by Lori Wilde
“And this stuff?” he asked, indicating the tendrils of smoke invading the bathroom.
“The smoke bomb in my purse could have accidentally detonated when my purse fell off the counter. The bombs are pretty old. They’re left over from Desert Storm.”
“You carry smoke bombs around with you in your purse?”
Marlie shrugged. “What can I say? I like to be prepared.”
“How would a smoke bomb help you be prepared?”
“Never know when you’re going to get caught in a riot or need to create a smoke screen so you can escape.”
“Escape from what?”
“Kidnappers, hired assassins, government operatives, the usual suspects.”
“You’re weird, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Where did you get smoke bombs?”
“They belonged to my dad. That’s why they’re old.”
“I’ll check it out. You stay put.” Hunkering low in a crouching position, Joel scuttled from the bathroom.
Marlie drew her knees to her chest and clamped her hands over her ears in an attempt to shut out the deafening noise. She couldn’t get over the fact he’d been carrying a concealed weapon. Fear did a dance in her gut.
Just who in the hell was he?
Until he’d appeared on her front porch that afternoon, her life (with the exception of her tiff with Cosmo and an occasional death threat or two from disgruntled wackos) had been perfectly normal. Okay, maybe not normal in the traditional sense of the word, and maybe not so perfect either. There were the occasional death threats, the datelessness, that three-week-late Visa bill, and she did rent from Mom. But until now, no one had been shooting at her or bugging her phone or letting the air out of her tires or ransacking her mother’s house.
What wasn’t he telling her? Could Joel somehow be tied to all of this?
He is rather Johnny-on-the-spot, Angelina said. Be careful.
“I thought you liked him,” Marlie muttered.
I do, but it’s not smart to trust strangers. Strange men in particular. Especially gorgeous strange men. Now get up and go see what he’s up to.
“He said to stay here.”
And you’re going to listen? Remember your tendency to idealize anyone who champions the underdog? And remember what invariably happens when they turn out to have feet of clay?
Angelina was making a lot of sense for once.
The smoke in the bathroom was growing thicker, darker. Marlie grabbed hold of the towel rack and pulled herself to her feet. Tentatively, she crept into the bedroom.
More smoke billowed in from the hallway. Coughing, she dropped to her knees and crawled for the door. She heard a soft hiss of apprehension and realized the sound came from her own lips.
“Joel,” she called out, “where are you?”
Smoke filled her lungs.
She could barely see a foot in front of her, it was that thick. Her nose burned and her eyes watered. She had to get out of here.
Now.
But what about Joel?
In the hallway, she staggered to her feet, calling his name and sucking in more smoke. Her coughing turned severe, her lungs fighting to expel the pollutant. This was no smoke bomb.
Keep moving. Angelina’s voice was in her ear. You can do it.
Tears streamed down her cheeks and she blinked hard, trying to see beyond the blur.
“Joel!”
She’d made it to the living room. The front door was just a few yards away but her legs felt heavy, mired in invisible syrup, and her head was as light as cotton candy. She tripped over something and stumbled, then realized it was her purse that had fallen off the bar onto the floor. She felt for it amid the swirling smoke, found the strap, and slung it around her neck.
Her eyes burned. Her head ached. She coughed again, choking.
You can make it, Angelina said. You already escaped a hit man today. Getting out of a burning building should be a piece of cake.
Marlie dragged herself to the door by sheer mental will, grabbed the heated knob, and twisted.
It was locked.
No!
Panic was a living thing, clawing at her chest. Out, out, she had to get out. Blindly, her fingers grappled for the locking mechanism. She flipped it to the unlocked position and tried the knob again, but it still wouldn’t budge.
She yanked harder, but to no avail. Someone had tampered with the locks, sealing them inside and then setting fire to the place. Someone had intended to kill them.
This is it. Second time today I’m going to die, Marlie thought. And I still don’t have clean underwear on.
Joel caught Marlie just before she fell and threw her over his shoulder. The heat was intense. Flames licked up the wall between the garage and the kitchen; the pungent odor of gasoline was overpowering.
This wasn’t the result of a smoke bomb. This was arson. He should never have left Marlie alone in the bathroom. He’d abandoned her, the same way he’d abandoned Treeni in Iraq. He’d never seen a fire spread so quickly, and in the chaos of war he’d seen many fires. By God, he wouldn’t let it happen again.
Fire engulfed the room in a series of liquid snaps that sounded like bones cracking. The air, what was left of it, vibrated with a wavery hum. The smoke alarm kept screaming—why hadn’t it melted in this heat?—and mingled with the wail of fire truck sirens.
He tried the front door even though he’d seen Marlie struggle to open it and fail.
But the knob wouldn’t budge.
Eyes burning from the smoke, Joel hurried to the window and tried to pry it open. The windows were nailed shut from the outside. There was no doubt in his mind. Someone had planned this arson to the last detail.
He let Marlie slip off his shoulder and gently leaned her against the wall. She could barely stand. Smoke obliterated everything.
Get out. Get her out of here.
