Scorched

by Laura Griffin

  He shrugged. “The other ones look occupied.”

  She shook her head as she took out her key card. At least she didn’t have to go raise hell at the front desk because they’d given out her room number. But still, she didn’t like him sneaking up on her in a parking lot late at night. What was he doing here? Either he was hitting on her or he had information related to the case. She suspected he was hitting on her.

  Elizabeth rested her hand on her holster as she stepped inside and flipped on the light. The room hadn’t improved since this morning. It smelled of mildew and cigarette smoke. She gazed at the faded orange bedspread and sighed.

  “Nice digs.”

  She turned around, and he handed over the file folders. He’d put her computer bag on the floor just inside the door. Maybe he sensed her uneasiness or maybe he simply had manners, but he hadn’t entered her room without permission. He stood on the threshold, his shoulder propped against the door frame.

  Where did they get these guys, Beefcakes R Us? At six-four, he was almost a foot taller than she was. Practically every SEAL Elizabeth had seen today had been almost as huge. She’d watched them doing their morning workouts as she’d waited for Lieutenant Brewer. All of the men she’d seen were impressive, but particularly the SEALs. They seemed to relish pain. And they were distinguishable from the others by their longer-than-regulation-length hair and—in some cases—their beards, which helped them to blend in in countries where American servicemen might not be welcome.

  Derek Vaughn was eyeing her now with a look she couldn’t quite read. Elizabeth stacked her files on the table. She tucked her hands into her pockets and saw his gaze drift to the sidearm at her hip.

  Some men had a thing for women with guns.

  “What can I do for you?” she repeated.

  “Let me take you to dinner.”

  She stared at him.

  “You’re ticked off about earlier. Let me make it up to you.”

  She watched him, annoyed now. She was ticked off about earlier. She was embarrassed, too. But she was also starving and it was nearly midnight. As much as she hated to admit it, she knew she’d be safer going on a quest for food with a jacked-up Navy SEAL beside her than she would by herself. Yes, she was armed, but as a young blonde, she tended to attract attention.

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked.

  “Ah, you know. Thought I’d show you some of the culinary adventures San Diego has to offer. Maybe a little international cuisine.”

  “You’re talking about the IHOP across the street.”

  “Good coffee.” He nodded at her files. “Looks like you plan to be up late. And they’re open, too, which is always a plus.”

  Ten minutes later, Elizabeth found herself sharing a vinyl booth with a ridiculously attractive man whose mission tonight was probably to separate her from her tailored gray pantsuit.

  She distracted herself by checking out the menu. After a waitress took their orders and filled their coffee mugs, Elizabeth folded her hands on the table in front of her.

  He was grinning at her.

  “What?”

  “Big appetite for a little woman.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Good for you.” He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “So, Liz—can I call you Liz?”

  “It’s Elizabeth.”

  “Yeah, but what do your friends call you? Liz? Beth? Betty?”

  “Betty?”

  “No one goes by Elizabeth. Too much of a mouthful.” Derek smiled, and something in his look made her stomach flutter. He had light brown eyes with gold flecks in them. Besides his build, he didn’t look a thing like Gage Brewer. How had she confused them?

  She took a deep breath. “My mother is Beth. I go by Elizabeth. Less confusing.”

  “All right.” He leaned back and watched her. “Elizabeth, how’s the investigation going?”

  “It’d be going a lot better if we knew where Lieutenant Brewer was.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “Do you care to tell me?”

  His eyebrows arched. “Is there a warrant out for him?”

  “No.”

  “Then I can’t tell you where he is.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t because I don’t know. Won’t because even if I did know, he’s my best friend.”

  She tamped down her irritation.

  “What do you want with him, anyway? You just talked to him this morning.”

  She felt almost sure he knew the answers to all the questions he was asking. “We need to ask him some more questions. And we need to talk to his girlfriend, Kelsey Quinn.”

  “Ex-girlfriend.”

