Secret Assignment

by Paula Graves

  She started to turn back toward the stairs when a niggling sensation at the back of her neck made her reverse course. She went instead to the side veranda that looked out across the trees to the east, hoping for a better view of the light she’d seen from her bedroom window. She had to unlock the dead bolt to step out onto the veranda. The door creaked as she opened it, the loud sound setting her nerves on edge.

  Wincing, she eased out onto the wooden porch, wondering if the sounds she was making were loud enough to wake Lydia in her upstairs suite. She stepped gingerly toward the railing, trying to make as little noise as possible from here on.

  A damp breeze blew in from the Gulf of Mexico, lifting her hair away from her face. Wishing she’d put her hair in a ponytail before she came downstairs, she finger-combed her hair out of her eyes to keep the swirling strands from blocking her view of the trees.

  She stared for a long time, straining for any sign of the lights she’d seen earlier, but the woods were dark and quiet. She released a soft breath and started to turn back to the house when she spotted it.

  A light, swinging back and forth with a rocking rhythm, as if held by someone moving slowly, steadily through the woods.

  Was it Gideon?

  She wasn’t so sure anymore.

  She moved around the veranda slowly until she was facing the back garden, where just beyond, a single-story house on stilts rose over the garden, perched on the highest point of land on the island. Like the Rosses’ house, Gideon’s residence also had a widow’s walk around the top gable, though when Shannon had first spotted the house earlier during Lydia’s guided tour of the house and gardens, she’d noticed the widow’s walk on the caretaker’s house looked new, as if it were a recent addition.

  There were no lights on in the caretaker’s house. No sign of movement inside. Maybe her first guess had been right. Maybe Gideon was taking a quick tour around the island to make sure everything was safe and secure for the night.

  She returned to the door she’d left open, stopping just long enough to take another quick look at the woods.

  Her heart skipped a beat. For there wasn’t just one light flitting around through the woods anymore.

  There were three.

  If Gideon was out there somewhere in the dark, he wasn’t alone. But was he in danger himself? Or was he collaborating with someone to do harm to Lydia Ross?

  Shannon slipped back into the house, her heart racing, and tried to figure out what to do next. Gideon Stone might be surly and unpleasant, but he seemed to aim his bad attitude primarily at her. To Lydia, he seemed genuinely affectionate, and clearly Lydia returned the feelings. In lieu of evidence to the contrary, she decided to give Gideon the benefit of the doubt.

  The question was, did he know there were people out there? And if not, what should she do, go bang on his door until he answered?

  It was as good a plan as any, she decided, heading back around the house to the garden. A gravel path wound through the garden, past brightly colored coleus and merry daisies, beyond a small stone basin of water where, Lydia had told her earlier, birds regularly gathered for communal baths during the oppressive heat of summer afternoons.

  At the end of the garden, the path to the caretaker’s house went from neat gravel to an uneven walkway crowded on either side by scrubby grass that grew halfheartedly in the sandy soil. She stumbled a few times before she made it to the front porch. Seeing no sign of a doorbell, she rapped loudly on the door, grimacing as the sound echoed in the night.

  There was no answer. Shannon knocked again, with no better result.

  “Come on, Gideon!” she growled softly at the unyielding door.

  But he didn’t come.

  Her pulse thundering in her ears, she hurried back along the crooked path, retracing her steps through the garden and ending up back on the veranda again. She circled the house once more to the place she started.

  How much time had she just wasted trying to fetch Gideon? How much farther had the lights in the trees encroached?

  She stayed in the shadows of the eaves, peering through the darkness until she spotted the lights again. They were stationary for the moment, glowing through the trees, flickering only when the breeze made the low-lying palmetto bushes and high-growing sea grasses dance back and forth.

  Whoever was out there had stopped moving toward the house.

  She wished she had a pair of binoculars like the ones Gideon had used earlier in the day. She should have packed a pair for herself, but she hadn’t been planning on trying to spot intruders at night when she packed for the trip.

