Exception to the Rule Page 11

  Rio wandered sock-foot through the room, staring into what Kimmer at first took to be a magazine. “Hey,” he said, his voice coming clearly enough through a window that hadn’t been built to keep winter weather out. “What’s a nine-letter word for ‘to dry out’?”

  Carolyne didn’t even look up. “Desiccate.”

  “Arigatou,” Rio said, and looked at his cousin with a scowl. “Gee, now I feel kinda stupid I couldn’t come up with it, after all that hard thought you just put into the matter.”

  “Shut up,” Carolyne said, though not with any heat in her voice. “You knew that. You just came out here to make the poor stymied geek feel better. You know what, I knew it when you let me win at tag when we were kids, too.”

  Rio feigned hurt. “That never happened.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He tossed the crossword puzzle book on the recliner and walked up behind her, peering over her shoulder. “Hey, you’ve got scribbles. That’s got to be good, right?”

  Kimmer couldn’t hear the response, but she didn’t think it was wholehearted agreement.

  Rio didn’t either, to judge by the set of his shoulders or the fingers he rubbed over one eye in a tired gesture. But Carolyne didn’t see any of that, Kimmer was quick to note. All Carolyne would have perceived was a slight pause before Rio’s hands landed on her shoulders, massaging the muscles at the base of her neck. “You need a break,” he said. “You can’t just stare at this laptop all day long.”

  “I haven’t been,” Carolyne said, and now she sounded miserable, although she let her head tip back to accept the shoulder rub. Probably had her eyes closed, shutting out the world. An odd, sharp pang gripped Kimmer, and after a surprised moment, she recognized it as jealousy.

  Screw jealousy. Kimmer had her own ways of shutting out the world, and she didn’t need another person to do it.

  She’d missed whatever Carolyne had said next. Something about going to the picnic the day before, Kimmer thought.

  “That hardly turned out to be relaxing,” Rio said. “I didn’t know the town would have its version of our home-town Greeley Gang.”

  Carolyne snorted. “I hear those boys are all domesticated now,” she said. “Kids and dogs and white picket fences. And here we are, still footloose and fancy free.”

  “I picked the wrong career for anything else.” Rio’s voice held a mixture of resignation and matter-of-fact acceptance. “As for you…you need the right guy, that’s all. Someone in your league.”

  “You don’t think that someone is Scott, do you,” Carolyne said, and it came out more edgy than a simple question.

  Rio put his hands in the air, a total surrender. “Whoa—you’re the one who used the term ‘footloose.’ Look, let’s just go for a walk tomorrow morning, okay? I’ll clear the area first, and you can check out the fall color and give your brain a break from coding and whatever thoughts of Scott are interfering with that coding. We’ll have some hot chocolate, you can whip my butt over some crosswords, and then you’ll be able to think better.”

  She straightened, twisting to look up at him in surprise. Relieved surprise, Kimmer would have said. “You think I’m blocked on this work because of Scott?”

  He crossed his arms, looking down at her. “You tell me.”

  Carolyne didn’t. But Kimmer could read her easily, and she knew Carolyne’s mind was alight with revelation—and with new purpose. She hadn’t realized her preoccupation, and now she thought she could set it aside by working it through. “You know, I used to like how assertive he is. I used to depend on it. He made things so much easier.”

  “All these years, and still the shy one,” Rio teased her.

  “I don’t get the feeling that’ll ever be different. Not in social situations.” She hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know if I’ve changed or if he’s just holding on a little too tight. No one likes to be taken for granted. It’s just…I miss him. It’s confusing. If I could just talk to him—”

  “That’s not safe,” Rio said. “You know that.” He sighed, and bounced the bottom of his fist gently off the top of Carolyne’s head. “Your heart’s too big, Caro. You feel things too deeply.”

  She snatched at his fist and then, when he eluded her, poked him sharply in the belly with one finger, unheeding of his pathetic oof noise. “It takes one to know one.”

  Rio made an inarticulate noise, followed instantly by, “I’m going out to check our little corner of the world.”

  Carolyne twisted to watch as Rio went out of Kimmer’s line of sight, headed for the door and, she supposed, his shoes and jacket. “Go ahead,” she said. “Run away. It’s because I’m right and you know it.”

