Janice Johnson - The Call of Bravery

“Would you consider allowing two agents from the DEA to conduct a stakeout from your attic?”

She queried what that meant; he explained. Assuming there actually was an adequate view from upstairs, they would use advanced surveillance equipment to watch the nearby home from the attic windows. The agents could sleep up there as well. He did concede that they’d need to use a bathroom if one wasn’t available in the attic.

“There isn’t,” she said flatly.

“It would also, er, be convenient if you could be persuaded to provide them with meals. We’d give you reimbursement for groceries and an additional stipend, of course.”

The entire time he talked, Lia thought furiously. Would the DEA have any reason to investigate which children had legitimately been placed in her home? Perhaps Arturo and Julia could be moved. They were short-term anyway; she didn’t expect to have them for more than a week or two. Their mother had been swept up in a raid on a tulip bulb farm here in the county and immediately deported. Supposedly a family member would be coming for them if the mother couldn’t make her way back quickly.

Lia might look more suspicious if she refused than if she agreed. And she did hate the idea of something like cocaine or heroin being sold from her next-door neighbor’s house. The whole idea was surreal; she might have expected it in New York City, but not in rural Washington State.

But…weeks or months?

“Would these agents be…respectful?” she asked slowly. “I’m a single woman, and I currently have a thirteen-year-old girl living here.”

Phillips’s smile held the knowledge that he was about to get what he wanted. “I guarantee you have nothing to fear from our agents.”

Oh, yes, she did, but she couldn’t say that. Lia sighed and stood. “Then let me show you the attic and you can see if it’s suitable. Please try not to wake the children.”

She felt nothing but apprehension as she led the way upstairs, shaking her head slightly at Sorrel’s startled look when they passed her open bedroom door. At worst, the resident government agents would discover that she regularly harbored illegal immigrants. At best…well, having two strange men—or maybe a man and a woman?—living in her house, sharing one of only two antiquated bathrooms, expecting to be fed, would be a horrible inconvenience. Never-ending houseguests she hadn’t exactly invited in the first place.

But…how could she say no?

She couldn’t. And that’s what, in the end, it came down to, wasn’t it?

* * *

CONALL COULD NOT BELIEVE he was here, driving through the town of Stimson where he’d grown up. Out of the twenty-one domestic divisions of the DEA, the Seattle division, covering Washington, Oregon and Idaho, was the only one he would have balked at being assigned to. When he left home, he’d never intended to come back.

He hadn’t even come home for his brother Niall’s wedding. The pang of guilt was unavoidable; he knew Niall had wanted him to be there. He might even have made it if he hadn’t gotten shot two weeks before the wedding. Yeah, he’d been out of the hospital and could have come anyway, but recuperation seemed like a good excuse.

A good excuse for him, that is, not his brother. He hadn’t told Niall about his near-death experience. In their every-few-months phone conversations, Conall tended to keep talk about his job light, even though Niall was a cop and would probably be able to handle the grimmer aspects of what Conall did. Maybe.

His fingers tightened rhythmically on the steering wheel as his attention was arrested by an obviously official, handsome brick building. Oh, damn. That was the new public safety building right there, housing the police station and city government. It was linked to the equally new courthouse by a glass-enclosed walkway.

The knowledge that Niall and Con’s big brother Duncan might be in there right this minute unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. God. Was he going to have to see Duncan?

He knew the answer. Yes. This was his operation. He had an obligation to liaise with local law enforcement. Which meant newly appointed Police Chief Duncan MacLachlan.

The sense of unreality swept over Conall again. Was God playing a nasty prank on him?

He’d tried to say no to this assignment. The suits upstairs didn’t like the word. Yes, they understood that he’d applied for a position with FAST—the Foreign-Deployed Advisory and Support Teams—that were interjected where needed abroad. The decision would not be made immediately. Even if he was chosen, the transfer could wait.

Somebody, somewhere, had noticed that he was, apparently, the only agent within the entire DEA from this particular corner of Washington State. Con had no idea why the fact that he’d gone to high school here was considered to be an advantage. He wouldn’t be conducting some kind of deep cover investigation that required him to have to act like a local. Good God, he’d fail if that was the object; he didn’t recognize half the businesses he was passing on the main street of the modest-size county seat.

The man who had ridden for the most part quietly in the passenger seat beside Conall said now, “Do you have family here?”

Conall wanted to lie, but knew he wouldn’t get away with it. “Yes,” he said shortly. “Two brothers. One is the police chief.”

Jeff Henderson looked thoughtfully at him. “Handy.”

Conall grunted.

He didn’t know Henderson, had never worked with him, but hadn’t learned anything bad about him, either, when he asked around. Henderson had been dragged in from the El Paso division. Apparently Seattle was currently conducting some major, named operation that had everyone excited and left them understaffed when something new cropped up.

“We’re not stopping?”

Oh, crap, Conall thought. They should. Or he should have set up a meet.

“No. I’ll call Duncan. I don’t want word to get around that a couple of DEA agents are in town.”

Henderson nodded, apparently satisfied. “You know your way?”

“Yeah.” He was a little startled to realize how clearly he remembered every byway in the county.

The town proper fell behind them, although they didn’t leave the city limits, which had been drawn by an optimist. Or maybe, he discovered, a realist after all since they passed several major new housing developments and an elementary school that hadn’t been here in his day.

They did shortly find themselves on a typical country road, however, with a yellow strip down the middle and no shoulders to separate road from ditches. Homes were on acreage now; animals grazed behind barbed wire or board fences with peeling paint. The countryside was pretty, though, the grass lush, maples and alders bright with spring greenery, a scattering of wildflowers adding cheer to the roadside. Deciduous trees gave way to forests of Douglas fir and cedar in the foothills, above which glimpses of white-peaked Cascade Mountains could be seen.

Henderson kept his thoughts to himself, although he eyed the scenery with interest. Conall found himself reluctantly wondering about his temporary partner. Normally he tried not to get personal, but this was the kind of job that would have them spending long hours together. They’d get to know each other one way or another.

“You married?” he finally asked.

Henderson glanced at him. “Yeah. I have two kids, four and six. You?”

“No. No wife, no kids.” God forbid.

“You know this house is stuffed full of kids.”

That snapped Conall’s attention from the road ahead. “What?”

“You didn’t know?”

He frowned. “I got pulled in at the last minute. All I was told was that the home-owner is willing to let us use the attic and will feed us.”