Live and Let Love

  Certain markings on the whiteboard also became visible under the beam of Jack’s flashlight. Ah yes, Kennett must have played with one too many spy kits as a kid.

  Jack cautiously stepped through the maze of trip wires as he made his way toward the whiteboard. What the hell would happen if he slipped up and struck a wire? They were obviously plastic, like fishing line, only made or coated with phosphorous. No fear of being electrocuted here. So what did all these wires do?

  Near the whiteboard and laptop, he fell to a squat. At that level, he had a view of the maze of wires. They were connected to a string of dart guns and blowguns.

  Poison-tipped darts, Jack thought. Probably tipped with something undetectable and fast acting.

  Off the top of his head, Jack could think of half a dozen poisons that would do the trick. He even had a few favorites. He didn’t, however, have any intention of finding out firsthand which one was Kennett’s poison of choice.

  Jack stood and went to work on the laptop, installing a flash drive to back up the contents. While the backup was in progress, he got out his smartphone with its dozens of CIA apps. While shining the black light on the easel, he snapped picture after picture as he flipped through the pages. Using sophisticated encryption and shielding techniques, he sent them off to NCS headquarters.

  He didn’t have much fear they would be intercepted. The bomb shelter was shielded by Kennett, too.

  Jack was just finishing up with his photo shoot and getting ready to set the ignition devices he was going to use to blow up Kennett and his stash of fertilizer-inducing death when a motion in his receptor goggles from the spy cam he’d set by the barn entrance caught his attention in the corner of his glasses. Willow was searching Kennett’s room. Shit.

  * * *

  Willow wiggled and wriggled and poked Shane until he rolled off her slightly and she managed to get out from beneath him. On the positive side, at least she had up-close knowledge that he was fine. His breathing was regular and he was making happy noises as if dreamland was treating him well. No need to call the doctor as far as she could tell.

  But as deadweight the man was substantial. Her pulse raced as she grabbed his legs, which were heavy and hard to move, too. With enough effort to cause her to break a sweat, she hefted Shane’s legs around onto the bed. She pulled off his boots, stared at the zipper of his jeans for a quick second, shook her head, and decided not to go there. Shane could sleep in his clothes. She’d rather not touch him.

  She grabbed the comforter and pulled it over him before surveying the room, which was a pit. And that was putting it mildly. Shane needed a maid. In the worst way.

  Willow frowned. What had Jack seen in here that caused the alarm she’d seen on his face? How was she going to find it? How was she going to find anything in here?

  The only housekeeping Shane had done in the room was to make the bed. Small consolation—that had caused her a problem, too.

  Willow got on her hands and knees and looked under the bed, hoping to find Shane’s store of treasures. That’s where she kept hers; why wouldn’t he?

  But the only things beneath the bed were dust bunnies. She got up and tried the closet. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a musty odor. He needed some cedar hangers and lavender sachets to put in there.

  She paused and tried to think like Jack. What would he be looking for? Unfortunately, she wouldn’t recognize an electronic bug if it zapped her onto her butt. Or a hidden spy cam, encoded secret message, or dead drop.

  Dead drop! Maybe Shane kept a hollowed-out rock? One with secret messages inside. Low-tech, yes. But Jack had told her a dead drop was still the most effective method of getting a message out without it being intercepted.

  She scanned the room. No rocks. Just a lot of dirty, smelly socks on the floor. She went to the dresser Shane was using and gently opened the top drawer—underwear and more socks, ostensibly clean ones.

  Shane snored and flipped over.

  The movement startled Willow. She jumped and put her hand over her heart.

  This is a dumb idea. Really stupid.

  Which didn’t stop her from opening drawer after drawer. And finding nothing.

  Finally, she tiptoed out of the room, gently shutting the door behind her. She felt disappointed beyond belief. There was nothing in Shane’s room that she could see that would have set Jack off.

  Con, with his immaculate personal habits, would have been appalled at the state of the room. That could have set him off.

