“The desert people don’t own the land?”
Ginny shrugged. “Like I said, it’s complicated. The Kingdom of Amar has a long history that stretches back thousands of years, so who owns what land generally falls under the discretion of the government and if needed, the ruling family.”
“Messy. Makes me grateful for our system here in America.”
Ginny raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s different, I’ll grant, but that doesn’t make it worse or better. No one’s being oppressed in Amar, no human rights have been violated—yet. God created us all in his own image, and so long as people are healthy, safe and maintain their basic rights, quibbling over the details is a waste of energy.”
She made a good point, Colin had to admit, and he’d worked in the public sector long enough to see both the good and bad sides of a democratic government. Didn’t mean he’d trade it for anything else, though. “Guess I’ll have to settle for thanking God that I was born on this continent and leave it at that.”
She wrinkled her nose in an adorable display of annoyance. “Fine. At least we can both agree that God’s in control in one way or another, right?”
“I guess.” Colin’s pulse quickened as she turned her attention back to the computer screen. What was that about? He couldn’t entertain those kinds of feelings. Her life and the lives and well-being of many Amaran people depended on her ability to complete this translation project. Even one moment without focus—
“Colin?”
Wrenched out of his thoughts, he found Ginny staring at him with narrowed eyes. “Yep. Right. Sorry. What?”
She inhaled and exhaled through her nose, her narrowed eyes closing farther. “You’re staring at me.”
He was? “Oh. I’m sorry, I was lost in thought. That’s not my intention.”
“Yes, I have a scar on my face. I know it’s distracting, but don’t you think I have enough to deal with right now?”
A gentle hand on his shoulder interrupted the sudden, bizarre shift the moment had taken. He turned to see the head librarian, bandage around her head and wide smile on her face.
“You’re the professor from Criminology who came with Ginny last night, yes?” she said.
“Donna!” Ginny stood and hugged her friend. “How are you feeling? I thought you’d be in the hospital for a few more days.”
“Good to see you,” Colin added, still stunned from Ginny’s outburst. He’d hit a nerve without intending to, but hadn’t she done the same to him this morning when discussing his past?
“Brought thank-you cookies,” Donna said, handing over a blue plastic container.
Ginny took the container and lifted the lid. The scent of chocolate chip cookies caused Colin’s mouth to water. “You baked? Shouldn’t you be taking it easy?”
Donna waved off Ginny’s concern and fluffed a stray strand of curly hair that had worked its way free from her bandage. “I’m sure you’ve heard that Roger left a note for me after finding out what happened? Well, we’re finally going to meet in person. I have a dinner date!”
“That’s nice,” Colin said, momentarily glad for Donna’s tension-dispersing presence. “Where is he taking you? And when?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Donna waved her hands dramatically. “He has quite the schedule as custodian here, so he’s going to call me when he has the evening free. And I’m flexible. Either way, I have some of my own tricks up my sleeve. I’m going to surprise him with a little flight before dinner. Do you think he’ll like it?”
Colin had no idea what the woman was talking about.
“Donna’s a hobby pilot,” Ginny explained. “Her family has a puddle jumper they use to scare people with.”
“Not scare! It’s exciting, being up there and flying free in the sky.” Her voice took on a wistful tone and Colin marveled at the librarian’s zest for life. Then again, most people had things about them that didn’t come up in regular conversation. Like pilot’s licenses. And old scars. And a death on their conscience. “I’ll take you up sometime, Mr. Tapping. No thrill like it.”
Of the thrill, he had no doubt—but he’d had quite his fill of excitement these past few days. Right now it was all he could do to prevent any more of it. What they really needed was a plan for the drop time this afternoon. No matter how much Ginny protested, he wouldn’t allow her to volunteer herself into harm’s way again.
