Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (54 page)

But before she could analyze her own feelings too carefully, she remembered the reason they were together. She pulled her notebook from her purse and opened it to see the disk she’d stored inside. A chill swept over her body, leaving her bathed in a sea of goose bumps. She held mass destruction in her hands. Something her own father had helped to create. Something friends had died for.

But why had it been given to her? There were too many coincidences for her to believe she’d been a random choice. The dates on the disk, the encryption code, her hiring at Eclipse Labs, her father’s death around the time the original designs had been made. But why?

Hopefully, Jonas’s assertion that his former boss, George Murphy, could help her was correct. That she could turn over the disk to him and be put into protective custody until this could all be straightened out. Of course, there was the not-so-tiny problem of Copperhead. Had they really shaken the hit man off their trail? Or was it just a matter of time before he caught up with them? And could they get to George Murphy before Copperhead got to them?

Fearing she wouldn’t like the answers to those questions, Faith went back to her cleaning and packing, determined to stay focused on survival. She replaced the disk inside her notebook, but had to dump out the contents of her small purse in order to fit everything back inside.

When she picked up her cell phone, she paused. She checked over her shoulder to see that Jonas was still in the shower, then she looked at the tiny screen again.

She had a message.

She’d left the phone turned off as Jonas had asked her to, but her voice mail was still active. She scrolled down to the number on the message and shivered with anticipation. It was a Missouri area code. Had Wes and Gran gotten her message? Were they okay? She didn’t recognize the number, but it called out to her like a voice from home.

She decided to take a chance. If she knew her family was okay, she could handle just about anything Darien Frye and the rest of the world threw her way. Listening for Jonas in the shower, she turned her back to the bathroom door and punched in the number.

It had barely begun to ring before someone snatched it quickly off the hook. A hushed, urgent voice answered. “Hello? Faith? Is that you?”

The voice was too muffled for her to recognize. Was this a trick?

“Faith?” The voice was a little louder this time. A dear voice from a past she’d thought she’d lost forever. Faith stared at her shocked reflection in the mirror until the image was blurred by tears. “Faith? This is your grandmother. Are you there? You won’t believe what’s happening to your uncle and me. We need your help.”

She stumbled over to the bed and sank onto the edge. “Gran?” The urgency in Florence Monroe’s voice cut through her shock and enabled her to think instead of just feel. “Where have you been? I tried to find you. I went to the house. It was all—”

“I know. Your uncle Wes suspected something like that might happen as soon as we saw your name on the news in connection to that horrible murder at Eclipse Labs. Oh, honey, we have so much to explain to you.” She paused for a breath that sounded more like a sob. “But there isn’t time.”

“Time? Why not?” Faith stood up and began to pace. “Gran, what’s going on?”

The wise, loving voice from her childhood hushed again. “Faith, dear, there’s not time to start from the beginning. I’m not supposed to be on the phone at all. But one of the nurses took pity—”

“Nurses?” Faith stopped midstride. “Are you hurt? Is Wes all right?”

She could hear her grandmother’s quick breaths and sensed an incredible level of stress—even fear. Faith clutched at her stomach, subconsciously bracing herself. “Maybe we should have told you, but we wanted to protect you. When we lost your father, we swore not to let those horrible people into our lives again.”

“Gran.” If time was precious and the phone call risky, she didn’t want to waste any time and jeopardize her grandmother’s safety. “You can explain the past later. What’s going on now?”

Her grandmother took a deep, steadying breath. She never raised her voice above a whisper. “Your uncle and I have been put into protective custody by the FBI. Wes…knows things…about your father. We thought the danger was past. We had no idea he’d come after you.”

“Who?”

“Darien Frye, dear. He and your father…” Her voice trailed away. Had the evil greed of a man she’d never met influenced and destroyed her entire family? “Are you safe? Are you far away?”

Faith glanced over her shoulder. The water was still running. Jonas would be furious if he caught her on the phone. She was the unplanned recipient of
his
protective custody, and the risk her grandmother had taken to contact her was as great as her own in returning the call. She dropped her voice to an equally urgent whisper. “I’m safe for now. But everywhere I go people are dying.”

