by Paula Graves
She sat down, her hip warm against his. “The hacktivists you were talking about, right?”
He nodded. “The government’s been known to hire some of them just to get them to stop making things hard for the good guys.”
“Surely the FBI is putting some of their best guys on the task of proving you innocent.”
“I don’t think I helped spur them along by disappearing.”
Her hand covered his in the dark. “Are you sure you’re making the right decision, running this way?”
“If you were the one with your whole life on the line, what would you do? Stay in custody somewhere and depend on other people to save your life?” He turned his hand palm up, grasping her hand in his. “Tell the truth.”
She was silent for a long moment. Then she squeezed his hand. “I wouldn’t do that. I’d want to be the one looking for the truth.”
He tugged her hand to his mouth, brushing his lips across her knuckles. “That’s the decision I made, too.”
“I still think we need to get out of here.”
“Let’s get some sleep while we can. It may be a while before we get the chance again.” He scooted over on the bed, tugging her toward him. She resisted for a moment, then gave in, lying beside him.
She rolled onto her side, facing him in the dark. “You never finished telling me what happened between you and Joanna. How did it fall apart?”
He resisted the temptation to roll over and refuse to answer, even though a part of him, the private, self-protective part, begged him to do so. She’d shared a painful, private story about her own life. The least he owed her was a little honesty about his own checkered past.
“We married too fast. We mistook surface compatibility and sexual attraction for something with a chance to last. But despite all the things we had in common, we didn’t want the same things in life.”
“Like what?”
“Joanna wanted a big house on the Chesapeake Bay. A golden retriever and two kids playing in the big backyard and a nanny to watch them while we worked. She wanted me to take every promotion opportunity that came my way, even if it was a position that held no interest for me. For her, the job was about the income and the advancement opportunities. Not the hunt.”
“You didn’t know that before you married?”
“Maybe I knew it but just didn’t want to admit it. Maybe I thought once we were building a life together, we’d both bend a little toward the middle. But it turned out neither of us was willing to bend at all.”
“So you broke.”
“Yeah. I guess we were luckier than most. No kids to screw up, no house to divide. We signed the papers, wished each other good luck and went our separate ways.”
“No harm, no foul?” She sounded skeptical.
“It hurt. My ego more than my heart, perhaps. But I learned a hard lesson about mixing business and pleasure.”
“Lots of FBI agents have very good marriages with fellow agents.” She spoke cautiously, as if she had her doubts about the feasibility of intra-agency fraternization herself.
“They do. I’m just not sure it was something I was capable of.”
She fell quiet long enough for him to wonder if she’d drifted off to sleep. But in a few moments, her sleepy voice broke the silence. “Was that why you cut things off between us after West Virginia?”
It had certainly been part of it. “I didn’t want things between us to change. If we’d tried to build on what happened that night, things would have changed drastically. The whole team dynamic would have shifted.”
“And you were my superior agent.”
“Yes. To make it work, you’d have had to be reassigned.”
“So instead, you just told me what happened could never happen again.” Her voice was carefully neutral, but he knew her well enough to recognize a darker thread of pain beneath the measured tone.
“And you left.”
“You valued the team dynamic more than you valued what happened between the two of us.”
Valued wasn’t exactly the right word, but he wasn’t sure she’d see the distinction. “What we were doing on the domestic-terrorism task force at the time was vital to national security.”
“But you lost me from the team anyway.”
He vividly remembered walking into his office to find her sitting there, a transfer request in her hand, her back as stiff as steel and her eyes blazing pain and rage in equal parts. “Yes.”
“If you’d said something, anything, that day I told you about the transfer—”
A part of him had regretted his silence for a lot of years. But regrets were cheap. They didn’t have the power to change much of anything. And he’d been certain he was doing the right thing.
Was he still certain? Being here with her, seeing her again, feeling the heat of her body next to his and hearing her familiar voice, he found his previous certainty crumbling.
He’d missed her horribly, all these years. Hadn’t really let her go, going so far as to use her brother to keep track of her. Were those the actions of a man who’d made the right decision?
Delilah rolled onto her back, the faint light seeping through the curtains casting her face in shades of gold. “I guess I thought you’d stop me.”
I wanted to, he thought. But he didn’t say it aloud. Then or now.
She shifted again, turning her back to him. He clenched his fists to keep from touching her.
I wanted to ask you to stay, he thought, staring at the curve of her shoulder, listening to the sound of her slow, steady breathing, an ache burning in the center of his chest. More than I ever realized.
But he hadn’t. Then—or now.
* * *
THE SNOW HADN’T reached as far east as Galax but the cold was bitter to the bone, sending a shiver through Delilah early the next morning when she crossed the street from the motel to a small mom-and-pop breakfast place for coffee and fresh-baked cheese croissants.
