Frailty of Things Read online

  She shook her head; her heart beat rapidly in her chest. She stilled for a moment when she felt a small shudder run through Garret’s body; his arms tightened around her.

  “When you left with Drew yesterday, when you left without saying why you were going or where you were going or when you’d come back. It,” he paused and she felt his heart rate kick up under her palm. “It almost brought me to my knees, Kit,” he said on an exhale as his eyes closed.

  “I was terrified,” he continued, opening his eyes and locking his gaze back on hers. “My mind went all sorts of places—bad places—and it’s a feeling I never want to experience again. In those hours when I didn’t know...” He let his voice trail off for a moment, then he took another deep breath and straightened just a bit. “I understand now what you were saying that first night, Kit. What I felt yesterday is what you would feel every time you woke up and found me gone or got a call saying I had to leave. And it would be worse for you. At least I have the contacts and skills to track you down. You don’t. You,” he paused and brought a hand to her cheek. Laying his palm against her face, he continued, “You’d be alone with no one to answer your questions. And yes, I do believe in love—or something—at first sight, and yes, I do think we should be together. But more to the point, I don’t ever want you to feel even a fraction of what I felt yesterday when you walked out that door.”

  Kit stared at him. She pushed aside the idea of him quitting his job and her mind zeroed in on one salient thought—Garret got it. He really did. Her father had always come and gone and she hadn’t really given it much thought until she’d learned of his activities. In the years following his death, wondering whose lives her father had ruined each time he’d walked out the door—each time he’d walked out the door and left her to her pampered, spoiled existence—had nearly crippled her with guilt. And then, with Caleb up and disappearing too, then coming and going as he pleased with no explanations later on, the thought of living with someone who held, for good or for bad, so many secrets was something she knew she couldn’t handle. At least not with any grace or constancy. That gut-wrenching feeling of being left to wonder was something she hadn’t wanted to sign up for, and it had taken a turn of the tables for Garret to understand.

  But she hadn’t wanted to change him. She respected him, knew he did good work, or believed he did, and she was sure that he loved his job. Him leaving it all for her was something that sat like a pound of day-old bread in her stomach. Because never in a million years would she have asked him to quit.

  “I don’t want you to quit your job for me, Garret,” she said.

  “Too late,” he responded.

  Her eyes narrowed at his flip tone. “It’s not funny, Garret. My issues and my thoughts and my feelings are my own—my own to deal with. I don’t want you to change who you are so that you can give me what I want.” She noticed that she’d used the word “want” instead of “need.”

  Garret sighed. “Kit, everyone changes, all the time. If I’m going to make a change, why shouldn’t it be for something we both want?”

  For several seconds, she said nothing, just thought about what he’d said.

  “You still don’t look happy about my decision,” he said, brushing a piece of hair from her face. A face that must have revealed her unease.

  She took a moment to answer, knowing that this was important. What she said and how she said it was important to him, to them.

  “I won’t lie,” she started. “I won’t lie and say that the idea of you being near me and knowing that you’re safe and close isn’t appealing. But,” she paused again for a moment before continuing. “But it’s a lot of pressure, Garret. On me. On us. What if we don’t work out?” she asked, gesturing with her hand to the two of them. “What if we do this, but in five months you realize you hate your job and can’t do it another day? You’d be torn between me and the job you love and that’s not a place I want to be. That’s not a place I want you to be.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” He sounded so sure, so confident.

  “What if I decide it’s not working, but here you’ve given up your job for me. Do you know how much stress that will cause to both me and the relationship?”

  He sighed and combed his fingers through her hair, forcing her to look at him. “Listen to me, Kit. I will say this now and I will repeat it as many times as you need to hear it. You are not responsible for my decision. Yes, if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have made it, but it was my decision. Not yours, not your brother’s, not Rina’s. And as it was my decision, it is my responsibility to live with the consequences. What those consequences may be, we have no idea, but I want to find out, Kit. I want to know if they are good or bad or possibly better than anything we could have imagined.

  “If you want me to walk away after all this stuff with the CIA and MI6 is over, I will. But I needed to make this decision for myself because I never could have lived with myself if I didn’t try to make this work between us.”

  He held her head tilted up to his, but she dropped her eyes to his throat and watched the steady pulse there. She swallowed. “What if you decide I’m not what you want?”

  On the one hand, she knew it would be easier if things between them didn’t work out and if he was the one to decide they weren’t good together. That way, he could go back to his job and feel like he’d given it the old college try. It wouldn’t be her responsibility.

  But on the other hand, just the thought made her feel like throwing up.

  He sighed, then dropped a kiss on her forehead and pulled her close. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I also don’t think this is something we’re going to resolve right now. You’ve been through a lot, both recently and with other men in your life, and I’m starting something new, leaving the work I’ve done for years. Maybe we should just focus on where we are now, and once things quiet down, you and I can talk about what we want to do.”

  That sounded reasonable, so she nodded. “And no pressure?” she asked.

  “No pressure,” he answered. “Provided of course, you trust Caleb and I to do our thing.”

