Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  “Thank you. Really. I...”

  Betty waved her off, then slid out of the kitchen almost as quietly as Reece had entered.

  “Are you gonna have grilled cheese, too, Reece?” Henry asked, trying to peek into the pantry without Lianna noticing.

  “That sounds good. Why don’t I handle dinner?”

  “But...” Lianna didn’t know how to argue when she didn’t know where anything in the kitchen was, but she was the innkeeper. Even without the inn, she was just used to being the one who made the dinners and handled things.

  Reece ushered her over to a large table. “Sit. Relax. Much as you can, anyway.” He patted her shoulder in a casual manner, then went about gathering tools and ingredients.

  Henry sat, but then immediately popped out of his chair to hover around Reece. Lianna didn’t have the energy to scold him, and Reece handled it all deftly anyway, melting butter in a pan and taking out slices of cheese to put on pieces of bread.

  “How come you don’t live here? I’d love to live in a place with an arcade. I’d play Street Fighter every day. I’d have all the high scores.”

  “Lofty goals,” Reece replied. “But video games get a little boring after a while, don’t they?”

  Henry made a scoffing noise, then wiggled his way back to her at the table. “How come we’re at Reece’s work, Mom?”

  Lianna looked at her son and found herself completely and utterly at a loss for words, when usually she had a plan in place. Words to say to assure Henry everything was fine and she was handling it.

  “Is it about Dad?” he asked, looking at his shoe as he kicked it against the table leg. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  She didn’t want to lie to Henry. Omission was one thing. Lying... She looked up at Reece. He was watching her, and as much as she would love for someone else to swoop in and lie to her son for her, she could tell he wasn’t going to do that.

  “Yes, it is.” She’d never flat-out told Henry that his father was not a good man. What would be the point? Henry hadn’t seen much of Todd—Todd had made sure of that—and Lianna figured Henry knew enough to know Todd hadn’t been, well, there.

  But it didn’t feel right to say, Hey, your dad was a bad man involved with bad things, and now we’re paying the price. Not to a child who was seven. So she had to choose her words very, very carefully.

  “There are some men who want to know some things about your father. They think I know. So Reece is just helping us explain to them that I don’t know anything.”

  Henry’s eyebrows drew together and his gaze didn’t leave his kicking foot. “Are they bad men?”

  “We can’t control what other people are,” Lianna said sternly. “We have to focus on who we are and how we can be good people. And if we...need some help, we can’t be afraid to ask for it.”

  Reece moved over, sliding a plate in front of Henry and then her. Grilled cheese, some grapes and some baby carrots.

  After everything today, somehow that was the thing that put her closest to tears.

  But Reece wasn’t done. He crouched next to Henry’s chair and looked the boy right in the eye. “Do you trust me?”

  Henry nodded.

  “I know you have a lot of questions, and you should. You’re a smart kid. But it’s a lot of complicated adult stuff. The bottom line is I’m going to keep you and your mom safe here until we can convince these men to leave your mom alone. So there’s nothing to be afraid of. Because your mom and I are handling it.”

  Henry stared at Reece for a few more seconds, seemingly searching the man’s rugged face for...something. Lianna felt herself searching for something, too, and she was just as in the dark about what she wanted to find as Henry seemed to be.

  Eventually Henry nodded. “Okay,” he said. Then he smiled crookedly. “It’d probably help me to play more Street Fighter.”

  Henry had always been a give-him-an-inch-he’ll-take-a-mile type. But he was so dang cute it was hard to be stern about it. Reece laughed and glanced at Lianna, who couldn’t help smiling in return. Their eyes met and...

  Her stomach swooped, and there was no pretending that the flutter wasn’t all those things she’d promised herself she would never allow in her life again.

  But she would not listen to attraction. She would not indulge in conspiratorial smiles. For Henry, she would just shut that feminine side of her off.

  Apparently, around Reece Conrad—no, Reece Montgomery—her feminine side wasn’t listening to her brain...because it was too busy noticing Reece. The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the warmth in those dark eyes, the easy way he rested his very large hand on the back of Henry’s chair.

  After having made grilled cheese for all of them.

  Henry dived into his dinner. Lianna picked at hers. She knew she should eat, but her stomach wasn’t cooperating. Too much fear, too much worry, and sadly, not just over the current predicament. Reece was turning into his own predicament. Especially when he took a seat at the table with them with his own plate—a turkey sandwich rather than grilled cheese. He talked baseball with Henry as if this was...

  Well, all the things it could never be.

  After dinner, and a little bit more Street Fighter, Reece showed Lianna to the room she would share with Henry.

  “I figured you wouldn’t want separate rooms.”

  She smiled at him, trying to strike the right balance between polite and grateful and not give away any of that...inappropriate, untimely fluttering. “You figured right.”

  Something beeped and he pulled out his phone, frowning at it. “Looks like Elsie got a hit on some things. Do you want to meet me in the conference room once Henry’s asleep, or do you want to wait?”

  “I’ll meet you there. I assume there’s some way I can watch him from anywhere in this place?”

  Reece’s mouth curved wryly. “You assume right. Take your time. I promise I’ll fill you in once he’s in bed.”

