The Protector (18 page)

**

Ike was amused to note that Stanley’s princess drooled. As he folded his briefs and T-shirts into neat little squares, he watched saliva trickle from the corner of her slightly parted lips toward the wet spot on the table. The dryer hummed with the second load, but
Eryn
slept on, oblivious.
     

Maybe I’m pushing her too hard, he considered with a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t like she’d signed up to take his course. Leaving her as vulnerable as a baby, on the other hand, would be a huge disservice to her.
Teaching her to shoot, to think through her fear, made perfect sense.

If he could just do it without wanting something more, without getting sucked back into the War on Terror. Extremists weren’t his problem anymore; they were hers. The most he could do was to teach her to defend herself. His job would be a hell of a lot easier, though, if she’d stop insisting that they get better acquainted.
 

It was none of her business what kind of family he came from, whether he called his mother or not. He didn’t need to hear her dismay, which only made him feel ashamed and then cheated. Hell, not everyone had parents who adored them.

The only people who’d ever treated Ike like family were Stanley and his brothers in Team Five. They’d lived through glory and hell together, day in and day out for years. They knew each others’ secrets, weaknesses, and strengths. Hell, they could practically read each others’ minds.

A sudden pain lanced Ike’s chest. Damn it, he still missed them—the ones who were gone forever and those he hoped still lived. He leaned against the dryer, racked by grief.
  

Where was Spellman recuperating, he wondered, after stepping on that mine?
     

It came as a relief to hear Winston barking out front. Counting on the dryer noise to keep
Eryn
unaware of what was going
on,
Ike hurried from the kitchen to intercept Dwayne Barnes in his front yard.

He found the thickset mountain man sitting in his F150 just looking at Ike’s Durango. Seeing Ike step out of his trailer, Dwayne pushed slowly out of his truck and approached him with a less-than-enthusiastic step.
“Hey, LT.”
He stopped about three yards away and gave his bushy beard a scratch. “What’s new with you?”
  

Usually Dwayne was all boisterous handshakes and claps on the back. Ike searched his guarded expression. “Not much.
You?”

“Oh, same
ol
’, same
ol
’.”
Dwayne rocked for an awkward moment on his feet. “I see you got yourself a dog,” he observed, jerking his thumb at Winston.
   

Ike acknowledged the comment with a nod. “You just come from work?” he asked.

“
Naw
, I’m
takin
’ the day off.”
 

“You go into town?”

“Yep.
Had to buy lumber for my new deck.”

Ike glanced toward the planks filling the back of Dwayne’s Ford. “Happen to see a large silver RV anywhere?”
 

The man stared down at the grass. “Can’t say I did,” he answered unconvincingly.
   

Ike’s sixth sense told him Dwayne was lying. The mountain man shuffled his feet. He cleared his throat. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. “You got something to tell me, Dwayne?” Ike invited, softly.
 

“No,” said Dwayne, just a little too quickly.

“That right? Maybe you need me to jog your memory.” The threat was accompanied by a widening of his stance.

“All right!”
Dwayne threw up his hands. “I’ll tell you what I know.” He sent Ike a tortured look. “
There’s
some FBI guys in town, LT, and they’re
askin
’ all about you.”
 

The confession wasn’t altogether unexpected, but it struck Ike squarely in the solar plexus. He took a step closer, pitched his voice low. “What are they asking?”
  

“They wanted to know what you were like, if you were right in the head, and all. They wanted me to list the weapons you have.”
 

Dwayne’s words made Ike’s blood boil. “You told them,” he guessed.
 

“I had to!” Dwayne took a precautionary step back. “They knew something about me.
Something that would’ve cost me my job.”

“You sold me out,” Ike accused, incredulous.
 

“Aw, hell, you got
nothin
’ to hide!” Dwayne protested. “You’re a
freakin
’ war hero, LT.”

“I want to know exactly what you told them,” Ike hissed.
  

“That you had a security system,” Dwayne admitted. “That you’d know they
was
comin
’, and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell they’d catch you, if you didn’t want to be caught.”

“Just like your favorite movie,
Rambo
,” Ike elaborated.
 

“Exactly,” Dwayne agreed.

Shit!

Ike thought of
Eryn
still sleeping in Dwayne’s kitchen. If the man got a look at her, there was no telling what kinds of rumors would start to fly. No one needed to know who she was, let alone where she was located.

Planting a hand on Dwayne’s massive chest, Ike propelled him toward his vehicle. “I think you’d better take a drive, Dwayne, before I break your fucking nose.”

“I’m sorry, LT! I’ll make it up to you, I swear it.”

