Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (51 page)

“There were other detectives?”

She shook her head. “The crime lab. The technicians who dusted for prints and went through my house taking pictures.”

“Detectives don’t usually work solo, either.”

It was the second thing that didn’t seem to fit Jonas’s idea of a cop. “Okay, you’re officially scaring me. Detective Collier creeped me out enough, already. He was all smooth talk and intimidation. What are you trying to say?”

He looked at her across the seat, his eyes seeming to glow in the lights from the dashboard. “I’m not saying anything. I’m just thinking out loud.”

He reached his long arm clear across the seat. His fingertips hovered close to her face, as if he wanted to touch her, but wasn’t sure the touch would be welcome. Faith encouraged him with a gentle smile and he brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. The pads of his fingers were like the stroke of a cat’s tongue, a mesmerizing touch that managed to be soothing and stimulating at the same time.

“Hey, you were a trouper tonight,” he praised. “Thinking on your feet, keeping your cool.”

“Keeping my cool?” She yawned.

He grinned and pulled both hands back to the wheel. “Most of the time. You weren’t bad for a rookie.” He nodded toward her door. “I’ll leave the heat running and you can use my coat for a pillow. It’ll be a while before we check in to a motel. Why don’t you get some sleep.”

The compliment made her suspicious. It was a little too long-winded for Jonas. But she
was
tired. And the warmth of the truck’s cab and the security of his company relaxed her weary muscles and made her drowsy.

“Okay.” She folded the jacket and tucked it between her ear and the door. “Promise to wake me when we get to Denver. Good night.”

“Good night.”

She was on the fringes of sleep when she heard the tone of his cell phone and listened to him begin to talk. But she was in a safe, cozy dreamland before she could make much sense of the conversation itself.

“C
OLLIER
. I don’t have a first name. Claims to be a detective with the Saint Louis police department. Check him out.”

George Murphy jotted down the information. “Collier. Got it. I’ll run it through with the description you gave me and have something for you tomorrow. You think he works for Frye?”

“I don’t know anything for sure yet. I’m just covering my bases.”

“Sounds more like a hunch. Wanna share?”

Jonas glanced over at Faith. She seemed so young and small curled up in the corner of the truck’s bench seat. So innocent. But as the pieces of the puzzles began to emerge, he was getting a very sick feeling that her involvement in all this was not unfortunate coincidence, but something much more sinister. A conspiracy set into play long before his lusty little brainiac with the just soul and sexy mouth ever entered the picture.

“Not yet,” Jonas answered, turning his attention back to the phone and his midnight call. “Any luck with the Feds?”

George
had
been a busy boy. “I got a friend of mine to agree to stall the investigation. As long as we give him everything you find when all is said and done. He does have a man in the field who’s been tracking your friend in relation to the string of murders in Saint Louis. He—”

“Is his name Rory Carmichael?”

“How’d you know?”

“Faith told me about him. She’s seen him on TV a couple of times. He put the description out on us after the murder in Elk Point.”

“Carmichael’s a rogue warrior, according to my contact.” George’s deep breath warned Jonas to brace himself for unwelcome news. “He’s got a rep as a straight arrow. But he’s like a dog with a bone. He won’t let go of a thing until he thinks it’s done. If he followed her trail to Wyoming, he’ll find her again.”

Jonas wanted to swear, but he was worried that Faith’s finely tuned radar would hear him, even in her sleep. “Can’t they call him back in from the investigation?”

“The order’s been issued. But we’ll have to wait and see how long it takes Carmichael to follow it. He wants Faith Monroe.”

So he had one gung-ho FBI agent on their tail he’d have to watch out for. But it would be a little easier to avoid one man than a nationwide manhunt. “What about Frye?”

Murphy’s report was quick and concise. “Like I said, he hasn’t actually been seen for a couple of years. But some of his old networks have been showing activity the past few months. Word is out that the DeLeone terrorist cell in Central America has been amassing a lot of cash and is looking for some high-tech weaponry. The sort of stuff Frye used to pedal to them.”

