Chapter 23
A quick trip to Stores provided me with a replacement bug detector. On impulse, I also requested a set of bump keys. They didn’t have Holt’s magic O-rings, so I dropped by the local hardware store before steering my car back to my farm.
There I scanned my house, garage, and car with the new bug detector. Its light remained obstinately green, and at last I put it away with a sigh that wasn’t quite relief.
After a check-in with Nichele and a quick lunch, I spent a few minutes researching bump keys on the internet, then used one of my new ones to open my front door lock almost as rapidly as Holt had broken into Dante’s house.
Shit.
I was shopping online for secure door locks when my burner phone vibrated on the desk beside me.
Probably Riel. Let him leave a voicemail. Then I’d have time to figure out my response instead of making a decision on the spot…
With a start, I realized it wasn’t Riel. It was the other phone.
Kane.
I scooped up the phone. “Hello?”
Kane’s voice was taut. “We have a situation.”
“What…” I began, but he was still talking.
“Meet me where you ran through the spider web,” he rapped out, invoking our code from long ago. “Today. The number of times we’ve slept together.”
Before I could gather my thoughts, the line went dead.
“Wait, hang on!” I protested into the silence. “…Shit.”
I pressed the callback button but he didn’t pick up, and after twenty rings I disconnected and stood staring at the phone in my hand.
Had he been attacked and overpowered? Or had he simply ditched the phone as a precaution?
Swallowing hard, I turned the phone over and over in my hands as if it might magically disgorge instructions for what to do next.
Should I call Spider and have him trace the phone? Get on the highway and drive like a bat out of hell to Alicia’s house? To Kane’s condo?
But he hadn’t sounded as though he was in danger. Just… terse. In secret-agent mode. And he’d obviously planned his message so that even if it was intercepted, nobody would know when and where we were meeting.
I leaned back in my chair, frowning. Hell, did I even know? The ‘where’ was easy enough. But when?
“Today; I got that,” I muttered. “But ‘the number of times we’ve slept together’? I guess that would correspond to hours on a clock. Like six times would be six o’clock…”
I trailed off, staring into space. But how was he counting? Times we’d actually slept together in the same bed? That would make it…
I counted in my head. Four. If I ignored the technicality that he’d been the only one sleeping while I lay awake having panic attacks.
But what if he meant the number of times we’d had sex? Muttering, I enumerated the list on my fingers. “In my bed that first time when I thought he’d been killed; in the woods; in his bed when he seduced me at his place; twice when we thought we were going to die in that plane crash; three times at his place in Silverside when I thought I’d have to marry him…”
I suppressed a shudder at the memory of how messed up I’d been then. Thank God Arnie had rescued me. And now, after months of therapy and soul-searching, I knew that if Kane and I ever had another relationship conversation I could be completely honest with him.
Probably.
Mostly.
But he was with Alicia now, so that wouldn’t happen…
Pulling my thoughts back to the situation at hand, I frowned at my fingers. “Eight. So, eight o’clock. He couldn’t mean the number of orgasms I had. There aren’t enough numbers even on a twenty-four hour clock.”
My mind drifted again to memories of his muscular body hard against mine; his hot mouth and hungry hands…
I shook myself back to reality and sat up. “Okay, so it’s either four or eight. Well, that narrows it down. Not.”
Unable to sit still any longer, I dragged myself to my feet to pace around and around my small office.
“I bet he means four,” I muttered after a few laps immersed in thought. “He’d want to meet as early as possible. But hell, if I’m wrong, we’re hooped. By eight I’ll be with Riel. He’d better mean four, dammit!”
Door locks forgotten, I hurried to my bedroom to pack. Dress-up clothes for dinner with Riel and a stay at Harchman’s fancy spa. Black yoga pants and a baggy T-shirt for loungewear that would conceal a waist holster and also be unobtrusive if I was sneaking around in the darkness. Jeans and hiking boots in case I had to crash through the bush again.
Should I take formalwear, too, just in case?
I glowered at the half-packed suitcase. “Why don’t I just bring my entire fucking closet?” I snarled. “And why can’t the rest of the world just get over itself and let me wear jeans all the time?”
The suitcase made no reply, and after another moment of indecision I added a cocktail dress, heels, stockings, and jewellery, muttering imprecations under my breath.
A glance at my watch accelerated my pulse even more. One-thirty already. I barely had enough time to get back to Calgary and drive across town to get to Kane’s meeting place at four.
I restocked my supply of secured phones, tossed a couple of extra magazines for my Glock and trank pistol into my suitcase, and hit the road.
