chapter Seven
Jenna’s nails dug into his wrist, but Cade didn’t flinch. He expected resistance, anger even, from Jenna. But he had to be strong enough to think with his brain, not his heart.
She cupped her hand around her mouth to shield her words from Gavin. “You are not dumping us off at some outpost. Even the name is offensive. Outpost. Out of your life. Out of your mind.”
He twisted his wrist from her grasp and smothered both of her hands with his. “That’s not possible. You and Gavin are on my mind twenty-four seven.”
“What are they going to do with us? Stick us in some kind of witness protection program?”
“That’s pretty much what you’ve been in, anyway, Jenna. New town, different identity, Prospero watching over you. Me watching over you. Only this time it will be official and professional and safer than anything you could do on your own.”
“It’s no way to live, Cade. It’s no way for Gavin to live.”
The quaver in her voice just about did him in. Squeezing her hands, he said, “It’s not going to be forever.”
“How close are you to catching Zendaris?”
His eye twitched, and she withdrew her hands from his. “Exactly.”
“He’s going to find out sooner or later that I don’t have those plans and once he does, he’ll back off.”
“Why would he do that? He’s had a vendetta against you for three years. Even if he finds out you don’t have the plans, that doesn’t wipe out his other grievance. He was after me before you took the plans, and he’ll be after me after he finds out you don’t have them.”
“You missed one.” Cade leaned over Gavin’s coloring masterpiece and pointed to a flower. When Gavin turned his attention to picking out a crayon for the blank flower, Cade hunched forward, his nose almost touching Jenna’s. “Let’s just get you safe and settled.”
Jenna took a deep breath, held it for a moment and then released it through parted lips. “Okay. We’ll go to this outpost. I—I’m not blaming you, Cade. It is what it is.”
He managed to prevent his jaw from hitting the table, but he couldn’t control his eyebrows, which jumped up to his hairline. Since when was she not blaming him? He’d take it for now.
“Then let’s do a little shopping while we’re here, at least pick up a few changes of underwear and a couple of shirts. I need to let them know we’re on the way, anyway.”
“Underwear.” Gavin giggled and finished off the flower with an orange flourish.
Cade paid the bill with cash. In fact, he and Jenna had enough cash between them to open their own bank. She’d handled things well on her own, but he didn’t want her to be on her own anymore.
They wandered around the town, which happened to be a hub of sorts for tourists heading to Vegas or the Grand Canyon or Utah’s National Parks, and picked up some clothes, toiletries and snacks for the drive.
On the road out of town, the flea market loomed ahead of them, a colorful mishmash of goods and humanity. Cade pulled into the dirt parking lot next to the booths. “Do you think we can find a car seat for Gavin here?”
“I think so. Looks like a giant yard sale, and people are always looking to sell baby items.”
They mingled with the people shuffling past the stalls and the wares displayed on blankets. The smell of popcorn and cotton candy wafted through the cold air.
Jenna pinched the sleeve of his jacket. “Baby stuff.”
They veered toward a vendor with toys arrayed on a table and tiny clothes hanging from a line. Cade fingered a blue one-piece outfit. Had Gavin ever been this small?
“How much for the car seats?” Jenna had ducked between the clothing and nudged one of two car seats with the toe of her boot.
A smile cracked the vendor’s weathered face. “For the little boy? Twenty-five for the blue one and forty for the gray one.”
“I’ll give you thirty for the gray one.” Jenna pinched a twenty and a ten in her fingers and held out the money to the old woman.
“Thirty-five.”
“You’re not supposed to sell used car seats.” She thrust the cash at the woman, who snatched it and tucked it into her pocket.
Jenna had become one tough customer. That flighty girl he’d met in Coronado had morphed into a responsible, no-nonsense woman.
Cade hooked the straps of the car seat around his arm and it bumped his leg as they meandered back through the flea market.
The smell of the sugar from the cotton candy must’ve intoxicated Gavin because he started yanking on Jenna’s hand and whining for candy.
“Gavin, you are not getting any candy.” She rolled her eyes at Cade and whispered, “I think he wants cotton candy and that’s a double no.”
Then he stopped the whining and started skipping and chanting. “Please, Mommy. Please, Mommy. Please, Mommy.”
“Would the little one like some homemade cornbread with honey?” A small, gray-haired Native American woman smiled and nodded toward Gavin.
Jenna stopped. “Oh, I suppose so.”
Cade chuckled in her ear. “It’s better than cotton candy.”
“You’re the child’s mother?”
“Yes.” Jenna peered more closely at the old woman’s cloudy, unfocused eyes and realized she was blind. “I don’t want to trouble you.”
