Operation Hero's Watch

He stood up abruptly before that pillow could lure him in. He opened his pack and started pulling out what was there. He’d packed light, so there wasn’t much, and what there was needed washing after the long trek. Maybe he could do that here, if Cassie didn’t mind.

It hit him then, and his head came up. He looked around the room. The walls were a neutral cream, with splashes of green and blue—the throw pillow on the chair, the vase on the dresser and the geometric pattern of the comforter on the bed. But in his mind’s eye it was a pale green, with white shelves on that wall, full of books almost to the ceiling. And that silly, droopy stuffed dog on the top shelf. He’d always thought of him as standing guard over her precious books.

Belatedly what she had meant when she’d talked of moving into the master bedroom registered. This had been Cassie’s room. He’d only seen it a couple of times, and that had been from down the hall at Cory’s room, when the door happened to be open. And once when he’d come out and caught her peeking out into the hallway, as if to see if anyone was around. When she’d seen him, she’d gasped and darted back inside and closed the door.

That was the first time he’d thought maybe Cory was right about Cassie having a crush on him.

It felt odd—maybe downright weird—to be in this room now. True, it was totally different now, down to the color, but it still nagged at him.

He caught a whiff of some luscious scent that his stomach quickly registered as food and a second later his mind labeled spaghetti sauce. It wiped all else from his mind, and he headed down the hall.

Cassie was putting a foil-wrapped bundle in the oven. She glanced at him. “You mind garlic?”

“Only if there’s not enough,” he said, sucking in a deep breath of the great smells.

She laughed and shut the oven door. “In about fifteen, then.”

“Great. Thank you.”

She just smiled at him, and he felt an odd sort of tumble inside.

“While I was stirring, I looked up Foxworth,” she said. “It seems they’re quite something.”

She nodded toward the tablet that lay on the counter. He picked it up and looked at the website she had open. It was slick, streamlined, and had all the basics. Contact info for the five locations Rafe had mentioned, although no addresses. A short bio of the namesakes of the Foundation, Rafe’s boss’s parents. Some effusively grateful testimonials, clearly written by people who had been at the end of their rope.

And not much more. In fact, it seemed to him that if you didn’t already know what they did, you’d never know what they did.

“It doesn’t really say what they do,” she said, echoing his thought.

“Rafe said they work mostly by word of mouth. And the dog.” She laughed again. He looked at her. “It’s good to hear you laugh.”

“I wasn’t,” she said ruefully, “until you got here. But I feel much better now.”

“Worth the trip, then,” he said, ignoring the fact that he wasn’t at all sure he was going to be able to help. But he was fairly sure Rafe knew what he was doing, so maybe he had helped, indirectly. Or the dog had.

“That’s so sad, about the guy’s parents dying in that terrorist attack.”

“What inspired the whole thing, Rafe said. They turned it into something good. Kind of like you keeping the family business going.”

She sighed. “Not what I’d pictured myself doing, but I couldn’t just let it go.”

He remembered what she’d told him with heartfelt earnestness when she’d been about fourteen. “You wanted to travel the country, see all the places you’d read about.”

She looked startled. “You remember that?”

“Sure.” I understood. I wanted to be anywhere but here.

Then, it had only been the desire to escape. But now running off with Cassidy Grant took on an entirely different meaning.

Whoa. He almost took a step back. This sudden awareness of her, as not his best friend’s little sister, but of the woman she was now, had him completely off-kilter.

“I guess we don’t always get what we want,” she said, and she gave him a sideways glance.

He had the strangest feeling she was talking about him, or at least the kid she’d once had a crush on. Then he told himself he was only thinking that because of the crazy direction his own thoughts had veered into.

“Could I borrow your washing machine?” he asked, rather abruptly, trying to snap his weird train of thought.

“Of course. If you need something to wear while you wash your things, Cory has some stuff in the closet in his room.” She wrinkled her nose. “If you can get to it past all the other stuff in there.”

“I climbed two-thirds of Mount Rainier once. I’ll manage.”

She stared at him. “You did?”

He nodded. “When I was sixteen. Made it to Camp Muir at ten thousand feet.”

“Wait, I remember Cory talking about that. It was a school trip, wasn’t it? I can’t remember why he didn’t go.”

“He did, he just didn’t make the upper climb.”

He didn’t mention that they’d had to qualify to go beyond the easier reaches, and Cory had skipped the training classes. Jace hadn’t missed one, because it got him out of the house and away from his father on the weekends.

“I wanted to do that, but I was too young,” she said with a sigh.

“You would have, too.” He meant it. Even then she had had that kind of spirit and the drive that her brother lacked.

He went back to the bedroom to empty dirty clothes out of his backpack. He was nearly done when he heard a noise from outside. His first thought was Rafe, but he dismissed it immediately; the guy never made noise, and he’d be willing to bet—if he ever bet—that Cutter didn’t, either. He could hear Cassie in the kitchen, and he knew the door there was locked. And the noise he’d heard had come from the side nearest this room.

