Gabby sucked in a breath. “Oh, God.”
They’d reached the place where the aquarium building ended at the water and they could go no further without hitting Boston Harbor. Ty turned and headed them back the way they’d come, shining his light from side to side, but seeing the faces of the people they’d been sent to save over a decade earlier.
“We went in and took the bastards out,” he said, his voice neutral from the hundreds of times he’d gone over the incident with his superiors, the thousands of times he’d replayed it in his own head. “We grabbed the hostages, gave them an antidote that helped fight the gas, got them out of their contaminated clothes. Most of them did okay. What we didn’t know was that the secretary of state already had breathing problems. He didn’t make it out.” He took a deep breath and concluded with, “The aftermath was a political nightmare, though Washington kept as much of it out of the papers as possible. We all took a hit, but Liam took the fall. Not even his family’s power could get him out of the court martial. He wound up doing ten years in a military prison.”
Gabby was silent as they worked their way back to the main courtyard. “What does this have to do with the vice president?”
“Grant Davis was the team’s tactical expert. Liam swears that Grant gave him the signal to cut the power, but he didn’t.” There was no question in Ty’s mind. He knew the vice president too well to believe anything else. “And now Liam doesn’t want revenge because Grant did or didn’t give the signal. He wants revenge because Grant has the life Liam thinks he should’ve had. He was the one who was supposed to go into politics, the one we all figured would be president someday.” Ty paused. “Which brings us back to your question. What does Liam want? If he wanted me dead, he could’ve killed me back at your apartment, or at the church. But he didn’t. He sent me on what’s feeling a whole lot like a wild-goose chase…. But why?”
None of it made any sense, making Ty feel edgy and raw. He wanted to pull away from Gabby and pace the length of the pier, but that would burn energy he didn’t have to waste, so he forced himself to stand still and think.
Still, the events refused to gel into anything approaching logic.
Gabby blew out a breath. “Maybe why doesn’t matter right now. Maybe what matters is following his instructions while we try to figure out the rest. So let’s find this clue he said would be here. He told you to follow the campaign trail, right? Where exactly did the vice president go when he was here? Did he visit the exhibits inside the aquarium?”
“No.” Ty shook his head, trying to remember back to eighteen-plus months earlier. He would’ve given anything to switch the batteries back to his radio and call for the info, but he couldn’t take the risk. No authorities, Liam had said. I’ll be watching.
Ty hadn’t seen him, but that didn’t mean the bastard wasn’t out there, doing exactly as he’d promised.
Knowing he couldn’t take the risk of making contact, he forced himself to think, trying to pick out a single stop out of a blur of campaign travel and the chaos of planning and refining the candidate’s protection at each stop.
“He didn’t go inside,” he said slowly, turning a wide circle and trying to imagine what the details around him would look like in daylight. “He gave a short speech…over there, I think.” He pointed to the other side of the building.
Somehow following his gesture from the movement of his body, Gabby nodded. “Over by the harbor seal exhibit, you mean? Or behind it? There’s a boat ramp, I think they use it for the stranding rescue boats.”
“Yes, that’s it!” He squeezed her hand, suddenly realizing that her local perspective could be more valuable than he’d thought. “The boat ramp.” He tugged her in that direction, sure they were onto something. “It’s coming back now. Grant gave his ecological conservation speech, touched on the fuel crisis and tied those issues back to the stranding rescue volunteers.” He remembered how he and the other agents had vetoed Grant’s grand plan of heading out into the harbor aboard the new rescue skiff he’d helped fund. “He christened their new boat the Davis Discovery. It was a damned good photo op, him standing next to the boat, smiling.”
“Then that’s where we need to look,” Gabby said with quiet assurance. “Let’s go.”
“Watch the stairs. They’re pretty slick.”
They descended the short flight of stairs, which led to a cement ledge bounded by the rear of the harbor seal display on one side and the harbor on the other. A swing of the flashlight showed that there was a sturdy metal railing designed to keep the unwary from falling into the water, and a locked gate blocked off the end. Beyond it, a cement ledge descended into the water on a sloping angle. Three boats were tethered to the ramp and locked in place with chains. One looked vaguely familiar, but its name was the Charter Bank Discovery, suggesting it was mate to the boat Grant Davis had funded.
Ty looked around and saw nothing else but water, marble and cement. “Damn it. There’s no message.”
“There must be,” Gabby insisted. “Where was Grant standing in the photo?”
“Down here.” He tugged her to the end of the ramp, near where the boats were tethered. Feeling his brief burst of optimism draining away, he used his flashlight to search the shadows. As a last resort, he leaned partway through the railing and shone the light down near the waterline, where the harbor lapped against the cement boat ramp.
And saw it.
“Sonofabitch,” he said quietly, when he saw the text chalked on the wall like graffiti, then louder, as his momentary excitement crashed to nothing. “Oh, hell.”
The storm had washed away part of the message.
* * *
“What did you find?” Gabby asked quickly.
“A message. Or more precisely, part of a message.” Frustration edged Ty’s tone. “He wrote it at the waterline in some sort of water-soluble grease paint. The tide doesn’t come up that far, but he must not have been expecting the storm. The rain washed off some of the writing. All I can make out is the letters T and D, then a gap, and the letter T, which doesn’t help us one bit.”
