Proving Ground

by Stanalei Fletcher

  He gave her a half-smile. “It’s always more when it’s your first. I felt anxious and unprepared my first time out. Trust your training and you’ll be fine. It’s no different than the simulations.”

  “I know.” She couldn’t control her churlish tone.

  He laughed. “I’m sure you do.” He turned his attention back to the road as they merged onto Briarcliff Road.

  Caitlin checked the GPS. Not much farther before they reached the CDC. On cue, the taxi turned onto North Decatur Road. Sloan followed, two car lengths back. The closer they got to their expected destination, the drier her mouth grew. With a deep breath, she centered, calling on the judo training she’d learned from her father. It wouldn’t do to hyperventilate when she needed to remain calm.

  The taxi turned north on Clifton Road. As cars veered off into various parking lots, the space between their rental and the taxi ahead lessened. The target’s dark outline showed clearly on the rear passenger side. She burned the image into her brain, recalling nuances of the man’s gait, the slope of his shoulders. Should she lose him, she’d need to remember those details to reacquire him.

  Patting her side pocket, she checked for her cell phone and adjusted the earpiece in her right ear. She wasn’t carrying a gun. Neither was Sloan. The target hadn’t stopped to retrieve luggage and only had his carry-on, which meant he probably hadn’t smuggled a weapon through airport security. Being armed seemed unnecessary. No guns, no bullets. Mac would approve. He hated guns.

  Damn, that man popped into her head at the most inopportune times. Caitlin closed her eyes and blew out a breath. Focus, Malone. Focus.

  “Are you okay?” Sloan asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good.” He nodded at the traffic in front of them. “They’re slowing. Get ready.” He lifted his foot off the accelerator.

  Her heart thudded double-time as the taxi passed the CDC and drove into a construction parking lot on Emory University property. For a moment, Caitlin wondered if the OIG’s concerns were off the mark. Then she realized that the target couldn’t just drive up to the front door of the CDC and walk in. This was one cool customer.

  Sloan continued past the lot and slid up to a curb. Caitlin opened the door and stepped out of the car before it came to a complete stop. Shoving the door closed, she glanced both ways before racing across the street. As she neared a construction trailer, she saw the taxi make a circle, kicking up dust in the dirt lot. It stopped and idled for a moment, then the man got out and the taxi drove off.

  Caitlin let go of the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. There was always the chance the target could’ve picked up an associate and continued on to another destination. She should have waited a bit longer before jumping out of the car, to be sure. But since he’d sent the taxi on its way, he must be planning to reconnoiter the location just as the intel suggested. She hit number one on her speed dial. “He’s out of the taxi. Same lot. I’m behind the trailer on the east side.”

  “Roger.” This time, Sloan’s response didn’t annoy her. Instead, the sound of his voice kept her grounded. “I’m parking the car now. Advise if you change locations.”

  “Will do.” She triggered the app for the camera. The focus was automatic, but she had to zoom in to get a good shot of the target’s face. Short brown hair, a fairly straight nose. Not bad-looking, but nothing to write home about, either. No distinguishable features. Even his eyes, which looked brown through the lens, were alert, intelligent, not the cold look often associated with a criminal.

  He checked his watch, then scanned the site. Caitlin hugged the trailer, staying inside the shadows to avoid detection. After a beat, she chanced another peek through her camera lens. This time, the target’s attention was on a tree near another construction trailer. With the afternoon sun close to setting, the shadows were deep around the tree, making it difficult for her to see. She tried the zoom and caught movement in the shadows. A glare from the sun caught the lens, preventing a clear look. She took a picture anyway, hoping the Northstar lab techs could work some digital magic.

  She keyed her phone. “He’s meeting someone,” she whispered. “But I can’t get a good view. I’m moving in closer.”

  “How far away are you?” Sloan asked.

  “About fifty yards. I can move closer and get both men in the same shot.” Excitement made her itchy. All her training culminated in this moment. “There’s a red truck parked next to a shed that’s another twenty-five yards closer. I can duck behind it without being seen.”

