Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  “I need you to talk to Claire about joining us.”

  “OKAY, SO I’VE GOT SOMETHING to tell you, and I can’t do it without you getting mad, so I want you to promise not to yell at me until I’m done, okay?” Claire swallowed hard as she waited for Keith to agree. He would be angry, she knew that, but setting him up like that usually meant he’d be quiet about it.

  “What’s up, kiddo? If you don’t want to do the pediatrician thing—”

  “That qualifies as yelling.”

  Keith stared at her, visibly stunned. “Trying to reassure you is yelling.”

  “Speaking is yelling. Just listen. About a month ago, I was talking with this guy I met at a coffee shop over on 34th.” Claire wondered if he’d blinked too quickly or not, but then brushed it off as her overly active imagination. “Anyway, he took me out to dinner—to a cool club I’ve never been able to afford to go to—and then somehow you came up and he knew you.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Alek Anastas.” She waited. This was where he’d start yelling. She couldn’t blame him. She knew she’d been stupid, but she’d meant well. Shouldn’t that count for something? She waited for him to let her have it with both barrels, but instead, his eyes darted around them and then he grabbed her arm and literally pulled her into the garage.

  “Do you have a spare helmet for that thing?”

  “Yeah, I thought maybe—”

  “Good, let’s get it into the back yard. I’ll get the gate.”

  “What are you talking about? Didn’t you hear me?” Claire tried to protest, but he was already pushing the Harley through the side door of the garage.

  “Let’s go.”

  “You’re going to ride it?”

  He pulled the gate open. “Get it into the alley. If you were leaving, what would you not leave behind?”

  “I—”

  “Don’t argue, tell me. Now.”

  “I’d take purse, backpack with makeup and hair stuff, and a change of clothes or something. I always leave a note or call...”

  “Call your parents and tell them you’re going to...” She watched ideas flicker through his mind and be rejected as each surfaced. Finally, he nodded. “Tell them you’re going to Stanford for a tour.”

  “You’re telling me to lie.” Claire knew her jaw was hanging open in a way that was particularly unattractive on her, but this was her cousin and she was too stunned to care.

  “Do it, squirt.”

  While he dashed into the house, Claire took a few deep breaths, and then dialed her father’s phone. “Hey, guess what! I just got a call from Stanford and they’ve invited me to come for a tour! Keith has been pushing me to reconsider med school, so I sent out stuff last week and they already called!”

  For the next three minutes, she went over her bogus itinerary, promised to give her father her hotel and room number as soon as she got it, and thanked him when he assured her that he’d deposit money into her account so she could really enjoy the trip. “Thanks, Dad. I know I’ll be busy, but I’ll try to check in often. I might be gone for at least a week. I can’t stand the idea of being there without sitting in on a few classes and checking out the sororities and stuff.”

  She was still chatting as Keith returned, making slicing motions across his neck. Once she disconnected, she stared at the bag. “You got it all in there?”

  “You’re good. Okay, let’s go. Mayflower Trust.”

  “Not the airport?”

  “Nope. Mark wants to talk to you about joining the Agency.”

  Claire’s heart nearly stopped beating. “And you’re taking me there even after I just told you I knew Alek Anastas? You know what that means, right?”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re still taking me to Mark.” She swallowed as she started the motorcycle. “I’m not going to die or anything, right?”

  “Look, if you were talking to Alek, Mark knows. It’s fine. We’ve gotta get you out of here though. Go!”

  Chapter 18

  KEITH RUBBED HIS TEMPLE, watching out into the inky blackness of the desert, and tried to relax. His head had been pounding for hours. Protection was always hard—always. Protection with kids was ten times worse than involuntary protection. Maybe a hundred. Children didn’t understand the concept of quiet, of staying inside, why they couldn’t go to school or soccer practice, or why they couldn’t play with their friends. Children whined, talked incessantly, and reacted to the tension with tantrums and fear.

  A tug at his sleeve told him one of the kids was up again. He glanced down and reminded himself to smile. “Hey, Jordan. What are you doing up?”

  “Can’t sleep. What are you doing?”

  “Watching.” He shook his infrared binoculars.

  “How can you see out there? It’s dark.”

  He handed the boy the binoculars. “Look over there... that way.” Keith pointed to some brush in the distance. “See behind that creosote?”

  “A rabbit?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re protecting us from rabbits?”

  It was always a delicate balance, trying to decide how much to tell a kid. “Well, if that was something dangerous, I could see it. That’s what I was trying to show you.”

  “Why do we have to be here?”

  “You’ll have to ask your father that, Jordan. My job is to protect you.”

  “Dad said I had to ask you.”

  Keith hated it when parents did that. He understood the reasoning. It was too easy to give too much information, and the agents knew what was and what wasn’t too much, but leaving it all to him meant that he had to make judgment calls for their children—not his responsibility.

  “Well, your father found out that he was working for someone who was breaking the law. So, we’re protecting all of you until he gets the proof he needs. Then he’ll turn it over to the police and they’ll arrest his boss. Then you guys can go home.”

