Light snow dusted the ground beside the two-lane country road, illuminated by the headlights of the SUV they’d rented in Watertown. One thing Dana had never gotten used to about the South...it hardly ever snowed. In upstate New York, they practically skipped fall and jumped straight into winter. In Georgia there were years when summer never surrendered at all. It seemed to be even worse in the city, where an inch of snow could gridlock the greater Atlanta area for hours.
The city. Dana glanced in the rearview, found it was still clear, then took in the tall trees and the occasional field. Until she’d visited Mountain Springs, she’d forgotten how much she loved living in the country, where the air was clean and the stars were visible. In fact, she hadn’t realized until she was in Mountain Springs that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a deep breath. Atlanta was amazing, but it had never felt like home.
Maybe that was why her apartment still looked as though no one lived there.
In the passenger seat, Rich stirred and crossed his arms over his chest. He’d fallen asleep not long after they hit the road to Oswego, and she’d left him alone. Knowing him, it had been almost two days since he’d let his guard down enough to sleep. Either he trusted her to drive them safely or he knew he’d reached his physical limit. Given that his control-freak self hadn’t argued about driving in the first place, it was probably the latter. Even hard-core soldiers needed rest now and then.
Soldiers. With another check of the rearview, Dana allowed herself a grin, largely to cover up her churning stomach as the miles to her childhood home disappeared under the tires.
Rich had called in the cavalry, all right. A buddy of his in Columbus rode with a veterans’ motorcycle association and was able to round up seven similar Harleys in a short time. Right after lunch, they’d roared up the street, the sound of their V-twin engines reaching all the way to the seventeenth floor. After some quick introductions, one couple stayed back in her apartment while Dana and Rich geared up in leathers and helmets. While no one was dressed exactly alike, it had been nearly impossible to tell who was who. The pack left the building and branched off one by one throughout Atlanta. If anyone was following, they were likely incredibly confused and unspeakably frustrated by the end of their ride.
It had been years since she’d been on the back of a bike, and for a brief moment when they headed south toward the small airport in Cusseta, she’d almost forgotten why the subterfuge had been necessary in the first place. Either she was going to have to learn to ride when this whole thing was over, or she’d have to find a friend who’d let her tag along.
Like Rich. Who apparently owned two motorcycles and was rebuilding a third.
He was a bigger surprise at every turn. Like the way he’d known to comfort her without getting too close.
She stole a quick peek at him as he dozed in the passenger seat, his face shadowed by the dim interior lights. In sleep, the stress and worry that seemed to dog his every step vanished. Other than the few days’ worth of beard darkening his cheeks and jaw, he looked like he must have looked as a young boy.
“You ought to be watching where you’re going.” He shifted, straightened and opened his eyes.
Yes. Yes, she should. Dana turned her full attention back to the road.
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep.” He stretched his legs as much as he could and reached his hands behind him in a full-on cat pose. “Somebody needs to be watching the mirrors.”
“Unless they’re driving without lights, which would be incredibly dangerous out here, we don’t have a tail. Even superheroes have to sleep sometime. You were about six seconds from a crash and burn.”
He dismissed her with a humph and glanced at his watch. “We must be getting close.”
They were.
The closer they got, the more Dana wanted to pull over the rented SUV and hide in the woods. Home had always been a safe place, but now...
Her hand resting on the gearshift gripped tighter. If her mother wasn’t her mother and her name wasn’t her name and her childhood home wasn’t her home, then there was no telling who she really was. No telling what horrible things lived dormant inside her, waiting for the wrong moment to rise up.
It was possible there was no safe place for her anymore.
Rich reached over and laid his hand, warm and gentle in a way that didn’t match him at all, on hers. “You know, we rented this truck with my credit card. I’d like to not have to pay damages for your permanent finger marks in the vinyl.”
His unexpected touch ran warmth all the way up her arm and into her stomach. The quiver had nothing to do with the fear and trepidation she’d felt since they touched down in Watertown. This was a lot more pleasant.
