Breaking Protocol

by Michelle Witvliet

  “I do trust you. That’s the problem.”

  “That requires further explanation,” she stated, waggling her fingers in a come-hither manner to encourage his reluctance. “Keep talking.”

  “Case in point: I didn’t feel the least bit threatened when you waved that gun at me earlier. You could have pointed that thing at my chest and pulled the trigger for all I did to stop you.” He thumped his sternum for emphasis. “You don’t think that’s a problem? I’ve always relied on my instincts, my ability to sense danger and respond accordingly, but I didn’t feel any of that. From the moment I snatched you out of Colombia, I’ve been reacting like a man, not an agent, and it’s scaring the hell out of me. I’m not especially proud of what I did to you back there, but I won’t apologize for it. I needed a response out of you that wasn’t premeditated. It was the only way I knew to be sure.” He spun on his heels and strode away, clearly indicating he’d said all he was going to on the subject.

  “Hey, Riggs,” Piper called after him. “There’s just one more thing I need to know.”

  Without breaking his pace or looking back, he asked, “What’s that?”

  “Did I pass?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Good answer, Riggs,” she replied.

  “And if I’d given the wrong answer?” he questioned curiously.

  “I would have had to shoot you, of course.”

  Her cheeky response caused his steps to momentarily falter, and she was satisfied that she’d made her point.

  Piper saw Riggs draw his weapon as he cautiously approached the rear of the house. She sensed his shift into high alert, which immediately sent her into a similar mind-set. They’d always worked well together in the past, and she was pleased to see that some things never changed, no matter how much time passed. They still functioned as a unit.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Piper, swiping her hand down her face. The earlier mist had evolved into a gentle but steady rainfall.

  Riggs flipped opened the panel on the rear-entry keypad and tapped in the code. “We’ll secure the upstairs, arrange for a ride back to the mainland and hold up in the storm shelter until they get here.” He yanked open the door and stepped into the storage side of the lower level.

  Eager to get out of the rain, Piper slipped in close behind him. “I sure hope you’re willing to settle for best two out of three?”

  After resetting the alarm, Riggs turned to her with a grin. “I know of one way to take your mind off your disagreeable surroundings.”

  Piper eyed his gun and jerked her head in the direction of the dreaded shelter. “You’d better be prepared to use that because the only way you’re going to get me back in there is at gunpoint.”

  She could tell from the way his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed and flattened, he was prepared to be his usual rational self, while she, on the other hand, was gearing up to be at her most irrational. “Forget it. Not going to happen, Riggs.” She crossed her arms and firmly planted her soggy cross-trainers in a defiant stance. A puddle formed and spread where she stood.

  “You know it’s the safest place to be right now and the easiest to secure.”

  “And you know whoever buried those butts left before the storm hit, otherwise we would have seen more recent evidence of their presence at the site.”

  “Everything you say is probably true, but you’ve got to trust me on this one.”

  “Trust you?” Incredulity spread across her features like the puddle at her feet. “Unlike some people, I’ve never doubted you for a second, Riggs. But I’m still not going back in that dungeon.” She pushed past him and started up the stairs. About halfway up, she stopped and smiled invitingly. “Will you be joining me upstairs for the remainder of our stay, or do you plan on spending it alone down here?”

  Clearly indicating he was conceding, Riggs lowered his head, his shoulders slumping in defeat, and sighed, “I’ll be up shortly.”

  * * *

  A myriad of flashbacks sent Carter reeling the second he stepped into the storm shelter, and Piper was connected to every one of them. Now that he allowed himself a moment, he realized most his pleasant memories were somehow attached to Piper, and no matter how long they had together, he would remember them forever.

  He collected the items he needed from the supply closet without any further delays, and headed upstairs toting, among other things, a satellite phone and a collapsible umbrella-like antenna, which was his only form of communication from the remote island.

  An awful ruckus erupted, and he took the remainder flight of stairs two at a time.

  He hastened to the source of the pounding and found Piper in the kitchen yelling and beating the hell out of the counter with a wooden spoon. A large wood bowl lay toppled on the floor, its contents of chopped lettuce and tomatoes strewn everywhere. She didn’t stop until the spoon splintered, sending one of the slivers deep into her palm. Dropping what was left of the handle, she danced around shaking her pierced hand, screaming like a banshee.

  Carter dumped his armload of equipment on the table and grabbed her hand to assess the damage. Piper promptly tried to yank it away.

  “Hold still,” he said, keeping a firm grip on her wrist.

  “I can’t,” she hissed. “It hurts.” She cast a disparaging glance at the splintered remains scattered across the counter. “Stupid spoon.”

  “From what I saw, it acted in self-defense,” he commented.

  “I was fixing us something to eat when I saw a bug,” she explained, wincing at his probing.

  “In the salad?”

  “No, crawling out of the sink. I knocked over the bowl when I went to smack it with the spoon.”

  Carter was rewarded for chuckling with a sock to the shoulder.

  “It’s not funny, Riggs. It was an nasty, ugly bug.”

