Chapter 24
K
ayla felt like a suddenly punctured balloon. Deflated, limp. Pressure had been building up inside her until she’d felt as if she would come apart, and then, in less than ten words, Quinn Foxworth had burst the bubble she’d been living in.
Chad. Here.
Without contacting her.
Last night.
Near her home.
At about the time of the explosion.
“Who saw him?” It was Dane, speaking calmly, as if the world hadn’t just collapsed.
Because it’s only your world now. Not his.
“Troy Reid,” Quinn said.
Kayla’s head came up. “Troy saw him?”
This destroyed her tiny, lingering hope that it had been a mistake, that someone had only thought they’d seen Chad or had seen someone who looked like him. Troy had known Chad too well—he wouldn’t make a mistake like that.
“Yes. And,” Quinn added, “Teague said he was pretty upset when he told Troy what had happened. He wanted to know if you were all right, if you needed anything. He’ll probably call you later.”
“Where is my brother now?”
“We don’t know,” Quinn answered.
She frowned. “Troy didn’t know? They were always best friends.”
“He says he has no idea. Teague says he said he was completely surprised when he saw him—a little shocked even that Chad hadn’t let him know he was back.”
“The great Troy Reid caught off guard,” Dane muttered. “I would have liked to have seen that.”
There was a whiff of the old rivalry in his voice, and Kayla didn’t know whether to be angry or secretly pleased about it. Maybe Dane hadn’t shut things off as completely as it seemed.
“Now what?” she asked.
“We keep looking. You get some rest.”
“But I—”
Dane cut her off. “You’ve been up all night, and you’ve been hurt, shocked and through hell. You need sleep.”
She would have been happier about his interruption if he’d sounded more concerned and less like that impartial bodyguard she’d thought of earlier. But the thought of collapsing into bed was suddenly so appealing she thought if she closed her eyes she might doze off right here.
And then it struck her.
She didn’t have a bed. Not anymore.
“Where?” She wished she hadn’t sounded quite so forlorn.
“My place,” Dane said.
“Or ours,” Hayley put in.
“Neither,” Quinn said, relieving her of that decision. “Until we’re sure who’s behind this, you should stay clear of anyplace you’d be expected to go.”
Thankful that there was at least some doubt, somewhere, that Chad had done this, Kayla nodded.
“Where then?” she asked.
“We’re a little short on safe houses in the area at the moment,” he said.
“Speaking of things that have been blown up,” Hayley said. There was a lighthearted note in her voice that seemed at odds with the words, and she and Quinn exchanged a glance that made Kayla smile despite her own turmoil, knowing the story of how they had met.
“There’s an old motel over by Freedom Bay,” Dane said.
“And Mrs. Clark’s B and B,” Kayla said. “Although I wouldn’t want to cause her any problems.”
“The motel, I think,” Quinn said. “And you should take one of our cars, just in case.”
He picked up his cell phone and pushed a single button.
“Rafe? We need a car. An anonymous one. Can we borrow yours?” A pause, then, “Okay, thanks.”
He disconnected and looked at Kayla with a smile. “It looks like it couldn’t get out of its own way, but looks are deceiving. More important, it blends.”
“I’ll be careful with it,” Kayla said.
“I’ll drive.”
Her head snapped around to stare at Dane.
“I told you, I’m not leaving you alone until this is over.” He looked at Quinn. “You have any problem with that?”
“None. I assumed,” Quinn said easily. “We’ll get you both some clothes and whatever else you need at the moment.”
And just like that, she was dispensed with. Her next move decided by the men. She would have argued if she wasn’t so tired. Too tired to even think.
Which told her, she supposed, that she shouldn’t be arguing at all. Maybe it wasn’t a male thing. Maybe it was the awake deciding for the half-asleep. And just as well.
* * *
Quinn hadn’t been kidding, Dane thought. The slightly battered, decade-old silver coupe didn’t look like much, but it purred like a big cat and shifted like silk, and when he put his foot in it from a stop sign he discovered it had some big dog tendencies, too—quick and powerful enough to bark the tires.
But most welcome for him was the fact that he didn’t have to make an adjustment for his long legs. He and Rafe were about the same height, and he always felt a little cramped in most cars. Not this one, despite the fact that it seemed no bigger than any other average car on the road.
