A Loaded Question

by Danica Winters

  “And don’t think I don’t know exactly who in the hell you are and what you do,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  His blood ran cold. If she knew who he was, he was as good as dead. Had his identity been compromised? Was that how the shooter had found them?

  If people knew him, there would be other killers to follow. He had an enemies list at least as long as his arm, and not half as dignified.

  She had to have been playing him. Damn, he hoped so.

  “Then who am I?” he asked, hoping she would falter.

  “Do you want to play that game, Iceman?”

  He tensed, trying to hide the response by slipping out of her grip once and for all. He didn’t need her taking his pulse and acting like a human lie detector. Some things he could control, but his heart wasn’t one of them.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.” His rebuttal sounded feeble and understated even to his own ears.

  “You can try to lie to me all you want, but John Q doesn’t roll around a small Montana town with a half-a-million-dollar van filled with spy equipment.” She paused. “Who do you work for?”

  Oh, hell no.

  He opened his mouth, but she put her hand up and stopped him midvowel.

  “And don’t you start the nonsense about ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you.’ We both know that is crap, and neither of us has time for that kind of stupidity. So, in an effort for transparency and if we are possibly going to be joining forces, you need to tell me the truth.”

  His appreciation for her compounded tenfold. In other circumstances, he would have happily worked to get this woman into his bed—handcuffs or no.

  Stop.

  Though he liked to think of himself as a man who respected women and their boundaries, rare moments like these made him wonder if he needed to work on his self-awareness. Beautiful, filled with spunk and courage, she attracted him. It was really too bad that she wasn’t more of a terror. Then at least he could tell himself that she wasn’t his type, but as it stood, she was entirely too much like a woman he could have been interested in.

  “Answer me, and quit playing games,” she pressed.

  He had to check his grin. Though he hadn’t been trying to keep her on her toes, it appeared he was doing exactly that. And she was reading it as him trying to control the conversation.

  She must have been thinking him far smarter than he thought himself.

  “If I tell you who I am, I need you to make me a promise.”

  She raised her brow, giving him a doubtful look. “What?”

  His gut roiled. Everything in his life depended on his abilities to stay in the shadows and remain unseen. Though he would never call himself anything remotely close to a hero, he did strive to work for the greater good and be the person who saved lives of people he would never meet and who would never know the sacrifices he made for their safety. If he was outed, his life and the lives of the people whom he strove to help would all be put into danger. And that was to say nothing about his job. Even if he managed to live through the exposure, he would have nothing left—arguably, he would be better off dead.

  The Russian proverb came to mind: Doveryáy, no proveryáy. Trust, but verify.

  Unfortunately, in a situation like this, verification would have to come quickly.

  “Do you play politics?” he asked.

  She frowned. “That’s not a promise.”

  “Just answer me.”

  “I avoid them like the plague,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

  That would have to do, for now. “If I tell you who I am, and who I work for, I need to trust that you can keep it a secret. I need your protection.”

  Her mouth opened and closed twice before she seemed to find the words she was struggling to say. “You can trust me.”

  “My life depends on it.” He reinforced his words by reaching down and touching her hand. “Truly.”

  “I’m yours...your ally.” She looked him in the eye. There were dark brown flecks interspersed throughout her hazel eyes.

  Though there was no one standing too close, and even those who were close enough to hear were far too busy to be listening, he leaned into her. She smelled like coffee and sunflower oil, but beneath the smell of her office was the jasmine scent of her body wash. “I’m an operator with STEALTH.”

  She took a big step back from him, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of his candor or his proximity.

  “You work for the Martins?” she asked, her voice airy and any disbelief she may have had now completely gone.

  He nodded.

  She ran her hands down over her face, smearing her black eyeliner at the corner of her left eye. He wanted to reach up and clear the smudge for her, but he already felt vulnerable and he didn’t need to make things worse.

  Agent Scot swallowed hard. “With you here, it’s no wonder there was a shoot-out. It’s a miracle that anyone was left standing.”

  Chapter Five

  There was trust, and then there was “I am trusting you with my life” trust. Few and far between had ever asked such a thing of her, and rarely in the first five minutes of knowing their name.

  Wait—he’d never even told Kate his full name.

  She thought about asking him his personal details—she would need them for her investigation—but at the same time, if she pressed him, she wasn’t sure he would give her a real answer. She had worked with his kind before, and his kind weren’t known for giving their trust even when they were on the same team. Trust was something that had to be earned and then tried before the recipient even knew it was a viable option.

  This man was good in all the wrong ways; he was going to be nothing but a pain in her ass. Yet she didn’t shirk from the possibility of being nearer to him.

