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

by Kimberly Rae

  “Are we in the clear?” Meagan asked. She pushed the stop button and retrieved the CD. “I’ll take this upstairs. Stephanie, make yourself at home. And Steve,” she said, pausing at the bottom of the stairs, “if you get bored later and want to scare us all to death again, you can go get my mail out of the mailbox and test it for drugs or teeny explosives.”

  Steve took one of the non-broken cups of coffee from Stephanie. “Ha ha.”

  Meagan smiled. “I won’t order anything else while you’re here,” she said. “I promise.”

  “That might be wise,” Stephanie quipped, “for the sake of your carpet.” Steve finished the first cup of coffee and reached for another, but Stephanie held it back. “These are for the other guys.”

  “I need it more.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  Steve growled. “A guy can’t get any respect around here.”

  Meagan’s laughter rang down from the stairs. “That sounds like something Pops would say.”

  Stephanie looked around and felt a surprising ache. Steve was smiling. He laughed with the guys, with her. They acted like friends. Like family. Had her prayers mattered to God after all?

  The good feeling dissolved when Steve’s smile fell. He looked at her, sober again, and said, “If you’ve got the time, I need to tell you something.” His gaze included Cole and Quinn. “All of you. Grab a biscuit. This may take a while, and by the end of it you might need an extra cup of coffee, too.”

  59

  Wednesday, January 7

  3:20 p.m.

  Meagan opened the window, alerting Cole to her presence with a wave so he didn’t fall off the ladder. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.” He had both arms extended, using an old broom to shovel leaves out of the gutter that ran to a peak above Meagan’s bedroom window. “This is an easy job. Fixing the loose shingles on the roof, now that will be tough.”

  “I mean about Steve.” She saw his face shutter closed. She leaned onto the windowsill and put her head outside. The ladder balanced against the siding about an arm’s length away. “It had to be hard to hear that all this time he thought you had given away secrets to the enemy.”

  He did not look at her. “I’m not sure if that was harder, or hearing that he might be the one who did.”

  She shivered but did not think it was due to the cool afternoon air. “What will happen to him now?”

  “He’s safe as far as prosecution,” Cole said, knocking another pile of leaves out of the gutter. They fluttered around him to the ground. “For one, he’s out of the military. For another, he doesn’t actually know if he told her anything. All he knows is that he went to the bar the night before the mission, she got him drunk, and he woke up with a hangover and a tank load of guilt over what might have happened.” He attacked a stubborn batch of piled-up pine needles. “The only person who could convict or absolve him is dead. So in that sense, it’s over. But some things don’t ever end.”

  Meagan brushed a wayward leaf from her arm. “I hope I’m not gossiping,” she said, “but do you think this will hurt his marriage?”

  Cole finished the section of gutter and dropped the broom. She waited while he climbed down the ladder and moved it to rest just below her elbows on the open windowsill. When he stepped up to his former position, broom in hand, his face was level with her own. “Steve’s marriage has been hurting ever since he started drinking heavily. Since that might have begun that night, I’d say yes.” He reached up and swept the broom across the gutter over her head. Leaves rained down around them. “Drinking destroys people and their relationships.” He frowned. “Guilt can do that, too.”

  “I hope things change for them,” Meagan said. “Stephanie seems really nice.”

  He lowered the broom and looked at her. His frown deepened. “You shouldn’t be visible like this, Meagan. I know you’re tiny, and Quinn says it’s not part of Lucias’ MO to shoot from a distance, but I’m not okay with you presenting yourself as a target.”

  She laughed. “Tiny? I’m five eleven.”

  “I didn’t say short.” He smiled and touched her arms where they crossed on the sill. “Put your head back inside and shut the window, please.”

  She gazed into the surrounding woods and felt fear trickle down her spine. “Only if you come inside, too.”

  “I have work to do. This house of yours needs some serious attention.”

  “I know. And I’m grateful. But clean gutters aren’t worth your safety.”

