by Jodie Bailey
Macey was scared. And something was wrong. So very wrong. This was not the behavior or the expression of a woman riddled with guilt or hiding something. This was—
He broke eye contact and pulled away, his heart tugging toward her in a way it definitely could not. His eyes could deceive him. His emotions could betray him. No matter what the commander had cautioned him about guilt and innocence, Macey was very likely—no, almost definitely—a criminal. He was investigating her. There was no room for pity or real friendship or more.
And there was definitely no room for whatever had stirred inside his chest. Something he hadn’t felt since long before his marriage imploded on a mountain of collapsing lies and betrayal.
He closed his eyes and stepped away from Macey, releasing her. People lied. Even people he’d believed to be the most trustworthy in the world. His ex had sure proved that with her double life. There was no reason Macey had to be innocent just because she had beautiful brown eyes.
No reason at all.
He shook off the feelings and found his rational self somewhere behind his foolish heart. “Okay. Picture.” Why did his voice shake? Seriously? He cleared his throat. “What’s this picture we’re looking for? Why’s it so important?”
Macey sank against the dresser and crossed her arms. It wasn’t a defensive move. It looked more like the posture of a woman trying to hold herself together.
Stay focused, Blackburn. Don’t trust vibes. Don’t trust your gut. Trust the evidence.
“Olivia had a boyfriend. He traveled a lot for work and they ran in some of the same circles. She met him on one of her business trips. I think he’s the reason she kept volunteering to travel, even though she hated it.”
“Wait. Olivia was dating someone?” How had he missed that? And could he be the man they’d suspected Olivia was meeting but had never captured on surveillance?
Macey’s eyes glazed with something Trey couldn’t read. “He died in a private plane crash about a month before you moved in next door.”
So Olivia died in a car wreck overseas and her boyfriend had fallen victim to an accident, as well? If those two similar deaths were coincidence, Trey would give up watching hockey for the rest of his life.
He fought to keep his posture neutral. The things Macey was saying lined up with their evidence, with Olivia’s guilt...and, unfortunately, with Macey’s, as well. “Olivia traveled a lot. Do you remember where?”
Macey shrugged. “You know she was an intelligence contractor, so I really didn’t get to be privy to a lot she did or a lot of places she went. All of that top secret security clearance stuff. They don’t exactly hand those things out to physical therapists, you know?”
“I know.” He refrained from saying too much, even though he wanted to shotgun blast questions at her. The less he said, the more she’d talk. Experience had unfortunately taught him that, as well.
“Anyway, she only had one picture of herself with him, one print she kept beside her jewelry box. Said it wouldn’t be good to have pics floating around in the cloud somewhere just because of...” She flittered her hand through the air like a butterfly. “Because of whatever reason she’s always been so crazy about online privacy and security and all of that stuff.”
What Trey wouldn’t give to get his hands on that picture. It might simply be a photo of a woman and her boyfriend, or it might be the key that unlocked this entire investigation.
With a photo, they could put all of the pieces into place. Surely. Maybe they could even clear Macey. He tried his best not to fist his hands. “You’re sure it’s missing?”
“I don’t see it. We can look for it as we clean up. But I guess it’s really not important now that Olivia’s gone. The fact that something precious only to her is missing makes me feel extra violated. Like this is personal somehow. It’s weird those guys would take something so random.”
Not so weird if that was the thing they were searching for, if they’d somehow found out there was photographic evidence linking buyer and seller. Maybe that was exactly why they’d hit this house. Why Macey’s room hadn’t been touched. They’d found what they’d come for.
Or maybe the photo was still here.
He bent and picked up a pair of athletic socks, then dropped them in a drawer. Maybe Macey would follow his lead and they’d find the photo buried under some of the mess left behind.
She did, gathering T-shirts, remarking that she should really donate them now that Olivia’s room had been disturbed. By the time they’d finished putting everything away and cleaning the mess from the mattress, nearly an hour had passed and there was no photo.
Maybe he could get a description. It was better than nothing. “You ever meet the guy?”
“What guy?” Macey shoved a drawer shut and wiped her hand at invisible dust on the dresser.
“Olivia’s guy.” He sat on the edge of the ruined bed and watched her fuss with some smaller items.
“Yeah, on one of her business trips to Denver. She had a ton of frequent-flier miles and took leave for a few extra days. She took me with her. That’s the kind of friend she was. I’d never have been able to afford that kind of trip on my own. The hotel alone was...” She shot him a look over her shoulder, one that was half teasing and half confused. “Why do you want to know?”
Trey shrugged one shoulder. “I never saw her date anybody. In all of the times we hung out together, I never heard her mention anyone. Call it curiosity about what kind of guy would catch Olivia’s eye.”
“She grieved Jeff’s death pretty hard. I’m not surprised you never saw her with anyone after him.” She hip-checked a drawer shut and headed past him into the living area of the house. “You upset she never looked twice at you?”
“Uh, no. Olivia was too...” He let the word trail off. Probably he shouldn’t go insulting Macey’s best friend if he wanted to stay on her good side.