  Inarticulate noise number two.

  Kimmer had seen what she’d come for. A feel for the station’s layout, some sense of how Carolyne fared with her life-and-death project. She’d seen more than she’d come for. As she backed away from the window, she tried to separate the relevant bits out so she could flush the rest from her thoughts.

  But as she reached the tree line in her retreat—only moments before he emerged from the front door—the distracting thoughts refused to be flushed. Nothing in Kimmer’s experience had led her to believe family relationships could be what she’d seen these past few days between Carolyne and Rio. She might not be able to get a direct bead on Rio, but plain old observation had shown her much. Carolyne trusted him. She wasn’t afraid of him. She trusted that he meant what he said, and that he’d do as he claimed.

  Part of it was Kimmer’s own fault, of course. She lived in a world where double-dealing, betrayal and using people as playing pieces were as common as not; she even took on some of those roles herself. Neither life nor work had exposed her to relationships of trust and truth, partnership and reliability. And now it was right here under her nose. She could almost wish she’d met Rio Carlsen long ago, before she’d become so jaded as to need her rules in the first place. Her mother’s rules.

  Then again, she’d reached that jaded point before her teens. And after that, no one—not even Rio Carlsen—could have changed the course of her life and who she’d become.

  Kimmer faded back into the woods, and went out to take up a safer vigil at the entrance to the camp.

  Chapter 8

  The morning dawned gray and drizzly, with tiny patters of rain occasionally gusting against the tent canvas and the sporadic splatter of giant drops from the leaves above. Kimmer headed to town early; her jeans were soaked to midthigh by the time she made it to the station wagon, and she crawled in to start the engine and crank the heat up high.

  At the hotel she stood under the apathetic shower until the water started to feel cool, and bundled up her laundry for the motel’s coin-operated machines. She took her chances with it and left the machine filling with water, heading for town in a brisk walk she hoped would finish warming her up. Bonnie Miller took her to the Shear Delight beauty salon, where she had no intention of letting anyone get near her hair, but put her nails up for sacrifice.

  “Sit your p’toot right down here, honey,” said Dora the manicurist with such enthusiasm Kimmer figured the woman had been facing an empty schedule—or she thought she had a chance at some juicy gossip. “Good Lord, what have you done to these nails? Jerri, you should look at these hands!”

  Kimmer managed an embarrassed shrug, as if she truly cared. She normally paid them enough attention to keep them smooth and buffed, and had false nails applied as suited her assignment. Now their coat of Bonnie-red nail polish was chipped, and the fingernails themselves had taken a beating in the past twenty-four hours of lugging, hiking and lurking. “Things have been a little rough lately,” she said. “I wanted to get some acrylics—a little pick-me-up, you know?—but I think I’d better stay conservative until things settle down. Nothing worse than a set of French sport nails half grown out.”

  Dora nodded agreement. “You just want ’em cleaned up, then? Some new color?”

  Kimmer spread her fingers out for insp
ection and gave them a wistful look. “Maybe a little stenciling? Nothing too fancy—I don’t want to feel bad if I wreck one tomorrow. But a couple of stars or some squigglies…”

  “Excellent,” Dora pronounced, examining Kimmer’s fingers another moment before sitting down and commencing work.

  “How about the hair?” asked Jerri, raising the chair for her current customer. “You look about ready for a trim.”

  “I’m letting it grow out,” Kimmer told her, lying without hesitation. No one touched this hair except for the stylist she’d found in Ithaca—well worth both the cost and the long drive to have her wildly unruly hair reliably tamed. Carina Hunter had put her on to the woman, just as one or another of the Hunters had guided her transformation since they’d discovered her, a skinny runaway with frightening hair and ragged hand-me-down boys’ clothes. And Mama’s rules, of course.

  Dora didn’t wait long before heading for the gossip portion of the manicure. “How’re you liking our little town?” she asked. “Most people find it too far from Pixburg, but I guess that’s one of the reasons you picked it.”