  She gently crept down the stairs, careful to not wake Shane. As she was heading toward the chair to get her coat and purse, she passed Grant’s study. The door was open.

  She hesitated.

  Well, why not? She’d snooped everywhere else. Maybe Shane was using Grant’s study while he house-sat and ran the orchard for him. She still held out hope that Con was Jack and Shane was a dangerous terrorist or foreign spy. If there was anything in that study that would make her case …

  She gently pushed the door open, letting light from the living room flood the study. She didn’t dare risk turning on a light.

  Grant’s study was not what Willow would call perfect and ordered, but it was less messy and seemingly more cared for than the bedroom.

  She tiptoed to the desk. A computer was on. She took a peek at the screen, but it was password protected. She tried a stab at a few passwords, typing in Duke’s and Buddy’s names and even Shane’s birth date, but none of them worked.

  She didn’t have time for twenty questions, or the million or so it might take for her to guess correctly. An invoice receipt on the desk caught her attention.

  She picked it up and read it.

  What? She couldn’t believe her eyes. This was a receipt for pesticides and fertilizer.

  Her mouth fell open. Nothing sinister in that. Just …

  Shane, you big cheat! You’re helping Grant perpetrate fraud.

  Everyone marveled at the quality of Grant’s organic fruit and the high yields he got without using pesticide. Because his apples were “organic” he commanded a higher price.

  Well, this explained a lot, including the yield. Shane was helping Grant deceive—claiming to be an organic farmer while using tons of chemicals.

  If she hadn’t already dosed Shane with chemicals, she’d be tempted to slap him. Not that she believed in violence. But the man was swindling people. Or helping Grant to, anyway.

  She gently set the receipt back in its place on the desk, being careful to make sure it was exactly where she’d found it.

  What was she going to do about Shane and Grant’s deception? Where in the world was Shane storing all those pesticides and chemicals? And how was he able to use them without anyone ever seeing him do it?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Willow checked on Shane once more before she left. He was sleeping with a smile on his face. She shook her head, wondering what he’d remember in the morning. Willow hoped he wouldn’t be at all suspicious that she’d drugged him. And why should he be? If he were an innocent man and not an enemy agent. And besides, she had Buddy as backup. He was okay after eating a caramel. Surely Shane would see that.

  Thinking like a true spy, Willow remembered to switch out the doped caramel for the good on her way out. She stopped by to pet Buddy and Duke where Shane had penned them in the kitchen. Buddy looked fine, totally healthy, as he let her pet him and licked her hand. Whew!

  “Nice dog. Good Buddy.” She rubbed his face and avoided his wet dog kiss, laughing. “What is it with the males in the house, huh? They all want to slobber all over me.”

  Well, Shane had been right about Buddy. That, at least, was a relief.

  Willow slipped on her coat, pulled on her gloves, and let herself out of Shane’s house, latching the door behind her.

  She slid into her car and banged the steering wheel in frustration. She hadn’t learned a thing. She’d completely failed in her mission. She still had no idea whether Shane was an enemy agent or not. And she’d gotten nothin
g to blackmail Jack with to make him take her with him when he left.

  All that fear and being pawed over for nothing.

  * * *

  Jack had just let himself out of the bomb shelter when he heard the door to Shane’s house swing open and slam shut. Willow leaving, he hoped. He could have watched the action from his receptor goggles, but he slid through the shadows to the apple-barn door and peeked through a crack.

  Willow was walking to her car. He took a deep breath, relieved to see her leaving Kennett’s unharmed, and filled with too many emotions to separate and name.

  What was up with him? He’d only wanted to protect Willow and get the hell out with his feelings intact and the protective scar he’d formed over his heart in place. But over the last week something had happened. Something had changed. The scar had ruptured and now he was bleeding love and emotions all over the place. Not good for a man in his position.

  In the end, he’d still have to leave her. And stay the hell away from her forever. No more peeking. No more coming back for just a look. Or to save her from an enemy combatant. Damn, what if someone came after her again looking for him?

