MARCUS (Dragon Security Book 4) (4 page)

Midmorning, I pulled off the road to get some gas. Another car pulled up alongside mine, a dark SUV driven by a man who looked vaguely familiar. He had dark blond hair and intense blue eyes that seemed to look through me when he offered a slight nod of greeting. I quickly filled up my car—the borrowed Ford Escape that Blake had given me to use—and pulled out, anxious suddenly to get to the safety of the secluded cabin.

The town of Ruidoso was beautiful. There were quaint little shops along the main street and several restaurants, all nestled under the beautiful architecture of a large casino. I stopped at a small grocery store and stocked up on necessities, texting Blake as I made my way through the aisles.

“They’re calling for a storm in Ruidoso,” he said when he called in response to my text. “Be sure to check the wood pile the moment you get there, just to be sure you have enough wood to make it a few days. If not, call my caretaker. He’ll be happy to come up and do whatever you need.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful, Cadence. And enjoy yourself.”

“First time in here?” the cashier asked as I piled my purchases onto the counter.

“It is.”

“Where you staying?”

“A friend’s cabin a little further up the mountain.”

“Well, be careful. They’re calling for blizzard-like conditions beginning tonight.”

I just nodded, not even sure what that meant. I’d never seen snow before. I grew up on the beaches of Galveston. The worst storm I’d ever seen was the hurricane that hit a few years back, the winds strong enough to knock a couple of the neighbors’ houses off their pilings. But snow? I had no idea what that was like.

The air was cold as I walked out to the car, shoving the groceries into the backseat of the Escape. And there was a smell that made my head spin just a little bit. It was fresh, light. It felt good in the same way that the heavy, humid air of Houston made me feel weighted down. Anchored, really.

I drove the ten miles left on my GPS, following the winding mountain roads until they dead-ended outside a private drive. I got out and unlocked the gate with one of the keys Blake had given me, leaving it unlocked as I drove through. I figured I’d be back down in a day or so. I could lock it up then.

The house appeared at the top of a steep drive. It was a lovely, low building that was clearly built to disrupt the landscape as little as possible. It was made of logs with a minimum of glass, set back in a stand of tall pine trees. I parked under the low carport and made my way to the door, loving the creak and snap of the wood planks under my boots. The door opened easily, the cabin welcoming me with a warmth that was quite welcome. Blake had said that the caretaker would stop by to turn on the heat. He clearly had.

The inside was large, but like Blake had said, it was all one room. There was a full kitchen to the right of the front door, complete with a low bar with handmade stools set in front of it. The appliances were modern, but they were designed to look vintage. There was a gas stove, a microwave, and a large refrigerator with a pull handle to open and close it. Directly in front of the door was a cozy sitting area arranged around a large potbelly stove as promised. There was a small fire burning in the stove already, the flames glowing in the low light. Then, against the left wall, was a large, vintage bed with wrought iron headboard and footboard, the intricate pattern designed into them almost flowery, a surprising touch for someone like Blake Zimmerman.

What surprised me the most, I suppose, was the large, claw foot tub that sat against a back wall. It was completely exposed, completely uncovered. Not a lot of privacy in this place. But, again, it was clearly designed as some sort of lover’s getaway. I wondered how many times Blake had brought Annie up here. A lot, I hoped.

I wanted to believe Annie and Blake had a good marriage. I wanted to believe they were deeply in love with one another. But there was this niggling thought at the back of my mind that made me wonder.

I went back to the car to gather the groceries, putting away the cold things before returning for my luggage. As I made the last trip, snowflakes began to fall from the low hanging clouds. I stood in the open for a long moment, my head turned toward the sky, watching the flakes fall, feeling them brush against my face like the touch of a lover’s fingers. It was sensual, the most erotic touch I’d experienced in quite a while.

My grandmother, God bless her soul, was a sickly woman the last fifteen years of her life. I spent most of my evenings in both high school and college rushing home to care for her. She could have hired a nurse’s aide to come to the house and care for her, but she preferred my touch. So there wasn’t a lot of time for romance in a time when it was normal for most girls to explore their sexuality.

