A Thin Disguise by Catherine Bybee

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Stubborn.

“I am stubborn,” Olivia said to herself in the bathroom mirror.

Dinner was behind her, and even though she could put her head on her pillow and conk out for the night, she was determined to take a walk before the sun completely set.

Lifting her left arm to work a band into her hair took a huge amount of effort. Each muscle extending and contracting on her left side was sore. And when she thought about it, some were trying to mend themselves back together.

Once her hair was up into a ponytail, she used a washcloth to rinse away the look of pain on her face. She’d gone a whole day without one person asking if she wanted something for pain. She counted that as a win.

She grabbed a sweater, placed it over her arm, and left her room. At the top of the stairs, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and intended to set a pace going down the stairs and not falter.

Five steps down she reached for the handrail and cursed the ache in her side. Why did a bullet to the chest cause her entire body to slow down?

She counted the last three steps in her head and paused when she reached the bottom. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Even that was painful. And in truth, it got worse as the day moved on.

“It’s not a race.”

Olivia opened her eyes to find Sasha standing several feet away, her knowing stare pinning Olivia in place.

She lifted her chin. “It feels as if it is.”

“Push yourself too hard and you’ll slide backward.”

Olivia knew her words were meant to help, but that didn’t stop her from justifying her actions. “I can’t push my mind to remember a solitary thing. Pushing my body is my only option.”

Sasha swallowed, looked away. “Leo is waiting for you on the porch.”

No argument . . .

Olivia was liking Sasha more each day.

She passed Pam, who was sitting in the living room, a book in her hand. “You’re not coming?” Olivia asked.

“What’s the point? If I tell you it’s time to turn around, you’ll just ignore me.”

Which had happened on their morning walk.

“Besides, if you can’t make it back on your own two feet, he can carry you. I can’t.” She flipped the page in her book, never looked up.

Olivia wanted to laugh but settled for a smile instead.

“We’ll be back before it’s dark.”

Pam looked at her watch, glanced up, then back to her book. “Stubborn.”

Olivia walked past her and out the front door.

Leo stood talking to Isaac and Lars, the three of them laughing about something.

“Looks like we have a crowd,” Olivia said when she approached them.

Lars nodded toward the opposite side of the drive. “We’re on a mission. Two of the sensors keep getting knocked offline by raccoons.”

“Try moving them up,” she suggested. “Above the level of the animals.”

Isaac cleared his throat.

“That was the plan,” Lars said, the smile on his face fading.

Leo turned to her. “If you want this walk, we need to go now. If we’re still out when it gets dark, I’m carrying you back.”

Olivia narrowed her gaze. “You’ve been talking to Pam.”

He lifted his hands in the air. “There are three women in this house, and two of them are ticked that you’re doing this. I can piss off one of you or two of them. What would you do?”

Lars chuckled. “Have fun.”

She moved ahead of Leo and took a good look at the second set of stairs.

“If you can’t make it down, you won’t make it back up.”

Her eyes shifted to him, drifted to his chest. “I’ve seen you without a shirt. You’re capable of getting me up these stairs.”

“Now you’re just using flattery to get what you want.”

Without asking, she placed her hand on his arm and reached for the handrail.

She took her time and felt good at the bottom.

“Let’s do this,” he said.

She removed her hand from him and started walking. “I know I appear obstinate—”

“Are,” Leo corrected her. “It’s only been a week. And most of that time you were in the ICU.”

“They kept me in the ICU for security. I’m pretty sure Neil bribed them for the room.”

Leo stayed silent.

“We’re simply going to have to agree to disagree on this,” she finally said.

“Fair enough. But I’m your walking buddy. I’ll be able to tell if you’re getting better or worse from day to day where the others may not if they aren’t out with you all the time. And you’ll bullshit them if it serves you.”

“You think I’m that conniving?”

Leo glanced down, then back to the road. “Yup.”

She laughed. “You might be right.”

