The Shadow: Someone is Watching (Rahab's Rope Series Book 1)

by Kimberly Rae

  Her smile, slight as it was, soothed some of the stress in the air. Cole crossed the room to edge the curtain aside. Was Lucias Moore out there?

  He dropped the curtain back in place and turned just as Meagan hung up the phone. “She said it worked, she thinks, but not to ever ask her to do anything like that again.”

  Steve stood. “They’re sure he came into the store? You should have let me talk to her.”

  “They did the whole routine three times, but she said she was almost one hundred percent sure the last one was him. To quote her, ‘No old lady in the world has legs that hairy.’” Meagan handed the phone to Steve with a grin. “You can call her if you want and talk about his legs some more, or his falsetto voice, or the curly wig that was put on crooked.”

  Steve looked like he’d stuck a lemon wedge in his mouth. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Meagan called her grandfather and talked for a few minutes. “Can I go up to my room now?” she asked when the call finished. “I need to order something online, and I want to send a few e-mails. I may not be in the store, but there’s plenty of work that I can do from home. The e-mails piled up while I was in jail.”

  Cole grinned. She stood with her arms crossed and her face pressed into a scowl, like a teenager asking to break curfew. He wished she had put on her bunny slippers, but then again, something about her wearing them made her look young and vulnerable, and he wanted to pull her into his arms and protect her from all the evil out there. It was better she kept her slippers in her room and he kept his mind on other things.

  That personal advice became harder to keep late that night when she wandered into the kitchen where he had set up a temporary office after Steve and Quinn had gone to bed. She startled and he stood. “It’s just me,” he said quickly, his gaze taking in her flowery robe and fleece pants with kittens on them. That night she wore just a t-shirt under the robe instead of a long nightgown. The bunny slippers nearly undid his carefully maintained composure. He gestured to his computer. “I can leave if you were hoping for privacy.”

  “What are you doing?” She opened a cupboard and pulled out a box of herbal tea bags.

  “Work.”

  She put a hand to her stomach. “Oh.”

  He clicked a button to minimize the window he was in, and slid the laptop to the side of the table. “Can’t sleep?”

  “I’d rather stay up than have more of the dreams I started with tonight.”

  “Understood.” He considered her for a moment, then said, “If you need a distraction, could I...could I tell you about Sadie, and what happened to her?” He never talked about Sadie, but somehow Meagan kept wedging into his carefully protected cavern of secrets.

  She returned the box of tea bags back to the cupboard, and looked back at him only long enough to nod once. She opened another cupboard and pulled out a box of macaroni and cheese. “How about I make some for you?”

  He could not explain why his throat clamped up on him or his voice went hoarse. “I’d like that.”

  While Meagan found the ingredients to add to the box mix, Cole sat, leaned back, and tried to keep his voice steady as his words took them both into the darkest, most enclosed part of his past.

  __________________________

  Tuesday, January 6

  11:00 p.m.

  Relief or guilt? Steve knew he’d feel one or the other when Stephanie answered the phone. “I’m sorry it’s so late,” he said when she picked up on the second ring. “I should have called you earlier. I don’t know why I don’t think to do that.” He checked to make sure the guest room door, where he’d stationed himself, was fully shut. “I can be a real jerk sometimes, I know that.”

  “Are you drunk again?”

  There was the guilt. He’d gotten used to associating the feeling with her. Maybe that was why he stayed away so much. “I’m not drunk. I’m at Meagan Winston’s house.” He told her about the changes in the case. “I have to be here until Thursday morning. I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. I should have.”

  “Steve, are you okay?”

  Her voice sounded wary. She probably thought he was at a bar, lying through his teeth. “What do you mean?”

  “You just—you don’t apologize for things. Ever. Has something happened?”

  What was he supposed to say? My best friend told a story this morning and I found out I hate myself. “Yeah, sort of. Listen, could you...would you want to come over tomorrow? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about, and I don’t want it to be over the phone.”

