Troublemaker

CHAPTER 9

ON MONDAY MORNING WHEN BO LEFT HER BEDROOM and looked down on the whole lower floor from the stairs, she realized that she was becoming accustomed to seeing the tall man sprawled asleep on her sofa. “Sprawled” was the operative word; he slept with one long leg draped over the sofa back, and the other either stretched out or with that foot planted on the floor. Given his height and the length of the sofa, he didn’t have much choice. It would be a red-letter day when he was able to climb the stairs and sleep in the guest room, in a real bed.

She thought he looked some better-not a lot, but some. His color wasn’t as gray, and though he’d slept a long time after sitting out in the sunshine yesterday, at least he’d been able to make the effort. Just two days before he’d had difficulty shuffling to the bathroom and back.

His appetite was improving, too. Every day he was able to eat a little more. She was beginning to feel a bit invested in his condition, and that disturbed her. She didn’t want to get to know him on anything more than a superficial level. She wanted him to get well and get gone with as little impact on her life as possible other than the very welcome addition of a hundred and fifty thousand to her bank account.

She had to admit he was playing it smart, keeping things low-key. She thought he was normally a take-charge guy accustomed to command, but he was careful to not be demanding. Though occasionally some impatience leaked through, he never let it become more than a leak. Likewise, several times he was a tad grouchy, but the grouch never escalated into anger. After the choking incident, they both worked to keep things under control, and she was appreciative of his efforts.

Tricks, however, knew no boundaries. He was a new playmate in her world, and she was determined to make him play. She bounded down the stairs now, full of energy and enthusiasm, and raced to the sofa to push her nose into his armpit before depositing her tennis ball on his chest. The ball rolled off and she pounced on it with joy.

He groaned and swung his legs down as he eased to a sitting position. “Hey, girl,” he croaked in a rough morning voice, giving Tricks a quick rub behind the ears as she brought the ball back to him. This time it landed between his spread legs. He quickly grabbed it before she darted her nose toward the ball to show him where it was. Bo stifled a snicker. He’d learned the hard way.

He got up and headed for the bathroom as she started the coffee. They muttered “Morning” at each other, then Bo took Tricks out. Coming back in, she opened the refrigerator to stare at the contents, wondering what she was going to prepare for breakfast. She’d spent a small fortune on groceries just three days before, so why was she having this problem? Because she didn’t usually cook breakfast, that was why. Normally she’d eat some granola and drink coffee while she worked.

Okay, something that didn’t take a lot of time, because she had work to do. She threw some bacon into the microwave, scrambled some eggs, and slapped slices of bread into the toaster. Breakfast would take ten minutes, max.

As she was plating the eggs, reality hit her smack between the eyes.

She’d been busy, pressed to lay in adequate supplies for him, and she’d been cooking for him, doing his laundry. She’d been knocked off her stride by his arrival, then the bakery incident, and all the extra work that taking care of him entailed. That was the only explanation she had for the fact that she’d asked almost no questions, had no idea really who she’d let into her house, knew nothing about him other than the scant information he and Axel had given her at the very first.

Well, that was easily remedied. As soon as he came out of the bathroom, freshly showered and shaved, dressed in an olive-drab tee shirt and black cargo pants that barely hung on him even with a belt, she said, “Are you a spy or something?” What he was was important because that was the reason why he was so thin, why he was here.

He flicked a glance at her but didn’t pause as he went to the counter and picked up the cup of coffee she’d set aside for him. “Starting to have some questions, huh?” He leaned one hip against the cabinet and eyed her over the lip of the cup as he sipped.

“A bit late, but yeah.” She wondered if he’d answer any of her questions, or if she could believe him if he did. Spies lied for a living, right?

“No, I’m not a spy.”

“If you were, you’d lie,” she pointed out as she divided the slices of bacon onto their plates, then got out another plate and began buttering the toast and stacking the slices on it.

