by Cindy Dees
Alarmed, Sammie Jo blurted, “A what?”
“He’s gonna put rat poison or something in fruit punch and make ’em all drink it. The women and kids and everyone.”
It wasn’t much of a stretch to act suitably shocked. “That’s terrible!”
Miss Maddie wagged a warning finger at them. “You mark my words. No good’s coming out of that place or that Proctor guy.”
The conversation devolved into meaningless gossip about other neighbors in the area, and Sammie Jo mostly tuned out. She made an appropriate noise of sympathy or shock to keep Miss Maddie happy, but her mind raced elsewhere.
A cult, huh? Why would Jeff Winston care about a bunch of hippies and conspiracy theorists tucked away in the backwoods of West Virginia? There had to be more to this Proctor guy than met the eye. One thing she knew for sure. It was time to have a conversation with her boss.
They went back to the roses and planted the last bush in silence. When they retreated into the house, Sammie Jo turned to Gray immediately. “I need to make a phone call.”
“To Jeff?”
“Exactly. Do you suppose the phone line here in the house is secure?”
“I doubt anyone would have tapped the phone on a vacant house, and I checked the box on the telephone pole in the backyard early this morning. It’s clean for now.”
Cautious man. Of course, just because the phone was safe today didn’t mean it would be safe tomorrow. She nodded and headed toward the kitchen.
Gray called from down the hall, “I’m going to jump in the shower. Tell Jeff I’ll call him when I get out. I’ve got a couple of questions about other stuff for him.”
Her mental antenna shot up and wiggled warningly. What other stuff? Was he going to pump Jeff for information about her? She shook off the paranoia. Jeff and Gray had known each other forever. For all she knew, they had other business dealings together. It wasn’t like Jeff Winston told her everything about his family’s vast corporate empire.
She, however, was not above snooping about her partner. The sound of running water came out of the bathroom and she dialed the Winston Ops Center’s main line quickly. She recognized the Slavic accent of the duty controller.
“Hey, Novak, it’s Sam. Is Jeff about?”
In a moment, her boss’s deep voice came on the line. “How’s it going, Sam? You and Gray getting along?”
Memory of the searing kisses they’d shared flashed through her mind, and she stammered, “Yeah. Sure. Great guy. So why in heck did you send the two of us out here?”
“Have you found anything?” he asked cautiously.
“Plenty. Your guy, Luke Zimmer, is dead. He was gutted and dumped in the woods behind his place.”
“Zimmer was murdered?” Jeff exclaimed.
“Brutally.”
Jeff swore roundly.
“Talk to me, boss.”
“I sent Zimmer out there to infiltrate a group of folks who ostensibly want to live completely off the grid.”
“Wendall Proctor’s group?” she asked.
“Exactly. I wanted you two to contact Luke. Give him support and relay information to me from him. That way there’d be no direct connection between him and me.”
She made the logical leap immediately. “You were worried Proctor would figure out you and Luke were in cahoots, and you needed a middleman to act as a go-between?”
“Right.”
“What was Luke supposed to find out about the Proctor gang for you?”
“What the hell they’re up to. I have reason to believe they’re far more than an antigovernment separatist group.”
“The way I hear it, there’s a commune of folks living at his place who want to live technology- and chemical-free.”
“Proctor’s using them for cover,” Jeff replied impatiently. “They’re not the heart of his organization.”
“Who is?”
“That’s what Luke was supposed to find out.”
“Since he’s dead, I guess that means Gray and I are going to have to make a run at this Proctor guy directly.”
“No!”
“What other choice do we have, Jeff?”
“I’ll figure out something. But it’s too dangerous. I’d lay odds Proctor’s behind Zimmer’s murder.”
That was a bet she wouldn’t take. She frowned. Contrary to popular belief, she didn’t actually have a death wish. And she was no great fan of serious danger, either. However, she and Gray were already here. “The two of us are in place. We already have a cover story, and we’re inserting ourselves into the local community. How long is it going to take you to find another appropriate mole who’s also a competent operator, build him or her a cover and move that person into the area without arousing suspicion?”
