And then he saw her.
He went very still. As usual his expression betrayed nothing, but she saw his chest rise sharply, then heard, even from where she stood, the long, soft exhalation.
“I shouted,” she said, feeling a bit guilty that he’d plunged right past her and she hadn’t realized what was happening until it was too late and he was already under. She supposed her reactions were still dulled from the shock.
He walked up out of the water and stopped before her. He seemed to hesitate, then reached out and gripped her shoulders. The heat of his hands made her feel suddenly chilled wherever he wasn’t touching her.
“You’re all right?”
She nodded. “I got out right away. I had the windows open, so all I had to do was find up.”
He closed his eyes for a moment.
“It’s not deep,” she continued. “I could see sunlight.”
He muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t catch. He opened his eyes and slowly, as if it were a tremendous effort, released her. She tried not to protest the loss.
“Lucky,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. She glanced at Nick. “I was more upset about your package than anything.”
“Good grief, girl,” Nick said. “That doesn’t matter. You’re safe, that’s what counts. What happened anyway?”
“A tire blew,” she said.
Nick frowned. “A tire? Everything’s got new rubber on it. I’m really careful in hot climates, you know that.”
“Yes, I know. But I heard the pop when it went, and then the truck just careened sideways. I tried, but the shoulder wasn’t wide enough for me to get it straightened out.”
“Well, damn,” Nick said. “When we get back, I’ll check all the tires on the auxiliary vehicles, to make sure—”
“Don’t bother.”
They both turned to look at Draven.
“What?” Nick asked.
“The other tires are fine. The one that caused the crash was fine.”
“But it blew,” Grace explained again, wondering if perhaps he’d not heard her right, water in his ears or something. “I heard it.”
“What you heard,” he said grimly, “was a shot.”
Chapter 10
“But I can’t—”
“You can and will.”
Draven spoke in that same grim tone he’d used when telling her the tire hadn’t simply blown, when he’d realized someone had tried to hurt or even kill her. It reflected exactly how he felt, how he’d felt since the moment when he’d seen the truck upside down in the water.
She’d taken a shower to rinse off the residue from the lagoon. He’d liked that she hadn’t worried about anything else, but had simply come out of the motor home’s bathroom in a pair of cutoff jeans and a bright blue T-shirt, with her hair wet and slicked back, her face scrubbed clean…and sans the prosthetic. Clearly she wasn’t bothered by him seeing her without it, but then, considering, why should she be?
They’d done a nice job cleaning up his mess, he thought. The end of her leg was tidy, and looked healthy. Even the scars weren’t that noticeable now, merely pink instead of the angry red he’d last seen.
She was using a crutch, resulting in a hop-and-swing-type motion that was in stark contrast to the ease with which she used the artificial foot. He wondered if the prosthesis had been damaged. If it had been, they’d deal with it later. Redstone would ship out a new one if necessary.
“I can’t just stay off the project!” she protested now.
“You’d rather stay off it by dying?”
She paled slightly, but her chin came up in stubborn determination. “We have a schedule to keep.”
“You won’t.”
“What?”
“If you’re not safe, there is no project.”
Her brow furrowed. “What are you saying?”
“Safety of Redstone personnel is job one.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. Josh put nothing above the safety of his people. When the Redstone Bay resort project had been taken over by terrorists from a neighboring island, the entire security team had been sent in. When a Redstone bookkeeper’s child had been kidnapped, it was Redstone Security who had effected the rescue. And he had personally gone after Redstone’s own Harlan McClaren, the famous treasure hunter who had been the first to believe in and financially back Josh, when one of his famous expeditions had gone sour in Nicaragua.
Shutting a project down until it was safe again—or forever, if necessary—was hardly out of the realm of possibility for Josh.
“You stay off-site unless there’s something both urgent and that can’t be delegated or handled on the phone.”
“According to who?” she asked, her tone suspicious.
“Me,” he said bluntly. “Next. You go nowhere without me.”
“Nowhere?”
“Nowhere.”
“Please, sir,” she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “may I go to the bathroom by myself, like a big girl?”
“Depends.”
“On what? You?”
She was building up a good mad; he could feel it. It wasn’t surprising, given her narrow escape. She’d proven before that when she was knocked down, she came up fighting. He’d once thought of her as a quiet sort, maybe even shy. But he realized now that his impression was wrong, that her quietness had to have been because she had focused all her energy and considerable drive on getting well fast. Because this woman was no shrinking violet, in any way. She was standing up to him now in a way few ever did.
He tried to keep his voice level but, uncharacteristically, some tension crept through as he ticked items off.
“I’m going to move your motor home.”
“Why?”
“Higher ground. And more isolated.”
“Isn’t there safety in numbers?”
“Don’t argue with me, Grace.”
“I’m not arguing,” she protested. “I’m asking a simple question.”
He reined in his temper, something else he’d never had to worry about before.
“I want it situated so that I know anybody coming toward it is looking for you, not just wandering or lost or looking for someone else.”
