by Misty Evans
Whistling at Salisbury, he drew the dog back to the side of the house and clicked off his flashlight. The approaching vehicle slowed before turning into the driveway.
Which—fuck—effectively spotlighted his hiding spot.
He put up his hand to shade his eyes, ready to go for his weapon, when he realized it was Connor in the rental.
He killed the headlights and Sabrina waved from the passenger side as she bounced out of the truck before Connor could get around to open her door. “Aw, look,” Sabrina said. “A dog!”
Connor rolled his eyes as she bent down to make friends with Salisbury.
“What are you two doing here this early?” Colton asked.
Sabrina looked up and cocked a thumb at Connor. “Your friend couldn’t sleep, like usual. Plus, I’m on Eastern time. We were both awake, so thought we’d swing by and see if you needed extra eyes on the files from Beatrice.”
“She hasn’t sent them yet. She’s reviewing them one more time.” He motioned them around to the back of the house. “I had company right before you got here. Not sure who it was, but they left footprints near my truck. Let’s get inside.”
He unlocked the door and held it open. Once they were in, he reset the security alarm and they followed him to the kitchen. “Shelby’s still sleeping, so we need to keep it down.”
“Who was it?” Connor asked. “Your visitor. Any ideas?”
Colton shrugged. “No clue, but you know what I’m thinking. I need to get Shelby out of here, move her somewhere off the grid. Even with the security system, me, and the dog, she’s too exposed.”
Sabrina stared at the mess scattered on the floor. Beside her, Connor did the same. “What the hell happened here?” he asked.
Colton grabbed the broom from the utility closet and started sweeping up the food, to Salisbury’s disappointment. “You don’t want to know.”
Connor went to the French press and started prepping it for fresh coffee. Sabrina sat at the table and Salisbury jumped in her lap. “What a good boy.” She accepted a sloppy kiss and pinched Salisbury’s cheeks. “You’re a charmer, aren’t you?”
“Prints?” Colton asked. “Did you find any on that wrapper?”
“Several full, one partial.” She nuzzled Salisbury’s forehead. “The full prints matched a clerk at a gas station in Tulsa. He’s a former juvie, and probably got his prints on that wrapper from stocking the shelf or checking out the customer who bought the bar. Nothing in his file indicates he’s a killer—his juvenile record is from shoplifting at age thirteen. I’m running the partial through IAFIS, but it’ll take some time.”
“IAFIS?” Colton put the broom away. “Translation?”
“The FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Partial prints are a disaster to match and there are millions of fingerprints in the database. Plus, there are more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies in the US, most of which are overworked and don’t always get prints uploaded to IAFIS.”
“Can you run it against members of the military, specifically snipers?”
“Afraid it’s not that simple.”
“But they’ll be in that database, won’t they?”
“Possibly, but the military, as we all know, moves in mysterious ways, and if the sniper served before 1999, when IAFIS was created, their prints might not be in there at all.”
“Fuck.” He jammed his hand in his hair. “I feel like we’ve got nothing. This guy is out there, I know it. I can feel him sniffing around even without seeing those shoe prints tonight.”
Connor slapped him on the back and handed him a mug of coffee. “If he’s sniffing around, bring it on, cuz he may be good, but we’re better.”
They clinked mugs, Sabrina laughing at another Salisbury kiss.
A second later, a scream pierced the air.
Chapter Fourteen
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“SHEL!”
The sound of multiple heavy footsteps pounding up the stairs reassured Shelby as she sat straight up in bed. The bed moved slightly and a cold nose jammed into her hands, a wiggling dog body clamoring over her lap.
Salisbury. She sunk her hands into his fur and snuggled him tight. He licked her face.
She felt Colton’s energy—immense and forceful, like the Titanic plowing through the ocean—enter her room. “Shelby, what’s wrong?”
“Colton, turn on the light.”
He moved to the bed, as two other people—she could hear the differences in their footsteps—hovered at the door.
Warm hands touched her arm, her knee. “Shelby, look at me.”
Wasn’t she already? “I think the bulb in my lamp is blown. I tried turning on the light, but nothing happened. I…I’m sorry, I freaked a little. It’s so damn dark in here and you weren’t beside me. It felt like when I woke up from the coma.”
“Sweetheart.” He took her by the knees and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Salisbury jumped around, but came back to her lap. “The light is on.”
And…yeah. That’s what she’d been afraid of.
She’d woken to an empty bed. The room had seemed way too dark and she’d reached over and flipped on the lamp on her nightstand. Except nothing had happened. She’d heard the click but was still in the dark.
She’d sat there for several long minutes, blinking, breathing, willing her eyesight to come back. Willing her body to come online and clear her vision. It had always worked before.
This time, nada.
She reached out and found Colton’s face. That face she loved so dearly. The one who hours before had stared into hers and made her believe they could be together again. “Okay. Not the best news, then, since I can’t see a cotton-pickin’ thing.”
He grabbed her hand and held it to his face. “We’ll get you to the doctor.”
