by Liz Shoaf
“It was supposed to be an easy in and out. Our job was to attend an art show at a famous gallery, pose as art dealers, get into the owner’s office and download everything on his computer. The owner of the gallery had political ties and shipped art worldwide. He was suspected of hiding state secrets and information in the shipments. Our government wanted a list of his shipments.”
“Why not just hack into his computer and get what they wanted?”
“In today’s environment, people with something to hide usually have two systems. One for their normal work, and the other they never connect online. It’s for their eyes only.”
Mary Grace had to admit she’d never thought of that. “So you and Finn went in to download whatever was on the second computer. What happened, then?”
His hands tightened on the yoke again and Mary Grace rubbed her throat. She could easily visualize those large strong hands wrapping around someone’s throat and squeezing the life out of them, but then she remembered how gentle and kind Ned had been with his niece and she dropped her hand and relaxed.
“It was an ambush. Finn went in to do the download and I waited just outside the door to make sure no one came down the hall. I heard a scuffle and entered the room, but it was too late. There was an open window in the office and a man dressed head-to-toe in black disappeared through the opening. I barely got a glimpse of him. I couldn’t pursue because Finn was down.”
He stopped for a moment, but Mary Grace knew better than to offer the comfort she so desperately wanted to. He thought her brother was somehow responsible for this horrific event. But that was impossible. Wasn’t it? No, Bobby would never do anything like that.
“The guy used a silencer and the bullet hit Finn in the spine, disabling him for life.” Her heart went out to him. She didn’t want to ask the question burning a hole in her gut, but she forced her lips to move. “And what makes you think Bobby had something to do with the ambush?”
He looked at her and his emerald eyes turned molten. “Because Bobby was responsible for monitoring all movement and information of the enemy. He gave me the all-clear signal. There were cameras inside the office and he had hacked into them. He had to know those two men were lying in wait. I couldn’t do two things at once and had to rely on the CIA team members to do the hacking and monitoring.”
Ned’s explanation shook Mary Grace to the core. She kept her expression even, but her heart was about to pound out of her chest. She breathed slowly through her nose until she calmed down enough to think. Pushing aside the churning, turbulent emotions connected to her brother, she forced herself to think like the reporter she was.
Mary Grace knew Bobby inside and out, but since working at the CIA, she noticed he’d become quieter, which she’d chalked up to maturity. She closed her eyes and let her mind rest for a second, clearing her thoughts. She popped upright when possible explanations presented themselves.
“You said yourself that Bobby hacked into the cameras in that man’s office. What if someone else overrode Bobby’s computer and the picture showed the room clear?” She gave a thoughtful pause. “Sounds to me like there might be some corruption going on.”
He cut her a sharp look. “Aye, the corruption might begin with your brother, but there’s someone more powerful behind him, pulling the strings. He should be able to lead me to them.”
EIGHT
Ned only had a moment’s respite before Mary Grace surprised him with her next question.
“Tell me about your friend, Finn.”
“His name is Finn Lachlan. He’s a natural born American citizen with a Scottish heritage. My family traveled a lot, but our home base is in the States. Finn and I were best friends growing up. He followed me into the army, and after that, as I told you, we joined the CIA.”
“You feel responsible for his injury.”
He took a deep breath and calmed the emotions churning in his gut.
“I don’t see how that’s pertinent to our current situation.” His words sounded gruff and irritable, but he didn’t really care.
She wouldn’t find much information on his old friend because he’d made sure both his and Finn’s operational backgrounds were buried deep. She might be a good, even great, reporter, but with his experience he had no doubt he could run information rings around her.
But he was curious. “Why ask me about Finn?”
She casually peered out the side window, but the tension in her body told a different story.
“Curiosity. That’s all.” The tone of her voice said differently.
“Tell me.” It came out as a command, but at this point he really didn’t care. He wanted to know what was going on in that active, inquisitive mind of hers.
She turned toward him and looked him in the eye. “Do you trust Finn?”
His gut rolled over once before the anger hit him. “What are you implying? Finn was the one left disabled for life. I grew up with him. Of course I trust him.”
“Sorry to hit a nerve.” She shrugged. “I’m a reporter. My job is to ask questions. If you say you trust Finn, fine, I believe you. Just covering all the bases.”
He forced himself to calm down. She was right. It was her job to ask questions and probe for information and he’d do well to remember that. He needed a break from her inquisition and realized he could smell himself. He stunk.
“Listen, I’m going to take a quick shower and change clothes. I’ll put the plane on autopilot. Call me if anything buzzes or sounds wrong.” He grinned to himself as he pushed out of the pilot’s chair and headed toward the door. Mary Grace didn’t know he had a plane-wide computer system that would alert him if there were any problems. That included notifications of any unwanted visitors like the drone that had visited them earlier.
A big grin split his face and he kept walking when she screeched at his back.
“What? You can’t just leave me here. What if someone tries to attack us again? What am I supposed to do? What if we have engine trouble?”
