by Elle James
Riley’s eyes widened and then narrowed. She tilted her head toward the bedroom. “Maybe we should take this into the bedroom,” she said in a sultry tone.
Riley took Mack’s hand and led him into the bedroom, where they performed a thorough search of every nook and cranny.
Another electronic device turned up in the lamp on her nightstand and one more on the light fixture in the bathroom.
Her lips thinning with each step, Riley marched to the closet, grabbed a suitcase and stuffed it with clothing.
Mack couldn’t blame her. Her space had been broken into before, but this was even worse. Someone had been spying on her with every word spoken. He checked behind the paintings on the walls and on the bookshelves just in case he found a video camera. He even stood on a chair and looked in the overhead light fixtures. Thankfully, there weren’t any camcorders lurking. But he might have missed one.
When Riley was dressed in jeans and tennis shoes and had a bag packed with clothes and toiletries, she led the way to the door.
Mack opened it for her and they exited the town house.
“You want to drive?” she asked.
Since he still had the keys, he nodded. As soon as they were out of the parking lot, he turned toward his apartment. “I just want to change into something a little less confining than this.” He waved a hand toward his tuxedo. “I have to admit, this is my first time in a tux.”
“Really?” She tilted her head and studied him. “You wear it well.”
“Thanks. But don’t get used to it. I’m a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy.”
“My preference,” she said.
“In guys, or clothes?” he asked.
Riley smiled. “Both.”
They accomplished the trip to his apartment in relative silence. After discovering three listening devices in her apartment, Mack didn’t trust her car, either. When he arrived in his parking lot, he held the door for Riley and helped her out of her sedan, handing her the keys.
“You aren’t driving from here?” she asked.
“Not in yours.” He cupped her elbow and led her toward his apartment. Once they were out of listening range of her vehicle, he relaxed a little. “I think we’ll take my vehicle from here.”
“You think they had bugs in my car as well?” She grimaced. “Did we say anything that would lead them to think we weren’t on the up-and-up?”
“I don’t remember. But we’d do well to keep our conversations down to a whisper when we discuss the plan.”
“We have a plan?” She looked up at him, her eyebrow cocked.
“We will,” he said. “As soon as I get out of this suit.”
“Right.”
She followed him into his apartment, her gaze sweeping across the furniture and bare walls. “Are you one of those minimalists?”
He smiled. “No. I just moved in. Since I’m new to the area, I’m not even sure this is where I want to stay.”
“It’s an okay neighborhood, from what I could see in the dark.”
“I prefer the countryside to city life. But my work with Charlie brings me to the city.”
“How long have you worked for Charlie?”
He twisted his lips into a wry smile. “Two whole weeks.”
“And before that? Were you one of Declan’s teammates in the military?”
He nodded.
“What’s the deal with you guys? Grace said you were basically kicked out.”
Mack shut the door and twisted the dead bolt. “She’s right. Dishonorable discharges.”
“Seriously? Don’t you have to be like the worst of the worst to get one of those?”
He shrugged. “I guess we are.”
“What did you do to warrant dishonorable discharge?”
“We didn’t follow through on our orders. The man we were supposed to kill got away and killed some important people because of it.”
“Still...seems pretty drastic to get kicked out.”
“We made a decision we could live with.” If he had to make the same decision again, he’d do so.
“Did you think it would get you kicked out?”
Again, he shrugged. “No. But politics were involved.”
“So you took the fall for someone higher up?”
“Maybe. Or maybe refusing a direct order was enough.” Mack agreed, but what was done was done. Someone needed scapegoats. Their team took the fall. They were out of the Marine Corps, and life went on. “If we hadn’t been kicked out, I wouldn’t be here with you now. We can leave it at that.”
“Okay.” She walked to the window overlooking a park.
Mack left her in the living room and went to his bedroom to change. His gaze took in the sparse furnishings from Riley’s perspective. He hadn’t made the apartment his home. In fact, since joining the military, he hadn’t made any living arrangements like home. He didn’t stay in one place very long. The Marine Corps had a way of moving you often. Why put down roots and hang pictures on the wall when you’d just have to pull the nails out and move to another station or be deployed for half a year or more?
“You know, it might be a little late to ask, but are you married or anything?” Riley asked from the other side of the wall.
“I wouldn’t have kissed you like I did if I was,” Mack said. He pulled the jacket off and laid it across the end of the bed. Then the shoulder holster he’d worn beneath with the P226 handgun. “Call me old-fashioned, but if I were married, I wouldn’t kiss another woman.”
“Even if it was part of an undercover operation?” Riley asked.
“Even then.” Maybe he wasn’t cut out for undercover operations. If he ever married, he’d have to stick to bodyguard duties and leave the undercover shtick to the other members of the team.
“I’m impressed,” Riley said. “My father would have insisted I do whatever it took to keep my cover. Even if it meant sleeping with the enemy.”
