The Protector (34 page)

Then she pivoted toward the mud room and found her Skechers drying with the laces untied and the tongues hanging out. Feeling guilty and ungrateful,
Eryn
slipped them on without socks. She tied them numbly. Her heart, sitting like a block of ice in her chest, scarcely seemed to beat.
  

How could she leave without saying goodbye to Ike, without explaining or thanking him for everything? Jackson had given her a thirty-minute lead, scarcely any time at all. She would need every second to get as far away from Naked Creek Vineyard as possible.

Please understand.
She sent the message kinetically as she cracked the rear exit and eyed the distance from the house to the trellises—fifty yards, or so.

If Chris’s security system was anything like Ike’s, she might not pull this off at all. But she had to try. Her hero didn’t belong in jail. Ironically, it was now her job to protect him.

Ike awoke to a brisk knock. He jerked to one elbow, noting with a sweep of his eyes that
Eryn
was not in bed with him; the clock by the bed read 4:53 P.M
. ,
and her purse was missing. His heart skipped a beat. “Yes?”

“Isaac,” Chris leaned into the room wearing an urgent expression, “do you know that
Eryn
left?”

Shock hit Ike squarely in the chest and radiated to his extremities. He leapt out of the bed, only to recall that he was completely naked.

“Do you want me to try and stop her?”
  

He tried to think through the memories crowding him. That single tear sliding from the corner of her eye… Had she known she was going to leave him?

“Isaac?”

“No, wait for me.” He jammed his feet into the pants that were several sizes too big for him. Strands of thought caught one upon the other, leading him to a startling conclusion. “She’s turning herself in,” he guessed, threading a belt with fingers that started to shake.

“She took Marie’s cell phone,” Chris added. “I found a note in the kitchen saying that she’d compensate us.”

The sequence of events came together in Ike’s mind.
Eryn
had called the authorities to reason with them, probably, and had realized, too late, that she’d exposed their hiding place. She’d then bolted, no doubt hoping to protect Ike.
 

“God
damn
it!” He stuffed his head into a clean T-shirt.
Why,
Eryn
?
They’d come so close to making a clean escape.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to stop her. He
had
to stop her. With the FBI fiasco all over the news, they’d managed to disclose her whereabouts yet again. No doubt the terrorists who wanted her dead were just waiting for the opportunity to finish her once and for all.

Sprinting past fertile furrows of grape vines,
Eryn
arrived, at last, at the dirt track where the Sheriff had dropped them off earlier. She followed it uphill, where it spit her out on a country road.
 

Looking both ways, she broke right, away from the vineyard, away from Ike. Ignoring a cramp pinching her midsection and the fact that her sockless heels were rubbing the backs of her shoes, she lengthened her stride, drawing on the strength of will that Ike had taught her.

All it took to gain top speed was to picture him behind bars.

Never!
She pumped her arms, sucked more air into her lungs, and stretched the ligaments in her thighs, running as swiftly as she ever had.
  

Rays of late afternoon sunlight combed through the branches of trees that lined the adjacent field. Pastures of bright green grass and wildflowers stretched in all directions, broken up by fences like the one she paralleled.

Sweat cooled her upper lip and trickled down her spine. Her heels began to burn, but she did not slow down.

Just as she approached a crossroad, a helicopter, larger than the one that had chased them earlier, broke over the horizon ahead of her, shattering the bucolic quiet.

Startled, certain it belonged to the search party hunting
her,
Eryn
broke left, onto a rural route where she hugged the shadows of the trees that lined it. Uncertainty had begun to weight her legs, limiting her stride. Tears stabbed at her eyes.

She had no way of knowing if she’d done the right thing. Without Ike, she felt suddenly vulnerable, suddenly exposed. God, she missed him already! The road beneath her feet blurred before her eyes as tears rolled onto her cheeks and dried in the air that sent her hair streaming.

Hearing an engine behind her, she craned her neck to look back. A truck had turned off the road behind her and was drawing nearer. The hope that Ike might be in it made her tremble with hope, but as it overtook her, the driver proved to be a bearded stranger, who gawked at her as he drove past.

The encounter sapped her energy. Loneliness and desolation overtook her abruptly, and she slowed to a brisk walk, peering about, feeling lost. There was no more traffic here, only trees and yards and an occasional clapboard home, nestled in flowering bushes. A steeple rose over the treetops up ahead, and the helicopter sounded farther away.

Ike might well have realized she was gone by now. He would be frantic when he found she’d left.
Furious.
He would search for her.

Please don’t, she prayed, dreading the prospect of him and the FBI converging on her at the same time. There would be a confrontation. Ike would be arrested.

Picturing him cuffed and stuffed into a vehicle, she picked up her pace, hobbling now for the blister on her left heel. As she limped past the church and several dwellings, a dog chained to a tree, lunged at her and barked. The curtains in the window twitched.
 