“You’ve figured out Gray’s competent, eh?”
“It’s hard to miss, Jeff. But speaking of which, is everything okay with him?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Now and then I get a flash of...something from him. Pain. Or maybe grief. It’s pretty dark, whatever it is.”
Jeff’s reply was sharp and immediate. “Leave it alone, Sam. Don’t ask and don’t pry.”
Taken aback by how vehement her boss had gone on her all of a sudden, she replied placatingly, “Okay, okay. I’ll leave it alone.” Sheesh. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Jeff get that tight that fast. She changed the subject. “Gray said he’d call you when he gets out of the shower. You gonna be around for a few more minutes to take his call?”
“Jenn and I are on our way to go parasailing, but I’ll have Novak forward his call to my cell phone.”
“’Kay. Have fun and don’t kill Jennifer. We all like her more than you.”
Jeff laughed. “Me, too.” His voice took on a serious note. “I promise I’ll keep her safe.”
Sammie Jo thought she heard a woman’s warm, contralto laughter in the background as the phone disconnected. Jeff had been a different man since he met his fiancée, Jennifer Blackfoot, earlier this year.
She felt Gray’s humid body heat behind her before she heard him. She turned, startled to realize he’d gotten right up behind her without her hearing a thing. And he had no shirt on. Hubba, hubba, that guy had a nice chest. And not an ounce of fat around his waist. Check out those rippling rows of cut abs! “Dang, you’re quiet.”
“I’m a superspy, remember?”
“Right.” A worrisome thought occurred to her. “How much of my talk with Jeff did you hear?”
“I caught something about not killing his fiancée.”
She hoped she didn’t look too relieved as she passed him the phone. Given how intensely Jeff had reacted to her question about Gray, she didn’t think she wanted to see Gray’s reaction to the notion of her prying into his deeply mysterious past.
She set about tossing a salad and shamelessly eavesdropping while Gray dialed Jeff.
“Hey, bro,” Gray announced. He listened in silence for a few moments, then, “Oh, yeah. It was definitely murder. Sam was able to see where he was attacked in his kitchen and dragged out of his house. The guy’s body was gutted with surgical precision. Now that the guy we were supposed to help is dead, what do you want us to do?”
A long silence ensued while Jeff no doubt repeated what he’d already told her.
Then Gray surprised her by asking, “Sam, could you go into my bedroom, find all the paper files I had on Luke Zimmer, and bring them in here? I’d like to look at them.”
“Sure.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. He wanted to get her out of the room so he could talk to Jeff about her. She strode out of the kitchen but stopped just out of sight in the hall.
Gray said quietly in response to some question by Jeff, “Absolutely. Sam’s been a godsend. But what’s her story? She ran away from home at fifteen? How rough did things get for her?”
The silence that followed was maddening. She’d never talked with Jeff directly about her early years, but she assumed he knew most of the sordid details. He h
ad an entire team of researchers every bit as good as her, and they could dig up just about anything on anyone with the resources they had in Winston’s Operations Center.
“Interesting. Thanks.”
What in the heck had Gray found “interesting?” Damn, she felt at a terrible disadvantage all of a sudden. He apparently knew everything about her, now, and she knew nothing about him, except there was something terrible and painful in Gray’s past that Jeff knew about and had warned her off in the strongest possible terms.
Didn’t Jeff know telling her to leave it alone was practically an invitation to dig? She was a woman, after all, and had the curiosity of a cat. Damn him! And not a computer in sight for her to do a quick search on Gray. Double damn. She would have to come up with some excuse to go out alone for a while. Even if it meant driving to Charleston to get access to the internet, she was going to find out what secrets kept putting that horrible haunted look in Gray’s eyes.
