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“So if this place isn’t yours, who does it belong to?”
“My brother Niall.”
“The black-ops warrior?”
Shane stiffened and his smile faded. “What do you know about Niall?”
“I have my sources,” she said with a smile that warned him not to ask for specifics...because she wasn’t about to give them. “But they couldn’t tell me much. I know he’s a year younger than you. I know he served four years in the Marine Corps, just like your other brothers and your sister. When he left the Corps he joined a federal organization that operates in the shadows. Even their federal budget is buried.” This was obviously a sore point with Carly, but she didn’t elaborate on it. “Other than that, I know nothing. He’s a blank slate.”
Tension ebbed out of his body. “Niall is...he’s the best brother a man could have—and my best friend. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have at my back than him—and I’ve served with some damned fine fellow marines. You wouldn’t want Niall as your enemy, but as a friend there’s none better.” He started to add something to this, but changed his mind at the last minute. Not because he didn’t trust Carly, but because it wasn’t his secret to share.
“So your brother lives here...when he’s in town.”
“Yeah.”
“If he’s letting you stay here, that means he’s not in town now.”
Carly hadn’t posed a question...and Shane wasn’t volunteering anything. Niall’s whereabouts were a closely guarded secret—even Shane never knew from one day to the next where his brother would be. He could reach him in any one of three ways...but not all at the same time—cell phone, email and Facebook. And of the three, Facebook was the most reliable, although response times could vary and coded messages were a must.
Shane had often wondered—but had never asked Niall—if Niall’s email and social media accounts were monitored by someone within his agency, someone who made it a point to contact Niall some other way when there was an urgent communication from his family, like this last time, when Shane had desperately needed to reach Niall. Some people might think that smacked too much of cloak and dagger work, but Shane had been on the receiving end of military intel gathered through the most unlikely sources. He didn’t care how his messages to Niall got through...just that they did.
“Too bad,” Carly continued, having no idea how far Shane’s thoughts had wandered. “I would like to meet your brother. He sounds fascinating. I’ve never met anyone in his line of work...at least I don’t think I have.”
He laughed softly. “You know what they say, don’t you?” he teased. “I could tell you about him...but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Ha ha ha.” Carly’s dry tone and the expression on her face said she wasn’t amused. “Seriously, though, does he really need to live in a fortress?”
Shane’s humor fled. “Probably not. But at the moment I’m grateful he does. There’s no way anyone could break in to plant a bomb here, so at least we can get a decent night’s sleep without worrying about that.”
“What about the FBI? Why can’t they keep us safe?”
“They could...if they could spare agents to babysit us indefinitely, which they can’t.” He thought about how to put it. “I know why the guy who tried to kill me in Phoenix is trying to kill you—you can identify him, or he thinks you can. But I still have no idea why he wants me dead in the first place. Do you?” Carly shook her head. “If the FBI or the ATF or the Phoenix police have any clue, they’re not sharing it with me. Which means it’s open season, and I might as well be walking around with a bull’s-eye target on my back.”
A stricken expression entered Carly’s eyes, but she didn’t say anything, and Shane continued implacably. “I can’t just hole up here for the duration—I have a job to do. For all I know, this could be some kind of campaign to intimidate me into hiding out, and the hell with my job. But if I do that, he wins even without killing me.”