  Slowly, she eased backward until her spine flattened against the French doors. Like it or not, she had to rouse Lydia and let her know something was happening outside. She would, at the very least, know how to sound the horn on the lighthouse, and maybe the noise would drive their intruders away again.

  She eased open the doors and slipped inside, turning for one last look at the woods. Only the faintest creak of the floor beneath her feet gave her any warning at all.

  A hand clapped over her mouth. A hard-muscled arm snaked around her stomach, pulling her flush with a hard, hot body.

  She raised her foot to stamp on her captor’s instep, Cooper Security training kicking in before she had time to think.

  Her captor sidestepped quickly, and her foot slammed on the ground, making her ankle tingle with pain.

  “Don’t do it again,” warned a voice like steel in her ear.

  The arms loosened, and she jerked away, turning around to face her captor. “You scared the hell out of me,” she whispered.

  Gideon Stone’s eyes glittered like blue diamonds in the low lights, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was gazing past her, toward the woods in the east, his expression hard.

  “You see the lights?” she asked softly.

  “I do.”

  “Do you think the intruders are back?”

  He nodded.

  “Pretty brazen,” she murmured.

  “How many lights did you see?”

  “Just three.”

  “Can’t be sure that’s all that’s out there, though,” he said thoughtfully, turning his gaze away from the door long enough to look down at her. “What were you going to do if I hadn’t grabbed you?”

  “Get Lydia up and see if we could sound the foghorn again.”

  “Let’s not do that yet,” he said softly, curling his palm over her arm and easing her away from the doorway. His hand was big and warm, sending unexpected sensations rippling through her flesh. “You stay here. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, sound the horn. The switch is located in the kitchen pantry, second shelf, at the back.”

  She nodded, too breathless to speak.

  He locked the French doors again, then pulled his Walther from a hip holster and checked the clip with practiced ease. He chambered a round and looked down at her. “Fifteen minutes.”

  He disappeared into the shadows, heading toward the back of the house. She heard the faint snick of the back door dead bolt turning and felt her way through the dark until she reached the French doors. She tried the locks until she found the one he’d left open. She locked it behind him and leaned against the door, her heart racing.

  Pushing the stem of her watch, she lit up the face so she could see the hands. Nine thirty-eight. At nine fifty, if Gideon didn’t come back, she would sound the lighthouse horn.

  And meanwhile, she had a GLOCK and knew how to use it. She hurried up the steps to the top floor, feeling her way rather than risk turning on the lights and possibly alerting the intruders.

  Retrieving her GLOCK from her duffel bag, she headed back into the hallway and collided with another warm body.

  She leaped back, flattening to the wall, already tugging the GLOCK from the holster.

  “Shannon?”

  She sagged against the wall. “Mrs. Ross.”

  Shannon heard a soft click and a flashlight flickered to life, illuminating Lydia’s kind face and reveali
ng the lethal gleam of a rifle gripped in her free hand. “What’s going on, dear?” The older woman’s tone was as gentle as ever, but the thread of steel beneath her words made Shannon smile despite her own nervous tension.

  She brought Lydia up to speed and checked her watch. “In six minutes, if Gideon’s not back here, we’re supposed to sound the horn.”

  Lydia nodded. “If the horn continues sounding for more than five minutes, Terrebonne Fire and Rescue knows to send a boat to check on us.”

  “Can they hear the sound from that far away?” Shannon had heard the horn well enough from the boat earlier that day, but the Lorelei had been a long way from the shore by that time.

  “It can be heard all the way to Bayou La Batre on a clear day.” Lydia nodded at the GLOCK. “Do you know how to use that?”

  Shannon cocked her eyebrow at Lydia and nodded at the Remington. “Do you know how to use that?”

  Lydia smiled. “Touché.” She turned off the flashlight.

