Her Spy to Have (Spy Games Book 1) (14 page)

“Do you have a girlfriend, Uncle Garrett?” Beth asked from the backseat, bringing his thoughts back to matters at hand.

He glanced into the rearview mirror. “All kinds of them. Why?”

“Izzy could be one of them, couldn’t she?”

The conversation was about to get interesting. “Who says she’d want to be?”

Beth blinked. “Of course she would. Ronan’s mom thinks you’re hot. She says if Izzy doesn’t grab you, she will.”

It was his turn to blink. “I’m pretty sure Ronan’s mom was joking. Ronan’s dad might not be onboard with that.”

“Why not? If you have lots of girlfriends, why can’t Ronan’s mom have boyfriends?” Chelsea asked.

This was turning into one of those discussions that might make Cheryl mad. Last time, he’d ended up practicing yoga. “I’m not married to any of my girlfriends. Ronan’s mom is married to his dad. It makes a difference.”

“Why?”

“Are Mommy and Daddy married?” Kiefer interrupted.

“Of course they are, stupid. How do you think they got us?” Chelsea’s green eyes met Garrett’s in the mirror. “Is that why it’s different? So you can have babies?”

Tailing arms dealers in Thailand had been less stressful than this. He rubbed the back of his neck and shot a desperate glance around the parking lot, searching for some sort of distraction. A crumpled piece of pink paper tumbled across the pavement, coming to rest beneath a nearby Lexus. Other than that, nothing moved.

What was taking Isabelle so long?

Right on cue, as if she’d been waiting for his mental distress flares to go off, she emerged from the building. But she wasn’t alone.

Garrett craned his neck, trying to get a look at the tall guy who was holding the door and talking to her, his head bent over hers. He was young, maybe a year or so older than Isabelle, and sported a suit and tie. Off the rack, Garrett noted. Decent quality. He carried a frayed laptop backpack with earbuds dangling by wires from one of the pouches. Some kind of computer tech, if he were to guess.

She laughed at something he said. Garrett tried not to stare at them. She had that whole fresh-faced cheerleader look going on, with the long ponytail, cropped, tight T-shirt, and skimpy, hip-grazing shorts. All that bare, toned leg…

It wasn’t that her outfit was inappropriate. She was dressed no differently than any other young woman her age. He also knew exactly what she had in her closet, and other than the oversize T-shirt and shorts she’d been wearing in Thailand, and a few lightweight dresses, she didn’t have much to choose from.

But Garrett didn’t like the way the other man was looking at her. She looked far too pretty when she was smiling the way she was now.

“Never mind, Uncle Garrett,” Beth said, her blonde head leaning out of the window. She had a streak of strawberry ice cream under her chin. “Isabelle’s already found a boyfriend.”

“She can have more than one,” Garrett said. “She isn’t married.”

“This one’s as hot as you are,” Chelsea added.

“Do you even know what that means?” he asked her. He didn’t plan to take the blame for this if she did.

She crinkled her freckled nose. “It means cute, right?”

“Close enough. Maybe you should say that instead of hot.”

“Don’t you think he’s cute, Uncle Garrett?”

“I’m not supposed to think he’s cute.” His attention was on the guy’s body language, not his level of hotness. Cuteness. Whatever.

Isabelle’s companion handed her a piece of paper. She read it, smiled again, and appeared to be thanking him as she stuffed it in her shorts pocket. Garrett wasn’t close enough to hear, but that was his best guess as to her side of the conversation. Then she looked around and saw the minivan. He sank down in his seat and turned to the kids in the back, not wanting her to think he’d been paying any attention.

He could hear her footsteps approaching. Her sandals made soft slapping sounds against the sticky asphalt. She opened the passenger door and hopped in, waving a plastic card in triumph.

“One hundred percent,” she said to the kids. “What do you think of that?”

The girls, however, remained focused on their previous, unfinished conversation.

