Exception to the Rule (11 page)

Kimmer had seen what she’d come for. A feel for the station’s layout, some sense of how Carolyne fared with her life-and-death project. She’d seen more than she’d come for. As she backed away from the window, she tried to separate the relevant bits out so she could flush the rest from her thoughts.

But as she reached the tree line in her retreat—only moments before he emerged from the front door—the distracting thoughts refused to be flushed. Nothing in Kimmer’s experience had led her to believe family relationships could be what she’d seen these past few days between Carolyne and Rio. She might not be able to get a direct bead on Rio, but plain old observation had shown her much. Carolyne trusted him. She wasn’t
afraid of him. She trusted that he meant what he said, and that he’d do as he claimed.

Part of it was Kimmer’s own fault, of course. She lived in a world where double-dealing, betrayal and using people as playing pieces were as common as not; she even took on some of those roles herself. Neither life nor work had exposed her to relationships of trust and truth, partnership and reliability. And now it was right here under her nose. She could almost wish she’d met Rio Carlsen long ago, before she’d become so jaded as to need her rules in the first place. Her mother’s rules.

Then again, she’d reached that jaded point before her teens. And after that, no one—not even Rio Carlsen—could have changed the course of her life and who she’d become.

Kimmer faded back into the woods, and went out to take up a safer vigil at the entrance to the camp.

T
he morning dawned gray and drizzly, with tiny patters of rain occasionally gusting against the tent canvas and the sporadic splatter of giant drops from the leaves above. Kimmer headed to town early; her jeans were soaked to midthigh by the time she made it to the station wagon, and she crawled in to start the engine and crank the heat up high.

At the hotel she stood under the apathetic shower until the water started to feel cool, and bundled up her laundry for the motel’s coin-operated machines. She took her chances with it and left the machine filling with water, heading for town in a brisk walk she hoped would finish warming her up. Bonnie Miller took her to the Shear Delight beauty salon, where she had no intention of letting anyone get near her hair, but put her nails up for sacrifice.

“Sit your p’toot right down here, honey,” said Dora the manicurist with such enthusiasm Kimmer figured the woman had been facing an empty schedule—or she thought she had a chance at some juicy gossip. “Good Lord, what have you done to these nails? Jerri, you should look at these hands!”

Kimmer managed an embarrassed shrug, as if she truly cared. She normally paid them enough attention to keep them smooth and buffed, and had false nails applied as suited her assignment. Now their coat of Bonnie-red nail polish was chipped, and the fingernails themselves had taken a beating in the past twenty-four hours of lugging, hiking and lurking. “Things have been a little rough lately,” she said. “I wanted to get some acrylics—a little pick-me-up, you know?—but I think I’d better stay conservative until things settle down. Nothing worse than a set of French sport nails half grown out.”

Dora nodded agreement. “You just want ’em cleaned up, then? Some new color?”

Kimmer spread her fingers out for inspection and gave them a wistful look. “Maybe a little stenciling? Nothing too fancy—I don’t want to feel bad if I wreck one tomorrow. But a couple of stars or some squigglies…”

“Excellent,” Dora pronounced, examining Kimmer’s fingers another moment before sitting down and commencing work.

“How about the hair?” asked Jerri, raising the chair for her current customer. “You look about ready for a trim.”

“I’m letting it grow out,” Kimmer told her, lying without hesitation. No one touched this hair except for the stylist she’d found in Ithaca—well worth both the
cost and the long drive to have her wildly unruly hair reliably tamed. Carina Hunter had put her on to the woman, just as one or another of the Hunters had guided her transformation since they’d discovered her, a skinny runaway with frightening hair and ragged hand-me-down boys’ clothes.
And Mama’s rules, of course
.

Dora didn’t wait long before heading for the gossip portion of the manicure. “How’re you liking our little town?” she asked. “Most people find it too far from Pixburg, but I guess that’s one of the reasons you picked it.”

Direct opening salvo. Kimmer approved. She noted the questioning look Jerri gave her, and realized that Jerri was the boss here, waiting to squelch the conversation if she thought Kimmer found it uncomfortable. So she shrugged and said, “Yeah, it is.”

Jerri took it as permission to dive in. “Did you hear about those two fellas up from the city, then?”

Kimmer didn’t bother to hide her interest, not when it suited her cover so perfectly. “I wasn’t in town yesterday. What two fellas?”

