He leaned back in his chair, cradling his coffee cup, and directed a piercing grey gaze at me. “What do you know about Fuzzy Bunny Enterprises?”
“What?” I faltered. Talk about hitting them out in left field. “Fuzzy Bunny? I’ve never heard of them.”
He watched me a few seconds in silence before explaining. “Fuzzy Bunny Enterprises is an importer and manufacturer of children’s toys. They ship worldwide, selling retail and wholesale. For some time, we’ve suspected them of shipping arms, intelligence, and drugs with the toys, as well as laundering money. We’ve never been able to prove anything, but many times when we’ve uncovered an operation, Fuzzy Bunny has been peripherally involved. Nothing we can nail them for, but they always seem to be there.”
“Fuzzy Bunny. You’ve got to be kidding.”
Kane smiled. “What, you think all the bad guys name themselves something sinister like ‘Evil Incorporated’?”
I laughed. “I guess you’re right, that would be stupid. But Fuzzy Bunny just seems so… incongruous.”
He sobered. “And that’s why it works. We discovered Ramos had made calls to contacts within Fuzzy Bunny in the past week. And then things got a lot more complicated. We went back to look at Ramos’s apartment again, and it had been trashed. Somebody had been there since we initially searched. We’re guessing they were looking for the fob. If he had an arrangement to deliver it to Fuzzy Bunny, they may have decided to go and take it for themselves when he didn’t show up for a meeting.”
He put his cup down on the table and leaned further back, tipping his chair onto its back legs. The chair creaked ominously, and he leaned forward again, dropping it back onto the floor. “We found a call record between Ramos and Mike Connor, and also between Ramos and another security analyst at Sirius, a Eugene Mercer. Connor and Mercer both had simple explanations for the calls, but it makes them suspects for hacking the fob.”
I thought that over. “So you think Mike Connor and this Mercer may be connected to Fuzzy Bunny?”
“If so, we haven’t been able to find a connection so far. But Connor disabled the alarm system so that a fob could be taken out of the building unnoticed. And he concealed the network containment breach and the data record that showed Ramos in the portal. He’s our prime suspect right now. We’re still digging to get solid proof.”
I frowned. “But what has all of this got to do with me? I don’t know a thing about fobs, and I’ve never even heard of Fuzzy Bunny before now.”
“That’s where things get complicated. I told you about the dead man on your property.”
I nodded.
“He died of hypothermia,” Kane explained. “You know how cold it was the night before last, and there was a high windchill. The RCMP found his car parked beside the highway. There was still a bit of snow left, and they could see footprints leading away over the fields. They thought his car had broken down and he’d walked for help, so they followed his tracks and found him just about a quarter-mile from your house.”
Sick dismay tugged at my heart. “That poor bastard. If he’d made just it a bit further, he’d have been okay. I was home that night.”
“Lucky for you he didn’t,” Kane said grimly. “He was armed, and he was carrying a stun gun and nylon ties.”
A surge of horror washed over me. I had been home alone, as usual. I would have answered the door, letting the poor half-frozen man in. And I would have been captured, no one to know I was even gone until I didn’t pick up my car at the impound lot the next afternoon. I breathed slowly and deeply, my hands shaking.
“It gets worse,” Kane said, watching me closely. “We didn’t discover that until late in the day. Once we found out, we started digging into the man’s identity. He had connections to Fuzzy Bunny, too. Ramos or Connor must have told them about you. And it looks like they’re serious about finding you. First Ramos tried to carjack you, then there was the failed abduction at your house in Calgary, and now this third attempt here in Silverside.”
I closed my eyes. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” I chanted quietly.
“That’s why I called you late last night. I didn’t actually expect you to answer. I thought they’d have you for sure.”
Chapter 27
I took a deep breath. “So now what?”
