by Paula Graves
To think they’d been worried about that young cop overhearing them… .
“Are the letters safe?” Wade asked.
“Yeah, they’re in the small documents safe. And I’ve scanned them to the computer and uploaded to our secure web archive, as well. Plus, there’s a copy on a flash drive in my purse.” She patted the small black bag slung over her shoulder.
“Good thinking,” Jesse said approvingly.
Megan shot him a wry look. “About time you realized I’m capable of it.”
“You’re not going to guilt me for worrying about you,” Jesse shot back. “I haven’t called the police yet. You want them in on this?”
“Well, that depends on whether or not the others manage to catch up with the intruders,” Megan said drily.
As it turned out, the black-clad intruders had enough of a head start to evade their pursuers until they met up with a getaway vehicle parked on Ridge View Road about a quarter mile away. Rick Cooper met them downstairs with the bad news.
“They’ve learned from our previous skirmishes,” he said with a grimace. “They can’t beat us on our own playing field, so they’ve learned to build escape plans.”
“I need people to stay here with me to guard the office until our security system techs can do the repairs,” Jesse said. He addressed his cousins directly. “Can any of y’all stay, too? I don’t want us to be outnumbered if any of these bastards decide to come back.”
“I’m in,” one of them drawled. Evan searched his mind for the name. J.D. The former navy man. Three other Coopers agreed—the twins and the one named Luke.
“I have to be at work early in the morning, so I’m going to have to beg off,” one of the men said with regret. He was a big guy—a deputy, if Evan remembered correctly. “Sure you don’t want to involve Maybridge PD? They’re a good department.”
“A small-town force isn’t equipped to take on a private army, Aaron. You know that. We’d be putting them in unnecessary danger.” Jesse turned to Megan. “You sure the two of you want to go back to your place alone?”
She exchanged looks with Evan, as if asking his opinion. He gave a quick nod. If she was right about a listening device at her place, he doubted the former MacLear operatives would be in a hurry to return there. The bug would do the work for them.
“I’ll need a bug detector,” Megan said.
“I’ll get you outfitted,” Wade said. Evan tried not to wince as he watched the man limp down the hall.
“Don’t let him see your pity,” Megan warned quietly.
Evan met her gaze. “No pity here. I was just thinking he must be one hell of a tough old leatherneck to be able to walk at all after taking a bullet to the kneecap.”
Her eyes glimmered with pride. “He is.”
Wade returned with an electronic device about the size of a cell phone. “Want my suggestion? Don’t try to remove the bugs if you find them. Just leave them in place and don’t say anything you don’t want them to hear. We may be able to use the bugs to lure them into a trap if we play it right.”
“Good idea,” Evan said.
Megan grimaced. “I don’t want to stay there with someone listening to me all the time. Maybe I’ll come back and stand guard with the rest of you, at least for tonight.”
“Let’s find out whether or not there are even bugs there,” Evan suggested, flattening his hand on her back and nudging her toward the door. She slanted a quick look at him, her gray eyes smoldering. Heat flooded through him, and he had to look away to keep from stumbling over his own feet.
Outside, he found the discarded bag of dinner on the ground near the boxwood hedge. He picked it up, finding the foil-wrapped sandwiches were still hot. “Probably still okay to eat, if you’re hungry,” he said with a grin.
“If we don’t find any bugs at my place, I’ll make some tea and we’ll have a proper dinner.” Her smile looked a little pinched around the edges.
But they didn’t even get inside Megan’s house before the device in her hand lit up, indicating the presence of a listening device somewhere within a twenty-five-yard radius.
Megan stopped on the porch and looked up at Evan, her expression sharp with anger. “Sons of bitches,” she whispered.
Then her chin went up, her back straightened, and she unlocked her front door and went inside, like a Christian heading into the arena to face a hungry lion.
Evan squared his own shoulders and followed her inside.
