Exception to the Rule

“Trouble in paradise?” He couldn’t help it, even though he knew the Big Brother Effect would only make her scowl.

Yep, she scowled, tugged on the sweatshirt. He didn’t know why she bought the things so damn large. “Watch your interpellation.”

Damn. Turnabout was fair play—and he’d have to look that one up. Still, he got the message. With effort, he closed his mouth on his opinions and questions. It didn’t matter that Carolyne had the brains, the pleasant features and sweet disposition that made him feel so protective even as he resented the failure of the male population as a whole to appreciate her. It didn’t matter that she was easily hurt, and that he never wanted to see that happen. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t ever quite approved of Scott’s failure to worship Carolyne properly, because really, what man could live up to his standards?

What mattered was that yesterday his cousin had called him from a pay phone, terrified because she’d heard rumors of a leak at work the same day she’d discovered a vulnerability in the new crop of laser-guided missiles. And she intended to fix it, but until then anyone who knew the weak point could exploit it. As soon as word got out that she could provide that information, she’d be a walking target. There would be international players desperate to exploit the problem before it was fixed, and there would be players trying to delay—or stop—her from fixing it at all.

Her teeth had been chattering.

So Rio had walked away from the Butterfly sailboat he’d been readying for early storage off Lake Michigan, and dusted off his retired secret-agent-man hat. He’d caught the first flight to Albany, grabbed a rental and driven up near Troy to find Watervliet and Carolyne’s charming, dormer-ridden home, surrounded by an astonishing display of fall color on the rolling hills around it.

Tomorrow they’d be on their way to a picturesque B&B in Mill Springs, Pennsylvania, where Caro intended to hide, working feverishly to patch the weapon’s weakness—after which said weakness would be a moot point.

Rio simply had to get her through the night. Or the packing. He wasn’t quite sure which was worse.

He leaned back in the chair, legs stretched out, and scratched the heel of one sport-sock-encased foot with the toe from the other. No shoes in the house, not with his grandmother’s influence still strong. “You know,” he said—and quite reasonably, he thought—” there’ll be shopping in Mill Springs. You can pick up anything you might forget.”

“Not anything,” she said tightly, having disappeared into her home office again. This time she came out with her laptop and unceremoniously dumped it in his lap.

He made an exaggerated grunt at the impact and hefted the thing. “I thought these things were supposed to be lightweight,” he said. “You know, portable?” But he’d heard her wax eloquent over the machine before, and knew it was loaded, the latest in RAM, CD/DVD r/rw drive, screen size and interfaces.

She said, “You’re such a Luddite. That machine has everything I need for this work and then some.” She tossed a black cordura case at him, one festooned with pockets he predicted would soon be bulging with peripherals of this and that sort. “Here, be useful, pack that up.”

“I am useful,” he said, dignity wounded.

A scuffing sound outside the door caught his instant attention. Swiftly putting laptop and case aside, he rose to his silent sock feet. Carolyne stood stiffly right in the middle of floor, so he put his hands on her arms and gently moved her aside, nudging her toward the office.

“Do you have a gun?” she whispered, the words barely squeaking out.

“I don’t carry anymore,” he reminded her, his voice as low as hers but more deliberately so. “Now find yourself a hidey-hole.” Dammit. He hadn’t expected trouble this soon.

Rio flipped off the floor lamp beside the chair he’d been in, and found the light switch to the hall. He padded through the dark house into the kitchen, easing up next to the half-glass door as he snagged a nice roll of quarters from the kitchen counter to weight his fist.

But no one came through the door. After a long moment during which Rio heard nothing but a screech owl off in the distant woods, he flipped the dead bolt lock and let the door drift open half an inch.

Nothing. Rio waited, breathing shallowly to concentrate on the sounds of the night, alerting to the faintest of noises near the end of the driveway. It bore checking…

But inside, Carolyne screamed, pure fear and panic. Rio bolted indoors to find the lights of the back hall blazing and Scott Boyle standing there looking annoyed and befuddled and sheepish all at the same time. Rio pushed past Scott to reach Caro where she curled up to fit in the bottom of the linen closet, shaking. “I’m okay.”

Not convincing.