“True. Though if I were, you’d be smarter not to point that out.”

His calm admittance was either annoying or gratifying, and she couldn’t decide which. She wanted to believe him; she wanted to think she was doing a good thing, even if she was being paid well to do it. Too bad there was literally no way she could know for certain; all she could do was go with what she thought was most probable. “I think it’s too late for smart-you’re already here. But if you aren’t a spy, then why were you ambushed?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. We don’t know.”

She put down the butter knife for a sip of her own coffee while she considered that. “You work for the government, so you assume it’s job related. Could it be personal?”

“Not likely.”

“You’ve lived such a pristine life, huh?”

Amusement quirked his mouth. “I didn’t say that. But I don’t have any psycho exes, haven’t gotten into any fights with the neighbors, anything that could be a trigger. I’d been out of the country for a few months, and after I caught up on my sleep, I went fishing. Someone hacked the state files and tracked me using my boat registration number. Let’s eat while we talk; our food is getting cold.”

He set down his coffee and picked up the plates of eggs and bacon, taking them to the table. When he’d first arrived he’d looked like a wreck, not anyone’s idea of a James Bond type, but with just a few days of recuperation and steady food he was moving better, she thought, still slow but with more confidence. She was beginning to see an animal grace in the way his muscles worked that reminded her all over again that this man lived a life that was totally alien to hers.

She pushed away the thoughts about how he moved and worked through what he’d said. If the attack had been personal, then almost assuredly the attacker would have known where he lived and wouldn’t have had to hack any files. “Okay, so it’s the job.”

“Yeah. And the shooter was Russian mob, but he’d hired out for an outside job.”

That stopped her. She set down her cup and stared accusingly at him. “You said you didn’t know who shot you.”

“Clarification: we know who did the shooting because I nailed his ass. What we don’t know is who hired him. Whoever it was could get inside state files, which in itself isn’t that hard, but our-ah-agency files were also hacked, and that not only took a high level of expertise, but also knowledge that the files even exist.”

That information gave her pause. “Nailed his ass” was a euphemism, she assumed, for “killed.” This man had killed. Deep down she’d known it, simply from the way he’d gone for her throat when she’d startled him, and also because he’d been shot. She’d never before known anyone who was shot. Accidents happened, and people were shot because they were involved in crime or someone close to them was, but she got the feeling firearms and violence were a constant part of this man’s life.

She blew out a breath. “You said you aren’t a spy, but you said ‘agency.’ Are you freakin’ CIA, or not?”

“Not.”

“Then what are you? Or is this one of those ‘I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you’ deals?”

“No, I’m not covert, or black ops. I’m former military-”

Boy, was that a surprise. Not.

“-but now I’m paramilitary. More freedom to act. We’re organized into teams, government sanctioned, and we handle crises before they blow up into catastrophes.” While they were talking, she’d gotten the plate of toast and jelly, and he’d made a return trip for the two cups of coffee. He set hers beside her plate. She took the seat she always took; he slid into the one he’d appropriated, to her right. For the first time she wondered if he’d deliberately selected that particular seat because it faced the windows and door. He was unarmed so she didn’t know how much good it did to be able to see any approaching danger-not that they had to actually see if anything or anyone was outside because they had Tricks, who could hear things way before they could. She was an excellent alarm system.

The alarm system, attracted by the food, came to the table and curled up on the floor beside Bo’s feet.

“So do you think this was connected to your last mission, whatever it was?”

“Not likely.”

Impatiently she said, “Do you have any idea?”

“No. I’ve been over and over everything I did that day, and nothing pings. I talked to four people, unless you count the cashier at the supermarket where I stopped, which would make five. There was nothing unusual about the four, nothing that has shown up in Mac’s investigations. But because the agency files were hacked, that means someone knew what I do for a living and where I work.”

His delivery was calm and analytical, punctuated by bites of food. He sounded more as if he were discussing an academic problem than something that had almost gotten him killed.

