Naked Risk (Shatterproof #3) (10 page)

Wow. How to answer that, considering everything that had happened in the last
half day or so? I thought for a moment, and then realized that the answer was so obvious that I had almost not even realized it.

Me:
I’m fine. Better than fine actually. Best I’ve been in a long LONG time.

Her:
Damn, I’ll miss you. Good luck and stay in touch every once in a while.

Me:
I will.

I didn’t know if I would, or even if I could, but what was I supposed to say? Her next text contained an emoticon of a heart. I closed the message app and slid my phone into my pocket.

My bookshelves. I couldn’t leave without one more look at my collection. I walked over to it, dragging a finger along the spines of some of my favorites, taking a few off the shelves just to hold them one more time.

They
weren’t just things to me. They weren’t just paper. They were things that had saved my life—or at least my sanity—at different times. They contained interesting people. People I liked, people I hated, people I could have been friends with, people I would have detested being around in real life…but all interesting in their own way, all having either taught me something about myself or the world.

Somehow, I would replace them. But
there was one I couldn’t do without. I grabbed my copy of
Cat’s Eye
and slipped it into my bag.

It felt odd leaving th
e apartment for the last time, but I didn’t linger in the doorway, didn’t say “goodbye” out loud or anything like that. I did feel my throat start to tighten and just the slightest suggestion of tears preparing to gush from my eyes, but I took a hard swallow, blinked a few times, and fought them back.

What awaited me in the future held enough hope to eclipse any sadness I felt at abandoning my tidy little life here.

I locked the door, put the key under the mat, and left my old home behind.

Forever.

Ready for a new life.

Whatever it was going to be, and wherever it was going to be.

Chapter Twenty –
Watts

I sat in the car trying to deal with the fact that my worst fear had been realized—I had put her in danger. She was safe now, and I was taking extra caution to make sure that remained the case until we were
safely on our way to our next destination.

I had thought about getting in touch with McDowell to deal with him in some way. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I saw him, so considering the fact that Catherine and I were pressed for time, perhaps it was best that I didn’t see him again.

Ever.

Catherine walked slowly and confidently down the steps of her apartment and back to the car. I knew then that she’d done just fine and that my concern about her being overcome with fear was totally unfounded. I always knew that she was stronger than she thought, and now I was realizing she was stronger than
I
thought.

“R
eady,” she said as she pulled the seatbelt around her and buckled it.

That single word carried enormous power.

She was ready, in that she’d gone into her apartment, did what she needed to do, and was ready for the next step.

She was ready, in that she had said goodbye to her old life, had no regrets about her decision to come with me, and was ready for a new life.

. .
. . .

A little more than thirty minutes later, we were at my place in Baltimore. The trip had gone faster than usual, as I expected it would have in the very early hours of a Monday morning.

“I only need to grab a few things,” I said, “but I’d like you to come inside with me.”

She got out of the car and followed me to the porch. As I put the key in the lock, I glanced over at Mrs. Woodall’s house. I figured there was little chance she was awake, but in the event that we woke her somehow, it could slow us down.

We slipped into the house.

“Can you get a fire started?” I asked Catherine, pointing to the fireplace.

“Uh, sure.” She
look confused.

“Everything’s there. Doesn’t have to be a big fire. Just get one going.”

She hesitated before saying, “Okay…”

I went into the basement
and got both of my laptops, all of my paper files, and some of the old material from inside a trunk—fake IDs, fake passports, fake gun licenses, and all manner of documents I’d used throughout the years to get me into and out of situations.

I brought it all back up to the den, where Catherine was sitting on the hearth, admiring the fire she’d created.

I gave her all of the papers and photos, asking her not to look at them, but just feed them into the fire. I sat on the floor and removed the hard-drives from the laptops, planning to toss them off into the woods by the side of the highway on the way to the airport.

There was nothing else in the house that needed to be disposed of.
Nothing sensitive or incriminating, anyway. I would be leaving everything behind, but it would be nothing more than a nuisance when the property management company stopped receiving rent checks and sent someone over to find out why. I wasn’t concerned about it any more than Catherine was concerned about her apartment.

