Under Surveillance

by Jodie Bailey

  In the same moment, Macey grabbed the belt of the man carrying her and pulled upward. As he lurched forward from the sudden movement, she leveraged her body weight. Kicking her legs to free them, she slid headfirst down the man’s back to the ground, where she rolled to a standing position. She whirled and rushed her off-balance attacker, shoving him to his knees.

  Trey didn’t dwell on how impressed he was by the move. He hustled into the fray with an unintelligible shout, heading for the other terrified man who seemed to believe the friendly, jumping husky was trying to kill him.

  Before he got there, both men scrambled to their feet and ran for the idling van.

  Macey jumped to go after them, but Trey reached her first and grabbed the back of her shirt, hauling her backward against his chest. “If you get near that van, you’ll put yourself in worse danger.”

  She moved to attack him but stopped at his words, likely recognizing his voice. Her muscles visibly tensed as the van screeched out of her driveway and roared out of the cul-de-sac. When it disappeared, she whirled on him, wrenching the back of her running shirt from his grasp. “What just happened?” Her shoulders heaved up and down with her breaths. “And where did you come from?”

  The way she faced him and the questions she asked told Trey everything he needed to know. Clearly, Macey Price hadn’t been running and his cover hadn’t been blown.

  But the fight she’d waged against those men and the innocence of her asks left Trey with questions of his own. Questions he had to answer if he was going to prove her innocence...or put her in prison.

  TWO

  Macey closed the door behind the police officer, then dropped onto the dark brown leather sofa while her mother puttered in the kitchen, probably trying to see what was happening out the back window.

  It was truly impossible that her evening had gone down the way it had. What kind of idiot was she, considering a toe-to-toe with two armed men who’d broken into her house?

  Looking for what? As far as she could tell, nothing was missing, although several rooms were a complete train wreck. But her laptop still sat on the dining room table on the other side of the living room. The drawer where she stashed extra cash hung open in the kitchen, but the money was still there. Her tablet still rested on her nightstand in her bedroom up the hallway.

  It made zero sense.

  She shut her eyes as a tremor started deep in her stomach and worked its way out until even her teeth rattled. Strange men. In her house. Men who’d grabbed her, had tried to shove her into a van...

  A weight rested on her knee, followed by a heavy canine sigh.

  Kito.

  Cracking one eye open, Macey leaned forward and rested her forehead against the dog’s, burying her fingers in the thick gray-and-white fur around his neck. Calm washed over her. The dog might be a wide-open ball of energy with a boundless need to explore, but he always seemed to know when she needed a little bit of love to make everything better. “You’re the best in the world, aren’t you, buddy?” She whispered the endearment and he dipped his head between her knees, letting her scratch his ears.

  Yeah, he really was the best. Her recently deceased roommate might have rescued the dog from a shelter, but the dog had definitely rescued Macey more than once. It might be cliché, but it was true.

  “You okay, honey?” Her mother approached and sat beside her on the couch. She set a glass of water on the coffee table, then leaned over and scratched between Kito’s ears. “You’ve said over and over again that huskies aren’t guard dogs, but you might be wrong. He sure got the job done today, I hear.”

  “He’s not a guard dog at all. Huskies don’t bark and couldn’t care less about random noises. He was welcoming the bad guys to the neighborhood, asking them to be his friends. That’s what he does best. Just so happened his new buddies weren’t all that interested in making his acquaintance.” Kito’s stature, coloring and piercing blue eyes made him a fearsome-looking animal. But, like most huskies, he was way too friendly to care about being an attack dog, even when the situation called for it.

  Macey patted his side to let him know cuddle time was over, then sat back on the couch. She wanted to lay her head on her mother’s shoulder and find some measure of comfort, but it would only be an illusion. Her mother had never been one to put her daughter first. She was only here now because there was drama to be witnessed.

  Still, it would be nice to have a mom who looked at her instead of through her, one who truly put her daughter first for once.

