A Loaded Question

by Danica Winters

  Though he wasn’t sure he had sold his lies well enough, especially with the verbal diarrhea that had escaped his lips, she let out a relieved sigh.

  “My parents are good people. They haven’t had any kind of trouble—at least, none I know of—since they started the company. You’re right. They wouldn’t do something like this.”

  He walked around the room, careful not to disturb the scene. The SWAT team had been right about the weapon, but of course they would be knowledgeable about such things—it was their job. He bent down, looking closer at one of the spent casings, not touching the brass.

  Often, the one way shooters made a mistake was when they failed to cover their tracks while loading their weapon. He’d heard of more than a few cases being solved thanks to rogue fingerprints on brass or a hair caught in the magazine. It was the little things that always screwed a person.

  “See something?” she asked, moving beside him and looking over his shoulder.

  It was good that she wasn’t a little thing. She had more power in her stature and presence than most, and damn if it didn’t make him ache for her to step just a little bit closer.

  He turned to face her, careful to avoid the tension that threatened to erupt between them. With the naked eye, he couldn’t see a print, but he wasn’t about to mess with possible trace evidence by handling the round. Instead, he moved closer and to the right for a better look. From the outside, it appeared typical and one of a million others like it, and yet there was more to it than most would realize. “This is the NATO 5.56 casing.”

  She stared at him like he had grown a horn out of the middle of his forehead. “What are you thinking?”

  “Just that whoever pulled the trigger knew their craft. This round is consumed en masse by military and police officers alike. As for the general public, it’s a known quantity but harder to get.”

  “You think that our shooter was military or law enforcement?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a place to start. Though, most of the military guys I work with usually use Federal brand rounds. It’s more of a personal preference thing, but whatever...” He slowly stood up, feeling like a complete dork for going down the rabbit hole that was munitions and guns. “Did you get enough pictures?” He motioned toward her phone.

  “I think I have gotten everything here.” She slipped her camera back into her pocket as she walked toward the window and looked outside.

  Her body was silhouetted by the midday light, and he couldn’t help but notice the faint line where her panty pulled against her hip beneath her suit trousers. Damn, he would have loved to run his finger right over that spot, to touch her skin, to feel her silky underwear in his hands.

  Whoa—where had that come from? He was a professional, on a job, and though he appreciated a good-looking woman as much as the next man, he’d locked down those kinds of strong feelings for a while. Don’t touch, don’t be touched, don’t get hurt. That was his new mantra.

  Looking away, he walked toward the office’s door.

  The place had the distinct odor of spent gun powder and sweat. “Whoever our shooter was, they must have been sitting up here for hours waiting for their shot.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Take a deep breath,” he said. “Smell that? This dude was ripe.”

  She squinted her eyes, like she was trying to decide whether or not he was messing with her, but then she cracked a smile. “I thought a rat had died in the wall or something. You telling me that’s man?”

  “Clearly, you haven’t spent enough time in a Connex with twenty other dudes,” he said with a laugh. “This is nothing. After a while in a container unit, you start considering how many rounds you would be willing to take just so you don’t have to lie next to a bunch of dudes after egg MREs.”

  She laughed out loud. “You did not just go there.”

  He had to admit that he loved the sound of her laugh. It was clean and bright, coming from a place deep within her that he doubted rarely saw the light of day. He’d give a lot to hear that sound again. “You went with the dead rat. You started this,” he said, laughing.

  Damn, he could get used to this.

  Truth be told, the only person he’d been talking to as of late was Mike and, like living in the Connex, it made him consider going rogue.

  “Let’s go,” she said, walking past him and out into the hall.

  She took a deep breath of the nonfetid air. He’d gotten to her, and the conniving part of him kind of loved it. There was something about this kind of nuanced game that stoked his soul, even if there was no chance of anything more than them becoming friends. With her, he would take what he could get.

  He felt a vague flicker deep within, as if some ember was being sparked to life, something he’d not sensed in a long time. It caused both pain and joy. He tried not to think of the pain.

  Their footfalls sounded on the concrete as they made their way downstairs. They slipped out of the back of the building, and there was the dumpster that the SWAT team had mentioned. Beside it were two tac’d-up SWAT members. They were holding their ARs to their chests like they were their lifelines. He’d always appreciated a locked and loaded Spec Ops team, but it may have been overkill when it came to guarding the trash.

  The team leader bobbed his head, acknowledging Kate, but he did little to cover the contempt in his face when he glanced over at Troy. He didn’t blame the guy. If he saw some grunt following around on the heels of a good-looking agent, he would have wondered what the hell was up too.

  “Anyone see anything?” she asked.

  The guy shook his head.

  She took out her camera and took pictures of the dumpster. Opening up the lid a bit wider, he could make out desert khaki tactical pants and a gray hoodie. After getting a variety of pictures, she motioned for the SWAT guy. “Have your team bag these up and drop them off at Evidence. I’ll have my team take care of them from there.”

  “10-4,” the man said.

