by Rebecca Deel
“Did he say why?”
“Afraid not.”
Of course he didn’t. Nothing about this situation was easy. “Vonnie has only been asleep two hours. I hate to wake her.”
“I understand, but R.J. doesn’t raise an alarm for no reason.”
“All right. Text me his number. I’ll find out what’s going on before I wake her. Anything on Lilah Collins?”
“She’s still in Belize, living in her father’s mansion with her husband. She also set up a foundation to benefit children down there. Lilah has gone from being a spoiled rich kid to a skilled money manager.”
“Any indication she’s picked up her father’s business on the side?”
“Nothing conclusive yet. I’ll let you know what I find.”
“Copy that.”
When the text came through, Adam called the number. No answer. He frowned. Was the SEAL so paranoid he wouldn’t answer a call from a number he didn’t recognize?
He sent R.J. a text and waited. One minute, two, five. The longer the silence lasted, the more his gut tightened. The door to Remy and Lily’s room opened and Remy walked out.
Sitting beside Adam, Remy motioned to the phone. “What’s going on?”
“R.J. has been trying to contact Veronica. I called and texted him, got no response.”
“Not good. What do you want to do?”
“Fly with Vonnie to the Bahamas for two weeks.”
A grin. “Sounds good to me. Lily loves the beach.”
“We need to check on R.J.”
“Do we wake the women or risk cold shoulders when we return?”
Adam snorted. “I’m smarter than that. Vonnie would tear a strip off my hide.”
“Good thing you know that, Walker.” Veronica entered the living room, fully dressed, including her Sig.
“And you should know better than to ask that question, Remy,” Lily said as she walked into the room. She unscrewed the top on a bottle of water. “Where are we going?”
“R.J. Walsh’s place,” Adam said. “He’s with Trident. He’s a friend of Zane and Veronica’s.”
“He’s also a friend of Rio Kincaid’s who connected me with R.J. in the first place. R.J. is one of my contacts.” Veronica shoved her hair away from her face. “I tracked Adam’s progress through him because Rio can be difficult to contact.”
“Grab your Go bags and we’ll head out.” Adam waited until Remy and Lily had left the room. “Did you sleep?”
“More than you.” Veronica eyed him critically. “You need some downtime.”
“Has to wait.” He grabbed his bag and headed for the door as Remy and Lily returned. “Stairs. We don’t want to scare the guests.” They looked like what they were. Mercenaries. Not exactly the kind of people you expect to see early in the morning at a luxury hotel. They didn’t need a skittish guest sounding the alarm and garnering a heavy police response. Adam’s gut told him they couldn’t afford to delay.
The forty-minute drive seemed interminable. In reality, Remy traveled the distance from the hotel to R.J.’s house in record time considering the traffic. As Remy parked in the driveway, Adam tried one last time to contact R.J. Still nothing. They didn’t have a choice. If R.J. was still alive, Adam prayed his reflexes were still sharp enough to abort a shot at one of them.
“Want us to go around back?” Lily asked.
He’d considered splitting up on the drive here. “No. He’s paranoid. If he didn’t hear his phone for some reason, I don’t want him to think we’re surrounding the place. He knows me and Veronica. It’s best if you stay with us.”
On the porch, Adam rang the bell. When he didn’t hear movement inside, he knocked on the door. “R.J., it’s Adam Walker. Open the door.”
After a few more seconds passed, he picked the lock and turned the knob. Inside, the house was silent except for a wheezing sound coming from the living room.
Adam signaled Remy and Lily to search the house. He and Veronica swept to the right, weapons drawn. At first he didn’t see anything in the dim light. Then his gaze fell on the figure sprawled on the floor.
“R.J.” Veronica shoved her Sig into her holster and hurried to the fallen SEAL. “Adam, I need more light.”
He turned the three-way switch to a higher setting and light flooded the room.
“He’s been shot twice and lost a lot of blood,” Veronica said. Her face said the man had lost too much.
