Call Out (23 page)

True to form, Dylan spent a lot of time with
her nose glued to one book or another. She also spent a lot of time
locked in the master bedroom with Brian, a fact that seemed to set
every other male in the house on edge. Apparently, if they couldn’t
get laid, they felt Brian shouldn’t either. Men can be so weird
sometimes.

Adrian spent a lot of time on the phone, too,
with his wife and with Kent. Kenny and the rest of the DPS
entourage – except Jimmy, who really had left the country - had
made it home safe and sound. All of them, along with anyone else
Ashe and Quinn considered high-risk, were under surveillance by
agents that Quinn trusted, and there had been no sign of
trouble.

Adrian and Brian also spent a lot of time
playing and writing music, sometimes with London but more often
without. London was busy working with Ashe and the other agents,
learning more about his abilities and how to control them. The guys
also watched a lot of sports and action movies, but...well, they’re
guys. Dylan, Martine, and I learned to either block out the worst
of what was on the TV or make ourselves scarce for the
duration.

Quinn and his team hadn’t made any headway in
their search for Julia, but the planning had resulted in an epic
battle between him and Ashe that had shaken up the quiet calm of
the safe house for a few minutes. Quinn had pointed out that, since
he was retired, Ashe couldn’t be part of the official investigation
into, search for, or apprehension of a rogue agent, and Ashe had
not taken the news well. The shouting match that followed had been
a little terrifying and had come to an abrupt end when Ashe slammed
out of the house. Carmichael had followed him, and sometime later
the two of them returned. Ashe had calmed down, but Quinn had
wisely gotten the hell out of dodge just in case, saying he was
going to meet with the field agents who were looking for Julia.

Other than that brief shouting match, all was
serene. We were safe, our lives were as secure as they could get
under the circumstances, we had a nice, comfy house to stay in –
and we were all going stir crazy. The agents dealt better with the
cabin fever and the close quarters, but even they were showing the
strain after two whole days of doing nothing. Peterson, especially,
seemed to be spoiling for a fight.

Sunday night bled into Monday and then into
Tuesday. I made lunch, as I sometimes did, and the men – minus
Carmichael who was on duty and Brian who was locked in his room
with Dylan – took theirs to the living room where they argued about
some sporting event or other in that good-natured way that men seem
to live for. I decided to join Carmichael and Martine for lunch in
the library because it beat hell out of listening to some game I
couldn’t care less about.

After lunch, Martine surprised me by breaking
out a giant cosmetic case that looked like a tacklebox and setting
to work on her nails. I’d never seen so many cosmetics in such a
tiny space, at least not outside of a store. There were implements
in there whose purpose I could only guess at. I found myself
watching in bemusement as Martine, who always managed to look both
elegant and austere, stripped off her fashionable, sensible shoes
and socks and began to paint her toenails with a metallic ice blue
polish.

“Holy crap,” Carmichael said. “You really are
a girl.”

Martine glared at him, but he just smiled
back, his eyes fixed on the monitors before him. She looked away
from him to find me watching her and raised her brows.

“Nice color,” I said.

She smiled, then looked contemplative. She
set aside the ice blue lacquer and turned to the kit, lifting each
bottle of polish in turn and setting them on the desk. The array of
colors was impressive. After a moment she chose a deep, true,
glittering red and showed it to me.

“That one suits you best, I think,” she
said.

After she’d painted my nails, I held my hands
out to admire them. She was right; the color did suit me.

“There you are,” I heard London say from
behind me, drawing me out of the contemplation of my brightly
painted nails. “I wondered where you’d disappeared to.”

I turned halfway in my chair to look back at
him as he neared the desk where Martine and I were playing beauty
salon.

“Nice,” he said, taking my hand and turning
it so the polish caught the light. He dragged up another chair and
leaned in to kiss my temple.

“Game over?” I asked, hopeful.

“Not even close. But it’s kind of a crap
game.” He launched into the reasons why the game wasn’t a good one,
and I just gave him a bland smile. “Aaaaand you really don’t care,
do you?”

“Nope,” I answered with a big smile. “Not
even a little bit.”

