Best Man for the Job

by Meredith Fletcher

  “I would notice. When you’re out hunting, you need to smell like the environment. Not too much cologne. Not too much soap. It’s okay to be clean—”

  “Thankful for small favors.”

  “—but you can’t smell like a flower shop or a soap factory.” Callan thought she might laugh at him then, or at least shoot him a disparaging glance and think he was borderline insane. “Gives you away every time.”

  But she didn’t. Instead, she nodded, and her eyes tracked down over his body. The curiosity—and maybe something else in her direct gaze—made him feel uncomfortable. “The food’s ready.” He picked the plates up from the counter and carried them toward the dining area. As he passed her, he felt her breath featherlight and warm against his bare skin. Just for a moment, he thought about turning into her and kissing her, wondering how she’d react to that. You could tell a lot about a person when you kissed them the first time.

  If she met the kiss, it could mean she was willing to do whatever it took to stay in his good graces so she could trail along. That could mean she was in on everything, just like he’d thought from the beginning.

  He made himself remember how she’d taken him down when they’d faced the gunfire. And he kept moving. Given her innocence in the matter and her desire to help, trying to kiss her would only complicate matters or turn her away from him.

  For the moment, although he didn’t want to, he needed her.

  Chapter 9

  Eryn stepped back from the doorway and let Callan pass, but only inches remained between them. Her pulse elevated as she watched the smooth roll of musculature play under his bronzed skin. Judging from her physical reaction to his presence, the cold shower hadn’t helped. She grew irritated with him. If he hadn’t invaded her home, she wouldn’t have to deal with any of this.

  The scars stood out against his lean, taut body. Some of them were still pink, and were from recent injuries. Others had turned gray with age. Most were smooth and showed signs of a doctor’s care, but others were puckered and had proud flesh, where the scar had risen up and stood out against his body.

  Although she wasn’t a medical expert by any stretch of the imagination, Eryn thought she recognized some of the wounds. She’d had to learn about scars while researching people for clients. Getting rid of a scar was costly. Hair color could be changed with dye, and eyes could be altered with contact lens, but scars tended to stay with an individual. Most of the scars were from gunshots. She counted eight of those, three of them close up because stippling—embedded gunpowder tattoos—showed around them, but there were scars from knives and fire as well. The burn scarring stood out on his body like melted wax.

  At the table, Callan placed the heavily laden plates near the center. Plates and silverware had already been laid out.

  He looked up at her, then hooked his shirt from the back of a chair and pulled it on. He buttoned it rapidly, looking as though he felt foolish for letting her attention bother him. “You look good.”

  Arms still crossed as she watched him, regretting his decision to put the shirt on, Eryn wondered what he meant by the comment. “Thanks.”

  “Feel better?”

  Reluctantly, Eryn nodded. She did feel better, even if she’d had to take a colder shower than she’d planned. However, she didn’t feel generous about letting him know he’d been right.

  “Are you hungry?”

  The smell of the steak was delectable, and she was surprised at her hunger despite the evening’s events. “Yes.”

  Callan pulled out a seat. “Good.” He waved her into the chair.

  She sat, knew she wanted to say something, to rebel in some way, but she didn’t know what she wanted to say.

  Quietly, Callan sat across from her and pushed the plate of steaks toward her. “Not exactly a balanced meal, but we’re going to need the extra calories tonight. Once we start moving, we’re not going to stop until this is finished. One way or the other.”

  Eryn took one of the steaks and a potato. After she split the potato, she filled it with butter and sour cream.

  After she had her plate, Callan addressed his own meal. He moved with grim determination, expertly slicing the steak into bite-size pieces. He ate with gusto and with total focus, like eating was a chore he had to mark off a to-do list. He used the remote control to switch the television on but muted the noise. He watched the news.

  Eryn picked up her fork. “It’s hard to believe we’re sitting here eating when your sister’s fiancé has been kidnapped and the police and FBI are looking for you.”

  “This is downtime. There’s nothing else I can do at the moment. You eat and sleep when you can while you’re waiting. That’s all you can do.”

  The soldier mentality irked Eryn. He wasn’t just a soldier on a mission tonight. His sister was involved. “What about the video footage?”

  “I contacted a guy I know. He’s going to look at the footage, enhance it and get back to us. We’ve looked at it. We’ll look at it again, but we’re stuck. We need to eat to keep going.”

  “You called a guy? What guy?”

  Callan shifted his attention to her. “A guy I trust. He’s good with this sort of thing. In the meantime, you and I are going to work on putting a list together of the people at the party.”

  “Does this guy have a name?”

  “Sure. Everybody has a name.” Callan forked up another piece of steak. “He’s pulling names from Jenny’s Facebook account. People that were listed who were expected to be at the party. We can do the same thing.”

  “Why can’t we send the video to this guy now?”

  “Because he has to set up a website we can send it to.”

  “If I send it from my computer—”

  “It’ll take hours. I know. He said you might know where there’s an internet café with a T1 connection.”

  Eryn fixed him with her gaze. “I suppose this guy is one of your CIA buddies.”