“Like our nontraceable minibomb?” William Rutherford’s disk supplied an apt acronym for what Frye was selling. NT-6. A bomb that couldn’t be detected. Small enough to carry in a purse or briefcase, but packing enough payload to destroy a city block.

“Just like.” There was an uncharacteristic hesitation on the other end of the line. “Beck?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you recognize Frye if you see him again? Or Copperhead? It’s been a lot of years since you worked the Frye case. You might not see them coming.”

“I’ll know Frye.” He’d know those eyes anywhere. His stepmother had claimed he had devil eyes because of their ultralight color. But Darien Frye’s ordinary brown eyes had reflected something that wasn’t human. No heart. No conscience. He could cut a business deal or cut a throat with equal indifference. Jonas had no doubts. “I’ll recognize him.”

“And Copperhead? He could be anybody.” George wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t already considered. “Your girl has seen him, even if she doesn’t know it. Someone she trusted. Someone the people he kills are willing to trust.”

A cop. An agent. A woman. An old man. Hell. An old woman. Anyone who might not be perceived as a threat could be the biggest threat of all.

“I know.” The lights of the Denver metropolitan area were glowing on the horizon. He hadn’t told Murphy where they were. He wouldn’t trust anybody right now. Not completely.

Faith stirred in her sleep, as if he’d transmitted the thought telepathically. Not even her. He was falling hard for his protected charge. He was becoming less of a guardian and more of a man the longer he was with her. He’d lost his objectivity somewhere along the line. And though he couldn’t pinpoint the exact time when he’d started to care, he could predict exactly when it would end.

The moment this was over. The moment she no longer needed a guardian. The moment she realized she could return to normal life and the real world, but he could not.

“Beck? You still there?” Damn. He was really losing focus. George had asked him a question.

“I’m here.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to meet you somewhere? I might be rusty from all my years behind a desk, but at least I’d be another set of eyes.”

“No. You’re more help to us in D.C. We’re coming to you. If I can get Faith and this disk to you, we can get her into some kind of witness protection program. Her testimony can clear her name and put Frye away for good.”

“If we can find him,” George cautioned, ever the voice of reason.

But Jonas was a man of instinct. “I’m not worried. He’ll find us.

“I just need to make sure I’m good and ready when he does.”

“W
HICH BED
do you want?” Faith asked, more disappointed than she cared to admit to see that Jonas had booked them a room with two double beds. She shrugged out of his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair at the desk. “It doesn’t matter to me, I’m beat.”

But Jonas had no trouble making a decision. “I’ll take the one closer to the door. It’s the only entrance.”

“Fine.”

Making quick work of washing her face and brushing her teeth, Faith stepped into the bathroom and changed into the flannel shirt she’d borrowed from Jonas. The shirt was big and warm and it carried a trace of masculine musk from Jonas’s skin. And while it was a comfort to wear it, or to snuggle in his coat, it wasn’t the real thing. And she felt vulnerable, incomplete without him.

She came out and climbed beneath the covers while Jonas took his turn in the bathroom. Though sturdier than the bed she’d slept in last night, this one felt just as empty. Just as lonely.

Jonas repeated the same ritual he had last night, checking the locks and window and turning off all but the bathroom light before removing his knife and holster and arranging them beside the bed and under his pillow. He climbed on top of the flowered bedspread, still wearing his jeans, and unbuttoned his shirt.

When she could hear him settling in to a more comfortable position to watch and doze, she rolled over to face him in the darkness. “Talk to me, Jonas. Tired as I am, I don’t think I could sleep right now.”

“What’s wrong?” His body might be a vague shadow on the other side of the nightstand, but his voice was deep and smooth and clear.

“Nothing new.” She pulled the covers up around her chin and wished he’d invite her to cuddle with him instead. “I can’t believe that I’m carrying around the design for such a destructive weapon.” She hesitated a beat before asking the next question. “How many people could be hurt if a bomb like that was detonated?”

“A lot.”

She rolled onto her back and stared at the nothingness above her. “And neither the police nor airport security nor anybody else would have a chance to detect it or stop and defuse it.”

So much devastation for such a small, unassuming disk. She thought she could relate.

