Exposing Justice

by Misty Evans

  After a second, she turned her head, spotted Mitch and Caroline, and her mouth stretched open. Brice had to laugh. Had to.

  She tugged on the hem of his shirt, doing a terrible job of covering her shapely thighs as she shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other. “Oh, I uh....”

  Mitch’s gaze scanned her bare legs and the oversized shirt and then he eyed Brice’s naked chest. He gave Brice a cheeky grin.

  Hope turned her big eyes to Brice. “Are these your friends?”

  If Mitch kept looking at her that way, he was going to be an ex-friend before he’d finished his coffee. Brice forced a smile. “Hope, this is Caroline Foster and Mitch Monroe.” He shifted his gaze to the two ex-Feds. “Caroline and Mitch, meet Hope Denby.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  There were certain things in her life Hope had never asked for. The floor opening up and swallowing her would be one of them.

  She glanced down at her bare legs and Hawk’s shirt that she’d haphazardly thrown on for a trip to the bathroom. Her first inclination had been to forego the shirt and just walk naked to the bathroom across the hall before returning to bed.

  That would have been the true disaster. At least now she wasn’t standing naked as a jay in front of complete strangers.

  Upshot.

  As usual, she’d found a way to ignore the looming disaster and humiliation.

  Always an upshot in Hope Denby’s world.

  “Um.” She gestured behind her with both hands. “I’m just gonna…” What? Put pants on after Hawk just proved what a manly man he was? Several times. She cleared her throat, thankful for the low-lit hallway because thinking about Hawk, on top of her, under her—everywhere—released a storm of hot flashes women should only get from menopause.

  Whew. That man.

  Get out of the flipping hallway, Hope.

  She whipped backward, faced the open bedroom door and the rumpled sheets and another hot flash flooded her. God, that bed. Talk about it being the stuff of dreams. “Be right out,” she called.

  Two minutes later, she entered the kitchen, this time in her slacks and blouse from work, her hair brushed and her face washed. The man Hawk introduced as Mitch kept his steady gaze on her and his mouth lifted into a crooked half-smile. An I-know-what-you-did smile if she ever saw one. Well, whoopdee-doo, she and the Hawkster had sex.

  Darn good sex, too. Deal with it, bucko.

  She reached her hand to him. “Hello.”

  “Hi.”

  He clasped her hand, gave it a good solid pump and released it. No prolonged squeeze, no brushing of the fingers, no innuendo of any sort. Just that stupid grin that should have made her want to vaporize herself, but instead, left her smiling. Almost laughing in fact, which immediately diffused any tension she’d felt just minutes ago.

  Hope repeated the routine with Caroline, who was quite possibly the most beautiful woman she’d ever met. Her perfect cheekbones sloped into an arresting, natural curve that made her a little more girl-next-door rather than striking supermodel. She stepped around the table to shake Hope’s hand and her long pony tail swayed with the movement, the silky brunette strands glistening against the overhead light. Her brown eyes were the killer though. A deep chocolate that despite their dark intensity somehow twinkled.

  “I’m Caroline. I brought you some clothes from your apartment.” She smiled. “I didn’t snoop.”

  “Thank you. That’s very nice of you. But how did you get in?”

  “Uh…”

  “She picked the lock,” Mitch said. “You really need better locks.”

  Oh, my. “Alrighty then. I guess I’ll work on that. Anyway, thank you, Caroline.”

  Caroline looked over at Hawk, still shirtless, but with his arms folded across that manly-man chest Hope had thoroughly explored an hour ago. “Anything for Brice. He saved our asses on our last case.”

  “Blah, blah, Caroline,” Hawk said. “Can we get back to it here?”

  She grinned at Hope. “He’s modest. I think he’s been in that cave of his for so long he’s forgotten how to let himself take credit for things.”

  “Hey,” Mitch said. “I helped.”

  “Oh, God,” Hawk muttered. “Please, can we not get him started? I’m not up for the Mitch Monroe Show tonight.”

