Page 71 of Not the Bodyguard's Widow
“Just a few. Let’s go.”
* * *
Kimberly squirmed in the front seat as they passed yet another green exit sign. She needed a bathroom and hoped they would get to the office soon. Alex’s phone rang. He answered it on the car system. “Hello?”
“Change of plans. Come over to the house for dinner.”
“Sure, Dad. Why?”
“Your mom’s idea. Since this is Kimberly’s birthday, a birthday dinner at our house makes it look like this was always your destination. I talked to my brother, and he wants to get a better look at the two following you.”
“Not his?”
“Nope.”
“Oh.”
The tone of Alex’sohwas enough to kick Kimberly’s heart rate up a notch or two. Alex released one of his hands from the wheel and gave hers a reassuring squeeze. “See you at the house, then.”
Kimberly waited for the call to disconnect before she spoke. “We can’t go to your parents’ house if those two aren’t FBI. They may be—”
Elle laughed. “You underestimate Jethro Hastings’s home. There isn’t a cockroach that moves within two hundred yards of their house they don’t know about. And there’s the safe room. I’d been in the house at least a dozen times before Alan showed it to me, and I never guessed it was there. The house looks like any other upper-middle-class home on their street, but I bet it has more security than Abbie and Preston’s.”
Kimberly looked over her shoulder. “Really? It didn’t seem like it had any security when I went there for dinner.”
“Then we did it right.” Alex turned off the freeway and looked in his rearview mirror. “And they are still with us.”
A few turns later, he pulled into the driveway of his parents’ home. As usual, he came around to help Kimberly out of her door. Over his shoulder, she noticed the men pulling off under the shade of a tree. “They are still here.”
“I know. Ignore them.” Alex lifted her to the ground.
They’d decorated the house with balloons, and a happy-birthday banner hung above the entrance to the dining room. Mrs. Hastings enveloped Kimberly in a hug. “Happy birthday! So glad you came. You remember where the bathroom is?”
Kimberly nodded, grateful Mrs. Hastings had recognized her most immediate need.
A few minutes later, Kimberly returned to a room full of familiar faces.
“We thought of shouting “Surprise!” But I told Adam that might not be the best thing to do when you have only six weeks left.” September patted Adam’s chest, and her daughter dove for him, yelling, “Da!”
“Abbie sends her regrets and asks you visit her in the morning.” Mrs. Hastings handed Kimberly a glass of lemonade. “Andrew is putting the burgers on the grill. Dinner will be a few minutes. Alex, show her the safe room. And I put her in Abbie’s old room. There’s a queen bed in there.”
The momentary look of confusion on Alex’s face caused Kimberly to wonder if there was anything unsaid in their conversation as she followed him down the hall past the bathroom to a linen closet. Alex opened the door and lifted one shelf. The closet rolled into the wall, revealing a room beyond. “You just lift on the shelf and the secret door opens. You can do it with one hand. September managed it while holding Harmony last February.” Kimberly followed Alex into the room.
“Once you are inside, close this door. What you don’t see is the linen closet moving back into place and the door shutting.” Alex closed what looked like a vault door. “This room is soundproof, fireproof, and, well, pretty much everything but teenage-boy proof. Mom only survived a day and a half with the entire family on what was supposed to be a seventy-two-hour drill. Apparently the ventilation system didn’t cope with teenage-boy sweat.”
Kimberly couldn’t help but laugh. Alex showed her around the rest of the room, including the monitors to the outside. “If anything happens, get in here as fast as you can. Even if Elle, my mother, and I don’t make it, if we yell at you to close the door, lock yourself in.”
“Will it come to that?”
Alex looped an arm around her shoulder. “I hope not, but we are Hastings. I think preparing for the worst and hoping for the best is in our blood.”
He turned on the outside monitor. Down the street, the car still sat with both men inside.
“Elle wasn’t exaggerating when she said nothing goes unnoticed here, was she?”
“Only a little. We don’t know anything that goes on in our neighbors’ houses. But this is the wrong street to steal a package off someone’s porch.”
“I pity the person who tries to get one off of your parents’ porch.”