Sweat rolled off his body. He could barely see, but he could make out the shape of a chair rising ghostlike from the corner of the room. He snatched the chair up and, putting all his weight into the effort, tossed the piece of upholstered furniture through the window.
He went back for Marlie, slinging her over his shoulder once again and stumbling a little on his way out the window, her weight throwing him off balance.
“Marlie,” he murmured, “are you okay?”
She didn’t answer.
Alarmed, he blinked in the light from the blazing fire and looked up to see a crowd of somber bystanders ringing the lawn. Reeling like a drunkard, he moved as far away from the fire as his legs would carry him, then dropped to his knees and laid Marlie on the ground.
“Give her some room.” He shooed back the throng. Respectfully, they stepped away.
He was vaguely aware of the arrival of fire trucks, but his eyes were trained on Marlie’s chest. She wasn’t moving air. He placed two fingers against the carotid artery in her neck.
Thank God, she had a pulse, but it was weak and thready, and she still wasn’t moving any air. If he didn’t give her artificial resuscitation immediately, her heart would soon stop.
Sliding his thumbs underneath either side of her jaw, he carefully tilted her head back and positioned himself at her side. He gently pinched off her nose with a finger and thumb and then lowered his lips to hers and blew two quick puffs of air into her lungs. He turned his head to watch her chest.
No spontaneous respirations.
Dammit. He refused to lose her.
He continued to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Her lips were cold, her skin pale.
Time evaporated.
It might have been a few seconds. It might have been an hour. Joel had no sense of any reality except the feel of Marlie’s mouth beneath his as he frantically tried to breathe life into her inert body.
He was consumed. Every conscious response concentrated on saving her life. He didn’t hear the noises around him, didn’t see the people, didn’t smell or taste or feel anything except Marlie.
A firm hand clamped him on the shoulder and a man spoke. “Mister, you can stop.”
No, no. He would not stop. She could not die. He refused to let it happen.
“She’s breathing, mister,” the man said. “You can stop mouth-to-mouth.”
Joel rocked back on his heels. Marlie looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed.
Their gazes met and stuck.
She was reborn.
Tentatively, Marlie licked her lips. Her gaze, wide and innocent, said it all. Thank you.
Joel stood. His legs as heavy as sandbags.
“Need a boost up?” he heard himself say casually, as if nothing monumental had just happened. He’d spent years playing the tough guy. He wasn’t about to turn soft now just because she’d almost died. No matter how much his gut quivered like jelly.
“Joel,” she whispered.
“Yeah?” He knelt beside her again.
She reached out and tightly curled her fingers around his bicep. “See that man at the back of the crowd? The one in the green windbreaker?”
Joel lifted his head and searched the collected group bunched together underneath the streetlight. “I see him.”
“It’s the guy.”
“What guy?”
“My assassin.”
When Gus Hunter saw the crowd gathered outside Penelope Montague’s burning house, he knew that he was too late.
Bad news. Really bad news.
He slowed the silver Ford Taurus he’d rented at the airport and cruised past the house at a crawl, rubbernecking around the spectators to see what he could see.
Smoke billowed from the shattered front window. Orange flames licked the roof. The rising wail of more emergency vehicle sirens vibrated the air. Something was going on in the middle of the lawn, but Gus couldn’t see what it was.
He felt sick to his stomach and a sour taste rose in his mouth. Had a passerby managed to drag Penelope from the burning bungalow in time to save her life? Gus gulped back the bile and prayed that was indeed the case.
Before he could decide what move to make next, his cell phone rang. Distracted, he guided the Taurus to a stop beside a culvert several houses to the right of Penelope’s. The crowd was growing larger, people running in from the beach, cars pulling over willy-nilly.
He flipped open his cell phone and recognized Abel Johnson’s number on the caller ID.
“Yeah?” Gus grunted.
“Admiral?”
“You were expecting Frosty the Snowman?”
“No, sir. It’s just you sound a little . . . um . . . I don’t know, sir, not yourself.”
“I assure you that I am one hundred percent myself, Petty Officer Johnson,” he said, never mind that he was anything but. Admirals didn’t get to be admirals by admitting the truth about how they were doing. “What do you want?”
“Where are you?”
“That’s none of your damn business.”
“With all due respect, sir, I withdraw the question. I was merely concerned and wanted to give you a heads-up,” Abel said.
“Heads-up? What about?”
“Admiral Delaney came looking for you earlier this afternoon.”
Gus knuckled his fist against the steering wheel. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“Only that it was a matter of utmost importance. He got pretty angry when I told him you weren’t in Washington and I didn’t know when you’d be back. He ordered me to give him your personal cell phone number.”
Dammit. Things were getting out of hand. “Here’s what I want you to do,” Gus said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Go home right now and call in sick to work in the morning— and then don’t answer your phone for anyone except me.”
“Sir, that would be lying.”
“Do you value your job, Johnson?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Then do it.” Gus hung up.
He stuck his cell phone in his back pocket, got out of the car, and made his way over to the throng semicircled around Penelope’s house. The fire trucks had arrived while he was on the phone with Johnson, and firemen were rushing to and fro, pumping water onto the blaze. When he got close enough to view the drama on the lawn, his heart did a double-time dance.