* * *
After Donna left, Ginny wolfed down six chocolate chip cookies and nursed a stomachache for the rest of the morning. She didn’t say anything to Colin, though—the man seemed worried enough about her without having to source anti-nausea tablets for her roiling insides. He hovered into the afternoon as she worked on the tablet translations in preparation for her meeting with Dr. Hilden in a few hours. Between Colin’s presence and ongoing phone calls with the police station or campus security, and having learned about the land sale that morning, it became very difficult to concentrate.
She shouldn’t have snapped at him earlier. He didn’t deserve it, and in all likelihood he hadn’t been staring at her face at all but just gazing blankly, lost in thought. The accusation had just slipped out, the product of her discomfort in the moment. Not discomfort at his presence. Discomfort at the strange, comfortable, soothing nature of having him around. It felt too normal to have him here by her side. She needed to shut that down immediately, before her heart became involved.
She heard him finish yet another phone conversation and got ready to apologize for her brusque rebuke. Before she took a breath, her TA Sam came barreling into the department.
“Professor Anderson! Professor Anderson!”
“Slow down, son.” Colin placed a hand on the student’s chest before he could barge into her little office. “What’s going on?”
“It’s your car! It’s being towed.”
Ginny shot out of her seat. “What do you mean? Colin parked us this morning.” She shot an accusatory glare at Colin. “You parked us off campus on a side street. Did you even read the signs?”
“Of course I did,” Colin growled. “How do you know, Sam?”
Sam huffed and puffed, bending over at the waist to catch his breath. “Another student...coming back from lunch...told me...tow truck, so I ran.”
“Colin, I can’t lose my car.” Ginny grabbed her purse and dug out her keys, then groaned. She had the tablets out on her desk and couldn’t leave them here unattended unless they were locked up in the lab. “You go.” She tossed the keys to Colin. “Please?”
“I’m not leaving you here by yourself with the drop coming up.”
“I have a meeting with Hilden. I’ll pack up and go right over, right now.”
“I can take her,” Sam chimed in.
“Sorry, not good enough.” Colin waved at the leather satchel. “Grab them and come with me. I’ll walk you to the library after. Hurry!”
Ginny’s shoulder ached just thinking about running all the way back to the car with the heavy tablet bag slung over the bruise that had formed there since yesterday. A sob welled up from deep inside. She couldn’t afford to pay to get her car out of impound if they took it, and the fines for illegal street parking around campus were astronomical as a deterrent. “Colin, I can’t run with these. They’ll have to be locked up.”
“Then you’d better move faster than that.”
He took her keys into the archaeology lab and got the cabinet opened and ready for the satchel of tablets. Feeling the seconds slip by like hours, Ginny locked the bag in its secured home and followed Colin out the door.
She rushed across campus with him, expecting at any moment to see a tow truck pass by in the distance, her car trailing behind it. How could Colin have missed a parking sign? That didn’t seem like him at all.
“Ginny, stop.” Colin’s hand fell on her shoulder as they rounded the southeast e
dge of campus.
Her car hadn’t been towed. There it sat, a block away and undisturbed. No tow truck in sight. “Should we check the signs? Maybe the tow truck driver got it wrong.” Ginny inhaled deeply to catch her breath as footsteps pounded behind them. Sam had followed, concern crossing his features.
“I’m sorry,” he said, skidding to a stop beside them. “I didn’t know if I should find you or go try to stop them myself.”
Colin grabbed the front of the student’s shirt. “Who told you it was being towed?”
Sam squealed as his feet nearly left the ground. “Another student!”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” he protested. Ginny’s sour stomach turned to lead. “Not someone I know, I assumed one of her students from another class. What’s your problem, man?”
“Maybe there was a mistake. I can’t be the only one who drives a blue hatchback.” But when Ginny saw the look on Colin’s face, she had to admit she was reaching. But why would someone do that, if not a mistake or a joke? “We know someone wants me to stop my research,” she murmured. “And if I’m hesitant to do as they’ve asked, one way to encourage me to do it or force my hand would be...?”