  Lianna nodded and then Reece disappeared. He was much...quieter here. She figured it was instinct or habit. One he’d purposefully broken when he was staying with her. Whether to put her at ease or to act more like your average civilian, she had no idea, but his footsteps had been heavy. She’d mostly known when he was about. Here it was all...appearing and disappearing and... Well, she supposed what he was. An operative.

  She went into the bathroom, found the toiletries Reece had said would be available to them and made Henry brush his teeth. They’d even thought to provide clothes. An oversize T-shirt for Henry, and what looked like women’s sweats for her.

  She didn’t change, but she had Henry change and brush his teeth. He crawled into the bed without much argument, which was how she knew he was beyond exhausted. She sat on the edge of the bed and ran her hand over his hair. “Get a good night’s sleep, baby. Lots of fighting games await you in the morning.”

  Henry smiled, but his eyes were already drooping. “When can we go home?” he asked around a yawn.

  Lianna closed her eyes against a wave of pain and guilt. “I’m not sure, sweetheart.” She wondered if she’d ever be sure about anything ever again.

  * * *

  “WE’VE GOT TROUBLE,” Elsie said with no preamble when Reece strode through the door. “Major trouble.”

  “How?”

  “I started digging into Charles Jackson, right? Well, everyone and their brother has a flag on the guy’s record. Got around the FBI and a few other groups I didn’t take the time to identify yet, no problem, but one group had their flag hidden.”

  Reece didn’t know much about computers, but he knew that meant... “So someone knows we’re looking for Charles Jackson.”

  “They don’t know who or where we are. I have protections against that. But they know someone is looking, and it doesn’t take a leap of reason to realize that if someone just happened to start looking into him today...”
r />   “They know Lianna told us his name.”

  “Or they’re at least going to make that assumption,” Elsie confirmed.

  Reece swore. Instead of getting her out of trouble, they’d put her smack down into the middle of it. They’d made her a target, not just a questionable liability.

  He swore again.

  “I take full responsibility,” Elsie said, her voice quavering just a hair. “It’s completely my fault. I didn’t see the flag. I’ve never seen one like that. This is my fail.”

  “Or they’re that good. Sometimes the wrong people get the best of us, Els,” Reece said with more calm and graciousness than he felt. Elsie was young. She wasn’t an operative. Tech geniuses couldn’t be expected to handle everything. “Now we just have to make sure we take the next step first and best.”

  “I’m not handing any of this off to my other tech people. I’m going to take extra precautions before I look into the names of the groups she gave us. But it’ll take longer.”

  “Then it’ll take longer. We don’t want to rush into anything.”

  Shay strode into the room. “I agree. No targets on anyone’s head. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to break it to Mrs. Kade so she understands how important it is for her and her son to stay here for the time being.”

  “I don’t think she’s under the illusion she’d be safer at the inn,” Reece returned stiffly. Better stiff than furious. Better closed off than let go of all the anger building inside of him.

  “You never know,” Shay replied with a shrug that grated on Reece’s frayed temper.

  “We should send an operative to each group,” he said through gritted teeth. “Including the FBI. Who knows how they’re involved?”

  Shay shook her head and Reece had to curl his fingers into fists to keep from demanding to know why.

  “I just spoke to my contact, the one who brought this little assignment to our doorstep. I told him we’d found some information, but that I needed more on his end to share it. Eventually, he gave me a little more to go on.”

  “FBI?” Elsie asked.

  “No. A group called T2K9.”

  Elsie frowned at her computer screen. “That was one of the groups Lianna told us about that was on the FBI file. So they’re bad?”

  “Not exactly. After some circular arguments, and calling in a favor from Granger, I was given enough information to believe they actually are one of the good guys.”

  “You talked to Granger?” Elsie asked, wide-eyed. “I thought he wouldn’t talk to anyone.”

  “He makes the occasional exception. Mostly when I threaten him with all of us invading his little ranch or whatever he’s calling it these days. Besides, it was just information. Information he had.”

  “Did they plant the devices?” Reece demanded. Much as he cared about his former boss and his recluse act, now was not the time to dwell on it. Reece needed to know more before he agreed with Shay’s assessment that the group that had approached them wasn’t going to hurt Lianna—whether on purpose or collaterally.

  “No. They didn’t. Apparently Todd Kade was a member, under the name Jack Charles, so Lianna was wrong about him not having any other names. T2K9 discovered he was playing them shortly before he died. They made the connection to the Todd Kade identity, and knew they needed more information. They couldn’t find it, so they came to us. You won’t be surprised to know the head guy over there knew Granger and enough about us to think we’d be able to find what they couldn’t.”

  “I don’t understand. How was this one guy involved in so much?” Reece demanded.

  “Charles Jackson liked to spread his talents around. He’s got links to more than just the groups Mrs. Kade gave us. Good, bad, questionable. It’s not clear why or how.”

  “Jack Charles was an FBI informant,” Elsie said, typing away at her computer. “There aren’t any flags, hidden or otherwise, on that name. I can dig up all sorts of things on him.”