  Apparently, Mitch took offense to that because he shifted in his seat. “Dude, that’s your problem. You need more of the Mitch Show.”

  “In case you were wondering,” Caroline said, “Mitch is modest as well.”

  At that, Hawk laughed. “Yeah. She keeps threatening to shoot him and throw his body in the Reflecting Pool.”

  Mitch popped out of his chair, wrapped an arm around Caroline from behind and nibbled her shoulder. The sweet gesture was cute, but the look on Caroline’s face, a cross between eye-rolling indulgence and affection, said it all. These two were in love and the easy banter and flat out heat between them could ignite the building.

  Immediately, Hope glanced at Hawk who met her gaze, but too quickly pulled away, staring down, studying his feet. Whatever was happening down there must have been pretty darned interesting.

  Interesting enough to prove whatever Mitch and Caroline had didn’t compare to Hope and her silly girl dreams of love.

  “You know what,” Mitch said, dragging his arm from around Caroline. “We’re gonna get out of your way.” He smacked her on the rear. “We have things to do.”

  “Great idea,” Hawk said. “Get out.”

  Caroline laughed and turned those amazing brown eyes of hers on Hope. “It was nice to meet you. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  Hawk and Mitch exchanged what Rob liked to call the shug—a combination shoulder pat and hug that was a staple in the male arsenal when saying goodbye to friends.

  “Later, dude,” Hawk said. “Thanks for everything.”

  “No, sweat. Watch the B&Es though. Grey will stroke out if he has to bail you out of jail.”

  “When isn’t Grey stroking out?” Caroline added.

  The second the door closed, Hawk shook his head and ran his hands over his face. “Jeez, I’m sorry about that. I should have warned you they were here. I figured you’d be out awhile.”

  Hope waved it off. “It’s all right. Let’s just be glad I didn’t go with my first choice of strolling to the bathroom naked.”

  Taking that in, Hawk grunted. “That wouldn’t have been good. Interesting, but not good.”

  “What B&E was Mitch talking about?”

  Hawk got busy pouring her some coffee. “Gerard and I checked up on the cab driver, Kostas. He’s hiding at least twenty grand in his house.”

  “You broke into his house?”

  He handed her the cup. “Don’t get self-righteous on me, Hope. You know this is what I do, and sometimes the way I do things isn’t pretty, but I follow my leads wherever I have to. I don’t know that Kostas is dirty, or that the money he’s hiding is, but it is interesting, don’t you think?”

  Accepting the cup, she decided not to argue. “But we know he’s not the killer.”

  “He could have been paid off and that’s why he can’t give the Feds or police a decent description of the man they’re after.”

  On the refrigerator hung a white board with photos. Earlier, it had been blank. Hawk and his friends had been busy while she snoozed.

  She slid into the chair Mitch had vacated and pointed. “What’s this?”

  Hawk stepped over to her, setting his hands on her shoulders, which, in a purely I-refuse-to-fall-in-love-with-him-way was kinda nice.

  His thumb worked a knot in her right shoulder and Hope closed her eyes, let herself enjoy the pampering.

  “My conspiracy board,” he said. “We’ve figured out Charley was actually in Barbados with Joel in December. The question mark is a third guy we have to find, the ‘my guy’ from Joel’s texts. I think it may be the same person Charley exchanged emails with about the Barbados trip, but nowhe
re is an actual name or mention of the trip.”

  “Expense reports,” Hope said, tilting her head to give him better access. “He probably submits detailed expense reports. If we can find any from around the time of the trip, we can look through them.”

  “Excellent idea.”

  And then his fingers—oh, that magic thumb—were gone. Pity that.

  She opened her eyes in time to see him leaning over the table and grabbing the stack of papers from the other side. His bare skin was just inches from her. So touchably close. Don’t. But it would be so easy to just reach up, run her hand over his trim waist to the dark swirling hair that ran right up the middle of his chest and fanned out over his pecs. Not too much to be off-putting, but definitely enough to let a girl know he didn’t manscape and didn’t need to. Call her twisted but she had a thing for men with chest hair.