“Can’t I just destroy the disk?”

“No.” His sharp answer took her by surprise. “Right now, that disk is probably the only thing keeping you alive. Frye doesn’t have it. He wants you to lead him to it.”

She shook her head. “But if we tell him it’s gone, that it doesn’t exist—”

“Then he’ll be pissed off and have you killed for messing up his plans.”

Her deep sigh filled the silence of the room. “Is there anything I can do to stop him? Besides keep running with the disk?”

He took so long to answer that she thought he might have fallen asleep. “You could hand over the disk to the FBI counterterrorist division as evidence. Give a deposition about the break-ins at your home and the lab. Testify to whatever Dr. Rutherford told you. Combined with what The Watchers have accumulated on Frye in the past, it’d be enough to put him away.”

“Wouldn’t my testimony be hearsay?”

“The courts are more lenient with deathbed confessions. Rutherford told you who killed him and who hired the hit. And he indicated that they would be coming after you, too.”

Run.

Faith shivered and curled into a ball beneath the covers, seeking, but finding little warmth. “I don’t want to run forever. I have family. I had a career. I’m missing a friend’s funeral. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

“You got guts, lady. You’re strong.” She heard him shifting on the bed. Without any sort of segue, he switched from boosting her confidence to acting like the agent he’d once been trained to be. “Faith, were you recruited to work at Eclipse Labs when you graduated?”

“I was recruited by a lot of places.”

“But Eclipse really wanted you, I bet.”

What was he getting at? “Yeah. They offered the best salary and benefits. But the opportunity to work with William Rutherford was what cinched it for me.”

“I’ll just bet.” That sounded ominous. “I think you can testify to a conspiracy that’s been going on for over half your life.”

Faith sat up in bed. He was making no sense. “What are you talking about?”

“When we were looking at the disk tonight, did you notice the dates on some of those documents? Not the file names themselves, but inside, on the specs and formulas you were reading.”

“No. I was a little preoccupied. Why?”

“They were dated twelve years ago.”

Twelve. The significance of the number toyed with her comprehension. “Maybe they were old designs that Frye just found out about. Dr. Rutherford certainly wouldn’t advertise that he’d invented something that could be used for such a purpose.”

Jonas’s uncharacteristically patient voice told her he wanted her to reach a different conclusion. “You said your parents died about twelve years ago. And that your father did the same kind of work that you and Rutherford did.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them. She didn’t want to even consider the possibility of what he was suggesting. She shoved her fingers through her hair and cupped the side of her neck. “My brain’s too tired and my heart’s too afraid to put together what you’re asking me to.”

But Jonas was determined to spell it all out. “I’m guessing that William Rutherford knew your father. Maybe they even worked together on the project.” Faith resisted the urge to cover her ears. “And Rutherford didn’t put your name in as the encryption code—”

“My father did.” She threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. Sleep was out of the question now. “Are you thinking my father was killed, too? That he somehow gave the designs to Dr. Rutherford, and Frye killed him?”

Her skin was a riot of goose bumps, and no amount rubbing her arms or pacing was bringing any heat back into her system. “I hate what you’re saying. I lost the two people I loved most. And you’re suggesting they were murdered over that same stupid disk?”

She was getting frantic now. No way was she strong or gutsy as Jonas had implied. She was falling apart. “And that I was set up before I ever went to work at Eclipse?”

She whirled around, seeing Jonas’s silhouette on the bed as a lighter shadow in the darkness. “Why would anyone do that? Did they think my father had given me the disk? Why would Dr. Rutherford lie? He was always so nice to me. Why would he—?”

“Maybe he thought he was protecting you by keeping you close.” Jonas the shadow was up and moving now, with a stealth that matched his catlike eyes. “Maybe he needed you there to divert suspicion from himself. Frye must have suspected he had that disk, or they wouldn’t have searched the lab and killed him.” Big, strong hands closed around her shoulders. “Maybe Frye and Rutherford didn’t know the codes to get into that disk, but as your father’s daughter, you might. Without realizing it, you could be the key to unlocking all that information.”