Chapter 15

Kirk rose from where he had been crouching on the ground, searching for signs of their intruders from the evening before. “Two of them. Looks like Slate took a good-sized bite out of one of them. They headed off into the trees back toward the highway, probably had a car parked there waiting for them.”

“Can we follow the blood trail?” Trevor asked.

“Not a problem. Like I said, Slate got a good bite; he left us one hell of a trail to follow.”

Snaf shoved past the both of them. “Great, let’s go find the creeps.”

The trail was clear. Two men walking side by side, one helping the other along because of the injury. Broken branches, clear footprints, and the blood trail, all gave them a path a blind man could follow it was so clear.

It ended at a set of tire tracks in the trees just off the highway. Kirk crouched down to study the tracks, when he rose he gave them a grim look. “SUV, large one. Probably our friends from the FBI.”

Both Trevor and Snaf grimaced, but it was Trevor who spoke. “They aren’t giving up, they know I’m here. They’re probably trying to flush me out.”

“They were probably following the iPad signal,” Snaf replied.

“Couldn’t be, Kirk had already taken it when they showed up. Wouldn’t they have followed it when it left the cabin?”

Snaf grunted and Kirk looked around the forest as if he were looking for someone to jump out at them. “Maybe they wanted to see what was in the cabin, after all they could pick up the iPad signal at anytime and go after it wherever it was.”

Kirk had a point; Trevor had to agree with it. “So what now?”

Kirk shrugged. “Nothing. You are Treacy Maher, not Trevor Madison. Life goes on and we keep our eyes peeled for the FBI snooping around.”

They turned away and headed back to the resort.

Despite Kirk’s confidence about him now being Treacy, Trevor couldn’t help the creeping feeling of looming danger that he had. They weren’t safe. None of them was safe.

He wasn’t certain about a lot of things these days but that was one thing he was certain of: none of them was safe.

Agent Brooks didn’t strike him as the kind of man who gave up easily. For whatever reason the FBI wanted him and they wanted him badly. For about the millionth time he wished he could remember why they wanted him. At the trailhead, the three of them stopped.

Kirk adjusted the rifle where it lay across his back. “I’ll head back to the cabin, keep an eye on Chloe, you guys do what you do.”

Snaf nodded. “Sure thing big brother.”

“Thanks for keeping her safe, Kirk,” Trevor told the other man.

“No problem cuz.”

Trevor watched him as he walked off down the trail in the opposite direction. Once he’d rounded a curve in the trail, he turned to Snaf with a sigh. “Let’s go finish up cabin twelve.”

***

Chloe looked up as Kirk entered the cabin and smiled at him. As usual, he didn’t return the smile. It didn’t upset her, she understood the older Maher brother more than he thought. She could see the pain in his eyes that he tried to hide behind the cold emotionless exterior. Someone had hurt him. Whoever it was; they had hurt him deeply, causing him immense pain. 

“Hello Kirk. How are you?”

“Good, looks like our visitors from last night were more than likely the FBI. I’m here to keep an eye on you until Tre is done with work.”

“All right. Would you like something to eat?” She rose and headed into the kitchen without waiting for an answer. She’d feed him no matter the answer. Kirk would never ask for anything regardless of how he felt. The man could be four days starving and he would never ask for a scrap of food. She felt him following close behind her.

“I’m fine Chloe, you don’t have to look after me like a stray,” he protested.

“You don’t need to look after me either. Yet here you are.” She sent him an arch look over her shoulder. He knew very well that he didn’t need to look after her; he’d seen her shoot when his brother had been teaching Trevor. Both he and his brother had been impressed by her shooting. She certainly wasn’t on a level with him, but she wasn’t a slouch.

“I’m not going to argue this with you. These men are government agents, Chloe.”

“Your point is what exactly?” she asked as she put a plate containing a sandwich and chips on the table. Turning away, she went to the fridge, grabbed a can of soda, returned to the table, and placed it beside the plate. “Sit and eat.”

Resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to leave him alone until he ate, he removed the rifle from his back, laid it across the table, and sat. “My point is that we all feel safer if you aren’t alone. All right?”

Throwing her hands in the air in resignation, she sat down at the table. “Fine then, stay, and be my bodyguard then.”

He sent her a rare grin and took a bite of the sandwich. She shook her head at him and watched him eat. Her eyes flitted over to the rifle where it lay on the table. It was an extended part of Kirk. He never seemed to go anywhere without it. She knew from what Snaf had told her that he’d been shot twice and had been in the hospital recovering from the second injury when Snaf and called him to come home and help.

“Do you miss it?” she asked him quietly, still staring at the rifle.

“Miss it?” he asked in apparent confusion.

She looked up at him. The question may have been laced with confusion, but she saw in his eyes that he had understood the question perfectly. “Don’t play with me Kirk. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” She gestured to the rifle. “Do you miss it?”

He leaned back in his chair and blew out a breath. “Yeah, I guess I do. What do you want me to say?”

“I wanted you to be honest.” She crossed her arms on the table before her and looked him in the eye. He was losing parts of himself. Whether because of the person who had hurt him or because, he was throwing himself much too far into the job that he seemed to love, she wasn’t certain. Perhaps it was a bit of both. Maybe he had thrown himself into the Marines because of the person who had hurt him.

“What happened to you?” She saw the shutters come down. Saw the exact second that he went completely cold and closed her out, until that second he’d at least been trying to speak openly with her, if not exactly maintain an emotional connection.

“My past doesn’t concern you. What made me who I am is none of your business.” He shoved away from the table, took his plate, and placed it into the sink. When he turned back, it was to find Chloe sitting complacently in her seat, his rifle in her hands, aimed at his chest.