He smiled back and laid his head on my
shoulder. He couldn’t have been comfortable in a physical sense,
but I knew that he drew emotional comfort from all sorts of
physical affection. I nuzzled his hair a little and planted an
awkward kiss on the top of his head.

Carmichael snorted and said, “Get a
room.”

London sat up, the beginnings of a frown
between his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. I put my arm
around his shoulders, careful of my nails, and leaned my head
against his shoulder. He sighed and returned my top-of-the-head
kiss. He leaned forward in his chair, and I retreated to mine to
see him reaching for the one of the polish bottles that hadn’t made
it out of Martine’s kit.

“You mind?” he asked.

She waved a hand over the box in a ‘be my
guest’ gesture, and London and I looked through the rest of her
arsenal of nail enamel. When we reached the end, London pulled one
of the vials out and held it up to the light.

“It’s darker than it looks,” Martine said.
“Almost, but not quite black. And the matte finish is an
interesting effect.”

London looked at her for a moment, his back
to me so that I couldn’t see his expression. Martine responded with
another ‘be my guest’ wave, and London uncapped the purple
polish.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

London turned to look at me, and I could see
him mentally gearing up to defend himself. I shook my head and took
the bottle from him, again being careful of my nails. I dragged my
chair around to face his, propped one foot up on his thigh, and
guided his hand up to rest on my bent knee.

“You can’t paint your own nails when your
girlfriend is around to do it for you. It’s like, a rule or
something.”

I halfway expected London to argue with my
use of the term ‘girlfriend,’ but he just flashed a wide smile at
me and watched me paint his nails. Martine was right; the matte
finish was interesting. I thought the purple lacquer looked pretty
good on London.

Beside us, Martine and Carmichael traded
places. She took a turn at the monitors while he found something
recreational to do. Recreation for him turned out to be cleaning
his gun. I paused in my artistic endeavor to watch him for a
minute.

“What the heck is that?” I asked him. “It
looks like something you’d see in sci-fi movie.”

“Yeah, it does,” London agreed.

Carmichael grinned a good-ol-boy grin that
looked out of place with his club-kid image. “Optical illusion,” he
said. “It’s a Glock 35, not much different from what a lot of cops
and feds carry. The add-ons are what makes it look odd.”

I leaned in for a closer look and nodded. “I
can see that, now. From a distance, all I could tell is it looked a
lot more high-tech and a lot more menacing than my 38 special.”

“You have a gun?” London asked.

“Of course she does,” Carmichael replied.
“Southern girl and all that.” He winked at me, and I rolled my
eyes.

“My Aunt Jean bought it for me as a
housewarming present when I moved into my first apartment in
Houston. Taught me to use it, too. She was kind of the
father-figure for Alex and me, growing up.”

“Your daddy not around?” Carmichael
asked.

“He died in the line of duty when Alex and I
were really little.”

“The line of duty?” London asked.

“He a cop?” Carmichael wanted to know.

I shook my head. “He was a fireman. He died
saving two little girls.”

“He died a hero then,” Carmichael said.

“That doesn’t mean much to an eight-year-old
girl who misses her daddy or a six-year-old boy who doesn’t
understand what ‘death’ is.” I shook my head. “Don’t get me wrong,
I get it now, for sure. I’m damned proud of my dad. But it was hard
as hell at the time.”

“Of course it was,” Martine said. “I was far
older than eight when I lost my father, and still it was hard.”

“Yeah. I think it was even harder on me when
Mom died,” I added, tears pricking at my eyes. “We’d gotten to that
point where we were friends instead of just mom and kid, you know?
And then she was just...gone.”

London reached for me, but I waved him away
and swiped at my tears. “I’m okay,” I said. I turned my attention
back to painting London’s nails and tried to clear my mind. I felt
the tiniest trickle of comfort spill into me, and I looked up to
meet London’s eyes. He offered me a tentative smile, and I rolled
my eyes at him. “I said I was okay. But thanks.”

