Live and Let Love

  She decided to follow Con’s online presence to keep tabs on him. She sent Con a friend request on Facebook. He could deny her, but if he was Jack that would be a giveaway, wouldn’t it? A slap in the face of a friend. If Aldo found out about that, he’d go Italian ballistic on Con.

  That might be worth seeing.

  What was she thinking? There was that awful violent streak showing up again.

  She got on Twitter and followed Con. Good thing he didn’t have to approve that. Let’s just see if he keeps up his regular tweeting, shall we?

  If Con was Jack, the Agency was probably doing it for him. Willow had her doubts whether Jack would be able to keep up with so much social interaction.

  One thing did stand out as suspicious—he didn’t post good, clear, full-on pictures of himself. Which was an indictment in itself. The Agency wouldn’t want pictures of an altered Jack all over the Internet. But it was still inconclusive and not definite proof of anything.

  The moon was out, drifting eerily in and out of a light cloud cover as she headed toward home. Ground fog hugged the dips and hollows. It was a perfect Halloween atmosphere. The perfect night for a haunting.

  Not what Willow needed to think. Not with all the creepy things that had been happening since Con arrived. She had to go home to an empty house that someone might be monitoring. Spookie wouldn’t be much help. Despite her name, if she saw a ghost she’d turn tail and run. Willow forced herself to look on the positive side and how beautifully silvery the night looked as the frost settled in.

  She’d have to be particularly careful on Loop Road Two at that bend near Shane’s place. Deer loved to hang out in the orchard there and eat culls. With a nearly full moon, more than likely there would be a mob of them.

  That curve was sharp. And the fog hung low in it. If it was going to freeze and be slick anywhere, that bend was it.

  Willow gave herself a pep talk. “Mobs of deer, sharp corners, frost, and freezing fog—bring it on.”

  None of that scared Willow as much as the thought of losing Con before she found out whether he was actually Jack. Or if he wasn’t, whether she could let herself fall in love with Con and love him for himself.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The fog hung close to the lowlands around Jack. Damn, he hoped it didn’t obscure his vision when Kennett came. Jack hated weather complications.

  Near him in the orchard, a ten-point buck nibbled low-hanging fruit. He had five or six does with him who ate culls and windfall. And two more does in the orchard across the road. The nearly full moon must have brought them out. The grower who owned this orchard wouldn’t be pleased. And neither was Jack. Deer were too damned unpredictable.

  Just then a pair of headlights swung into view. Jack’s two pieces of duct tape lit up. He aimed six inches beneath the top one, took a deep breath, and held it as he rested his finger on the trigger.

  Just as he began applying pressure to the trigger, one of the damned does ran into the road. She stared into Jack’s headlights and froze. Jack eased up and swore.

  Impaired by alcohol and blinded by Jack’s headlights, Kennett swerved too late to miss the doe.

  Jack heard the sickening sound of four thousand pounds of metal hitting flesh. Watched the deer fly and crash to the ground just off the road. Shane’s crunched truck veered off the road and slammed head-on into a big old granddaddy apple tree with an impact that shook the orchard.

  Looks like Lady Luck is on my side tonight.

  Jack hadn’t even needed to take a shot. The doe had done his work for him. He jumped to his feet, slid into his car, and turned off his headlights. If anyone came by, Jack didn’t want them to spot him.

  He grabbed his gas can, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and watched Shane’s truck. Shane didn’t move.

  Excellent.

  The doe’s mournful, whining bleat carried through the silent night, ghostly and eerie. After he took care of Shane, Jack would put the deer out of her misery.

  He took off at a run toward the accident site. He was nearly halfway there when the lights of another car coming around the bend lit up the ground fog. Jack swore to himself and fell to his belly on the ground again, hoping a Good Samaritan hadn’t just arrived on the scene to disrupt his mission.

  To his dismay, the car slowed and pulled over to the narrow shoulder of the road. The driver put the emergency flashers on.

  Jack put his scope to his eyes to get a better look just as a woman stepped out of the car.

  His heart pounded. Damn it all! What’s Willow doing out now?

