“He did. They were too late.”
She shifted her head in a kind of nod. “I know. Pat smashed the phone. He said you have the key and I have to get it back to him in seventy-two hours—a lot less, now—or he’ll start killing.” She lifted her head. “Please tell me you have it. Even though I might kill you if you do.”
“I don’t. I’ve never even seen it.” But as worn out as his brain was, he was putting three and five together and coming up with eight. Almost. “Did he say how I got it?”
“No.” She sat up and pushed her hair off her face. It was a limp, tangled mess. “But I was thinking about that on my way down here. He thought he was supposed to get it the night I escaped. But what if Jordie got it first? What if he got the totems but hid the key, and Pat never knew until now? The person he was supposed to meet with might have told him he gave it to Jordie.”
Grant stiffened. “And he told you I have it.”
She nodded, but then flattened out her hands, palms up. “But why?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I think I know. But I’m not sure how.” They might have been watching his mother, or maybe somehow listening to her phone conversations or hacking her e-mail. Somehow, they’d determined that she’d sent a package here and assumed the key was in the package.
The problem was, he didn’t have one. Of course, he’d been gone for five days. When he traveled, the mail carrier shoved his regular mail through a slot next to the door. He went over and crouched to dig through the bin that caught it all.
“What are you doing?” Zoe got up and trudged over, pressing a hand on his shoulder as she leaned to watch him.
“Looking…” He pawed through the junk and bills and coupon flyers. Nothing. Starting again at the top, he methodically pulled out each piece of mail until he found what he was looking for. A pinkish slip with his name and address scrawled in one box…and his mother’s in another.
“What? What is that?” Zoe plucked it out of his hand and backed up so he could rise. Her eyes flew over the paper once, twice, three times before she looked up, her mouth falling open. “She had it. She sent it to you.”
“Maybe.”
“We have to make sure she’s okay! What if they tried—”
He held up a hand. “She’s fine. I just talked to her a few hours ago. She mentioned the package, which I obviously hadn’t gotten yet. That’s why I came down here instead of staying at the FBI office in Ohio.”
“Where’s the post office? How do we get this?”
He rasped out a humorless laugh. “Zoe, it’s nearly midnight. We can’t get it until morning. And we both need to sleep.”
“I can’t. I only have hours—”
“Neither of us can do anything if we keel over.” He’d have included himself regardless, just to convince her, but he was almost as desperate as she was. “Sleep, Zoe. We’ll go to the post office first thing in the morning and then take it from there.”
“We should talk about—”
“No.” He nudged her toward the bed. “Sleep. Non-negotiable. We’ll figure out what comes next after what comes next.”
She managed a chuckle and sank onto her side, adjusting the pillow, her eyes already closed. “I hate that I understood that.”
“You probably hate more that you could have said it.” He settled next to her, back to back, and matched his breathing rhythm to hers. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
A little murmur was all he got back. She’d already fallen asleep, which was good, because it was a promise he didn’t know how the hell to keep.
Chapter Seventeen
Zoe burst from deep sleep into bright sunlight, her sharp intake of breath lingering on the air. She blinked, frowning up at the tin roof until her brain caught up. Morning. Grant’s. Alone. She sniffed. Coffee?
A rustle of paper and scrape of a box on wood made her sit up. Her shirt and jeans were twisted on her body and her face felt stiff, as if she’d been crying in her sleep. She threw off the blanket and eased her aching muscles out of bed. Grant didn’t look up from where he stood at the table, lifting packing paper out of a box.
“You went without me,” she accused. Her throat rattled, making the words husky. She rubbed sleepy sand out of her eyes.
“I didn’t want to wake you. It didn’t take long, and there was no point in both of us going.” He crumpled the paper and tossed it toward the trash can, missing by several feet.