  “But why do we have to come? He’s the one who knows stuff. I don’t know anything. Katie doesn’t know anything. Mom and the baby don’t know anything. It’s just him.”

  The child’s tone was a familiar one—resentment. This father was another workaholic. Kids never understood why their parents chose work over time spent with them, and parents never understood that all the money earned meant nothing to the kids who just wanted their parents’ time. “One way to hurt someone is to threaten the people they love. We just make it so they can’t even do that.”

  “Dad wouldn’t care. As long as he could get to the office on time, he wouldn’t care.”

  This was something he could truthfully refute in a way the child could understand. “Jordan, I don’t know your father and what he’s like, but I know this. Men do not spend the kind of money he’s spending—money I know he really can’t afford—to keep their families safe if they don’t care. They just don’t do it.”

  “My dad has a lot of money.”

  “Listen.” Keith waited until the boy’s surly eyes met his gaze. “We’re expensive. Paying me to guard and protect your family is very expensive. It costs a lot more money than you could ever imagine. Your father is not only paying that money, out of his own pocket, he is also turning his boss into the police. That means he won’t have a job. All that work he’s been doing that kept him away from home? That means that you will still have enough to live on now. If he hadn’t done that, you would be unsafe right now and he’d be worried about how to take care of you.”

  The boy listened. How long the words would stay in the child’s mind and soothe the heart, he didn’t know, but he had to try. At last, the child nodded. “He doesn’t like to spend money, but if you’re so expensive, I guess that means something.”

  “My dad didn’t like to spend money either, Jordan. But it wasn’t because he loved it more than me; it was because he loved me and wanted to make sure my future was secure. It’s how some dads say, ‘I love you.’”

  The boy shuffled toward the bedroom and the
n returned. “Miss Claire is scared. You should talk to her. You’ll make her feel better.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you made me feel better.” Jordan’s voice seemed to scream, “duh.”

  “I meant, why do you think she’s scared?”

  “She just is.”

  Without another word, Jordan went back to his air mattress in the other room. Keith made a sweep of the house, checking the outside from every window, and then crept over to Claire’s pallet on the floor. “You asleep?”

  She stirred, and then sat up, glancing around as if waiting for instructions. “No.”

  “Come on. Come talk to me.”

  Back in the front room of the small stucco house, Keith pointed to the lumpy recliner and insisted she sit. “You still need rest.”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  “What’s wrong, Claire?”

  “Nothing.” Something in her tone seemed to indicate how unconvincing her words were. “I’m just nervous. What if Alek’s people find me here? It could put these people in real jeopardy.”

  “This is the safest place for you, and here you get a chance for some on the job training. Most people don’t get that until they’re ready for the field.”

  “Why did Mark give me a chance like this? I put you at risk.”

  “You were stuck, Claire. He fooled you. We understand that. You also hid the fact that I tossed my card and my phone until we were safe on the plane. That was quick thinking and smart.”

  “I would have told him to forget it if I thought he’d just take it out on me.”

  “I know, squirt. I know. We blew it there. It never occurred to me that he’d court my family. We still don’t know how he knew I was on the case.”

  She shrugged. “He never said anything that would make sense. It was all so fast—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Really. Right now, learn the job by watching and asking questions.”

  “Do you think any of his guys would really come after me?”

  “Mark doesn’t.”

  Claire’s eyes snapped up to search his. “You don’t agree?”

  “I don’t know. Mark is usually right, but he’s still human. Alek Anastas had quite an empire. He shipped girls all over the country. If any of his contacts thinks you have any information that could be damaging, no matter how wrong they are, they’ll do everything they can to take you out of the equation.”

  “Columbus was so hard. When you told me to go into Hard as Nails, I almost choked.”

  “Servane David recognized me.”

  “Well, you got her. That woman is cruel. I overheard her on the phone once. That’s how I found out Alek’s business.”

  “Did he know?”

  “I’m alive, aren’t I? I hung up and then called back and said we got disconnected.”

  Keith nodded appreciatively. “Smart move—calling back, that is. Very good. You have good instincts.”

  “You said they’d never hire me.”

  He shrugged and passed her the binoculars. “Let me know what you see out there.” Once she was in position, he kept talking, anything to relax her. “I suppose it was wishful thinking. I didn’t want you to know what I did.”

  “But I did, really. I mean, we all know you’re a bodyguard. That’s what we’re doing now, right?”

  “Kid, it’s not always like this. My last case was an abduction.”

  “You had to find someone who was kidnapped?” Admiration filled her voice. “Did you find him—her?”

  Part of him resisted. He didn’t need to tell her yet, did he? What was the point? If he had his way, she’d be heading to Stanford as soon as this assignment ended. One look at the concentration Claire showed as she scanned the shrubby terrain told him she’d never do it now. This was already in her blood.

