Naked Risk (Shatterproof #3) (5 page)

Chapter Nine –
Catherine

Early the next morning, Watts told me he had to get back to work.

“Not the bookstore,” I said, as we got dressed after a quick shower. I had awakened to him touching me, teasing me, and I returned the torture, thinking it was foreplay to another round of sex. But we were enjoying it and there seemed to be an unspoken mutual desire to just lie there, kiss, and bring each other to orgasm with our hands.

“No, not the store. It’s been closed all week.”

“Don’t people wonder why?”

Watts shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care, really. I put a sign up, saying the store would be closed until next Wednesday for vacation.”

It was Saturday morning. If Watts intended on being away until Wednesday, that meant I probably had another four full days before I’d see him again. He would drive me back to D.C., go wherever it was that he was going, and I would have minimal contact with him in the meantime.

“Take me with you,” I said.

Watts was putting his belt on and stopped, his eyes shifting to me, our gazes locking. “No.”

I walked over to him, putting my hands on his sides, feeling the stress in his body. “Please?”

“Catherine—”

“I can drive the car. I won’t even get out. Or…I’ll stay in the backseat.”

He sighed heavily. “It’s really not a good idea.” He resumed threading his belt through the loops of his pants.

“Well, I don’t think me being away from you for four days is a good idea, either.”

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look at me.

“I want to be a part of your life,” I continued. “I want to be a part of
this
part of your life.”

“I don’t want you to be a part of this.
At all. Ever. I’ve already broken my own rule about not getting close to anyone or letting anyone get close to me. You’re already in too deep. Sometimes I feel selfish because of it.” He paused and he looked at me. I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t just saying that. He wasn’t using that as an excuse to leave me out of this.

“You don’t have to feel selfish. You shouldn’t feel that way.”

“I do,” he said. “Now, please, trust me on this. I know what I’m doing.”

I
found the restraint to drop the subject. I didn’t want my worrying to interfere with his mental preparation. He was under enough pressure as it was. I could see it in his face, see it in the way he rapidly got dressed and gathered his things.

It was like a different person emerged when he was preparing to go out on one of his operations. I thought back to the time when he mentioned the ability to turn off his emotions, compartmentalizing the vastly different aspects of his life.

It was far from the way I was able to separate. There was something a little unnerving about the way Watts did it. Considering what he was doing with his life, I guess that shouldn’t be surprising.

As unsettling as it was to watch him become a serious, intensely focused mercenary, I knew that the gentle, sincere Watts was the one that a
lways came out to play with me.

I didn’t fear him. I had no reason to. In fact, I had every reason to be glad that the dark side of him was there, lurking somewhere. I knew that side of him cared as much about
me as the soft side of him did, and I knew that dark side would keep me from the dangers he had warned me about.

Finally, for
the first time in my life, I was settling in to the idea that I wasn’t alone.

. .
. . .

I spent most of Saturday fidgeting around my apartment. I cleaned it once. Then did a deep clean. Washed
some clothes. Cleaned and disinfected the refrigerator…

I was going to drive myself nuts over the next four days if I kept this up.

On Saturday afternoon, just after lunch, I decided to go to the shelter and take Winnie for a walk. Meg was there when I arrived. She was behind the counter, sitting at the computer.

“
I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, but clearly glad to see me.

“I had some time, so I figured I would come take Winnie out for a little bit.”

Meg smiled. “Oh, she’ll love that. You two have fun.”

“Thanks.” I opened the door that led to the rear area of the shelter and found Winnie in her kennel. She stood up and her tail thumped the wall as it wagged back and forth. She was happy to see me, as always. I let her out
and the moment I said “Wanna go for a walk?” her ears perked up and she ran around in little circles as I got her leash.

We left through the back door and within moments we were
at the dog park. It wasn’t crowded yet, but there were enough dogs there to make her put her tail between her legs and stay closer to me as we strolled onto the grass.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re all here to have fun.”

Her confidence grew little by little as we walked. Mine dropped, though, as I noticed a car go by twice. I told myself I was probably being too paranoid because of my connection to Watts and what he was off doing that day. Still, I had every reason to be suspicious of anything out of the ordinary.

Those thoughts ran through my mind in a matter of seconds, until I realized that I recognized the car. How had I missed it?

It was the rental car Watts had been driving when he picked me up Friday.

A chill ran up my spine. This was…odd.

