Exposed (7 page)

The firemen nearest the blast were being hauled back by their team members, as another large engine arrived with more firemen jumping off and immediately starting to work. Frank counted a total of three crews on the scene. Now their focus shifted, as they worked on preventing the flames from spreading to the neighboring homes, as well as trying to contain and stop the fire in the burning rubble that was once the little photographer’s home.

“Oh, my God. Ian. What have you done?”

The words came out of Sydney in a sound of shock and despair, barely above a whisper. If he hadn’t been holding her tight, Frank doubted he would’ve heard them over the first responders and bystanders shouting around them. Something in the way she said them set off the danger warning alarms in his body—the ones reserved for at-risk witnesses.

What did she mean
what have you done
? Did she think her brother was responsible for the fire and resulting explosion? Why would she think that? Who was her brother?

Before he could get any answers from her, Frank needed to get her away from this mess, at least until he knew what was going on.

Bending, he scooped her up into his arms and headed back to his SUV. The fact that she didn’t protest his efforts, was in fact clutching his shirt with her head buried against his chest, told him she was probably in shock.

At his vehicle, he put her on her feet long enough to open the door, took off his tux jacket, helped her into it and then scooted her into the passenger side. Once she was buckled in, he stopped to look at her.

Her face had gone quite pale and her eyes rounded as large as the children’s eyes he’d seen once in the
Our Children
painting by Margaret Keane at the United Nations. He cupped her face in his hands. It was like holding a block of ice.

Shit.

He closed the door, sprinted around to the driver’s side, and got the engine running. Getting her warm and somewhere safe was the priority. Turning on the heat, he adjusted the vents to point directly at her.

“Hold on, Sydney.” He put the SUV in gear, and reversed back up the street through the milling crowd until he could make a U-turn.

Protocol said he should be taking her to either a police station for questioning or the hospital for a checkup.

Screw protocol
.

His gut told him the best thing was to get her out of the limelight, at least for now. If she didn’t snap out of the shock once he got her to his house—and that was the closest of his places at the moment—then he’d have Sami come see her. As an ER nurse, Sami Edgars Carlisle would know what he needed to do next.

He glanced over at Sydney. Still as a statue, she stared out the windshield, her hands clutching his coat closed, her lower lip trembling and tears slowly rolling down her cheeks.

Fuck waiting.

He hit the phone button on his steering wheel. “Call Jake.”

“What’s up, Frank?” Jake’s voice came through the Bluetooth feature of his vehicle.

“Can Sami meet us at my house?” he said, trying to keep his voice as calm and neutral as he could. Adding to Sydney’s fright didn’t sound like a good idea at this moment.

“Us?” Jake sounded just as neutral.

“Me and Sydney Peele.” He turned left onto High Street, and then a quick jog over to reconnect with First Avenue, and another right.

“Tonight?” And there was that one word question that spoke volumes. Jake knew something was wrong and he needed Sami as soon as possible.

“We’ll be at the Neil Avenue house in about ten minutes, depending on traffic.” Given it was a Saturday night, it could be crowded.

“We’ll be there in about twenty.”

“Come in the rear. It will be unlocked.” He hit the disconnect button as they headed west past Dennison. Four more streets and he’d be on Neil, more than halfway there.

Another glance at his passenger. She hardly blinked. Her breathing so shallow he wanted to put his hand on her chest to feel if it rose and fell.

He should say something.

But he’d always sucked at comforting platitudes. In his line of work it didn’t do the person any good to promise things were going to be okay when you had no idea who the bad guys were or how bad the problem was. Blunt honesty worked better. So, how did he comfort a woman who just had her whole world completely blown apart? What if her brother was inside? How did he comfort her while she dealt with all this loss?

Better to keep his mouth shut than offer false hope.

How the hell had he gotten in this situation anyway?

She inhaled deeply, giving a hiccup of a gasp as she let the air out, then smaller little gasps as she tried to breathe in.

