“I don’t think any of that’s bad, Dean,” Dallas said. “I think that’s all fine. Normal, even. But how you’re going about all of it is, frankly, batshit crazy.”
Dean laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Point taken.”
“We don’t have the answer, you know,” Jim said. “But you need to sit down with Emma and you two need to talk… really, really talk.”
Dean shut his eyes.
“I know you hate that kind of thing, man,” Dallas said, correctly interpreting his pained expression. “But she needs to hear what the hell you’re doing and why.”
“She knows,” Dean protested. “She knows better than I do, I’ll bet.”
“So what?” Chris said. “That’s no excuse to duck the hard stuff and take the easy way out.”
“Argh,” Dean muttered. “Fucking mature relationships.”
The other men laughed.
“Right?” Dallas said, teasing him now. “With talking and shit.”
“Argh,” Dean said again, but it was a sound of surrender this time. “I know, I know.”
“Go on and say it,” Dallas said.
“Say what?”
“That we’re right.”
Dean shook his scruffy blond hair. “C’mon, Foreman… when aren’t you guys right?”
“Never,” Dallas agreed. “Never ever ever.”
Chapter Four
It was four o’clock and already dark outside when Claire finally shut her laptop and started to pack up her things. Mirrie caught her eye as she slipped on her coat, and Griff quickly got to his feet and gathered up his own stuff.
Never, in the whole of his forty-two years, had he spent the whole day in a café. It felt like an incredible waste of time, and more than once, he’d wished hard for Claire to just move that cute little ass somewhere – anywhere, really. Hell, around about noon, he’d have given his eye teeth – whatever the hell they were – to trail her around a goddamn grocery store, that’s how bored he’d been. Sitting on his butt was so not him, even if he was technically working.
But now that she was making a move, all he saw was the heavily-falling snow outside the massive windows. He cursed under his breath, then sucked it up. Yeah, he’d have to trudge out there at some point anyway… unless he wanted to camp out under the table overnight.
Keeping one eye on Claire and Mirrie chatting amiably, Griff timed his exit to be less than fifteen seconds after Claire had staggered out into the wind and snow. He shut the door with a bit of effort, then spotted Claire heading towards a crappy-looking car, and right away, he strode to his own rented beige Taurus. When she yanked some keys from the depths of her coat pocket, he slid into the driver’s seat, watching her closely. Following a target was usually a bit tricky, but in this kind of storm, it’d be a cake walk. She’d never notice him, Griff was sure about that.
He waited a few minutes while Claire warmed up her engine, he presumed, then when she pulled out, he followed right away. She headed through the city centre, then headed out to the highway. She passed Dangerous Curves – the bar that Griff’s good friend Luke Rhodes worked at – and kept on going, heading closer to the Rocky Mountains now. Griff was just wondering why the hell the woman would drive all the way out here in the middle of a goddamn blizzard, when he saw her turn signal indicating left. He slowed down, watched her turn into a roadside rest-stop, and he carried on past.
At a small, secluded mountain path ahead, he turned around, then sat at the edge of the highway hidden by trees, squinting into the swirling whiteness. About fifty feet away, he saw her car headlights, saw that she was just sitting in the car.
Waiting for someone? But why the hell would they meet up way the hell out here, instead of, say, in a nice warm café with fresh-baked pastries?
After about ten minutes, another car approached, slowed down, pulled up next to Claire’s. Griff sat straight, totally alert. Now just who would uptown-girl Claire Worthington be out here meeting in this kind of weather? This had all the makings of a drug deal or weapons exchange, at least that was Griff’s experience when this sort of thing was going down. He doubted very much that that’s what was actually happening, but damned if any other options presented themselves immediately. Unless it had something to do with her ex-husband and the money?
Whatever it was, though, it was definitely shady.
