by Vicki Hinze
“Not liking the sound of this. I’ll get everyone busy on this end, and we’ll see what we can find out.”
He’d hoped that would be Mark’s reaction. It mirrored his own. Every instinct in his body hummed. “Call me—“ Tim started.
“Anything we uncover, you’ll know it.”
“Thanks.” Tim ended the call confident that within minutes Mark’s media room would look like an operations center. Joe would be working the phones, reaching out to every contact he ever had, a considerable and impressive list. Nick would be at his tricked-out computer, running deep background. Sam at his computer, equally tricked-out but in his areas of expertise, digging deep into everything untouchable through conventional means, and Mark would be setting up the organizational command. Even Lisa would be in action. On the phone with Peggy Crane at Crossroads Crisis Center, activating the Prayer Warriors to put out their own brand of inquiries.
Within half an hour, it’d be all hands on all decks.
Hopefully, nothing Mandy would reveal to Tim in their talks would reveal or create serious complications. Either way, he couldn’t stumble in the dark, and whatever this trouble was, one thing was clear: It terrified Mandy.
That worried him. She didn’t scare easily and knowing it, he feared what he didn’t yet know could be more important than what he did.
He went back inside and, on closing the door, his instincts alerted. The teakettle whined, shrill and full-throated, and there was no sign of Mandy.
Reaching to his back at his waist, he pulled his gun, and methodically began searching the house. Living room. Dining room. Both clear. All the downstairs rooms—clear. His heart rate kicking up, he took the stairs and began searching the upstairs, sliding, back to wall, from room to room. All three bedrooms, the two baths, the master bedroom—all clear.
Confused, he stilled. Was this a trap? Had she departed the fix as soon as he’d stepped outside? Could she do that to him? Would she?
He took the stairs back down to the lower level two at a time, paused, but didn’t pick up on a sense of anything malevolent. Relieved by the absence, he headed for the garage to see if her car was inside. If she’d brought him here and then run out on him—he swung open the laundry room door—there was going to be—
She sat huddled in the corner next to the dryer, her arms covering her head, her mobile phone in her hand. Her skin had drained of color. If she’d looked terrified before, it was nothing compared to the way she looked now.
He softly called out to her. “Mandy?”
She looked up at him, wild-eyed and haunted. “You have to go. Now, Tim. Right now.”
“Go where?”
“Away!” She clutched at her knees, her voice shrill and urgent. “Run as far as you can run, and don’t come back. Never come back.”
“Why?” Obviously, while he’d been outside, she’d received a phone call. But from whom? What would provoke this kind of reaction? He reached for her hand.
She slapped it away. “Will you just listen to me? You have to go now.” She let out a keening wail. “Hurry, Tim. Run!”
He stayed put. “Tell me why.”
Tears leaked from her eyes, washed down her face. “Because if you don’t, he’ll kill you.”
She feared for him. This upset was for him. He, not she, had been threatened. “Who will kill me?”
“Jackal.”
Chapter 4
“Jackal?”
“Yes!” Mandy screamed at him. “Run, Tim.”
His mind tumbled into dark places. There was a connection between Mandy and Jackal? How? Why? Since when? What did she know about Jackal and NINA?
Tim didn’t wait for explanations or bother to ask questions. The threat had come here, to her home. They had to get out of here. Get someplace safe. Then he would find out what this was all about and how she fit into it. “Get up.” He hauled Mandy to her feet. “Jackal called you?”
She nodded, and Tim added, “Pack. Fast. Move it, Mandy.” He urged her to the stairs and then into her bedroom.
“Where am I going?” She walked in a little circle between the bed and her closet, seeming confused and lost.
He found a purple suitcase in the closet. Dumped it on the bed, and then unsnapped and opened it. “Just pack. Hurry, Mandy.” He checked the window through the narrow blinds. The street was ink-dark. Still. Silent. Glancing back at her, he saw she just stood there. “Will you please move it? We can talk after we’re away from here.”
She didn’t move, stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “We can’t outrun him. You need to leave me here and go. It’s the only way you’ll be safe.”
Him. Jackal was a guy. “I’m never safe,” Tim admitted. “And I’m not leaving without you.”
“You’re scared.” She tilted her head. “You’re never scared. Well, until now.” She sounded more shocked by that than anything else. “I’ve never seen you scared.”
“I’m always scared. You don’t know the difference,” he said, not mincing words. “In my line of work, staying scared is essential to staying alive.“ He frowned at her. “Will you please move? I’m not asking again. You pack now, or go with nothing.” He held up two fingers. “Either way, we depart the fix in two minutes.”
She rushed into motion, slinging belongings and cramming her case full. Her nose down, he couldn’t read her expression, but he didn’t need to see her face or to read anything. Terror didn’t begin to describe where she was mentally.
And it infuriated him, seeing her going through it. Jackal. Even away from her, this was his fault. Tim snagged his phone from its case at his belt then dialed Mark. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
She rushed into the adjoining bath then returned with her arms full of toiletries and a straight metal rod . . . curling iron? It was a curling iron. “While I was talking to you, Mandy got a call threatening my life.”
