Operation Hero's Watch

“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.