Griff watched as Claire climbed out of her car, approached the second one. A man got out, and Griff raised his binoculars to his eyes. The snow was slowing down a bit and thinning out, so Griff actually had a pretty clear view of the guy’s face. Nothing remarkable, and certainly not one known to Griff or Solid Security.
He watched them talk for a minute or two, watched Claire show the man something in her backpack, and that was when it happened: the man smartly backhanded Claire across the face, and she fell to the ground so quickly, Griff wondered if she’d been knocked out. Shocked, stunned, disbelieving, Griff lowered the binoculars – automatically and stupidly – then glued them back to his face.
The man was on his knees now, and it looked like he was throttling Claire as she wrestled with him for the backpack. Every single one of Griff’s protective instincts surged up and forward, and suddenly, he wondered if he was about to watch Claire Worthington get killed on this lonely mountain road, in the middle of a snowstorm.
Well, fuck that. No matter what she’d done, or what she was planning to do, she didn’t deserve to be smacked around, or hurt. Or worse. Nobody deserved that, and suddenly, Claire stopped being the focus of his job, or a target to observe and tail. Suddenly, she was a woman in trouble.
A woman who needed him.
And damned if he wasn’t going to answer the call for help.
Not giving one second’s thought to the fact that he was about to blow the op out of the water and sky-high, Griff turned the key in the ignition and pushed the pedal gently, mindful of the icy conditions. He turned right, turned on his high beams… and watched as the man spun to face him, then shot to his feet, wrenching the backpack from Claire’s grasp as he did so. He then dove into the car, and had peeled out of the rest-stop before Griff was within twenty feet of the entrance.
Griff paused, wavering a bit now. OK, he had two choices here, clearly. One was to tear after the guy, and get back whatever it was that was in the backpack. Obviously, it was important… important enough to haul ass all the way out here in a blizzard and assault a woman to get it. Maybe it was important to the SEC investigation; maybe it was even crucial.
The other choice was lying motionless on the freezing ground. That choice was embodied by a woman that Griff despised on principle, a woman that stood for everything that Griff had been raised to scorn and scoff at… a woman who was now in need of medical attention and assistance.
Goddammit.
Without too much regret, he pulled into the lot, threw his car door open. He practically flung himself at Claire and dropped to his knees in the snow.
“Hey,” Griff said urgently. “Hey, Cl–”
Common sense suddenly smacked him between the eyes: yeah, OK, the op was probably busted, but it wasn’t definitely busted. In fact, the quickest and surest way to end this whole thing was to call the woman by her damn name.
You don’t know who she is. Remember?
“Hey, lady,” he amended. Not that it really mattered, actually, since she was pretty out of it. Not out cold, thank Christ, but hazy and confused. He was pretty sure that he could have used her name, and she’d barely have clocked it in her current state.
“Lady?” he repeated. “You OK?”
The bluest blue eyes that he’d ever seen were staring up at him, teary and bewildered, and Griff suddenly found himself falling on into them… just falling like he’d fall into the world’s bluest ocean.
“What…” she said, her voice weak. “What…”
“Hey, shhhhh,” Griff said, alarmed at the vividness of the red and purple mark against the pallor of her cheek. “You in any pain?”
“Uh.�
� She shut those incredible eyes, and thank the fuck for that, because now Griff could focus again. “No. No, not really. A bit around my throat.”
“Alright. Can you sit up?”
She opened her eyes, nodded. He extended his hand to her, and she reached out her own mittened hand and took it. With no effort whatsoever, he pulled her to a sitting position, then stared at her as she sat there, trembling.
“I’m going to take you to the hospital, OK?” Griff said gently. “Get you checked out.”
“No!” The vehemence of her response took him aback. “No hospital!”
“But…”
“No. No ‘buts’,” she insisted. “I’m fine.”
Griff stared at her. “You don’t want to go to the hospital?”
“No. No need.” She forced a smile onto her gray lips and located her glasses in the snow, put them in her pocket. “I just – I was shaken up for a minute. I’m OK now.”
