Reluctant Hero

by Debra Webb

  Her front door buzzer sounded and she capped the tube of lipstick, dropping it into her evening clutch. Time to make another attempt at refining the rather abstract concept of her personal life. Whether or not the evening went well, it was a plus to have a hot date to an A-list party. She’d even convinced herself she wasn’t offended that her date had probably only asked her out in hopes that he’d get an inside track to her well-known father.

  She opened the door without looking through the peephole and found herself face-to-face with the man she’d been daydreaming about—Parker Lawton, accused thief. For a moment she gawked at him. She decided the photographer had been a hack to only catch the glint in his eyes. The man’s allure drew her in despite his casual khaki work pants, faded blue zippered sweatshirt and black ivy cap. In her heels, she was nearly eye level with him, and the intensity in his dark chocolate gaze muddled her thoughts.

  “Pardon me—”

  She pushed the door closed on his greeting and he stopped her, wedging his booted foot into the space. “You’re not welcome here.” She gritted her teeth and put all her weight into the effort of squishing his foot.

  “Steel-toed,” he said calmly. “Can’t even feel it. I just want to talk.”

  “Not tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Pardon my skepticism. You haven’t returned any of my calls or emails. Can I have five minutes?”

  “No.” She shoved at the door again. “I’m on my way out.”

  “With this guy?”

  He stuck a cell phone through the space and showed her a picture of her date at the elevator downstairs.

  “What did you do?”

  “Bought myself five minutes.”

  The stunt only confirmed that he was willing to fight dirty. “You have no right to be here.” She leaned into the door again, despite the lack of progress. “How did you find me?” She had an unlisted number and the apartment was rented under the network’s corporate account.

  “It’s what I do,” he replied. “Look, I’ve heard someone is trying to cause trouble for me and some friends. Can you just confirm if you’re working up a story on me and the men I served with in Iraq?”

  Working up a story? Her temper caught like a match to paper. They dealt with facts, not fiction. “I’m a producer, not a reporter,” she replied with the last thread of professionalism.

  “Not buying the obtuse routine, red.”

  Red, ha. As if he was the first to try and get away with that nickname. She was far more than the hair and freckles, and many a man had learned that the hard way. “I’ll be smarter tomorrow. At the office,” she added, clipping each syllable.

  He leaned into the door, making it clear he could force his way in at any moment. “Tell me who told you to look into my team.”

  “Never,” she vowed. “That’s Journalism 101, Mr. Lawton. I will not reveal a source.”

  “You’re a producer, not a reporter.”

  “Still applies.”

  The elevator at the end of the hall chimed an arrival on her floor. “Guess your time’s up, Mr. Lawton.”

  His boot was gone and without it the door snapped shut before she finished the sentence. She opened it again to find the hallway empty except for her date, striding forward with an eager smile.

  Clutching her evening bag, Becca did her best to match his pleasant expression while she willed the heat of temper to fade from her cheeks. Her date chattered aimlessly as she locked her door and they walked down the hall. She slid her hand into his at the elevator, knowing Lawton had to be close. Telling herself it wasn’t misplaced paranoia didn’t change the sensation that the man was watching her. He knew where she lived and she didn’t trust him not to try something else.

  She clung to the fact that soon she’d be out of his view and his reach. No sane man would dare make a move while she was with her date and surrounded by people at the awards gala. And afterward? The idea of coming home alone sent a little shiver of trepidation down her spine.

  Well, she’d cross that bridge when she reached it. For now, she would focus on her personal life. Beaming a high-wattage smile at her date, she set out to enjoy the evening.

  * * *

  OH, THAT SMILE on her face irked Parker. He hadn’t found anything during his recon of Rebecca Wallace, award-winning producer, that indicated a romantic attachment worthy of that heart-stopping dress and killer heels.

  He waited until they were gone to move out of the alcove near the stairwell. He was an idiot for confronting her at her door. But he was getting desperate. The bizarre blackmail note had arrived yesterday, claiming media outlets had been notified last week, and granting him five days to make restitution for the gold he and his team stole from an Iraqi family or the men listed at the bottom of the single page would be killed one by one.

  Theo Manning, Jeff Bruce, Franklin Toomey, Matt Donaldson and Ray Peters were more than soldiers. They were friends. The six of them shared a bond forged on several challenging assignments during Parker’s last deployment. Together they’d handled a sensitive intel-gathering mission near the Iranian border. While it might have been easy to learn they’d all served in Iraq, it shouldn’t have been as easy to connect them as part of the same team on that operation.

  While they’d been deployed nearby and, through the course of the mission, had contact with the family listed as the victim, Parker and his team were innocent. None of them were thieves and he in particular had no cause to steal anything, not even back then.

  He’d been ready to write off the note as a sick joke until a reporter called the office, asking for his opinion on soldiers successfully returning to civilian life. His assistant handled those comments on his behalf, as she usually did. While he was debating how to investigate the origin of the blackmail note, he’d received a call on his personal line about his opinion on locally grown terrorists. The timing was too close to be a coincidence. Someone had started snooping, and Parker needed to know who’d set them on this wild-goose chase.

