Loe raamatut: «Unknown Enemy»

ONE

Virginia Anderson pushed back from the desk with a sigh, rubbing her tired eyes with a thumb and index finger. If she had to spend another hour in Rhoads, Pennsylvania’s Gwyn Ponth College library without seeing the fading October sunlight, she’d go stark raving mad. Of course, she thought, I have at least three more hours of documents to pore through, so what will that make me?

Taking the work home? Not an option. The combination of futon, fleece blanket, tea and heavy reading would put her right to sleep. Better to sit on a hard chair in a cool, quiet library and actually get her reading done.

“See you tomorrow, Ginny?”

Virginia—Ginny, to most everyone save her parents—waved at Donna, Gwyn Ponth College’s head librarian. “I’ll stick around until Roger comes in to start cleaning.”

Donna tut-tutted and shook her head. “You work too much, my dear. You part-timers aren’t paid nearly enough for the amount of hours you put in each and every day. If you’re not teaching, here you are. Don’t you ever sleep? You have a big meeting tomorrow, yes?”

“I only sleep if I have to.” Ginny laughed, waving Donna out the door. “Plus, it’s a meeting with a stuffy old grump from the museum. If I play it right, by this time next year I’ll have a tenure-track position and have made the historical discovery of a lifetime, and the lack of sleep will have been worth it.”

Donna swept out the door with a sympathetic smile. “I certainly hope so. Tell Roger I said hello.”

A smile crept into the corners of Ginny’s mouth. Since mid-September, Donna and one of the custodians had been leaving brief, affectionate notes and messages for each other through Ginny, though she’d never actually seen the head librarian and Roger meet in person. If only she could arrange it somehow, but Roger wasn’t a very chatty guy. He was a little on the shy side, and had a hard time making eye contact with others. It explained his hesitance to court the librarian in person, but Ginny was happy to be the go-between for them. It was sweet, and she thought Donna and Roger would make a cute couple.

As Ginny focused once more on the journal article in front of her, the lights in the room turned off with an audible click. Had Donna turned them off by accident, out of habit? “Not again, Dee,” she called. No response. The librarian must have left in a hurry. “Never mind, I’ll get it.”

This section of the library book stacks was dim enough to cause eye strain when all the lights were on, let alone having only the light from the emergency exit signs and the intruding outside light from streetlamps to navigate by. As she approached the light switch, a thump came from somewhere behind her. It sounded close. Had she left one of her books too close to the edge of the table?

“Hello?” Ginny squinted into the darkness of the book stacks behind her. “Is someone there?”

The sound of a pen hitting the floor sent her flying in the direction of the light switch. She felt a looming presence behind her just as a hand tapped her shoulder.

“Hey, kid,” said a gruff voice behind her. “Think you’re smart, hiding in here? Don’t make another move.”

Don’t move? Ginny knew there were still other people in the building, few as they might be, so she made the obvious choice. She shouted and twisted away as the hand slid off her shoulder, flailing her palms against the wall, fingers groping for the light switch.

With a click, the lights flickered on and relief flooded into Ginny’s limbs. She shot forward, bracing herself against the end of the nearest bookshelf. Her fingers brushed the spine of a hardcover book. She yanked it off the shelf and whirled around, swinging the book at what she assumed was her attacker’s head.

“Hey, stop!” He covered his head with his arms as the book made contact, then reached out and snatched the book away from her. He tossed it aside and held his hands up. “I’m not after you—I thought you were a student trying to sneak around in here off-hours. I can see now you’re not a student.”

Ginny grabbed another book and held it aloft, ready to throw it and run if he took another step closer. “I don’t believe you. Who are you? Why did you creep up on me in the dark instead of talking like a normal person?” His shirt bore the college crest and he looked too old to be an undergraduate—early thirties, maybe—but his coal-dark hair and razor stubble said troublemaker.

He raised one obsidian eyebrow as the sound of another book hitting the floor echoed from somewhere deep inside the library stacks. “Instinct due to training, plus I didn’t want to give you a chance to run off and disappear elsewhere. Earlier today, I heard we’re having some issues with students trying to hide in the archival area overnight. Something about accessing the controlled documents for their projects without the hassle of being monitored by a librarian. But we can discuss that later. Get down.”

“Why should I?”

“Trust me, please.” He reached for her arm and pulled her down into a crouch.

She drew back from his grip and scooted a few feet away from him, ready to demand he tell her what was going on, but his attention had fixated elsewhere and off of her. He had one finger to his lips. Stay quiet, really? After all that?

“Is there another way out of here?” He kept his voice low. “A back door?”

Ginny frowned, the words spilling out before she could help herself. “Haven’t you been in the library before at all?”

“I’m new,” he growled. “So, is there?”

Ginny swallowed, hoping she didn’t say anything else that could be construed as careless. Clearly, the man thought they were in danger, but he’d been the one waiting in the dark, hadn’t he? What if he had used this moment to divert her attention and was planning something horrible? What if he had a partner waiting in the book stacks to abduct her the moment she let her guard down? He hadn’t given her a good enough reason to trust him. As much as she hated to leave her wallet and research notes in the library, she might lose precious escape seconds by taking the time to grab either one.

Taking a deep breath, Ginny visualized the back door that led to the library’s administrative offices, said a quick prayer and silently counted down from three.

When she reached zero, she pushed off the floor and bolted toward freedom.

* * *

Seriously? Colin Tapping groaned as the woman sprinted away from him. She had no idea what kind of danger she might be putting herself in. The best-case scenario was that a student had, in fact, shut the lights off and hidden in the library in hopes of working here through the night. But his former line of work as a Secret Service agent had taught him to never underestimate the potential dangers of a situation.

