He remembered that she was wet. And had been shivering. And had had a hell of a bad day. All things considered, she was hanging in pretty well. Actually, damned well.
“There’s a bathroom and bedroom upstairs you can use,” he told her, even as he watched Matthews go over and test the front door, then push the curtain aside to take a peek out the window.
Wendell settled down in one of the chairs, her eyes on Jess as she headed for the stairs. Jess’s back, which was turned to them, was ramrod straight. Her head was held high. She walked slowly, but her gait was surprisingly steady under the circumstances. He was guessing that it cost her to keep it that way.
“You have an alarm system?” Matthews turned away from the window, attracting his attention. Mark caught just a glimpse of the obsidian blackness beyond the glass. At just after eleven p.m., there was still a lot of night to go. A lot of hours in which anything could happen. The thought made him antsy.
“No,” he answered.
“That would be us.” Wendell’s voice was dry.
“Any other means of egress?” Matthews asked.
“Basement door.”
Matthews said something back, but Mark missed it, following Jess with his body as well as his eyes now over to the stairs, which were narrow and steep. Mark came up behind her as she paused with one hand on the newel post before attempting the ascent.
“Want some help?” he asked in her ear.
She shook her head, didn’t give him so much as a glance. “Nope.”
Okay, she was clearly still feeling waspish.
Squaring her shoulders, she started to climb. Mark stayed where he was in case he was needed, watching her plant one foot after the other on the treads with steely determination. The effort it cost her was apparent in her tight grip on the handrail and her slight hesitation between each step. His instinct was to run up behind her, pick her up despite what he was sure would be her protests, and carry her to the top of the steps, but he resisted. She would be angry. And embarrassed. While he didn’t mind making her angry—she was cute when she was angry—he didn’t like the idea of embarrassing her in front of the others.
But his eyes never left her.
Despite the business-like suit, she looked delicate. Fragile even.
Narrow shoulders, tiny waist, slim calves above the idiotic high heels.
The thing that struck him most though, hit him as kind of a revelation.
She had a nice ass.
High and tight and round as a basketball. With just enough of a feminine sway as she climbed the stairs to really catch his attention.
Sexy.
That was the thought that was ping-ponging through his surprised brain when Fielding walked into the room and said, “So, Ryan, you want to give us an overview of what’s happened?”
“Yeah,” Mark answered, even as Jess paused and stiffened. What was going through her head was as plain as if she had turned around and yelled it at him:
Don’t tell them what I told you.
Which he had no intention of doing, if for no other reason than she’d asked him not to. Anyway, he believed in erring on the side of caution. He trusted these guys, but . . .
There was always a
but.
Always.
“Bathroom’s first door on the right,” he called up to Jess. “You can use the bedroom beside it.”
“Great. Thanks.” She started moving again, still without looking at him. In female-speak, this meant he was still in the doghouse with her, as he knew from long and sometimes bitter experience with the species. “I should be down in a little while.”
“Don’t come back down. Go to bed. Try to sleep. Unless something changes, we’re fixed here until at least morning.”
“All right. Good night, then.”
Mark didn’t realize he was still watching her until she gained the top of the stairs and walked out of sight, still without so much as a glance over her shoulder. Then, collecting himself, he turned to find three pairs of eyes looking at him. Wendell’s, at least, were bright with speculation. He wondered if she was just more observant than the others, or if there really was such a thing as feminine intuition and if he was witnessing it at work. Frowning, hoping his little mental digression on the state of Jess’s posterior had not been obvious, he moved back into the center of his living room and put Jess out of his mind. With Zoey weaving in and out around his ankles, he got back to business, giving them a carefully edited account of the evening’s events. They listened intently, which was what he expected. As part of the team that had been on duty that fateful Saturday night, Wendell, Fielding, and Matthews had all suffered in the backlash of the tragedy, remanded to desk duty by the director for the duration of the investigation. Above and beyond providing firepower if needed, they were thus more than ready, willing, and able to help him try to figure this thing out.
