Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Seth strode over to the silver Toyota Sequoia sitting in the parking lot and turned to watch Callie walk toward him. The uncertainty on her face had him taking a mental step back, reminding himself he needed to be friendly. Approachable.
He’d done a good job of it in the conference room, but his guys had been there for back up. He’d been congratulating himself on getting her to talk when Ghost chose him to accompany her home.
Not what he wanted to do. He wanted to be on his laptop, searching the dark corridors of the web for information on Mikhail Volkov and the other two Russians. And her connection to them.
But Ghost had pointed out—rightfully—that Callie was a programmer and he was a hacker, and that meant he was the right man to go with her. Check out her place, see if there was anything suspicious. Break into her computer when he got a chance.
He could do it easily, but in order to do it he had to spend time with her. Be nice. Personable.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t be personable. He could.
But he wasn’t all that good at the polite banter that meant nothing. He never had been. When it was better to be quiet so that nobody noticed you, you learned to be quiet. You learned to sit at the dinner table and not say anything so the grandparents who resented getting stuck with you wouldn’t send you to bed still hungry. Which they often did anyway because they said you ate too much. Cost too much.
You learned to be quiet so your grandmother wouldn’t call you a burden and a drain on her golden years.
You learned to be quiet so your grandfather wouldn’t take a swig of his beer and glare at you, muttering about making a man of you.
You kept your mouth shut and said nothing, praying you’d get the hell out of there someday.
“Do you need to stop anywhere before we go to your place?” he asked, shoving aside thoughts about his damaged childhood. Couldn’t change it, did no good to dwell on it. They were dead now anyway.
“The farmer’s co-op. I have to pick up another bag of feed and some fly spray.”
“Okay.” He pointed at his maroon Ford F-150. “I’ll follow you there. You need help loading it?”
Her eyes were too big in her face. He wished she’d stop looking scared so he could stop caring that she did. She could be the enemy, the leak. Helluva convoluted game she was playing if so, but he knew from his years in Special Ops that anything was possible.
“No, the guys will load the feed. But thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
His voice was gruff, and she gave him a confused look before reaching for her door handle.
“Anywhere else you need to go?” he added. “Lunch in town? The grocery store? The pharmacy?”
She turned green eyes on him, her glossy hair swaying. She tucked it behind her ears on both sides, something he’d noticed she did frequently. “I don’t need anything, but if you want me to stop at the store to pick up things you like while you stay with us, I’m happy to do so.”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “It’s okay. I’m good.”
“You don’t even know what I have. What if we’re vegans?”
Was she joking with him? He wasn’t sure. Best not to laugh in case she got insulted by it. “I’ll order pizza. Or one of my guys will drop off some barbecue or a burger from the Dawg. I’ll figure it out.”
“Good to know.” She swung her door open and climbed inside the Toyota. He waited a moment, thinking he should say something else, but in the end he walked away and got into his truck.
He followed her to the co-op, watching as she got out of the SUV and went inside. When she returned, one of the young men who worked there had a bag of horse feed slung over his shoulder. Callie was talking to him. Seth had observed that she had a habit of using her hands to gesture. When she wasn’t deliberately holding them flat on the conference table, staring at her fingers instead of making eye contact.
She gave the man a big smile and a thank you as he put the feed in the cargo area for her. He didn’t look in any hurry to walk away as he stood there talking and smiling. Seth was about to lay on the horn when Callie turned and walked to the driver’s side door.
The man watched her go, his gaze most definitely sliding to her ass. Seth didn’t give two shits if the guy found her attractive, so why was there a hot feeling in his chest again?
Must be acid reflux. Wasn’t that something that made your chest burn?
Callie backed out and Seth followed her to the road. She hung left and headed south until she took another left on a dirt road that wended between cotton fields, making its way to a thick stand of trees on a small hill. A house and barn appeared once they drove beneath the trees.
There was a field behind the barn. A horse grazed in the pasture, its tail sweeping back and forth to brush away the flies.
He didn’t like how isolated she was out here. Not at all. He’d thought Rory Harper’s place was isolated, but this property took it up a notch. The only buildings they’d passed for the last two miles had been an abandoned building and a farmer’s house that sat back off the road.
Seth turned off the truck and went to help her as she tried to wrestle the bag of feed from the back of her Sequoia.
“I got it,” he said, reaching for the fifty-pound sack and slinging it over his shoulder the way the man at the co-op had.
Callie frowned up at him. “I was going to get the wheelbarrow. I was just trying to pull the bag closer to the edge.”
“Now you don’t have to. Tell me where to put it.”
“This way.”
He followed her to the barn, watching her ass the way the other man had. It was a nice ass, shapely, though the baggy jeans she wore fooled a man at first. Made him think there were no curves under there when there were plenty. Her white T-shirt wasn’t as baggy as the jeans, though. He could definitely see the swells of her breasts beneath the fabric.
She led him to a room in the interior of the barn. It was dark and musty, but he supposed that was just how barns smelled. He’d been in a few, usually while on missions or when they’d been helping Rory at her farm, but he didn’t know the first thing about horses.
“You can put it in that wheelbarrow. We still have some other feed to use first.”
He tossed the sack down and turned to face her. A shaft of light speared through the slats, tickling her in dust motes that swirled around her head. She looked young. He knew she was twenty-six, because he’d learned everything he could about her, but in that moment she looked even younger.