He edged over to the window, trying to see outside without moving the curtain. He waited, listening intently. Heard it again—the faintest of scrapes, like something over concrete. Not close to the house, but no farther than the fence, he guessed.

His mind raced. He could go out into the dark and try to catch whoever—or possibly whatever—it was. Or he could flip on the outside lights and let him know he’d been heard.

Keep Cassie safe.

Catch him.

Their simultaneous answers echoed in his head. And his decision still held; keeping Cassie safe was paramount.

He dropped everything on the bed, spun and headed for the bedroom door. Cassie looked up, startled, as he belted through the dining room to the back door. He hit the light switch with one hand and unlocked and yanked open the door with the other. He was outside before a second ticked down.

The backyard and patio were empty. Looked exactly as they had before. He wondered if his imagination had been playing tricks on him. But he did a careful walk around anyway.

“Jace?” Cassie’s voice sounded worried as she called out from the back door.

“Go back in. I’ll be there in a minute.”

She hesitated, and he hoped she wasn’t going to argue, not this moment. Because he’d just spotted something. “Hurry,” she said and went back inside.

Breathing again, he walked toward the corner of the house where Cassie’s old room was. Everything looked fine. Except for that one oddity he’d spotted: a branch of the small maple tree next to the fence, now bare of the fall-bright leaves it had likely had just a couple of weeks ago, was now caught at an unnatural angle over the top of the fence.

The light from the patio cast everything into stark relief, making the shadows seem even darker. Nothing else looked amiss. He searched the ground around the tree and saw nothing unexpected. He crossed the last couple of feet to the fence, reached up to grasp the top and hoisted himself up for a look over.

He hadn’t been imagining it. Because out in the alley, up against the fence, was a stack of wooden pallets. Pallets he’d noticed earlier behind her neighbor’s garage. Now placed on top of each other in exactly the spot where he’d heard the noise. And right where somebody trying to see or even climb over that fence might get tangled up with that maple branch.

Cassie hadn’t been imagining things, either. And that sent his stomach into a plummeting free fall.

It was real.

* * *

They were nearly through the meal that Jace thought was the best thing he’d had in weeks. Cassie had eaten, but not much, and he thought she was much more rattled by the proof he’d found that her suspicions were true than she was letting show. And he couldn’t think of anything to say to her that was reassuring. “You were right but we’ll catch him” didn’t seem quite right.

The cell phone Rafe had given him let out a buzz. It was clearly different from a normal ring, so he picked it up and pressed the red intercom button.

“I’ve got it outside now,” the man said without preamble. “Get some sleep.”

Jace glanced at the time readout on the oven across from him. It was 9:00 p.m. now, so he did some quick math. “When should I relieve you? One?”

“I’m good for tonight. You need to stick with her in daylight hours.”

Quickly, Jace told him what he’d heard and found by the fence. “Explains why Cutter was revved up when we got back here,” Rafe said.

“Any sign of anything else?” he asked, assuming he probably knew the answer or Rafe would have led with that.

“Not current. But somebody’s been around. Cutter verified my guess it was recent.”

His breath caught in his throat again. Yes, this was all definitely real.

“Right. All right. I’ll be up before first light.”

“Not saying much up here.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Jace felt foolish, now that he remembered sunrise here this time of year was about seven thirty. “I forgot. Five, then. What I’m used to.”

When he put down the phone, he found Cassie watching him.

“You’re used to getting up at 5:00 a.m.? What happened to the guy who liked to stay up late and sleep in?”

She said it lightly, but it still stung. The memory of staying up late because they were the only hours he had without his father bit at him. “Reality,” he snapped.

He saw his sharp tone register, and he sighed inwardly. He was about to mutter a “sorry” when she smiled rather ruefully. “Bites all of us eventually, I think.”

“Yeah.” It was then he saw the chance to say something that had been nagging at him for years. He hesitated, not wanting to bring back unpleasant memories, but then he realized they were probably never far away anyway, for Cassie. “I really was sorry about your folks. I felt terrible that I couldn’t get here for the funeral. They were always so good to me.”

“They liked you. A lot.”

And he had liked them. Her father had become his model of what a parent should be, since his own had been such a disaster. And so he’d in fact felt like utter crap not being able to get here. At the time he couldn’t afford a plane ticket, or the time away from work. Hell, he still couldn’t afford it, hence the bus ride and hitchhiking.

Back then he’d been in a lousy mood for days, until his quiet, gentle mother had sat him down and demanded to know what was wrong. He was bad-tempered enough at that point to tell her and then instantly regretted it when she’d nearly cried.

You’re doing this for me, and—

I’m doing it because one male in this family should be responsible, damn it.

“Sometime,” Cassie said softly, yanking him out of the painful memory, “will you tell me what happened?”

He looked at her, at the same time aware of the house he was standing in, that nice, well-tended, spacious place like the one down the street he’d spent his first years in. Compared it to the tiny, old and very shabby apartments he and his mother had lived in until just this last summer when he’d finally moved her into a nice place.

“Not likely,” he muttered.

