The Agent Next Door (11 page)

She reached out her hand. This time she made
it to a few inches away from the grip before pulling back.

“Don’t be nervous,” John said.

Erin resisted the urge to kick him in the
shins. Nervous? She wasn’t nervous. She was scared as hell.

She’d been around too many guns, seen their
handiwork too many times, to be anything but. There had been
weapons all over her father’s house. They’d hung off the hips of
the men that had ripped her away from her mother. And they’d been
in the hands of the agents who had shot her father down.

He’d taken more than a dozen hits, four of
them clean through the heart, from a 9mm. Just like the one in
front of her now.

The only thing that scared her more than
touching it was the thought of never seeing her mom again.

Erin reached out her hand. This time her
fingers wrapped around the hilt.

“Okay,” she said, trying to steady her
breath. “Now what?”

Her house might have been full of the damned
things when she was a kid, but that didn’t mean she’d ever fired
one. Her mother might have been an outlaw, but that didn’t mean
she’d been reckless with her daughter’s life. She’d been adamant
that Erin never touch one.

He wrapped his arms around her, steadying her
forearms as she lifted the barrel. Her trembling stilled a
little.

“First, breathe,” he said. “The more relaxed
you are, the more accurate you’ll be.”

Erin bit back a laugh. She was pretty much
screwed then. John might be able to blackmail her into picking the
damned thing up, but there was no way he was going to get her to
like it.

Sure, she understood why he was making her go
through this. He was afraid that she was giving up. But she wasn’t.
She was just being honest. Her odds weren’t all that great. But if
seeing her shoot off a couple rounds at the local firing range made
him feel better about the whole thing then she would humor him.

Especially, since she had no other ride.

John guided her thumb back over the safety,
unlocking the trigger. Erin closed her eyes as she wrapped her
pointer finger over the trigger.

“Now just aim and squeeze.”

Erin opened her eyes and forced in another
breath. She pointed the barrel in the general direction of the
paper target off in the distance, braced herself, and pulled back
hard.

A puff of brown dirt flew into the air as the
bullet dug into the dirt twenty feet in front of her.

Shoot.

“Good,” he said. “Again, but this time try to
relax.”

Now she
was
going to kick him. Just as
soon as she’d emptied the magazine.

She pulled back the trigger again. The same
dust cloud appeared as the recoil swept up her locked arms. It
wasn’t as painful as she’d feared it would be, but it wasn’t all
that pleasant either.

“I’m no good at this,” Erin said, frustration
surging.

“You’re doing fine. Just—”

“Relax. I know.”

Another shot. The same result.

“No,” Erin said, putting the gun back down in
front of her. “I’m done. I can’t do this.”

John turned her around. She wasn’t sure what
expression she expected to see on his face—anger, frustration
maybe—but compassion wasn’t it. He knew just how hard this was for
her. He’d have to be a fool not to.

“Yes, you can.” He swept his hands up and
down her arms, as if hoping some of his resolve would literally rub
off on her. “You have to.”

Erin’s heart sank. She turned back toward the
range so he wouldn’t see how misplaced his faith in her was, how
different they really were.

John might not see anything more than a piece
of paper with a half dozen circles at the other end of the range,
but Erin saw something else. She saw a person. There was no use
pretending it was anything else. That’s what John was trying to
prepare her for after all.

Because if she was ever forced to handle a
weapon outside of this range, it wasn’t going to be because she was
being attacked by paper circles. She would be shooting at a person.
Someone who walked and talked…and bled when he was shot.

And Erin remembered all too well what that
blood looked like when it soaked a man’s shirt. When she closed her
eyes, she could still see how it had pooled, dark and shimmery, on
the boards below her father. She would never forget.

And she knew she could never do it to another
person. Maybe not even if it meant saving herself.

But she couldn’t let John know. For some
reason, he believed she was strong, and she didn’t want to let him
down. Not until she had too.

