Glass Houses (31 page)

Passengers were stacked in the doorway, waiting to move forward yet again. Aiden looked behind him, expecting to see Chris, but it was several seconds before he caught up.

“You scared me,” Olivia said to him. “I thought you were with us.”

Chris waved his ticket stub and said, “Dropped the thing.”

He got an entirely different kind of look from the attendant, a long, long, interested look.

Their seats were one row from the back. Chris had mentioned going for an upgrade to first class, but they’d decided they ought to be where they’d attract the least attention.

Chris sat on one side of the aisle and Aiden sat on the other with Olivia beside him in the window seat.

Chris leaned toward A
iden and said, “Fish and Moody—
and Fats—are out there. You can see the security checkpoint. That’s where they are. No Ryan, of course. He’s gone back into his hole.”

“They’re going to make it,” Aiden said, careful not to let Olivia hear. “You can bet Ryan told Fats about the bag. We’ll have to be damned sure he doesn’t get to it first.”

“Good job I’ve got my badge,” Chris said. “It’ll come in handy if we end up tackling the guy.”

“Yeah.”

Olivia’s fingertips dug into his forearm. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” she said. “Tell me.”

Still leaning toward them, Chris said,
“
Don’t worry. Everything’s okay.”

She grasped the back of the seat in front of her and peered over the top.

Aiden decided he must be hysterical because her stealthy pose made him want to laugh.

“Don’t,” Chris said to Olivia. “There’s nothing, really. Just sit down.”

Aiden shook his head. “Fats Lemon was at security. So were Fish and Moody.” Olivia wouldn’t thank anyone for treating her like a kid.

She plopped into her seat, rolled her eyes, then pushed herself up by the arms to continue watching people coming down the aisle. Aiden ea
sed her down again and said, “
Relax. Whatever comes, we’ll handle it.”

“We most certainly will, but not without very careful planning,” Olivia said. “Depending on where they sit, we’ll have to make sure we get off first. They absolutely won’t want a lot of fuss, will they? Surely—”

“You’re right, sweetheart,” Aiden said. “And there’s nothing we can do yet.”

Olivia picked up his right hand and absently traced one of his old scars. She supported his wrist and studied the open welts there. “We’ll ask for some dressings for these.” She looked directly at him. “We can do that.”

This was their first moment of anything close to being together since Ryan had jumped him. The enemy was at the gate and mayhem waited ahead, but Aiden couldn’t turn from Olivia.

Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone. Her lips parted, and she held the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. There
were good reasons why it wasn’t a good idea to respond to what he felt now. He felt urgent, caught, and he didn’t want to escape, wound up so tight inside that his muscles stung. His jaw locked. He absolutely could not look away.

Olivia, moving suddenly, touching his mouth, shocking him. She said, “I’m sorry I’ve made so much trouble for you, but I’ll never be sorry I met you.”

She might as well have opened him up and taken away the parts he couldn’t live without. For thirty-
six
years he’d watched other men fall in love and envied some of them—but he’d never felt a glimmer of the same emotion himself. Most of him had wanted it that way.

Very gently, he took her forefinger into his mouth. He could hardly breathe. She closed her eyes.

Chris tapped his back. “I think they’re getting ready to close the doors. Maybe we’re safe.”

Aiden released Olivia’s finger and said to her very quietly, “I’m not safe. I’m in a lot of trouble.”

K
itty had her ticket in one hand and her carry-on bag in the other. She stood at a distance, watching the commotion Rupert and Winston were creating.

Fats had said they should all pretend they didn’t know each other. Fine with her.

Rupert and Winnie were struggling to be first through the metal detector. So much for giving the impression they didn’t know one another. Everyone was staring, and a grumbling line of passengers had piled up behind them.

A waving hand caught her attention. Fats indicated for her to board. Suspicion made her hesitate. Why would he want her to board without him?

At last Rupert managed to shake Winnie off and leap through the gate. He picked his bag up from the conveyer belt, then shouted, “No,” when security asked to look inside.

The sensors went off when Winnie passed through the gate. He threw up his hands and repeated the process—including
the alarms. Back he went again and took off his watch and rings this time.

Kitty made sure the hood of the furry white anorak Fats had bought her was pulled well forward. That hunky policeman had supposedly been unconscious, but from what Ryan had told Fats when he’d gone back and found him. Detective Flynn might have managed to peek at her.

