For Your Eyes Only
www.escapepublishing.com.au
For Your Eyes Only
Sandra Antonelli
The smart-talking, quip-cracking, pop-culture addicted author of A Basic Renovation is back with a new romance for grown ups...
By day, Willa is a mild-mannered scientist; by night, she's on the trail of stolen classified documents. Technically that makes Detective John Tilbrook on her side, but Willa has secrets she can’t share...
John is instantly fascinated by the new physicist on the block, even though Willa keeps her distance. A fan of coincidence and happy endings, John has plans for the secretive scientist with the wicked sense of humour.
But Willa has more than her heart on the line—her best friend is at the top of the suspect list for espionage, she’s having trouble leading her double life, and somehow her hair just turned purple. As days speed past, Willa’s life unravels as she struggles to come to terms with her unexpected feelings for a man she just met. John’s a big fan of happily-ever-afters, but will he believe in love and happiness when Willa divulges the real reason she’s in town? Will he break the law he’s sworn to uphold—for love?
About the Author
Sandra Antonelli grew up in Europe, but comes from the land Down Under. She prefers peanut butter to Vegemite, drives a little Italian car, lives in a little house with a little peanut butter-loving dog, and is married to a big, bearded Sicilian. When she’s not writing, Sandra can be found at the movies, drinking coffee, or eating cookies.
Acknowledgements
This novel was written as a portion of my PhD and there are many I need to recognise for their contributions and handholding. My deepest gratitude lies with Lisa Barry for her unwavering belief in me and this story. Elle Gardner had the patience of a saint for putting up with student me and endless blathering about this book. Kate Cuthbert deserves note for supporting me as an author, a friend, and scatty PhD candidate. She gets the Sweetheart award for letting me ‘borrow’ her name for a character. My PhD Supervisors, Dr Vivienne Muller and Dr Glen Thomas never let my lack of academic nous spoil my creativity. I am indebted to the very lovely Rachel Bailey for the brainstorming and critique weekend, to Dr Veny Armanno for making me think I could actually write. And a very special thank you goes to my editor, Laura Daniel for her patience, brains, and very keen eye. Finally, none of this would ever have been possible without the big goateed Sicilian who loves me like no other.
Author’s Note
I have taken a number of liberties in For Your Eyes Only, and many of them include inaccuracies regarding the town and other localities, as well as FBI and police operations and procedure. For example, Deer Trap Mesa exists, but the game pit that I describe in the story is really quite shallow and would be easy to climb out of—if one fell into it. However, some of the story is based on a number of actual incidents that occurred at the Lab. There was a security breach at the Lab and flash drives were found in a raid on a meth lab in a trailer park. Wen Ho Lee is a real person. A former US Attorney General did fail to securely store classified information, as did a former CIA director. Tortilla Flats is a real restaurant in Santa Fe. It is owned by Dean Alexis and managed by the wonderful man Ivan Macias, the man responsible for having the best green chile in the world. Sadly, there is no bakery behind the Chamber of Commerce in Los Alamos. I confess to naming one FBI agent after author Laura Kinsale because she kept me updated with news during the Las Conchas fire that saw Los Alamos evacuated in 2011.
For my tiny little mom.
She always told me my lack of mathematical ability would add up to something else.
Thanks, tiny little mom!
Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgement
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…
1
Fear was a powerful motivator. If it hadn’t been for the fear, Willa would have had the good sense to not fall for the flattery. Her ego wouldn’t have gone on a superhero power trip. She wouldn’t have believed she was capable of saving the day. She would have told Oscar to shove this job up his Alabama butt. Instead, provoked by terror that reached down to the pit of her stomach, seduced by praise, she’d lacked the strength—superhuman or mortal—to refuse.
An angry squall of cold wind whipped dirt into her mouth and stung her calves. She checked her cell phone and willed the missing reception bars to appear, but telekinesis was another superpower she lacked. The damned thing still said no service. Swearing, the lug wrench in one hand, she crammed the useless, so-called ‘smartphone’ into her blazer pocket and got greasy black smears all over the cranberry wool. Her next curse was carried away by a frosty gust.
Nose running, fingers like ice, Willa crouched again in front of the final lug nut, the one the Volkswagen service department had clearly welded onto the left rear wheel of the Jetta during the last tire rotation. Furious with herself, with Oscar, she set the wrench against the obstinate wheel nut and prepared for a fifth round.
Yeah. Fear had pinched her, but flattery had sucker-punched her. “Come on, Heston,” she mumbled, imitating Oscar’s twang, “do this and then yew can push your papers and analyze all yew want. I need yew back on my team. No one knows this stuff like yew. These other guys lack the science. I need yew in Los Alamos.” Willa twisted the lug wrench as hard as she could. “That slick,” she hissed, “manipulative, pork-rind-eating,” she grunted as she tried to force rotation, “cueball!”