  Callan looked at her, put his fork down and blotted his lips with one of the paper napkins that had been on the table.

  “You weren’t the only one making phone calls.” Eryn took a bite of her steak and almost smiled at the annoyance that showed in Callan’s sudden stiff posture. He’d been playing Bobby Flay after sending her to scrub up like some child.

  Sitting there watching him, Eryn hated the way he could so coldly turn off his interest. He wasn’t showing any signs of stress over his sister, over Daniel Steadman, being hunted by the police or the fact that he’d probably cost her the job she’d fought so hard to get.

  Silently, she turned her attention to the muted television. Footage of the kidnapping continued to roll. The scene quickly shifted back to the anchor at the desk. Behind her, the words Ransom Demand lit up over a picture of Daniel Steadman.

  She glanced at Callan, who was already picking up the television remote from the table. He punched the mute button and the audio came on.

  “—tell us about the ransom demand the Steadman family has been given, Jess?”

  Beside the anchor, a window opened up on a young Hispanic male reporter standing on the street in front of the hotel where Daniel Steadman had gone missing.

  Callan cursed and muted the television again. Beside him, his cell phone vibrated on the table. Although she couldn’t see the number, Eryn did see a picture pop up on the view screen. The image was that of a young blonde woman in her mid twenties.

  “Jenny?”

  Callan nodded.

  “Have you talked to her?”

  His silence answered her, and it took some of the edge off the frustration she was feeling toward him. Both of them had been caught up in circumstances beyond their control.

  “Talk to her, Callan. You’re the only family she’s got. Especially with Daniel gone.”

  Reluctantly, Callan picked up the phone, got up and let himself out onto the balcony.

  Eryn turned her attention back to the television. As she watched the footage roll again, she thought about Callan’s “fr
iend” and about the video they’d be uploading to him. Then an idea occurred to her.

  Walking back to her bedroom, she took her notebook computer from her desk and returned to the table. She opened the computer and took out the thumb drive. A moment later, she was sorting through the video feed, freezing the stream and taking pictures of the kidnappers. With the current resolution of the video quality, she couldn’t see much.

  Whoever Callan’s friend was, the man was going to need to be a miracle worker to pull anything usable off the footage.

  Glancing at the balcony, she studied Callan standing out in the open. The neon gleam of the Strip dawned just beyond him. At first, she couldn’t tell anything from his body language. He seemed as implacable as ever. Then he put one hand on the balcony railing and leaned on it for support. Talking to his sister was hard and Eryn felt guilty about badgering him into it.

  Feeling even more guilty for watching Callan’s discomfort, Eryn picked up his plate and put it in the microwave in the kitchen to keep. Then she forced her attention to the video and looked for another potential image she could capture.

  “Callan?”

  “Yeah, sis.” Callan suddenly felt like the weight of the world had dropped onto him. From the time their parents had died, he’d worried about Jenny. He’d hated signing up for the military when he had, but that was the only place he knew an eighteen-year-old could go to work and earn enough to help take care of a sibling.

  During these last years, he hadn’t gotten to see Jenny as much as he’d wanted to. There were occasional downtimes between missions, but some of those had been forced because of injuries and he hadn’t wanted her to see him then. He hadn’t wanted her to worry.

  But she had. He’d known that in her letters, in the phone calls they’d shared. She’d thought of him always, and never without worry. That hadn’t been what he’d wanted for her.

  “Where are you?”

  “Safe.” That was what he always told her, even when it was a lie. That was the only falsehood he’d learned to effortlessly tell, and it was the only one he’d ever told her.

  Her voice broke and it took her a moment to continue. Callan swallowed the lump at the back of his throat. “They said you were there when Daniel was taken.”

  “I was, but I couldn’t get to them. They got away. But I tried, Jenny.”

  “I know you did. There was nothing you could do.” She paused. “Was Daniel all right? The last time you saw him?”

  “He was fine. Scared. But he was holding it together.” Callan took a breath and distanced himself from the fear and hurt and anger in Jenny’s voice. The military had taught him to do that, but they’d never taught him a way to do that easily.

  “I need you here, Callan.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I haven’t given up on finding Daniel.” Callan stared out at the neon glow in front of him, but he really didn’t see it. In his mind’s eye, he always saw Jenny as the little girl he’d left behind when he’d enlisted. He could still remember the way she’d cried when he walked away from her at the foster home. He hadn’t cried till he was on the bus headed for the airport. Then he hadn’t cried again. Ever.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to find him, Jenny. I promise. This—this is what I do.” Callan decided he’d tell her that much. He wouldn’t tell her about the other things he did.

  “The police are looking for Daniel. So are the FBI.”

  “I know. I’m better than them, sis. I promise.”

  She cried for a moment then, no longer able to hang on to the thin veneer of composure.

  Callan listened to his sister weep and hardened his heart. Staring out over the city, he knew he wasn’t that far away from her. If he chose to, he could be with her in minutes.

  Only he couldn’t do that yet.

  “Callan.” Her voice was so raw it came out as a whisper. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I’m not going to get hurt.”

  “Promise.”

