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Authors: Doranna Durgin

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BOOK: Exception to the Rule
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She backed down the path, keeping an eye on Rio until the underbrush obscured him and she could turn to make her speedy way back to the mess hall and then to the main drive. She’d head back to town, acquire just enough gear to keep from freezing and starving, and return here to set up her own little camp in one of the abandoned platform tents. Still watching the watcher…

Whom she’d done a decent job of observing back there at the nurse’s station after all, quickly getting a sense of what he was about. Maybe it meant her knack hadn’t failed at all.

Except anyone could have done it, could have perceived what she’d seen, could have noted Rio’s affection for his cousin, could have seen the signs that he did this not for money at all.

No, it didn’t mean her knack was back on the job with Rio.
It just means you’re not blind
.

 

Kimmer drove out of Mill Springs and down closer to Pittsburgh until she found an outfitter where she’d go unrecognized—not to mention a store large enough to supply her every whim. She grabbed up trail food and then stopped at the local Giant Eagle to add a big bag of cherry Twizzlers and her mocha Frappuccino. By early afternoon she’d returned to the scout camp; she used the rest of the daylight hiking her supplies into the tent grouping farthest from the nurse’s station, satisfying herself that no one showed any interest in the camp during that time as she set up in one of the musty platform tents. She’d maintain her presence at the motel and keep in touch with the folks in town with whom she’d established contact, but for now the bulk of her time would be spent here. Rio might not know it, but Carolyne still had two layers of protection.

To her relief, she discovered none of his little trip lines near her tent; she was easily able to establish a path through the woods to reach the Taurus, now parked half a mile down the road on a rutted track long abandoned to anyone but hunters. At first the absence of trip lines had surprised her…and then impressed her. As enticing as it was to trap this place so thoroughly that no one could intrude at any point without running into trouble, unless Rio heard the bushwhacking encounter, he’d have done nothing but warn an intruder to be on the lookout for other traps…such as the ones that were indeed close enough for someone at the nurse’s station to hear reliably.

Before nightfall, Kimmer took her little brochure map and inspected the paths near the nurse’s station, marking the trip line locations and alert for Rio’s presence.

She almost missed him.

As alert as she was, as sizable as he was, she almost missed him.

Like Kimmer, he’d dressed in browns and dark khakis, a fatigue sweater over cargo chino pants. If it weren’t for the wear on those clothes, he might as well have stepped out of an outdoor catalog—tall without bulk, lean without weediness. He moved with easy purpose, stopping in all the right places to hesitate behind cover created by the winding path, his tread landing no more heavily than Kimmer’s.

Good. He’d had more than the usual complement of outdoor-survival and paramilitary training. She found herself caught in an unusual conundrum…hoping he was every bit as good as he looked, and yet not quite good enough to find her, crouched behind the broad, scaly trunk of a hickory with the wilting leaves of a bushy little slippery elm between her exposed head and his line of sight.

As he came closer she studied his expression, hoping to fill in those details her intuition refused to supply. Was he as relaxed as he seemed, or did he hold hidden tension, indications of uneasiness that might mean when push came to shove, he’d fail?

He hadn’t failed at the roadside convenience store. In fact, he’d contained the situation without going overboard; Kimmer had done more damage than he. He hadn’t failed at the picnic. He’d kept his cool and again avoided escalation. He could do more than take care of
himself and Carolyne; he could think on his feet. Act, not react.

And now his face showed his concern. The frequent glances over his shoulder weren’t to check his tail; they were aimed straight through the trees at the nurse’s station. To where his cousin worked. His tightly strung genius of a cousin, racing the clock for her own safety—and for the security of the country.
Let it go
, Kimmer thought at him. Out here in the woods, he didn’t need the distraction such worries presented.

But he didn’t know anyone watched him. This was no front, no subtle ploy to keep up appearances. Kimmer had seen enough of keeping up appearances to spot them on sight, even with her intuition gone napping. No, the slight narrowing of those dark, angled eyes when he looked back, the mild furrow in his brow…those were for real. He cared about his cousin. He worried about her, and for more than just her safety. For her peace of mind.