They were eager. Their careers had been damaged, too.
“Wendell, I need you to check on Marian Young’s condition,” he concluded, looking at her as she sprawled out in the chair.
Ladylike
was not in Wendell’s vocabulary, and he kind of liked that about her.
“Will do, boss.” She got to her feet, running her hands over her hair, and headed for the kitchen, presumably to make the necessary calls.
“If somebody really wants to kill her”—Fielding straightened away from the wall he ’d been leaning against and jerked his head upward to indicate Jess—“she ’s not going to be hard to find. It’s kind of an open secret in the Service that you’ve been keeping an eye on her.”
“Fielding’s got a point.” Matthews rose from the couch. “This house is bound to be a target.”
“That ’s why you’re here,” Mark said. “Tomorrow we’ll move her. We just need to keep her safe for tonight.”
“No worries, then.” Fielding grinned and patted the Glock holstered at his waist. “Bring it on. I even brought an extra clip.”
That was actually pretty funny, considering that Fielding was notorious for running short on ammunition during training exercises.
“Marian Young’s dead,” Wendell announced, returning from the kitchen. “Arrived DOA at University Hospital.”
The tension immediately ratcheted up again.
JUST BECAUSE HE WAS
a suspicious bastard at heart, Mark waited until he was alone to make a quick phone call. It was to a friend at the FBI; it was made on Wendell’s phone, which he filched from her pocket when she removed her jacket and hung it in the hall closet (he didn’t want to use his in case it was being monitored, and he figured Wendell wasn’t likely to check her own outgoing call history anytime soon); and his request was quick and to the point: He wanted somebody to check the rear of the burned-out Lincoln for any kind of collision or other damage that might have forced it off the road.
That done, he returned the phone to Wendell’s pocket. Grabbing a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, he exchanged a few words with Wendell and headed upstairs.
There was one more quick question he needed to ask Jess before she went to sleep.
18
S
he was shivering when she stepped into the shower, from fear and delayed reaction and God knew what else. Plus, her back ached. Her legs ached. Her head pounded. Collapsing where she stood was starting to feel like a real possibility.
Only she wasn’t going to let that happen. If ever there was a time to be strong, this was it. Gritting her teeth, she turned on the taps and stepped under the spray.
What she wanted more than anything in the world was just to be able to go home. To take a shower in her own bathroom, crawl into her own bed, and pretend that none of this had ever happened.
If she could only turn the clock back to last Saturday night, she would never, ever, in a million years have picked up that phone.
But she couldn’t turn back time, she had picked up that phone, and here she was.
Taking a shower in the bathroom of a hunky Secret Service agent she wasn’t even sure she could trust.
While jumping at every stray flutter of the shower curtain or unexpected sound in mortal terror that somebody might be trying to kill her again.
Besides Ryan, there were three other Secret Service agents downstairs. Which, on the face of it, might seem like a good thing. Jess was unconvinced. Maybe these three were, as Ryan seemed to think, good Secret Service agents.
And maybe they weren’t.
And that didn’t even factor in Secret Service agent number four, Ryan himself.
He
didn’t want to kill her, she was almost sure.
So why, in that case, hadn’t she told him that she suspected the Secret Service itself was involved in this?
The answer was dismally apparent: She might trust Ryan, but not enough. She still harbored that wiggly little smidgen of doubt where he was concerned. Maybe he was just pretending to help her while setting her up for something big; maybe, if he knew she suspected the Secret Service was part of what had happened, he would stop pretending and get on with the something big, which presumably would include her death.
You’re paranoiding yourself out here.
She was so tired that trying to figure anything out was useless, so she quit. In an attempt to empty her mind, she deliberately focused on the here and now. The hot water helped, chasing away the shivers and calming the worst of her nerves. In fact, it felt better to Jess than anything had in ages. She stayed under the steaming cascade for a long time, washing her hair, soaping herself from head to toe, then letting the hot water run over her until the worst of the stiffness in her back and legs had washed away.
