The Protector (8 page)

Moment by moment, her sobs subsided and her self-control returned.
 

Gathering what little remained of her
dignity,
Eryn
dashed the wetness from her face, sniffed, and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, staring at the cracks in the tiled floor, aware of his emotionless scrutiny.

“You’ll feel better in a day or two,” he finally predicted. With a glance at the toilet bowl and the dissolving pills, he left her standing there, bitterly humiliated, feeling like a junkie in rehab.

Screw you, she thought, glaring after him.
 

The spoiled princess was sulking over her lost meds, Ike decided, as he carried two bowls of stew from the stove to the field table that served as a dinette.

Eryn
sat stiffly in a ladder-back chair, clutching a glass of ice water. The sinking sun spotlighted her puffy, red-rimmed eyes and spiked eyelashes. How she managed to look beautiful, even regal, on the heels of her emotional outburst was a mystery to him. But thanks to her meltdown, her softness and her scent were now imprinted on his senses, giving rise to a nagging sexual awareness.
 

“Back up,” he snapped at Winston, who stepped into his path while sniffing the air appreciatively. At his sharp tone, the Shepherd mix lay down, put his head between his paws, and gazed up pitifully.

“He’s hungry,”
Eryn
growled in defense of her dog.
 

Ike felt like an ogre. Placing
Eryn’s
dinner in front of her, he braced himself for a negative response. Being the daughter of a four-star general, he imagined she was used to eating at fancy restaurants and officers’ clubs. He doubted she’d ever seen grub like this before.

When she studied the unappetizing mush without comment, he dropped into the seat opposite hers and dug in wordlessly, watching her reaction out the corner of his eye.
     

She lifted her spoon, took a small bite, chewed and swallowed. “Do you always eat MRE’s?” she asked him.
 

That got his attention. “How do you know this is an MRE?” She’d been upstairs when he’d dumped the stew out of the Meal-Ready-to-Eat Pouch.
       

“’Cause that’s all we ate after my mother died,” she said, stirring her stew. “That’s when I learned to cook.”
  

Now he really felt like an ogre. The memory of Stanley’s moist gaze as he talked about his wife at the Watering Hole returned to Ike with clarity. He wondered if Cougar would grieve for Carrie as long as Stanley had grieved for Irene—over a decade now. “You don’t have to eat it,” he heard himself offer. “I’ll find you something else.” Except the only thing growing in his garden was winter squash.
  

“You know, I could cook while I’m here,” she suggested unexpectedly. “I make
a really
mean lasagna.”

Ike’s mouth watered. When was the last time he’d tasted home-cooked lasagna?
 

“We’ll buy groceries,” he decided.
“Tomorrow.”

“How long am I going to be here?”
 

The question agitated him all over again. “Depends on whether the FBI can find the bomber and whether they can prove he murdered your student.”

She put her spoon down, looking suddenly ill. “You heard about
Itzak
?”
 

“Yes.” Stanley had relayed the story to Cougar, who’d told it to Ike. Her Afghani student had plotted with another man to abduct her on her evening commute, only the kid had changed his mind at the last instant and ended up paying for his loyalty with his life.
 

“He had ties to the Brotherhood of Islam. That’s a faith-based group in D.C.”

“I know what it is.” Bunch of homegrown terrorists, he thought.

“The FBI says they want to avenge my father’s actions in Afghanistan by...by attacking me.” She lifted a dainty hand to her neck as if protecting it.
 

Disturbed by the look on her face, Ike heard himself say, “No one’s going to find you here.”

She nodded, blinking rapidly to staunch the tears that made her eyes luminous.
 

“Eat your food,” he ordered. It annoyed him that he could feel himself getting sucked into her predicament. It had nothing to do with him—not anymore.
    

She poked at her stew but didn’t eat. “Listen, I don’t mean to be a nuisance,” she said with hesitancy, “but I don’t have any clothes.” Her gravity conveyed that the world would stop turning. “Plus, I need a toothbrush.”

Her perfect, white smile had probably cost a fortune in orthodontics. “I have an extra. Never been used,” he added when her eyes just widened.
“You going to eat that or not?”
 

She took a genteel bite to appease him. Ike acknowledged that she’d probably never called anyone crazy in her entire life, nor told anyone his house was a hovel. He had managed to bring out the worst in her, which had amounted to a storm of weeping and mild epithets, making her more appealing than ever, damn it.
  

Truth was, she’d been through hell lately—like nothing she’d ever experienced before. He could at least try to be nice, whether she abused drugs or not.

“Did you get a look at the man in the taxi?” They might as well hash it out now while they were on the subject.

She fought to swallow the bite she’d taken. “Not really. It was dusk. I couldn’t make out his face, just the fact that he wore glasses.”

