Protective Measures

She smiled. Okay, maybe he was the kind of person she could talk to. At least it seemed like he was taking her seriously.

“There were three of them at the gala tonight,” she said. “Their code names were Prometheus, Pandora and Jason. I guess Pandora pepper-sprayed me. I never saw Jason, but apparently he’s young, tall and thin. Like I told you, Samantha saw some online chatter about them scoping out a potential target at this gala and I went in undercover to see if I spotted anything fishy or could identify any members of the team. Something we could pass to police to help our current clients or even help us be on the lookout for the future. I have no idea why they’d set the coatroom on fire, unless it’s to keep someone from discovering what they’ve stolen or rifled through. We have no idea who their target is or what they’re attempting to steal. It could be something professional or intensely personal.”

There was another long pause. Again, she couldn’t shake the idea that he knew something he wasn’t telling her. This time she waited Leo out. Finally he said, “How do they usually warn their targets?”

“What?” She nearly slipped off his toes and into the water. “They don’t warn them. At least, I’ve never heard of anyone from The Anemoi warning anyone. Why?”

She waited again. But this time Leo didn’t answer.

“Leo?” Her tone grew sharper. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“Don’t worry about it. I saw a thin man—could be Jason—defacing a poster in the ballroom. But it might not mean anything.”

He was talking like it was no big deal, but that didn’t explain why his voice sounded both angry and strangled.

“Do you think you know who the target was?” she asked. No answer. A chill ran down her spine. “Could it be you? Do you have something worth stealing?”

“No, I don’t,” he said.

Why didn’t she believe him? Voices were clamoring above them now. People were running toward them.

“We’ve got some survivors over here!” a male voice bellowed above her. “Can someone grab us a rope?”

She looked up and was blinded by the glare of flashlights. Leo pulled her against the rock.

“I’m going to hoist you up,” he said. “You should be able to climb up from there. It’s not that far.”

Light fell from above, highlighting the lines of his chiseled jaw and the strength that lay beneath his wet dress shirt. But it was the depth of the worry pooling in his eyes that made her heart stop beating.

“What’s wrong?” Her hand brushed his jaw. “Tell me. Do you have any reason to believe you’re The Anemoi’s target? Is there anything you have that someone would think shouldn’t belong to you?”

To her surprise, he hugged her quickly with the shared relief of two people who’d been through trauma together. She hugged him back.

“Don’t worry about me.” Leo’s voice was a deep, gruff whisper in her ear. “I don’t have anything worth stealing, and definitely nothing that a vigilante would argue doesn’t belong to me. Thank you for everything.”

He hoisted her up. Other hands were reaching down for her. She stepped up onto Leo’s shoulder and grabbed onto one of the outstretched hands. A police officer pulled her up onto the ledge.

“Are you alright, miss?” a paramedic asked. There was a light in her still sensitive eyes. He took her arm and started leading her toward a bank of ambulances.

“I’m fine, thank you.” She pulled away.

The paramedic let her go without an argument. She wasn’t surprised considering the scene. Firefighters and emergency service personnel were trying to corral people, put out the fire and check for injuries. Party guests rambled around the gardens, ignoring orders and trying to take pictures on their phones.

She’d learned as a teenager that whenever there was a spectacle there’d be two different types of people running around. There were those who watched the show and those who kept people safe. Back then she’d been the spectacle, the fire, the flashy and fierce marital arts and gymnastics competitor who people cheered for loudly when she won and booed at when it all came to an end. But she’d known, even then, what kind of person she wanted to be. She wanted to be the one who protected people and rescued them from the metaphorical flames.

The crowd parted and she saw Leo hauling himself over the ledge. He stood on the edge of the rocks, with the fire to his right, the darkness to his left and the river swirling behind him. Her breath caught in her throat. He was rugged, strong and dashing in a way she’d thought only movie stars could be. Yet as his eyes scanned the crowd, something deep inside his gaze almost looked wounded, too.

Lord, protect him and help him. I don’t know what he wasn’t telling me or why he brushed off my questions. Or why my gut’s telling me that he was The Anemoi’s intended target.