Doing so risked lives. He’d learned that the hard way and he’d vowed to never let it happen again. Not that he’d thought he’d ever be in that kind of situation again, and especially not on a college campus in the middle of small-town America.

He rushed after her, listening for footsteps, thumps or anything else that sounded out of place in a library. Would she be headed for the front door? The college library had a simple floor plan, so there couldn’t be more than a few exits for her to choose from.

The library’s front entrance was dim and empty, with no movement from any of the doors at the main exit. He couldn’t have been more than a few seconds behind her, and those doors were heavy and slow to close. She hadn’t left this way. Might there be another entrance and exit for library staff? Colin took a left turn and ran past the ground level’s odd contrast of modern cubicles containing student computer terminals and glass cases displaying old, rare books. When he reached the hallway containing staff offices, he heard the tap of shoes on laminate flooring, followed by a feminine shout of dismay.

Colin reached a bend in the hallway to find the woman he’d followed kneeling on the floor, crouched over another prone figure with dark, curly hair. He took two steps toward them, already pulling his cell phone out of his pocket to dial 911, and froze.

A black cylindrical device rolled into the hallway from around the corner at the other end. It bounced against the side wall and skipped toward them.

“Get out of there!” Colin shouted at the woman. She turned to regard him with wide, frightened eyes, but she hadn’t yet seen the grenade. “Grenade! Run to me!”

Fright morphed from confusion to alarm, but instead of running toward him, she lost a precious half second by glancing at the person on the floor. Colin knew that look—she wanted to save her friend, but knew she didn’t have the strength to carry the person.

And in that lost moment, Colin knew it was too late.

The grenade exploded with a concussive bang. Colin collapsed where he stood as a bright white light flooded all his senses. He closed his eyes and counted to five. When he opened them, his vision had begun to return.

Relief poured through every inch of his body, and the flood of adrenaline at realizing he was still alive shot him to his feet. Only a stun grenade...but I guess it wasn’t a student hiding in the stacks after all.

Colin stumbled toward the blonde woman and the prone figure, his ears ringing. She was blinking and shaking her head, trying to restore her vision and hearing. He wanted to tell her that her hearing would return within the next few hours, but she might have some ongoing discomfort for a few days. Tinnitus was always a possibility after being hit with a stun grenade. He reached for her shoulder, and she startled at his touch.

When she made eye contact, Colin swayed where he knelt before recovering his senses. She was stunningly gorgeous, with piercing blue eyes and long blond hair that framed her face. Her features reminded him of the images of runway models he’d seen in the newspaper—angular, perfectly proportioned, feminine. Combined with the display of compassion for her friend, it had a powerful impact, and Colin’s heart was overtaxed. He thought he felt it skip a beat before he regained control of the moment.

He lifted his thumb up for a moment and then turned it down. If she had an injury, they’d deal with that first. She gave him a thumbs-up in return and gestured to the person lying on the floor. Colin now recognized her as the middle-aged woman who’d given him a library tour on his first day of teaching on campus.

“Hurt?” Colin said, though of course neither of them could hear each other.

The younger woman leaned over and touched two fingers to the back of the librarian’s skull. Her fingers came away wet and red. Tears filled her eyes and he resisted the urge to let his emotions take over and offer comfort. His sympathy went out to her, but calling emergency services took priority.

He dialed 911 and repeated their location and the nature of the emergency five times, since he couldn’t hear the person on the other end to know if anyone had even picked up yet. Finally, he ended with a simple instruction. “Three subjects hit by stun grenade, hearing lost. Repeat, I cannot hear. If you have received this message, please redial this number after I hang up.”

He hung up and waited, counting the seconds until his phone lit up. When it did, he released the breath he’d been holding, thanked the person on the other end and turned his attention back to the two women. And here he’d thought teaching criminology classes in a small college would be a break from the exhausting Secret Service life. This was the exact thing he’d come here to get away from after making a career-ending mistake two years ago. Last spring, he’d realized staying in Washington, DC, wasn’t doing him any favors. He needed to move on and forget about the ache of being dismissed—and the regret of making a mistake that had caused the woman he loved to be killed, thanks to his inability to separate his heart from his job.

How did he not know the name of the woman in front of him? Shouldn’t he have seen her around by now? Gwyn Ponth was quite small, so far as local colleges went.

She checked the other woman’s pulse, and a second wave of relief flooded through his veins when her worried frown eased. Gently, he helped her to roll the librarian onto her back. She remained unconscious, breath labored but steady, and Colin checked around her head for the source of the blood matting her hair. It appeared to be a superficial wound, much to his great relief. The librarian would feel terrible for a few weeks and likely suffer frustrating headaches, but she’d live.

It was then that Colin noticed the younger woman’s tremble, tears of fright slipping down her cheeks despite the resolve set in her jaw. Her long hair fell in curtains on each side of her face, and from this angle, her delicate features carried an intriguing, ethereal symmetry.

An errant tear escaped its prison and slipped down the side of her right cheek. Without thinking, Colin reached out to wipe it away. Surprise swept through him as he brushed his thumb across her cheek toward her hair. Where he’d expected smooth skin, he felt the tight, bumpy dryness of skin damage—burn scarring? Some other injury?

Instantly, she gasped and knocked his hand away with enough force to sting. The motion revealed too-shiny, reddish scarring from the outside corner of her eye down to the midcenter of her jaw. Her hair had covered it completely.

She scrambled to her feet and leaned against the far side of the hall, where she stayed until the paramedics and police arrived on scene. Once they could both hear again, he’d apologize properly.

And find out if she knew of anybody who might want her or the librarian dead.