“Apparently.”
“No strange movements or staring at the cameras. Head down and act normal and it will feel normal.” He repeated the mantra to her two more times on the stairs.
When they hit the landing, Mia rounded on him and stuck a hand in his face. “Enough. I get it.”
“We need to be prepared.”
“I’m about to hit you.”
“Then I guess you got it.” He reached behind her and pulled the door to the hallway tight so she couldn’t open it. “Let me check it out first.”
“After you.”
He pressed on the handle and opened it a slit. He saw a line of dark brown double doors leading down the hallway but no people. “All clear.”
She led the way to the middle of the longest stretch and stopped. The plaque included a room number and Walters’s name. The reference was to the eighth congressional district.
Just as Holden told her to do, she stayed calm. No shaking or panic. She slipped the key in and pushed the heavy door open. Except for a light on the receptionist’s desk, the place was dark. Off to one side he could see a room full of cubicles. In front of them was a closed door to the Congressman’s private office.
He lifted his finger to his lips and walked over to the room, nice and quiet. A soft knock and then he waited. When no one called out or came running, Holden turned the knob.
The room looked like he thought it would. Oversize desk. Oversize chair. It all matched Walters’s oversize ego.
But no laptop. “Is the desktop an office computer?”
“Yes and he barely uses it.”
Holden slipped the gloves out of his suit jacket pocket and handed a set to her. “Touch as little as possible but look through everything. Files, whatever it takes. We’re looking for evidence that ties him to WitSec, or Recovery, or Rod. Got it?”
But she was already working. She opened the slim door to a small coat closet and started rifling through the boxes she found there.
He didn’t waste any time either. He rolled out the file drawers and pawed through the files. They all had headings that referenced bills and committees and issues. He grabbed the employment folder with Mia’s name on it and scanned for anything that might help.
Mia moved to the desk. Systematically, she poured through the stacks of paper and then targeted the drawers. Every one opened.
“We’re doing this the wrong way.” She delivered that opinion from behind Walters’s desk.
“What do you mean?”
“He’d keep it in a locked place. In the evenings when I’d come in to take out the letters he’d signed, the laptop was here. Later it was gone.”
Not the news Holden wanted to hear. “You think he takes it home at night?”
“I think he hides it. He’s not the kind of man who would leave incriminating evidence just sitting around. He’s also too lazy to drag a laptop around with him.”
“Impressive guy. I can see why people voted for him.” Holden kept his voice light, but on the inside the pressure started building.
The safety of a lot of people depended on him finding an answer. Not just the lives of his friends were at stake. They could fight back. The beautiful woman across from him was much more vulnerable. She’d been assaulted and threatened. If any single moment had played out a different way, even slight, she’d be dead. He’d never be able to live with that.
He wasn’t a guy who shared his life, and no one should get stuck trying to sort out the nightmares that haunted him, but he wasn’t ready to let her go yet. He definitely had to see her safely through this situation.
“Walters is the type who expects his staff to schlep everything,” she said. “But he’s not dumb. He wouldn’t let someone who sits in a cubicle be responsible for carrying around something so important.”
“I’m open to any ideas. Where do you suggest as the next place we look?”
She scanned the room, from the plush carpet to the decorative dark wood squares on the wall below the chair rail. “A safe.”
“Where?”
She pointed at the panels. “What’s the chance one of those open?”
He followed her gaze. “Pretty good.”
It made sense. A makeshift safe that passed for part of the wall. Nothing stuck out or looked different. Still, they’d tried everything else.
They hit the floor, both of them knocking and listening for a hollow echo. She started under the window behind the desk and went to the left. He picked the nearest square to his right.
The thumping kept time with the ticking grandfather clock in the corner. He’d tap. She’d tap. Before they knew it, they tapped a steady beat. Minutes passed without conversation or success.
Without warning, Holden’s watch beeped. A third dot showed on his miniature schematic. It took a second for the information to process in his brain. That was just long enough to be dangerous.
He’d lost focus, hadn’t seen the problem until it was on top of him.
“Who are you?” The voice came from the doorway.
Holden lost his balance and hit the wall. He turned in time to see a tall man step into the room carrying a stack of files. Confusion raced across the man’s face as his stare bounced around the room.
Short hair and glasses and wearing a red-and-black-stripe tie Holden figured was a uniform because he saw it over and over again in the hallways since they entered the building. From his endless studying, Holden knew every detail of Walters’s life, from his two teen kids to the ex-wife who lived in southern Virginia, outside the bustle of the city.
Holden recognized the man who walked in—couldn’t remember the name but the face definitely looked familiar.
Holden stood up, sparing a glance at the desk. He thought that was the last place he saw Mia, but there was nothing there now. He hoped she dived under the furniture and stayed out of sight.
“Take it easy,” Holden said as his mind flipped through possible ways out of this predicament.
He couldn’t afford to be found here. He also didn’t want to hurt this guy since his only offense, as far as Holden could tell, was a case of poor timing.