It got even worse when she realized he wasn’t coming back. “I’m never flying with you again, you hear me? You’re a crazy mountain man.”
He scratched the scraggly beard covering his face and decided it was time to get rid of it. It had been functional on the cold mountain, but they were headed to Georgia. As he passed the plush seats in the middle of the plane, he wondered what Mary Grace would think of his clean-shaven face. Not that it mattered. As soon as he ran Bobby to ground and squeezed every morsel of information out of him, Ned would disappear. He wouldn’t be seeing Mary Grace again.
His heart missed a beat at the thought of never peering into those intelligent golden eyes again, but he had a personal mission. Ned wanted to find the person responsible for putting Finn in a wheelchair and destroying his friend’s life.
He shook his head when he entered the bedroom and spotted Krieger protectively curled around TB. The unlikely friendship between two such different dogs reminded him just how different he and Mary Grace were. He had tons of secrets and she was in the business of revealing them.
He grabbed a pair of worn comfy jeans and a soft blue jean shirt, but paused with the clothes in his hands and stared at the neatly laundered khakis and starched shirts. He threw the clothes back into the closet and removed a pair of pants and a shirt from their hangers. Mary Grace’s grandmother sounded old school and he wanted to make a good impression. He had a gift for being able to fit into any environment and social situation.
He headed toward the shower and worked hard to convince himself that shaving his beard and dressing nicely had nothing to do with Mary Grace. Nope, this was all about information gathering. It didn’t have a thing to do with the gorgeous, terrified, sassy woman currently sitting in the copilot’s seat of his plane.
* * *
Fuming, and somewhat terrified to be the only person in the cockpit of a large airplane—although she’d
never admit that to Ned—Mary Grace sat there and stared at the panel full of instruments, her fingers gripping the armrests. Every one of them was completely foreign to her. If something happened, they’d just have to crash while Mr. Mountain-Man-No-Last-Name-Ned took his leisurely shower.
Loosening her grip on the armrest, she started tapping her fingers against the leather while her brain began functioning again. She relaxed when she realized that a plane this equipped most likely had a computer system that would alert Ned if any problems presented themselves. No pilot on a commercial plane would ever leave the cockpit, except to use the bathroom, and they had copilots.
She grinned. Ned had a warped sense of humor and she liked it, maybe a little too much. He cared about and helped his friend, Finn, and had a burning desire to root out the bad guys. The only problem was that it might be at her brother’s expense. Her momentary fuzzy feelings took a sharp nosedive at that thought.
Mary Grace would protect her brother with her last breath and Ned was convinced Bobby had something to do with the ambush the two men experienced.
Her nails tapped harder against the arm of her seat as she thought through everything Ned had shared. He’d been very careful to keep his personal life concealed. He’d told her about the ambush, who he and Finn had worked for and that was it. What interested her the most outside of Ned’s unknown personal history was the fact that Ned and Finn worked for the CIA.
That type of story was right down her alley, but her first priority was to find and protect her brother. Lost in her own thoughts, she jumped when Ned spoke from the entrance of the cockpit.
“Man, that shower felt great. I didn’t realize how filthy I was.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but...”
Her words fell away and her chin dropped when she swiveled around in her seat and got her first real look at Ned. The nasty beard had disappeared, only to reveal a granite-sharp jawline. The skin on the lower portion of his face was lighter than the upper portion due to the beard, but the man could easily be on the cover of a sports magazine, any sports magazine. He had on khakis and a starched button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing muscled forearms.
The man was drop-dead gorgeous, and before she could clamp her lips shut, the words popped out of her mouth. “Are you sure you’re not married?”
Those intelligent emerald eyes sparked with humor and Mary Grace wanted to crawl under the seat.
“That’s not what I meant to say,” she blurted out again. This was going from bad to worse. She took a deep breath and pasted on a false smile.
“I meant to say you clean up pretty good.”
Grinning, he slid into the pilot’s chair and checked all the controls. She wanted to smack the smile off his face because it was at her expense. She looked away, but couldn’t stop from sneaking another peek. Mountain Man really was too good-looking for his own good. The guy probably had a woman stashed in every country. He certainly had the means to travel extensively with his expensive plane.
“I’m really glad you didn’t touch anything while I was gone.”
An explosion welled up inside her, but he grinned at her again before she had a chance to erupt.
“And once again, no, I promise I’ve never been married.”
With stiff shoulders, she shrugged in embarrassment.
Immense relief hit her in waves when he changed the subject.
“We’ll be landing within twenty minutes. Buckle yourself in.”
Mary Grace pulled the seat belt across her chest, her mind shifting to her grandmother. She prayed that the older lady was safe and the killer hadn’t decided to pay her a visit, trying to find Bobby. Gram Ramsey might be tough, but she wouldn’t stand a chance against the people after them.
NINE
After a perfect landing, Ned guided the plane behind a large building, which effectively shielded the aircraft from unwanted eyes. He flipped a bunch of switches and the engine rumbled off. He bit back a grin when Mary Grace slowly relaxed the death grip she had on the armrests.
