel her policy. I have an emergency fund. I’ll buy her a new window.”
He let it drop.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she added. “If you leave now, I’ll call the cops and tell them about the window and how I’ve felt as though I’m being watched. I’ll give them the rock and the paper. We won’t have to inform the insurance company if Grandma doesn’t want to, but the authorities will be advised. You’ll get your way.”
He shook his head. “Not until you’re honest with me. I want to know who you’re protecting. I figure it must be someone at the Staar Foundation.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Not that again—”
“I haven’t told you what I saw out in the jungle,” he said.
The baby started crying. Hannah deftly manipulated baby and blanket against her chest and stood. “Turn around so I can fix my bra,” she said.
With an internal smile, he did as she asked. Funny how shy people could be around someone they’d once been so blatantly intimate with.
“Okay,” she said, and patting the baby’s tiny back, demanded, “What did you see?”
He pushed himself away from the jamb. He wished she’d come closer to him so he could speak in a whisper instead of across a room. The things he had to say weren’t the kind of things a man wanted to shout.
As she resettled in the rocker, he looked around the room until he spied a small wooden toy chest. Pulling that close to her chair, he parked himself on top of it, forearms resting on his thighs.
“First of all, the guerillas knew about me. About my training and the fact that I’d been a mercenary for a short time a while ago. They treated me differently than the others, singling me out. At first I thought it was because I spoke the language, but then I realized they were kind of grooming me, seeing if I might turn tail and help them.”
Her eyes grew wide. “What did you do?”
“I had nothing to do with them until after they killed the other hostages. Then I considered the possibility that if I ever wanted to escape, I had better seem to be more cooperative. So I turned into a model prisoner and kept my eyes open.”
“I don’t—”
“I’m going to cut this short. I think the Staar Foundation is the front for the GTM, that they are supporting terrorist schools and camps. I have to find out who is involved and how deeply.”
“That’s absurd. Santi Correa and his son, Hugo, would never—”
“How do you know? How do you really know that?”
She was silent for several seconds. “Couldn’t you just tell our government or the Tierra Montañosa government about your suspicions and let them investigate?”
“The minute the GTM realized I escaped, you can bet the camps I was shown disappeared, but they’re still there, further underground or in a different spot. They were working up to something big. Right before I left, they were practicing some sort of mock invasion or takeover of some kind.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they practiced entering blocked-off areas that represented buildings and killing and subduing mock representations of people. As for telling our government—governments don’t move fast, they launch studies. Just verifying my true identity and being viewed as a credible witness given the way I entered the country would take forever.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “I can see you’re truly concerned about this, but it has nothing to do with what’s happening to me—”
“Doesn’t it? Are you sure?”
He could see by the look in her eyes that she wasn’t sure at all.
He took her free hand in his. “Hannah, even if this is unrelated to you, the fact remains you and your family are in danger. You have to take the threat seriously. You’ve mentioned small things going wrong, but these things today aren’t small, they’re meant to terrify you. The bomb could have easily been big enough to destroy your car and everyone near it. The rock through the window could have been a bullet. Since you aren’t aware of what you’re doing that has someone reacting this way, you can’t even stop doing it.”
“If I go to the police I’ll have to tell them all this,” she countered. “They’ll check into everyone’s lives and if you’re wrong, we could irreparably damage the reputation of a wonderful nonprofit organization. I’m not doubting these schools exist, I’m just doubting your conclusion that the Staar Foundation is connected to them. I’m sure the GTM has camps everywhere.”
“You haven’t been listening to me.”
“Yes, I have, Jack,” she said, and firmly reclaimed her hand. “I’m just not convinced.”
“Then why are you protecting someone?”
“Oh, no, not that again.”
He shook his head. “Listen, no matter what you think, I’m here and I’m not going to go away until I get to the bottom of this.”
“I guess that’s your decision. It doesn’t include me. We had one night a long time ago…”
“Then let me be your bodyguard. That way we can pool what we know, we can work together and I can protect you. I need a place to hang out while I snoop around—”
“No way. I don’t need protection.”
“Really? Do you actually believe that?”
“Of course I believe it. It won’t work. You have to leave.”
“You’re wrong,” came a voice from behind Jack’s back. He swiveled around to find Mimi standing just inside the room.
“Grandma—” Hannah began.
“You’re wrong, Hannah Marie. Ever since your grandpa died and you got pregnant, you’ve been trying to do everything alone. You need help. We need help.”