My mind fully occupied with anxious speculations, I had been driving for nearly an hour when I remembered my ‘date’ with Hellhound.
Shit.
Pulling over, I punched in his number and waited.
It rang repeatedly on the other end, finally going to voicemail.
“Hi, Arnie,” I said. “I’m sorry, something’s come up and I’m not going to get to see you this afternoon. I’ll catch up with you later, okay? Take care.”
I almost added ‘I love you’, but settled for ‘Bye’. If my enemies somehow got access to his voicemail, I didn’t want them to know how much he meant to me.
Steering back onto the highway, I stared anxiously out the windshield. He had said he’d be there. He was expecting my call. So why hadn’t he answered? And if he’d been busy at the moment I called, why hadn’t he called back?
Maybe he was with another woman. I tried to comfort myself with memories of his wicked grin the other times I’d accidentally walked in on one of his trysts.
But somehow I couldn’t imagine him hitting the sheets with somebody else when he knew I was on my way. And anyway, I was pretty sure he hadn’t been skirt-chasing as much lately…
A sudden horrible thought made my guts clench.
Oh, God, what if something had happened to him? What if he’d been attacked or abducted? Was that what Kane’s ‘situation’ was?
I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.
It would take an army to overpower Hellhound. And if Kane knew his best friend was in danger, he wouldn’t mess around with an encoded message; he’d tell me right away…
My phone vibrated and I nearly drove off the road in my rush to pull over. The number on the call display was unfamiliar, and I answered with a cautious, “Hello?”
“Hey, darlin’…”
“Hi, Arnie!”
My initial relief vanished when he kept talking over me, his words fast and tight. “…Sorry I can’t see ya today; somethin’ came up. Watch your six. Love ya.”
The click of his disconnect shattered the fragile dam I’d constructed around my worries, and they cascaded over me like icy water.
His wording told me he hadn’t gotten my earlier message, so he wasn’t at home. The unfamiliar number confirmed that. And that terse ‘watch your six’… Was it general advice to watch my back, or did he know something bad was coming my way?
I dialled the number back, but it rang and rang without an answer. My heart thumped harder. Maybe he’d had to ship out on an unexpected job.
But Dante had made one call from a burner phone before he disappeared. What if this was Arnie’s one call?
Had his ‘love ya’ carried extra meaning this time? Were those the last words of a man who knew he was going to certain death?
“Oh, God, no,” I quavered. “Arnie, please be okay.”
By the time I parked at the coffee shop where I was to meet Kane, my shoulders were aching with tension. Peeling one tight finger after another off the steering wheel, I leaned my head back against the headrest and attempted some yoga breathing.
In… out…
In…
My breath hitched at the sight of a black Expedition pulling into the parking lot, but the narrow-shouldered man who got out couldn’t have been Kane even in disguise. Nothing could hide that spectacular build.
I consulted my wristwatch for approximately the tenth time. Only a few minutes before four. How long should I wait?
A peevish voice from the past spoke in my memory. “How stupid are you? If he wasn’t there at the appointed time, he obviously had to abort. You don’t hang around attracting attention.”
“Thanks, Kasper, you dickhead,” I muttered. “I’m glad I shot your stupid face off.”
But he had been correct at the time; and he was probably correct now, too. If Kane didn’t show up by five after four, I shouldn’t stick around.
Five after four came and went, leaving me jittering in the driver’s seat. Dammit, he must have meant eight…
Sudden realization struck me, and I groaned. Shit, I’d counted wrong. I’d forgotten that time he’d been drugged and ended up sleeping in my bed after our first explosive round of sex. He must have meant five. Or maybe…
Clenching my fists in my hair, I redid the tally yet again. What if he’d included the time at the commune when Hellhound and I had dragged his mattress over beside ours to soothe his nightmares while he slept?
Six.
Dammit, I couldn’t make it at six; I’d be sitting down to dinner with Riel.
Which was more important?
My heart cried ‘Kane’ with all its might, but I muffled it with cold facts.
Hundreds of innocent lives might be on the line. And Kane had sounded tense but not frantic. He was a top agent. I had to trust that he could deal with his ‘situation’; just like he had believed I could take care of myself last summer.
I drove away resolving to come back at five just in case, but the knowledge that he almost certainly wouldn’t be there weighed in my belly like a cold stone. He must have meant six o’clock.
But what if he had meant four o’clock, and something had prevented him from coming?
Had Riel set up our dinner date so he could gloat that all my lovers were hostages?
Or worse, so he could tell me they were all dead and watch me shatter?
A cold wave of fear swamped me. I hadn’t heard from Holt all day, either.
Nichele.
“Oh, no. No, no, no…”