Erin picked up the gun. She drew in a deep
breath, and slowly squeezed the trigger as she let it out. Then she
did it again. Then again. And again.

Chapter 8

Two hours crept by. It seemed like days since
John had pulled out of the gun range parking lot. Still even with
all that time, Erin wasn’t sure if she was feeling relief or dread
when he drove off Highway 99 onto the county road that led to the
prison.

It had been years since she’d had the luxury
of gazing out the passenger window and getting lost in her
thoughts. Not since she was seven and Gran had been the one behind
the wheel. Erin had taken over driving duties when Gran had started
to get sick back when she was seventeen. By the time she was
twenty, Erin was left to make the trip on her own.

She'd been doing it solo ever since. Having
someone else at the wheel meant that she had time to think. A lot
of it.

She wasted most of it gazing out the tinted
windows of John's big black Range Rover as they sped by the central
California valley. Not that there was all the much to see. It was
starting to get late in the day, and a thick layer of fog had begun
to descend into the valley. So instead of losing herself in the
landscape, she spent the time worrying about what she was going to
tell her mother.

For years, Erin had only shared the good
parts of her life—making the honor roll, getting her scholarships,
buying her house—and swallowed down all the bad—the bullying, the
break-ups, the loneliness.

She’d always figured that her mother had
enough to deal with, living in prison and all. Erin had to be her
bright spot, her smiling face, her hope for the future.

But she wasn’t sure how in the hell she was
going to spin this one. The same two FBI sedans had shadowed them
to the prison. She was pretty sure the black-suited agents would be
following her inside too. Erin didn’t want to think about how that
was going to go over with her mother. So she stopped trying.

If there was one thing that this situation
showed her was how little control she actually had over her life.
Some things, it seemed, were inevitable. She could rail against
fate all she wanted, but she’d always end up on the losing side.
Maybe it was just better to give in and let life sweep her where it
wanted her to go.

Erin sighed as she turned away from the
window. She had used up all her will to fight back at the range.
She’d fired off every bullet that John had given her, and her aim
hadn’t gotten any better.

Well, that wasn’t totally true. By the end,
she had managed to fray the bottom of the paper target a couple
times. Turned out, she shouldn’t have worried so much over having
to shoot anyone in self-defense. Unless the guy was standing two
feet in front of her, she was never going to hit him.

Not that John had given up on her. He’d kept
encouraging her throughout her attempts, telling her she could do
it. She had no idea where his confidence in her came from. Hers was
at an all-time low.

Erin glanced over at John. His eyes were
focused on the road, his hands on the wheel. He hadn’t said a word
since they’d crested the Altamont Pass, but she hadn’t felt any
pressure in his silence.

A wave of guilt washed over her. She’d been
so wrapped up in her own head that she hadn’t once thought about
how he was doing on this long boring drive. They only had about ten
minutes until they reached the prison gates, but that was better
than nothing.

“Sorry. I haven’t been very good company,”
she said.

“It’s fine.” He sounded like he meant it.
“You’ve got a lot on your mind. This is as good a time as any to
work it out.”

She shifted her weight in the seat so she
leaned toward him. “Yeah, but I know just how boring this drive can
be when it’s quiet.”

His lips lifted up in a slight smile. “Trust
me. I’ve been on some long, boring drives. This hasn’t been one of
them.”

“Oh, yeah? Where?”

John’s brow arched as he glanced over at her.
His mouth stayed shut even as his lips quirked up.

“You can’t tell me, can you?”

He turned his attention back to the road.

“Should have figured,” Erin said.

“Do you come out here every week?”

“Every Sunday since I was ten.” Erin nodded.
“But I’m usually alone. It’s nice having company this time.”

“Why don’t you ever ask anyone to come with
you?”

“You’re kidding, right?” He wasn’t laughing.
She should have known. John Ryman wasn’t exactly the joking type.
“I take it you’ve been in places like where were going?”