  It would never happen.

  Kito trotted off to watch out the front storm door, where Trey was still talking to one of the responding officers near her front porch. While most people seemed a little stiff when they spoke to the police, Trey’s stance was relaxed. Well, his arms were crossed, but in that casual way of his. Maybe he knew the guy. Maybe it was because he was in the military and was still wearing his uniform. Or maybe they were talking about hockey scores and the conversation had nothing to do with her home being invaded.

  Another shudder quaked in her chest. My home being—

  “He’s definitely pretty, isn’t he?” Her mom had leaned forward and was following Macey’s gaze out the front window.

  “Kito?” Macey’s voice shook. She swallowed to try to bring it back under control.

  “No. Trey.”

  And...tremor halted with a jolt. Good thing she hadn’t been drinking any of that water her mother had brought for her. “What? Mom, really?”

  Shoving a lock of brunette hair behind her ear, Tiffany Price shrugged. “I never said I wanted to date him. Just that he’s—”

  “Okay. Enough.” Shoving up from the couch, Macey paced to the fireplace and faced the back door so Trey was out of her line of sight. Kicked in by the robbers, the door hung open on its hinges, the wood frame near the lock splintered. This was the very reason she couldn’t even begin to think about what her mother was saying.

  Besides, Trey was... Well, Trey was her neighbor. Her friend. They watched football together. And hockey. He’d never shown a speck of interest in her outside of that. To consider making their relationship anything else was ridiculous.

  Although, she couldn’t deny her mother was telling the truth. At a little over six feet tall, with light brown hair cut short but not too short, blue eyes and a military-bred stature... Okay, so she wouldn’t choose the word pretty. He was beyond that word.

  And she shouldn’t be noticing. According to him, his job with the army made it hard to build a relationship. The way he talked, he was probably with some covert Special Forces unit. Also, he’d hinted at some hurt in his past that he’d never explained. Still, she’d noticed how female heads turned when she was with him.

  Macey glanced to the side. Her mom sat on the couch, eyeing her with a knowing smile.

  What her mother thought she knew was beyond her. There was nothing between Trey Burns and Macey except friendship. Never would be. She’d learned from a walkaway father and a distracted mother that romantic relationships weren’t worth the effort or the heartbreak. “Let’s just leave the word pretty off the table, okay?”

  “Who’s pretty?” A deeper voice, definitely not her mother’s, stiffened her shoulders as the glass door clicked shut on the other side of the living room.

  Seriously. He had to walk in for that part?

  “Clint Eastwood when he was younger,” her mother answered before Macey could.

  Wow. Smooth. But what else had she expected? Macey turned to face Trey, dragging herself back to reality, to what had happened and to why they were all in her living room when it was getting dangerously close to what was normally her bedtime. “What are the police planning to do?”

  Trey strode into the room and dropped into the recliner. “As much as they can. I gave them access to the footage from my doorbell camera, but I don’t know if it will do any good. This is going to
be a slow process that may not yield a lot of results if they can’t find any fingerprints or witnesses other than the two of us.” He shifted in the seat and the leather creaked. “You being assaulted bumps the priority level up from your average home invasion, though.”

  Assaulted. The word was ugly and jagged, ripping along the nerves she’d so far managed to hold together. It was a crime show word. A prime-time news word. A horror movie word. It was not a word that should ever apply to her.

  Macey wrapped her arms around her stomach and willed it to stop shaking. She couldn’t fall apart in front of her mother and Trey. It would be humiliating. Before she became a physical therapist, she’d taught countless women how to defend themselves. While her instincts hadn’t failed her, her emotions had. Never once in all of those years of teaching self-defense had she considered the mental toll an attack would take. No doubt, when everyone left, she was going to curl up in the shower and cry the ugly cry.

