The Call of Bravery

She’d known that was coming. After a hesitation, Lia admitted, “No. It’s pretty bare-bones up there, though.”

“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.”

“She runs a foster home. Records show she currently has three kids, but I guess from what she told Phillips, she has another two on a real short-term basis.”

“Five children?”

“That’s the word.”

Conall groaned. “Does the attic door have a lock?”

“If not, we may want to install one,” Henderson said, faint amusement in his voice.

“If we have to deal with kids, you’re the specialist.”

“Okay.” He leaned forward. “Is that the street?”

It was. Conall slowed and put on the turn signal, even though he hadn’t passed another car in the past five minutes.

The road was gravel and made perilous by potholes. Conall drove at the pace of a crawl. The shocks were none too good on this aging Chevy Suburban, borrowed from the fleet of seized vehicles kept for occasions when agents wanted to be inconspicuous. Conall had been assured that, belying the appearance of dents and a few pockets of rust, there was plenty of power under the hood if he needed it.

A small grunt escaped Henderson when the right front wheel descended with a clunk into a particularly deep crater. “Why the hell isn’t this road paved?”

“It’s private. Only five houses on it.” Conall had counted the mailboxes out at the corner. “Too expensive to pave, even if the residents could all agree to share the cost.”

“The least they could do is fill the damn holes.”

Conall didn’t bother to explain what a headache it could be for residents to coordinate on even such a relatively modest project. A couple of the households might be short on bucks; the home-owners closest to the county road might not feel their share should be equal. Probably the only vehicles that used the road belonged to home-owners or visitors; kids would have to catch the school bus out at the main road, and obviously the post office had declined to deliver off the pavement. Probably even garbage cans had to be hauled out to the main road for pickup.

Which gave him the idea that, once he knew what day was garbage pickup, he’d wander out here and investigate the neighbor’s cans. If they were smart, they wouldn’t be careless enough to dump anything but kitchen garbage and the like in their cans, but you never knew. Crooks were often stupid, a fact for which law enforcement personnel gave frequent thanks.

Last driveway on the right, his directions had said. No house number was displayed at the head of the driveway he turned down. Scruffy woods initially screened the house from view; alders, vine maples, a scattering of larger firs and cedars, scraggly blackberries and lower growing salal. At least there were no potholes here, instead a pair of beaten earth tracks separated by a grassy hump.

They came out of the woods to see fenced pasture and, ahead, a white-painted farmhouse that probably dated to the 1920s or 1930s. Red and white beef cattle grazed the pasture on one side of the driveway, while on the other side a fat, shaggy Shetland pony and a sway-backed horse of well-used vintage lifted their heads from the grass to gaze with mild interest at the passing Suburban.

As they neared, Conall could see that the house had two full stories with a dormered attic to boot. Several of the wood-framed, small-paned, sash windows on the first floor boasted window boxes filled with bright pink and fuchsia geraniums. The wide, covered front porch with a railing looked welcoming.

The one outbuilding, probably a barn in its past, apparently served now as garage. The double doors stood open and he could see what he thought was a Subaru station wagon in the shadowy interior.

The setup was good, he reflected; they’d been lucky to find a neighbor willing to cooperate with a surveillance team, and even luckier given that this one and only suitable house happened to have an unused attic that offered a perfect vantage point. Still, he studied the facade nervously, half expecting children to swarm out like killer bees from a hive. God, he hoped there wouldn’t be babies squalling all night. Although babies might be preferable to kids of an age to be curious.

No one, adult or child, swarmed out. Or even peered. Lace curtains didn’t twitch.

“This woman expecting us?” Conall asked.

“So I’m told.” Henderson glanced at his watch. “It’s nap time.”

“Is that like the eye of the hurricane?”

His partner’s raw-boned face split into a grin. “That’s one way to describe it.”

They parked beside the barn and pulled out a duffel bag each before starting across the yard to the house. They could come back later for their equipment.

Walking across the lawn, Conall realized he felt no sense of anticipation whatsoever. Okay, this might not be the most exciting operation ever; surveillance gigs never were. Even so, he used to feel at least mildly stirred at the beginning of any new challenge. Lately…

He shook off the momentary brood. He liked action, not sitting in the middle of a cow pasture watching grass grow. No wonder he wasn’t worked up about this particular assignment.

Somehow he hadn’t convinced himself. Boredom wasn’t the whole problem. His dissatisfaction had other causes. He just hadn’t nailed them down yet.

There was no doorbell. Henderson rapped lightly instead. Conall thought he heard a TV on somewhere inside. They waited, finally hearing the sound of someone approaching.

The door opened and a woman stood there. Behind her was a girl—maybe a teenager?—but Conall was only peripherally aware of her. He couldn’t tear his gaze from the woman.