“How did you get in here?” The man took a step back.
Mia had warned Holden about the emergency assistance buttons hidden around the office. Other than the ones at the receptionist’s desk and near Walters’s chair, Holden had no idea where the other ones were. He wasn’t about to let this guy get to one and call security. There were too many people in the room already.
“I was in here earlier this afternoon and lost my favorite pen.” Holden held out his hands, trying to keep the other man calm.
“No, you weren’t.”
“We missed each other.”
The guy’s chest rose sharp enough to signal his difficulty in breathing. “I know the Congressman’s schedule. You weren’t on it.”
Holden ran out of lame excuses. That left violence.
Before he could formulate a reasonable plan, Mia popped out of the closet, swiping a trophy of some sort off the credenza as she went. The guy must have heard her or felt the air shift. Just as he started to pivot, Mia swung the bronze statute in a wide arc. The corner connected with the man’s head.
He went down in a whoosh. His body folded, as if every bone turned to liquid.
Holden reached the guy right as he crumpled in a heap on the carpet. “Damn, Mia.”
“Oh, my God.” She stood over them with a hand over her mouth and the weapon clenched in her hand.
Holden felt for a pulse. He saw blood but that wasn’t unusual with a head wound. Blood didn’t necessarily mean death or even a serious wound.
“It’s David,” she said in a voice thick and trembling.
“Who?”
“Walters’s chief of staff. David is the man who hired me.”
“We’ll get him help, but we need to get out of here now.”
“I can’t…” She continued to stare, wide-eyed and horrified, at the man at her feet.
“Mia?” He snapped o
ut the name to get her attention. “Finish looking for the laptop.”
“What?”
“We still haven’t found what we came here for. Check the last few blocks.”
She pointed at the unmoving man on the floor next to Holden. “But, he—”
“I’ve got him. David will be fine.” Holden nodded toward the far wall. “You go.”
Something clicked because she went from pale and withdrawn to jumping around the room. On her knees, she gave a brisk knock to each of the remaining doors while Holden made sure the blood on David’s head didn’t signal a bigger problem.
The rapping sound stayed consistent until she reached the last panel. With her fingernails tucked in the seam, she pried open the door and revealed a safe.
“Here it is.” She sounded unnaturally giddy, her voice high and breathy.
Holden poked around the injured man’s pockets and found a handkerchief to hold to the wound. “Is there a lock?”
“Yes.”
Walters made everything so difficult. “Switch places with me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We don’t have time to argue about this.”
Mia didn’t move. “What if he wakes up? He’ll recognize me.”
She had a point but he was the only one in the room with safe-breaking skills. At least he thought that was the case. “Which is why we need to move fast.”
Mia walked over, her feet dragging, and sat on the floor with David’s head in her lap. She shrugged out of her jacket and pressed it against the wound.
“Just do whatever you’re going to do. Fast.” Concern and more than a little guilt floated around her.
Holden reached into his pocket and took out a small packet. The putty stuck to the wrapper but finally came loose. The guard downstairs let it pass. Holden didn’t blame him. Zach had devised the paper packaging to look like gum. In reality it was a concentrated explosive device.
Hardly an expert at demolition, Holden tried to both rush and be careful at the same time with the dangerous substance. The instructions were clear: push the sides together to ignite, then stick to the surface.
“Holden.” Her voice cracked.
“What?” he asked without looking up.
“He’s waking up.”
David’s feet shifted and he started to moan.
“Keep him still,” Holden ordered.
“How exactly do I do that?” The words rushed out of her.
Holden tried to block it all out. He folded the material, then rolled over to her, ducking her head under his arm and covering her body with his. He heard a small hiss and then the bang akin to slamming a microwave door. By the time Holden sat up again, David’s eyelids were flickering.
They’d just run out of time.
Holden crawled on his knees, waving away the puff of smoke and acrid stink of sulfur. Ignoring the heat, he reached in and picked out the contents of the safe. One laptop and a stack of papers. Tucking it all under his arm, he pushed to his feet and ran for the door.
As David’s head moved from one side to the other and his hands pushed Mia’s helping arms off of him, Holden hurdled over him. He reached down and scooped Mia off the floor, dragging her with him as they made their escape. He slowed only when they got to the front door to the hall.
“Head down and move to the stairs as fast as possible without running.” The plan B formed as he walked.
“What happened to acting natural?”
“Security is going to study these tapes. We want to make sure we can’t be identified.”
They double-timed it back to their escape route. Despite the suit and stuff in his hand, he jogged. They hit the lobby without any trouble.
“Keep moving.” He hustled her across the marble floor. When they got to the last corner before the lobby, they stopped and, while pretending to talk, checked out the trail to freedom.
The guard stood by the metal detector but everything appeared normal.
Mia tugged on his tie. “We need to go before David wakes up enough and calls for help.”
Holden agreed. With his hand on her elbow and a fake smile plastered on his face, he guided her to the exit. Her head stayed down as she pretended to cough. He waved. They sailed through.