  “Wait for me. I’m almost at your location.”

  Caitlin rolled her eyes. Sloan Cartland—glorified babysitter. Well, she was the lead. This was her call. “It’s only a few more yards. Meet me at the truck.” She removed her earpiece and stuck it in her pocket, effectively cutting off any argument. Sloan said this wasn’t any different from the simulations. Time to prove it.

  Her heart rate picked up. Nerves buzzed with anticipation as she approached the sidewalk along the construction perimeter. For approximately twenty feet, she sauntered along the sidewalk like a student out of class for the afternoon, before reaching an eight-foot fence. As soon as she reached the fence line, she ducked just inside and ran to the truck.

  Her heart was pounding now. She took two deep breaths to slow the adrenaline racing through her veins and cautiously peered over the hood. This view was much better. She raised her camera and zoomed in for the picture. The shot was perfect. Both men’s faces were clearly visible. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought they were looking right at her. She clicked the shutter several times getting various photos. Crouching down, she scooted closer to the front fender for a better picture.

  Something thunked into the shed behind her. When she turned to look, dust hovered around a splintered hole in the wood. A bullet?

  “Caitlin! Get down!”

  Sloan sprinted across the construction site toward her.

  A cold realization flashed over her skin, too late. She’d blown her cover.

  Although the target might not have a weapon, his companion obviously did. Caitlin took cover behind the truck just as a ping ricocheted off the side mirror. No loud report sounded from the gun. The shooter was probably using a silencer and low velocity ammo.

  Her mouth went dry. She fumbled in her pocket for the earpiece that should’ve connected her to Sloan. A lifeline she’d carelessly abandoned. “Sloan. Where are you?”

  The pounding of heavy bass reverberated from the street. A car, with windows down and rap booming from the speakers, turned onto the construction lot. University students whooped as they drove to a secluded party spot alongside the fence. Caitlin glanced over her shoulder to see if the shooter would gun down the students. The target and his companion had disappeared.

  She looked for Sloan but couldn’t see him. He should have reached her by now. She edged along the truck until she was near the tailgate. Then she saw him. Spread-eagled on his back. Blood oozed into the dirt under his left shoulder.

  “No! Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” Caitlin raced to Sloan and knelt beside him. She pressed a finger to his neck and felt a pulse. Weak, but there. She placed her palms over the wound, heedless of the blood oozing through her fingers. “Don’t you die on me, Sloan. Don’t you dare die on me.” She spotted the car with the students and screamed at the top of her lungs. The time for discretion was over. With her cover blown, she needed all the help she could get.

  ****

  “Sunlight must have reflected off the smart phone, giving away my position. That’s the only way they could have known I was there.” Caitlin shifted under Byron O’Neal’s frown.

  He’d hardly said two sentences to her since arriving at the Emory University Hospital that morning. Instead, he’d paced, filling the hospital waiting room with his six-two presence. Those green eyes looked almost brittle under the harsh lighting. O’Neal was near the same age as her father, but his barely graying hair didn’t betray his fitness for dir
ector of Northstar Security Firm.

  She’d spent the night at the hospital, waiting through Sloan’s surgery for word of his condition. In spite of the first-aid she’d administered, Sloan owed his life to the fact they were so close to emergency facilities and that one of college students who drove into the scene happened to be a pre-med student. “I’m just glad the bullet was a through-and-through.” The doctor assured her that it had missed all of Sloan’s major arteries and the shoulder bones.

  O’Neal stopped pacing and his frown morphed into a dark scowl. “You’re glad?” His quiet words couldn’t have affected her more if he’d shouted them.

  Caitlin swallowed, feeling the blood leave her face. She hadn’t meant to sound flippant. She was more tired than she realized. “Poor choice of words.”

  “Poor choice, indeed. You, more than anyone, should know better. Especially when your father went through a similar experience.” O’Neal’s chest heaved in a deep sigh. “Caitlin, I’ve given you the best training we can offer. You’ve shown the skills needed to be a good agent. But yesterday, you failed to follow instructions from a senior agent—”

  “I was the lead in the assignment. Doesn’t that make me in charge?” she interjected.