“A wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he murmured as they left the city limits and headed down the narrower part of the road through thicker trees and dappled sunlight.
“Sort of like its owner,” Kayla said, the first time she’d spoken since they’d left Foxworth. “A little beat up on the outside but lethally effective.”
Dane glanced at her, curious enough about what she’d said to set aside his determination to speak to her as little as possible. “Lethally?”
“Hayley told me he’s the team sniper.”
Team
sniper?
Dane’s perception of Foxworth as a do-gooder, strictly investigative-type organization shifted suddenly. They had—needed—a sniper?
“Teague wasn’t kidding when he said Quinn kidnapped her. That really is how they met.”
Dane knew her well enough to recognize she was feeling the urge to talk, to pretend things were normal between them simply because they were not. She kept going with the story, and he hoped she wasn’t harboring the hope that pretending long enough could make it real. Yet he found it a relief himself; the strain of being with her was already beginning to wear at the edges of his control.
“Explosions, sieges, literal fly-by-night escapes and a sniper?” Dane said when she had finished the tale, shaking his head. “There’s obviously a hell of a lot more to the Foxworth Foundation than I realized.”
“Hayley said they do occasionally get involved in nasty situations. That this witness they helped knew of them because they’d rescued an American girl from a drug cartel. Took her right out from under the nose of some big drug lord.”
“Sounds like something we have government people for,” Dane said.
“But they didn’t do anything. Bogged down in diplomacy and political haggling, Hayley said, and the girl nearly died. Would have, if they hadn’t gone in and gotten her.”
“Bet that made them unpopular in some quarters.”
“Hayley said that’s the best part. They’re independent, not connected to any agency, and have extensive resources. They don’t need anyone’s approval to act.”
“What about fallout afterward?”
“I guess some of those resources go to some really good attorneys,” Kayla said.
“So they’re not beholden to anyone, but there are many, many people beholden to them,” Dane said.
“That’s how it works.”
“Sort of gives a new definition to balance of power, doesn’t it?” he mused aloud.
“Exactly,” Kayla said with a small laugh.
And Dane realized that somehow things had slipped back into normal. As if her pretending really had made it real.
He was going to have to be on guard, he thought. It would be very, very easy to let it happen, to let it all slide away like a patch of debris floating in a stream, forgotten once it was out of sight and replaced by clear, fresh water.
The motel, with a small café attached, appeared on the right, tucked back into the trees. The nearest other buildings had been left behind at least a mile back. Dane wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but Quinn had seemed happy enough with the choice, and with his new awareness of some of the unexpected skills of the whole Foxworth organization, he decided that was good enough.
He’d have to stay alert and aware, though. And right now, after the long, rough night, he was feeling a bit ragged. But it was Kayla who had been hurt, who needed rest; he was just going to have to manage.
He ordered Kayla to stay in the car with the doors locked while he went into the office. He found that the ever-efficient Hayley had called ahead for them, and he was back in moments with a key in his pocket. An old-fashioned key dangling from a ring that also held a heavy brass tag in the shape of an orca, that icon of the Northwest.
Then he walked to the café and ordered two of the largest coffees they had and a couple of sandwiches for later. Once they were in, he didn’t want to come back out unless he had to.
The room was at the far end of a row of six, and Dane guessed it had been chosen specifically for that location; there were no vending machines, no laundry facility, nothing was beyond that last door, so no one had reason to be there except the occupants. He wouldn’t be surprised if Quinn knew that already. Or had been able to find it out in the time it had taken them to get here; the Foxworth research capabilities were very impressive.
He parked the car near the opposite end of the building, as Quinn had suggested. He wasn’t sure it would help if Chad—or whoever—came after them, but it might slow him down enough for them to realize he was there and give them time to escape.
He just had to be awake to realize it.
“We’re down here,” he said when Kayla gave him a puzzled look as he started to walk back along the row of doors. She looked more than just puzzled by his actions, but he wanted her inside and safe before he explained about the slight diversion of parking the car in front of a different room.
It wasn’t until he had the door open and they’d stepped inside that she turned to look at him, then at the single room key, and asked the simple question that had apparently really been behind the deeper intensity of her expression.
“We?”
He steeled himself. “One room. Two beds.”
