Merline Lovelace - Military Heroes Bundle - A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

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HE BARELY REACHED the foot of the stairs before Cory came staggering from her bedroom, her eyes heavy-lidded with sleep, a blue terry-cloth robe held tightly around her with her arms.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just needed to move around.” Check the perimeter. “I didn’t think it would do much good for your sleep if I clomped around upstairs.”

Her brown eyes regarded him groggily. “What time is it?” she asked finally, smothering a yawn.

He glanced at the highly complex dive chronometer on his arm. He hadn’t worn it in months, but for some reason he’d put it on during the night. As if something had niggled at him, saying it was time to go on duty. “A little past five,” he answered.

“Good enough time to start the coffee,” she said, yawning again.

“I can do it. Why don’t you go back to bed?”

“I’m one of those people. Once I’m awake...” She gave a shrug and shuffled toward the kitchen.

“I’m just going to walk around the block,” he said.

“Fine.” She didn’t even look back, just waved a hand.

So he turned off the alarm and turned it back on again so he could slip out the door. He was going to hate that alarm before long. It hampered him. He should have been able to do this without waking her at all.

On the other hand, he was glad he didn’t have to leave her unprotected in there. Outside the sun was rising already, casting a rosy light over the world. He walked around the house, then set out to jog around the block.

He should have noticed it sooner, but the guy who had parked beside them at the store, then met them in the aisle had been the very same man who had driven past them on Cory’s street in a different car. Evidently he’d relaxed more over the past six months than he’d realized, because he never would have failed to notice that immediately when he was on the job. Now that he’d made the connection, he had to know if they were still being watched. Had to make up for lost time.

But neither the mystery man nor either of his cars showed up.

Which of course meant nothing except that if the guy was indeed shadowing Cory, his prey was in for the night. Reaching the house again, his breath hardly quickened by his fast jog over such a short distance, he stepped inside once more, tended the squealing, annoying alarm and made his way to the kitchen.

Cory sat at the table, chin in her hands, eyes half-closed as she waited for the coffeemaker to finish.

“Do you ever hate that alarm?” he asked as he pulled mugs out of the cupboard and put one of them in front of her.

“Sometimes.” She gave him a wan smile. “I never love it, that’s a fact.”

“I’ll get used to it,” he said as he reached for the coffee carafe and filled both their mugs. Then he got the half gallon of milk out of the fridge for her and placed it beside the carafe on the table.

“Thank you. You do get used to it.”

“Sorry I woke you,” he said again. “But I just couldn’t sit still another moment.” Not exactly as simple as that, but just as true.

“No need to apologize. I may not get back to sleep now, but I usually can manage a nap in the afternoon if I need it. I’ll be fine.” She poured maybe half a teaspoon of milk into her coffee, then raised the mug to her lips and breathed the aroma in through her nose. “Fresh coffee is one of the greatest smells in the world.”

“It is,” he agreed. He pulled out the chair across from her, but looked at her before he sat. “Do you mind?”

Something crossed her face, some hint of concern, but it was gone fast and he couldn’t make out what it meant. She waved toward the chair. “Help yourself.”

He turned the chair so he could straddle it, then sat facing her. “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day out there.”

“Probably. I miss the rain, though.”

“Rain?”

She covered her mouth, stifling another yawn. “Back in...back where I used to live, this time of year we’d be having afternoon thunderstorms almost every day. I miss them.”

“But you get some here, too, right?”

“Sometimes. Not nearly every day, though. In a way, they’re prettier here.”

“How so?”

“You can see so far you can almost watch them build out of nothing. Sometimes anyway.” She gave a little shake of her head. “No trees to get in the way if you drive out of town.”

“True.”

“But there’s not as much lightning with them. I used to love the lightning shows in—” Again a sharp break. An impatient sound. “We used to watch them some nights. One storm in particular, there must have been a lightning bolt every second or so. And when they’d hit the ground, you could see a green glow spread out from them and rise into the sky. I only saw it in that one storm, but I was fascinated enough to research it.”

“What was it?”

“Corona discharge. It’s actually quite common in electrical discharges, but often we don’t even see it. The air around gets ionized as the charge dissipates. Most corona discharges aren’t dangerous, but when lightning is involved, it can be.”

She sipped her coffee, then held the cup in both hands with her elbows on the table. “You must have seen storms all over the world.”

“I have. Monsoons, hurricanes, typhoons and then just the regular buggers, which can be bad enough.”

“Yes, they can. There’s so much power in a thunderstorm. Incredible power. I used to te—” Another break. She looked down, effectively hiding her face behind her mug.

Teach? he wondered. Deliberately, he let it pass. The last thing he wanted to do was cause her fear because she’d revealed something she felt she shouldn’t. Not yet anyway. It wouldn’t serve any useful purpose to make her more afraid.

He fell silent, enjoying his coffee while his mind turned over the things he should do, and might do, to help protect her. Maybe one of the first things he should do was find a way to speak to the sheriff. But given WITSEC procedures, he doubted Dalton would give him anything useful. No, he guessed he was on his own with this, at least until he had something more than suspicion.

But he was fairly decent on his own. And he was intimately acquainted with his own abilities and weaknesses. After all, he’d spent twenty years honing those abilities and weeding out those weaknesses.

So the question now was how much he should share with Cory. Should he let her know what had coalesced everything for him? Or should he let it ride to avoid making her any more frightened? That was always a difficult question in WITSEC ops. You needed your protectee to be as cooperative as possible, as helpful as possible, but you didn’t want to scare him or her needlessly because that could result in actions born of fear that could endanger the entire operation.

Cory still had her head down, her face concealed. He studied her, trying to see her as a mission, not as a woman who had stirred some long-buried feelings in him.

He needed to gain her confidence, sufficiently that she would trust him if he told her to do something. That was primary. But how? This was no ordinary operation where being bulked-up in body armor and armed to the teeth would do the job.

Well, he couldn’t let her know how much she had betrayed by her silences. That would scare her into wondering if she’d left a crumb trail for someone to follow.

Yet, he feared someone had found her. That phone call, he was now certain, had been no innocent prank. Someone was sounding out women who fit a certain profile. Waiting to see if something changed after the call. He could explain it no other way. Certainly you wouldn’t warn your intended target if you were certain you had the right one. Instead, and he had done this on an operation or two, you would try to precipitate revealing action.