“Flight 512 to Seattle is closing. This is the last call for flight 512 to Seattle.”

Rupert berated a woman at security. The occasional word
reached Kitty, “Bloody nerve… people like you…
come
on,
Winston.”

Kitty searched the melee for Fats and finally spotted him. He’d drawn away from the security checkpoint and stood aside, observing Rupert and Winnie.

She turned toward the plane. A United employee was starting to close the door to the jetway.

The sensors blared again.

Kitty stepped backward.

“Let him through, I say,” Rupert roared.

Two policemen materialized from the crowd and bore down on the security area.

Fats was walking away.

She held her throat, but that didn’t slow her racing heart.

One of the policemen said in a deep, rumbling voice, “Cooperate, sir, and you might make your flight. Let’s get this over with.”

While Rupert hopped from foot to foot and slapped his hands against his thighs, Winnie glared at the police and reached into his pockets.

His jaw slackened.

He threw himself around and tried to run, but the police stopped him before he’d moved from the spot. The officer with the rumbly voice patted Winnie down before pulling his hand from his coat pocket.

Women screamed and there was a collective gasp.

Winnie held a gun.

* 
* 
*

T
he instant before the door would have been completely shut, the flight attendant standing there answered a ringing phone on the bulkhead.

Aiden was a long way from the front, but he had a direct view. When the attendant pushed the door outward again, he gritted his teeth.

“Oh, shit,” Chris said.

A woman in a bulky white parka boarded and took a seat in first class.

Final departure preparations were swiftly completed, and the plane pushed back from the gate. Chris ducked his head to see past his two seatmates. He turned back to Aiden and Olivia and said, “They’ve swung the jetway aside.”

Aiden flopped back in his seat, and Olivia rubbed her hands together. “We’ve won,” she said.

Twenty-one

T
he plane landed in Seattle, and tousled passengers jostled each other to empty overhead bins and pushed up the aisle, Chris carried what baggage they had between them. He also had to reclaim the luggage he’d checked before Olivia had interrupted his plans. Twice he’d tried to reach Sonnie from the plane. She wasn’t there, but neither had she checked into the hospital. Despite his comment that he’d take the second item as good news, Olivia felt his anxiety grow.

They allowed the people beside Chris and in the row behind them to go ahead. “The less you crowd the ai
sles, the faster things move,”
Aiden said.
“
A little-known idea that may never gain popularity.”

Olivia rubbed his back. A helpful attendant had produced first-aid supplies and helped Olivia clean and dress Aiden’s wrists. He’d refused to have his ankles touched, pleading that they were already so swollen he’d never get the boots back on if he once removed them. Olivia thought he felt hot, but he brushed her concerns aside. He “never ran fevers.”

Inside the North Satellite, the lights were bright and the pace leisurely in comparison to O’Hare. They moved briskly
and took escalators deeper into the building to catch an underground train to the main terminal.

“First thing we do when we get to Chris and Sonnie’s is take a magnifying glass to those photos,” Aiden said. He wanted, more than almost anything, to know what Ryan Hill either feared or hoped might be in them.
“
We haven’t discussed it, but
I
take it we’ve got a reason not to want the other set of prints in enemy hands?”

“We’ve got a reason,” Chris said at once.

Aiden smiled despite his throbbing ankles.
“
I just wanted to hear that we’re all on the same page. If there’s nothing incriminating there—”

“We don’t want our friends to know it,” Chris finished for him and added, “If they discover they don’t have to worry about that angle, they could complete their business and go into hiding.”

“We could have avoided this angle if I hadn’t outsmarted myself,” Olivia said.

Aiden looked at Chris and said, “Well,
I
guess we’ve all been under a lot of pressure.”

“Yes,” Chris said neutrally. “And we’re almost to baggage claim. Don't worry about it, Olivia. You did what seemed right at the time.”

Olivia nodded and averted her face.

The train traveled fast through its black tunnel. Inside the car, more white lights turned faces into masks. Canned instructions were repeated in English, French, Spanish, and Japanese in a woman’s sweet, high voice.

“Once more,” Chris said, draping an arm around each of them. “Do we have something we want really badly?”

“Yeah,” Aiden said, feeling the flush of the chase, “we want to bring the enemy to justice.”

“You sound like a character in a comic strip,” Olivia said, but she bowed her head and smiled up at him. “You’re right. We want them to
suffer.
And we want to clear our names.”