She looked around, saw the two queen-size beds, and color crept up into her cheeks.
Two beds, he told himself. No problem. Sure.
Dane closed the door behind them, refusing to think about the hell he’d let himself in for.
Maybe he’d have no problem staying awake after all.
Chapter 25
“D
o your folks ever fight?”
Dane blinked at the seeming non sequitur and at the oddity of it in itself; she knew his parents, they—
Damn.
It hit him abruptly. He was going to have to tell them. And his mother would be...maybe not pleased but relieved. And that would smart. It would probably be best to just let her think he’d finally seen the light, that he’d finally taken her advice after all these years.
“Do they?”
“No. They’ve been married thirty years.”
“Are you saying they don’t have anything to fight about anymore, or that they never did?”
He frowned. Was she really trying to make some sort of comparison between what was happening between them and a marital spat?
“Of course they did. When I was a kid they’d argue now and then, just not much anymore. They’ve learned how to deal. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“They love each other more than any couple I’ve ever known. I just wondered if it was always smooth sailing.”
Just like that she took the wind out of his sails. And reminded him of something he’d once learned that he’d shoved so far back into the “don’t want to think about it” part of his mind that he indeed rarely did.
When he was nineteen, home from college for a visit, he’d learned his parents had actually separated for a while. His uncle Alex, who his mother had always said needed a governor on his mouth, had let slip one day that Dane’s father had once spent several weeks sleeping in his attic room. To this day he didn’t know the full story of what had happened with them at the time relative newlyweds; neither of them would discuss it.
“Newlywed problems. We worked it out,” was all his mother would say, “and because it was before you were born, it’s not your concern.”
“Working it out is
why
you were born,” his father had quipped, earning him a simultaneous glare and blush from his wife. And that had embarrassed the still teenaged Dane enough that he dropped the subject forever.
He’d never told Kayla that, he realized. That was at the time when his long absences away at school, and the unrelenting peer pressure over loving someone younger at that stage of life, had stretched their relationship to its thinnest. Until now.
Only Kayla’s unswerving loyalty had kept them going back then. The same unswerving loyalty she had to her brother. Could he really hold that against her when he had reaped the benefits? And hadn’t she been just as loyal to him, even when he’d been the prime suspect in the attack on her?
And there it was, he thought. Just what he’d been afraid of. An hour alone with her in a motel room, and he was looking for reasons to backtrack, to change his mind, to go back to what they’d had, that loving, deep, and then passionate relationship that had been his foundation for so long.
“I’m going to go out and look around. Quinn said to make sure I knew what normal looked like here so I could spot anything different.”
“Makes sense,” she said, not calling him on the abrupt change of subject.
“I need you to promise me to stay here.”
“I’ll go with—”
“No.”
It came out more sharply than he’d meant it to. She jerked back as if he’d raised a hand to her, and that hurt as much as if she’d actually slapped him.
“You’re the target,” he said. “The last thing we need is you outside advertising where you are.”
She couldn’t argue with that, he told himself.
“And you want to be alone,” she said. “Away. From me.”
No, she didn’t argue, but she didn’t leave it at that, either. She knew him too well.
“Yes,” he said, not seeing the point in denying it. His brain knew the truth; they were over. His heart, gut and especially his body were taking a lot longer to get the message.
“I’ll rap on the window first when I come back.”
She didn’t answer. He supposed there was nothing more to say. He set the lock, closed the door behind him, shoved the key into his pocket and just stood there for a moment.
In the short time they’d been inside clouds had rolled in, turning what had been a sunny day into the typical grayness. “Junuary” in the Northwest, he thought. Normally it didn’t bother him; this time of year the sun rose at 4:30 a.m. and it didn’t really get dark until nearly ten, so there was more than enough daylight. At 4:30 a.m., it seemed too much.
But that was in Kayla’s house, where her bedroom windows faced—had faced—east. He wondered what was left of it now.
She’d wanted to go by, wanted to see just how bad it was, but he’d followed Quinn’s advice to get her under wraps right away. It had been only advice, but something about the man, some air of knowledge, of command, made it hard to do anything else.
Dane knew he was ex-military, and he suspected that both Teague and Rafe were also. He’d asked once if all Foxworth people were, and got, “Many, but not all,” as his answer.
