Because he'd heard something outside...but they hadn't heard a car. And no one came up that long driveway in a car and went unheard.
She caught Rio's eye, and he nodded at the kitchen door—currently open to the screen, granting access to the breeze and to the long wrap-around porch. I'm watching the back, said that nod.
She lifted her chin and headed for the front door on the other side of the house, slipping out to the slate gray paint of the porch. She already knew every squeaky board, every wrong step. She knew exactly when she'd become visible to any given point in the yard, and that she could peer through the tiered hanging basket of blooming bleeding hearts at the corner of the wrap-around porch before most people even noticed.
This time, peering through the waterfall of fuchsia blossoms told her little—a stiff, tall figure by the kitchen door—a woman—with her back to Kimmer. Kimmer didn't relax in the least. Romajn had been a woman. Kimmer was a woman, and God help anyone who didn't take her seriously enough.
But still. There was an uncertainty in this woman, dressed in jeans and a sloppy T-shirt. An anxiety. And just as Kimmer realized—it's Caro!—Rio's filtered voice said, "Either knock or go away. Lurking there is annoying." Whatever position he'd taken inside, he hadn't exposed himself to direct sight.
"Caro," Kimmer said, her voice low.
Carolyne Carlsen shrieked, straightening as if she'd been prodded in a personal area. She spun around, her gaze searching the planters and hanging baskets until it lighted on Kimmer. "Kimmer, my God! You scared the—"
And at that, Rio stuck his head out the back door. "That's what you get for lurking outside the home of two superhero operatives," he said. "Especially when you had an invitation."
Kimmer wasn't as quick to let down her guard. "Tell me you didn't bring unwanted friends," she said, meaning goonboys.
Caro took her meaning quite well—after what they'd been through together, how could she not? "Nonono," she said, turning it into one long word. "And I'm early, that's all, I just came a day early and I didn't know if you'd want—"
Kimmer exchanged a wry glance with Rio at this unfinished spurt of words. "Caro," she said firmly, "you're always welcome. You come early, you don't get the spiffy clean litter box effect. That's all."
"I could hurry with that," Rio said, and he slipped out the door to enfold his cousin in a hug. They were two of a kind—tall and sturdy, Caro's hair a golden contrast against Rio's pale wheat blond. But Caro hadn't gotten Rio's exotic blend of features; she resembled her mother's side—her coloring a little darker, her oval face rounded into plainness that disappeared when her expression lit from within. She returned the hug as Kimmer eased off the porch to spot Caro's car. Damned quiet hybrid. What was a spy to do?
Stay alert, that's what. Even as she heard Caro offering a rapid explanation of her early arrival—missing family, needing grounding, and following impulse to drive a day early from Albany's suburbs to the Finger Lakes—she heard another vehicle. Obvious, this time, making the turn into the landscape-hidden driveway with the loud and characteristic downshift of gear that not only confirmed its arrival, but told her who it was long before the vehicle was visible.
"Owen," she said out loud. Owen and his antique farm truck. She slanted a hard look at Carolyne. "Tell me this is just coincidence."
Caro, startled, only stared for a moment—and then she laughed, short and a little bitter but entirely convincing. "Coincidence, I swear. I'm not up to anything that your Owen would care about. Or that anyone else would care about, either." And then—superstar genius researcher driven by inherent honesty-she had to mutter, "Well, not much, anyway."
But when Owen arrived, striding up to the porch in his no-nonsense manner and offering the merest lift of his chin to greet Kimmer along the way, he gave Caro his own wary look. "Something happening here that I should know about?"
"Yes," Rio said, quite seriously. "We're having a family visit. We made an announcement; it was in all the papers. Where have you been?"
Owen glanced briefly heavenward as if asking for strength, but it didn't buy him any time from Kimmer. "What's up, Owen? And cut right through any passing through the neighborhood excuses you have prepared. You know I'll just see right through them."
Caro appeared aghast, looking to Rio, but Rio only grinned. "Ah, that's my little cuddly-wuddly," he said. "But hey, as long as Kimmer's mentioned it...what's up, Owen?"
