“You know, I’m really sick of that question. No offense, but it seems to be the first thing everyone says to me.”
His lips twitched and she twisted to face him more fully. “Tell me something, Noah. What exactly do you do in the military?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It was hard not to notice how deferentially they started treating you. I realize you’re just a bystander here, but even so. Did they ask you to spy on me?”
Noah choked on a bubble of laughter. “Wickowski didn’t give you nearly enough credit,” he told her. “I’m supposed to keep you alive until we find out what these guys want from you.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw her shoulders slump. “And once you know that, it’s okay if they kill me?”
He braked for the red light and turned to face her, lifting her chin. “No one is ever going to hurt you again. You got that?” he growled.
The car behind him beeped to signal the light had changed. Noah ignored the driver. He pinned her with his stare, willing her to believe him. Finally she nodded. He couldn’t tell if she was relieved or simply scared.
“You’d better drive on before we get a ticket for loitering.”
Her voice was thick, but there was determination in her expression. Damned if her vulnerability wasn’t getting to him. He ran his thumb across her lower cheek in a deliberate caress before dropping his hand and focusing on traffic.
“Where are we going?” she asked him quietly.
“Ever hear of a place called Fools Point?”
“Yes. You and Jerome grew up there.” She frowned. “Why are we going there?”
“Because despite its proximity to D.C., it’s still small-town America. Everybody knows everybody else and strangers stand out.”
“You want us to stand out?”
“No. I told you, I intend to keep you safe. Dad’s house is there. It’s unlikely anyone will connect you with the place, at least right away. Let’s call it my version of a safe house. I’m hoping it will be better than a motel or hotel. Do you have a better idea?”
“No,” she said reluctantly.
She sat back, looking totally composed and detached, much the way she’d looked ever since the break-in this morning. Her calm bothered him because he suspected it was artificial. She should have been huddled in some corner, mindless with fear.
“Do you want something to eat first?” he asked.
“Not really. They gave me a sandwich and some doughnuts.”
“I guess the FBI are just plain old cops when it comes right down to it.”
They shared a weak smile.
Sydney watched Noah calmly thread his way through the dense traffic and decided he had wonderful hands. Long, graceful fingers that rested as lightly on the steering column as they did on a woman’s skin.
She brushed aside the direction of that thought and stared at the traffic beside them. They were getting out of town right ahead of rush hour, but Noah’s eyes kept flicking to the rearview mirror.
“Trouble?”
Noah shook his head. “I’m just being cautious. I told Wickowski where we were going, but I thought they might have given us a silent escort anyhow.”
“How would you know the bad guys from the good guys?”
Noah grinned, reducing the tension lines around his eyes. “The good guys won’t shoot at us or try to run us off the road.”
“How reassuring.”
As if to put her at ease, Noah began asking questions about her job. He appeared genuinely interested in her replies. He wasn’t quite as forthcoming about his own work, but she suspected there might be security reasons for that. The FBI had definitely treated him as if he was someone not to mess with. She hoped the bank robbers would view him the same way.
Despite her own situation, Sydney found herself relaxing for the first time in months. “I should call my boss and let him know I don’t know how soon before I’ll be back to work.”
“You can call when we get to town,” Noah promised.
She wished Noah’s presence weren’t so comforting.
Comforting? Who was she trying to fool? Noah was wickedly attractive in a pulse-pounding way that made her all too aware that she was most definitely a woman. She couldn’t keep skirting the knowledge of her attraction to him. She simply couldn’t act on it. Now if they’d met a year ago, before Jerome was anything more than the man who worked next door at the bank—but they hadn’t, and Noah was off-limits. Forbidden fruit.
A man she could easily have loved.
“Did you love Jerome?”
The question jerked her around in her seat. “What sort of question is that?” she snapped guiltily.
“Wickowski said you were planning to file for divorce.”
“Wickowski has a big mouth.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No. Do you want to talk about your relationship with your brother?”
She’d caught him so completely off guard, he nearly missed the 270 exit. She felt guilty, but only a little. Despite their rocky relationships with Jerome, she knew Noah grieved for his brother.
“He idolized you, you know.”
Noah snorted. “Not likely.”
“Oh, but he did. I think he also resented you. He felt you’d given him an impossible standard to live up to.”
“He said that?”
“Not in so many words, but Jerome was complicated. I never really understood him at all.”
He waited, but she didn’t say anything else.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said finally.
“No.”
She saw his jaw clench. “No, you didn’t answer my question, or no, you didn’t love him?”
“Why ask the question at all, Noah?”
He expelled a deep breath and kept his eyes on the road. Her nonanswer was answer enough. “Call it curiosity.”
“I don’t want to discuss this, Noah.”
“Do you agree that you’re in danger?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think the bank robbery and your attacks are connected?”
“I…” She cursed softly. “They must be or else I’ve got some really bad karma going for me right now.”
“I’m going to take care of you, Sydney.”
“Why?”
