Gayle Wilson - Sight Unseen

He wore a gray, three-button suit over a white dress shirt and blue tie. His salt-and-pepper hair had been cut almost militarily short, and he was clean shaven. Although she had never seen him before, the look was one she instantly recognized, despite the passage of years. Perhaps the style of the suit had changed, but the way he was dressed was what she had once considered to be the agency’s unofficial uniform.

Another of Cabot’s men? Assigned to protect her father? Or assigned to watch her?

That was possible. Cabot and Ethan Snow were probably already in the process of trying to verify her claim.

Other than asking the man in the cubicle behind her, she wasn’t sure how they would do that. Monty Gardner was far too adept at keeping secrets. After all, he had had more than forty years with the CIA to perfect the art.

“I think it would be better if you go back to the waiting room now,” the nurse from the station said.

Startled from her contemplation of the man outside, Raine turned to smile at her. “Of course. You will send for me when they’ve checked out the equipment, won’t you? I wasn’t in there but a minute or two. I’d really appreciate another chance to talk to my father.”

The nurse looked slightly taken aback, perhaps because of Gardner’s physical condition. It was obvious that any conversation wouldn’t be two-way.

“I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities,” she said. “Now, if you don’t mind…” The nurse gestured toward the exit to the unit.

Given no choice, Raine walked across the room and pushed the bar that would release the door. As it opened with a pneumatic hiss, the eyes of the man who had been waiting outside met hers.

“Ms. McAllister?”

He had obviously been given her description. Maybe he had a message from Ethan or the Cabots.

“Yes?”

“If you’d come with me, ma’am.” He took a step along the corridor as if her consent would be automatic.

“Come with you where?”

He turned back, smiling at her. Although it was an attractive smile, it didn’t quite reach his eyes, which she saw were an unusual shade of brown, so light they were almost gold.

“To rejoin your party, of course.”

Ethan? Or the Cabots?

The latter seemed unlikely, given Claire’s reaction. Maybe Ethan had arranged for her to be escorted to somewhere besides the waiting room, so that she and Claire wouldn’t meet again.

“And I need an escort to do that?” she asked.

The man’s smile widened before it became a soft chuckle. Even his laughter didn’t change the amber eyes.

“I’m just following orders, Ms. McAllister.”

That, too, was something she remembered from when she was a child. That’s what they all said. All those hard men had always just been following orders.

All but my father, who gave them.

As the charge nurse had done inside the ICU, her escort put out his hand, gesturing down the hallway. Raine glanced back through the glass door, but the curtain around her father’s cubicle was still closed.

They had said they’d send for her, but they would assume she had returned to the waiting room. If Ethan were waiting for her somewhere else and she allowed this man to take her there, they wouldn’t know where to find her.

“I’ll have to tell the nurses where I’ll be.”

When she turned back, the man was no longer smiling. His eyes seemed even more golden. Lighter. Colder.

Colder?

“I’ll send someone to tell them,” he said, taking her arm.

She was getting tired of people doing that, she realized. As if they thought she wasn’t capable of making up her own mind about where she wanted to go. She pulled against his hold, but instead of releasing her, his fingers tightened painfully around her elbow.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

She hadn’t finished the sentence before he’d pulled her against him, her back to his chest. Something hard was pressed into the base of her spine. For a second or two she didn’t understand its significance. Not until he put his cheek next to hers, his mouth close to her ear.

“Walk,” he said. “Don’t look back. Don’t talk. Just walk. I’ll tell you where.”

When she didn’t move, more out of shock than from any intention to resist, the object in her back, which she now realized must be the muzzle of a gun, ground into her backbone. He closed the distance between them, which had the effect of both hiding the weapon and, at the same time, urging her forward.

“I don’t know how much you know about firearms, Ms. McAllister, but the one at your back is a 9 mm. Trust me when I tell you it will blow a very big hole in your spine.”

She did trust what he’d just said. Just as she knew he would have no compunction in pulling the trigger.

It was damned late to be getting that kind of clear message about what was happening, she thought. Far too late to do her any good.

From the first she had tried to tell Ethan Snow that she couldn’t help him, but he hadn’t listened. And then when she had heard Monty Gardner was involved, she had put her doubts aside in order to make this journey.

One that was a waste of everyone’s time. Because now she had absolute proof that she couldn’t even use her gift to help herself.

“She said nothing about Gardner being her father, I swear to you,” Ethan said for the second or third time. “She told me she’d worked for him. That he’d paid for her to go to school—a finishing school of some kind—and then to college. If I’d had any idea that she would say something like that to Claire, I swear I’d never have brought her here.”

In all the years that Ethan had known him, he’d seen very few things rattle Griff Cabot. Anything that affected the well-being of his family was obviously one of them.

Although he hadn’t been in on the action, Ethan knew that the Phoenix had been born out of a dangerous operation Griff’s former External Security Team members had undertaken, at Cabot’s request, to rescue his daughter from a kidnapper. The fact that Griff had blown the cover the CIA had arranged for him in order to carry out that mission indicated exactly where his priorities lay.

“I think she’s lying,” Cabot said curtly. “I’ve known Monty Gardner a long time, both before and after I met Claire. There’s never been a man more devoted to his family.”

“Maybe after his wife died—”

“He’s been a widower for less than seven years. It won’t wash, Ethan. Whatever Raine McAllister is selling, I’m not buying.”

Despite his sympathy for Claire, who had clearly been distraught, for some reason Ethan felt compelled to defend Raine against that characterization.

“I’m not sure she’s selling anything. She hasn’t made any claims on Gardner’s estate or on the family. At least, not yet. I think she just wanted to see the old man again. It may be that when she was told visitation was for family only—”

“She dreamed up that story about being his daughter?” Griff interrupted. “That’s even more unforgivable. Besides, a claim like that is too easy to disprove. She has to know she can’t get away with this.”

“Maybe she only needed to get away with it tonight.”

“You think she wants access to his room to do him harm?”

As the thought occurred to him, Griff started toward the corridor leading to the ICU. And considering the seemingly inexplicable attack on Gardner, that suspicion wasn’t as farfetched as it normally would have been.

Ethan grabbed his arm, forcibly restraining him. “I’m not suggesting anything like that. We’ve all been afraid he won’t make it. She was, too. She wanted to see him before it was too late. Maybe she was desperate enough to come up with that story.”