The Anemoi had gotten its name from a group of deadly winds, and somehow the castle fire felt like the first rumble of thunder that warned of an approaching storm. Something big was coming. Something devastating and dangerous. And she just couldn’t shake the feeling that Leo Darius was going to be right in the center of that storm.

People pushed past her. Voices babbled around her, fading into white noise. Still her eyes were locked on Leo’s form. He’d come for her. He’d carried her in his arms. He’d leaped through the air to save them both. She’d trusted him with the truth about her job at Ash Private Security and about The Anemoi. But he hadn’t trusted her in return.

“Excuse me! Ma’am.” The Irish voice was smooth behind her and his hand touched her shoulder so suddenly she nearly jumped out of her skin. She flinched, her whole body pulling away as she turned. It was him, Killian, the same creep who used to skulk around the edges of martial arts competitions hitting on the female competitors, until one day, when he’d snuck up behind her, she’d wielded around and elbowed him in the face on live television, ending her competitive career. “Are you the woman who Commander Darius rescued from the fire?”

She nearly choked. He didn’t recognize her. She didn’t know if it was just because of the odd way the combination of the night, the flames and emergency beams played tricks with light and shadows. Or if it was because of how disheveled she was from the fire and the lake.

But she couldn’t shake the thought that maybe he’d actually forgotten her. That despite everything she’d lost by elbowing him in the face, she’d been nothing but an insignificant and forgettable blip in his life.

Even though she’d never forgotten his face.

“No comment.” Zoe didn’t meet his eye and turned away, hoping not to jog his memory.

“No comment?” he pressed. “How can you have no comment? Either you’re the woman he rescued or you’re not.”

“Sorry, I’ve got to go.” She persisted through the crowd, searching the sea of emergency vehicles for the plain black Ash Security van.

Killian kept following her. She could hear his voice as sharp and direct as arrows shooting after her. “At least, tell me your name. Who are you?”

“I’m nobody.” She disappeared into the crowd. She was nobody now. She liked it that way. One brief intense encounter in a moment of danger with the daring Commander Leo Darius wasn’t about to change that.

* * *

The Ottawa River raged and surged as it flowed through Canada’s capital city, past beautiful historical buildings and stately monuments. Leo walked with his daughters down a path that ran alongside one of the river’s branches as it flowed into a canal. His mind swirled like the water. It was Tuesday, the morning after the fire. Thankfully no one had been hurt, the symposium was continuing as usual and the informant had left another untraceable robotic message on Leo’s phone line saying the intel was still up for sale but the price had just gone up. But an early morning phone call from Admiral Jacobs’s secretary had sent everything into chaos. The admiral had been in a terrible car accident on the way to work and was now in the hospital. Leo had no way to get the admiral’s advice on whether he should continue with the mission, no idea who could’ve tipped The Anemoi off to the informant’s existence and no one else inside naval intelligence he knew he could trust. He was on his own. His eyes rose to the sky in prayer. I just don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do. Guide me. I need backup and I don’t know how to get it.

“Can I get ice cream?” Eve’s voice broke into his thoughts. Bright blue eyes looked up hopefully into his. Her tiny hand slipped into his large one and squeezed it, very hard, like she was double-checking he was really there. “Or can I climb a tree?”

There was something so real and genuine about his littlest girl’s smile.

Thank You, God, for my daughters. Help me be the father they need me to be. Help me raise them and protect them.

“You can’t climb a tree in flip-flops,” he said. “But we can see about ice cream later.”

Eve squeezed his hand hard one more time. Then she scampered off to join her sister, Ivy, who was now walking alone up the path ahead of them. Ivy had been a little girl on his last visit home. Now, at twelve, she was almost a teenager, with long hair as dark as his and eyes that tended to glance sideways at the world. He watched as Eve nudged her big sister in the side. Ivy threw her arm protectively around Eve’s shoulders. It was hard to know how much the strained mess that was his marriage to their mother had impacted them, but he knew they missed her. He missed Marisa, too, in a much more complicated way. Late at night, her painful words to him still echoed in the empty recesses of his chest: “I tried to love you, Leo. I really did. You’re just not the kind of man who’s easy to love.” But she’d stayed married to him, accepted politeness instead of romance, made a bed for him on the couch whenever he was home on leave and given him two beautiful daughters. He’d always be thankful for that.

