The Pregnancy Plot (Brothers In Arms: Retribution Book 2) (14 page)

Crossing her arms, she backed away from the computer and the window. She retreated to the kitchen, her eyes flicking toward the laptop. Maybe that file didn’t represent his book. Maybe his book was in a folder somewhere else.

She hadn’t even checked when he’d last saved the file. Maybe he was just playing with a new idea based on all the stuff going on since his arrival on the island. The sentence itself was a joke, not a serious attempt at writing.

She paced while hugging herself, the flannel pajamas no longer warm enough. She’d snooped and paid the price. If she confronted him about it, she’d have to admit she’d accessed his laptop on the sly. If she didn’t confront him, she’d have to continue to suspect his motives—and his sanity—just as with Simon.

She heard him stomping his boots on the porch and took the best course of action. She retreated to the rooms in the back and cranked on the shower. After locking the door.

The warm water calmed her nerves. She hadn’t stumbled on his book. Jase Buckley didn’t pose any threat to her. He’d saved her on the water and had been there for her when Lou had attacked her and then wound up dead on the deck. He’d come to her defense when he thought Chris Kitchens meant to do her harm and then had insisted on accompanying her when Chris texted her his warnings.

Jase was one of the good guys.

She finished her shower and dressed in the bathroom. When she entered the sitting room, Jase turned from staring out the window, his hand resting on his open laptop.

Keeping her eyes pinned to his face, she asked, “Did you get a lot of work done this morning? The fence is looking pretty good.”

“What?”

“The fence.” He knew. He knew she’d been snooping.

“Oh, yeah. Coming along, and I picked up the boat.” He swung his head back toward the window. “Did you have breakfast? I was kind of hoping for more blueberry pancakes.”

“I was...busy.”

He turned to face her, his gaze raking her from head to toe. “Taking a shower? You must’ve slept in. That’s good. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, because...” She closed her eyes and dragged her fingers through her damp hair. “I went onto your laptop.”

His eyebrows jumped. “I have a password.”

“I saw you enter your password last night before I went to bed.”

“Why did you use my computer?”

His soft voice made her swallow. “M-mine is corrupted and I wanted to search for
tempest
.”

“Did you find it?”

“I found— No, I didn’t find out anything about that word.” She twisted her fingers in front of her. “I found your book.
Is
that your book?”

“That’s it.”

His flat admission sent adrenaline surging through her body and she flung her arms out to her sides and took a step back. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m not Jase Buckley, Nina, and I’m not a writer. I’m Jase Bennett and I’m an agent for an undercover ops organization—just like Simon was.”

Chapter Fifteen

Her arms fell to her sides. She took another step back. Why did she attract the lunatics? She’d had this man in her bed, in her heart.

She folded her arms over her baby bump. No wonder he’d reminded her of Simon. Two sides of the same crazy coin. Jase had done a much better job of disguising his madness, though.

“Jase, I think you’d better leave now.”

His dark eyes widened and he threw back his head and laughed.

She jumped.

“I thought you’d be angry with me, maybe throw something at me—but you just think I’m crazy.”

“I don’t think that.” She shook her head back and forth, her hair whipping from side to side. “Not at all. But I think it’s time you left and did your covert ops stuff somewhere else.”

He reached behind his back. She ducked.

The look on his face gave her pause—gave her hope. He held his hands in front of him, clutching a thumb drive. “Don’t be afraid, Nina. I know it sounds crazy to you, but it’s the truth. I would’ve told you sooner, but I wasn’t supposed to reveal my identity to you or tell you what was going on until...until a later date. But with everything going on—Lou, Chris, Tempest—we need to tell you.”

“Don’t be afraid? You ask me not to be afraid and then bring up Lou and Chris?” She jabbed her finger at him. “What’s that?”

“Proof.” He pulled out the chair in front of the laptop. “It’s proof that everything I’m saying is true. Have a seat. I don’t bite.”

He’d used the same phrase she’d used on him last night when inviting him to join her in bed. Was it deliberate? She studied his face, and his mouth turned up at one corner.

