It wasn’t the first time that worrying about a woman had thrown him off stride. He had the knife wound in his side as a constant reminder.
He stopped along the side of a house. Without moving, he drew on his powers of concentration, trying to bring his focus back to the hunt. He shoved out the sirens and talking, the roar of the fire and chatter from all the people gathered to watch Garrett’s house melt into ash.
Centered again, Jeremy slipped into the backyard of the beige bungalow at the end of the block. He took in the small patch of grass and the fenced-in vegetable garden in the far left corner. Two steps led up to an entrance and an open screen door. No one lingered, but the attacker could have dragged a new victim into the house as his shield.
The tingle at the base of his neck had Jeremy glancing behind him. The sight of Joel sneaking across the lawn and Meredith hovering within shooting range sent rage burning through him. He didn’t need a team. He’d planned to go in and out before Meredith faced one more second of danger.
Not going to happen now.
At the near-silent tap of a shoe against cement, Jeremy tensed, waiting for the shot to come. He ducked as he spun around, but the attacker made his move and launched his body off the top step at Jeremy’s midsection.
The flash of a gun and a hint of a feral smile. A heavy body crashed into Jeremy, slamming him into the flagstone path leading around the house and sending his gun skidding into the grass. Air rushed out of his lungs as his side screamed with blinding pain.
In the second before his vision cleared and his senses returned, his attacker pinned his arm to the ground with his knee. Jeremy’s muscle cramped and tore as he tried to roll the other man off him. He shifted enough to nail the guy in the back with his leg.
Jeremy could hear Joel’s shouts and Meredith’s cries for help. Knowing they were closing in and drawing unwanted attention, that with one simple shift the attacker could shoot and take them out, Jeremy dipped into his strength reserves. He bucked his hips and grabbed for the gun in the grass as he knocked his other fist into the side of his attacker’s head.
“Put the weapon down!” Joel yelled.
Footsteps slapped against the walkway as Joel and Meredith came closer. Jeremy grabbed for the attacker’s gun. Anything to keep it from pointing in Meredith’s direction. Joel could fight back and defend. He had the training and the skills. She was an innocent bystander.
Jeremy’s fingers wrapped around the hot metal as he strained to push the barrel toward the other man. Jeremy braced his back against the ground as he kicked out to unbalance his attacker. The guy’s quick look at Joel gave Jeremy an opening. He slammed his elbow into the attacker’s jaw, sending his head flying back and loosening his hold on the gun.
Jeremy tore the weapon away, ready to fire, but the attacker stopped him with a sucker punch, right on his fresh wound.
Fire raced through Jeremy’s body as his breath hiccuped and his body jackknifed. Pain exploded in every brain cell. His fingers went numb and the gun dropped to the ground next to him.
With a sound somewhere between a roar and a laugh, the attacker slipped a knife out of his belt and aimed it right for Jeremy’s gut. One second he saw the other man’s teeth and a face splotched red with rage. The next a boom thundered around them.
As if in slow motion, the attacker slid off Jeremy and fell to his side. Blood trickled from the small hole in his forehead as a sea of red pooled beneath him in the grass.
Jeremy looked up in time to see the bleak determination in Joel’s eyes as he lowered his weapon. He’d done exactly what Garrett had taught him to do...kill the bad guys. The question was whether the answers they needed stopped with the man bleeding out on the ground.
“Jeremy!”
“I’m okay.” He could barely move his mouth, but he forced the words out. He also put up a hand to keep Meredith from plowing into him as part of her rescue plan.
A few more seconds and he’d pass out. Being knocked unconscious would be the perfect ending to this crappy day. But instead of hugging him, she dropped to her knees and brushed her hands over his chest as if he were made of glass.
“He shot you.”
“How did that happen?” Joel checked the attacker for a pulse then took up position on Jeremy’s other side.
“It didn’t.” Jeremy leaned on both of them to sit up and couldn’t hide the sharp inhale when he pressed his hand against his side. “He alive?”
“No,” Joel said.
“There’s blood all over you.” She reached over Jeremy to Joel. “Give me your jacket.”
Joel didn’t hesitate. He ripped it off his shoulders and wadded it into a ball.
When she pressed it against the wound, Jeremy’s world started to spin. “Not shot.”
Meredith bunched his shirt in her fist and exposed his bare chest before returning the makeshift bandage to his side. “He got you.”
“Old knife wound. I reopened it. Not a big deal.” With each breath he took, the house in front of him shimmered and shifted. With his head tilted to the side, the landscape morphed from bright colors to dull gray. That had to be a bad sign.
“That’s it. No more excuses.” She jumped to her feet but stayed crouched at his side. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
Jeremy grabbed her arm and tightened until the black-and-white vision in front of him blurred then shifted back into place.
“She’s right.” Joel took out his cell. “You need medical attention.”
“Just a safe house and a first-aid kit.” Jeremy tried to harness all his energy to get to his feet. If he sprawled on his back he’d lose any chance of convincing them to go along with his plan.
“You’ll bleed to death if we don’t get you help.” She nodded at her hand and the blood seeping through the jacket.