  “So, that’s the deal? I let you and Caleb stick around until all those people are caught and Drew thinks I’m in the clear, and in return we table the conversation about your new job and about us?”

  “We table it for the moment,” he clarified.

  It wouldn’t be easy, but it also wouldn’t be the hardest thing she’d ever done. And just because they didn’t talk about it didn’t mean she couldn’t think about it and figure out how she felt.

  She nodded and he let out a long breath.

  “Good,” he said before sealing the deal with a deep kiss. She didn’t even try to resist him. It felt good. He felt good.

  When he pulled away, he studied her face for a long moment, then dropped his hands and stepped away. In an instant, the heat from his body flooded away from her, leaving her chilled.

  “Where’s Caleb?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself.

  “He’s making the rounds but he should be back in a few minutes. Drew pulled two people from his team off the detail so there are still four of us,” he answered. He reached back up and traced a line down her jaw. “How are you? Really?”

  She smiled. It was small, but it would have to do. “I’ve been better. I’m bored, but there’s not much I can do about that, so I’m trying to make the best of it.”

  “Getting some writing done?” he asked with a nod to her laptop open on the small desk in the room.

  She bobbed her head. “An outline of the story I’m just starting to work on.”

  “When we have more time, you’ll have to tell me all about it.”

  She studied his face and thought about what he was saying and what he wasn’t. When everything was sorted with the MI6 leaks, she and Garret had a lot to talk about; a lot to get to know about each other.

  “I’d like that,” she said softly.

  A brief smile touched his expressio
n, then he leaned forward and gave her another quick kiss. “I need to get downstairs and debrief with your brother and the rest of the team. I’ll come up to check on you later, but if you need anything, someone will always be downstairs.”

  She nodded and he paused for a moment to look at her before leaving. He was at the door when she called him back.

  “Yeah?” he said, turning to look at her over his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  This time his smile lasted longer. “Anytime.”

  ***

  Garret jogged down the stairs of the small, efficient house. It looked like most of the other houses on the Cape with its white clapboard siding, beach-facing porch, and paned windows. He had no idea when it had been built, but it looked to be in the style of the houses built when this part of the Cape was more heavily settled in the 1800s. Other than its location, there was nothing special about it, which made it a perfect safe house.

  But right now he was thinking the house was the only thing that was perfect. His talk with Kit hadn’t exactly gone as planned. Or as he’d expected. In all honesty, he’d thought she would be beside herself with his decision to quit his job. Or at the very least, marginally happy or excited.

  He scowled as he grabbed a mug from a kitchen cabinet and dumped hot coffee into it. If she’d come to him and told him she was rearranging her life to be with him, he would have grabbed her and taken her straight to bed to celebrate.

  Wouldn’t he?

  He took a sip of the scalding brew and gazed out the window toward the waves barely visible over the small dunes. The gray of the ocean, with its churning white foam, blended with the snow-covered ground to give new meaning to the word bleak.

  Pushing aside what a blow to his ego Kit’s reaction had been—which was harder to set aside than he thought it should be, considering he wasn’t an ego-driven person—he took another sip of coffee and conceded at least one of her points. The fact that he’d changed his livelihood for the sole purpose of being with her did sound like a lot of pressure. He could understand, in a theoretical sense, why she would be concerned. If they didn’t work out, would he blame her or would she blame herself? If they didn’t work out, how long would it take for him to resent her or for her to become preemptively defensive? While he stood in the small kitchen, he kind of got her point and understood her concerns. From a theoretical perspective, anyway.

  Because in his mind, it was all theory. Because in every cell of his body, he knew that whatever life brought him and Kit, they would face it together. Maybe he would hate his new job, but he had no intention of letting that change the way he felt about her. He probably couldn’t change the way he felt about her if he tried. No, whatever life brought them, he knew that what he felt for Kit would be his anchor, would be their anchor. As far as he was concerned, the rest of the world—their jobs, families, friends—could swirl around them creating chaos, or not, but he and Kit would stay the course.

  “I’d say a penny for your thoughts, but they’re probably about my sister, so then I’d probably have to kill you,” Caleb said from behind him.

  Garret turned to see his partner standing in the doorway that led from the kitchen to the small sitting room at the front of the house. He thought about making a joke about how much Kit had already been through and that by killing him, Caleb would only make things worse. But then the light caught the shadows in Caleb’s eyes and the dark circles under them. Caleb hadn’t recovered from learning what had happened to his sister after he’d left home. And Garret knew he was being eaten alive by guilt.

  Instead of joking, Garret shrugged, pulled another mug out, and poured Caleb some coffee. Handing it to him, he asked, “Everything alright?”

  Caleb took the mug and nodded. “We’ve got two people in the house that’s visible just up the road. It sits higher and they have a good view of this place. This time of year, no one will be coming in by the water, so we’re pretty well tucked in here. You can stay here full time, but I may alternate with one of the other guys between here and the other house.”

  The plan sounded fine to Garret and he said so. “How’d they get access to two houses on Cape Cod?” he asked, realizing for the first time what a costly piece of real estate the government owned.