Feeling eyes on her, she tried to run again. But her energy stores were all used up. Suddenly, the phone in her pocket vibrated. She slowed to a walk and pulled it out. “Yes,” she gasped, expecting to hear Jackson’s voice.

“Where are you?”

Ike’s voice, gruff with urgency, brought her to a halt. She pressed a fist to the stitch in her side and swallowed the sob rising up her throat. “You shouldn’t call me. They’ll find you,” she warned him.
  

“I told you not to do this.” His voice cracked.

Was he furious or fearful?
she
wondered. “I didn’t mean for it to happen,” she cried, desperate to absolve herself in his eyes. “I just had to talk to Jackson, to persuade him to stop chasing us.”

Movement in the corner of her eye drew her gaze toward the house with the dog. An old woman now stood in the shadows of her porch, watching her intently.
Eryn’s
nape prickled. “He told me if I got away from you quickly, he would pick me up and leave you out of this. I’ll talk to them, Ike. I’ll make them see you were just trying to help me.”

“What the
hell
am I supposed to tell your father?” he thundered quietly.

Was that all he was worried about, what her father thought? “I’m sorry.” Regret choked her, making it hard for her to speak. “I didn’t know what else to do! I love you, Ike,” she added, throwing caution to the wind in telling him the truth. “I can’t stand the thought of you getting in trouble because of me.” Tears tracked her overheated cheeks.

The silence on the other end was so complete that
Eryn
glanced at the phone to check her reception. “Ike?”
 

“Just tell me where you are,” he implored, and her heart gave a pang of disappointment. He hadn’t even acknowledged her confession.
   

The sound of an approaching car had her whirling around to see a familiar, green sedan turning the corner and speeding toward her. “It’s too late,” she answered, torn by the possibility that she would never hold Ike again. “They’re already here. Good-bye, Ike. I hope I see you soon.” With profound regret, she ended the call.
 

Ike stared sightlessly out the mud-splattered windshield of Chris’s off-road Jeep. The click against his ear as
Eryn
hung up tore into him like shrapnel. His fist closed over the cell phone until it bruised his palm. At the same time, he savored the words that pillowed his heart against blows of frustration.

I love you, Ike.
How could four small words change everything? Yet, they did. He’d intended, after dropping
Eryn
off with Cougar, to head straight for Canada, where the FBI wouldn’t find him, where his survival skills would serve him well. There on some cold, remote mountain, he would nurse his misbegotten infatuation for a woman he did not deserve.
 

But her words swept away those plans in an instant. They filled him with a sense of destiny and purpose. Knowing
Eryn
loved him made abandoning her unthinkable.

Chris’s knock on the window, startled him back to the present. Ike rolled down the window.

“Did you reach her?” his friend asked. “Are you going?”
 

Ike handed him back his cell phone. “It’s too late,” he conveyed with numb acceptance. “They’re picking her up right now.”
  

Chris’s blue gaze reflected sympathy as they searched Ike’s expression. “So what will you do?” he asked. “Are you still taking off?”

“No.” He realized he had every reason in the world to protect
Eryn
, still. And, given his special skill set, it seemed like fate, for he knew exactly what it would take to liberate her from terror, once and for all.
 
“I have a job to finish,” he added, glancing at the pack on the seat beside him. Everything he needed was there, including a bottle of Naked Creek Vineyard’s 2008
Meritage
. Thrusting his hand out the window, he wasted precious seconds thanking his host properly.

With a wave at Marie, who stood at the winery doors looking concerned, Ike cranked the Jeep’s engine, worked the gears, and pulled
away.
 

Grim but ennobling determination spurred his heart into a trot.
 

All he had to do was kill the terrorists before they struck again.
 

 
Eryn
wilted with relief to see Jackson alone in the government issued Taurus. The sight of Winston in the back seat chased away a portion of her despondency.

“Hop in,” said the agent, his light-colored eyes flicking toward the house with the dog. “We’re being watched.”

Eryn
leapt into the front seat and turned to hug Winston. Her face was still buried in the fur at his neck when the car lurched forward.

“I’m surprised you came alone,” she muttered, sitting back and latching her seatbelt. “I’d have thought the whole posse would come after me,” she added bitterly.
 

With a sidelong glance of sympathy, Jackson executed a three-point turn and took off with a spray of loose gravel. “You hear that helicopter?” he asked, glancing toward the treetops.

“Yes.”

“That’s MSNBC news. If three agents went streaking off to pick you up, they’d be right on top of us.”

Eryn
stared at him aghast. “This is getting national coverage,” she realized.
 

“Correct. That’s what happens when you bring an army into a small town,” he added, mocking the FBI’s tactics. They sped down the country route toward the wider road.
  

“Then why’d you do it?”
Eryn
demanded. “I was perfectly safe with Ike.”

His full lips quirked ruefully.
“Believe me, I’ve tried convincing my boss of that, but he won’t listen to reason. And, unfortunately, Calhoun’s got a glitch in his military record—”