Active Defense

by Lynette Eason

  Ian headed to his van, and Travis placed a hand on Martin’s shoulder to direct him toward his parents’ house. Now what?

  Heather couldn’t stop looking at the picture. She dialed Caden’s number again.

  “Caden here.”

  “It’s Heather again.”

  “You okay?”

  She paused. Sighed. “I don’t know. I think I’m grasping at straws.”

  “But?”

  “But . . . I’ve just come across something, and I think I’m putting this all together.” Terrified she was right, she gripped the phone tighter. “The last picture Mrs. Wicks posted was a picture of Gina and Brad on their honeymoon. He’s wearing the shirt that Abdul wore that day he was supposed to blow up the hospital.”

  “What? How can that be? How do you know it’s the same shirt?”

  “Because of the paint stains. The shirt is navy blue, and it has white paint stains on the left shoulder and down the front. They kind of look like teardrops. There’s no mistaking it.”

  “Then how did a kid in Kabul get his hands on that shirt? And why?”

  “That’s what I want to know. And I have an idea. Do you have Benny Silver’s medical records?”

  “Sure do. Once Silver’s death was ruled a homicide, the sheriff didn’t let any grass grow under his feet. He got warrants for everything. One of those things was medical records. He was trying to trace a path to who Benny had come into contact with just before his death.”

  “What about his medical records from Kabul?”

  “Yep. That was all included. What’s up?”

  “I’d be interested in seeing those,” Heather said. “I don’t suppose you could send them to me.”

  He chuckled. “No, I can’t.”

  “I figured.”

  “But if you’ll tell me what you’re looking for, I might be able to find it.”

  “I think Benny was in the hospital the day of the attempted bombing.” She pressed a hand to her head. She was going to need her migraine meds if she let herself get too worked up—and right now, she needed all of her wits about her. “Can you just tell me if he was there on September twenty-eighth?”

  “Sure . . . uh . . . let’s see July twenty-fourth, sinus infection. Placed on antibiotics and given a nasal spray. August first, infection in his hand, August fourteenth, follow up on the infection. September eighteenth, flu shot. September twenty-fourth, appendicitis. Yep. He was there.”

  “He was there,” Heather said. “That’s it,” she whispered. “I knew there was something I was trying to remember ever since someone said he’d been murdered. September twenty-fourth, Benny Silver had surgery on his appendix. I took it out.”

  “Heather, what are you thinking?”

  “That Gina’s mother-in-law somehow managed to arrange for the bombing because she knew that Benny was there.” But that didn’t even make sense. What made sense was too horrible to think about.

  A low breath escaped Caden. “That’s a pretty far stretch. How would she know about that? It was an emergency situation.”

  “I know.”

  “How long was he in the hospital?”

  “Over a week. He’d developed complications and an infection.” She closed her eyes and thought. “He was admitted on the twenty-fourth, moved to the recovery tent on the twenty-fifth, and the bombing occurred on the twenty-eighth. That means he would have been there four days before Abdul showed up.”

  Caden was silent. “I still don’t think it’s possible to set something up that fast and from this kind of distance. She was here in America while everything else was going on in Kabul. Like I said, that’s stretching it.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is. Then she hired someone to do it.”

  “That’s possible, I suppose.” A pause. “Okay, this is going to be a far-fetched thought, but . . . what about Gina? It was her husband who was killed by the friendly fire. I think we have to look at her as a possible suspect in this. That and the fact that Gina was actually in country and could set it all up.”

  “They could be working together,” Caden went on.

  “I don’t believe so,” Heather said. “Brad’s mother hates Gina. I’m thinking she might have thought Gina was going to be at the hospital that day as well. She was supposed to work, but we convinced her to ask off at the last minute to go sandboarding with us. Brad had been gone only about a month, and I could tell she was struggling. I asked the others if she could go, and they all agreed it was a good idea.”

  “Again, we know whoever was in your house was working with someone. Maybe the mother-in-law. But . . . I’ll be honest—right now, I keep coming back to Gina.”

  So did she. But . . . “Again, I don’t see how.” She paused. “However, she did leave the party early. A short time before I did. And . . .”

  “And?”

  “She’s the only one who could have given Brad’s shirt to Abdul, Caden. It was there, in Kabul. I saw Brad wearing it not long before he died. How do we explain that one away?”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t think we can.”

  Heather shivered and walked to the office door. She shut it and locked it. “She’s here, Caden. I brought her here to Travis’s home.” She swallowed and pressed a hand to her stomach. “I feel sick. I’ve done exactly what I didn’t want to do, and that’s possibly put his family in danger!”

  “First, you need to get away from her and we’ll put the family on alert. Travis has guards there who will help. I’m texting him right now.”

  Silence descended and Heather pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose.

  “Heather, you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you get out of the house? Signal for some help?”

  “Maybe.” She went to the window. A blanket of white covered everywhere she looked. “I’m in Travis’s office with the door locked.” Heather paced behind the desk. “What do I do, Caden? This is crazy. It can’t be Gina.”