Intellectually, Kimmer saw it clearly enough. Emotionally, it didn’t track with her own experience; it made something crimp in her throat to see the contrast.

So she quit looking. Instead she watched his easy stride as he passed her tree, only six feet away while she did a quick mental accounting of any possible scents she might be carrying.
No perfume, no scented deodorant, no floral shampoo
…And then she watched him walk away, her gaze drawn to his shoulders, down his straight back and lingering on—

Well. Even a woman who knew better than to touch could still amuse herself by admiring.

 

After a short nap and soup heated on the diminutive Coleman stove, Kimmer dressed for the colder night air, tugging on a neck warmer and then a fleece balaclava folded up as a hat, donning her new parka and getting ready to poke her nose out into the night. Using an aluminum fire shield, she’d heated her soup right there on the wood-plank floor of the platform tent, raising the temperature of the four-cot structure considerably. Bereft of its tent, the platform would look like nothing so much as a freestanding porch. Three steps up, a simple two-by-four railing all around, wood framing to hold the canvas. Standard Scout camp fare. From the outside of Kimmer’s tent, no one would ever be able to tell it was any more occupied than the others grouped around this tiny clearing.

Of course, if Rio checked every single tent, Kimmer would be out of luck. But he had no reason for it; anyone coming in after Carolyne was racing time, and would not go out of the way to set up house here.

She gave her pockets a last check, making sure everything had been transferred from earlier in the day: the little club, the Talon Mini, a handful of sharp things. The .38 rested in its SmartCarry holster, nestled snugly, low between her hipbones. The target-shooting wadcutter load wouldn’t penetrate far, but it’d make an instant wreck of whatever flesh it traversed on the way. A real attention-getter—and all the distraction she’d need to handle things. Or to run away…whichever best suited the moment.

She didn’t think she’d be doing any running tonight. Tonight she flicked on her red-beamed flashlight,
slipped out between the tent flaps, and fastened the ties back as they’d been. Tonight she headed for the nurse’s station, and a long vigil there. Watching on Carolyne’s behalf, of course, but also watching Carolyne herself as much as possible, getting a sense of how things stood with her work and whether this further retreat had calmed her nerves any. It was also her first chance to get up close to the little nurse’s station, checking the doors and windows and layout details. She might even run into Rio’s rental car, which she suspected was well hidden but nearby.

Bypassing several of the trip lines, Kimmer found the station by its light alone. Those thin curtains weren’t meant for blackout conditions or living quarters. At the front door a slight overhang covered the square concrete platform that acted as a step to the door, interrupting the black gap of a crawl space beneath the raised building.

On approach Kimmer readily saw both Carolyne and Rio inside, occupying the front area of the building. She pulled the balaclava over her face and crept in close, each step a slow eternity of quiet just as she’d learned over a decade ago. Slinking out of the house and out to the barn, out to the pond, out to the woods—out to anywhere that wasn’t full of shouting and the sounds of fists on flesh.

She took a breath, squelching memories. Those skills served her well enough now, didn’t they?

Well enough to bring her up to the nurse’s station, to peer inside and find Carolyne on the other side of the small room at an ancient metal desk, her back to the window and her laptop open. She tapped her pen against a yellow pad, staring off into space. As Kimmer
watched, the laptop screen saver kicked in; Carolyne flicked the touch pad with a finger to bring up the program window again, indecipherable text against a white background.

Not exactly what Kimmer would call progress.

The rest of the room was pretty much as she expected—the entrance door opposite Carolyne’s desk, two bare cots lined against a wall, a file cabinet and the less expected luxury of a recliner in the front corner, complete with reading lamp. The painted wood floor had an old oval braided rug in the center, theme of brown, and the insufficient curtains were a matching taupe. The walls held a few empty hangers near the desk—the right spot for nursing certificates—and one hugely enlarged photo of the camp that had been taken either from a terribly low-flying plane or else the raised service bucket for a power-line repair truck.

Rio wandered sock-foot through the room, staring into what Kimmer at first took to be a magazine. “Hey,” he said, his voice coming clearly enough through a window that hadn’t been built to keep winter weather out. “What’s a nine-letter word for ‘to dry out’?”

