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

“You already apologized.” And her eyes told him she’d already forgiven him.

“Yeah, but this will make me feel better.” He grinned his most engaging smile at her. “And besides, there are a couple of books here I wouldn’t mind reading myself. I’ll borrow them if you don’t mind.”

She didn’t say anything more, just added the book in her hand to the pile in the cart and followed Liam to the checkout. As the cashier rang up their purchases, Liam noted absently Cate’s taste in reading was eclectic, but the majority of books were fiction. Women’s fiction. Or at least that’s what his mother called the genre. Liam still thought of it as romance—books most guys avoided like the plague. All of a sudden, though, something occurred to him, bringing her choices into sharp focus. If Cate read romances, then that meant—in her heart of hearts—she still believed in love.

A rush of excitement swept through him, which he was hard-pressed to keep off his face. Cate still believed in love. Still believed men could have tender feelings for a woman as well as baser urges. Still dreamed dreams, despite what she’d been through. Which meant there was a chance for him. Unbelievably good news, since he was halfway to being in love with her already.

* * *

Vishenko’s men swarmed around the government official the minute he entered the airplane hangar. The pat down one of them gave him was much more thorough and intimate than any airport screener, but he didn’t protest. Another man ran a metal detector over him that pinged on his artificial left knee—he was forced to roll up his pants leg and show them the vertical surgical scar, then take out his wallet to display the ID card he used when he went through the metal detector at the airport, the one with a graphic X-ray picture of what his knee looked like now. A third goon ran an electronic scanner—a scanner that would detect any listening device he might be wearing—over his entire body with the exception of the artificial left knee that had already set off the metal detector. His heartbeat was a little faster than normal, but that was only to be expected...given what he was about to do.

In a long-ago era he’d been a US marshal. He’d protected witnesses with his life, and had the scars to prove it. But it had been years since he’d handled field assignments, since he’d put his life on the line. Not since he’d assigned himself to the team backing up Reilly O’Neill—aka Ryan Callahan—and Cody Walker when they confronted David Pennington. How long ago was that? he wondered, mentally trying to add up the years.

It had never been about the money. Even at his level within the government, his salary and benefits paled in comparison to what he could have earned elsewhere, so money had never been a motivating factor for him. But every man has his price, he reminded himself with grim smile. Every man has something he will risk everything for. He was no different.

Incorruptible. Everyone who knew him believed as much in his incorruptibility as in his omniscience. So no one would suspect what he was about to do. No one. And that dovetailed nicely with his overall plan.

* * *

“If you need a rest stop,” Liam told Cate when they were back on the road, “don’t hesitate to tell me. I know guys tend to forget women usually need to stop more often.”

“Okay.” There was a hint of reserve in her voice, a little shyness, and Liam guessed this probably wasn’t a conversation she was used to having. She glanced down at the bag in her hands—the one she’d refused to let Liam put in the back with their limited amount of luggage—then over at him. “Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate this, and I...well...thank you.”

“My pleasure.” And it was, he realized—just as much a pleasure as holding her had been last night. He’d never given a woman a gift that brought him as much joy as seeing the warm glow in her eyes at the thought of owning so many books. If he’d given her expensive jewelry it wouldn’t have meant as much to her.

They whiled away the next hours talking about books they’d read. Liam was surprised and yet not surprised to learn they’d read some of the same books, and had similar takes on them.

“Wasn’t it unbelievable how Isaac Cline played such a critical role in two of the worst natural disasters in US history?” Cate asked, referring to both Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History and John M. Barry’s Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. “And because of him, because of his actions so many years apart, both disasters were immeasurably worse than they could have been.”