“Paranoid? Obsessive? Controlling?” Macey pulled a laptop out of a cabinet under the television and carried it to the counter that divided the den from the living room. She opened the device and ran her fingers along the trackpad to wake it up. “You wouldn’t be saying anything I didn’t know. Olivia was definitely one of a kind. And she could be tough to live with, that’s for sure. But she was...” She stared at the closed blinds over the back window.
“A good friend?”
“Yeah. And that’s why I went against her wishes and made a scan of the photo and stored it on the hard drive of the computer she used to run the security system. If she ever lost it for some reason, I wanted her to have a copy. That laptop doesn’t have connectivity, so I figured her overly cautious self couldn’t object too much if she ever found out.”
Macey punched a few keys. “It was taken when we went out to dinner on the last night of our trip to Denver. I was the fourth, sort of the company for Jeff’s brother to keep the guy from feeling like a third wheel. Or maybe he was there to keep me from feeling like one. I’m not sure.” She turned the screen toward him.
Trey nearly lost his balance and grabbed the back of a bar stool. Smiling back at him were Olivia and Macey seated at a table with Jeffrey and Adrian Frye, the very men Eagle Overwatch was trying to take down.
FOUR
Trey tried again to get comfortable on the leather sofa, turning onto his side and wedging his pillow tighter under his head. How could a couch that sat so comfortably for ball games be an absolute beast to sleep on?
Okay, so maybe the couch was more comfortable than his brain and body wanted to admit. And maybe it wasn’t the thing robbing him of sleep.
The absolutely senseless puzzle laid out before him had tangled his thoughts and fired his brain up to eleven.
Literally nothing about this night or Macey or their case made any sense at all. The more he learned, the less he knew.
Either she was a master criminal the likes of which his team had neve
r seen, or she was completely innocent of everything the evidence seemed to say she was guilty of. Her bewilderment and wrung-out emotions tonight had seemed very real. Then there was the fact that she’d literally handed him the missing piece of evidence that linked her to two heinous criminals. Was that photo a ploy to make him think she wasn’t involved? Or was she truly an innocent bystander to someone else’s horrible, deadly game?
He reached for his phone and pulled up the photo he’d surreptitiously snapped of Macey’s computer screen earlier, hoping the image would have changed. Nope. Still the two men who called themselves Jeffrey and Adrian Frye, real names unknown. Still suspected of being the masterminds behind countless computer hacks around the country, hacks that had disrupted everything from local hospitals to city power grids. While they were most closely linked to an organization known as Sapphire Skull, the two seemed to glory in being guns for hire, doing the work of anyone who wanted to wreak havoc, claiming the name of whoever paid them the highest price at the moment.
More than once, they’d seemed to act on intelligence they could only have received from someone on the inside of the US intelligence community. Someone like Olivia.
Only Olivia was dead, and the stolen intel still flowed unchecked.
There should be a burning passion inside him to bring Macey to justice, a disgust with her seemingly criminal behavior. It sure was there for the Frye brothers.
Yet, for Macey, he could only battle a sick feeling in his gut that something was wrong. That she was innocent.
He desperately needed to talk this new intel out with Captain Harrison, but he had to be careful. Their texts weren’t secure, so he couldn’t reach out that way. He could call from Olivia’s room, located on the other side of the house from Macey’s, but if Macey got up and overheard him, then the whole operation was blown.
A quick glance at his watch told him it was the darker side of three in the morning. Maybe he could slip out and head home for a few minutes, pass along the intel, then come back.
Except Macey had set the alarm and he had no idea what the code was. He was stuck inside. Trapped.
The idea of not being able to get out ran heat across his skin. Only one other time had he been stuck in a place he couldn’t get out of, and it had been Gavin Harrison who’d shown up in his hospital room and pulled him out of a pit. Still, the memory congealed in his stomach, disturbing the churning that Macey had already stirred.
He laid his phone next to his pistol on the coffee table and flipped onto his back again, resigned to counting the minutes until sunrise. There was no telling what time—
A soft thud sounded from the deck at the back of the house.
Trey froze.
It could be an animal. Their proximity to the woods wouldn’t rule out a stray critter, although with Kito’s scent all over the yard, it wasn’t likely many animals would be that brave. He tensed, waiting to see if Kito would react from behind the closed door to Macey’s bedroom. Not likely, since huskies never barked and were notoriously bad guard dogs, but there was always a chance.
Aside from the music she’d turned on as white noise shortly after disappearing to catch some sleep, silence reigned inside the house.
Silence reigned outside, too. He eased against the sofa cushions but kept his eye on the back door, somewhat visible in the dim light that filtered into the house from outside. If anyone breached an entrance, the alarm would let the whole neighborhood know, but he couldn’t relax. The back of his neck tingled, something that rarely happened when all was well.
Another series of thuds sent Trey’s hand for his gun on the coffee table. Those weren’t random noises.
Those were footsteps. Someone was outside. Someone who clearly knew the back door had been compromised earlier and was back to try again.