“Maybe we do,” Hannah said reluctantly, and then with a swift glance at Jack, added, “But not this man.”
Mimi made a big
deal of looking around the room and behind her. “Then, which man, Hannah?”
“Grandma—”
“I’ll hire you,” Mimi said, looking directly at Jack.
“You don’t even know Jack Starling,” Hannah muttered.
The older woman nodded abruptly. “You’re right, I don’t. But I like him, and so do you.” Jack smiled.
“I do not like him,” Hannah grumbled.
“Whatever. Okay, if you won’t allow me to hire him as a bodyguard for you, then I’ll hire him as one for my great-granddaughter. It’ll be good having a man here protecting her. You accept, Mr. Starling?”
“I accept,” Jack said quickly before Hannah could get in another word.
Chapter Four
“You can sleep here,” Hannah said a few hours later when everything had quieted down again. Aubrielle slept in her crib, which Hannah had pushed into her own bedroom. No way was she leaving her baby alone in a room with a big window. Mimi had long since excused herself to go to bed and Jack, who refused to leave even to drive back to Fort Bragg and check out of his motel, had finally stopped bombarding her with questions.
Standing next to her, he perused the room that had been her grandfather’s den until his death. The walls were still lined with shelves of books, but the desk was gone, shoved into Hannah’s room where she used it to work from home. In its place was the futon they’d installed for the occasional overnight guest. The closet was stuffed with boxes that were too heavy to cart up to the attic.
The fact was, Hannah realized, it was like there were three of them crowded into the small room: herself, Jack and the memory of their first and only night together. That memory had somehow assumed an identity of its own, a mass larger than the sum of the two of them combined. It vibrated with suspended breath as it hovered and waited.
“Cariño,” Jack said, his eyes dark in the deep shadows, the undercurrents of desire she could taste in the air between them sharp and poignant…and impossible.
“We need to get something out in the open,” she said softly.
He moved past her, gently brushing her breasts with his arm. As he had nothing to unpack, he turned upon reaching the futon, sat down, patted the mattress beside him and said, “I’m all ears.”
She crossed to the closet, yanked open the door and caught a sleeping bag as it fell from its perch atop a stack of cardboard boxes. She tossed it at him and grabbed a pillow. “A lot has happened since we met,” she said, still way too aware of him. When he opened his mouth to respond, she held up a finger. “To both of us, I mean. Nothing is the same. We’re not the same. You may have railroaded yourself into my grandmother’s house, but you can’t—”
“Railroad myself into your bed?” he finished for her.
Holding the pillow against her chest, she nodded.
He tossed the bag down on the futon, stood up and walked back to stand in front of her. “I don’t force myself into a woman’s bed. I wait to be invited.”
The last time they’d met, she’d done the inviting and he knew it. This time she met his gaze and said, “Then we’ll be fine because I won’t be asking.”
He leaned forward and whispered, “That’s too bad.” Then, his voice serious, he added, “Your grandmother mentioned you go to work twice a week and do the rest of your work from your home office. You don’t go in again until the day after tomorrow, right?”
Remembering the promise of the paper she’d found with David’s money that might or might not help matters, she said, “Actually, I need to go in tomorrow for a few minutes. Uh, I need to make a copy of a report brought home from work that got destroyed in the car bomb today. Plus we’re all working more hours because of a big Founder’s Day open house planned for next weekend.”
The look he directed her way was suspicious. “I don’t think—”
“Let’s remember exactly who you’ve been hired to guard,” she warned him. “Don’t try to tell me what to do.”
He threw up his hands in mock surrender. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Because your number one priority is keeping my baby safe or didn’t you mean what you said about being her bodyguard?”
“Of course I meant it. But the big picture—”
“Yes, I know. But if you’re going to stay in my grandmother’s house, then you pay your way by thinking of Aubrielle first.”
“Sure,” he said. “Of course. But that means tomorrow you tell me what you’re so determined not to say tonight. We have to work together, Hannah, and we have to start immediately.”
It was well after midnight and the day’s events had finally battered their way through Hannah’s defenses, so she didn’t push further.
“Do you have a gun?” she asked.
“No.”
“My grandfather had a rifle and a shotgun,” she said.