  “Whatever. She’s been missing since Monday evening, the night Blake Reid was murdered.” Elizabeth watched closely, to see if any of this seemed to come as a surprise. As she’d suspected, he seemed well aware of the situation.

  Just as he was probably well aware of Gage Brewer’s current location. Elizabeth tried a new tactic.

  “So, what do you know about her?” She took a sip of coffee.

  “About Kelsey? I know she’s a nice lady. It’s not every woman who spends her summer vacation in some armpit jungle digging up bones.”

  Elizabeth listened, intrigued by the admiration she heard in his voice.

  “She’s got an impressive career,” he continued. “Top of her field. She’s smart, too—lot of degrees under her belt. But I hope to hell Gage catches up with her before whoever killed Reid does.”

  “And what if Gage killed Reid?”

  He smiled.

  “What? It’s an avenue we’re currently investigating.”

  “Why, because Reid was killed with a KA-BAR knife? Because someone broke his neck?”

  She gaped at him. “How—”

  “You’re not the only one who knows a few folks at the Bureau.” He winked at her. “Relax, it’s not like it’s common knowledge or anything. I just happen to have a friend who’s been following the case.”

  From the way he said “friend,” Elizabeth figured it was a woman. Probably some San Diego field agent he’d taken out for pancakes a time or two.

  Elizabeth took another sip of coffee and tried to appear casual. “So. Do you know why Kelsey broke up with him?”

  Derek just looked at her, and she hoped he wasn’t going to clam up.

  “Maybe he was a bit too controlling? Or maybe he had a violent streak?”

  “You’re working the jealous-ex angle,” he stated. “Only problem is you got your facts mixed up. Gage dumped her.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know the details,” he said, but Elizabeth could read his face and the message there was plain: Even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you.

  She was an outsider here. He was having coffee with her and answering her questions, sure. But she now knew for certain that his motive wasn’t to help the investigation. He was fishing for information to help his friend.

  “I know she gave him an ultimatum,” he added, probably sensing her annoyance. “She told him it was her or the teams.”

  Elizabeth stared at him. Kelsey Quinn gave an ultimatum to a Navy SEAL? The move was either stupid or desperate. And nothing she’d learned about Kelsey pointed to stupid.

  “An ultimatum seems a little extreme,” Elizabeth said. “Why do you think she did that?”

  Derek smiled and shook his head. “You got me. Why do women do anything?”

  Two large plates arrived, overflowing with eggs and sausage, followed by two smaller plates stacked with pancakes. Elizabeth forgot the investigation for a moment as the scent of food wafted up from the table.

  “So, Elizabeth, I know you suits think us military guys are dumber than a box of rocks.” He shook hot sauce over his eggs, and she noticed his drawl had become more pronounced. “But see, Gage is a SEAL. Means he’s smarter than the average bear.”

  “Your point is?”

  “Your theory doesn’t add up. It
’s too easy. Why would Gage implicate himself? And why would he need to kill the guy twice?” He carved a sausage in half and took a bite.

  He had a good point. It was one she’d spent considerable time thinking about. Even with the evidence pointing to a perpetrator trained in hand-to-hand combat, and even with the combat knife and the hole in Brewer’s timeline, Elizabeth didn’t actually believe he’d murdered his ex-girlfriend’s lover. And if it was true Brewer had been the one to end the relationship, then she really didn’t believe it.

  Plus there was this morning. Elizabeth had seen the look on the man’s face when he found out Kelsey was missing. If he could manufacture that reaction, he was an amazing actor.

  Somehow Kelsey was the key. Elizabeth believed that and so did Gordon, which was why he’d ordered an entire team of agents to spend the day trying to track her down.

  She recalled Gordon’s reaction when she’d phoned in the news that she’d lost their suspect. Silence. That was it. And an excruciating pause that ended with her pathetic offer to come into the office and help the rest of the team.