He didn’t respond right away. They rode in troubled silence until Noah took the off-ramp for Fools Point. Sydney had only been here once on her way to the fertility clinic with Jerome. She wondered if the sleepy little town had changed much since Noah had grown up here. Jerome claimed it was as it had always been, but she knew it wouldn’t be much longer before developers got their hands on all the open land surrounding the town and changed the landscape the way they’d done with Gaithersburg and Germantown.
Noah stopped for the traffic light in the center of town and leveled a long look at her face.
“There’s no one answer to your question, Sydney. I care about you. And your baby…”
He hesitated. Sydney realized this was the first time she’d ever seen Noah uncertain.
“Your baby is the only family I have left. I don’t intend to let anything happen to either one of you.”
She was strangely disappointed in that answer. He was holding back something.
“So protecting me is your duty?”
His jaw set and his eyes bored into her.
“The light’s green now, Major.”
He started to say something else and stopped. Without another word, he turned onto Perry Road past the doctor’s office where Jerome had stopped before driving to the clinic that day.
Not wanting to be reminded of that event, she stared at the old stone church instead. Jerome told her it had been there since the eighteen-hundreds. But she couldn’t focus on anything because she was so aware of the man at her side.
Noah turned left onto a side street and slowed the car. He came to an abrupt stop in the road, staring toward the large gray frame house Jerome had pointed out t
o her that same day. The house sat back from the road with a long sweeping lawn that led to a wide covered porch spanning the front of the house. The hedges needed to be trimmed and weeded and the house itself could have used a coat of paint, but it was a lovely old structure all the same.
Noah tensed, circling the cul-de-sac before coming to a stop opposite the house.
“Noah? What’s wrong?”
“Jerome said the tenants were supposed to vacate last week.”
She followed the direction of his stare and apprehension sank its tendrils deep inside her. Three vehicles sat in the driveway. Two pickup trucks and one motorcycle.
Hadn’t hotel security seen someone speed away on a motorcycle shortly after her attack this morning?
CHAPTER FIVE
The front door opened and a leanly muscled man in a T-shirt and jeans stepped onto the porch. The jeans were old, paint-stained and torn. An obviously empty can of paint dangled from one hand as he came down the steps and sauntered over to the white panel truck. Trouble looking for a place to happen.
Noah turned to Sydney. “Wait here while I check this out.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. Let me check it out first.” Probably he was overreacting, but security had seen a motorcycle driving away fast from the hotel this morning, so his mind was making connections where maybe none existed.
Her eyes flashed with annoyance, but his tone must have warned her that the subject wasn’t up for debate. Or maybe she didn’t like the tough looks of the man any more than he did. Either way, she remained seated as he climbed from the car.
The man placed the paint can in the back of the panel truck and whirled around at Noah’s approach, braced for trouble.
Noah’s heart sped up as he came to a stop several feet away. The man’s face showed faint traces of bruising, and if Noah wasn’t mistaken, there was tape under his shirt. A broken rib or two? This guy had either been in a recent fight or an accident.
“Help you?” the man asked in a deceptively quiet voice. From beneath a mane of thick black curling hair, badly in need of a cut, his dark eyes took Noah’s measure.
“Yeah. You can tell me who you are and what you’re doing here. I’m Noah Inglewood.”
Acknowledgment flickered in his eyes.
“Jerome’s brother?”
“That’s right. I was led to believe the house was empty.”
“It is. Jerome hired us.” He inclined his head in the direction of the logo on the side of the truck. Yosten Lumber.
The self-assured toughness about the man kept Noah on guard. He stood easily, arms relaxed, but he was balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to move quickly if he needed to. There was something disturbingly familiar about the guy.
“Jerome’s dead,” he told the stranger. “Do I know you?”
The man didn’t seem surprised by the news, but he definitely appeared surprised by the question.
“We’ve met, but it was a long time ago.”
Noah waited.
A wry sort of humor settled lightly on the man’s lips. He gave a slight inclination of his head as if conceding something. “Alex Coughlin. Your brother and I were classmates.”
Noah placed the name after a second. Though Noah hadn’t lived here at the time, he knew the Coughlin kid had been well on his way to building a reputation as reckless. Apparently, he’d finished the project.
“I was sorry to hear about Jerome,” Coughlin added with a serious expression.
“Hey, Alex,” someone yelled from inside the house. “You comin’ back in today or…? Oh. Company?”
Noah eyed the newcomer and his unease grew. The greasy-haired man who stepped onto the porch had a long, pointy ferret face and a mouth that turned down at the corners. Like Alex, he was dressed in a decrepit pair of jeans, but instead of a white T-shirt, he wore a sleeveless black one to display an impressive cobra tattoo coiled up one leanly muscled arm. There was a bandage on the other arm.
Noah had seen his type before. Anyone who’d ever watched a cop show had seen his type. A tough guy.
Ferret Face rubbed absently at a recent bruise on his chin and stared hard.
“Barry Fairvale, meet Noah Inglewood,” Alex Coughlin said easily. “Jerome’s brother.”
The squinty eyes narrowed even further without a shred of welcome. “That right? His brother, huh? Military type, right?”
This guy was going to be trouble. “That’s right.”