* * *
“WE FOUND FIVE DEVICES,” Megan told the others when she and Evan returned to the Cooper Security building about an hour later. “They weren’t taking any chances.”
One of the bugs had been in Megan’s kitchen, which explained how the black-clad intruders had known to look for the letters at Cooper Security.
“Why do they think the letters are so important?” Isabel’s husband, Ben, asked.
“Because I think they’re important,” Evan answered.
“Who did you tell about your trip here?” Jesse asked.
“A couple of my former bosses at the Pentagon,” he answered slowly, looking a little ill. “People I thought I could trust.”
“You can’t know they betrayed you on purpose,” Isabel said. “Where did you tell them about it?”
“At Major Kinsley’s office.”
“Which could also be bugged,” Megan said, picking up on her sister’s point. “Did you specifically mention wanting to look at the letters Vince sent to me?”
“I did. Vince spent a lot of his downtime writing to you. I figured if he suspected anything, he might have told you something about it.”
“Don’t you think if he’d even hinted someone was gunning for him, Megan would have made a stink about it by now?” Wade asked, eyeing Evan with a hint of anger, as if he’d just accused Megan of obstructing justice.
“He might have said something Megan wouldn’t have known was a clue.”
“But you would?” Wade pressed.
“Maybe.” Evan’s jaw squared. “I think if we can figure out what happened to the package Vince wrote you about, we’ll be a step ahead.”
“What if it’s nothing but a pretty scarf he picked up at one of the bazaars in Tablis?” Megan countered, shaking her head. “I think if Vince knew he was in danger from someone at MacLear, he’d have told me outright, if only to make sure I could warn Rick about it.”
“We should at least try to find it,” Evan argued.
“You’re right—we should. I just don’t think we should get our hopes up that it’s going to answer all our questions.”
Evan sighed. “I’ll be happy if it answers one or two.”
“Do you even know where to look?” Jesse asked.
“I have an idea where to start.” Megan had been pondering that question on the drive back to the office from her home. “If Vince got a package ready to send home, wouldn’t someone in his unit know about it? I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you could hide, and Vince didn’t send a lot of packages home. He didn’t like to deal with the rigmarole of shipping stuff from a war zone.”
“Yeah, people in his unit would know about it,” Jesse agreed. “You thinking about trying to track some of them down?”
She knew exactly where to start. “I need to drive over to Fort Benning and see what happened to the guys in his unit.”
Chapter Seven
Megan’s family stared at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“By yourself?” Jesse asked, his expression fierce.
She tried not to bristle, as it was a reasonable question, but Jesse’s tone made her feel like a twelve-year-old. “I thought Pike might want to go with me.”
Evan met the challenge in her gaze with wariness. “I’m not a favorite with that unit.”
“We’ll make it work.” She ignored the skeptical look on her brothers’ faces and turned to Isabel. “Can you get Patton out of the vet’s office tomorrow? Have them put the charge on the credit card they have on file. I’ll call from
the road to let them know it’s okay.”
“Sure,” Isabel agreed. “He can stay in the backyard and chase the rabbits that have been eating our lettuce plants.”
“He might dig them up himself,” Megan warned. She turned to Evan. “Come on. I’ll follow you back to the cabin and help you pack your stuff.”
Jesse followed them into the stairwell. “You’re about to ask questions that may stir up a hornet’s nest. You really sure you two want to do this?”
“Someone’s trying damned hard to keep us from asking questions,” Megan answered firmly, though her insides trembled at the thought of what she and Evan might be stepping into.
“I can go alone,” Evan suggested.
Megan scowled at the look of approval in her brother’s eyes. “You said yourself you’re hardly a favorite with Vince’s unit. You’re not going to get the answers I will.”
She saw her brother and Evan exchange a long look that made her want to punch them both.
“I’m not fragile and I’m not stupid. I know the dangers. I’ll do what I can to keep them from coming to fruition. Okay? Do I need to apply for permission in writing?”