The gravel under her feet crunched, the noise heavy in her ears. Why not a paved driveway? The homeowner spent a lot of money on the house itself.

But would Neil pick a house with a paved drive?

No. He would want to hear cars coming and going.

Olivia watched her feet moving. Why would she know what Neil was considering when he picked their location?

“What are you thinking?” Leo asked.

“Random thoughts. They keep coming out of nowhere.”

“Memories?”

She shook her head. “Not memories. It’s hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“Like this . . .” She reached behind his back and patted where he held his weapon. Smiled when she confirmed with a touch what she’d figured out earlier that day. “I never saw it, but I knew it was there.”

Leo had stopped to watch her. “I am a federal agent.”

She kept walking. “It’s not knowing that you should have a gun on you, but that you did and where it was. Isaac has his in his cargo pants. Must be strapped in somehow, otherwise it would have been obvious. AJ has his here.” She patted her left flank. “Lars . . .” She stopped, thought of him before he walked off to set sensors. “He’s armed to the teeth. Why would I know that?”

“You’re intuitive?” Leo didn’t sound convinced by his own words.

“It’s more than that. Pam walks up and down the stairs with heavy feet. She’s a small woman, but her footfalls are like an elephant in my ears. Isaac and Lars are better, but Lars favors his right leg. I bet he’s had an injury. And Sasha . . . I never hear her. That woman is stealth. It’s more than intuition. It’s knowledge that’s ingrained.”

“Maybe your other senses are heightened since your memory is missing?”

“You really believe that?”

“You have a better theory?”

“No.” She hadn’t thought that long or hard about it. She’d been spending too much time thinking of the facts as they dropped into her head.

She swatted away a mosquito and considered putting the sweater on if only to ward off any bug bites.

They walked in silence for a few yards. “You don’t have to hide them.”

“Hide what?” Leo asked.

“Your guns. They don’t scare me.”

Leo chewed on that for a few steps. “If we all walked around armed to the teeth, and someone from a neighboring property took notice, questions would come up.”

At first, his explanation made sense, but Neil wouldn’t choose a property with neighbors. At least not neighbors who were actually around.

Another mosquito moved in for blood.

Leo reached over, took her sweater from her hand, and held it out for her to step into. “You’re not the only one who’s intuitive. It’s cooling off, the mosquitos are attacking, but it’s hard to get into the sweater without hurting.”

She accepted his help, eased her left arm in first. “Another week and the mosquitos will die off with the shift in the weather.”

“You think so?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He pulled the sweater around her, let his hands linger on her arms. “Better?” he asked.

“Your hands are warm.” So were his eyes. Trusting. Like a net at the end of a fall.

There it was, the rapid rise and fall of his chest, his eyes drifting to her lips. How would they taste? How would he taste? A feeling washed over her with the memory of what a kiss felt like, but not the who on the other end.

Then logic knocked on the back side of her brain. “Getting mixed up with your protectors is just as foolish as with your captors,” she whispered. Not that her words stopped her from her next thought about the day’s growth of beard that gave Leo an edge she liked even more than the clean-shaven look he started with every morning.

How would he feel on her skin?

Did he want to find out about her as much as she desired to learn about him?

Leo snapped his eyes away, dropped his hands to his sides. “We should head back.”

Olivia took that as an agreement.

A few steps toward the house and she confronted him. “Are we going to ignore this?” she asked.

“You called it foolish.”

“Am I wrong?”

“No.”

“Yet you volunteered to escort me on my walks.”

He kept his gaze forward. “That makes me a masochist.”

Why did this feel like a challenge? “Are you afraid I might be married?” she asked him.

“Happily married women aren’t walking around Las Vegas without a wedding ring,” he told her.

She glanced down at her left hand. No evidence of atrophy where a ring had lived, no tan lines. “What about an unhappily married woman? Or maybe I have an awful boyfriend.”

He snuck a glance her way.