Made him feel like an old man at the ripe age of thirty-four. He almost felt guilty for noticing her ass and tits in that moment, but he pushed the feeling away. She was old enough, and he wasn’t dead. Like he’d told Kane.
“You just have the one horse?” he asked.
“Here, yes. That’s Charlie. But my sister has another horse in training at a hunter-jumper stable in Madison. His name is Jack.”
“Why two?”
“Because Charlie was Nikki’s first horse and she’s attached to him. But Jack is what she needs for the next level of competition.” She sighed, dropping her gaze a moment. “When our parents died, I couldn’t take the horses away from her. It’d be easier with one, but the kid’s been through enough. So Charlie lives here and she gets to love on him, but she goes to Madison three to four times a week to practice on Jack. More when there’s a competition coming up.”
He could hear the love in her voice. The concern. Whatever Callie Crowell might be, she cared about her sister’s well-being. He’d never had anyone who cared about him that much. Maybe his mother had, but she’d died when he was three. He’d gone to live with his dad’s parents a year later when his dad washed his hands of having a kid and abandoned him on their doorstep.
“Does she enter many competitions?”
“A few. Not as many as she’d like, because they’re expensive and time-consuming, though she has one next weekend. She still has to get good grades, or I’ve told her no horses. She grumbles but she does it. She wants to be a horse-trainer someday. I haven’t told her it’s not an easy profession. There’s time enough for disillusionment later.”
“Do you ride?”
“I did when I was her age. There’s ten years between us, but we rode at the same stable the last few years I was in high school. Nikki started lessons at five.”
“Did you compete?”
She nodded. “I was state champion three years in a row. I loved it, but then you grow up and realize that life is harder as an adult and you don’t have as much time. I went to college to study software engineering, programming, and languages, then went to work for the government. How about you?”
He was so focused on asking her questions that he hadn’t anticipated her turning the tables on him. “I joined the military at eighteen and I’ve been there since. Took an early retirement to come here with my bros.”
“So you guys are close then.”
“We are. Did time in special forces together.” He didn’t say Special Ops because that was too much information. Too specialized. “Always dreamed of opening our own business, and here we are.”
“Why Sutton’s Creek?”
“Because it’s close to Huntsville and Redstone Arsenal, and because we found the perfect place to open the range and training facility.”
“Makes sense.”
The sound of an engine approaching at speed reached into the barn. Callie went still, then pressed her hand to her mouth and coughed. Seth watched her as he planned what to do if the visitor turned out to be unfriendly.
“You need a dog,” he said when she stopped coughing. “First priority.”
“What? No.” She shook her head, her voice hoarser than it was a few moments ago. “I don’t need a dog to take care of on top of a horse.”
“Yeah, you need a dog. One that’ll scare motherfuckers off if they think to bother you out here. Don’t tell me a dog won’t be easier than a horse, either.”
“I’m not saying that, but I have enough responsibilities as it is.”
“I’m not talking about a fucking lapdog, Callie. I’m talking a big dog. You can let it out to take a piss and not worry it’s gonna get snatched by a hawk.”
“No, I?—”
Seth lifted a hand to silence her as the crunch of tires on gravel got louder. She nodded and he put a hand on his sidearm as he walked to the front of the barn. A red station wagon with a US Mail sign on the roof appeared between the trees and pulled up next to his truck.
Callie breathed a sigh behind him. “It’s just Bonnie. She’s probably bringing a package that won’t fit in the box.”
He didn’t stop her as she breezed past him and headed toward where a gray-haired woman leaned out the window with a handful of mail.
“Got a package for you, doll,” she said as Callie approached. “Take this stuff first and I’ll hand it to you.”
Callie took the mail and waited. Seth strolled out of the barn, heading for his truck so he could grab his computer and the few things he’d brought. He’d go pack some clothes later, but right now he wanted to get the lay of the place.
Bonnie turned back to Callie, holding a small Amazon box. Her smile went from a hundred watts to a thousand when she saw him.
“Well, well. If it isn’t one of Sutton’s Creek’s newest residents. Which one are you, gorgeous?”
“Seth King, ma’am.”
Bonnie winked. “That’s right. The strong, silent one. Nice to see you making friends.”
Seth didn’t know what to say. Callie’s cheeks were red as she took the package. “I’m thinking about putting up some cameras to keep an eye on Charlie,” she blurted. “When we’re not home. Seth is here to give me an estimate.”
Bonnie looked disappointed. Then she grinned again before she threw her station wagon in reverse. “You never know, sweetie. Met my Vernon at the gas station. He was on his way back to Decatur after finishing a plaster job for Judy Simpson over at the Bee, but he needed to fill up. I was a cashier back then. Love at first sight. Been married almost fifty years.”
She backed up at speed, whipped the wheel, and waved before speeding off down the drive. Callie stared after her, package in hand, as if she was trying to think of an answer that was already too late.
“You want to show me the house?”
She jerked her gaze toward him. “Oh. Right. Of course.”
She hurried away and Seth followed. He was supposed to be thinking about where to put cameras. Instead, he was thinking about the way the light had caressed Callie’s face in the darkness of the barn.
And wondering what the rest of her would look like with nothing but sunlight stroking soft fingers over her skin.