  “Mace...” Trey sat forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “It’s okay to be scared. What happened tonight was—”

  “What happened tonight is over. And I need it to be over so I can get it shoved behind me and stop thinking about it.” So she could feel safe in her own home again. So she could fall asleep without flying apart at every little sound. She didn’t want to live that way, but the likelihood was high that she would for a long time.

  And she hated those men for it.

  What if Olivia had lived to experience the fear that now coursed through Macey? What if Olivia had been home when they’d broken in? Sure, Macey had taught her some skills, at Olivia’s request, but would she have been able to save herself?

  Then again, if Olivia was still alive, they’d have each other to lean on as they’d had before in several tough times since becoming roommates and best friends. Olivia. Her room had suffered the brunt of the invasion. Macey hated the men for that, too.

  “You have to live it for a little while.” Her mom cast a glance at Trey, then crossed her legs as though she was trying to be casual, although Macey knew better. She was antsy to get out of there now that the excitement had died down. “Eventually there will be more questions. More investigation. Like Trey said, the police aren’t done yet.”

  Macey closed her eyes and pulled in a deep breath. Couldn’t they just stop talking? Let it go? Let her have five minutes of denial?

  “Speaking of questions...” It was Trey this time. “Any idea what they might have been looking for?”

  “None.” Trey had walked through the house with her after the police had given their okay, trying to help her catalog missing items. “They were leaving when I came up on them. It doesn’t look like they’d been here long. I went for my run and saw Kito on the next street over when I returned. He must have gotten out when they came in. I followed him along the wood line, and you were involved in what happened after that.” She raised her hands helplessly. Trey knew the rest, and she didn’t particularly want to rehash how she’d gone all Rambo on two men outside of her house. Not in front of her mother, anyway.

  “No big ATM withdrawals recently? No bonuses at work? No unexpected financial windfall someone might have found out about?”

  Macey arched her eyebrow. “That’s a lot of focus on money, Trey. Do you know something I don’t?” She forced a grin to let him know she was trying to be funny and then shook her head. “I stuff most of my money into savings, so, for the most part, I’m a paycheck-to-paycheck kind of girl. Besides, work’s not in a position to be offering up extra money.” As part of a small independent clinic in the shadow of a larger hospital system that tended to take up all of the business, her job as a physical therapist didn’t exactly rake in the big bucks.

  He didn’t smile. “Just concerned. Break-ins in this neighborhood are rare. We’re on an out-of-the-way cul-de-sac. Seems a little too weird to be random.”

  “The fact that your houses are tucked out of the way might be exactly why they came here.” Her mom shot a warning look at Trey. It was a level of disapproval she rarely showed him. She’d hinted almost since the day he’d moved in that Macey might want to consider him as husband material. “Less chance of being seen. You might want to consider—” Her mother reached for her phone, which lay facedown on the coffee table, and read the screen. She smiled briefly and angled it so that Macey couldn’t see her phone.

  Macey turned away. Whatever that text was, it was going to pull her mother away. Now that the drama had passed and her mother had a good story to tell her friends, she’d be off to something else. Something that didn’t include her daughter.

  Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, Macey counted to ten. She was only worthy of attention until something better came along.

  “That was Kim.” There was a rustle as her mother gathered her purse and coat from the couch. “There’s a group getting together at her house in half an hour to watch the two-hour episode of that new dating show. Looks like a good one.”

  Steeling herself, Macey turned and faced her mother. “Have fun.” Her voice stayed level, the tone contrary to the words.

  Trey looked away.

  “Now, Macey...” Her mother paused with her purse dangling from her fingers. “You’re clearly safe and you don’t need me anymore. Those men are long gone, and you’ll probably start cleaning up as soon as I leave. You don’t need me for that.”

  “You’re right. Go.” Yeah, it was all bravado. She’d learned long ago that wanting her mom would only lead to disappointment.

