The Protector (2 page)

She heard the words but refused to dwell on them. “Okay, calm down,
Itzak
. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in America. We’ll go to the police, and we’ll tell them everything you know. They’ll find that man and arrest him—”

“No!” He cut her off, blanching. “I am sorry,” he added, his voice cracking. And then he fled from her, moving against the tide of pedestrians as he ran in the direction of his home.
 

Eryn
watched his backpack bob up and down until it disappeared. Jerking a fearful gaze at the heavy traffic, she sought any sign of black taxi. There were two, one coming from either direction. She quickly moved behind the crowd, and they roared past, neither one even slowing.

Everything appeared as it always did. People rushed toward the entrance to the metro station, bumping into her as she went to salvage her briefcase, which was being trampled on. Maybe she’d just imagined that she’d nearly been kidnapped.

But Itzak’s warning played over and over in her head, keeping her pulse unsteady.
My beautiful teacher, you must run. He will not stop until he takes your head.

The warning carried distinctly jihadist overtones. People didn’t go just around “taking” other people’s heads in America, but she was the daughter of the top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan. A couple of Afghanis with ties to the insurgency might have a real motive for abducting her.

They’d probably intended on grabbing her in the alley behind the school’s rear exit. Or had
Itzak
wanted to take that route to avoid being seen by the taxi driver?

Dear God, if that man knew where she worked, how could she be sure he didn’t know where she lived?

Envisioning the taxi cab lying in wait, she shuddered.

She didn’t dare go home, not without getting help first. A call to Kabul, Afghanistan during peak calling hours was going to cost an arm and a leg, but her father would know exactly what to do. General McClellan would do everything in his power to protect his only daughter.

Chapter One

Isaac Thackeray Calhoun imbedded the head of the ax into the log he was splitting and went to silence his beeping watch. The watch, linked to the security system that monitored his sixty-three acres, alerted him that someone was now trespassing on his property.

Ike pricked his ears and tested the atmosphere. Over the cry of a red-tail hawk and the sloughing of a spring breeze, he could hear a vehicle fighting its way up his mountain. Who the hell? He wasn’t expecting visitors.
 

Abandoning the log pile, he strode to the towering oak tree and ascended twelve slat rungs to a platform that offered a bird’s-eye view of Overlook Mountain and
Jollet’s
Hollow.

The spume of dust rising over the budding treetops confirmed the intruder was coming up fast, in what sounded like an eight-cylinder pick-up conquering the steep, gravel drive with ease.
 

Four years in Afghanistan had conditioned Ike to expect the worst. Sliding down the thick rope he used for conditioning, he hit the ground running. His old, clapboard cabin, twenty yards away, housed an arsenal of weapons, all of which he kept locked and loaded.
 

Retrieving his Python .357 Magnum, he returned outside and stepped gingerly through the bed of winter squash at the side of his cabin. He lowered the brim of his baseball cap, leaned his 6’-2” frame into the shadows, and waited.
  

Within seconds, a black Ford pick-up with Pennsylvania plates swerved to a stop in Ike’s front yard. Shining like a new penny under a coating of road dust, the well-cared for truck spoke volumes about the man who drove it.
  

Ike could just make out broad shoulders and dark sunglasses through the tinted windows. The intruder looked like any one of the first responders who took Ike’s survival and security course. Except the spring session had just ended, and he wasn’t due for more trainees till July.
 

If it wasn’t business, and it sure as hell wasn’t pleasure, that left nothing but trouble.
 

The engine died, and Ike tensed as the driver’s door opened. A pair of cowboy boots
emerged,
followed by jeans, a plaid shirt, and aviator sunglasses. The intruder was lean and blond with hair buzzed high and tight. Closing the truck door, he cut across the grassy yard while scanning his surroundings with eyes that never stopped moving.
 

There was something familiar about the way the man moved, a confidence in his stride that prompted Ike to steal a closer peek at his face. The intruder spotted him, reaching for the small of his back

“Leave it,” Ike barked and the man froze. Aiming high over the porch rail, Ike stalked him.

Two hands shot into the air. “Goddamn it, LT, don’t
fuckin
’ shoot me! It’s me, Cougar Johnson.”

Ike hesitated at the exasperated announcement. The intruder didn’t look much like the twenty-year-old teammate he had left behind last year. But Afghanistan had a way of aging a man.
 

“How’d you find me?” he demanded. He’d been living off the grid, doing everything in his power to leave the past behind.

“How ’bout you put the
gun
down, then we talk?” Cougar kept his eyes on the Python.
 

“How ’bout you jump back in your truck and haul ass off my mountain?” Ike countered, only he knew Cougar wouldn’t do it. The boy never did have any stopping-sense.

Proving him right, Cougar whipped off his sunglasses. “I had a hell of a time finding you,” he accused.
 

If Ike had wanted to be found he’d have listed himself in the goddamn phone book.