  Though there was no doubt that she shouldn’t have been drawn to bad boys, there was something primitive in her need to be with them. Thankfully, she’d learned to quell that pull ever since her college boyfriend—Alex, a marine who’d loved to tell her that she needed to lose twenty pounds while he stuffed his face with Cheetos. She could have still punched him in the face. But she’d heard it said that a person had to really love to really hate.

  Her cell phone buzzed from inside her pocket and she pulled it out. Fifteen missed calls and twice that in texts. Even the crew in Salt Lake City had tried to contact her. Word had spread fast about the shooting.

  “I want you to know, I had nothing to do with what happened here today,” the dark-haired man said. “But whoever pulled that trigger...they had to have known that I was coming. Which means that if I don’t get the hell out of here, I’m putting myself and my team at risk. If you need me, you know how to get in touch.” He bladed his feet, moving toward the sidewalk.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” she said, sounding more authoritarian than she felt next to the man. “I appreciate what you are saying, but I can’t let you go. No matter who you work for. Zoey and I are friends. I can give her a call and get you cleared by your team if you’d like, but I need you. As I see it, you are the reason this all went down, even if you don’t think you are. They weren’t shooting at me, and they weren’t shooting aimlessly at the people on the street. Whoever was behind this, they were going for a kill shot on your driver. They just underestimated their opponents.”

  His jaw clenched as he seemed to be trying to cover his tells and his body language. The attempt told her more than if he had spoken—he knew she was right. At least he was smart enough not to try to deny her rationale.

  “Iceman, how good are you at your job?” she asked.

  “Until this morning?”

  She chuckled. “You want to go with me while I clear the floors?”

  It was dangerous bringing this stranger with her and there were better ways to keep him under her team’s thumb, but no one would keep bet
ter control of him than her.

  His eyes widened. “Seriously?”

  “How long have you been in the game?” From the little crow’s-feet around his eyes and his fading tan, she guessed he was about thirty and had been in the desert not too long ago.

  “Contracting?”

  “Let’s say all special security operations,” she said, hoping to lead him.

  “I’ve been at it long enough to know how to clear a building and get my hands on a shooter.”

  Of course, that would be his answer. “Then don’t let me down and don’t leave my ass hanging.” She waved for him to follow her as she yelled commands out at her team. “Hunt, you head the scene here. We’re going to do a sweep at the shooter’s location.”

  “Roger that,” Agent Hunt said, a frown on his face.

  She charged down the road, clearing as she worked toward the Sol building. There was a SWAT team posted at the building’s doors, and as she approached, the sergeant waved at her to stop until she lifted her badge, flashing it for clearance.

  “Did you get a visual on our shooter?” she asked.

  The sergeant lowered his assault rifle to his side, the action seeming somehow resigned. “Not yet. However, we found evidence that he may have discarded his clothes in a dumpster behind the building.”

  Crap.

  Their shooter was among them, and smart as hell.

  “Did you pull any lookie-loos who spotted the shooter? Saw his face?” she asked.

  The sergeant pinched his lips and shook his head. “No one so far. You guys will have more luck.”

  Yeah, the SWAT crew was more concerned with kicking doors than they were with collecting statements.

  “We swept the fifth floor. Dude left his gun. MK12 Model 1.”

  She nodded. This guy must have been planning on leaving the gun behind all along. Either he was superconfident it held no clues to his identity, or he’d planted false ones on it. Or he was just careless.

  There were far better, more expensive sniper guns out there. If she was going to pull the trigger like the man had, she would have used the M110 SASS. Something like that would have run between eight to ten thousand, versus the couple-thousand-dollar model that the shooter had dumped.

  Then she was assuming that money was some kind of deciding factor. If their sniper was being funded by a paramilitary, corporation or government, a price point for a leftover gun was probably the last thing on their minds.

  She couldn’t assume anything yet, but the more details she could piece together, the more she could try to build a profile around their shooter, their identity and their motive.

  The iceman stepped around her. “Did they leave any brass?”

  The sergeant looked him up and down, feeling him out for a fed. “Who in the hell are you?”

  He chuckled. “Call me Troy.”

  “Well, Troy, as a matter of fact, there were at least a dozen spent casings. What the hell does that matter?” The sergeant spit out his name, making her wonder if they were having some kind of caveman fight over the woman—her—in their presence.

  Men.

  “Keep your guys on scene,” she said, trying to ignore the battling testosterone around her. “Let me know if you find anything else. And make sure to send me pictures of the area in which you found the clothes. My team will be in shortly to collect the evidence.”

  “10-4,” the sergeant said, turning toward his crew.

  They made their way inside and she could sense that Troy wanted to take the lead in the way he kept pressing in close from behind her. He was so close; she was almost certain that if she held her breath she could have heard his heart beat.

  The building was silent, the kind of quiet that came just after a storm, a quiet that promised that there was more to come, but it was only a matter of time.

  SWAT had cleared the building, but the electricity that came with fear and crime still filled the air.

