Operation Nanny

by Paula Graves

  He lowered his mouth slowly, giving her a chance to pull back. But, instead of moving away, she closed the dwindling distance between them, her lips pressing soft and warm against his mouth.

  Magical, he thought, silently echoing her words as he deepened the kiss, tasting the sweet tea and wasabi spice on her tongue. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing closer, as if seeking to become part of him the way he wanted to meld himself to her.

  It was perfect. It was right. He felt as if all the missing pieces of himself had suddenly fallen into place and he was whole again, the way he hadn’t been whole since his father’s death. Was such a thing possible? Or was he letting his desire for her, his need to be closer to her, fool him into believing there was more to their connection than really existed.

  They’d known each other for days, not months. Surely this sort of feeling took time to build, to grow, to strengthen into something lasting.

  And yet, when she curled her fingers through his hair and held him in place while she answered him, kiss for kiss, he felt that nothing in the world could be more right, more lasting, more perfect for him than being with Lacey Miles every day for the rest of his life.

  He pulled away first, overwhelmed by the emotions galloping through him, emotions he didn’t trust and couldn’t reconcile to the reality of his life. Or hers.

  She gazed up at him, her expression slightly dazed and wholly recognizable, as if the emotions still beating at his heart like hammer blows were echoing inside her, as well.

  “I think we should catch a train home tonight,” she whispered.

  He nodded. “You’re right.”

  They walked back to the visitor parking lot slowly, not touching, maintaining enough distance that Jim couldn’t even feel the heat of her body between him and the sea breeze. But he felt her regardless, felt the steady beat of her presence like a pulse inside his chest. She was inside him, somehow, a part of him that he might never be able to excise.

  He didn’t know whether that thought thrilled him or terrified him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was after midnight by the time Jim drove the Jeep into the gravel parking area at the side yard of the farmhouse. The house was dark except for the light shining in the front parlor, golden and welcoming.

  Cade and Julie Beckett were still awake, forewarned by a call from Lacey before she and Jim got on the train back to DC. “How’d the trip go?” Cade asked cautiously, as if well aware that their early return might be the result of either good news or bad.

  “A mixed bag,” Lacey answered, stifling a yawn. “We’ve eliminated the Whittiers as the car bombers, at least.”

  “But?” Julie probed.

  “But they also provided explanations for a couple of the incidents I’ve experienced in the past few weeks.”

  “Which means there’s still a threat to Lacey and Katie,” Jim growled, “and we’re no closer to knowing who’s behind that threat than we were before we went to Connecticut.”

  Lacey barely resisted the impulse to reach out and take his clenched fist in her hand, to gently ease his tension with her touch. Things between them had escalated rapidly at Cove Island Park, not just physically but emotionally. And it was the emotional connection growing between them that scared her to death.

  “Well, I have a new lead for you to follow. Maybe.” Julie pulled out her phone and ran her finger across the screen as if searching for something. “While y’all were gone, I contacted a friend of mine, Lanny Copeland, who’s a special agent with the Richmond field office. I had this vague memory of a BOLO he’d sent out a few months back about a group of young men from Kaziristan who’d disappeared suddenly right before their student visas expired.”

  “Sleeper cell?” Jim asked, his muscles twitching as if Julie’s words had put him on high alert. Lacey felt her earlier sleepiness drop away as curiosity and a touch of alarm took its place.

  “Well, they haven’t been considered terrorism suspects, exactly. They all seemed like normal students, westernized and showing no signs of trouble or radicalization. It was really just the fact that they all dropped from the radar right before they were scheduled to return to Kaziristan that pinged Lanny’s radar. Okay, here we go.” She handed her phone carefully to Lacey. “Does anything in that photo look familiar to you?”

  The photo on Julie’s phone was a shot of the front of a low-rent apartment complex. The angle was close up on two adjacent apartment doors, numbered 314 and 315, and the paved parking lot in front of the apartments. In the parking slot in front of the apartments were two vehicles, a black panel van that looked to be twenty years old and a later-model blue truck.

  A ripple of recognition skated up Lacey’s spine. “That’s the truck.”

  “Ever since y’all told me about that truck, it’s been nagging at my brain. It seemed so familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it, until suddenly I remembered that BOLO for those students and their vehicles. Fortunately, I’d saved the photo to my phone. So I took a look. Sure enough, it fits what you described. Blue Toyota Tacoma, later model, with a dent in the left front panel.”

  Jim edged closer, looking at the photo over Lacey’s shoulder. He felt warm and solid beside her, his nearness easing some of the nervous tension roiling inside her. “Should I call Quinn?” he asked Lacey.

  “Already done,” Cade said bluntly. He glanced at Lacey. “Sorry if that was presumptuous.”

  “No, I think the more hands on deck, the better.” Kaziri nationals gone missing just before their visas expired could very well mean al Adar was placing sleeper cells in the United States, just as law enforcement had begun to fear.

  “He’s calling in support from the DC area, but it will probably be morning before anyone can get here.” Cade shot them an apologetic look.

