Framed for Murder

by Mary Alford

  FALSELY ACCUSED

  Framed for helping her partner smuggle guns—and then murdering him—CIA agent Liz Ramirez must find the evidence that will prove her innocence...before she’s caught or killed. So when her squad’s leader attempts to bring her in for questioning, she knows her future depends on convincing Aaron Foster to go rogue and help her. On the run from the rest of her team and the gun dealers who are convinced she knows the location of their missing weapons, Liz risks losing the proof that would clear her name. But will eluding her pursuers—and trying not to fall for the handsome commander—prove to be fatal?

  “Drop the weapon, Liz.”

  Aaron’s normally smooth-as-caramel Southern drawl held a steely edge Liz had never heard before. He’d found her. Anticipated her next move.

  He stepped closer, the look in his eyes matching his tone. Just for a second she lost what little bit of hope she still clung to. Did he think she was capable of killing her partner?

  “Aaron, you scared me.” Her voice shook slightly, her nerves wrecked.

  “You need to come with me, Liz,” he said quietly.

  She swallowed back the betrayal she felt at those words. She wouldn’t blame Aaron. He was just doing the job he’d been tasked to do.

  “I—I can’t do that. I didn’t kill my partner, but someone wants you to think that I did.”

  His face twisted with gut-wrenching pain. “I know you didn’t kill him, but running makes you look guilty. I promise we’ll figure it out together.”

  Could she trust him? She was close enough to witness the battle raging in him as they faced each other in a silent standoff.

  Mary Alford was inspired to become a writer after reading romantic suspense greats Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney. Soon, creating characters and throwing them into dangerous situations that test their faith came naturally for Mary. In 2012 Mary entered the Speed Dating contest hosted by Love Inspired Suspense and later received “the call.” Writing for Love Inspired Suspense has been a dream come true for Mary.

  Books by Mary Alford

  Love Inspired Suspense

  Forgotten Past

  Rocky Mountain Pursuit

  Deadly Memories

  Framed for Murder

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  FRAMED FOR MURDER

  Mary Alford

  And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

  —John 21:25

  To my sweet angels, Ava, Kinze and Baylee.

  I love you so much.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DEAR READER

  EXCERPT FROM OFF THE GRID CHRISTMAS BY MARY ELLEN PORTER

  ONE

  You’re being set up... The moment Agent Liz Ramirez switched on the burner phone and read the text message, her stomach turned to ice.

  The number attached had been blocked. The sender wanted to remain anonymous. That it had come through on her burner phone was disturbing enough. No one knew the number except...Michael.

  Her fear for his well-being spiraled. It had been growing most of the day.

  She thought about her partner, Michael Harris’ earlier depression. When she’d dropped him off at his home after he’d been released from the hospital, she’d sensed something was bothering him even though he refused to talk about it.

  Now, standing on his front porch, the same feeling of unease that had followed throughout the day resurfaced.

  Liz rang the doorbell. “Michael, are you in there?” she called out when nothing stirred inside.

  His car was in the drive. The house looked the same as when she’d left Michael to get some rest, yet the hair standing at full attention on her arms warned her the feeling was neither a figment of her imagination nor a remnant of recent events creeping in.

  With the Scorpion team’s latest capture of their top terrorist threat known as the Fox, and the weapons he’d supposedly smuggled into the US still missing, the implication hinted at by his second-in-command still troubled Liz. Was someone else involved in the operation? Someone closer than any of them wanted to believe?

  She tried his phone once more. She could hear it ringing inside.

  Liz reached for the door handle. It opened freely in her hand. As a member of the CIA’s elite Scorpion team, Michael would know security was critical. The team had been tasked with bringing down some of the most deadly terrorists operating around the world and because of it, they had enemies everywhere. Michael wouldn’t deliberately leave the door unlocked.

  With her heart hammering in her chest, she reached for her weapon, eased through the door and into the house.

  “Michael, where are you?” The quiet of the house settled around her without answer.

  Liz forced herself to breathe as she glanced around the living room. Nothing appeared out of place. His phone lay on the end table as if he’d tossed it there.

  “Michael,” she called out as she eased to the bedroom. She touched the unmade bed. It was cold. He hadn’t been here in a while. A quick search of the closet and adjoining rooms proved fruitless.

  That left just one more place. The kitchen. Her stomach chewed with tension. Something was wrong; her heartbeat drummed in warning. It felt as if she were walking through cement as she slowly entered the kitchen and saw it. In an instant, her world crumbled and her worst fear became a reality.

  Michael lay sprawled facedown on the tile floor. A pool of drying blood framed part of his head.

  Her hand flew to cover her mouth. “Michael,” she said in a broken voice then dropped to her knees next to him. He was cold to the touch. Rigor mortis hadn’t yet set in. A single gunshot wound to his right temple confirmed the method of death. But the murder weapon was nowhere in sight.