Adam grabbed the house phone and placed a call to emergency services, reporting the incident to the dispatcher. Without disconnecting, he set the phone down where the dispatcher’s recording wouldn’t catch his conversation with Veronica and the others.
Veronica glanced at him. “I need towels.”
Remy and Lily returned to the living room. “I’ll get them,” Remy said. “House is clear.”
“R.J., can you hear me?” Veronica gripped the operative’s hand. “Talk to me. Who did this to you?”
Adam crouched on the other side of him. “Sit rep,” he snapped. Just as he’d hoped, R.J. stirred, opened his eyes. After dragging in a ragged breath, the injured man said, “Risa.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Risa shot you?” Not possible. Dane’s assistant, the sweetest woman Veronica had ever met, hated guns. If she did own a weapon, why shoot R.J.?
R.J. grimaced, closed his eyes, and went limp.
No. Just no. Not another death. “R.J.” She pressed her fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. A weak one. At least he was alive.
Remy returned, handed her a stack of towels. Veronica applied pressure to R.J.’s wounds to stem the flow of blood long enough for the EMTs to render aid.
In the distance, a siren sounded, drawing closer by the second. “Vonnie, we can’t be here when help arrives,” Adam said.
They couldn’t find the shooter if they were locked behind bars. Still, she hated to leave the man when he was critical. No one should be alone in that condition. “I can’t leave him, Adam. I know it’s not smart, but I can’t do it.”
He gave a slight nod, accepting her decision without question. What a gift he’d given her. “I need your weapons.”
“Why?”
“If we stay until the EMTs arrive, we’ll encounter local law enforcement. We shouldn’t be armed to the teeth.”
Veronica handed him two Sigs and the holsters. When she reached for her knife and sheath, he held up his hand.
“R.J. has gunshot wounds. Keep that.” He stood. “I’ll store your weapon in my Go bag.” He signaled Remy and Lily to follow him outside.
When they returned, the three were armed with knives. Veronica had to smile. The police would take one look at them four of them and wonder why they weren’t armed with handguns. She hoped the police didn’t search the SUV. The weapons stash in the vehicle would raise eyebrows. If they confiscated the weapons from the Fortress vault, Maddox would not be happy.
Adam updated Maddox and Zane about R.J. He ended the call as the ambulance parked in the driveway.
A moment later, EMTs hurried into the living room with their equipment. The next few minutes were chaotic as they worked on R.J. before they finished, a patrol car rolled up.
Adam clasped Veronica’s hand. “Come on. I’m sure the police will have questions for us.”
“Good idea. This house is a crime scene. The police will move us outside to answer questions anyway.”
As they left, the EMTs moved R.J. to the stretcher. A policeman scanned the four of them for visible weapons.
“You called in a shooting?”
“That’s right. I’m Adam Walker. This is Remy and Lily Doucet, and my girlfriend, Veronica Miles.”
“You friends of the victim?”
“Veronica and I are acquaintances. Remy and Lily never met him.”
“Vic’s name?”
And so the questions began. Veronica knew they would be asked the same ones more than once when the detectives arrived. Under normal circumstances, she would have been patient wit
h the questions, knowing the process was necessary. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Someone was targeting the people she cared about.
“Wait over there, please,” the policeman said. “Two detectives will arrive soon to ask you questions.”
Veronica walked to the far side of the porch and sat on the white swing beside Adam. Lily and Remy sat on the wicker loveseat. Lily curled into her husband’s embrace, looking relaxed and unworried by the events of the past few minutes. Appearances were deceptive. One look at the operative’s alert gaze as she scanned the area continuously belied her apparent unconcern.
Adam wrapped his arm around Veronica’s shoulders. “How are you holding up?” he murmured.
“Afraid for another friend.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “This is not your fault, baby.”
“I know. Doesn’t make me feel better.” She tilted her head back. “Makes me concerned for your safety, Adam.”
