Nobody's Hero (9 page)

“You’re a friend, too.”

The loop-de-loop was back. Even now in the midst of this hell, his smile made her stomach drop to her toes. She needed to get away from him before she did something stupid like kiss him again.

Standing, she moved across the room and then faced him. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

His brow furrowed in confusion. “Earlier?”

God, he was going to make her say it out loud. “The kiss. I went a little crazy and I apologize.”
   

“You apologize?”

Okay, he sounded a little mad, which wasn’t her intention at all. But she wasn’t going to say anything more about it.

He, however, wasn’t done.

“Damn, Darlin’. You can’t apologize for a kiss like that. You’ll make me think I’ve lost my touch.”

She blushed an even deeper shade of red and shot him a pure go to hell look. “Don’t make fun of me, Riley.”

“Aw, Hon. Don’t go confusing pure-D appreciation with making fun. You are one hot babe. You’ve always been sexy as hell. It was hard enough keeping my hands off you. Now I’ve got to go around trying to think about how to keep you safe, figuring out puzzles and writing stories all while remembering the feel of you sitting on top of me, your tongue inside my mouth, your left breast so close I could’ve….”

Her heart pounded as heat radiated through her body. She held out her hand. “Okay. Okay. Stop.”

And just like that, he did. “As long as we’ve got that cleared up.”

“Perfectly.” She couldn’t sit there talking about that kiss without wanting to relive it. And that was out of the question. Time to change topics. “Tell me about you.”

“Hmm?” Riley was having a heck of a time not marching across the room and kissing her breathless again. Talking about it had made it all the more real. He wanted her. Bad.
 

“Tell me about you.”

“Me?”

“You know, the cabin, the boat, your job, your life.”

Oh man. She wanted the whole touchy, feely share conversation. One hot kiss and they’d graduated to the talk phase of the relationship. He wasn’t going there. He couldn’t.

“I inherited the boat and cabin from a nice man.” Understatement, but it worked.

“The man in the picture?”

“Yeah. Sparky.” She wouldn’t remember Sparky. No one in town really knew him. They’d just benefited from his money over the years.

“You spent a lot of time with him?”

Man, this really sucked. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Kind of like a grandfather.”

He wasn’t going to tell her how Sparky’d rescued him from the hell of a loveless home the night when Riley was twelve years old. How the old man had followed him out of the 7-Eleven and made him empty his pockets of the stolen merchandise and then made the deal that Riley clean the store every night for a month in exchange for his silence. How now that he was older he understood his father’s grief, but he didn’t understand his fist or his belt or his words. In fact, he was done with this conversation period.

He looked at the clock over the stove. Rand should be calling with news soon. The loaded gun sat ominously on the counter next to his computer. He looked back at the lake. It was still crowded with typical early evening summer traffic. The boat from earlier was nowhere to be seen.
 

And then he turned his head just in time to see a man walking along the edge of his dock.

The dog walker.

He’d found them.

Callah saw the alertness in Riley’s eyes, the way his back stiffened. An almost predatory feel to his entire being.

And she knew.

He
was out there.

The flight in fear, the boat ride, the clues they’d gathered, none of it mattered. The man who wanted her had found her.

“How?” Callah’s whispered word echoed through the bare living room.

Riley shook his head slightly, frowned. “I don’t know. But the news about your dad was a pretty good indication these aren’t your every day bad guys, Callah.”

He was right and dammit that frustrated the heck out of her. “We can’t win.”

“We’re not going down without a fight.”

She laughed, shook her head. She’d made her decision. “You sound like Clint Eastwood, Riley.”

She inserted the loaded clip into the revolver.

Riley’s eyes narrowed as he watched her, his own gun ready at his side. “I can think of worse comparisons for situations like this.”

She breathed deeply, sited the gun as she pushed the curtain to the side.
 

The dog walker was there. On the dock. Watching the house. Waiting.

She was done running. She had to be.

“I’m going out there.”

“No, Callah.” Riley’s hand shot out, grabbed her wrist, but she pulled away.

“He wants me, and I want to know why. This running away, putting innocent people in danger has to stop. I’m the only one who can do that.”

Riley’s phone rang, the
Pink Panther
ring tone completely at odds with the man in front of her. But he wouldn’t let go of her hand.

“Let me go, Riley.”

“This is Rand. Let me talk to him. Tell him the situation. See what he says.”

She looked at the man on the dock. He’d found her. How could someone in D.C. help? But then what could a couple more minutes change?

“Fine. But when I go out there, you have to promise me you’ll get out of here.”

“No way in hell, Babe.”

Pink Panther
kept right on playing and she wanted to laugh or cry or both.

“I mean it Riley. Agree now or I’m out the door.”

Riley just laughed and held the door shut with his foot.

“You’re not going anywhere, Callah. Not yet.” He snapped his phone open, practically growling “We need some help here, Rand. Now.”

She was pissed, but no way was Riley letting Callah walk out that door.

Someone had trusted him to keep her safe. After the last couple hours, he knew he had a mission. A mission he couldn’t fail.

When he snapped open his phone, Rand started talking immediately. And as he spoke, Riley knew, all bets were off. All of them. Rand didn’t waste time.
 

“Riley, you need to listen to me very carefully.”

“You’ve got my full attention, Rand. What did you learn?”

“Not a lot. At least not about who’s after Callah or why. But I found someone willing to talk and it’s not good.”

“Spit it out, Rand. We’re aware nothing about this is good. What did you find out?”