“Just the kind you don’t want to meet, if you catch my drift.” Jerri flipped a screen of hair over her comb, pulled it out straight and divested it of several inches with a quick pass of her shears. Her customer, although silent, watched Kimmer in the mirror she faced. “Big guys in suits. Well, okay, they weren’t in suits, but they looked like they should have been. They had on brand-spankin’-new flannel shirts and jeans that haven’t even seen a single load of wash. Thought that would make them fit in, I guess.”

“You saw them?” Kimmer fought to keep her hand relaxed in Dora’s expert grip. The scents of nail-polish
remover and hair product seemed overwhelming, intensified by the damp weather.

Jerri had to admit not. “Missy told me about them. But she described them just like that. And said they’d been asking about a visitor to town, a woman. They seem to think you’re blond, though.”

Kimmer tapped her temple. “You never know.”

“Really?” Dora’s eyes widened. “I’d never have guessed that was a dye job.”

Nature’s dye job
. But Kimmer just looked pleased as she nodded.

Jerri added, “I hear they were asking around pretty thoroughly. I even saw them talking to the Murty brothers.” She looked at Kimmer and added slyly, “You know, two of those boys at the picnic who came out from behind the firehouse with their tails between their legs? People seem to think they saw you back there, too.”

Kimmer gave a scornful snort. “They were drunk.” It didn’t truly explain anything, but it gave the appearance of a response and might sidetrack the conversation.

The woman in Jerri’s chair, her hair now combed over her face like Cousin It, muttered, “They’re always drunk.”

“Nearly always,” Dora agreed. “At least, anytime they all get together like that.”

Kimmer held one hand to the light, admiring the manicure portion of the treatment. “These men. Anyone know where they’re staying?”

“I’m not sure they did stay.” Dora worked on the second hand, gently cleaning off the old polish, creaming and pushing back the cuticles, shaping the nails. “I never heard anything, anyway. And you can see I’m pretty much in the right spot to hear it all.”

As was Missy. Kimmer squelched the impulse to go rushing out to question the young woman, an effort of willpower made easier by the fact that Missy apparently worked a later shift.

“Maybe the B&B,” Jerri said suddenly. “They were asking how to get there, and Missy told them. She knew you weren’t staying there, of course—so why not?”

Right. Why not? But Kimmer just shrugged, staying in her Bonnie persona while her thoughts raced on ahead with the job at hand. If they’d caused any trouble the night before, someone would have heard of it. They might have cased the place and moved on…or they could decide to come back with a more direct approach.

A talk with Angelina might be a good thing.

After dark at the B&B
. Kimmer parked down the block, torn by the impulse to get back in the car and speed back to Camp Cardinal. She’d been away most of the day, with only a quick late-afternoon foray to confirm that no one had encroached on the camp or disturbed the lines she’d drawn across the dirt entrance road. Rio and Carolyne, trapped indoors by the morning drizzle, were out for an afternoon walk when Kimmer, her newly blazoned nails hidden by gloves, spotted them—a good way down the trail and plenty of time for Kimmer to secure herself behind a tree.
Trapped into lurking again
.

Except that wasn’t quite true—or if it was, there was more to it. She found herself with a willingness to listen, an interest in hearing more of the byplay between the two…of learning what it revealed about Rio. Somehow such things had become more than just part of an
assignment. They’d become a glimpse into another world, another way to be.

Carolyne’s laugh caught Kimmer’s attention first—a welcome sound. Maybe the other woman was finally starting to catch her balance. She got close enough to hear the conversation and planted herself behind a nice white oak tree, hoping for some tidbit of good news.

A casual pronouncement that Carolyne had solved the problem with the guided missile would sound good to Kimmer.

Of course, she heard no such thing. Just some playful banter, and then Rio’s warning for Carolyne to step over a trip line.

“Another?” Carolyne asked. “Where’d you learn to do stuff like this, Rio?”

He cleared his throat. “I took some courses.”

“Yeah, but not at the local community college, I’ll bet.” A silence, and then Carolyne said, “You never talk about what happened. The family doesn’t even know how badly you were hurt or why you left. I mean, did you just get tired of taking chances?”

A much longer silence.

When Rio did answer, he sounded a little tired. “You know I can’t talk about that.”

“I’m not asking for details. I don’t even care where you were when it happened. I’m just trying to understand what changed for you. You liked what you were doing, didn’t you? Felt it was important? Well, so do I.” Carolyne must have tossed a pebble as she spoke; her voice changed with her body movement, and then a tiny missile sped past Kimmer.
Good arm
. “And I still do think it’s important, but I’m not sure I ever signed up for
this. It got me to thinking whether I should be making the same decision you did. And whether it was this sort of thing that made you change your life so completely.”