Owen shook his head. "Damn," he said. "I should have known better than to ever let you two team up."
"You could have stopped them?" Caro asked, surprised.
"Team up on the job," Owen shot back, wry and dry. He was in casual mode today, one of very few times Kimmer had seen his linebacker frame not defined by a suit. Jeans—worn jeans at that—and a short-sleeve button-down with the tails left out, making a bulge over his hip that had to be his cell phone.
Of course. As if he'd go anywhere without a connection to the Hunter Agency and to the operatives he handled.
The casual clothes didn't mean this wasn't business. In fact, she'd be shocked if it was anything but. Owen Hunter hadn't shown any signs of having a social life. "Come on up," Kimmer said. "Rio's dying to offer you something to drink. His grandmother wouldn't have it any other way." Her Japanese traditions had trickled down through the generations; Rio still took his shoes off outside the door as he could.
Carolyne brightened. "I brought the best chai!" she said. "Let me make it, Rio. You have milk for it, don't you?"
"Let's get your bags." Rio headed off the porch with Caro in tow, treading barefoot beside the tree-shaded driveway.
Kimmer crooked a finger at Owen. "Come," she said. "Sit."
"I will if you will," Owen told her, but he moved easily onto the short leg of the porch, making himself at home in the rocker there.
Kimmer sat against the railing, hitching her leg up; eyeing him.
He didn't waste any time. "Something's come up."
She didn't need to say that she and Rio were off the books; he knew they had planned a trip with Caro to see the girls, and he knew she had community service the following week. He probably knew when she had her next dentist appointment and haircut. She ran fingers through her tight-cut hair, gauging the curl. Soon.
Owen leaned back, crossing his ankle over his knee. "We've got a client looking specifically for your services. You and Rio."
"No kidding," Kimmer said flatly.
His laugh was short and a little hard. Everything about Owen came hard, whether it was his features or his laugh or his very presence. He had, she thought, taken on the Hunter Agency mantle at too young an age. But he'd done it, and it had made him expert in all things Hunter...and he'd been the one to pick her off the streets, making him expert on all things Kimmer.
So she wasn't surprised when he said, "I know you're worried about what happened in New York." Rio's cover, blown. "I'm looking into it. It seems to have been a tip. From whom, we don't yet know."
"Rio's visibility was always a concern," she said. Six-three, striking features, bright stand-out hair...disguises could handle some of that, but not all. Especially when Rio's strength played to his compassion, his caring—his determination to get the job done. "Unless this job's not undercover—?"
"It shouldn't be a problem," Owen said, by which he admitted—and they both knew it—that he was indeed talking about an undercover gig. "He worked the Nordic/Germanic areas when he was CIA, and the incident before he left did make him visible in those circles. But this new operation is in northern Spain."
The incident before he left. Right. The one where he lost friends, lost the agent-asset for whom he'd been responsible, and incidentally lost a kidney and almost his life. All from stupidity within the agency that had left him disillusioned—and meant his work with Kimmer and the Hunter Agency was on contingency at best. "Location doesn't matter. You want a quickie dead drop in disguise, fine. But don't even think about an extended undercover op. Rio knows how to take advantage of his vis
ibility, not to hide it."
"Exactly." Owen said it with such satisfaction that Kimmer gave him a narrowed eye. He had, she realized, somehow herded her right where he wanted to go.
Trust Owen to manage that even with someone who could read his every motive and undertone.
"Oh, just spit it out," she said in disgust. Rio and Caro approached with her bags in hand—not much by way of clothes, but gadgets in abundance—and Rio gave her a questioning eyebrow on the way up the porch stairs. Kimmer lifted her chin infinitesimally—enough to confirm that yes, Owen was here to kick the next several weeks out from under them, and yes, Caro needed to be kept out of it.
They silenced as the pair traversed the porch and headed into the house via the front door—the luggage dump. Owen waited until Caro's chatter could be heard, filtered from the kitchen. "The client wants exactly what Rio brings to the table—visibility. She wants you as a traveling step-sibling pair—distant relatives—who are staying at her villa while you explore the area. She even intimated that a hint of your real relationship would be a welcome bit of scandal to distract from the real reason you'll be there—guarding an antiquity while she arranges for its secure disposition at the Museo Arqueologico e Historico Vasco. So your visibility and scandalous allure will deter interested parties even as you keep the object safe."
