by Janet Dailey
Like a tall, strong tree, he’d withstood her attack—but his reflex reaction might have taken her out if she hadn’t dodged in time. Hell of a way to say hello for both of them.
Linc seemed to know when she didn’t want to talk, and she had to admit that she found his presence comforting.
Truth told, more than comforting. The big, muscular body under the fine suit, the tousled hair and handsome face, right down to the scar on his cheek and especially that soft but tough smile he flashed occasionally got to her.
Kenzie stretched out and put the pillow under her head, looking at the ceiling. It was going to be tough to ignore all that.
CHAPTER 2
He turned the key in the ignition and headed away from her building, memorizing the streets of Ridgewood along the way. Nestled in rolling green hills that were typical of Virginia, it was a pleasant town, a bedroom community just far enough away from DC and the tony suburbs of Maryland to be friendly.
Exhaustion had hit him at last. He hoped she’d gone to bed. Their parting had been matter-of-fact, but he’d been surprised by her rising on tiptoe and pressing her lips to his unshaven cheek in a ghost of a kiss.
Just before she closed the door on him.
He’d heard the latch click from where he stood in the hall, then left.
The motel wasn’t hard to find. He noted that a letter on the neon sign was out of commission. It couldn’t get worse than staying at the D-Light Inn.
Even with a name like that on the sign, Linc got the hairy eyeball from the desk clerk, who surveyed him and, through the window, his car with equal suspicion. Linc knew he looked like a refugee from an all-night stag party.
Oughta fit right in here.
But the clerk slid over a thick metal key to a room as soon as the card reader hummed its approval of whichever piece of plastic he’d handed him. He climbed metal stairs to the room, on the side of the building that faced the road, and walked in.
It was dismal. Noisy too. Linc was too fried to care. He sat on the edge of the bed and set the alarm on his phone for two hours ahead. He shrugged out of his wrinkled tuxedo jacket and flung it across the room onto the floor.
Hard to believe he’d had it on for more than twenty-four hours. He slipped off his shoes and threw them too, earning a barely audible grunt of protest from some guy in the next room. The walls must be made of cardboard.
Then he fell back without turning down the grimy coverlet or taking off the rest of his clothes. Linc unbuttoned his shirt and fell sound asleep.
He woke up feeling awful. A glance in the motel’s cheap mirror told him he looked worse. However, it was nothing he couldn’t scrape or shower off. And he could buy a few basics in terms of clothes and drop the monkey suit off at a dry cleaner’s later today.
Linc made himself a cup of instant, making a face when he took the first sip. Nasty brew. But it was hot and it would help him get out the door and focus on what needed to be done.
He drank the rest of the coffee, thinking about Kenzie’s question and how quickly he had said yes. She’d asked for help. He would give it. Explaining that to the commanding officer of his operations group would be lots of fun.
He told himself to make the call and get it over with.
Turned out no one had a problem with his announcement. Good enough. Putting on the tux shirt and pants from the crumpled formal suit, he drove out to the mall and bought some ordinary clothes, jeans and polos, a couple of flannel shirts, socks and briefs, and a jacket. Nothing remotely memorable.
Next up, discount sneakers to replace his gleaming black dress shoes. He tossed the box when he was in the parking lot, then rubbed the tops and sides with a little dirt from the planted median strip so they didn’t look so new, covering his action with his opened car door.
A quick stop at a drugstore for manly essentials like disposable razors and shaving cream and he was done. The clerk at the register barely looked at him, which was good. Linc didn’t want to be remembered, he wanted to be invisible. The agency encouraged it anyway. He went back to the motel and got cleaned up and headed out again.
To Kenzie’s apartment.
“Come on in. Have you had breakfast?”
Her welcoming voice took the chill off the fall morning. He almost wished he hadn’t eaten.
“Diner delight, four bucks. The hash browns were great.”
“So you’re fueled.” Kenzie scrutinized him. “New clothes, huh? Guess you really are in.”