  “Take three steps back,” she ordered as they reached the bottom of the stairwell. Her voice echoed against the concrete, bouncing until it disappeared into the shadows overhead.

  From behind her, she could make out the distinct sound of steel scraping against hard plastic as he pulled his sidearm from its holster. She followed suit, slipping her gun out, though she doubted she would have to pull the trigger. It was better to be safe than wish she had been at the ready.

  She moved forward, Troy giving her space. Their footfalls filled the quiet air, the only other sound their breathing as they ascended the staircase. The fifth floor was deadly silent, as if even the building knew what had happened within its core.

  It was all office spaces, most completely abandoned and neglected, with dusty boxes in their corners and the windows covered with old newspapers. The door was open to the office space that had held the shooter. There was an old desk in front of the window. Upon it sat the assault rifle, mounted on a tripod and lifted with sandbags.

  On the desk were the spent casings.

  She put away her weapon, took out her camera and started snapping pictures from a variety of angles, hoping to catch things that she was yet to notice. She’d have plenty of time back in the office to dissect the images, but for now she had to look at the big picture.

  From where she stood, she could see people milling around Troy’s van. It wasn’t a difficult shot to hit the van; in fact, it was the perfect setup.

  “I don’t think the boy, John, was in on the shooting.”

  Troy shook his head as she looked back at him. “Nah, the kid was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “You want to tell me what led up to the accident?”

  “I told you... I didn’t have—”

  “Anything to do with the shooting,” she said, finishing his sentence. “But we both know that you can’t deny you were the target. You said it yourself. But that’s not what I was asking. I was asking what led up to the accident.” She paused, looking at him.

  He was staring at the floor as if, somewhere in the dust, he could find the words that she wanted to hear.

  “If you want me to protect you, to keep your secret, then we are going to have to start out with some goddamned truths. Do you understand me?” she pressed.

  He looked up at her. “What do you really want to know?”

  “Who would want you dead? At least today?”

  “It could be any number of people.” He sighed. “This shooter, they could have been after me or Mike. It’s hard to tell.”

  “How long have you been working with your driver? He’s a contractor too, right?”

  “Mike’s my brother. I would trust him with my life. And we’ve been working tight together for the last two years. I’m the one who got him into the game—for better or worse.” A certain guilt seemed to tinge his words.

  “What’s your last name? Are you one of the Martins?”

  “No. My name is Troy, Troy Spade.”

  She gave him the side-eye as she tried to watch him for any deceptive behaviors.

  “I’m telling the truth. And, to be honest, it’s the first time I’ve spoken my full, real name since I was hired on at STEALTH.”

  “Are you operating under an alias?”

  He simply nodded. “It’s possible that the company I’m investigating is the one behind this,” he said, motioning around the room.

  “What company is that?” she asked.

  “They are called ConFlux. They have a headquarters downtown and—”

  “Are associated with military machining,” she said, interrupting and finishing his sentence as all the blood drained from her face.

  “You know them?”

  She nodded, the motion slow and smooth. “Yeah, I’m familiar.”

  Troy said nothing, just watched her as if he could hear there was more to the story and was simply go
ing to outwait her for the details.

  There was no use in holding out.

  “ConFlux is owned by my family. My father is the CEO. My mother... She used to run the financials, but retired five years ago.”

  A quick curse escaped his mouth. Then he remained mute, his entire body tense and his pupils dilated as his fight response appeared to kick in. Nothing could have prepared her for this, for staring down her enemy...an enemy who had just entrusted her with his life.

  She thought she had known true silence, but as she stood in that room with the man who had been sent to investigate her family’s company, the world around her became deafeningly quiet.

  Chapter Six

  That was what he got for believing in trust, even if it was only for a millisecond. What the hell had he been thinking in giving the woman his real name without more vetting? Dammit.

  Know thine enemy.

  Lesson number one. He had known the owner had a daughter and she was local, but in all of his background work, he’d found nothing to indicate that she was working for the FBI. The only thing he had found about the girl, Kate, was some high school track stats and a picture from when she was out with her friends—she’d been around sixteen. The gangly, awkward girl he had seen looked nothing like the stunningly beautiful, confident agent who now stood beside him.

  This kind of thing, this right here, was going to get him killed. And screw it, if it was his fault and he died it was one thing...but if Mike got hurt or killed because of the mistake, he was never going to forgive himself.

  He had to go into damage control before something happened that he couldn’t take back.

  “If it makes you feel better, I don’t think that your ’rents have anything to do with this shooting. At least, I hope not,” he lied through his teeth, trying to cover the tells he knew she was searching him for. “Besides, what would your parents have to hide or cover up?” He could hear himself blabbering; he needed to shut the hell up, so he pinched the inside of his arm with his hand as he moved to holster his weapon.