The Protector (24 page)

Fortunately, Shahbaz still could not identify
Farshad
if his life depended on it.

Chapter Eleven

The fog that blanketed the cabin cast an ethereal light on
Eryn’s
sleeping face, making her look like an angel. No one would look at her and know that she packed a wallop when she kicked. He had bruises all over his body to prove it.
 

When she finally retired to her room last night, it had taken all of Ike’s willpower not to offer her his bed. To his relief, she’d marched up the stairs without asking. He’d heard the springs on her mattress creak briefly,
then
all went still and silent. For a change, she had slept like the dead.

Given how hard she’d worked that day, he regretted having to rouse her now, just hours into a full night’s sleep. But he couldn’t risk leaving her sleeping and alone.
 

“
Eryn
.”
He gave her shoulder a gentle shake.

She lurched awake, grabbing him hard with both hands, her eyes wide open.
 

“It’s just me,” he said, impressed with her reflexes.
 

“Ike.” She fell limply against her pillow and blinked up at him. “Are you wearing a cap?”
 

“Yes.” It was a ski mask, actually, but he’d rolled it up so that it looked like a cap. “I need you to wake up.”

“We’re training now?” she moaned, casting a glance at the fog-shrouded window. “What time is it?”

“Zero-one-hundred hours.
We’re not training.” He didn’t want to tell her what they were doing yet. “Just get dressed and come downstairs.” He stood up, ignoring her shocked silence. “Keep the lights off and dress warm,” he added. Marshalling the willpower to avoid looking back, he trotted down the stairs.
 

Eryn
wriggled into a pair of jeans, donned one of the sweaters she’d bought at Dollar General, but she couldn’t find a second sock in the dark. Giving up, she pushed her bare feet into her Skechers and crept downstairs. She spied Ike standing by the armchair.

A thick fog at the window illumined his all-black attire: black sweater, black jeans. With the cap covering his silver hair, he looked younger and more dangerous than ever.
  

Foreboding twisted her insides. “What’s going on?”
 

“Intruders,” he said calmly. “I need to see who they are.”

I, not we.
She locked her knees as fear threaded through her body. “You’re going to leave me here?”
  

“I’m going to put you somewhere safe. Winston will keep you company.”

Mystified, she allowed him to lead her to the bathroom, where he shut the door, pulled the blind, and snapped on a pen light.

This is safe? She watched in confusion as he rounded the bathtub, shone the light on the whitewashed paneling behind it, and ran his fingers over the grooves.

With a
snick
, the paneling pulled away, and cold air spilled into the room. A dark, musty-smelling maw now stood where the wall used to be.

“The cellar,” he explained, pointing a shaft of blue light down the stairwell. “You’ll be safe down here.”

Eryn
eyed the sharply descending steps in astonishment.
 
She had bathed and showered in this tub and never once suspected there were stairs behind it.
  

“I don’t like dark spaces,” she informed him.

“You’ll be fine.” He pulled her, resisting, toward the opening. “I won’t be gone long.
 
There’s a cot and a blanket. You can sleep.”
 

“Who could sleep down there?”
  

Ignoring her protests, he herded her down the steps with Winston right behind them.

Eryn’s
foreboding rose as she touched down on an earthen floor. “Please.” She clung to his arm. “I can help you, Ike. I’m not helpless anymore.”
 

He pried her hand loose. “Here, I’ll leave you a light.” Striking a match, he held it to a lantern that was hanging from the ceiling.
  

The brightening wick drove back the shadows, revealing a cellar packed with military paraphernalia.
Eryn
looked around in astonishment. Ghillie suits hung like shag carpets on the far wall. Firearms of every shape and size had been mounted on the other three. Half-opened boxes showed stores of artillery, ammunition, and battle dress uniforms underfoot. Winston sniffed at them cautiously.

“If you hear anyone upstairs, douse this flame,” Ike instructed, recapturing her attention. “The light bleeds through the floorboards. If Winston makes a sound, tell him ‘Quiet.’ You can also make him ‘Sic,’ but that’s not going to happen.”

“Who would I sic him on?” Ike’s precautions, like all these weapons, seemed excessive. The last two times he’d suspected interference, nothing had happened.

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” he said, telling her nothing.
  

She felt his hand on her head one minute; the next, he was up the stairs, shutting her in.

The panel closed with a
click
. Floorboards creaked overhead,
then
all was silent save for the sound of Winston padding about, sniffing boxes.

Eryn
shivered. Eying the uncomfortable looking cot, she crossed the room to sit on the coarse blanket and to think.

Ike was grim and tense again. Oh, God, was it possible he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? He’d certainly seen enough of combat to have picked it up.
    