  They went downstairs together, easing through the dim shadows to the French doors on the eastern side of the house. Shannon peered through the clear glass. “I don’t see the lights anymore.”

  “How much longer?” Lydia asked.

  Shannon checked her watch. “Two minutes.”

  “Do you see any sign of Gideon?”

  “No. He went out through the garden door.”

  “Perhaps we should make our way to the foghorn switch.” Lydia hooked her free hand in Shannon’s elbow, guiding her toward the kitchen. Shannon heard a pantry door creak open and a soft tapping sound. A light mounted inside the pantry snapped on, illuminating cans, bottles, boxes and, at the back of the second shelf, as Gideon had promised, a simple electrical toggle switch.

  Shannon checked her watch. The second hand passed twelve. “Now,” she said, her stomach aching with tension.

  Lydia flipped the switch. Shannon braced for the moan of the foghorn.

  But nothing happened.

  Chapter Four

  Three years of Marine Special Operations missions in Afghanistan. Four more years of duty in Iraq, clearing Baath Party holdouts and al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters out of war-weary villages hungry for peace and stability. He’d done a final three years on super-secret reconnaissance missions in Kaziristan and almost paid with his life.

  Gideon had seen his share of impossible missions and no-escape situations. Being surrounded by at least three unknown subjects wasn’t the most terrifying situation he’d ever dealt with. Not by a long shot.

  But if he had his choice, he’d rather be elsewhere.

  Time ticked inexorably away as his quarry circled him in the thick stand of pines and hardwoods that grew in abundance in the center of the island. He didn’t want to give away his position by lighting the dial of his watch to check the time, but he was certain most of the fifteen minutes he’d given Shannon to wait before acting had already passed.

  What would the men moving through the trees around him do once the lighthouse foghorn sounded?

  He hadn’t gotten very close to the intruders before they extinguished their lights, making recon substantially more difficult. Whoever they were, they were damn good at moving quietly through the dark, making him wonder for a while if they were wearing night-vision goggles. He gave himself a mental kick for not having a pair of his own, although in his defense, he’d thought he’d left his night-combat days far behind him.

  He spotted one of the intruders again, finally. Male, based on his shape and size. He was dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt, dark trousers, a black hood and a balaclava, as they all had been. He wasn’t visibly armed, though Gideon couldn’t be sure he wasn’t packing a concealed weapon. No sign of night-vision goggles, he saw to his relief.

  Time ticked, and still no horn. Surely fifteen minutes had passed.

  The sound of movement nearby set his nerves on edge. He hunkered lower, sheltered by a fallen pine tree that had gone down during the last tropical storm of the previous season. The leaves were brown and prickly but offered acceptable shelter.

  He spotted movement to his right. A second man glided through the trees in near silence. “It’s done,” the newcomer said in a flat, Midwestern accent that sounded strangely familiar. Gideon frowned, trying to remember where he’d heard that voice before.

  “Good.” The first man’s voice was pitched a step or two lower, the authority in his voice unmistakable. He seemed to be the leader.

  “There’s still Stone to deal with,” Midwest said. “And the women.”

  “An old lady and a little stick of a girl. Still decent odds.”

  Gideon arched his eyebrows at the man’s description of Shannon Cooper, remembering the way her windblown clothes had hugged her tempting curves and delightful valleys.

  A third man circled around, moving with more speed than stealth. Through the pine fronds sheltering his hiding place, Gideon saw the leader wheel around aggressively as he reached them. Even though the third man was the largest of the three by far, he took a faltering step back as the leader hissed his displeasure.

  “Stupid idiot, what part of silent force don’t you understand?”

  “No sign of Stone,” the big man said in a growling bass. “I thought you said he would be trouble.”

  “He will,” the leader said. “He’s already on guard, thanks to the misstep earlier,” the leaders said. “If we give him more time to shore up his defenses, we may not get a second chance. He thought he won today. He thinks he has time.”

  “Arrogant son of a bitch,” Midwest muttered.