“Mr. Wonderful?” Mark guessed.
“Close.” At the window, Tim parted the blinds, checked the street again. Still empty. “Jackal.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Mark didn’t bother trying to hide his shock.
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” Tim forced a steadiness he didn’t feel into his voice.
“Bug out.”
“One minute. Mandy’s packing.” Mark would get that Tim couldn’t leave her here. First, they needed information from her. And secondly, Jackal would snatch her then use her to draw out Tim and the team. They didn’t know Jackal’s identity, but threatening Tim through Mandy made it clear that Jackal knew theirs. Tim’s, anyway. But for safety’s sake, he and the team had to plan as if the NINA honcho knew them all.
“Mach one, Tim.” Mark suggested they move in high gear. “How does she know Jackal?”
“To be determined, but she referenced him as male.”
“Report with her ASAP. We need answers.”
As soon as possible. He automatically translated the familiar acronym. “My thoughts exactly.” There, they had top-notch security and resources—the team—none of which should or could be underestimated, and their community beyond it. Professional and personal.
Tim ended the call. “Let’s move,” he told Mandy.
She grabbed her purple case. A wad of several somethings hung out between the lid and bottom.
He snatched the case from her, his weapon in his free hand. “Stay close to me. From the time we leave the front door, focus. Run straight to the car. Don’t look around, don’t slow down. Get to the car as fast as you can, get in, and buckle up.”
“Tim, this is a bad idea. I’m poison for you.”
Nothing generic in that statement. “Save that to explain later, too.” He clasped her arm, took the point position to exit the room, then moved down the steps. Studying the hallway with his senses wide open, he picked up on nothing and went on, cutting through the kitchen, pausing to shut off the stove and moving the whistling kettle off the burner. He visually scanned the lock
s then made sure everything was turned off, spotting her handbag on the seat of a stool at the bar. “Get your purse.”
She reached for the phone and her purse in one swoop.
“Leave your regular mobile here.”
“Why?”
“They can locate you through it.”
“But the location is turned off.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He slid her a flat look. “Leave it.”
She dropped her mobile onto the granite counter. It bounced into the sink.
Just inside the front door, he paused. “Stay here.” When she nodded, he slipped out of the house and ran reconnaissance. The night remained as silent as it had appeared from the upstairs window. The wind still, the streetlight casting wide pools of light on the asphalt street. No one was out on the sidewalk. Lights burned inside some of the windows, looking like a typical neighborhood settling in for the night. No strange noises or smells caught his attention, and nothing struck him as alien or out of place.
Satisfied, he moved to his car, parked in her driveway, double-checked the Phantom’s frame, found no devices or signs of tampering, then went back to the house’s front door and collected Mandy. “Everything seems fine, but remember what I said. Focus. Don’t mess around. Get to the car, get in, and shut the door just as fast as you can.”
“Understood.”
“Ready?” She nodded yes, and he whipped open the front door. Mandy shot past him. He slammed the door shut behind him, and long seconds later they were seated in the locked Phantom. Another half-minute, and they were racing out of the neighborhood and toward the Interstate.
Mandy stared out the windshield, then the side mirror, checking behind them. Her gaze darted non-stop from one to the other.
Until she got out of hyper-alert mode, he’d be wasting his breath seeking answers. So he waited, biding his time. Even though her color was coming back, instead of her usual stoic silence when upset, turning it all inward, she sat curled as small as she could make herself, her teeth chattering. Intermittently, she mumbled something, but he couldn’t make out a word of it, and frankly he needed to focus on the road to be sure they weren’t being followed. When he did hear her explanations, he innately knew his full attention would be required to catch not only what she said but also what she didn’t say.
Jackal? Jackal!
Calling Mandy.
Questions burned in Tim’s mind. He started to ask them a half-dozen times but held himself in-check. When they arrived at Mark’s would be soon enough. Considering Tim couldn’t be objective, one of the other guys should handle questioning her anyway, and it should be first-time questions and answers. Before she started second-guessing every word that came out of her own mouth. They couldn’t afford for those filters to kick in, and they always did. Not with Jackal involved.
“Are we safe?” she finally asked, her skin cast in amber from the dash lights.
How did he respond to that? She’d stopped scrunching down in her seat and he couldn’t hear her teeth chattering anymore, but he didn’t dare do anything to get her started up again. This reaction from her was bizarre. For Mandy? It was beyond bizarre.
She had a low tolerance level for nonsense, and an even lower one for any kind of force being exerted against her. He’d seen that in her shop when she’d encountered an assertive customer. There’d been no need for Tim to step in. She given as good as she gotten.
“Do you think we’re safe now?” she persisted, glancing over at him.
“For the moment.” It was as honest as he could be at the time. “We aren’t being followed.” At least, not from the ground. By satellite? Who knew? NINA had the capability.
Seeming a little reassured, Mandy stayed quiet and didn’t visibly relax much. It took a few dozen more miles for her to stop darting her gaze. Eventually, she let out a deep shuddery breath. “I know you’re eager for answers, but I think we should wait until we get where we’re going to talk about all this.”