“It concerns me when I see you self-destructing. It concerns me because I care about you, about your family. I cannot stand by and watch you slowly kill yourself. You need to deal with whatever is eating away at your soul before it destroys you completely.” She stood, shoved the rifle at him, and left the kitchen.

 

Kirk stood with his butt leaning back against the edge of the counter, his fingers wrapped around his rifle, staring after Chloe. He blew out a breath that he’d been unaware of holding. It had been a long while since anyone had ever gotten the drop on him. Probably since, he’d been a green trainee in boot camp. Yet, Chloe had picked his rifle up and had it aimed at him and he’d had no clue until he’d turned to face her. What frightened him the most wasn’t that she’d been able to get a line on him without his knowing it, it was the fact that he knew she was perfectly capable of firing his rifle and hitting him. Even if she hadn’t been aiming at close range. “What the hell?” he muttered.  

When had Chloe turned into a psychologist? He reached up and ran a hand over his short, cropped hair. Sadly, what she’d said was very close to the truth. The anger, hatred, inside of him was eating away at him, slowly destroying everything that he had once been. He’d pulled away from his family, thrown himself into the Marines, become one hell of a sniper. A damn good assassin. One of the best. Because it was all he had. As long as he could go out and put a bullet in between the eyes of some lowlife b*****d who deserved it, it would keep him from doing the same to the woman who had ripped his heart out and trampled it as if it had meant nothing to her.

Pushing his body away from the counter, he followed Chloe out into the living room. He had an urge to apologize to her, but he tramped it down. No way in hell was he going to apologize. It was his business. And it would stay that way.

***

Durn stayed back from the cabin, staring at it through binoculars. A frown was pulling at his features. He’d seen the older Maher brother enter the cabin a while ago. What the hell was going on here? If Madison and the woman Brooks had identified as Chloe, were living there, what was Kirk Maher doing in there?

“You think the Maher brother is doing Madison’s woman?”

Durn glared at Agent Sands. “We don’t have proof of that, Sands.”

She grinned at him. “Well, let’s see Madison isn’t here, Kirk Maher isn’t exactly hard on the eyes, what do you think is going on Agent Durn?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m not playing the soap opera game.”

“The soap opera game?”

“Yes, who’s screwing who and when,” he answered without taking his eyes off the cabin.

She snorted. “Wow, that’s a new one. Never heard that one before.”

He didn’t give a crap if she had or not. He was here to do a job. They had to find out if Treacy Maher was really Trevor Madison, period, end of story. He could care less about anything else. If Maher’s wife was doing his cousin, it wasn’t his business. He lowered the binoculars and rubbed at his eyes.

“I’m thinking this is a waste of time. Brooks said the iPad left the premises, so why are we still here?”

Sands shrugged and took a swig of water from the bottle she never seemed to be without these days, the woman was always swigging water. Some new diet where she had to drink a gallon�"or some such some crap�"a day. “You know Brooks; he has to cover every damn base.”

“Right.” He sent her a glance. “You have any idea why we’re even after this guy?”

“Nope, does it matter?”

Disgusted that she wouldn’t care if they were simply following some personal agenda of Brooks’ or not, he chose to ignore her instead of continuing any further conversation. Her perked up when he saw Treacy Maher approaching the cabin. Well, he doubted Kirk and Dale Maher were having an affair if her husband was coming home and Kirk was still there. Treacy Maher went straight inside and they didn’t hear any shouting and no gunshots, so it was a safe bet that there was no hanky-panky going on.

***

Trevor smiled at Chloe as he entered the cabin and shut the door. “Hey how were things here?”

“Quiet. How was work?”

He shrugged, pulling her in for a kiss, before answering. “Boring.”

“Right I’m out of here before you two get past kissing,” Kirk said with a grimace as he headed for the door.

Trevor followed him out to the porch. “You see anything?”

“No, not a thing. If they’re here then they’re doing the bright thing and staying far from the cabin so Slate can’t sense them.”

Trevor rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. His neck was crawling with ants, they were here, and he could feel it. “I can’t help but feel as if we should split before they come down hard on us. I wouldn’t want your family to get caught in the middle of this s**t-storm.”

“It’s our choice. You’re family cuz, family sticks together. You run, we follow and make certain that you’re okay.” He slapped Trevor on the back.

Trevor sighed and watched as Kirk disappeared off into the darkness of the forest. He stood on the porch for a few minutes, enjoying the silence of the night, before he headed inside.

“Kirk okay?” Chloe asked him.

“Same as ever.”

“I wish he’d open up and talk about whatever is bothering him.”

“He will when he’s ready.”

“I suppose, he’s just so quiet that it’s hard not to worry about him.”  She turned and headed for the kitchen. “Come on I’ve got dinner ready.”

He signed. “Yeah all right. Do you think we should just leave?”

“Why? If we run, the FBI might see us and that could cause bigger problems. I don’t know Tre, it could be worse if we run or it could be worse if we stay. Who’s to say which is right? Right now, I say we stay. There is nothing that says the FBI is suspicious about our cover, they only have a vague idea that you might be here. Nothing more. And I like it here. I like the Maher’s as well.”

He pulled her into his arms and placed a kiss on the tip of her nose. “You always see things more clearly than I do. Let’s eat and get some sleep. Who knows how long we’re gonna have to tip toe around. Kirk is going to slip out into the forest and see if he can find that SUV tonight.”

“Good then maybe we’ll know who is watching us and how many of them there are.”

“That would be a plus.” She pulled away from him and began getting things out for dinner. “Let’s eat,” she said with a weary sigh.

“Good idea.” He came up behind her, leaned down, and wrapped her in a tight hug, placing a kiss on her neck.