Liam's Witness Protection (Man on a Mission 4)

Cate shook her head. “Is this some guy thing, like you giving Alec a black eye?”

Liam grinned. “Not exactly, but close. Shane gave him a medium set of lumps, but Cody gave as good as he got, then offered to take the rest of us on. But at that point Shane laid down the law, said anyone who pounded on Cody would have to pound on him first. Shane’s the oldest, so...” He shrugged. “We welcomed Cody into the family.”

Cate shook her head again, as if she would never understand the workings of the male mind.

“Sorry,” Liam said. “I was supposed to be showing you around. This is your bed,” he said, pointing to the double bed her suitcase was lying on.

“Where will you sl—” She stopped short, as if she wasn’t sure he was staying there with her, but Liam knew what she’d been going to ask.

“There’s a cot in that closet,” he said, pointing. “I’ll use that while I’m here.” He continued as if she’d never interrupted. “That door leads to the bathroom, and that’s obviously the kitchen.” A kitchen table and two chairs stood neatly in front of the stove and the sink. “And that’s the back door. The generator’s out there, and I guess now’s as good a time as any to crank it up so you can have water. I’ll be right back.”

He started toward the back door, then reversed course and returned to stand in front of Cate, trying to reassure her with his presence. He very carefully didn’t touch her, but he wanted to. And he knew he wasn’t entirely successful keeping that out of his expression. “You’ll be okay?” he asked. “I’ll only be gone a couple of minutes. Feel free to look around.”

* * *

Cate waited until the back door closed behind Liam, then her curiosity got the better of her and she started on a voyage of discovery where the cabin was concerned. The cabinets in the kitchen contained not only dishes, coffee cups and glasses, but row upon row of canned goods of all kinds and boxes of prepackaged dry food—the nonperishables Liam had mentioned earlier. The closet contained the cot Liam had told her about, and tidy stacks of sheets, pillowcases, pillows and blankets on the shelves. She took one book out of her precious bag of books and put it on the nightstand next to the bed to start reading that night, then stashed the bag out of the way on a lower shelf.

She opened the door to the bathroom and saw a smallish room, with much of the space taken up by a large, old-fashioned claw-foot tub. She wasn’t big on baths—when living in boardinghouses a bath meant cleaning out the tub each time, before and after using it. So she was glad to note there was also a showerhead. Towels, washcloths, soap and other toiletries were stacked neatly on the shelves between the sink and the tub. Liam had told her no one actually lived here, but she’d never have known it. Everything they needed was readily available.

She was just closing the bathroom door when Liam returned. “I started the pump on the well,” he told her. “There will be water soon.” He opened another closet door, one Cate hadn’t gotten around to, and made a sound of satisfaction. “I thought I remembered the water heater was in here,” he said. He searched in a drawer next to the stove and found a box of kitchen matches. “I’ll get the pilot light going so you’ll have hot water later on.”

When he was finished, he dusted off his hands and tucked them in the back pockets of his jeans. “Is it okay?” he asked her. “I know it’s not fancy, but—”

“But it has everything we need,” she finished for him. “I already found that out.”

“And it’s safe,” he added. “About as safe as you can possibly get.”

The sound of footsteps thudding on the front porch drove the smile from Liam’s face, and he pulled his SIG SAUER from its shoulder holster so quickly Cate didn’t even have time to draw a breath. Then he was pushing her inside the bathroom just as someone knocked on the front door. “Not a sound,” he breathed before he shut the bathroom door with her on the inside, himself on the outside.

Cate strained to hear what was going on in the other room, even going so far as to place her ear against the door, but all she could hear was the rumble of deep male voices. Then the bathroom door opened, and Liam smiled at her.

“False alarm,” he told her, indicating the tall, dark-haired man standing just inside the front door, wearing a uniform and a cowboy hat with some kind of insignia on both. “Cate, this is Ryan Callahan, sheriff of Black Rock. Sheriff Callahan, this is Caterina Mateja, but she goes by Cate.”