  Direct opening salvo. Kimmer approved. She noted the questioning look Jerri gave her, and realized that Jerri was the boss here, waiting to squelch the conversation if she thought Kimmer found it uncomfortable. So she shrugged and said, “Yeah, it is.”

  Jerri took it as permission to dive in. “Did you hear about those two fellas up from the city, then?”

  Kimmer didn’t bother to hide her interest, not when it suited her cover so perfectly. “I wasn’t in town yesterday. What two fellas?”

  “Just the kind you don’t want to meet, if you catch my drift.” Jerri flipped a screen of hair over her comb, pulled it out straight and divested it of several inches with a quick pass of her shears. Her customer, although silent, watched Kimmer in the mirror she faced. “Big guys in suits. Well, okay, they weren’t in suits, but they looked like they should have been. They had on brand-spankin’-new flannel shirts and jeans that haven’t even seen a single load of wash. Thought that would make them fit in, I guess.”

  “You saw them?” Kimmer fought to keep her hand relaxed in Dora’s expert grip. The scents of nail-polish remover and hair product seemed overwhelming, intensified by the damp weather.

  Jerri had to admit not. “Missy told me about them. But she described them just like that. And said they’d been asking about a visitor to town, a woman. They seem to think you’re blond, though.”

  Kimmer tapped her temple. “You never know.”

  “Really?” Dora’s eyes widened. “I’d never have guessed that was a dye job.”

  Nature’s dye job. But Kimmer just looked pleased as she nodded.

  Jerri added, “I hear they were asking around pretty thoroughly. I even saw them talking to the Murty brothers.” She looked at Kimmer and added slyly, “You know, two of those boys at the picnic who came out from behind the firehouse with their tails between their legs? People seem to think they saw you back there, too.”

  Kimmer gave a scornful snort. “They were drunk.” It didn’t truly explain anything, but it gave the appearance of a response and might sidetrack the conversation.

  The woman in Jerri’s chair, her hair now combed over her face like Cousin It, muttered, “They’re always drunk.”

  “Nearly always,” Dora agreed. “At least, anytime they all get together like that.”

  Kimmer held one hand to the light, admiring the manicure portion of the treatment. “These men. Anyone know where they’re staying?”

  “I’m not sure they did stay.” Dora worked on the second hand, gently cleaning off the old polish, creaming and pushing back the cuticles, shaping the nails. “I never heard anything, anyway. And you can see I’m pretty much in the right spot to hear it all.”

  As was Missy. Kimmer squelched the impulse to go rushing out to question the young woman, an effort of willpower made easier by the fact that Missy apparently worked a later shift.

  “Maybe the B&B,” Jerri said suddenly. “They were asking how to get there, and Missy told them. She knew you weren’t staying there, of course—so why not?”

  Right. Why not? But Kimmer just shrugged, staying in her Bonnie persona while her thoughts raced on ahead with the job at hand. If they’d caused any trouble the night before, someone would have heard of it. They might have cased the place and moved on…or they could decide to come back with a more direct approach.

  A talk with Angelina might be a good thing.

  After dark at the B&B. Kimmer parked down the block, torn by the impulse to get back in the car and speed back to Camp Cardinal. She’d been away most of the day, with only a quick late-afternoon foray to confirm that no one had encroached on the camp or disturbed the lines she’d drawn across the dirt entrance road. Rio and Carolyne, trapped indoors by the morning drizzle, were out for an afternoon walk when Kimmer, her newly blazoned nails hidden by gloves, spotted them—a good way down the trail and plenty of time for Kimmer to secure herself behind a tree. Trapped into lurking again.

  Except that wasn’t quite true—or if it was, there was more to it. She found herself with a willingness to listen, an interest in hearing more of the byplay between the two…of learning what it revealed about Rio. Somehow such things had become more than just part of an assignment. They’d become a glimpse into another world, another way to be.

  Carolyne’s laugh caught Kimmer’s attention first—a welcome sound. Maybe the other woman was finally starting to catch her balance. She got close enough to hear the conversation and planted herself behind a nice white oak tree, hoping for some tidbit of good news.

  A casual pronouncement that Carolyne had solved the problem with the guided missile would sound good to Kimmer.

