The image of her as a little girl sitting in the middle of her bed singing Madame Butterfly made him want to time travel to take her bike riding the hell away from there. But was he doing any better at protecting her in the present?
She leaned forward on her elbows. “Just so we’re clear, you have absolutely no reason to be jealous of Anthony. Nothing happened with him, and I made sure he understood that when I spoke to him yesterday. I even had a friend from work pick up Mimi. I would never, never betray your trust that way.”
“I believe you.” And he did. He knew how she felt about what her family had been through with her father’s longtime affair.
“What’s wrong then?” She clasped his arms, holding on tight, her eyes confused, hurt and even a little angry. “Why are you so...distant? You know those walls destroyed us last time.”
He shoved away from the table, holding himself in check. Barely. But he wouldn’t be like her father, shouting and scaring the hell out of her. “This whole mess with Zhutov and you having to second-guess every call that comes into your life. Do you expect me to be happy that there are people asking around about you? That I had to take you to a remote corner of the world to make sure no one is after you—because of me?”
“Of course you have a right to be worried, but if Colonel Salvatore says there’s nothing to worry about, I believe him.”
“Nothing to worry about—this time.”
“We don’t always have to assume the worst here.”
A siren split the air like a knife, cutting her off midsentence.
He recognized the sound all too well. Someone had tripped the alarm on the outer edges of his property.
Holy crap. His body went into action, his first and only priority? Securing Jayne.
“Conrad?” Her face paled with panic. “What’s that?”
“The security system has been tripped. Someone’s trying to break into the compound.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and hustled her toward the front steps. “You need to lock yourself in the panic room. Now.”
Eleven
Jayne hugged her knees, sitting on a sofa in the panic room. Her teeth chattered with fear for her husband. She’d barely had time to process Anthony’s confusing call before the alarm had blared. Conrad had hooked an arm around her waist, rushed her indoors and opened the panic room. He ushered her in and passed over a card with instructions for how to leave...
If he didn’t return...
Horror squeezed her heart in an icy fist with each minute that ticked by. She’d already been in here for what felt like hours, but the clock on her cell phone indicated it had only been sixteen minutes.
Someone was trying to break in and there was nothing she could do except sit in this windowless prison while the man she loved faced heaven only knew what kind of danger. Desperately, she wanted to be out there with him, beside him. But Colonel Salvatore had been right. She was Conrad’s Achilles’ heel. If he had to worry about her, he would be distracted.
She understood that problem well.
There wasn’t anything she could do now other than get her bearings and be on guard. Surveying the inside of her “cell,” she took it in, for all the good that did her.
As far as prisons went it wasn’t that bad, much like an efficiency apartment, minus windows and with only two doors—one leading out and the other open to a small bathroom. A bed filled a corner, a kitchenette with a table in another. A table and television rounded out the decor.
A television? She couldn’t envision anyone in a panic room hanging out watching their DVD collection. Angling sideways, she grabbed the remote control off the end table. She turned on the TV. A view of the front yard filled the flat screen.
Oh, my God, she was holding the remote to a surveillance system. She wasn’t isolated after all. Relief melted through her. She could help by monitoring the outside. She yanked her cell phone from her pocket and saw...she still had a signal so the safe room hadn’t blocked her out.
She thumbed through the remote until she figured out how to adjust the views—front yard, sides, the river—all empty. Her eyes glued to this thin connection to Conrad, she clicked again to a view of the outward perimeter including the clinic.
Not empty.
In fact, a small crowd gathered outside, even this late in the day with the sun setting fast. In the middle of the crowd, four lanky figures sat with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
Teenagers.
Probably not more than fifteen.
And if she guessed correctly, they were some of the same kids who’d played soccer with Conrad just that afternoon.
She clicked the remote, the camera scanning the view until she found Conrad standing with Dr. Boothe. Her husband had his phone out, talking to the doctor while thumbing the keypad. She sagged back on the sofa. If there was any danger to her here, Conrad wouldn’t be so far away.
Still, she stayed immobile, waiting for his call. She wouldn’t be the fool in the horror films who walked right into a killer’s path in spite of all the warnings. But how many times in her life had she sat waiting and worrying, unable to connect or help? She couldn’t be a helpless damsel in distress or a passive bystander in her own life.
Her cell phone buzzed beside her, and she saw an incoming text from Conrad.
All clear. Just a break-in at the clinic for drugs. I’ll be home soon.
A moment of sheer fright was over in an instant. Was this how Conrad lived on the job? Not fun by any stretch of the meaning. But then, not any more stressful than the time she’d been working in the E.R. when a patient pulled a knife and demanded she empty the medicine cabinet. He’d been too coked up to hold the knife steady, and the security guard had disarmed him.
There weren’t any guarantees in life, regardless of where she lived.
She picked up the clearance code and punched in the numbers to open the door back into the house. She texted Conrad an update.
Made it out of the panic room. No problems with the code.
She hesitated at the urge to type “love you” and instead opted for...
Be safe.
Seconds later the phone buzzed in her hand with an incoming text.
This will take a while. Don’t wait up.
Not so much as a hint of affection coated that stark message, but then what did she expect? He was in the middle of a crisis. She shook off the creeping sense of premonition.
For a second, she considered returning to the panic room and just watching him on the screen, but that seemed like an invasion of his privacy. If she wanted this relationship to work between them, she needed to learn to trust him while he was gone. And he needed to learn to trust that she could handle the lifestyle.
So what did a woman do while her man was out saving the world? Maybe she didn’t need all the answers yet. She just needed to know that she was committed to figuring them out.
She knew one fact for certain. Living without Conrad was out of the question.
* * *
The moon rose over the clinic, lights blazing in a day that had run far too long. Bile burned his throat as he watched the last of the Agberos loaded into a police car. Ade, a teen from the soccer game, stared over the door at him with defiant eyes that Conrad recognized well. He’d seen the same look staring back at him in the mirror as teenager.
Jayne and the house were safe, but four teens he’d played with just this afternoon had tried to steal drugs from the clinic. While one of them tried to escape, he’d strayed too close to the house. Boothe had said the attempts were commonplace. Agberos weren’t rehabilitated in a day—and many of the Area Boys could never be trusted.
Now wasn’t that a kick in the ass?
Intellectually he understood what Boothe had told him a million times. In a country riddled with poverty and lawlessness, saving even a handful of these boys was a major victory.
Still, defeat piled on his shoulders like sandbags.
The ringleader of this raid really got to him. Conrad had played soccer with Ade and his younger brother Kofi earlier. He thought he’d connected with them both. And yeah, he’d identified with Ade, seen the seething frustration inside the teen, and wanted to help him build a stable life for himself. Would the little Kofi follow in his big brother’s footsteps?
There wasn’t a damn thing more Conrad could do about it tonight. He jerked open the door to the Land Cruiser, hoping Jayne had turned in for the night, because he wasn’t in the mood for any soul searching.
The drive home passed in a blur with none of his regular pleasure in the starkly majestic landscape that had drawn him to this country in the first place.
Ahead, his house glowed with lights.
The house where Jayne waited for him, obviously wide-awake if the bright windows were anything to judge by.
Conrad steered the Land Cruiser along the dirt road leading up the plateau, his teeth on edge and his temper rotten as hell. He floored the Land Cruiser, the shock absorbers working overtime. He couldn’t put enough space between him and the mess at the clinic, now that the cops had everything locked down tight again.