Free Waiting... On You (Force Recon Marines) by S.A. Monk

license number, although it looked like a Washington
plate.”
    Nick pictured the scene, and it scared
the hell out of him. She could have easily ended up in the bay below the cliff
road.
    “You keep saying he. Was it a man
driving?”
    “I think so. He had short hair. But it
was so dark….”
    “What did the car look like?”
    “It was a sedan, an older model. I
don’t know the make. It was a dark color, maybe blue or black.” Hanna shook her
head. “I wish I could tell you more, but it happened so fast.”
    “You weren’t hurt, were you?” Again
Jessie saw the unmistakable concern on her son’s face.
    Hanna shook her head no. “It just
shook me up a bit.”
    “Was that the only incident?”
    Colleen came back into the room and
sat down in a rocking chair near Jessie. Hanna asked her if Christine was okay,
and she told them that she was lying down. “The next night I was near the same
spot on the same road, and I had a flat tire. I’d just had the tires replaced,
so I was a little surprised. A man on a big bike like yours, a Harley, stopped
to offer me help. He looked like he belonged to a biker gang. He was scruffy… scary.
He had long hair and was dressed in a black leather jacket and chains. He might
have been in his thirties. His face was rough, pock-mocked. He didn’t threaten
me. But he made me uneasy. He came up really quietly behind me while I was
getting my tire iron and tools out of my trunk. He startled me, but I was ready
to clobber him with the tire iron if I needed to.”
    Nick frowned, clearly troubled.
    “Luckily, a male nurse from the hospital
happened along at that point and stopped, recognizing my car. The biker left then.”
    “And the latest incident?” he prompted
her.
    Hanna shot Jessie and Colleen a
censuring glance. They obviously had told Nick about her latest fears. Since
they were just that, she hadn’t intended to tell Nick about them. He had enough
to worry about. “It wasn’t really an incident.”
    “You thought someone was following
you,” he reminded her. “Under the circumstances, that’s important. And I
understand your car isn’t running too well.”
    “Grandma! Jessie!” Hanna sent both
women a look of rebuke.
    “We’re just worried about you, honey,”
Jessie told her.
    “I think we’ve lost enough of the
family the last few weeks,” her grandmother gently scolded. “We certainly don’t
want anything to happen to you, too.”
    Hanna felt immediately contrite. “I
know. I’m sorry. Yes,” she said, looking at Nick. “I’ve had the feeling that
someone has been watching me, following me. But I’m not sure. Only suspicious.”
    “Nick’s home now. He’ll take care of this,”
Colleen inserted, giving him a brief smile.
    “Suspicious is good,” Nick encouraged
them. “It will be a lot easier to take care of all of you, if you don’t keep
anything from me, no matter how trivial it seems,” he added just as Christine
came back into the room and sat down. “Until we know what’s going on and who’s
targeting our families, you need to be extremely alert. Look around you all the
time. Be suspicious, even of people you know. Paranoia doesn’t hurt under
circumstances like these. It might save your lives. I carry a regular cell
phone on me all the time, plus my SAT phone. I have an extra one that I’ll
leave with Mom. You can reach me anywhere with it, no matter where you are.
I’ll send all of you my numbers. Call me if you need me, no matter how silly
you think it might be. No one is going to chastise you for it, especially not
me. Christine, don’t go to your house alone. Always wait for me to go with you.
And Hanna, no more using your car. It’s not reliable enough. If you break down
on the way home after work, on a dark stretch of the highway, you could be in
big trouble. You’ve been lucky so far. In fact, I’ll take you to work and bring
you home this week.”
    “Can’t you just fix my car?”
    “I’ll take a look at it, but