“And if they are?”
“I’ll handle it.”
“How?”
“My problem.”
“No, it’s—”
He cut her off, and continued to count off his instructions. “You go nowhere without me. You go nowhere I haven’t checked first. If I don’t like it, anything about it, you don’t go or I go in with you. I stay till you’re done.”
“Does that include my bedroom?” she asked sweetly.
Heat blasted through him, so fast and fierce he nearly wobbled on his feet.
“Don’t tempt me,” he muttered under his breath. And then, as his body clenched, he added silently, Please, don’t.
She looked at him, the faintest spots of color flaring on her cheeks, and he realized she’d heard him. She looked at him, her eyes wide. She looked at him as if she didn’t hate the idea of tempting him. As if it didn’t repulse her.
He told himself it was shock, shock from her crash, shock that he would say such a thing. But the only one who seemed shocked was he himself; he never—ever—did things like this, not with a protectee. Which is what she had suddenly become.
He didn’t know how to deal with this. It never happened to him. He felt many things for the people he protected or helped for Redstone; he even liked many of them.
But he’d never felt anything like this.
“Look,” he said, his unaccustomed emotions making him resort to slow, complete sentences. “I wish it wasn’t me. You’d be better off with somebody else, especially since I’m running at about half speed. But I’m what you’ve got.”
Her brows furrowed again. “What’s wrong?”
God, he couldn’t believe how he was rattling on. Cut to the chase, he ordered himself.
“You’ve got to
cooperate, Grace, because right now I’m all that’s between whoever wants to shut this down and you. And Marly.”
She gasped, and he knew she hadn’t thought that far ahead, hadn’t realized that if she was in danger, it was possible her daughter was, too. He knew he had to take advantage of that. He had to use any tool that would work.
“Whoever it is tried to kill or at least badly hurt you,” he said softly.
“Maybe not me, specifically, maybe…”
Her voice trailed off as he looked steadily at her. It was natural to deny the possibility that someone actually had tried to murder you, but he didn’t have time to work her through to acceptance right now.
“You, specifically,” he said. “And if they’re willing to do that, why would they stop short of using your daughter as leverage?”
“Who’s going to use me as leverage?”
They both jerked around as Marly stepped into the motor home. The girl looked at Draven, and as if he’d asked, said, “I finished, okay? I came in to clean up.”
He nodded, not knowing what else to do. Using Marly to scare Grace into cooperating was one thing, scaring the child was something else.
“What kind of leverage? What are you talking about?” Marly persisted. And then, belatedly, she seemed to realize her mother’s state. “Why are you all wet? And your foot, you never take it off in the middle of the day.”
Grace shot Draven a warning look he couldn’t misinterpret. “I took a little dip, so I rinsed off the salt.”
The girl frowned. “You don’t do that, either. You never take off work to play.”
Only then did she seem to notice Draven, too, was soaking wet. He hadn’t taken the time to hit the shower in the hut set up for the crew; he’d been too focused on getting Grace to cooperate.
“And you,” Marly said, “don’t know how to play.”
At that succinct assessment of them both, the girl muttered something that sounded like “Whatever,” and turned her back on them both to walk toward the bathroom. Apparently forgetting about the leverage question. Judging from Grace’s look of relief, that was a good thing. Right now, he’d take anything that made her happy, as long as it also made her cooperate.
“I’m going to be your shadow, Grace. You’re going to have to live with it. It’s the only way to keep you and your daughter safe.”
There was a whoosh of air as the door of the bathroom was yanked open. “Safe?” Marly’s voice was sharper, and they clearly weren’t going to get off so easily this time.
Someone had told him once about the selective hearing of teenagers, that they heard only what you didn’t want them to hear, but he’d never seen it in action before. He should have waited until the bathroom door was shut tight.
Feeling guilty that his lack of knowledge about kids had caused this, he tried to fix it, to go along with Grace’s obvious desire to keep today’s incident from her daughter.
“A precaution,” he said.
Marly looked from her mother to him, then back to her mother again.
“You really think I’m stupid, don’t you?”
Her voice was soft, not angry as it usually was. There was an undertone even Draven recognized as a young girl’s pain, and would have even if he hadn’t noticed the sudden glistening of the girl’s eyes as tears brimmed.
Grace’s eyes, he thought, and wondered what it must be like to look at another human being and see parts of yourself. He’d never thought about it before, but when he did now, all he could picture was a dark-haired boy with those same eyes. And that rattled him enough to keep him silent. Grace needed to deal with this anyway. And would do a much better job of it than he would.
“No, Marly, I don’t think you’re stupid at all,” Grace finally said. “I know you’re not. But I’m your mother. I’m supposed to protect you.”
The girl stepped back into the room, her gaze now fastened on her mother’s face.
“So there is something to protect me from,” she said. She flicked a glance at Draven, but only for an instant. “And it has to do with you both being wet, doesn’t it.”
