Protecting Her Own (Love Inspired Suspense)

by Margaret Daley

  Inside the building Connor greeted the receptionist and showed her his ID and badge, noting, as cops did, her plain features, medium brown hair, brown eyes. A tattoo of an orange and black butterfly on her arm caught his attention for a few seconds before he said, “I’m here to see Eddie King. Is he here?”

  The young woman’s eyes grew round. She checked Connor’s ID a second time and nodded.

  “In his office?”

  “No, in the warehouse out back.” The woman’s voice squeaked on the last word.

  “Would you show us where?”

  She bolted to her feet, smoothing down her short-sleeved dress. “This way.”

  Connor and Cara followed the receptionist out the back door and across an asphalted parking area. When they entered the cavernous building, he immediately scanned the inside of the structure, noting the machinery, stacked wood and any rooms off the larger one, where the exits were.

  The receptionist stopped a few feet from the main entrance and waved her hand toward a large man, approximately two hundred and fifty pounds, six and a half feet tall. “Mr. King is over there. I have to get back to the phones.”

  “His build doesn’t fit the man who attacked me,” Cara said after the receptionist left. “My assailant was maybe a hundred seventy or eighty.”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t involved in some way. He’ll need to explain why his fingerprint was on the pipe used.”

  “Maybe he went to the manufacturer and handled it there. Remington-Burke Industries isn’t too far from here. That’s his supplier.”

  “I’ll check with them if I need to. If this isn’t the place, the next nearest company that bought that piping from the manufacturer is in Richmond. We’ll check all of them if we have to. The other two fingerprints on the pipe fragments aren’t in the system. This is the only one we have to go on.”

  Cara sighed, running her fingers through her short russet-colored hair. “I can see why you went into law enforcement.”

  “Why?” he asked, curious about her take.

  “You always loved a good challenge, and I remember the harder the puzzle, the more you liked it.”

  “I still do. But the main reason was that I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives.” He started forward, casually putting his hand at the small of her back—like he used to in the past.

  King looked toward them as they approached, his gaze narrowing, assessing. “What can I do for you?”

  The smile on his face contradicted his voice, which held a touch of wariness. Connor showed him his ID and said, “I have some questions about some piping you ordered from Remington-Burke Industries. Also some blasting powder you recently purchased.”

  A worker on the far side of the warehouse switched on a power saw.

  King pointed toward a door a few feet away. “Let’s go in here where it’s quieter.” In the small room with boxes stacked around its perimeter, he continued, “What questions?”

  “You received a shipment of piping a month ago from Remington-Burke.”

  “Yes. What’s this all about?”

  “One consistent with what you purchased was used in a pipe bomb recently. Are you missing any in your inventory?”

  “Don’t know. Let me have my foreman check for you. He keeps track of that sort of thing.” King went out into the main part of the building, leaving the door open.

  The sound of the saw reverberated through the room. The scent of wood permeated the air, reminding Connor of his last camping trip into the Smoky Mountains. This vacation wasn’t exactly turning out like that one.

  Cara leaned back against a stack of boxes, folding her arms across her chest, dropping her head as she stared at the concrete floor.

  There was so much he wanted to say to her, but he couldn’t move. The feel of her in his embrace still lingered and so did the danger of getting too close to her emotionally. They weren’t the same two people. He didn’t really know this Cara.

  When King returned a few minutes later, closing the door, a frown beetled his brow. “Vance checked the inventory, and there are two pipes missing.”

  Cara brought her head up, straightening away from the boxes. “When did that happen?”

  King looked toward her. “He takes inventory every week and would have later today. Last week the pipes were there.”

  “How about your blasting powder? You bought it two weeks ago. Where is it?” Connor’s question drew King’s attention back to him.

  “I use it on my construction sites occasionally. All legal.”

  “Can you account for all of it?”

  “I’m sure I can. I haven’t used any yet. We were supposed to last week, but the rain delayed us, throwing that project off schedule.”

  “Can you show me where it is? Blasting powder was used in the pipe bomb. A fingerprint was found on a fragment of the pipe used. It was yours.”

  King’s face went white. “I check all orders that come in so that wouldn’t be that unusual.” He drew himself up taller, his gaze slipping to Cara briefly. “I assure you any explosives I use are kept under lock and key.”

  “Have you checked it lately?” Connor asked over the muted sound of the power saw.

  “Well, not personally, since I put it in the shed.”

  “Please do to make sure you have it all. Unless there is some reason you don’t want to.” Connor kept his gaze on the man.

  “No. No. I’ll show you, and you’ll see for yourself.” King withdrew a set of keys and exited the room. Outside he stopped in front of the smaller building next to the warehouse and unlocked the door. He waved both Connor and Cara to go ahead of him into the shed.

  “That’s okay. After you.” Connor stopped Cara from moving through the entrance until the owner went inside. He leaned close and whispered, “I gather he doesn’t look familiar to you.”

  “Nope.”