“You’ve had a fright. Take a moment.” And then Rio raised an eyebrow at Scott, a silent demand for an explanation as he set aside the quarters.

“I’ve got a key.” Scott put his hands on his hips, shoving back a cheap suit jacket, and looked at Rio in clear guy-speak that meant And you? “Carolyne told me she had an emergency business trip. I just came by to say goodbye and wish her a good trip. I damn sure wasn’t expecting to find all the lights out and Carolyne hiding in the linen closet.” Scott looked at Carolyne, who quickly looked away.

Rio broke the awkwardness of the moment by helping his cousin to her feet. “It’s my fault,” he said, ushering Carolyne back into the living room, where she chose a corner of her boxy, stylish, color-on-color-patterned couch and sank into it, hugging her arms. “I’m on the road, needed a place to stay. I didn’t realize it would be so inconvenient for her.”

“Ex-spy,” Carolyne mumbled. “Hear a noise, find a closet.”

Scott gave Caro a troubled look—and Rio understood why. Caro was shy and quiet and hadn’t dated seriously before meeting Scott. He’d filled the holes in her life—and he was used to being the one who watched over her. Scott himself seemed to need the stability of the relationship; Caro’s gentleness reached past his rough street-kid experience, giving him the unconditional acceptance he’d never had—not to mention that his relationship with Caro gave him a certain status. But then again, that last bit of internal commentary came from the biased proud-cousin viewpoint.

And now wasn’t the time to let it show. Rio lifted his shoulder in a slightly sheepish shrug. “Occupational hazard,” he admitted. “I’ll give you a moment to sort it out.”

Rio found his shoes and slipped out; they didn’t seem to notice. Scott said something that sounded conciliatory, and there were a few moments of conspicuous silence that, up a little closer, would probably sound like kissing noises.

Rio escaped to prowl the yard and driveway until the cold bit through his sweater, making him clumsy. The small of his back tightened, threatening pain…threatening memories of a night he was still trying to put behind himself. The night that had left him with a CIA disability pension and a part-time job at his brother’s dock—and left him free to come cover his cousin’s back.

He clenched down on the memories as relentlessly as his back reacted to this cold, sweeping one last glance across the woods opposite the entrance to Carolyne’s driveway, peripherally alert to Scott’s departure. He didn’t like the noises he’d heard. And while he and Caro had planned to leave first thing in the morning, Rio thought about Caro’s leak at work and made the sudden decision to leave just as soon as she was packed.

He headed back for the house. As he reached the porch he dropped stealth mode, and Caro’s voice rang out. “Come on in, you big spy goof—he’s gone. Good thing you got out of the biz, if you’re going to be that noisy.”

“Hey!” Rio came through the storm door, closed the house door behind him, offering a quick “Tada Ima”—“I am returned to the dwelling”—as he slipped his shoes off and went right back to the conversation he’d interrupted with his habitual announcement of arrival. “Social sneaking and professional sneaking are two entirely different things.” He leaned against the kitchen counter as Caro appeared in the living room with a stack of clothes, openly watching her. Noting especially the frown around her eyes, the one that hadn’t been there before Scott arrived and had nothing to do with her anxiety over her discovery at work. “You look upset.”

“I guess I am.” She dropped the clothes on the couch. “I don’t like putting him off.”

The best response was sometimes no response at all. She didn’t need to think about this, not now. “You have anything else ready to take out to the car?” Because he, too, had been unsettled by Scott’s visit—now Scott knew Rio had been here, and that news could mean something to the wrong ears. If anyone hunted Caro, they’d come to Scott first. He had no way of knowing how damaging his offhand comments might be. Rio wanted to get her packed and ready to go as quickly as possible.

Soon enough they’d hit the road, heading south and west across the state to put them just outside Erie, with Rio’s butt and back both needing a break they weren’t likely to get.

Rio shifted in the driver’s seat again, hunting a better spot. A glance at Caro showed her still asleep; Rio gave her a wry little smile, hoping she stayed that way, for she’d need all the sleep she could get if she was going to solve the laser-guidance-code weakness before the rest of the world caught up with them.