  He remembered seeing a first-aid kit in the cabinet over the fridge and reached for it with one hand while maintaining a hold on a very uncharacteristically skittish Piper. When she wriggled out of his grasp, he snagged her around the waist and pulled her back.

  He cleared a space on the counter and lifted her to sit there, arranging the open first-aid kit next to her. “I’m laughing because you’re the most fearless person I know. I find it amusing that you’re having a fit over a little bug when I’ve seen you go up against a two-hundred-pound adversary without flinching.”

  “I hate bugs,” Piper declared with a convincing shudder. “They’re creepy and can hide in tiny places. Had it been a two-hundred-pound bug, I would have kicked its ass.”

  Carter held her hand open, palm up, and worked at the splinter with a pair of tweezers. It was a sliver from hell, thick and long enough to grasp and extract without much effort because of its size. He had it out in seconds and held it up for her inspection before pitching it into the trash. Then he dabbed the area with an antiseptic wipe and slapped a bandage across it.

  After a cursory inspection of his efficient handiwork, Piper wrapped her legs around his waist and urged him closer. “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”

  Carter gripped her butt, pulled her off the counter and carried her out of the kitchen and down the hall with Piper clinging to him like a monkey.

  “Maybe we should clean up the mess I made first?”

  “Let the bugs do it,” he said as he dropped her onto the bed. “They caused it.”

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, Carter came bounding into Piper’s bedroom feeling all the enthusiasm of a schoolboy anxious to start his first day of summer vacation. Freshly showered, hair still damp, and wearing only black shorts and a pair of high-tech running shoes, he gave the revealing outline of her lithe body beneath the pastel sheet only a moment’s pause before continuing across the room to throw back the curtains.

  �
�Do you have any idea what time it is?” He disarmed the alarm and pulled open the sliding glass door.

  The ceiling fan’s lazy revolutions captured the tangy ocean breeze and spun it around, tossing it into every corner and sweeping away the lingering scents of sex and sweat.

  Piper squeezed her eyes tightly shut against the glare, rolled to her stomach and covered her head with a pillow. “Go away,” she groaned into the mattress.

  “The caretaker is scheduled to be here tomorrow morning with supplies. We’ll catch a ride back to the mainland with him.” The edge of the mattress dipped when he sat beside her, his hand spanning her thigh. “This is our last day together on the island. We should try to enjoy it.”

  Hugging the pillow more tightly around her head, Piper groaned again, more insistently this time.

  Swatting her playfully on the butt, he pushed himself off the bed, and began to pace. “Know what we need?”

  “Sleep,” she muttered. “I need sleep.”

  “Wrong answer,” he said, giving her bare foot a playful tug and a little tickle. She kicked at him and drew her feet under the sheet much like a turtle seeking shelter from an unexpected predator. “The correct answer is exercise,” Riggs stated. “I figured a couple of laps around the island ought to get our blood pumping.”

  She lifted the pillow and turned her head just enough to cast him an incredulous frown. “Are you serious? We’ve had sex on practically every horizontal surface in the house. I need time to recharge.”

  “I’ve got ten years on you and just as little sleep,” he reminded her.

  “Then come back to bed,” she whined as she rolled to her back. The bedsheet shifted under her languorous movements, artfully coiling around her long limbs as she stretched and yawned and patted the empty spot next to her. “You can get all the exercise you need right here.”

  It became clear that her blatant attempts to lure him back to bed weren’t working when he said, “Just because we aren’t technically on active assignment doesn’t mean we should let ourselves get lazy. We need to stay in shape.”

  Okay, she had to admit that got her undivided attention. She tossed aside the pillow and sat up, pushing herself to lean against the headboard. “Haven’t you been pretty much straight administration for the last couple of years? How physically fit do you need to be to park your butt behind a desk every day?”

  When he looked at her like he couldn’t believe she just said that, she continued, “You might as well find out sooner than later that I’m not the nicest person when sleep-deprived.”

  “Leading your rescue made me realize how much I missed being in the field.” His eyes flashed with a mixture of excitement and something else, Piper noted—something that caused her to narrow her focus when she couldn’t quite define what it was. Sadness? Regret? She couldn’t be sure and she wished he hadn’t blinked before she could get a handle on the fleeting emotion.

  She bit her lower lip and said, “Then I have the perfect solution. You can take my place, because I’m not going back.”

  Carter arched his brow with a lopsided grin and a half chuckle. “You’re quitting? Again. How many times does this make it?”

  “Glad to see you found your sense of humor, however misguided,” Piper remarked, visibly bristling from his teasing. “But I mean it this time, no matter what you might think.”

  His smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “I can see that,” he said as he braced a thigh on the edge of the bed and drew his knee toward her, keeping one foot planted firmly on the floor. “I already told you that leaving InPro wasn’t necessary.”

  “I know you did,” said Piper, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as she sat up and twisted her legs into a partial lotus. The sheet wrapped through and around her legs. “And I appreciate it, but I’ve been thinking about leaving for some time now. I planned on giving notice when we got back to Washington.”

