Secret Assignment. Paula Graves
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the worst.
It wasn’t her fault she was born last of the six. It wasn’t her fault their mother had decided her career had to come before motherhood or marriage. She hadn’t asked her siblings to make her their pampered, protected little pet.
She pushed herself off the bed and crossed to the window. It had rained a little during dinner, enough that the window sparkled with tiny diamonds of raindrops clinging to the glass. Moonlight peeked from behind thinning clouds, casting a cool blue glow across the night scene.
Through the blur of water, the thick stands of trees east of the house looked like a dark watercolor painting, all soft edges and mysterious shadows, punctuated here and there by the glow of lightning bugs flitting between the trees. It took a few seconds to realize that the light came not from flying bugs but from someone moving through the trees about two hundred yards away from the house.
Curious, she went out onto the balcony for a closer look. It was definitely a light, moving slowly through the trees. Was it Gideon doing another tour of the island for the night?
One way to find out, she thought, heading for the stairs.
When she reached the main floor, it was dark. Gideon was no longer inside Stafford House, so the light in the woods must have been him.
She started to turn back toward the stairs when a niggling sensation at the back of her neck made her reverse course. She went instead to the side veranda that looked out across the trees to the east, hoping for a better view of the light she’d seen from her bedroom window. She had to unlock the dead bolt to step out onto the veranda. The door creaked as she opened it, the loud sound setting her nerves on edge.
Wincing, she eased out onto the wooden porch, wondering if the sounds she was making were loud enough to wake Lydia in her upstairs suite. She stepped gingerly toward the railing, trying to make as little noise as possible from here on.
A damp breeze blew in from the Gulf of Mexico, lifting her hair away from her face. Wishing she’d put her hair in a ponytail before she came downstairs, she finger-combed her hair out of her eyes to keep the swirling strands from blocking her view of the trees.
She stared for a long time, straining for any sign of the lights she’d seen earlier, but the woods were dark and quiet. She released a soft breath and started to turn back to the house when she spotted it.
A light, swinging back and forth with a rocking rhythm, as if held by someone moving slowly, steadily through the woods.
Was it Gideon?
She wasn’t so sure anymore.
She moved around the veranda slowly until she was facing the back garden, where just beyond, a single-story house on stilts rose over the garden, perched on the highest point of land on the island. Like the Rosses’ house, Gideon’s residence also had a widow’s walk around the top gable, though when Shannon had first spotted the house earlier during Lydia’s guided tour of the house and gardens, she’d noticed the widow’s walk on the caretaker’s house looked new, as if it were a recent addition.
There were no lights on in the caretaker’s house. No sign of movement inside. Maybe her first guess had been right. Maybe Gideon was taking a quick tour around the island to make sure everything was safe and secure for the night.
She returned to the door she’d left open, stopping just long enough to take another quick look at the woods.
Her heart skipped a beat. For there wasn’t just one light flitting around through the woods anymore.
There were three.
If Gideon was out there somewhere in the dark, he wasn’t alone. But was he in danger himself? Or was he collaborating with someone to do harm to Lydia Ross?
Shannon slipped back into the house, her heart racing, and tried to figure out what to do next. Gideon Stone might be surly and unpleasant, but he seemed to aim his bad attitude primarily at her. To Lydia, he seemed genuinely affectionate, and clearly Lydia returned the feelings. In lieu of evidence to the contrary, she decided to give Gideon the benefit of the doubt.
The question was, did he know there were people out there? And if not, what should she do, go bang on his door until he answered?
It was as good a plan as any, she decided, heading back around the house to the garden. A gravel path wound through the garden, past brightly colored coleus and merry daisies, beyond a small stone basin of water where, Lydia had told her earlier, birds regularly gathered for communal baths during the oppressive heat of summer afternoons.
At the end of the garden, the path to the caretaker’s house went from neat gravel to an uneven walkway crowded on either side by scrubby grass that grew halfheartedly in the sandy soil. She stumbled a few times before she made it to the front porch. Seeing no sign of a doorbell, she rapped loudly on the door, grimacing as the sound echoed in the night.
There was no answer. Shannon knocked again, with no better result.
“Come on, Gideon!” she growled softly at the unyielding door.
But he didn’t come.
Her pulse thundering in her ears, she hurried back along the crooked path, retracing her steps through the garden and ending up back on the veranda again. She circled the house once more to the place she started.
How much time had she just wasted trying to fetch Gideon? How much farther had the lights in the trees encroached?
She stayed in the shadows of the eaves, peering through the darkness until she spotted the lights again. They were stationary for the moment, glowing through the trees, flickering only when the breeze made the low-lying palmetto bushes and high-growing sea grasses dance back and forth.
Whoever was out there had stopped moving toward the house.
She wished she had a pair of binoculars like the ones Gideon had used earlier in the day. She should have packed a pair for herself, but she hadn’t been planning on trying to spot intruders at night when she packed for the trip.
Slowly, she eased backward until her spine flattened against the French doors. Like it or not, she had to rouse Lydia and let her know something was happening outside. She would, at the very least, know how to sound the horn on the lighthouse, and maybe the noise would drive their intruders away again.
She eased open the doors and slipped inside, turning for one last look at the woods. Only the faintest creak of the floor beneath her feet gave her any warning at all.
A hand clapped over her mouth. A hard-muscled arm snaked around her stomach, pulling her flush with a hard, hot body.
She raised her foot to stamp on her captor’s instep, Cooper Security training kicking in before she had time to think.
Her captor sidestepped quickly, and her foot slammed on the ground, making her ankle tingle with pain.
“Don’t do it again,” warned a voice like steel in her ear.
The arms loosened, and she jerked away, turning around to face her captor. “You scared the hell out of me,” she whispered.
Gideon Stone’s eyes glittered like blue diamonds in the low lights, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was gazing past her, toward the woods in the east, his expression hard.
“You see the lights?” she asked softly.
“I do.”
“Do you think the intruders are back?”
He nodded.
“Pretty brazen,” she murmured.
“How many lights did you see?”
“Just three.”
“Can’t be sure that’s all that’s out there, though,” he said thoughtfully, turning his gaze away from the door long enough to look down at her. “What were you going to do if I hadn’t grabbed you?”
“Get Lydia up and see if we could sound the foghorn