No, my time for exploring my sexuality came when I was twenty-two, watching grown men undress in the doctor’s office in preparation for a physical exam. There were dates, a few here and there. Guys Lettie often set me up with. Usually self-centered guys who were more her type than mine. But one guy, a year ago, had seemed promising. He was an English teacher at a local high school. But after a few dates, he announced that he’d met a woman at his mother’s church and he thought he preferred her company to mine. There hadn’t been anyone truly serious since then.

I was…strange. Men found me odd. I never really understood why, but I accepted that I was likely going to be alone for a long time. Maybe that was why I’d jumped at the chance to give Blake and Annie a baby. Maybe I figured that since my own dreams were going to be on hold for a while, I should help someone else achieve their own dream.

It sounded self-centered and really arrogant when I said it like that, even in my own head. But it was about as close to the truth as I was ever going to get.

I went inside the cabin, pulling the door tight and flipping the deadbolt. I didn’t expect anyone else would be this high on the mountain in this weather, but it never hurt to be safe.

Dinner consisted of a nice stew out of a can and a piece of bread off of a long baguette. I curled up on the couch and watched Netflix on my cellphone. I wasn’t much of a television person, but Netflix had changed my television watching horizons. No longer did I have to fit my schedule to someone else’s. I could watch whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. It was marvelous. I think even my grandma—who was very much against sitting all day in front of what she called the “idiot box”—would approve.

And then it was time for bed. I was exhausted, but sleep would come. I stood at the windows, watching the snow fall. The ground was already covered in a nice sheet of white. It was peaceful, somehow. Then I turned to the bed, still hesitating for reasons I didn’t want to explore. I grabbed a knife from a drawer in the kitchen and slipped it under my pillow.

Just in case.

Marcus

I shivered, the iPad I was trying to hold in front of me shaking so badly that I couldn’t tell what was going on in the real world of the
Housewives of Orange County
. If I’d known we were coming up into the mountains, I might have grabbed myself a winter coat while I was following the target around the mall. But how was I supposed to know where we were going when I wasn’t allowed to approach the target?

I thought she might recognize me when we stopped for gas. I was going on fumes and had no choice but to fill up beside her. I almost lost her as it was since it took the damn SUV twice as long to fill as it did her little Ford Escape. It was just bad luck, her seeing me in the restaurant and then again there at the gas station. Megan wouldn’t be impressed, but I made here, didn’t I? Even called in like I was supposed to, even though it made me feel like a child reporting in to mom and dad.

But now…the snow was coming down in sheets and I was fucking freezing! I couldn’t keep the engine running much longer. I’d run out of gas and wouldn’t be able to make it back down the mountain. It seemed to me I had two choices: I could go into town and find a motel, hoping that Cadence would be a good girl and stay put. Or I could go knock on the door and tell a few lies to get inside. Either one had its risks. If I went into town and there really was someone else trying to kill Cadence, I could be leaving the door wide open for that person to make an attempt. But if I knocked on the door and she didn’t let me in, I’d have to blow my cover. The client wouldn’t like that.

But Megan told me to stay close to the target no matter what.

I sighed as I threw the SUV into gear and drove up the steep drive. What choice did I have?

I had to pound on the door for several minutes before she finally cracked it.

“Who are you? What are you doing out here?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, inclining my head slightly. “I was up here visiting a friend and I got lost coming down the mountain. And now the storm…”

She looked over my shoulder at the heavily falling snow. She bit her lip, clearly not comfortable with letting me in. But then I shivered under the wet material of my light leather coat.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, moving back to slip the chain from the door. She opened it and gestured for me to come into the cabin. “It’s not much, but I guess you can sleep on the couch.”

“Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

I kicked the snow from my boots and walked into the wide, one room cabin. It was cozy and warm. The bed was unmade; the indentation of her body made it quite obvious that I’d pulled her out from its warm blankets. I felt bad.

“I’m borrowing this place from a friend, so I don’t know if there are spare blankets. I assume so…”

She was babbling. I just watched her, letting her nervousness play itself out.

