His gut burned raw with each forced even breath. He needed a status report. "SITREP?"
"One confirmed dead, more expected, but it's chaos there and here."
His gaze snapped straight to Nikki and her furrowing brow as she somehow picked up on his tension even though he'd kept his face neutral. Her father was over there along with so many of their friends, and there wasn't a thing he could do except be the bearer of the horrific details. With the taste of Nikki still on his lips, he was torn with the need to keep her close in case the news involved her.
But duty didn't give him that option.
"Hold down the fort. I'm on my way."
And he prayed when he came back to the Price home that it wouldn't be for an official notification visit.
Chapter 9
Six hours later, the phone rang on her mom's kitchen wall.
Slamming her memory journal shut, Nikki launched from her chair at the table to snatch up the cordless receiver and kicked herself for not placing it beside her, but she wasn't thinking clearly right now. Carson had told her there was a bombing overseas and to keep her pregnant mother away from the television until he could get details.
Please, God, let her father be all right.
And if her father wasn't okay, let her be strong enough when the time came to tell her mom. At least her mother was upstairs resting after supper, so Nikki would have time to pull herself together if the worst...
"Carson?" she gasped into the mouthpiece, her fingers numbing from her death grip. Death? Awful word choice. The smell of leftover spaghetti hanging in the air made her nauseous. "Is everything okay?"
Silence answered. A delay for a telemarketer recording? She glanced at the caller ID, which read "unknown" as she'd seen before when Carson used his cell.
She put the receiver to her ear again. "Carson? Is that you?"
Was the news so bad he was searching for the right words? But no. He was never that shaken. If anything, he became more focused in a crisis. She admired that about him, along with so many other traits she'd never noticed before, too caught up in her hormonal crush and a thousand other things that seemed frivolous now in light of how transient life could be.
Huffing breaths increased on the airwaves, sending a creepy chill down her spine. An obscene phone call? Or something far more sinister and dangerous?
Footsteps sounded from the living room, coming closer, loping—her brother.
"Hang up," Chris hissed, the television echoing Jamie's Disney flick from the other room.
"What?"
He yanked the phone from her and barked into the receiver, "The line's tapped, you bastard, so quit calling."
Chris nailed the off button and tossed the phone onto Jamie's empty high chair.
What was going on and why hadn't anyone bothered to tell her? "The phone's tapped?"
"We've been getting calls like that for two days, so Mom phoned that Agent Reis guy. Mom didn't want to scare you and since you stayed up in the garage apartment most of the time, you were never here when one came in."
Could that have been why Reis wanted to speak to her family?
And ohmigod, none of this even mattered if something had happened to her father.
Call, call, call. She touched the phone, willing it to ring with Carson on the other end. Her hand slid back to her side as she turned to her brother. "Were you going to tell me about the breather and speaking with Agent Reis?"
"Haven't had the chance since you've been so busy with your major squeeze." Her brother slouched against the counter with a leftover slice of garlic bread. "Major squeeze. Get it? He's a major?" When she didn't laugh, he frowned. "Is something wrong?"
No need for Chris to worry, too. Pulling a weak attempt at a smile, she pitched a pot holder at his head. "Major squeeze? That was pretty lame."
"So insult me or something. This is no fun if you won't fight back."
She dropped into a chair at the kitchen table, snitching up the cordless phone. "I'm just on edge." She nudged her memory journal aside, not that she'd been able to add anything to the blank page with worries for her father filling her head. "Now what about this mystery caller? What did Agent Reis have to say?"