  He shook his head. Once he left, that was the end. No turning back. He’d be dead to her. Forever. It was just too damned dangerous—for her and him. She was too intuitive. Too close to the truth.

  He didn’t like the thought of stepping into an eternity without her. It wrenched his heart out.

  What about Con? Could he win Willow’s heart and make her forget Jack? Could she live with him—a straightlaced, normal guy with a slightly exotic accent and no assassin tendencies? At least none that were in the cover brief. He was perfect for Willow—Jack without the faults. Guilt-free. And family to her neighbor.

  The bigger question was—could Jack fool her forever? Would the Agency let him? And did he want to? Would he be happy in Con’s shadow? And then there was that damned chuff—how would Con ever explain that?

  * * *

  The house was suspiciously quiet when Willow walked in her front door. No tapping of tiny paws on her wood floors. No cute, yelpy little squeaks that passed for barks. No pleasant aroma of caramel and scented wallflower plug-ins.

  She wrinkled her nose and took a deep sniff. The house smelled faintly of vomit and urine. And her floors—covered with excrement and accidents.

  Willow’s heart thumped wildly in her chest. She slapped her thighs and whistled. “Spookie! Here, girl.” Willow’s voice shook. She was supposed to sound reassuring.

  She raced through the entryway past the dining room and scanned the living room. When she turned back over her shoulder into the kitchen, her heart stopped. An overturned can of dark Dutch cocoa lay at the edge of the kitchen counter, its contents spilled into a pile on the floor. A pile with paw prints in it. A pile that had been tracked around the kitchen floor.

  “Spookie! Spookie, where are you?” Willow was screaming now, not even trying to hide her worry.

  Being a Halloween pup, Spookie had gotten into the Halloween candy the very first week Willow had her. How the tiny pup had managed to bump the table, knock over a bowl of mini chocolate bars, chew through the wrappers, and consume two of them Willow never knew. But ever since, no matter how sick it made Spookie, she sought out chocolate wherever Willow hid it, however cleverly concealed and seemingly out of reach it was. For that reason, Spookie was never allowed in the shop—too much temptation and opportunity for chocolate tragedy.

  Willow rarely kept chocolate in the house. But she’d gotten out the cocoa from the high shelf where she kept it to dust the caramels with at the last minute, hoping to hide any lingering bitterness of the allergy meds. She’d been so distracted and caught up in her own plans, she must have gotten careless.

  She didn’t even remember setting it on the counter. She would have sworn she’d put it away. She’d certainly put the lid on tightly, hadn’t she? No, she must not have sealed it. And now her little dog—

  Willow raced toward the bedroom following an awful trail of doggie vomit. “Spookie!”

  Just then, Spookie staggered out of the corner of the living room from behind the chair, her little white face covered with cocoa that looked comically like a fake beard. Her muscles were twitching so that she walked jerkily and tottered as if she were drunk. She had absolutely no coordination.

  Willow ran to her and scooped her up, cradling her and crying at the same time. “What have you done, baby? How long ago did you eat that nasty cocoa powder?” Willow rubbed her cheek against her poor dog’s face, fearing the worst and almost glad Spookie couldn’t answer.

  The lack of coordination and muscle control was a bad sign. A very bad sign. The nearest twenty-four-hour emergency veterinary clinic was almost half an hour away. The bad way Spookie looked, Willow feared they didn’t have half an hour. Any minute now the seizures could start.

  The last time this had happened, that time when Spookie was a pup, Jack had administered something to make Spookie throw up and had rushed her to the vet just in time. The man took extreme driving to a new level. He could drive like James Bond on the best of Bond’s days.

  Willow scratched Spookie’s poor, aching tummy.

  It took practically no chocolate at all to kill a small dog Spookie’s size. And pure cocoa powder was the most lethal form of it. Half an ounce could be fatal.

  Willow grabbed her cell phone and dialed Con’s number.

