Shiver

protecting civilians usually happened on a pay grade level way below Mayhew’s. What Danny was asking for was a five-star, gold-plated personal favor. He recognized that Mayhew wouldn’t forget it, that he’d be throwing it in Danny’s face at the most inopportune moments for the rest of his professional life. Danny thought of Sam, and Tyler, and concluded, worth it.
    “Yeah,” he said.
    “You got it.” Mayhew wasn’t one to waste time when he didn’t have to. “Some reason you’re not taking this to your AIC?”
    His agent in charge would be Crittenden. And no, Danny didn’t feel like he could take this to him. Like Sanders, Crittenden would consider Sam and Tyler as not critical to the mission.
    “I want them completely out of this,” he said. “And I want them kept safe.”
    “Any way I can get in touch with you? I don’t suppose you want me to call you back at this number.”
    “No.”
    “I’ll set it up. Operation Romeo. You’ll be hearing from me shortly.”
    Mayhew hung up before Danny could say thanks.
    The name Mayhew had chosen for the operation, Romeo, registered as Danny removed the battery from the cell phone again, and wrung a wry smile from him as he considered it. One thing was for sure, it hadn’t been chosen at random. Mayhew never did anything at random. Restoring the phone to its hiding place, reassembling the crutch, he thought back over what he had said. He’d given the associate deputy director only the briefest of thumbnail sketches of who Sam and Tyler were, so how Mayhew had divined his romantic interest in Sam he had no clue. Except the operation name told him that he had; it was Mayhew’s way of taking a dig at him. The only explanation was that there must have been something in his tone as he’d talked about her. Plus, Mayhew knew him pretty well.
    Whatever, just as soon as Mayhew got Sam and Tyler out of there, he’d sleep a whole lot better.
    The clock was running down. The word on the street would be that Marco was going to be playing show-and-tell any day now, and the Zetas, with their wide-flung contacts, would have picked that up. By now the cartel would be getting desperate, and since the purpose of the assignment was for him to provide a decoy while the real Rick Marco gave chapter and verse to the government, the path that led to this safe house would be followable. It wouldn’t be easy to find, but it would be there, because it was supposed to be there. All he had to do was stay one step ahead of Veith and/or any other cartel enforcers until Marco was done, and then Marco would go into witness protection and he, Danny, would be finished with one more assignment and free to live his life until the next one. In St. Louis, however, staying one step ahead of the hit squad on Marco’s tail had not worked out so well, and the more Danny thought about it the more that bothered him. The key was for him to get out of this alive, and that almost hadn’t happened. Either somebody had fucked up big time, or . . . or what? He didn’t know. What he did know was that here, although the marshals had him under round-the-clock protection and Crittenden and his team were supposed to be set up somewhere nearby monitoring the house as well as keeping tabs on any suspicious movements on the part of any known cartel associates such as Veith, he was starting to feel uneasy.
    He’d been doing this job long enough to know to trust his gut, and his gut was telling him that something wasn’t right.
    The first order of business had to be to get Sam and Tyler out of harm’s way.
    The second? Well, that would depend on what came up.
    Tightening up the head of the crutch, Danny was pondering the possibilities when he heard a kind of strangled sounding cry. At first he had trouble placing it. Then he realized: Tyler.
    Even as Danny shot to his feet and, balancing on one leg, grabbed for the nearest crutch, he remembered Tyler had nightmares and told himself to calm down.
    A nightmare. That was all it was.
    Still, he hurried to the boy’s room just to make sure.
    Just as he reached Tyler’s doorway, the kid let loose with a shriek that made Danny wince. The room was dark, but not totally. He could see Tyler sitting bolt upright in the middle of the bed, his eyes closed, his arms stiff as boards at his sides, screaming like someone was cutting his throat with Sam nowhere in sight.
    Jesus.
    “Tyler.” Danny swung over to the bed. “Tyler.”
    Then, because he didn’t know