Agent Bride (6 page)

Chapter Seven

Cal moved quickly. “I’m going downstairs. Stay up here. No matter what, stay up here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Whatever it takes,” he said. He grabbed the coat that Stormy had shed and tossed it at her. “Lock this door behind me. Hide in that closet,” he said, pointing across the room.

“Shouldn’t we call 911?”

“Won’t do us any good. By the time they get here, it’s going to be over, one way or the other.” He could tell she didn’t like the sound of that.

“But—”

“No time,” he said. The Mercedes Men were halfway down the road. He pulled up his pant leg, reached inside his cowboy boot and came out with the knife that he kept strapped to his ankle. He pressed a button on the handle and the blade extended. He handed it to her.

She didn’t recoil or throw up her hands. She took it, tested the weight in the palm of her hand, then gripped the handle.

“Do you think you could stab someone?” he asked.

“I’ll do what I have to do.”

“Good. If anybody besides me opens that closet door, let them get close and then go for center body mass. Don’t hesitate. You’ll only get one chance.”

He took two steps toward the door.

“Cal,” she said.

He turned and she was close. Close enough to reach her arms up, pull his face toward her and kiss him hard. It was unexpected and explosively hot. He opened his mouth and their tongues battled.

When she pulled back, he felt as if he’d been hit by an incoming missile. Dazed.

“Be careful,” she said.

He was generally never careful but almost always successful. “I’ll do my best,” he managed.

He ran lightly down the stairs. If the Mercedes Men followed their pattern, two would enter. He would have the advantage of surprise. It would be enough unless one of them got off a lucky shot. The trick was letting them get far enough inside that the other men waiting in the car didn’t realize that their buddies were under attack and come running. That would change the odds.

He absolutely could not let any of them get upstairs. While the knife gave Stormy a bit of protection, it was an inefficient weapon against a gun.

He stood flat against the wall, near the door that they would either pick the lock or simply knock down. He listened hard. Could hear the first set of tires. The car engine. Second set of tires. That engine. Then nothing for a minute.

Car door slam. Second car door slam.

He breathed normally, in and out, in and out. He needed to get steady fast. Needed to get that kiss out of his head.

His buddies would be laughing their tails off knowing that his knees were practically knocking together. Not because of the Mercedes Men. Them he could handle.

The doorknob jiggled. It had been an easy door to unlock. If they had any skill at it, it shouldn’t take them long.

He listened for the lock to tumble.

What he heard was a muffled cry, the voice deep. Then fast conversation at the door in a language that he didn’t know. Then the sound of running feet. Two car doors. Engines changing gears.

The cars were both leaving.

What the hell?

Then it made sense. He heard the sound of another approaching vehicle, coming from the direction of the hotel. Big rumbling engine.

The engines from the two cars were fading. They’d turned right out of the parking lot, headed back toward the Interstate.

He needed to see. He ran back upstairs to the windows.

It was a big delivery truck. The sign on the side said Wardman Toboggan Company.

It was a “good news, bad news” kind of moment.

Good news in that the Mercedes Men had decided a confrontation wasn’t in their best interests. Bad news in that the likelihood that the truck would pull into the garage and see their rental car was pretty high.

He’d had no compunction about taking out the Mercedes Men but didn’t want to have that same fight with an unsuspecting employee.

“Change of plans,” he said, turning. Then smiled when Stormy didn’t immediately open the closet door. Good girl. “Just me,” he said. “Mercedes Men backed off when a company truck started down the road. Let’s roll. We need to be in our vehicle and ready to go if those garage doors open.”

She opened the closet door and tried to hand him back the knife. “You keep it,” he said.

She shrugged, retracted the blade and put it into the pocket of his coat that she’d once again put on. She didn’t ask any additional questions, just followed him down the stairs and got inside the SUV. He could hear the engine of the truck. It needed a tune-up.

He started the SUV. Counted to five. The garage doors started rising. All three of them. He saw the nose of the big truck in front of the third door. Waited until the door in front of the SUV was open far enough that they could squeeze under.

Gunned it. And they were out of the building and sliding around the edge of the big warehouse, likely before the man in the truck had any idea what had happened.

He went the opposite direction of the Mercedes Men, heading back toward the hotel. But he didn’t stop there. Just kept going until he was also back on the Interstate.

She didn’t say a word until they were safely back on the road with nobody following them. “That was fun,” she said.

He turned, trying to figure out if she was being sarcastic. He didn’t think so.

It was oddly endearing and very attractive. “Ready for the drive?” he asked.