“I’m not a serial killer,” I finally said to stem the flow of words, holding my hands up, palm out, in a gesture of peace. “I promise I’ll just snooze on the couch and then I’ll be on my way as soon as the storm passes.”

“They say it’s going to be blizzard conditions, whatever that means.”

“Let’s hope not. The forecast is always much worse than the reality.”

She agreed with a little incline of her head. “Anyway, let me look in the bathroom. There’s a small closet in there that might have some blankets.”

She disappeared through a small door at the back of the cabin, coming back a minute later with two blankets and a pillow. I took them from her, our fingers brushing. She blushed, turning away from me for a second. Then she turned back, pointing a slim finger in my direction.

“Do I know you?”

I shook my head. “I have one of those faces.”

She studied me for a long second, and then nodded. “I suppose so.”

She crossed the room back to the bed, curling up on her side. I saw her hand slip under the pillow, her muscles flexing slightly. I wondered what she had under there. A gun? I hadn’t seen any permits in the file Megan gave me on her. A knife? Probably the more likely scenario.

At least I knew not to catch her by surprise.

I unfolded the blankets and lay them on the couch, making myself a little bed. Then I slipped out of my jacket, hiding the holster holding my gun on the inside, and lay it over the back of a chair.

“Night,” I called to her.

“Goodnight.”

I lay there for a long time, listening to the silence. My thoughts went places I hadn’t allowed them to go in a long time. I once had a happy life. A good life. Some would say I had the kind of life that was once considered the ultimate American dream. My dad owned his own business. My mom was the chairlady of all the local charities. My older brother was an academic star, winning a full ride to Yale based on his SAT scores. And I was the football star.

I went to college on scholarships, too. Football all the way. And I had the perfect girlfriend, this blonde, blue-eyed beauty that all the other guys wanted. Kelly O’Brian. She was the hottest girl on campus and she was mine. And then it was my senior year and the NFL scouts were coming around. They were hot to put me in the draft the moment I was eligible, but I waited until my senior year, determined to get the education my mom so badly wanted for me. It was my chance to have everything I’d ever wanted, and I couldn’t imagine anything could get in my way.

But then there was Blake Zimmerman.

A midyear transfer, Blake came to Notre Dame the end of my junior year. The moment he stepped onto the football field, I knew he represented a challenge. But I had no doubt I could beat him out. But then things changed and Blake ended up in the NFL while I went to the Marines.

And here I was, sleeping in his cabin with his surrogate. Whoever said karma didn’t exist? That it wouldn’t one day come back to bite a man in the ass?

I fell asleep with a smile on my lips.

When I woke the next morning—after the deepest sleep I’d experienced in quite some time—it was to the soft cursing of a feminine voice. Cadence was bent low in front of the potbellied stove, using a long stick to stir up the coals.

I could see why Blake would choose Cadence as his surrogate. She was a pretty girl. She had curves on her curves, a body that screamed sensuality in a way that was far different from the eroticism a woman like Kim Kardashian, or Annie Zimmerman, might scream. She was subtler, but just as exciting. And she had a face that made a man either want to devour her or protect her from the world around her. She had delicate features, soft features that were like beauty that had been must slightly muted. Auburn hair that flowed in big, soft waves. Green eyes that seemed to soak in everything around her. And a smile that made my heart hurt.

She was Blake’s type. There was a slight resemblance there to Kelly.

Or was that just me?

“What’s the matter?”

She jumped, nearly falling face first into the stove. She caught herself, swiveling on her heels.

“The power went out at some point during the night. Without it, all we have is this stove to keep us warm.”

I sat up, pushing the heavy blankets off of me. The fire was going out because she threw a new piece of wood in it and it was wet from the snow. I gently pushed her out of the way and filled the lower portion of the stove with dry paper and other pieces of kindling sitting nearby and lit it, hoping it would dry out the wood enough to help it catch. After a few minutes, it did just that.

“You have to be careful about putting wet wood in there.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“You might want to bring a few pieces of wood inside and set them aside so they can dry out before you need them.”

“Okay.”

