Mountain Bodyguard, page 10
“Two reasons. First, somebody needs to watch the house. Second, these schedules don’t fit together seamlessly. I’m here to cover the downtime after one activity ends and the next begins. Sometimes Helena will fly in with some movie friends for an impromptu party. Or her husband will hold a weekend conference with movers and shakers.”
“But mostly you’re at the house alone.”
“Poor me,” she said with a melodramatic rolling of the eyes. “Here I am...all alone in a multimillion-dollar mansion amid some of the most spectacular scenery in the world.”
He tried to find something objectionable. “What about housework? Or special projects that the family wants you to do?”
“The maid service comes in once a week. If there’s a special project, the housekeeper has already hired someone to do it. For cooking, all I need to do is make a phone call. The chef lives in town and is happy to come out and prepare a single meal or a whole regimen for any of Helena’s crazy diets.”
“Why doesn’t the housekeeper live here in the summer?”
“The summer house-sitting used to be her job,” she said. “But she’s sixty years old and likes to travel. I wanted to do it, and the housekeeper gets much-deserved time off. She’s taking two of her grandchildren to Australia for the month.”
He looked down at his watch, and then held it so she could read the dial. “Time’s up. You said that you needed ten minutes to relax before you could talk. Ready?”
Resolutely, she lifted her chin. “What do you want to know?”
“You’re different.” He could tell that she was scared, but mentioning her fear seemed confrontational. “Something has changed from the last time I saw you.”
“I learned that somebody tried to kill me.” Her voice was eerily flat, as though she’d repeated those words a hundred times. “And they very nearly succeeded.”
Chapter Eleven
When Mason showed up on the doorstep and said he’d been hired to be her bodyguard, Lexie had been relieved. The possibility of another attack had made her nervous. A deeper fear arose when Helena told her that the car crash hadn’t been a random event. She’d been targeted. For the first time in her life, she’d felt like a victim.
Her life had been irreparably damaged. She’d never have kids. Every time she thought of that gaping hole in her life, she’d remember the black car with the tinted windows coming at her. Terror and rage would rise in her, again and again.
No way could she tell Mason about her hysterectomy. He was a family man, through and through. Solid, steady and stable, he was suited for a long-term relationship. That didn’t work for her, but she was fairly sure that he’d be happy with a no-strings-attached affair. Most men were.
It wasn’t her nature to have casual relationships, but her only other choice was to shove him out the door and insist on a less charming bodyguard. She didn’t want to do that. She and Mason were most definitely attracted to each other. The moment he walked through the door, the air in the room had changed. The pheromones were flying. The snug fit of his jeans and the black T-shirt under his plaid shirt made her heart beat faster. Her fingers longed to embrace the breadth of his shoulders and slide down his muscular chest and abs. The timbre of his voice drew her closer.
He sat at the counter, sipping his lemonade and waiting for her to explain what she’d meant when she said that someone had tried to kill her. It was her turn to speak, and she knew it. But her throat had become a rusty hinge, holding back the words she needed to say.
“I’m not ready to talk about it,” she creaked.
“Let’s start with something easy,” he said. “Why did you take out all those weapons?”
That, she could talk about. “I was in the gym when I got this creepy phone call.”
“Ha-ha,” he said.
“A really nasty voice,” she teased, “ugly and evil. Then I went to Command Central, and I saw a rope dangling. I needed to check it out and didn’t want to go in unarmed.”
“You lost me. Let’s go back to the gym.”
“I’d love to.”
“Can I see it? The admiral sent me blueprints of the security system and the house. The gym is huge, and I know Prescott would have the best equipment.”
“Let’s go. This way.” She led to the staircase leading down. “I need to get my shoes, anyway.”
Mason was a big man, several inches over six feet, but his hiking boots hardly made a sound when he walked across the wood parquet floor. Silence accompanied his movements. Not stealth. He had nothing to hide. But there was a stillness that came from his sheer, unshakable confidence.
At the foot of the stairs, he made a detour, turning right and opening the door to Command Central. Apparently, he already knew his way around the house. As he stood in the doorway, his gaze flicked from screen to screen, taking in all the dials and knobs. Again, he seemed to know how everything worked without having her explain. Why shouldn’t he? Security was his job, after all.
“Show me where you saw this dangling rope.”
Taking a seat at one of the consoles, she flipped though several views from cameras outside the house. She paused and pointed. “There it is. That’s the north end of the house near the kids’ bedrooms.”
“It goes up to the roof,” he said.
“But there haven’t been any break-ins. If any of the windows or openings onto the roof were tampered with, an alarm would go off.”
“I’m familiar with this system.” He leaned over her shoulder to tap the keyboard, and the warmth of his body wrapped around her. His citrus and nutmeg aftershave teased her nostrils.
“What are you doing?” Other than smelling good and driving me crazy. “The screen went dark.”
“I’m doing a rewind,” he said. “I programmed it to go backward in twelve-hour jumps. Good eye, by the way. I never would have noticed the rope.”