He hadn’t come into this situation with any expectation, so he didn’t know why he was so startled. Then he barely stopped himself from grimacing. Of course he knew why; what he hadn’t expected was to find himself sexually riveted by their reluctant hostess.

She was average height, maybe five foot five or six. Slender but strong, her curves subtle but present. Her feet were bare, her jeans fit snugly over narrow hips and fabulous legs. Her yield-sign yellow T-shirt fit even better, displaying a narrow rib cage and high, apple-size breasts to perfection.

Her face…well, damn, she was beautiful. Stunning. High, winged eyebrows, a model’s cheekbones, a luscious mouth and small straight nose. Her eyes were an unusual mix of brown and green. The colors were deep and rich, not like the typical hazel. And her thick, wavy hair was midnight-black and hung loose to her waist.

God help him, he wanted to grab her, carry her upstairs and find a bedroom. And they hadn’t even said hello.

Man. This wasn’t a good start to what promised to be a lengthy stay. Conall had the wry thought that the stay might be considerably shortened if she noticed he was aroused.

And maybe that would be a good thing. Right this minute, Conall couldn’t imagine living in close proximity to her without breaking down at some point and coming on to her.

Way to lose his job.

His jaw flexed. For God’s sake, if he was that desperate, he’d look for a woman while he was in town. Any woman but this one. Get laid.

He realized how long the silence had stretched. Conall cleared his throat. “Special Agent Conall MacLachlan from the DEA. This is Jeff Henderson. I believe you were expecting us.”

CHAPTER TWO

HENDERSON HAD BEEN gaping, too, but he managed to snap out of it and offer his hand. They shook. Conall offered his badge instead of his hand. He didn’t dare touch her.

She examined it briefly, then glanced at their duffel bags. “That’s all you have?”

“We have more stuff in the car. We thought we’d find out where we’re to set up first.”

She looked past them to the gray Suburban. “At least you don’t have one of those government cars. That would have given you away in a heartbeat.”

Jeff’s face relaxed into a smile. “True enough, ma’am.”

“No ma’am.” She moved back to let them in. “I’m not old enough to be a ma’am. Call me Lia.”

Lia Woods. That was her name. Was Lia Hispanic? Only partly, he thought, given the delicious pale cream of her skin where it wasn’t tanned, as her face and forearms were. And her eyes were a remarkable color.

“Lia,” he said politely.

“This is Sorrel,” she said, “my foster daughter.”

The girl was pretty, in an unfinished way. Skinny but also buxom. She had her arms crossed over her breasts as if she was trying to hide them. Blond hair was pixy-short, her eyes blue and bottomless, her mouth pouty. Blushing, she mumbled, “Hello,” but Conall had the impression she hadn’t decided how she felt about their presence.

They stood in a foyer from which a staircase rose to the second floor. The television was on in a room to his right. He could see the flickering screen from here. To the left seemed to be a dining room; a high chair was visible at one end of a long table.

Lia crossed her arms, looking from one to the other of them. “You understand that I have a number of foster children.”

“Yes.”

Both nodded.

“The two little ones are currently asleep. Chances are you won’t see much of them. Julia is a baby, and Arturo a toddler.” She pronounced Julia the Spanish way.

They both nodded again. Sorrel watched them without expression.

“Let me take you on a quick tour and introduce you to the other kids.” Lia led the way into the living room, where two boys sat on the sofa watching TV.

The room was set up to be kid-friendly, the furniture big, comfortable, sturdy. The coffee table had rounded corners. Bookcases protected their contents with paneled doors on the bottom and glass-fronted ones on top. Some baby paraphernalia sat around, but Conall didn’t see much in the way of toys. Did she let the kids watch television all day?

“Walker,” she said in a gentle voice. “Brendan. Would you please pause your movie?”

One of them fumbled for the remote. Then they both gazed at the men. They had to be the two saddest looking kids he’d ever seen. Grief and hopelessness clung to them like the scent of tobacco on a smoker. Their eyes held…nothing. Not even interest.

They were trying damned hard to shut down all emotional content. He recognized the process, having gone through it. He didn’t know whether to wish them well with it, or hope someone, or something, intervened.

His child specialist was staring at them with something akin to horror and was being useless. Somebody had to say something.

Apparently, that would be him. “Walker. Brendan. My name is Conall. This is Jeff.”

After a significant pause, one of the boys recalled his manners enough to say, “Hi.”

“I know we’ll be seeing you around,” Conall said awkwardly.

The same boy nodded. He was the older of the two, Con realized, although they looked so much alike they had to be brothers.

Lia guided the two men out of the living room. Behind them the movie resumed.

She hustled them through the dining room and showed them the kitchen.