A little bit of tension seeped from between her shoulder blades and she walked to the chair. She sat on the corner of it, gripping the edge of the table.

Jase leaned over her to insert the thumb drive into the side of the laptop, and her shoulders stiffened.

“Sorry about this.” He moved the cursor to the Book file and deleted it. “It was my attempt to add some humor to our situation.”

“Our situation.”

“You’re not in this alone, Nina. I’ve always been on your side.”

A man this sincere couldn’t be a whack job, could he? But the alternative he was proposing wasn’t much better.

He opened the thumb drive, which was populated with multiple folders. “I’m really not supposed to be sharing this with you, but you deserve to know what’s going on and I’ve kept you in the dark long enough.”

He double-clicked on a folder, and she held her breath. If this folder contained more of his bizarre attempts at writing a book, she was ready to sprint.

Instead, a photo of her on the phone and getting into her car on the street in front of her LA condo filled the computer screen. She jerked her head to the side. “How did you get this?”

He clicked the mouse and another picture of her appeared and another and another, all going about her daily business.

She gasped, half out of her chair. “You were following me in LA?”

“Not me personally. I don’t do surveillance like this.”

The photos were professional, taken with a high-powered telephoto lens. There’s no way she wouldn’t have noticed someone that close taking a picture of her. But maybe she sensed the scrutiny.

“What
do
you do?

“I’m on the personal security end. My job right now is to protect targets.”

“I’m a target? Why?”

He closed out her personal photo album and opened another folder. Some sort of document or report flashed on the screen with Simon’s picture prominently displayed in the middle.

She covered her mouth with one hand. “You knew all about Simon.”

He tapped the monitor. “Probably more than you did. Simon Skinner was a covert ops agent, like me, but for a different agency.”

Her eyes scanned details of Simon’s life, including a map pinpointing his locations over the past few years.

She squinted at the red dots. She knew he’d traveled a lot for his so-called government security job, but she had no idea he’d traveled to Yemen, Beijing, Libya.

She slumped back in her chair. Jase couldn’t be just a garden-variety nut job with all this info and high tech at his fingertips, but that meant he was telling the truth. She didn’t know which frightened her more.

“When you say covert ops agency, do you mean the CIA?”

“Both of our agencies are offshoots of the CIA. The average citizen has never heard the names and is unaware of our activities.”

“Who
is
aware of your activities?”

“It’s on a need-to-know basis—sometimes the military, sometimes the CIA, sometimes the president.”

“Only
sometimes
for the president?”

“Do you believe me now? The book was just a cover to take me to Break Island.”

“Why are you here? Just because I’m Simon Skinner’s ex-fiancée? Was I right all along? Is he the one stalking me? And because he’s one of these secret agents, you guys had to get involved?”

“It’s more complicated than that, Nina. It’s Tempest.”

She slammed her palms down on each side of the laptop. “What’s Tempest? What is it? You know, don’t you? That’s why you got so freaked out when I showed you that slip of paper from Lou’s pocket.”

His broad chest expanded as he filled his lungs with air. When he’d released the last bit of breath, he double-clicked another folder. An image of dark, swirling clouds took over the screen and an unaccountable feeling of dread thrummed through her system.

“Simon worked for Tempest. It’s one of the covert ops agencies I was talking about.”

“Then it is Simon following me. He has something to do with the deaths of Lou and Chris. That’s why they knew about Tempest.”

“It’s not Simon, Nina.”

“How do you know that? How can you be so sure?”

“Nina.” He crouched beside her chair and took both of her hands in his, still rough with dirt from his work outside. “Simon’s dead.”

“No.” Her belly flip-flopped. “He can’t be dead.”

“He is. I’m sorry, Nina. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before. It’s been hell listening to you voice your suspicions about him, knowing all the time how false they were.”

She snatched her hands away from his. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying, Nina.”

A laugh bubbled up from her throat and she jumped up from the chair, knocking it over. “Because you’ve been so honest about everything else?”

“I had no choice in the matter. We’re talking national security issues.”

She drove a thumb into her chest. “I have something to do with national security?”

“You do now.”