  Working the situation as he might do for a client, Parker scrambled to carefully reconnect with the men named in the blackmail note. He’d debated the wisdom of warning them about the note and the possibility of reporters and instead had suggested a guys’ weekend. He hadn’t seen the point in dredging up uncomfortable memories or causing worry over something that probably wouldn’t amount to anything.

  Then Theo had called back, saying he’d agreed to meet with Bill Gatlin, anchor reporter for one of the top special report shows. It was the red flag Parker couldn’t ignore. He’d spent the day hustling up information on Gatlin, Wallace and the network. If other shows had the blackmailer’s tip, it seemed Wallace’s team had been the first to bite. And Theo’s name had been the first on the list.

  Parker had been given five days—four now—to return gold valued at over a million dollars. No exchange details or contact information had been provided, only an assurance that Parker would know where to bring either the gold or the equivalent in US currency when it was time. Logic and history said making the payoff was a tactical error, yet Parker planned to do whatever was necessary to keep those men alive.

  Having been stonewalled by Wallace’s gatekeepers at the network, he’d given up trying the polite approach. While he appreciated that they hadn’t run the story on speculation and zero evidence, he didn’t have time to play ethics games. He needed the name of the source or some clue he could follow so he could peel back the layers of anonymity and handle the jerk tossing around these outrageous, damaging allegations.

  Parker lingered in the hallway, recalling his cursory searches of Rebecca Wallace and her reporter Bill Gatlin. At first glance, they were both workaholics and married to their jobs. He didn’t know where the reporter was tonight, but he knew where Wallace was not.

  He’d had his boot in her doorway long enough to learn he
r apartment security amounted to two dead bolts and a chain. Far easier for him to bypass the locks here than get past the systems protecting her office at the network building. He strolled up to her door, pulled his lock-picking kit from the thigh pocket of his work pants and was inside in less than a minute.

  A quick survey of the space told him she was tidy, she spent little time here or she had an excellent cleaning service. He roamed around, appreciating the decor and furnishings. She went for classy and practical, not overdone or overpriced. As a business owner and a building owner, he knew the going rate for a two-bedroom apartment in this area and decided producing for a popular network show must pay well.

  The master bedroom felt more lived-in. Though the bed was neatly made and the closet well organized, the various notes she’d left for herself here and there, along with the overflowing laundry hamper, gave him a sense of her as a more accessible person. He couldn’t blame her for coming off as a prim snob during their tussle at the door.

  The second bedroom she clearly used as a home office and guest room. He searched the desk, found an invitation to a gala that explained the little black dress, but no sign of the lead he needed. If she’d ever brought information on the bogus theft home, it wasn’t here now. Leaving the room as he’d found it, he checked the more common and uncommon places people stashed important information. Nothing. She didn’t even have a briefcase or a laptop here tonight.

  On a sigh, he mentally adjusted his evening plans, knowing the next stop would need to be her office at the network. With his hands fisted in his jacket pockets, he was aimed for the front door when another idea struck. Returning to her bedroom, he found a tablet as well as an e-reader. “Yes!” he cheered softly when he opened the tablet and found her email applications were still open.

  He searched through her inbox and the main folders, grumbling when he found all of his email messages moved to the trash folder. Were the days of professional courtesy gone? At least his assistant had handled the initial inquiry professionally while he was still waiting for Wallace to return his calls.

  Continuing his search, he learned how she organized her files. He couldn’t find a way to access any progress they were making on the story about him and his team, but he could tell it had nothing to do with soldiers returning to civilian life.

  Sitting on the blue suede bench at the end of her bed, he searched through her email folders until he found an email from the previous week with Soldiers Steal Gold in the subject line. Bingo. The email was written in a similar tone to the blackmail note Parker received. While the author of the email didn’t threaten anyone on the show, the names of those involved were the same, and listed in the same order as the note he had tucked into his wallet.

  The allegations in the email were ghastly, making Parker’s skin crawl. His team had worked their mission and followed orders. The implications—with no evidence to back them up—that he and the others were corrupt, brutal thieves infuriated him. The last few lines and the unique closing really caught his attention. The writer, pleading to maintain anonymity, thanked Rebecca and Bill for their kindness and integrity during their visit to the Iraqi village where the theft allegedly occurred. He—Parker was certain the writer was a man—gave the producer’s ego another stroke by claiming Rebecca was the only person who could be trusted to handle this the right way.

  The original email was bad enough, but the instructions she added when she forwarded the email to her reporter hit him like a sucker punch.

  Bill, reach out to the family. Verify their safety and if/when the gold was stolen. If this is from Fadi, why would he insist on anonymity?

  Parker swore. Fadi was a common name. In context with the other details laid out in the email, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that she was referring to the same young man they’d employed as a translator when they were in that area.