“Well, hold on. Don’t start digging yet. I have to…” She rushed into the bathroom and straightened herself out, taking care of urgent business before washing her face and pulling her hair back into a rubber band. “Okay,” she called, opening the door. “I just have to get some—” She stopped short. Grant held out a mug of coffee. “Get some of that. Thank you.” She wrapped her hands around the mug and inhaled, easing closer to the table as the world perked up around her.
He removed a few battered books from the box and set them on the table. Zoe tilted her head to read the spines. Hardy Boys hardcovers and a copy of The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. One of her favorites as a kid.
She watched him remove a soft old baseball shirt, a trophy, and a glove from the box, and bit her tongue to stop herself from urging him to hurry. A tingle went up her spine, and when Grant drew out a roll of leather, she almost cried again. The key.
“Oh, thank God,” she breathed, reaching a tentative hand toward it. She didn’t really want to touch it, but couldn’t help herself. Was it real?
“Hold your horses. We’re not sure yet.” He cleared some space, letting the rest of the twisted packing paper fall to the floor. She stepped closer as he untied the leather thong holding the roll in place, then gently laid it out on the table. The leather had darkened over time, the markings harder to see than in the picture Zoe’d found, but they were the same. Four squares connected in a diamond pattern by filigree chains, with a few symbols in the center. After seeing the totems at Will’s house and again at Pat’s shack, she recognized the symbols. They were small images that were carved on the totems. The ones on the key were angled, as if pointing to each of the squares the totems needed to be placed on.
The drawing she’d found had been incomplete, though. There was writing across the top and bottom, a language she didn’t know, and she wondered if that was what was supposed to unlock the supposed powers of the totems. Like a chant. But then she remembered the girl, and that Pat thought there was a ritual involved. And the burden of what she had to do descended on her. She sat with a sigh.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she told Grant.
“Do what, exactly?”
She flicked a corner of the leather. “This. Do I take it to Pat so he doesn’t kill Will, then convince him to let him and the girl go? He won’t do that. Will, maybe, if he doesn’t think he needs him anymore. But he needs the girl. Or a girl.”
Grant crouched in front of her. “You don’t need to do any of it. I have a team gathering. You just tell us where you’re supposed to go and we’ll do the rest.”
It was tempting to simply let him take over. But the risk was too high. “I can’t stay here, and I have to travel alone. He had people follow me down here. I couldn’t get away to call Henricksen to tell him anything. PB even went into the bathroom with me so I couldn’t borrow a cell phone from a stranger.”
“I called Henricksen this morning,” Grant told her. “So they know what’s happening. And Kell, who was devastated when they found the house where you were was empty.”
“God, Kell.” She rubbed her face with her hands. “He’s got to hate me.”
“No, he doesn’t. He’s crazy in love with you.” He stood and rolled up the key, replacing all his brother’s other things carefully in the box. “So here’s the plan. You and I are going to meet up with Kell, who will take you to an FBI safe house while I go connect with my colleagues, who are all eager to kick ass and take names and under fewer restrictions than the FBI. We’ll go to your meeting spot and extract Carling and th
e girl, then hand them off to the FBI, who can clean up whatever mess we leave behind while we melt into the wind. ’Kay?”
He made it sound so easy. “What about Pat’s tails?”
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know.” She waved a hand at the beach. “Watching.”
“They’ll expect me to go with you. Rhomney won’t care. He’d be glad to have another person to use as leverage. Don’t worry, Zo, the plan will work.”
She finally nodded, reluctantly. She should see this through to the end, but didn’t know how without getting in the way. The idea of going into hiding with Kell was almost more frightening than going back to Pat and Freddie. She’d lied to him, again. And how were they going to handle being alone together with nothing to do? All the questing and running and adventure stuff had been sufficient distraction from their main problem, but if they had hours to kill, she’d have to face the reality of what came next.
It wasn’t just that Kell didn’t know her past. She’d changed over the last week. Grant fed a fierceness in her that she’d packed away when she went to college, like everything her abduction had touched. That part of her wouldn’t be buried again. She wanted to be whole, to embrace everything she was, whether the influences that carved her were good or bad.