  Bile rose in her throat and she sucked in handfuls of breaths before it finally subsided. She couldn’t wrap her head around the truth staring her in the face. Michael had been murdered.

  Tears filled her eyes, spilled over and soaked her jeans, yet she was powerless to stop them. The man who’d become like a brother to her was gone and she couldn’t have felt guiltier.

  Since they’d started working together a little more than a year earlier, she and Michael had just clicked. They had the same sense of humor. Liked the same type of action movies, and when they worked in the field, they could almost anticipate each other’s moves. That’s how she’d known something was wrong with her partner. And yet she’d ignored the warning signals.

  Aaron. She needed to let Agent Aaron Foster know what had happened. Time was critical. As field commander of the CIA’s elite eight-member Scorpion team, it was Aaron’s job to monitor terrorist activity and prevent the recently stolen weapons from fa
lling into the wrong hands. There was little doubt in Liz’s mind that Michael’s death was related to the Scorpion’s capture of the Fox.

  She and Aaron had grown close through the years and Liz trusted him with her life. He was a natural born leader and a good man. She respected him like crazy, even though from time to time, they butted heads.

  Aaron answered on first ring. “Liz? Are you okay?” The lateness of the hour was proof enough that she wasn’t calling to chat.

  “No, I’m not. It’s Michael...” She stopped when her voice threatened to crack. “Aaron, he’s been murdered.”

  The silence that followed her declaration confirmed the magnitude of the news. Aaron was just as shocked as she had been.

  “How? When?” His broken questions were heavy with emotion. Aaron loved Michael as well. Everyone on the close-knit team did.

  Liz stuffed down her feelings. She needed to do this as a professional. Michael deserved her best.

  “A gunshot wound to the head,” she said quietly. “He was killed at close range. From the size of the entry wound, I’d say it was a Glock.”

  “Are you in danger?” Aaron asked with his concern for her safety intensifying his voice. Their friendship was just as important to him as it was to her. She struggled to stay focused. “No, he’s been dead for a while. Whomever did this is long gone.”

  “I’m on my way. I’ll call in Gavin and Alex. We’ll be there soon.”

  She ended the call without answering and stared at the man that she’d shared so many good moments with.

  “I’m sorry, Michael. So sorry I wasn’t there for you,” she whispered and meant it as she scrubbed tears from her face and got to her feet.

  Michael’s house had now become a crime scene and she had to tread carefully. She’d unknowingly contaminated the door handle by entering the house. It stood to reason that the killer would have touched it at some point. The door had been unlocked.

  Using her shirt as protection, she grabbed his phone and checked the outgoing calls. Michael hadn’t called anyone in days. Hers were the only incoming today. Had she been the last person to see him alive until the killer arrived?

  She thought about his strange behavior after she’d picked him up at the hospital. Was it all due to his near-death experience? She and Michael had been forced at gunpoint into a chopper by the Fox. They both could have died when it crashed to the ground outside a small town in Pennsylvania two weeks earlier. She’d suffered a fractured wrist, a few bruised ribs and some cuts and scrapes. Her injuries hadn’t been nearly as severe as Michael’s. For a while they weren’t sure Michael would make it.

  After he was cleared, the doctor had wanted Michael to go straight home and rest, but Michael had insisted on visiting Sam Lansford in prison first.

  It had been unthinkable that someone the team all knew and trusted had turned out to be the Fox. When their chopper had crashed, Sam and several of his men had been captured. The team had immediately transported their prisoners to the Scorpion headquarters outside of Painted Rock, Colorado, for interrogation. The weapons Sam had smuggled into the country were still unaccounted for and they needed to find them as soon as possible.

  Still, Liz didn’t understand why Michael had insisted on seeing Sam. Once the two had faced off, there had been no words exchanged between them.

  She glanced around the living room, seeing things through different eyes than when she’d first entered. There was no sign of a break-in. Had Michael known his killer?

  One of the cushions on the sofa caught her attention. It was visibly out of place as if something were tucked under it. Liz carefully eased it up and found a large manila envelope stuffed there haphazardly. Her name had been hastily scribbled across the front of it in Michael’s handwriting. But it was the next line written there that was the most alarming.

  For Your Eyes Only!

  Dread wrapped itself snugly around her shoulders. What was Michael trying to tell her that only she could witness? Before she had the chance to open the envelope, headlights flashed across the front of the house.

  Liz shoved the envelope in her purse and hurried to the window. She parted the curtains, expecting it to be Aaron. Michael’s place was at the end of a sparsely populated cul-de-sac. A car had pulled into the drive and flipped its lights on bright.

  She shielded her eyes and managed to get a better look at the vehicle. It looked like the same car that had Michael spooked earlier when she’d driven him home after that strange visit with Sam.