And a lot more unsettling.
She withdrew her fingers and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “We’re less than ten minutes away.”
“Then you’ll have answers.”
“To questions I don’t want to ask. Questions I shouldn’t have to ask.”
Rich watched her for a second, kneading his knee with his left hand, then looked away.
“Your knee bothering you?”
“What? No.” He snapped to attention, then stared out the window. “Sure are a lot of houses lit up for Christmas out here.”
Dana let the change of subject take hold. He’d been wounded overseas, that much she knew, but she didn’t know the extent or even the location. It didn’t matter. Apparently, she was traveling with a real-life hero, according to some things Sam had said in the past.
Easier to think about this than what was coming in the next ten minutes. “Christmas is different here. I mean, it’s...slower. At least in my head it is.” Memories of visits with other families, parties at church, gifts left on front porches. “My mom’s best friend owns a Mexican restaurant not too far from here, on the outskirts of town. She always had a big bash one week before Christmas Eve with all sorts of gifts and Christmas karaoke and other stuff.”
“That was last night.” Rich’s voice was low.
Dana scanned the road ahead as though it would show her a calendar. “Christmas Eve is less than a week away?” She hadn’t bought anything. Hadn’t considered whether or not she’d come home for Christmas. How had she missed it? Even before her life blew up, she’d forgotten Christmas?
How would this year play out? Everything was falling apart. Even her memories held a false tone. Instead of bringing warmth, they clanged a hollow ring. Part of her longed to walk through the front door as though this was a surprise holiday visit, to pretend all was well and her family was her family. To make cookies with her mother. To relive the innocence of Christmas Eve church services and Christmas morning gifts. To feel the warm fuzzies she’d lost long before tonight.
But she couldn’t. There was too much at stake. Too much had changed.
The familiar entrance to the driveway made her stomach roil.
She turned in to the driveway, navigating the narrow path through the trees. When she was younger, her dad had complained about having to hook the snowplow to the front of his truck so he could get to the mailbox.
Her dad. Who actually wasn’t her dad.
Dana chewed on the inside of her lower lip as the headlights swept the front of the two-story vinyl-sided house. It was dark, although it was not quite eight. Either her mom was at her friend Stephanie’s restaurant or she’d already gone to bed.
Dana was about to wake her up.
She killed the engine and reached for the door, but Rich’s hand on her shoulder stopped her. “What?”
“Front door’s open.”
Icy fear and hot anger blended in Dana’s veins in a sickening soup. She drew her pistol. “I’ll go in the front and clear the house. You don’t know the layout. You take the back. Make sure no one heads out. Be careful. My mother is the one who taught me how to shoot.” He’d cleared a house before, but her mother didn’t know him. No sense in getting Rich killed by friendly fire. The thought made her blood even colder.
“If anyone’s inside, they’ve seen the headlights, but kill the interior lights,” he told her. “At least they won’t be able to tell how many of us there are.”
It took a second in the unfamiliar car, but she located the button and shut down the door lights.
Almost with the same motion, they eased out of the vehicle and crept toward the house.
Dana kept to the side and eased up the steps, out of the direct line of sight of the door. Outside, she stopped to listen and to give Rich time to get into position. She took two deep breaths and tried to shove her emotions aside, to make this simply a home entry and not a mission with serious personal stakes.
She’d count to five for Rich to be in place, then enter.
One. Her grip on her pistol tightened.
Two. One foot slipped forward.
Three. Something shuffled behind her.
She pivoted on one heel, but a massive force slammed into her head, knocking her into the bushes beside the porch.
The cry from the front of the house set Rich into motion before the faint echo died away.
Dana.
He never should have left her alone. His gut had told him to follow her into the house, but he’d obeyed her order, heeded her plan. He’d followed a valid tactical plan instead of remembering Dana was in danger and he was here to keep her safe.
Whatever happened to her would be his fault.