It sounded like the two men were winding up. She sprinted on her toes to Gray’s room and snatched up the Zimmer pictures and notes. Being sure to make plenty of noise, she entered the kitchen in time to hear Gray say goodbye.
He served up two big bowls of salad and sat down across the kitchen table from her. “Are you thinking the same thing I am? That Proctor’s bunch killed Luke?”
She nodded. “No doubt. Looks like the sheriff thinks so, too, or he wouldn’t be searching a place rented by Proctor’s guys.”
Gray said quietly, “Are you also thinking that you and I should take over where Luke left off?”
“Yeah, but whatever Luke was poking into got him killed. I’m not sure I want to take up exactly where he left off.” She could do without dying.
Gray frowned. “Two newcomers showing up on the heels of another newcomer’s death is going to raise all kinds of red flags for Proctor if he’s even half as paranoid as Miss Maddie says he is.”
“We’ll have to throw Proctor off the scent, then.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
She turned over several ideas but discarded them all as too obvious. “Logically, we should make a point of meeting some people in the cult. Get to know them. Gradually earn their trust and get them to invite us in.” Gray nodded. She continued, “Which is why that’s the one thing we mustn’t do.”
Gray blinked. “Come again?”
“Best way to throw the enemy off is to do what he doesn’t anticipate, right?”
“Sometimes,” Gray allowed cautiously.
“So what’s the one thing Proctor will least expect? If it’s wild enough, he’ll have to believe it’s true.”
Gray leaned back, staring at her speculatively. He commented offhandedly, “I suppose we could always march up to his front gate and announce that I’m a government agent and want into his cult.”
“Exactly!” she exclaimed enthusiastically.
“I was kidding, Sam. That would be insane.”
“And that’s why he’d believe it.”
“We’d be shot where we stood!”
She leaned forward eagerly. “Not necessarily. What if you said something along the lines of you don’t like what the government’s doing to its own citizens. You’re concerned that Americans’ constitutional rights to privacy are being trampled on.”
“It sounds like the sort of message that would resonate with Proctor. Small problem, though. I’m not a government agent.” He raised a hand as she opened her mouth to protest. “I’m out here purely as a favor to Jeff, and I don’t have any official sanction from my employer, government or otherwise, to be here.”
“So you’re not officially a spy?” she asked in disappointment.
“Sorry. Not officially.”
She perked up. “But you are one in your regular life, yes?”
“Sam,” he warned.
“You have got to loosen up. I just think it’s cool, that’s all.”
He made an exasperated sound.
“Can you pull some strings? Get someone credible to vouch that you are a government agent? Jeff can probably arrange that if you can’t.”
“I can arrange that myself, thank you,” he replied wryly.
“There you have it. We convince Wendall Proctor that you’re a spy and you want to help him bring down the government from the inside.”
He shook his head. “It’ll never work.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Yes. We use your eyes to stand off at a distance and watch Wendall and company. See if we can figure out what they’re up to.”
“My way’s better,” she declared.
“My way’s safer.”
They glared at each other, at an impasse.
Gray sighed. “How about this? We try it my way first, and if it doesn’t work, then we do it your way.”
It would cost them a few days, but that might not be a bad thing. A little more separation from Luke’s murder before they showed up on Proctor’s doorstep might reduce the suspicion aimed at them. Or not.
* * *
They spent the rest of the morning tearing up carpet. It was hard enough work that Gray was mostly able to ignore the disturbing parallels of it to his previous life. He and Sam wrestled the heavy rolls of dusty carpet and truly foul padding out to the front curb together.
“Good riddance,” he declared. And he did have to admit the oak flooring beneath the carpet was pretty decent. “I’ll rent a buffer tomorrow and start sanding the floors. It’s going to be a giant mess.”
“Maybe I should run some errands, then, and be out of the house.” She tried to sound casual, but her pulse leaped at the idea of getting her hands on a computer.