It wasn’t a question. No, Marilyn O’Conner was hardly stupid. Draven waited. It was up to Grace now to decide what and how much to tell the girl.
“There’s a chance,” Grace began, “that these little incidents on the project aren’t accidental.”
“No kidding,” Marly said sourly. “You think I didn’t notice everybody being so jumpy? What’s that got to do with you being all wet, and him, too?”
Something about her reaction and tone made Draven take the girl off his mental suspect list. Unless she’d gotten tangled up with somebody in the short time they’d been here, he didn’t think she was connected.
Grace sighed. “I didn’t get wet intentionally. The truck and I…ended up in the lagoon outside of town.”
Marly blinked. “How did—” She stopped. Draven saw her figure it out, saw her face pale. “Somebody ran you off the road?”
Grace took in a deep breath. Draven could see she didn’t want to tell her about the shot, but didn’t know how else to explain.
“In a manner of speaking,” Draven said. “She wasn’t hurt, but we’re going to be very careful from now on.”
Marly looked at him. “Why are you talking funny?”
It was Draven’s turn to blink.
“What?” He definitely wasn’t used to the twists and turns of the teenage mind.
“You never talk like that. Like a regular person.”
“Thanks,” he said, his mouth twisting wryly.
Marly shrugged and let it go. “What do you mean, careful, and who’s we?”
“Those present,” Draven said.
“And?” Marly prompted for the answer to the first part of her question.
Draven glanced at Grace and waited. After a long moment, during which Marly looked from one to the other as if their silent stares were a tennis match, Grace finally let out an exasperated-sounding breath of resignation.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Tell her.”
Great, he thought, imagining the teenager’s reaction to being told she was to be more restricted than before. And he wasn’t stupid, either, he knew perfectly well this was Grace’s way of letting her own aversion to this whole thing be known.
Get it over with, he told himself. And rattled off the same list of limitations and orders he’d given Grace.
The girl’s eyes widened with every statement. And when he was done, to his surprise, all she said was a very quiet, almost meek, “Oh.”
“Any questions?” he asked, still a bit startled at her non-reaction.
She shook her head.
“Comments?”
She met his gaze, with more steadiness than some grown men he’d encountered. “Just that I thought about what you said.”
He’d said so much to her—uncharacteristically—that he had no idea what she was referring to.
“This afternoon,” she clarified.
It hit him then. Maybe you should think hard about what your life would really be like without her.
Apparently she had been thinking, if this was her reaction instead of the expected explosion.
“Are you moving in here with us?” Marly asked him, sounding quite open to the idea. He quashed the images that flashed through his mind, and hedged a bit when he answered.
“You’ll be seeing me a lot more.”
“Where are you gonna sleep?”
It was all Draven could do not to look at Grace. The possibilities that Marly’s words brought to mind were vivid and breath-stealing. And he couldn’t seem to stop them.
“Outside,” he managed to say. “Hear better.”
Marly frowned. “Where?”
“On the roof,” he said.
And again he didn’t dare look at Grace, for fear she might have noticed how gravelly his voice had gone. But he was so focused on not looking at her that the additional words he’d been thinking slipped out aloud.
“
For now.”
For a third time he didn’t dare look at Grace, but he heard her sudden intake of breath. She’d heard, all right. But Marly didn’t seem to notice anything unusual. After a moment when she seemed to struggle to take it all in, she turned to face Draven.
“Were they really trying to hurt her?”
Truth, lie or half-truth? The options raced through his mind. But as he stood there, looking at Grace’s eyes reproduced in her child’s face, he knew there really was only one option.
He nodded.
The girl bit her lip until he could see it turn white where her teeth dug in. “Were they trying to kill her?”
“Maybe. Put her out of commission, most likely.”
She absorbed this, pondered for a moment. Then words burst from her, almost explosively.
“Hasn’t she been through enough?”
This time he did look at Grace, in time to see a near-startled expression cross her face at her daughter’s words. Or at the intensity of them.
“Yes,” he said. “She has. That’s why we’re doing this.”
Marly thought about this, too, but not for long. Then she nodded. “All right.”
She started toward the bathroom again, then came back and gave her mother a swift hug. Without another word she turned back and continued on her way. When the bathroom door finally closed behind her Draven let out a long, relieved breath.
“Don’t know how you do it,” he said under his breath.
“It’s a challenge,” Grace said as if he’d spoken normally, reminding him of the other muttering she’d heard. Those two words that had betrayed the lascivious road his thoughts had barreled down without warning.
He fought down the urge to explain, telling himself nothing he could say could change what she’d heard. Besides, he didn’t know what the explanation was, and it didn’t seem wise to make something up just now.
“I’m going to go dry my hair,” Grace said.
He barely breathed until she was gone into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Then he let out all the air in his lungs, grateful she’d let the subject drop, that she hadn’t called him on his uncharacteristic and no doubt thoroughly unwelcome comment. If there was anyone she’d be less likely to want to share a bed with, he couldn’t imagine who it would be.
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