  * * *

  Jack let himself into Aldo’s guesthouse, hyped up and angry at the situation he was in. He hadn’t felt this potent combo of emotions since his junior high years, the years he was bullied before he got the courage to fight back. It was the kind of emotion that made some teenage boys into killers who shot up their high schools, and others into heroes. It was the kind of emotion Jack had vowed never to feel again.

  He disabled his alarm systems and took the stairs two at a time. In the main apartment, he began to pace, which was what he did when he needed to think and work things out.

  Tomorrow morning, Kennett would go into his apple barn as usual, well before he opened for business and there was any chance of a customer stopping by. He’d open his cash register, which would set off a charge that would blow him to bits.

  It wasn’t the cleanest kill, but it would have to do. Jack would be positioned nearby to hit the disable button, just in case anyone else happened by. Jack had a zero collateral damage record and he sure as hell wasn’t going to blow it now.

  But after the explosion, what did he do? Leave town without a word? Without saying good-bye to Willow? Never to see her again?

  Wouldn’t that make Con look guilty of something? Emmett would give Jack time to close out business. But did he want it?

  Just then his smartphone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the screen, picking up the call as soon as he saw who was phoning. “Willow?”

  “Con, come quickly! It’s Spookie. I was out and she got into the cocoa powder. Now she’s … she’s losing muscle control and starting to twitch. I need help. I can’t lose her. She’s the last living thing I have from Jack. I don’t know what to do.” Willow sounded on the edge of tears.

  Jack’s heart simply stopped for a beat as a memory of Spookie as a pup and the first time he and Willow had nearly lost her flashed through his mind. Then his heartbeat kicked in with a fury and he sprang into action, rushing to the bedroom for his kit of chemicals and meds. “Hang on, Wills. I’ll be there in a minute. Just make Spookie comfortable.”

  He clicked his phone shut, remembering too late he shouldn’t have called her Wills. He’d broken his cover for an instant.

  It took Jack less than a minute to get to Willow’s house. Willow was waiting for him by the door with Spookie trembling in her arms. When she saw him, she ran to the car.

  He reached across and opened the door for her. “How’s she doing?”

  Willow shook her head as she slid into the passenger seat with Spookie.

  Jack looked at his dog. The dog looked ba
ck at him with pleading eyes, begging for help. Damn it all, he felt helpless. “Has she vomited?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He wouldn’t need the hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting. Instead, he pulled out a bottle of activated charcoal and held it out for Willow to see, dropping all pretense of uninterested stranger. “Give her this.” He told Willow the dose. “It will prevent her body from absorbing more of the poison.”

  He rubbed the dog’s head. “It’ll be all right, girl.” He wanted to say, Daddy will take care of you, but he bit it back just in time.

  “What kind of chocolate did she eat and how much?”

  Willow was already coaxing Spookie to eat the charcoal. And Spookie was balking. Why was it that dogs would eat shit and resist what would save them?

  Willow somehow managed to get a pill down Spookie’s throat as the dog whined and cried. “Dutch cocoa. Too much.”

  Jack nodded. “Where’s the nearest emergency vet clinic?”

  “Half an hour away.” Willow looked into his eyes, pleading more poignantly than even his dog’s eyes for help.

  Ah, the hell with it. He was going to have to drive like Jack to save Spookie. “Give me directions. I’ll get us there in ten.”

  “Alive?” she asked.

  He grinned, shifted into reverse, swung the car around, and peeled down the driveway with gravel flying behind him.

  Con’s cover car was not the vehicle he would have picked for a drive to survive, but it would have to do. He preferred the precision and control of a stick shift. Sometimes an automatic such as this was just too sluggish.

  Using his peripheral vision, he pulled onto the road without stopping. There was nothing coming.

  “Take a left here,” Willow said at the first intersection.

  Jack didn’t stop at that stop sign, either. He fired up the car to over 60 on the 35 mph speed limit road.

  The moon shone, nearly full, lighting their way as he took the corners of the curving road at full speed. Despite the worry and concern, he couldn’t help grinning. He hadn’t had an opportunity to drive like this, with Willow by his side, in two terrible years.