The second after they pushed the door, the speaker attached to the guard’s shoulder squawked. Holden didn’t wait to see what was happening. They ran down the steps and right into the car Caleb had waiting in the street.
Only then did he glance up. Instead of swarming the car, the security appeared to run deeper into the building.
This time, Holden knew his luck held.
Chapter Fifteen
It took another three hours to quiet down the Hathaway household. Between the questions and the yelling, Mia had a headache.
Not that she blamed Luke for being furious with the implementation and potential fallout from the evening. Injuring a congressional staffer had not been part of the plan. It didn’t help that Holden appeared determined to blame Adam for David slipping into the room unnoticed.
Mia knew the truth. She originally thought Holden was so closed and hard to read. But after spending time with him she saw every emotion as he felt it. He thrived on control and hated his lapse in concentration. The warning came and went and he missed it until it was too late.
And he hadn’t stopped kicking his butt since. The frustration came out in fights with Adam and arguments with Luke. In stomping around and a raised voice.
To Mia, it was transparent. Holden kept poking and pushing because he knew he could. They’d support him and that made his outbursts safe.
“I understand why you cut out down there,” Holden said as he walked into the bedroom and locked the door behind him.
This was the second time he came into the room intending to sleep with her. The last was about protection and ended with him watching over her while she recuperated from her head injury. This time his purpose was equally clear.
Every other night, he fell asleep downstairs on the couch with work piled on his stomach. She found him there each morning. They never talked about the sleeping arrangements. They just fell out each night with him making the decision and her waiting in bed to see if she’d spend the night alone.
Unbuttoning his sleeves now, he stripped as he went. The trail led from the door to the dresser. A shirt draped over a chair and shoes abandoned on the floor behind him. By the time he got to the chest of drawers, he wore only a white T-shirt and pants.
She sat on the bed cross-legged and watched it all. Even with something as mundane as undressing, he commanded the room. His steps didn’t falter and his self-assurance never slipped.
It was as if it never dawned on him that she might turn him away tonight. Not that she was going to, but he acted as if this was any other night. As if they hadn’t committed a federal crime or hurt a man for simply doing his job.
Mia understood the guilt because she felt it, too. It lived inside her, growing and thriving despite the good prognosis for the man who trusted her enough to hire her.
“David is fine.” She said it because she needed to say it and even though Holden already knew.
He dropped his gun on the nightstand like a man on a mission. “He’ll be sore but okay.”
“It’s the mental damage I’m worried about.”
Holden stared at her in the mirror in front of him. “From what I can tell, he’s a strong guy.”
Adam relayed the information about David’s injuries earlier after breaking into hospital records and following the case on the police scanner. The story hadn’t hit the news, but it would soon. This wasn’t the sort of thing even Walters could hide. Not after all these government services and departments got involved.
Sure, Walters would downplay it. Refer to a breech or an accident. He’d insist security held and the guards did their jobs—the usual political speak that meant nothing and hid the truth.
She used to believe all that garbage. After everything she’d seen wi
th Holden, she viewed all of those stories and political speeches differently.
But none of that changed what happened to David. He had a superficial head wound and no understanding of what happened to him. He remembered seeing someone and then getting hit. The lack of a story would make Walters’s false one easier to create.
Mia blew out a relieved breath David was alive. When he went down, her stomach had turned and tossed. Her fingers had gone numb and her mind refused to tie her action to the obvious reaction. Being tracked and attacked was one thing. Launching an offensive strike on an innocent man made her sick.
She’d thrown up twice and showered once since coming upstairs. She’d wanted to crawl into bed, throw the covers over her head and forget the day. Instead, she settled for the subtle comfort of soft sweats.
Exhaustion pulled at her, but she doubted she’d be able to sleep. Her body tingled with unspent energy. And Holden’s refusal to treat the moment as anything other than a normal night had her temper skyrocketing.
“I’m the one who hit him,” she said.
Holden finally turned to her. “I know.”
“His injuries are my responsibility, not yours. The plan was mine. The hit was mine. You can let yourself off the hook.”
Holden eyes narrowed. “Are you okay?”
Hearing the concern, the fight seeped right out of her. “Not really.”
“You did what you had to do.”
“Does that make it all right?”
He slumped down on the bed next to her, exhaling as he went. He slipped his fingers through hers. “Sometimes innocent people get caught in the middle.”
“That’s a rough justification.”
“I’m thinking that’s the rationale Walters used to get the group disbanded. He doesn’t like the consequences. Maybe that’s valid.”
“I didn’t mean that. Walters is doing what he’s doing for his own ends. Whether it’s to help Steve Samson or pump up his ego, it doesn’t matter. He’s not you. I get that.”
“I wish I could tell you the job is easy and always goes the way you think it will. It doesn’t.” Holden rubbed a finger over her knuckles. “But sometimes that’s the best part.”
“How do you figure that?”
Guns and the Girl Next Door Page 11