by Geri Krotow
Certainly her obsession over her rescuer indicated she might need more human contact.
As she ate her pepper pot pie and sandwich dripping with Gouda and cheddar, she studied her handheld tablet. In a medium-sized town like Silver Valley, charities often combined events to help individual nonprofits to raise exponentially more cash. Since she’d been the one to suggest marrying the homeless shelter’s fund-raising efforts to the library gala, Portia knew her professional reputation was at stake. If the gala raised the same amount as last year, that meant less money for the library, as they’d agreed to give the homeless shelter 25 percent of the funds raised. There was less than a month left, and so far they had sold the same number of tickets as last year. She needed to figure out how to sell more by the RSVP deadline, two weeks away. The gala was to be at the end of the month, and would include a Silver Valley ice sculpture festival and contest. She was grateful for five weeks in January this year.
The homeless shelter was a short ten-minute walk from the diner, but it was located at the end of town, where the buildings thinned and the northern wind was a force to lean into. She’d traded her shoes for snow boots and wore her warmest down parka, but nothing seemed enough to stay warm in the sub-zero windchill.
The shelter was a modest craftsman-style home that had been converted to a fifty-bed mission by an anonymous donor three years ago. The porch and entry, usually full with patrons waiting until the last minute to go in for the night, stood empty. It was totally because of the cold, no question.
Still, a shiver raced up her spine and Portia knew a moment of sheer terror as she stared into the dark shadows of the porch. And then made herself look at the windows, aglow with light and promising warmth.
But she couldn’t shake the frigid snare of fear that stabbed at her previous sense of safety, of surety about Silver Valley’s place in the world. Would she ever regain it?
* * *
Kyle hoped tonight’s surveillance at the homeless shelter would lead him to whomever might know when and by what means the next heroin shipment was coming in. On a cold night like this, addicts who normally avoided the shelters for fear of getting arrested for carrying illegal substances were sure to come in. He wanted to know who the newest dealers were, and where to find them.
Kyle checked in early to the shelter, well before the time he knew Portia normally showed up. Just in case she did. He’d expect her to go home and take the night off, after what she’d been through today.
Who was he kidding? Portia would no more likely bail on a volunteer shift than he’d quit an undercover op. Wasn’t one of the things that he found so attractive about her the dedication she appeared to have to her work, her community? He tried to mentally brace himself to focus on finding someone else to date, to be with. Yet his gut instinct seemed to laugh at him, as if what he felt toward Portia were predestined, beyond his control.
He tried to breathe through his mouth, to not inhale the scent of his unwashed clothes. Part of his successful capture of intelligence regarding ROC’s heroin and illegal-goods shipment operation was blending in, no matter the circumstance. As a homeless man, that meant stinking as if he’d been on the streets for several days.
He’d refuse to bathe here, unlike most of the men and women who gratefully accepted a hot shower. He couldn’t risk anyone seeing him without the dirty wig or baggy clothes. He promised the intake person that he’d shower before bed. The mission also offered gently used but clean pajamas, to change into and wear so that their dirty clothes could be washed. Kyle found it easiest to play the role of the reluctant shelter-seeker. No one bothered him, save for the social workers who always tried to convince him to let them help him.
He’d found an old, scraggly wig at a used clothing store and wet it thoroughly, doused it with dirt, rubbed it around the attic of the house he rented, until it was sufficiently matted. No one would recognize him as the man who’d knocked Silver Valley’s librarian off the local train tracks, in front of an oncoming train, just hours ago.
He scratched his head, hating the wig, and wished he hadn’t shaved and had his hair cut. He’d had to, in order to hang around the library and not draw unwarranted attention. He’d needed to blend in, which he did by wearing different types of clothing each day, his wardrobe flexible to accommodate the needs of a farmer, teacher, professional or what he really was. An undercover agent.
After pouring a cup of hot coffee from the urn set up in the dining room area, he settled into a worn sofa and prepared to listen and learn. Observe. It was his job to do so.
A gust of polar air rushed into the room as the front door opened with a bang. His nape tingled and he silently swore to himself. It wasn’t a premonition or anything portending danger. It was what he’d labeled his Portia Radar. He’d had to call it something, because as a good undercover agent, he couldn’t afford to ignore how he reacted to people.
Before her shiny brunette hair that curled around her face and hung to her shoulders appeared, before the overhead lights reflected off her doe-brown eyes, before her confident, super-feminine laughter bounced off the dining room walls, he knew Portia was here.
A sense of urgency to get the ROC op wrapped up, Ludmila Markova locked up, gripped him. It wasn’t so that he’d feel free to pursue Portia, because Kyle didn’t do anything long-term, and Portia DiNapoli wasn’t the one-night-stand type. Rather, she wasn’t his one-and-done type. She was the woman that came to mind on the rare occasion he imagined what his “forever” woman would look like, if he were the type to settle down.
Hell. He had to get out of Silver Valley as quickly as he could. Something about this place had wrapped around him, gotten under his skin.
And they’d never been properly introduced.