He inclined his head in a brief nod. “I could use some more coffee.”
“Be right with you. Just have to finish making my bed.”
She must have just rolled out of it. Her dark hair was tousled and he could see the impression of a pillowcase hem ever so faintly on one cheek.
“It has to be perfect,” she threw over her shoulder.
“Mind if I watch?”
“No.”
He followed her and stood in the doorway of her bedroom, watching her tuck in the corners with military precision. Her vigorous reaching and stretching pulled her sleep tee out of her pajama bottoms. Linc tried not to stare.
She was done. A few final tugs and yanks and a sergeant could have bounced the legendary quarter off the top blanket. He’d bet anything she’d done that correctly from her first day as a soldier.
Kenzie straightened and looked at him a little sheepishly. “I keep telling myself not to obsess.”
“Doesn’t seem to be working,” he said gently.
She walked past him out of the room. Maybe prowl was a better word for the way she moved. He felt a distinctive electricity raise the fine hair on his body in the split second it took her to go by him. “Well, that’s because I got a call from a police lieutenant just before you got here. Mike Warren. From the Ridgewood PD. He said, quote, that he’s working with the other jurisdictions, but he’s the main man on this.”
That meant an investigation had begun. Linc raised an inquiring eyebrow. “What did he say?”
She shrugged, sitting down on the couch and motioning to him to do the same. “Not much. He asked if I could stop by the impound lot again, look at the wreck with him. Today or tomorrow. I said I’d let him know.”
“Mind if I come along?”
Kenzie shot him a look. “Of course not.”
“Do you want me to act like your friend or identify myself as a federal op?”
“Is that what you are? Ready to admit it?”
Not yet. He shrugged. “It’s close enough.”
“Hmm. Well, I’ll just introduce you as my friend for this go-round. Let’s see what he has to say before you pull rank,” she said mockingly. “I assume he’s going to give us the bare minimum on what he thinks happened.”
Her instincts were good. It was always better to let the other person do most of the talking.
“You’re probably right.” Linc had grown up with the unwritten rules of police. Protect and serve—and cover your ass. His late father, a lifelong cop, had made sure his rowdy teenage sons knew how law enforcement really worked.
If, as he’d thought, evidence had been skipped over or trashed in the confusion around the accident—especially if the crash turned out to be more than an accident—guess who would get blamed for it. He suspected Mike Warren would do his best to keep that from happening. So would Linc, in his shoes.
“Did you set a time to meet him?”
She nodded and flipped open her laptop. “An hour from now. But I want to show you what Mrs. Corelli did before we go. She called first thing this morning to update me. From Christine’s apartment.”
Linc had figured one of the Corellis would be there occasionally, when they weren’t at the hospital. “Where do they live, by the way?”
“Not all that far from you, actually. In Hopkinton.”
He sat down beside her, watching absently as she pulled up a Facebook page. “She used Christine’s laptop to post an announcement about the accident. Look at all those responses. Everyone really wants to hel
p.”
“Good idea to get the word out.”
Kenzie clicked over to her own page. “Mrs. Corelli wanted me to reply to the people I knew. Maybe later. Not quite up to that at the moment.” Her fingers moved briskly but Linc heard the catch in her voice. “That’s Christine,” she said, pointing to a group of photos.
Linc leaned closer to the screen. The young woman’s vibrant expression was a far cry from the pale, battered face he’d seen at the hospital. “She looks a lot like you, Kenzie.”
“People used to say that. The Corellis thought it was funny, because she’s an only child and so am I.”
“They’re really nice people. They seem to know you pretty well.”
She seemed flustered. “Yeah, they do. When I was a teenager I didn’t exactly get along with my parents. So I hung around the Corelli house whenever I could, pretending I was one of them.”
“Like sisters.” He repeated Mrs. Corelli’s comment to the doctor. “What did her mom say today? Update me.”