“And have you?”
“This was my first assignment. And I didn’t want it in the first place. If not for Toby, I wouldn’t be in this situation. I’d have refused.”
“Do the Russians allow you to refuse?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. And then her voice came back softly. “I don’t know. According to my father, we had no other choice. I’m beginning to believe him. I just wonder what they held over him. He seemed happy in his American life. Like he’d fully embraced the life, liberty and justice of the American dream. He had a good-paying job with a local factory, using his skills as an engineer to make parts for tractors and combines. If you’d met him, you’d never have known he was KGB. He had no accent that gave him away.”
Mack shucked his white dress shirt, changed out of the tuxedo trousers into a pair of dark jeans, and stepped into the bedroom doorframe. “What about your mother?”
Riley looked up, her eyes widening. She swallowed hard and swept her tongue across her lips before replying, “Also Russian, but raised by an American au pair.” As if tearing her gaze away from his bare chest, she turned back to the window. “My mother must have taught my father how to speak American English.”
“And yet she let him train you to be a sleeper spy?” Mack slipped a black T-shirt over his head and tugged it over his shoulders and torso.
“Maybe she thought since we were in the States, they wouldn’t be called on to complete any missions. That was my hope, too. Especially after my folks died. I thought they’d forget I existed and leave me alone.” She looked back over her shoulder with a weak smile. “I guess I was wrong.” Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “And Toby is paying the price for my mistake.”
Mack padded across the carpet, wrapped her in his arms. If she didn’t want him to hold her, she could have taken him down like the professionally trained spy she was. Instead, she leaned her face against his chest and let the te
ars slip down her cheeks.
“My father would be so very disappointed in me right now,” she said, and sniffed.
Mack brushed his lips across the top of her head, reveling in how soft and silky her black hair was. And it smelled of wildflowers. He inhaled deeply. “We’ll find him,” he promised. He wasn’t sure how they’d do that, but he’d do his best to make good on that vow. He wanted to help this woman. She was a stranger to him, but he felt a connection that had nothing to do with the job.
* * *
RILEY’S HEAD SPUN in a thousand directions as she thought hard about where to start looking for Toby. The enormity of the effort threatened to overwhelm her. The hard muscles beneath Riley’s palms strangely reassured her, like a rock in a fast-moving stream. He grounded her. This man had promised to find her little brother. They were smart people. Together they would figure it out.
For a long moment, she let herself lean on him, allowed her tears to flow while absorbing his strength.
He tilted her head up and stared down into her eyes. “We have to think through your life. There has to be someone in it who has been monitoring your every move. Possibly someone close to you.”
She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “I thought it was my supervisor at Quest. But he’s dead, killed by the people who wanted the data from my special project.”
“Does anyone else at Quest hang around you a lot? Do you have any friends who seem really interested in you and your life?”
Riley didn’t move from Mack’s arms. Instead, she stared at her hands on his black T-shirt and thought through all the people she came into contact with on a daily basis. None stuck out more than the others.
“What about your roommate?”
“Grace?” Riley frowned. “No way. I met her my first year at Georgetown University.”
Mack’s brows rose. “And you were together for the entire four years?”
Riley’s frown deepened. “Yes, but she’s with Declan now. And she got Mrs. Halverson involved in finding me. She’s too nice. She couldn’t be a Russian spy.” She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t Grace. My gut tells me no.”
“And you trust your gut.” Mack nodded. “My gut has saved me on more than one occasion.”
“I need to talk with Margaret Weems, Toby’s nanny. She might have seen something. And we have a security system at the house. I want to review the footage. I usually have access from my cell phone, but the connection has been interrupted. I have to find out why.”
“You’re not due back at work until Monday.”
“If Mrs. H. hasn’t died by then, it might be too late for Toby.”
“Then we have to hurry through the leads we have.” Mack set her at arm’s length. “Are you okay?”
She snorted softly. “Do I have a choice? I have to be okay in order to find Toby. I’m all he has.”
“Now he has me, too.” With his thumb, he brushed away a tear. “Let’s do this. Where is this cabin? Sounds like we need to make a trip there.”
Riley checked her watch. “It’s two hours outside the city in the Virginia countryside. With the amount of construction on the roads between here and there, by the time we get there, it’ll be morning. Margaret will be beside herself. I haven’t contacted her since the abduction.”
“Then we start there. Just you showing up will help her.”
“I doubt it. She blames herself for his disappearance. She thinks she should have heard the intruder.”
“Let’s get out there. We can question her.”
“It’s a small town. If a stranger came through, someone might have seen him.”
“And someone might have security cameras on their shops. We could ask to see them.”
Riley nodded. “It’s like sifting through a haystack looking for one specific strand of straw.”
“All it takes is that one,” Mack said. “We just have to find it.”
