Tami Hoag - Heart of Gold

“Faith,” Jayne called, breaking the tension. “Telephone.”

Almost weak with relief, Faith turned away from the confrontation. Her knees wobbled a bit as she crossed the room to take the receiver from Jayne.

“Hello, this is Faith Kincaid.”

“How would you like to be dead, Mrs. Gerrard?” a man’s voice questioned very softly.

Blinding, instantaneous fear lodged in Faith’s throat. She felt as if she had suddenly been encased in ice, and yet her palms were sweating as she clutched the receiver to her ear. The only thing she could think to say was ridiculous, but she said it anyway, her voice shot through with trembling threads of panic. “Who is this?”

“A friend,” the man answered, but there was nothing friendly in his voice; it held all the silky menace of a viper, dark and evil. “A friend who thinks it would be better if you didn’t testify, because I’d hate to have to kill you.”

For a long moment Faith listened to the silence after the soft click on the other end of the line. Finally she hung up and turned slowly to face the other people in the room. If she had felt weak before the call, she felt faint now, and she knew she had turned as white as the kitchen appliances. She was certain no one could feel as cold and terrified as she did and still have a red blood cell left in her body.

Everyone in the room stared at her, their faces grim with worry. They seemed miles away, even though they were in the same room.

She didn’t turn to her friends. Her gaze went directly, instinctively to Shane Callan and locked on him desperately, as if she could somehow draw strength from merely looking at him. Faith didn’t question her reaction; fear had stripped away the ability to question and reason.

Managing to draw a shaky breath into her lungs, she said, “It would seem I was a bit hasty in saying you aren’t needed here.”

HE COULDN’T SLEEP. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how detached he claimed to be, he couldn’t blank the image from his mind. Every time he closed his eyes all he could see was Faith Kincaid, looking small and terrified, her face washed of color, her dark eyes staring up at him, wide and shining with tears of fear.

She had looked to him in that instant, and his first and strongest instinct had been to take her in his arms and hold her.

Shane swore softly, exhaling a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. What the hell was the matter with him?

Lurking not so far in the back of his mind was the fear that after sixteen years on the job, maybe it was time to move on to something else. But when he tried to see the future, it simply stretched before him, a barren gray plain. His dedication to duty had distanced him from everyone and everything he had ever cared about. Now he had nothing to move on to.

Without turning on the light he sat up and reached for the tumbler on the nightstand and took a swallow of velvet-smooth whiskey.

Banks had wanted him to take R and R after the Silvanus case. Correction, Shane thought with a wry smile, as he took another long drag on his cigarette, Banks had ordered him to take R and R after the Silvanus case. He probably should have listened. Instead, he’d picked one hell of a fight with his boss, and now he was stuck here. This was Banks’s way of punishing him. When Shane thought of the woman lying in bed just across the hall from him, and his blood surged hot in his veins, he had to say it was cruel and unusual punishment.

What a pretty little bundle of trouble Faith Kincaid was. In the first place he wanted to believe she was as guilty as her ex-husband where DataScam was concerned. That alone should have kept him from feeling this damnable attraction. Under the tarnish of cynicism he was still a patriot. And if she really was as innocent as those big brown eyes of hers claimed, she was a civilian under his protection. That meant hands off.

But, oh, how he’d wanted to touch her when she had hung up that phone and turned to him. He had felt every facet of her fear, had known she was looking to him for strength, for protection. The protection she had been so certain she didn’t need.

Shane told himself his job was keeping Faith safe and sound until the trial. He had men stationed at strategic points on the property, well hidden from view. Tomorrow Del Matthews would arrive to tap the phones. They would construct a safety net around Faith, hoping to catch whoever was after her rather than simply frighten them away.

He stubbed his cigarette out in the little porcelain dish that was intended for bedtime mints and rubbed the back of his neck. Everything was under control. Repeating that in his head, he lay back down on the rumpled sheets and tried to relax. Everything was under control.

Everything had been under control in the Silvanus case. All the players in the Silvanus operation were now either dead or under indictment. Except Strauss. It haunted Shane that the most lethal of Silvanus’s cohorts had escaped, but that case was over. Here and now, everything was under control.

Everything had been under control at Quantico ten years ago too. Still, Ellie was dead.

Cold swept over him in a sheen of damp sweat. Where had that memory come from? He had buried it along with Ellie. Why had it surfaced now?

The image of Faith Kincaid floated through his mind, but Shane stubbornly ignored the clue and hauled himself out of bed to pace naked back and forth across the width of the small room. With a strength of will few men possessed, he pushed the memories out of his mind. This wasn’t Quantico. Nobody was going to get to Faith Kincaid because it was his job to keep her safe. End of story.

As those words branded themselves in his mind, a sound penetrated his thoughts, snatching hold of his attention. It was faint, overhead on the second or third floor, but it was distinct. Ker-thump… ker-thump… ker-thump…

Hastily he pulled on a pair of pants, grabbed his gun, and slipped from the room.

She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t begin to relax, not even after her friends had forced a glass of brandy on her. The one instant she had finally begun to doze off she had been awakened by an itching sensation on her chest where the pendant of her necklace lay.

Great. Not only were there killers after her, she was developing an allergy as well, Faith thought, as she sat up and switched the bedside lamp on.

In the soft light she studied the delicate gold filigree heart as she often did. The intricate lacework of the piece had always enchanted her. When Bryan had given her the necklace as a graduation present, he had claimed there was magic in it. Of course, for her friend Bryan Hennessy there was magic in everything. Where was the magic now, Faith wondered, now that she and Lindy were in danger.

Trembling, she pulled the covers up even though she wasn’t cold. She had felt so safe here. All it had taken to shatter that sense of well-being was a phone call. That easily, evil had violated her home, her peace. The overwhelming sense of vulnerability that swept through her at the thought was frightening. And with the helplessness came anger. She had always taken care of her own problems. This was one she couldn’t begin to handle on her own.

Shane Callan, a presence she had wanted removed from her life earlier in the day, had suddenly become her savior. It made little sense. She hardly knew him, yet she had immediately turned to him. The whole episode had taken on a surrealistic quality in her memory. Had she really seen concern in his translucent gray eyes, or had she imagined it? Had she imagined the softer quality in his low voice as he had questioned her, or had that been genuine?

All she was really certain of was that her world had been turned upside down yet again. How could such an ordinary person find herself constantly thrown into extraordinary circumstances, she wondered. She was just a girl from the farm country of Ohio. What did she know of spies and assassins?