“Aside from the no-choice problem and rehab time?” Rio asked, his voice as dryly ironic as Kimmer had heard it. Yes indeed, she was getting good at spying on the people she was supposed to protect. Too bad she hadn’t been as successful with finding the people she was protecting them from.

Rio eventually spoke again, but only after tossing another wicked stone. “Someone we counted on got his priorities mixed up,” he said, his words hard and a little jerky. “He got tangled with a double agent, wouldn’t heed the warnings because this particular asset was really a sweet one.”

“Double agent…as in, pretending to work for your case officer, but really feeding him pablum while picking his brains.”

Rio snorted. “Just that. When the double realized the rest of us were getting close to him, he went deep. But he took as many of us with him as he could…and I was in the middle of an exfiltration.” He threw a pebble. Hard. “We lost people. Too many people. And I don’t want my life to be in someone else’s hands anymore. I’ll take my own chances. But there aren’t many job offerings for paladins these days, so…”

“So you work with Ari and ply your brush on custom-painted boat names and pack them away for the winter.”

Another pause. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I do. Except when I’m rescuing my genius cousin from people who want a piece of her smarts.”

“Ha,” said Carolyne. “And ha again.” A stone pinged directly off Kimmer’s tree; only strength of will kept her from jumping. At that they started walking again, as if waiting to hit the tree was what had kept them here.

“There’s another line coming up,” Rio murmured.

Her voice was fading with distance. “How many of those things did you put out, Rambo?”

“As many as I thought we needed,” he said, quite seriously.

Kimmer waited until she could no longer even glimpse them through the trees, and then she waited five minutes beyond that. This game, she knew, could not last much longer. Rio’s CIA experience as listed in his file had been typically vague, but for all his laid-back exterior, she trusted her instincts on this one thing: sooner or later, he’d catch her lurking. Between that knowledge and her recent discovery of goonboys in town, she had a sudden impulse to be waiting at the nurse’s station when he and Carolyne returned.

But on top of the impulse came a flood of reluctance…of knowing that she couldn’t read him, and that she’d simply have to trust him. Trust in his skills, trust in his truths. And trust that the weird tug she felt upon sighting him wouldn’t interfere with her own work.

Nope. Time to return to town, and see if she couldn’t track down the goonboy interlopers. Angelina’s was the best place to start—they needed a warning—not to mention the most likely place for the goonboys themselves to show up.

If they weren’t already there.

The mouth-watering smell of apple pie hung by the front door of Angelina’s. As Kimmer waited for someone to respond to her no-nonsense use of the old-fashioned door knocker, she turned to examine the yard from this new perspective…daylight, and no skulking. The long driveway that kept the B&B isolated from what one might generously call traffic also meant no one was likely to notice trouble on the premises. The several acres around the house that offered up a peaceful garden and lush lawn also made plenty of room for shenanigans. Not to mention it had prevented her from performing surveillance from the potentially cozy interior of her car—but now she had parked in the B&B’s crowded little lot, a full house in the height of Pennsylvania fall color. The spot she’d taken, she figured, was the one Rio and Carolyne should have used.

The porch floorboards shook slightly as someone approached the door on the other side. Kimmer turned her attention back around and, as the door opened, found herself facing a man who must be Mr. Angelina. Short, hair cut tight to accommodate his thinning hair with dignity, a reedy man going slightly chubby, he greeted her with a faintly puzzled smile. Behind that smile waited a pleasant refusal to consider solicitations, and Kimmer suppressed a wry little smile at the knowledge of just how wrongly he’d pegged her.

The full impact of the dinner aroma rolled out the door to engulf her; she had to stop herself from simply stopping to inhale and appreciate. “Hi,” she said. “I’m here looking for a couple of friends who I thought would be staying with you, but I didn’t see their car.” Of course not. But one had to start somewhere. “Rio and Carolyne.”

His expression shifted to puzzled; she wasn’t what he’d expected and he couldn’t immediately reclassify her. “They were here.” He pointed upward in an unconscious gesture, indicating the room Kimmer had so recently searched. “They left early.”

Kimmer frowned. “They did? When I heard from them, they said they loved it here. Welcoming, that’s what Rio said. I never would have expected them to leave early. I’d hoped to surprise them.” If she was lucky, the mere conversation would prompt him to mention if the goonboys had been by. She doubted it, or she’d have heard it as his initial response—the old “you’re the second visit we’ve had for them today” kind of thing.

And if the goonboys hadn’t been here yet, Kimmer began to think a warning would be in order. But how to do it…

Probably shouldn’t. It would compromise all sorts of things…her cover, for starters. It would create complications—especially if someone from the B&B tried to involve the police.