  Callan tried to speak and couldn’t. That was a promise he knew he might break, and he didn’t break promises to Jenny.

  “Listen, you’re going to be all right. Tell me about the ransom.”

  “I don’t know much about it. Morgan, that’s Daniel’s father, took the call. He said he needs till eleven o’clock tomorrow to get the money.”

  Callan cradled the phone on his shoulder and reached down to his watch. It was the most expensive thing he owned outside of weapons. Combat ready, water resistant to 200 meters, the watch showed hours, minutes, seconds and tenths of seconds. The time was nine thirty and the secondhand moved smoothly and quickly.

  “Callan?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Morgan is going to pay. He’s going to pay the money and everything is going to be all right. They’ll give Daniel back to us. Morgan doesn’t want you to do anything that will jeopardize Daniel.”

  As he listened to the raw pain in her voice, feeling it scrape along the nerves inside him that he couldn’t quite protect, Callan wanted to assure her that he wouldn’t do anything to endanger Daniel. But he couldn’t do that, and he couldn’t tell her why he was going to continue searching for Daniel. She needed to think that Daniel was coming back home to her alive, not that the kidnappers were going to kill Daniel as soon as they were certain they were getting the money.

  Images of dead kidnap victims scrolled through Callan’s head and he couldn’t step away from them. Several of those people had gone down hard and bloody. In some cases the kidnappers had killed themselves as well once they’d known there was no way out.

  That was a political and religious-motivated abduction. He forced himself to remember that. Daniel’s kidnapping was motivated by profit. The people who had taken him weren’t there to send a message. They just wanted a payday.

  And that made them vulnerable.

  “How did the media find out about the ransom? I’m sure the police and FBI told Daniel’s father to keep quiet about it.”

  “They did. They told everybody to keep quiet about it, but Toby told Sierra, his sister, and she was so relieved that we’d been contacted that she told a couple of friends and it was all over Twitter.”

  Callan filed away the name. He didn’t know what Twitter was, but he was going to find out.

  “I saw the footage of you and that stripper, Callan.”

  “Exotic performer.” Callan didn’t know why he bothered to correct Jenny’s choice of words, but he didn’t like the idea of Eryn being thought of as something so mundane as a stripper.

  “Why did you take her?”

  “I thought she was involved in Daniel’s kidnapping. But she wasn’t.”

  “The police liaison here says they want to talk to her but no one has been able to find her.”

  She was currently in one of the bags Eryn had packed. Callan knew the police weren’t going to find her.

  “They’re also saying that you could be in a lot of trouble. They want to talk to you.”

  “Now isn’t the time for me to talk to them.”

  Jenny fell silent for a moment. “You’re not going to stop, are you?”

  “No.” Not answering would be the same as lying.

  Her voice was softer when she spoke this time. “Callan, I know you. I love you and I trust you and you’re my brother, so I know that what you’re doing is because you love me.”

  Pain constructed Callan’s throat and he had to struggle fast and hard to get on top of it. He managed, barely. “Just remember that, Jenny. No matter what happens, just remember that.” He glanced back inside the apartment and saw Eryn sitting at the table looking at her computer. He felt guilty because she must have already started to work.

  “I’m going to call you again.” Jenny’s voice was quieter, more together now, and that helped Callan. “Will you answer?”

  “If I can. I’ve got a few things I’m working on.”

  Jenny covered
the phone with her hand for a moment. The sound of a garbled conversation leaked between her fingers. Whoever she was talking to was upset. She lifted her hand from the phone. “There’s a detective here named Vogler. He wants to talk to you.”

  “No.”

  When Jenny relayed the news, Vogler didn’t take it well. The man’s words echoed hard and sharp over the connection. “Tell your brother that if he doesn’t come in willingly, we’re going to pick him up and charge him with interfering with police business.”

  Callan smiled at that. The cop’s threat was the least he’d been treated to in years.

  “You heard him?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about him.”

  “There’s an FBI agent I’ve been talking to. His name is Dana. Special Agent Dana. He said he’s found out some of your background.”

  Callan’s heart stilled for just a moment.

  “He seems kind of impressed and worried at the same time. He didn’t tell me any of it. I told him not to. I told him that you’d told me everything you wanted me to know about what you do, and that was the end of that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “He also gave me a phone number. He says he can be more understanding than the police. He said to tell you he was in Special Forces, so he knows some of what you’re going through.”

  Not really. Callan knew that instantly. Guys who’d been through what he’d seen didn’t talk about it. Ever. Those experiences were something a soldier worked to bury.

  “Do you have a pen and paper?”

  “Sure.” Callan didn’t work with pen and paper. He remembered things. That was what someone in his business learned to do. He listened to the number and filed it away, then repeated it when prompted by Jenny. He glanced back at Eryn. “I’ve got to be going, Jenny. I just wanted to let you know I’m here, and that I’m doing what I can to get Daniel back.”

  “I know.” Her voice broke again. “Just—just be careful.”

  “I love you.” Callan hung up before she could say anything else. Then he pushed open the sliding door and stepped back into the apartment.