He reached for her hand and squeezed it where it clutched the tux jacket, willing some of his own warmth into her frozen fingers. Driving one handed, he kept her fingers tight in his other as he maneuvered through the streets to his home. He pulled around back and parked near the rear door. Hitting the electronic door opener attached to his key as he climbed out, he unlocked the security system to the house.

“Okay, Syd, we’re here.” He said, as he scooped her out of the car and into his arms once more, kicking the door closed behind him.

“Not…my…name,” she muttered between her chattering teeth.

Great, she finally responds, and it’s to complain about the shortening of her name
.

“Sure it is. Sydney sounds like a delicate southern flower. Syd sounds like one tough cookie.”

Hitting the light switch as he carried her through the kitchen, he headed straight into the living room and slowly lowered them both onto the leather couch. He held her tight to his body, slipped the Glock out of the shoulder holster he’d worn beneath his tux and set it on the end table within easy reach. Some habits were hard to break.

The afghan Mary Edgars knitted him last Christmas lay neatly folded on the back of the sofa. He grabbed it and wrapped it around them both like a giant cocoon. Sydney trembled so hard her teeth rattled. It felt as if she were having a seizure. Eyeing the bottle of bourbon on the counter in the kitchen, he wished he could pour her some to sip on. Warming her from the inside, as well as the outside, would hurry the process up, but he didn’t risk letting go of her.

Rubbing his hands over her back to create some slow friction, he found himself humming an old Frank Sinatratune. Beneath his hands her back muscles started to relax. Oddly, he felt his own heart rate slowing to a normal one.

Sounds came from the kitchen door. He lifted the gun from the table.

Steadily, he watched the back door as Jake and Sami Carlisle came inside.

“Frank?” Sami called.

“In here,” he answered, setting the gun back on the table.

“What happened?” she asked, hurrying to the sofa and turning on the table lamp, the expression on her face clearly illustrating that she was quickly assessing the situation. She sat on the sofa next to him so she could face Sydney, who still had the side of her face pressed right against where his heart beat.

Jake came to stand nearby. His mouth in a grim line, the look of a wary professional lawman on his face.

“Her house burned down,” Frank said, staring straight into the other man’s eyes. Then he switched his focus over Sydney’s head to Sami. “I think she’s in shock. She was so cold, I had to try and get her warm.”

“Sydney, can you hear me?” Sami stroked some the blonde hair that had come out of the bun back from her face. “Can you look at me?”

Sydney shifted in his arms, her head moving slightly away from his chest. He resisted the weird urge to pull her back.

“Jake can you put on some water to boil, and bring her something strong to drink?” Sami looked up at Frank in question.

“There’s bourbon near the electric wine opener on the counter,” he called out.

“Got it.”

A moment later, Jake handed the glass tumbler with a finger’s worth of the Kentucky bourbon to his wife, then headed back into the kitchen to follow her other instructions.

“Take a little sip,” Sami said, as she took one of Sydney’s hands in hers and wrapped it around the glass, then helped her bring it to her lips.

Sydney did as instructed, then grimaced. “Yuck.”

Sami smiled. “I know, I’m not a whiskey drinker, either, but it will warm you from the inside.” She pushed on the glass and Sydney took another, bigger drink.

“That’s nasty.” She made a face at Frank. Her eyes less dazed, the pallor of her skin less frightening, as she gave him a you’re-crazy-to-like-this-stuff look.

“Excuse me? That’s my very expensive bourbon you’re drinking, finest there is, in fact,” Frank defended his choice of liquid libation.

“Still sucks,” Sydney muttered.

“It’s an acquired taste,” he muttered back.

She took one more sip, made the same grimace, and pushed the glass towards Sami, shaking her head. “No more, please.”

Sami, who seemed to be trying to keep from laughing, set the glass on the table. “Do you have any tea, Frank?”

“Yeah, all kinds.” He kept all his safe houses and his home stocked with different kinds of teas, coffees and pops, just in case a witness voiced a preference and he needed them not to leave the premises.

“Why don’t you go make Sydney a cup?” Sami said, gently pulling the afghan off them and helping Sydney off his lap as he eased out from beneath her. Once he was standing, she wrapped the afghan around the photographer and held both her hands, gently chaffing them to continue the warming process.