“We’ll watch over each other.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I don’t want to lose you.” Just the possibility of that made an invisible band around her chest constrict. Would her confession scare him off? Probably not. Adam Walker didn’t scare easily.
“You won’t.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped.
“Adam?”
He trailed his fingers down her cheek. “What I want to say has to wait. This isn’t the right time or setting.”
What did that mean?
Another car parked in front of the house. Must be the detectives. She sighed, dreading the next session of questions and answers. She needed to be sharp and right now, her brain operated at snail speed. “I wish I could curl up with you on a couch and fall asleep watching a movie.”
“Sounds like a great plan. We’ll get there.”
After a quick conversation with the first policeman on scene, the detectives approached them. The questions from Henley and Cotton continued for two hours, long enough to strain Veronica’s patience.
“You asked the same questions several times over and we provided the same answers,” Adam said, his tone curt. “We can’t give you more details. If you think of different questions, call the number I gave you.”
“We want to search your vehicle.”
Adam’s smile lacked humor. “Not unless you have a warrant. You are welcome, however, to test our hands for gunshot residue. You won’t find anything because we didn’t fire a weapon at R.J.”
“But you have them or access to them.”
He inclined his head. “We couldn’t do our jobs otherwise.”
The detectives glowered at them although they remained silent.
Veronica and the others stood and walked off the porch. “Having to follow rules bites,” she said after they were safely inside the SUV.
“That it does,” Remy agreed. He drove from the property and headed toward the hotel. “I’m not sorry to be with Fortress instead of the NYPD.”
Inside the suite, Veronica turned to Adam. “Take my bed. You need to sleep.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Stubborn man. She pressed her fingers lightly against his jaw. “Adam, please. You promised we would watch out for each other. You need rest.” Deciding to press a bit more for his sake, she leaned up and kissed him. “Do it for me.” She felt his muscles relax before he nodded.
“Come get me if there’s a problem.”
“I promise.”
The Marine pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, then glanced at Remy in wordless communication. He got a nod in response before he went to Veronica’s room.
When she turned, both Remy and Lily were grinning at her. “What?”
“If I hadn’t just seen that myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.” Lily shook her head. “Adam has a will of iron and yet you convinced him to put himself before you for a short time.”
“Hey, he’s a logical guy,” Remy protested. “He knows he needs sleep in order to protect Veronica.”
Lily shook her head. “He thinks he’s Superman.”
Not Superman, just a man who looked after his circle of friends. He cared deeply about people he let into his life. Although she hadn’t met his sister Claire yet, Veronica knew he would lay down his life for her in a heartbeat, as would her husband.
She glanced at the Doucets. “Sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”
“You’re still recovering,” Remy said.
“Now who’s being stubborn? It’s a three-hour shift and I have research to do.”
“If you become too tired, knock on the door and I’ll relieve you.” He held her gaze a moment. “I’m trusting you to be honest with me and yourself.”
“You have my word.” She waved him on.
Left alone, she grabbed Adam’s laptop from his Go bag. He’d given her the password earlier and told her to use his computer when she wanted to do searches. Zane had tweaked the computer so that searches didn’t leave electronic footprints. She didn’t see how that was possible, but apparently Fortress’s tech guru was something of a miracle worker.
She went to the DEA database and searched Risa Shoemaker’s name. Not enough information. Risa had worked at the Nashville DEA office for six years. She’d been hired ten months before Veronica. Dane insisted she was the best assistant in the agency.
She dug into Risa’s background, flinched at what she read. Man, if she’d known about Risa’s rough childhood, Veronica would have been friendlier. Oh, she’d never been mean, just not warm and fuzzy. A snort. Right. Like she was ever warm and fuzzy.
Risa had been dumped by her single mother on her grandparents who were harsh disciplinarians. More than one visit to the hospital after a discipline session. Veronica scowled. Might as well call it was it was. Abuse. Her grandfather tried to beat her into submission. She didn’t blame the woman for leaving the day she turned eighteen.
