They could hear the crunch of tires on gravel now, and a second later Liam’s car emerged from the trees. Cutter trotted over as the young man got out of the vehicle.
“Hey, hound, you just saw me half an hour ago,” he teased as he scratched the dog’s ear. “Think I’d been taken over by aliens in the meantime?”
“It’s that taking the job seriously thing,” Hayley said, smiling at them both.
“Speaking of which,” Quinn suggested.
Liam didn’t come to attention. Unlike Teague and Rafe and Quinn himself, it wasn’t trained into him. But for him he came close enough, and Quinn acknowledged it with a barely perceptible nod.
“They weren’t followed,” Liam said.
Alyssa looked startled, and Drew went very still. Quinn didn’t ask if Liam was sure. He was the best tracker they had, and he knew when someone else was tracking. If he said they were clear, they were clear.
“Followed?” Luke asked, frowning.
“It’s nothing, honey,” Alyssa said quickly.
Drew tensed, and his mouth went tight, but he said nothing. And Quinn realized that just as their love for Luke made them pull together, it also drove them apart when they didn’t agree. He tended to agree with Drew, that hiding the threat from the boy wasn’t necessarily the best thing, but he also understood Alyssa’s need to protect. It was in a mother’s DNA, he thought.
It would be in Hayley’s, when the time came.
He felt a little shiver that was a combination of anticipation and dread and eagerness. Hayley hadn’t just changed his life, she’d changed him.
He gave himself an inward shake, ordering himself to focus.
“Hey, buddy,” Liam said to Luke, “why don’t we take a hike?”
Quinn managed not to smile at the phrase and it’s double meaning. Liam was getting good at sensing undercurrents.
“A hike?” Luke asked.
“I’ll show you where the eagle’s nest is,” he said.
Luke lit up. “Really?”
“Cutter can come with us.” He looked at Quinn. “Unless you need him.”
“I think we can spare him for the moment.”
Once the trio was out of earshot—well, Luke and Liam, he was sure Cutter could still hear them—Drew spoke.
“You told him to see if we were followed?”
Quinn shrugged. “Didn’t have to tell him. It’s S.O.P. in situations like this.”
“So, it wasn’t because you had reason to think we were, then,” Alyssa said, sounding relieved.
Quinn didn’t want her too relaxed about it, so he gave her the truth. “Not a specific reason, just a lot of experience. When somebody like Oliver is involved, things tend to go certain ways.”
“That’s why Luke should know. We should show him a picture of Oliver, so he’ll—”
“Be terrified?” Alyssa interrupted him. “He’s six years old, Drew.”
“But he’s smart, and if he knows to look out then—”
“We’re supposed to protect him.”
“I swore I would, and I will. But—”
“You’re both right,” Hayley said. “Our job is to figure out the best way to do that. Let’s go in and talk about it.”
Just like that, peace reigned again, and Quinn thought once more how lucky he was. How lucky Foxworth was. Hayley had added a unique something, a sort of sensitivity and understanding that got people to open up to her, trust her, a way of reading people that had salvaged what could have turned into nasty situations more than once.
He didn’t know how long it would last, though. What was coming in this meeting wasn’t going to make Alyssa happy. He just hoped Drew was smart enough to avoid any “I told you so,” afterward.
When they were seated—it was warmer today, so they went to the third-floor meeting room, where Alyssa could also look toward the woods where Liam and Luke and Cutter were—Quinn didn’t waste time with niceties.
“Detective Dunbar called me this morning,” he said. “He had a call in to an old colleague of his at LAPD. He was in the middle of a robbery-homicide case, so it took a while.”
“Robbery-homicide?” Alyssa’s voice was full of apprehension. She was many things, Quinn thought, but slow on the uptake wasn’t one of them. Information coming from that particular kind of investigator wasn’t likely to be good. Drew said nothing, but Quinn doubted what he was about to say would surprise the man.
“Doug was picked up as a suspect in a gas station robbery six months prior to the convenience store.”
“Picked up? Not arrested?” Drew asked.
“They didn’t have enough to hold him.”
“So he was innocent,” Alyssa said, sounding relieved. Drew sighed and gave a sad shake of his head.
“According to Brett’s friend, he was guilty, they just couldn’t prove it,” Quinn said.
“Then he—” Alyssa began.
“Don’t,” Drew said. “Please, just don’t.”
Alyssa shot him a sideways look that Quinn thought must have singed. Then she looked back at Quinn. “What day was this?”
“December twenty-first, before he died in June.”
Her brow furrowed as she tried to recall.
“Right before Christmas,” Hayley said quietly.
Alyssa’s head came up, and her eyes widened. Her hand came up, slowly, and she touched the gold necklace with the tiny pendent Quinn had noticed she seemed to always wear.
“He bought me this that year,” she whispered.
“Now you know how he paid for it,” Drew said sourly.
Alyssa winced, and Quinn thought he saw a flicker of self-reproach in Drew’s eyes. This must have been going on so long that it was a festering sore, something that resulted in a reflex reaction any time it was poked.
“Sorry,” Drew muttered. “I’m sure you could have figured that out on your own.”