She paced away from him, her hands settling on her stomach. “How did he die? When did he die?”

He ran his hands across his face and for the first time she noticed the deep lines on both sides of his tight mouth. “I’m telling you this because he was your fiancé, because you’re carrying his baby and because your life may be in danger because of that.”

Her heart fluttered in her chest and for a brief moment she wanted to run away and pull the covers over her head, but this was Will’s father, a story she might well have to tell her son someday.

“What happened to him? Is it related to his PTSD?”

“It’s related to his behavior but Simon didn’t have PTSD.”

“What did he have? Why did he go off the deep end like that?”

“He’d been drugged, programmed, and in trying to break free from the mind control, he lost his mind.”

Her body swayed as if she was on the deck of a sailboat, and Jase was immediately at her side. “Sit down. Do you need some water?”

He led her to the love seat where they’d been so close last night in front of the fire. And all along he’d known these terrible truths about Simon, her baby’s father.

She sank into the cushion, and Jase returned with two glasses of water. She downed half of hers with one gulp.

“Are you telling me that Tempest did that to him?”

“Not just to Simon. We have reason to believe that Tempest had all of its agents on the same program. They’re still on it. Simon was one of the strong ones. They could never completely control him, and when he and another agent figured out what Tempest was doing to them, they went rogue.”

“Another agent?”

“He’s the one who came in from the field and told us this story. We had plenty of reasons to doubt him, but everything he’s claimed has checked out.”

“Max Duvall.”

His hand jerked and he spilled his water all over the front of his flannel shirt. “How do you know that name?”

“I met him once. He came to our condo when our relationship was on the precipice. Simon introduced him as a coworker and then they went outside to talk.”

“That’s the agent.”

She nodded. “You still haven’t told me what happened to Simon.”

He looked away and cleared his throat.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“He died, Nina. He died as a result of what those bastards did to him. He died trying to break free from the yoke of servitude that Tempest imposed on him.”

“Why is Tempest doing this to its agents?”

“According to Duvall, Tempest is creating a cadre of superagents—strong, invincible, impervious to pain, devoid of conscience.”

“That’s crazy.” She dipped her fingers in her water glass and rubbed her temples with the cool moisture. “It’s like science fiction.”

“That’s why it took a while to verify Duvall’s story.”

“But why me? Why did you land on my doorstep?”

Jase wiped his hands on the seat of his pants. “I told you. I’m the protector. I came here to watch over you.”

“Why would Tempest care about me? Simon told me nothing about his work. I obviously didn’t even know the name of his agency.”

“We’re not sure. My boss had an intuition about you and sent me out here.”

“To pose as a writer-handyman.”

“That’s right.”

“And it seems that your boss’s intuition was correct. Tempest is here. Tempest is watching me. Tempest was watching me in LA. You both were. No wonder I felt stalked.”

“I don’t know how they contacted Lou and I don’t know how Chris found out about them, but it’s clear they had a hand in their deaths.” He scratched the stubble on his chin. “And your boat accident.”

“What?” She choked on her last sip of water. “The boat?”

“The first day I met you. We both assumed Lou was responsible for damaging your boat, but she never admitted it. Why not? She’d admitted everything else.”

“You think Tempest put a hole in my boat?”

“Yeah.”

“For what purpose?”

“To scare you, put you on edge. They don’t know you or this area. Maybe they thought that would be enough to drown you, but if they wanted to kill you, I think they would’ve done so by now.”

She pushed up from the love seat. “That’s a lovely thought. What now?”

“I need to get you out of here, off this island. My agency can offer you refuge.”

“I think it’s a little too late for that.”

“Why do you say that?”

As if to punctuate her point, a flash of lightning lit up the room and a rumble of thunder shook the floor.

“Nobody’s getting off this island.”

Chapter Sixteen

Jase flung open the front door and stepped onto the porch. The dark clouds that had been threatening from a distance all morning had moved in swiftly to envelop the island. A gust of wind slammed against the house, ripping off the shutter that had been hanging by a thread.

Backing up, he stepped over the threshold and clicked the door shut on the encroaching storm. “That came in fast.”