* * *
“Here you go, Mr. Turner.” Portia handed the neatly folded pile of bed linens and towels to the man, still bundled up in his worn puffer down coat that she’d bet was from circa 1995. But it still kept him warm, and that was all that mattered. Still, she was glad he was at the mission tonight.
“Thank you, Portia. You’re very kind.”
“Just doing my job.”
“They give you a raise yet?” He winked at her from behind his thick eyeglasses as he turned to head to his assigned bed. Mr. Turner, as well as most of the clients, she’d assume, knew who the volunteers were. The paid shelter workers included a social worker and counselor, as well as an accountant and grant writer, and were the ones who could get prescriptions filled as needed, medical care when warranted.
As much as Portia remained committed to her time here, she knew her vocation was in library science. Neither social work nor grant writing appealed to her. Her passion lay with seeing patrons find the book that they’d searched for, or a child figuring out that a novel was way better than the film version of their favorite story.
When she walked through the dining room, en route to the library, she couldn’t escape the feeling she was being watched. Plain silly, as of course there were several pairs of eyes on her. Several different groups of people gathered around the family-style tables, drinking coffee or tea or hot chocolate. Alcohol and illegal drugs were strictly prohibited at the shelter, but she wouldn’t be surprised if some of the hot drinks were spiked.
Portia ignored the urge to sit at one of the tables and find out more about the clients. Her shift was more than half over and she hadn’t even started on the library. Before she left the dining area, though, she decided to get a cup of tea. The hot water urn was too tempting to pass up on such a cold night. Even with the house heated, the modern heating units couldn’t keep up with the windchill. She pulled a bag of ginger tea from her pocket, ripped open the envelope and dunked the sachet into a thick paper cup. As she watched the boiling water turn golden, the creepy sense of being observed crawled up her back, her neck, and made her scalp tingle. This wasn’t her introverted self being aware of the night’s clients wa
tching her. It was more.
Portia kept her back to the dining area, where at least twenty people sat around. The hum of their conversations hadn’t waned, so it wasn’t as if everyone had gone quiet and was staring at her, waiting for her to turn around and face them for an unknown reason. She heard the rush of liquid through the overhead piping, indicating that several overnight visitors were taking advantage of hot running water. Yet she couldn’t shake her awareness of being watched in an unfriendly way.
Keeping her movements as casual as possible, she squeezed the tea bag with the paper envelope and threw it out. Hot drink in both hands, she turned carefully toward the door. As she neared the library’s entrance, she risked a quick glance about the room. First she swept the dining room at large. No one paid her any attention. Same with the people chatting in various easy chairs and sofas around the perimeter of the room.
Except for one man, who was sitting in the club chair next to the library entrance. He wasn’t looking at her now; in fact, he’d looked away the second her gaze hit him. But not quickly enough. Not before she saw the flash of familiar gray eyes that gave away more than the fact they were watching her.
Her stomach flipped and her body froze. The man who’d rescued her was sitting Right. Here. Right. Now.
Impossible. This man in front of her had shaggy, dirty hair. He appeared filthy, from his worn clothing to the grime under his nails, lying casually atop the chair’s upholstered arms.
Yet he had the same cut to his chin, the cleft almost as mesmerizing as his unusual eyes. Portia tried to make her legs move, tried to think and get herself to where she needed to be. But the shelter library’s usual lure of a peaceful couple of volunteer hours was nothing compared to figuring out how the hell the man who’d rescued her this afternoon had managed to invade her every thought.
She shook her head and blinked. Forced her gaze elsewhere. Moved one foot in front of the other until she was in the safety of her beloved books. And away from the man who’d rattled her.
She set her tea down and noticed her hands were trembling. So not like her. Maybe she’d hit her head and didn’t remember it? But the EMTs, and then the ER staff, would have found a lump during their examination of her, wouldn’t they have? Unless she’d had no swelling but in fact had a concussion, or maybe even a hematoma. That was it—she had a hematoma and was about to have a brain bleed.
What else could explain the way her body had reacted to a complete stranger earlier today, a stranger who’d saved her freaking life? And how else to explain her reaction just now, to a homeless man who had nothing to do with what she’d been through? Self-recrimination slammed against her conscience. It was one thing to indulge in harmless fantasy at her own expense. But she’d just mistaken a homeless patron of the shelter, someone who came here out of extreme need, someone with a backstory that had to be pretty ugly to bring them to this point in circumstance, for a man she had an inexplicable draw to. A man she didn’t even know.
Portia began to sort and stack the piles of books that were laid out on the few tables scattered around the small room. Maybe keeping her focus on what she knew would bring her sanity back. Otherwise she was going to have to return to the ER. And what would she tell them? That an unexpected attraction to a complete stranger, at the most terrifying moment of her life, was messing with her normally organized, methodical thoughts?
* * *
Kyle thought once, twice, three times about giving up and walking into the shelter’s makeshift library and telling Portia DiNapoli who he was, what he was doing. Or at least offer a more broad-stroke explanation and tell her he was working with SVPD. ROC’s presence in Silver Valley wasn’t classified, and in fact only the details of his case were. But he stopped himself. Portia had been through enough. She was an innocent civilian in all of this, and any further contact with her invited trouble. He’d never forgive himself if her involvement with him in any way led to harm, or worse. This was an aspect of the case he’d not counted on: finding out that he cared for a woman he barely knew. And it wasn’t just a sexual attraction, though that was front and center. There was something potent between him and Portia, something he’d never experienced with anyone else.