  “Don’t worry about Macey, Mrs. Price.” Trey stepped closer. “I’ll walk you out, grab a couple of things from my house, and then I’m planning to help Macey clean up. I’ll bunk on her couch tonight. She’ll be fine. I—”

  “Bunk on my couch?” Sure, he was at the house enough to practically be another roommate, but he’d never spent the night under the same roof. No way did Macey intend to let him start now.

  Even if the idea of his presence did clamp the lid on some of her fears.

  With a smile, her mother dropped a kiss on Macey’s cheek before she turned to Trey. “That’s good to hear, Trey. She doesn’t need me at all when she has you.” She didn’t look back as she walked out the door, Trey in her wake.

  When the door shut behind them, Macey stretched her arms out to the sides and turned her face to the ceiling. What had she expected? In the end, even her own mother couldn’t be counted on to stand beside her.

  * * *

  “So she threw herself into the fray and tried to fight off two men breaking into her house? Single-handedly? And unarmed?” On Trey’s laptop screen, his team’s commander, Captain Gavin Harrison, whistled low and his eyebrows tented. One of the original recruits to the army’s investigative unit dubbed Eagle Overwatch, Harrison was no-nonsense when it came to their mission, but his sense of humor always shone through. In a job like theirs, it had to. “That’s some bold stuff. If she wasn’t a credible suspect in this whole espionage ring, I’d say we hire her.”

  Suspect. Trey stopped pacing and dropped into the chair at his desk, facing his computer. In the craziness and confusion, he’d nearly forgotten that Macey Price very much was a suspect in a yearlong investigation into government contractors allegedly stealing secrets and selling them on the dark web to the highest bidder. Worse, evidence strongly indicated that Macey was dealing to Sapphire Skull, an upstart domestic terrorism organization led by Jeffrey and Adrian Frye. A couple of low-level punks looking to make a name for themselves, the Frye brothers had certainly found a way to do it.

  With government employees involved and no way to tell how deep the conspiracy ran, Criminal Investigations had called on Eagle Overwatch, a deep-cover investigative military team, to deal with long-term surveillance.

  Trey had spent months undercover, befriending Macey and her roommate, Olivia, trying to gain their trust. All evidence had indicated that one of the women was the ringl
eader, though figuring out which one had eluded them. Until her death, Olivia had seemed the likeliest, given her job as a government contractor, but Trey hadn’t yet been able to clear Macey. A trail of emails and bank drafts seemed to indicate she was brokering intel, but where would she obtain classified information without Olivia to help her?

  An even larger issue loomed, one he’d discussed with Captain Harrison on more than one occasion. Macey presented none of the indicators of a person dealing with criminals. He’d dealt with thieves and liars in the past, and Macey wasn’t like any of them.

  Brown-haired, brown-eyed Macey. Who worked with patients in a private clinic as a physical therapist. Who’d forced him to watch that Princess Bride movie so many times even he could quote it. Who made a mean homemade pizza crust and—

  “You with me, Blackburn?” The captain’s pointed question cut through his thoughts.

  “Yeah. I’m here.” It didn’t matter what good things Macey was. She was a suspect first and foremost. If she was guilty, she deserved jail for treason.

  A harsh word. A harsher reality. One his emotions had no business in.

  But he couldn’t deny that the longer he was around her, the more he believed she was innocent in spite of the evidence. A horrible trait in an investigator.

  Captain Harrison eyed him through the camera, then seemed to adjust his thinking. “So our intel was good that these guys were about to move, only they weren’t on the move with Macey Price. They were on the move to locate her, possibly to harm her. That adds a whole new dimension to this investigation. We need to find out exactly who they are.”

  “They can’t stay ghosts forever. They’ll slip up eventually.” And when they did, Macey would either be proved innocent...or she’d be a notorious name on international news. “Here’s the deal... Macey seemed genuinely clueless. The way she talks, this was random to her. She showed no indication that she knew what they were after, no nervous tics when it came to the police being in her house. Nothing.”