Kenzie brightened but just a little. “That the brain swelling has diminished. They’re thinking of taking her off the critical list—but she’s still in the ICU,” she added nervously. “And she’s going to be there indefinitely.”
“Then all we can do is wait.”
“Yes,” she said with a soft sigh. “I don’t want to think about it.”
Distracting herself, Kenzie scrolled rapidly through posted photos on different pages as Linc tried to take in the details. There were several of Kenzie and Christine partying with friends in various nightspots, clearly having a great time.
Then she clicked a larger shot, taken during the day, of the two of them posing by alert-looking, big-eared puppies with smooth coats the color of dark honey and black muzzles. Belgian Malinois. The girls were at the JB training compound—he remembered it. He noted a beefy guy in camos in the background, grinning at both of them.
Click. Click. Click. She moved right along, too fast for him to memorize the guy’s features.
He glanced at outdoorsy shots of a camping trip. Tent, backpacks, firepit. Then Kenzie paddling left, Christine paddling right in a canoe on a quiet river. Who had taken the photo? He wasn’t going to ask.
Then he zeroed in on one of Christine standing by a black sports car with yellow detailing, her hand resting on the hood like it was hers.
“You never did say why she borrowed your car.”
Kenzie sighed. “Hers was in the shop. She’d always wanted to drive mine and there was a big sale at the mall. So I got out of the session with the new client a little early, picked her up at her place, and she dropped me off here. You know the rest. It seems like a hundred years ago.”
Linc gave a slight nod. “Accidents put you in a time warp.”
She clicked around on her page, moving the cursor over the messages on her wall without reading them.
“You’re right about that. And I can’t seem to concentrate. On anything. I still haven’t notified SKC.”
“Has to be done.”
“I’m not looking forward to it.” Kenzie frowned. “I never met any of the people she worked with, but I do know she wasn’t happy there.”
“Why not?”
“Not any major reason. She didn’t like her new boss, though. And there was an outdoor equipment firm opening an outlet three towns over. She was going to apply there, then quit SKC.”
“Was she that sure she’d get the job?” The question was idle.
Kenzie adjusted the laptop’s screen position and looked up at him. “You don’t know Christine. Everybody loves her and she never gives up.” She paused. “I know exactly what she’d tell me. It’s like I can hear her voice. Make the freakin’ call, Kenz, get it out of the way.”
“Right,” Linc said.
Kenzie gave a ragged sigh. “Maybe I’ll do it from her apartment. Mrs. Corelli asked me to go over there and look for Christine’s insurance documents and health records. She’s sure the SKC human resources department is going to want something they don’t have. Bureaucracy. I hate it. But I have to do something to help or I’ll go nuts.”
Linc took a few seconds to reply. Kenzie waited, glancing again at the messages on her wall.
“Go,” he said simply. “It’ll help you, too.”
“Hang on,” she replied. “Incoming. Haven’t heard from her in a while.” A new message appeared at the end of the ones she’d been scanning. “My friend Donna.”
He looked at her inquiringly.
Kenzie’s expression was brighter when she glanced up again. “She’s a surgical nurse at an overseas base hospital. Wicked sense of humor. I need a shot of that.” Her hands hovered over the keyboard. “Do you mind?”
Linc tsked. “You going to remember the call? And don’t forget about meeting Mike Warren, by the way.”
“Oh, him. Yes. No. I won’t.” Distracted, she glanced down at the message from the nurse as Linc read over her shoulder.
Did you hear about Frank Branigan?
“No, I didn’t,” Kenzie said out loud, turning to look at Linc. “Okay. I know you want to know who Frank Branigan is.”
“Not really.”
She clicked around on her page and located a photo of a grinning, handsome soldier in camo fatigues and a maroon beret with his unit’s insignia on the front. “That’s him.”
Somehow, Linc didn’t feel reassured.
“The army sent Frank to Big Dawg to train as a K9 handler before he was deployed to Afghanistan last year.”
