“We should go,” he said.
Ash tossed him a set of keys. “Take mine.”
We started for the door, but Ash grabbed Donovan’s arm before we could get out the door.
“David thinks he has an image of the intruder. Have her look at it when you get there.”
Donovan jerked his chin up, as he turned and pulled me out the front door. They were all so excited, I almost expected to be ambushed on the driveway. But we made it to the SUV—another dark, nondescript SUV—without incident.
“How do you tell them apart?”
“License plate,” Donovan said, as though my question was completely serious.
He pulled out of the driveway, his eyes flicking between the rearview mirror and the road. The tension rolling off his shoulders was palpable. A part of me wanted to reach over there and help him relax. Another part of me was frightened by his tension because it probably meant that I should be tense, too.
“Where are we going?”
“Ash has a place outside of town. The compound.”
“The Compound? Is that its name?”
“No, it’s just what we call it. Our offices are there on the bottom floor of Ash’s house. And then there are houses on the property where the rest of us, his operatives, live.”
“You live there, too?”
He glanced at me. “Yeah.”
I hadn’t ever thought about where Donovan had been living since he was discharged from the Army. But the idea that I was about to see the place where he spent the majority of his time took the edge off of my fear. My curiosity was bigger than my fear.
Funny how that works sometimes.
“And Detective Warren?”
He glanced at me. “What about her?”
“How did she get involved with Gray Wolf?”
He was quiet a moment, his eyes still shifting from the road to the rearview mirrors, and back again.
“We had a case when the company was still new. Only our second client. She was the lead detective on it. And when she came to interview the victim and Ash and I were already with him, she was pretty annoyed. But when the perp made an attempt on the vic and we were able to thwart it, she was pretty impressed. Then she crossed our path—or we crossed hers—on a couple more cases, and she finally conceded that we weren’t going away. I guess she just found it easier to work with us.”
“You’re friendly.”
He glanced at me. “I’m not having an affair with her. She’s a friend.”
I nodded. “I know. I figured that out when her husband came lumbering into the room.”
Donovan actually smiled for the first time in hours. “He’s something, isn’t he? But he’s a damn good cop.”
There was respect in his voice. And, for some reason, that too pushed the fear inside my head back a little more.
I was in good hands. If I’d ever doubted it, those doubts were gone now.
Chapter 13
Kate
The compound turned out to be a beautiful piece of property out in the middle of nowhere. It was surrounded by a wrought iron fence with a wide gate that had no adornment, no sign of who or what might live beyond it. It was all very deceptively benign. Donovan had to use his smartphone to get through the gate, so I was pretty sure it was all connected to this computer system that was also monitoring the cameras back at my house. There were probably cameras everywhere. And I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn there were some sort of weapons buried somewhere in the luscious lawn that flowed away from the drive on either side.
We drove nearly half a mile before we entered a small copse of trees that opened onto a rounded courtyard in front of a beautiful stone and wood home. It looked like one of those hunting lodges you always see on those television shows featuring the rich. Like the fence, it seemed benign. There was a lot of glass along the front of the house, windows that reached from floor to ceiling. They were tinted, so I couldn’t see inside, but it seemed an ill choice for a place that housed a highly trained security team. But I assumed the glass was bulletproof or something, something that would keep the bad guys out.
“Come on,” Donovan said, coming around to my side of the car and offering me a hand. “It’s safe here.”
I took his hand and let him lead me up the stone steps that stopped at the wide, double doors that served as the home’s main entrance. The doors opened onto a large, open living area that was filled with desks and computers and a long conference table with a few couches and loveseats scattered around the room. A woman who appeared to be just a little older than Detective Warren sat behind the first desk. She looked up, a phone pressed to her ear, her eyes narrowing as she studied Donovan.
“You okay?” she asked almost gruffly.
“In one piece.”
“Good. David has something he wants you to look at.”
Donovan nodded. “Thanks, Rose.”
“Who’s that?” I asked, as we passed her desk and headed toward the back of the house.
“Rose. She’s the office manager slash receptionist slash mother.”