  And watches.

  Oh, look, Hawk had his watch on.

  Rowrrrr. If this kept up, she’d shove him on the table and have her way with him. For a good long time. Don’t. She set her hands in her lap and looped her fingers together.

  “I saw some stuff in one of these files,” he said.

  Yes. Let’s focus on the files.

  He shuffled through the stack until he found one marked with a B. Taking half, he handed her the other half. “Teeg pulled anything that mentioned Barbados. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Five pages in, Hope found an email between Charley and someone named Marly. Subject line: Barbados Flight. “Do we know who Marly is?”

  “His assistant. I think. She takes care of scheduling meetings and whatnot. Why?”

  She perused the email. “He’s requesting a bottle of MacCallan whiskey for the flight.”

  “Charter.”

  “Pardon?”

  He snatched the email from her. ”On private flights you can request special items. He must have chartered a plane.”

  “Which could mean all three of them flew to Barbados together.”

  “Keep looking. Anything that mentions a charter company, pull it.”

  “Well, look at you going all Carl Bernstein on me. I love a man with investigative reporting skills.”

  He grinned at the reference to the famous journalist duo who reported on the 1970’s Watergate scandal that drove President Richard Nixon from office.

  And darn, that was hot. Game over. She needed to touch him. Just for a second. Feel that same spark from earlier that sent them straight to making each other moan. She shifted sideways, bumping his leg with her knee and ran her hand along his rock solid abs. The warmth traveled through her palm right up her arm and oh, yes, before the night was over, she wanted to hit replay.

  He met her gaze and held it as a slow, knowing smile tugged at his lips. “Hope, we’re busy here.”

  “We certainly are.”

  He set his hand on top of hers and held it. “Honey, I promise you, as soon as we find the name of this charter company, I will take you back to bed and do wicked things to you. But now we have work to do.”

  “How wicked?”

  He laughed. “Really wicked.”

  She smacked her hand on the table. “Then let’s get to work here. What else were you and your friends talking about?”

  “I was bringing them up to speed on the Charley-Joel connection. We’ve got to figure out who that third guy is or we’re nowhere.”

  “And the DDOT connection.” She walked to the board, uncapped the marker and added a line extending from Charley’s name and the word DDOT followed by a question mark. “We need to figure out how DDOT ties into this.”

  “Yeah. We’re dead in the water on that one.”

  Dead over water was more like it if they didn’t uncover who closed that bridge lane and why. But so far, there’d been no proof the lane had purposely been blocked.

  Not yet anyway.

  What they needed here were drastic measures.

  Wanting to protect the office she worked for had propelled her to make a deal with Hawk. A deal that would keep the Chief Justice’s name from becoming fodder for the conspiracy nuts.

  Hawk, at the time, being one of them.

  But he’d kept his word and hadn’t run one blog post about the Chief’s death. He’d proven himself. Plus, he possessed the sharp mind and tactical prowess of a legitimate journalist. The blogger had won her over.

  In more ways than one.

  But in a matter of days they’d gone from living normal lives—at least her life was normal—to hiding in some rundown safe house from a killer. Add to that Hope on suspension and just short of being fired and they were at Defcon One, journalism style. At Defcon One, the military’s most severe state of alert, war was imminent.

  Up to this point, Hope had done everything she’d known to do, followed every lead and yes, maybe they’d made some progress, but not enough. Not enough to blow this story open and determine who killed the Chief Justice of the United States.

  Not enough to save their own butts.

  Don’t let them get away with it.

  Being a person who thrived on staying positive while working a problem, she was about filled up on feeling helpless. She knew she shouldn’t feel that way, but being evicted from her life tended to jade her.

  The motor on the refrigerator clunked and wheezed—ancient, that thing—and she glanced around the kitchen, halting at a water stain on the ceiling that three days ago would have skeeved her. Three days ago this entire set-up would have skeeved her. She wouldn’t have sat in one of the chairs much less sleep—naked—in that lumpy bed.