  As Willow ran to Shane’s truck Jack lowered his rifle and listened to the deer bleating over the sound of Willow calling Shane’s name.

  * * *

  “Shane! Shane! Can you hear me? Are you all right?” Willow stood on her tiptoes and banged on the driver’s window of Shane’s truck.

  No response.

  The front of his truck was crumpled into the tree and smoking and hissing. Had Shane even braked?

  The dark shape of a wounded deer lay on the ground about twenty feet away. The deer bleated mournfully, raising the hair on Willow’s arms and neck.

  Poor, poor thing.

  Willow leaned in to peer into the driver’s side window. Her breath fogged the glass. She wiped it away with her sleeve.

  Shane was slumped over the wheel. A trickle of blood, black in the moonlight, ran down the side of his head.

  He wasn’t moving. She tried the door, but it was either jammed, locked, or both. She tried the passenger door. Same thing.

  She looked around desperately for help as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed 911. “There’s been an accident on Loop Road Two. Shane Kennett hit a deer and wrapped his truck around a tree.…

  “No, he’s not moving. I can’t get to him. His doors are locked or jammed shut. And the deer’s hurt and crying. Send an ambulance. Please, please hurry!”

  She barely registered what the operator told her, except that help was on the way. Her fingers shook as she slid her phone shut and the deer continued to cry.

  She should have asked them to send a vet. She’d been too upset to ask. Somehow she made it to her car and found her emergency kit and blanket.

  She grabbed the blanket and went to the deer.

  “You’ll be all right,” she crooned to the doe as she put the blanket over her. But she lied. She had no idea whether the deer would live through the night or whether the coyotes would come for her.

  Willow wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. Then she went to Shane’s pickup and leaned against it as she waited for help to arrive.

  * * *

  Jack watched Willow and the accident from a distance. Was she covering the deer with a blanket? His Pendleton wool Yellowstone National Park blanket? That thing cost several hundred bucks.

  He shook his head at her tender heart as he settled in. No way he was leaving Willow alone with the Rooster, even on the hope he was dead.

  The fog covered Jack’s misty breath as he waited. About five minutes later, an ambulance, a paramedic crew, and the police arrived.

  It didn’t take them long to get Kennett out of the car and load him onto a stretcher while the police interviewed Willow. Unfortunately, Kennett was moving.

  Finally, they loaded Kennett into the ambulance and it sped off. A tow truck arrived. Willow got into her car and pulled away. Jack seized his opportunity to head to Kennett’s to gather some intel.

  * * *

  Willow dropped her keys on the kitchen table and collapsed onto her sofa, still shaken from coming upon the accident. Shane drank too much. He wasn’t careful—

  Duke and Buddy! Shane’s killer Brazilian Filas. They were really just softies when you knew how to handle them. Who was going to feed them now? To Willow’s dismay, Shane kept them on the edge of hunger. He fed them once a day right before he went to bed. But he hadn’t made it home today.

  Oh, the poor things! She couldn’t stand to think of his dogs hungry and
thirsty and on their own. He treated them badly enough as it was. Behind his back, she frequently stopped by, brought them treats, and showed them some gentle loving. She had those vicious dogs eating out of her hand. She was almost as good with dogs as Jack had been.

  She got to her feet. She really didn’t want to go past the accident scene again. What about that poor deer? But she couldn’t sleep, knowing Duke and Buddy would be scrounging for food. They’d be locked in the house. Fortunately, Grant Cooper had shown her where he kept a key hidden outside. Shane was just staying in Grant’s place while he was here. She doubted he’d moved the key.

  The thought of going into the old farmhouse creeped her out. Built in the 1920s, it had all the eccentricities, creaks, and moans one would expect of something its age. Local legend held that the previous owner was a crazy old loon who haunted the place.

  But instead of sensing a haunting, all Willow felt at his place was a vague sense of evil. And totally perplexed that any sane person would have picked the hideous wallpaper in the kitchen.