This time she didn’t smile. “I see.” She looked hurt.

Nice work, Cahill. You’ve been in her house maybe three hours, and you’ve already hurt her feelings. Twice.

He hadn’t intended that. But then, he seemed to have the knack to upset women, so maybe he should have expected it.

Then again, given his weird reaction to her, maybe some distance was a good idea. She’d become the hottest thing he’d been close to in a long time, but he was here to help her, not lust after her.

They finished the meal in a silence that wasn’t quite strained but certainly wasn’t the pleasant way they’d started, even with the discovery he’d made outside hanging over them. He helped her clean up after, during which the only conversation was about the task at hand.

In a very businesslike manner she showed him the laundry room and told him to have at it. Still regretting having hurt her feelings, while facing the fact that he was in no way ready to talk about what his life had become since they’d left town, he ventured into Cory’s old room.

She hadn’t been kidding—there was stuff piled everywhere, and some of it made him step carefully. But he managed to dig a pair of sweatpants out of a bottom drawer. They would do while he was washing his own stuff, he thought.

He took a shower, quick and merely warm because he didn’t know what the hot water situation was. Then he pulled on the sweats. He was a little taller than Cory, but also leaner, so that made up for the length. They were a bit loose, so he tightened the drawstring a little, then grabbed up his clothes from the floor. He walked back to the guest room—Cassie’s old room—added the ones from the pack to his pile and dumped them all in the washing machine. They’d all been washed so often he didn’t worry about anything fading; they were already there.

When the machine was going, he turned to leave the compact but workable laundry space. And nearly ran into Cassie, who was standing in the doorway.

She was staring at him. And blushing.

Instinctively he glanced down, thinking he hadn’t pulled that drawstring tight enough. But while they were riding a little low, the essentials were still covered. And it wasn’t like Cassie hadn’t seen his bare chest before. True, it had been years ago, but still...

“I just thought...without a phone...you might need this. I moved it out of that room to the living room when that one died, but it can go back for now.” Only then did he realize she was holding a small electric alarm clock. “It doesn’t take up much room on the nightstand. I know you’re more of a play-it-by-ear kind of guy, but—”

“Not anymore,” he said, thinking it sounded almost like she was nervous. She didn’t usually jabber, and that’s what that flood of words sounded like. “Thanks.”

He took the clock. Odd, that little jolt as their fingers touched. It had been raining far too much for any static electricity to be lingering. But she pulled her hand back as if she’d felt it, too. He was still pondering it as he walked into the guest room, plugged the clock in, set the time and put it on the nightstand.

Yes, his days of dealing with time casually were long over.

* * *

Cassidy leaned against her closed bedroom door, breathing easily for maybe the first time since Jace had appeared on her doorstep. She wanted to close her eyes, but she didn’t dare, because she knew perfectly well if she did all she would see was that image of him, half-naked, Cory’s sweats slung low on his hips. That broad, strong chest, the flat, ribbed abdomen, the lean hips...he looked like an escapee from a fitness magazine.

Apparently even as a kid she’d had good taste, because he was still the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. And she didn’t need to close her eyes, apparently, because it was playing back in her mind as vividly as if she were still standing there, gaping at him.

So much for breathing easy.

If she kept this up, he was going to be very sorry he’d come to help. And she’d best remember that was the only reason he was here—because she’d made that panicked phone call. If he’d wanted to come on his own, he’d always known where she was. Jace was here to keep a promise he’d made, probably never expecting it to be called in. It would be very shabby of her to start drooling on him.

She heard a dog bark and for a second wondered if it was Cutter. But she instantly discarded the thought; that yippy sound had never issued from that dog’s throat. More likely it was Mrs. Alston’s little terrier, down at the end of the block toward the thick grove of trees they’d played in as kids, where the old cabin was.

Next door to Jace’s old house.

And there she was, right back at the subject she was trying so very hard to avoid.

She bustled about, getting ready for bed with much more concentration than the task required, or than she normally gave it. She had the rueful thought that her life could never be normal with Jace just down the hall.

It was a long night, without much sleep accomplished. And she was up even before Jace, who, true to his word, was up at five. She knew, because she heard the faint creak of the floorboard just inside the door of that bedroom, a creak she knew all too well from when it had been her room and she’d tried to sneak out without her parents knowing.

When she was dressed, she went out and put coffee on. She was going to need it. A lot of it. A glance down the hall had told her the light was on in the guest room—she determinedly thought of it that way, not as her room, and spared a moment to be thankful she’d replaced her old, rather girly white bedroom set with something more neutral, since the idea of Jace sleeping in what had once been her bed was far too unsettling, no matter that she hadn’t slept in it in years, and God, even her thoughts were rambling now...

Thankfully, when Jace came out, he was fully dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved henley shirt. They both looked a bit worse for wear, but they were now freshly washed. She thought again of how people paid a lot of money to buy jeans that looked exactly like those, worn and broken in. But she’d be willing to bet Jace’s were that way genuinely, that he’d earned every hole and fray.

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