  It had been one of the low points of her short career.

  Derek was watching her now over the rim of his coffee mug. “So come on, ask me.”

  “Ask you what?”

  “How we pulled the old switcheroo.” His mouth twitched at the corner, and she could tell he was laughing at her.

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t care less.”

  “Sure you could. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t they teach you that at Quantico?”

  She looked at him, irritated because he was right. Fine—she could play along.

  “You were at the bus depot.”

  “Nope.” He took a big bite of pancakes. “Damn, these are good.”

  Elizabeth pursed her lips.

  “You were on the bus?”

  “Honey, you’re way off. Think earlier.”

  She gritted her teeth. It simply wasn’t possible that she’d lost him before the bus depot.

  “You weren’t in the gift shop,” she said. “I saw Brewer exit the store and—”

  “—and cozy up to that drill team?”

  She looked at him.

  “Cute girls. All the way out from Nashville. They’re performing in the parade tomorrow, by the way.”

  He’d been in the crowd somewhere. Surrounded by young women. Waiting for Gage Brewer to take his place.

  How could they have planned that ahead of time? Or had they made the plan on the fly after spying the opportunity?

  “So, what’d you stop for?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “In the gift shop. You ducked in for something.”

  She took a deep breath. “M&M’s. I was trying to let him shake me. I thought if he believed he’d lost me, he’d let his guard down and the other agent could follow him more easily.”

  Derek shook his head. “See now, that was a tactical mistake. Gage spotted your buddy way back at his apartment. You underestimated him. Another tactical mistake? Stopping for snacks in the middle of an op. Gotta keep your eye on the ball.”

  Elizabeth felt her stomach tense. She was getting defensive. But she needed to look past that and get this man’s information. She no longer had any doubt that he knew where his friend was.

  “Explain something to me,” she said. “If Gage and Kelsey’s relationship was over, if he dumped her, as you say, why would he feel obligated to go looking for her?”

  Derek sighed. “You really have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you?”

  “I guess I don’t.” She tipped her head to the side. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Gage and I were swim buddies during BUD/S training. You know what that is?”

  “The SEAL training course. I’ve read about it.”

  “During BUD/S, you don’t go anywhere without your swim buddy. The ocean, the pool, the chow hall. Even when you go to the head, your swim buddy goes with you. You never leave your swim buddy. Ever. It’s a serious offense, and you can get thrown out right there on the spot. It may sound silly to you, but it goes back to the age-old SEAL ethos that you don’t ever leave a man behind, dead or alive. That’s ironclad. You take care of your teammates. Your team is everything.”

  He held her gaze, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but ease closer.

  “So, we were in Hell Week—the hardest part of BUD/S. Guys had been dropping like flies. We were down to forty-three men from our original hundred and twelve. The guys that were left—they were pretty much hard-core, and every last one of us was hating life.” He shook his head. “It was relentless. For days we’d been doing obstacle courses, surf drills, rock portage—where you have to dock this inflatable boat without getting your brains bashed out on these rocks. We’d been doing beach runs, night swims, log PT, and every damn thing we did, we were in boots and long pants and T-shirts, and we had to be wet and sandy. All the time. We froze our asses off.”

  “Sounds brutal,” she said. Brutal? It made the FBI Academy sound like a health spa.

  “Yeah, but there was a purpose to it. It’s designed to make you reassess your commitment. Do you really have what it takes? And it’s not always the biggest guys who end up being the toughest. A lot of it boils down to mental stamina—which is where Gage really has something on the rest of us.” Another sip of coffee. “Anyway, all of it was straight up hell, but the worst was the sleep deprivation. You’re going on fifty hours with no sleep—your mind starts to play tricks on you. So, it was the middle of the night, ’bout four days in, and we were doing log PT.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You get with your team—which by that point was only five guys, because so many had rung out—that’s when you ring this bell announcing you quit. Your log is like a telephone pole, and first thing they tell you to do is get it wet and sandy, because God knows it’s not heavy enough on its own. Next, you have to hold it up—arms straight—while you do sprints, squats, whatever they tell you. They tried to divide the teams up by height, but Gage and me being six-four—you can picture where the lion’s share of the weight came down. And we’d been doing this for hours.” He shook his head. “Our arms were on fire. Our legs. Our joints. I was delirious—didn’t know my own name. At one point—and I don’t even recall it, really—but I dropped to the ground. I remember lying there, facedown in the sand, and thinking, ‘They finally did it. They finally killed me.’ And I was so relieved, I wanted to cry.”