“How many boyfriends do you have?” Chelsea asked her.

Isabelle, used to children, wasn’t fazed by the apparent randomness of the inquiry. “Seven,” she said without hesitation. “What about you?”

“I only have two.”

“Does your father know about them?” Garrett asked Chelsea. He turned to Isabelle. “Who’s your new friend? Is he number seven or eight?”

Her face blanked for a second. “You mean the man I was just talking to?”

“That would be the one. Do you always collect phone numbers from strangers?”

“Of course not. I spoke to him for two minutes. He gave me a website address for an online running room he thought I might find helpful.”

Garrett didn’t need to ask how the guy knew she was a runner. One look at her legs said it all. He didn’t believe for a second that running was what he’d been interested in when he’d looked at them, either.

“Really? Want to check that piece of paper he gave you more closely?”

She pulled it from her pocket and read it. “Hmm. I guess he really is number eight,” she said to Chelsea.

Garrett shook his head. “You can’t possibly be so naïve as to think running was what he had on his mind.”

She held up the strip of paper for him to see. On it was the link to a running website.

“You think I don’t know when a man is interested in me?” she asked. She paused for a beat. “Or that I can’t tell when he’s playing games?”

Garrett might play games, but they were serious. She had to know he was interested in her. “No,” he said. “I don’t think you can.”

“He was hot, Izzy,” Beth spoke up.

Isabelle’s head whipped around, her eyes widening. “Excuse me?”

Garrett bit back a grin. “She means cute. According to Ronan’s mother, I’m the one who’s hot.”

“I wouldn’t read too much into that. The last time she saw you, she had a lot on her mind.”

“Don’t you think Uncle Garrett’s hot, Izzy?” Chelsea asked.

Isabelle looked him over. Her grave expression became one of pity, as if she hated to be the bearer of bad news. “He’s cute enough, I suppose.”

He’d love to know what she really thought. He was fairly confident she considered him better than cute.

Chelsea played with one of her braids, a frown of deep concentration on her face as if she couldn’t quite figure something out. “If you have seven boyfriends, how will you know which one to marry?”

Garrett sighed. “You just aren’t going to let this go, are you?”

Isabelle nudged his knee with hers as she rested her arm along the back of her seat to speak past the headrest. “If I have seven boyfriends it means I’m not going to marry any of them. It means I like them and they’re nice, but I don’t think any of them are special enough to marry. If one of them was that special to me, he would be my only boyfriend.”

“Nice answer,” Garrett congratulated her.

Kiefer weighed in with his opinion. “You could marry Uncle Garrett. He’s special.”

Four pairs of eyes, including Garrett’s, turned on Isabelle. He lifted his eyebrows in a silent challenge. C’mon. Let’s hear you talk your way around this one.

She ignored him. “Of course he is. And he deserves someone special, too. But finding two special someones who are right for each other can take months, even years. It’s a big decision. You don’t want to get it wrong.”

“I disagree. If it takes months or years to decide,” Garrett said, “then they’re probably wrong for each other right from the start.”

“I’ll marry Isabelle,” Kiefer said, as if the matter were settled. “I think she’s special. She thinks I’m special, too. Don’t you?” he demanded of her.

“I certainly do,” she replied. “If you still want to marry me when you’re old enough, then I’m all yours.”

Kiefer had lost interest by now, more intent on ending the conversation than pursuing it. He grabbed one of Chelsea’s red braids in his fist and gave it a hard jerk. “When are we going to see Mommy?”

Garrett rolled up the windows so the whole industrial park didn’t have to hear Chelsea’s screams, letting Isabelle deal with the problem because she was better at soothing hysterics, and eyed his watch. Ten minutes. The boy was growing up.

Once Isabelle had the backseat under a cease and desist, he drove the minivan out of the park and onto the highway, headed for downtown and the harbor front. She was good with children, no doubt about that. She wasn’t the kind of woman who couldn’t make up her mind about things, either. She knew what she wanted—and she wanted to work with children.