  “You don’t need to worry about my safety.”

  “Then do it for my sense of sanity.” She pulled her head in and stood upright, but bent down again to say out the window, “Do you really think I’d be okay sitting inside while you’re out here making yourself a very not-tiny target?”

  With a chuckle, he let the broom fall to the ground. “I’ll come in on one condition.”

  “Who says you get a—” A shrill noise rang out, startling her. She banged her head against the upper window frame. “Ouch.”

  Cole pulled his phone from his pocket. “Steve, why are you calling me? You can’t be more than thirty feet away.” She waited as he listened, chuckled, and whispered to her, “He doesn’t want to come out in the cold.” She smiled at first, but her nervousness grew as he remained outside talking. And talking. About something inconsequential compared to the danger that she hadn’t even thought of until he mentioned it. Now she couldn’t think of anything else.

  She waved her hands at him to come in. Tapped his arm. Thought about smacking him if that would get his attention. After several minutes passed and he still talked Steve through fixing some piece of equipment inside that wasn’t functioning, she blew out a breath and ducked back inside to find the notepad on her bedside table. She wrote a quick note and went back to the window, slamming it against the glass hard enough to catch his eye.

  “Tell Steve to tell you to Get Inside Now!”

  He grinned. “I’ll come take a look at it,” he said to Steve. “Be right there.” He pocketed his phone and said with a smile, “You should have written code blue or something on there.”

  “You’re not in danger from the person you’re standing near.”

  The smile in his eyes had her toes curling. “I’m not so sure.”

  She flushed. “And code red is when one of the girls is in danger. There isn’t a code for the situation you’re in. I guess Kelsey figured if you stood outside in broad daylight when a stalking maniac was on the loose, you’d have the sense to know you were in danger and come in.” Her volume had increased with each word. She wanted to shake the stubborn man.

  “You should make a code for that,” he said, ignoring her growing frustration. “Like green or something.”

  “Green? Shouldn’t it be yellow, like a caution light? Green means go.”

  He laughed and pointed at the note still in her hand. “What’s with the capitals on some of the words?”

  “If I tell you, will you get off the ladder?” She touched the note. “We teach our girls if they need to send us a message but can’t say things openly, to write a longer note and capitalize the words that matter. I’ve practiced it so many times with them, it’s gotten to be a habit when I write messages. I have to go back through my e-mails and take out the capitals.” She frowned and tossed the notepad backwards toward the bed. “But we shouldn’t be talking about this right now.”

  “I’m really not worried, Meagan. Lucias is probably hiding somewhere, making some crazy plan for tomorrow morning.”

  “Then why’d you scare me back inside?”

  “You’re different. We’re all here to protect you.”

  “Which you can’t do if you get shot, or fall off the ladder for that matter. Please come inside, Cole.”

  “You didn’t hear my condition yet.”

  She huffed a sigh. “Fine. What’s your condition? I’ll give you some fudge.”

  “You have to promise to let me come back when this is all over and fix some t
hings around here.”

  The shiver running across her this time was one of pleasure. “Why?”

  He regarded her with a smile. “Let’s just say your house is a nice place to be.” He swept his arm toward the yard and shed. “Besides, I need the practice working on a house. When Sadie gets out, I want to get a place for her and me. We never had a real home, and I want her to know some stability. She needs to be able to start over in a place that feels like...like...”

  “Like home.”

  “Yeah.” He started down the ladder. Finally. “Like family. A safe place where she can have hope.”

  She put both hands on the window to close it. “And love.”

  “Yes,” he said. He paused on the ladder and his eyes found hers as she slid the glass shut. She saw his mouth move. “And love.”

  60

  Wednesday, January 7

  11:20 p.m.

  Meagan woke to the sound of gunshots and her own scream. The insistent pounding sounds came again, from the other side of her bedroom door. It’s just knocking. Get a grip on yourself. She grabbed her pajama pants from where she’d draped them on the chair and held them against her chest. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Cole. Are you okay?”