  O’Neal rewarded her outburst with a piercing glare. “Don’t interrupt me again,” he growled.

  She wiped damp palms down the sides of her shorts that still carried stains from Sloan’s blood. “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m placing you on suspension. I want you to take a leave of absence.” She started to object, but his raised eyebrows stopped her. “I’m not firing you. Your quick thinking saved Sloan’s life. That counts for something.”

  She opened her mouth to disagree. All she’d really done was put pressure on the wound until help had arrived.

  O’Neal cut her off with a raised hand. “I suggest you take a couple of weeks to consider the decisions you made yesterday. At twenty-six, you’re the youngest employee I’ve brought aboard the firm. I expect my agents to show maturity, discipline and self-control. I know you have those qualities from your training. However, you didn’t demonstrate them during this assignment. I can’t force you to comply with Northstar’s guidelines. You must make that choice. Rash and rebellious behavior gets agents killed. I won’t tolerate it on my watch.”

  “Two weeks?”

  O’Neal’s brows lowered, his eyes narrowing to mere slits. “You think that’s too harsh?”

  Caitlin straightened, ignoring the warning signals from her boss. “A little.”

  “Discipline keeps my people alive. When they’re out in the field, I can’t protect them. If I don’t do something to curtail your impetuous behavior now, the next bullet could have your name on it.”

  She nodded, swallowing the lump that suddenly appeared in her throat. Put like that, she had no rebuttal. The director was right. She’d screwed up. The fact that he wasn’t firing her meant she had a chance, albeit a slim one, to save her career. “Yes, sir.” She had nothing more to say. No words would make things right.

  “Go home.”

  She nodded and started to leave the hospital waiting room.

  “Caitlin…” The director’s voice stopped her at the door. She turned.

  “Not your apartment in D.C. I said, home.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. You’re Sean Malone’s daughter. Go home. Talk to him.”

  Until today, the director had never played that card. Dad hadn’t wanted her to work for Northstar. They’d fought bitterly over her decision to join the firm he’d helped build. However, her father wasn’t the only reason she’d avoided going home for the last couple of years.

  Her gaze collided with O’Neal’s as they faced off in a battle of wills. She lifted her chin, but didn’t shrink from his penetrating stare. She’d prove she could follow orders even if she didn’t like them. “I’ll leave today.”

  Chapter Two

  Rockton, Oregon

  John MacAlistair slipped the house key into the lock, twisted it, and froze. There was no customary click releasing the deadbolt. The door to Sean Malone’s house wasn’t locked as it should’ve been—as Mac had left it when he’d taken Sean to the hospital that afternoon.

  Adrenaline spiked through Mac’s system, squeezing out exhaustion that had crept into his bones during the last few hours. Rather than drive home to La Grande for the night, he’d opted to stay in Rockton until he reached Sean’s daughter to give her the news about her father.

  After the day he’d had, surprising an unwelcome intruder wasn’t on his agenda. However, he refused to let some stranger ransack his old friend’s home. Clearing his mind of the emotional last eight hours, he slowly turned the handle and stepped across the threshold.

  Through the open door, the porch light cast a dull gleam on a long, metal object. An expletive caught in the back of his throat as he stared down the barrel of Sean’s favorite semi-automatic, 12-gauge shotgun. Mac’s hands instinctively rose to shoulder level before he remembered the folding knife strapped to his belt. He started to lower a hand, but a threatening lift of the gun stopped him. It was probably a good thing he couldn’t reach the knife. Although handy in most situations, it would be useless against a gun. His only chance of coming out unscathed in this encounter would be quick reflexes and luck. Mostly luck.

  Breathing slowly, he cleared his mind, took a cautious step forward—and froze when he heard the click of the gun’s safety release.

  The time it took to consider alternatives should’ve been spent backing out the door. However, in his nearly thirty years, he’d only run away from one situation, which, although dangerous to his emotional well-being, hadn’t been life threatening. He wasn’t backing down now.