“God, no.” She sighed, defeated. “This is one of the side effects from the brain injury. There’s nothing the doctor can do except hook me up to a bunch of stupid monitors and wait. I don’t need that to tell me my brain hiccupped again. My vision should clear in a few minutes.”
Or hours. The last time this had happened, she’d gone a whole day on the fritz. “I’ve had two of these episodes since I came out of the coma. The last one was three weeks ago, so I thought—hoped—I wouldn’t have any more.”
“The brain is so cool, but super funky,” a woman’s voice said. “If I hadn’t studied chemistry, I would have chosen cognitive science.”
Shelby ran a hand through her hair as she smiled toward what she hoped was the doorway. “You must be Sabrina.”
The woman had a light, playful voice. “And you must be the fabulously talented Shelby Claiborne. I’m a huge fan.”
“You are?”
“You’re the hotshot FBI agent who saved my Connor.”
The pride and gratitude in the woman’s voice was as honest as it came.
“Hi, Connor. I assume you’re here too.”
“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “I made fresh coffee.”
“Is it strong enough to kick-start my eyesight?”
“Damn straight.”
Colton squeezed her hand. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call the doctor?”
“No doctors. Just coffee.” At least for now. “I want to go over the case and those files we stole from my office.”
“You stole files?” A smile teased Sabrina’s voice.
Not seeing any of their faces made Shelby a little nuts. She reached for her braid, remembered it wasn’t there any longer. Colton had unbraided it and combed his fingers through it during the night. “That’s a secret that doesn’t leave this house.”
“My lips are sealed.”
After a change of clothes and Colton brushing her hair, he carried her downstairs to the dining room. A cup of coffee was waiting for her and Colton made sure she got it to her lips without spilling any. “Okay, so where are we?”
While it was unlikely a bunch of kids would hang out in an abandoned house skeleton outside of town to begin with, it was even more unlikely the only thing they’d leave behind was the wrapper from a granola bar. Chip bags, empty beer bottles? Sure. Drug paraphernalia? You bet. But a granola bar wrapper?
Ditto went for any homeless person. “It’s most likely a piece of garbage that blew across the way from one of the neighbors.”
“I looked through your paper file on the serial killer,” Colton said. “I didn’t see anything we didn’t already know. There were no interviews or photos of me or any other guy who matches my description. If you give me your password, I can hop onto your computer and tell you what’s on that USB.”
“You stole a paper file and a computer one?” Sabrina asked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a spy, Bells.”
Colton chuckled.
Shelby heard papers shifting around, then Connor’s voice. It held a definite edge. “So you think there’s a connection between this killer and my rescue mission?”
“That’s correct,” Shelby said. “Two of them have direct ties to Colton outside of Mission Liberate Green Frog as well. I believe the third crossed paths with him at some point, but I have no direct link to him and your rescue.”
“So I’m the common denominator,” Colton said. “As well as a suspect.”
“You’re a suspect?” Sabrina’s chair creaked as she sat back abruptly. “Is that true, Shelby? The FBI thinks Colton is a serial killer?”
Did they? She couldn’t remember. It had obviously crossed her mind and the evidence was damning enough for Theo to think the same thing.
But she was still trying to wrap her brain around all three men being on Connor’s rescue mission. “Wyatt Evers wasn’t on our taskforce in Baghdad.”
The heavy silence that followed made her skin itch. She could see Colton and Connor in her mind’s eye exchanging a weighty glance.
“What aren’t you guys telling me?”
“Wyatt Evers was not part of the rescue taskforce,” Colton said.
He was lying, but why?
“Sorry, I…” Connor didn’t finish the sentence but a thought tickled her brain.
“Colton, the day you arrived, Theo had my file, and your picture was in it, that’s how he recognized you. What happened to that?”
“Maybe after you cleared me,” Colton said, “he removed it.”
Maybe, but she was starting to think a bunch of her work on the case had simply disappeared. Colton was lying to her, her case file was incomplete…what was going on here? “That’s probably the photo I showed to Lori that day. Not to incriminate you, to try to find the link between you and her husband. You said earlier that you crossed paths, but you never did tell me how.”
“On one of my rotations back to the States, I trained him.”
And ho-boy, Colton’s voice had gone almost frigid.
“And?” Shelby asked, shrugging her shoulders.
“And what? The guy was as smart as they come. Accurate, tough, passed every test with ease.”
Salisbury jumped into Shelby’s lap. Connor’s voice dropped a notch. “I was never on a team with him. What did you train him for?”
The temperature on Colton’s side of the room dropped another ten degrees. Shelby was going to need a sweater in a minute.
“Some sniper shit, that’s all.”
But that wasn’t all. If only she could see his face.
Did she need to though? The ice in his voice was enough to freeze them all out.
“Colton, you’re no longer a SEAL, nor do you work for the government. If we’re going to figure out who killed these men, we need to know everything.”
His chair scraped back and he took his frigid body temp with him as he left the room. The heavy silence that followed was filled with awkwardness.
Shelby plastered on her best smile and sent it Connor and Sabrina’s direction. “Thank you both for being here.” What a hodge-podge team they made. “I’m sorry I’m not more help. My memory is…”
A hand covered hers. Connor. “Don’t sweat it. I have blanks in mine too.”