“Not really,” Nina called from the kitchen, where she’d put on the kettle for hot water. “The weather guy on TV has been forecasting it all week. All the signs were there.”

He strode to the kitchen. “Why don’t you sit down? You’ve had a huge shock this morning. If you give me directions, I can try to replicate those pancakes from yesterday.”

She kept her back to him and hunched her shoulders as she braced her hands against the stove. “You can stop now, Jason Bennett.”

Uh-oh. He had a feeling he’d been experiencing the calm before the storm when he told her about Simon and Tempest...and his own deception.

He wedged his shoulder against the wall. “Stop what? And everyone calls me Jase anyway.”

She snorted. “At least that wasn’t a lie.”

“I thought you understood why I had to lie.” Folding his arms, he dug his fingers into his biceps.

“Of course.” She flicked her fingers in the air. “National security.”

“We didn’t have all the facts, Nina.”

The whistle on the kettle blew, piercing the thick air between them. She grabbed the handle and dumped the boiling water over her tea bag in the cup and then jumped back as drops of water must’ve splashed up and scalded her wrist.

He shrugged off the wall and then stopped as she turned with her cup in hand, her blue eyes blazing. “You can stay here because it’s going to start pouring rain in the next thirty minutes, but you don’t have to pretend to care about me and the baby anymore.”

“Pretend? There was no pretense on my part.”

Biting her lip, she moved away from the stove and squeezed past him, holding her steaming cup aloft. She stopped at her office door and turned. “Was there ever really a pregnant girlfriend? A baby lost?”

His stomach dropped. “Good God, Nina. Do you really think I’d lie about that?”

“I think you’d lie about anything to do your job, which was get close to me and find out what I knew about Tempest.”

“Tempest?” He ran a hand along his jaw. “We didn’t think you knew anything about Tempest. It was always just about protecting you, making sure Tempest didn’t come after you.”

“I know. I got that part and now that I know all about Tempest and...and Simon, you can just do your job. You don’t have to fake affection for me or my baby.”

“Nina...”

The office door slammed and then shook for good measure.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked at the leg of a chair. If it had been up to him, he would’ve told her when Lou died and she found that piece of paper in her stepsister’s pocket, but Coburn had just given him the okay to tell her. The tremor in her voice and her glistening eyes told him she felt more hurt than angry.

Maybe he should’ve never gotten personal. Would she be this upset if he’d remained the handyman? Now she believed he’d held her and kissed her just to fake her out and let him in.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

The wind howled outside and he felt like howling along with it.

He hunched over the counter, surveying the kitchen and weighing his options. Cereal. Instant oatmeal if she had it.

He glanced at the office door, firmly closed in his face. He’d look for it himself.

He grabbed a bowl from the cupboard and almost dropped it when someone started banging on the front door.

He shoved his weapon in the back of his waistband and put his eye to the peephole. Mr. Kleinschmidt, the single piece of gray hair on his head standing straight up, swayed on the porch.

Jase inched open the door so that it wouldn’t be snatched from his grasp. “Mr. Kleinschmidt, what are you doing out here? You look ready to blow away.”

He braced a gnarled hand on the post. “Like my boat?”

“Your boat?” The wind blew the rain sideways and soaked Mr. Kleinschmidt’s jacket. Jase grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. “What about your boat?”

Nina had wandered in from the sealed fortress of her office, her eyes wide. “What’s going on? The storm has really picked up, hasn’t it?”

“It snatched my boat right from the dock.” Mr. Kleinschmidt ran a hand over his wet face.

“How did that happen? It was tied up.” Jase stalked to the window to peek outside. The Kleinschmidts’ boat had, indeed, vacated the dock.

“That’s what I was going to ask you. We haven’t taken it out since you brought it back early this morning. Did you secure it?”

“Of course.”

“Did you see the boat out on the water, Carl?”

“It’s gone, Nina.”

She shot a gaze toward Jase. “Maybe someone stole it, maybe someone desperate to get to the mainland.”

“We may have been desperate to get to the mainland. I think we just lost our last chance.”

“Is the Harbor Patrol still letting boats cross?”