  “But what if it is? You can’t take any chances. We need to clear her before you do anything else. Hold on a second, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  Quiet murmurs reached her. While she waited, she went back to the window and unlocked it. It wouldn’t be any trouble to climb out. She slid the window open and cold air rushed in.

  “Heather? I just got Patty Wicks’s financials. Let me take a look.”

  “Of course.”

  She paced while she waited. He finally returned to the line.

  “It might not be Gina after all,” Caden said. “Her mother-in-law has had some significant withdrawals from her savings and she even cashed in a life insurance plan. Could be how she paid to have people do her dirty work.”

  That made sense. “How do I tell Gina this?”

  He hesitated. “Let’s play this safe. You don’t say anything to Gina. Not unless you have someone with you. Don’t be alone with her.”

  She didn’t plan on it.

  “Travis isn’t answering my texts,” Caden said. “I’m going to call him as soon as I hang up with you.”

  “Hold on.” She glanced out the window. The wind had really started to blow as the trees in the distance were bobbing and swaying. “Travis is talking to his mother. He’s got Martin with him.” The two started hurrying toward his mother’s home.

  A knock on the door almost made her drop the phone. “Heather?” Gina’s voice came through the wood door.

  “Just a second,” she called. Lowering her voice, she said, “Caden, Gina’s at the office door. I’m going to sneak out the window and see if I can get Travis’s or one of the guards’ attention.”

  “I’m calling 911 and sending some local officers out there.”

  “No. Not yet. We may be overreacting.”

  “I’d rather do that than leave you in the vicinity of a possible killer.”

  Yeah, so would she.

  “Heather? You in there?” Gina called.

  “Stay on the phone with me,” Heather said to Caden. Then
raised her voice once more for Gina. “Yes, I’m still on the phone. Be there in a minute.”

  “Okay.” She waited for Gina’s retreating footsteps before darting to the window and shoving it open. She swung a leg over the sill and pulled herself out.

  Just as she turned, she caught a brief glimpse of movement to her left. A hard hit to her wrist sent the phone tumbling to the ground. Heather cried out and she grabbed her hand, pulling it to her chest.

  She spun to face Gina, who was holding a weapon, the black muzzle of the barrel centered on Heather’s face. Without a word—or moving the weapon from its target—Gina slowly knelt and grabbed the phone from the ground. She tapped the screen. “It’s on mute.” She held it out to Heather. “Put it on speaker and say goodbye like everything’s fine or I’ll start shooting people. Understand?”

  Heather gave the brief thought to blurt out she was in trouble, but Gina’s dead-serious look convinced her if she did, someone would lose his life. Heather tapped the screen. “Caden?”

  “Heather! What was that? I heard you scream.”

  “I . . . uh . . . tripped climbing out of the window.”

  “You okay?”

  “Peachy.”

  Gina waved the weapon at her and Heather flinched.

  “Caden, I’ve got to go. Um . . . Travis is heading this way and I need to fill him in on everything.” Heather never took her eyes from Gina’s.

  “Okay,” Caden said slowly, “so I don’t need to call him?”

  “No.”

  “Then let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “I will. Bye.” Heather tapped the screen to disconnect the call. She’d briefly considered trying to get away with leaving the call connected but was glad she didn’t when Gina turned the phone to check it. With a jerk of the gun, she motioned Heather away from the window, then stepped forward to drop the device inside. “Close the window,” she said.

  Heather did so with shaky hands. The wind chilled her, her fingers going stiff with the cold.

  Struggling to find a way to alert someone without getting them killed, she scrambled through various scenarios at lightning speed. And came up with nothing. When she turned, she faced the weapon once more.

  “I know you know,” Gina said.

  “Well, I wasn’t positive. Not until now.” She was proud of her even tone and lack of any discernible fear.

  “You locked the office door. Why else would you do that unless you suspected something?”

  “Caden suspects something too.”

  “But he doesn’t know for sure.”

  No, he didn’t. “We thought it was your mother-in-law. She took out a lot of money for some reason. We speculated it was to pay for everything.”

  “The money is for a shrine to Brad. An entire building in her backyard that she can visit and remind herself of everything she’s lost and blame those she considers responsible.”

  Heather shut her eyes for a brief moment. How very sad. She opened her eyes and locked them on Gina. “So, what now? Travis will be back at any moment, and there are three guards patrolling the grounds around this house. Do you really think someone won’t come help me?”

  “The first person who realizes something’s wrong gets a bullet. They might get me in the end, but maybe that’s for the best. However, I’m willing to bet no one else wants to die today.”

  “If you wanted to die, you wouldn’t be working so hard to avoid getting caught.”

  Gina started to protest, then shrugged. The terror Heather had experienced when she turned to face the gun was nothing in comparison to the horror that swept through her envisioning Gina hurting someone else—especially one of the children. “So . . . what now?”

  “We take a ride.”

  “But the roads are going to be awful in a very short time.”

  “And if anyone tries to stop us,” Gina said as though she didn’t hear Heather’s words, “you convince them that everything’s okay. If they’re not convinced, they die. Am I clear?”

  “Crystal.”

  Travis had hurried into his mother’s home to find Sandra on the phone, looking like she was on the verge of tears.

