Colder Than Ice

“So what are you looking for?” She shoved the icy, dewy glass into his hand.

He took a long pull, mostly to give himself time to come up with a convincing answer. Then he lowered the glass, licked his lips. “Just looking. You spend a lot of time with my grandmother, after all.”

“Oh. And you think I might be some sort of a con-artist, out to fleece her? Maybe offer to reshingle her roof and then vanish with her money, something like that?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just…curious about a woman who lives in a small town like this for a whole year and only makes one friend. One elderly, vulnerable friend.”

“Maude Bickham is far from vulnerable. And who said she was my only friend?”

“She did.”

She lowered her head. “You done with that water or what?”

“No.” He took another drink, a slow one. He could see it was pissing her off. She wanted him out of there—now. When he swallowed, he nodded toward the punching bag. “So you box?”

“You want a demonstration?”

He blinked in surprise.

“Look, I know what you’re doing. I saw that brown car go by. It was nothing, okay? I’m fine. Perfectly safe all by myself. Have been for over a year now. No bogeymen have come calling. And if you knew your grandmother at all you’d know what she was up to with all this make-believe worry about me walking the streets alone.”

“She’s up to something?”

“Of course she’s up to something. You’re single, I’m single. She’s probably hoping you won’t even come back home tonight.”

“Oh,” he said. Then he lifted his brows. “Oh. Well, there’s no danger of that happening.”

She blinked, clearly not sure whether she’d just been insulted.

He let it hang there for a moment, then added, “Your bed is way too small for both of us.”

She snatched the water glass from his hand, turned and marched to the front door. “Very funny. Tell your son I’ll see him at noon.”

“I will,” he said following her. “And, Beth?”

She stood there, holding the door open, his glass in one hand. He was glad he’d drained it, or he thought he might be wearing it.

“What?”

“Thanks. For offering to tutor Bryan, and for the advice. I mean it.”

Her bristles softened almost visibly. “Like I said, Josh, I’m no expert.”

“That’s ten times the expert I am.”

Smiling just slightly, she nodded, and he thought he was forgiven for intruding and even for snooping. She didn’t like people looking out for her. He’d been warned about that, he thought, studying her eyes, how green they were, and the stubborn set of her jaw. Arthur had sent federal agents to protect her, but she always spotted them and sent them packing. That was why, he’d said, he wanted someone else, a civilian, and Josh had been the logical choice. Josh and his former partner had a very successful private security firm; they’d gone into business together after leaving the ATF. After the raid. After he’d shot Beth.

A wave of nausea rose and receded with the thought as he stared at her, the curve of her neck, the little pulse he could see beating there after their run. Alive. God, it was a miracle.

In truth, he thought, Arthur Stanton must have had a whole other set of reasons for sending Josh, of all people, on this mission—reasons Josh still wasn’t certain he understood.

“Do I pass inspection?”

He shook free of his thoughts and realized he’d been staring at her. Her cheeks were a little pinker than they had been just from the run. Embarrassed? Flattered, maybe?

“Sorry. You’re…you’re a beautiful woman, Beth. I got distracted there for a minute.” And he still was. Did she look this good to him because she really was as beautiful as she seemed? Or did she only look that way to him because he was so God damn glad to see her alive?

“Thanks,” she said. “I think. Goodbye, Josh.”

It was his cue to leave. Sighing, he stepped outside, and Beth closed the door.

He didn’t leave right away, though. He walked down the road a short distance, then stopped and looked back. He wasn’t used to cases where the client didn’t want to be protected, much less those where she wasn’t even supposed to be aware of her bodyguard’s presence.

Much less those where you don’t particularly want to leave the client’s side, his inner voice scolded.

He ignored it. He liked being able to have someone watching his clients 24/7. And though it was doubtful, there was always a chance that brown car might come back. Its driver could just be waiting for him to leave.

So he would spend a few minutes doing surveillance, just in case.

The brown car didn’t return. But Beth did step out onto the porch. She looked around carefully, up and down the road. And he thought maybe she was looking for the brown car, too, but he couldn’t be sure.

He could be sure, though, of the item she held in her hands. He figured any man who’d worked in law enforcement could spot a gun from three hundred yards away, just by the way a person held it, the shape of the thing, its weight. Identifying firearms in the hands of suspects was something he’d had drilled into him during his training. You didn’t want your agents shooting people for pulling out wallets or cell phones, after all.

He hadn’t lost the skill.

Beth had a gun in her hands. A large caliber semiautomatic handgun. Black, not silver. From here it looked like a .45; a damn big gun, and the scope on the top made it look even bigger. You didn’t see scopes on handguns very often. Avid hunters seldom had them, because avid hunters had much better luck with shotguns. Militarily trained snipers rarely used them, because rifles were so much more accurate. Professional killers used them, because, though huge, they were easier to conceal than a shotgun or rifle would be.

Beth Slocum meant business. She could probably take down a small elephant with that thing.

She held the gun two-fisted, in front of her body, muzzle to the ground, arms extended. She handled the weapon as if she knew how to use it.

She was nervous, he thought. But she was ready, too. Or thought she was.

Whether that readiness would make her safer or put her at greater risk remained to be seen.

Beth looked up and down the street, waiting, watching, listening. She didn’t see anyone. Probably, she told herself, the brown car had been nothing more than a sightseer or nature lover. Probably her blood pressure was going through the roof over nothing.

After several minutes she went back inside, hit the release and let the fully loaded clip drop from the hollow butt into her waiting palm. Then she locked the gun in its assigned drawer, next to the tiny derringer. The key was on a chain around her ankle. She returned the clip to the top of a bookshelf, where she could grab it fast but no one else would ever notice it.

Her telephone was ringing. She snatched it up and whispered hello, half-afraid the man she’d been thinking about—Mordecai, not Joshua—would somehow start whispering to her from the other end.

“Hey, Beth. It’s Julie.”

“And Dawn!” Dawn called from somewhere in the background. Not on an extension, though.

Beth closed her eyes against the rush of sheer pleasure hearing her daughter’s voice brought welling up inside her. God, it was heaven to hear her voice. Warm, sweet heaven. The night of that horrible raid, Dawn had been only a baby. Beth had been shot, certain she was dying, when she’d given her daughter to her best friend, begged her to take Dawn out of that place. And Jewel—Julie now—had done it. She’d raised Dawn as her own, believing, as the rest of the world had, that Beth had died in the raid. By the time Beth found them again, Dawn had been happy, thriving, and calling Julie “Mom.”

And yet…. “Are we private?”