  “Claire, look at me.” He nearly choked at the pride and earnestness in her eyes. The minute he told her the truth, she’d lose all respect for him, but maybe it’d be worth it. Maybe she’d realize why he didn’t want her to join the Agency. “I was the abductor.”

  “What!” Shock registered and then disbelief. “Why?”

  “It was the Anastas case. The girl didn’t know she was endangered, so we had to remove her against her will.”

  “Can you do that? Legally, I mean?”

  “No. It isn’t legal.”

  He watched her face, each emotion, each thought, flickering across her features as she processed his words. “I don’t understand. How can you kidnap someone and get away with it?”

  “They eventually see the need, even as much as they hate it, and we do everything we can to ensure their lives are disrupted as little as possible. We make arrangements with employers, pay bills, keep account activity normal, everything. They reenter their lives as if they took off on a spontaneous vacation, usually only for a week or two.”

  “How often do you do the involuntary protective things?”

  Keith swallowed hard. He’d been wrong. Already, Claire was choosing words that sounded more palatable than kidnap, abduction, and hostage. “I’ve just transferred to that division. I’ve only done two. Karen has done dozens.”

  “Wow. Dozens?”

  “A lot of our clients don’t know they’re in danger. If we try to tell them, they often don’t believe us, or we actually put them in more danger. So, we have to do what’s best regardless of what they want.”

  “How do you—”

  He shook his head. “Not here. Not now. We can take a walk tomorrow.” Keith let his eyes roam back to the room where most of the family slept.

  “Right. How do you find clients—or rather, how do they find you?”

  “Mark has connections in all of the government agencies, in political circles, and even among organized crime. People can contact him in a variety of ways and then he puts together a package that suits their situation.”

  “How do you get paid?”

  “Well,” Keith began, trying to decide how much information was enough while still doing his job, “most are like John Frielich. He finds out something he knows he shouldn’t know, he goes to the FBI but doesn’t have the evidence they need to take him seriously, he’s scared, so they contact us. Mark gives the okay, he calls, and they meet. Based on that, we’re here.”

  “What about things like the abduction?”

  “Well, the last one was part of a bigger protection detail. The girl didn’t know she was in danger, but that’s because Anastas knew the house but not what the person who owned it looked like. He based his hit call on the information he got on the resident of the house rather than the owner.”

  “How’d he know about the house? Why wouldn’t he know the owner and then find the house?”

  Keith leaned his forearms on his knees, his hands clenched together. “That’s how you think it’d work, isn’t it? It rarely does. People start with bits of information from somewhere—this time from an address. Rather than searching house records to see who owned it and going after that person, he went after the person residing there.” Keith pushed back as if the memory was distasteful. “On the one hand, it makes sense. The house could have been a rental or anything, but once he found out about the woman, he should have looked into the owner to make sure he wasn’t barking up the wrong tree.”

  “So, who paid you if she didn’t ask for help?”

  “The owner. Somehow, she got information about Anastas’ syndicate and she knew about the Agency.”

  “So, she paid for someone to guard her and the girl?”

  “Yep. Nice when it works out that way. My first abduction was an old guy that didn’t know he was in danger. Mark just learned about it in passing and sent us in.”

  “So, you worked for free?” Claire’s incredulity was charmingly naïve.

  “Something like that. Don’t worry, at Mark’s prices, we can afford to protect people regardless of their payment ability.”

  “Will I get to help with those?”

  “Normally
,” Keith admitted, “no. Me being your cousin means possibly. It makes it easy to train you when you’re there, but it’s very different than this.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

  “YOU HAVE TO USE LOCKS and guns and stuff!” Claire wasn’t sure she believed him. It made no sense to her, but Keith’s face was free of any hint of teasing. He meant it.

  “Okay, put it this way. You wake up in the middle of the night, and some strange man tapes your mouth, ties you up, and carries you out of your home. You drive for a long time, maybe fly somewhere, and then end up in a remote place—sometimes alone with the guy. What happens if he doesn’t chain your ankle to the floor or hold a gun on you?”

  “I run the first minute he goes to the bathroom.”

  “Assuming he goes.”

  “What do you mean?” Claire frowned at the scenarios that ran through her mind. Surely, he didn’t mean—

  “Well, in one place, Anthony couldn’t go outside, and it was a one room place.”

  “Tell me it was a man.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Kelly had to hold up blankets and sing to give everyone privacy. I hear it was hilarious.”

  “That’s gross.” The job didn’t seem as exciting and glamorous anymore. Seriously? No bathroom? Disgusting. “How often does that kind of thing happen?”

  “Not often. The abductions are relatively uncommon—primarily because they’re usually pro bono. It’s harder to hear of them when people aren’t asking for help, y’know?”

  “I guess. Still, this is pretty boring stuff. We just sit here and watch for something to happen.” She hated to hear his laughter, but Claire had to admit to herself that she probably did sound very foolish.

  “Well, usually, we like boring. It means people stay alive.”

  “Have you ever had to run?”

  “On almost every case, we have to run. About half or a little more are just drills, but you just don’t know it is until it’s over.”