  Caleb shrugged. “They own this house; the house behind us, the bigger one, is owned by Drew Carmichael. His family owns stuff all up and down the Eastern seaboard.”

  Garret shot a questioning look at his friend, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know more, considering how close Carmichael and Kit were.

  “The family is über wealthy. They run one of the last major private conglomerates left in the US. Of course, they have international holdings as well. It’s still mostly run by Drew’s father, but Drew’s younger brother, Jason, and his wife, Samantha, who is, by the way, Dani Fuller’s twin sister, are involved in the operations as well. Drew’s involved too and becoming more so as he’s getting older and wanting out of the game, I imagine,” he added.

  The information was neither here nor there to Garret, but still, he let it sift through and sink into his brain. He had no problem picturing Drew, with his urbane presence and yuppie looks, gallivanting around the world conducting business. But one fact floated into his mind and stuck.

  “Holy hell, that woman has a twin?” he said, referring to Dani.

  Caleb chuckled.

  No wonder Drew had made the comment about knowing what it was like to have sisters after he’d seen the damage Caleb’s fist had done to Garret’s face. He reached up now and rubbed the spot—there wasn’t a bruise, but it was still sore. He imagined having two “sisters” who looked the way Dani Fuller looked—even in her late thirties—with her attitude to boot. Must have been hell on the guy.

  With a shake of his head, Garret turned back to the coffee pot and topped off his mug. “So, now we’re in the waiting game?” he asked, knowing the answer full well.

  Caleb pulled a chair up to the small table, sat down, mug in hand, and nodded. “Now we wait.”

  Garret grabbed a deck of cards he’d seen sitting on the window ledge and sank into a seat of his own. “At least this time we have cards. Poker?”

  And by unspoken agreement they fell silent on the topic of Kit, opting not to talk, for the moment, about what was bringing them all together under this one roof.

  ***

  “Where’s Garret?” Kit asked as she walked into the kitchen.

  When Caleb looked up from the table where he sat playing a game of solitaire with actual cards, she didn’t miss the fleeting look of discomfort that flashed across his face. They’d been living in the same tiny house for two days, and she still hadn’t spent any time alone with him. She didn’t love the thought of another trip down memory lane, but seeing the somberness in his eyes when he looked at her now, she recognized just how tormented he’d been feeling about the whole thing.

  And while she wasn’t exactly “over it”—after all, what had happened wasn’t something someone “got over”—she was starting to feel the need to address the elephant in the room. It wasn’t going to be easy. There were still moments when a wave of nausea would wash over her, leaving her feeling almost unable to stand up or even breathe. It was the same feeling that had hit her like a tsunami when she’d first heard—and understood—what her father and the Michaels men had agreed upon. And occasionally she’d feel a burst of panic, and maybe even fear, when she remembered what she’d done to her father. It was that part she tried not to think about too much. She didn’t condone her behavior. Being both judge and jury of her father and sentencing him to death was something that, if she let herself think about it much, would probably give her panic attacks.

  And if it had been just about what he’d done to her, she never would have gone through with it. She would have waited a few months for her eighteenth birthday when the trust fund her mother left her came into her possession, then simply taken off.

  But it wasn’t just about her. There had bee
n so many people killed by the weapons her father had dealt. She knew it for a fact because she had heard him talking to one of his buyers one day after she’d started to snoop around. Her father was laughing, telling whoever it was on the other side of the line that he never had any doubt the launchers would do their job.

  Kit hadn’t known what he’d meant when she had first heard him, but she’d looked into it and realized that whoever had bought what her father had been selling had attacked a refugee camp in Africa. Two hundred people had been killed. Mostly women and children.

  And then there were the women. The women and children her father’s network trafficked and sold. Yes, she’d read all about them too. Along with his assessment of each broker he worked with, based on her father’s personal experience “testing” the goods the broker provided.

  The more she had learned about her father, the more she had realized that while what he’d done to her was deplorable, what he was doing to hundreds and maybe even thousands of others had to stop.

  And so she’d stopped it.

  “You okay?” Caleb asked, bringing her back to the present.

  She gave a little shake of her head and moved to put the teakettle on. “Fine, where’s Garret?” she repeated.

  “Walking the perimeter; checking things outside,” he answered. She didn’t look at him but could feel his eyes on her as she pulled out a mug and rummaged for tea bags. She heard him gather up the cards and shuffle, but he didn’t re-deal them. He just shuffled and reshuffled while she waited for the water to boil.

  The kettle finally whistled and she poured the water into her mug, then turned and joined her brother. Judging by the look on his face, he wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or not.

  They sat in silence for a long moment before Kit decided she couldn’t take it anymore. Someone had to be the first to bring it up and it didn’t look like her brother was willing to be the one to do it. Because he was scared or because he was worried about her, she couldn’t tell.

  “Why did you want to know about Henry Michaels and his son?” she finally asked. The question had been bothering her since he’d first asked and now that everything was out—well, almost everything—she wanted to understand what had happened to bring it all about.