“Assumed it, you mean?” Alyssa countered, but there was little heat in it. She was beginning to see, Quinn thought. To admit that her version of Doug might not be the real one. It had been the goal here, to find the real man Drew’s brother had been, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant. There was a reason Foxworth generally steered clear of these things, and he should have kept it that way.
As if Cutter would have let him.
“I said I’m sorry.”
“Fine,” Alyssa said, ending it with that female culmination that Quinn knew meant anything but what the word itself meant.
A rather loud jangle thankfully broke the tension. Or so Quinn thought until he saw Drew’s face as he grabbed at his cell phone. It must have been an alert of some kind, and the man’s expression said it wasn’t good.
He looked at the screen, then at Quinn.
“It’s the business alarm,” he said grimly. “Somebody’s breaking into the office.”
Chapter 20
“Stay here,” Drew said. He saw the protest about to start, so he added the one thing that would silence it instantly. “With Luke.”
They had all raced down the stairs in seconds. Quinn dialed three numbers into his phone, while simultaneously stepping outside and letting out a piercing whistle. Silence reigned in the clearing. And then Cutter burst out of the trees at a head-down, tail-straight-out run. He was nearly across the clearing by the time Luke and Liam emerged. Drew wasn’t sure what Liam saw, perhaps something in Quinn’s posture or demeanor even from that far away, but he scooped Luke up and over his shoulder and began to run. The boy seemed to think it was a game; Drew could hear his laughter even from here.
“Alarm at Drew’s office,” Quinn said to Liam as soon as he had handed the boy over to Alyssa, who hurried inside with him. Hayley waited. For instructions, Drew realized; she truly was as much a part of this t
eam as anyone.
Quinn glanced at Drew. “Do they call the sheriff?”
“They notify me first. If they don’t hear from me in five minutes, then they call them.” He thought quickly. “Fastest response time ever was five minutes, it’s usually closer to ten, fifteen if they’re busy or spread thin.”
“So they could possibly beat us there.” He looked back to his fiancée, still talking rapid-fire. “Call Brett.”
She nodded. “You want him there?”
“His call. Just want him to know we’ll be there and why, in case we run afoul of the locals.” He turned to Liam. “Go. I’ll be rolling in two. Channel six.”
Without a word Liam nodded and ran for his car, and was gone within seconds. Quinn glanced at Hayley, who stood waiting. “You want Cutter?”
She shook her head. “I’ll lock down, and we’ll be safe enough here. No reason to think Oliver has any idea about us. Besides, you might need him.”
Quinn didn’t argue, Drew noticed. He obviously trusted Hayley’s judgment in the matter.
“Rafe’s due in about fifteen,” Quinn said. “Text him that you’re on lockdown, so he comes straight in.”
Hayley nodded. “Then we’ll be safer than anyone else on the planet.”
“Indeed,” Quinn agreed. He gave her a swift kiss and headed for the larger blue SUV parked next to where Liam’s had been. Drew followed. Quinn let Cutter in the back, then stopped.
“Stay here,” he said.
“No,” Drew said simply. Quinn blinked. Drew doubted he was used to people saying no to him in situations like this.
“Drew—”
“Is my family safe here?”
“Fort Knox,” Quinn said. “And once Rafe gets here, they might as well be on the moon for anybody who tries to get to them.”
“Then I’m coming. This is my livelihood, my job to defend.”
“It’s what we do. What we train to do.”
“In my work, I hire the best I can, then leave them alone to do it. I’ll do the same with you. Besides, I’ve the keys to get in, and the code to turn off the alarm.”
“Wasting time,” Quinn muttered, and gave in.
Seconds later the SUV was hurtling down the drive at an even faster pace than Liam’s.
“You’ll stay in the vehicle unless I say otherwise. And if it goes to hell, you do nothing more than call for help.”
“Who?”
“What?”
“Who do I call?”
Quinn glanced at him. “Foxworth first. Hayley’ll deal.”
“Not your detective friend?”
“Only if shots are fired. And then Rafe will deal.”
Drew had the feeling he was being assessed, tested. He kept his expression impassive, and merely nodded. Apparently it was the right choice, because Quinn nodded in turn.
“He’s that good?” he asked as they reached the last road before the small district whose peace and quiet had just been shattered by the claxon of the alarm.
“He’s the best,” Quinn said, negotiating the turn. “Failure isn’t in his lexicon. He’d die first.”
Quinn’s voice had taken a grim turn, and Drew gave him a sideways glance. “You mean that literally, don’t you?”
“That he’d die first? Yes.” His mouth tightened. “Sometimes I think he’s looking for the chance.”
Drew didn’t know what to say to that. Obviously Quinn had a deep respect for the man, and that was telling. But it was clearly coupled with a deep worry as well. There had been a time, way back, when he’d felt the same way about Doug. When he’d worried about his careless little brother, feared he’d get hurt, or worse. But the constant barrage of denigration, insults, nasty tricks, and downright sabotage had turned off that brotherly caring before he’d finished high school and escaped.