He wondered what a nonmilitary person had to do or be to make it into the Foxworth fold, what criteria they had. From what he’d seen of Quinn, it was probably very particular.
Dane walked around the building, trying to untangle his chaotic thoughts. He was usually more organized in his thinking, and this tumbling from one subject to the next, like a billiard ball bouncing off the sides of the table, was disconcerting. He knew it was all to keep from thinking about the one thing that was unbearable, but he couldn’t seem to find anything strong enough to put it out of his mind.
He finished his circuit, trying to set the details in his mind. The faded red sedan parked behind the office was likely the clerk’s, and he guessed whoever worked the next shift would park in the same place. The trees had been cleared enough to give a good fifteen feet of grass around the back of the building, and the parking area was a clear field of view out to the street.
He supposed it would be possible to come in through the trees and not be seen. It appeared to be open forest behind them, and fences weren’t the norm out here. So if he assumed any approach would be from the rear, the only weakness he could see was the bathroom window. It was the only window in the room that opened to the back. It was high, but not impossible to reach. And it was small, but an adult could get through if they had time to squirm or were particularly athletic. The frosted glass prevented anyone from seeing inside but also declared exactly what room it was.
Once he had it set in his mind, he headed back. Kayla had opened the curtains in the front window, but thankfully she wasn’t in sight. He tapped the window with his knuckles as he went by to let her know it was him.
When he unlocked the door and stepped inside, he saw that she had pulled one of the two upholstered chairs off to one side, to where she could see through the opened curtains but not be seen except by someone right at the window or at an extreme angle. So she was, at least, taking this seriously. That relieved some of the pressure that had been building.
She was sitting in that chair and talking on her phone. She glanced up when he came in.
“You’re not telling anyone where you are?”
The look she gave him was both answer and opinion.
“Sorry,” he muttered as he locked the door behind him, stifling the urge to close the curtains; she was taking care and he didn’t want to upset her more than she already was.
He walked back to the bathroom and checked the window that had caught his attention. There was a latch on the lower sash, but it was a bit flimsy and old, and he imagined it wouldn’t take a lot to overpower or break it, even from the outside.
Warning was the best he could do, so he took the paper-wrapped glasses that were next to the ice-bucket on the dresser, unwrapped them and lined them up on upper edge of the lower sash of the window. There was just enough room for them to balance a bit precariously. He might not be able to stop somebody from trying to open that window, but at least he could make it a noisy proposition. He’d have to warn Kayla; it wouldn’t take much to knock those off.
When he came back into the main room, Kayla was off the phone.
“Hayley is coming over. She’s bringing clothes and toothbrushes and stuff.”
He tensed. “Clothes? She’s not going to your place, is she?”
Kayla looked at him rather oddly. “No, she bought things. My stuff will need to be cleaned. If there’s anything left,” she ended sadly. “I gave her your sizes and preferences earlier.”
“Oh.” He tried to ignore the implied intimacy of that last bit. She was still giving him that quizzical look, and he felt compelled to add, “I just didn’t want her coming from there straight here. Quinn said arsonists like to revisit.”
“And you thought he might follow her? When did you become Mr. Super Spy?”
“The moment somebody tried to kill you,” he said.
She stared at him for a moment, then lowered her gaze. He saw the faint tinge of color appear in her cheeks. He knew her too well not to guess accurately what she was thinking.
“I don’t want it to end that way,” he repeated bluntly. “We’ll see this through, and then we can both walk away clean.”
Her head came up. “If we see this through,” she said, “then the reason you’re leaving will be resolved.”
He’d thought of that. Repeatedly. But right now he was hurting too much to see hope there. “Unless it’s not Chad. Then you’ll go on and on searching until you’ve wasted your life on it.”
“I promised you I’d accept what Foxworth found.”
“What they’ve found is evidence your brother tried to kill you.”
“Evidence someone did,” she said, her defense of Chad immediate and automatic.
“I believe we’ve just arrived back at what they call square one.”
For a long moment they stood there silently, the impasse almost tangible between them. He saw the pain in her eyes and guessed it was probably echoed in his. He would never have believed it would come to this, nor could he keep going. He would see this through, make sure she was safe. This would end—they would end—on his terms. And then he would start learning to live a life without her.
Somehow.