  What was Cole Fleming doing outside her room in the middle of the night? She imagined opening the door and being pulled into a kiss and her face flamed. “What do you want?”

  “Can I open the door?”

  “No!” She threw her bedcover aside and yanked her robe, which had been draped on the chair next to the pants, over her lavender t-shirt. She stepped over the slippers set next to the chair and rushed to the door, opening it and realizing at the exact moment Cole’s eyes dropped to her legs that she’d left her pants where they’d fallen from the bed. She shut the door in his surprised face and ran back to the bed, grabbed the pants from the floor and put them on, then rushed back. She flung open the door a second time, re-tying her robe.

  “Your phone is ringing downstairs,” Cole said without preamble. Now that the door was open Meagan could hear it. “Steve thinks it’s Lucias.”

  What a fool she was. Cole wasn’t thinking about romance. He was doing his job. “Oh.” She joined him in the hallway but he gestured toward her feet.

  “Don’t forget your slippers. It’s cold on those wooden stairs.”

  She blushed but went back to slide her feet into the fuzzy bunnies. When she returned to the hallway, Cole looked down and smiled. She should have bought new slippers, and new pajamas, when Kelsey had suggested it. “The phone stopped,” she said. “What do we do now?”

  It rang again and Steve appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Can I answer it?”

  She was surprised he asked. “Go ahead. I sure don’t want to talk to him.”

  Steve returned to the living room, out of sight, and Meagan rubbed her hands up and down her arms, giving up when she realized her hands were just as cold. “I want to know what he’s saying, but I don’t want to know.” She faced Cole. “I dreamed Steve and Quinn waited at the wrong plane and I ended up flying to India with Lucias three rows behind me in that nasty old wig. We landed and—” The dream had been more vivid than a real memory, the colors sharp, the noises loud. She shivered.

  Cole put his hands on her arms and rubbed warmth into them. “What happened when you landed?”

  She shook her head and shut her eyes tight. “You don’t want to know.” She tried to smile. “I want to be like your little sister and ask you to tell me a story to distract me from whatever they’re saying downstairs.”

  His gaze grew tender. He moved to sit on the top step and invited her to join him. He did not pull her into his arms as he’d done with Sadie, but he did put one arm around her shoulders. She decided to stop caring about her pajamas and her slippers, and snuggled against his warmth. Tomorrow she would feel the embarrassment, but tonight she was just too cold and too scared.

  “Once upon a time,” he said and she smiled. “There was a boy who wanted to grow up to be a brave man. He wanted to stop bad people and rescue the innocent. He wanted to become strong, very strong, so he would be able to protect the people he loved.”

  Meagan could hear Steve’s voice rise in the living room, but did not strain to understand the words. She leaned her head against Cole’s shoulder. “Did this boy grow up to be a soldier?”

  “He did. And he learned everything he could about fighting, but only because he wanted to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.”

  “That sounds a lot like our verse at Rahab’s Rope.”

  “I’d give anything to work there someday.”

  She glanced at his face. He looked as surprised as she at his words. “Is that part of the story?”

  “No. I wish it was.” His eyes were shadowed. “I can’t ever become who I want to be until Sadie’s father is brought to justice.” He looked down at her face and she longed to reach up and trace the thin red line that ran across his cheekbone, covered by a light brown scab. All the smaller scrapes from the car accident had healed. “Your ministry, Meagan,” he whispered, “is what I’ve always wanted to do.” His breath touched her face. “To rescue kids like Sadie. To help them live free and stop the pattern of bondage for future generations. I don’t want to spend my days in the hole I’m in, pretending to be like the men I want to take down. I want to help get people out of captivity, but I feel captive myself.” He gazed at her lips, then his eyes trailed up until they met hers. “What do I—?”

  Steve yelled and something in the living room slammed. Cole removed his hand from her shoulder and she sat up just as Steve and Quinn both entered the hallway. “We were so close,” Steve said. “Four more seconds and Quinn would have had his location.”