Colton returned, his physical presence like a lightning bolt to her senses. Even if she couldn’t see him, she felt him. Every inch of him. It was like getting hit with a live wire each time he was near.
“I’ve got your computer.” She heard the thunk of her laptop on the table as Colton resumed his seat. “And the USB. Tell me your password.”
Her throat tightened. If anything, the Bureau, and especially Theo, had drilled into her the need for confidentiality. Secrecy.
Her reaction made her silently laugh. She’d already violated some pretty hefty protocols and rules, what was one more? “Born2RunSB.” She spelled it out, so he would know where to capitalize and that she’d replaced the word ‘to’ with the number.
“Born To Run?” Sabrina asked. “That’s a Springsteen song, right?”
The woman was probably only a few years younger than Shelby, but the reference suddenly made her feel old. “It was a song Colton used to play all the time. Sometimes he sang it to me.”
Colton’s embarrassed silence was better than the ice bullets he’d been shooting off earlier, but Shelby still felt a bit guilty.
On the other hand… “He’s actually a great singer.” Why not make his embarrassment complete? “I always loved hearing him sing Amazing Grace on Sundays when I could actually get him to church.”
Colton cleared his throat as if begging her to stop, and said, “The file is open. What am I looking for?”
That was the thing. She didn’t know. “Just start reading to me.”
THE EARLY MORNING was so quiet, so peaceful. Hard to believe they were sitting at Shelby’s dining room table discussing murder.
Through the windows, Colton could hear the last of the late fall locusts and other night insects winding down as the sun broke the horizon. Inside the room, with the blinds and curtains drawn, it was still dark enough they needed the overhead light.
It killed him to see Shelby staring blankly at the far wall as he read through the stolen FBI file on her laptop. Various official internal memos, a few phone interviews, notes about the deceased men’s backgrounds and families. Large blanks with only a few details about their military careers. Bulleted points about what the three had in common.
All Navy. All from Oklahoma. She’d flagged that two of them had definitely been connected to Colton, with a question mark about Evers.
“We should review the night of the mission,” Shelby said, her hands cupped around her coffee cup. “Mission Liberate Green Frog.”
Sabrina deposited a plate of toasted bagels on the table. “I’d like to hear that story as well.”
The smell of the warm bagels made Colton’s stomach growl, yet, the thought of rehashing the night of Connor’s rescue made his neck tighten. He glanced over at his friend, who looked a bit green around the gills as well.
Ditto not wanting to talk about that night.
“I’m not sure what good that will do us, Shel,” Colton said.
“It will do me good.” She accepted a bagel from Sabrina and munched on it. Salisbury, previously asleep in her lap, sat up and sniffed. Even though she couldn’t see him, she knew what he wanted and, sucker that she was, broke off a piece to feed to the dog. “All I ever had after the mission was a single Bureau report with a vague Navy addendum regarding Connor’s extraction. If we could pinpoint everyone whom Bard and Edmonton interacted with that night and what happened immediately before and after the mission, it could lead us to the killer. We don’t have the official JSOC reports but we can rebuild the timeline ourselves since the three of us were there.”
The mission reports were
all classified by the Department of Defense and not even the FBI had access to the final, all-encompassing report. Colton didn’t doubt Beatrice could get her hands on it if she sent Rory hunting, but he didn’t want to ask her to. Dangerous waters there, and he’d already asked for so much.
Connor’s bagel sat untouched. “I’m not sure I can add much to your information.”
Shelby looked down and Colton wondered what she was seeing behind her sightless eyes. She’d admitted she didn’t remember why she’d divorced him. Was it possible she forgot that night? What went down?
Heaven help me. That would be an answer to his prayers, wouldn’t it? For her to never remember?
“We’ve got to start somewhere.” She squirmed in her seat and handed the rest of her bagel to Salisbury. “Since neither Connor nor I remember much, we’re relying on you, Colton.”
At least she was admitting to not remembering. In a sick way, he was relieved.
The dog jumped down, his nails clacking on the floor as he headed for the living room with another piece of bagel.
Colton kicked back in his chair. He could make quick work of bringing both of them up to speed and avoid the details that would help no one. “The taskforce involved my SEAL team, Shelby, and another Fed named Calisto, our helo pilots, and Dr. Edmonton.”
“Before we took off, we practiced a dozen times, didn’t we?” Shelby said. She continued to stare at the table and Colton could see her straining to remember. “You hated having us to account for—me and Juan Calisto. You didn’t believe we should go on the raid.”
She had that right. “Direct orders were for you two to go along to manage Quan once we nabbed him. My superiors assured me you both had the training and could handle yourselves in a firefight.”
“But you didn’t believe it.”
He believed the Feds were well trained—he knew Shelby had worked her ass off to prepare for the mission. Plus, her and Calisto’s job hadn’t been to engage the enemy, only handle the asset once he was in custody of Colton’s SEAL unit.
It had looked good on paper, but as every SEAL knows, the bad guys never follow script.
