She laid her bags on the walkway to clear her hands, and poised her right hand on the grip of the pistol strapped to her chest. If it came to that, she could draw and fire in less than two seconds.
The lock turned and Jolaine paused before shoving the door open about 50 percent too hard. She’d intended it to float inward, when in fact it exploded open and bounced off the perpendicular wall.
In a single glance, she eliminated the possibility of a bad guy, but she sensed danger — from Graham. He stood between the beds, poised in a comical Bruce Lee — wannabe pose, his feet wide set, his fists clenched.
“Relax, Graham,” she said. “It’s me.”
He didn’t move.
“Graham?”
“Where have you been?” He looked younger than she’d last seen him — more vulnerable.
“Didn’t you find my note?” she asked.
“You left me.”
“You were asleep,” she said. “And I couldn’t exactly take you along half-naked.” If it were a normal day, she would have reminded him of her warning back in the house to get dressed.
“I thought you were gone,” he said. His chin muscles trembled.
“I’m sorry I worried you,” Jolaine said. “I thought I left it all in my note. I’m here now. I didn’t leave you. More importantly, I wouldn’t leave you. You have to believe that. You have to trust me.”
As Jolaine spoke, she removed the key from the lock and pocketed it. Keeping her right hand free, she picked up the bags and stepped inside. She pushed the door shut.
Graham’s eyes reddened. “Are my parents dead?”
“I don’t know.” Jolaine launched the words to get them out before she could show that she didn’t believe them. “But I think they may be. Hand to God, I don’t know anything more than you do. But what we both know leads mostly to bad conclusions. I’m sorry.”
Graham stared at her as he processed the words. He seemed to have found a neutral place in his mind, neither calm nor stressed. It reminded Jolaine of the mental space she sought when she was about to step into harm’s way. It was the spot you went to when you realized that tomorrow may never come, yet you were too old to cry.
“What’s happening, Jolaine?” Graham half sat, half fell back onto the bed.
Jolaine had learned a long time ago that hyper-stressed situations required hyper-fidelity to the truth. “I don’t know,” she said. “We’re under attack, and as far as I can tell, we can’t trust anyone.”
Graham’s eyes darkened.
“What?” Jolaine asked.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
Jolaine placed the shopping bags onto her bed, the one closest to the door. With both hands clear, she pointed to her eyes with both forefingers. “Look at me,” she said.
Graham rolled his eyes, dismissing the overkill.
“No, I’m serious,” Jolaine said. She’d modulated her voice to be serious and then some. “Look in my eyes.”
Graham’s entire face morphed into a scowl. But his eyes met hers.
“Think of the person that you trust more than anyone else in the world,” she said. “You can trust me fifty points more than that.”
Graham’s scowl deepened. “Why? You’re not even part of our family. If people are trying to kill Mitchells, why wouldn’t you just hand me over and go home safe?”
Jolaine wished that she had something lofty to say. Again, she defaulted to the rawest form of the truth. “Because that’s what I signed on for,” she said. “Keeping you safe is my job.”
Graham seemed unsatisfied. “Is that all of it?”
She knew what he was trolling for. He wanted to believe that her interest was personal — that she was motivated to protect him because she cared. With all that had transpired, she knew that he was in a dark place, that he needed affirmation that he wasn’t alone in the world. Believing that her mission was to protect Graham-the-individual as opposed to Graham-the-obligation would put him in a better place emotionally.
But preservation of his emotions was not on Jolaine’s priority list. Her focus was exclusive to his physical body. When the dust settled on all of this madness, she could claim victory if the boy still had a heartbeat.
“That’s most of it,” Jolaine confessed. Reading his eyes and the sagging of his shoulders, she added, “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care for you. This personal protection stuff is complicated.”
Graham took his time forming his next question. “Bottom line. Are you supposed to give up your life for mine?”
Emotion stirred in Jolaine’s gut. “My job is to see that you’re still breathing at the end of every day,” she said. “I have no intention of dying in the process.”
“Good,” Graham said. “I don’t think I could live with the thought that someone had gotten killed protecting me.”
Jolaine was thunderstruck. She’d never heard a selfless word from him before.
He gestured toward the bags on the bed. “So, what did you buy me?”
The Defiance County Memorial Airport offered precious little in the way of creature comforts, but it had a long, flat runway that was more than capable of handling the little Lear that a client named Mannix had made available for Security Solutions’ short-notice call. It was a nice thank-you present to acknowledge Jonathan’s safe return of Mannix’s daughter from a very unpleasant place.
Boxers flew the plane, as he always did — there were few machines with wings, wheels, or rotors that Boxers couldn’t pilot with the best — and Jonathan sat up in the cockpit with him. In the back, in the area where Mannix no doubt entertained his hotshot friends and clients while in flight, Jonathan and Boxers had stacked duffels filled with the tools of their trade. That translated to long guns, pistols, body armor, a few explosives, surveillance toys, and enough ammunition to launch an invasion.
Once on the ground, they needed a car, but they needed one without the traceability of a rental. Here’s where Venice’s command of the Internet came into play. While the guys were airborne, she’d worked the online ads and found an SUV for sale that would fit the bill. She’d contacted the owner and negotiated a figure that was ten percent above his asking price, on the condition that he have the vehicle at the airport in time to meet Jonathan’s flight.
You’d think that the spectacle of two men carrying a couple hundred pounds of equipment divided into four duffel bags would attract attention in an airport, but therein lay an important benefit of using the civil aviation terminals. People minded their own business. After parking the Lear in its assigned slot and locking it up, they just walked straight through the Spartan departure lounge and back out into the sunlight.
Boxers pointed to a ten-year-old blue Ford Expedition that was parked at the curb. “Is that it?” he asked.
As if to answer the question, the driver’s door opened and out stepped a guy in his sixties. Tall and trim, he wore all the accoutrements of a cowboy, from the jeans to the boots to the hat and the plate-size belt buckle. The man approached readily, yet warily. This was a guy who’d been around the block a few times, and from the lines etched into his face, Jonathan sensed that he’d seen as many bad times as good. Not a man to jerk around. He wore a sleeveless denim jacket covering a T-shirt, leading Jonathan to wonder if he, too, was concealing a firearm on his hip.