“Gamble says she’s in a hurry to make her mark. And she’s young,” Rand said. “Who knows what she might have gotten herself convinced of.”
So Ian did notice such things. She’d wondered if he was so focused on his work he missed the nuances, missed the subtle signals people sent. Perhaps he’d gotten more of his mother’s people skills than he thought.
“Maybe,” Sam said, still watching. “Maybe I’d better go for a walk.”
“Your call. What’s she doing?”
“Right now she’s just watching his house. She’s empty-handed and in light clothing, no place to really hide a weapon. I think I’ll give it a minute or two.”
She set down the binoculars and stretched. All that gardening had made itself felt in various tight spots. She was in good shape, but those were some muscles she didn’t use on a regular basis.
“Josh had a little talk with the head of JetCal,” Rand said.
“Poor guy.”
She heard Rand chuckle. “Someday I’d really like to be there when he goes after somebody.”
“Not me. I hate the sight of a grown man whimpering.”
“I’d just like to see it happen. The guy must have felt like he’d tried to sneak past a puppy that morphed into a wolf on him.”
“Sounds about right,” Sam agreed. “So, what did the guy have to say?”
“Not much, according to Josh.”
“Figures. They never do. But I’ll bet they don’t try slipping anybody in again.”
“That’s what Josh said. But he also said we have to figure they’ll try something else.”
“Keep me posted,” she said, although she knew it was unnecessary. Rand was utterly, totally reliable when it came to being the base man for an operation like this. He thought of anything the operative missed, had information before you asked for it, often before you knew you wanted or needed it.
He was working the night shift on this because there were several people around during the day to take care of anything she needed. But at night, he was worth two or three all by himself.
“I will. If you need—”
“Hold it, she’s moving.” She grabbed the binoculars. “She’s headed for the house. Later.”
She hung up, knowing Rand would understand. She watched, waiting until Rebecca Hollings—if indeed it was her—got across the street and stopped on the sidewalk, still staring at Ian’s home.
There was a narrow window at the top of the stairs, and she ran for it. A quick look told her the woman hadn’t moved, and Sam kept going. She took another glance out a lower window as the woman moved along the side of the house, just beyond the half-trimmed honeysuckle.
Sam grabbed at the dark knit hat she’d hung near the door, and on the run shoved her gleaming pale hair undercover. Figuring the woman’s wariness would be directed toward the street, she went out her back door.
She was thankful she’d cleared at least one path through the thick shrubbery. She was able to crouch there, out of sight, watching as the woman—it was Ian’s young assistant, she could see that now—hovered along the side of the house, looking up at Ian’s bedroom windows. Sam waited. She could be simply casing the house for a later action.
Or she could be a scout, Sam thought suddenly. A scout, with the real troops standing ready to move in the moment she gave the signal.
She swore at herself for not bringing her cell phone out with her. The built-in intercom feature was out of range of Redstone headquarters from here, but she could have speed dialed for help. If there were indeed troops in the wings, she couldn’t take them on alone, especially with the two-inch revolver in her ankle holster her only weapon. Her job was to protect Ian, and she couldn’t do that if she got mowed down in the first offensive—one of the lessons Draven had thoroughly pounded home long ago.
But if Rand hadn’t heard back from her in fifteen minutes, he’d be organizing backup, anyway. Unless she made contact within thirty minutes, they’d be on their way.
The woman let out an almost pained sound, then spun on her heel.
Changed your mind? Sam wondered.
Or was she really checking out the house for some later action?
She debated for a moment over confronting the woman, but decided against it. It was too early to tip their hand, to warn anyone that Ian was being guarded. And she hadn’t really done anything, although if there was an innocent explanation for her appearance here in the dark of night, skulking around Ian’s house, Sam couldn’t think of one.
She watched until the woman got back in her car and drove off, then headed quickly for the phone. She got through two minutes before her time was up.
“All clear.”
“Cut it close there, sis. What happened?”
“Nothing. Closest she came was a few feet between this house and his. She just stood there looking up at the windows for several minutes, then left.”
“Casing?”
“Definitely possible,” she said, although the pained sound she’d heard from the young woman nagged at her.
“I’ll start digging, then. And we’ll warn Gamble to watch out around her. If you think he can maintain, that is,” Rand added.
“You mean can he lie with a straight face?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
He gave me a chance when no one else would, and I owe him everything….
Ian’s words echoed in her head. “If he had to for Josh, yes, I think he could.”
“All right. You’ll be up for a while?”
“Probably the night,” she agreed. “Just in case.”
“I’ll be here.”
She hung up, feeling for the first time that she might just be more than a precaution.
But it wasn’t until Monday, after she’d gotten Ian safely to work and had returned to catch up on much-needed sleep, that it became more than just a feeling. The phone rang at a little after one in the afternoon. When she answered, the sound of St. John’s voice woke her up in a hurry.
“Beckett?”
She sat up. “What’s wrong?”