A dust-devil whirled across the road carrying leaves, foliage, and sandy soil that moved in a frenzied tornado-like dance around her. The bouncing tumbleweed that thwapped into her wasn’t big, but had enough force to knock her off balance and dump her backwards onto the red-dusted road. Skirt hitched up high on her thighs, tailbone smarting, she sat beside the tire iron and blinked against the wind that blew salmon-pink dirt into her face. She swabbed her running nose and wiped muck from her eyes with the elbow of her jacket. Over the edge of worsted wool, she caught sight of another twister reeling along the asphalt. It was billowing up a cloud of rose-tinted soil and bearing down on her at high speed.
Willa always assumed work would be the death of her, but this was not how she pictured things would end. She somersaulted in what she hoped was a safe direction, shut her eyes, and said her prayers.
She hit a patch of half-melted old snow. Vulcanized rubber screeched on pavement.
Gravel hit her like buckshot.
Something wobbled past her head and clanged metallically against rock.
Then it was all over. Above the howling wind came the sound of a rumbling engine and sputtering exhaust system.
A door slammed.
Slowly, Willa cracked open her eyes to yellow scrub grass, chamisa, and rolling tumbleweeds. Patches of snow and ice were tinged by pinkish volcanic clay. The wind screamed. It was a blustery April day in New Mexico, and she was still very much alive. She sat up, heart thumping at high velocity, and stared at the mud-spattered, purple tornado made in Detroit.
“Are ya drunk or somethin’?” The cowboy-hatted driver yelled, as he snatched up the hubcap that had flown off his rusted violet pickup. �
��What are ya doin’ laying there like that, you stupid heifer? You coulda killed someone!”
Willa sucked in a breath. The mustachioed Roy Rogers wannabe had jumped the gun on who got to go first. Yes, she had been sitting halfway in the northbound lane of New Mexico State Route 14, but the southbound pickup had come shooting down the highway straddling the double-yellow center lines.
“I could have killed someone? Listen, assh—” She caught herself. As much as she would have liked to point out that he nearly squished her, confrontational finger pointing wasn’t going to help her situation. Biting back a rush of road rage, shaking from a surge of near-death adrenaline, she got to her feet, hair whipping into her mouth and eyes. “Yes. Right. Whatever. Okay, look,” she said, hating to be in this position, hating to ask, “I’ve got a flat tire and I nee—”
“So change the damn thing and get your ass the hell off the road, grandma!” Cowboy swung into his running truck, veered around her and squealed off towards Golden, leaving black stripes on the pavement.
An acrid blue haze of burning oil wafted into Willa’s face. Coughing, she grabbed the lug wrench and climbed into the Jetta to blow her streaming nose. She tossed the greasy tool on the passenger seat. It landed on top of her shoulder bag and the Albuquerque Journal. Dusty pink and black grime smeared across the front page.
While the hazard lights ticked out a tempo, Willa sniffled and began to pull things from her oversized purse. She took out the source of all her fear—the fat manila envelope Oscar had given her last week—set it in her lap, and dug around inside the leather pouch for the packet of Kleenex at the bottom. Then she blew her nose and read the newspaper headlines for the millionth time. Body Identified as Clovis Man. Los Alamos Busts Meth Lab Ring. Funeral Gets Teen Off Robbery Conviction.
Willa shuddered. Headlines made things seem so simple, so cut and dried. Headlines seldom saw the big picture, like she did. Willa had been good at her job, careful, thorough. She had a keen eye for minuscule detail and a reputation for being unflappable when things went wrong or had an unexpected outcome. As if any of that mattered now. That was before Miles. After he died, unflappable wasn’t the same as indifferent.
Still, there was a certain freedom that came with not giving a rat’s ass about anything. It made life easier in some way, sort of like the how the newspaper presented items in a disengaged manner. Willa had grown accustomed to being detached, especially when it came to Alicia. Detached had been the norm until Oscar approached her with data that ran across various projects. She told him she’d have a look at the data and that was all, but after fifty or so pages, comfortable dispassion shifted.
While she didn’t possess a photographic memory, it was curiously enhanced. Her perceptions were different than what most people experienced, and she remembered things differently, with more than one sense. Reading, seeing words or numbers on a page triggered involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Numerals and letters were full of colors and occasional sounds. As she read the documents Oscar had presented, the hues of her senses swirled around and recollections of dates and events and experiments snapped into multicolored focus, just like a Schrödinger equation.
At first, she told herself the findings were a coincidence, only she didn’t believe in coincidence. She could lie to herself and say Oscar’s ‘no-one-can-manage-but-Willa-Heston’ flattery had truly influenced her, but she only kidded herself for a moment. The real truth of it was she was driven by a sense of loyalty and sickening fear. That undeniable fact made her realize she still cared. About six seconds after everything clicked into place in her brain, she’d decided there was no way in hell anyone else was going to Los Alamos.
A forty-five minute drive from Santa Fe, Los Alamos—birthplace of the atomic bomb and Manhattan project—was a small town on the edge of the Jemez Mountains. It was a paradise for nature-lovers and outdoorsmen, but hiking and getting in a run down the Pajarito Mountain ski slope before spring settled in was out of the equation. With a groan, Willa crumpled the tissue and threw it on top of the newspaper. She changed her shoes and hopped out of the VW into the sand-filled pink gale, lug wrench in hand. It was a six-mile walk to Madrid or five miles back to the General Merchandise Store in Golden.