  “The blasting powder is kept over here.” King halted and lifted the lid on the box. A frown descended. The man glanced from side to side at the cartons lined up against the wall. “Part of it is missing, too.” The pasty-white color returned to his face as the implication sunk in.

  Connor examined the container King had. There was enough blasting powder missing for more than one pipe bomb. “Who has access to this place?”

  “My foreman, Vance Dodson. But I store other things in here, and there’s a key kept in my office desk drawer in case something is needed and one of us isn’t around. But anyone would have to go through my receptionist to get the key.”

  “I need you to see if that key is there. If anyone has checked it out in the past week.”

  “Sure. I promise you I’ll get to the bottom of this.” King marched toward the exit, waited for Connor and Cara to leave, then secured the door. “I’ll be changing the lock today.”

  “I assure you, I’ll get to the bottom of it.” Connor told the man as he again surveyed the area. A middle-aged man chewing a piece of gum watched them trek toward the entrance into the front building, the same man who King had left the room earlier to talk to. “How long has your foreman been working for you?”

  “He wouldn’t take the pipe or powder. He’s been with me from almost the beginning.”

  When they entered King’s office, he went directly to his desk and opened a top drawer on the left. “It’s right here.”

  Not locked. “How easy is it to get the key from your desk?”

  King cocked his head and stared off into space for a good minute. “Like I said, a person has to check it out, but I guess pretty easy. Lucy is usually at her desk out front, but she does run errands for me and stuff like that. Not to mention she always goes to lunch between twelve and one. She has to go home and let her horde of dogs outside.”

  “Do people know about this key?” Connor walked toward a door on the other side of the room.

  “Yes, probably. It’s never really been a secret.”

  Connor gestured toward the door. “What’s in here?”

  “
It’s an exit.”

  “Is it usually locked?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like a list of employees, including those who no longer work here, but did during the last few months.”

  King sat at his desk and pulled something up on his computer then hit the print button. “This is a list of current employees. I haven’t let anyone go since early summer.” Swiveling his chair around, he grabbed the sheet then gave it to Connor. “I’ll get their names.”

  “Thanks. I may have other questions for you later. For the future, please secure your explosive materials better.”

  “So you think someone used the pipe and blasting powder from here to make a bomb?”

  “It’s looking that way. If not, you still have some missing. Either way, it isn’t a good situation.”

  King nodded. “I agree. I’ve just been lucky and not had much stolen around here. I’ve let my security get lax.”

  On the way out, Connor paused at the receptionist’s desk. “Lucy, has anyone checked out the key for the storeroom in the warehouse in the past two weeks?”

  The young woman peered at her boss then back at Connor. “Let me check.” She opened a side drawer and withdrew a notebook. “No. George was the last one three weeks ago.”

  As Connor and Cara left the building, he again inspected the terrain. “King said he checked inventory last week, but that doesn’t mean he’s not lying. Or that he and the foreman aren’t in this together. The pipe and powder came from here.”

  “Yeah, especially since King’s fingerprint was found on it, but who took them?”

  “King was right about his security being lax. Anyone with a little knowledge could pick that lock on that other exit in his office. We’ll need to look into the current and former employees. I’ll have Gramps do that, as well as an agent at the main office in Richmond.”

  Cara smiled. “I can’t get over the image of Gramps sitting in front of a computer for hours and enjoying it. He used to spend so much time outside.”

  “Yeah, and he still does that. He loves his flower and vegetable gardens, but when he’s not out there tending to them, he’s usually at the computer. He has friends all over the world. He keeps telling me he’s going to go see a few of them, but I don’t think he will. He’s a homebody.”

  “Like you?”

  “I guess. I don’t stray far from Virginia.” He opened the passenger door for Cara. “How did you do it? Travel from place to place. Never home much except to wash your clothes before going back on the road.”

  “I looked at it as an adventure each time I went out on an assignment as an investigative reporter, and later as a bodyguard.”

  “And you never got homesick?”

  A shadow darted in then out of her gaze. She glanced away. He shut the door, rounded his Jeep and climbed behind the steering wheel.

  He slanted a look toward her. “What happened in Nzadi?” He’d heard rumors and seen the reports of the rioting at the time she’d left the country.

  Her eyelids slid closed, and she rested her head back on the seat cushion. For a long moment silence reigned in the car.

  When she reestablished visual contact with him, a bleak expression had taken hold in her gaze. “I learned how quickly my life could change.”

  He started the engine. Question after question floated through his mind. But in the end he only wanted to ask her: Was seeing the world worth leaving me?

  “For you. Clear Branch held happy memories because it was your home but not mine—not really. It was a place where I grew up, but that’s all. I couldn’t wait to get away.”

  “Away from your dad?” From me?

  “Yeah, but at the time I wouldn’t have said that. I thought I was fulfilling my dream by traveling—seeing all the places my father had gone, experiencing what he did. I thought that might make me understand him better. I was wrong. I couldn’t recreate his life in order to get his approval. It took tragedy in Nzadi to finally hammer that into my stubborn brain.”

