by Jodie Bailey
If Jessica had been taken, it would have been all his fault.
TWELVE
Jessica dragged her knife through a green pepper, her face screwed up in that look she had when she was so deep in thought that the rest of the world fell away. She was oblivious to the danger that had come so close to her only half an hour earlier. Sean and Tate had felt it better to not rock her fragile security further, but they’d redoubled their efforts to protect the house. If the bad guys were getting bold enough to try a midday grab, there was no telling what their next step would be.
From outside, the sounds of a push mower rose and fell faintly, adding a low hum to the scene. The familiar sound calmed Sean’s nerves, reminding him of warm summer afternoons mowing the grass while his parents worked in the small garden on their land. Right now, he chose to focus on those good memories.
Cliff diving into the current situation could kill him.
Sean stood in the kitchen door, watching Jessica work, the weight of the afternoon’s events heavy on his shoulders. It was all he could do not to cross the room and pull her close, to reassure himself that his lapse in security hadn’t cost her everything.
He had to relax, had to let the afternoon go. If he didn’t, she’d feel the tension pouring off him. She was astute enough to realize something was wrong.
Maybe even astute enough to realize he was afraid for her, not because she was his responsibility, but because he was feeling way too much for a woman he’d only just met.
Hopefully, she’d attribute his stress to their latest intel. So much was happening, and none of it made sense. The conversation with their suspect at the hospital rattled him more than he cared to admit. If Kyle Randall knew who Ashley was, there might be unfinished business Sean didn’t even want to consider.
Sean had passed the message through to Ethan and Ashley, and they’d moved from their home to safety at the unit’s main headquarters, but it didn’t give Sean any peace.
Ethan, either. He’d tried to pull Sean off the op and shove him into hiding as well, but that wasn’t going to happen. Sean had vowed to protect Jessica, but he couldn’t put her into hiding, not without tipping their hand to the enemy. He had to see this through so he could finally put the past behind him. No more nightmares. Success was the only way to slay them. Outside of keeping Jessica alive, he didn’t know how to define success in a case like this.
“Colorado.” Across the kitchen, Jessica reached for another pepper, slicing it in half mechanically. “Why in the world would Channing be in Colorado?”
There it was. The other piece of information that seemed to have no place. The badly burned body of Specialist Lindsay Channing had been located in a remote area not far from Fort Carson, a single gunshot to the back of the head the preliminary cause of death. Sean caught a memory. “Wasn’t Carson her duty station before she came here?”
“Yeah. But why go back there?”
“She could know someone there who agreed to hide her. She might have hooked up with whoever is behind all of this there. It’s likely she trusted someone in that area, or she wouldn’t have gone.”
“She trusted them, and they murdered her.” The knife wavered in Jessica’s hand and she set it to the side, clenching and unclenching her fingers.
More than anything, Sean wanted to close the space between them and pull her close. Channing might be part of the attempts to harm Jessica, but no one deserved murder, and Jessica was feeling the pain. “There’s nothing you could have done.”
Jessica leaned against her hands on the counter, still not looking at Sean. “If we’d caught her here, maybe—”
“They’d have killed her here all the same.” He was certain of that, especially after the attempt to breach the house this afternoon. “Apparently, she was a loose end.”
“You’re right.” Jessica picked up her knife again and pulled another green pepper toward her, silent for long moments as the hum of the lawn mower rose and fell. “Tell me again why Tate’s mowing my dead grass in November?”
Because they’d decided to let their adversaries know Sean wasn’t the only one watching the house. It put Tate outside, visible but not recognizable, a subtle message to anyone watching. But he couldn’t tell Jessica that without raising questions.
Sean forced a smile to tilt the corner of his lips and chose to play the game. If she wanted to take a step away from the chaos, he’d gladly lead her. There would be plenty of time to think when night fell. “He says it helps his brain focus.”
Jessica arched an eyebrow but didn’t pull her attention from her work. “But it’s November. Nosy Major Neighbor is liable to call my father and tell him about all of the strange goings-on at the Dylan house today.”
Not all of them. “Count your blessings. Tate used to use one of those manual push mowers back when he owned a B and B. Him huffing and puffing that thing around your huge backyard would draw a whole lot more attention.”
“I tried that once. Thought I’d be all environmentally conscious. I returned it so fast...”
“Why’s that?” Not that it mattered, but the distraction was welcome. And watching her nose scrunch with disgust was an even nicer diversion.
“Because my yard really is huge. And Tate must have lived in the Arctic. I almost sweat myself to death on a Tennessee July afternoon. Had to come in and lie on the bathroom tiles to get my body temp to drop.”
Sean chuckled at her independent streak. “You’re smarter than that. Didn’t you pay attention during hot weather training?”
“Like you do everything exactly by the book. Yes, I paid attention. I just didn’t apply my knowledge to the civilian side of my life.” She flicked him a rueful glance. “I understand the weather is cooler, but I don’t understand why your friend is out there right now, probably killing my grass.”
Well, the conversation hadn’t totally wiped that tension from her face, but it had lightened the heaviness in the room. He should have told her everything about why it mattered if the bad guys knew who he was, but he wasn’t ready to burden her. She’d worry, feel pity, step up and try to protect him. That was the last thing he needed.