“Go,” Ike ordered.
     

With a resigned look, Dwayne slumped back to his truck. He stepped in, revved the engine, and took off with a spray of gravel.

Good riddance, thought Ike, but then he felt his nape prickle. Turning, he found
Eryn
standing on Dwayne’s front stoop, staring in astonishment at the retreating Ford. “Was that Dwayne?” she asked.

“No,” he lied, stalking back to the trailer.

As he hustled her inside, she shot him a reproachful look. “Why on earth did you chase him off?” she demanded.

“Time to leave,” he said, ignoring the question and continuing into the kitchen. There, he scraped the colored clothes out of the dryer and stuffed them into the laundry bag on top of the whites.
  

Eryn
didn’t move an inch as he passed her again en route to the door. “Now,” he urged.

“I don’t think so.” Her chin was angled upward, her hands planted on her hips. “You need to explain what I just saw.”
  

It was obvious to Ike she wasn’t going to move an inch unless she got some answers. His temples throbbed. He peered through the cracked front door, half expecting to see the FBI barreling through Naked Creek. “Dwayne took my course last fall,” he admitted shortly. “I teach survival and security.”
   

Her brow furrowed as she processed his statement. “So, that’s what the trails are for,” she guessed aloud. “And the shooting range.”

“Right.”

“Dwayne took your course, and that’s why he agreed to house your machines here.”

“Exactly.”

“Then why’d you chase him off his land?”

“I didn’t. He forgot something.”

“You’re lying.”

Ike had had enough of the fifth degree. “You
gonna
come on your own, or do I need to carry you?” he threatened.

Eryn’s
back stiffened. After a measuring look, she apparently decided she wouldn’t put it past him to throw her over his shoulder. She marched mutinously out of the door, sending him a look that should have left him in cinders. Amused despite the urgent situation, Ike trundled her into his SUV, tossed the laundry bag onto the back seat, and took off.

With haste that bounced them in their seats, he sped them away from Dwayne’s trailer, spraying water twenty feet into the air as he sluiced through Naked Creek and out the other side.
 

No Feds or the local cops in sight.

As he rushed them toward his mountain, leaving a trail of dust hanging in the air behind them, he was sharply aware of
Eryn’s
silence. She sat stiffly in the opposite seat clutching the safety handle, her mouth drawn into a firm pink line.

Her irritation with him unsettled him. Just like everything else about her, it went straight under his skin to affect his nervous system. And, damn it, before she’d come into his life, he hadn’t been aware that he’d even
had
a nervous system.

“Why don’t you tell me anything?” she demanded as he flew toward his property.

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that you teach survival training? Like why you chased that poor man off his property.”

“Trust
me,
you don’t need to pity him.” His temper flared again at the thought of Dwayne’s betrayal.

“Okay, then, give me one good reason for your hostility.”

“I can give you several.”
 

“Go ahead.”

But he couldn’t because he’d assured her just the other day that the FBI hadn’t followed them, and he didn’t want her losing faith in him. Worse than that, if the FBI was in town, then the fucking terrorists probably weren’t all that far behind. She sure as hell didn’t need to know that.

Swinging between the pillars, he silenced his watch, shifted fluidly into four-wheel drive,
then
took off again, using the need for concentration to avoid her expectant gaze. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, he assured himself.

**

“Damn it, we missed him!”
Caine
looked from his laptop to the long stretch of country road blocked at the far end by a lumpy mountain. “It’s too late. They’re back on his property.”
  

Ringo
, who was driving the Taurus, let up abruptly on the gas, and the seatbelt strapping Jackson into the rear seat jerked tight at the abrupt change in speed. He had to take it off in order to put it back on.

It was just another sign of how totally ineffective their approach was. He couldn’t even say if they were on the side of the law anymore.
  

As a Marine, Jackson had been one of the good guys. Sure, he’d done some dirty deeds in the line of duty, but he’d never shot at women, children, or upright men. And, as far as he was concerned, Isaac Calhoun was an upright man. Any special ops warrior was a hero in his eyes, whether the men under his command got killed or not.

“Turn around.”
Caine
gave an angry gesture, and
Ringo
swung into a tractor road to pull a U-turn, pointing them back toward town.

“Don’t worry,”
Caine
added after a minute of tense silence. “We’ll get her back tomorrow night.”

Jackson’s pulse accelerated. “Sir, I’d just as soon not run into a SEAL in the dead of night,” he announced. Their plan to lure Calhoun away from the cabin wasn’t going to work the way
Caine
figured it would.
  

“I don’t want to hear excuses, Maddox. He’s not a SEAL anymore.”