  He waited long seconds before she said, “I could pick up breakfast and bring it over.”

  “That would be great. I’d like to have you here.”

  “Will Meagan mind?”

  “I think she’d like to have another woman around. But I’ll ask her in the morning just to make sure.”

  “Okay. Anything specific you want for breakfast?”

  “Whatever you bring will be fine.”

  Silence again. Then, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  How did she pick up on so much even over the phone? “I just—are you still praying? You know, about us?”

  “Well, kind of.” She didn’t sound as enthusiastic as she had before. He could hear her soft breathing and was surprised at the sudden, strong desire to have her near, to pull her close and spend the night with his arms around her, thinking only of her. How long had it been?

  “If you pray tonight,” he said, “say one for me, okay?”

  The one word came through quiet. “Okay.”

  “Thanks. And I’m sorry for running out on you yesterday. The house looked real nice. And you did, too.”

  He heard a sniff and the guilt cut deep. “Goodnight, Steve.”

  “Goodnight.” He closed the call and sat on the guest bed in the dark, thinking of his wife, wondering if her prayers would get through, and if he should dare adding one of his own.

  58

  Tuesday, January 6

  11:40 p.m.

  Meagan scooped macaroni and cheese into two bowls and made her way to the kitchen table. She placed one in front of Cole, who stared at it like a long-forgotten memory. “What happened next?” she asked.

  He put his hands around the sides of his bowl. She did the same with hers and felt warmth seep into her skin. “He started hitting me more often, for lesser reasons. After a while, it was for no reason at all. Sadie would scream and try to get him off me, but he was usually drunk by that point. He’d pass out eventually and she’d clean me up.” He kept his face down, looking at the noodles in unnaturally bright yellow cheese sauce. “She would cry and I’d hate him. If I had been old enough, if I’d had a steady job, I would have gotten us both out of there, away from him.”

  Meagan kept her voice soft. “Did your father ever beat Sadie?”

  He shook his head. “She was his real daughter. I was just a step-kid. He doted on her. Used to show people her picture and brag about how cute she was, what a pretty woman she would become.” He put his head in his hands. “I left the day after high school graduation and joined the military. I cut out because I thought she would have it better without me around, with no one for him to target. I never guessed...I should have known...” A shudder ran across his shoulders.

  She reached across to him, but pulled back when the kitchen door opened and Steve appeared. He stopped short. “Didn’t know anyone was up. I can come back later.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Meagan took in a deep breath and gestured to her bowl. “Want some mac and cheese?”

  He shook his head but smiled a little. “Did Cole make that?”

  “Meagan made it for me,” Cole said.

  “That’s a switch.”

  Meagan looked at Cole. He had his attention back on his computer. Emotions he probably did not want to feel played across his features. “I was telling her about Sadie,” he said, his voice gruff, his bearing showing military control again. “Just got to the leaving home part.”

&nbs
p; “Cole spent two tours of duty writing her letters,” Steve said to Meagan. “After a few years, she stopped writing back.” He lowered his voice. “Broke him up pretty bad when he found out what happened.”

  Cole stood. “I’m going to the bathroom. Fill her in on that part while I’m gone, will you?” He made an abrupt departure.

  Steve took his chair. “I got back to the U.S. while Cole was still recovering from the bomb blast.” He ate a few spoonfuls of the food in Cole’s bowl. “He was out of it for a long time, so I was the one who took the call when it came.”

  “About Sadie?” Meagan was not as concerned about hearing that part of the story as she was about the man who could not bear to tell it. “She was on drugs by then?”

  Steve nodded and took another bite. “From what they told us, it—”

  “Who are they?”

