Where Loyalties Lie (MidKnight Blue Book 3)

by Sherryl Hancock

  Where Loyalties Lie

  Sherryl D. Hancock

  Copyright © Sherryl D. Hancock 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Vulpine Press in the United Kingdom in 2018

  ISBN 978-1-910780-97-8

  Cover by Claire Wood

  www.vulpine-press.com

  To all the amazing staff and agents I worked with at the Department of Justice for many years of my State career, thank you! I learned a lot!

  To the pilots I worked with in BNE who taught me the difference between a Queen Air and a Cessna and let me see all the inner workings of their jobs… Thank you! It's an experience I'll never forget and hopefully I got it all right here.

  Also in the MidKnight Blue series:

  Building Empires

  Empires Fall

  Chapter 1

  San Diego, California, 1993

  “Are you ready yet?” Rick asked impatiently. He was standing in the doorway to his and Midnight’s bedroom, waiting for her to finish up on the computer. It bothered him a little that she found it necessary to work even at home; their lives had been busy enough lately, and now she was holding them up again.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Midnight said, holding a delicate hand up. “Is Keyla even ready?” she asked, trying to deflect him from starting an argument she could already feel brewing.

  Rick looked over his shoulder. He saw their daughter looking up at him; she was wearing her jacket and the knitted hat she had become very fond of, which his mother had sent from England.

  “Yes, Keyla is ready. We’re waiting for you,” he said. Midnight could hear the “as usual” in his voice. She craned her neck to look at the clock.

  “Oh Jesus, Rick, it’s only seven o’clock. They don’t even get in till eight,” she said, exasperated.

  “Well, I want to make sure we get there early, just in case, alright?” His voice was taking on an agitated tone. She’d heard more and more of it lately; nothing ever seemed to be okay between them anymore. She hoped that this visit from his sister would improve things.

  They’d been married for almost three years now. Their daughter, Mikeyla Marie, who had been born after an extremely difficult labor, was just a little over two years old and very precocious. Mikeyla had received the best features from her parents; she had Rick’s deep blue eyes and Midnight’s copper-blond hair, as well as her independent attitude. She had started walking at the very early age of eight and a half months, and talking—in complete sentences, no less—at a year and a half. Midnight loved her daughter very much, and found herself constantly trying to do what she felt would be the exact opposite of what her parents would do.

  Midnight’s mom and dad had essentially abdicated their role as parents when Midnight was young, and had gone back to drinking, drugs, and staying out all hours of the night. It had fallen to Midnight to take care of herself and her younger brother, Thomas. When Thomas had been killed in a gang fight, Jack and Carrie Chevalier had blamed their daughter, since it was her gang Thomas had been fighting alongside that fateful night. Thomas’s death had sent Midnight reeling. At the age of eighteen, to her way of thinking, she no longer had a family.

  She had continued to have almost no contact with her parents. However, at Rick’s insistence that Mikeyla should know both sets of grandparents, she had let him arrange a meeting with the Chevaliers. Jack and Carrie hadn’t been overjoyed to hear that they were grandparents, but had, from what Rick said, been enchanted with Mikeyla when he had taken her to see them. Midnight had refused to go, telling Rick that she had no desire to see her parents and that if he wanted them to meet Mikeyla, he was on his own. Rick had been disappointed at her attitude, and had been unable to change her decision in the slightest.

  Finally he had given up and taken Mikeyla to meet her grandparents alone. They had been very impressed with Rick and with Mikeyla. They hadn’t, to Rick’s dismay, asked much after their daughter; when Rick brought up Midnight, they had become rather uncomfortable.

  He had seen a picture of Thomas while he was at the house. Thomas had looked a lot like Midnight, and he could see that he would have been a handsome young man. Jack Chevalier had told Rick that they had been very proud of Thomas, that he had done well in school and was generally a good kid, but Midnight… His voice had trailed off as he had shaken his head, as if Midnight were a lost cause. Rick had felt anger rise in him. How could her own parents think so badly of her? And what was this professed pride in Thomas? Midnight had always said that her parents didn’t give a shit about her or her brother, and that was why she and subsequently Thomas had ended up in the gang.

  Rick had left the Chevalier home with a sense of unreality. He had tried to talk to Midnight about it, but she didn’t want to hear anything about her parents. Whenever he tried to bring up going to see them again, she closed down, shaking her head at him as if to say, “You know better.”

  In Rick’s eyes, his wife had changed over the last two years. She had become a very important part of the department since they had gotten married. Suddenly there was an outcry in communities around America for the police to do something about the gangs and the violence. Midnight had been called upon by numerous agencies to conduct training and seminars on the problem, and on the program she had built. She’d been traveling a lot; she’d spent at least a week out of every month traveling to one city or another, speaking on the topic of gangs, or giving briefings to chiefs, sheriffs, and other heads of departments on what their department could do to create their own gang task forces. Now many of the departments were requesting that she return and help them set up the program itself. The chief was more than happy to lend out his star officer to other departments; it was an election year, and all of the publicity on his department being the leader in the war against gangs did nothing but improve his standing in the community. So Rick knew that Midnight would be traveling even more in months to come. He didn’t like it—she was never home, and when she was, she was working on some project, like now.