"Oh, ick."
"Oh, it's not that bad," Owen said. "Plenty of step-siblings meet as adults."
Rio cleared his throat from the doorway. "C'mon, Owen, that's striking a little close to home, don't you think?"
Weird rebellion rose in Kimmer. "My damned brothers never got in more than a good grope," she said, her voice hard. So they'd smacked her around...tormented her...tried to give her away...damaged her ability to trust so deeply that even now, it regularly astonished her to find herself sharing a home with a man. "I can handle it. I'm just not sure I trust it. Owen, we haven't even been working as a team that long." And we need more time after how things went down. "How'd this client hear of us? Us, specifically?"
Owen's expression darkened. "Seems she knows someone in immigration...someone who mentioned your brief work at the southern border this late spring."
"Someone who should have kept his mouth shut," Kimmer muttered.
"No doubt about that." But after a moment's grim contemplation, Owen lifted one shoulder, let it drop in resignation. "But they didn't, and now we lose nothing by pursuing this."
"And what do we gain?" Rio asked. "Aside from generating a bit of distracting scandal."
Owen rubbed his lower lip; Kimmer could have laughed out loud. Here it was. The layer running beneath the obvious. The thing that was really making Owen tick this time.
"That area..." he said. "Northern Spain..." He looked straight at her. "It's always been an area of unrest."
"The Basque Euskadi Ta Askatasuna," Kimmer said. "ETA. Old news. And they're busy trying to look innocent since the cease fire failed, so Spain can look like the bully."
"They are." Owen nodded, lacing in his fingers together and resting them over his belt buckle in lieu of his usual immaculate desk. "But there have been rumblings..."
"They're targeting someone?" Rio asked, not sounding terribly surprised. He still lingered at the doorway, bridging the territory between the spy talk and the cozy chai production—glancing back now and then at his cousin, left to her own happy devices in the kitchen.
"More like they've spawned some impatient splinter groups who're trying to fill the void and the resulting quiet after Ibon's arrest several years ago." Owen's lack of inflection was too casual. Somewhere along the line, directly or indirectly, Hunter had taken a hit from one of those groups. "We're still putting the players together. It could be a convenient thing to have a couple of operatives in the area right now."
Rio frowned. Not quite saying it out loud, but not liking it. Kissing step-sibs, working a job at the same time they were a distraction from the principle focus. Not having to say it out loud, even if Kimmer couldn't read him as she read everyone else.
She thumped her heel against a porch rail. "You don't even have clever terrorist group names for them yet? ETA-plus? T-Minus-Zero?"
For a fleeting second, Owen smiled. But only for a second. "These people take themselves very seriously, Kimmer. So should we, if we want to stop that terrorist mindset from taking root again. It's not far under the surface."
"So you want us to go, and you don't think Rio will be compromised, and you think his face factor will suit the situation just fine, and by golly we can even have sex because it'll only spice up the cover if everyone thinks it's happening."
Owen winced, but Rio laughed right out loud. "Damn," he said. "I do love you."
"But," Kimmer said, and Owen winced again even though he pretended not to, "what about our own travel plans?"
"Chai!" The cheery call came from the kitchen, growing louder on the end note—and instead of leaving to distract Caro back into the kitchen, Rio merely stood aside and let her come. It meant he'd decided Owen still had to prove himself on this one—that he was backing Kimmer.
That they were both thinking about their plan to visit to the girls, complete with Caro. Their first family vacation, as unlikely as it was. With a cousin in need, a cousin still struggling to reconcile her life expectations—a fiancé, plans for a family—with her life reality: the fiancé's betrayal, her plans in ruin.
But Caro knew the Hunter work was unpredictable; she knew Owen was their boss. And when Kimmer added, "You think I'm going to disappoint those girls?" Caro knew exactly what was going on. Even as she distributed plastic insulated tumblers and poured thick concoctions of iced chai, she eyed Owen and Kimmer and Rio, her expression both concerned and knowing.