“They tried for him, right in front of Redstone.”
Chapter 6
It was absurd, Ian thought. Nothing had really happened, but he felt shaken. The first time in ages you leave the building for lunch, and look what happens, he thought.
He wondered if fate was trying to send him a message. He told himself he was feeling this way because everybody else—well, Josh and St. John, anyway—was reacting as if his near-miss accident out in the street was some kind of nefarious plot. Only he and Stan thought it was merely a distracted driver, probably on a cell phone, and that he’d come a lot closer to getting run down than any kind of public kidnapping.
The man simply hadn’t been paying any attention, Ian thought, as he himself sometimes had to admit to, although never while driving.
Almost never, he amended, remembering when he’d nearly driven through his own garage door at the sight of Samantha in his yard.
Samantha.
Now there was the most absurd part of all. Nothing had happened, he’d simply had a close call, as people did all the time on the busy, chaotic streets of southern California. Yet he’d had the urge to call Samantha. When they’d told him he should go home, he’d wanted to agree, to call the cell number she’d given him and ask if she could come get him, visions of another day spent with her forming teasingly in his mind. He just knew she’d find a way to prod him out of this weird mood, get him over this shaken feeling.
He didn’t call, of course. He’d see her this afternoon when she picked him up at the regular time, he told himself. In the meantime, he did what he’d always done, turned to his work for solace and distraction.
But that wasn’t working as well as it once had. And it wasn’t merely that Josh had warned him they were watching Rebecca after some suspicious actions Josh wouldn’t elaborate on in case they were wrong. Ian understood that that was Josh’s way; if you were one of his, he’d protect you until it was
clear you no longer deserved it. But knowing that they suspected Rebecca didn’t make it very easy to act the same around her, as Josh had requested.
And it wasn’t just what had happened this afternoon that had him so distracted, either, Ian admitted reluctantly. He was spending far too much time thinking of what a beautiful day it was outside—something he usually completely forgot about once he got into the windowless lab—and how much he had enjoyed working in his own garden.
With Samantha.
He sighed, realized that all the figures he’d entered in a results table were in the wrong column, deleted them and started again.
It was going to be a long afternoon.
“Could it have been coincidence?” Sam asked.
“Maybe,” Rand said. “But we can’t be sure.”
She wanted to believe it had been, that the van that had swerved perilously close to Ian as he crossed the street outside Redstone had been just a careless or reckless driver rather than an attempt to grab him. But they had at least one witness who swore the sliding side door of the van had been open, and added that he was fairly certain someone had been crouched there in the opening.
She shoved her hair back and grimaced. She picked up her glass of lemonade, then set it down again. She pushed her sandwich around on the plate a bit more.
Ian was now safely tucked away in his lab, insisting that he was fine. With Josh out of town, St. John was chewing on everyone in sight for letting Ian slip away, despite the fact that he almost never left Redstone to go to lunch as he had today. His explanation had simply been that he’d needed to get out, to think in the fresh air. Sam had felt a stab of guilt at that, wondering if her urging him out into the garden had somehow brought that on.
“This news shouldn’t come as a great surprise,” Rand said mildly.
“No,” she said, “I’m not really surprised. It’s just been so…routine until now that I was hoping maybe Josh was wrong about there being a threat.”
“He’s rarely wrong about much of anything,” Rand said.
“I know that,” Sam said, aware her voice sounded a bit snappish. Maybe more than a bit, judging by Rand’s surprised expression.
“What’s up with you? Bored with suburbia already?”
“No.”
Actually, she was quite enjoying it. She’d settled into a routine that, while odd, seemed to work. Thanks to Josh, the shop that had Ian’s car was awaiting a part that would take a considerable amount of time to find and install, so she was still taxiing him to Redstone. Even though she’d told Ian it was on her way, he’d been uncomfortable until she’d allowed him to fill the tank.
So each morning she would rise early—although not as early as Ian normally would, for fear he would back out altogether thinking he was making her get up earlier than she had to—dress in businesslike clothing and take him to Redstone. Then she would head over to spend the morning with Billy, who seemed vastly entertained by her new attire. But he was happy to see her so often, and excited to be planning their summer vacation together. After that she made her calls to or met with Josh or Rand for any updates, then she was free for the afternoon, often using it to catch up on sleep she missed while watching during the night.
At six she would head back to Redstone, knowing already that the chances of Ian being done earlier were slim and none, and as her father used to say, Slim just left town. Whatever high salary Josh was paying Ian, he got his money’s worth. He worked hard, and—
“—so distracted.”
Sam snapped out of her musings. “What?”
“Well, that proves my point,” Rand said. “I said I’ve never seen you so distracted.”
She opened her mouth to deny it, then shut it again. Rand knew her too well, they’d worked together too often, faced life-and-death situations together. Denial was not only useless, it was an insult to what they’d been through together. She was distracted.