  “The same people Cole works for now. Sadie’s dad got her started doing drugs with him, then he started selling. He got behind on payments with the wrong people and needed fast money, so one night when Sadie had a slumber party with some friends, he drugged them all and took some pictures. After that, he would force her to plan sleepovers and repeat the process. He kept it up until people got suspicious, and then he just focused on Sadie, keeping her high so she didn’t know much of what was going on. He got enough hits online that he caught the attention of the internet task force. He had gotten real cocky by then and bragged online about his ‘business’ success. One night an officer who posed as a john hooked up to come visit Sadie at her dad’s place, and they busted the dad and got Sadie out. They found a pile of drugs and camera equipment, enough to put him away for a while, but because Sadie was incapacitated at that point, there was nobody to testify against him. He got out on a legal loophole right before Cole got released from the hospital.”

  Meagan’s whole body felt wired tight. “What did Cole do?”

  Steve stared down at the bowl much as Cole had earlier. “He was in no shape to do much of anything yet, but he came back to Gainesville, put Sadie in a secret recovery facility before her dad could find her again, and went on a rampage looking for the man. He worked the streets and I’ll be honest, I was afraid what he’d do if he found the guy.” He ate three more bites, scraping the last of the sauce from the bowl with the spoon. “After two months of that, the task force recruited him. Said he’d learned more in those two months about the underground internet trafficking market than they had in a year. He agreed on the terms that he be allowed to use the job to search for his step-father.” Steve put the spoon into the bowl and looked at it as if he wondered who had eaten Cole’s snack. “That’s been his whole life ever since.”

  The kitchen door opened and Cole appeared, too exact for the timing to have been a coincidence. Steve mumbled an apology for scarfing down his food, set the bowl in the sink, and said goodnight.

  Meagan stood and turned to face the man who had suffered as much or more than his sister. The kitchen was lit only by one dim light over the stove, but she could see the pain, unhealed pain, still in Cole’s eyes. She picked up her bowl and held it out to him. “Steve was hungrier than he thought. Do you want mine?”

  Cole looked down at the bowl. “You made mac and cheese for me,” he said.

  “Yes.” The bowl wasn’t warm anymore in her hands. She tried to think of what to say, what would help. Her toes wiggled inside her slippers.

  “No one ever made mac and cheese for me before.” His voice was a whisper. “I always made it. No one ever made it for me.”

  She saw the unshed tears in his eyes. Setting the bowl back on the table, she reached out and did what her heart had wanted to do all day. The moment her arms circled his waist, he pulled her against his chest, crushed her to his heart. She cried for him, for the boy forced to become a man far too soon, for the man who suffered still. When she lifted her head and looked up, she saw his own face was wet. She pulled her hands free to wipe his cheeks. He closed his eyes as her fingers swept over the contours of his face. “When this is all over,” she said softly. “I will help you find Sadie’s father. I will help you catch him.”

  His arms still around her, he leaned to rest his forehead against hers. “So my sister can be free.”

  She brought her hands down to settle against his heart. “So you can be free.”

  __________________________

  Wednesday, January 7

  8:20 a.m.

  Stephanie had just put the car in park when Steve was at her door, jacket open and gun exposed. He opened the door for her, scoping the area with what she used to tease was his eagle-eye vision. She had never seen him act like this on her behalf. “Steve, I’m not the one getting stalked,” she said, collecting the bags of food and the cardboard contraption that held four cups of steaming coffee. She juggled the bags, but gave up and said, “Would you pause being Mr. Protective and carry something?”

  He stopped viewing the area and seemed to see her for the first time. “Stephanie,” he said, as if surprised. She never would understand this man. “Good morning.” His gaze traveled over her face and hair. “You look pretty.”

  She blushed like a pre-teen and felt even more unnerved when he continued to stare. “What are you looking at?”

  He cocked his head. “At you.”

  “What for?” She let a little bitterness creep in. “You haven’t looked at me on purpose in a long time.”

  “That’s because I’m an idiot.”

  This was a day for surprises. They stood with hesitant gazes on one another until Stephanie said, “Weren’t you worried somebody was going to shoot us or something?”

