Sometimes Morgan went with her to work when he got too bored staying at the house. She could only imagine how that must be wearing on him; he was accustomed to living a high-adrenaline life, jumping out of planes and getting into firefights. He seemed to enjoy the small-town quirks, such as the parade and the divorce drama. Whenever he was at the police station with her, visitors would appear, usually bearing food as the whole town seemed to be on a mission to fatten him up. For whatever reason, he was getting acquainted with a surprising number of the townspeople, somehow becoming part of the warp and woof of local life.
One afternoon when she collected the mail there was a letter addressed to Morgan Rees, plain white envelope, no return address.
The letter had to be from Axel because no one else knew he was here, or the name he was using. When she thought about it, snail mail was the safest way to contact Morgan-no data to trace.
He lifted his eyebrows when she handed it to him. “He wasted a stamp to tell me there’s no progress? He must be afraid I’ll jump ship if I don’t hear something.”
“Maybe there’s progress, but nothing definitive yet.”
He tore open the envelope and scanned the single sheet of paper, then wadded it up and did a three-point shot to the wastebasket. “No progress.”
She didn’t know if she was disappointed or not. She wanted him gone, but she also knew she’d miss him when he left. “Would you jump ship?”
“Only if I had a good reason.”
She didn’t ask what would be a good reason, but evidently boredom wasn’t on the list.
He started going on her walks with Tricks. He always took his Glock, because warm weather = snakes. She had done the same but saw no reason to take her pistol if he was armed, so instead she took only her long, sturdy stick. She might not be able to shoot a snake, but she assumed he could.
At first he couldn’t make the whole trek with her, because the hill was too much for him; instead he’d wait at the bottom for her and Tricks to return. Tricks always bounded to him in a paroxysm of delight, as if she hadn’t seen him in days instead of less than half an hour. By the fourth walk, he was going partway up the hill. By the seventh, he was keeping pace with her. His rate of recovery astounded her, but of course he’d been in phenomenal shape to begin with, so he didn’t have as far to go as the average person would have.
Unfortunately, working like a fiend on the tech-writing projects meant that there were inevitably lapses when she didn’t have any to work on because she’d already finished them. She couldn’t manufacture projects out of thin air. Very occasionally she’d been able to pick up a last-minute job when something happened that prevented the tech writer already lined up from doing the work, but for the most part the work was something scheduled ahead of time.
Her options then were to sit in her room or watch television with Morgan. She watched television.
She’d always been an on-off watcher; sometimes there would be a program that she liked and watched, but for the most part it was something she’d have on while she read, or worked on a tech project. With the schedule Morgan had had while he was operational, he hadn’t had the opportunity to watch much beyond sports and news-or the interest, truth be told. He liked hockey better than basketball, football better than baseball, but shortly after coming to stay with her he developed a passion for women’s fast-pitch softball. Thanks to her satellite system, he got to watch a lot of women’s softball; because she didn’t have a preference for anything else, she found herself also watching softball.
With his move upstairs to the guest room, the sofa had ceased being a bed and returned to seating. Morgan sat on one end, she sat on the other, and Tricks on her special blanket snoozed contentedly between them. She always rested her muzzle on Bo’s thigh and turned her butt to Morgan, but he was okay with that; he knew where he was in Tricks’s hierarchy of affection.
On the day she got home and found he’d cut the grass for her, she could have hugged him. She didn’t because she was smarter than that, but the impulse was there.
Damn it all, she wasn’t just attracted to him; she liked him.
Now that he was stronger, Morgan made it his mission to walk the hills around Bo’s place, getting the topography set in his mind. He wanted to know all the possible routes anyone could take to approach the house; the surrounding hills and mountains were rough going, which was reassuring. There were bluffs, impenetrable underbrush, streams and rivers. From a strategic point of view, he liked that.
He knew it was unlikely anything would actually happen here, but his training said to prepare for the unexpected. He was the bait in the trap, but the rat was never intended to actually get the cheese. The act of looking for his location would trigger the trap.
Still… shit happened.
If it were just him, he wouldn’t mind, but he had Bo to consider.
The simplest approach usually had the highest degree of success. The more complicated a plan became, the more details could go wrong. In this case, the simplest approach would be to come up the driveway. The very length of the drive itself was part of what made it the most likely; anyone could get far enough from the road to be out of sight from both road and house.
He couldn’t turn the house into a bunker; it simply wasn’t feasible to bury the entire house, or reinforce walls and windows and doors. Nor was it feasible to dig an underground escape tunnel, not when weighed against the likelihood of anything actually happening, how long it would take, how much it would cost.
There were real-world, more reasonable approaches he could take.
He didn’t talk it over with Bo because he knew she’d kick up a fuss-either that or come to the not unreasonable conclusion that he hadn’t told her everything she should know about the level of danger. He and Axel had definitely downplayed that part of the situation, but neither of them had exactly lied.
Logically, the townsfolk would be fine. Only an idiot would try to take him out in town, where there would inevitably be a bunch of witnesses and someone to interfere. No, if trouble came, it would come here, to Bo’s house.
There were commonsense measures to take that wouldn’t involve turning the house into a bunker. He called a security company and made an appointment for a salesman to come out, listen to what he wanted, and give him a price. Because he wasn’t stupid, he waited until the day of the appointment to tell Bo.
She was working at her computer, but at his words she swiveled her chair around to face him. “You did what?” she demanded, annoyance in both expression and tone. “Don’t you think you should have talked this over with me first?”
“No,” he said baldy. “I knew you’d balk, just like you’re doing now.”
“I already have a security system.”
“You have an alarm on the doors and windows. You need more.”
Some of the things he liked best about her were that she was logical and reasonable and organized. Unfortunately, that meant she immediately came to the logical and reasonable conclusion he hadn’t wanted her to reach. “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked, her dark eyes narrowed. “If you can’t be traced here, why do I need beefed-up security?”
“Because things can always go wrong. What I’m thinking of is stuff you should have anyway, such as security cameras. You live out here by yourself; you need to be able to see what’s in the yard before you take Tricks out at night. You need motion-sensor lights. I’m paying for this, and I’m putting it in. If you don’t like it, after I’m gone you can have it taken out.”
She glared at him and finally muttered, “Don’t be so damn reasonable. Give me something I can argue against.”