Love Inspired Suspense June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Exit StrategyPaybackCovert Justice

by Shirlee McCoy

  The knock on the door drove both of them to their feet. He couldn’t stop his arms from reaching for her. He put both hands on her upper arms and looked deep into her eyes. She didn’t back away, or fight him, but he could see the desire to do both, and maybe even the desire to do something else. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She smiled. “Yes. Are you?”

  Good question. The door opened and Maggie’s voice broke through the tension. “Are you in there, Miss Heidi?” He needed to talk to Maggie about bursting into other people’s houses uninvited.

  Heidi turned to the stove and called out, “In here.”

  Blake left a few minutes later carrying a paper plate full of ham sandwiches and scones. He placed them on the porch swing while he went inside to pour a glass of iced tea. When he came back out, he could hear laughter and conversation bubbling from Heidi’s porch.

  He finished off the ham sandwiches in three bites and then dove in to the scones. He opened the upcoming week’s production schedule from his iPad and scanned through the runs. The last run of the sample batch they were making for the baseball parks would run through Wednesday, a smaller order for the Flight to Win the Fight races would run on Thursday and Friday, along with a handful of specialty batches.

  It should be a calm week, but Heidi’s words kept niggling at him. It had been two months since someone had tried to kill him. As far as anyone could tell, his dad’s stroke had been the fault of heredity, not human manipulation. Heidi spent hours each week doing a stellar job as a quality engineer, and then even more hours trying to determine what Mark was planning.

  Sometimes he forgot why she was here, but then there were days when he could feel tension rolling off her in waves. Something had to give, and soon. He didn’t know how much longer any of them could stand under the pressure.

  TWELVE

  Heidi started her third month of work at HPI with a migraine and a bad attitude. Why couldn’t it be easy? There were fifty agents working on this case and the only success they’d had was that they’d been able to make some useful recommendations to improve the process at HPI.

  And they’d kept Blake Harrison alive. Three months ago, she couldn’t have guessed how important that would be to her.

  She sat in the observation room and watched the lines running. The smell of blown plastic permeated everything, the sounds all fit with a normal production run and nothing looked out of the ordinary. Another typical Monday.

  Markos stepped onto the plant floor. He’d been in the warehouse? Again? She’d noticed him disappearing and reappearing from there more than once, but when she’d followed his route, she’d found nothing but boxes of containers stacked high on pallets, waiting for shipment. Did he go back there to smoke? HPI had a strict no-smoking policy, but TacOps had learned Markos had a serious habit.

  Blake appeared at one end of the production line. He was predictable with this routine. Before he left, he walked the lines, spoke to the shift supervisors and then made a pass through the warehouse. As long as everything was running smoothly, he headed home.

  She checked her watch. Four-fifteen. Time for her to pack up. Maggie had a bake sale this weekend and she’d promised to teach her how to make scones.

  Funny how the Harrison family had accepted her into their world. Caroline treated her like a lifelong friend. Maggie assumed she would be at all games, church services and family outings.

  Eleanor Harrison had been too busy with Jeffrey’s care to pay her much mind at first. Now that Jeffrey’s recovery had reached a point where he didn’t require as much assistance, she’d been paying closer attention to Heidi.

  And Eleanor Harrison had matchmaking on her mind.

  While it was flattering, Heidi wished she could explain how wrong she was for Eleanor’s son. Blake Harrison had turned into a good friend, but that was all it could ever be. Sure, he had it all—intelligence, good looks and charm oozing from every pore. He had a wicked sense of humor but tempered it with a compassionate streak that had caught her off guard and touched parts of her she kept locked down.

  If they’d met under different circumstances, maybe there could have been something between them. Maybe. She still hadn’t decided if his annoying side outweighed his considerate side. But it didn’t matter. She had a criminal to catch and even after she took Markos down, the Kovac family would still be out there.

  Until she took them out of the game—permanently—Heidi couldn’t afford to get too close to anyone.

  Blake Harrison had a lovely life, a great family, a wonderful business. When he decided he wanted to add a loving wife to the picture, it wouldn’t be her. It couldn’t be.

  She watched him leave the plant floor and walk into the warehouse. She scanned the area again. Markos was talking to one of the line operators. This was as good a time as any for her to slip out of her hiding spot.

  She picked up her iPad and made her way down the stairs. As she reached the door, a rumble reverberated through the walls. The warehouse. She ran toward the sound.

  As she burst through the door, others ran in from different parts of the plant.

  “Over here!”

  “Quick!”

  “Get a forklift!”

  The voices rang out from the back of the building and she raced in their direction.

  She came around a corner and skidded to a stop. Splintered wood and broken boxes littered the floor. As far as she could tell, an entire shelving unit had collapsed. It must have held both empty pallets and boxes of finished containers because they lay everywhere.

  Markos jumped onto a forklift and moved the pallets and boxes he could reach. He didn’t look like a man who’d tried to kill someone.

  But Heidi knew he had.

  Somehow, he’d tampered with those shelves and figured out a way to make them fall when he wanted them to.