  “That explains the FBI’s involvement,” Shay said, leaning over Elsie’s shoulder to look at the monitor.

  “So which of these groups put out the listening devices?” Reece demanded, irritated that the two women seemed more interested in what one man had done than what certain men were currently doing. “Who sent the man?”

  “We’re still working on those answers.”

  “Damn it, Shay, that’s not good enough,” Reece said, and though he kept his voice controlled, it was an outburst all the same.

  One he immediately regretted when he turned and saw Lianna standing in the doorway, hands clasped together. Her expression was carefully neutral, but she held herself so very still.

  He wished he could reason out the emotion that slammed through him every time he looked at her, and that it was never quite the same, but always...deep, immediate. Troubling.

  He didn’t know what it was, and he couldn’t fight it. He could only stand there while she looked at him with wide, scared eyes.

  “It seems things are a little more tense than they were an hour ago,” she finally said when no one spoke. And there was no stutter, no tremor of fear. Her voice was perfectly calm and steady.

  Because for a year now, she’d faced down this uncertainty and had to put on a brave face for Henry. She was a strong woman, made stronger by a circumstance beyond her control.

  And Reece had to stop worrying about stupid feelings plaguing him and focus on giving her what she really needed—safety and peace of mind. This problem erased so she and Henry could have a normal life.

  “We’ve got a few leads,” Shay said. “Unfortunately, the people who want information from you are a little more...underhanded than we might have anticipated. It’s very possible they know you’ve given us a name.”

  Lianna’s face paled, but she raised her chin. “How would that have happened?”

  “My fault,” Elsie said, and her tone was both professional and apologetic. A fine line somewhere between a human courtesy and maybe some real guilt. But Reece could also detect confidence that she could still handle the mission in front of her. “In layman’s terms, they hid what amounted to a tracking device on the name Charles Jackson.”

  “Which means they know his real name,” Lianna said. “Whoever these people targeting me are.”

  Shay nodded. “Yes. It appears Todd had a few aliases, worked for a number of groups. He couldn’t have been home much.”

  Lianna’s shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly, as if she’d taken Shay’s observation as a personal insult. “He told me he was a salesman who traveled a lot. We had a baby ten months after we were married and Todd made it clear he wasn’t interested in fatherhood. His trips increasing in frequency and length made sense in how much he didn’t want to be around to be a father.”

  “No one’s saying you could have known what he was,” Reece offered, understanding what she considered to be an insult now.

  “Aren’t they?” Lianna returned with an arch look at Shay.

  Shay’s mouth curved. Not a patronizing smile. More of respect at a point earned. “It’s not my job to make insinuations or interpret what you should have known or not, Lianna. I’m collecting observations.”

  Lianna made a scoffing sound. “Observations you have to weave together to form some kind of hypothesis. Some kind of mission. I didn’t know what he was. I’ve told you everything I know, and you know what? I regret it. Because I’m apparently now in even more danger.”

  Shay’s expression didn’t change, but Reece knew her well enough to know Lianna had landed her blow. Shay nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “You’ll be safe here. For as long as it takes. I promise you that.”

  Lianna shook her head. “We can’t stay here forever.” She wrapped her arms around herself, eyebrows drawing together. “If we don’t know who’s after me. If we don’t know why. If we don’t know anything, that me
ans we—”

  “It means I will handle it,” Reece said firmly. “We’ll send an operative to each group we’ve got. We’ll get what we can out of the FBI—surely they know more than they’re letting on. We’ll—”

  “We’ll remember that I’m in charge here,” Shay interrupted.

  “With all due respect, and the understanding I’m just a civilian with no understanding of all...this,” Lianna said calmly, but her nerves finally betrayed her as her hands shook before she shoved them into the pockets of her jeans. “The only way to find out who’s after me is to let them come after me.”

  “Not a chance,” Reece said, unaware those words had come out of his mouth until he realized all three women’s surprised gazes were on him. Still, he didn’t back down. “We’re not letting an untrained civilian act as bait to a group we know nothing about. End of story.”

  “No, it’s not ‘end of story,’” Lianna retorted with a barely leashed fury that surprised him. “You are not in charge of me, Reece. None of you are in charge of me. I have run or hid for a year now, and I’m not any closer to safety. Henry’s life is disrupted once again. It has to stop, and if I have to be the one to stop it, so be it.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Lianna.” Shay’s voice, kind and patient, made Lianna want to haul off and punch something. Particularly Reece’s handsome face.

  “I understand you’re frustrated,” Shay continued. “But like you said, you’re just a civilian. You can’t—”

  “So train me. Help me. I don’t care what you have to do. This has to end. And we all know, thanks to Todd or Charles or whatever the hell his name really was, I’m at the center. I’m the thing they’re worried about or... I don’t even know what they want from me, and neither do you. We won’t find out without me.”

  Lianna tried to pretend that didn’t scare her. Tried to brave her way through this like she’d braved her way through the past year. She liked to think she succeeded. Oh, inside she was a petrified mess, but on the outside she appeared certain. Impassioned.

  She hoped.

  “I’m sorry. No. We’re not considering this,” Reece said, more to Shay and Elsie than to her.