Kimmer turned the Taurus northward toward Lakemont, ruing every moment lost but not about to lead her tail in the correct direction. With dawn yet to break and no one else on the road, she wouldn’t easily lose her unwanted parasite, though he’d probably expect her to try.

So she did.

She found a familiar little set of back roads and unofficial access roads, and she flipped off her headlights to navigate the darkness, taking them in a few lopsided circles until she hit the main road again and put her foot to the gas, not bothering with the headlights with dawn now on the horizon.

She didn’t think they’d be so easy to lose; a glance in the rearview mirror showed them right in place, hanging back far enough to be casual. They can afford to be. Where was she going to go? On an impulse she turned the headlights on after all…let them think she didn’t recognize them. Ubiquitous little Ford sedan in the most popular color of the year, seen only in darkness…

With no sign of concern, she drove onward. They obliged by falling back even farther, occasionally going invisible—a bronze car without headlights in the dim light of a cloudy morning. Thank you. Now I can pretend I don’t see you at all. In fact, between the hills and curves, they were truly out of sight when Kimmer reached the gas-and-snacks convenience store for which she’d been waiting. She pulled right up at the front of the store, humming lightly to herself, and took the time to transfer her stoutest little toothpick knife from her small contoured backpack purse to her back pocket and to jam a floppy, obscuring knit hat on her head.

Then, as if the goons of the day hadn’t pulled up beside her in the interim, she got out of the car, slipped into the pink raincoat and sauntered into the cookie-cutter convenience store. An aisle for chips and snacks, an aisle for candy, an aisle for items pretending to be actual food, and freezers lining the walls. Kimmer picked out a wide-necked bottle of Starbucks mocha Frappuccino and resisted everything else but a bag of pretzels.

At the counter, she paid for her two items with a hundred—but held on to the bill as the prematurely aging man behind the counter tried to take it away. “Give me ten minutes,” she said, “and make a big commotion in here, and the change is yours.”

“Big commotion?” he asked, wary suspicion settling in the deep frown lines in his forehead. “How do you mean, ‘big commotion’?”

Kimmer shrugged, unconcerned. She’d had him as soon as he realized the size of the pay-off, an eagerness betrayed by his slight forward lean and his attempt to mask eagerness with reluctance. “Whatever you want to do. Get the attention of the man waiting outside, and your job is done. But if you don’t, I’ll be back for that change.”

This time his hesitation was a short internal assessment of Kimmer herself. Did she mean it? Could she pull it off if she tried? She smiled at him. Yes, I mean it. Yes, I can do it. He blinked, not expecting such a veiled threat from a woman he’d already summed up as a pixie in a bad hat. For an instant he hesitated, uncertain if he wanted to get involved, but the hundred dollars waiting between them made up his mind. He gave a short nod, and Kimmer released the bill.

“Ten minutes,” she reminded him.

“Or you’ll be back for the change,” he finished for her, his voice dry as dust.

She only smiled again, stuffing her purchases into her leather backpack and heading not for the door, but for the exit sign at the back of the store.

To his credit, he didn’t question her.

At the back of the store, Kimmer wove her way between pallets and a particularly odiferous Dumpster, and then through the raggedy, dried goldenrod at the side of the building. At the corner she pulled off the hat and wedged herself behind a big freezer with giant blue ice cubes painted across the front, her eyes on the lone man occupying the sedan. She had only a few more moments….

There—he looked down at something. A cell phone, one that held his attention as he dialed. Kimmer scooted to her car and behind it, leaving her backpack purse next to the driver’s-side back wheel, checking the sedan’s side-view mirror to see that her new pal was involved in conversation, his eyes on the well-lit fish bowl of a store. Arrogant of him, just sitting here out in plain view. He’d done just as she wanted, assessing her by her feeble attempt to lose him and by her apparent inattention to his continuing if stealthy presence. It’s nice when you’re predictable, she thought at him. No doubt he intended to vacate the small, ragged parking lot as soon as he saw her heading out of the store.

Not gonna happen. With one crouching step she crossed the wide space between cars, ending up snugged in behind the sedan’s bumper. In an instant she retrieved her stout toothpick blade, jamming the tip into the sidewall with only enough force to penetrate the outer layer of rubber, and not enough to alert the man within the car. She didn’t bother to glance at her watch, knowing she’d used up her ten minutes. Any moment now…

“Hey!” the storekeeper bellowed, muffled through the glass storefront. “What’re you—put that down! You can’t go back there!”