He’d wondered, briefly, if Alyssa might be the saving of his brother. She was such an innocent when he’d first met her, so good and straight and smart that he couldn’t picture them together. He’d thought surely she was smart enough to see through Doug’s facade. But she was also barely more than a girl, with a teenager’s ability to see what they wanted rather than what was. She—
“Is there anything in the office that will give him your home location?”
Drew suppressed a shudder and said evenly, “No.” Quinn glanced at him. Drew shrugged. “It’s the most obvious and findable place to start, if you’re looking for me or mine. So I cleared any trace out after I learned Oliver had been released.”
“Smart.”
Fear, Drew thought. “My people know where we live, they’ve all been to the house, but they know not to say anything. They’re good people.”
“Sometimes good, honest people are the easiest to fool,” Quinn said rather grimly as he made the last turn. “They can’t believe people are really that devious until it’s too late.”
“But if he’d accomplished that, he wouldn’t be breaking into the office, would he?”
Quinn shot him a sideways glance and said with a grin, “You really do catch on fast.”
Funny how a compliment from this man he’d known such a short time was so heartening.
“On scene.”
His useless thoughts were cut off by the slightly scratchy but quite intelligible sound of Liam’s voice; the connection must be live and routed through the vehicle’s speakers for driving.
“Copy.”
Quinn didn’t ask for a report, or if there was any sign, or even if the alarm was still going off, although the fact that there had been no sound of it in the background—or for that matter from here in the car—sort of answered that. Obviously, he trusted Liam to do as he was trained to do. He was beginning to see just what an efficient and skilled operation Foxworth was.
Drew realized suddenly that Quinn had never asked him where the office was. No doubt, he already knew.
“You’ve been here,” he guessed.
Quinn nodded. “We did a recon, after we knew Oliver was in the area. Just in case.”
“You leave nothing to chance, do you?”
“We control what things we can, so we can save our resources to adapt to things we can’t.”
Quinn pulled over just before the turn onto the narrow side street. Cutter was on his feet before the SUV even came to a stop. Quinn simultaneously hit a button below the dash that activated the lift gate in the back, and a green button on the overhead console.
“On scene,” he said toward the speaker Drew now saw next to the button. “With Cutter,” he added.
Sort of, Drew thought. The dog had leapt clear the moment the hatch had lifted enough, and had taken off at that same dead run toward the building just as Liam answered. He wondered if the dog had been here with Quinn, then realized he’d been with them practically since they’d learned Oliver was out. Maybe he scented Liam, Drew thought. That had to be how he knew.
“Copy. Clear so far. Which way?”
“He’s en route from the north. I’ll come in from the back.”
“Copy.”
“Civilian in the vehicle,” he added.
“Afraid he’ll shoot me by mistake?” Drew asked drily.
Quinn was already out of the car, but he looked back. “No. Afraid he might have to keep you here.”
“I gave you my word.”
For a split second Quinn stared at him, and Drew had that feeling again, of being assessed.
“Then give me the keys. And the code.”
Drew wasn’t happy, but he didn’t hesitate. “Code is 64171.” He pulled out his key ring and isolated two keys. “Big one’s the main door, smaller one’s my office. Been locking it lately, too.”
Quinn nodded and was gone.
And the moment he was out of sight, and he sa
t there alone, feeling helpless and useless, Drew realized the promise he’d made might be harder to keep than he’d thought.
* * *
Alyssa paced restlessly. She couldn’t seem to stop it, although she’d tried several times to sit down and stay.
Luke was edgy, but not wildly so. She’d told him the burglar alarm had gone off at his dad’s work, and they were going to check. His eyes had widened at that, but before he could think too much and get scared, she’d added, “It’s probably some critter. Remember that big ol’ raccoon that set the one off at home, checking for more pie?”
Luke had laughed at the memory of the fresh apple pie that had been cooling on a windowsill, drawing the curious—and hungry—little raider. And when Hayley had set him up with a game of birds crashing into pigs in helmets he’d settled in happily. That had been twenty minutes ago, twenty minutes punctuated by occasional yelps of triumph and groans of defeat.
And growing anxiety on her part.
“They’ll let us know?” she asked.
“Of course,” Hayley said. “It will be fine, Alyssa. Quinn and Liam will handle it.”
“I wish Drew had stayed here.”
“From what I’ve seen and learned, he wouldn’t be much for staying here while somebody else does what he feels responsible for.”
Alyssa sighed. “No. No, he wouldn’t.”
“Lucky for you.”
She said it evenly, not a trace of inflection in her voice. Yet Alyssa still felt as if she had to explain.
“Believe me, I see the irony of it.” She smiled wryly. “All the things Doug used to taunt Drew for, the things he hated about him, are the same things that saved us, and have kept us safe and protected all this time.”
“You’re not looking through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old any longer,” Hayley said.
“Neither was Doug. He was twenty-four when he was killed. But he never looked at Drew as anything but his pain-in-the-ass big brother, who always tried to show him up.”
“Maybe,” Hayley said, gently this time, “you’ve grown up more than Doug ever did. Having a child will do that.”
Operation Unleashed Page 16