“It’s his way.” Her grandmother’s voice sounded cold and flat. “He doesn’t like to be crossed. And he doesn’t like witnesses. That’s why I’m so worried about your uncle Wes and risked calling you. The agents guarding us—they’re all around us, disguised as nurses and orderlies.”

If Faith hadn’t been scared before, the portent in her grandmother’s voice would have finished the job. “What’s wrong with Wes? He’s in the hospital?”

“University Medical Center in Columbia, Missouri.” She’d inherited her grandmother’s ladylike grace and propensity to express her emotions through tears.

But there wasn’t time to cry. “Gran?”

“He’s dying, Faith. The doctors don’t know what’s causing it. He was fit and healthy and working the farm last week. And then we were moved to a safe house. And then he got sick. All of a sudden. Like poison. Only the doctors can’t identify it.” Her grandmother’s effort to muffle a sob tore right through Faith’s heart. “I can’t lose both my boys.”

“I’m coming, Gran.”

“No.” She shouted the word over the phone. The sudden volume startled Faith back to her surroundings. The water in the shower had stopped. “I don’t want you in any danger. I just wanted you to know. I needed to hear—”

“I love you, Gran. You be strong. Tell Wes—”

“I have to go. Someone’s coming. We love you.”

“I love—” But the line was dead.

So was she.

“Hang up the phone.” A chill cascaded down her spine at the dark, frozen voice behind her. Faith slowly turned.

Jonas had emerged from the shower, his body hot and steamy and wrapped in nothing but a towel that didn’t quite cinch his waist. But she knew she was in trouble. The expression on his face told her as much. The monster was back.

“Hang it up. Now.”

Chapter Ten

“I swear to God, Jonas, if you don’t let go of me, I’ll scream.”

He didn’t think she’d really do it, but he was steamed. She needed to understand the unnecessary risk she’d taken, how she’d put her life on the line for one stupid phone call. He should have been smarter. He should have taken her damn phone and crushed it under his boot as soon as he signed on for this unsanctioned assignment. He knew better than to allow her any contact with the outside world—to allow anyone on the outside a chance to contact her. It was rule one in the protection book. He’d counted on a stern warning and common sense to keep her from making such a foolish mistake.

And that was the thing that steamed him the most. He’d made a grave mistake of thinking of Faith as part of
his
world. For a few blissful hours, there had been no one else, and he’d dropped his guard.

He’d slacked off the hard and fast rules he knew could keep a witness alive. All because she did crazy little things like talking back when others tiptoed around him. Or demanding that he be polite, while offering up
pleases
and
thank-yous
and
good nights
of her own. And holding him close and offering the balm of her body as he exposed the darkest secrets of his soul.

He was angry at himself because he’d let her make that mistake. But he’d made an even bigger one. And now he was scared he wouldn’t be able to keep her safe.

“Go ahead and scream.” Jonas never broke his stride, hustling her down one of the long concourses of Denver’s Stapleton Airport, keeping pace with the steady flow of travelers. With his hand gripped firmly around her upper arm, he carried her as much as she jogged to keep up with him. Something was closing in on them. He could feel it in every pore of his skin.

He might have sensed the oncoming danger sooner if he hadn’t forgotten who he really was and spent the morning in bed with Faith—nurturing parts of his heart and soul that hadn’t known kindness and trust and fun for so long that they felt like new discoveries for him. Now they might both pay the price for indulging his humanity.

“You might as well shout to the world where you are,” he snapped, moving his eyes back and forth in a constant scan of the people around them. Last night, he’d planned to ditch the truck and lose themselves among the crowds at the airport. Now, all he could see were the overwhelming numbers of potential undercover cops and killers who might be on their tail. “That phone stunt could lead Frye right to us. A call like that can be traced. If someone was tapped in to the other end, they’ve got us nailed. Even if they weren’t, they can trace the transmission back to the nearest relay tower. Then it’s a matter of hours rather than minutes before they track you down.”

