Safe Passage

Scott hit the wheel, swore again.

Surveillance was a junior agent’s beat.

His beat was out there, in the international field, in the wilds of the Borneo jungle, under the relentless sun of India’s Thar desert, in the hot red sands of Namibia. Not here. Not in the stifling, dripping, cool, gray stillness of a place he’d once called home.

He didn’t have a home. Not anymore. But right now he had no choice. He’d almost lost his leg.

And his mind.

It was this, or a desk job, while he recuperated. And he’d rather die than push a pen behind a desk.

He snorted at the irony of his situation. Because his cover was that of a full-time paper-shuffler and pen-pusher. He was to be Scott McIntyre. A writer. A futurist. It would put him at liberty, Rex had said, to ask questions, to get the doctor’s views on things like macroeconomics, social trends, globalization, American imperialism.

And Honey, he’d added, would help break the ice.

Yeah. Right.

It was almost dark by the time he found the narrow farm road, picked out the house number on a faded green mailbox. Grass and weeds grew up between the rutted tire tracks that constituted the driveway. The truck jounced up to the front porch. Honey yipped with glee.

“Oh, shut up, dog!” She made him feel like a redneck arriving on the farm in his beater. All he needed was a shotgun behind the seat and load of beer cans in the back.

Scott pulled to a stop, threw open his door. Honey dug claws into his thighs and scrambled over him, promptly relieving herself in the grass. Scott scratched his head. “Okay. Sorry, pooch. Guess you gonna want food, too, huh? Let’s see what Rex has packed for supplies.”

He grabbed his old, gnarled walking stick, hesitated, fingering the ancient knots in the smooth, durable wood as if they’d somehow yield an answer. A reason for it all.

The dog yipped again, jerking him back to the present. Scott shrugged off the sensation of buried memories scratching at locked mental doors, climbed out of the truck and tentatively tested his leg on the ground. It felt okay. Better than it had in weeks. He could almost put all his weight on it. “Small mercies,” he muttered as he limped up the porch steps, pushed open the front door.

He flipped on the lights.

Honey’s paws skittered over wooden floors as she explored the premises, butt wiggling in a crazy hula of excitement.

Scott checked out the rooms. More than he’d ever need. The kitchen was big and airy. And the windows looked out onto Dr. Van Rijn’s neighboring property.

“Sweet,” he told Honey. “I can wash the dishes and watch the Bug Lady at the same time. Ain’t life grand. Come, let’s see if we can find you some doggy chow before it gets too dark out.”

Scott counted five large cardboard boxes in the back of the truck. One was marked Computer, another Books. Yet another was marked Kitchen. He sliced the tape on the kitchen box with his army knife and tore back the cardboard. In the fading light he could make out a box of cereal, some tins, and a humungous bag of dog kibble.

Then he cursed Rex.

How in hell was he supposed to carry all this crap with a walking stick in one hand?

His buddy had probably done this on purpose. Just to make sure he turned to someone for help. Just to make sure he met some locals.

“There’s no way I’m going to be reduced to begging someone to help me carry a couple of boxes,” he mumbled. Honey circled his feet with excitement.

Scott dropped the tailgate with a clunk, maneuvered the kitchen box to the end. Dropping his cane, he used both hands to grab the box. He flexed his knees, slowly lifted the box, trying to transfer most of the weight through to his core ab muscles, shoulders and thighs and onto his good leg. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and took a few steps toward the porch.

Pain sparked out from his knee, seared down his calf, shot up his thigh. He swallowed it. Jaw clenched, he made his way, step by painful baby step. And in his mind he heard the heavily accented voice of Dr. Ranjit Singh from the Mumbai hospital, rattling off dire warnings about what could go wrong with his leg if he didn’t follow the recuperation procedure, if he didn’t keep his weight off his new, fake knee. Pain, swelling, slippage, infection. He could cope with those. It was the risk of breaking the bone below the new joint on which his knee was anchored that concerned him most. Or the threat of a blood clot.

But it was not enough to stop him from carrying the box. Minute beads of perspiration pricked through the skin of his forehead as he stepped through the front door. He made it a few more paces and slumped to his haunches with a grunt of pain.

He hunched over the box, rested his forehead on the cardboard, letting wave after nauseating wave of pain flow over him. His heart thumped against his chest from the exertion. “Oh, sweet Mother Mary,” he whispered to no one in particular.

But Honey heard. She quivered, licked his face, sat beside him, watching, her liquid brown puppy eyes almost level with his.

“You know, Honey, you actually look like you understand. What is it about dogs that—” He saw the change in Honey.

She stiffened. The fur on her neck rose.

It stopped him dead.

Scott was so used to living in the wild he’d almost developed an animal’s sense of a presence himself. He could feel the hair on his own neck prickle with that awareness now.

“You drop this?”

He swiveled the instant he heard the voice.

His hand shot instinctively for the knife at his ankle. In another heartbeat he’d have thrown it.

But he froze at the sight in front of him.

The most striking woman he’d ever seen. At his door.

He swallowed.

Her stance was wide, her muscles tensed, knees flexed. She held his wooden cane across her body, one end in each hand, as if to deflect the knife he held in midair.

As reflexive as his reaction had been, hers had been more so.

Scott stared, realized he had his knife aimed at her heart.

Shaken, he slowly lowered the arm that held the blade. He slipped the knife carefully back into the sheath at his ankle, his eyes never leaving hers.

Honey snarled, head low, hackles raised.

But the woman didn’t flinch. Not even blink. Her jaw remained clenched. She stared straight at him with penetrating silver eyes.

Scott could almost see her mind computing, trying to second guess, to figure out what had just happened. Lord knew, he sure was.

She made the first move, the muscles of her shoulders visibly relaxing as he moved his hand away from the knife, safely back in its sheath.

She stepped forward, held his wooden cane out to him as if an offering of peace. “I think you dropped this.” Her voice was low, like smoke over the desert, and it came from lips that invited sin.

He stared at his cane in her hands.

Then he looked up into her eyes. They were set above strong cheekbones and they were shaped like almonds. Large and light with impossibly thick, dark lashes. There was a wildness, a recklessness, that lurked there. Something he recognized. Something that reminded him of vast spaces and untamed tribes.

The shape of her face was exotic. Foreign. Her skin was a soft olive tone. Her hair, lush and dark. It fell below her shoulders in a soft wave. The image of her burned into his brain, in the way he had trained his mind to capture the tiny details of each new face he encountered on a mission.