  Once they’d turned onto his street, Liz had caught a glimpse of a car behind them. She didn’t think anything of it until she saw how Michael had reacted. She’d asked if he knew the person, but he’d denied it.

  Liz rushed from the house with her weapon drawn as the car quickly reversed and headed down the street picking up speed along the way. The license plate had been removed.

  While the shock of realizing it was the same car as before and that someone had gone to great lengths to hide their identity froze her in place, two additional sets of headlights came down the usually quiet street. Liz squinted through the blinding lights and was able to identify Aaron’s SUV. Aaron pulled up beside her. “Did something else happen?” he asked as if reading her thoughts.

  She quickly nodded. “I’m pretty sure the car that just passed you was here earlier today when I brought Michael home.”

  Aaron got out of the SUV and hurried to the truck behind him. “See if you can catch up with the car we just passed. They might be involved.”

  The driver of the truck, Alex Booth, nodded, put the truck in Reverse and made a quick U-turn before flooring the gas.

  Aaron came back to her. Liz knew he could see that she was still shaking in reaction to finding Michael and to seeing the suspicious car. “Are you okay?” he asked in that serious Southern drawl of his that was always so charming. Now it was laced with worry.

  It was so like Aaron to be concerned about her, especially after she and Michael had barely escaped death. He’d always been there for her whenever she needed to talk. Strong. Caring. A true man of valor. She’d often wondered why someone as handsome and as captivating as Aaron was still single.

  He ran a careless hand through his chestnut hair before those intense midnight-blue eyes focused on her and just for a second, she lost her train of thought.

  “I’m okay,” she managed.

  Aaron had been tasked with heading up the critical investigation into how someone as close to the Scorpions as Sam Lansford could turn out to be the Fox. As a former CIA agent himself, Sam had quit the Agency to go into business for himself as a hostage retrieval agent. On several occasions, Sam had provided the team with useful information that had led to the capture of some very dangerous people. They’d all thought they knew him. They’d been wrong.

  The team had been trying to bring down the Fox and his weapons-smuggling activities for more than seven years. No one expected the terrorist to be someone they all knew.

  Yet even with the pressure for answers so great and the guns Sam smuggled out of Afghanistan still missing, Aaron had found time to check on her when Liz’s injuries had her sidelined. That was just his way.

  He glanced up at the house, his expression solemn. “Take me through what happened. Why are you here so late anyway?” he asked curiously before stepping up on the porch. Was there something accusatory in his tone or was the outcome of the day playing tricks on her?

  “I was worried about Michael. I’d been trying to reach him most of the afternoon.” She followed him up the steps to the porch. “Since the accident, he wasn’t himself. I knew something was troubling him, but he didn’t say what.”

  Aaron nodded. “I noticed it as well. What did you find when you arrived?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary at first, until I tried the door. It was unlocked. I went inside, searched t
he place and...” She snatched a much-needed breath. “Found him in the kitchen.”

  Aaron took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry,” he murmured with sincerity.

  From this day forward, they both knew nothing would ever be the same for her. She’d lost someone else she cared about to an unknown enemy. She still mourned the loss of her husband Eric who had been taken from her far too soon. And now Michael was gone. She considered him family.

  Liz waited in the living room while Aaron examined the murder scene. A few minutes later, Alex and Gavin returned from the hunt.

  Alex Booth and Gavin Dalton had been with the Scorpions since its inception. They were the best of the best and she was glad they were on her side.

  “No sign of the car,” Alex told Aaron when he came into the room.

  “There’s no murder weapon either, but my guess is it was a Glock. The perp must have taken it with him.” Aaron nodded to Alex. “Search the place. Maybe we’ll get a lead. Call in the local police to canvass the area.” He turned back to Liz. “What’s your theory here? You knew him better than any of us.”

  She glanced through to the kitchen where Michael’s body lay and tried to hold back the emotions. “I think he must have known his killer. There’s no sign of a forced entry or a struggle.” She hesitated briefly and then voiced her thoughts aloud. “Aaron, we need to talk to Sam right away. If anyone knows what happened here tonight, it’s the man who almost took Michael’s life once before.”

  * * *

  Aaron drove to the secure prison inside Scorpion headquarters where Sam Lansford had been held since his release from the hospital. Aaron’s thoughts were working overtime trying to make sense of their fallen comrade’s death.

  As much as he wanted to believe Sam was behind Michael’s death, too many things didn’t add up for it to be so. The biggest being how would Sam have managed to order the murder in the first place?

  The capture of the Fox was big. The CIA hadn’t taken any chances that Sam might escape. He’d been heavily guarded at the hospital. When he was transferred to his prison cell, a state-of-the-art security system watched his every move twenty-four hours a day. No one got in or out of the compound or the prison without a passkey that was only issued to Scorpion team members.