On a scale of one to ten, Kimmer put his acting in the negative numbers—but gave him points at the loud crash from within the store. For a hundred dollars, he’d apparently found something to knock over.

The sedan shifted as the man within took notice—and a second crash piqued his curiosity beyond tolerance. The driver’s door opened; the car rocked as the man exited.

Kimmer took advantage of the moment to drive the knife home, twisting it to shred rubber and release air. As the bells of the store’s front door jingled, she crouch-walked behind the car to the other back tire—he’d probably risk driving on the minispare to follow her, but there was nothing to be done about two flats—and jammed the knife home.

He might not notice right away, but it wouldn’t take long.

At that she stood, retrieved her backpack and slid behind the wheel of the Taurus. With no haste, she backed out into the road and headed onward. Another mile or two and she’d take the turn that would lead her back to Route 17 and onward to merge with 86.

She watched her rearview mirror as the sedan appeared on the road behind her. It took only a moment before dark strips of rubber flew out behind the sedan, followed by a dual line of sparks. The car slowed to a stop. Kimmer smiled into the mirror and gave the emerging driver a little wave he probably wouldn’t even see. She hoped that the object he flung to the ground in disgust wasn’t his cell phone.

On the other hand, all the better for her.

As she reached her turn and headed back in the direction she should have been going all along, Kimmer settled into the car’s worn but comfortable seat, digging the bottled drink out of her backpack. Ah, caffeine. It would serve her in good stead; with the time she’d lost, she’d go without much in the way of driving breaks to reach Mill Springs before her quarry. Although somewhere along the way, she’d have to touch base with Owen…and let him know someone was already on to Hunter’s involvement.

She twisted the cap from the Frappuccino without taking her hand from the wheel and raised it in salute to the man she’d left behind. “To you,” she said. “Thanks for tipping your hand so soon.”

But she wondered if he’d be the only one.

Kimmer stretched hugely, her secured cell phone ear bud in place as she stood beside the little station wagon and waited for Owen Hunter to answer the phone. He didn’t always answer on the first ring, but he always answered.

“Chimera,” he finally greeted her, using her handle in a way that made it seem more personal, not less, than her real name. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until you reached Mill Springs.”

“I was followed out of Hunter,” she said. “Would have called even sooner, but I wanted to get some miles under my belt after the delay.”

“Have any trouble?”

Kimmer made a dismissive noise. Pfft. “An amusing diversion. But you might want to warn Carlsen’s fiancé. Someone found out about this assignment right about the same time you did—he could be tapped. They might even go after him for more information now that I’ve dumped their clever tail.”

The faint clicking of his keyboard told her that even as they spoke, someone in his surprisingly vast resource pool was being alerted to do just that. After a slight delay, he asked, “You lost a lot of time?”

“I’m only just past Erie—nice big anonymous rest stop here. For all I know, Carolyne Carlsen left north Albany in the middle of the night with her cousin the bodyguard, and they’re right on my tail. Do you know how hard it is to coax speed from this old thing?”

She heard the frown in his voice. “I had the engine checked—”

“You should have looked at the alignment instead. This car took a knock at some point—push it over sixty and it rattles hard enough to chip your teeth.” Kimmer rummaged in the tote bag of provided goodies and dug out the nail polish, giving the bottle a few good hard shakes. Time to start transforming herself into Bonnie Miller. “Another two hours and I might make it to Mill Springs.” She applied quick-drying nail polish with quick, economical strokes. Red, red, red. “It’s not perfect, but I don’t foresee any problems—at least, not as long as the gas gauge on this thing is working.”

Owen cleared his throat, a faint but definite sound. “Perhaps you’d better fill up along the way.”

Mill Springs, 50 Miles.

The hand-painted sign greeted her from the side of the road, part of an advertisement for Hillside Gas & Food. Beneath it perched a more precarious seasonal sign declaring Hunters Welcome.

