LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Four

      For the first time since throwing in with the Corcoran Team, Holt seriously considered not showing up at the prearranged time for a meeting the next morning. This one took place two towns over. He’d lost his tail easily and doubled back, circled around. Now he stood in the storage room of a hardware store with his men, waiting for them to snap out of their joint stupor.

      He’d known the crap storm he’d wade into the second he opened his mouth and filled them in on what had happened last night, including the part where he camped out on Lindsey’s couch. He stuck to the facts and rapid-fired his way through them in his oral report.

      Fallout time.

      “You did what?” Shane Baker, Holt’s best friend and the man he trusted most in the world, looked as if he couldn’t fight off his smile.

      The openmouthed staring had given way to smirks, which meant Holt needed a new topic of conversation. “Let’s move on.”

      “When do we get to give you a hard time for picking a woman over the job?”

      Holt reassessed his decision to lay out all the facts. He should have skipped right over the Lindsey piece, but Shane was about to walk into town playing the role of an old military buddy. For the fake romantic relationship with Lindsey to work, Shane needed to play along. That meant coming clean...unfortunately.

      “Never,” Holt said, wondering how to regain control of the conversation. Taking on two of them made it tough.

      The snorting sound came the second before Shane’s response. “Wrong answer.”

      Cameron Roth, the team’s flying expert, shook his head. “Sorry, man. It’s happening.”

      Holt thought he’d at least have an ally in Cam. The guy had run into a similar situation with a woman and a mess followed by a rescue three months before. “Should we talk about you and Julia and how you had us all racing through an abandoned shipyard to save you?”

      “Huh.” Cam made a face. “That’s not how I remember it.”

      Shane held up a hand. “Wait, are you comparing your situation with Lindsey to Cam’s sad lovesick whining over Julia?”

      Cam shook his head again. “I don’t remember that either.”

      “Oh, please.” Shane took a seat on a stack of boxes balanced against a wall. “You fell in love and got stupid.”

      Holt felt a punch of relief when Shane and Cam went after each other and jumped over him. Comparing his relationship with Lindsey to the one shared by Cam and Julia, a couple on the verge of getting engaged, did not amount to a good strategy. But he’d dodged that disaster.

      Now he needed his men back on track, and fast. “We’re on limited time here.”

      Fully engaged now, Shane crossed one ankle over the other and leaned in. “Then let’s get back to your cover.”

      Not exactly where Holt wanted to take the next round of conversation. “What about it? It’s intact.”

      “Do we know that or are you going to get called in to see the boss at the camp and get shot?” Cam asked.

      “The thing with Lindsey makes me more interesting to management.” Being followed ever since he left Lindsey’s house clued Holt in. He’d gone from being one of the many faceless men roaming around the campground handling odd jobs to a person they watched.

      Not that the person following him could be called an expert. No, the guy closed in too fast and showed too much interest. He also managed to pick a vehicle Holt recognized as regularly being parked in Simon Falls’s private garage. Not a New Foundations company vehicle but one Holt had already staked out during his late-night recon on the property.

      Shane frowned. “Which is the problem, since the point was to blend.”

      “This is better.” Every minute Holt became more convinced and he’d get Connor on board in the next hour or so.

      Lindsey’s intel placed a target—whatever it was, and he’d get that out of her soon enough—on her forehead. That put Holt in the middle, and if he was going to sit there he might as well use the position.

      The system worked like a circle. He wanted the information Lindsey possessed, and now someone at New Foundations would want to know what he knew. Either that or eliminate him, and Holt had no intention of letting that option happen.

      Shane’s frown deepened with each question. “How can the impromptu plan you’re using now be better than the one we worked out for a week, taking all contingencies into account?”

      All contingencies except Lindsey. Nothing prepared Holt for her, but he didn’t volunteer that piece of information.

      “Because under his new plan he gets to sleep at Lindsey’s house.” Cam twisted the top off the water bottle in his hand. “She is the prize here.”

      “It’s not like that.” And Holt would work very hard to keep it that way. He was not a dating guy and he never fooled around on a job.

      Cam saluted him with the water bottle. “Yet.”

      The man-to-man look from Cam made Holt worry they’d never stay on task, so he looked to Shane for help. “I need you on this.”

      “What’s the ‘this’ you’re talking about?”

      “Watching over Lindsey when I can’t.” Holt had to keep up the job at the camp. That meant leaving her without protection. Enter Hank Fletcher’s old friend in town for a few weeks.

      The cover gave Shane an excuse to hang around. Cam could continue to fly tourists around on the helicopter while really conducting aerial searches of the campground and surrounding areas.

      “Does she know she’s about to get a second roommate?” Shane asked.

      Since she barely wanted one man in the house, Holt hadn’t exactly jumped at offering details between coffee and cereal at the kitchen sink this morning. “No.”

      “Can I be there when she finds out you plan to spring me on her?” Shane’s smile could only be described as annoying.

      Holt hid a wince. “Go away.”

      “Make up your mind.” Shane dragged out the sing-songy voice. “You want me to stay. You want me to go.”

      “To the public we were in the military together. Met there, served and remained friends through everything.” Connor and Joel had set up the cover. “Now you’re out and looking for a place to land, but you were there when I shot the locals in Afghanistan. You think I got a raw deal.”

      New Foundations sought out disgruntled men with skills. That meant Holt had needed a story that fit the type. And since he had a horror story of his own in his past, it wasn’t all that hard to call up those feelings of frustration.

      The difference was he didn’t blame the army for what had happened to him. In real life, he’d been the one left to die by someone he trusted. In his cover story, he did the killing. He hated both end results, but he’d lived with the realities of one of them for years now.

      “You said that’s the story to the public. Interesting word choice.” Cam and Shane started talking at the same time, but Cam rushed to finish first. “Are you saying you’re going to tell Lindsey who I really am?”

      Didn’t matter who spoke up, because the answer didn’t change. “She already knows my real name and about

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