A heavy object collided with the door and a muffled curse followed the blow.
Nice. That someone outside hadn’t counted on Trey, a drill and some heavy-duty, two-by-four reinforcement.
He almost smiled as he fired off a quick text to the detective he’d befriended after the initial break-in, then crept to the back door. Trey pressed his back to the wall beside it and waited to see what the nighttime visitor would do with his chosen point of entry sealed.
Of course, Trey was stuck, as well. While he wanted to apprehend this guy dead to rights on Macey’s deck, his repair job on the door not only walled him out but walled Trey in. With the alarm on and his need to keep Macey in the dark about the investigation for as long as possible, he’d have to wait until the visitor found another way in or the police arrived.
At least he knew Macey was safe in her room. Her window was too high off the ground and not accessible from the deck, so he could wait.
His phone vibrated.
Patrol in the neighborhood. Advised them to swing by. No lights or sirens.
He slipped his phone into his hip pocket with a nod. Trey had explained the bare bones of the situation to Detective Franklin, but the man had promised discretion. The last thing he needed was for Macey to figure out she was being investigated and had now been targeted by an unknown assailant. If she was guilty, she might go on the run. If she was innocent, she’d be terrified.
A familiar soft scrape came from Olivia’s room down a short hallway on the other side of the dining room.
Trey’s grip on his pistol tightened. Someone had opened a window and was likely entering the house.
In silence. The alarm hadn’t sounded.
Slipping quietly across the dining room, Trey crept past the linen closet and up the short hall until he reached the doorway to Olivia’s room.
A dark figure slid through the window and straightened.
Trey raised his pistol and aimed at center mass. “Most people ring the doorbell.” He kept his voice low, hoping neither Macey nor Kito would hear. Not that Kito had ever barked at anything.
The figure froze, a silent shadowed statue in the moonlight.
Steeling himself for a fight, Trey steadied his weapon.
The intruder dived through the low window, cracking his head on the casing and scrambling up to run as soon as he hit the deck.
Trey rolled his eyes and made a quick check of the area for an accomplice before he climbed out the window and raced down the deck stairs, following the mystery intruder to the front of the house. The man vaulted the fence, with Trey not far behind, and they raced toward the subdivision’s main road. As a police cruiser came into sight, the guy turned and ran between two houses, angling for the woods and the street on the other side.
Headlights swept up from behind Trey and across the front of his house as the police cruiser rolled to a stop.
Backup. Exactly what he needed.
“Police! Stop and lift your hands!”
Trey skidded to a halt as his suspect disappeared. He was the only one in sight. They were talking to him, because he was running from the house.
And he was carrying a gun.
* * *
Macey flopped onto her back and stared at the ceiling as the morning sun strong-armed its way through her thin plastic blinds.
She groaned. Last night, she’d dropped into bed so completely worn-out that she hadn’t closed the blackout curtains. Now, at dawn, she was paying the price.
Rolling over, she slapped the off button on the wireless speaker that had pumped instrumental music into her room all night long. She always slept with silence, but her mind had been way too in tune with every single settling pop and creak in the house. Music had been the only antidote to her straining ears. It had worked, too. Aside from hearing Trey moving around sometime after three, nothing had interrupted her sleep.
Something cool and wet nudged her wrist before a furry head slipped under her fingers. Kito. Rolling onto her side, she took the dog’s face in her hands and rested her forehead against his. “Always angling for attent
ion, aren’t you?”
Excited as only a husky could be, Kito bucked his head, cracking his skull against hers and almost toppling her head backward. “Nice, dude.” Rubbing her forehead, Macey sat up, wrinkled her forehead and then nodded as a familiar scent wafted in from the kitchen. Bacon.
That was what had Kito so excited.
The scent of wood-smoked bacon and fresh coffee seemed to fill the room. That dog did love his bacon. Apparently, so did her neighbor.
Guess he’d decided to stay the morning, too.
Tugging a sweatshirt over her head and socks onto her feet, Macey padded to the door and up the short hallway, then peeked around the corner.
Trey stood in the kitchen at the stove, his back to her. He was already dressed and clearly ready for the day, wearing jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt. Even from the back, though, she could tell his hair was tousled from what little sleep he’d probably gotten on her couch.
It was weird, having him in her kitchen this early in the morning. Sure, he’d spent hours and hours hanging out with her and Olivia and, lately, just her, but breakfast had never been involved. It was different.
It shouldn’t make her stomach all warm and fuzzy.
Probably she was just hungry. And, well, bacon.
Kito had had enough waiting. He squeezed his fifty-seven-pound body between her and the door frame, bolting for the kitchen and drawing Trey’s attention from the stove.
“’Bout time you got up.” Trey jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the back door. “I took the boards down so you could let Kito out when you got up, but I couldn’t open it because of the alarm.”
A strange look accompanied his statement before he turned back to the stove. Maybe he thought this whole breakfast thing was a little weird, too.
She walked into the kitchen to the keypad by the garage door and punched in the code. “Is that why you’re cooking breakfast? Because you were trapped in the house?”