“Now, you don’t spend another second alone until we get this resolved. For the next few days, Wheeler, Germain, and I will trade off staying with you. I feel like the pieces are coming together on this. Things have gone wrong for them, and that’s when people start to get desperate and make mistakes. But if it drags out for much longer, you’ll have to go into protective custody.”
I sat rigidly, fists clenched, willing my breathing slow and steady. In. Out. Ocean waves.
“Aydan?” Spider’s concerned voice brought me back to the meeting room. He touched my arm. “Don’t be scared. Kane and Germain and Wheeler, these guys are the best. Nothing’s going to happen to you. They’ll keep you safe.”
I faked calm with an effort of will. “Thanks, Spider.”
My hands were still trembling, but I held my voice steady as I turned to Kane. “What does this mean in terms of my mobility?”
“For the next few days, you’ll follow your normal routine. We’ll tag along with everything you do. If you need to go somewhere, one of us will drive. We’ll stay at your house at night, for now. If it goes beyond that, we’ll work out the details with you then.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“If I think of anything, I’ll let you know. I’ll be with you today. Then Wheeler will take over for the night, Germain in the morning. We’ll trade off every eight hours or so.”
I let out a long, slow breath. “Okay. Are we done here?”
“I can’t think of anything else, unless you have more questions.”
“No. Can we leave, then?”
“Where do you want to go?”
I surreptitiously dried my moist palms on my jeans. “I need to go home and get some workout clothes, and then I need to come back to town and go to the gym. If I don’t work off some of this nervous energy, I’m going to explode.”
He smiled. “Your wish is my command. Webb, do you want me to drop you off at Sirius?”
“No, that’s okay,” Spider replied. “I’m going to get some work done here.”
“I’ll go and grab a change of clothes,” Kane said. “If we’re going to the gym, I’ll work out, too. I’ll be right back.” He disappeared down the hall. After a short delay, he returned wearing sweats and carrying a duffel bag.
Staring through the windshield of the Expedition a few minutes later, my mind whirled, my heart still beating harder than necessary. I was the target of an international cartel of evil. I was in danger of being locked up by the good guys. I wasn’t going to have a moment alone for the foreseeable future. I was scared, helpless, and... horny as hell, dammit.
After the sexual tension of the morning, my body wanted release and there was none in sight. Why hadn’t I just taken Hellhound to bed? I squirmed in the seat and sighed. Because there was no such thing as casual sex, that’s why.
And now, big, hot Kane was going to be my shadow for the afternoon. I wished he hadn’t said ‘Your wish is my command’. That conjured up some extremely inappropriate scenarios in my imagination.
He glanced over. “Something on your mind?”
I snorted. “You really don’t want to know.”
“We’ll catch these guys,” he said.
“I hope so.”
We drove in silence the rest of the way to the farm. He made me stay in the SUV while he opened the gate himself, then drove in and parked in front of the house.
I reached for the door handle, but Kane stopped me. “From now on, any time we come back here, we’ll follow a procedure. You’ll stay in the vehicle, sitting in the driver’s seat with the doors locked. I, or whoever is with you, will circle the outside of the house once. If you see anyone other than Germain, Wheeler, or me, you will imm
ediately drive away as fast as you can. You will call Webb, and he will meet you at our office. Is that clear?”
I nodded. “Got it.”
“Once I finish the circuit of the exterior, I’ll come back and get you. Stay in the vehicle until I do. We’ll go up to the front door together. You will stay behind me. I’ll open the door and check the house. You will follow me, stand where I tell you to stand, do exactly as I say until I tell you the house is clear. If anything happens to me or if I tell you to go, you will run to the vehicle as fast as you can and drive away. Call Webb, meet him at the office. You will not hesitate, and you will not try to help me in any way if I’m injured. You will just go. Got it?”
“Roger that.” I gave him a weak smile. These guys weren’t messing around.
“I know this may seem over the top, but we can’t afford to lose you.”
“It’s good to be popular,” I joked feebly.