  “Are you sure?” she’d asked. “Are you positive?” She’d hurried down the hall, her voice fading as she went, but he caught something about, “Let me grab some things for the kids and . . .”

  Travis looked at his hovering mother. “What’s wrong?”

  “Joe was in an accident and he’s headed for the hospital in an ambulance.”

  “An accident? Is he okay?”

  “Yes. He said he had a cut on his head that probably needed some stitches. They’re also going to do a CT scan to make sure there’s nothing more serious going on. He’s insisting he’s fine, but you know Sandra. She won’t be satisfied until she sees him herself.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m going to take her to the hospital. He’s at Mission.” His mother bustled around grabbing her coat, gloves, and hat. “Can you help me get the kids into the van?”

  “Mom, the roads might be okay right now, but they’re going to be icy very soon. I’m not sure it’s a great idea for you to be driving on them. And no, not because I think you’re old or incompetent. I don’t even want to drive on them when they get like that.”

  She hesitated, then said, “I have to. Now. Before it gets any worse. Joe put chains on the tires yesterday, so we’ll be fine getting there. We’ll stay in a hotel tonight if we have to. We can all wear the same clothes two days in a row without the world ending.”

  Travis almost protested once more, but then thought about Heather and resisted. It might be better if the kids were gone from the ranch. “I know Sandra’s going to be impatient about getting there, but just go slow, okay?”

  “I promise.”

  “And if it’s too bad, turn around and come back.”

  “Travis, darlin’, the longer we stand here, the worse it’s going to get.”

  “Right.”

  Once everyone was loaded into their car seats and his mother was in the driver’s seat, Travis headed back toward his home, only to stop and frown. Gina’s red truck was headed down the drive. From his position, he couldn’t see if anyone was in the passenger seat, but a bad feeling developed in his gut and grew with each spin of the wheels taking her away from the property. He snatched his phone from his pocket, noted he had three missed texts and three missed calls. All from Caden. In all of the hurry to get his family situated, he’d had to ignore the phone. Now, he wasn’t sure who to call first. He settled on Heather and dialed the number even as he hurried toward the house.

  When her phone went to voice mail after the fourth ring, he picked up his pace. He couldn’t figure out why he was so out of sorts. Everything looked fine and no one had raised an alarm. He rounded the corner of the house and headed for the back door. Johnny Kaufman sat on the front porch, his Stetson shadowing his face.

  “Hey,” Travis said, “where did Gina go?”

  “She said she’d forgotten something and had to run home.”

  Travis frowned. “Alone?”

  “No. Your girl went with her. Said she didn’t want the other woman to be alone.”

  And just like that, fear shot straight through to his heart and gripped him by the throat. “No! What? Why didn’t you stop them?”

  “They were insistent that everything was fine, and they’d be back later tonight.”

  “No, no, no!”

  A Jeep appeared on the dirt drive, coming from the direction of the main road of the property.

  “Chris!” Travis ran to meet him.

  Travis’s ranch manager braked to a stop, left hand on the wheel, his right in a cast from elbow to wrist, thanks to a battle with an ornery bull.

  “Did you see them?” They would have had to get past Chris at the end of the drive.

  “Yeah. I tried to get her to stop and wait for you, but Heather insisted they needed to go and all would be fine.”

  That
didn’t sound right. Something was way wrong. He jumped in the Jeep. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Tried. You didn’t answer.”

  “Just go! We’ve got to stop them.” Thankfully, someone had outfitted the vehicle with snow chains.

  Chris gunned the Jeep, spun into a U-turn, and barreled down the snow-covered drive. It wasn’t icy yet, but if the weather held true to what the forecasters called for, it wouldn’t be long before driving would be hazardous. The wind already rocked the Jeep with a strong force. Travis called Caden.

  “’Bout time you called me back,” the man snapped. “Is Heather okay?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out. She just left here with Gina. Chris and I are trying to track her down.”

  “What do you mean, she left with Gina? She was trying to get away from Gina by climbing out of your office window!”

  Travis winced at the shouted words, then froze when they registered. “What are you talking about?”

  “She called. We put it all together.”

  Caden launched into his explanation, and Travis felt his blood running colder and colder with each word the man uttered. Chris spun the wheel and sent them careening onto the snow-covered asphalt that would take them toward town.

  “And now you’ve let her get in the car and drive off with Gina?”

  “I didn’t let her!” Travis raked a hand over his head. “Are you serious? Gina?” He never should have brought Heather to the ranch. He’d gotten distracted with his family issues. He’d been arrogant in his belief that he could help her. He’d been so sure she’d be safe here with the ranch hands and . . . him.

  “Yes! Gina!” Caden’s shout grounded him. No time for recriminations. It was time to find Gina and Heather and end this once and for all.

  “I’ll call 911 and get the cops on the way.”

  “I’ve already sent them, looked up Gina’s vehicle, and sent them her tag number. Hopefully, we’ll have them in custody soon.”

  “What was Gina thinking? Why was she after Heather?”

  “I think it has to do with that shirt that the would-be hospital bomber in Kabul wore. Gina’s husband was wearing it in a picture on social media.”

  “And Heather put it all together. That shirt connected Gina to the kid in Kabul.”