  Don’t let them get away with it.

  Defcon One.

  Now.

  Recapping the marker, Hope set it in the holder, let her fingers linger there a second as her thoughts aligned. Do it.

  “Hawk, it’s time to make a move. Shake things up a bit.”

  At that, he grinned. “That’s my specialty. What do you have in mind?”

  She turned from the board, met his gaze and held it. “You need to run a blog post questioning why DDOT closed that lane.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The DDOT lane closure wasn’t exactly the hard-hitting expose he had in mind for his blog. “While there are plenty of people out there who think the DDOT exists solely to ruin their morning drive to work, closing that lane isn’t much of a conspiracy unless we show how it could be the key to figuring out if Chief Justice Turner was murdered for a reason other than road rage.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. You need to question why that lane was closed until he was shot dead and then reopened as if nothing were amiss. And how convenient the killer had a car waiting for him on the other side.”

  A strong lead for a story, but… “You didn’t want me to say anything about the judge until we had proof.”

  “I’m changing my mind.”

  His pulse double-timed it. “What we have is circumstantial, and not a credible story unless I can point fingers at those we suspect are tied into this.”

  She bit her bottom lip, chewed on it for a moment as if it might help her sort through the conflicting emotions playing over her face. “Leave their names out of it, so Joel and his parents don’t sue you, but…you have to do this, Hawk. It’s time to play hardball.”

  His fingers itched to start typing, yet, he had to put something—someone—before the story this time. Hope’s safety was paramount.

  She looked like she might jump out of her skin if he so much as touched her, so he didn’t. He did, however, move closer. Not too close, but close enough that she knew he was there and wasn’t about to let anyone do her harm. “I know I’ve already mentioned this, but I’m saying it again. We’re dealing with some very dangerous people, here. People who will do anything—including kill—to protect their futures, their companies, their positions.”

  Her chin rose and she stopped chewing on her bottom lip. “I’m not afraid of them.”

  “Hope, I’m afraid of them.”

  She snorted, as if s
he thought he were joking.

  He wasn’t. “Are you sure you want this? For me to expose this? We could be wrong.”

  Her gaze dropped to his shoulders and she reached out and touched his chest. “Do you think we’re wrong?”

  “Hell, no, but once we put this blog out there, there’s no taking it back. You sure you’re ready for that? For the blowback that might land on you?”

  “Yes.” She dropped her hands from his chest. “I…dammit.”

  This back and forth flip-flopping would drive him insane. Except, this was her process. It was growing on him. She was growing on him.

  He brushed a finger across her cheek. “It’s okay. Let’s take a minute and think this through.”

  Her eyes hardened. Her hands went to her hips. “I’m as sure as you are that we’re not wrong.”

  She was so not sure. He could see it in the nervous fidget of her toes, the faint twitch under her eye. “You know, as an ATF undercover agent, I was trained to spot liars.”

  Her eyes went wide. “I’m not lying. I’m—” she flapped her arms. “I don’t know what I am.”

  Gullible. Another thing he found charming about her. “You’ll lose your job, I guarantee it. No matter how I write the blog post, your boss will know you were involved in this investigation.”

  “I’ll find a new job.”

  “What about the White House?”

  “Screw the White House.”

  This was definitely a new Hope Denby. One he had a sudden surge of fresh admiration for.

  He couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. “Things are going to get messy. Are you sure?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know if I’m sure, but bring it on. Everything we’ve done so far isn’t working. Not as much as I’d hoped. And we still have a dead Chief Justice. One we think was murdered and that’s just wrong. So, if it means finding out who killed this man, I can handle messy just fine.”

  He almost believed her. His admiration, that subtle warmth low in his stomach, turned to pride. “You are some woman, Ms. Denby.”

  Her chin inched up again. “Don’t you forget it.”

  “Want to help me write it, Bernstein?”