He gave me a half-smile. “Slide over to the driver’s seat as soon as I’m out.” He got out and watched to make sure that I followed his instructions. I pressed the door locks, and he nodded, drew his gun, and started to circle the house.
By the time he retrieved me from the SUV and methodically cleared the inside of the house, I was wound so tightly I thought I might jump out of my skin if there was a sudden noise. When he gave the all-clear, I scuttled into the bedroom.
“Change here,” he called after me. “I can’t supervise you in the locker room at the gym.”
I put on my workout gear and snapped on my waist pouch again before heading to the kitchen to snag an apple from the fridge. “Ready to roll,” I said. “Too bad you had to go through all that just for me to spend thirty seconds in the house.”
He shrugged. “Better safe than sorry. Oh, I just realized, you should bring a change of clothes. You can’t change at the gym, but we can go back to the office afterward and change there. I arranged to meet Wheeler at Blue Eddy’s, and I don’t want to do this again in between.”
Back in the bedroom, I packed clean underwear, a nice pair of jeans and a flattering T-shirt into my bag. I really do try to dress a little better when I know I’ll be out in public.
Kane preceded me out the door, scanning in all directions, and then hustled me back to the SUV, staying close. Shielding me with his body, I realized.
When we were back on the road, I turned to face him. “You must be hating your job right now. You probably didn’t sign on for nursemaid duty, did you?”
He smiled. “I don’t think of it as nursemaid duty. I’m protecting national security. It’s a nice change that this time it comes in an attractive package. Usually I’m dealing with fat old men.”
I laughed. “I aim to please.” I thought wistfully about the double entendre before letting it go. We rode back to Silverside in silence broken only by me crunching my apple.
When we arrived at the community recreation centre, Kane stuck close while we walked across the parking lot and through the entrance. I’d signed up for my membership the week after I moved in, so I showed my card at the reception desk in the gym. Kane produced one, too.
I glanced up at him. “How much time do you spend here in Silverside, anyway? I wouldn’t have thought it’d be a hotbed of crime.”
“My time is about fifty-fifty between here and Calgary. It’s not that there’s so much crime here, it’s just that I have access to certain tools here that I don’t have in Calgary.” He fell silent, and I let it lie. He probably couldn’t tell me anyway.
“Do you want to split up and do your thing?” I asked.
“No. I need to stick close to you. Where do you want to start?”
I eyed him doubtfully. “You won’t get much of a workout if you follow me around. I just do some strength training on the machines and then I run a bit or hit the elliptical trainer.”
“Lead on. Anything’s better than sitting at a desk.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “I usually do my core first. It’s too bad they don’t have those basketball machines here. Those are fun.”
“We could toss a medicine ball.”
“Sounds good.”
At the mats, I picked out a six-pound medicine ball. “This is about all I can handle.”
Kane nodded, and we sat down on the mats facing each other, knees bent. I lay back on the mat, holding the ball over my head, then sat up and tossed him the ball. He caught it and repeated my motion, tossing the ball back.
We did twenty reps, then varied the routine by tossing the ball to the side for another forty reps. I caught the ball on the last one and collapsed onto the mat.
“Okay, I’m done,” I panted. He rose and came over, reaching a hand down to pull me up. He was breathing normally, and he hadn’t even broken a sweat. Wow.
“Upper body next,” I said, heading for the chin-up bar. I always did my chin-ups first, so I could get in as many as possible. Hey, when you’re talking six chin-ups total, you don’t want to let the count drop by one.
I hopped up. The first three were always easy, and I did them smoothly. By the sixth, I strained to the top with agonizing slowness, then dropped back to the floor, a little embarrassed. “Your turn. Show me how it’s done.” I gestured him to the bar.
He stepped forward, reaching the bar easily, and took a wide grip. Yeah, those were a lot more difficult than the kind I did. He surged up and down without apparent effort, his massive arms and shoulders flexing. I lost count of his reps and just stood there enjoying the show. Like me, he pushed his muscles to failure, and when he stepped away from the bar, he was sweating and breathing heavily.