The head bobbed as the eyes continued to measure him. “Shame about Jerome getting offed like that,” he said. But his calculating expression wasn’t saying anything of the kind.
A warning prickle went down Noah’s back. He’d have taken bets that Barry Fairvale had seen the inside of more than one jail cell. And that thought reminded him that Sydney waited in the car at his back. Would she be smart enough to take off if things went bad? Because he had a strong hunch they just might any second now. All of his instincts were on full alert.
A voice yelled from inside the house and Noah wondered just how many of them there were. He should have taken Sydney away from here the moment he spotted that motorcycle.
“What the hell are you two doing out there? Is that bathroom finished yet?”
“Company, Gun,” Fairvale said without turning around.
The screen door banged open. The man who filled the space was older than the other two. Older and harder. Years of outdoor work had toughened his body and put age lines on his face. His cold gray stare absorbed the scene.
“This here’s Jerome’s brother,” Fairvale announced.
Noah wouldn’t have been surprised to see Fairvale spit or start scratching. Either action would have been as much of an act as the dumb hick routine. Feral intelligence shone in Fairvale’s eyes.
The blond newcomer started down the steps.
“Jerome’s brother? Why didn’t you say so?”
He came forward with his hand outstretched and an obliging smile pasted on his face. Noah suspected he was the most dangerous of the three.
“Noah, right?”
Noah waited, instinctively braced for trouble. “That’s right.”
“I’m Gunnar Yosten. I’m a friend of Jerome’s—was a friend, that is. Real sorry to hear about what happened to him. Real sorry. I’ve been out of town. Didn’t hear the sad news until the other day. I’ve been trying to find some way to get hold of his wife ever since. That her, in the car?”
Gunnar wasn’t exactly a common name in the D.C. area, and the voice matched the voice on the answering machine in Laura’s apartment. No wonder she hadn’t thought this man was her type. Despite his looks and the affable front, he wasn’t any smart woman’s type. Nothing could hide the cold calculation behind his friendly facade.
Noah bristled at the way Yosten stared toward the car, and he took a step forward to block that view without extending his hand. “Why don’t you tell me what the three of you are doing here?”
Gunnar’s eyes narrowed. His expression stayed friendly as he dropped his hand to his side. He wore the same uniform as the other two, stained jeans and a T-shirt. This one was too dirty to call white.
“Sure. I imagine it is a bit disconcerting to find us here when you weren’t expecting it.”
“You could say that,” he agreed tightly.
“Jerome hired us to fix the place after the tenants moved out. He said he was planning to move here with his wife. That’s why I’ve been trying to reach her. I didn’t want to disturb her right now, but I need to know how far she wants us to take the renovations, what with Jerome’s death and all.”
Noah was more wary than ever. The explanation would have been entirely plausible if Sydney and Jerome had been happily married, but they hadn’t even been living together.
“The house passes to me, not his wife.”
“That so?”
Noah nodded, aware that Coughlin had moved away from the truck and was heading toward the motorcycle—or else down the driveway to
ward Sydney.
“I didn’t realize that. I guess it’s you I need to talk to then.”
“Yes.” He resisted an impulse to look over his shoulder and watch Coughlin. He felt confident Sydney wouldn’t let the guy anywhere near her, and he was pretty sure it would be Gunnar who would signal the start of any trouble.
“I’ll need some time to look over the place before I determine what sort of renovations I want to undertake. I can see you’ve been busy,” Noah conceded, “and I’ll reimburse you for whatever work you’ve already done, but I’m going to have to ask that you stop for now.”
The cold eyes grew colder.
“Why don’t you give me an itemized invoice for the work you’ve completed and a list of what Jerome wanted done. I’ll call after I have a chance to review the situation.”
Gunnar Yosten reined in his unhappy expression. “I’ll do that,” he promised.
Stepping to one side to bring Coughlin into view over his shoulder, Noah realized Coughlin had stopped beside the motorcycle. Unfortunately, that put him between Noah and Sydney. Fairvale still lounged against the porch rail. His eyes were trained on Sydney’s car. These men might be exactly who and what they said they were, but the atmosphere was all wrong.
“Guess that means we’re done here for today,” Coughlin called out from behind him.
“Yes,” Noah agreed decisively before Yosten could respond.
“Okay by me,” Coughlin said cheerfully. “The bathroom’s painted and you’ll remember I told you I needed to leave early today anyhow. Call me later, Gun.”
Coughlin slid a leg casually over his bike.
Noah brought his attention back to Gunnar Yosten.
Gunnar looked toward the porch. “Barry, grab the rest of the equipment. Looks like we’re leaving early, too. I’ll be in to give you a hand in a minute.”
Fairvale disappeared inside with a grunt. The air remained charged with a sense of suppressed violence. Noah had no trouble picturing these three robbing a bank—or coming after Sydney. If there were weapons inside the house, Noah knew he was in big trouble.
The motorcycle kicked to life. With a roar of sound, it backed down the driveway.
“I’ll just go over and pay my respects to Jerome’s wife.”
My Baby, My Love Page 9