A picture on the screen came back into focus. The shadows and light were different, but nothing else had changed. The rope still dangled.
There was another picture and another and another. He leaned even closer. His cheek was even with hers. If she swiveled her head, she’d be looking directly into his ear.
He pointed to a time stamp in the corner of the screen. “This is Tuesday morning.”
The next picture filled the screen. Together, they said, “No rope.”
Using the keyboard, Mason had both arms around her, though the low back of the office chair separated them. It would have made sense for her to move, but he hadn’t suggested it, and she liked being nestled in his arms. He played forward on the screen until he found Tuesday at four o’clock. The long shadow from the house almost obscured the appearance of a man dressed in jeans and a black Windbreaker. He wore a cap with the visor pulled down. His features were hidden.
Mason put the image on pause while he juggled dials to improve the resolution on the screen. “His jacket says CIA across the back.”
“Tuesday was when Agent Collier and his men from the CIA were at the house, searching for the Damascus Cache. This guy could have been any one of them.”
“To your knowledge, were they outside the house?”
“No, but I wasn’t keeping track of what they were doing. You need to talk to Collier for verification.”
As she watched the intruder, her muscles began to tense. The dangling rope indicated that someone had been there, but she was hoping for an innocent explanation. The intruder had a hook attached to the rope. He tossed it onto the roof three times before it caught. Then he used the rope to scale the wall.
“He’s fast,” Mason said. “That didn’t even take five minutes.”
“And we still haven’t gotten a clear look at his face.”
Mason straightened and stepped back from the console. His demeanor had changed; he’d gone from light to dark. “Do you want to know the worst thing about a risk assessment?”
“I think I know,” she said. “Sometimes you find danger.”
He nodded, then hit a button to pause the playback on the screen. “I’d like to see the gym before we finish the assessment.”
She padded barefoot down the hall to the keypad outside the gym. “The code is B-U-N-S and never changes. We have the room locked to keep little Todd and Stella away from the heavy equipment.”
He trooped inside behind her. Helena’s Pilates equipment, mirror and ballet barre were of little interest to him. His eyes lit up when he saw the array of weights and punching bags.
“Beautiful,” he murmured with undisguised lust. He rubbed his palm across his close-cropped blond hair and turned toward the sunlit forest outside the wall of windows. He inhaled a deep breath, and his muscular chest expanded inside the black T-shirt. A wide smile stretched across his face.
It would have felt good to have him look at her with such naked longing. She huffed. “Do you love it?”
“I could live here.”
“A gym rat, I knew it.”
“I haven’t always been that way.” Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he went to the speed bag and punched it a couple of times with his bare knuckles. “When my brother was killed, I needed something to get rid of the tension, know what I mean?”
She did, indeed. Lexie relied on her karate exercises to relieve stress. She crossed the gym to the more feminine side and slipped into her red sneakers.
He shucked off his plaid shirt, picked up a ten-pound dumbbell and did a few curls. “I used to exercise until I could barely stand up. I’d stagger home, fall into the sack and my eyes would pop open. Couldn’t sleep. My brain wouldn’t shut down. I kept thinking that Matt wasn’t really dead. It must be a case of mistaken identity. I couldn’t let him go... Still can’t.”
She’d been so caught up in the tragedies of her life that she’d forgotten about him. When the SecNav had commended his brother’s heroic action, she’d seen the pained and haunted look on Mason’s face. A Purple Heart was a great honor, but he’d rather have his brother back.
Not that Mason was the type to indulge in a pity party. Automatically, he transferred the weight to his other hand to balance the exercise as he strolled toward the covered lap pool and hot tub. “Do you ever use these?”
“Yes for the tub. Not often for the pool. It takes thousands of gallons of water to fill and when the little ones are around, it’s not safe.” She wasn’t ready to drop the subject of his brother. “How old were you when he died?”
“He was killed,” Mason said. “Saying he died implies that there was something natural about it. Murder is an unnatural act. Six years ago, he was murdered in Afghanistan. I was finishing up college, deciding if I should go for my master’s.”
She hadn’t pictured him as a college student. “What was your major?”
“International studies.” He continued to pump the dumbbell as he walked the perimeter of the long lap pool. “Back then, I was young and innocent and thought I could make sense of the world. I learned that no single country can take credit for being the worst mess. They’re all bad, even us.”
“I could’ve figured that out.” She wanted to know more about him, more details. “How did you get into security?”
Standing in front of her, he stopped pacing and dug into his jeans pocket. In his hand, he held a key chain. The brass fob was a four-leaf clover with TST Security written in a half circle across the top. Three of the leaves were a lucky-Irish green. One was red.
“I don’t remember who came up with the idea,” Mason said. “Me and Matt were buddies with Sean and Dylan, and we thought we’d be outstanding crime fighters. Just before Matt was killed, we sat down and talked about the possibilities. Sean’s the oldest, and he had done a stint in the FBI. Dylan is a computer whiz, which is necessary for security work. Matt had top-notch military training. And I was a political wonk who could get by in seven languages.”
