Free When a Man Loves a Weapon by Toni McGee Causey Page B

in distress, “Why sorry, sir, I’ll kindly fret over here in the corner so as to not disturb you.”
    Not. Going. To. Happen. She might as well plan to sprout wings.
    Agents
died
. It was a fact of life. For someone to be placing heavy bets against Trevor suggested his cover had been blown. And usually when someone’s cover was blown, they were the last to know, hence the whole “blown” manner of speaking.
    “Ten minutes,” Riles snapped, and she ignored him as she approached and then knocked on Cam’s door. No answer. No conveniently un-draperied window to peer into. She walked around the side of the house, stood on tippy-toes to see into the garage and made sure his truck was indeed parked there.
    Which was odd. He never slept that soundly and he wasn’t currently mad at her. He didn’t want her to marry Trevor, but he was definitely still speaking to her. She thought.
    In fact, he was being downright sneaky, because he was being
nice
. And
fun
. And
charming
.
    She went to the back door, knocked, and there was still no answer, which—seriously?—just freaked her out. He was as bad as Trevor for his ability to hear a spider hiccup at thirty yards, much less her banging on the back door. Hell, just a car in his driveway should have gotten him out of bed. She keyed her old code into the alarm system, banking on the fact that Cam would have changed his own personal code fairly frequently, but not hers.
    He’d said she could always move out, move away from Trevor, if she changed her mind. Come “home.”
    The alarm flashed to green. When she stepped inside, the kitchen was pretty much as she remembered: it smelled like coffee (Community Coffee, dark roast, no sugar). There were light-colored oak cabinets, deep green tile that registered as black in the late evening light, and randomly stacked batches of mail, tools, and camping crap on every flat surface. “Cam?”
    She flipped on the light as soon as she stepped inside, hoping like hell Cam wasn’t about to spring out and surprise his “intruder,” but it was silent, except for the steady hum of the refrigerator. She eased past piles of junk (holy geez, he was always bad, but this was worse), guns, gun parts, computer guts, and catalogs for every conceivable thing that could be purchased under the sun.
    “Cam?” she called again, louder this time, spooked, easing through the kitchen into the dining room where fishing gear covered the old antique table he’d gotten from his grandmother’s estate when she passed. His grandmother would have been horrified to see the sharp hooks dangling off the sides of that beautiful wood, just inches away from her polished-to-a-gleam finish. Next to the hooks: a fifth of Jack, empty, at the end of the table where he’d cleared a spot to eat. A single spot, amidst the lures. She turned away, feeling a pressure in her chest she didn’t quite want to identify.
    He didn’t normally drink, and if he did, it might be a beer or two. Well, he didn’t used to drink. And maybe that hadbeen on her account, since he knew she was always waiting, always holding her breath that she was going to have to pour someone else into bed and mop up the disasters in their wake. Of course,
used to
were the operative words there. A lot had changed.
    Hurry
, she thought, calling his name again, knocking on the wall along the hallway, flipping on lights as she went. He must be freaking dead to the world to not hear her and have come storming out. . . .
    Dead . . .
hung there in the air in a little bubble over her head as her brain crunched out inarticulate syllables, trying to process what she saw as she stood in the doorway to the master bedroom: Cam, dark hair nearly jet black, longer than usual, grown long enough now to flop over his brow as he lay sprawled on his bed face-up, half covered by wine-colored sheets, his long frame catty-cornered to the headboard, his right arm dangling off the side. Motionless. There was no rise and fall to