“I think this morning would’ve been our last opportunity.”

Jase spread his hands. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kleinschmidt. I don’t know what could’ve happened.”

But he had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had no doubt someone from Tempest was on the island and could even be responsible for the theft of the Kleinschmidts’ boat. This agent had made contact with both Lou and Chris somehow. What he couldn’t quite grasp is what he and Tempest wanted with Nina.

If the agency wanted her dead, she’d be dead. They could’ve targeted her in LA before Prospero even had her in its sights, before he’d taken up the job of protecting her.

And if they’d taken the trouble of punching a hole in Nina’s boat, they could’ve just as easily packed it with explosives. He clenched his teeth and took a shuddering breath.

“Were you and Mrs. Kleinschmidt planning on evacuating the island?”

“Not now.” Mr. Kleinschmidt tugged his damp jacket around him. “You know, Nina, the water’s getting pretty high out there. The Harbor Patrol just might tell us coastal folks to move to higher ground.”

“Would they do that?” Jase turned to Nina, whose pale face caused knots to form in his gut. Had the missing boat raised her suspicions, too?

Maybe he should’ve kept his secrets. He could’ve explained away the Book file, made a joke of it. He had enough legitimate reasons to protect her that had nothing to do with Tempest. She’d been buying his story up until this point. Now she was needlessly worried about something out of her control...but not out of his.

She twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “It happened once when I was a teenager. Am I remembering that right, Carl?”

“It was about ten years ago, and I think this monster storm has that one beat.”

An evacuation would definitely complicate things. Jase asked, “How does the Harbor Patrol notify you if there’s an evacuation?”

Mr. Kleinschmidt scratched his chin. “If they can’t get out on the water, they’ll come door-to-door and you’d better obey or they’ll come down on you with fines. Maybe Dora and I can ride with you in the truck if it comes to that, Nina.”

“Of course we’ll give you and Dora a lift, Carl, and I’m sorry about the boat. I don’t understand what could’ve happened. Do you think the wind was strong enough to snap the rope?”

“It might be in an hour or two, but it wasn’t that bad this morning.”

“Maybe the Harbor Patrol will find it on the bay.”

“Maybe. You two take care now. Dora’s going to want to help you out with the baby, Nina. She’s been after me to move to California to be closer to the grandkids, so she can use yours as a substitute in the meantime.”

So, she hadn’t been fooling the Kleinschmidts at all. “That would be lovely. Do you need Jase to help you get back home?”

He waved them off. “Naw.”

“I wanna have a look at the bay anyway. I’ll walk back with you.” Jase grabbed the mackinaw from last night and winked at Nina.

As soon as he stepped onto the porch, the rain lashed his face. He grabbed on to Mr. Kleinschmidt’s arm, and the older man listed to the side.

He kept a firm grip on Mr. Kleinschmidt all the way to his front door, where his wife was hovering.

Then he turned toward their boat dock. The water churned and gurgled. Waves formed and crashed against the beach, the wind carrying the salty spray inland.

Even the current force of the water and wind weren’t enough to rip a boat from its moorings. Either someone had untied it with the intent of letting it get carried away, or someone had stolen it.

And he hadn’t noticed a thing. There was a lot he hadn’t noticed since falling under the spell of Nina Moore.

He crouched and studied the area around the dock. Indentations from footprints crisscrossed the dirt and sand. They could belong to anyone.

He returned to Moonstones, and the closed office door. What was she doing in there? Her computer didn’t even work.

He sat at his own computer and stared out the window at the darkening sky, which made the afternoon look like midnight.

He brought up his email and clicked on one from Jack. He’d sent a minidossier on Chris Kitchens and the guy was legit—dead but legit. So how had he run afoul of Tempest?

If Break Island had truly been a small town, without all the tourists and the mainlanders coming and going, it would’ve been a hell of a lot easier to zero in on a stranger. As it was, Nina didn’t know half of the people she ran into on a daily basis.

A few hours later, after no communication from Nina, no food and an increasing deluge outside, the table lamp flickered and died. His laptop made a buzzing noise and went black.

