Free Station Alpha: (Soldiering On #1) by Aislinn Kearns

arse to get to, and you need a Soldiering On employee with you to be able to enter it. All of our safe houses are—should be—safe, but this one is generally used for long-term clients, rather than short-term layovers.”
    “So, I’m a long-term client now?” She sent him a smile and his heart stuttered in response.
    “I hope not,” he muttered, his voice hoarse. “But best not to take any more chances with you.”
    She nodded, sobering. “How do you think they found me?”
    He sighed. “It could have been a number of things. A tracker on your car, or they found you when you used the computer. They could have followed Sam, or hacked Duncan’s phone, or…well, there could be a mole. Who knows?”
    “You don’t sound very concerned about the possibility.”
    He grinned at her. “If you knew the other Soldiering On guys—and women—then you wouldn’t even think it. They’re the most loyal bunch, every last one of them.”
    “That sounds like it would be a nice thing to be a part of.” The words were soft, a mix between questioning and wistful. Paul’s smile faded.
    “I wouldn’t exactly say I’m a part of it.”
    “Why not?” Her dark eyes were liquid in the late afternoon sun as she watched him. It made him nervous, having not had someone look at him for such an extended period since before his last mission. She didn’t seem at all fazed by the ugly scar on his cheek. His colleagues—all former military—had no issues with it. They’d probably all seen worse. But civilians were another matter entirely.
    His cheek tingled, but he didn’t dare take his hand off the controls to rub it like he wanted to.
    “It’s complicated,” he murmured instead. Her look was patient and kind, compelling him to continue. “I have my set role within the company, but it’s separate from the others. They go out into the world, often with partners on the same jobs as them. They work out of the office. I work from home, and never really go on field missions.”
    “Do you want to?” she asked.
    He hesitated for just a fraction too long. “Nope.” He wasn’t convinced she believed him.
     
    An hour later, they pulled up outside a plain-looking, one-story house on an anonymous suburban street. They were in the northwestern suburbs of Portsboro, known for its big lots and recently built houses.
    “I’ll have to park it properly in a minute, but it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to do,” Paul told her. “Let’s get you settled in the house first. The car will be okay outside for a little while. No one followed us.”
    Christine was barely listening, too curious about the house to pay attention.
    She stepped out of the car to get a better look at the house in which she would now be staying. She could barely see the roof over the high fence surrounding the property on the three sides that she could see. Instead, she peered through the bars of the driveway gate.
    A neat lawn spread between the sidewalk and the house. No other shrubbery dotted the property. No bushes, hedges, flowers, or trees between the fence and the building. The house seemed to rise from the flat earth surrounding it. Its walls were plain white, without any colour to relieve it.
    “This is it?” Christine asked. After Paul’s description of it, she’d expected something a little more high-tech.
    “Yup,” Paul told her happily, coming up behind her. He’d managed to get his chair out of the back seat and reassembled without her noticing.
    “It’s so…boring.”
    Paul laughed, and Christine’s stomach somersaulted at the sound. “If it looked like the fortress that it is, it wouldn’t exactly be a safe house, would it? Too obvious.”
    Christine wrapped her hands around the bars of the gate and reconsidered what she saw. The empty garden meant there was nowhere for an intruder to hide. The bare exterior walls meant that there was no foot- or handholds for any enterprising villain to use to climb. The wider than normal gaps between