  Gideon frowned. That remark sounded personal.

  The men moved forward toward the house, away from Gideon’s hiding place. With their backs to him, he took a chance to check his watch. Five past ten, and still no horn.

  Where was Shannon?

  * * *

  “GIDEON’S NOT GOING to be happy that I’m letting you wander out here while there are intruders about,” Shannon whispered to Lydia as she followed the older woman through the high sea grass behind the caretaker’s cottage.

  “He asked you to sound the horn,” Lydia said sensibly. “We need to find out why the switch didn’t work. And because you don’t know how the contraption works and I do...”

  They’d already checked the electrical connection to the house and found that the circuit appeared to be intact. “The problem must be on the lighthouse end,” Lydia had told her solemnly. “The lines between the lighthouse and here run underground,” she added, showing Shannon where the cable ran down into the sandy soil. “We have to go to the lighthouse to see if someone has disabled the horn on that end.”

  Shannon hadn’t protested Lydia’s pronouncement at first, her mind on Gideon somewhere out in the woods, outnumbered at least three to one. But the farther they walked from the house, the more vulnerable she felt.

  Gideon had told her to stay put, and while she wasn’t the sort of woman who needed a man to make her decisions for her, she knew the odds were against a natural explanation for the switch malfunction. More likely, someone had sabotaged the switch at the lighthouse.

  Would that someone be guarding his handiwork? Were they walking into a trap?

  She kept her hand on the butt of her GLOCK as she walked through the sand, her calves beginning to ache from the extra exertion. Up ahead, Nightshade Island Lighthouse glowed as pale as alabaster in the blue moonlight peeking through scudding clouds overhead.

  “There are two places where the connection could have been disrupted,” Lydia whispered as they neared the base of the lighthouse. “Here, where it comes out of the building and goes through a circuit box. And then there’s also a connection up in the lighthouse itself.”

  Using a small penlight Shannon had grabbed from her duffel bag, they examined the connector. “It looks all right,” Shannon murmured.

  “That leaves the direct connection to the horn at the top,” Lydia said, gazing up at the tall lighthouse. “There’s a spiral staircase inside that leads
to the service room and then up to the lantern room at the top, where the beacon is located. The beacon no longer works, but Gideon had an electrician from the mainland rig the horn. It’s located on the catwalk outside the service room.” Bathed with moonlight, her face creased with regret. “I’m afraid I can’t manage all those stairs with my arthritic knees. You’ll have to check it.”

  “How will I know if it’s connected?”

  “I’m not sure, but I suspect if it’s been tampered with, you’ll know.”

  “You’ll have to stand guard,” Shannon said, hating the idea of leaving Lydia alone. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

  She opened the faded wood door of the lighthouse, her nerves twitching as her footsteps on the stone floor echoed up the tall structure. With her penlight, she traced the curve of the spiral staircase. At the top, there seemed to be a large, enclosed platform. That must be the service room.

  She started up the steps, keeping her gaze directed upward. The steps were rusted but seemed sound enough, though the creaks and groans of metal echoed through the stone tower as she climbed.

  She was breathing hard and her legs were shaking by the time she reached the service room, although she suspected fear, more than exertion, was the source of her weakness. She leaned against the damp stone wall and flashed her penlight around, taking in the small space.

  There was little left of whatever had been inside the service room when the place was a working lighthouse. A rickety table, missing one leg and lying in a lopsided heap against one wall, took up half the space. Fortunately, it didn’t block the door that led out to the narrow catwalk circling the lighthouse. Light seeped in through a cracked and dirty window. From elsewhere—either the broken window or the narrow space beneath the door—a draft blew in, cool and fragrant with the sea.

  Heart racing, Shannon opened the door and crept out onto the metal catwalk. With the Gulf of Mexico spreading around the island as far as the eye could see, she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t standing on a rusted metal platform thirty feet in the air. She’d never considered herself afraid of heights, but that perception was about to be tested.