Colton's Secret Service

Moving back toward the fireplace, Georgie pushed the coffee pot back on the grating. He heard her ask, “To your liking?” The woman didn’t even bother looking over her shoulder as she carelessly tossed the words at him.

The question, coming out of the blue, caught him completely off guard. Was she referring to herself? Did she somehow sense that he was watching her, or was his reflection alerting her to the fact that he was studying her?

“What?”

“The coffee.” Turning around, she nodded at the mug he was still holding in both hands. “Is it to your liking?”

Lost in his thoughts, some of which he shouldn’t be having, Nick hadn’t sampled the coffee yet. To rectify that, he took a sip—and discovered he had to practically chew the mouthful before he could swallow it. Accustomed to the coffee from a lucrative chain this offering she had prepared tasted almost raw to him. It certainly brought every nerve ending in his body to attention.

Nick cleared his throat after finally swallowing what he had in his mouth. He looked at her incredulously as she sipped, unfazed, from her mug.

“It’s a little thick, don’t you think?” he asked, pushing out each word. Was it coffee, or had she substituted tar?

Georgie seemed mildly surprised at his comment. “Most men I know like their coffee strong.”

“You might not realize it, but there’s a difference between strong coffee and asphalt.”

Georgie lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to,” she told him, reaching for the mug.

He drew the mug back out of her reach, knowing that to surrender it would somehow diminish him in her eyes. Nick had a feeling he was going to need all the edge he could get.

“That’s okay,” he assured the woman. “I’ll drink it.”

Nick saw a slight, amused smile curve the corners of her mouth. He had the uncomfortable feeling she was looking right through him. “Nobody said ‘I double-dog-dare you,’ Mr. Secret Service agent—sorry, ‘Mr. Sheffield,’” she corrected herself. “If you don’t like the coffee, don’t drink it.”

He held on to the mug anyway. “Just takes some getting used to.” Like you, he added silently. Looking around at the darkened room, he changed the topic. “You really turned off the electricity.”

A little slow on the uptake, aren’t you, Sheffield? But she kept the observation to herself and replied, “That’s what I said.”

Then how had she sent those e-mails? he caught himself wondering. Eyeing her thoughtfully, Nick came up with the only alternative he could think of off the top of his head. “Then you took your computer with you?”

She thought of the refurbished tower and monitor she’d bought roughly six months ago, a couple of weeks before she’d gone back on the road with Emmie. She’d had the previous owner set it up for her, but personally had no interest in exploring its properties. It was like an alien entity to her.

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Now why would I do that?”

It took him a moment to realize she was serious. His own computer was almost an appendage with him. He took the notebook everywhere he went and couldn’t conceive of a day going by without his checking his e-mail account. In his opinion, doing so was what kept the world small and manageable. He liked being in control, in the know. This was the best way.

“To stay in touch,” he finally said when he saw that she was waiting for a response.

Georgie frowned. The man was obviously just another drone. Too bad, but then, what had she expected? He worked for the government. A clone without an imagination—except where it didn’t count.

“They’ve got phones for that, Sheffield.” She could see that her answer didn’t make an impression on the Secret Service agent. “As I said before, I don’t believe in computers,” she told him. “I don’t believe in sitting on my butt, sending messages to people I don’t know—” what the hell was a “chat room” anyway? “—and living vicariously through someone else’s stories. I’m out there, every day, experiencing life, I don’t have to get mine secondhand.” And then she gave him a reason she was certain he couldn’t argue with. “Besides, my computer is too damn big to cart around across the state.”

It was time he stopped trading words with this woman and start investigating. He was better at that anyway.

He’d already given the inside of the house a once-over when he’d first arrived on the property. “That tower in the bedroom room is the only computer you have?”

“Yeah. Why? How many computers do you have?”