“I know. Your grandmother told me where they are.” He dug in his pocket and produced the small gold key that locked the gun cabinet in the living room. “I’m kind of hoping I won’t need to use a weapon,” he said, flipping the key in the air and catching it. It disappeared back in his pocket.
Hannah refused to think about the fact that Mimi was so spooked she’d handed this man a key to the guns within hours of meeting him. “And if you do need to use one?”
“Then I will.” He put his hands on her shoulders and stared down at her. Despite her best intentions, her pulse throbbed in her throat. His mouth mesmerized her as a sensuous smile lifted one corner of his upper lip. She prepared herself for—well, for anything. Why deny the fact she was attracted to him as she’d never been attracted to anyone before? It didn’t mean she had to act on it, but pretending it didn’t exist wasn’t working, either.
“Go to bed,” he whispered.
She escaped with her pride barely intact but she slept like a rock, so lost in unidentifiable dreams that the next morning, it was clear Aubrielle had been crying for a while. After taking care of her tiny daughter’s needs, she carried her into the living room.
The plastic on the window served as a vivid reminder of the rock and the attached warning that had sailed through the night before. Juggling Aubrielle and the phone book, she found the number of the one and only place in town that handled things like broken windows and arranged for an estimate.
What did the person who threw the rock think she was doing? That was the big question and though she’d racked her brain a million times in the past twelve hours for an explanation, she simply couldn’t think of one.
She mothered her baby, she did her work, she shopped—her life was a little on the predictable side for bombs and rocks and threatening notes.
She found Jack in the kitchen with her grandmother, the two of them reading the paper and eating burned toast like long-lost friends. Jack was wearing the same clothes as the day before—a little more crumbled now as though he’d slept in them. It didn’t matter. Clean as a whistle, slightly rumpled—he looked good no matter what his condition. In fact, the beard darkening his jaw-line seemed to make his eyes all the more blue.
Hannah had dressed for work in a black jacket and trim skirt. As soon as Mimi saw her, she got to her feet and laid claim to her great-granddaughter, transferring the baby and blanket in an effortless manner, but Hannah noticed the sideways glance at Jack and the nod of her head.
“What’s going on?” Hannah asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Nothing,” Mimi said quickly.
Jack cleared his throat. “Well, actually—”
“My poker ladies are all due in half an hour,” Mimi said while rocking Aubrielle in her arms. “It’s way too early for pretzels and beer. I’ll make tea. Are there cookies in the freezer?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “Since when does your poker group meet on a Tuesday morning?” Looking from Mimi to Jack, she added, “Okay, you two, what’s up?”
“Nothing. Barb and the others are coming over to keep me and Aubrielle company while you and Jack go do your reconnoitering
. Did you call the glass people yet, dear?”
Hannah took a sip of coffee brewed twice as strong, no, three times as strong, as her grandmother made it. Didn’t take a genius to figure out who started the coffee maker that morning. “They’ll be here at ten o’clock. What do you mean, ‘reconnoiter’?”
“I want to see foundation headquarters,” Jack said.
“I don’t think that’s such a great idea,” she said.
“Plus, I figure you probably need to take care of some kind of insurance thing with the garage concerning your car and I have to check out of the hotel by 10:00 a.m. We could take my Harley but it’s a little on the conspicuous side. Mimi has generously offered us the use of her car.”
“And the poker crew?”
“I don’t want anyone to be alone in this house until we figure out what’s going on. Alone anywhere, for that matter.”
“So five ladies over seventy are going to keep my baby safe? I thought you were Aubrielle’s bodyguard.”
“I think the best way to keep Aubrielle safe is to figure out why someone wants to scare her mother half to death. For this particular morning, this is the plan. It’ll give us a chance to talk and begin cementing our new pact. We’re a team, remember?”
There was no need to ask what he wanted to talk about. Again she thought of the front window and the rock and what it could portend. What was the point of trying to protect David? Besides, if Jack got to the bottom of this, he’d leave and that was a good thing. “Okay,” she said, then, looking at each of them in turn, added, “No more making sneaky plans behind my back.”
“Of course, dear,” Mimi said. “Don’t forget to stop by the store and get something for dinner. I made another list. It’s there by the door.”
“And you’ll call my cell if there’s any sign of trouble?”
“Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Jack pushed himself to his feet. “Mimi, I know you’re familiar with the rifle, so we’ll take the shotgun. That okay with you?”
“Damn tootin’,” she said. “No one will get close to Aubrielle with me and the poker ladies here.”