Even if he’d reached the same conclusions, her suggestion had to be for different reasons, and it fired off an alarm in his mind. “Why?”
She worried her lip with her teeth. “Because you’re not going to like what I have to say. I’d prefer you not be barreling down the Interstate at ninety miles per hour when you react. Someone could get hurt.”
Ominous or practical? “Fine.” He passed a red minivan and pulled back into the right lane. “I’ll trust your judgment on that.” Agreeing came easily. They were on the same page, just in different books. “Just answer one question for me now.”
She clasped the door’s armrest and squeezed, raising her knuckles. “If I can.”
He gave her a second. She could answer. He didn’t doubt that. He wasn’t so sure if she would. That was his question. “I’ve pretty much gathered you didn’t break our engagement because you met Mr. Wonderful and wanted to marry him.”
Mandy didn’t react, or utter a word. When he glanced over at her, she lifted her left hand. “I’m listening. I haven’t yet heard a question.”
He frowned and held it so she wouldn’t miss it. “There isn’t and never was a Mr. Wonderful, was there?”
Silence.
“That was a question, Mandy.”
“I heard it.”
“Well are you going to answer it?”
“I am.” She took in a steadying breath, exhaled it slowly. “No.” She looked him right in the eye. “There isn’t and never was a Mr. Wonderful.”
She’d lied. She’d broken their engagement and his heart, and she’d lied to him. He expected that had been the case, but hearing it confirmed had an explosion of warring emotions detonating inside him. Relief. Anger. Frustration. Resentment. Disbelief. All that and more flamed and singed the walls of his mind, burned through the chambers of his heart. Betrayed.
He grappled with the flood of feelings, isolated them, and one by one tamped them down. Think steel. Think steel. Think steel. He repeated the phrase the team used in dire and impossible situations, when the risks were astronomical or the pain so intense it threatened to prohibit them from doing what had to be done for mission success. “Why?”
She swept her hair behind her ear. “I will explain . . . when you’re not behind the wheel.”
He was a seasoned operative and she knew it. Entrusted with high-level security matters for an entire nation, charged with missions that at times carried one to three-percent survival odds, and vested with enormous powers to make things happen or not happen, and she won’t talk because he’s driving a car on a half-empty road in the middle of the night? Anger simmered in his stomach. “Are you that afraid I’ll risk your life?”
“No, Tim, I’m not,” she said softly. “I’m that afraid of risking yours.”
Chapter 5
Of course, Tim had no idea what Mandy had meant—she hadn’t given him enough information to figure it out. And, of course, that he couldn’t figure it out rankled him enough that he seethed for the rest of the ride.
The problem was that he no longer trusted her, and she couldn’t blame him for that, so his simmering was uncomfortable for them both but it was also for the best, even though tension pounded off him in waves that rippled through her stomach, leaving it sour and a bitter taste in her mouth. She’d earned it, and she’d endure it.
She had no idea exactly where they were going but accepted that, too. He didn’t look receptive to questions or discussions, so she just let the silence between them settle in and hoped he calmed down a little before they got wherever there was.
Half an hour later, when she spotted an exit sign with a familiar name and he signaled he’d be leaving the Interstate, she wasn’t surprised. His old military team, now his partners in the security consulting firm, had to be in Seagrove Village, and he was taking her to them.
Comfort and dread warred inside her. They would be best able to help him protect himself, but after breaking her engagement to Tim, she would get anything but a warm reception from any of them—or any of thei
r friends in the village.
The whole bunch would definitely close ranks against her. She couldn’t blame them for that. They loved Tim and the fault was solely hers. Yet, angry with her or not, they would do everything humanly possible to keep Tim alive, and that’s what most mattered. Of course, she’d have to explain.
That fact had the deepest dread imaginable threatening to smother her. Humiliation. Degradation. Shame . . . Revealing secrets she had concealed her entire life. Sweat beaded on her brow and she went clammy all over.
Clasping her hands in her lap, she squeezed them into fists. Suck it up and endure, Mandy. There’s no help for it. Not now. Jackal is back . . .
A silent fifteen minutes later, she sat in a kitchen chair placed in the center of Mark Taylor’s media room, the large screen behind her, and all members of the team—Tim, Joe, Nick, Sam, and Mark—seated in front of her.
She glanced at them from under her lashes. The only non-stone expression was on the face of Lisa Harper, who from all signs was involved in a serious relationship with Mark—not that she was friendly. But at least she stood aside and she wasn’t snarling at Mandy.
Nick was. Sam had his baseball cap pulled low on his forehead, its brim shielding his eyes, and his mouth flat, a grim slash above his chin. Joe, who had always been kind and charming, looked like his expression was carved out of rock and, ever since Tim’s hushed huddle with Mark near the door, Mark’s face looked even harder. If his tone got any colder, the sounds coming from his mouth would frost and freeze before reaching her. Already, his words traveled to her on the Polar Express.
Inwardly, she stiffened and talked herself out of being angry or feeling isolated and alone. It’s not their fault. They’re protecting their own. You hurt Tim, and they hate you for it. It’s that simple.
It was. That simple, and that complex.