“I’m going to grab a couple of days worth of clothes,” I said. “Do you want anything to drink? Eat?”

“No,” she said, watching the fire.

“I’ll just be a few minutes, then we can get going.”

I started to leave the room, one foot on the hallway, when she called out, “Watts?”

I turned around.

She looked at me and then started laughing. Lightly at first, then harder. “Never mind.”

“What’s so funny?” I said, cracking a smile of my own, if for no other reason than the sight of her laughing was one of the best things I’d seen in a while.

Or maybe we were both so exhausted we were on the edge of delirium.

“Nothing, never mind,” she said.

I stepped back over to her and knelt beside her. “It’s going to take a little time for us to get used to each other’s quirks and pet peeves, but I’ll tell you one of mine now. I hate it when someone starts to tell me something and then stops.”

This only made her laugh harder.

“What is it?” I said, cracking a smile of my own.

She put her hand over her mouth, trying to suppress what had turned into nearly giggling at that point. “It’s stupid, but now that everything’s changing and we’re starting…whatever it is we’re about to start…can you
drop that fake American accent?”

I chuckled. “I think I do a pretty good one, actually.”

She reached for my arm, putting her hand on it. “No, you do. It’s just that I want to be with the real Watts. And the real Watts is British, so I think you should speak how you really speak.”

“Okay, you got it,” I said, dropping the American accent and sounding as British as I had in about a decade. “Better?”

She nodded.

“Good,” I said, “now let me pack some things and we’ll be out of here.”

I was halfway down the hall when she called out, “Plus, it’s hot.”

“Don’t tempt me, Catherine, or we’ll end up losin
g time because I’ll have to fuck you on the floor in front of that fire.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“No problem,” I said. “After today, you’ll barely be able to keep me off of you. Or out of you.”

I was back downstairs in just a few minutes, a change of clothes in my bag, ready to go.
I got my keys out of my pocket, and that’s when the front door opened and I saw him walk in.

Howard McDowell. Standing right there in my living room. Smiling. “Mr. Watts.”

“Go wait in the car,” I said to Catherine.

“Why? Who is that?”

I moved Catherine behind me, then walked us briskly toward the front door, keeping myself between her and McDowell the entire time and never taking my eyes off of him.

The smug fucker stood there smiling.

“Watts,” Catherine whispered. “What’s going on?”

I looked outside to make sure no one else was out there. It looked to be clear.

“Go wait in the car. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

Fear had taken over her expression—her eyes wide, darting back and forth, her mouth slightly open.

“Go,” I said, and she went.

I closed and locked the door, then turned to see McDowell sitting in one my chairs.

“I wasn’t going to hurt her,” he said, grinning. “Relax, Mr. Watts. I’m just here to give your final orders.”

My
final orders
.

As much as he knew about me, he had no idea that I h
ad already made plans, and Spencer had taken care of some of the details for me, at least as it pertained to giving advanced notice to Mr. Atherton.

“You didn’t happen to make any coffee, did you?” McDowell asked.

He was always arrogant, but this was as brazen as I’d ever seen him.

I shook my head.

“Ah, well, all the same,” he said, crossing his legs. “This won’t take long. A private plane awaits you—just you, not Ms. Kolb—at BWI,” he said, referring to the Baltimore airport not far from my house. “You’ll be at Mr. Atherton’s farm by ten o’clock this evening, local time.”

I walked toward a chair that faced him, considered sitting down, but remained standing.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

He furrowed his brow and cocked his head to the side a little. “Why did I do what?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

He stared back at me, his face blank, giving nothing away.

I wasn’t going to waste any time, and I didn’t care if he tried to avoid giving me honest answers, but I knew he would tell me. I knew because he was just that arrogant. He never passed up a chance to assert his power over people, reminding them that he was in control. I knew there was no way he would be able to resist telling me what he had done and why he had done it.

