Shadow Woman: A Novel (15 page)

This duty was new, but he
had
been briefed. Once the subject was in, she should have been in for the night. He’d seen pictures of her, walking in the neighborhood, iPod on, earbuds in, zoned out and dressed in shorts and a tank top that didn’t leave room for her to hide so much as a piece of gum. So, leaving the house was unusual but not unheard of. Still … this was an entirely different look for her.

She jogged toward the street, and he got ready to throw his jacket over the computer and start the engine if she headed his way. Instead she turned and ran in the opposite direction, and he relaxed again as he kept an eye on her: back straight, form good, she ran slowly past her neighbor’s house and then increased her speed. She didn’t keep her eyes straight ahead, but instead studied her surroundings, keeping good situational awareness. No iPod. People were stupid to run alone with their ears plugged so they couldn’t hear anyone coming up behind them. A lot of people got mugged that way.

The subject hadn’t looked straight at him as she’d hit the street, but he was sure she knew he was here.

Quickly he dialed a number on his cell phone. When the call was answered, he said, “I think something’s going on.”

There was a short silence, then an exasperated, “Like
what
, for fuck’s sake?”

“I may be wrong, but it looks as if she’s going into some physical training. Not a casual jog; the look’s all wrong, like she’s about to get into some serious running. No iPod, noticing everything around her. I’m pretty sure she spotted me.”

There was another curse, then: “Clear out. You don’t need to be there when she comes back home. I’ll get someone else on her.”

Three a.m. was prime time for any self-respecting burglar. Houses were dark; all the residents were—or should be—sleeping.

Felice definitely had active surveillance on Lizzy. Even if he hadn’t already been alerted, Xavier would have spotted the car right off. The car itself was as bland as a car could get, but he knew what vehicles belonged in the neighborhood, and this one didn’t. The guy inside was taking care to keep a low profile; he wasn’t smoking, but he
was
drinking coffee to stay awake, and Xavier didn’t need night-vision goggles to spot the movement of his hand as he lifted the thermos cup to his mouth.

Before actually arriving at her house, Xavier had made a thorough reconnoiter of the surrounding area. Everything was clear. This was exactly what Forge had said it would be: low-level, just one guy.

Knowing how the game was played, he wasn’t surprised they’d put eyes on her. But he hadn’t picked up any prior intel on the move, which meant Felice McGowan was behind the
surveillance, not Forge. And it meant she had used people outside the usual network.

That wasn’t good news for any of them. She had taken control from Forge on this; Forge might have balked at the idea and this was nothing more than Felice having her way, but Xavier didn’t like the use of outside people. That signaled a breakdown of trust.

Trust was all they had holding this thing together. It was an armed, guarded, lots-of-safety-nets-in-place kind of trust, but it worked because they all knew each other and the situation was limited to their small group. Outside people … he didn’t know their training, didn’t know how they’d react in a fluid situation, didn’t know how much they knew or what their orders were.

He’d rather deal with a skilled professional any day than an amateur. There was no telling what the fuck an amateur would do. They were as likely to open fire at a sudden noise as they were to totally screw the job by going to sleep. Hell, he didn’t even know if this guy was armed, or with what. Though knowing Felice, he’d bet on armed.

He sometimes imagined their group as all of them standing in a circle, aiming at each other’s heads. Forge was undoubtedly the most dangerous and capable of the group, outside himself, and then perhaps only because of his younger age and active training. But whenever he pictured this scenario, his weapon wasn’t trained on Forge; it was on Felice, because she had the most to lose, and that made her the most likely to break the status quo. She would want to protect what she had, and she might decide the only way to do that was to eliminate the rest of them.

Like that idea hadn’t occurred to each and every one of them. He had his own safeguards in place, and Al Forge wouldn’t be Al Forge if he didn’t, also.

One day, which might not come around for years but could
happen at any time, Felice was going to be a problem. He might or might not survive, but then again, the same odds applied to her.