“Show me,” Gabby said.
He hesitated for a moment, then took her hand. “You’ll need to climb through the railing and lean way over. I won’t let you fall.”
“I know,” she said, and let him guide her into position. It wasn’t until she was nearly upside down, hanging over Boston Harbor anchored only by Ty’s strong grip on the waistband of her shorts and his hand wrapped around one of her bare calves, that she realized she was putting more faith in Ty than she normally did in people she’d known for years. He’d lied to her and he’d dragged her into events that went far beyond her small sphere, yet she trusted him not to let her fall.
Then again, she supposed it made sense on some level. He wasn’t the man he’d pretended to be during their late-night conversations. That man had been open and approachable, sharing her love of computers and community, along with the thirst for adventure she only let loose in her internet life. No, the real Ty Jones was hard and no-nonsense, and if he lived for adventure, it was the sort that came with guns and life-or-death politics, not bungee jumping and skydiving. Yet it was that very part of him that made her lean against his strong form and stretch her arm out to touch the water, then the rough cement surface above, trusting him.
He might be a liar, but he was also the sworn bodyguard of one of the most powerful men in the country. He was, by his very nature, a protector.
He wouldn’t let her fall.
“A little up and to your left,” he said quietly.
She felt the faint change in texture, the smear of greasepaint on wet cement. “Got it.” She traced the first two letters. “You’re right, there’s a T and a D, then nothing.”
“Then we’re at a dead end.” He shifted and started to pull her up.
“Wait,” she ordered. “I think I can get another letter or two.” She traced her fingertips lightly along the wet cement, feeling where the rough texture went faintl
y slick. “I think there’s a hyphen.” Continuing on, she found an S and a Y. Then she shook her head. “There’s probably one more letter before the T you found, but it’s too far gone. You can pull me up now.”
Once they were standing together on the boat ramp, she shook her head. “I’m sorry. TD-hyphen-SY-something-T sounds like gibberish to me.”
Ty stiffened, his body going still and hard as granite. He muttered a low, vicious curse.
“What is it?”
“TD-SYDET,” he said flatly. “Goddamn it. It’s short for Time-Delay Sympathetic Detonator. He’s telling me how to disarm the bomb he’s hidden somewhere in the city. The one set to go off at dawn and take the vice president with it.”
Automatically, Gabby’s fingers went to her wrist, where her watch displayed the time in Braille. “It’s just past one and the sun comes up around five-thirty. We’ve got four and a half hours. How many places did the vice president visit when he was in Boston?”
“Too many,” Ty rasped. His fingers closed on her wrist. “Come on. We’ve got to haul ass.”
Gabby resisted, pulling away and swinging to face him with her heart drumming in her ears and her throat nearly clogged with nerves. “You don’t need me for this. In fact, the only thing I’m going to do is slow you down.”
“I’m sure as hell not leaving you here.”
“I know my way home.” She forced bravado when her voice wanted to tremble. “I’ll go to Maria’s.”
She didn’t want to know about this, didn’t want to be part of it. All of a sudden, her online adventure had become far too real.
“Hiding out at a friend’s house won’t stop Liam from taking you,” he said grimly. “Then you’d be endangering her, too.” He tugged her to his side, still holding her hand as he had been since they left the church.
She resisted. “I don’t…I’m not…” She blew out a breath and went with the truth, no matter how handicapped it made her look. “Despite what I told you about loving to travel, I’ve barely been anywhere besides the North End and the waterfront in years, Ty. I’m not comfortable in new places, and I’m not kidding when I say I’m going to slow you down the moment we step outside my comfort zone.”
Instead of answering, he said, “You’re doing fine so far.”
“I get around okay with the cane, or someone leading me.” She also felt less self-conscious at night, in the darkness, less like everyone nearby was watching her fumble, but he didn’t need to know that. Nor did he need to know that her name had come up on the guide dog list twice now and she’d backed out, more than half-afraid that bad things would happen if she left her niche.
“I haven’t been around many…what’s the proper terminology these days? Sight-challenged people?”
“Blind people,” she said. “Tell it like it is.” She paused, then said, “I can see some light and dark when it’s really bright out. It happened in an accident when I was fifteen, so I had the benefit of having sight half my life, and spending the other half learning to function without it.”
She braced herself for the inevitable platitude, the pity. Instead he said, “You do it well.”
“Not well enough,” she said, feeling the familiar acid burn. “After I graduated from the Edmunds School, I lasted six months in the so-called real world before I came crawling back to the school, asking for a job.”
“What happened?”
“Something that doesn’t matter in the slightest right now,” she said firmly. “The point is, you’ll be far better off without me.”
“No, I won’t,” he said simply, and tugged her along, not letting her resist this time. “Come on.”
As she stumbled along beside him, not struggling nearly as hard as she knew she should, she wished she could see his face, wished she could tell what he was thinking.