  “Any specific reason?”

  “This last assignment was the clincher, but these last few days have been somewhat of a revelation for me, as well.”

  He was surprised by how calm and assured she sounded, which told him her decision was in all likelihood the right one. He leaned in and tried to make eye contact to convey his undivided attention. “How so?” he asked.

  “All this free time has given me pause to think about...well, a lot of things...” A deliberate pause was planted but never allowed to take root. “This isn’t easy for me, Riggs. I’m not very good at sharing personal stuff.”

  “Don’t you think that’s normal for the kind of work you do? You’ve been trained not to reveal too much about yourself.” He scooted a little closer. “So, what kinds of things have you been thinking about?”

  “Oh, the usual stuff when a person is contemplating a career change. You know, where I’d like to live, what I’d like to do next, what it’d be like to stop living out of a suitcase and settle down in one place longer than the time it takes to get my next assignment.”

  He touched her upper arm and ran his palm up and down the smooth swell of her bicep as if he were attempting to chase away her doubts. “It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”

  “I’m not being my usual impulsive self this time, Riggs. I’m tired of the transience of my life.”

  “I hope you’re not letting this last assignment influence your decision more than you should.”

  “How I behaved on this last assignment is precisely why I need to get out. I got careless and lost focus, and consequently made some foolish errors in judgment that almost got me killed.” She touched his thigh, her fingers lingering on a scar still red from its newness just above the kneecap.

  “You’ve been doing this for what, almost twenty years?”

  He nodded and covered her hand. “In one form or another.”

  “How have you lasted?”

  “I wish I had some magic wisdom to impart, but I got nothing. All I can tell you is I’ve done this as long as I have the only way I know how—one day at a time.”

  “One day at a time used to work for me, too, but it doesn’t cut it anymore. I find myself thinking about the future, and we both know what that means.”

  He nodded solemnly, his gut twisting from the knowledge that he couldn’t stop her. “Sounds to me like you’re ready to move on.”

  “Haven’t you ever wondered what it’d be like to live a normal life with a nine-to-five job and a membership to the local country club?” Even as she spoke, she surprised herself with her example and wondered what caused those ideas to enter her head. That kind of life had never appealed her, not even when she’d watched her parents live it. It had always seemed so downright pointless and predictable. Oh, her mother had done her share of community volunteer work and her father had obligingly sat on the boards of several local charities, but even as a child she’d recognized their growing dissatisfaction, and the longer her mother’s depressive episodes lingered, the deeper her father sank into his bottle of whiskey. Her brother’s murder and the ensuing rumors surrounding his death had pushed them both over the edge.

  Carter cocked his head and looked at her in a way she wasn’t quite sure how to interpret. “Look, Piper,” he said with a reluctant catch. “This thing between us is good, but I’m not looking to go down that road.”

  “What are you talking about? What road?” Before he had a chance to clarify, the light came on and it all became perfectly clear. She almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of his assumption.

  “Whoa, Riggs,” she blurted, waving both palms in his face as if to hold back any further misconceptions he harbored. “Back up that train of thought and put it in Park. You’re reading way too much into what I said. I’m not looking to go down that road either. What I said was just an example, not an objective.”

  He relaxed his posture and gave a little laugh. “Can
you honestly see either one of us living like that?” He chucked her under the chin.

  Sighing, she slowly shook her head. “No, but I don’t see me living like this anymore either.” She sighed again. “If not that, or this, then what?”

  “Start with short-term goals. What do you want to be doing a month from now?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve always had InPro telling me what and where my next move would be. But I have a little money saved. I’ll be okay while I decide. Maybe I’ll backpack across Europe for starters. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  “That sounds like it could be interesting,” said Carter as he absently fingered the gold medallion dangling from Piper’s belly chain and watched how the coin glistened against her honey-brown skin. She’d worn it for as long as he’d known her, never took it off that he knew of, and he’d often wondered about its significance. She wasn’t particularly sentimental, and God knows she wasn’t a materialistic individual. The few belongings she hauled around in that beat-up backpack was testament to that fact, so there had to be something very special about that medallion for her to keep it so close.

  He was just about to ask her about it when she said, “You want to hear something funny?”

  “Sure,” said Carter, pushing thoughts of her body jewelry aside. “I could use a good laugh right about now.”

  “Sorry, Riggs, but the kind of funny I’m talking about is the sad and pathetic variety,” she clarified.

  “I’d still like to hear it,” he told her as he slid one finger back and forth across the smooth gold links lying across her naked belly.

  “The time I spent in Colombia was the longest I lived in one place since college. How’s that for pathetic? And the sad part is the last four places I lived before South America let me pay by the week. Even sadder is most everything I use on a daily basis fits in a backpack or a piece of carry-on luggage, and my only means of communication are smartphones, tablets and laptops—none of which have any more permanent connections than I do. And to top it off, all I managed to accomplish on this last assignment was get a man killed because I was too weak and lonely to resist the companionship he offered, however temporary.”