She’d left Brand asleep, careful not to wake him when he looked so relaxed and free of care. He’d never looked his age, and even now, knocking on the door of his mid-forties, he looked a decade younger. Only a smattering of gray flecked the hair at his temples, and there was a hint of silver in the beard he hadn’t been bothering to shave since he’d gone on the run, but the lines on his face gave him character, not age, and his fit, toned body would put most younger men to shame.
Sharing a bed with him after all this time, and trying to pretend it was nothing more than a necessary convenience, had led to a series of strange dreams. Erotic in some ways, terrifying in others, and all conspiring to keep her from getting much benefit from the hours of sleep she’d managed.
Brand was no longer in bed when she unlocked the motel-room door and entered. He was flattened against the wall, his Ruger in hand. He slumped when he recognized her. “Don’t do that again.”
She slapped the bag of croissants against his chest. “Sorry. You looked so peaceful asleep, I didn’t want to wake you.”
While she carried the two cups of coffee to the small table in front of the window, Brand opened the bag of croissants. “Where’d you find these?”
“Little shop across the street.” She nodded toward the window as she sat and pulled the cover off one of the cups of coffee. “By the way, it’s cold as hell outside.”
He sat across from her. “The frost on the window was my first clue.”
“I think we should stay here until checkout time at noon and get as much computer work done as we can. Agreed?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Not looking forward to heading into Travisville?”
“Well, no, but I’m not stalling. If we’re going to figure this mess out, we need as much information about Cortland as we can get our hands on.”
“I have my preliminary file
s on Cortland on a flash drive.” He dug in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his wallet. Inside, tucked in the loose-change pouch, he’d hidden a small, oval-shaped flash drive. “It’s not a lot—Liz and I were still in the early stages of trying to figure out what Cortland was up to when he sent his goons to kill her and frame me.”
“He must have spies everywhere.”
“That’s my theory.”
After they finished off the coffee and croissants, Brand set up the tablet computer and handed over the flash drive. “Take a look at the files on the flash drive first, get up to speed. Let me know if you have questions.” He stretched out on the bed and folded his hands behind his head, his gaze settling on her as she got to work.
Trying not to feel self-conscious, she plugged the flash drive into the tablet’s USB port and scanned the files, making notes as she went. Brand’s style of research tended toward the methodical, while she favored a more freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness way of pulling the disparate threads of research into a narrative that made sense to her. There were pluses and minuses to the way she did things, just as there were to Brand’s preferred style of forming a theory.
They’d always done their best work together, blending their styles for a comprehensive picture of whatever mystery lay unsolved in front of them.
“What made Liz suspect Cortland in the first place?” she asked aloud.
“She originally started investigating militias in southwestern Virginia, and his name came up in the periphery of her investigation. She probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it, however, if she hadn’t connected the militias to the meth mechanics in the area. When she realized they were running joint operations, and one of the area’s top meth cookers just so happened to do business with Cortland, it caught her attention.”
“How do the anarchists fit in?” She opened the file on the hacktivists Brand had mentioned, running down a list of known screen names to see if any looked familiar.
“There was a pipe-bomb attack on a post office in Roanoke. Nobody killed, but the ATF identified the pipe bomber through his bomb signature. It was a guy named Harold Petry, a member of the Blue Ridge Infantry. Problem was, nobody could figure out what the BRI had against the post office.”
“Maybe any federal building would have done.”
“There’s a courthouse right there in Roanoke. Much bigger target.” Brand shook his head. “Liz and I interviewed the victims and that’s when we learned that one of the people injured by the bomb had most likely been the primary target, based on the placement of the bomb. And he told us right away the only person he knew who had anything against him was a guy he knew only from online, a gamer he’d come across who made a big deal of being a hacktivist. Went by the name ‘systemg33k.’ With threes instead of e’s in geek.”
She slanted a look at him.
“I don’t name ’em,” he said with a grin. “Anyway, we followed up and found the real name of the hacktivist was Neil Posey, and he’s a freelance information tech in the Abingdon area. Guess who happens to be one of his IT clients?”
She looked away from the list again. “Wayne Cortland?”
“Well, technically, Cortland Lumber. But yes.”
She looked back at the list of names, searching until she found systemg33k. “So that’s three strikes for Cortland.”
“It can’t be a coincidence.”
“No, I agree. It can’t.” Her gaze settled on another name in the list of hackers Brand and Liz had compiled. Her eyes narrowed. “Where did you get these names?”
“It’s a list our cybersecurity section came up with,” Brand answered, pushing up to a sitting position. “Why? Have you found something?”
On the list, a few names below systemg33k, was the name “pwnst4r.” Something about the screen name niggled Delilah’s memory but she couldn’t quite make it click. “No,” she said finally. “One of the names tripped a switch in my brain, but it’s not really going anywhere. Let’s move on.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” She opened a different file, one named “BRI.” Inside, she found a list of names and, next to the names, a dossier. Most were brief, but a few had more details. She scanned the list to see if she recognized any of the names, but none rang a bell. “BRI—Blue Ridge Infantry. They weren’t around back when I was at the bureau.”