  The gun didn’t waver. The person behind it remained shadowed, but steady hands indicated someone other than a fly-by-night burglar. Had one of Sean’s old nemeses come after him for some long overdue retribution?

  “I don’t know who you are.” Mac kept his voice calm, soothing. “But I’m pretty sure I’m not the person you want to shoot.”

  The snick of a switch and a blaze of overhead light prevented more talk. Blinded by the sudden brightness, Mac stood rooted to the floor, hands in the air, not daring to make any sudden moves.

  “Damn it, Mac, I could’ve killed you!”

  Caitlin Malone.

  Mac’s heart stirred to life. Blood surged through his veins as his breath released on a whoosh. He lowered his hands, but his body refused to budge. His reaction had nothing to do with the fact Caitlin had greeted him with a shotgun, and everything to do with the woman herself.

  When he’d placed the call that afternoon with news about her father, he’d known he’d have to see her again. He thought he would’ve been better prepared. Except nothing prepared him for the lilting sound of her voice, the flash of her amber eyes, nor how his body responded to the memory of her taste. Slamming the lid on those wayward thoughts, he concentrated on the whole of her and wondered how she’d arrived from Washington, D.C. so quickly.

  “Either let me in, or pull the trigger, but get that shotgun out of my face.” Mac was amazed how calm his voice sounded against the thunder in his ears.

  Caitlin lowered the barrel toward the floor. His gaze followed, and settled on her delicate bare feet peeking beneath sweatpants. Feet that were as lethal from her martial arts skills as the shotgun.

  Mac took a breath to steady his racing heart, and the unforgettable fragrance of wildflowers stirred dust off memories long buried. One look at her reminded him exactly why he’d buried those memories. Her long hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. In the sixteen years he’d known her, he could count on one hand the times he’d seen her hair unbraided. It shimmered in the light, boasting all the colors of a campfire. Clamping down the urge to run his fingers through those silken locks, he turned and shut the door.

  “You could’ve called first, instead of breaking into the house!” she accused him.

  Be
fore facing her again, he took a moment to gather his wits. Composure and control. Whether Sean wanted to admit it or not, he trusted Mac to be with Caitlin when she heard the news. He pivoted and held up the key Sean had given him.

  Caitlin’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Flushed cheeks accentuated porcelain-like skin. “Since when did you get a key to the house?”

  “Since this morning. Besides, you left the door unlocked.” He nodded toward the gun. “You weren’t really going to use that thing, were you?”

  She shifted under his gaze and backed away from the front entryway. Her movement offered an opportunity to study curves that appeared more generous than he remembered. A tease of bare skin, not quite hidden beneath a cropped T-shirt, showed off a firm, flat stomach. Sweatpants clung to trim thighs, leaving little to his imagination, and triggered an unwanted response in his libido. He swallowed. She was a redheaded angel who was all grown up and endowed with the temptations of the devil herself. He promised himself never to surrender to that temptation again and forced his gaze back to her face—to those amber eyes that reminded him so much of a tigress prowling for a meal.

  “Of course, I’d have used it. If I had to,” she replied. “Law-abiding citizens don’t sneak around in the middle of the night.”

  “And you just happened to be waiting in the dark with a shotgun for an unsuspecting criminal to walk through the door?”

  Caitlin’s lips pulled tight, but not quickly enough to conceal the quiver at the corner of her mouth. Warmth spread through his chest. It was good to see her sense of humor hadn’t deserted her. Absurdly, it pleased him that he’d almost made her smile.

  “I heard the dogs down the road start barking.” She backed away a couple more paces. The physical distance didn’t lessen the emotional tension suspended between them. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. You don’t live here.” Suspicion leapt to her eyes. “Do you?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “And neither do you, as I recall, or you’d know that.”

  Her eyes narrowed as his statement hit a mark. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Her expression shuttered, sending an unexpected pang of disappointment through him. Caitlin never used to hide how she felt. The variety of her emotions had always fascinated him. She appeared to have learned to conceal her feelings during her two-year absence. He supposed he was partially to blame for that.