She pretended not to notice.

“You don’t strike me as a woman who would stay in any relationship she wasn’t happy with. We can’t even get you to stay inside and put your feet up. I don’t see a man controlling your actions.”

Part of her believed everything he said, and something else told her he was wrong.

“If there is a Mr. to my Mrs. , he might want to show up soon.”

“Oh?”

Olivia looked over at him, waited until he looked back before she spoke. “I’m starting to have some thoughts on how to spend the time around here.” Without thinking, she licked her lips.

Leo blew out a very audible breath and forced his eyes away. “You’re killing me,” he murmured.

She couldn’t say for sure if this was her normal behavior, but she wasn’t going to deny it felt damn good and familiar. “You’re too easy.”

“I’m a man.”

They walked in silence. The house and the valley below came into view.

Leo reached over and gently slid his hand over hers.

Her heartbeat rushed in her head.

The flirting felt familiar.

The handholding . . . not so much.

Not that she wanted to pull away.

“Does she have her memory back?”

Not hello . . . how are you? How’s the weather? It had only been a week that they’d been in Colorado, and Leo’s boss sounded as impatient as ever. “No, Brackett, her memory is still on the streets of Las Vegas where someone shot it out of her.”

Leo was in the situation room on the secured line. Isaac sat in front of the monitors watching the most boring show on television.

Although Leo didn’t want to invite excitement.

“Thought as much. Am I to assume there’s no trouble?”

“We’re good. And movement on Navi?”

“He left Vegas after the judge sent Mykonos away for forty years to think about all the bad things he’s done.”

“Out in ten for good behavior?” Forty years wasn’t enough.

“Minimum twenty. They’re appealing, of course.”

Still not enough time. Only they couldn’t pin down a manslaughter charge since the man who had killed the women that were with Marie ended up dead in his cell before he could stand trial. Crazy how the little guys never make it out alive, and the big bosses always do.

“We’re interviewing all parties. Looking for who was watching the headlines and would have behaved differently should that bullet have hit you instead of the girl.”

Leo thought about that a lot.

“Someone on the jury?” Leo suggested.

“Or the judge . . . maybe even the lawyers. But they aren’t about to say a damn thing. We’re digging. Looking for patterns.”

“Whoever they were trying to make me an example to didn’t get the message.”

“Unless someone just wanted you out.”

Leo had a hard time seeing that. He wasn’t even a witness in the case. Though he did put a target on himself when he cornered Navi. In which case, Leo had no one to blame but himself. He knew the dirtbags he was dealing with. “Always a chance it was meant as a warning to me.”

“That’s not off the table either. Considering you didn’t take the hit. These guys are professionals. They don’t miss very often.”

“How is Fitz holding up?”

“She asked for a raise . . . says she’s working both of your jobs.”

Leo laughed. The government didn’t give two shits how hard you worked. Raises were mapped out from the day you took the job to the day you retired.

“So, she’s fine.”

Brackett laughed. “Talk to you next week.”

“Sooner if I have anything.”

His boss hung up, and Leo looked at the phone, then Isaac.

“What are the chances that this phone call wasn’t recorded?”

Isaac reached over, pressed a button on his computer.

Leo’s and Brackett’s voices replayed the conversation for several seconds before Isaac shut it off.

“It’s not about trusting you. You wouldn’t be here if Neil had any doubts. It’s about taking his intel and putting it with ours. Adding scenarios, removing others.”

“When is that happening? This scenario speculation you guys do?”

“Once Olivia is sleeping. Plan is to meet down here, video with Neil and the others. Swap stories.”

The hair on Leo’s neck pulled with irritation. “Was it also in the plan to clue me in?”

Isaac stared at the monitors. “Not my call.”

“Yet you just told me about it.”

“Was told to wait for you to ask. You earn your stripes with this group. Nothing’s given for free.”

“Olivia earned her stripes?”

“Oh yeah. In spades.”