In the meantime, he had to continue on the course he’d set for himself five years ago—longer, if he went back to when he’d first agreed to live a double life in preparation for the unthinkable, in case it ever came to pass.

Nothing he could do about that. All he could do was handle the present, which meant he had to get into Lizette’s house—while it was under surveillance.

He smiled in the darkness. He liked a challenge.

Sometimes the gods smiled, because a light rain began falling.
Perfect
. For someone sitting inside a parked car, that had just cut visibility through the side windows down to nothing more than a blur. It wasn’t just the rain, but the inevitable fogging that would occur. In the same situation, Xavier would have lowered the window and let the interior of the car get wet, because surveillance, not staying dry, was the objective, but the human instinct was to shut out the rain.

Xavier reached the rear of her house and took a quick peek around the corner, keeping his body flat against the wall and rolling his head just enough to get a line of sight on the car across the street.

If the gods sometimes smiled, other times they downright laughed. Abruptly a light was turned on inside the house just up from where the guy was parked. A couple of seconds later, the porch light was turned on, the door opened, and the robe-clad homeowner stepped out with a small dog bouncing around his feet. The little dog immediately dashed into the yard to take care of his business.

Human nature being what it was, the guy in the car had probably lain over in the seat so he wouldn’t be seen; if he hadn’t done that, he had at least slid way down in the seat, and all of his attention would currently be on the pet owner, hoping the
guy either didn’t notice his car or didn’t recognize it as not belonging.

Xavier figured he couldn’t have been handed a better opportunity. Silently he slipped around the corner of her house and approached the back door.

He could hear the neighbor saying something to the dog, his tone more querying than angry. Xavier imagined it was something along the lines of
Are you finished yet?
He didn’t care what was said, because as long as the neighbor stayed on the porch, the guy in the car wasn’t going to be watching anything else.

Xavier spared a quick glance to see that the dog was now happily prancing toward the owner, wagging its tail. He had just a few seconds left before that perfect distraction ended.

The keys, one for the doorknob and one for the deadbolt, were in his hand. He kept them separate, so they wouldn’t clink against each other. Swiftly he unlocked both locks, each one clicking smoothly and almost silently; he put one key in his left pocket, one in his right, then gently turned the knob. He eased inside, closed the door, then stood very still and listened.

He was in the kitchen, with light coming in through the window; there were lights from the oven, the coffeemaker, and the microwave as well, small but effective. He heard the hum of the refrigerator but nothing else, no creaking of the floors or fabric brushing against walls, nothing to indicate that she’d been awakened by his almost completely silent entry. Faintly, from outside, he heard the air-conditioning compressor kick on, and a moment later cool air began blowing from the vents.

That was good. Air conditioning covered a multitude of small sounds.

Beyond the kitchen, the house was dark. That was the way she liked it when she slept—dark, like being in a cave. There were no night-lights for her, no bathroom light left on to illuminate the hallway. The dark worked in his favor.

He made his way through the kitchen, noting that the clocks
all displayed the same time: three thirty-two. Lizzy kept her clocks synchronized. He wondered if she realized why, if somewhere in the back of her mind she knew how crucial a minute could be. He himself had an instinctive sense of time, one that he’d learned to adjust according to what time zone he was in, and he could usually nail it to the minute without seeing a clock. For operations he always synchronized with team members, but that was more for their benefit than his. He’d always appreciated Lizzy’s punctuality. She’d been dependable down to the second.

He didn’t have to fumble around, figure out where he was or where she kept things. He was familiar with the layout of the exterior and the interior because he’d seen pictures. Lots of them. Even though he’d never been here, this wasn’t entirely unfamiliar territory.

She was asleep just down the hall. He could almost feel her there, her presence pulling at him, and he had to make a conscious effort to focus on the task at hand.