Two pain pills from the prescription that had been given to her in the hospital, which was now in a small bottle in her purse, taken before she had gotten into the shower and finally kicking in, helped, too.
When she got out at last, she wrapped herself in a threadbare orange towel from the linen closet beside the sink, wrapped another around her hair, then wiped the worst of the steam off the mirror. Having taken her contacts out pre-shower, her reflection was pleasantly blurry. Fishing her glasses out of her purse, she put them on and immediately made a face at herself as she came into focus.
Still the same old ordinary four-eyed Jess, plus a few yellowing bruises and a line of stitches above her eye.
What, had she been hoping for something different?
If she was, it was because of Ryan, and that could stop right now. She wasn’t dumb enough to start fantasizing about him again, even if she did get a little thrill from just remembering what it felt like to be held against that big, strong, muscular chest in those big, strong, muscular arms.
He was holding you in his arms because somebody’s trying to kill you, fool.
The thought served as a figurative slap in the face. She kicked Ryan out of her head. She needed to try to come up with a plan to survive, not moon over some hot guy.
Maybe I should just tell everything to the media and get it all out there. If everybody knew what I know, no one would have any reason to want to kill me. Would they?
Unwrapping the towel from her head, Jess turned that thought over in her mind and arrived at no definitive solution. Like everything else, the matter was best left to be mulled when she wasn’t so tired. Accordingly, she put her efforts into getting ready for bed. The bathroom was clearly used frequently by a female, most likely his daughter. There was a hair dryer in the closet beside the sink and she got it out, retrieved a brush from her purse, and started blow-drying her hair. The process was short and simple, a blast of hot air here, a few twirls of the brush there, and it was done: presto, chin-length bob. Then she brushed her teeth with the travel toothbrush she always carried in her purse and some of Ryan’s Crest toothpaste, applied a little cherry ChapStick, rubbed on a little lotion, rinsed out her undies, wrapped them in a towel and tucked them under her arm along with her suit to be hung in the bedroom to dry, and headed out the door.
The hall was dark. The only illumination was a yellowish glow from the living room below. She could hear people talking—the Secret Service on the job. The thought made her shiver. Fortunately, the door to the bedroom was only a yard or so to the left. Too bad she hadn’t thought to leave on the light.
“Hey.”
Coming unexpectedly out of the dark just as soon as she walked into the bedroom, Ryan’s voice made her jump. Luckily, she recognized the deep, drawling timbre of it before her body could go into full crisis mode. She recognized him, too, in the solid long shape sprawled out on the still-made bed.
“What are you doing in here?” She glared at him, which was, of course, a waste of a good glare because he couldn’t see it properly. He reached out a long arm and switched on the lamp beside the bed, revealing the boxy bedroom with the headboard-less double bed pushed into the corner beside the single, heavily curtained window.
Then the glare worked.
“Waiting for you. Look, I brought you some water.” He held up an unopened plastic bottle, then put it back down on the bedside table. He ’d lost his jacket, and his shoes, and his white shirt had come untucked. The sleeves were rolled up almost to his elbows. “And some pj’s.”
He got to his feet as she eyed the new-looking pink flannel pajamas that lay across the foot of the bed. They had a high neckline and a ruffle down the front, and were covered with dancing black poodles. In tutus.
These had to be his daughter’s, although they were awfully childish for a fifteen-year-old.
“I’m not sure your daughter would like me wearing her pajamas.”
“Don’t worry about it. She ’s never worn them. I bought them for her for Christmas, and she took one look and practically gagged. She made it pretty clear she’ll never wear them in this lifetime.”
The man was clearly clueless. His daughter’s bedroom was just across the hall, and the door was open. Unlike the rest of the house, which was done in soothing if uninspired earth tones, it was painted deep purple and decorated with Day-Glo band posters taped to the wall. Having glimpsed that, and the picture on the living-room mantel of the pretty blond girl on horseback wearing jeans and a black skull-and-bones tee, Jess could see how the pink pajamas might not be quite to the teen’s taste.