And in his case, it wasn’t just bad form to get eyeballed—it was suicide.
So as much as his body was screaming for him to get a move on, close in, change locales, he had to stay put.
Nightfall. He had to wait until nightfall, and even then, he needed to be careful. That security system of hers was a no-break sitch: His specialty was killing people, not disarming state-of-the-art wiring, so the chances of his getting in without triggering it were nil.
Assuming he even wanted inside where she lived. The issue was how to best protect her, and it was hard to know what was worse—her in there alone with him on the perimeter. Or him in there with her.
Dimly, he heard his stomach growl and the sound made him feel keenly the number of hours that had passed since he’d eaten last. But he shrugged that off, just as he had countless times in the field.
Mind over matter, mind over body . . . mind over everything.
He just wished like hell he knew what Grier and her pops were talking about.
Standing in her kitchen and staring at her father as he looked at her little lineup of what-the-hells, Grier had so many questions she didn’t know where to start.
One thing was certain: When her father reached out to pick up the business card, his hand was trembling ever so slightly. Which in anybody else was the equivalent of a full-blown epileptic seizure.
Alistair Childe was a warm man with a good soul, but he rarely showed emotion of any kind. Especially if it was an upset kind of thing. The only time she’d ever seen him cry had been at her brother’s funeral—which had been bizarre not just for the rarity of his tears but because the two hadn’t really gotten along.
“Who gave this to you?” he asked in a voice so thin it didn’t sound like him in the slightest.
Grier sat down on one of the stools at the island and wondered where to start. “I was assigned a public-defender case yesterday. . . .”
The story was a quick tell, but it got a big reaction: “You let that man come over here?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes, I did.”
“Into the house.”
“He’s a human, Dad. Not an animal.”
Her father all but fell onto the other stool and then he struggled to unzip the neck of his fleece. “Dear God . . .”
“I’ve resigned from the case, but I went to Isaac’s apartment just now—”
“What in the world made you go there?”
Okay, she was going to ignore that outraged tone. “And that was when I was given the card and told to call if I saw Isaac again. And I also got that Life Alert thing.” She shook her head. “I’d seen the man before. I swear . . . a long time ago.”
If her father had been pale before, now he turned the color of fog, not just blanching, but going opaque gray. “What did he look like?”
“He had a patch over his eye and he—”
She didn’t finish the description. Her father bolted up off the stool and then abruptly had to catch his balance on the counter.
“Father?” She grabbed his arm in alarm. “Are you all—”
She was not surprised when he just shook his head.
“Talk to me, please,” she said. “What is going on here?”
“I can’t . . . discuss it with you.”
Grier dropped her hold and stepped back. “Wrong answer,” she bit out. “Totally wrong answer.”
As she glared at him and all his resolute silence, she realized why she’d felt so oddly comfortable around Isaac: Her father was a ghost as well. Always had been. She’d literally grown up and now lived under the fear that at any moment he could disappear forever.
And her client had given off that exact same vibe.
“You’ve got to talk to me,” she said grimly.
“I can’t.” The eyes that looked at her were those of a stranger in familiar garb—as if someone had taken a mask of her father’s features and stepped in behind the surface dressing to stare outward. “Even if I could . . . I couldn’t bear to contaminate you with . . .”
He sagged as if bowing under a great mountain of weight.
Strange, she thought. There were definitely times as you got older when you began to see your parent as a person rather than Father or Mother. And this was one of them. The man in her kitchen was not the all-powerful lord of house and office . . . but someone who was caught in some kind of bear trap, the jaws of which were seen only by him.
“I need to go,” he said roughly. “Stay here and don’t let anyone in. Turn the security system on and do not answer the phone.”
As he went to leave, she blocked his way to the front hall. “Unless you tell me what the hell is going on, I’m going to walk out that door the moment you leave and parade around Charles Street until I either get mowed down in traffic or am found by whatever you’re so afraid of. Do not push me on this. Because I will do it.”
There was a moment of glower-to-glower. And then he laughed harshly. “You are my daughter, aren’t you.”
“Through and through.”
He started walking, doing laps around the granite-topped island.
It was time, she thought. Time to get the answers to all those questions that she’d wanted to ask about him and what he did. Time to fill the voids of mystery and shadow with tangible answers that were long overdue.
God, as much as Isaac was a complication, he was almost like a blessing from above.
“Just talk, Dad. Don’t be a lawyer—don’t think everything through.”
He stopped on the far side of the cooktop and stared over at her. “My mind is the only thing I’ve got, my dear.”
After a moment, he returned to the stool he’d dropped onto earlier, and as he sat down, he rezipped the neck of his fleece—which was how she knew she was going to get the truth, or some measure of it: He was pulling himself back together, regaining who he was.
“When I was in the army as an officer, I served in Vietnam, as you know,” he said in the direct, matter-of-fact tone that she’d heard all her life. “Then I went to law school, and I was supposed to go back to civilian life. But I didn’t really get out of the military. I’ve never really been out.”
“The people who came to the door?” she said, realizing it was the first time she’d ever spoken about them.
“It’s the kind of thing that you never really leave. You can’t get out.” He pointed to the card. “I know that number. I’ve dialed that number. It takes you right into the heart . . . of the beast.”
He went on to speak in general terms, offering loose description instead of clear definitions, but she filled in the blanks: It was government ninja-style, the kind of thing that justified the paranoia of conspiracy theorists, the sort of organization that you were likely to see in movie theaters and comic books, but that sane civilians didn’t believe really existed.
“I don’t want that”—he jabbed his finger at the card again—“anywhere near you. The idea of that . . . man . . .”
When he didn’t finish, she felt compelled to point out, “You haven’t really told me anything.”
He shook his head. “But that’s the thing—it’s all I’ve got. I’m on the fringes, Grier. So I know just enough to be clear about the danger.”
“What exactly did you do for . . . whoever ‘them’ is?”
“Information gathering—I was strictly in intelligence. I never killed anybody.” As if there were a whole murder department. “A big part of what drives the machine is information, and I have gone out and gotten it, and brought it back. I have also been called upon from time to time for my opinion on certain international figures or corporations or governments. But again, I’ve never killed.”
She was incredibly relieved there was no blood on his hands. “Are you still involved?”
“Like I said, you’re never truly out. But I haven’t had an assignment in . . .” Long pause. “Two years.”
Grier frowned, but before she could ask anything further, he got up and said, “Your former client is in over his head if he’s gone AWOL from them. He can’t save himself and you can’t help him or save him, either. If that Isaac character shows up here again, call me immediately.” He swept the card, the cloth strips, and the transmitter up and put them in the pocket of his fleece. “I won’t let you get into this mess, Grier.”