“This isn’t really a normal walk, Eve,” Ivy said, in a conspiratorial tone that was so loud she had to know that he would be able to hear it. “Daddy is meeting someone. But it’s a secret meeting.”

Eve gasped, a sound that was thankfully all excitement and intrigue, not worry. Leo almost stopped short. How could she possibly know that? Josh had phoned his cell before the sun had risen this morning to suggest they meet up. Josh’s tone had been friendly, but there’d been a current cutting through it that had let him know it was important. Leo kept his voice level. “Why do you say that, honey?”

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Ivy tossed a glance back over her shoulder. A slight smile turned at her lips, her keen eyes flashed and he realized that she’d been guessing. She was a smart kid and perceptive, too. Neither of which helped the gnawing feeling he got in his gut sometimes that Ivy was bothered about something she still didn’t trust him enough to open up about.

His cell phone buzzed. He reached for it hoping it was the admiral. Instead it was a text from a number with an Irish area code.

Hey Commander, it’s Killian Lynch. Any news on the identity of your mystery woman? My message board’s been pinging nonstop from other women asking me if you’re single!

He frowned. Killian’s tabloid story on the fire had been posted online before the fire had even been put out and included a blurry photo of Leo falling through the air with Zoe in his arms. The post and picture had “gone viral,” which apparently meant it was now spreading around the internet like a plague. He had no intention of blowing Zoe’s privacy. He’d lost sight of the dark-haired beauty in the crowd after the fire. But he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind since.

A second text arrived: A woman named Melody Young asked me to pass on her name and number. She’s an old friend of your wife. Had lost contact and misses your girls. Wanted to send her condolences and set up a playdate.

The strains on his marriage to Marisa had meant he didn’t really know much about her life. While his transfer home to Ottawa had meant the girls had to move to a new house and new school, Theresa had told him the more connections the girls had to their past the more grounded they’d feel.

This is her. Said I’d pass it on to help the girls remember her.

Another text came in before he could answer. It was a picture of a beautiful, blond-haired woman holding a toddler on her lap. He looked closer. The child was Eve.

Leo texted back: Thank you.

No problem, came back the reply. Ready to go over that stuff I uncovered online yet? The story can’t stay on ice forever.

No. Leo slid his phone into his pocket without answering. He followed a path and reached a small park. His eyes surveyed the scene. Josh sat on a bench by the water. Alex stood nearby with his back to the street. The location was pretty isolated and yet still close to the road, with good lines of sight. He could only spot two ordinary civilians in the park. One was a well-dressed mother with auburn curls who was pushing a stroller along the riverbank. The other was an older man with a small white puppy, ambling through an outcrop of trees. Neither looked like anyone he’d need to worry about. The tiny ball of puppy fluff started to pull and scrabble on all four paws toward Ivy and Eve. The girls squealed and cooed, and begged Leo to let them go pat it.

But all of that was eclipsed by the site of the petite, dark-haired woman walking toward him. She was dressed simply, in jeans and a tank top that showed off the strength in her arms. Her skin was free of makeup. A simple elastic held back her hair, letting only a few wisps escape and fall around her face. She was even more dazzling than he’d remembered.

“Hey,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” he said. “You?”

“I’m okay.” Her dark eyes met his and it was like everything else faded to static around him. There was something about her that hit him like a punch in the gut. An attraction? A feeling? He didn’t know what to call it. But it was like someone had attached jumper cables to the dusty remnants of his heart and was trying to jolt it into beating again.

“Daddy!” Eve said. “Can we go see the puppy? Please?”

“It’s okay,” Zoe said, stepping forward. “I’m happy to watch the girls. I know you and Josh need to talk. We’ll stay right around here within eyesight.”

Her hand brushed her ear and he saw she was wearing a tiny earpiece. Apparently she’d be staying within earshot, too.

“Please, Daddy? Can we go with her?” Eve’s bright eyes brimmed with hope.

“Okay.” He hated having the girls beyond arm’s length. But he trusted she’d keep them safe, and maybe putting a few feet of distance between himself and Zoe would help keep the jumper-cable jolts at bay. “Zoe, these are my daughters, Ivy and Eve. Girls, this is my friend Zoe. She’s really nice and is going to watch you while I talk to my friend Josh. I want you to be very polite and stay where I can see you.”