"You can reschedule," Owen suggested, clearly knowing it sounded just as lame as it was.
"Caro," Kimmer pointed out, "is already here."
And then Caro did the unexpected. "I'll go by myself."
Even Kimmer hadn't seen it coming. Rio said, "Caro—?"
"No, seriously." She tucked her long, gold-washed hair behind her ear. "I need to get away—obviously, or I wouldn't have crashed on your doorstep a day early. And I'd love to see the girls again. Just hearing you talk about their letters and phone calls...I feel as though I know them much better than I have any right to. I know it won't be the same for them, but I'll make sure they don't feel abandoned." She hesitated, not quite looking at them. "Maybe it'll help me process my own situation."
And Owen, as if he'd planned it all, folded his fingers together and rested them across his belt buckle, wisely saying nothing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER 3
Puddle-jumper to NYC; Brussels Air to Barcelona; Vueling Air to Bilbao. Rio shifted in the business class Brussels Air seat and tried to fool his knees into thinking he'd gained leg room. Kimmer helped; she always let him sprawl into her leg room, tucking her feet up to sit in some impossibly petite, folded pretzel. At the moment, a pretzel who looked fairly well pleased with herself. He said it out loud without thinking. "What's got you so cat-and-canary?" He tried to pretend the swoopy roll of the pain meds and muscle relaxants in his system had nothing to do with his loose tongue.
His back would never likely travel well again. Not this cramped, sitting in one spot for a decade, kind of travel demanded by road trips and air travel.
Overseas train tracks suddenly seemed like a brilliant idea.
Kimmer smiled. "Not quite yourself, are you?"
Dignity. Remember dignity.
Forget dignity. This is the one woman you'll never fool.
Not because she could use her knack of reading people on him; she couldn't. But because she'd come to know him that well.
So he said, "You enjoy it far too much."
"You on opiates, or embarrassing customs inspectors?" She smiled, all sharky innocence.
"At least you've given up on trying to get that war club past security," he muttered, and wondered about the potential of some nice s
ugary soda to cut through the dry taste in his mouth.
Her smile widened; her gaze unfocused enough to let him know she was thinking back on their most recent puddle jumper flight, when the security X-ray had revealed her war club—a vicious homemade weapon of a metal ball cradled in a red oak root cluster, made by an inventive teenager who shouldn't even have had to think of such things, and yet who'd used it to save her own life too many times even before she ever grew up into a Hunter operative.
"Oh, you found my massage ball!" she'd purred to the security guard at their tiny little regional airport. "Would you like to see it?" And when the security guard removed the thing—not waiting for an invitation—Rio had groaned inwardly.
How could anyone see it as anything but a weapon, even if she had cleaned off the stubborn flecks of blood?
Because who carried around a war club these days, anyway? And it didn't have any sharp edges. Less scary than batteries, three ounces of liquid, or even your basic knitting needle.
Kimmer hadn't missed a beat. "Yes, that's it. The metal holds the warmth of the oil, you know. And the weight of it is so...comforting. I never go anywhere without it." She'd somehow made the moment a very personal one, just her and the guard. "You'd be...surprised."
As if she needed the war club to surprise any man, in any way. Rio hadn't dared look at her, or at the guard's entrancement.
And then the man had shaken himself off, realized anew where he was, and hastily stuffed the war club back into Kimmer's pack.
But that had been a very, very small airport indeed. This trip, they'd get their guns, their edged weapons, and the war club once they landed in Spain.
Now Kimmer looked at Rio and said most wickedly, "I'll just savor the memories. But no...not with international security. Besides. I've got a pen. I'm armed."
"Scary but true." His tongue felt especially thick. His brain felt especially thick. And how could she look so damned cute, anyway? Pretzeled up in an airline seat with one of their blankets draped around her shoulders, jeans worn to thin satin over her legs and some ribbed knit thing clinging to every curve—the sleeves a tad too long, the scooped front just low enough, and the color an intense, deep teal that brought out her equally deep eyes.
Making the Rules Page 2