“We’ll need a high-quality polyurethane stain and sealer if we’re going to do the floors right.”
She laughed at his seriousness over the job. “Do you like dark oak or light?”
“Dark. It gives more of a feeling of age. Importance. Which do you prefer?”
“Why, Grayson Pierce. Who’d have guessed you think about such things? I had no idea you’re an interior decorator at heart.”
He swatted her playfully on the behind as she walked past him into the house. She squealed and scooted out of his reach. “Hey, while we’re redoing the floors, how do you feel about painting the walls? I can’t stand that shade of beige.”
He grinned. “I didn’t know beige came in shades. Who’s the decorator at heart now?”
“It’s my superior eyesight. I see nuances in color that you normal people don’t.”
He laughed. “I bow to your supersight, madam. Paint the walls whatever color you want.”
“Any color?”
“No black. And nothing with the words ‘neon’ or ‘glow-in-the-dark’ in its name.”
“Stick in the mud.”
“Yup. That’s me.”
And there it was again. That awful haunted look at the back of his gaze that shouted of unspeakable suffering. The only place she’d seen such pain before was in old photographs of Holocaust survivors. What in the hell had happened to him?
In anticipation of Sam needing to go different directions from him, Gray drove her to the nearest vintage car rental place to lease her a car for the next several months. He sincerely hoped they were done with their investigation long before then, but right now, they were all about the appearance of settling into the area.
No surprise, she squealed with delight at a late-’60s vintage, red Volkswagen Beetle and just had to have it.
“I’m calling it the Ladybug,” she announced as he handed her the keys.
Knowing her, she would be painting black polka dots on it and mounting twin antennas on the windshield before long. “Do you name all your cars?” he asked curiously.
“Absolutely. It makes them feel loved. They run better that way.”
“They’re machines,” he scoffed.
“You watch. If you don’t show your Bronco some love and name it, it’ll turn on you,” she warned.
“Hippie.�
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“Pig.”
He blinked, and then laughed. “You’re going to fit in great around here. I bet you eat granola and can make your own yogurt, too.”
“Yes to both,” she answered indignantly.
“I’ll see you back at the house in a few hours?” he asked in good humor.
“Deal. Love ya, babe.”
His entire body went hot and cold. Sick to his stomach, he froze as she stood on tiptoe and laid a kiss on him that surely wasn’t legal in public. The woman practically had carnal knowledge of his lungs. As she sashayed around to the driver’s door of her Bug and swung her mile-long legs into the car, he caught sight of the car salesman gawking. Jealousy flared in his gut. His woman—
Not his woman. He stumbled to his own vehicle and climbed in. He rested his head on the steering wheel and concentrated on slowing his breathing to something resembling human. They were just words. She didn’t mean them. Didn’t know what they meant to him. It wasn’t her fault.
“Oh, God,” he groaned. A tear spilled onto his hands, hot and painful. What was he doing? He was being disloyal. Unfaithful. Traitorous.
He had to get his head in the game. Finish this damned mission as fast as possible and get away from Sammie Jo Jessup before she tore him to pieces. To that end, he guided his Bronco toward the Shady Grove Naval Signals Intelligence facility. Somewhere along the way, he achieved a state of numb emptiness. That was good. He had lots of practice functioning in that particular vacuum.
An armed guard waved him to a stop as he approached a heavily fortified gate and accompanying guard shack. “Can I help you, sir?”
He handed over an ID badge he dug out of his wallet. The guard stepped into the shack and ran it through a magnetic scanner. “Welcome to Shady Grove, Agent Pierce.”
Chapter 6
Gray nodded grimly at the guard, who he knew to be a marine in civilian clothes. “I need to use a secure phone and a computer.”
“Roger, sir. Here’s your visitor badge. It needs to be in plain sight at all times. Head for the main entrance of that white building straight ahead and park in one of the visitor’s spaces. Check in with the front desk, and they’ll hook you up.”