Ivy’s skeptical eyes flitted to Zoe’s face. Zoe stretched out her hand toward Leo’s eldest. “It’s very nice to meet you, Ivy.”

“I like your bracelet.” Ivy eyed her hand.

“Thank you,” Zoe said. A tightly woven black-and-green rope encircled her wrist. If she was wearing a microphone, Leo didn’t see it. “It’s a special kind of rope called a paracord. I wear them all the time. You can unravel it really long and use it for climbing or other useful things. I can show you how to make one.”

Ivy paused another moment, then asked, “Do you like dogs?”

“Definitely. I have a terrier at home named Oz. He’s very pesky.”

“Do you like ice cream?” Eve interjected.

“A bit.” Zoe looked at her seriously. “But I prefer sherbet.”

Eve’s lips scrunched as she pondered this. “Do you like climbing trees?”

“I love climbing.” Zoe smiled. “I used to be a gymnast.”

“Really?” Eve beamed. “I want to be a gymnast!”

Did she now? Last he’d heard she wanted to be either a princess or a unicorn. But he wasn’t exactly surprised. Both girls loved climbing.

Having apparently passed inspection, Zoe started walking with the girls toward the dog.

“I can’t climb trees in flip-flops,” Eve was saying.

“Well, maybe after we meet the puppy I’ll teach you how to climb in bare feet.”

Their voices faded to background babble. He let out a long sigh, then turned toward Josh. The former soldier was already on his feet.

“Good to see you.” A broad smile crossed Josh’s face as he reached out to clasp Leo on the back. “You’ve met Alex, right?”

“I have.” Leo stretched his hand out and shook Alex’s hand. “Theresa never told me you were a bodyguard.”

A wide grin crossed Alex’s face. “We do our best to keep it on the down low. Doesn’t always work, but we try. The work we do is one hundred percent confidential.”

“I noticed Zoe was wearing an earpiece.” Leo looked at Josh. “I take it she can hear our conversation, too?”

“Yep.” Josh turned his wrist toward Leo. There was a small microphone implanted in his watch. He had to admit, it was pretty impressive tech.

“I was surprised to hear from you.” Leo sat. “I thought you were on your honeymoon.”

“I am,” Josh said. “But it’s the second week and it’s hard to keep Samantha off the internet once she knows she’s onto something. She found something on The Anemoi’s message board we thought you should see.” Josh passed Leo his phone. Leo looked down at the picture the waiter had snapped of the vandalized poster of him and the girls. “Did you know that you’re The Anemoi’s next target?”

FOUR

Leo glanced at the picture of the vandalized poster of his girls, then up to where his girls were now climbing trees with Zoe. The old man with the dog had continued down the path. Eve was hanging upside down from a low tree branch like a koala, while Ivy was halfway up the tree. Leo reached into his wallet, pulled out the first bill he could get his fingers on and pressed it into his old friend’s hand. “I’m hiring you, all of you, because I need advice. We can work out the details later. But as of right now, I’m your client and everything we discuss is confidential. Agreed?”

Josh nodded. “Agreed.”

Leo let out a long breath. “Yes, I suspected that I was The Anemoi’s target. But I didn’t know for sure.”

Zoe wasn’t looking at him but he could see her shoulders flinch, as her earpiece picked up their conversation through Josh’s mic. He imagined it bothered her that he hadn’t been more forthright with her when they’d swum to safety together after the fire. But open book had never really been his style.

“Does this mean you know what The Anemoi is trying to steal from you?” Alex asked. “Have they stolen it yet?”

“That’s a complicated question with a very complicated answer.” Leo turned back to the men. He didn’t know how to answer Alex without breaking his cover and spilling classified information. But he trusted they could read between the lines. “I gather Josh told you the story of how we met? It was about six or seven years ago. I was commanding a ship, Josh realized that one member of my crew—a real charmer named Tommy Ferrier—was smuggling some drugs in his bunk. I looked into it, got the proof I needed, and Tommy was discharged and tried. He eventually went home, ruined his life dealing drugs in Canada and went to jail for beating his girlfriend so hard she miscarried. It was an incredibly sad story. But it’s why I trust Josh with my life and why I trust you and Zoe by extension.”

