Page 29 of Midnight Secrets

“I got an email about you today.”

It felt like a punch to the stomach. All the wind went out of her. Her mouth fell open. “You got an email aboutme?” The bottom dropped out of her world. Nothing made any sense anymore. “What—what did it say?”

Was it a journalist looking for dirt? Was someone trying to ruin what was left of her life? But whoever had sent the email had sent it toJoe. Not to her. After the Massacre, Isabel had received all kinds of hate mail. There’d also been lots of condolence emails but also tons of political hate mail, to the effect that her godless family had gotten its just reward. Trolls crawling out of the woodwork to tear her down at her lowest point. She changed her email address and that was when she decided to move to Portland and change her name.

She’d known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if the hate mail continued, it was going kill her. She’d been half-dead and this wall of hatred, of vitriol was going to finish her off.

So she braced herself for whatever Joe was going to say. Somehow someone had latched on to the fact that Joe was being kind to her. And they wanted to destroy that. Leave her as alone as before.

She was ready for anything. For Joe to say that the email called her a whore, a bitch, a girl-child of privilege. That she wasn’t fit for decent folk.

That had been the baseline of the emails she’d received. An avalanche of them, happy that her father would never be president.

She held her breath.

“The email was simple,” he said. “It said protect Isabel.”

Her heart stuttered and her breath blew out in a whoosh. “It saidwhat?”

“Protect Isabel. Two words. And we were unable to find the source. Not even Felicity was able to find the source and Felicity is the atom bomb of IT. Someone seriously does not want to be found. But that someone also wants me to protect you. To keep you from harm.”

Isabel watched his eyes and saw the truth of what he was saying. “I don’t understand. I can’t understand. There’s no one left in the world who cares what happens to me.”

Joe’s face turned even grimmer as he took her chin and turned her head to fully face him. “That’s not true, Isabel. Not anymore. I care what happens to you.”

And he kissed her.

* * *

Fuck fuckfuck!

The bitch made him! Kearns stumbled his way back to his vehicle at a fast walk, still half-blinded. Luckily, training kicked in.

He knew how to walk without calling attention to himself. He knew exactly how to go in a mile-eating stride that looked normal but was about 30 percent faster than a normal walk. He knew how to unobtrusively avoid sources of light. He knew how to obscure his face when the odd car drove by this late at night in this residential neighborhood.

He knew it all. He’d been trained to observe strict surveillance rules. He knew how it was done. He’d worked for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service for five years before being cashiered for some stupid anti-corruption rule. They’d trained him well. But the government didn’t pay well. What did they care if he accepted money on the side? It had nothing to do with his mission. The discharge still burned.

No one had ever made him before. Ever. Kearns was furious with himself that he’d been made by a freaking untrained girl. A cook, for fuck’s sake. A woman who’d had a nervous breakdown. He’d read the psych eval. Someone in her state was barely aware of her surroundings and here she’d caught him.

But goddamn. What betrayed him was that she was a freaking looker. He had a weakness for the ladies. Isabel Delvaux was a little on the scrawny side but fuck. Big eyes, big pouty mouth. Surprisingly large boobs for a thin chick. A guy’d have to be dead not to notice. Kearns wasn’t dead. Not even close. And his dick worked just fine.

He had a low-level contract to keep an eye on the Delvaux woman who’d changed her name and moved to Portland. It was boring work because the chick never did anything. And the pay wasn’t good because it was goddamned scut work. Nothing a half-assed snot-nosed newbie couldn’t hack.

Watching a clueless woman was demeaning work. Kearns had taken it only because he was working his way up this new hierarchy he’d sensed was doing big-time stuff. Big-time stuff meant big-time money and he needed it. He’d blown the money from his last big contract in Vegas. He was flat-out broke and he wanted in on whatever it was that was happening. He’d put out the word that he was available and he’d gotten a bite within forty-eight hours.

He hadn’t expected to watch a chick day after day, doing nothing but taking slow walks in the mornings and cooking and reading in the afternoons, from what he could see.

Another guy followed her at times, walked slowly with her at others. Her next-door neighbor. Kearns checked the name, and when he checked in military databases the hairs rose on the back of his neck when he saw the guy was a former SEAL. Those guys didn’t fuck around and Kearns was no match for him in a fight unless he took him from behind.

And even then. The guy had been wounded—he had scars and he’d walked with a cane for a few days then threw it away. Wounded or not, though, he had that situational awareness the SpecOps guys were born with and then had the gift pounded into them.

You didn’t take SEALs by surprise.

He stopped day surveillance when he read that Joe Harris was a SEAL. Kearns didn’t report that the Delvaux bitch had a SEAL living next door. Either he’d lose the gig altogether or he’d be replaced, and though it wasn’t much money it was easy money.

So he didn’t follow her around anymore in the daytime beyond the occasional drive-by. He checked in on her at night. Easier, simpler.

And got a real perk. Shit yeah. She looked scrawny when dressed but when she walked around naked, oh yeah. Everything a woman needed, she had. Instead of bony, she was delicate with perfect tits.

---