She got up and went to the backdoor in the kitchen, yanking it open. The wind blew a cloud of snow in, catching her by surprise. She gasped as the cold hit her full in the face, forcing her bathrobe back, revealing the thin nightgown she wore underneath. I got up to help, but she clearly didn’t need me. She simply brushed the wet from her eyes and leaned out, grabbing a handful of wood that might have been too much for a different woman to carry. But she held them tight against her chest, managed to not only shut the door, but lock it too, and then carried the wood to the little rack by the stove.

She brushed her hands clean when she was done.

“Want some breakfast?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She snatched a dozen eggs from the fridge, warming an iron skillet on the stove before breaking them inside of it, seasoning them lightly with salt and pepper. I sat at the counter and watched her work, finding it oddly entertaining.

“You were visiting a friend?” she asked.

I nodded. “A guy I was in the service with. He comes up here during the winter to get away from it all, you know?’

“I know exactly.”

“What about you? Why would a lady come up here alone?”

“To get away from the city for a while.”

“Sounds like fun.”

She shrugged. “I’d almost rather be at work. It seems like fun, the idea of having the time to sit around and read or whatever. But when you have the time, you suddenly realize that having too much time is just as bad as not having enough, you know?”

“I do.”

She flipped the eggs and put a couple of slices of bread into the toaster. “Do you like yours over easy, or hard?”

“Hard.”

She nodded, focusing on the eggs a minute longer.

“Do you have family?”

“Like a wife and kids?”

She nodded again.

“No. You?”

“No, not me.”

“It’s easier to run away like this when you have no one.”

“There’s more reason to run away when you’re alone, I think.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I had some family issues once that made me want to run for the hills.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. I just joined the military.”

She looked me over for a second. “I thought so. You have that look about you.”

I reached up and ran my hand over my slowly growing buzz. “The haircut?”

“That and the tucked t-shirt. There aren’t a lot of guys who do that anymore.”

I nodded. “Marines are hard about that. It’s kind of ingrained in everything I do now.”

“Not such a bad thing.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.”

She set a plate in front of me and then served herself. I watched her move around the kitchen as she grabbed a couple of glasses and took a container of orange juice from the fridge.

“We’ll have to stick everything out in the snow if the power is off too long.”

“There are some benefits to this weather, I suppose,” I said.

She came around the counter and paused to look out the window. “Doesn’t look like it’s slowed down at all.”

“I’ll go out to check how deep it is here after breakfast.”

“If it’s too deep…”

“Sorry. If I’d realized there was such a storm coming, I would have stuck it out at my buddy’s a while longer.”

“Don’t worry about it. Might be nice to have a little company for a day or two.”

“How long were you planning on being up here?”

“Don’t know. A couple of weeks at least. After that, I’m not sure.”

“Hiding from someone?”

She smiled, a little bit of a blush touching her cheeks. “No, nothing like that.”

“No violent ex-boyfriend in your past?”

“No.”

The blush deepened. She was clearly flattered that I would even think that.

“But I bet there’s a whole stable of exes looking for you,” she said.

“What makes you think that?”

She glanced at me her fork raised to her lips with a small bite of egg congealing on the tip of the tines. “A guy who looks like you? I would assume you’ve had plenty of girls and I’m sure most of them wouldn’t mind hooking up with you again.”

“That’s quite an assumption.”

“Am I wrong?”

I studied her face a second. “Would it surprise you to know that the love of my life, the girl I thought I was going to marry, cheated on me with a guy I thought was my friend?”

“It would, actually.”

“Why? Because of the way I look?”

She regarded me for a long moment, her eyes moving slowly over my face and then my chest, stopping before they went much lower. She blushed again, her eyes falling to her plate.

“I guess I just assumed that people who look like you don’t have the same problems that we mere mortals tend to run into.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. She got up and rounded the counter, shoving the last of her breakfast into the trash.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to offend.”

She shrugged, grabbing the iron skillet and scraping the egg remnants out of it.

“I just…I think you’re beautiful. More so than I could ever be. So, maybe I look at you the same way you look at me.”