“I think I’m just angry,” she said, giving him the conclusion she’d arrived at during the long night she’d spent watching Ian’s house every minute after Rebecca Hollings had left. “Ian’s a good guy. He’s trying to do a good thing with this explosives sensor, he shouldn’t have to worry about crap like this.”
“He doesn’t,” Rand pointed out. “We do.”
She smiled then. “There is that.”
Rand smiled back, but she caught a glimpse of something rather intent in his gaze as he looked at her—a speculative sort of expression that he rarely turned on her. But he said nothing more, just shoved a hand through the silken hair that was the same childlike shade of blond as hers and stood up, tossing down money for their lunch plus a generous tip for the long time they had taken up the table.
“We’re sure of Hollings’s whereabouts at the time of the incident?” Sam asked.
“She was signed into the lab. Gamble says he saw her there when he left.” Before she could ask, Rand foresaw her questions and answered. “And no calls were made or e-mails sent from there after Gamble left.”
“She could have used a cell, though.”
“Yes.”
“If it was a kidnap attempt, somebody had to tip them off. How else would they know he was leaving the building at that moment?”
“Reasonable deduction,” he agreed as he held the door open. She accepted the gesture without comment; she was long past worrying about men holding doors for her. She did it as often for men, and figured it all evened out in the end. “Especially since it was a break from his usual routine.”
“But who?”
“You answer that, and Josh might start sleeping at night.”
“He does take this kind of thing personally, doesn’t he?”
“Very. You want me to take over tonight?” Rand asked as they made their way out to their respective vehicles.
She shook her head. “I’m fine. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Just let me know. It’s tough sleeping with one eye and ear open all the time.”
It was, and she knew he knew it. He’d done his own share of surveillance work for Redstone—more, in fact, than she had, since he’d been on the security team three years longer than she had. He was good at it, one of the best. She would—and had—trusted him with her life. But somehow she didn’t want to turn Ian over to him. And that bothered her, because she’d never felt this way before. Bothered her almost as much as the fact that she didn’t quite know why she felt that way now.
Sam hacked away at a wisteria stem as thick as her wrist. There were few things worse when out of control than these kinds of vines. She wondered what would happen when this was over. Would Ian let things run amok again, or would he remember the pleasure he seemed to have discovered in working out here and continue?
For some reason the thought of the garden returning to its neglected state—and Ian returning to his solitary hours holed up inside—depressed her on this lovely Sunday.
She glanced up as he hefted another full garbage bag and lugged it over to the ever-growing pile. They had taken to dividing the refuse for the trash pickup, a few bags in front of his house, a few in front of hers, so he didn’t test the patience of the trash collectors quite so much.
He’d never said a word to her about what had happened on Monday. When she’d picked him up she’d asked if something had gone wrong, since he’d seemed a little preoccupied. He’d insisted nothing was wrong, and she wondered if he really felt that way, or if he was just trying very hard to convince himself.
All week she’d given him every opportunity, but he’d never even broached the subject, just told her not to worry. Then, in that oddly charming way of his, he added as a disingenuous afterthought, “But thanks, anyway.”
She heard him coming back now. “I picked up a soaker hose,” she said.
“A what?”
“A soaker hose.” She gestured toward the flat hose with two rows of small holes punched along its length before she went back to her sawing. “It waters slow and deep, the best for this bed. Less water wa
ste, too. It waters out both sides, so if you space it right, it will cover the whole bed.”
“Is this garden stuff another one of those things women just know?”
She laughed but kept her eyes on what she was doing since she’d resorted to a rather lethal machete-type blade to try to cut through the rest of the woody stem.
“No. I learned from my dad. He had the proverbial green thumb. My mom used to say hers was brown. If she touched a plant, it died.”
She heard his soft chuckle, the knife cut through the last of the stem, and she looked up.
She nearly dropped the blade. She was rarely caught completely off guard, but Ian Gamble had just done it. She was sure her jaw had literally dropped.
In the heat of the afternoon, he was pulling off his T-shirt. She had looked up just as he’d begun to tug it over his head. She’d seen only the graceful, sinuous movement of muscle on a fit, surprisingly broad chest, and strong arms. And that flat, taut belly, drawing her eyes unerringly to the gap between denim and skin….
He works out in the gym, Josh had said.
“No kidding,” she muttered inwardly.
She fought to regain her composure, aided slightly by the fact that his glasses had caught on the neck of the shirt and he had to pause to save them from being pulled off. By the time he was done she had herself back together. She had even managed not to take that extra moment for another look at him. Instead when he got free of the shirt she was busily tugging at the vine again.
“Tell me about your brother.”
The request was unexpected both in nature and that he had asked at all. She supposed it was a good sign that he was so much more relaxed around her than he’d been at first, enough to ask a personal question, anyway.
“Billy?” she said, carefully not looking up at him just yet. “He’s great. He’s in a new school, and he’s doing really well.”
It was the truth, but she was very aware of what she wasn’t telling him. Stupid, that that bothered her. After all, this whole thing was a deception.
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