office box in Houston.
“Who sent you?” she demanded. “Who hired you?”
He sauntered to the wall, reached out to flick some paint chips from a board. “When’s the last time this was painted?” he asked over his shoulder.
“How should I know?”
“Been here long?”
“No. Only about…”
Molly’s mouth snapped shut. When she entered the program, they had warned her not to answer even the most innocent of questions. Be skeptical, they had said, especially of strangers too eager to strike up a conversation. If you have any suspicions, don’t hesitate to call.
“I need to make a phone call,” she said, clutching the trusty hoe and locking the back door once she was safely inside.
“So, what you’re saying then, Deputy, is that I don’t have to worry about this Shackelford character? That he really was hired to make repairs?”
Molly was whispering into the phone, her lips practically brushing the mouthpiece. She’d been peeking out the kitchen window at the character in question, but at some point he’d disappeared around the back of the house.
The U.S. marshal on the other end of the line once again confirmed that Dan Shackelford was working in their employ.
“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “Thank you, Deputy. Oh, and tell Uncle Sam thanks for fixing up my house.”
She put the receiver back in its cradle and let out a long, audible sigh before peering out the window again. The trailer was still hulking diagonally in the drive, but she didn’t see hide nor hair of its owner.
“You need a new lock on the front door.”
The sudden voice behind her had Molly reaching for the hoe again as she whirled around. “How did you get in here?”
“You need a new lock on the front door.” His gaze cut away from her face to take in the rest of the room. “What a pit.”
Molly was less frightened than irritated. “Well, it’s my pit.”
Except it wasn’t, and she was sorely tempted to tell him that her little stone cottage in upstate New York might someday be on the National Register of Historic Places, and that her kitchen—her sweet, cozy kitchen with its big brick fireplace—had already been featured in Early American Homes and Hearth and Home. Only that had been Kathryn Claiborn’s house, and Kathryn was, for all intents and purposes, dead.
Molly looked around at the ancient metal cabinets, the faded red Formica countertop and the scarred linoleum floor. The appliances had probably been manufactured when Roosevelt was president. Not FDR, but Theodore. My God, calling this place a pit was flattering it.
“I’ve been too busy to decorate,” she said lamely.
“Uh-huh.” He was leaning over the sink, jiggling the rusty lock on the window while looking into the backyard.
While Shackelford scrutinized the landscape, Molly scrutinized him. He was about six-two, lean as a greyhound, probably in his mid-thirties, and he needed a haircut desperately, not to mention a shave. New jeans, too. The ones he wore were faded to a soft sky blue, replete with fringed rips. Her gaze traveled down his long, muscular legs in search of the obligatory hand-tooled boots worn by every self-respecting male in Moonglow, only to discover a pair of flip-flops instead. Flip-flops! Oh, well. They went with the ratty Hawaiian shirt, she supposed, and the sunglasses that hung from a thick cord around his neck.
He didn’t look dangerous. He didn’t even look competent! But the marshal’s office had said he was okay.
“Mind if I park my trailer under that live oak back there?” he asked.
“Fine. As long as you don’t drive through the house to get there.”
Molly glanced at the clock above the refrigerator. “Oh, God. I’m going to be late for work.”
“Well, you just go on,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I expect to have all new locks and dead bolts installed by the time you get home.”
“Home?”
“From work.”
“But I work here.”
“Oh.” He looked confused for a moment, then shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll just have to do my best to stay out of your way, Ms. Hansen.”
“Well, I certainly hope so, Mr. Shackelford.”
Dan slid behind the wheel of his black BMW, then glared in the rearview mirror at the Airstream looming there. He swore roughly. He used to be able to thread any vehicle through the eye of a needle at ninety miles an hour in the dark of night. Now he couldn’t maneuver a goddamned trailer into a cement driveway in broad daylight.
Little wonder Bobby had assigned him the lowest of low-priority witnesses. Kathryn Claiborn’s terrorists, the Red Millennium, had all but blown their own heads off in labs in the U.S. and Beirut and Ireland this past year. As far as U.S. Intelligence knew, there was nobody left for the woman to identify, but they kept her in WITSEC, anyway, just in case. It was easier to put someone into the program than to get them out.
The worst thing that was going to happen to her during this computer crisis had already happened when Dan backed his trailer into her house. And the worst thing that was going to happen to him was discovering once and for all that he was washed-up.
He turned the key in the ignition. Well, hell. He could always make a halfway decent living on the demolition derby circuit. And maybe, if he was really, really lucky, he’d be demolished in the process.
This time he shifted into Drive, easing the ancient Airstream out onto Second Street, then circled the block until he found access through a narrow vacant lot into Molly Hansen’s backyard. After half an hour he had the trailer unhitched, his lawn chair unfolded in the shade of the live oak, and a warm beer in his hand.
It was only nine-thirty, but he felt as if he’d already put in a full day’s work trying to ignore Molly Hansen’s long blond curls and the dangerous curves of her body. He hadn’t been with a woman since…
Damn. He’d promised not to think about that. His nightmares were bad enough. How many times could you watch your partner die because of something you’d done or failed to do or simply overlooked? How long could you try to dream it different, only to have it all turn out the same? The answer, after nearly five months, was indefinitely. He took a long pull from the bottle and let the warm lager slide down his throat. Unless, of course, you overmedicated yourself into besotted oblivion, which was still his favorite place to be.
Not Moonglow, that was for sure. He’d never expected to come back here, to come full circle. Bad boy leaves town. Bad man comes back. Dan closed his eyes. Hell, it seemed there had been nothing in between.
Molly showered, dressed, put on her makeup, took her morning coffee into her tiny back bedroom office as she did every day, then proceeded to spend more time at the window watching Dan Shackelford not working than she spent working herself.
Trust the government