“Hey, no. You were attacked,” Griff corrected her. “Who was that guy, anyway? And why did he rob you?”
“Rob…oh. Oh, no.”
Alarmed, Griff watched her go from gray to white in a heartbeat. Before he could stop her, Claire had struggled to her feet, then stood there, swaying.
“Hey!” Griff said for about the tenth time. “What are you doing?”
“He… he took my backpack!” She stared around helplessly. “He… oh, God.”
“What was in it?” Griff asked, watching her like a goddamn hawk. “Anything important?”
“Important?” she said, disbelieving. “Yeah, it was important. It was my whole life.”
“How so?”
“How…” Those astonishing eyes swung back to him, and now that she wasn’t wearing her glasses, he saw them even more clearly. “How so?”
“Yeah. I guess your wallet was in there, huh? I.D.? Credit cards? House keys?”
“Yes to all of it, but far more importantly, my laptop was in there… and so were all my materials.”
“Materials?” Griff was rarely wrong-footed, but he was now, for damn sure. Nothing in any of Solid Security’s research into Claire had turned up anything that might require materials. “For what?”
Claire looked at him now, really looked at him. Those eyes were both ice and fire now, and they cut through him like a laser beam.
“Do I know you?” she asked. “You look familiar…”
“No,” Griff said, calling on every one of his acting skills. “I’m pretty sure we haven’t met.”
“No?” Now her voice was getting softer and sweeter – weirdly – all the more menacing for it. “You totally sure about that?”
“Yep.”
“Then why do I know your face?” Claire said.
“Wishful thinking?” Griff said, going for jokey idiot, in an effort to throw her off. She wasn’t going for it, though.
“Just what the hell are you doing way out here, anyway?” she said point-blank. “In the middle of a storm?”
He shrugged. “Passing by on the way to Curves.”
“Curves?”
“The bar a ways down the road.” He cocked his head at her. “And what were you doing out here, lady? Meeting some guy in a rest stop in the middle of a storm?”
Right away, she looked unsteady again. Without a thought, Griff reached for her arm.
“You alright?” he said.
“Dizzy.”
“OK, c’mon.” Gently, he propelled her forward, sat her down in the driver’s seat of his car. “Just relax, OK? Some deep breaths, warm up a bit.”
She nodded. “OK. Thank you.”
“Sure,” Griff said easily. “Now, can we please talk again about me taking you to the hospital?”
“No,” she said, but more calmly this time. “No way.”
“Look, lady…” He paused as an idea came to him. “Erm… what’s your name, by the way?”
“What?” She stared up at him, completely unnerved. “Why do you want to know my name?”
“Because then I can stop calling you ‘lady’,” Griff pointed out.
“Oh. Right.” Her brow furrowed under her hat. “What’s your name?”
“Jack. Jack Gordon.” He gave her his warmest smile. “Now… your name?”
“Caitlin.”
He waited. “Caitlin – what?”
“Just Caitlin.” She looked away, took a deep breath. “Listen, Jack… thank you for your help, but I’m really OK. I don’t want the hospital, alright?”
“Well, you ain’t driving,” Griff said, going for bluntness now. “You’ve been hit in the face, and you’re dizzy. No way you’re getting behind the wheel, especially in these conditions.”
“But…” She stopped, gathered her thoughts. “But I have to. How else will I get home?”
“I’ll drive you,” Griff said, all reason and logic. “Where do you live?”
“What? No!”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know you!”
“What do you need to know, Caitlin? I’m a man who saw a woman getting attacked, and who stopped to help. If I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it five times over.” He gestured around them. “We’re all alone out here, in case you haven’t picked up on that.”
“Uh.” She blinked at that. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s true, actually.”
“Damn right it is.” Griff pressed his advantage while she was being a bit open. “And if you won’t go to the hospital, can I at least take you to a friend of mine who’s a doctor?”
Right away, she looked shifty. “What friend?”