In the kitchen, Frank busied himself finding a mug and pulling out the box of assorted teas from the cupboard. Setting it on the counter, he opened the lid and stared at all the individual packets. “Which kind?”

“Lemon ginger,” Jake said, leaning in to pick the light-yellow-and-orange packet and hand it to him. “Sami gives that to the kids when they’re sick. Says it boosts the immune system.”

“Not going to argue with a mom and a nurse.” Frank opened the packet, pulled out the little tea bag and set it in the mug while the tea kettle heated on the stove.

As they waited, he could literally hear the gears turning in the FBI agent’s head.

Wait for it…

“Gonna tell me what happened, and why we found you cuddling the wedding photographer in your lap like she was someone you’ve known for years instead of a few hours? And why you felt the need to hold a gun at the door until you were sure it was us coming in?”

And here it was. The moment a friend, colleague, and member of his adopted family questioned his actions. Hell, he’d question them, too.

He ran his left hand over the stubble on his lower jaw.

“I gave Miss Peele a ride home after the wedding. When we got on her street, the road was blocked by fire engines. Turns out it was her house on fire.”

“Damn. That sucks,” Jake said, all seriousness.

“That’s not the worst. While we were standing across the street an explosion occurred and the house literally blew all to hell.”

“A bomb?”

Trust the FBI agent in his friend to jump to that conclusion. The same one he’d had. Especially after she’d whispered those words about her brother—
what have you done?

Frank shook his head. “Don’t know. Could’ve simply been a gas leak.”

“There’s something else you’re not telling me,” Jake said, lowering his voice.

Frank glanced at the sofa where Sydney sat talking quietly with Sami. “She assumed her brother might’ve been in there when we first saw the fire.”

“But…?”

“After the explosion, she said something strange.” He didn’t take his eyes off Sydney while he spoke.

“Jesus, Castello, it’s like pulling teeth to get information out of you.” Jake grabbed his arm to get his attention. “What did she say?”

He stared into the other man’s face. “She whispered,
Ian, what have you done?
”

“Ian would be…?”

“Her brother.”

“And that set off what Luke calls the
Spidey-sense
.”

It wasn’t a question. Jake and all the Edgars brothers had talked at length how when something wasn’t right, or one of their wives was in danger, they all seemed to get a tingling up their spine. Luke had given it a name, stealing it from his favorite superhero.

“The way she said it, and how still she went…” He shook his head, trying to make sense of everything that happened and his reaction to it. “I just had to get her away from there as fast as possible. If she’d been a high-priority witness or political target, I could understand the feeling that we were out in the open. Exposed. Being watched. But she’s just a little fashion photographer.”

“That we know very little about.”

Jake’s words brought him up short and Frank’s gaze shot back to Sydney, who finally had some color back in her face. Could she be in league with her brother over something sinister? Or could they be in some kind of trouble, and exploding their past as a way to dodge the consequences?

The teakettle whistled. As he poured the water into the mug, he let his mind revisit the scene at the burning house like he’d watched Abigail do when she was seeing a crime scene again.

Sydney running to the house. Sydney trying to fight her way past the fireman. Her face as she watched her home burn. Her focus on the house, her eyes large with fear.

“No, her reaction to the fire had been real. No way could someone fake that kind of shock.” He added a spoonful of sugar to the tea, then another. Finally, he faced his friend once more. “Luke and Abigail trusted her. Not just with their wedding pictures, but on at least one of their assignments…Milan, I think it was.”

“True,” Jake said, leaning one hip against the counter. “But you and I know that someone can be a good person in public and have dark secrets they’d kill to keep hidden. I could pull some strings and get my people to do some background search on Sydney and her brother, but that would make it official.”

“I’d rather not get anyone official involved, just yet,” Frank said, unable to shake the need to protect Sydney, even if it was from herself.

“We could use some other options to get the information. A good hacker could probably get us what we want to know.” Jake paused a moment. “And of course the one we know the best and trust the most just left town on his honeymoon, they’re probably already tucked into their private island retreat.”