Mack disappeared into his bedroom and reappeared a few minutes later wearing boots and a black leather jacket. The bulge beneath it indicated he was wearing more than a shirt under the leather.
Once again, his presence gave Riley hope.
He held out his hand.
Riley placed hers in his. “Why are you doing this?”
“For one, it’s my job.”
“Is that the only reason?”
He shook his head. “Let’s just say I had a little brother once. I would have done anything to save him.”
Riley walked with Mack to a big black pickup. He helped her up into the passenger seat and then rounded the hood to the driver’s side.
She gave him the address to the cabin. He punched it into his GPS and soon they were on a highway leading out of Alexandria into the countryside. As she settled back in her seat, she thought about what he’d said about his little brother. “You said had. You had a little brother.” She glanced across the console at the man behind the wheel. “What happened to your little brother?”
His lips thinned into a straight line. “He didn’t make it past six years old.”
Riley drew in a sharp breath, her chest squeezing tightly. “What happened to him?”
For a long moment, Mack didn’t answer. His face grew even darker in the light from the dash. “We were waiting at our rural bus stop when he stepped out in front of a logging truck.”
“Oh my God.” Riley cover her mouth with her hand. Her stomach roiled at the image conjured by his words. “And you saw it happen?”
“I was standing next to him one minute,” Mack said. “The next minute he was gone.”
“And you thought it was your fault,” Riley said. She could see the truth in the way his hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. He blamed himself for his brother’s death.
“I should have held his hand. But I was older and didn’t think it was cool.”
“You couldn’t know he’d dart out into the street.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Mack said. “Nothing I can do now will bring Aiden back. But I will find Toby for you. We will get him back. Alive.”
Riley sat back, her heart hurting for Mack’s little brother and the young man Mack had been when he lost him. The miles passed.
Riley must have fallen asleep. The smooth road turned bumpy, shaking her awake. She opened her eyes to the gray light of dawn pushing the darkness out of the sky. In front of her was the little cabin she’d rented when she moved Toby out to the country with his nanny, Margaret. The idea was to keep him hidden from her potential handlers. Now she wondered if she’d have been better off keeping him in the city, close to her. At least then she would have had a chance to fight off his kidnapper.
As they pulled up to the house, Toby’s nanny, an older woman with graying hair, appeared in the door. She stared out at them, her eyes narrowed.
Riley climbed down from the truck. “Oh, Margaret.”
The woman’s eyes widened, and she cried out. “Riley!” She ran out on the porch and down the steps.
Riley met her halfway to the house and was wrapped in the older woman’s huge hug.
“Oh, Riley,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how it happened. I’ve been beside myself since Toby disappeared. Please tell me you know what’s going on. Tell me he’s all right.” She backed away far enough to look Riley in the face. Her lips trembled, and tears spilled from her eyes. “You haven’t heard from him, have you? Oh, sweet heaven. My little guy is gone.”
“Margaret.” Riley cupped the nanny’s cheek. “We’ll find him. But we came to see if there’s any images on the security system and to ask questions. We hope to find some clues.”
“Why don’t you contact the police? I’ve lifted the phone a hundred times and put it down.” She wrung her hands. “We should call them. They’ll know what to do.”
Riley bracketed the woman’s face b
etween her hands. “Margaret, we can’t call the police. The kidnapper will hurt Toby if we do.”
“What does he want?” she said, her tone like a wail. “It’s not like you’re rich.”
“He wants me to do something I don’t want to do.”
“Do it,” Margaret urged. “Get Toby back.”
“I can’t talk about it. You have to trust me. I’m doing everything in my power to find Toby.”
Margaret pulled a tissue out of her pocket and pressed it to her nose. “I just don’t understand how this could happen.”
“I’m going to check the cameras and the recordings. While I do that, talk to my friend Mack. He’s here to help. Answer his questions, if you can. Anything you might have seen could help us find Toby. No matter how insignificant it might seem.”
“Okay.” Margaret looked from Riley to Mack. “Ask away. I hope I know something that will help.”
Riley nodded to Mack. “I’ll be inside looking through the footage.”
“We’ll join you,” Mack said. “We can look and ask questions at the same time.”
Mack followed the women into the cabin. He paused for a moment on the threshold and stared out at the woods surrounding the little house. Then he turned and joined the women around a computer monitor at a small desk in the corner of the main bedroom.
Riley wiggled the mouse and waited for the screen to come alive. When it didn’t, she turned the screen on, then off. Nothing.
Then she turned the computer off, then on. Nothing happened; the motor didn’t kick on and the fans that usually hummed inside were silent. The computer was dead.
“How long has the computer been dead?” Riley asked.
“I was online the morning before Toby disappeared. I haven’t touched it since. I searched the entire house and the yard. I even went into the woods along the paths we usually walk. I thought he might have wandered away.”