  Of course, she heard no such thing. Just some playful banter, and then Rio’s warning for Carolyne to step over a trip line.

  “Another?” Carolyne asked. “Where’d you learn to do stuff like this, Rio?”

  He cleared his throat. “I took some courses.”

  “Yeah, but not at the local community college, I’ll bet.” A silence, and then Carolyne said, “You never talk about what happened. The family doesn’t even know how badly you were hurt or why you left. I mean, did you just get tired of taking chances?”

  A much longer silence.

  When Rio did answer, he sounded a little tired. “You know I can’t talk about that.”

  “I’m not asking for details. I don’t even care where you were when it happened. I’m just trying to understand what changed for you. You liked what you were doing, didn’t you? Felt it was important? Well, so do I.” Carolyne must have tossed a pebble as she spoke; her voice changed with her body movement, and then a tiny missile sped past Kimmer. Good arm. “And I still do think it’s important, but I’m not sure I ever signed up for this. It got me to thinking whether I should be making the same decision you did. And whether it was this sort of thing that made you change your life so completely.”

  “Aside from the no-choice problem and rehab time?” Rio asked, his voice as dryly ironic as Kimmer had heard it. Yes indeed, she was getting good at spying on the people she was supposed to protect. Too bad she hadn’t been as successful with finding the people she was protecting them from.

  Rio eventually spoke again, but only after tossing another wicked stone. “Someone we counted on got his priorities mixed up,” he said, his words hard and a little jerky. “He got tangled with a double agent, wouldn’t heed the warnings because this particular asset was really a sweet one.”

  “Double agent…as in, pretending to work for your case officer, but really feeding him pablum while picking his brains.”

  Rio snorted. “Just that. When the double realized the rest of us were getting close to him, he went deep. But he took as many of us with him as he could…and I was in the middle of an exfiltration.” He threw a pebble. Hard. “We lost people. Too many people. And I don’t want my life to be in someone else’s hands anymore. I’ll take my own chanc
es. But there aren’t many job offerings for paladins these days, so…”

  “So you work with Ari and ply your brush on custom-painted boat names and pack them away for the winter.”

  Another pause. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I do. Except when I’m rescuing my genius cousin from people who want a piece of her smarts.”

  “Ha,” said Carolyne. “And ha again.” A stone pinged directly off Kimmer’s tree; only strength of will kept her from jumping. At that they started walking again, as if waiting to hit the tree was what had kept them here.

  “There’s another line coming up,” Rio murmured.

  Her voice was fading with distance. “How many of those things did you put out, Rambo?”

  “As many as I thought we needed,” he said, quite seriously.

  Kimmer waited until she could no longer even glimpse them through the trees, and then she waited five minutes beyond that. This game, she knew, could not last much longer. Rio’s CIA experience as listed in his file had been typically vague, but for all his laid-back exterior, she trusted her instincts on this one thing: sooner or later, he’d catch her lurking. Between that knowledge and her recent discovery of goonboys in town, she had a sudden impulse to be waiting at the nurse’s station when he and Carolyne returned.

  But on top of the impulse came a flood of reluctance…of knowing that she couldn’t read him, and that she’d simply have to trust him. Trust in his skills, trust in his truths. And trust that the weird tug she felt upon sighting him wouldn’t interfere with her own work.

  Nope. Time to return to town, and see if she couldn’t track down the goonboy interlopers. Angelina’s was the best place to start—they needed a warning—not to mention the most likely place for the goonboys themselves to show up.

  If they weren’t already there.

  The mouth-watering smell of apple pie hung by the front door of Angelina’s. As Kimmer waited for someone to respond to her no-nonsense use of the old-fashioned door knocker, she turned to examine the yard from this new perspective…daylight, and no skulking. The long driveway that kept the B&B isolated from what one might generously call traffic also meant no one was likely to notice trouble on the premises. The several acres around the house that offered up a peaceful garden and lush lawn also made plenty of room for shenanigans. Not to mention it had prevented her from performing surveillance from the potentially cozy interior of her car—but now she had parked in the B&B’s crowded little lot, a full house in the height of Pennsylvania fall color. The spot she’d taken, she figured, was the one Rio and Carolyne should have used.