She had a point but he wasn’t ready to admit it. “I need an ID on the dead guy and for someone to find Garrett.”
Jeremy pushed out the worst fears about his brother being hurt or injured. He’d know. He’d feel it in his gut. The connection they shared extended that far. It bound them when the miles kept them apart for months. Like when Garrett got shot two years ago and lay bleeding in a hospital in a country where no one knew his name. Jeremy had sensed it all.
“You win. I’ll call it in to the office.” Joel pressed a few buttons, then put the cell to his ear.
All the color rushed out of her cheeks. “You two can’t be serious about treating this with simple first aid.”
“We’re going into hiding,” Jeremy said.
Her hands flattened against his chest. “We?”
“The two of us.”
“Oh, really?” Her voice turned positively frosty as she sat back on her heels.
For some reason, her slip from panic to angry teacher mode restored some of his strength. “I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck with me for a while longer.”
“Who says?”
That one was easy. “Me.”
Chapter Five
“It’s been an hour and thirteen minutes since you went to collect information. I’ve been paging you for the last ten.” Ellis stopped pacing and shuffling the papers in his hands long enough to glare at Andrew. “You’d better have some good news to explain your delay.”
“Not exactly.” Andrew shut the office door behind him and stepped inside. Not far. Just in front of the door at the edge of the dark blue carpet. As if distance would save him from his new boss’s wrath.
“And by that do you mean ‘no’?”
“Garrett Hill is still missing.” The younger man visibly swallowed but his voice stayed strong. He didn’t as much as shift his feet as he delivered the bad news.
“Unacceptable.”
Andrew spent far too long studying the file in front of him before responding. “Our man in Coronado says—”
“Stop.” Ellis dropped his stack of folders on the desk and slid into his chair. The silence stretched out, ratcheting up the tension as it built. He
could have eased the choking panic in the room, but he fed off it instead, letting the quiet throw the younger man further off balance.
“Sir?”
“I don’t care what anyone says.”
“Excuse me?”
“Call the operative back in. While you’re at it, tell him to bring his government passport and security badge with him, because if he can’t track a man escaping a fire in the middle of broad daylight he’s done at this agency.” So much for sending the guy with a decade of service to cover his top man. Garrett Hill could slip any tail. That’s what made him so good.
“But according to our guy there was a pretty big crowd around the fire. It would have been easy for anyone to move in or out of there without being noticed.”
Ellis flipped a switch on his desk and a bank of monitors to the left flickered to life. “There are people in this office who get paid to keep me updated on what’s happening everywhere in the world. I need you to establish other skills if you want to remain useful.”
He also had a file on his desk filled with photos and status reports and backgrounds on every person in Garrett’s neighborhood. Ellis had possession of redacted top secret reports on the brother and a separate paper consisting of less than a paragraph about some woman named Meredith Samms, a woman Garrett should have run through a background check before allowing her to move into his house.
When Ellis debriefed Garrett he’d add in a question or two about that. Being the best didn’t mean he could ignore the rules. Well, not all of them.
Ellis glanced up and noticed Andrew hadn’t moved an inch in five minutes. Good.
Now, on to the next issue. “Locate Darren Mitchell.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, Andrew.”
“But he’s no longer with the DIA.”
“It would appear we’re back to the obvious.”
Andrew’s eyebrow rose and an uncharacteristic spark of anger flashed in his eyes. “Excuse me?”
Ellis took the show of emotion as a good sign. He admired people who stood their ground. The weak wasted his time. “I’m aware of Darren’s work status with this agency, since I’m the one who fired him after Garrett filed his last operation report.”
“My point is that we can no longer track the man through the building or in his car or at his house by using his badge or the GPS tags.”
“There are other ways. He’s wearing an ankle monitor. It was one of the conditions of his bail. Get me a report on where he’s been and with whom. Also check the video surveillance.”
“Excuse me?”
“Say that again and you’re fired.” Satisfaction flowed through him when Andrew’s mouth snapped shut. “We’re tracking Darren’s moves.”
“All the time?”
“Yes. We used the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act and got a warrant. We know everything he says and does, or we should. Your job is to check for loopholes.”
“Anyone else?”
“Garrett Hill has many enemies, the most immediate and obvious one being the fellow agent he turned in for extortion. With Darren’s trial looming, he is a logical choice for investigation. He takes out Garrett, he stands a better chance of walking away clean.”
* * *
MEREDITH PULLED BACK the thin yellow curtain with the strange flower print and stared out at the empty motel parking lot. The SUV they’d driven here had disappeared. Except for Joel walking back and forth in front of the door as he talked on the phone, there wasn’t any sign of life out there. Just the sun bouncing off the black pavement as it dipped lower on the horizon.
They’d driven across the bridge into downtown San Diego and kept heading east until the neighborhoods disappeared and nothing stood in front of them except a row of mountains. She had no idea where they were or how long they’d been in the car. She’d been too focused on keeping pressure on Jeremy’s stomach. Every flat, muscled inch of it.