  Did Rebecca know who’d sent the tip raising questions and spreading rumors about his team? The way he read and reread the email, she sure suspected the tip on the theft had come from the oldest son of the victimized family. No wonder she’d avoided Parker and refused to give up her source. Hell. He wouldn’t get anywhere with her if she felt some misplaced obligation to cooperate with the person trying to discredit his team.

  Well, he wasn’t leaving empty-handed. He had a better idea of where the tip originated from, which gave him a better starting point than he’d had an hour ago. After his service in Iraq, he had people he could reach out to as well. He set her tablet back to the home screen and wiped off his fingerprints before slipping it back into the bedside drawer.

  After locking her front door, he let himself out of her apartment through the fire escape and headed home to work the new lead. He needed to find the show with their report from that trip to Iraq and start fitting the pieces together. When he went to her office in the morning, he would insist on hearing everything about her trip to Iraq and why she was so eager to believe the worst of him and his team.

  He stalked down the street, needing to walk off the anger simmering in his system. It wouldn’t be smart to call for a car or catch a bus so close to her apartment. From his pocket, his phone rang. Seeing Theo’s name and face on the screen, he picked up immediately.

  “How did things go?” he asked. There was a long pause on the other end of the line and he heard several voices in the background. “Theo?”

  “Mr. Lawton?”

  Parker froze. This wasn’t Theo. “Yes?”

  “My apologies, sir. This is Detective Calvin Baird of the SFPD. I’m calling from Theo Manning’s phone, as we’ve just opened an investigation.”

  A detective’s involvement could mean any number of new problems and most likely the work of a busy blackmailer. “What kind of investigation?” He put his back to the wall of the nearest building and studied the action around him on the street.

  The detective ignored the question. “According to his phone log, you spoke with him recently.”

  “That’s true.” Parker’s stomach clutched and his pulse kicked into fight mode. “Where is Theo? Can I talk to him?”

  “I’m sorry to say it, but he’s dead,” Baird replied.

  No. Parker couldn’t catch his breath. His hand gripped the phone hard and he slid down to land on his backside as the grief stunned him. He was on the phone with a homicide detective. What had happened to the five days the blackmailer had given him?

  “Mr. Lawton?”

  “Yeah.” He swallowed the emotion choking him. “I’m here. What do you know? Where is he?” Was. Theo was gone. Parker cleared his throat. “How did it happen?”

  “Nine-one-one received a call about shots fired about forty minutes ago. By the time the responding officers and paramedics arrived, it was too late. I am sorry for your loss.”

  “Was I the last to call him?”

  “According to his phone log, you were one of two people trying to reach him.”

  “Who was the other?”

  “I’m not ready to comment on that yet,” Baird said. “I just arrived on the scene and we have very little to go on right now. Do you have time to come by the Bayview Police Station tomorrow morning? I should have more details for you by then.”

  Bayview? That hardly narrowed it down. The large district covered the port where Theo worked along with the southeastern part of the city. “Yes, of course.” Parker knew the drill. If he wasn’t a suspect, he was a person of interest. Unfortunately, his alibi was best not confirmed, since it involved his harassing a woman followed by breaking and entering.

  “Thank you—”

  “Hang on a second,” Parker interrupted. “You mentioned gunshots. How did Theo die?”

  “It’s too soon for the coroner’s report,” the detective hedged.

  Parker stood up, pulled himself together and applied the tone he’d once used to lead others in and out of harro
wing conflicts. “He was my CO and a friend. What appears to be the cause of death, in your opinion?”

  “Unofficially, sir, I’d blame the two bullets in the back of his head.”

  Parker’s vision hazed red. Assassination less than twenty-four hours after he’d reached out to Theo. If the blackmailer thought this would motivate him to cooperate, to pay a debt he didn’t owe, he was mistaken.

  “Officers are canvassing the area for witnesses,” Baird continued. “I’m hoping for a better picture of what happened by morning.”

  “No signs of a struggle?”

  “Not at first glance, but we are in an alley.”

  Parker cringed at the image. “Thank you, Detective. I’ll come by your office first thing in the morning.” Tonight he had more work to do. He took another minute after the call ended to say a prayer for Theo. Real grieving required time he didn’t have right now.

  The blackmail note taunted him. Why ransom his team for gold they’d never stolen and then ignore the timeline? Something was off, and he intended to figure it out before anyone else on that list got hurt.

  Chapter Two

  The gala wasn’t living up to Becca’s hopes for the evening. Oh, the glitz and glamour made a visual impact, although her date clearly had an agenda. His conversation revolved around her father’s work, and he hoped one day to work with him on a project. The scenario was familiar territory for Becca, who listened with only half an ear as he droned on. If he could pitch his big idea to her father and add a side trip under her skirt, his life would be complete. He didn’t say that last part in so many words, of course. He let his wandering hands make his point clear.

  She admired the timing and efficiency of the dinner and award presentations, but now, with only dancing, celebrating and mingling on the schedule, her mind kept circling back to Parker Lawton’s shocking appearance at her door.