There was Joel, soot smeared on his cheeks, gently cradling a young dark-haired woman in his arms.
She wasn’t Penelope Montague.
Where was Penelope, and what in the hell was Joel doing here? And who was the girl?
The young woman said something and pointed into the crowd. Joel raised his head.
Gus jumped behind a fireman. Shit. He had to get out of here before his son spotted him. He wasn’t able to tell Joel what was going on. Not yet. There were things he had to take care of first.
Ignoring his churning heart, Gus turned and moved away as quickly as he dared without drawing attention to himself. He went back to the Taurus, but before getting inside he stooped down and wedged his cell phone underneath the left front tire.
He slid behind the wheel, keyed the ignition, and backed over the cell phone. The crunching sound was completely satisfying.
Let Delaney try to call him now.
The bastard.
Gus might be too late to save Penelope Montague’s life, but maybe he still wasn’t too late to right the wrong he’d committed all those years ago.
“Hey, buddy, hey, you there in the green windbreaker,” Joel shouted and jumped to his feet.
The guy turned and took off at a dead run.
Joel’s pulse raced, revving with adrenaline and testosterone. His brain issued a single edict: Stop the guy who tried to kill Marlie.
His motivation extended past the need to see a potential killer caught. It went beyond making the man pay for his misdeed and on to preventing him from doing it again. Joel wouldn’t have confessed his central reason to anyone. He barely acknowledged the impulse to himself. But the thing that drove him the strongest was his desire to look like a hero in Marlie’s eyes.
When had her respect become important to him? Was it after he’d found out she’d had a crush on him twenty years ago? How pathetic was that?
“Stop that man!” Joel shouted, but no one heeded his call.
Green Windbreaker dodged around a cluster of look-loos, headed for the beach road that ran along the back side of Penelope’s property.
One of the firemen called out to Joel as he zipped past the fire truck. “Mister, the arson investigator wants to speak to you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Joel waved a hand, his entire attention beaded on the man in the green windbreaker. Once he’d cleared the thick of the crowd he kicked it into high gear, sprinting around the side of the house in hot pursuit, legs churning up sand.
Firemen were back here too, dousing the bungalow from the beach side. Joel jerked his head from left to right, but Green Windbreaker had vanished.
Where had he gone?
Stunned that he’d lost him, Joel stopped. What now? He cocked his head, listening. It was hard to hear anything beyond the noise of the fire.
“Sir,” a breathless and red-faced fireman said, “for your own safety I’m going to have to ask you to clear the perimeter.”
Joel nodded, defeated. He turned back toward the road, but from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something and spun around.
There, draped over a patio chair on Penelope’s deck, was the green windbreaker.
The arsonist had given him the slip.
Defeated, Joel snatched up the windbreaker. At least he could have the NCIS Corpus Christi field office test it for fingerprints and trace evidence.
With the windbreaker tucked under his arm, he started for the road once more, only to notice that the fireman who’d warned him off before was walking along the beach r
oad away from the fire and toward a black Camaro parked on the shoulder.
“Son of a bitch,” Joel swore when he realized he’d been duped.
The fake fireman broke into a jog.
“Hey,” Joel shouted, dropped the windbreaker, and tore after the guy. “Hey, you. NCIS. Stop right there.”
They were both running at a dead sprint, and Joel was gaining on the guy. He spurred himself forward, running as hard as he could.
The Camaro engine roared to life before the guy even reached the door, and Joel realized he must have started it with one of those automatic remote starters.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Joel growled.
He reached for the scruff of the guy’s neck, intent on yanking him into a choke hold, but then he spotted the semiautomatic Colt 45mm with a silencer snugged onto the end of it clutched in the guy’s right hand.
Immediately he changed tactics. Using moves he’d learned in Navy SEAL training, Joel came up off the ground with both feet.
Putting all his body weight behind it, he slammed the flat of his sneakers into the guy’s kidneys, knocking him hard into the side of the car. At that very same moment Joel heard the soft, muffled thwap of the muzzled gun going off.
The bullet struck the Camaro’s side-view mirror. Joel fell face-first into the sand.
Before he could scramble to his feet, the gunman had the Camaro’s door open. He threw his body inside.
“Son of a bitch,” Joel cursed again as he struggled to his feet and watched the black sports car speed away into the night.
CHAPTER EIGHT
While Joel had been chasing the hit man in the green windbreaker, Marlie lay on the lawn, surrounded by burly arms and legs and fire hoses, gasping for air, barely able to believe she had lived through the fire.
She squinted into the darkness beyond the light from the blaze. Her glasses were smudged with soot. She took them off and polished them with the hem of Joel’s shirt and then put them back on. She stared at the spot she’d last seen Joel, before he’d disappeared around the corner of the house in hot pursuit of the killer.
Would he catch the guy? She hoped that he could, but then again she didn’t want him getting hurt in the process. She nibbled her bottom lip.
Tentatively, Marlie rose to her feet and edged toward the corner of the bungalow. Chaos was erupting around her. Firemen ran to and fro. People shouted. The blaze radiated intense heat. Bystanders gaped. No one seemed to notice her.