When Riley closed the phone, he knew what they had to do. They were out of time. The dog walker reached the edge of the property. Started forward.
 
And Callah tried to push him out of the way.

“Wait, Callah, just wait a damned minute.”

“For him to knock on the freaking door again? No way, Riley. I’m out of here.” Her voice broke and her hand trembled as she reached forward, but Riley refused to move. She needed to know.

“Stop. You have a choice. That man’s not here to hurt you. He’s here to help.”

“What?” Callah tried to make sense of his words.
 

“We’ve got to make a choice, Callah. Rand hasn’t been able to see your dad. But he’s found one answer. The dog walker isn’t out to hurt you. He’s assigned to your case. He was in Burkette to keep you safe.”

Shocked silent, Callah looked at Riley wordlessly. Just one more thing on the never-ending list of things that didn’t make sense.

“He’s there to protect me? But who’s after me then? Why don’t I know this?”

Riley moved his foot from in front of the door. “Good questions, Callah. Questions we can still get answered.”

Callah looked out the window, but she didn’t see a savior. She saw the cold eyes of a man on a mission. A man intent on harm.

“This is insane, Riley.”

Riley nodded. “I agree. And for protecting you, Mr. dog walker out there did a lousy job. I’m helping you, but he certainly couldn’t have known that. You tell me what you want and we’ll do it. We can go back or we can walk out there together and try to get to the bottom of this, shoot him if we have to. The choice is yours.”

We
.

Callah latched onto the word. She wasn’t in this alone. At least not yet.

“You’re supposed to be some sort of investigative reporter, Riley. Help me out here. What do I do?”

Riley’s laugh was bitter, and she wondered what nerve she’d hit. “The last big investigative piece I broke had to do with embezzling at the public library, Callah. It was a five hundred dollar mistake and was settled in minutes. We’re not talking Bob Woodward here.”

As Callah watched Riley, something shifted inside her. He might not believe in himself, but she believed in him. Riley had saved her from something, she wasn’t sure what. “Someone wants to hurt me, Riley. And someone else thought you were the man to save my life. There’s got to be a reason.”

And as she spoke she realized she’d come to her conclusion. “The answers are in Burkette.”

“Someone certainly thinks so.”

“Then we’ve got to go back.”

“We’re not going to be able to do that without him seeing us.” Riley nodded to where the man who was supposed to protect her was standing. The man who’d talked to Charlie.

“I won’t leave with him.” She couldn’t. Of that she was certain.

“Fine. Just put down the gun and we’ll talk to him, Callah. If you go out there with that thing, there’s no telling what will happen.”

“What if your brother’s wrong, Riley? What if that man out there won’t tell us what’s going on?” The cold metal felt good in Callah’s hand. For the first time since she’d run out of her house with Riley that morning, she felt like she was in some sort of control. She couldn’t put the gun down without knowing the man outside wouldn’t hurt them.
 

The decisions made, Callah opened the door just as the dog walker reached the sidewalk.

“Don’t come any closer.” She held the gun behind her, ready to use it if she had to. But then Riley stepped close enough she could feel the heat of his body. When he put his hand over hers, she didn’t bother fighting. She needed to focus on the man in front of her.

The dog walker’s startled eyes met hers. “Ma’am, I’m Special…”

“I know who you are.”

The radio in his hand squawked to life, an urgent sounding call for communication.

He started to pick it up, but Callah shook her head. “Tell them I’ll meet you in Burkette. With Riley.”

“Ma’am, just let me explain.”

His voice was soft, completely at odds with his eyes, and she wanted to laugh. “I’m not interested in explanations,” she lied then continued. “Not yet. We’ll talk in Burkette.”

Chapter Seven

Back in Burkette.

Callah figured there was a song in there somewhere.
 

Riley’d spent the first thirty minutes of the ride across the lake railing about how lucky she was not to be dead after stepping outside with a gun when they knew the dog walker was a government agent. One part of her knew he was right. But faced with the same circumstances she’d make the same choice again.

Because she wasn’t dead, and the federal agent had followed them across the lake all the way to the offices of
The Standard
. And now he and some other official looking guy in a suit were sitting outside the office waiting to speak with her. Two Cigarette Smoking Men. Stars in her very own
X-Files
.

Riley’s editor, Mack, looked at her as if she were the key to Fort Knox. Worse, Riley looked at her in the very same way. Like an object for examination. A subject. A headline. Somehow she’d let herself forget that first and foremost she was a story.
 

Dang, it was cold in here. Callah wrapped her arms around herself as she tapped her sandal on the floor and wrinkled her nose at the smell of ink and paper.

Reporters kept looking up from their cubicles with curious glances. They circled big stories like sharks around blood.
 

This was her
Jaws
.
 

She tried to ignore the phones ringing, the sound of tapping on keyboards, the occasional curse at computer problems. The men in the hall. Waiting.

She felt exposed in the glass windowed room with its cowboy and Indian brass sculptures and paintings that looked like they’d come from a Spaghetti Western. Fitting really since her life had somehow turned into the stuff of movies. Riley sat across from her and smiled as if this were the best day of his life. She needed to remember how close to the truth that was.

“Okay, Callah, here’s the deal….”

Callah blew out a pent up breath. “Riley, I’m tired of this. Let’s talk to the men outside this door. They’re the ones with the answers.”

Riley frowned. “I know at some level that’s the truth. But they make me uncomfortable. All the secrets. And we still have the package delivered to me. It doesn’t make sense. I figure if we go to press with your story you’ll be safe.”