Meanwhile, no signs of further interest in the Taurus, no random acts of stupid motorists in her path, no signs of construction on roads turned classically wretched at the state line…another hour and she’d be there. Not bad, considering the state of the car—and that she’d turned off the interstate to travel quieter roads as soon as the opportunity arose. She’d also taken advantage of another short break to apply a metallic-blue eye shadow and pull her almost nonexistent bangs aside with a tiny plastic barrette, and to play with her long-buried accent. I’m Baw-nie Miller….

The hilly Pennsylvania woods unrolled before her, full of waxing fall color; the number of dead deer by the road reminded her that it was indeed the whitetail’s most active season. Just another of the memories she’d put behind her that now flooded back full force, erasing the intervening years as if she hadn’t crawled out of this place on pure grit and desperation. Foolish to have brought the camera…she needed no pictures of this area.

But she snarled back at those memories. This trip wasn’t about the past, no matter what Owen might think. It was about the present, and a woman in danger. It was about the way Kimmer had changed her life so she was the one who could deal with such situations—instead of running from them.

It was about the way she needed to put gas in this game little car.

As promised, the entrance for Hillside Gas & Food appeared just beyond the next curve, although the sign over the gas pumps had taken some wear and now read Hillside Gas & Foo. The pumps themselves were old enough that they didn’t take credit cards; gas purchase was purely via honor system. Kimmer filled the nearly empty tank and pulled the car away from the pumps and off to the side. She checked to see that her little red barrette hadn’t slipped, took a deep breath that somehow felt necessary, and headed for the store.

Bells announced her arrival. She found an older man behind the counter, thinning white hair in a halfhearted comb-over, cheeks red from the same rosaceae that had roughened his nose. He nodded when she told him “Fifteen dollars,” and went to wander briefly through the store, trying to decide between caffeine in Frappuccino or caffeine in Mountain Dew, smiling slightly at the man’s instant curiosity and his following gaze. A little bored, a little nosy…harmless combination. Just enough of a proprietary nature to let her know he owned the place.

The glass-front shelves held plenty of dairy and plenty of beer, but nothing so esoteric as her favorite cold coffee; she grabbed the soda instead. A few desultory cans of soup caught her eye; she snagged one, hefting it thoughtfully. Lunch? Peanut butter crackers would be easier to eat on the road….

Reluctantly, she decide to return the soup to the shelf—but the door bells jangled and when she glanced up at the new customers, surprise rooted her to the spot.

Two of them. Tall and blond and sturdy. Kimmer snapped off an inward curse, and not a nice one. The very people she was trying to avoid on this road. And as Ryobe Carlsen held the door for his cousin Carolyne, he said with straight-man humor, “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some good foo.”

The man at the counter gave a hearty but insincere laugh. “Gotta get that sign fixed one of these days.”

Kimmer eased back slightly. She would just stay here and examine the soup can until they left, head bent, body language small and inconspicuous—while still taking advantage of this first opportunity to scope them out in person. Knowing better than to think too hard about it, but just taking the impressions and trusting them.

Carolyne Carlsen was a tall woman, figure hidden beneath a worn sweatshirt with a patchwork design on the front, pretty features marred by smudgy circles under her eyes and a wrinkle of worry on her brow. Tense, for certain. Tired, and not the kind of woman who easily withstood this kind of stress. She headed straight for the back corner of the store that held the bathrooms, lugging a shapeless crochet purse. Still…not as worried as you should be, Kimmer silently told the woman’s retreating back. Not given the tail Kimmer had shaken that morning.

Whatever the trip had held for them, it didn’t seem to have affected Carolyne’s cousin. He moved with relaxed strides—not the fluid power of some strong men, but with a matter-of-fact presence. Only in retrospect did she see the strength and confidence there.

She bet he fooled a lot of people.

He grabbed some Oreo cookies and a couple of colas, paid for his purchases and the gas he’d just pumped, and leaned against the counter to wait for Carolyne, somehow failing to knock over any of the gimmicky cardboard displays of fishing lures, Steelers memorabilia, and spiced jerky sticks. His driver’s-license photo hadn’t done him any more justice than such pictures ever did. They hadn’t truly conveyed the astonishing lines of his face, a perfect combination of strong Danish bones and lean Japanese angles.