“Little ones need something sweet now and then.” The old woman turned her head to the side. “Patrick.”
A young man stepped from the recesses of the booth, holding a paper plate with a square of cornbread drizzled with honey in the center. “Just one?”
“I think that’s enough for us to share. How much?”
Cade stepped forward and took the plate from Patrick. He sawed off a small piece of the cornbread, stabbed it with the plastic fork and fed it to Gavin.
The woman waved her gnarled hands. “Take it, but I’d like to read your cards.”
Jenna stumbled back against Cade. “Read my cards?”
The woman slid a stack of cards from the folds of her dress and rapped it against the table. The cards did not come from a regular playing deck. They were composed of some hard substance, and as the woman spread them on the table Jenna saw shapes and figures carved into the cards.
The old woman ran her fingertips along the ridges and grooves of the shapes. She must’ve had this set of cards created exclusively for her.
“Are those tarot cards?”
She caressed the cards with knotted fingers. “Some call them tarot cards. We call it an oracle deck.”
Jenna glanced over her shoulder at Cade and Gavin stuffing cornbread into their mouths, and Cade shrugged.
She slipped into the chair opposite the fortune-teller. “Can you tell my future with that deck?”
“I see—” she drew a hand across her milky eyes
“—many things.”
Who was she to deny the old woman a chance to practice her art? Jenna folded her hands on the table and took a deep breath. “What do I have to do?”
“Nothing at all.” The woman’s hushed tones caused the hair on the back of Jenna’s neck to quiver.
The woman closed her sightless eyes and fanned the cards in front of her in an array of suns and moons and animals.
Jenna found herself holding her breath as the woman read the cards with her fingertips. She slid them around the table, discarding some and arranging the others in the pattern of a cross.
When she had the oracle cards where she wanted them, she traced the shapes of each one with her fingers. When she finished stroking the final card, she swept them up and stacked them with their discarded mates.
“Well? What did you see?”
The woman’s eyes flew open and Jenna flinched at the pale opaque film that seemed to float over both orbs. The seer grabbed Jenna’s hand in a clawlike grip.
“You live a life of danger.”
Jenna stiffened and she felt Cade move in behind her and slip a hand on her shoulder.
“Someone covets what you have.”
Jenna reached out, curling her fingers around Gavin’s wrist.
“This person poses the greatest threat to your happiness. Defeat this person, and you shall walk in sunshine.”
Jenna’s heart hammered in her chest and she hunched forward, staring into the old woman’s eyes. “What else? What else did you see?”
“Where is this person? Where can we find him?” Cade’s hand tightened on her shoulder.
The young man, Patrick, stepped out from the shadows again and held up his hands. “Reading the oracle deck tires my grandmother. She can’t tell you any more.”
Despite the chill in the air, a warm flush crept up Jenna’s neck. Her voice had risen and she’d been almost nose-to-nose with the woman. She slumped back in her seat as Gavin patted her leg and Cade ran a hand over her hair.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at your grandmother.”
Patrick collected the cards from the oracle deck and stacked them next to his grandmother’s elbow, resting on the table. She appeared to be asleep.
“She doesn’t take offense when her readings upset people, but you need to be careful. She picked you out of the crowd.”
Squeezing Jenna’s shoulder again, Cade asked, “What does that mean?”
The man shrugged. “She felt your aura. She wanted to warn you. She does this to earn a few bucks, but she’s never wrong.”
With trembling hands, Jenna dug into her bag. “Money. How much do I owe you?”
Patrick waved it off. “She wanted to read the oracle deck for you.”
“I insist.” Jenna peeled a twenty from her roll of cash. “Is this enough?”
“That’s fine, but the highest form of payment for my grandmother is that you heed her words. That’s why she singled you out.”
Jenna shoved back from the table and the dozing woman. “Believe me, I’m heeding.”
Moments later, Jenna tucked Gavin into his new used car seat and slammed the back door.
Cade pinned her to the side of the car, one hand on each shoulder. “That fortune-telling mumbo jumbo is nothing we didn’t already know. Don’t let it upset you.”
“But she could feel the danger coming off me. She couldn’t even see me and she felt it.”
“Maybe she is for real, but that doesn’t change a thing. We know Zendaris is after Gavin. We know you’re both in danger.”
Cade spoke the truth. What did it matter that some Native American shaman had confirmed what she already knew? Danger swirled around her. Any shaman worth her salt should be able to sense that a mile away.