At the corner of the house, he skidded to a stop on damp leaves and snow, nearly dropping to one knee. He forced himself to act out of his rational mind and not out of his wildly misfiring emotions. Running blind around the corner might get him killed.
He inhaled cold night air, counted to three and focused on the next step. Holding his sidearm low, he peeked around the house and tried to distinguish shadows. In the faint moonlight, a figure stood on the porch with its back to Rich and looked down into the bushes.
Rich eased around the corner. The figure was too big to be Dana. Definitely a male. Tall. Broad. Light reflected off an object in his right hand.
Another knife. There was definitely continuity in the choice of weapons, which indicated one group in play rather than a random hodgepodge of assassins.
It was better than a pistol. Creepier, but better, because Rich having a firearm definitely gave him the advantage.
As long as the guy didn’t have a partner waiting in the woods.
The man shouted something in Spanish, but the words weren’t familiar. He raised the knife.
Rich aimed and swallowed the unfamiliar mass in his throat that threatened to choke his words into uselessness. “Drop the knife!” The shout echoed off the trees.
With a jerk, Dana’s assailant turned. In the pale moonlight, his face was featureless, menacing beneath a dark mask.
“You heard me.” Rich held his aim level at center mass and stepped slowly closer. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot a man, but the thought of Dana dead or injured made his trigger finger twitch. “Lay down the knife. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“You are the big hero again, Espectro?” The man shifted his grip on the knife, as though he prepared to throw it. “You will force us to kill you before we carry out our plans for Danna.”
Espectro? And that name again, Danna. Rich forced his mind to center. “Lay down the knife. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“You will have to shoot me first.” He raised the knife, his arm drawing up and back to throw.
A shadow shifted in the bushes behind the man, and a dark figure caught him in the back of the legs. He went down hard on his knees with a sickening thud. The knife clattered off the porch and into the bushes.
Rich ran forward as Dana stood at full height in the bushes beside the porch, but the assailant rolled to the side and raced down the steps, heading for the trees at full speed, although a limp likely slowed him some.
Rich pursued, but he stopped at the wood line. It was too dark to see, and running into the trees without an idea of where he was going was foolish.
Besides, he wouldn’t leave Dana alone again. Bad things happened when he went his own direction. When he left the women in his care to their own devices. Tonight had only reinforced that truth.
“Have you lost your mind?” Her footsteps pounded closer behind him. “Go after him!”
Rich turned on his heel and caught Dana around the waist as she tried to pass. He spun her toward him and pulled her to his chest with one arm. He holstered his pistol and wrapped his other arm around her. She was fighting too hard for him to keep her in place one-handed. “Dana, stop. Think about what you’re doing.”
The side of her fist landed against the scar on his shoulder, the spot still tender even though more than two years had passed. “You’re letting him go.”
“I’m saving your life.” He tightened his arms around her back. “You’re not thinking. You’re acting on emotion. Remember your training, Dana.”
“You’re letting...” With a huff she stopped fighting and sagged, her forehead against his chest, her breathing heavy. She stayed there, her inhales gradually shifting from ragged to calm.
Rich kept his eyes on the trees and his ears on the night sounds, listening for their anonymous “friend’s” return, but he heard nothing except Dana’s breathing. His hold on her gradually shifted, from defensive to soothing, until he’d pulled her close in a way that surpassed the comfort he had offered her earlier.
This time he wanted to hold her close. He wanted to be near her. His eyes slipped closed. Since Amber’s death, he hadn’t wanted to hold another woman.
Until now.
With a ragged breath of his own, Rich set Dana away from him. Now it was his emotions running away with rational thought. A killer likely lurked nearby, and here he stood in the open with Dana, acting as though the only thing that mattered in the world was how she made him feel.
The exact same thing that had led to Amber’s murder.
Rich was out of bounds. Getting attached was foolish when he couldn’t plan a future. Letting her become a distraction was a danger to both of them. “We have to go. Now.” Her attacker could return at any moment, and he likely would not come back alone.