Part of her wanted to wake up from this strange nightmare, where people carried guns and a time bomb was ticking down somewhere in the city. But part of her—that crazy, mixed-up part of her that had gotten her in so much trouble before—wanted to never wake up, wanted to keep living this adventure as long as she possibly could. Worse, there was a small, stupid corner of her soul that wanted to stay with him long enough to figure out how much of himself he’d put into those late-night e-mail exchanges.
She’d liked the person she’d gotten to know online. Maybe she could have loved him.
At the thought, she missed her footing and stumbled, slamming into Ty’s solid body.
He caught her and held her against him, waiting for her to regain her footing. “You okay?”
No, she thought, I’m an idiot who’s managed to confuse fiction with reality. But she wasn’t quite brave enough to say such things aloud, not anymore. Besides, the feel of him against her, the press of his strong arms and the solidity of his body, which seemed cool in the hot, humid night, ignited feelings in her that jumbled the words in her brain and reminded her of just how long she’d been without a man, without a lover.
Reminded her that she’d dreamed of Ty in lurid Technicolor fantasies, and that she’d awakened wanting and alone.
“Sorry,” she murmured, and levered herself away from him. “I told you I’d slow us down.”
“It’s okay.” His voice had gone husky, sending a shimmer of awareness through her, a faint hope that the sudden flare of heat wasn’t entirely one sided.
They stood there for a heartbeat in a sort of half embrace, arms wrapped around each other, bodies warming at the points of contact. Then, as one, they moved apart.
This was neither the time nor the place, Gabby knew, and even under the best of circumstances, what could possibly happen between them? He was a Secret Service agent. He guarded the vice president, for heaven’s sake. The last thing a man like him needed was a woman like her.
She shrugged off the thought, shoving it deep down into the recesses of her mind as she said, “I guess you’ve got yourself a temporary partner, then. So, partner, want to tell me where we’re going?”
“Boston Garden, or the Fleet Center, or the TD BankNorth Garden or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days.” He took her hand and their fingers twined together as he tugged her along. “Our second campaign stop was at a tutoring center right outside.”
“That’s halfway across the city!” Gabby fought to keep a tremor out of her voice. It’d been months since she’d been outside her familiar haunts, more than a year since the last time she’d left Boston.
“I stashed a car two blocks over. We’ll have to risk the drive.” Either he hadn’t caught the tremor, or he was deliberately misunderstanding its cause. “Come on. There’s a curb here, then stairs.”
Gabby hesitated for a long moment, then took a deep breath and stepped out of her comfort zone.
* * *
Maybe five minutes later, as they skirted the wharf area just south of the aquarium, Gabby wrinkled her nose. “Smells like someone’s catch went bad.”
“And then some,” Ty agreed, then cursed and dropped his voice to a near whisper. “Careful. There’s someone up ahead of us.”
“A cop or a looter?” Gabby hissed back.
“I’m not sure it matters at this point,” Ty said quietly. “We have to avoid everyone. I can guarantee my boss went ballistic when I missed the last two meetings, and the radio gives off a homing signal, so he knows either I’m in trouble or I pulled the batteries and went off the grid. I’m betting there’s a BOLO out for me at this point, and we can’t afford to be seen. It’d take too long to talk our way out of a stop, and we don’t know how or how often Liam is keeping tabs on us. If he sees us talking to someone, anyone, he could panic. I won’t let that happen.”
Gabby’s stomach knotted. “What are we going to do?”
“We’ll skirt the back side of the processing shed and work our way around this guy. With a little bit of luck we’ll be past him and at the car in five.”
He transferred her hand to his belt, leaving his hands free as he moved out with her in t
ow. They moved swiftly but silently, and Gabby was grateful for the flat rubber soles of her sandals.
Adrenaline buzzed through her system as she followed him, straining her acute hearing in an effort to track where they were, and where the other man might be. Inwardly, she chanted, Please be a cop, please be a cop, because no matter what Ty said, she’d rather meet up with a cop than a looter. Last night Maria’s brother had brought rumors of the terrible things that were happening just a few miles away. “They’re tearing open the stores and stealing stuff,” he’d said. “Busting up parked cars, fighting each other for the loot, setting things on fire. It’s a real mess.” His voice had dropped before he’d added, “There’ve been some shootings, too. Rapes. It’s getting ugly down there.”
Now, feeling her legs start to shake, Gabby put her head down and prayed, Please let him be a cop. Please let us get by safely.
As Ty changed direction, looping around the back side of the pier, she heard water lapping down and to her left, and felt sound vibrations bounce off a long wall to her right. The strong, fishy smell identified it as the sorting shed the fishermen used to divide their catch.
The surface underfoot felt and sounded like a mix of slick wood and rough concrete, and Gabby didn’t want to think about what might be in the puddles that wet her toes. She and Ty finished their three-sided circuit of the sorting shed and turned south once again on what she was pretty sure was AtlanticAvenue, the main road paralleling the harbor. Once they were back on the sidewalk, Ty whispered, “We’re past him. Let’s move out.”
He lengthened his strides until they were moving fast, almost running the final half block to his car.
Gabby was breathing hard by the time he skidded to a stop. Ty caught her hand from his belt and guided her touch to the vehicle. “This is it.”
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