  Locals knew that Old Man Terrence had died in his bed in the house a few years into the twenty-first century. He’d wanted to pass away in his 1960s bomb shelter, just in case the end of the world came while he was dying. He wasn’t convinced the Soviets no longer existed, claiming the breakup of the USSR in 1991 was all a clever hoax. He didn’t want them dropping the bomb on him during his final minutes.

  His son, who hated his old man, refused his last request. Terrence hadn’t changed a thing in the house after his wife died some years before he did. He died in his fussy bed upstairs, surrounded by dusty pink frills, cursing until his last breath. Rumor had it that he haunted the bomb shelter, waiting for final annihilation so he could be vindicated for all the flack he took about the shelter all those years.

  His son sold the house to Grant Cooper. He’d only made one improvement—he’d locked the bomb shelter.

  Ghost of Old Man Terrence or not, Willow didn’t want to go there alone.

  She grabbed her cell phone and called Con.

  * * *

  Having tranquilized Kennett’s dogs and locked them in the bathroom, Jack was making a thorough examination of Grant Cooper’s home, if you could call it that. House, maybe. The place was about as homey as the mausoleum of an old lady. The peeling floral wallpaper alone was enough to set Jack’s teeth on edge. The Rooster had picked a hell of a place to roost while he was here.

  Jack’s cell phone buzzed. Damn, what now? He looked at the number. Willow.

  Shit. He couldn’t ignore Willow. He glanced at his watch. One AM. Con would be asleep at the guesthouse. Jack answered, trying to sound groggy, as if he’d just been pulled out of sleep in Aldo’s comfy queen-size guest bed.

  “Con!” Willow sounded relieved, frustrated, fragile.

  Jack suppressed his instinctive protective urges. “Willow?”

  “Did I wake you?” Willow asked.

  Jack would have told her, No, I had to get up to get the phone anyway. Since that’s what Jack would do, Con couldn’t.

  “No problem. What’s wrong? What’s happened? Are you all right?” He knew very well what had happened. She’d inadvertently foiled his mission and rescued the enemy.

  Wives on missions—a damned nuisance! Every spy he knew said so.

  He could hope Kennett had died due to his injuries. Death by deer seemed like a good, ironic end to an assassin like the Rooster. Jack certainly wouldn’t be shedding any tears over him.

  Sadly, Jack wasn’t optimistic. The crash didn’t look lethal. And Jack was a pretty good judge of lethal.

  “I’m fine. It’s Shane. He hit a deer on his way home.” She launched into a brief explanation that pretty much matched the facts as Jack had observed them.

  At appropriate intervals, he made sympathetic noises.

  “Now I’m worried about Shane’s dogs,” Willow said. “He feeds them right before bed. I know he’d appreciate it if someone stopped by tonight and fed them. I’m the only one who can handle them.”

  Damn. The best-laid plans.

  “I don’t want to go to his place alone this late at night. It’s, well, it’s creepy out there in the best of times. I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you go with me?”

  Jack didn’t want her out there alone, ever. Besides the dogs, which were a bit loopy right now, any number of terrorists or assassins could be hanging out at Kennett’s. Just as Jack currently was.

  Jack jumped in to head her off. “You stay where you are. I’ll go.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet. But you’ll need the key. I know where one’s hidden. It’s kind of tricky to find in the dark.”

  Like hell he did.

  “And Shane’s Filas will tear you apart if they don’t know you.”

  He glanced toward the bathroom door. Not if you come armed with sedatives.

  “They’re bred to be aggressive and obey only their master, but they’re really just sweeties at heart once you get to know them and learn how to handle them,” Willow said.

  Jack doubted that. Filas were so aggressive they couldn’t be trusted around anyone other than their owners.

  “I’m the only one who can handle them. They like me. They’d attack anyone else. I still don’t know how Sam and Gus got past them the other night when they took Shane home. He must have been coherent enough to handle them.”

  Willow had disarmed Kennett’s guard dogs. Why did that not surprise Jack? She had him cornered. He couldn’t figure out how to wiggle out of this one and stop her from coming to Kennett’s.

  “I’ll pick you up,” he said. “Give me fifteen minutes to wake up and throw some clothes on.”

  Damn, now how was he going to explain the drugged dogs?