After I’d finished up my paint job and the
enamel had set, London and I went back to the living room. I felt
wrung out after my unexpected trip down memory lane, and I would
have liked to curl up in bed. However, I knew from an unpleasant
experience the day before that without music or some other sound
for buffer, I could hear Dylan and Brian through the wall. Not how
I wanted to spend my afternoon, especially in my current state of
mind. I opted instead for snuggling with London on the sofa while
he joined in on the male sports ritual.

The game ended just a few minutes later, and
I thought my luck might be changing for the better. The guys
tussled over the remote, argued over what to watch next, and
settled on a comedy farce that I actually liked. Peterson went to
spell Martine so she could rest for a while, and I wondered if the
security shifts made waiting around more or less tedious. I
snuggled closer to London and wished for something to break up the
monotony a bit.

They say be careful what you wish for, and
they’re right. I got my wish, but not in anything like the way I
was daydreaming about.

One second London was wrapped up with me on
the sofa, his fingertips tracing an idle path up and down my arm.
The next, he jerked away and slid to the floor to curl up in the
fetal position with his arms over his head, hands tearing at his
own hair.

Ashe and Adrian both leapt up from the sofa
and hurried to London’s side. Quinn jumped up as well, vaulting
over the back of the sofa to take off down the hallway at a dead
run. I tried to fight my way through the onslaught of London’s
terror but all I could do was sit like a statue, watching Ashe and
Adrian trying to help him.

Adrian talked to London in a soothing voice,
letting him know he wasn’t alone, and held his hands to keep him
from hurting himself. Ashe laid a hand on London, and I guessed
that he was projecting calm or maybe throwing up a shield. Unlike
the other times, it didn’t seem to be doing a damn bit of good.
Instead, London jerked, trying to pull away.

What seemed like an eternity later, Martine
rushed into the room with Quinn right behind her. She slid to the
floor like a skateboarder landing after a failed stunt; it had to
have hurt, but rug burn seemed to be the furthest thing from her
mind. She elbowed her way between Ashe and Adrian, cradling
London’s head between her hands, her palms against his temples. He
stilled, but the terror continued to roll off of him.

Another eternity passed before London fear
eased enough for me to shake off the second-hand effects. I moved
to kneel beside Adrian, who still held London’s hands. I leaned
against Adrian and covered his and London’s joined hands with my
own smaller ones. From there, I could see London’s face. His eyes
were wide and wild like those of a cornered animal. I tried to hold
back tears, but that’s something I’ve never been too good at. I
lost that battle almost before it started.

Glancing up, I noticed first the strain in
Ashe’s face – just a faint hint of stress around his tired eyes.
Then I looked at Martine and saw that she, like me, was crying.
Beads of sweat stood out on her brow, and the muscles in her arms
trembled.

We all jumped when she suddenly snarled,
“Fuck you, you two-bit whore!” I don’t know if it was the
unexpected shout echoing in the silence or the string of swear
words from the normally refined Martine that shocked us more.

Ashe let go of London and laid a hand on
Martine’s arm, and she stopped trembling. She closed her eyes and
bowed her head, though, as if she didn’t have the strength to do
otherwise. No more than another minute passed before Martine’s body
sagged and her hands slipped away from London’s face. Quinn was
there to keep her from pitching forward, easing her down to lie on
the floor with her head in his lap. London shook off mine and
Adrian’s hands and heaved himself up into a sitting position. He
swiped at sweaty brow with the back of one arm, the other pulling
me close to his side.

“What just happened?” Adrian asked, his voice
hoarse with emotion.

“This wasn’t like the other attacks,” Ashe
said.

“But we were kind of expecting it,” Quinn
added, stroking Martine’s hair in a way that made me wonder if they
were more than friends, or if maybe he wanted them to be. “It’s why
I called Martine in on this job, actually.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“After what Julia did to Brian, we had an
idea she might try a sending on London,” Ashe said. “The other
attacks were emotional projections, but this time she made him see
things.”

“That’s not…exactly…true,” London said, the
words coming out stilted, hesitant. “Before...there were images.
They just...they weren’t....” He broke off, trying to find the
right words. Or maybe any words. He was still shaken.