“Sure. But what about the people at Wardman’s?”

“Well, I suspect it’ll go sort of like this. When they first saw my SUV pulling out, they probably would have tried to figure out if there was a legitimate reason for me to be inside. For example, did the SUV belong to someone who works there? When they came up empty on that, they might have tried to get a plate number. But they wouldn’t have. We got out of there pretty fast and this morning before we started, I made sure there was a nice mud and snow mix on the plates, obscuring the information.”

“They’ll call the police?” she said, more fact than question.

“I imagine so. First, they’ll call the boss. He or she will tell them to call the police. Then there will a quick look around to see if anything is missing or disturbed. When everything looks okay, they’ll probably calm down, and quite frankly, the cops won’t put any time into it.”

“Cameras?” she asked.

“Didn’t see any. Those are getting more sophisticated by the minute, however, so it’s possible. Nervous about seeing your photo splashed across the internet or the local news station?”

“Nervous?” She put her hands on the borrowed sweatpants. “Why, do these make me look fat?”

He laughed so hard that he almost couldn’t drive. He might not know her name but he was slowly fitting together the pieces of Stormy. And liking the image he was creating.

Which was a problem considering she was somebody else’s woman.

He turned on the radio. “I’m going to try to catch some road reports,” he said.

* * *

S
HE
WATCHED
THE
miles roll by. They’d left the Interstate behind and turned off onto a two-lane highway. In most places, it was plowed wide enough to cause no worry for cars going opposite directions. There were places where it had blown badly and had they met a car in exactly those spots, it might have been an interesting game of chicken.

That didn’t happen. In fact, they met very few cars. Fewer than ten so far and none of them had been a black Mercedes.

The lack of activity gave her plenty of time for reflection. Perhaps too much.

She’d kissed him. Couldn’t put it out of her mind.

She’d grabbed his face, pulled him close and laid one on him. What the heck did that tell her about the kind of person she was?

She was a kisser? A wanton kisser? A nondiscriminating kisser, looking for any pair of available lips?

Or was it possible that she was very discriminating and had simply found something unique and interesting and worth her time? That was certainly something to chew on.

She fought the urge to ask Cal how he felt about it. That would have been such a female thing to do—to want to talk it to death. He hadn’t resisted. Had participated quite nicely, in fact.

But hadn’t mentioned it and apparently wasn’t inclined to want to talk about it or anything else. He’d fiddled with the radio for a few minutes and settled on a talk radio station that was debating the use of drone technology in the public sector.

She could tell the roads were still slick although no new snow was falling. Once the plows and the salt trucks were out and about, it would be fine to travel. There would be nothing to slow down the Mercedes Men.

But how would they be able to trace her to Ravesville? Maybe once she got to Cal’s family home, she’d truly be safe. Her mind would heal.

She’d had the two flashes of memory. They seemed incongruent. Her in a pretty dress with a briefcase and the ability to pick a lock. Figuring out how these seemingly disjointed memories went together was difficult.

Equally challenging was sorting through the new information that she was learning. Just this morning, she’d discovered two rather interesting facts. One, when Cal had handed her the knife and told her not to hesitate, she’d known that she would do what she had to do to protect herself. She would fight. And the second thing that had become abundantly clear when she’d been hiding in the closest, sweltering in Cal’s big coat, was that she didn’t like being left behind. When Cal had ordered her to hide, her first impulse had been to tell him to think again. But she’d decided to go along.

While she’d been waiting, her heart had been beating hard. At first, she’d thought it was in fear. Then she’d realized that it was in anticipation.

Of what, she wasn’t sure. But she wasn’t scared of it.

She wasn’t scared now. She closed her eyes, comfortable in the warm SUV, confident that Cal could handle the roads just fine.

She woke up when she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. She opened her eyes.

“We’re getting close,” he said. “Thought you might want to get a glimpse of the town. We have to go through it to get to the house.”

“Will anyone recognize you?”

“I wouldn’t think so. I haven’t been home since my mom died eight years ago.”

“Did you...did you see her before she passed?”

“I did. We had a couple days together. She was in and out because of the meds they had given her but it was still good.” He was silent for a few more minutes. “Where do your parents live?” he asked.

“Fort Collins, Colorado,” she said. Then turned to him. “How the heck do I know that?” she asked, hysteria hovering at the edge of her very slim grasp on sanity. She closed her eyes. Then after a long, frustrating moment opened them again. “This is crazy. I can’t picture them and I don’t know their names but I’m confident that it’s Fort Collins. How can this be?”