“Seven? I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. With language, you’ve got to use it or lose it, and I haven’t kept it up. I turned into a gym rat. Now I’m the muscle in the group.”
He was so much more than muscle. Not that she had any complaints about his body. But she found herself being drawn to his mind and the unique way he saw the world. For sure, he was cynical. But there was a redeeming ray of hope that kept him from being bitter.
With her forefinger, she pointed to the three green leaves. “These stand for you, Sean and Dylan.”
He raised the red leaf to his lips and kissed it. “This stands for Matt. He’s always watching over us.”
If he was trying to seduce her, he was sticking to an extremely low-key approach. And yet she wanted him. She wanted him desperately. Maybe because she hadn’t been dating much for the past year and a half, Lexie was ready to pounce, to drag him off to her bedroom and get sexy. Better yet, they could strip down right here in front of the mirror. Practically panting, she asked, “What comes next?”
“I’m not finished with my risk assessment.”
Inwardly, she groaned.
He continued, “The dangling rope indicates that somebody might have tried to break in. But I need to talk to Agent Collier and find out if he sent one of his men up onto the roof.”
“Then what?”
“I should familiarize myself with the house and make sure all security functions are working properly.”
Following someone around and watching while he did his job wasn’t her idea of a great time. Besides, she seriously doubted that she’d be able to trail him all the way around the massive house without tearing off his clothes. “I’ll leave you to your work.”
As she went down the hall toward the staircase, she heard him call after her, “We have a date at five.”
“How should I dress?”
“You decide.”
She had a few ideas for her outfit. Maybe she’d go casually seductive with shorts and a bare midriff. She had a fancier outfit with a plunging neckline. Maybe she should go for a wraparound dress that could be removed with one light tug on the sash. Or she might decide to wear nothing at all.
Chapter Twelve
While he was exploring the main floor of the house, Mason’s call to Agent Collier finally went through. He went into the formal office with the locked gun cabinet and sat at the massive, carved desk. Being in a classy office/library like this made him feel like a high-ranking officer. Tilting back in the swivel chair, he stretched out his legs and rested the heels of his hiking boots on the desk blotter.
“I’m at Admiral Prescott’s house,” Mason said. “Lexie told me that you and your men were here on Tuesday.”
“Yes, I brought four agents.” Collier’s accent sounded thicker over the phone. “We discovered evidence that we weren’t the first to go through the house.”
“What did you find?”
“An infestation of bugs.” He chuckled at his pun. “There were twelve listening devices planted throughout the house. Also, we found three cameras that weren’t part of the Prescott security system.”
The blueprints showed three cameras inside the house: one in the hallway outside the children’s bedrooms, one in the kitchen where there were French doors and one in the lobby. “Are there more than three cameras inside the house?”
“That is all,” he said. “While we were there, we made a thorough search, except for one room.”
“Which room? And why not?”
“In the lower level, there is a safe room with a combination lock and a key. According to the magnificent Helena Christie Prescott, her husband possesses the only key. He was still at the Pentagon.”
Keeping it locked was counterintuitive. A safe room was supposed to be entered easily by the people who lived in the house. Once they were safely locked inside away from any threat, the room should be impregnable to outsiders.
He jolted forward to sit upright in the chair and spread the blueprints for the house across the desktop. “I’m assuming they don’t actually use that room as it was intended. Is it storage?”
“Helena says yes.” Collier mumbled a few words that might have been curses. “Extreme valuables are kept there—artworks, statues, antiques.”
“What about deeds and paperwork?” The safe room seemed like the ideal place to hide the Damascus Cache. The admiral was from an older generation where papers and documentation were all carefully stored in locked boxes in banks or in safes.
“Helena would not say more. But I suspect she has a key. Among the valuables, there must have been jewelry. Her jewelry.”
“She stonewalled you.”
“It was disturbing,” Collier said, “to come all the way to Aspen only to be denied full access to the premises.”
“It’s not a bad trip.”
“Marvelous scenery,” he agreed, “and the gym is among the best home facilities I have ever seen.”
Tracing with his forefinger, Mason found the safe room on the blueprint. It was located on the lower level at the opposite end of the hallway from the gym. The house butted up against a cliff with one floor stacked on top of another. At the northern end, the safe room would be underground. The level on top of it was the wing with the children’s bedrooms, where the rope had been left dangling. Mason wondered if there was any connection.
“In your search,” he said, “did any of your men go outside?”
“No, nor did we search the outbuildings, including the horse barn or the garage or anywhere that an outsider could approach without help from someone inside the house. We operated under the theory that the AC-CD believed the admiral had hidden the cache, and it was probably smaller than a matchbox—the size of a computer flash drive.”
“Can you think of a reason why anyone wearing a CIA Windbreaker would want access to the roof?”