Getting no response, Cougar cast a wider look around. “So this is where you retired, huh? Not bad.” To Ike’s irritation, he dragged a porch chair closer and perched his ass right on it. “I wondered where you’d holed up after you left.”

Guilt bubbled up, burning and raw after all these months.

Undeterred by his silence, the boy continued a one-sided conversation. “So, I guess you heard Spellman stepped on a mine?” he said, a hard glint in his brown eyes.
  

Ike had not heard. He did everything in his power to avoid getting news from the outside.

“They managed to save him,” Cougar added, his voice roughening. “But he lost his left arm and both legs.
Fuckin
’ shame,
ya
know?”

Spellman had been Ike’s spotter, the most careful guy he had ever known, not the type to put his foot down carelessly.

Johnson’s face contorted with the scorn Ike knew was coming. “He never did get over what happened, I reckon,” the kid added, reckless enough to bring up the past. “After you left, he couldn’t stop thinking everything was his fault.
Figured he should’ve done something different.”
Cougar glowered down at him, awaiting a reaction.

Ike didn’t give him one. He had learned to
be
nothing,
need
nothing,
feel
nothing. It was the only way he could live with himself, day after grueling day. “
Why’re
you here?” His tone would have sent any other man running for dear life.
 

But not Cougar.
The kid looked like he wanted to jump off the porch and whoop his ass. Ike considered letting him try when Cougar’s words, quietly measured, stopped his breath.

“McClellan needs you.”

Ike choked on his own spit. With three simple words, Cougar had shattered his self-imposed isolation.

The Commander of ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force, had been more of a father to him than his own daddy ever was. He might have been the leader of every coalition soldier in Afghanistan, but to Ike, he was a confidant who understood what it was like to be an executioner, commended for taking human lives.

Stanley, as he’d insisted Ike call him when it was just the two of them, had been a sniper, too, with the Marines two decades earlier. Many a night, they’d lingered at the Watering Hole in Kabul baring their sins, granting clemency, from one killer to another. Stanley had trusted Ike to keep his teammates alive. Ike would never forget the look on his face when he’d returned from the mission with four body bags.
 

“McClellan told me to tell you, ‘You owe him,’” Cougar added.

Three more words guaranteed to bring Isaac Calhoun down off his precious mountain. He couldn’t bring himself to disappoint Stanley ever again.
 

Lowering the nose of the Python, Ike rumbled a growl of defeat. Whatever the Commander asked of him, he would do. Yeah, he’d do it. But then he’d come right back here and shoot the next fucker who tried to drag him off his mountain.

**

“I’ll be back for lunch.”

FBI Special Agent Jackson Maddox’s voice reminded
Eryn
of a Jamaican steel drum. “You know the drill, ma’am,” he added. “Stay away from the windows. Keep the doors locked. You’ll be fine.” White teeth flashed against his mocha-colored skin as he sent her an encouraging smile.

Fine?
She wanted to scream at the agent for using such a vague, insubstantial word.
Fine?
Her student
Itzak
had been found with his throat slit the very night he’d changed his mind about abducting her. She’d been removed from everything that was safe and familiar and brought to this sterile environment, where communication with the outside world was strictly forbidden. And she hadn’t been allowed any communication with her father since the day of the incident. How in hell did that make her fine?

Fifteen days! She’d been at this safe house for over two weeks and all the FBI had learned was that
Itzak
had ties to the Brotherhood of Islam, a local Muslim group with an extremist element. They hadn’t arrested anybody.

Somewhere out there lurking in the shadows, sat a killer, mocking the Bureau’s attempts to identify him, while
Eryn
wasted away behind locked doors and cameras, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Oh, no. She was far from fine, but if she opened her mouth to admit it, she was certain she would burst into tears.

“You okay, ma’am?” Jackson’s blue-green eyes, so startling against his dusky complexion, reflected sympathy.

Given the lump in her throat, all she could do was nod at him.

“Dial one if you need me,” he reminded her.

Hugging herself against the tremors that had started up again, she trailed him toward the door, wishing desperately that she could just walk out into the world like he did each morning. She missed her freedom almost as much as she missed talking to her father. It made so little sense that they refused her that harmless concession.

“Try to sleep,” Jackson added, stepping outside. Fresh, spring air taunted her as it wafted in.

Thanks to the prescription the FBI’s psychologist had given her, sleeping was about all she had been doing. It left her feeling more isolated, more cut off than ever. What she would rather do was to slip quietly away from here, just disappear, to someplace where neither Itzak’s killer nor the FBI could find her, ever again.

Jackson shut the door between them, waiting for
Eryn
to bolt all three locks behind him, just as she’d done from day one. Moving toward the window, which she’d been told never to approach, she tabbed the blinds to watch jealously as Jackson slipped into a dark green car and pulled away.

The sudden stillness in the townhouse plucked at her tautly strung nerves. The downy hair on her forearms prickled.