Page 13 of Hot Intent

“Coffee or sleep?” she asked sympathetically.

“Sleep.”

“By all means.” She’d heard that doctor’s spouses had to get used to some weird working hours. Not that Alex had hinted in any way about marriage, of course. The poor guy was barely getting used to the idea of having a girlfriend, let alone a wife.

She heard Alex’s shower running while she dressed Dawn and fed her breakfast. The baby was starting to feed herself, which entailed much hilarity with flying food and lots of cleaning up. After breakfast, Dawn settled down to play with a pile of stuffed animals in need of chewing and tossing while Katie flipped on the television to check out the news. Ever since she’d hooked up with a spy, she paid much closer attention to world events than before.

Not that she was exactly sure what Alex was, any more. Supposedly, now that his training was finished, he would go back to work as a humanitarian aid doctor.

The morning news focused mostly on a hurricane entering the Caribbean. It was forecasted to grow into a major storm. Current storm tracks had it pointed at Cuba. Too bad. The impoverished nation needed a natural disaster about like it needed a hole in the head.

The news moved on to a shooting in a shopping mall somewhere on the west coast, and Dawn squalled. Katie picked her up quickly and shushed her lest she wake Alex. Sensing a bout of baby babble coming on, she bundled Dawn up and took her out onto the terrace for some fresh air.

Dawn bounced up and down excitedly in her walker, and Katie pulled out her cell phone to check her texts and email. Nothing much was happening with her friends or family. Bored,she pulled up a search engine and typed in the phrase she’d seen on Alex’s desk.

Her phone took a long time doing the search, and when the results finally flashed up on the small screen, they were worthless. Every hit had both of the words in it, but not together. It was a bust. She would have to wait until Alex woke up to ask him what it meant.

She shrugged and strolled along behind Dawn, enjoying the early springtime sun as Dawn propelled herself around the garden. Winter in Washington D.C. was generally a gray, wet affair, and she was enjoying this dose of sunshine.

After nearly an hour outside, Dawn caught one of the wheels of her walker on a pavement joint, and without warning the whole thing started to tip over. Katie dived for baby and walker just as the waist-high ceramic planter beside her exploded. Black dirt flew everywhere. What the heck? The baby started and let out a howl while Katie brushed dirt off both of them.

“Get inside,” Alex barked from the sliding glass door to his bedroom.

Katie looked up, shocked to see the blunt shape of a pistol in his fist. Having grown up with soldiers and when her dad left the military, a cop, she was long conditioned to follow orders like that instantly and ask questions later.

Keeping her head down, she raced through the door behind him. Dawn started to cry in earnest, no doubt sensing Katie’s panic. Alex slipped outside, closing the door behind him, while Katie tried to calm the baby. But Dawn was having no part of it.

Had the sharp warm-up overnight caused the cold ceramic to crack? Alex was going to be annoyed if that was what woke him up. So jumpy he was since he got back. Was he going to whip out a gun at every loud noise?

The outside door slid open, and she tensed. Okay, so in all fairness, she was jumpy, too. Hard not to be after all the crap lastyear. A bunch of people had made a good faith effort to kill the three of them and nearly succeeded. And for the first time since, they were all back together.

“Shooter’s gone,” Alex bit out.

“It was just a big pot cracking?—“

He dropped something small and irregular on the bedspread. It looked like a pebble. She picked it up to examine it.

“Medium caliber slug,” he said tersely.

“You’re saying someone shot at you out there?”

“No. Someone shot at you. I dug that out of the dirt from the big planter that broke beside you.”

She lurched. “Are we under attack? Do I need to get Dawn to the safe room?”

He shook his head briefly in the negative. “Shooter’s fled the area. We’re clear.” His syllables were clipped but devoid of emotion.

Wasn’t he the slightest bit freaked out that someone had justshotat her? “Any idea who it was?” she asked as calmly as she could manage.

He shrugged. “I got no visual. I’ve called Langley, though, to have them pull satellite telemetry. This city always has a high-resolution satellite parked over it.”

“Now what?” she asked nervously.

“Now nothing. It’s over. You’re safe. I’ll investigate who shot at you. When I know the source of the threat, I’ll eliminate it.”

God, not even a bump of emotion entered his voice as he casually talked about killing someone. A chill rattled across her skin. Whowasthis man? What had they turned him into?

She stared at him in dismay. “I thought we were done with all of that. The people who came after us before are all dead or in custody. It’s finished. They told me it was all over. And no one’s tried to kill me and Dawn since you left. Why now? If someonewants to kill me, why wait until the person who can best protect me comes home?”

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