He nodded.

“I’m going to bet that afterward you’ve never
thought to yourself, ‘That’s a nice place to spend a Sunday
afternoon. I think next time I’ll bring a friend.’”

“No, I guess I never have,” he said, slowly
shaking his head. “But that doesn’t mean that your friends wouldn’t
come. You know Marianne would do just about anything for you.”

“I would never expose Marianne to
Chowchilla.”

John tilted his head just a notch. “She’s a
tough broad.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Erin crossed
her arms over her chest. A few days living on Shannon Court and he
honestly thought he knew her friends better than she did? “She’s
also eighty-two.”

John shrugged as if her age was irrelevant.
“You have other friends.”

Erin looked down at her nails. “I don't tell
too many people about my parents.”

“That’s a shame,” he said.

Erin didn’t have time to ask him what he
meant. He took the turn into the prison gates and pulled up to the
gatehouse.

She reached for her purse and rummaged for
her license as an officer she wasn’t familiar with stepped up to
the driver’s window. She shouldn’t have bothered. John held out his
badge. The guard took one look and waived them through.

Erin lifted a brow as he pulled into the
empty parking lot. “Does that thing get you in everywhere?”

He shot her a slick smile and stepped out of
the car. “Not
everywhere
.”

All right. So she was wrong about him and the
jokes. He did have a sense of humor. Sometimes she only wished he
didn’t.

Erin took in a deep breath before opening her
car door and tried to still her anxious thoughts. She prayed she
wasn’t making a huge mistake, accomplishing nothing more than
riling up her mother and upsetting herself.

But if she didn’t? The thought of never
seeing her mother again was just too painful. She had to do
this.

She had to.

John was waiting by her car door. He nodded
to the men in the black sedans who were just now pulling into the
lot. At least it didn’t look like they were getting out. Thank God
for small favors.

John turned around and held out his hand.
Erin wrapped her fingers around his.

“This place used to scare the hell out of me
when I was a kid,” she said nervously as they climbed the steps
that led to visitor’s entrance.

“And now?”

“It still does.”

His grip on her hand tightened. She was
reluctant to let go when they stepped inside. Erin had never seen
the place so empty. She was used to wasting every Sunday standing
in a long processing line with a hundred or so other people only to
be shuffled off into a waiting tank for a couple of hours until a
visiting table became available. The stillness of the place
bordered on eerie.

The visitor center wasn’t completely empty
though. A couple of guards still worked on the computers behind the
counter. One looked up and greeted Erin with a smile.

“Miss Holliday,” he said, standing up.

“How are you, Carl?”

“Doing fine. Warden sent word you might be
coming in today.” Carl looked John up and down. “Everything all
right?”

“Everything’s fine, Officer.” John stepped in
front of her and slid his badge across the counter. The meaning in
his tone was unmistakable. No questions.

A part of her wanted to smack him for his
rudeness. Erin had been coming to this prison for so long she knew
just about every corrections officer in the place. She was on
friendly terms with most of them.

Another part was grateful for John’s
intervention. She didn’t want to have to explain herself more than
she had to. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to manage
getting through the whole story with her mother. She knew she
didn’t have the energy for anyone else.

Carl frowned, looking even more concerned
than before. “Homeland Security, eh?”

“He's a friend, Carl,” Erin said.

“Some friend.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Carl arched his brows, but didn’t ask any
more questions. Erin was quickly learning that one look from John
went a long way in dispelling people’s curiosity.

“Well, then I suppose I’ll show you to the
visiting room,” Carl said.

Carl walked ahead of them, down the long hall
of flickering fluorescent lights. Every stutter in her step on the
worn vinyl tile echoed off the concrete walls. Erin hesitated as he
opened the door to the empty visiting room, but she managed a shaky
smile as she stepped inside.

“Your mother should be here shortly,” Carl
said, before turning and leaving her and John alone.