Grit slapping against her legs, she stood in front of the stubborn flat tire and kicked it as hard as she could.
Avril Lavigne.
John Tilbrook groaned inwardly. The last half hour in the car it had been the Canadian pop star singing ‘Ska8erBoi ’ and a cheerleader-esque tune called ‘Girlfriend ’ that was so much worse than the ’80s one-hit wonder ‘Mickey’ had ever been.
This had to be punishment for some sin he’d overlooked, retribution for some transgression he’d failed to address, like how he’d treated his older sister when they were kids.
Sofia reached for the stereo controls and said, “Oh, we gotta hear that again!”
John’s butt clenched the same time his jaw did. Yeah. Karma was laughing at him. “Do we have to? We’ve listened to it nine times already.”
“Nuh-uh, just three,” Sofia tossed her streaked blonde hair over her shoulder with a flick of her head, “but we can listen to Fergie too.”
The clenching happened again. It was his fault. He’d volunteered to drive his niece to this birthday party in Santa Fe, since she had the day off from school and it was on his way home, but what had he been thinking?
Just drive. It could be worse. It could be Taylor Swift. Ignore it and drive.
A haze of rain moved far off to the east. Up ahead in the distance, a blue sedan was parked on the side of the road. John kept both hands on the wheel and cast a sideways glance at his niece. She was seat-dancing like a chubby little kid, but the make up she wore, the streaks in her hair, and the off-the-shoulder, throwback-to-Flashdance top that exposed too much skin made her look like a chubby little…
He shook his head and fixed his gaze on the road. In his book, eight was too young for hair streaks and makeup, yet Sofia had black eyeliner caked around her eyes the way Avril Lavigne did.
According to Sofia, anything Avril did was awe-some. John thought listening to Sofia and Fergie sing about ‘lovely lady lumps’ was aw-ful. Did his sister understand that letting her daughter dress like a cheap hooker was provocative and inappropriate? He cut his eyes to Sofia again and thought about JonBenet Ramsey, Little Miss beauty pageants, and how stupid his sister was to let her eight-year-old strut down the path of precociousness.
The realization was like a sudden slap. Popular music sucked and he was moaning about unsuitable clothing for pre-teen girls. Shit. He’d finally crossed the line into middle age. Next stop was liver spots, incontinence, and dentures, a room at the Aspen Ridge Lodge with round-the-clock nursing care, and picking out a headstone. He was as good as dead.
What the hell was he thinking?
This had nothing to do with middle age. Sofia and Fergie asking him what he was gonna do with ‘all the ass inside their jeans’ made it obvious this wasn’t a question of age. Some things were absolutely unacceptable for eight-year-old girls, especially songs that were booty-call requests.
Repulsive stories and images of child exploitation and kiddie-porn he’d dealt with in the past filled his head for a moment. Whether he was behaving as a cop doing his job, acting like some kind of sensitive New-Age guy, or simply being a concerned uncle didn’t matter; a very grown-up, responsible John reached over and turned off the music.
“Hey!”
“Hay is for horses, Miss Sof.”
“What?”
“It’s a Captain Kangaroo thing.”
“Who?”
“Nothing. Did your mom buy you that outfit?”
“Yeah. Put Fergie back on.”
“No. I don’t think it’s really appropriate to put Fergie back on.”
“Why not?”
He sighed. “Well,” he began, “I thi—” Right genius, how are you going to explain this, tell her she looks like a hooker? Does
the average eight-year-old know what a hooker is? Probably. Harrison is nine and. thanks to TV, he knows what erectile dysfunction is, so go with the you’re-growing-up-too-fast thing. “Okay, Sofia, it’s—”
“Oh, yeah. I see.”
“You do?”
“Well, duh. It’s hard to miss with the way you’re looking.”
John made a face. Now he felt bad. “Ah, Sof, I know you want to be gro—”
“Mom says since you’re a detective you have three-sixty vision, which is way better than twenty-twenty, but I see pretty good too. I see the old lady there.”
“The old lady?”
“Yeah.” Sofia pointed out the windshield to the beat-up blue Volkswagen just ahead on the side of the road. “I coulda told you her car was broken down when we were, like, ten miles away.”
Although he had been preoccupied by the negative influence Avril and Fergie were having on his niece, the VW had registered in his brain as they’d come down the hill about a mile back. He’d had the car in his line of sight as they approached, but somehow, even as they as they got closer, he’d completely missed the white-haired figure crouched beside the sedan.
He sure as hell didn’t miss her now.
Her dark red suit was vivid against the indigo of the car, as vivid as the hot pink Converse on her feet, but her sartorial choices and hair color weren’t what made her stand out. It was the way she was beating the crap out of the left rear tire with a lug wrench.
Sofia sighed. “You’re gonna stop and help her and old people never like today’s music, right?”
Amused by Sofia’s take on things, and oddly fascinated by the elderly woman’s frustration—she had some real power behind those blows—John nodded absently. The wind lifted the lady’s white hair and whipped it into her face as she stood and watched him pull off the road in front of her Jetta. “You stay in the car, Miss Sof,” he said, shutting off the Subaru’s engine.
For Your Eyes Only Page 1