He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together.

He shrugged and said, “Why did I do it? Because I had to. Because I could. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

“There’s a hell of a lot more to it,” I said. I felt my jaw clench, my teeth almost grinding before I opened my mouth again. “You put her in danger.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He smirked.

“Why the roses?” I demanded, my voice getting louder.

“Pretty girl, pretty flowers…” McDowell’s voice trailed off as he shrugged. “Speaking of which, I suppose I can assume from the order of events here that she didn’t thank you for the first one.” He smiled and shook his head slowly. “I can’t imagine it—giving a girl a rose and not even getting a ‘thank you’ from her.”

I wasn’t really looking for an answer as to why; I had a pretty good idea that he’d done it to scare her
, creep her out, cause some kind of turmoil. All I wanted was confirmation that he’d done it, and he had just given it to me.

Add to that the not-so-subtle insult and it was classic McDowell.

“I realize my effort backfired, to say the least,” he said. “It only sent her running faster into your
loving arms
.”

Just as I had suspected, he wasn’t holding back any information. He liked telling me what he had done.

“How did you get the guy’s information?” I asked.

McDowell crossed his arms over his chest in an easy,
relaxed way, not a defensive posture. “You used the computer in the bookstore to login to that site, so my guy found her username and followed it back to Jim Udall.”

When he said “my guy,” I knew he was talking about his own computer guy, not Justin.

I thought of all the emails McDowell had no doubt read—all the intimate and graphic ones Catherine and I had exchanged.

I shook my head. “Un-fucking-believable, you know that?”

He extended his arms, palms-up. “I do what I have to do.”

“And that included paying a
sick fuck like Udall to go into her apartment?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t know any of that was going to happen. But, as they say, shit happens. Call it…collateral damage.”

That was about the angriest I felt during the conversation. I felt my body go tense, rage building inside of me, but I didn’t want to lose my cool. I needed to be in control for whatever might happen, and I could tell this was coming to an end soon, one way or another.

“Mr. Watts,” he said, leaning back in the chair again, “You made a terrible mistake getting involved with Ms. Kolb. You put yourself and others in jeopardy. You talk about the danger she was in because of me? You should consider the danger I was in because of you.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “You can’t justify what you did to her. We weren’t sent here to hurt innocent people, and we weren’t sent here to turn on each other. You did both.”

He started to stand. “We’ll deal with this when you get back to—”

“Sit down,” I said, reaching behind my back, retrieving my pistol and pointing it at him.

He stayed in a half-standing position for a few seconds, and then stood up completely. “What are you going to do, Mr. Watts? We both know you’re not going to shoot your superior—”

The bullet pierced his forehead and he was dead instantly, even though his body took a couple of seconds to react and fall back in the chair.

. .
. . .

When I got outside and into the car, Catherine said, “Who is that guy?”

“Nobody. Don’t worry about him.”

I hadn’t lost it with McDowell: my heart rate hadn’t sped up, my breathing hadn’t changed, and there was no need to calm myself before going out to the car. I knew Catherine would ask about him, and I figured she might also ask why he hadn’t come outside with me, but she didn’t. She’d accepted my non-answer to her one question and she’d let it go.

While
McDowell’s private plane awaited me at BWI in Baltimore, Catherine and I drove back to Washington. Dulles International Airport was busy on a Monday morning, even at 5:45 a.m. I bought two first-class one-way tickets, and within two hours we were in the sky and off American soil.

When Catherine saw where we were going, she couldn’t have been more excited. I played along, not wanting to spoil it for her, but I had a little trepidation about what was to come once we landed.

. . . . .

“Are you kidding me?” Catherine said, looking over at me, her mouth agape. “This all looks better than anything I’ve ever had in a restaurant.”

“Nobody does it like British Airways,” I said.

An attendant came around and lowered our trays, placing a white table cloth over it, and setting the silverware and empty glasses as we looked over the menus. Catherine looked at me out of the corner of her eye as this was happening. I watched her face, loving how she was enjoying herself.