Now, that was a good look for him. The parts of me that weren’t already sweating got hot and wet. I turned away.
What the hell had I been thinking? I’d planned to work out to reduce my tension, not increase it.
Oh, well. I stifled a grin. I could think of worse ways to spend a couple of hours.
I headed for the lat row. “I’m just going to do some lighter stuff here. Trade you off on the triceps pulldown,” I offered.
The two machines were in close proximity, so I didn’t expect he’d object. He stepped over to the pulldown and loaded up the stack. This was going to be good. I’d chosen the lat row machine because it faced where Kane would be working out. I’m not stupid.
I loaded my usual weight on the machine and pulled off my twenty reps easily, absorbed in Kane’s flexing triceps. We switched, and I lightened his stack by over a hundred pounds before pulling my usual reps.
When I finished at the bench press machine, Kane eyed me. “Do you mind coming with me to the free weights? You’re strong enough to spot me, and I like free weights better than the machines.”
I shrugged. “I don’t mind, but I don’t have a clue what to do. I’ve seen what you’ve lifted so far, and I guarantee I’m not strong enough to do anything but run for help if you drop a weight on yourself.”
He laughed. “I don’t need you to be able to lift the weight. And I’m not going to push my limits today.”
“Okay, it’s your funeral.”
At the bench, he pointed to the set of hooks near the bottom of the rack. “If I drop the bar for some reason, I don’t want you to try to hold it up. Just yank the bar back toward yourself so that it lands in these hooks instead of on my head.”
“You’re nuts,” I said flatly.
He grinned. “Don’t worry, it’s never happened. It’s just a precaution.”
“Okay…”
I positioned myself over the head of the bench. As he had directed, I took a wide stance with my legs flexed and back straight, placing my hands lightly under the bar, which was loaded with several huge plates. As he slid onto the bench, I realized with a shock that his face was almost in my crotch.
Not that I’d have any objection to that in private, but it seemed ridiculously intimate in the crowded gym. As he pressed the bar up and down, breathing rhythmically, it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t the only one enjoying our workout.
&
nbsp; I managed to finish the rest of my weight workout without actually dissolving into a puddle of jelly, though I came close several times while I watched Kane’s muscles in action.
“Elliptical,” I said finally, heading for the machines. We chose a pair that stood side by side and I climbed aboard, setting the random program at high resistance. I really needed a hard cardio workout by that time. If you can’t have sex, you’ve gotta have exercise.
The difficulty of the workout left me no time to appreciate Kane. At the top of each resistance spike, I bore down hard on the foot pedals, my breath coming in hard gasps. I grinned fiercely, enjoying the effort and sweating profusely. Not quite as good as an orgasm, but at least it took the pressure off.
When the 45-minute program ended, I set the resistance back to minimal, cooling down. Kane must have set his machine to a high-resistance program, too, because he was sweating as much as I was. We glanced at each other and smiled, our breathing slowly returning to normal.
Shit, mutual virtual sex. Now that was just sad.
We got off the machines and headed back to the mats for cooldown stretches. I watched Kane out of the corner of my eye while I went through my usual routine. He was remarkably flexible.
Damn.
When we left the gym, Kane hovered closely again, scanning the parking lot. Once in the SUV, he drove directly back to the office.
Spider was at his desk in the shared office space, and he gave us a cheery hello when we walked in. “You guys look like you’ve been through the wringer. Better you than me. I’ll never understand the need to go and push around heavy weights until I pass out.”
Kane and I exchanged a glance and laughed. Both our T-shirts still showed sweat stains, and he pulled his away from his body. “I’m going to hit the shower. Webb, you’re responsible for Aydan’s safety until I get back. You know what to do.”
Never Say Spy (The Never Say Spy Series Book 1) Page 17