  * * *

  As promised, fifteen minutes later, bundled in a designer jacket only a dandy like Con would wear, Jack pulled into Willow’s driveway. He’d only had to drive back to Aldo’s, making a quick stop to put that deer out of her misery on the way, and retrieve his blanket, change, and head back out. A hell of a feat for fifteen minutes. He didn’t even have to get out of the car to get Willow. As he expected, she’d been waiting and watching for him. She dashed out of the house, breath frosty in the night air, the moment he pulled up.

  Seeing her made him want to wrap his arms around her and protect her. If he had half a brain and an ounce of courage, he’d grab her and run somewhere neither RIOT nor the Agency would find them. Unfortunately, such a place didn’t exist, not to his knowledge. Too many before him had tried to run and failed. Whether it took five minutes or ten years, RIOT and the Agency would find him. He rubbed his hands together and smiled at the woman he loved enough to die for and stay dead for as she got into the car.

  “Con!” Her eyes lit up when she smiled at him. “Thanks for coming.”

  They made the four-minute drive in silence.

  The Cooper house stood dark and foreboding in the fog and eerie blue light emanating from a mercury vapor light on the pole above. It didn’t take much imagination to picture it on the front of a Halloween greeting card. They got out. He followed Willow to a plastic rock with a key hidden inside and then to the front door.

  “I can see why you don’t want to go in there alone,” Jack quipped. “Freddy Krueger won’t be waiting inside with an ax, will he?”

  Willow laughed and shook her head as he followed her to the door. “Yeah, it’s a bit of a fixer-upper, isn’t it? Grant isn’t really into home repair. But the fog is adding to the atmosphere. Don’t believe all the ghost stories you hear around town about it, either.”

  “There are ghost stories?”

  She ignored Jack’s question, slid the key in, and unlocked the door.

  He angled to get past her. “I’ll check it out first.”

  Willow blocked him with her arm. “You’d better let me. Duke and Buddy will tear you apart.”

  “I think you just crushed my machismo,” Jack said.

  She gave him a smile that made him want to kiss
her as she reached into her pocket and pulled out two dog treats. “Sorry, but you don’t have the proper ammo.”

  “Dog treats? That’s all it takes?”

  She shook her head. “And a lot of love and attention.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, even though there was no one else around to hear and Willow didn’t know about the Rooster’s secret, and deadly, occupation.

  Good thing Jack had disabled all of Kennett’s bugs and security devices earlier. Jack was pretty sure that feeding Kennett’s dogs and invading his private territory was tantamount to signing your death warrant.

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret—Buddy and Duke think I’m their owner. But don’t tell Shane. It will hurt his feelings.”

  Hurt his feelings? Who the hell cared if Kennett got his tiny feelings hurt? Jack frowned his puzzlement at Willow. Why would the dogs think she was their master and did he really want to know?

  Willow nodded as if he’d asked a question aloud. “Yes, really.”

  Willow seemed to know what she was talking about, so he followed her in. Plus, old Duke and Buddy were going to be lethargic and wobbly on their feet for another four or five hours at least. He’d given them a gentle dose of PromAce. There was really no danger.

  “Brace yourself. The boys can be exuberant.”

  Not tonight, Jack thought.

  Willow flipped a light on. “Duke and Bud! Where are you boys?”

  Nothing but the complete lack of pitter-patter of big bad dog feet, and the wheezing of the old house as the furnace kicked on. The kitchen was empty.

  Willow let out an ear-piercing whistle.

  Jack jumped.

  She waved the dog treats in the air, made that sucking noise people use to call dogs, and patted her thighs. “Here, boys! Here, boys!”

  “I thought Filas were vicious guard dogs,” Jack said. “Shouldn’t they be attacking us by now?”

  Willow frowned. She turned to Jack, a look of fear and apprehension on her face. “Duke! Bud!”

  “Are you sure going looking for them is a good idea?” Jack said.

  She grabbed Jack’s arm. “Something must be wrong. Usually, they’d be beating down the door before I even got out of the car. What if they’ve gotten out and are gone?” Her voice cracked.