Carol Ericson - Locked, Loaded And Sealed

“It’s okay. I’ve been watching.”

“Left.”

She trapped her cold hands between her knees and took a deep breath. “Why are you here? You were responsible for getting Dr. Fazal out of Pakistan and, what? You kept tabs on him?”

“Me personally? No.” He cranked up the heat in the car. “US intelligence? Yes.”

“CIA?”

“Sort of. There are intelligence organizations under the umbrella of the CIA that are deep undercover.”

“You work for one of these organizations?”

“I’m a United States Navy SEAL.”

“But one of these organizations contacted you, right?”

He nodded once.

She hunched forward, stretching her fingers out toward the warm air seeping from the vent. “Are you revealing too much? You’re not going to have to kill me now, are you?”

He raised one eyebrow without cracking a smile at her clichéd joke. “You’re in the middle of this. You deserve to know.”

“Am I? In the middle of this?”

“Fazal’s killers put a tracking device on your car and tried to pull a gun on you. What do you think?”

The warm air blowing from the vent couldn’t melt the chill stealing across her body. She snuggled into Austin’s jacket and the comforting scent from its folds. “I think I’m in the middle of it. These intelligence agencies must’ve known Dr. Fazal was in danger since you showed up at the precise time he was murdered.”

Austin’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I failed him.”

“Had you been watching him?”

“I just got to Boston this morning. I read the file on the plane. I read about you, your job, your car, even your address.”

Checking the mirrors again, she slumped in her seat. “So much for privacy.”

Her paranoia about authority hadn’t been misplaced all those years. They really were out to get her. Did Austin also know about her messed-up past?

He snorted. “There is no privacy.”

“You knew all that, but you hadn’t seen Dr. Fazal yet?”

“I showed up at the office building minutes after the first responders did. Then I located your car in the parking structure and waited for you.”

“You were supposed to protect Dr. Fazal?”

“I was.” His jaw formed a hard line.

“Those intelligence organizations don’t sound very intelligent. They should’ve called you in sooner. You could’ve done something then.”

She didn’t know why she wanted to make this supremely confident man feel better. Maybe it was the clenched jaw showing that he was human after all. He clearly felt as if he’d failed Dr. Fazal—and she knew all too well what failure felt like.

“Maybe. Or maybe his killers made their move today because they knew we were on to them.”

“Who are they? Who killed Dr. Fazal?” She tapped on the window. “Turn right.”

“It depends on the motive. If it was revenge for working with us to capture the terrorist we’d been tracking, then we know it’s that terrorist group, but if it’s something else...” He shrugged.

“What else could it be?”

“You tell me. Why’d his killers search his office? Why’d they come after you?”

She turned to him, her mouth gaping open. “You expect me to know that?”

“You worked with him. You were close to him. He treated you like a daughter. We know that.”

Her throat felt heavy and she cleared it. “He told me very little about his life before. He always emphasized looking forward.”

“You said you noticed something different about him in the past few weeks. Was he nervous? Jumpy?”

“Yes.” They’d had a dinner planned and he’d cancelled it. He never canceled plans with her because he knew how much stability meant to her.

“How so?”

“He was secretive. He took a few phone calls behind closed doors. He also saw some mysterious patient. He gave me his file, but he never included the person’s information in the regular patient database.”

“Is this your street?”

“The apartment building at the end of the block on the right.”

“That behavior was unusual for him?”

“It was in retrospect. If he hadn’t been murdered today, I probably wouldn’t have thought much about it—except for the dinner.”

“What dinner?” He pulled the car alongside the curb in front of her apartment building and left the engine running.

Did he expect her to hop out and go up to her apartment by herself while he left her car at the curb and loped off into the night? Hadn’t he assured her he’d keep watch tonight? Of course, he owed her nothing.

She coughed into the sleeve of his jacket. “We had dinner at least once a month, and he canceled this month.”

“He never canceled before?”

“Never. I mean, I did once or twice, but once Dr. Fazal made plans he kept them.”

“If they’d just killed him, that would’ve been the end of it. But why the search?”

This time she knew it was a rhetorical question, as Austin stared out the window at nothing.

He reached for the ignition. “Should I park here or do you have a parking spot?”

She released a breath. He wasn’t ditching her—yet. “If you go up ten feet, there’s an entrance to our underground parking garage. I’ll direct you to my spot.”

They rolled into the garage and she pointed out her parking space, which she’d left what seemed like a lifetime ago but had only been that morning.

“I’ll go up with you just to make sure everything’s okay, and then I can check your security and monitor the front of your building and watch the elevators.”

“A-all night?”

“Whatever it takes.”

He said those three words with such conviction, she had a feeling Austin would always do whatever it took.

“Thanks.” Was that enough? What did you say to someone who’d just saved your life? She hadn’t even thanked him for that. “A-and thanks for saving me from the man with the gun back in Cambridge.”

“Of course.”

She slipped out of the car and he was beside her in a second. When they got into the elevator, she pushed the button for her floor. “I’m on the third floor.”

As they passed the second floor, Austin pulled a gun from his waistband and crowded her to the back of the car. He raised his weapon and the door opened—on her empty floor.

She huffed out a breath, feeling dizzy with relief. “My place is on the left, smack in the middle of the floor.”

She held out her hand for her key chain but he shook his head.

When they reached her door, he tucked her behind his body and dangled the keys from one finger. “Which one?”

She tapped her front door key and he inserted it into the deadbolt lock above the door handle and unlocked it. Then he opened the door, and stepped inside, leading with his gun.

“Wait outside the door for a minute.”

She held her breath as he stepped inside, continuing to lead with his gun.

He disappeared inside and her heart skipped a beat. “Everything look okay?”

“Just a minute.”

His voice sounded muffled, and a picture flashed in her head of Austin going through her closet and personal effects. Gripping the doorjamb, she leaned into her small living room. “Nothing looks out of place in the living room.”

Austin emerged from the hallway, his gun still out but dangling at his side. “I wanted to make sure no one was hiding in the back.”

“First time I’ve ever felt good about my small apartment.”

“Nothing’s out of place?” His eyes flicked over the sparse room, devoid of personal photos and treasured mementos.

She pulled back her shoulders and marched to the console that housed her TV and a few books and placed the cracked photo of her and Dr. Fazal, which had been stashed in her purse since she’d left the office, on a shelf.