He shrugged. “I’m not a physician but I’ve seen this before. When you try to force it, it won’t come. But random things will be there. It should make you feel good, that it’s not all gone.”

She rubbed her forehead. “It’s like my brain is a crossword puzzle and the edges have been rubbed off the pieces so I can’t see how everything fits together.”

“It’ll come,” he said. He slowed the vehicle down. “Well, this is it. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.”

She smiled. It was sort of charming. A big main street, a couple blocks long, with four-way stop signs at the end of every block. Lots of red brick. Diagonal parking. There were a few cars in front of the Wright Here, Wright Now Café. She looked in the windows as they passed. “Cute little place,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“You lived here your whole life?”

“Yep.”

“Your mom and dad must have liked the community.”

He didn’t answer right away. Two stop signs later, he said, “My dad died when I was eleven.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“My mom remarried a couple years later. Brick Doogan. He wasn’t a nice guy. He’s been living in the house since Mom died. He was in a fatal car accident very recently.”

“Which is why your brother is fixing up the house to sell.”

“So you were listening?” he teased. “I’m not sure what the house will look like. I got the impression from Chase when we first spoke about it that it was worse than he expected.”

“It’s got to be better than a snowdrift,” she said.

He nodded. “A woman with low expectations. My kind of girl.”

She felt her stomach tighten. His kind of girl. Was she?

As nice as that might be, there was a reason she could not be involved with Cal. Felt it. Sadly enough, knew it had something to do with the wedding dress in the backseat.

Chapter Eight

As they passed the Fitzler house, he pointed it out. “Gordy Fitzler and his wife have lived there forever. They had two daughters. They were older than me but that didn’t stop me from teasing them mercilessly on the school bus. Gordy owned a roofing company and Chase worked for him for several years.”

“Is that a for-sale sign?” she asked.

Cal squinted. The sign was in the front yard and the snow was high enough to almost obscure it. But Stormy was right. The Fitzlers were selling. “I wonder if that will hurt our chances of making a sale, to have two houses on the same road up for sale at the same time.”

“Or maybe help it. Someone will come out to see this house and it won’t be quite right and then they’ll realize your house is for sale, too.”

“Maybe. Fitzler has a nice outbuilding that he used for his business. That may make his a more attractive property.”

He drove another five hundred yards. “That’s ours.”

“It’s big,” she said.

“Big enough,” he said. There’d been times in the past years when his whole living space wasn’t as big as one of the rooms in this rambling white farmhouse.

The driveway to the house was drifted badly and even with his big SUV and a running start, Cal thought there was a possibility that they might get stuck. But he wasn’t inclined to leave his vehicle on the road and walk the rest of the way.

So he accelerated, made the turn and tried to plow through it. The back end slid and the tires grabbed. He didn’t let up on the gas and managed to get close to the house before the vehicle stopped forward progress.

He looked at Stormy and at her feet in his white athletic socks. “I’ll carry you,” he said. “Let me get the key out of the garage first.”

He pushed open his own door, stomped through the snow and then used his hands and feet to move snow away from the side door of the garage. When he could get it open, he slipped inside. Flipped the light on and from there, it was easy to find the key. Just where Chase had said it would be.

He grabbed a shovel on his way out and noted with relief that there was a snowblower. That was new. When he and his brothers had lived here, they’d shoveled. Missouri rarely got snow like this so it hadn’t been all that difficult.

Today, he sincerely hoped the sucker worked.

He waded back to the car, got Stormy’s door open, and gathered her up in his arms. His coat came almost to her knees and he knew it had never smelled better, some combination of hotel lotion and Stormy.

There was a moment of excitement when he got to the steps and his foot sunk deeper than expected. He pitched forward. “Whoa?” he said.

She squealed. It was delicate and feminine and it made him laugh.

“Sorry about that,” he said. He yanked his foot free and managed to get up onto the porch, where the snow was significantly less.

“Put me down so you can unlock the door,” she said.

He ignored her. Instead he shifted her so that one hand was free. Unlocked the door and pushed it open with his foot. Stepped inside the dark cold house, still holding her.

She stretched out a leg and used her toes to flip up the light switch.

When light flooded the entryway, he grinned at her. “We’re a good team,” he said. Then he carefully set her down.

The house was much the same yet felt very different than the last time he’d been there, when it had been filled with death. It smelled different. The light seemed different.