  She paused long enough to concentrate on what she was seeing, committing the scene to memory. She’d spend time processing it later, but for now, only one question mattered.

  Where was Blake?

  She waded into the melee and stopped one of the warehouse employees. “Have you seen Blake?”

  “Hasn’t he already left for the day?”

  Maybe he had. Maybe he’d skipped the warehouse and gone on home. Heidi grabbed her phone and dialed Blake’s number.

  The pile rang.

  Everyone froze.

  “Blake’s in there!”

  “What?”

  “Blake?”

  The voices took on a new urgency. Everyone worked to pull the boxes and pallets out of the pile.

  As they neared the floor, Heidi eased her way closer.

  Father, please.

  “Over here!”

  One of the second-shift line supervisors held up Blake’s iPad. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

  “Blake!” Heidi yelled and others joined in. “Shh,” she said and everyone went quiet, listening for any sound. Nothing. They continued moving pallets and boxes.

  “There!” She ran to him while some of the men pulled the last remaining boxes away.

  Blake lay on his side, blood pooling on the floor. No. No! Not him!

  Someone screamed.

  Another voice called out, “I’m calling 9-1-1.”

  Heidi made eye contact with the employees standing nearby. “Keep moving this mess away. We’re going to need a clear path to get a stretcher to him.”

  She stepped over a shattered pallet and knelt beside him.

  “Come on, Blake. Don’t do this to me.” She couldn’t let herself think about a world where his smile didn’t start her day.

  She leaned closer. Breath. Yes!

  “He’s breathing!” A cheer went up. “ETA on the ambulance?”

  “They’re on the way.”

  “Tell them to hurry!”

  Heidi tried to get a fix on where the blood was coming from. Would moving him cause more harm? She couldn’t bear to be responsible for a spinal injury, but nothing could be worse th
an if he bled to death while she watched.

  She eased herself to the floor behind him and stretched a tentative hand toward him. She touched his head with the lightest pressure she could manage. His hair was sticky with blood, but there were no other obvious injuries.

  The whine of sirens reached her ears. Blake hadn’t opened his eyes or responded to any of the chaos around him. Maybe that was for the best.

  The EMTs arrived and Heidi had to work not to react. Richards? She knew some of the TacOps team had combat trauma experience and they knew their stuff. She had no idea how they’d gotten here, and in an ambulance no less. She’d ask later.

  “What happened?” Agent Richards asked her.

  “Looks like the shelving unit collapsed.”

  “Has he been moved at all?”

  “No.”

  Heidi stood back as they put a neck brace on Blake. With a gentleness that didn’t match their heft, they strapped him to a backboard, loaded him onto a gurney and rolled him to the waiting ambulance.

  She got in with them.

  “Ma’am, you’ll need to drive your own car.” She couldn’t tell if Agent Richards was trying to be a jerk or trying to maintain his cover. It didn’t matter.

  “I am not getting out of this ambulance, and if you don’t get him to the hospital promptly you’ll be facing litigation.” Not to mention the butt-kicking she’d personally administer.

  Richards nodded at one of the other agents and the doors closed. As soon as they drove away, he hit her on the shoulder.

  “You should have stayed behind.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What if this was intentional? What if Markos uses the confusion to hide the evidence? Did you think about that?”

  She hadn’t. Heaven help her. All she’d thought about was the man lying on the gurney who still hadn’t opened his eyes.

  Richards was right.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  He didn’t say anything else as he checked vitals and pupils and tried to stop the bleeding. They rode in silence for a full five minutes until he asked her to hand him a stack of gauze pads from the shelf behind her.

  When he took them, he winked. “I had a feeling you might not be bringing your A game, so I left a few men behind.”

  Heidi pinched the bridge of her nose. “Thank you.”

  What more could she say? What did it indicate about her if everyone on this case knew her feelings could compromise the investigation at any time? What did it mean that she had these feelings in the first place?

  She bounced along in the back of the ambulance and tried to rationalize her reasons for going with them. She had good ones.

  Didn’t she?

  Blake had been harmed and someone would need to provide security for him at the hospital. She couldn’t let them take him there alone in this condition.

  Of course, it would have only taken one phone call to have a team of agents waiting for them, ready to stay close.

  Why had she been compelled to be with him?

  This case was messing with her.

  So was this man.

  *

  The first thing that filtered into Blake’s consciousness was the smell. A smell that was all too familiar.

  How had he wound up in a hospital again? He tried to open his eyes, but they didn’t want to cooperate.

  “Hey.”

  That was a voice worth waking up for. He tried again. Nope.

  A hand squeezed his. “Don’t fight it. You’re going to be fine. Although this time you do have a concussion.”

  He squeezed Heidi’s hand and tried to remember how he’d gotten here. He’d checked on the line. Everything had appeared to be running smoothly and the first batch of the run had been first-quality all the way through. No reason to suspect they wouldn’t end the evening on a high note.

  He’d made a pass through the warehouse. Hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember anything past checking on the line. Heidi would know.