  “Night…” he said impatiently, looking at his watch.

  “Okay, okay!” she said, standing.

  She was wearing black jeans and a black sweater, and Rick had to admit that no matter what problems they had, he still found her incredibly attractive. Having Mikeyla had done nothing to alter her perfect shape; if anything, it had made her curves even more rounded and alluring. She looked up at him now, smiling apologetically.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, “I just gotta get this in tomorrow, and I didn’t want to try to do it with Deborah here.”

  She watched him, hoping that would put an end to the hostility for now. Rick nodded, closing his eyes for a second, knowing that he was overreacting to something that she did all the time—and he knew that getting into a nasty fight about it wasn’t going to do either of them any good. He forced himself to let go of his irritation.

  “Hey,” she said softly, moving to stand in front of him, looking up at him with cat-green eyes.

  “What?” he replied, almost petulantly.

  “I love you,” she said, her eyes searching his.

  He grinned, knowing that he was being a shit and that was what she was trying to poin
t out to him. He nodded. “I’m being an asshole, huh?”

  Midnight grinned back at him. “Kinda, but I love you anyway.”

  “Well, thank God for that,” he said, pulling her into his arms.

  As he held her against him, he remembered their wedding day. Sometimes he wanted to go back and just start again. But he knew they were a long way from that day; he just hoped they hadn’t moved too far from those feelings.

  “I love you too, baby,” he whispered against her hair.

  “We’d better get going,” she said after a few minutes.

  He could hear the reluctance in her voice and he felt buoyed by that. It reminded him that they had a lot to work for in terms of their relationship. They loved each other—about that there was no doubt—but keeping things smooth between two such strong personalities was not an easy thing to do, even with the love that they shared.

  They left the house. They still lived in Mission Beach, but they had bought a home in a more affluent neighborhood closer to the ocean.

  “I don’t want our child to grow up in a neighborhood where she can’t play in the front yard,” Rick had told Midnight, by way of explaining why he thought a more upscale neighborhood would better suit them.

  Midnight had been reluctant to buy in a posh area, not wanting to send the wrong message about them to the gang members she worked with, but Rick had been adamant. “Your job can’t dictate everything we do, Midnight,” he had said, and she had realized he was right.

  “Do you want me to drive?” Midnight asked, eyeing him.

  “No, I think I will,” Rick said, glancing at her.

  “Do you know how to get to the airport?” she asked, her voice skeptical.

  “Yeah,” Rick said, but a slow grin spread across his face. “Maybe…”

  Midnight started to laugh. They were constantly getting lost because Rick refused to take directions from her. She always reminded him that she had grown up in San Diego, and therefore knew it better than her “English transplant”. Because of that, he was always determined to find places without her assistance. It had become a constant joke between them.

  “If you really want to get there on time…” Midnight said, trailing off as she looked up at the sky unassumingly.

  “Oh, shut up, Midnight, and drive!” he said, laughing as he tossed her the keys to his car. He was still driving the Mustang he had bought two and a half years before. Midnight still had her Corvette.

  Forty-five minutes later they were waiting at the gate for Deborah’s plane to arrive. It was about fifteen minutes late. Rick paced while Midnight leaned against a nearby wall with Mikeyla standing beside her, copying her mother.

  When the plane arrived a little while later, Rick stood, looking anxiously for his sister as the passengers started filing through the gate. A bright smile appeared on his face when he saw her. Deborah moved directly to her brother and threw her arms around him.

  “Rick! It’s so good to see you!” she exclaimed. Stepping back from him, she looked him up and down. “You look great, same as always.”

  “You too, Deb,” Rick said, smiling down at his sister.

  His eyes went to her husband, and he inclined his head slightly; he still didn’t like the guy. He was almost bowled over by his nieces as they threw themselves into his arms. Deborah moved to Midnight, who stood holding Mikeyla’s hand in hers as she watched her husband.

  “Midnight,” Deborah said, reaching out to embrace her sister-in-law. Midnight hugged her warmly. Deborah stepped back and looked down at her niece. “And this must be little Keyla,” she said, smiling her warmest smile at the little girl. She knelt in front of her. “Hello there,” she said softly.

  Mikeyla looked at the pretty lady in front of her, her blue eyes narrowing just slightly, much like Midnight’s did when she was trying to work something out in her mind.

  “Who are you?” Mikeyla asked, her voice no-nonsense.

  Deborah was taken aback by the child’s tone—she sounded so serious. “Well, I’m your aunt.”

  Mikeyla gave the woman a sidelong glance, which made her look even older. Her eyes were still narrowed. Midnight was laughing by this time, knowing that her daughter was remembering that she and Rick had always told her not to talk to strangers and to be aware of a stranger that was being “too nice.”

  “Keyla,” Midnight said. Her daughter’s head snapped up at the sound of her mother’s voice. “This is your daddy’s sister. It’s okay.”

