The Protector (9 page)

“Yeah, I think someone paid him to send it,”
Ringo
agreed.

Ignoring both of his subordinates,
Caine
snatched up the report coming in from NCIC. “Patel comes up clean,” he relayed, stating what they’d already guessed.

The UPS driver was not a suspect. The kid who mailed the box knew nothing, was nobody, as their facial recognition system attested when it flashed NO MATCH.

SSA
Caine
wiped his sleeve across his forehead. “We’ve got nothing,” he admitted, looking stunned. “They bombed our fucking safe house, and we don’t have a fucking lead!”
   

“ERT might come up with something,”
Ringo
offered.

The Emergency Response Team was analyzing what was left of the bomb.
 

“Why don’t we ask our asset if he recognizes any of our suspects,” Jackson suggested.

Caine
glared at him. “Of course we’re going to ask him.” He started printing off the picture of the unidentified youth. “You two make yourselves useful,” he said, thrusting the photo at
Ringo
. “Go canvas the neighborhood and be quick about it. Then we’ll go after our client.”
  

On his way to the exit, Jackson stopped and backtracked. “Did you say our client, sir?”

“That’s what I said, Rookie.”
Caine
sounded smug.

“How are we supposed to find her?” Jackson had assumed—and been glad about it—that
Eryn
McClellan was as good as gone.

Caine
sent him a small, superior smile. “I’m tracking her,” he admitted.
  

Ringo
had also circled back. “How?” he demanded.
 

“Bought the dog a special collar last week.
Looks just like the old one but it has a SIM card which gives us the dog’s global positioning. You can buy them at any pet store.” Turning to his open laptop,
Caine
tapped a key and displayed a map with a neon dot blinking at its center. “They’re 125 miles southwest of here, outside of a town called Elkton.”

Jackson looked from the neon dot to
Caine’s
satisfied smirk and arrived at a startling conclusion. “You knew her father would come for her.”
    

“Suspected,”
Caine
corrected. “What I
knew
was if he came for his daughter, he’d also take the dog.”
 

“Yes, but why would we want to take her back?”
It didn’t make sense to Jackson.

Caine
flushed with anger. “We’re the Counterterrorism Division, Maddox,” he said through clenched teeth. “If we’re going to find the terrorists, we need to find the girl.”

Not necessarily, but he wasn’t going to argue with his boss. “We can’t force her to return to us, sir,” he pointed out.
  

“Who says we’re going to force her?”
Caine
glanced at the flashing light, his face pinched with disapproval. “I just want to know who this soldier is. If he looks legit, maybe I’ll forget that he destroyed federally owned property.”

“He didn’t bomb the safe house,” Jackson insisted, thoroughly disillusioned. He had assumed when applying to the FBI that they operated with the integrity as the Marine Corp.
Evidently
not.

“Prove it,”
Caine
shot back.

Jackson sighed. McClellan’s elite soldier wouldn’t like the FBI hounding him. Nor would he appreciate being framed for something he hadn’t done. Having insight into the man’s lethal skills, Jackson liked even less the idea of pissing him off.

**

Eryn
couldn’t sleep. She lay on a lumpy mattress, staring at grotesque shadows creeping across the attic’s sloped ceilings while replaying the day’s events in disbelief.

If she hadn’t heeded her instincts and fled the safe house, she could be dead right now.
They used me as bait!
The realization filled her with fury. Had Jackson known? How could he have been so thoughtful and considerate and still have left her there to fend for herself?

She wondered if her entire life would be like this, running from place to place in fear.
 

Whenever she closed her eyes, all she could envisioned was the terror
Itzak
must have felt when the taxi driver caught up to him. Recalling his parting words to her, he must have known the man would come after him with a knife. And now, because of her, her student was dead, buried in a Muslim cemetery in the heart of the city. She’d wanted desperately to attend his funeral, but, of course, the FBI agents had convinced her it wasn’t safe.
 

Eryn
kicked off the covers. Heat from the woodstove was rising through the cracks in the floorboards, turning the attic into an oven. Damn Isaac Calhoun for dumping her pills into the toilet! She’d be sleeping like a baby if he hadn’t.

Straining her ears, she listened for him, but all she could hear was Winston snoring next to her bed and firewood crackling in the woodstove downstairs. A creaking sound outside her window had her sitting up abruptly.

What was that?
Wind howled and the panes of the window rattled. The creaking came again. Her overwrought imagination spawned visions of terrorists skulking around the cabin, dousing it in lighter fluid. All it would take to end her life would be the strike of a match.

Frightened by the direction of her thoughts, she leapt from the bed and squirmed into her jeans. Another gust of wind sent her flying down the stairs in fight or flight mode. As much as she resented Ike for taking away her only comfort, he was her protector.