Chase had been busy. The living room and dining room both had fresh paint. The carpet in the dining room had been ripped up, exposing a real nice wood floor that he hadn’t realized was there. There was a neat pile of wood flooring in the corner of the living room, a good match to the dining room, just waiting to be laid down.

He walked toward the kitchen with Stormy following. He remembered the appliances. White, sturdy, and more than thirty years old, they’d been a part of Hollister dinners since before he was born. The table was the same, too. But the kitchen felt warmer, more welcoming than he remembered it feeling eight years ago. Maybe it was the paint? It was different. Maybe it was because it was sparkling clean?

Maybe it was because Stormy was beside him?

He shook his head to clear it. He might have carried her over the threshold but she was somebody else’s bride.

“Great house,” she said. “I love the big windows.”

“The one in the front room was replaced about seventeen years ago. After my stepfather put my hand through it. My punishment.”

He heard her gasp and immediately regretted his frankness. It was unexpected, really. He was generally much more careful about sharing anything personal. But somehow his usual defenses were on the fritz when it came to Stormy.

“What did you do?”

“Didn’t get the dirty clothes off my bedroom floor quite fast enough.”

She was silent for a few minutes. “How old were you?” she asked.

“Fourteen.”

Another bout of silence. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said finally.

He appreciated that she didn’t seem inclined to want more information. Such as how did that make him feel about his stepfather? His mother? What was it like after that? Those were complex questions with even more complex answers.

“So that makes you thirty-one,” she said. “I wondered. You must have gone to college before you enlisted?”

“Chase and I moved to St. Louis the day I turned eighteen. He got a job with the St. Louis Police Department. Busted his ass so that I could go to school and get an engineering degree.”

“And then you decided to enlist? After all that? And become a SEAL?”

“Seemed like the thing to do.” He wasn’t going to tell her about the conversation that he’d had with Brick Doogan, about how the man had tossed his world upside down in a matter of minutes.

He hadn’t had the guts to confront Chase with the truth at the time. Had simply left home and proved time and time again that he was tough enough to take anything that got thrown at him. Proved that nothing scared him.

“Now what?” she asked.

“I’m going to go see if the snowblower works. The car needs to be dug out.” He thought that they were safe in Ravesville but he wasn’t taking any chances on getting caught unawares with no means of escape.

“What should I do?” she asked.

“Whatever you want,” he said, smiling. “You’re a guest.”

* * *

A
N
UNINVITED
GUEST
. For sure.

He had to be regretting that he’d ever pulled her out of the snowdrift. Yet he was being really great about it. Acting as if it was no big deal that he was suddenly saddled with a woman who didn’t even know her own name but apparently had done something to give four guys a reason to chase her around the Missouri countryside.

She was going to remember everything and get the heck out of his hair. She was.

She had to.

The alternative was too awful to contemplate.

But in the meantime, she could earn her keep. She was hungry. He had to be more so. So far, she’d seen him consume a good amount of licorice, chips, candy bars and apple pie.

She suspected that wasn’t all he normally ate. He was incredibly buff. He’d picked her up and
carried
her several times, as if she weighed twenty pounds rather than a hundred and twenty pounds.

At thirty-one, he was young to have lost both of his parents. And his stepfather, too, although the man certainly didn’t sound like a prize. What kind of person shoved a fourteen-year-old’s hand through a window?

Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that it was time to eat. She walked over to the cupboards and started opening them. There was a good supply of the staples: flour, sugar, salt, dried pasta and cereal. She opened the refrigerator. It was practically bare. No eggs, no milk, none of the things that would allow her to cook much of anything.

She heard the roar of the snowblower and knew that Cal would be occupied for a little while. There was a lot of snow. She looked again at the cupboards. She was going to have to figure out how to deliver on her end, as well.

Ten minutes later, she was waiting for water to boil. Something about standing at the stove felt familiar. Was she a cook? Did she spend time in the kitchen? She closed her eyes, willing her mind to find something that would tell her just one small thing about her past.

But it was as if she’d been born yesterday, in the middle of a snowstorm, wearing a wedding dress. But she hadn’t been. She had parents. And she’d remembered that they lived in Fort Collins, Colorado. If she got really desperate, maybe she could put a picture of herself in the paper with the hopes that they’d see it. Sort of like a lost-cat advertisement.

She shook her head. She was really starting to feel sorry for herself, wasn’t she? Enough of that. It was going to get her nowhere.

She opened two cans of tomato sauce. She added a liberal amount of dried basil, oregano and garlic. She found a jar of mushrooms and threw those in, as well.