  She moved away from the team, her face awash with concentration. He wished he could know what she was thinking. If he was in charge of this investigation, they wouldn’t have been standing around; he would have been calling in drones and moving satellites in order to get a pin on their shooter. But then again, this wasn’t his investigation and this wasn’t a war-torn region of some developing nation. This was America, home of the brave and the situationally unaware.

  He regularly forgot how different his view was of the world—that was, until he was back down in the reality of living in a nation where safety had given rise to comfort and comfort had given rise to blindness.

  Not that Kate was blind.

  He walked behind her like a lost puppy, heading back to the car crash scene, feeling more and more out of place every second he was forced to follow. “If you wanted, I could—” He started to speak, but she stopped him with a touch.

  “You don’t get to go anywhere.” She looked annoyed as she lifted her cell phone to her ear and started speaking to someone on the other end.

  “Yeah, anything?” she said.

  He wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but she wasn’t trying to disguise her conversation, either.

  Kate watched him as the person on the other end of the line must have been speaking.

  “See what you can pull. No crosshatching on the brass. Normal markings.” She continued giving a report of what they had seen. After a few minutes, she clicked off the call and moved to send whomever she had been talking to the pictures she had taken.

  He was dying to ask her the specifics of her conversation, but as much as he was curious, he wouldn’t—if someone asked him questions like that, the last thing they would get would be any real answers.

  “So, tell me more about you,” she said, turning back to him. She motioned for him to follow her in the direction from which they had come. “What brings you here, besid
es my family’s company?”

  He was really hoping she had forgotten about that admission. Fat chance. She was too smart to let it go, and it was just this kind of thinking that drew him toward her.

  “Who were you talking to?” he asked, trying to turn the conversation away from anything that would cause him discomfort or lead him into making any more mistakes.

  “That was Agent Hunt. No one has spotted our shooter, so it looks like we are going to be working from the ground up. However, we do have beat cops working the perimeter. They put up roadblocks. Yet I have a feeling that, given the professionalism of our shooter, we have a better chance of finding Waldo.”

  He glanced around the area. Unlike many metropolitan cities, Missoula was conspicuously devoid of any eyes in the sky. Until now, it was one of the reasons he had enjoyed doing the job he did in this state. He didn’t need to worry about his actions being tracked. The lack of tech was probably a major thorn in her side, though, especially if she had ever worked in the tech sectors within the Bureau.

  Once again, he was reminded of how little he could gather about her. He’d like to know a lot more, not just for anything related to his job but because she intrigued him. For now, all he could glean from her would have to come from watching and listening, looking for patterns and tells in her person.

  Right now, she was standing tall, confident in her abilities and who she was as a person. Maybe she felt that way, maybe she was putting on a show just for him. The truth would come out, eventually.

  “If I were you, and I’m not saying you don’t know how to do your job, but I would start having my guys tap into all the camera systems within three miles. There are a limited number of choke points in this city. If you look close enough at who is coming and going, I’m sure we can get a visual on this guy.”

  Her brows rose. “I have my crew working on that, among a few other things.”

  Raising his hands, palms up, he showed his surrender. “I didn’t mean anything—was just trying to give you some helpful suggestions, maybe a starting block or two.”

  “A good starting block would be to get a key on why someone would want to shoot you and Mike down there,” she said, motioning in the direction of his van.

  Mike was handcuffed, his hands tight between his back, and he was leaning against the federal building. The man beside him, who Troy recognized as Agent Hunt, was talking on the phone. He was waving his hands around, and the way his face puckered made Troy wonder if the guy was talking to one of the STEALTH crew.

  Troy chuckled under his breath. Mike’s face was pinched into a tight scowl, and even from a block away, he could read his lips loud and clear. He was an unhappy camper, and he could only guess what Mike had said that had led to him getting a set of silver bracelets. If a bad guy had tried restraining his brother, they would have ended up in a body bag.

  “If you want me to tell you anything, we’re going to have to be on the same team.” He pointed at his brother. “If you don’t have your guys let him go, there is no way on this green earth that I’m going to talk to you...with or without handcuffs.”

  Kate looked over at his brother and then motioned to the agent beside him. “What in the hell are you thinking?” she yelled, jogging slightly to get over to them and through the crowd of officers and bystanders that had started to accumulate in the wake of the shooting. “Folks, this is an active crime scene!”

  The people milling around barely seemed to notice the woman yelling in their midst.

  There was an older man milling about, talking to someone on his telephone. His eyes were wide and his words were coming fast as he paced, all evidence of stress behavior.

  As he watched the man, he was reminded how different he was from the public; he didn’t have the same response. He’d gone through far too many rapid stress adaptation drills for something like a little shooting to get under his skin. Everyone was alive and unhurt. What more could people want?

  He followed behind Kate as she made her way to Mike. His brother’s face was tight and red, and he could only imagine how the conversation would go once they got the hell away from this S-show.