  Connor chuckled. “Stubborn? You? No way.”

  Her gaze connected with his. “We both know I was.” One corner of her mouth hitched up. “Still am.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “You are?”

  What light had entered her eyes vanished and her expression sobered. “In Nzadi, my job was to guard a woman who only wanted to shop her way around the world. At first I thought she was nothing more than a typical rich man’s trophy wife. Blonde, beautiful, with a perfect body maintained by yearly visits to a plastic surgeon.”

  “But she wasn’t the typical trophy wife?”

  “Oh, she was, but I was wrong for judging her. She was nice enough but her life was focused on trying to make her husband happy. Like my mother did with my father. It didn’t work for her, either.”

  “And that isn’t enough for you, even now that you’ve seen the world, fulfilled that dream and found it lacking?” He stopped at a red light and looked toward Cara.

  “Would it be for you if the roles were reversed?”

  “No. What I do is in my blood. It’s everything I am.” Through his work he could make the world just a little safer.

  “I began to feel sorry for my client. Actually became emotionally invested in her as I escorted her around Nzadi. The day we stopped at a café to get something to drink, she’d just been shopping for some children she’d met at an orphanage and had the driver take the goods back to the car. I told her we should leave. The café was crowded, not an easy place to protect her…” Cara’s voice faded into silence.

  “That makes sense,” Connor said to keep her talking about what was bothering her.

  “My client saw Obioma Dia, a woman revered by the people of Nzadi for her humanitarian causes. Obioma had been at the orphanage where my client got the idea to buy items for the children and we’d talked with her for a while. My client insisted we rest and talk with Obioma before going back out to do some more shopping for the kids. I had opened her eyes to something when I suggested we visit the orphanage the day before. I was excited about what she wanted to do so I reluctantly agreed, especially because I was impressed with what Obioma was doing in her country to help her people.” Cara swallowed hard and averted her face, staring out the side window.

  Connor wanted to console her. He’d heard the catch in her voice and wished he hadn’t asked about Nzadi.

  “That day in the café didn’t go well. Someone tried to kill my client, and I prevented it by pushing her out of the way. But the bullet intended for her struck Obioma. I couldn’t react fast enough to help her, too. She died in the café. I wanted to stay and help, but I had to get my client out of there. That wasn’t an easy task. Some of the crowd stopped us, angry, shouting at us. Blaming us for what happened. The police came and rescued us.”

  “Do you blame yourself for that woman’s death?”

  “If I had insisted we leave earlier, when I realized it wasn’t safe, she might be alive today, so yes, I do. I wanted to talk with Obioma as much as my client did.”

  “Did you pull the trigger that killed her?”

  Cara released a slow breath out between pursed lips. “No, but our presence put the woman in jeopardy. I can’t keep thinking I could have saved both of them somehow. Maybe if I had been totally focused on my job and not pulled into what Obioma was saying.”

  “You can’t control everything, and it certainly is hard to control another person when they want to do something.” He remembered back to when he had wished he could control Cara and make her stay in Clear Branch and marry him. He now realized if he had somehow managed to talk her into staying, a tragedy of a different kind would have occurred. She would have resented him in the long run. “You can’t be responsible for another’s actions, only your own.” Constantly checking the rearview mirror, Connor pressed the accelerator as they left the outskirts of Silver Creek.

  “The woman who died worked hard to make the people’s lives better. There were riots in the street. Her murder touched off some un
rest that had been brewing for a long time in Nzadi. The president of the country ordered the businessman, his wife and me to leave the country immediately. My client left all the gifts for the orphanage behind in her hotel room. She didn’t care if they went to the children or not. She was furious at how she had been treated.”

  “So the children never got what they needed?”

  “I told the hotel desk clerk as we were leaving about the gifts and who they were for. I can only hope someone delivered them to the orphanage, but with all the confusion and mobs, I have my doubts.”

  “You blame yourself for that, too?”

  She shifted completely around to face him. “In my head I know it’s not my fault if the necessities weren’t delivered to the orphanage, but in my heart I feel as though I’m the reason if they weren’t.”

  Pulling onto the street where Cara grew up, Connor shook his head. “The burden must be mighty heavy. Carrying around all that guilt can wear a person down. You were always realistic, so what’s the real reason behind you beating yourself up over something you couldn’t change? You weren’t the gunman who ambushed you all in the café. You weren’t given a choice about staying in the country so you could get the provisions to the children.” Connor parked in her driveway and angled toward her. “What’s really going on, Cara?”

  SIX

  “What do you want me to tell you?” Cara asked, trying to stall for time. She didn’t know how to answer Connor’s question. “The truth.”

  “I’ve always told you the truth.”

  “The woman I used to know would be sad for that lady’s death, but she wouldn’t blame herself. She wouldn’t play the ‘what if’ game. What if we hadn’t gone to the café? What if I had dragged my client away? What if—”