“Main terminal,” Chris said. “This is where we get off. I hope Sonnie’s waiting downstairs.”

Olivia glanced at Aiden, and he drew his lips back from his teeth in a grimace. They were both worried that Chris’s wife might have needed him when he was out of touch with her.

Baggage claim was more crowded than Chris had expected. “Boss’ll be okay for a few more minutes. Over here first,” he told Aiden and Olivia, making straight for the customer-service desk. He stood there and searched in every direction. It didn’t take an imagination to figure out he was looking for Sonnie. When he didn’t see her, he went for his phone and placed a call.

“Look at that,” Aiden said to Olivia.

She knew what he meant. “He really loves her. From the way he looks, she’s there finally, thank goodness.” Chris’s face had relaxed, and he smiled with pure pleasure.

“They love each other so much. They’ve been through a lot together. Mr. and Mrs. Unlikely some people call them, like Chris’s brother Roy. He did his best to push them together, then couldn’t believe it when it happened. That was in Key West, where Chris and Sonnie met.”

“
And he helped her with something?
”

“
They helped each other. They were both heading for the end of the line.

“
If Vanni doesn’t call fast, I’m calling him and to hell with security. I’ll make up a name. I’ve got to know what’s going on in the department. By the way, that terrific Rover we left behind belongs to Roy’s partner, Bo. I don’t look forward to trying to explain that.”

Chris had hung up. He motioned them to the desk, and within minutes his bag was produced. “I don’t know where my head’s been,” he said. “One of Sonnie’s friends gave a shower for her, and she took Anna.”

“Sorry to interrupt the domestic report,” Aiden said, and he was, “but we should get Olivia’s bag and get out of here. We can’t afford to forget that we could be picked up anywhere if Ryan’s done his worst.”

“
Not unless something’s really changed, and Ryan decided
to risk making this an official investigation,” Chris said, “Last I checked, there hadn’t been a bulletin on you.”

“Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen any time,” Aiden said.

“I sent a bag ahead on TWA flight 1207 out of JFK three days ago,” Olivia told the customer-service representative. “My name is Olivia FitzDurham. It’s a green tartan grip with a shocking pink name tag. That’s to help me see it when it arrives on carousels. It really works, you know.”

“Yes, ma’am,” a heavy-eyed customer-service representative said. She consulted her computer terminal and sighed. “The system’s fluctuating. Keeps slowing down. Come on, come on.” She punched keys.

Chris was silent, but his impatience to leave showed in his repeated glances at his watch.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” the rep said. “Now it’s frozen. And now it’s gone down. I’m sorry. It could be up in five minutes, or an hour or so. We’ve been through this three times this week.”

“Chris should go home,” Olivia said. She was inconveniencing too many people. “You go w
ith him, Aiden. I’ll come when I
get my bag.”

“That’s one of the more stupid suggestions you’ve made,” Aiden said.

Olivia’s cheeks smarted. “Why, thank you, kind sir. Chris, would you please go home to your wife and daughter? I’m embarrassed because I’ve put you out so much.”

“You haven’t at all. And I’m in this to the end. But I would like to check on Sonnie in person. I’ll get a cab and go on ahead, Aiden. Bring Olivia as soon as you can.”

“I should get a room at a hotel out here by the airport,” Olivia said. She desperately needed rest.

Chris shook his head. “You’re both coming to us. There’s a practical as well as a personal reason. Sonnie and I want you with us. And we need to stick together. Don’t forget I’ve got resources at my disposal, too. There are
too many unknowns out there.”

“You’re right, coach,” Aiden said. “Take what bags Olivia’s got. Now beat it. We’ll be there.”

Without argument, Chri
s slung Olivia’s two bags over h
is shoulder, wheeled his own large bag behind him, and set off. He turned back once to wave before hurrying outside. Olivia saw him hail a cab and get in.

“I really like him,” she told Aiden.

“You’ve got great taste. Sonnie had a cesarean with Anna. They’re hoping Chris gets to coach through to the end this time. That’s why he doesn’t want to be out of reach.”

The service rep was on the phone, and the answers she was getting weren’t pleasing her. “How long?” she asked.

Aiden smoothed Olivia’s hair back from her face.

“
That’s a lot of help. Yes, I’ll wait to hear.” The representative hung up. “This is going to take a little while. I’m sorry. Might be a good idea to find coffee or something and come back in half an hour.”

“
Can’t we just go through the bags and get it if it’s there?
”
Olivia said.

