Free Boneyard Ridge by Paula Graves Page B

hyperalertness when he’d finally tried to lie down and doze the night before. But after a while, even his Army training had been no match for the bone-deep weariness that had come from so much exertion after so many months of relative inactivity.
    For the past couple of months, he’d been spending as much time as he could in the gym Quinn had set up in what had once been the root cellar of the old Victorian mansion that housed The Gates. The dirt floor and walls had been reinforced with concrete and softened by a springy gym floor and, in places, spongy mats where one of the agents, Sutton Calhoun, put the agents through a series of hand-to-hand combat drills to keep their skills honed to a razor edge.
    Calhoun was a former Marine, another mountain boy, hailing from one of the roughest parts of the county, Smoky Ridge. The place where dreams not only went to die but to die in a spectacularly bloody and painful fashion, as Calhoun had put it one afternoon during a no-holds-barred combat drill.
    “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, soldier,” Calhoun had barked in his best drill-sergeant tone, throwing Hunter back to the floor and daring him to get back up.
    Rubbing the ache in his shoulders, where the heavy rucksack had taken a toll, Hunter wished he could go another round with Calhoun again. His time undercover with the BRI hadn’t done much for his stamina. For all their military posturing, the BRI was a militia in name only. They had some tough and very dangerous members, but those men dealt in guns, knives and bombs, not hand-to-hand combat.
    He pushed himself up from the sofa and padded barefoot down the short hallway to the bathroom, listening for sounds from the nearby bedroom. The door was closed, the house silent except for the hum of electricity coursing through the walls and the sound of his bare feet on the hardwood floor. He winced a little as the bathroom door creaked while closing behind him, hoping it wouldn’t disturb Susannah’s sleep.
    If she’d managed to get any sleep at all.
    She might not be the spoiled little city girl he’d assumed, but it wasn’t likely she’d ever found herself on this end of a manhunt before.
    As he stepped out of the bathroom a few moments later, the bedroom door opened as well and Susannah stepped out into the hallway, turning to face him. She was dressed in the jeans and sweater he’d provided the night before, though her hair was freshly brushed and pulled back into a sleek ponytail. “I borrowed a rubber band from your dresser drawer.”
    “Welcome to it.” He stepped out of her way, nodding toward the bathroom. “All yours.”
    “I used it earlier.” Her eyes were winter-gray this morning, the dim light of the hallway dilating her pupils until only a fleck of hazel showed in her pale irises. “You have any eggs in the fridge? I could whip up an omelet.”
    He wasn’t sure he trusted her sudden easy friendliness. She’d been downright combative most of the previous evening, and he doubted a night in a strange place, spent under the constant fear of discovery, would have altered her mood so completely.
    So she was up to something.
    But what?
    “No eggs. I wasn’t sure when I’d be back here, so I didn’t stock any perishables.”
    Her dark eyebrows ticked upward, and he could tell by the flicker of her eyelids that she was processing the meaning behind his words. He could almost hear her thoughts, the complex calculations winnowed down to the basics: he planned ahead, but not far. And this bolt-hole, while well-equipped for the purpose of lying low, hadn’t been his first choice.
    He hadn’t thought he’d need a place to hide her, if she wanted to know the truth. He’d planned to stop the plot without her ever having to know that she was on the BRI’s target list.
    This cabin had been a different sort of hiding place. Not from specific threats like Billy Dawson and his ragtag crew of soldier wannabes but from the world in general.
    But from a life