The tablets.
“Colin, the tablets. We locked up the tablets, but...”
Colin released Sam and took off with her, running toward the Daviau Center with all the gas left in her tank. She yanked on the door, only to find it locked. Why would the building’s outer door be locked at this time of day? There should be students coming and going, and they’d left here only minutes ago.
“Is there a faster entrance to the Language and Culture Department?” Colin paced in front of the door as she flipped through her key ring.
“No. This is the fastest way in.” She fumbled to find the right key, each moment of delay seeming to take hours. Finally, she unlocked it and Colin yanked open the door. “The entrance on the other side of the building leads into the administrative area for the college. It’d take several minutes to get here from there.”
“Great.” Colin ran down the short hall to her department and yanked on that door. Also locked. “Was anyone else in here when we left? Besides the receptionist?”
Panic flared in Ginny’s chest as she found the key. “I don’t know. We talked to Beverly Dorn earlier, and it’s possible there were others, but nearly everyone in this department teaches on Thursday afternoons.”
Pounding from inside the office sent Colin into action. He ran inside the department and down toward the sound of the knocking. Instead of following him, Ginny headed to the receptionist’s desk. Where was Mrs. McCall?
A high-pitched whine caught Ginny’s ear. The phone was off the hook. Mrs. McCall would never leave the phone off the hook. Her hopes sank. Something was terribly wrong.
Ginny rounded the receptionist’s desk and her stomach lurched into her throat. Mrs. McCall lay facedown on the floor, her limbs splayed out at unnatural angles. Some of her hair was red and matted, and streaks of red had dripped down her neck onto the floor. Oh, no. Lord, please, no.
She knelt and pressed two fingers to Mrs. McCall’s neck, but her own pulse was racing too hard to tell if the prone woman’s heart still beat.
And then Colin was next to her, one hand on her shoulder and the other hand on Mrs. McCall’s throat. “Faint. Very faint, but if this just happened, we might be able to get an ambulance here in time.”
“Call 911,” Ginny shouted at Sam, who’d run into the department behind her. “Then call campus security, any emergency responders on campus and Foot Patrol. Have them announce that no one is to walk unescorted on campus right now. We may need a lockdown.”
Sam looked stunned.
“Go!” Ginny refocused on Colin, who’d grabbed the first aid kit from the back wall and now worked to stem the blood flow from Mrs. McCall’s head wound. “Colin, what can I do?”
Colin glanced back at her and her heart constricted. He stayed so calm when all she wanted to do was scream. What would she have done without him here?
His gaze shifted over her shoulder. “Beverly, can you head outside and direct the first responders inside when they arrive?”
For the second time in less than a minute, Ginny’s chest grew tight. Behind her, calm and smug as ever, stood Beverly Dorn. The woman’s arms were folded across her stomach, and she regarded the injured receptionist with cool passivity. “Certainly, I will. How tragic. And here I thought it was a student playing a prank. Most unfortunate.”
She left the office without another word and Ginny had to resist the urge to run after the woman and shake her by the shoulders. Unfortunate? That’s it? A woman lay bleeding on the floor from a head wound and she called it unfortunate?
Colin still hadn’t answered Ginny’s question. Even Sam crouched down to assist with the receptionist as he made calls for help, phone receiver shoved between his ear and shoulder.
“Colin? I want to help. What can I do?”
Colin finished wrapping a piece of gauze around Mrs. McCall’s head, checked the clock in the corner of the room and finally turned his attention back to her.
“Go. Check the lab.”
Fear spiked through her skull, but she couldn’t shy away from this. Would not shy away from this. She pulled on the archaeology lab’s door handle, praying it remained locked. The handle turned and the door swung open. She had locked this. She remembered doing it not ten minutes ago.
Acid crept up the back of her throat. Black spots swam in her vision. This couldn’t be happening.
The archaeology lab looked pristine, no broken pottery or scattered pages. Nothing overturned. Except...
