not a comfortable thought.
Dropping the sledgehammer, she left it standing on its head as she stepped around the fifty-five-gallon trash can to reach the bottle of water on the counter. She tugged off the face mask, leaving it dangling around her neck.
It was as she took the first swig that the room’s condition registered fully. Believing her safety glasses responsible for most of the fuzziness, she removed them. The haziness remained. And that was only the beginning. Dark electrical wires dangled from the ceiling like long tentacles, their safely capped ends of neon yellow and orange swaying slightly. Pebblelike chunks of plaster had fallen out of the lath as she’d ripped the ceiling down and now resembled gravel strewn across the old floor.
Reaching over, she turned down the radio. What in the hell had she been thinking? Starting a demolition when there was a chance that she’d have to put her house on the market? No job, therefore no money for mortgage.
But as with most things in her life right now, there obviously was no turning back.
As she reached for the sledge again, someone pounded on the front door. She glanced at the clock—5:55 a.m. Who the hell…?
Dread beginning to pool at her core, she shed the safety glasses and retrieved the .45 automatic—her home-protection weapon—from the counter.
Maybe it was just a neighbor in trouble, but she didn’t think so. Given the past twelve hours, she felt fairly certain Mark had been right. That Rabbit had nothing to do with the attempt on her life. That someone had come to correct Leon Tyber’s mistake.
Flicking off the safety, she pulled aside the plastic sheeting she’d used to seal the kitchen from the rest of the house and stepped into the hall. There were no lights on in this part of the house, and she left it that way, preferring not to give whoever was out there a heads-up.
She took up a precautionary position just to the right of the door and out of the direct line of fire in case the person on the other side was planning to pump a few rounds through the solid wood panel. Whoever it was had finally located the door buzzer and punched it a dozen times in rapid succession. Her already fatigued muscles contracted as if the zaps of sound were short blasts of electric current.
Taking a deep breath, she shifted her index finger from the trigger guard to the trigger. “Who is it?” she called through the door.
“Mark Gerritsen.”
The sound of his voice only served to make the adrenaline kick a little faster. What would he be doing here at this time of morning? She hadn’t anticipated any additional contact with him, at least not right away. As she’d shown him out last night, he’d mentioned having to catch an early flight to Boston.
“Beth?”
“Give me a sec.” Still holding the automatic, she punched in the security code to the alarm system and then worked the dead bolt.
As soon as she had the door open, almost before she had time to move aside, he slipped past her, accompanied by a gust of frigid air.
He was dressed in a suit and an overcoat. If not for the fact that he was clean shaven and that he smelled of soap, shampoo and cologne, she might have questioned if he’d been to bed since she’d last seen him.
In sharp contrast to his impeccable grooming, she wore paint-spattered, low-rise sweatpants, an old FBI T-shirt that she’d long ago cropped and a face mask clogged with construction dust. And since she hadn’t bothered to brush her hair when she climbed out of bed it was matted to her skull. Not exactly how any woman wanted to be caught. Especially by an attractive, well-dressed male.
“You should try answering your phone,” he offered tersely, his brows drawn down tight over his eyes.
What in the world was with him? Just because she hadn’t answered her phone at an unreasonable hour, he decided to drive all the way out here at this time of morning? And then is irritated…? She frowned. Was it possible that when he hadn’t been able to reach her, he’d grown concerned? She found the possibility that he might have been checking on her intriguing.
By the time she turned around again, he’d wandered as far as the kitchen doorway and was pulling aside the plastic sheeting. Before she could stop him, he ducked through.
Obviously, he expected her to follow. For a brief moment she debated staying where she was, forcing him to return to the foyer, but then decided playing power games with Mark as an adversary was stupid at best. Mostly because she was unlikely to win, and it would eat up time better spent getting ready for work.
She jerked off the face mask and then, tugging up the neck of her T-shirt almost as if she was stripping it off, she used the less dusty inside to wipe her face before following him into the kitchen. “What’s going on?”
“I could ask the same thing.” He glanced at her. “Is this your idea of midnight therapy?”
Midnight therapy? For the second time in a matter of minutes, she scanned the mess she’d created, recognizing how it must appear to an outsider. To Mark. As if she’d lost her mind. And maybe she had.
Screw it. He was going to think what he was going to think.
Stepping past him, she turned off the radio. “I hadn’t planned to start demolition until this weekend.” The lie came with surprising ease. “But physical activity helps me think.”
She folded her arms across her, her forearms settling against her bare midriff. “Now what’s going on?” she repeated. “I know you’re not here to discuss my renovation schedule.”
She saw indecision in his eyes, as if he was wondering the same thing—why in the hell he was there. Or maybe he actually had been concerned about her, but for obvious reasons was now hesitant to admit it.
“You’ve been assigned to the task force, and there’s been a development. You need to get packed.”
“I’ve been what?” She managed to keep her voice in check, but certainly not her thoughts.
She hadn’t given any consideration to the possibility he might actually request her transfer. The most she’d anticipated was a reprieve. One that would give her some time and a shot at another investigation where she could shine in her field—in forensic accounting. Which wasn’t likely to happen in a counterterrorism outfit where the other team members would have been handpicked because of their extensive knowledge of terrorist groups and activities.
“I requested your reassignment,” he clarified.
In the middle of the night? Had he awakened Bill Monroe? Or someone at FBI headquarters? Normally a transfer didn’t happen instantaneously, and the idea that this one had left her feeling uncertain.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why would you do that?” It didn’t surprise her that he had pull, but that he would use it to get her transferred did. What could be that urgent? Then she replayed everything in her head a second time. “You said there’s been a development. What kind?”
His eyes met hers, but there was a disconnect in them that hadn’t been there earlier tonight. A sense that he saw her, but that he was no longer emotionally involved with her on a human level.
So it hadn’t been concern for her after all. She was caught off guard by the level of her disappointment.
“I’ll fill you in on the plane. Right now you need to get cleaned up and packed.”
Tightening her arms, she lifted her chin. “I think you need to know that I may have misled you somewhat about my ability to recognize the voice.”
“That has nothing to do with the reason I made the request.”
“Then what does?”
“Whoever wants you dead…If they sent someone after you once, they may do it again. If they do, we’ve got a shot at getting to them before…” Mark didn’t finish the thought.
Why not finish it? What exactly