She didn’t understand that perspective, unless being shot at was so commonplace he took it for granted. She couldn’t imagine that kind of life, or the type of person who deliberately chose it. “If it isn’t personal, then it’s either something you did, or something you saw-either on the mission or after you got home. Common sense.”

“I know, but I got nothing. If I saw something, I didn’t know what I was seeing so it didn’t register. Nothing about the mission was unusual. There were screw-ups, but there are always screw-ups, and none of them were major. We went in, we got the job done, we were sent to another hot spot, then to another, and seven weeks after we left, we made it home, everyone alive and in relatively good shape.”

She was operating from a position of ignorance, so there was nothing she could offer him in the way of possibilities that he hadn’t already thought of-he, and Axel, and probably a whole bunch of other people. She was also not entirely accepting of everything he told her, and she saw no reason to be coy about it.

“You could tell me anything,” she pointed out conversationally. “I have no way of telling whether or not you’re lying. For someone in your occupation-if that really is your occupation-you’re being very open about it, not just with me but with Jesse too.”

He sipped his coffee, then shrugged. That was twice he could have been using the coffee as a blind to hide his expression, or as a subtle diversion. She’d never before thought of drinking coffee as an evasive action, but with him she was beginning to think she needed to view everything through that filter. “You’re not very trusting,” he finally said. Evidently she wasn’t as good at those diversions and hiding her thoughts as he was.

“That’s a good thing,” he continued. “You’d have to be a fool if you took everything at face value. What you said is true enough. But as a team leader, I have both the authority and the training to make field decisions. If I hadn’t brought Jesse into the loop, he might have triggered some alarms by poking where he shouldn’t have-am I right? He didn’t seem like the type to give up if he wanted to know something unless he had a compelling reason not to.”

She wrinkled her nose. “No, you pegged him right.”

“As for you-Mac and I discussed how much you could be told, and he said he’d leave it up to me.” He reached for the jelly to slather some on a second piece of toast, the first time he’d eaten extra. His forearm brushed her arm and automatically Bo drew back, a frisson of alertness shooting along her nerve endings. She couldn’t have said why; she’d touched him before, helped him into the house, but-that was her touching him. This was the first time he’d touched her.

On one level, her alarm felt silly. She wasn’t afraid of him, didn’t think he was a rapist or anything like that; if she had, no way would he be staying in her house. But on a very basic level her instincts told her something else, that he was like a tiger in a zoo: under control at the moment, but still a wild animal.

She glanced up and saw shrewd awareness in his blue-lightning gaze, as if he’d correctly tagged her reaction. This could get awkward, considering he’d be living in her house for an unspecified time-if she let it. She was more inclined to be up front.

“Don’t take it personally. I’m cautious that way.” In her experience, romantic entanglements were unreliable and more trouble than they were worth. Her parents’ examples were proof enough, but she’d tried marriage herself only to have it fall apart within a year. She’d learned her lesson; she was better off on her own, relying only on herself.

“So you aren’t afraid I’ll try to jump you?”

Humor was in his eyes now, and she snorted. “The shape you’re in? I could take you.”

“As humiliating as it is to admit, yeah, you could.” His gaze darkened. “I hate being this weak. I’m working on it, though; I estimate it’ll be another two or three weeks before I can start any real workouts.”

Was that a warning, or casual conversation? If she’d ever had any real skills at deciphering personal dynamics, they were rusty now from disuse. She’d be on firmer ground if he were a dog. She opted for casual conversation. “There’s a gym in town. Not the best, but at least it’s a gym. And I have a treadmill tucked in the storage under the stairs; I can get it out when you think you’re ready.”

“Thanks. For now, my next goal is climbing those stairs. No offense, but your sofa is killing me.”