The blond woman shook her head. “I’m sorry. We’ve had too much trouble lately with the wrong people taking the wrong bags.”

“Come on.” Aiden took Olivia’s arm. “We’ll be back. Let’s make sure Boss is okay, then get that coffee.”

The baggage area had all but cleared, and the hubbub had faded until the shoes of those who remained clipped noisily on the hard floors. Boss’s travel crate was easy to locate. It was huge. The dog lay forlornly inside, his eyes moving from side to side.

“It’s okay, old fella, we’ll get you out of there as soon as we know we’re leaving,” Aiden said, sticking his fingers through the front grid to scratch Boss’s nose. Boss’s response was to get up, present his back to them and flop down again. Aiden shook his head and said, “Looks like we can’t get anything right tonight. We’ll be back, Boss.”

On their way past the service desk, Aiden inquired for the bag again, only to be told the computers were still down. At
some level he was tired to his bones, and he knew Olivia must be just as weary. But at another level his awareness snapped and felt every nuance in the atmosphere surrounding him and Olivia. He ought to cool it. Their days together hadn’t included a single normal hour. Everything they’d experienced had been extraordinary and played out against a drama most people wouldn’t believe if he tried to recount it.

“Let’s find somewhere to sit,” he said. “Did the coffee idea sound good?”

“No, thank you.”

“Tea?”

She gave him a quick smile. “No, thank you.”

“Somewhere to sit, then?”

“You sit. You need to be good to your ankles. I’m goi
ng out to get some fresh air.”

What was he supposed to say to that? He considered a row of black plastic chairs beyond counters that enclosed the silent and empty baggage carousels. At this time of night the airport was a people-spitting machine in sleep mode.

Olivia didn’t look back. She walked to doors that opened onto a short-term parking area and went outside.

Aiden didn’t want her out there alone.

He didn’t want her anywhere alone—ever.

Deliberately keeping his pace slow, he followed and stood on the inside of the doors. To the right, where she’d be out of sight if he’d stayed where he was, she faced the building and balanced her toes on the curb, then jiggled her heels up and down.

Aiden pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his pants. He probably shouldn’t let her catch him watching her.

Her arms were crossed, her face turned from him. Her breath sent clouds of vapor into cold, f
aintly foggy air. A light on th
e side of the building shone on her head, and he saw beads of moisture glimmer in her hair.

Best just walk away and sit down. She’d be okay.

Olivia wiped a hand over her eyes and kept it there.

Aiden swallowed. They were some pair. People from two
different worlds who had collided like magnetized trouble on a collision course.

The leather pants showed what her preferred shapeless skirts didn’t; her hips were rounded and very, very nice. But he knew that—he’d seen Olivia FitzDurham in nothing at all and she looked the best then, fabulous then.

She was unique. Everyon
e was unique, but Olivia was…
unforgettable.

He turned away and started back toward the chairs. If he could be sure he wouldn’t repeat the pattern of selfishness he’d seen in his father, or the man’s indifference toward his child if Aiden ever had children of his own, he might be thinking about how it would be to come home to Olivia.

His mother had been a sweet woman, passive but concerned for her one child, her son. His father had provided well for his family, in every way but with his presence. Aiden had never caught a ball thrown by his father, or kicked a ball while his father watched, or heard his father cheering at the edge of the pool when he swam in a meet. The man had sought solitude as if he needed it as much as breath. Hiking mountain trails, hunting, fishing, those had been his passions, but never with his son, and his wife wouldn’t have gone anyway. Hilary and Dan Flynn used their son as a messenger between them, not as a symbol of what Aiden had convinced himself had once been love for one another.

But he was okay with all that Cautious about his own involvements because of it—that was wise—but not hung up on history.

How would it be to come home to Olivia?

He grinned and said, “Crazy.”

He really didn’t like her being out there alone.

When he got to the doors again, she’d swapped her toes for her heels on the curb and looked over the almost empty parking area.

Olivia was chilled, but she welcomed something to think about other than Aiden Flynn. Not that she wasn’t thinking
a
bout him, too. She’d rather be inside the building with him,
sitting by h
im even if there was nothing to say—even if he fell asleep again.

The tears that welled in her eyes made her feel angry and sad at once. From the moment she met Aiden, she’d decided she wasn’t the kind of woman who would interest him because he was the type of man women stared at and she was the type of woman men did not stare at.