Then she opened the freezer, saw the frozen rolls and grabbed them. By the time Cal came back inside, she’d set the table and there was a steaming bowl of spaghetti and warm bread from the oven. She’d poured them both water to drink.

He was snow-covered and his jeans were wet. He sniffed the air. “Smells great,” he said.

It felt good to do something for him, even if it was as simple as throw a quick meal together. “So the snowblower worked?”

“After a little gentle coaxing,” he said, shedding his coat.

“You must be the handy type,” she said.

“My background is mechanical engineering. I’m a total geek.”

“You don’t look like a geek,” she said, immediately wishing she’d kept her thoughts to herself.

“Oh yeah?” He lifted his chin.

In his faded blue jeans that he wore low on his hips and his flannel shirt, he looked sexy and just a little dangerous. The cold air hung around him and his cheeks and nose were red from the wind.

“I always loved figuring out how things worked. Mechanical engineering was an easy choice. After I enlisted, I realized that I had something I could offer to the rest of the guys on the team. As long as I had some string, duct tape and a sharp knife, I could get most anything running again.”

“Good skill,” she said.

He sniffed the air again. “Looks as if you’ve got your own skills.”

“It’s just a little something,” she said. “But it’s ready if you are.”

He followed her into the kitchen, washed his hands and sat down at the table. He looked up at her. “This is amazing,” he said, as if she’d done something special. She felt warm.

“Thanks,” she said. “We’re going to need to get some milk, eggs and fresh produce at some point.”

“No problem,” he said, taking a big serving of the spaghetti. “I’ll go to town tomorrow,” he said. “Just make me a list.”

He said it as if he expected her to stay. “I might remember everything by tomorrow,” she said.

He nodded. “I hope you do.”

“I’ll be out of your hair just as soon as I do,” she said.

“Okay.”

“And if...if it doesn’t come back,” she added, realizing that she needed to vocalize her greatest fear, “I’ll still move on. I know this is just a temporary stop,” she said, assuring him that she wasn’t going to overextend her welcome.

“Great,” he said.

She laid down her fork. “I know I’m putting you at risk by being here.”

He sighed. “Do I look concerned about that?”

She shook her head. “Maybe you should be,” she said. “Maybe you should just tell me to get the hell out.”

He looked at his half-eaten lunch. “When you can cook like this? You think I’m crazy?”

Maybe. He was inviting trouble into his life. “I just want to be clear on my intentions,” she said stiffly.

“Crystal clear,” he said. He pointed at the bread basket. “Can you pass the rolls?”

* * *

A
FTER
LUNCH
,
they cleared the table. He washed and she dried the dishes. “Let’s take a look at the rest of the house,” he said.

There was a master bedroom off to the side of the kitchen. It had also been freshly painted but there wasn’t a stick of furniture in it. The attached bath had been cleaned and emptied of all signs of Brick.

He wondered if that had been the first thing that Chase had done. It wasn’t as if Chase didn’t have a reason to hate Brick Doogan, to want to exorcize his spirit from the premises. He’d taken the brunt of Brick’s hateful nature, protecting everyone else in the house.

Cal had let him. And that knowledge still rubbed him raw with guilt.

When he and Stormy went upstairs, it was easy to see that Chase had plans for the second story but had not yet had time to implement them. Bray’s room was empty save a gallon of new paint in an unopened can. He opened Bray’s closet. It was filled with old winter coats. He recognized them as coats his mother had worn over a period of many years. She’d been dead for over eight years and Brick still hadn’t done anything with them.

Maybe he’d been sentimental. Maybe he’d simply been lazy. It didn’t matter but perhaps one of them would fit Stormy.

Chase’s room was also empty and his closet was bare. There was a gallon of paint there, as well.

He was starting to get the pattern. He wasn’t surprised when he opened the door to his old room and saw the gallon of paint. The bed in the middle of the room did give him pause. There was no frame. The mattress and box springs sat on the floor. Sheets and a blanket, looking freshly washed, were folded and sitting at the end of the bare mattress. He opened the closet door. Women’s clothes and men’s clothes.

Not his mother’s or Brick’s. These belonged to Chase and Raney. He turned to Stormy. “Will any of these fit?”

She glanced at several of the items, looking at the size tags. “Well enough,” she said. “But I hate to use someone’s things without their permission.”

He shook his head. “Chase won’t care and while I don’t know Raney, if my brother loves her, then she’s the type who won’t care, as well.”

She nodded. “I suppose you would like your sweatpants back,” she said.