She’d recognized him, he was certain. And worse, by the way she’d halted midstep and locked her attention on to him, he suspected she felt it, too. The most surprising and intense awareness that seemed to connect them in a way he sure couldn’t explain.
He grabbed another cup of coffee and headed to the middle of the dining room. He may as well use his time as he always did: listening for any indications of another heroin drop, or notice that another large commercial goods shipment was en route. As he pulled out a chair, he saw a dark shape flit across the frosted windows that lined the back wall of the room. Normally they overlooked a well-kept garden and yard, judging from the photos he’d found online. But in the current winter, it looked like a frozen tundra. The other night, he’d marveled at the way the moon reflected across the crystalline snowpack. But tonight the windows were foggy from the large amount of folks and need for increased heating in the shelter. The motion detector lights had lit up, allowing him to see the quick-moving shadow. His gut raised the alarm, clenching as it always had in Afghanistan, telling him that an attack or explosion was imminent. He’d never questioned his body’s third eye of sorts—it was something he’d had as a kid, growing up in a less than desirable neighborhood in San Jose until his father bought an almond farm, and had only grown sharper with his Marine and then Trail Hiker training.
His sensitivity to danger was on full alert. He’d bet his powers of observation that the shadow was Ludmila Markova’s, or another thug sent by ROC. The only room accessible from the backyard was the library, which was in fact the former screened-in porch. It’d been built up and insulated to become the library, but the door remained.
An entry point for someone with nefarious intent.
He didn’t hesitate. He excused himself before he ever sat down, and headed straight for one of the private restrooms. Once locked inside, he used his phone to alert Josh at SVPD and his boss at TH Headquarters. They’d know to call in backup for him, and to keep it on the down-low until he relayed further information.
He left the restroom and went into the shelter’s library, closing the door behind him. Portia jerked up from the pile of books she was bent over, her eyes widened from hearing the door click shut. She opened her mouth, and he saw her chest rise, and he concluded in a split second that she wasn’t about to offer a friendly greeting.
Portia was about to scream.
Chapter 4
Ludmila was about to make Portia DiNapoli pay for messing with her, the stupid fool. The librarian actually thought she’d run her off this morning, and she’d had to let her go, find her own cover. She’d come too close to the local police spotting her. As it was they’d seen her running away, but luckily for her, the train provided the divide she’d needed and she’d found cover among Silver Valley’s many tiny alleyways and courtyard-style homes. When the law enforcement presence lessened, she’d circled back to her vehicle, a small economy car, just like all the others she rented and traded back in on a regular basis. Using different pseudonyms made her very difficult if not flat-out impossible to trace. The people she worked for provided nothing but the best in the way of forged documents and identification.
She’d had to spend the rest of the day in the mobile home she rented in a rundown trailer park outside town. It was pretty much abandoned and when she’d researched it, she discovered it had been the site of a cult that tried to take over the town. Silver Valley didn’t impress her, with its openness and the ridiculously friendly people. Finding out they’d been victims of a cult until it’d been taken out at the very last minute only increased her derision. What good was this freedom they spoke about if they allowed outsiders like those people into their communities? Not that she cared. All Ludmila wanted was her own freedo
m from anyone ever telling her what to do, how to live, ever again. She’d escaped the FSB, virtually impossible for being such a well-trained agent. They didn’t let their assets go, not alive. She’d escape ROC, too. All she needed was a little more time to pull one over on Ivanov. It was a shame she wouldn’t be around to see the ROC boss’s face when he realized she’d duped him.
Of course, her neighbors’ welcoming nature worked in her favor. No one suspected her of being a lethal ROC operative. Fools.
The librarian hadn’t come back to work today until much later, and then ate at the diner. She lived near there. Americans ate a lot of fattening food and very often—something she at once envied and reviled. As a top FSB agent, she’d needed to be in top form, and now working what she hoped was her last time for anyone but herself, her physicality was one of her best tools.
It was too tempting to drop the laptop today, to get it out of her hands and ready for the next operator. But it was too risky. No matter—she had until the end of the week. Her employer was unforgiving but reasonable about the length of time she was given to complete her job. And she’d gotten lucky—the shipment arriving in refrigerator trucks from destinations down south, close to the Mexican border, had been halted halfway across the country due to a blizzard. It bought her time. And her life, some might say, but she wasn’t going to let anyone take her life from her. She had to keep going for the sake of her murdered family.
Finally she spied DiNapoli as she left the diner. As soon as feasible, she slipped into the night, following her down the sidewalks of Silver Valley. Dressed as an elderly woman, she was prepared to indicate she lived in a nearby apartment and had only come out to get a meal or a hot beverage at the nearby coffee shop. But she didn’t expect anyone to bother her. It was still early enough in the evening for an older person to be out.