While Bo was doing her morning work, Morgan walked outside, both to give her room to concentrate and for the joy of getting out in the fresh air and sunshine and pushing his body a little. Getting back into shape wasn’t going to just happen; he’d have to work for it, maybe harder than he’d ever worked before, because he couldn’t remember ever being this weak before. He was already getting stronger, probably because he was eating more. Bo wasn’t a fancy cook, but he wasn’t a fancy eater; give him a good hamburger or spaghetti dinner any day, rather than some frou-frou arrangement of two green beans, a mushroom, and an ounce of sautéed chicken.

Because it would only be fair, when he was able, he intended to take over some of the household chores. He could vacuum with the best of ’em, and do laundry. From what he could see, she had almost no down time, unless you counted when she took the dog for walks.

Carefully he walked to the edge of the woods, then turned and looked back at the barn-house. It was an unusual place for an unusual woman. He was a man who liked women, so he pondered his hostess. She had walls-serious walls. Some women had walls because they were afraid, but he didn’t sense any timidity or uncertainty in her. She was self-contained, confident in who she was and the choices she made, alone and happy to be that way.

He liked that about her because clingy, dependent people annoyed him. His own nature was to take charge and get things done, which was why he was in the GO-Teams to begin with. He liked the adrenaline rush, but he also liked the sense of accomplishment, of being able to do things the ordinary person couldn’t do. He put his ass on the line every time he went on a mission; nothing about indecision and weakness appealed to him, no matter how it was packaged.

Bo’s packaging was on the skimpy side, but appealing for all that. She was a little taller than average, thin, with long arms and legs, and no boobs to speak of. If she was bigger than an A-cup, he’d kiss her ass-and enjoy doing it, because though she might be skinny her ass had a definite curve to it. Her face was faintly exotic, all big dark eyes and a wide, soft mouth, more appealing than pretty. There was that word again: appealing. And he didn’t need to think about how appealing she was. He was here to recuperate and wait for Axel’s trap to be sprung, then he’d be gone. He’d enjoy some flirtation, the zing of sexual attraction, if the circumstances were different. They weren’t. There wasn’t any point in thinking about Bo’s curvy little ass.

Instead, he should spend his time going over and over everything that had happened the day he’d been shot, trying to spot the pertinent detail that had so far eluded him. Being relegated to the position of bystander rubbed him wrong. He was accustomed to swinging into action and doing what needed to be done, to being the bullet instead of the bait. He wanted to be doing something, anything, other than sitting with his thumb up his ass. He felt useless. Hell, he was useless. If anything happened, he wasn’t certain he could save himself, much less anyone else.

Look at him now: he’d walked maybe fifty yards, and he was exhausted-though that was an improvement because when he’d arrived last Thursday, he’d needed help just getting into the house, and to the bathroom. It galled him that he needed to rest before he could make the return fifty yards.

At least he was upright, and in the sunshine. The bright heat felt good on his skin. He stood there listening to the birds singing as boisterously as if they were drunk, and his mind slipped back to that day.

Congresswoman Kingsley was at the top of his list for somehow being behind all of this, but he had to admit she was there solely because she was a politician. Other than that, he couldn’t think of anything she’d said or done that was out of the ordinary. There was also her husband, Dexter the lawyer. Politician, lawyer to the power brokers-was there much difference between them? Again, Dexter hadn’t done anything other than become a lawyer.

He replayed his chance meeting with them, everything they’d said, anything he’d seen, and nothing popped.

Next on his list was Brawley, who had made that phone call immediately after seeing him. But Axel had managed to trace the call, and the only call Brawley had made in that time frame had been to his wife. After checking out both Brawley and the wife, Axel had found nothing. They were regular citizens, with nothing suspicious in their backgrounds. They’d raised a couple of kids, had a few grandkids, went to church.

The last person on Morgan’s list was the one he was most reluctant to think about: Kodak. He and Kodak had been in so many firefights together he couldn’t say who had saved the other’s life the most times. Kodak knew where he lived, wouldn’t have had to hack any files to get his address… and yet, Kodak was sharp enough to have done exactly that as a means of throwing suspicion away from himself.