After working two jobs year round to put herself through college and graduating with a business degree, Risa applied at the DEA and was assigned to Dane.
No weapons permit. No run-ins with the law, not even a traffic ticket. Risa Shoemaker was squeaky clean. Why would R.J. point a finger at Risa? Didn’t make sense.
Veronica needed to talk to R.J. If he was still alive. Maybe Zane could find out for her. He seemed to know everything. She called Zane.
“Everything okay, Veronica?”
“We’re fine. Adam, Remy, and Lily are asleep. I’m researching Risa Shoemaker.”
“Why are you looking at Carver’s assistant?”
“When I asked R.J. who shot him, he managed to say Risa’s name before he passed out.”
“What do you need from me?”
“My computer hacking skills are mediocre. I need to speak to R.J. again. Can you check the hospital computer to see how he’s doing? Calling won’t help because I’m not a relative and I can’t use my badge since I don’t have one at the moment.” There went that pain in her heart again.
“I heard. We’ll clear your name, sugar.”
“Thanks.” She heard keys clicking in the background. A moment later, a sigh sounded in her ear. “Zane?”
“I’m sorry, Veronica. R.J. died on the operating table.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Adam opened his eyes at the six hour mark, wide awake and alert. Military training had perks. Waking up alert without an alarm was one of them.
He rubbed his jaw. Needed to shower and shave. Otherwise, his beard would scratch Vonnie’s sensitive skin when he kissed her. Much as he hated to admit it, his girl and Maddox were right. He had needed six hours of rest.
What about Veronica? Had she slept while he’d been down? He grabbed his bag and went to shower. Adam returned dressed in fresh clothes and anxious to see Veronica. He walked into the living room and stopped short. Where was Veronica?
Lily handed him a bottle of water. “Food is in the refrigerator. We ordered room service two hours ago.”
“Where’s Vonnie?”
She incli
ned her head toward the patio. “She’s been out there a while. Wouldn’t eat.”
Adam watched Veronica a moment, noted the slumped shoulders. “What happened?” Why didn’t they wake him? If the woman he loved needed him, he wanted to be available for her.
“R.J. didn’t make it.”
Food could wait. Veronica couldn’t. He opened the patio door and sat in the chair beside hers.
Adam laced his fingers with Veronica’s, but allowed her to sit in silence. This side of the hotel faced a greenway and gardens on the hotel grounds, a spectacular view. If you were looking for a view to soothe your heart, this was a good one.
A few minutes later, he said, “Lily told me about R.J. I’m sorry.”
“He was a good man, despite his addiction.”
“Small comfort, but Trident will take care of his family.”
“I’m glad.” She turned to him, then, her eyes reddened, her cheeks tear-stained. The sight tore at his heart. He never wanted to see that look in her eyes again, but he couldn’t prevent life from hurting Veronica. “The family shouldn’t have to worry about R.J.’s gambling debt.”
“Agreed. I’ll have Maddox contact the head of Trident. They’ll take care of everything.”
Her fingers tightened around his. “You look better.”
“At the risk of hearing ‘I told you so’ for a long time in the future, you were right. I needed sleep. I could have kept going, though.”
Veronica’s lips twitched. “Of course.”
He felt like he’d accomplished a great feat by lighting a spark of humor in her eyes. “I’m starving and I hate to eat alone. Join me?”
That brought a full-blown smile. “Adam Walker, you can’t convince me eating by yourself worries you.”
He grinned. “Come on. Lily tells me you didn’t eat. I slept for you. Eat for me.”
“Not the same thing,” she pointed out. “I won’t waste away if I skip a meal. I’ve done it often enough in the field.”
“You shouldn’t. It makes you weak, and in our business you never know when you’ll have a chance to take in fuel again.” He drew Veronica to her feet. “What did you learn while I slept?” No question in his mind that she had utilized the time well.