Her gaze touched wonderingly on the fearsome collection in front of her. Poor man, did he need all these weapons just to make him feel safe?

But then she noticed four boxes labeled by size. Those were for his survival and security course. Maybe all of these weapons were for his course.
    

In that case, Ike wasn’t paranoid. That was the good part. The bad part was there probably were intruders on his property! Who could it be?
The FBI?
Terrorists?

Disturbed,
Eryn
called her dog over. As he sidled up to the cot, she threw her arms around him, petting him distractedly.
  

Winston rumbled his pleasure. He liked for her to remove his collar now and then and give his neck a good scratching. With nothing else to do,
Eryn
obliged him, fumbling with the catch on his collar. Puzzled, she leaned closer.

Wait, this wasn’t Winston’s collar. It was the same color, same material, but the buckle plate was different.
 

Figuring out how to release it, she took off the collar and studied it in the flickering light. When and where had Winston gotten a new collar?

The answer hit her with a corresponding outbreak of goose bumps:
At the safe house when she’d been too drugged to notice the difference.
But there’d been nothing wrong with the old collar. Why would Winston need a new one?

And then it hit her.
 

With a gasp, she dropped the collar on the cot and jumped to her feet, backing away from it.

Metal or plastic-coated,
Ike had said when he’d searched for the transceiver. My God, then the FBI had been stalking them, using the collar, all along!

Maybe Ike already knew that. Maybe that was the secret he’d been keeping from her.
 

She gave a half-hysterical laugh. Hey, at least he wasn’t crazy.

Concealed by a stunted cypress and the ghostly fog, Ike watched two federal agents through the eye holes in his ski mask, as they wended their way along his southern-most boundary. Unlike last night, they’d crossed his property line at one point—intentionally or by mistake?

He hadn’t been content to study the images on his laptop. He’d wanted to know what the hell they were up to, and that entailed getting close enough to listen to their conversation.

But by the time he reached their location, up where his property abutted the Shenandoah National Forest, there were only two men, not three. The wet mist muted the beams of their flashlights as they picked their way along the rocks.

Straining to hear their conversation, Ike searched for the third agent’s heat signature through his rifle’s scope. He’d feel a whole lot better knowing where that man was. Perhaps he’d returned to their vehicle, which they would have parked on Skyline Drive, the only road within miles of Ike’s southern boundary.

“You sure this will work?” the curly-haired agent asked his partner.
 

“I’m not sure of anything,” retorted the other man. “Just keep quiet and keep your eyes peeled.”

Peeled for what? Ike wondered, thoroughly unsettled. An answer occurred to him at once.
For him, of course.
They had activated his alarm tonight in order to draw him out while...oh, fuck, while the third man went to the cabin to look for
Eryn
.

Aw, hell, he’d heard something in the forest earlier, which he’d convinced
himself
was a bear or a deer. After all, the agents hadn’t done anything last night but reconnoiter. But that was just to lull him into a false sense of security. Tonight they were going for recovery.

Scuttling from his hiding place, Ike accidentally kicked a pebble loose. As it clattered down the slope, the agents pivoted, swinging their lights in his direction.

“Freeze!
FBI! Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head.”

Like hell, thought Ike, who was fairly sure they couldn’t see him. He continued his descent, moving on all fours to keep his balance.
 

A bullet whizzed over his ski mask, fired from a 9mm pistol that shattered the quiet. Now that was a lucky shot. Ike’s temper flared. He considered returning fire to teach the agents a lesson:
 
No one but an idiot fired at a Navy SEAL sniper. But they were no doubt hoping to goad him, so they’d have something to charge him if they ever managed to catch him.
  

Bounding down the precipice into the tree line, he had to grab at tree branches to slow his descent. It wouldn’t do
Eryn
any good if he broke his neck; on the other hand, he couldn’t get to her fast enough.

The sound of his pounding heart became indistinct from the thudding of his boots as he crashed downhill toward the trail that would carry him back to her. Stanley would be so pissed if he let the FBI take her back.

Was that a gun shot?

Eryn
froze at the sound, her heart palpitating. Then the FBI was already here, and Ike was out there trying to chase them off his land. Oh, my God!

No sooner had she arrived at that awful realization than the cabin’s front door groaned open. Recalling Ike’s warning about the lantern, she snuffed the flame, plunging the cellar into total darkness.

Please, let it be Ike, she prayed, straining to hear over the blood rushing past her eardrums.
 

The intruder closed the door quietly behind him. Footfalls, heavier than Ike’s, moved stealthily across the floorboards above her. Winston growled low in his throat, and
Eryn
crouched beside him, hushing him and clutching him for reassurance.