by Paula Graves
“Maybe they were just screening,” Rick said drily.
Jesse gave him a black look. “I checked. General Marsh is in Iraq for the next couple of weeks. I got through to Evie.”
Evan glanced at Megan, not following the undertones of the conversation.
“Rita’s Jesse’s ex-fiancée. Evie’s her little sister. Bad ending to a doomed love affair,” she summed up beneath her breath. Apparently not quietly enough if Jesse’s dark glare was anything to go by.
“What about General Ross?” J.D. asked.
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Jesse answered. “General Ross died in a one car crash just three months ago. The police seem to have some questions about the mechanics of the crash, so they haven’t entirely closed the case.”
“So, maybe someone made him crash?” Megan guessed.
“That’s what I’d like to find out,” Jesse admitted. “Gantry seems to think the three generals may have been onto whatever conspiracy Barton Reid was part of. That would certainly put them on someone’s hit list.”
“Why wouldn’t they just come clean about their suspicions, then?” Megan asked. “Get it out in the open?”
“If the conspiracy went high enough, they’d have to play it very carefully,” Luke answered.
“I made some calls. It looks like Ross’s widow lives on a private island down in the Gulf, not far from Terrebonne,” Jesse said. “A place called Nightshade Island. She needs help archiving her husband’s collections and correspondence, so I called this morning and talked her into letting Cooper Security handle the job.”
“Great,” Megan said. “Who’re you going to send?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Jesse said. He smiled at her. “But enough of this mess. It’s your wedding day. Dad’s looking for his dance.”
Megan sighed and looked up at Evan. “Remember what I told you a minute ago?”
He did, vividly. “Yep.”
She shot him a saucy grin. “Hold that thought.”
* * *
JESSE COOPER SPOTTED an uninvited guest lurking near the punch bowl. Glancing around the room to see if anyone else had noticed the stranger, he edged his way across the room.
“Rick knows what you look like,” he told his silent partner, Maddox Heller, who was sipping a cup of peach punch and watching the mass of revelers on the dance floor with a bemused smile on his face.
“Rick’s too busy looking down his wife’s dress to notice me,” Heller drawled. He held up his cup. “Good punch.”
“I assume you must need something to risk coming here.”
Heller met Jesse’s gaze, his smoky blue eyes sharp. “Did you decide what to do about the Nightshade Island job?”
“You’re right about Gideon Stone. I asked around—he’s smart and he’s very protective of the Ross family.”
“Their son died saving him. A marine doesn’t forget that.”
“I know. And he’d spot a trained operative a mile away.”
Heller took another sip of punch. “So, who’d you choose?”
Jesse looked across the dance floor, where his youngest sister was dancing with his cousin’s teenaged son. “The only Cooper who doesn’t look like she could hurt a fly.”
Heller followed his gaze. His brows quirked with surprise. “You sure?”
Anything but, Jesse thought. But he had to get someone inside the compound on Nightshade Island to find out what kind of secrets the three generals might have uncovered.
Shannon was the best choice. The only choice.
He just hoped he wasn’t about to send her into a mess she wasn’t equipped to handle.
* * * * *
Look for more books in Paula Graves’s COOPER SECURITY miniseries later in 2012, wherever Harlequin Intrigue books are sold!
ISBN: 9781459227606
Copyright © 2012 by Paula Graves
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