  He didn’t bother trying to make his eyes open. He focused on finding his lips. “Wha—” He tried to swallow.

  “Here.” Something cold touched his lips. Ice? He opened his mouth and a cool chip slid down his throat. Much better. “What happened?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  He shook his head and regretted it. Pain shot through his skull. The upside was he got his eyes open. Heidi’s face perched inches from his own.

  “Moving might not be a good idea.”

  “Ya think?”

  She chuckled. “Glad to see you’re as annoying as ever.”

  “Only with you.”

  “Ha.”

  “You still haven’t told me what happened.”

  “I’m trying to give you time to remember.”

  Oh. “Can you tell me where I am?”

  “Where do you think you are?”

  “I know I’m in the hospital. Am I in ICU or some sort of trauma unit?”

  “Nope. Still in the ER.”

  That meant he hadn’t been out of it for too long. He tried to think. “Did I ride in an ambulance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you fighting with someone? No. Wait. Someone was fussing at you. I remember wanting to tell them to leave you alone.”

  Heidi didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Bits and pieces of the ride were coming back to him. He still couldn’t remember how he’d wound up in the ambulance, but he’d heard someone tell her she should have stayed behind. And something about her feelings?

  No. He must have been dreaming. The agent must have been teasing her. And what did it matter? She’d never see him as more than a good friend. She’d made that clear. Which was good, because even if he did have feelings for her, which he didn’t, he could never allow himself to act on those feelings.

  He had Maggie to think about. Maggie needed stability and there was nothing stable about Heidi Zimmerman. She spent half her life undercover in dangerous settings. A woman like Heidi could disappear for weeks, months, maybe even years.

  As much as he hated to think about it, Heidi’s job put her in jeopardy every single day. Could he risk a relationship with a woman with a life as dangerous as Heidi’s?

  If it were just him? Maybe.

  But when he added Maggie into the picture?

  No.

  Besides, even if Heidi did care for him in some small way, she’d made it clear that her mission in life was to bring down the Kovacs. It would be hard to do that from North Carolina and he couldn’t pick up the entire HPI operation and move it to Virginia.

  No. Nothing about this would ever work. It couldn’t.

  “Anything else coming back to you?” He heard the fear in her question. She probably didn’t want him to know the agents were teasing her about her feelings for him.

  “A lot of jostling. Maybe some people yelling?” He pushed his brain to the edges of his memory. “Was I in the warehouse?”

  “Yes,” she said and he heard the relief. “An entire section of shelves collapsed. We found you buried under pallets and boxes.”

  “We?”

  “It made a lot of noise. I think everyone not running a line came to dig you out.”

  “How did you know to look for me?”

  “I tried your phone.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Thanks. I’ve been known to have one from time to time.”

  He tried to remember the sequence of events, but nothing about what she said rang a bell. “Did Mark do it?”

  “We’ll know more after the team your dad has hired to inspect all the shelves gets back to us.”

  “He hired a team?”

  “I may have recommended them. They’ll be able to determine what caused those shelves to fall and if there was a trigger. There’s a problem with the Markos theory, though. I was watching the line from the observation room and he wasn’t in the warehouse when it happened. Either he had help, or he had a way to trigger it remotely, or it was a total fluke.”<
br />
  “I’m not prepared to buy into the fluke theory.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “What’s my status?”

  “No broken bones, although I have no idea how that’s even possible. The nasty cut on your head needed twenty stitches. You should be glad you don’t remember that part. The head wound explains the amount of blood we saw. Unless you’re having trouble moving your limbs, it looks like your biggest complaint is going to be a massive headache. And you can’t drive for the next five days.”

  Great.

  She hesitated. “In order to facilitate the inspection of the warehouse, your dad has decided to shut down the plant until Thursday. He’s going to pay everyone for the missed time.”

  “Your idea?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t like that one.”

  “I didn’t expect you would.”

  She was right, though. Shutting down the plant for several days would give whatever this team was a chance to go over the whole place with a microscope. They’d be looking for anything and everything, and it could protect their employees and his family from further harm. “It might give Mark time to plan something worse.”

  “I don’t think time is his problem.”

  “What is?”

  “You.”

  “Why me?”

  “I have no idea.”

  THIRTEEN

  Blake refused to stay away from the office on Wednesday. He wanted to be there. If they found anything, he wanted to see it.

  Heidi had not approved of his plan. “Why don’t you take it easy? I’ll let you know if anything happens.”

  He appreciated her concern, but he was sick of taking it easy…even though his head still throbbed, and he wasn’t supposed to drive for three more days. Stupid concussion. He had work to do. This unplanned shutdown would put them behind, but they could make up for the lost time. Assuming they kept the quality in check.

  He walked through the production area. Agents roamed about with flashlights or Geiger counters or devices he didn’t recognize.

  He walked through the warehouse and spotted Heidi near the collapsed shelving units. She was talking to an agent and even though he couldn’t hear the conversation, he could tell she wasn’t happy. She had one hand on her hip, the other she ran through her hair the way she did when something bothered her.