Presently, he owned three. He had the one in his office at the Senator’s headquarters, plus a full-sized one in his apartment. And, of course, there was the one that he always took with him, the notebook that contained everything the other two did, plus more. But he had no intention of telling her anything.

“This isn’t about me,” he reminded her.

Georgie lifted her chin defensively. Every time she started to think that maybe the man was human, he suddenly sprang back to square one all over again. It was like trying to take the stretch out of a rubber band and having it snap back at you.

“It’s not about me, either,” she retorted tersely. “Whoever you’re looking for,” Georgie informed him, “it isn’t me.”

What else could she say? He laughed dryly. “Mind if I don’t take your word for that?”

“I’d like to say that I don’t mind—or care—about anything you do, but because it affects me and mine—” she glanced over toward the sofa and Emmie, who, by virtue of her silence, she knew to be asleep “—I do. I mind very much.”

“Afraid of what I’ll find?” Nick asked. He was already on his way to her bedroom. The fact that she had it set up in her bedroom rather than out in plain sight told him that she was probably trying to keep her little girl away from it and unaware of what she was doing. From what he’d observed she was a decent mother.

“No, I’m afraid that you’ll plant something,” she shot back, abandoning her mug as she hurried after him. “Hey, do you have a search warrant?” she challenged, suddenly remembering that on the TV dramas she’d occasionally watched, they always asked for a search warrant before allowing the police to turn their homes upside down. “Well, do you?”

“Patriot Act,” Nick cited, reaching her bedroom. The existence of the act allowed for shortcuts and he mentally blessed it now. “I don’t have to have one.”

“That has something to do with finding suspected terrorists,” Georgie remembered. The second the words were out of her mouth, her eyes widened in utter stunned surprise. She could only come to one conclusion. “So now you think I’m a terrorist?” This was becoming too ridiculous for words.

“Lots of definitions of a terrorist,” he told her, pushing open her door. The small bedroom had only moonlight, pouring in through the parted curtains, to illuminate it. “Not all of them come with bombs strapped to their chests. The definition of a terrorist is someone who brings and utilizes terror against their victim.”

This time, when he entered the room, Nick noticed something that had escaped his attention the last time he’d looked around the bedroom.

The computer tower and small monitor were set up on a rickety card table with a folding chair placed before it. The set-up stuck out like a sore thumb. What hadn’t stuck out—at first glance—was the rectangular item stashed underneath the table. Pushed far back, it was attached to both the computer and the monitor.

“What’s that?” he asked her.

“What’s what?” she snapped. Was he talking about the computer? He would have had to have been blind to miss it. Just because she had a computer didn’t mean she was guilty of sending threatening e-mails to his precious Senator Colton.

Damn it, Clay had told her to keep a gun in the house and she would have, if Emmie wasn’t around. Not that she thought the little girl would play with it. Emmie knew better than that. But she knew her daughter. In a situation just like the one that had gone down in the front yard, if there’d been a gun around, Emmie would have grasped that instead of the tire iron—and used it. Emmie was very protective of her.

Almost as protective of her as she was of Emmie.

As she watched, Sheffield toed the rectangular object under the card table she’d put up. “This.”

She looked down at it, then at him. Georgie shook her head. This was the first time she was seeing it. “I have no idea.”

Squatting down, he used what moonlight was available to examine it. “Well, I do.”

“Then why d’you ask?”

He ignored her annoyed question as he rose again to his feet. Nick dusted off his knees before answering. “It’s a generator.”

“No, it’s not,” she countered. She jerked her thumb toward the back of the house, beyond the bedroom. “The generator’s outside, just behind this room—and it’s broken,” she added before Sheffield was off and running again. Repairing the generator was one of the things on her “see-to” list. The one that was almost as long as Emmie was tall. The house needed a lot of work, but because she was going to be home from now on and she was pretty handy, she figured she’d be able to finally get around to getting those things done.

If she could ever get rid of this man.

“Yes, it is,” he informed her. “It’s a portable generator.”