But he wasn’t there. A knock at his bedroom door resulted in silence. Her clammy skin sprouted goose bumps in the cooler air. “Ike?” When he didn’t answer, she slowly turned the doorknob. His bed, illumined by moonlight, lay empty and still neatly made.

She whirled to face the empty cabin. Fear skated up her bare arms. Where was he? Crossing to the window, she went to peek outside. In that same instant, a silhouette loomed against the glass, snuffing out the moon glow.

With a muffled scream,
Eryn
jumped back.

The boards on the porch creaked. Then the door groaned open, admitting a breath of cold air.
Eryn
ducked behind the recliner, not altogether certain who she was hiding from. Winston came barreling down the stairs to defend her, and Ike’s “Easy boy,” had her melting into a boneless puddle on the floor. It was just Ike.

The light came on. A pair of running shoes walked into her line of sight. She craned her neck to find him frowning down at her.

“What’s wrong?”
  

“N-nothing,” she said, coming unsteadily to her feet. “I didn’t know that was you outside.”

His gaze skimmed over her camisole, reminding her that she’d discarded her bra so she could sleep more comfortably.
 

“What do you need?”

“I can’t sleep,” she said, folding her arms against his all-seeing gaze. “You shouldn’t have thrown away my pills.”
 

He shrugged. “Nothing I can do now.”

Heartless man.
You could reassure me. “What time is it?” she asked.
 

He glanced at his watch. “Zero hundred hours.”

Midnight.
“And you haven’t even gone to bed yet?”
  

He pushed his hands into his pockets. “Don’t sleep much,” he admitted.
 

“Then you can’t sleep either.” Maybe they could play a board game or something.

But the way his eyes touched on her bare arms told her he was thinking of something else. Her body prickled with sudden awareness and not a little caution.

“Does anyone know I’m here besides my father?” she asked, bringing up the Commander intentionally. Ike’s allegiance to her father would keep him from doing anything inappropriate.
       

“Just Cougar.”

“Who’s he?”

“Former teammate.
You were supposed to go with him,” Ike added, with resentment that cast light on what had put him in such a foul mood earlier. “But he never showed up. His wife is sick. She’s dying.”

“Cancer?” she guessed, with a twinge of compassion for the faceless Cougar.

“Yeah,” he said.
   

She thought she detected some compassion in the single syllable. “But, I’m safe here, too, right?” she added, still craving reassurance.
  

His gaze dropped to the strip of bare flesh above her low-rise jeans. “Go back to bed,” he said, in lieu of an affirmative.
 

The inference that her virtue might be at risk made her pulse quicken. Did he honestly find her alluring? He sure had an odd way of showing it.

“You mentioned books I could read?” she said, taking her chances.

He swiveled wordlessly toward his bedroom. Returning with a handful of books, he dumped them on the coffee table.
 

Her stomach rumbled. “And I don’t suppose there’s something I could eat?”
   

His gaze jumped at her so predatorily that
Eryn
caught her breath. Perhaps it was reckless of her to push him, but she was more intrigued than frightened by his body language.
 

Turning toward the kitchen, he grubbed inside a cupboard, coming away with a foil-wrapped nutrition bar which he thrust at her en route to the door. “Go back to bed,” he repeated, exiting swiftly.

A puff of cold air left her shivering and alone. Just as I thought, she considered with a rueful smile. He wouldn’t dare lay a hand on General McClellan’s daughter.

Bending over the pile of books, she refused to admit to a tiny pang of disappointment.
 

A vision of
Eryn’s
ripe breasts, so clearly outlined beneath her strappy little top burned the backs of Ike’s eyeballs. Their generous shape, the shadow of her hardened nipples, abraded his nerves like the rasp of a cat’s tongue.

Christ, it wasn’t like she needed to be any easier on the eyes.
 

Stalking to where his driveway began its descent, Ike gnawed on the hankering inside of him,
then
pushed it ruthlessly aside. Wanting more than what he already had was dangerous. It upset the delicate balance he had struck for himself, here in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
 

Up here on Overlook, nothing ever happened to disturb the peace. Nothing but his dreams forced him to recall the past. In the present time, his only preoccupation was survival, which he excelled at, which was why he taught that skill to others. In his solitude, he could almost convince himself that the enemy no longer existed. After all, Osama Bin Laden was dead. A significant dent had been put into The War on Terror.

Only,
Eryn’s
circumstances indicated otherwise, reawakening the disturbing feeling that the enemy was still out there, multiplying.
 

Tonight he needed the tranquility of the Blue Ridge to settle his perturbation. Drawing a deep breath, he centered his awareness then expanded it outward into the chilly night, seeking unexpected disturbances.

The gurgle of Naked Creek, the whisper of the wind, the scent of granite and mountain laurel soothed his disquiet, as they always did. But the faint rumbling of a large gas engine, idling near the base of his mountain, roused it again.