“They’re a new outfit, although some of the founders had roots in other militia groups. Apparently there was a schism in the old group between the older guys, who were practically Luddites, eschewing modern technology, and the newer guys, who wanted to use technology to advance their principles. The BRI is one of the new breed. We think that’s how they hooked up with the anarchists.”
“Both of them hate all forms of government, though for different reasons,” she said with a nod. “Is BRI a white-power group?”
“Not as much as the groups they broke off from. I mean, I doubt they have any ethnic members, but their goals don’t seem as focused on white-supremacy issues. They’re more interested in undermining the U.S. government wherever possible.”
Delilah shook her head. “Part of me sympathizes, a little bit, with what drives these groups. I’m from the mountains, you know. We’re not many of us big fans of government intrusion. It was an issue I had to deal with all the time working for the FBI. How much of what we were doing was too much, you know?”
Brand nodded. “After 9/11, we probably went too far in trying to empower the government to keep us safe. But so much of what we accomplished did stop terrorist attacks from taking place.”
“At a hell of a cost to civil liberties.”
“Granted.”
She looked back at the list. “But these guys aren’t trying to preserve civil liberties. They’re trying to destroy the fabric of civil society. That’s definitely not the answer.”
“No, it’s not.” Brand swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, bending over her shoulder to read the tablet screen.
He smelled good, she thought, allowing herself to take a deep breath. Warm and masculine, the scent as familiar as the memory of him that had haunted her for years.
“We never could figure out what they were up to.” His deep voice rumbled in her ear. “It’s like we have all the pieces in place, but we’re missing the one big section of the puzzle that will help it all make sense.”
“I have a feeling we’re going to have to go to Travisville for the answer.” She turned to look at him. His face was close, the beard he’d been allowing to grow now thick enough to hide most of his jawline. Her fingers itched to run through the crisp, dark hair, to pull him down for a kiss and feel that beard against her skin.
She was no more immune to him now, after all these years, than she had been when they’d worked together daily. Maybe less immune, since it had been a long time since she’d had to shore up her defenses against the daily onslaught of his virile magnetism.
His blue eyes met hers and darkened, and she knew he’d read her naked desire for him on her face. For a moment he hesitated, and she imagined she could hear his heart pounding in frantic tandem with her own.
Then he backed away and sat down, snapping the cord of tension between them. She turned back to the table, bristling with frustration.
She spent the next couple of hours going through the rest of the files on the flash drive, trying to draw together the disparate threads of the conspiracy behind Elizabeth Vaughn’s death and the frame-up that had sent Brand on the run.
“I’d like to get my hands on a list of Wayne Cortland’s holdings,” she said finally, pushing up from the table to stretch her legs. “There doesn’t seem to be anything here listing what he owns outside the lumber mill.”
Brand, who’d settled back on the bed and now lay staring at the ceiling, turned his head toward her. “That’s because we haven’t
found any holdings. We’re pretty sure anything else he owns is hidden behind shell corporations.”
She sighed. “We need a forensic accountant. And, it so happens, I know one of those.”
“At Cooper Security?”
Delilah nodded. “Evie Cooper, Jesse’s wife. She’s an accountant, and since she’s been working for Cooper Security, she’s been brushing up on her forensic skills. She’s gotten damned good at digging up bones.”
“I suppose one more call to Luke Cooper won’t kill us.” With a sigh, Brand sat up and dug his burner phone from his pocket. “But we’re going to have to lose this phone and pick up another before we leave town.”
She took the phone from him. “How’s your slush fund holding out?”
“We’re good for now. And if it comes to it, I have more stashed in a safe place near Abingdon.”
She dialed the number for Cooper Stables, rather than Luke’s home address, figuring he’d be working by now. Luke answered on the third ring. “Cooper Stables.”
“Luke, it’s Delilah.”
“Hey. How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine. Everything okay with Seth and Rachel?”
“They’re all set up. And hey, your mama’s fine, too. Sutton and his girl have taken her in and they’re keeping a close watch on her.”
Relief rippled through her. “Thanks. That’s a huge help.”
“I assume you’re not just calling for an update, though.”
“No, I need to get in contact with Evie. I need her help with something.” She glanced at the tablet screen, which currently displayed the contents of the hacker file. Her gaze drifting back to the name pwnst4r, she added, “And I think I may need to talk to Shannon as well. Could we set up a secure chat somewhere off the Cooper Security grid? Somewhere random and impossible to trace. Shannon knows how to do that, doesn’t she?”
“I think so,” Luke said, sounding uncertain. “How do I get back in touch with you? This number?”
“No, I’m burning this phone as soon as I hang up. I’ll be in touch. This time I’ll call Gabe. Tell him to be expecting the call.” She hung up and handed the phone to Brand.