  “He knew exactly what he was doing,” Quinn said. “He had it timed just right.”

  Meagan didn’t want to know but felt she should ask. “So it was Lucias?”

  Steve nodded. “He asked to talk to you.”

  “What did he want?”

  Steve’s expression was far from pleased. “We recorded it. You should probably come and listen.”

  61

  Wednesday, January 7

  11:23 p.m.

  Lucias was sick of Steve Campbell and the FBI. “Just let me talk with her!” he shouted. He wiped spit off his phone. They were making him angry and that made his headache worse. “I know she’s there. Is she with him?”

  “With who?”

  Steve Campbell’s fake calm voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Don’t act stupid,” Lucias said. “Cole Fleming has been helping you manipulate my Meagan from the beginning. And now you’re holding her prisoner in her own home. I want to talk to her. Make sure you’re treating her as well as she deserves.”

  “She’s just fine. But you don’t sound fine. You sound upset. Why don’t you tell me why—”

  “Don’t start that psychoanalyzing stuff on me.” Lucias kicked the wall. He’d stayed in the junky hotel a second night and the wall now had two holes in it. “You’re not going to get me talking so you can trace this call.”

  He wanted to put his pillow against Steve Campbell’s mouth and shut it forever. When Steve said, “You killed Claudia Connors, didn’t you?” he pulled his knife out of the bedside drawer and slashed his pillow in three places.

  “Stop! Just stop talking!” He stabbed the mattress of the bed again and again. “Give the phone to Meagan right now!” he screamed.

  The idiot’s voice rose. “Are you planning to kill Meagan, too?”

  “Shut up! You can’t keep her there forever!” He cut a slit in the sheet and tore it, hoping Steve could hear the sound of his rage unhinged. “I will get her from you. She is mine!”

  The alarm on his watch went off. He hung up the phone and threw it against the wall. Shreds of sheets in his hands, he clenched both fists and roared. They did not know who they were dealing with. Tomorrow morning he would show them. He would show them all.

  _____________
_____________

  Wednesday, January 7

  11:35 p.m.

  The recording ended and Steve pushed the stop button on the machine. Meagan dropped to sit on the loveseat in the living room, curling into a fetal position. “He’s insane,” she whimpered, putting her head on her knees. “I can’t—I can’t go tomorrow. I just can’t.” She lifted her head to look at Steve, Quinn, and Cole, who all stood over her, Steve with her phone in his hand, Quinn holding his headphones, and Cole with his hands in his pockets. “He’s crazy and obsessed and no matter what you do, he’s going to get me.”

  “We should rethink this, Steve,” Cole said. His eyebrows cinched together. “There’s got to be another way to catch him.”

  Steve sat next to her on the loveseat and looked her in the eye. “There is risk involved, I won’t deny that,” he said. “But we need to get this man behind bars and we need to do it soon. Right now we don’t know where he is, and our only hope of drawing him out is you.” He stood and looked at Cole before saying to her, “We can’t force you to do this, and considering I suspected you as an accomplice, no one would blame you for not wanting to help me. But I am asking you to help. I need your help. I can’t think of any other way to bring this man to justice.”

  “Justice. You picked the right word,” she said, certain her tone radiated how pathetic and helpless she felt. She probably looked like Alexia her first days in the safe house when her pimp was still hunting her. “You know I’m going to do it. I just really, really don’t want to.”

  “Thank you, Meagan.” Steve put her phone into his jacket pocket. “I’m going to bed. I’ll keep your phone with me in case he calls again, but if it’s okay with you, I won’t come and get you if he does. I think we’ve all heard enough from him for the night.”

  She nodded and he left the room, followed by Quinn. Cole put out a hand and helped her to her feet, and she walked with him to the stairs, murmuring, “I keep telling myself that if Lucias gets caught, they can catch the contact overseas who is buying his drugs. If I stop Lucias, I’m helping kids in India.”