“I didn’t know this airstrip was here and I’ve lived in this area all my life.” Those golden eyes of hers gazed at him, full of curiosity and suspicion.
He shrugged. “It’s a privately owned airstrip. There’s hundreds of them across the United States. Most owners will allow usage for the right price.”
The gold band around the brown in her eyes burned bright with righteousness. “Does that mean bad, as well as good, people can pay for usage?”
He shrugged again. “If you don’t like it, do a story on it.”
Standing, she straightened her sweater and Ned winced. Most Christmas sweaters weren’t very pretty, but this new one was much worse than the previous one she’d been wearing. It was green with a triangular Christmas tree on the front. Sewn in ornaments were placed all over it and yarn tassels flowed free from the top of several of them.
“I’ll do that. We should get going. I’m worried about Gram Ramsey.”
He understood her concern. He had a crotchety old grandfather he worried about all the time. Angus Duncan, laird of their family clan in Scotland, did his best to interfere in Ned’s life, but he loved the old man dearly.
By the time he left the cockpit, Mary Grace and the two dogs were impatiently waiting on him by the exit door. She had her backpack slung over one shoulder and TB was safely ensconced in the dog carrier strapped to her chest.
She caught his scowl as she looked up from fiddling with the straps of the dog carrier. “What?”
“You shouldn’t be carrying all that gear with the wound in your side.”
She shot him a feral grin and the backpack slid from her shoulder and plunked onto the carpeted floor. “I’ll be happy for you to carry my stuff.”
He scowled again for good measure. Aye, the woman was as surly and stubborn as the pony he’d had as a kid. “Let me grab my gear and we’ll be on our way.”
He strode to the back of the plane to the bedroom, opened a hidden closet panel and grabbed the duffel bag that was always packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice. He was back at her side in moments. He pressed the release hatch button and the stairs lowered to the ground.
He grinned at Mary Grace’s back as she quickly scaled the steps and took a relieved breath when her feet hit the ground. His scowl returned when Krieger followed along behind, instead of in front of, the woman and her rat dog like a mutt in love. He was trained to leave the plane first and check the perimeter.
“Krieger, perimeter.” He snapped out the order and Mary Grace frowned over her shoulder, her gaze following Krieger as the dog disappeared around the corner of the building.
Carrying his duffel and her backpack, he took the steps two at a time and stopped at her side, waiting for his dog to give the all-clear.
TB stuck her head out of the pouch and Mary Grace soothed the rat dog by stroking her gently on the head and making nonsensical noises when the dog started whining. She looked up at Ned with amusement lighting her eyes and his heart expanded in his chest. It disgruntled him that a mere look from this woman—a journalist at that—could make him react in such an unsettling fashion.
“What?” he snapped, then felt like a fool for allowing emotions to get in the way of the important task at hand.
She grinned wider and he felt as if she could somehow see inside him, past the gruff exterior and hard shell he’d grown.
“I think Krieger’s in love with Tinker Bell.”
“What? That’s preposterous.”
Mary Grace tilted her head and her eyes became mere slits. “You think just because Krieger is a fully trained dog that he’s too good for my Tinker Bell?”
Ned became very wary. His grandfather always said that women would say one thing and mean something else entirely. That a man had to pay close attention to figure out what was really going on. H
e was terrified that she wasn’t talking about dogs, but alluding to something much more personal, so he took a relieved breath when Krieger came loping around the corner of the building and sat in front of him, giving the all-clear signal. He ignored her question and moved forward. “Let’s go.”
Handled by his contact, an empty car sat in front of the small building that manned the airport, waiting on them. A man inside the building threw his hand up but turned away when they approached the car. Mary Grace pinned him with a look brimming with questions, but opened the back door for Krieger, closed it and loaded herself and TB into the passenger seat.
He held her backpack out to her, which she took and placed on the floorboard, then tossed his duffel into the back seat. She didn’t say a word until he pulled out his phone and asked for the address of her grandmother’s house. He input the information she relayed, backed the car out of the parking space and they were on their way. He didn’t have to wait long for the explosion of questions.
“I don’t see how we were able to land at that airstrip without filing a proper flight plan. And how we were able to bypass security at the airport. We’ve probably broken a ton of laws, and if I get into trouble, it’s going to be your fault. And why didn’t you use the GPS in the car?”
His head pounded as her questions peppered him like a round of gunfire. “Everything we’ve done has been legally authorized. You won’t get in trouble.” Then understanding dawned. “You’re a stickler for the rules, aren’t you?”
She sniffed in disdain. “Rules are there for a reason. What would society look like if we didn’t have rules?”
He snorted in disbelief. Mary Grace was a White House press correspondent. She was exposed to the underbelly of Washington politics on a daily basis. She should have known better.
“In a perfect world, if everyone played by the rules, then the government wouldn’t need people like me. Someone has to be there to clean up the mess everyone else makes of their lives and their countries.”