She also liked traveling, and remained unflustered in high-pressure situations. Garrett shifted gears and moved into the passing lane. She’d make a good relief worker. An excellent one, in fact. She spoke several languages and understood third world living conditions.

But he’d been in disaster zones. While she might be good at it, and he didn’t doubt she could take care of herself as much as anyone in those types of situations, he didn’t like the idea of her working in one.

Isabelle wasn’t his responsibility, however. It didn’t matter what ideas he liked. She’d agreed to help him find her father. She’d said nothing about letting him take charge of her life.

* * *

They had lunch with Cheryl at one of the many taverns in Historic Properties, a tourist area along the city’s waterfront. They ate outside, on the patio. The street was narrow and very steep. The historic sandstone buildings were juxtaposed with newer, more modern glass and steel. At the foot of the hill, the white-capped waters of the harbor sparkled in the sunlight. If Isabelle turned, she could look up to the Citadel, an old fortress dating back to 1749, which crowded the skyline.

Isabelle barely tasted her order of fish and chips. Her entire body felt numb. The scrap of paper burned a hole in her pocket. Someone had tapped the Mansfords’ landline on her father’s behalf. When she’d made a call that morning to check on the times for writing her test, they’d found out where and when she’d be. Good fortune had found her alone long enough for a messenger to slip her a note.

So yes, Garrett, I do know when a man is interested in me.

All of her father’s precautions, ones she’d taken for granted—or chosen to disregard—were now cast in a new light. The Mansfords’ landline—belonging to Peter, a Member of Parliament, and Cheryl, who worked for a prominent law firm—had been tapped. Peter received personal calls at home from constituents with problems. One of the last cases Cheryl had worked involved a high-profile homicide. To tap their landline went far beyond a harmless safety precaution. What if Peter or Cheryl got in trouble over information someone stole from them?

Her father couldn’t possibly do something like this and be in international security management, as he’d claimed. Whatever he was involved in, Garret was right. It had to be bad. Nausea churned in her stomach as another realization struck her. She’d given CSIS information on her own father, the man who loved and raised her.

She could feel Garrett’s eyes on her.

“You okay?” he asked.

“The sun’s in my eyes.” She squinted, making Kiefer giggle.

“Would you like to trade seats with me?” Garrett was wearing sunglasses and she wasn’t.

“Thank you, but no. Then I wouldn’t have such a great view. From here I can see everything.”

After lunch they walked Cheryl back to her office, then headed to the boardwalk that skirted the harbor. Garrett had parked at an outdoor lot not far from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. They spent two hours inside the museum. Behind it was a small playground the children wanted to visit. After another hour, everyone was tired and ready to go home.

“Can we stop at a pharmacy?” Isabelle asked Garrett once they were out of the parking lot. “I’ll only be a few minutes. I need to pick up a few personal things.”

That was all it took to keep him from asking questions. Men were ridiculous when it came to feminine products.

He pulled up to a fire hydrant on the street out in front. “If I’m not here when you get back, just wait for me. It means I had to circle the block.”

Inside the store, she grabbed a box of tampons before heading for the display of disposable phones. She chose the cheapest she could find and purchased the minimum amount of minutes. She also picked up a bag of candy for the children to help disguise what she had in the bag.

When she finished, the minivan was still in the same spot on the street.

“That didn’t take long,” Garrett said. If he knew she was hiding something from him, he gave no indication.

“It didn’t require a lot of decision making,” she replied.

When they got home, she ran her purchases straight up to her suite. She stashed the phone under her mattress. It wasn’t an ideal hiding place, but neither was it out in plain sight.

Then she sat on the side of the bed and dropped her face in her hands. She could think of no way to tell Garrett about the phone being tapped that wouldn’t incriminate her father. Even now, she couldn’t begin to comprehend what he must be involved in to be able to arrange such a thing.