“His name’s Mike,” Griff said, already plotting how the hell to get Claire to Mark Hayden and make this work without blowing the op. “He can check you over, OK?”
She hesitated, rubbing her throat gingerly. “And would he… would he need to – to document anything?” Her voice was weaker, more raspy. “Like… officially?”
“Why?’ he said. “You got a problem with filling in some paperwork?”
She avoided answering the question directly, and instead just said, “Well, I feel OK now, so no need to trouble your friend. Thank you, Jack.”
That stopped him dead, really gave him pause. Claire was actually going to refuse medical treatment… to stay below the radar? She had to be in a lot of pain, he knew: her cheek had swollen up to the point that her left eye was starting to shut a bit, and now she was having trouble speaking, making him wonder if her throat was damaged in some way. Why would she be fighting him on seeking help? Was she that worried about people discovering her whereabouts?
Suddenly Griff found himself wondering just what or who she might be hiding from, besides journalists and angry people wanting their money back. Yeah, it would be bad for some newspaper to splash her face all over the internet, to share her location far and wide, to throw a grenade into the middle of her life.
But was it so bad that she’d avoid seeing a doctor when she so clearly needed one?
Or was her fear and skittishness about something else? Maybe something to do with that guy who’d just taken off at break-neck speed into the storm with her life in a backpack?
“OK.” His voice was impossibly gentle. Whatever was going on here, it was secondary to getting her looked at; Griff would get Dallas to follow up on all of this. In the morning. Right now, Claire needed some help. “No paperwork. No full names. No social security number. Nothing that makes you feel exposed.”
“None of the above?”
“None, Caitlin.”
A long, long pause. Then she said, “Alright.”
“OK.” Hugely relieved, Griff helped her to stand up, steadying her as he did. Yeah, she was starting to look bad, and taking her to Mark was hands-down a necessity. “C’mon. Let’s get moving.”
Wearily, she nodded, and that was when he knew that she’d really given in. Carefully, he got her settled on the passenger side and buckled in, then he hurried back to the driver’s side, running through the code words that he’d need to use when tal
king to Mark. There were protocols in place for when anyone on the team was engaged in an op and needed to make contact with the rest of the staff, and Dallas made sure that things were drilled into everyone’s head.
Griff shut the door, and speed-dialled Mark as he buckled up. Keeping one eye on Claire, Griff took a deep breath as he heard Mark pick up.
“Jack?” Mark said, his deep voice a bit tight. “What’s up, man?”
“Hey, Mike,” Griff said, and he actually felt Mark’s attention focus like a laser. If Griff was using Mark’s code name aloud, then there was a reason for it. “You busy right now?”
“Nope. Absolutely not. Go ahead.”
Griff glanced over at Claire, saw those blue eyes watching him closely. His own green eyes lingered on her bruised cheek, just for a few seconds.
“Can I bring someone for you to check over?” Griff said. “She’s a bit injured.”
“Who’s injured?” Mark grated out. “The target of the op? Claire?”
“Her name’s Caitlin. And she needs things down on the QT, man. No paperwork.” Griff looked over at Caitlin once more, saw the fear swimming in those eyes. “I gave her my word, Mike. Nothing on the record.”
Mark paused now, and Griff knew the wheels were turning. Big time.
“What’s happened to Caitlin?” Mark finally asked and Griff almost laughed at how ludicrous this all was: this situation had code names and aliases and fake identities coming out of its goddamn ears. “How injured is she?”
“Dunno how bad. She’s been – attacked by someone.”
Mark sighed, and Griff knew that he was fighting down the urge to strangle that ‘someone’. Like every decent man that Griff knew, any kind of violence against women was a fucking non-starter, and it made them want to take down the brutal perpetrator by hand. And with extreme prejudice.
“Bring her to number four now,” Mark said. “I’ll take a look at her.”
“You sure it ain’t a hassle?”
Solid Gold (Unseen Enemy Book 8) Page 5