Phd Protector. Cindi Myers

weren’t listening. He suspected Cantrell or his bosses had the place bugged. She might even be a plant, sent to learn his intentions, though her anger felt very real. Maybe his captors’ paranoia was rubbing off on him. “First, tell me your story,” he said. “How did you end up here? Are you a scientist?”

      “No. I’m a teacher.” She straightened a little, as if one of her students might be watching. “I teach math to seventh and eighth graders in Idaho Falls, Idaho.”

      “Then what are you doing in the middle of nowhere in western Colorado? Do you know anything about the men who brought you here?” What had she done to end up on the wrong side of a group of terrorists like the Patriots?

      “Oh, I know about them all right.” Her expression grew even more grim. “Their leader is my stepfather.”

      * * *

      ERIN KNEW SHE had succeeded in shocking Mark Renfro. Frankly, he had shocked her, too. She had heard so much in the past weeks about the famous scientist who was going to help Duane Braeswood and his group of deranged thugs bring the world to its knees. She had expected him to be like them—a hardened, arrogant braggart whose cruelty showed in knotted muscles and cold expressions. She had been prepared to have to fight him—possibly to the death—to prove she wanted no part of his “mission.”

      Instead, she had found a thin, weary-looking man in a dirty lab coat, with despair weighting his eyes and slumping his shoulders. He might have been handsome once, before deprivation and grief and whatever other emotions had etched lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth and drained the life from his expression. “You’re Braeswood’s daughter?” he asked.

      “Stepdaughter.” At least she didn’t have to claim any of that madman’s DNA ran through her veins.

      Mark sighed and let his hands rest loosely in his lap. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” he said.

      The beginning. Once upon a time there was a girl named Erin, who had everything she wanted. Then her father died and her mother made some very poor choices.

      “My mother met a man online when I was twelve,” she said. “My father had died two years before, of liver cancer. She moved back to Idaho to be closer to her family and started hanging out on a survivalist message board. Who knows why?”

      “And she met Duane Braeswood through these survivalists?” He nodded. “I guess his ranting might appeal to the more radical factions in that group.”

      “Do you want me to tell the story or not?”

      He looked sheepish. “Sorry. I haven’t had anyone to talk to in a while, so I’m rusty at conversation. I won’t interrupt again.”

      She hugged her arms over her chest. “Mom didn’t meet Duane on the message board. She met a guy named Amos or Abe or something like that and they dated for a while. She started going to meet ups and gatherings with him and at one of those she met Duane Braeswood.” Just remembering the way Duane had come into their lives and taken over made her sick to her stomach. “Among that bunch, he was already a big celebrity. Maybe Mom was flattered by his attention, or impressed by the way he threw money around. Maybe she was just lonely. I don’t know.”

      “Ah, Duane.” Mark said the name the way he might have referred to a notoriously badly behaved public figure.

      “Yeah. My mother’s second husband.” Erin gave him a hard look, ignoring the sympathy in his expression. Maybe he was just a good actor. “Obviously, you know him well.”

      “No. I’ve only seen him a few times. He reminds me of a televangelist. One who prefers camo to shiny suits. Though his charm is lost on me, I can see he has a kind of creepy charisma.”

      “Exactly.” She rubbed her arms. “He gave me the creeps from day one, but my mom fell for it. Next thing I knew, she had married him and we moved to this big house with a bunch of other like-minded people, sort of a commune for survivalist types. At first I thought we were just going to stock up on dried food and hunt our own meat and that kind of stuff. I was a kid who wanted to fit in and I thought it might even be fun.” Looking back she could see how pathetic she had been, wanting love and approval from her stand-in dad, playing right into his manipulative hands. “As I got older, I figured out he had a more sinister plan.”

      “The government needs fixing and he’s the man to do it,” Mark said drily.

      She nodded. “He tried to recruit me as one of his loyal followers, but I balked.”

      “I’m guessing that didn’t make you very popular,” Mark said.

      “I told my mom he was a terrorist, plain and simple. We had a big fight about it. She just couldn’t see it.” The memory of her mother’s rejection still stung. “The day after I graduated high school I left the compound and swore to my mom I wouldn’t see her again until she came to her senses and got out of there, too.”

      Her stomach still knotted when she remembered that day. She had walked out, sure the next time she saw Helen Daniels Braeswood she would be either dead or on the news, arrested for her involvement with some plot of Duane’s.

      “That must have been tough,” Mark said.

      “Yeah, well, we didn’t speak for four years. Then she called, out of the blue one day, to tell me Duane and the others had left her and moved to Colorado. She sounded worn-out. She asked if she could come stay with me awhile. I was thrilled. I moved her into the house I was renting in Idaho Falls and after a few weeks she was a new woman. She was the mom I had known and loved before. She still refused to admit that Duane was evil. She called him ‘misguided but sincere.’ She said she had loved him very much but that she was determined to get over him.”

      Erin fell silent again, remembering all the hope she had had in those months.

      “What happened?” Mark prompted after a moment.

      “She stayed with me about eighteen months. I thought everything was great. Then one day I came home and found her bags all packed. She said she had had a call from Duane. He had been injured in an accident and he needed her. They were still legally married, so she was going back to him. I went a little crazy. I screamed and yelled and threatened to call the police. She was perfectly calm through the whole thing. She told me one day I would be in love and I would understand. Then she got in a taxi and left.”

      “How did that lead to you ending up here?” Mark asked.

      “I’m getting to that.” She took a deep breath, steadying herself. “About six weeks ago, I got a call, from a man who identified himself as Duane’s personal assistant. He said he thought I would want to know that my mom was very ill. In fact, she was dying of cancer. She was in hospice and didn’t have long and had been asking to see me. He gave me the address he said was for the hospice and suggested I might like to visit her before it was too late.” She covered her eyes with her hand, fighting back tears—of grief and rage and shame.

      “Did you see her?” Mark asked, his voice gentle.

      “She wasn’t even sick! It was a trick, to get me to a place where Duane’s men could grab me. He showed up, too. He was in a wheelchair, with an oxygen tank. He’d clearly been messed up somehow, but that didn’t seem to lessen the power he had over everyone around him. He told me I needed to be punished for upsetting my mother so much, and that he had a job I could do to make up for all the trouble I had caused.”

      “And his men brought you here.”

      “First they took me to a fishing camp somewhere in the area, and we stayed there for a few days. I guess they were waiting for some signal from Duane or the stars to align or something. Then they took me to a house in Denver. I stayed there for weeks, in a locked room with the windows blacked out.” She glanced around the cabin. “At least this isn’t as bad as that.”

      “Do you know why I’m here?” Mark asked. “What it is that you’re supposed to assist me with?”

      “Duane always