So which man would accept her that way? Grant had at least witnessed some of the carving and hadn’t expressed any doubt in his belief that they belonged together. But how could she assume Kell couldn’t love her without giving him a chance to try?
She glanced up to find Grant watching her with equal amusement and longing. When she met his gaze, he smiled and hid the latter.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll get there. And it will be right, whichever way you choose.”
Zoe wasn’t sure choice had anything to do with it.
* * *
A few hours later, Zoe walked into a pleasant suburban home on a cul-de-sac near Miami, accompanied by two FBI agents. She didn’t take note of the neighborhood or the décor. She was still exhausted and scared of what would happen when Kell saw her. He’d insisted on flying down here as soon as he found out she was okay, and the FBI was meeting him at the airport to bring him here. If Grant found out that meant leaving only one agent at the house with her, he’d freak. But Zoe didn’t think she was in much danger. Grant had arranged for a female mercenary he knew to impersonate Zoe and travel with him back to Ohio. That should keep Pat and his people on hold unless and until they caught wind of something hinky.
Unable to eat the soup the agent offered her or to sleep in the bedroom, Zoe curled into a corner of the couch and propped her head on a toss pillow. Kell’s flight should be landing in a few minutes, so it wouldn’t be too long before he got here. Grant would already be in Ohio, because he wasn’t using a commercial flight this time. How long before he got to the meeting place? How long before they heard if the girl was okay? If Will was alive?
She didn’t realize she’d dozed until she woke to a hand on her face and her name murmured close by. She cranked open her eyes and rested her hand on the one cupping her cheek. “Kell?”
“Zoe. You’re safe.” He closed his eyes and kissed her, a tender, trembly kiss that brought tears to her eyes. “I was—” He sighed and rested his forehead on hers. Zoe absorbed his closeness for a moment, then struggled to sit up.
“You’re okay? I’m so sorry.” She didn’t know what she wanted, didn’t believe he could ever forgive her, but she had to apologize, to make him understand, at least. “I’m sorry I tricked you and—everything. But I can’t say I shouldn’t have done it. And the situation with your father…I’m sorry,” she said again, lamely. “How are they? Your family?” She wasn’t sure if anyone had told him about the girl Pat had taken, about her fear that it had been Olivia—and that she’d left her there without knowing for sure it wasn’t his sister.
Kell dragged himself up onto the sofa next to her. He rubbed his hands over his face, and when he dropped them to dangle them over his knees, she saw how haggard he looked. His eyes were red-rimmed and heavy, his face puffy and gray. “They’re enduring. Mom’s a mess. I mean, you know.” He smirked. “Her hand trembles sometimes. She knows the initial accusations are fake, but he did have an affair, and that’s all coming out now. She’s standing by him because they repaired things and she says they’re stronger now. I didn’t get a chance to see Dad before I left again.”
“I’m—”
He held up a hand. “Stop apologizing. It could go on forever.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Do you know what’s been happening?” she asked.
“Some, but not all. Tell me what happened when you were in the house. Where did all the blood come from?”
Since she’d given the details to Grant and then to the FBI, they flowed easily now. But Kell turned even paler when she told him about the girl, and he reached out to grasp her hand tightly in his.
“The FBI said they think they know who she is. She’s been missing only a few days. And she didn’t really seem hurt. At least, as far as I could tell.” She trembled, and Kell’s hand tightened around hers. “The blood was all Will’s, I think.” She swallowed hard. “Scalp wounds bleed a lot, but it could have been from something else.”
“It’s okay.” Kell tugged her toward him and hugged her. “They’ll get them.”
She nodded. She meant a different “they” than he did, but the goal was the same.
A jaw-cracking yawn took her by surprise. Kell steered her toward the bedroom. “Come on. You need to sleep.”