“My mother.” Dana backed farther away and turned toward the house. “She might be inside. He might have gotten to her first. She might be...”
There was no need to finish. Her worst nightmares might be true inside her childhood home.
Rich prayed not. It was one thing to lose a parent. But another entirely to lose one with so many questions unanswered. Lord, let Dana’s mother be safe. Let her be anywhere but here.
Without looking at him, Dana headed toward the house. “My gun’s in the bushes.” She marched into the shrubs beside the porch, knelt down and came back with her weapon in hand. “His knife’s there, too. We’ll get it on the way out.” She took the steps two at a time.
Rich caught her before she opened the front door. “Me first.”
“My mother. My house.”
“Your life.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, laid a hand on her biceps and shifted her behind him. “You’re too emotionally involved. You’ll miss something.” Holding out his hand, he waited for her to drop a key into it. She was bound to have one.
She muttered something under her breath but handed him her keys. “As soon as we get in the door, I’m turning on the lights. Nobody gets to hide from me here.”
Not even her mother, Rich was sure. He was three steps into the house when the room illuminated. The glare forced him to blink a few times before his sight cleared.
He stood in the middle of a large living room. Below the front window, a couch stood sentinel, facing a TV mounted over a brick fireplace. A fully decorated Christmas tree filled one corner of the room, the limbs heavy with homemade decorations. The space was pristine. “I expected it to be tossed.”
“Same.” Dana’s voice was grim, but it had lost that emotional edge. “I’ll take upstairs. You take down. We’ll meet in the kitchen.”
“We go together.” No way was he letting her out of his sight again.
“Have it your way.” Methodically, they cleared the house. No hidden attackers. No sign of Dana’s mother. The only indication she’d been here recently was her cell phone, lying on a table next to the back door, the battery dead.
In the kitchen, Dana holstered her pistol. “Her car’s gone. She could be anywhere.”
“Would she take off without her cell phone?”
With a shrug, she rounded the island and leaned back against the counter, staring at the back door. “It wouldn’t be unusual. My mother was never a big fan. Took me years to get her to carry one at all. She doesn’t trust technology—says the more you have, the more privacy you give away.”
“She’s not wrong.”
“You have no idea how right she is. In my line of work...” She shoved away from the counter and pulled the fridge open.
In her line of work, she probably knew thirty-seven ways to hack his smartphone. “Any clues in the fridge?” It wouldn’t have been his first place to look, but she knew what she was searching for. Either that, or she was hungry.
“She was here today. There’s deli meat purchased this afternoon.” Shutting the door, she eyed him up and down, her expression dark. Something more than her mother’s whereabouts seemed to be bothering her.
“What?” She was thinking something, and Rich wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what. Not with that look of concern on her face.
“The man outside. He called you Espectro. It means ghost.”
“I heard. He also called you Danna. They definitely know who you really are.”
“I’m more concerned they know who you are.” She held a hand out to him, almost as though she wanted him to come closer, then let it drop. “If you have a name, an identifier with them, then you’re on their radar.”
She was probably right. The military worked with the same parameters. People in the spotlight had nicknames that often grew larger than their actual personas.
But his safety wasn’t the issue here. “It doesn’t matter right now. We need to get you out of here before he comes back with reinforcements. They want you dead, Dana. They won’t miss a chance to come at you while they know where you are. It’s time to go.”
“My mother.” She turned a slow circle and surveyed the kitchen. “There has to be a way to warn her, a way they wouldn’t know.”
“We’ll call the cops from the road, report a break-in, then set up a meeting with her remotely. We’ll call from my cell, since yours is still in Mountain Springs.”
“I wish—wait.” Dana stepped toward the refrigerator, staring at the photos there. “A way to warn her...”
Her face relaxed. A slight smile tugged at her mouth. Turning on her heel, she reached into a drawer, retrieved a zip-top bag and headed for the front door. “Let’s get that knife and get out of here. I know where she is.” She glanced over her shoulder at Rich. “She knew this was coming.”