“Whoa. Back it up. Who or what is Big Dawg?”
Kenzie smiled faintly. “He’s my boss. Guess I never told you his nickname. Also known as Jim Biggers.”
“That I remember.”
“He’s a Gulf War vet, married, six kids.”
“More than I needed to know, but okay.”
She tapped at a photo on her page. “And that’s Jim.”
Linc noticed that Big Dawg was fit but somewhat thick in the middle, and going gray. Pretty wife firmly attached. Good, he thought.
Kenzie went back to the previous subject. “Anyway, Frank’s an experienced K9 handler. He was heading out to his second deployment to Afghanistan and I got him up to speed with a new dog. Chili.”
Linc nodded, letting her chatter away.
“They clicked right away. A true team from day one.”
So the handsome soldier was a dog lover. And rugged. On the front lines too. The kind of guy who’d probably punch Linc in the arm and call him Desk Boy. Linc wasn’t seeing a reason to like Frank Branigan.
He glanced at the clock in the living room. “Do you want to answer Donna before you get going?”
“Yes. I really do.”
Her eyes widened when she looked back at the screen. Another message from Donna had popped up under the first one.
So sad. I cried when I heard.
Kenzie sat straight up and typed a question at top speed.
What happened?
Her friend responded almost instantly.
He died in Kandahar. Routine patrol. Ambush.
Kenzie gasped and rocked back in her chair. Linc felt ashamed of himself. His work for the army kept him away from the front lines, but he had the utmost respect for the soldiers who were doing the actual fighting in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The province of Kandahar was notoriously dangerous. He looked away from the photo of Frank Branigan.
Tears welled in Kenzie’s eyes as she began to type again. One word.
How?
There was a pause, not long. The reply was blunt.
Shot in the chest.
Kenzie glanced up at Linc with fierce puzzlement, then back at the screen. She scrubbed away her tears and focused hard on the screen as her friend typed.
I’m sorry, Kenzie. I saw his name on the casualty list for the region and I thought you knew—it was a few days ago.
Linc understood. Those lists got read all over the world, wherever there were service members. You never knew. A buddy could be on i
t. You prayed your friends wouldn’t be—and you prayed for the men and women you didn’t know who were.
Heck, I just got beeped. Back in a bit.
Kenzie didn’t reply, just sat where she was for a little while. Eventually the screensaver appeared, a moving design that made her blink. She clicked on a key to get the page back, staring at the message space as if she could will Donna to come back.
For a few seconds, Linc rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder and was surprised that she didn’t brush it off. He could feel her pulse racing faintly under her silken skin.
Suddenly more words appeared. Unconsciously, Kenzie turned the laptop away from him, hiding her grief as best she could.
She had moved to her desk to sit in a swivel chair. With a touch to the keys, she shut down the laptop after the silent conversation was over.
Kenzie heaved a raw sigh, then pressed her lips together before she spoke again. “Apparently Frank had more than one wound.” She swallowed hard before she summed it up for him. “Handguns, close range. Could have been more than one shooter. They cleared out. The two soldiers with him did what they could to help.”
He nodded.
“The body armor’s supposed to be better than it was in Iraq. But it makes you wonder.”
“Sounds like the odds weren’t on his side.”
“No. They couldn’t save him. The field surgeon found a rifle bullet in his chest too. Most likely from a Dragunov. Does that mean anything to you?” She fell silent.
“That’s a sniper weapon. Russian design, probably made somewhere in China, popular in Afghanistan. Depending on the bullet, it can kill from a mile away.”
She shrugged. “Nobody knows exactly which shot killed him. Casualty of war, no more, no less. Not the subject of an official investigation.”
Something in her tone made him ask more. “But he could be.”
Kenzie paused. “Donna knows a medic on his evac team who told her the vest was shredded, looked like bad gear. Maybe Frank didn’t have to die.”