“Didn’t anyone get the plates?”

She shook her head again. “No one even noticed. They would have gotten away with it if
Itzak
hadn’t changed his mind.” She bit her trembling lower lip. “He saved my life.”

Poor kid was probably half in love with her.
 

“Did he say anything that could help identify the driver?”
 

All color slipped from her face as she gave a nod. “He told me to run, that the driver of the taxi would find me, and...
he
would take my head.”

The stew in Ike’s gut threatened a return. He stared at
Eryn
, aghast. Beheading the enemy was a fun little game that fundamentalists liked to play overseas. To date, it wasn’t a pastime of homegrown terrorists. That meant they were probably acting at the behest of the Taliban or al Qaeda. Had the FBI considered that?
 

Feeling thoroughly worked up, he thrust his chair back and crossed to the woodstove where he busied himself stoking the flames, adding enough firewood to last till midnight.

“Why did my father send you, Ike?”
 

The soft question, spoken just over his shoulder, startled him. He hadn’t heard
Eryn
leave the table.
 

Shutting the iron door, he brushed dirt off his hands and rose to face her. His first impulse was to shelter her from the truth, but then he decided it was best that she knew. “He figured the FBI was using you as bait.”
 

Air whooshed from her lungs but she didn’t look too surprised. “That’s what it felt like,” she admitted, proving herself more astute than he’d given her credit for. As he watched, she hugged herself in an effort to quell the tremors shook her entire body. He started to reach for her,
then
thought better of it.
  

“I’m scared,” she whispered. The pleading look in her violet-blue eyes begged for his comfort.
 

Ike’s heart trotted. All this touchy-feely stuff awakened emotions in him he’d spent the last twelve months—a lifetime maybe—trying to deny.
 
She made him want what he could never have
 

“Give your dinner to the dog,” he said, fleeing for the door. What he needed right now was fresh air and a clearer perspective.
      

“Where are you going?” she asked, whirling with a panicked look.
 

“Not far.” He couldn’t get out fast enough.

“Ike?”

With one foot out the door, he glanced back.
 

“I’m sorry,” she said, unsettling him further.
 

“For what?”
 

“For intruding on your space.”

He didn’t want her feeling bad for him, not after the way he’d treated her today. Not when he looked at her and thought about sex.
  

Not going to happen.
Without a word, he kept right on going, pushing into sharply cooler air, shutting the door behind him.
  

The sun was starting to set behind the adjacent landmasses, Green Mountain and Lairds Knob. Stalking up the trail he’d extended for his survival course, Ike hiked through the sparse, shadowed woods to the man-sized boulder that marked the first tenth of a mile. Climbing onto its lichen-covered surface, he dangled his feet off the edge and admired the burnished horizon.
 

Eryn’s
struggle was a manifestation of the war he wanted no more part of. Recruiting Ike had been Stanley’s way of getting him back into the game, the sonofabitch.

It wasn’t like Ike had a choice, either. He’d do anything to make up for the mistake that had cost four teammates their lives. Stanley knew that. He knew Ike wouldn’t fuck up again. He knew he’d keep
Eryn
safe from any threat that might come up his mountain.
 

Keeping her safe from
himself
? Now that was going to be the real test.
  

Chapter Five

“Okay, so the UPS man didn’t martyr himself,”
Ringo
stated, bringing them up-to-date on his findings. “
Ashwin
Patel has been a U.S. citizen from the age of two, plus he practiced Hindu.”
 

“That could have been a cover,”
Caine
insisted.

“The manager said some little shit came in and mailed the package, paying for it in cash.”
Ringo
set aside the baggie with the cash in it for the Emergency Response Team to take back to Quantico for fingerprinting. “It’s all on the tape, which has been rewound for us.”

Caine
inserted the old cassette tape into a compatible player, and they all watched with baited breath.

“That’s the kid,” said
Ringo
.

“Christ,”
Caine
exclaimed. “What is he, like fifteen years old?”

The little shit,
Jackson determined. The boy was probably too young even to be in their system.
  

Despite the cool thermostat setting in the sound room,
Caine
had sweat stains under his arm pits. “How the hell are we going to find a kid that young?”
  

“Learner’s permit if we’re lucky,” Jackson drawled. He thought to himself that the mastermind behind the attack was pretty damn clever.

As
Caine
queried their facial recognition software, Jackson studied the boy’s every nuance. Unlike the man pretending to be Pedro, he made no attempt to disguise his face. He smiled at the cashier, paid seven fifty in cash, and left. He’s not the bomber, Jackson realized. In deference to
Caine’s
worsening mood, he said, instead, “The kid has no idea what’s in the box.”