I stopped and watched him pull away down the street, then take a left and disappear behind a building. What was he doing driving around here?

Watching me?

Why?

Fear coursed through my veins as my overactive imagination filled in the possibilities. None of them were good.

I looked down and saw Winnie looking up at me, her head cocked a little to the side, as if she sensed something was wrong.

“Come on,” I said, tugging at the leash and she kept up with me as I made my way over to the large patio area where there were two public bathrooms. I sat on one of the concrete benches, reached into my pocket and brought out a treat for Winnie. She took it and laid down before me to crunch on her snack.

I got my cell phone out and called Watts.

He picked up on the second ring. “Hey.”

“Why are you driving around the dog park?”

Silence.

“Watts?”

He sighed. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing.”

I felt a little angry at his answer. It wasn’t
nothing
. It was something. “It’s…weird. Sorry, but it’s just a little strange seeing you driving around.”

“
I’m leaving. Just checking on you. You said you would trust me. I know what I’m—”

I cut him off. “I do trust you.
You said you trusted me but now I’m beginning to wonder.”

“It has nothing to do with that. I’m asking you, Catherine, just a few more days at most. I promise.”

If there was something I needed to know, he needed to tell me. A couple approached the area with their dogs so I lowered my voice. “Am I in some kind of danger? Like right now?”

“No, and
that’s what I’m making sure of.”

That wasn’t a very convincing answer. In fact, i
t was a bit contradictory. “You know, if you had let me come along like I asked—”

“Catherine,” he said in that low and even tone he sometimes took with me, “the promise?”

He was right—I had promised him trust, and he had promised me everything would be okay in a couple of days.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

“Okay.”

And he was gone.

Chapter Ten –
Watts

I was beginning to worry about my state of mind. For a decade, I had cultivated the ability to become focused like a laser beam when I was on a mission. I barely thought about food, I shut down the store and didn’t spend a second thinking about it, and I shut down the part of my brain that was always very enthusiastically thinking about women.

That was the part that thought logically about pursuing a woman, and once that was achieved, the primal part of my brain took over and it was all about sex.

Now it was all about Catherine’s safety and protection.

By the time I had arrived in Alexandria and rejoined Spencer for the operation, I wished I had taken Catherine up on her plea to help. I would never have let her come along, but I could have done something that would have placated her while at the same time assuaging my concerns.

I should have given her a gun and taught her how to shoot.
We had a little time that morning. I could have taken her to a gun range and let her shoot a little. Get the feel for the gun in action. She was more than capable of handling a weapon.

“Goddamn,” I said aloud.

“Goddamn what?” Spencer asked.

It was just after midni
ght and we were in the satellite TV van outside the first house. He was about to take up his position outside the second location, but for now we were watching, waiting, because all of the members of the sleeper cell were in the first house.

“I’m fucking paranoid.”

“What about?” Spencer asked, sipping a fast-food milkshake through a straw and making that annoying sound when you get to the bottom of the cup.

I grabbed it out of his hands and tossed it into the back
of the van.

“Christ, Watts, what’s gotten into you?”

I looked out the window, hand to my face. I hadn’t felt stress like this in years.

“Something’s not right,” I said.

“With…?

I shook my head, trying to make sense of what I was feeling and what I was seeing. Feeling was fear. Seeing was facts. The usually bright and clear line between them was becoming blurred.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just a feeling. I need to think, not talk.”

“Fine with me.”
He sat there for a moment not saying anything. I heard him rustling through the bag of food. “Do you mind if I eat these chips? Or, since we’re in America I should say
fries
, I guess. Either way, you’re not going to swipe them and throw them out the window, are you?”

I let out a little laugh.
“No.”

“Good then,” he said. “I promise I’ll chew them very quietly, just for you.”

. .
. . .

An hour passed, then two. Every member of the cell was still in the house. Spencer and I had been monitoring the cameras inside the house on the laptop, but had seen nothing. Unfortunately, they were all apparently gathered into one of the rooms where I hadn’t placed a camera.

We didn’t talk much, just took turns watching the live feed from
inside the house. During Spencer’s turns, I spent a lot of time thinking about Catherine.

Or, more accurately, how I had changed because of her. There was some truth to the idea that I couldn’t get close to anyone because my life was dangerous, covert, and required a high degree of privacy. It would be difficult to argue against that.

