know.”
“Not possible.”
She flattened her palm against his chest, her gaze searching his face as she talked. “Caleb, listen to what I’m telling you.”
The soft touch of her hand burned through him. The feel of skin against skin lit his nerve endings on fire. It had always been that way with her. Despite the fury and betrayal, his body reacted to her nearness.
He stepped back to break the hold, physical and otherwise, she had over him. “This is nuts.”
“We don’t have a lot of time.”
“For what?”
She bent down and grabbed her bag. “I have information for Rod. Where is he?”
Nothing she said made any sense. The Recovery Project was top secret, an off-the-books, quasi-governmental agency that hunted missing people, both those who wanted to stay missing and those who wanted to be found. Or it was until a congressman with a personal vendetta pulled the funding and disbanded the group. Now it functioned as a private, rogue investigative organization.
Rod had always spearheaded Recovery, handpicked its operatives, but he had nothing to do with Caleb’s past. And Avery was most certainly his past. “What do you know about Rod?”
“Like I said, he’s your boss.”
Caleb wanted to shake her, but touching her again was out of the question. “Damn it, Avery. That’s not public information, and I think you know it.”
“He told me if I needed him and couldn’t find him through our usual communication channels—”
“What does that mean?”
“I should come to you.” She sent Caleb that disapproving frown, complete with flat-lined lips. The same look he dredged up from memory whenever he got dangerously close to calling her to talk over old times. Caleb shook his head. “So?”
“I don’t know where he is.”
She went from frowning to sighing, another of her annoying specialties. “This isn’t the time to play super-secretive-operative guy. Rod told me if he ever failed to check in, I should come to you. So, here I am.”
She talked as if she worked for Rod, but that was impossible. Rod was his boss. The man ran Recovery, or he did until he disappeared, leaving behind only cryptic notes about a problem in the Witness Security Program, WitSec.
Caleb shook his head as he tried to make sense of his colliding worlds. “We’re starting this conversation over.”
“No, we’re not.” She pulled her bag over her shoulder as she looked him up and down. “Go get dressed. I have to keep moving.”
“Why?” Caleb barely got the word out when he heard the scraping at the front door. He expected reinforcements, but not from that direction. “Did you relock it?”
“Of course.”
A danger signal flashed in Caleb’s brain. He grabbed Avery by the wrist and pulled her into the small kitchen while the panel on his watch went wild with racing lights. His stare never wavered from the door. He raised the weapon with one hand and reached around Avery to unlock the window behind her with the other.
“Out on the fire escape and then go down. Do not wait or stop until I tell you.” He whispered the command right as the front door shattered off its hinges.
Wood splintered and cracked. A metallic smell mixed with a puff of gray smoke. The too-late alarm screeched inside his condo while the building’s fire alarm kicked to life out in the hall. A gun barrel peeked into the room as the door across the hall opened, only to slam shut again.
Caleb didn’t wait. He turned to the empty space beside him, relieved to see Avery gone, and then slipped out the window. As quiet as possible, he closed the glass behind him. Ignoring the cold air against his bare skin, he started crawling down the metal steps. His feet touching against the cold, he was careful not to slip or make noise to draw the gunman’s attention. Caleb counted on the guy searching the bedroom first. That would be the instinct, to go into the other room, which was exactly why Caleb’s escape route didn’t lead that way.
Police sirens wailed in the distance as the lights flickered and the building came alive with activity. Avery was a floor below him. She kept glancing up but never stopped moving. When she hit the landing two floors down, he banged the gun against the metal railing to get her attention.
She stopped and shrugged her shoulders at him. Only Avery could maintain her offended sense of bossiness in the midst of a crisis.
Some neighbors flooded into the street as others ducked their heads out windows, looking for the source of the noise and confusion. The action made sneaking away to safety even more difficult. Skipping the last few steps, Caleb jumped down, landing on the platform beside Avery and ignoring the feel of whatever was underneath him.
“Why are we stopping?” she asked.
He didn’t take the time to explain. With his hand on her shoulder, he moved her to the side and slipped his fingers between the sill and wall of the window two floors below his condo.
She slapped at his arm. “What if the people are home?”
With a touch of his watch he silenced the alarm for this condo before it could go off and join the others. The window lock clicked open and he raised the glass. “They’re not.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I own this, too. It’s my escape route.” He glanced around but all attention seemed centered on the lobby and the two fire engines pulling up to the curb, instead of the guy in his underwear on the steps.
“Well, of course you own it.” She sat on the frame and then swung her legs inside. “Doesn’t everyone keep two condos in the same building?”
“I don’t remember you being this sarcastic this early in the morning when we dated.”
“At this time of the day sarcasm is all I can manage.” She continued to grumble even as he followed her in side.
“You could try being grateful that I had a contingency plan.”
She stood in the middle of the studio apartment. “Is there a light switch?”
So much for gratitude. “Leave it off for now. The only thing in here is a couch, so you don’t need to worry about tripping and I don’t want you skulking around anyway.”
He walked past her and headed for the front door, trying to block out the emergency evacuation message blaring through the building on an endless loop. The speakers were mounted in the hall, but the beeping followed by the monotone voice instructing occupants to use the stairs and meet in the lobby echoed all through his small space. He’d hear that thundering warning in his sleep. That was, if he ever had the chance to sleep again.
Looking through the peephole, he saw people scurrying in the hallway. Another neighbor simply opened his door, glanced out and then went back inside again. Caleb didn’t care what anyone else did so long as no one tried to come inside.
He