“I serve the kids three meals a day and can include you in any or all of those,” she told them. “If you’d rather make your own breakfasts or lunches, just let me know in advance and help yourself to anything you can find.”

She didn’t say whether those meals would be sugary cereals and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Right this minute, Conall didn’t care. He kept his voice low. “What’s with the boys?”

Her glance was cool. “Their mother died five days ago. She had adult-onset leukemia. Six weeks ago, she was healthy. She went downhill really fast.”

“They don’t have other family?” Jeff asked.

“No. The boys barely remember their father, who abandoned them a long time ago. If there are grandparents or other relatives on that side, no one knows anything about them. The boys’ mother grew up in foster care.”

“So now they will, too.” Conall wasn’t naive; in his line of work, he didn’t deal much with kids, but sometimes there were ones living in houses where he made busts. He’d undoubtedly been responsible for sending some into foster care himself. He’d never had to live with any of those children before, though.

“Yes,” she said. “Unless they’re fortunate enough to be adopted.”

He didn’t have to read her tone to know how unlikely that was, especially with the boys as withdrawn as they were. And being a pair besides. Or would they end up separated? That was an idea that he instinctively rebelled against.

He and Henderson both were quiet as she showed them a home office on the ground floor, and opened the door to a large bathroom and, at the back of the house, a glassed-in porch that was now a laundry slash mud room.

“You can do your own laundry, or toss your clothes in the hamper and I’ll add them to any loads I put in.”

They nodded acknowledgement.

Upstairs was another bathroom and bedrooms. Hers, one with a closed door that was apparently where the little kids slept, a room shared by the boys, and a smaller one that was obviously the teenager’s. It was little larger than a walk-in closet; maybe originally intended to be a sewing room or nursery?

“Sorrel understands that the attic is off-limits,” Lia said, her tone pleasant but steel underlying it. The teenager looked sulky but ducked into her bedroom as Lia led the way to the door at the end of the hall. Like all the others in the house, it had an old-fashioned brass knob. It also had an ancient keyed lock with no key in it.

Behind it was a staircase steep enough Conall wouldn’t have wanted to navigate it after a few beers. Lia’s hips swayed seductively at his eye level as she preceded him up.

Don’t look.

He couldn’t not.

It was a relief to have her stand aside at the top, where a huge open space was poorly lit by only four, smallish dormer windows. The dormers would allow them to stand upright in front of the windows, but the men especially would have to duck their heads in much of the rest of the space.

“Yesterday I washed those windows on the inside.” Lia sounded apologetic. “I can’t even get my hose to squirt that high on the outside.”

The two light fixtures up here didn’t do much to illuminate the attic, especially around the edges where the ceiling sloped sharply down. As in many old houses, it was cluttered with unwanted pieces of furniture, piles of cardboard boxes filled with who knew what, more modern plastic tubs stacked closer to the top of the staircase, and a few oddities and antiques. A naked female clothing mannequin with a bald head stared vacuously at them. Conall saw an old treadle sewing machine cheek by jowl with a gigantic plastic duck.

Lia’s gaze had followed his. “I think the duck rode on a Fourth of July float every year until my uncle died.”

“The mannequin?”

“My aunt owned a small clothing store in town.” She looked around as if she hadn’t thought about the contents of the attic in ages. “I don’t actually know what’s up here. Someday I should go through it all, but I always seem to be too busy.”

“The animals out there yours?” Jeff was peering out one of the windows.

“The horse and the pony are. They’re fun for the kids. I rent the other pasture out. Keeps it from growing up in blackberries.”

Conall found himself curious about her and wanting to ask questions, but none of them had anything to do with the job. Had she inherited the house? Why did she foster kids instead of having her own? Why wasn’t a woman who looked like that married?

Focus, he told himself. Lia Woods wasn’t the point here. Her neighbors were.

He walked to the second of the two windows looking to the south and saw immediately that they had a bird’s-eye view of the target. Except for the film on the outside of the glass, it couldn’t be better.

“Do these open?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

From the reluctance of the latch to give way, he could tell no one had tried in years. He muttered a swear word or two under his breath, scraped the latch open and heaved upward at the sash window. It groaned, shuddered and rose two inches before jolting to a stop.

“Hell.”

“Is this not going to work for you guys?” Lia sounded hopeful. And why shouldn’t she? She’d probably rather they got in their Suburban and drove away never to be seen again.

“We’ll loosen it up,” Conall said. He saw that Henderson was using his muscle to work on the other south-facing window. They’d need the damn things open, if only to get some air flow up here. Not surprisingly, the attic was stuffy and warm, and that was on a cloudy day with the temp reading sixty-nine when they passed a bank in town. If this op dragged on long, with spring edging into summer, it could turn hellish up here.