Lizette knew she was dreaming, because she recognized the dream. It was the all-white house again, except for that one three-dimensional room that held all the colors, as if the colors from the rest of the house had been bled away and put in that one room. But she wasn’t in the colored room, she was in the biggest white one, everything muted and quiet.

He
was here, her Mr. X. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, but she knew he was close by. She could sense him as strongly as if he were in the same room, watching her. She spun around, checking every corner, every white wall, every window, but the room was empty except for herself.

Wait a minute
, she thought. What was going on? Was this a dream, or reality? It felt real. She’d been here before. But—oh, yeah, that had been a dream too. Her heart began beating
faster, because X had been in that other dream, and he was waiting for her in this one.

He’d be in that bedroom where all the color was, the one room in this massive house that seemed more real, more tangible, than all the others. Her body responded, knowing he was near, instantly craving what she’d gotten in the last dream: not just sex, even though it had been powerful and earth-shattering and almost—
almost
—nothing-else-matters sex. Because something else did matter, something stronger that pulled her to him.

But where the hell
was
he?

She walked from one room to the next, searching for the one room with color, but it wasn’t where it had been the last time. Damn it, why wouldn’t the rooms stay in one place? She grew more and more frustrated as she got more and more turned around. She was completely lost now. Hallways twisted and turned, grew longer as she tried to reach the end. She was so frustrated she felt like kicking a wall. He was
here
—somewhere. She felt him on a cellular level, down deep where instincts ruled alone and logic went out the window. But if she didn’t find him soon, it would be too late; he’d go away, find something else to do. He was always going away.

And then she smelled him. He had a faint, masculine odor that was his and his alone. His skin, his clothes, the soap he used … it all added up to X. Perhaps no one else would note the scent, it was so light, but she did. She’d inhaled his scent on more than one occasion, had closed her eyes and breathed deep and been soothed and excited and inflamed by the way he smelled.

She followed her nose and her instincts. She quit thinking and just walked forward, drawn onward. And finally there it was, the room she’d been searching for. She knew it was the right room before she even opened the door, but she watched her hand turn the knob and push the door open, watched all
that vivid color bloom at the threshold. And there he was, waiting for her, always waiting. All this time, if only she’d known where to look.

“Lizzy.” That was all he said, one word, her name, but it was enough.

Xavier knew the details of this house he’d never been in before tonight almost as well as he knew his own. Even though it was an older home, it had been renovated at some time, opening up the interior to a more modern floor plan. The living room and dining area were open to each other, one to the left of the front door and the other to the right; the kitchen was separated from the dining area by a half-wall.

Moving into the living room, he looked around; again, the room wasn’t completely dark. Light seeped in past the edges of the heavy curtains over the windows, plus there were the electronic lights: a small blue one on the cordless phone charger, a bright amber light from the cable box, a red dot on the DVD player. The soft, multicolored glow allowed him to see all the furniture in the living room, and a sweeping glance told him what he was looking for wasn’t there. Damn it, he hoped she hadn’t carried everything into her bedroom, because that could get dicey. He stood in one spot and did a slow three-sixty, carefully examining every chair, the floor, every flat surface—

Aha. There they were, on the round table in the dining area—the shopping bags from this afternoon’s jaunt into Virginia.

This very-early-morning visit—he wouldn’t call it breaking and entering since he did, after all, have a key—wasn’t the safest course of action, but he had to know. Where had she gone, and why? What would take her into Virginia when everything she might possibly need could be found within ten miles of her house? She had been put in this location for that very reason,
to make her world small. Routine was their friend. Routine kept Lizzy alive. Her days were usually predictable down to the minute, allowing for traffic variables.

But not today—rather, yesterday afternoon, when she’d left work. She’d gone in the opposite direction. She’d driven too fast. She’d gone way the hell into Virginia, then turned around and come back, and on the return trip she’d gotten off at an exit that she’d burned past on the first half of her trip. She hadn’t gone just one exit down, as if she’d missed that one; she’d gone several exits down. It was as if she’d been trying to shake a tail.