Carolyne didn’t even look up. “Desiccate.”

“Arigatou,”
Rio said, and looked at his cousin with a scowl. “Gee, now I feel kinda stupid I couldn’t come up with it, after all that hard thought you just put into the matter.”

“Shut up,” Carolyne said, though not with any heat in her voice. “You knew that. You just came out here to make the poor stymied geek feel better. You know what, I knew it when you let me win at tag when we were kids, too.”

Rio feigned hurt. “That never happened.”

“Uh-huh.”

He tossed the crossword puzzle book on the recliner and walked up behind her, peering over her shoulder. “Hey, you’ve got scribbles. That’s got to be good, right?”

Kimmer couldn’t hear the response, but she didn’t think it was wholehearted agreement.

Rio didn’t either, to judge by the set of his shoulders or the fingers he rubbed over one eye in a tired gesture. But Carolyne didn’t see any of that, Kimmer was quick to note. All Carolyne would have perceived was a slight pause before Rio’s hands landed on her shoulders, massaging the muscles at the base of her neck. “You need a break,” he said. “You can’t just stare at this laptop all day long.”

“I haven’t been,” Carolyne said, and now she sounded miserable, although she let her head tip back to accept the shoulder rub. Probably had her eyes closed, shutting out the world. An odd, sharp pang gripped Kimmer, and after a surprised moment, she recognized it as jealousy.

Screw jealousy
. Kimmer had her own ways of shutting out the world, and she didn’t need another person to do it.

She’d missed whatever Carolyne had said next. Something about going to the picnic the day before, Kimmer thought.

“That hardly turned out to be relaxing,” Rio said. “I didn’t know the town would have its version of our home-town Greeley Gang.”

Carolyne snorted. “I hear those boys are all domesticated now,” she said. “Kids and dogs and white picket fences. And here we are, still footloose and fancy free.”

“I picked the wrong career for anything else.” Rio’s voice held a mixture of resignation and matter-of-fact acceptance. “As for you…you need the right guy, that’s all. Someone in your league.”

“You don’t think that someone is Scott, do you,” Carolyne said, and it came out more edgy than a simple question.

Rio put his hands in the air, a total surrender. “Whoa—you’re the one who used the term ‘footloose.’ Look, let’s just go for a walk tomorrow morning, okay? I’ll clear the area first, and you can check out the fall color and give your brain a break from coding and whatever thoughts of Scott are interfering with that coding. We’ll have some hot chocolate, you can whip my butt over some crosswords, and then you’ll be able to think better.”

She straightened, twisting to look up at him in surprise. Relieved surprise, Kimmer would have said. “You think I’m blocked on this work because of Scott?”

He crossed his arms, looking down at her. “You tell me.”

Carolyne didn’t. But Kimmer could read her easily, and she knew Carolyne’s mind was alight with revelation—and with new purpose. She hadn’t realized her preoccupation, and now she thought she could set it aside by working it through. “You know, I used to like how assertive he is. I used to depend on it. He made things so much easier.”

“All these years, and still the shy one,” Rio teased her.

“I don’t get the feeling that’ll ever be different. Not in social situations.” She hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know if I’ve changed or if he’s just holding on
a little too tight. No one likes to be taken for granted. It’s just…I
miss
him. It’s confusing. If I could just talk to him—”

“That’s not safe,” Rio said. “You know that.” He sighed, and bounced the bottom of his fist gently off the top of Carolyne’s head. “Your heart’s too big, Caro. You feel things too deeply.”

She snatched at his fist and then, when he eluded her, poked him sharply in the belly with one finger, unheeding of his pathetic
oof
noise. “It takes one to know one.”

Rio made an inarticulate noise, followed instantly by, “I’m going out to check our little corner of the world.”

Carolyne twisted to watch as Rio went out of Kimmer’s line of sight, headed for the door and, she supposed, his shoes and jacket. “Go ahead,” she said. “Run away. It’s because I’m right and you know it.”

Inarticulate noise number two.

BOOK: Exception to the Rule
9.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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