“Fine. So I screwed up. You explained that already.” But even though she’d been chastised, Faith still argued her case. “It was a risk I had to take. I needed to know about my uncle. My grandmother was distraught. I’m sorry you can’t understand how a normal family works. I wish you had known one like mine. But I have a little bit of family left to cling to. And they need me.”

He understood all he needed to. “You won’t do them any good dead.”

“Jonas.”

He deserved a reprimand for his callous statement of the bottom line. But it didn’t stop him. They stepped onto a moving walkway and Jonas tucked her right up beside him. He dropped his arm around her back and held her close. It was partly a compromise to her objections to his brutish behavior, and partly a concession to the narrow walkspace. But mostly he just needed to feel her warm, breathing body and know that she was still unharmed and in his safekeeping.

“I’m sorry about your uncle.” The fear that their morning had temporarily chased away was back in her eyes. Despite her defiant tongue, she radiated her worry as if she was weeping out loud. But though he hurt for her, he couldn’t let that sway him from his purpose. “It’s my job to keep you safe.”

Faith slid her arms beneath his jacket and hugged him around his waist. It was a placating action, whether intended to persuade or apologize or even seek comfort, he didn’t know. But her needy touch burned the angry energy out of him, leaving him raw with the knowledge of how far he’d let himself get involved with this woman.

It seemed odd that no one seemed to be paying any mind to the diminutive redhead being swallowed up in the arms of the stern-faced giant. There were a few glances of idle curiosity from the pedestrians outside the walkway, who were moving at a slower pace. But they were watching everyone who went by on the conveyor. And the man who bumped his shoulder, zipping past on the left in an even quicker hurry to meet someone or transfer to his next flight, muttered a polite “Excuse me.” But he didn’t startle or react as if he’d noticed anything unusual about the man he was addressing.

Strange. It was as if having Faith at his side diminished his threatening size and the shock of his scarred-up face. He almost felt…normal. As if he really could be like all these everyday, average people around them.

But Faith’s next words reminded him he was anything but normal. “It’s not your job to protect me. Nobody’s paying you.”

“Nobody has to.” He gave her a squeeze, lifting her up onto her toes, hoping she understood the double entendre of his words. He was a born protector, as she’d stated that morning. But keeping
her
safe was a choice, not a duty. And certainly not a job. “So if I see you writing down one more penny in that notebook of yours—”

“I only put down the cost of the motel this morning.” She tried to push some space between them, but he wasn’t ready to let her go yet. “I let you buy me lunch.”

Small concession. They’d driven through a fast-food restaurant. If he’d waited until they’d gotten to the airport, where the price of one cheeseburger would have been more than the cost of their entire meal, she’d have logged that in as well, he was sure.

Still, it wasn’t the price that had concerned him about dining at Stapleton; it was the lines. The waiting. The standing in one place long enough for anyone who might be searching for an unlikely duo to get a really good look at them.

He bustled her off the end of the first walkway belt and hurried her onto the next one. This time he wrapped his left hand around her waist and pulled her back into his chest, forming a shield between her and whatever pursued them. Once he’d situated them well between the couple behind them and the businessman on the phone ahead of them, he rested his right hand on the conveyor’s guard rail and resumed the debate.

“And the airline tickets?” He’d called on his cell and made three different reservations under different names on flights to Washington, D.C. Though she’d done her best to eavesdrop, and had hounded him afterward, he’d been closemouthed about the final tally. He didn’t want anyone to know which flight they’d be on until he paid his cash at the counter and picked up the tickets. “Are you going to put those in your book, too?”

A beat too long passed before she answered. And though her fingers pressed lightly against his hand at her waist, her body was stiff as a board. He wasn’t going to like this.

“I didn’t write them down because I’m not going to D.C.,” she announced.

Jonas dipped his head and whispered beside her ear. “George Murphy’s in D.C.” He refused to acknowledge his body’s eager interest in the tangy fresh scent of her hair. “The people who can translate your knowledge and that disk into a case against Darien Frye are in D.C.” He articulated his authority succinctly enough to remind Faith and his own randy hormones of the gravity of her situation. “The team of professionals who are going to keep you alive long enough to testify against Frye and his hit man are in D.C. That’s where we’re going.”