Sea Haven 02 - Spirit Bound

on,” Judith said, taking charge. “Let’s all go down to the coffee shop. We can visit while Jonas is working on this. Frank, I can fix the paintings, so no worries.”
    She flashed a smile at the couple, but Stefan could feel anxiety. As always, in public, Judith hid her emotions, refusing to allow them to spill out and affect others around her. She kept that control very carefully. He ran his hand lovingly down her spine just to remind her he was there and knew how concerned and distressed she was that someone would do such a thing to her work.
    He doubted Ivanov had vandalized the paintings. It wasn’t the exterminator’s style. He’d never even think about such a thing unless it was bait to draw everyone into a building to blow it up around them. And that meant only one thing. Jean-Claude La Roux had made his way to Sea Haven. He hadn’t wasted any time. If he was searching Judith’s paintings, removing the canvases from the stretcher bars, that meant he’d hidden the microchip in between the canvas and the stretcher bar. Judith must have taken the painting with her when she left.
    Why? Why, if she was running for her life, would she take a painting with her? That made no sense to him. If she’d known about the microchip, and had deliberately taken it with her, why hadn’t she tried to sell it on the black market? His life was about to become very complicated. Judith had to be questioned and she wouldn’t like that he had misled her, failing to admit he was working for the Russian government to recover the microchip.
    The four of them left Jonas to his work, stepping outside onto the covered porch. The fog had come in even thicker, turning the world into a thick gray mist. The outline of trees and buildings were shadowed and vague. The knots in Stefan’s stomach hadn’t let up and the tension in him coiled tighter than ever, knowing he was going to have to get Judith home and find the microchip. Aside from the threat of Ivanov, La Roux was lurking around. He was certain of it.
    Judith drew her sweater closer around her. “It’s definitely cold today.”
    “And a little dreary,” Inez added. “I don’t mind the fog as a rule, but when it’s like this, you can’t see anything, it can get depressing.”
    Frank wrapped his arm around her shoulder and smiled down at her. “Not if we’re home watching an old movie and eating popcorn.”
    Inez brightened immediately. “That’s true. And on a stormy day, we can find the old-fashioned scary films, like Hitchcock’s. I love those.” She turned a smile on Stefan. “Do you enjoy old movies?”
    Entertainment films weren’t shown to the boys and girls training in the camps he’d grown up in and his job didn’t exactly send him to the theaters often. He gave a casual shrug. “The movies I’ve managed to see, I’ve really enjoyed. Watching old films when it’s foggy or stormy out sounds good to me. I’m ready to settle down and enjoy life a bit.”
    It was surprising to him when he said the words, how much he meant them. He was more than ready to trade a life in the shadows for a life with Judith. A real life. The home, the kids, the farm, traveling to kaleidoscope conventions, he wanted the entire package.
    “Do you work a lot?” Inez asked as they started down the sidewalk in the direction of the small local coffee shop.
    “I travel a lot for work,” Stefan admitted. “It can get old. It’s time I settled down.”
    His radar refused to fade away. The fog was a definite problem when he needed to see an enemy coming toward him. He didn’t like the closed in feeling the blanket of heavy mist gave him. Every step he took added to that coiling tension. He was missing something important and his warning system was screaming at him to heed it. Judith and Inez chattered away, and he tuned them out, listening for telltale sounds, running footsteps, anything at all that might tell him there was danger close.
    Ivanov had been wounded, there was no doubt in his mind that Stefan’s bullet had taken him down, but there was no way he’d gone over the cliff with that car the way the cops thought he had. Stefan didn’t believe it for a moment. He’d escaped and slipped away to another lair, shedding his skin and growing a new one in the way he’d been taught.
    His mind began a rapid assessment, fitting pieces together, all the while his warning system shrieked at him. Where’s your sleeping bag, Bill? Judith’s voice. Shed his skin, grow a