  Though it seemed impossible, Mike was a guy who liked sticking deeper to the shadows than him. Mike was a night owl, wanting to do nothing more than watch, listen and document his enemies. When he did pull the trigger, he only had to pull it once. But it had been a long time since Mike had been the one to draw down. Though, right in this moment, Troy held no doubts that it was exactly what Mike wanted to do.

  His brother was maturing as a person; if nothing else, he would have to buy him a beer later and congratulate him on his personal growth.

  Mike looked over at him, and as he spotted Kate, he stopped talking and stood up a bit against the building, puffing his chest out.

  Maybe he had a little bit more personal growth to go—especially when it came to the fairer, and arguably wiser, sex.

  Agent Hunt said something and Mike turned around as the officer reached for the cuffs, but he didn’t take his eyes off Kate. An odd wave of possessiveness washed over Troy and he took an almost imperceptible movement closer to the woman. Mike must have seen it because he sent him a sly grin as he approached.

  Slipping the cuffs off, Mike turned back around and rubbed his wrists. He glared at Agent Hunt. “I would like to reiterate that putting me in cuffs was more than a little unprofessional, ass—”

  “Nope, don’t say it,” Troy said, cutting his brother off before he spouted something that they would both come to regret. “Kate, this is Mike Spade. He is a fellow contractor...” He sighed. “And this piece of meat is my brother, for better or worse.”

  She extended her hand, but not without Troy noticing that Mike was staring at her chest region. “Nice to meet you, Mike. You are a fellow contractor?”

  Mike gave him a WTF look that made him yearn to flip his brother the bird. He wasn’t the one who’d had to be rescued from cuffs; Mike had no business to judge.

  “It’s okay—your brother and I have established that we are on a trajectory that is going to need some fine-tuning and honesty. If not, your next trajectory will be to jail—no matter how much I like Zoey and the rest of the Martins.”

  Mike’s eyebrows shot up with surprise. “You know the Martins?”

  She laughed. “This is far too small of a town for us not to know your bosses. We’ve had a few run-ins with their friends in the past.”

  “If you like Zoey, then you are off to a good start with me.” Some of the tension eased from Mike’s body. “But I can’t say the same about my brother...or his big goddamned mouth.”

  “Your brother is tighter than a snare drum, so don’t jump down his throat too much,” Kate said, surprising him.

  Why had she risen to his defense?

  He glanced over at her, and for a split second, their eyes met. Those hazel eyes... They would be the end of him. Even if they were hedging their bets with one another, he couldn’t deny that she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever met. Her long brunette hair had started to gather at the back of her neck where it rubbed against her suit jacket.

  Tiff had always hated to wear her hair down. She complained that it got into a rat’s nest in the back. For a while Tiffany had tried to wear it loose anytime they weren’t training or on assignments, but after six months she had decided that when it came to pleasing him, keeping her tresses free and flowing wasn’t worth the effort. He had totally understood. Not long after, she had cut six inches off her hair. She’d never been more beautiful. And then a month later...she was gone.

  Yes, he couldn’t get involved with another woman—not even the beautiful Kate Scot, despite the instant connection he’d felt with her, the light that had flicked back on deep inside. Sure, they had a lifestyle in common, maybe even a way of thinking and a schedule that was like his own, but they were far too alike for a real relationship. But sh
e had made an effort to keep him happy in her investigation. That had to count for something. Yet he couldn’t make the mistake of falling for anyone. When he did, it ended only in heartbreak and death—Tiffany was proof of that.

  If he hadn’t gotten involved with her, she would have probably worked with a different unit, she wouldn’t have gotten into the up-armored vehicle with him, and there were a million other little things that she had done to put herself in the line of fire for him. Love had made them both blind, and worse—blind to the dangerous world that they had chosen.

  No matter what he yearned for, he wouldn’t put another person he cared about at risk.

  Chapter Seven

  There were mistakes, and then there were getting-people-killed mistakes. And she had the sinking feeling that Troy Spade was about to become one of those mistakes.

  He sat in the interrogation room inside the federal building; he’d been there for the last two hours. Against Agent Hunt’s wishes, she had ordered everyone sandwiches and drinks from Doc’s and had them delivered while the rest of her teams cleaned up the streets and sent her emails with all the superfluous details she would have to spend the rest of the night poring over.

  She glanced up at the video feed and watched as Mike and Troy sat at the interrogation table, finishing up their lunches. Mike was talking animatedly, but she couldn’t make out exactly what he was telling his brother.

  Though Troy had told her that they were brothers, looking at them on the feed, it was hard to see their likeness. Troy was taller and his hair was darker than that of Mike’s, who was shorter and a tad on the heavier side. They both had the V-shaped, muscular torso that came with a military contractor lifestyle, a life that was made or broken on a person’s ability to get themselves out of any catastrophic event in which they found themselves—even when they were an iceman.

  She had met a few contractors in her years at the Bureau, and a few of her friends had even left the agency in order to go into the private security sector. The money was always one heck of a draw. The feds paid her just enough to keep her, but not a heck of a lot more.