Even though he couldn’t deny her presence was something he wanted. Somehow he knew, if she touched him, looked at him just the right way, he’d spill it all. She was safe in a way no one had ever been, not even Ashley.
He needed her, and that made her dangerous. Sean shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to keep them from taking on a life of their own by reaching out to her. That was the last thing he should ever do.
He cleared his throat and stared at the wall above the sink. “What are you making anyway?”
“Chicken fajitas. I have to use up all of the chicken in my freezer somehow. Hope you and Tate are hungry.”
“Tate won’t eat. He’ll mow your grass and hit the guest room couch to sleep. He has to be up tonight while I catch a couple of hours.” Or try to. Now that the house had been targeted again, sleep would probably be harder to come by than ever.
Jessica leaned heavily against the counter, seeming as exhausted as Sean felt. “Is anyone else I should know about prowling around my house? Is some mysterious person going to show up to paint my shutters next?”
Sean shook his head, lips pressed together to keep from laughing at that look on her face. At this point, anything was possible.
She got that sarcastic spark that said she’d fallen into the game with him. “Too bad. Those things need to be painted and I’m really having trouble getting excited about doing it myself.”
“Maybe we can persuade Tate that shutter painting is the new lawn mowing?”
Jessica shrugged and went back to her food prep. “Maybe we should go out there and take the mower away from him and try it ourselves. Might yield some answers to some of these questions.”
Questions like wh
y Andrew Murphy’s photo was on that cell phone...why Channing’s killer had seen fit to destroy her body to the point that only DNA could identify her...and why Channing’s belongings from her room simply didn’t add up.
“You’re thinking about Channing, aren’t you?” Jessica had stopped what she was doing again, this time to watch him.
It was scary how she could read his mind. Sean studied a faint crack in the ceiling that ran from above the stove to a spot above the refrigerator, a mark likely left as the house settled over time. All it did was make him think this case was cracking him up.
“Are you also thinking what I’m thinking, that our Channing might not actually be Channing?” Jessica’s voice hit home once again.
“Well, Kyle Randall sure isn’t a soldier.” Sean dragged a hand down his face and hazarded a look at her. “I don’t know what I think anymore. They destroyed Channing’s body, purposely did away with anything recognizable including fingerprints, and tried to destroy DNA. That’s either exceptionally brutal, or someone is hiding something.”
“You’ve got a slim bit of circumstantial evidence there. Surplus store uniforms and a charred body don’t mean we’re dealing with a fake.”
“It does sort of sound like a movie plot.” Something teased the edge of his mind, something that wouldn’t fully form, something that felt like the one piece that could fit the whole puzzle together. But his mind was too tired to hang on to more than the edges of the thought. He shoved it aside. “The bigger question is what their endgame is.”
“And why they want me dead. They’re bound to know that the phone is in your hands now, that everything I’ve seen and know has been passed on. Their own man is in custody. Killing me at this point gains them nothing.” She backed away from the counter. “Maybe you can walk away from me now and figure this out without my help. Nobody’s made an attempt on me today. Maybe they’re done.”
They were far from done, but he wasn’t about to tell Jessica. She’d want to know why he thought that way, and he didn’t want to give her reason to be afraid. She’d been nothing but a loose end to these guys at first, someone who could identify them. Now, it was personal, and that made the game much deadlier. “I’m not willing to take that chance.”
He had a growing hunch, one that refused to stop nagging him. This might not be about her at all. He pulled his phone from his pocket and held it up. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Walking into the living room, he punched in Ashley’s number.
She answered on the first ring. “You’d better be calling to tell me you’re headed back here where it’s safe.”
“And hello to you, too, Ash.”
She blew out an exasperated sigh. “Don’t mess with me, Sean. Kyle Randall knows something. You can’t—”
“Do me a favor.” If he let her keep talking, she’d lecture him worse than his mama ever had. Sean had no intention of going into hiding, not while Jessica was in danger.
There was a stretch of silence as Ashley considered whether to grant him a favor or to keep yelling at him. Finally, she sighed. “Fine. You’re not going underground. What do you need?”
“That hacker’s signature you found on Dylan’s desktop?”
“No match for it in the major databases yet. What’s up?”
“Run it against the hack on my computer in Afghanistan.” He had to force the words out through a throat that didn’t want to say them. He’d missed that hack and it had almost cost both of them their lives.
“Sean. No.”
“Do it, Ash. Leave no stone unturned.”
“But if it’s the same hacker, that means we didn’t win. People who worked with Mina are still out there and your guy Randall...”
“Is working for them.”
She didn’t say another word, but the clicks coming through the line as she tapped on her keyboard spoke a Morse code of anxiety. Sean had once encoded data using a program he’d devised with Ashley, and he’d made her the key. When Sam Mina’s minions hacked his computer and found out he wasn’t who he pretended to be, they snatched him and went after Ashley. Only Ethan’s quick thinking had been able to save both of them.
If those coded signatures matched, it meant this wasn’t over—they weren’t safe. And it explained why the bad guys had targeted Jessica.