Colin reached her side as she pointed into the room, her index finger extending toward the previously locked cupboard at the far side of the room. Its doors were wide open, shelves bare. The heavy lock lay in pieces on the floor.
“They’re gone.” She barely had the strength to form the words. Her knees hit the floor with a crack, but she felt nothing. Nothing but dread, terror and fear. Her life, her career was over. She couldn’t help the Amarans, couldn’t bring their lost history back to the people who deserved it. They’d trusted her with the tablets, and now they were gone.
Colin knelt beside her and took her hand the same way he had the day before. Gentle. Unassuming. Requiring nothing in return, offering only comfort. “Please tell me this robbery didn’t just set off an international incident between the United States and the Kingdom of Amar.”
Breathe, Ginny. Breathe. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to sink into the floor. Make all of this disappear. “I don’t... I don’t...” A glimpse of the paramedics arriving to take Mrs. McCall to the hospital set her off again, each breath coming in sharp gasps.
Drowning. She was drowning on air and no one could save her.
Colin’s arms wrapped around her shoulders, drawing her to his chest. He held her head against his sternum, and the pressure of his embrace eased the effort in her lungs.
She didn’t know how much time passed. It could have been hours or only minutes, but eventually and all too soon, Colin released her and held her at arm’s length. His jaw was chiseled stone, hard and determined. “Mrs. McCall appears critical. This is beyond unacceptable. I need to know what’s on those tablets that’s worth killing for.”
TEN
After the police arrived, Colin connected Sam with an officer who could take the student to a sketch artist, and then gingerly helped Ginny to her feet. She continued taking deep, noisy breaths to steady herself, but she was not the kind of person who handled repeated life-or-death situations well. He didn’t mind. In fact, he appreciated that her strengths lay elsewhere. Her intelligence lent her beauty an appealing softness that he found increasingly difficult to ignore.
She took small, shuffling steps as they made their way to Gin
ny’s car, now parked closer to the school thanks to a thoughtful officer who’d noticed the professor’s pale complexion and trembling limbs. While Colin didn’t want to press her until she felt calmer, he had to ask a question that the Service—and the FBI, and Homeland Security—needed to know. “So, about our relationship with Amar. Are we in trouble?”
She pursed her lips before responding. “Maybe. No. We shouldn’t be. It’s not our fault, and other things have happened so it’s not as if we had control here. They were secured as per the loan agreement, so fault can’t fall on us.”
“You sure both governments will see it that way?”
“They have to. Guess I’ll have to cancel all the rest of my appointments with Dr. Hilden. Wait...no!” She grabbed his arm in excitement but let go just as quickly, a hint of color returning to her cheeks. “Uh, sorry. I had an idea. I might be able to find old photos from the early archaeological field reports back when the tablets were first dug up. If those reports have been archived online, I can still work on the translations even without having the tablets in my hand.”
As much as Colin knew he should be excited about this for her, he couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm. “We put a woman in an ambulance not an hour ago because of these tablets and the research you’re doing. It might be wise to pull back and take another look at what’s going on before diving back into things.”
Ginny’s eyebrows rose and she coughed in disbelief. “Aren’t you the one who told me not to listen to these people? That I shouldn’t give in to their demands?”
“Yes, but that was before someone got driven off to the hospital in critical condition.”
“What about what happened with Donna?”
Colin sighed and gestured back toward the Daviau Center, where police officers filtered in and out as they tried to make sense of the attack. “Look around, Ginny. Then tell me if you think it’s a good idea to continue working on this while there are innocent lives at stake. I know I said it’s not the nature of my training or of the Secret Service to discourage protectees from going about their work, but someone is going to a lot of trouble to make sure you don’t work on your translations. Until we know exactly why, all I’m suggesting is that we take a step back and try to gain some perspective. Maybe take a harder look at what you already have.”
Unknown Enemy (Love Inspired Suspense) Page 9