Nina flew out of the office. “We lost power.”

“Flashlights? Candles? You already mentioned you didn’t have a generator.”

“I’m not even sure about candles.”

They both jumped when a voice boomed from a loudspeaker outside.

“This is the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Department calling for an evacuation. Leave your homes on the coast and head over the dunes into town.”

“The Kleinschmidts.” Nina made for the front door and barreled down the porch.

By the time Jase joined her, she was already hanging on the door of the sheriff’s truck and turned at his approach. “There’s an evacuation center in the school gym. The school sits on a hill behind the main street.”

“I’ve seen it.”

The sheriff jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You folks need to get going. The water’s rising and churning and we’re expecting some big waves and flooding. The road’s going to be washed out for sure by the end of the day, and then you’ll be completely cut off.”

“Maybe the storm will level this place and I can start from scratch.” Nina tossed her head back toward Moonstones.

“You might get your wish, but you don’t want to be inside when it happens.”

“We need to pick up the neighbors.” Jase gestured to the Kleinschmidts’ house.

“Yeah, the old guy opened the front door and waved. They heard us.”

“We’ll get going, then.” Jase smacked the roof of the vehicle. “Thanks.”

As Nina picked her way over the soggy ground to the Kleinschmidts’ house, Jase held her arm whether she liked it or not.

Mr. Kleinschmidt swung open the door before they took their first step onto the porch.

“I heard, I heard. This storm’s coming in like a son of a bitch.”

“Carl?”

“It’s Nina and her friend.”

“Her fiancé?” Dora Kleinschmidt joined her husband at the door, carrying enough jackets to outfit a small army.

The fiancé and pregnancy story must’ve spread far and wide, because Mrs. Kleinschmidt studied him from behind a pair of thick glasses that magnified her eyes to scary proportions.

“Dora, this is Jason...Buckley—my fiancé.”

Jase returned Mrs. Kleinschmidt’s surprisingly strong grip. “Call me Jase. Everyone calls me Jase.”

“Okay, enough with the introductions. You’ll have hours to grill him at the school gym, Dora.” Mr. Kleinschmidt took an armful of jackets from his wife.

Nina held up her finger. “Wait here. We’ll get the rest of our stuff and drive the truck up to your gate.”

They returned to the B and B and Nina collected a few items while Jase packed up his laptop and his weapon and stuffed them into a backpack.

Before she locked up, Nina paused on the threshold and gazed into the sitting room. “I almost do hope the place is destroyed. I need a fresh start.”

He took the keys from her hand. “I’ll drive.”

They picked up Carl and Dora and crawled along the road to town with the rain falling so fast and furious the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up.

They hit a little traffic jam winding onto the main street as other coastal residents had gotten the same directive from the sheriff’s department.

As Jase pulled into a packed parking lot, he said, “I’ll drop you all off at the entrance to the gym and then park the truck.”

By the time he parked and slogged his way back through the school parking lot to the gym, Nina and the Kleinschmidts had claimed one corner of a few low bleacher rows.

Jase shed his jacket and hung it over a bleacher railing. “At least they keep it warm in here.”

Mr. Kleinschmidt snorted. “With all these bodies in here it’s going to get plenty warm.”

“The Emersons are over by the coffee.” Mrs. Kleinschmidt placed a hand on Nina’s arm. “Do you mind if we leave you to say hello, Nina? I’m sure you two would like some time alone anyway.”

“Of course not. It looks like they’re getting a card game going, too. You might as well enjoy yourself.”

Mrs. Kleinschmidt patted her arm. “You have this big, strong man to look out for you now.”

Nina managed a tight smile.

When the Kleinschmidts crossed the room to join the card game, Jase puffed out a breath. “Thanks for not blowing my cover.”

“What am I supposed to say? ‘Jason Bennett is actually a spy for some black ops agency. Oh, and my ex-fiancé was one, too.’”

“I told you a lot more than you needed to know, Nina.”

She rounded on him, her nostrils flaring. “You didn’t tell me nearly enough, Jase—you or Simon. I sensed the two of you were alike from the minute I met you.”