She blew out a breath and sagged against the car. “You’re right. Hearing it spoken aloud like that and by a stranger gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
“I get that.” Then he leaned in and kissed her on the mouth, short and oh-so-sweet. “We can get to the Prospero outpost by nightfall if we get moving. Lunch on the road.”
Cade circled the car to the driver’s side, and Jenna had to peel herself from the car door. That man’s touch still worked magic. The old woman could just as well have been warning her about Cade. He posed a grave danger and had the ability to take something precious away from her. Her heart.
* * *
CADE SLID INTO THE driver’s seat wishing he’d kissed her longer and harder. She needed it after that soothsayer had spooked her.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I’m going to go ahead and let the outpost know we’re on our way.”
“You have the phone number for some outpost in the middle of nowhere?”
He slid the phone open and tapped out a message on the tiny keyboard. “We use a message center. I let them know I’m on my way in, using the outpost’s code, and the message gets relayed to the outpost.”
“You guys are almost as good James Bond.”
He picked up a pen in the console. “But this pen is just a pen.”
They’d fallen back into their teasing banter, and she’d taken a break from accusing him of abandonment every ten minutes. Progress. Now how could they get from here to forever after?
Several minutes later his cell phone buzzed and he checked the display. “Confirmation.”
“So they know we’re on our way and will be rolling out the red carpet?”
“They’ll be expecting us, anyway. They know you’re with me and maybe can start working on relocating you and Gavin to a safe place.”
Jenna sighed and he held his breath, but she didn’t respond further. Did she really believe she and Gavin would be safer on their own without Prospero behind them?
Maybe not on their own, but safer with me.
The thought slammed against his brain. He knew he could keep his family safe, and he owed it to them. Jenna may have stopped blaming him for running out on her and Gavin, but he hadn’t stopped blaming himself.
Was he putting them in jeopardy again by dumping them off on Prospero? It felt as if he was abdicating his responsibility.
Cade shook his head. Emotion could cloud your judgment. The nameless, faceless techs and analysts with Prospero would be able to make the right decisions based on facts.
Jenna touched his arm. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?”
Before he could answer, his phone buzzed again. He squinted at the display. “It’s Jared.”
“Jared Douglas from your team?”
“The one and only.” He answered the call because he’d answer any call, any time from J.D., Gage or Deb. “Hey, I heard you were out of the country.”
Jared’s voice crackled over the line. “I am. I saw your message come through. You’re on your way to the Arizona outpost with your family?”
“Yep.” Cade punched the button for the speakerphone. Jenna had more at stake than he did and deserved to know everything.
“Give my best to Jenna.”
“Do it yourself. You’re on speaker.”
“Hey, darlin’. Do you still hate me?”
She rolled her eyes at Cade. “Nothing personal, J.D., but you spent more time with my husband than I did after we got married.”
He laughed. “Yeah, we had a sweet honeymoon in Afghanistan. But you can have him back.”
“Don’t provoke her, J.D. She’s not the same sweet girl she used to be.”
“I could’ve told you that. The minute I met her, I could tell that little filly was going to take you for a ride.”
“Okay, cut the cowboy act, J.D. I know you didn’t call just to hear my dulcet tones.”
“Just wanted to tell you, I heard from Gage recently. He’s following a lead on Zendaris.” The line hissed and buzzed as if for emphasis.
Gage Booker had been their other Prospero Three team member, along with the first female agent, Deb Sinclair. The four of them had been responsible for torpedoing Zendaris’s first big arms deal.
“How close is he, J.D.?” Cade reached over and squeezed Jenna’s fingers. “We need to bring him down now more than ever.”
Jared’s voice faded in and out. “Did you hear me? Gage is working on an informant, someone who worked for Zendaris in South America.”
“Does he have the informant in hand?”
Dead air met his question.
“J.D.? Does Gage have the informant?”
“Not yet.”
“He’d better get on it. We all know how quickly Zendaris’s former employees disappear.”
“Don’t I know it. Gage knows it, too. He’s treating this one with kid gloves.”
“The sooner we nail that SOB, the better for everyone.”
“Especially if those plans for the anti-drone fall into his hands again.” Jared coughed, or was it the phone again? “No word on the plans yet, huh?”
“Disappeared like one of Zendaris’s former employees.”
“I wonder why they haven’t...”
J.D.’s last words were garbled, but Cade filled in the blanks and his muscles tensed. “Are you accusing me of something, bro?”
Even through the static, Jared’s voice took on an edge. “You know me better than that. I’m just sayin’...”
“What? What are you saying?” His grip had tightened on Jenna’s fingers, and she squirmed out of his hold. “What are you trying to tell me, J.D.?”
“Watch...back. Zendaris...not...only one after...”