“You do, too,” she murmured, crawling onto the bed and collapsing on a pillow. The case scratched her cheek, and she rolled toward the dip in the center of the bed. “This is the only bed.” She patted the old polyester comforter. “Here.” She was too tired to say more than that. Kell lay down and tilted her way, influenced by the mattress’s crater. He tucked her head under his chin, rubbed her back, and sighed, and Zoe faded to oblivion.
When she jerked awake some time later, it was dark in the room. Kell snored softly over her head, his arm still curved protectively around her. No light filtered down the hall from the living room, and she couldn’t hear the agents moving around. Maybe they’d fallen asleep, too, though that shouldn’t have happened. At least one should be awake.
Thinking she’d go see if there was coffee and any news, she slowly slid out from under Kell’s arm and off the bed. He rolled into the center and snuffled into the pillow just like he had hundreds of times throughout their relationship. She smiled bittersweetly and started down the hall.
Her stocking feet were quiet on the ugly sculpted carpet, and she didn’t brush the walls or clear her throat or anything. Not quite intentionally—it just seemed like a good idea to be quiet. And it probably saved her, because she saw the body on the floor and the figure standing over it before it saw her. She swallowed her instinctive yelp and jerked back into the hall, mind racing, adrenaline pumping once again into her system.
Pat had found her. His guy was disabling her protection before he came for her. Was he alone? She craned to listen. Soft footsteps tapped on the linoleum in the kitchen, moving away from her, and all she could hear in the bedroom was Kell’s mild snore.
But then another noise overlaid that. A scraping glide. Like a window going up. She whirled and dashed as quietly as she could down the hall toward the bedroom, diving at the last second into the bathroom. She needed some kind of weapon, but dammit, what would she find in here? She spun in place, afraid to open the drawers and make noise, and Holy God of Luck, there was a pair of scissors in a cup at the back of the sink. She snatched them out, and they were short but very pointed. Haircutting scissors.
Praying they’d be enough, she stuck her middle and ring fingers through the holes and made a fist. Then she crept back out into the hall, peering both ways before moving toward the bedroom again. Her eyes had adjusted to the low light. Kell was a lump on the bed. A silhouette straightened in front of the ope
n window. Before it could register her presence, she lunged ahead and sped into the bedroom, across the empty floor, leading with the scissors and barely missing the end of the bed. She landed on the figure hard enough to send it crashing into the desk next to the window, then to the floor, the rolling chair falling over on top of them.
Zoe was yelling now, no sense staying quiet anymore after the noisy crash, but the man under her caught her arm before she connected with the scissors. She should have the leverage, but he was strong and easily held her at bay. Good thing she had two hands. She stiffened the fingers of her left hand and jabbed down at his throat. Her aim was off the soft spot, but he still gagged and let go of her to clutch at his neck. She shifted back on his body and punched toward his solar plexus. Again left-handed, because now that she was in it, she found herself too squeamish to stab him.
“Zoe!” The commotion had awakened Kell. Zoe heard the click of the lamp next to the bed, but the light didn’t come on. They must have cut the power.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” she cried, lurching to her feet. The guy on the floor grabbed at her legs. She kicked him in the side of the head, not too hard, but enough to make him flop back, possibly unconscious. But there’d be another any—
She screeched as arms came around her from behind. Then Kell was there, punching, trying to separate them. The arms tightened, higher on her body, so she just dropped her full weight to the floor. He couldn’t hold her, but the smack of flesh on flesh told her he was fighting Kell. She couldn’t tell who was doing what, couldn't even tell which one was Kell, so she couldn’t help.
Nine-one-one. She could do that. The FBI had given her another temporary phone and she’d kept it in her back pocket. It lit up when she hit the home button, which wasn’t the best idea because it turned out there were more than two invaders. More arms grabbed her, knocking the phone out of her hand. She screamed, but whoever had her swung her up into a fireman’s carry, heading immediately out the door.
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