“She can do this,” Evan said to Jesse, earning her brother’s frown.
“Can and should are two different things.”
“Come on, Pike,” Megan said firmly. She started down the stairs, leaving Evan to catch up.
“Stay in touch!” Jesse called down behind them.
“Will do,” Evan answered for her, coming level with her as they reached the ground floor. He walked with her as far as her little blue Jeep Wrangler. “Are you sure about this? Here, you’re surrounded by your family for backup—”
“And they’ll back me up out there, too, if I call them,” she argued, even though part of her felt as if she were cutting some invisible cord tethering her to earth. Since Vince’s death, and her full time return to the Cooper fold, she’d become used to having her family around for comfort and support. “You don’t have to go with me if you don’t want to.”
“No way are you leaving me out of this.” His jaw squared stubbornly, the pale blue moonlight caressing the angles and planes of his handsome face. To her consternation, her fingers itched to follow those same lines.
“Okay.” Her voice came out hoarse and unsteady. “Can I bunk at the cabin?”
His eyes widened. “Tonight?”
“If we leave at first light, we can be at Fort Benning by midmorning. We may even be able to get the information we want and be back here before midnight. It’ll save time if I’m already at the cabin.”
He still looked troubled.
“Not an early riser?” she prodded.
He made a face. “I kept combat hours for three years. I think I can manage getting up before dawn.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
He looked at her, his expression thoughtful. “If you don’t have a problem with it, I sure don’t.” He stepped back to let her open her car door.
I don’t have a problem with it, she assured herself, even though her mind was already flashing forward to where she was going to bunk down and how hard it would be to drift off to sleep while her mind kept replaying the way moonlight had etched Evan’s face into a thing of rare beauty.
She made herself think of Vince on the drive to the cabin, visualizing the craggy masculinity of his features and the raw male power of his body pressed against hers. As a familiar ache of longing began to bloom in the center of her chest, she nursed the sensation, let it grow until she was nearly in tears by the time she pulled up in the parking area outside the Gossamer Mountain cabin.
Evan’s rental car pulled up behind her vehicle. He joined her behind the Jeep. “I didn’t see anyone following you.”
She cleared the ache from her throat. “But did anyone follow you?”
“I don’t think so. But let’s bring everything inside the house, just in case. I don’t want anyone rifling through our things without our knowing about it.” He patted the Wrangler’s back window. “Keys?”
She handed him the keys and he retrieved her duffel. “You should pack a bag for tomorrow, in case we have to stay somewhere overnight,” she said as they climbed the cabin steps.
He unlocked the front door of the cabin, but as Megan started to push through, he caught her arm. “Let’s be sure we don’t have any visitors.”
Stupid of her not to think of that possibility herself. She nodded, easing her Ruger from the holster. “Ready?” she asked softly.
He wiggled the butt of the P32 at her and nodded.
They went in quietly, checking room by room until they were satisfied that Evan hadn’t received any unexpected visitors during the time he was gone. The bug-detector showed no sign of listening devices, either. While he locked up behind them, Megan took her things into the smaller of the cabin’s two bedrooms. It had bunk beds instead of the larger queen-sized bed in Evan’s room, but it was a place to sleep and had its own small bathroom. She’d slept in worse places.
“Like where?” Evan asked later after she assured him over a dinner of reheated barbecue sandwiches that the room was a luxury spa compared to some of the places she’d stayed.
“When I was working for Homeland Security, they sent us to Afghanistan for training. I slept on a dirt floor in a little village near the Tajikistan border. I don’t think I’ve ever been that cold in my life.”
“You worked at Homeland Security?” Evan looked surprised.
“That wasn’t in your research on my family?”
He shook his head. “I guess maybe Homeland Security is like Fight Club. First rule of Homeland Security is—”
“You don’t talk about Homeland Security,” she finished in tandem with him. “My job wasn’t undercover or anything. I was an analyst. Mostly I went through reams and reams of intel, trying to piece together any obvious links. The Afghanistan trip was an anomaly, believe me.”