But then he came back to the same bottom line he’d reached on the others: he couldn’t think of any reason why. From Axel’s interrogation of Kodak after the ambush, he knew that Kodak had indeed had a lady companion that morning, that he’d spent the day with her. She’d gone home after an early dinner. Everything looked normal; there were no suspicious calls made to or from Kodak’s cell-or even his lady friend’s cell-and no sudden transfer of funds from his bank to that of Albert Rykov.

They hadn’t even been able to track the money backward. Rykov had made a sizable deposit, but it had been in cash at the Bank of America ATM on Pennsylvania Avenue. Security cameras had recorded it; Rykov had been alone. The money was a dead end. It wasn’t even gratifying to know that someone had paid twenty thousand in cash to have him killed.

Everything led to a dead end. No one he’d seen that day had said or done anything suspicious. He was no closer to figuring out who’d tried to kill him now than he had been when it first happened.

He heard a muffled but happy bark and turned to see Tricks barreling toward him, tennis ball in her mouth, which explained why her bark had been muffled. Bo was following behind. Tricks reached him and dropped the ball at his feet, then took off running. Careful to keep his balance, he bent to pick it up and hurled it over her head. It bounced, she leaped and caught it, and immediately she froze in place with her head proudly lifted, waiting to be praised.

“Good girl!” Bo called, clapping her hands. “That was a beautiful catch.” She reached him and said, “You’ve been out here a while. Are you okay?” Her dark eyes were calm, revealing nothing more than a casual concern.

“Yeah, just thinking.”

“You didn’t move for a good forty minutes. Do you want to go back in before I take Tricks for her walk?”

Meaning she wasn’t certain he could make the short trip on his own and didn’t want to leave him there until she got back. The reminder of his weakness frayed his temper, and he started to snarl an answer before catching himself. Snapping at her wouldn’t help him recover any faster, no matter how much it galled him to have to accept her help.

On the other hand, maybe there was an upside to this.

He said, “My knees got a little shaky. I thought I’d rest a while before trying to get back to the house.”

Strictly speaking, none of that was a lie. His knees had gotten a little shaky when he’d walked out. He’d also rested. But he could easily make the return trip to the house-okay, if not easily, at least without falling on his face.

“Lean on me,” she said without hesitation, though again there was nothing to read in her face that hinted at any great concern. She stepped close and shoved her shoulder against him the way she had the day he arrived, her right arm around his waist. He looped his left arm around her shoulder and let a little of his weight rest on her as they slowly walked back to the house, Tricks prancing in escort.

He looked down at the top of her head, at the sun gleaming on the thick, rich darkness of her hair. She didn’t do anything special, he didn’t think; her hair reached the middle of her back and all she did was pull it back and clip it at the base of her neck. If she wore any makeup, he couldn’t see it, though he wasn’t exactly an expert in the makeup department. He noticed lipstick, or if a woman wore enough eyeliner that she looked like a raccoon. Other than that, he was a guy, which meant he was fairly oblivious.

Her skin was smooth, with a healthy sheen to it. A faint peach-hued flush had warmed her cheeks. Beneath his hand the bones of her shoulder felt fragile, not much thicker than a child’s. There was nothing childlike about her, but the feel of her shoulder clasped in his rough fingers made his stomach tighten because it reminded him that she had jumped headlong into a fight without regard for her own safety, that she’d been punched in the face by some low-life son of a bitch who needed to be shown a thing or three about what happened to jerks who hit women.

“Are you okay?” she asked again, frowning as she slanted a look up at him, and he realized his breathing had gone deeper and faster as anger bubbled his blood.

“I’ll make it,” he said roughly, sidestepping the question. Yeah, he was okay. He made himself a promise: Before he left this place, he’d make it his mission to track down that bastard and make him wish he never saw Hamrickville again.