  Elizabeth tried to picture this huge man weeping in the sand, and she couldn’t.

  “Next thing I know, someone’s hauling me to my feet. It’s Gage. I could barely talk, but I remember telling him I was done. He’s just as tired as I am, but he’s in my face screaming at me, ‘Don’t you quit on me! Damn you, Vaughn! We didn’t get this far so you could ring out!’ I don’t remember if he dragged me or carried me, but next thing I know, I’m back with the team, heaving that log over my head, stumbling forward, one foot at a time, with Gage yelling at me the whole way. One step at a time.” He paused and looked at her. “That’s the key, you know. If you think about the pain to come, you’ll just give up. So you take it hour by hour, minute by minute, and the only thing you have through all of it is your team.”

  Elizabeth watched him talk, certain she’d never felt a bond like that with anyone.

  “So, that’s Gage,” Derek said. “He’s about loyalty. Kelsey’s no longer his girlfriend, but she’s someone in his life and she’s Joe Quinn’s niece besides. If Gage believes she’s in danger, then his mission is to protect her. He will pursue that mission until she is safe or he is dead, because that’s who Gage is.”

  She watched him, starting to see where the arrogance came from. She still didn’t like it, but she was beginning to understand it.

  He nodded at her plate. “Hey, I thought you were hungry.”

  She glanced down at her untouched food just as her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and checked th
e e-mail message that had just come in from Gordon.

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  “What is it?”

  “I have to go.”

  He smiled. “You haven’t even tried your pancakes.”

  “Sorry.” She rummaged through her purse, then left a twenty on the table and scooted out of the booth. “Something’s come up.”

  • • •

  Gage sped down the two-lane highway, checking his mirrors at every curve. Finally satisfied that they hadn’t been followed, he swung onto a dirt road.

  “Where are we going?” Kelsey asked.

  He glanced at her. For the past half hour she’d been silent except for the barely audible sound of her teeth chattering. The woman was petrified.

  Gage passed a sign for a picnic ground and turned into a gravel lot. He pulled up to a split-rail fence and cut the engine.

  “We need to talk.”

  She didn’t answer. Gage watched her profile in the dimness as she stared silently through the windshield.

  “Kelsey, look at me.”

  Instead, she pushed open the door and climbed out of the pickup.

  He followed. She trudged past a pair of picnic tables into a clearing where a circle of stones was visible in the moonlight. It had probably once been a campfire pit, but this part of the state had had a burn ban for years.

  She tipped her head back and just stood there. The fir trees towered high into the sky and the air smelled like pinesap.

  “Look at those stars,” she whispered.

  Gage tamped down his impatience. He glanced at the sky. Then he looked at Kelsey and felt a stab of worry.

  “We used to come here.” She looked at him, and her brown eyes were luminous in the moonlight. “Well, not here here. But this part of the state. Back when my dad was alive, we’d load up the car and go camping. Sometimes Joe would come if he had leave.” She looked up at the sky again. “I used to lie in the tent and listen to the grown-ups talk after they thought I’d gone to sleep. I can’t believe he’s gone. And Blake—”

  Her voice caught and she turned away. Gage gritted his teeth. Even in the dimness, he could see her shoulders shaking.

  Gage wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. She pressed her face against his chest and he felt warm tears seeping through his T-shirt.