But I had long suspected that I was letting that reason overshadow another motivation for my detached lifestyle, and now it was becoming clearer and clearer.

I simply didn’t want to let anyone become an important part of my life because I knew the world was a nasty, dangerous place, and that any of us can be taken from it in a matter of a single second ticking on the clock.

I had lived that truth. Painfully. I was determined to never live through that again.

The more I got to know Catherine, the more I r
ealized just how much we were alike in that regard. We were living our lives in constant fear of loss, so the less we had to lose, the less likely we were to suffer.

It was a perfectly understandable reaction to what we
had been through, but that didn’t mean it was rational. In fact, it was so irrational that I had become thoroughly numb to the reality that deliberately having nothing to lose meant there was also nothing to live for.

I didn’t question my decision to join Atherton’s team, nor
did I regret doing what I had done over the last decade to rid the world of cold-blooded murderers of the innocent. But things were changing now. Changing because of my feelings for Catherine.

She was the first reason in ten years I’d had to make me rethink my life, re-evaluate my future, actually to see a future at all.

My thinking was almost putting me in a trance, until I saw the trucks. I nudged Spencer with my elbow. “Wake up.”

He stirred out of his slumber. “Are they moving?”

“Someone is.”

We watched as four
pitch black vans moved up the street in a crawl, lights off. They stopped two doors down, facing in our direction. The house we were watching was three doors away, and we were on the other side of the street.

Two of the four vans drove past the house and stopped.

We crouched down in our seats, just enough to hide ourselves as much as we could while still being able to see out of the windshield.

He started to lift the laptop lid, but I slammed it shut. “No light. They’ll see us.”

“Who the fuck is that?” he said.

At least
two dozen people poured from the trucks, clad in all black, with matching helmets, gasmasks covering their faces, automatic weapons at their sides.

“Cops,” Spencer
said.

“Not so sure about that.” I had picked up the binoculars. I saw no kind of insignia on the uniforms—not POLICE, not SWAT, not FBI, not ATF, none of the ones I would have expected.

“That’s not another team like ours, is it?”

“Definitely not,” I said.

They ran toward the house, crossing lawns, running alongside the neighboring houses, taking up positions and surrounding the terrorists’ house.

They held their positions for less than ten seconds, and then they swarmed the house, using a battering ram on the front door, others breaking windows, tossing in teargas grenades.

“My fucking hell,” Spencer said.

A firefight ensued. It lasted
just a few seconds.

Spencer
sat forward in his seat. “They’re killing them.”

“Maybe not,” I said.

Within a minute, the action had died down, but the neighborhood was waking up. Front porch lights were being turned on, people were opening their front doors just wide enough to peer outside.

Two ambulances appeared at the end of the street, lights off, stopped, waiting for word if they were needed.

I grabbed my prepaid phone and dialed a number. When he answered, I said, “Back off. Get as far away as fucking possible. I’ll be in touch later.” The guy said he got it and they were on the move.

“How close was your team?” Spencer
asked.

“Three blocks away.” They’d been waiting there all night, just in case. We hadn’t planned on taking the cell down until Sunday night, but I had paid them a few grand extra to be in position Saturday night.

Marked cars began to show up, flashing blue and white lights illuminating the neighborhood.

“We have to get
the hell out of here,” he said. “But…”

“Right. We can’t.”

It was just after 3:45 a.m. Starting up a satellite installation van at that hour, in the midst of what appeared to be a federal raid, would have been insanely foolish.

We were stuck.

Quite possibly on the verge of getting caught.

“I wonder
if they killed them all,” he whispered. “Wish we could look.”

“Me, too, but no way are we turning that laptop on.”

It wasn’t long before they started marching the terrorists out of the house, one by one, cuffed at the hands and chained by the ankles. We counted as they were brought out.

“None killed,” I said.

“Huh. Lucky for them. Too bad for us,” Spencer added.

The ambulances
turned on their lights and moved toward the house. Two of the suspects were brought out, put on stretchers, and loaded into the ambulances.

None of the officers needed any medical attention, at least not that I saw.

I wondered if my hired team of killers would have pulled that off so swiftly and without any harm to themselves. Moot point.

The marked cars were from the Alexandria Police Department. Apparently they were there to provide security at each en
d of the street, most likely to keep the press away. As more unmarked cars showed up, I saw more windbreakers with FBI printed on the back in large, bold, white letters.

And we were surrounded.