“How long did you work for Homeland Security?”
“I started not too long before I married Vince—right out of college. I lived in D.C. for a year, then when I married Vince, they reassigned me to work as a liaison with the Alabama Department of Homeland Security, since Vince was stationed at Fort Benning about two hours away from the office in Montgomery.” She grimaced at the memory. “A lot of the time, I’d stay at a motel near my office during the week and return home to the base on weekends.”
“That had to be rough on a new marriage.”
“We made it work. Vince was deployed a lot of the time, so it wasn’t like it mattered where I was staying.”
Evan shook his head. “Don’t know how you did it. These days, marriages end in divorce for no reason at all—”
“We loved each other,” she said. “We wanted to be together, so we made it work.”
He crumpled the foil wrapper of his sandwich into a tight ball. “That simple, huh?”
“I never said it was simple.” She shot him a wry smile.
“We should probably get some shut-eye,” he suggested, gathering the remains of their dinner.
“Thank you.”
He looked up at her, his brow furrowed. “For what?”
“For dinner. And for coming with me.”
“This investigation was mine to begin with. Thank you for joining it.” His voice softened, and he took a step closer to her. “I know it’s making you relive a lot of memories that give you pain. I’m sorry for that.”
“If someone murdered my husband, he has to pay,” she said simply, telling herself the fire licking at her belly had everything to do with outrage and nothing to do with how close Evan was standing, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his big, rangy body.
She escaped to the small bedroom for a quick shower to save them time in the morning. And if the water was a little cooler than she normally liked, that was purely a coincidence.
* * *
ONCE THEY REACHED HIGHWAY 231, heading southeast toward the Georgia state line, the
drive to Columbus was easier than Evan had assumed—a good thing, since sleep had been harder to come by than he’d expected after the long, eventful day before.
Megan Randall’s smoky gray eyes and fiery soul had chased him through his dreams, as tantalizing as a mythical siren. He gave up on pretending he didn’t find her exciting and attractive, since he wasn’t fooling anyone, especially not himself. It wasn’t as if there was anything he could do about it anyway. She was about the worst prospect for a no-strings fling he could think of, and no-strings was all he could manage these days.
She sat with her bare feet propped up on the dashboard of the rented Taurus, her attention focused on the tablet computer resting against her bare knees. He’d been alarmed when she’d emerged from her bedroom early that morning wearing a pair of hiking shorts that hit her mid-thigh—modest by most standards but nothing but temptation for Evan. Her sleeveless cotton T-shirt also covered more than it bared, but the cut skimmed her curves like a caress, reminding Evan that for all her wiry strength, she was still a woman blessed by nature with tantalizing curves and valleys that tempted a man to explore.
“The names that keep coming up again and again in his letters are Delgado, Raines and Gates,” Megan said aloud, not looking up from the tablet.
Rafe Delgado, Tyrone Raines and Donald Gates, Evan thought, remembering those three with great clarity, despite having been stateside for over three years. He’d spent his days among those men, trying to win their trust and respect. Sometimes it had worked. Sometimes it hadn’t.
He’d gotten along well enough with Raines. Delgado hadn’t warmed up at all, and Gates had seemed entirely distrustful. “How do we know any of them are still around Fort Benning after all this time?” he asked.
“We don’t,” she admitted. “I should have called ahead.”
“You can call now,” he said, glancing at the dashboard clock. It was eight-forty-five. The personnel office should have been open long before now.
To his surprise, she gave him a quick look full of apprehension. He’d begun to see her as such a fierce, fearless warrior of a woman that he’d almost forgotten how painful this endeavor must surely be for her, reconnecting with the people she’d once considered friends, even family. The army engendered more than just a “band of brothers” philosophy among the soldiers. The soldiers’ families, as well, formed cohesive bonds of shared sacrifice and constant awareness of how fragile life really was.