  Mikeyla looked at the woman kneeling in front of her, her blue eyes searching Deborah’s face as if looking for some resemblance to her father. “Hello,” she said matter-of-factly after a few moments.

  “Midnight, this child is absolutely enchanting, and very well taught, I see,” Deborah said, looking up at her sister-in-law, a smile on her face.

  “Oh yes, we have her programmed,” Midnight said, grinning at her daughter.

  “Have who programmed?” Rick asked, walking over to them with a niece to either side. Elizabeth and Susan squealed with delight when they saw Midnight and moved to hug her, careful not to trample the little girl with her.

  Midnight hugged both girls, looking up at Rick. “Our daughter,” she said. “Liz, Susan, this”—Midnight let her nieces go and lifted Mikeyla up in her arms—“is your cousin, Mikeyla Marie Debenshire.”

  Liz and Susan stood and looked at the little girl, and Mikeyla examined them from her mother’s arms.

  “Hello,” Susan ventured, putting her hand out to Mikeyla. Mikeyla looked at the girl’s outstretched hand, her small brow furrowing, then she looked back at Susan, still frowning.

  “Cousin?” Mikeyla asked Midnight, not taking her eyes off Susan.

  “Yes, Keyla, Susan and Liz are your daddy’s nieces—his sister’s daughters, like you’re my daughter. Do you understand?” Midnight knew this was a lot even for Mikeyla’s quick little mind to digest. Mikeyla shook her head slowly, but obviously getting that these girls were related to her in some way. To Midnight’s surprise, she held her arms out to Susan. Susan’s eyes widened in surprise too, but she reached up to take her little cousin in her arms. As Midnight, Rick, Deborah, and Deborah’s husband, Wilson, watched, Mikeyla laid her head on Susan’s shoulder, and with a small hand reached out to touch Liz’s hair. She smiled. Susan looked up at Midnight, perplexed, and Midnight smiled.

  “She likes you,” Midnight said. “She doesn’t go to anybody she doesn’t know, so she must like you. You too, Liz.”

  Back at the house, Deborah asked Midnight to give her a tour. They ended up in Midnight and Rick’s bedroom.

  “Your home is absolutely lovely, Midnight,” Deborah proclaimed, sitting down on the bed. Midnight looked at her sophisticated, well-groomed sister-in-law, astounded once again that this woman actually liked her and accepted her. Deborah had been closest to her since Rick and she had been married. They had kept in touch by phone and through the occasional letter, although Midnight had warned Deborah early on that she was not the world’s best pen pal.

  Deborah looked at Midnight. She thought she had noticed a slight current between her brother and Midnight, and she wanted to ask her about it, but she was concerned with being too nosy. Katherine, Rick’s oldest sister, who still didn’t approve of Midnight in the slightest and referred to her as “the American,” had told her to keep an eye out for any sign that Rick might not be happy. Deborah had no intention of telling Katherine anything, even if Midnight and Rick’s marriage wasn’t all rosy. Their mother had been concerned too—she had told Deborah that Rick had sounded unhappy the last time he called—but when Anabelle asked her son about his blue mood, he told her nothing was wrong. Anabelle had beseeched Deborah to try and see if there was anything she could do.

  Now, Deborah could see all was not rosy on Midnight’s end either.

  “Midnight,” she said quietly, companionably. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Midnight echoed, moving to sit in the wing-backed chair across from where De
borah perched on the end of the bed.

  “Yes, wrong, between you and Richard?”

  Midnight looked at her sister-in-law for a long moment, wondering how she had known, and also wondering if Rick had said something to her. After a long moment, she sighed, leaning back in the chair. “Yes, I guess there is…but I’ll be damned if I know what it is,” she said, shaking her head slowly.

  “What do you mean?” Deborah asked, her concern growing.

  “I mean… Things are just real strained right now, and I don’t really understand it. Rick and I, we argue, but it’s not like fights, you know. It’s like disagreements, but they seem to keep us just far enough away from each other to keep us from being totally happy.” She looked at Deborah, her face belying her frustration.

  “Have you talked to him about it?” Deborah asked.

  “No. If I bring it up, he tells me that married people don’t always agree on everything, and when I tell him that I think it’s not just little disagreements, that there’s something else going on underneath, he just shrugs it off and finds a way to change the subject.” She shook her head sadly. “I just don’t know what it is, Deb. Maybe it’s me, maybe… I don’t know.” She sounded defeated. It was obvious to Deborah she had been mulling the problem over for a long time, and it distressed her that she hadn’t come up with the answer.

  “Do you still love him?” Deborah asked gently.

  “Oh God, yes,” Midnight said, sitting up, her face reflecting surprise at Deborah’s question. “I love him just as much as the day we got married, but maybe I just don’t show it as much now. I’m not sure… It’s really hard to know if you’re showing someone you love them enough, you know?” Her eyes begged Deborah to understand. And Deborah thought she did. She was surprised at Midnight’s clarity of thought; she seemed to go right to the heart of a situation and analyze it.