“It’s not exactly four-star accommodations.” Despite the slight slur around the edges of his voice, it boomed strong and deep through the small room with the queen-size bed and bright orange bedspread.
She let the curtain drop and moved back to the bed. The white bandage glowed against his tan skin. She’d cleaned the wound then watched and winced as Joel stitched Jeremy up. Through it all, he gritted his teeth and introduced her to some inventive swearing combinations, but he never said anything else. Never yelled. It was as if he were made of steel.
She sat down next to him, careful not to let the bed dip or the shake of the cheap mattress jostle him. “I’ve stayed in worse.”
He curled one arm under his head and propped his body up on the flat pillows. “You need to date guys who treat you better.”
“I was paying my own way at the time.”
“I know you and Garrett...that you guys are...” Jeremy stared at the ceiling, his gaze following the lines in the crisscross panel design. “It’s not my business, but maybe he said something to you during some of your private time together. Something that didn’t seem important at the time.”
“I was his tenant.”
Jeremy’s gaze shot back to hers. Bright blue eyes held her fixed in place. “Tenant?”
“I rented the upstairs apartment.”
He shook his head then closed his eyes and let out a groan. “Shouldn’t have done that.”
“Are you okay?”
“Confused and trying to beat this headache.”
“Because?”
“It hurts.”
She sighed. “I meant the confusion.”
“It’s the house thing.” When he spoke again, his voice dipped even lower. He rubbed his temples as he talked. “It’s not possible.”
“It’s a fact.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” He grabbed his head as he spoke.
“You really do have a headache, don’t you?”
“There isn’t anything that doesn’t hurt, but I’d really like an explanation for the rental.”
Her gaze swept over him. His bloody T-shirt lay wadded up in a ball on the floor. That left him bare-chested and, despite the injury and pale face, as formidable and dangerous as when he’d stepped behind her attacker hours ago.
“I’d show you the lease, but it’s probably scorched, along with everything else I own.”
He waved her off. “Not a big deal. Insurance will cover most of it.”
“I hate when guys do that dismissive thing.”
His hands fell to the mattress. “How did I do that?”
“What about my memories? Nothing expensive or even important to anyone but me, but they’re still mine.” The photographs of her family and the diaries she’d kept since she turned twelve. She knew being alive was a miracle, but she mourned the moments she would now only carry in her head.
“But it’s only stuff.”
“Never mind.” A practical guy who carried light would never understand, so she didn’t even try. “Why do you doubt my renting status?”
“Because I own the house with Garrett. Because we never agreed to rent. Because he never mentioned you. Because I can’t believe Sara would agree.”
“I see you’ve given this some thought.”
“I’ve been stuck on an assignment in Arizona, but I’d think Garrett would have gotten word to me.”
“This assignment of yours.” Her gaze wandered to the nightstand and the two guns, one knife and strange-looking metal star thing sitting there. “I guess it explains the weapons?”
“Remember how I said I was a Border Patrol agent? Well, I’ve been undercover for fourteen months.”
“Sounds terrible.”
His mouth fell into a flat line when he tried to sit up higher on the bed. He flopped back against the pillow as the skin around the corners of his mouth turned white. “It was even worse than that, but it’s over.”
“No wonder you seem so comfortable chasing and shooting.”
“Not so good with being injured, though.”
She
traced her fingers over the edge of the bandage and watched his stomach dip in response. “You got knifed on your last assignment. It hadn’t healed when the guy hit you.”
“And now I am on mandatory leave.”
The laugh bubbled up before she could stop it. “This is your idea of rest and relaxation? Dodging bullets and running from fires?”
“Believe it or not, no.”
His broad smile caught her off guard. Since she’d done enough admiring of his strong jaw and sexy mouth, she looked around the room, anywhere not to stare at him.
The room smelled like wet carpet, and the dark brown furniture and lack of sunlight made it resemble a tomb. Not the best place for a guy to recuperate.
They both jumped when Joel opened the door, talking as he walked. “Pax and Davis are on the way.”
She drew back her hand and inched away from Jeremy. “Who?”
“More of Garrett’s men.” This time Jeremy scooted back until his neck rested against the headboard. “Why are they even here? I thought they were working out east these days.”
“Had some business in town.”
Jeremy nodded. “Understood.”
“That makes one of us.” The shortcut conversation was making her crazy. She’d shoot them her best eye roll but was too tired to do anything but talk, and even that took more concentration than she possessed. “Now might be a good time to tell me what your brother does and why he has so many men helping him do it.”
“I like her.” Joel laughed as he took up a position by the window, glancing at them each in turn and then looking outside. “Don’t get me wrong. I liked Sara, too, but this one has spunk.”
That was the second or third time Meredith had heard the name. Each time Jeremy had frowned and shot her an unreadable look.
Meredith couldn’t shake the feeling of being judged by Jeremy. “And while you’re at it, explain who this Sara person is.”
Joel treated her to the typical she-lost-it look guys did so well. “She’s Garrett’s fiancée.”
Meredith jumped off the bed. Nearly swallowed her tongue and bounced Jeremy off the mattress as she moved. “His what?”
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