  “There’s one more thing,” Julie said, directing her words to Lacey. Her expression held sympathy, but the emotion Lacey saw in the other woman’s eyes was darker, angrier. “I called Lanny to tell him about the truck. I explained why I’d thought about it, and he told me something that the FBI hadn’t been sharing with other agencies yet. It seems that when the students went missing, something else went missing, as well.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Two dozen boxes of screws and ball bearings from the hardware store where one of them worked.”

  Lacey’s knees wobbled. “Oh.”

  Jim put his arm around her and pulled up one of the chairs across from the sofa. Lacey sat, clenching her hands together as a cold chill ran through her.

  “Around the same time, there was an incident at a construction site in southern Maryland. A fire started in a storage area for explosives used to clear large boulders out of road-construction sites. There was a storm that night, and nobody could be sure that one of the lightning strikes in the area hadn’t hit the storage site, but of course the FBI had to investigate. The security guard in charge of patrolling the site sustained a concussion, possibly from flying debris from the blast. He doesn’t remember anything, including a lightning strike or anything else.”

  “So it was ruled an accident?”

  “Actually, it was ruled inconclusive evidence of a man-made event, but the FBI hasn’t ruled out the possibility of human involvement. You see, when the explosives storage hut went up in flames, the resulting blast wasn’t quite as large as experts might have expected, leading them to wonder if there might have been substantially less explosive material in the hut than reported.”

  “Meaning it might have been stolen before the fire destroyed the evidence,” Jim said. “Do you know what explosives were stored there?”

  “Semtex,” Julie answered. She looked at Lacey. “Is that what was used in the explosion that killed your sister?”

  “I don’t know. The police haven’t released that information to the public.”

&n
bsp; “There aren’t that many explosives that would be used in a car bomb, and Semtex is relatively easy to obtain. It just makes sense.”

  “The car bomb was also packed with ball bearings and sheet-metal screws,” Lacey added.

  “Which could also be found at a construction site,” Jim said.

  “That’s a hell of a lot of coincidences,” Cade muttered.

  “Listen, we’re not going to solve the mystery of the missing Kaziri students or the purloined explosives tonight,” Jim said, his hand warm and firm on Lacey’s shoulder. “Let’s try to get some sleep and pick this up again in the morning, okay?”

  “We think Julie should take Samantha and Katie back to Kentucky with her in the morning.” Cade looked at Lacey. “The girls don’t need to be here if there’s trouble on the way.”

  “Maybe Lacey should go with them,” Jim suggested.

  “No way,” Lacey said with a shake of her head. “I’m their target, not Katie and not Julie or Samantha. They’d go after us on the way to Kentucky.”

  “As much as I hate to duck out just when the action starts, I think Lacey’s right. It’s safest for the girls if she stays here with y’all. By morning, hopefully Quinn will have people here to shore up the security.”

  “Let’s all get to bed, then,” Jim said, giving Lacey’s shoulder a squeeze. “Tomorrow will be a long day, no doubt.”

  While Cade and Julie headed down the hall to the guest bedroom, Lacey joined Jim as he went from window to window, door to door, to make sure the place was locked down tightly for the night. When Jim turned out the light in the parlor, plunging the house into darkness, the world outside the window seemed unnaturally bright as the blanket of snow shed an artificial glow across the darkened landscape.

  “One good thing,” she murmured. “It won’t be easy to sneak up on us in all that snow.”

  “Famous last words.” Jim’s statement was a grim rumble in the darkness.

  * * *

  THE PHONE RANG just as Jim was starting to release all the tension of the long day and settle into a light doze. The trill shocked him awake, and it took a second to realize what he’d heard.

  The number on the display was unfamiliar, and Jim almost hit the ignore button, but the fact that it was a local number gave him pause. He swept his finger across the phone and answered. “Jim Mercer.”

  “I know it’s late,” the woman’s voice on the other end of the call said without preamble. “I wouldn’t have called you except you told me to let you know if anything strange happened.”

  He tried to place the voice, which sounded familiar. “Who is this?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s Charlotte. From the diner in town? I’m the one who told you about that fellow poking around and you gave me your card with your phone number.”

  “Right.” He sat up in his bed, rubbing his fingers through his hair as he tried to wake up. “Has something happened?”

  “I’m not sure.” She sounded nervous now, as if she’d made the call on impulse and was now second-guessing the decision. “It’s probably nothing. You know how small towns can be—everything strange must be a conspiracy. I shouldn’t have bothered you so late.”

  “Charlotte,” he said patiently, “tell me why you called.”

  “Well, now that I think of it, it’s silly. And I wouldn’t have even seen it if I hadn’t gotten up to check and make sure I turned off the oven downstairs in the shop.”

  “What did you see?”

  “It was just odd, you see. We’re a little town, and we don’t get a lot of traffic coming through the area at this time of night. But while I was down in the shop, I saw four trucks drive by, one after the other, almost like a convoy, you know? It was odd enough that I went outside and watched them go, and one by one, they all took the turn down the road toward the farm. You sure don’t get much through traffic, so I thought—”

  Her voice cut off suddenly. Jim looked down at his phone and saw that there was no cell signal.

  What the hell?

