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“Honestly, someone who would hack into a pacemaker is not going to let security cameras take him down.”
She had him there. “Well, it’s clear on the first floor. You can wait here, and I’ll make sure it’s safe upstairs.”
“I’ll go too. My stuff is upstairs in my old room.”
“I can grab it for you.”
“That’s okay.”
Was she afraid to be alone? “Suit yourself.”
He led the way upstairs and cleared the rooms as he moved down the hall. Pushing through the last door to the left, he cleared it, then paused to take in the figurines on a shelf, as well as the posters of mountain bikers and movie stars on the wall. “This is your old room.”
“Dad kept it like it was when I left for college. Then after Dad died, for some weird reason, Rowan never changed it. He was probably too busy or maybe he felt too guilty after everything else. I don’t know.”
What did that mean?
She waltzed into the room, stepped around him, and quickly stuffed a few personal items into a duffel bag. Now he understood why she hadn’t wanted him to grab her much-too-personal stuff.
“Or he couldn’t bear to change it because he cared about you.” He had no business offering up a psychoanalysis of her family.
She huffed. “Hardly.”
Yep. Family issues. He understood—he had them himself, except he’d never considered Ron family because he wasn’t Alex’s biological father. Just his stepfather—a guy he never got along with. Maybe the bad attitude was all on Alex.
After packing her laptop in a tote, she lugged the duffel over her shoulder. “I didn’t bring a lot.”
“Nothing wrong with traveling light.”
Once downstairs, Mackenzie headed for the back of the house instead of the front door.
“Where are you going?”
“I need a moment ... I have a few good memories of my father here. Give me this, okay, Alex?”
She flipped on the lights to the deck, disarmed the security system, opened the French doors, then stepped outside. Alex followed her out onto the balcony that overlooked a small stream. The sound of trickling water met his ears.
She eased into an Adirondack chair.
“Mackenzie,” he said, keeping his voice quiet. “We can’t stay long.” He’d prefer they didn’t stay at all, but she’d invoked the memory of her father, a request he couldn’t deny.
“I know.” Pain edged her whisper.
He stood back against the walls in the shadows created by the soft lights. She obviously needed time to process with the recent events. Her brother’s death. Still, she wasn’t thinking about her brother.
She was thinking about her father.
He watched the woods, peering through his night-vision monocular. He saw no heat signatures, except for an animal or two.
And if a drone was out there, watching, spying...
What exactly could he do about it?
I have to get my hands on that drone-neutralizing tech.
She sighed deeply, sounding like she held on to a hundred years of regret. He understood her melancholy but wished they were in a safer place.
“Tell me about him.”