  Steve came to attention. “Right.” He took the coffee carrier and she carried the bags inside. “Breakfast!” he called out.

  “Is everybody up?” she asked.

  “Baine called at seven this morning wanting a report.”

  “Nice of him.”

  Quinn emerged and followed them into the living room. Cole was already there in a recliner, a Bible open on his lap. “Where’s Meagan?” Steve asked.

  Cole set the Bible aside with a half-smile. “You’re the FBI. Aren’t you supposed to know?”

  “I’m coming!” Footsteps pattered down the stairs and just as Meagan came into view the doorbell to the front door rang inches from where she stood. She shrieked. Stephanie felt Steve’s arm snake around her waist and move her behind him. He pulled out his gun and Quinn and Cole followed suit.

  “Meagan,” Cole said low. “Come stand behind me.”

  She stood frozen in place, her eyes huge.

  “Meagan,” he repeated. “Walk. Now.”

  She followed instructions and positioned herself behind Cole’s wide shoulders, her hands curling around the arm he stretched out in front of her torso.

  “Hi,” Stephanie whispered to her as Quinn made his way toward the door. “Didn’t mention it before, but I’m Steve’s wife.”

  Meagan’s eyes never left the door, but she nodded. “Nice to see you again.”

  “I brought breakfast.”

  Quinn looked through the peephole in the door. Steve shifted to peer around the bay window’s heavy curtain. “Man in uniform,” Steve said. “FedEx truck. Package in hand.”

  “Who’s there?” Quinn called out.

  “I’ve got a package for a Meagan Winston,” the man said. “I need a signature.”

  “Oh, that’s my CD,” Meagan said. She moved to go around Cole but he held her back.

  Quinn opened the door a crack. He held out his hand for the small envelope. “I’ll get it signed for you.” He closed the door and brought a clipboard and pen to Meagan. “Just sign this. Don’t open the package.” He carried the signed paper back and opened the door enough to return the clipboard and pen to the man. The FedEx employee glanced inside and his eyes went wide at the gun in Cole’s hand, then his gaze traveled up to Cole’s face.

  “Say, aren’t you the guy in the paper this morning?” He reached to his back pocket but came up empty
. “I’ve got one in the van. You saved your battalion from a woman suicide bomber. That was really—”

  “Thanks,” Quinn said and closed the door with an abrupt thud. Steve snatched the envelope from Meagan’s hands.

  “Hey! That’s mine.”

  “It could be from Lucias. A trap of some sort.” Steve disappeared with the envelope.

  “He’s probably gone to test it for arsenic or something,” Stephanie said with a shrug. “Sorry. He tends to overreact.”

  “I do not!” Steve yelled from the kitchen. “I’m just getting a pair of scissors to cut this open.”

  She grinned at Meagan. “So like I was saying, I brought breakfast, and coffee.”

  Cole loosened his tense posture and pointed his gun at the floor. “Steve overreacted.”

  Meagan giggled and Stephanie groaned. “Of all the things to drop. I should have had him carry the bag of biscuits. At least we could have salvaged those.” She picked up the Styrofoam cups and tried to stack them back in the container. Two had broken open and coffee puddled on the floor. “I’m so sorry, Meagan.”

  “Don’t be.” Meagan pulled napkins from one of the bags and mopped up the dark liquid. “This carpet is shag from forty years ago. I’d love to replace it.”

  “If Steve stays much longer, you’ll probably have to.”

  “I heard that.” Steve returned to the living room, CD in hand. “Is this the one you ordered?”

  Meagan looked at the Hayes family photo on the sleeve. “Yes.”

  “I’m going to test it just to make sure. If Lucias somehow hacked into your internet account, he might have discovered your order. This could have a secret message on it, or some kind of drug that affects you if you touch it.”

  Stephanie watched with the others as Steve put the CD into the player near the coffee table. Southern Gospel music poured out and Cole smiled. “It’s their new one. I really need to order that soon.”