  He pulled a pair of jeans out of his dresser drawer and pulled them on, sleep fleeing, replaced by instant alarm. Four trucks heading toward the farm and now he’d lost cell service. Maybe a coincidence.

  Maybe not.

  He turned on his bedroom light, half expecting that it wouldn’t come on. But light blazed brightly in the darkness, making him squint, and he allowed himself a brief moment of relief.

  Pushing open the bedroom door, he listened to the familiar noises of the night. The hum of electricity from the refrigerator and the soft whisper of heated air blowing through the vents. The faint ticks and groans of an old house settling in for the night.

  He didn’t want to wake Lacey, but he needed to know if her cell phone was picking up a signal. To his relief, he saw a light glowing under the door. Tapping lightly on the door, he spoke in a half whisper. “Lacey? It’s Jim.”

  There was a long moment of silence before she answered in just as hushed a tone, “Come in.”

  She was in bed but awake, dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt. She was frowning at the phone in her hand. “All my bars disappeared.”

  He crossed to look at her phone. “Mine, too.”

  “That’s weird, isn’t it?” She looked up at him, her brow furrowed. “I thought I heard your phone ring earlier.”

  “It did.” He told her about the call from Charlotte, who ran the diner in Cherry Grove. “It cut off in the middle of her call.”

  “It wouldn’t take long for someone to drive out here from town, would it?” Lacey’s gaze slanted toward the window across from her bed, which looked out on the side yard and the parking area.

  Jim crossed to the window, staying just wide of the glass. He lifted one edge of the curtain and looked out. With the light on, it was hard to see anything outside even with the glow of the snow-covered land.

  “Maybe you should...” Suddenly the light went out in the room. “Turn off the light,” he continued.

  “I didn’t turn off the light,” Lacey said, her voice closer than he expected. He turned his head toward her voice and found her standing beside him, her back pressed against the bedroom wall.

  He edged the curtain away from the window again and peered outside. In the side parking area, his Jeep along with the Becketts’ Ford Explorer were the only vehicles in sight.

  But there was a lot of land surrounding the farm, some of it thick with trees and underbrush. It wouldn’t be hard to hide four trucks from view of the road.

  “Maybe the lightbulb blew.” Lacey’s voice was shaky.

  Jim crossed to the door and looked out into the hallway. His room was dark as well, even though he’d left his light on.

  “My clock is dead. The power is out.” Lacey crept closer to him in the dark, her blond hair catching glints of light from the snow glow outside. “I don’t suppose the weight of the snow finally snapped a branch and it hit a power line?”

  “Nice thought,” he answered grimly.

  “We’d better tell Cade and Julie.”

  “Already on it.” Cade’s voice came from the hallway. He was using a flashlight application on his phone to shed light into the gloom. Julie was right behind him. Already dressed in jeans and a sweater, she had a Ruger tucked into a holster at her side and looked ready for action.

  Jim kicked himself for leaving his own room without his Glock. “I’ll be right back.”

  He returned with his Glock holstered at the back of his jeans. “You said you know how to shoot, right?” he asked Lacey.

  “Yes, but I don’t have a weapon.”

  “Cade brought an extra,” he said with confidence, looking at his former employer with a grin. “Didn’t you?”

  “Of course.” Cade left Lacey’s bedroom, plunging it back into darkness.

  Ji
m opened the flashlight app on his own phone and turned it on. It illuminated the tense, worried expression on Lacey’s face, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to touch her. “We’re going to figure out what’s going on and we’re going to stop it.”

  “There are four of us and two children,” Lacey said with quiet despair. “Maybe we’re all armed, but what if they’re out there right now, rigging this place to blow? What good will it do for us to go out with guns blazing?”

  The truth was, if their communications were jammed and the power had been cut, it was already too late to get out of the house.

  Lacey must have read Jim’s expression in the light of the cell-phone app, for she released a soft groan of despair.

  Cade returned with a second weapon. “Smith & Wesson SD40. Ten in the mag, one in the chamber. Can you handle it?”

  She took the pistol, her expression ambivalent. On the train ride to Stamford earlier that day, she had confessed to Jim that while she had been pretty good with a gun, she’d never really enjoyed shooting. But if it came to having to fire a weapon in order to protect Katie, she’d do it without hesitation.

  “I can handle it,” she said, and Jim believed her.

  “Julie and I will take the north and east windows. You take the south and west.” Cade nodded toward the hallway. “Call out if you see anything.”

  “Should we go to the second floor?” Lacey asked as they headed toward the back of the house. “We might have a better line of sight.”

  “Good idea.” Jim followed her to the narrow staircase at the back of the house that had once been the servants’ stairway. Less ornate and grand than the staircase off the parlor, it felt rickety and old beneath his feet. But it held them all the way to the second floor.

  “There’s a good line of sight from my workroom toward the west,” Lacey said as they entered the second-floor hallway. “I’ll check there. This back bedroom here looks to the south.”

  Jim didn’t like parting company with her, but they each had a job to do. He peeled off and entered the empty back bedroom, crossing to the curtainless window that looked out on the snowy backyard and the pastureland beyond.