The clicking stopped along with all other sounds on the line.
“Ash?”
“Sean. I—” She cleared her throat. “The signatures match. Mina’s men are still active.”
Heat, a mixture of fear and anger, flooded Sean from the inside out. Sean’s mind and body had paid the price in a takedown of Sam Mina’s terror cell last year. Those men had tried to destroy him, but he’d survived and defeated them. Clearly, someone wanted revenge. “They’re coming after Jessica to get to me.”
THIRTEEN
Sean stretched his arms wide along the rail of the covered back porch, leaning out to stare up at the dark Tennessee sky. He’d come out here when sleep eluded him and he had to convince himself the backyard wasn’t full of men climbing to the roof.
Worse, the house had grown too claustrophobic, driving him outside in a search for something he couldn’t define. With Jessica’s roommate gone to visit her parents for the holiday, Sean felt comfortable roaming out of the den for the first time. He’d sent Tate out front to stand his watch there, wanting to stand guard and needing the quiet and the darkness to unknot everything.
Out here near the river, his back to Clarksville, the stars hung low and bright. The temperature had risen over the past few days, leaving the night warm enough for a sweatshirt and jeans, but his breath still frosted. It would be awesome to be a kid again, sitting in the tree stand near his dad, pretending to be a dragon who could level a forest with one blow.
What he wouldn’t give to burn away the chaff and get to the center of whatever was happening now. He’d incinerate the fear that ate at his shoulder and made the scars on his arms raw. If Mina’s men laid their hands on him again, he’d never get out alive, even if his heart was still beating.
The back door popped open, and Sean held the rail tighter but didn’t turn. He’d half expected her.
“Hey.” Jessica’s voice came from behind him as the wood floorboards creaked her presence. “You okay out here?”
“I’m fine. And you should be upstairs asleep. It’s after midnight.” The way he was feeling tonight, he didn’t need her close by. He was too tired, too worried, to keep his guard up around her. It was way too likely he’d fire off at the mouth and tell her all of the things he was beginning to feel.
“I could say the same to you.” She stepped to the rail just out of reach and held out a steaming mug. “If you’re going to freeze out here, you might as well be warm.”
She was wearing black Army sweats and the gray University of Tennessee sweatshirt she seemed to think was a security blanket. The clothes softened her. Did she realize, with her hair pulled back in that loose ponytail, she looked more like a college freshman than a seasoned soldier?
He took the cup, careful not to brush her fingers. It would be too much. “So why aren’t you asleep?”
“Same reason you aren’t.” She took a sip from her own mug and stared out at the yard. “Trying to figure out everything. I wish I had a huge poster board and some markers.” She drew an imaginary square in the air. “I could put everything on a flat surface and see if any dots connect.” She tilted her head back and stared up at the sky. “I love it out here.”
“Yeah?” Sean held his coffee between his hands and watched her, her neck stretched out, her face relaxing as she leaned over the rail to look up at the sky. Every time she appeared, the nightmares receded and the world came into focus. Even now, with his failures staring him in the face, Jessica made him feel he could somehow be whole again.
“Yeah. On a clear night lik
e this, there’s nothing like it.” She set her coffee on the rail. “Makes me want to find my sleeping bag and lay out in the backyard all night, watching the stars.”
Sounded like a great idea to him. And one he shouldn’t follow up on, not if he wanted to keep his distance and keep her safe. “It’s nothing like the stars in Afghanistan, though. When things got bad, I used to step outside and look up. It was so dark out there the stars seemed so close you could touch them.”
She chuckled softly. “You sound like me. It was hard to believe the same stars there were in the sky over this very house. It made home not so far away, but it made the war that much worse, thinking people could be sleeping in freedom half a world away while we fought in the mud and the snow and the blood.” She shot him a sheepish grin. “I sound like a teenage girl.”
She looked like one, too. He hid a smile in his coffee mug. “Nah. You sound like a homesick soldier.”
“Is that why you’re out here now? Homesick? Or something else?” She turned and leaned a hip against the rail, facing him in a way that said she was about to ask questions she would no longer let him evade. “You didn’t eat after you made that phone call earlier, and you prowled like a caged animal the rest of the evening. Now you’re out here contemplating astronomy instead of sleeping. Talk to me, Turner. Whatever’s going on, it affects my life, too, and I can handle it.”
He didn’t doubt that. She’d proven she could deal with anything these guys threw at her. But this wasn’t about her. It was about him, and if he started talking...
“I need to know.”
The words were low and pleading, the tone washing over Sean’s skin with a warmth he couldn’t fight. He surrendered. “Last year, I was assigned to gather intelligence on a group that was hacking into our computers to skim money. What I found pointed to a contractor who was funneling money into a terror cell. The problem was, they were better than I thought they were, and they hacked into my system and figured out I’d found them.” He’d been cocky, arrogant enough to think his skills outpaced theirs. If he’d been a little more humble, he’d have seen the signs before it was too late. “We thought we’d shut down their operation, but we were wrong. The same people who hacked my computer in Afghanistan hacked yours. And it looks like, since they know I’m involved, they’re rewriting their own script. They want retaliation.”