Josh nodded. So did Alex. Neither answered.

“Now imagine, instead of one ship it was a lot of ships, and instead of one rat on my ship there were a bunch of them scurrying inside a lot of ships, and instead of just telling me that info, Josh had offered to sell it to me for a whole lot of money. After seeing what happened to Tommy Ferrier, I know how important it is that information like that gets handled very carefully and what people would do to keep it from ever coming out. But let’s say that my boss just ended up in hospital from a car accident this morning, and I was obligated to get that intel, but I couldn’t ask any of my crewmates for help in case they were rats.”

“Wow, that would be quite the thing,” Alex said.

“Wouldn’t it?” asked Leo. Out of the side of his eye, he saw Zoe flash a smile in his direction. Despite the seriousness of the situation, he felt his shoulders begin to relax. It felt good to know he wasn’t alone. “Obviously you can’t be involved in my mission, at all. Hands off. If any of you were at an event with me and someone were to approach, you’d all have to skedaddle and disappear. I can’t have outsiders involved in this. You are all civilians with zero clearance. But you can watch my back, keep your eyes open, tell me if you see anything I should be worried about, keep me informed of whatever this Anemoi situation is, and of course make sure my girls aren’t touched by any of this.”

“Understood,” Josh said. “Eyes and ears only. Can I ask what you know about the new, less charitable version of me?”

“The informant?” Leo said. “Not much. He contacted my admiral a week ago using robotic-voice-disguising software and an encrypted line. He said he had ample proof of a large-scale rat problem to sell, but that he couldn’t trust anyone inside military intelligence to handle the negotiations. The admiral suggested me. I’ve been overseas for a long time and would spot bad drug-smuggling data in a heartbeat. The informant suggested the exchange happen during the symposium. I’m authorized to give him a lot of cheese, but only if the intel proves sound.”

“Can we assume he’s a criminal?” Alex asked.

“Yes and no,” Leo said. “He could be selling bad data, or good data, to make money. He could be a whistle-blower who just wants some leverage so he can disappear. You might remember, last year a hacker named Seth Miles found proof that some higher-ups in the military were in the pocket of Eastern European mobsters. He struck a plea deal for espionage, but he’s still been branded a pariah and his life was destroyed. It could be someone who doesn’t want to repeat what happened to him. Either way, I have to keep his identity a secret. My boss promised him total anonymity, and my work thrives on privacy. So, if all goes smoothly none of you will ever find out who he is.” He leaned back on the bench. “That’s all I’ve got for you. Now it’s your turn to answer some questions. You’re telling me some vigilante group, named The Anemoi, was at the gala last night, attacked Zoe and set the building on fire?”

“Pretty much.” Alex nodded.

“And one of them defaced a picture of my girls and posted it online?”

“He used the handle Jason of the Argonauts,” Josh said. “He’s quite the hacker. When Samantha tried to trace him, he deleted the picture and any trace of himself on the message board.”

“My mission, if you want to call it that, is so top secret that nobody knows about it,” Leo said. “So only someone very high up could have tipped off The Anemoi to the existence of this intel, or the informant himself did. Both scenarios are bad news. But either way, I don’t understand why they’d deface a poster of my daughters.”

“We’re baffled, too,” Josh admitted. “What can we do to help?”

“I’ve got to go to a bunch of symposium events this week,” Leo said, “and hope that the informant approaches me with the intel. I need someone to watch my back and make sure The Anemoi—whoever they are and whatever they want—don’t get in the way.”

A fresh burst of giggling dragged his attention back to Zoe and the girls. Ivy had dropped to the ground and was lounging in the grass, facing the water. Eve was standing on Zoe’s shoulders gripping the thick branch above with both hands. Before he could so much as call out and remind them to be careful, his little girl had scrambled up off Zoe’s shoulders and onto the branch.

“How many events are we talking about?” Alex asked.

Leo turned back. “There are symposium meetings tomorrow, a parade on Friday near Toronto and a charity auction back in Ottawa on Saturday, to raise money for children’s hospitals. After that the symposium is done and if I don’t get the intel by then it’s gone.”