by J. L. Drake
“John,” Daniel spoke up, “she’s only here for a bit, and for now she’s confined to here and town. We’ll get Davie or Dell to drive her around when she needs to come and go. Frank just wants her out of Washington for a while until the dust settles on the trial.”
“Why do I have the feeling there is more to this story than I’m being told?”
Frank smirked and hit my arm playfully. “Because there’s always more, son.”
I rolled my eyes, and Daniel chuckled.
“Be nice, John.” Savannah poked her head around the corner.
“I’m always nice.”
“You can be, but you also can be a bit cold too.”
I pointed at her, and Daniel shrugged like he agreed.
I wasn’t cold, I was quiet. People misunderstood that about me.
“Would you mind meeting with her tonight?” Frank jumped in. “She’s down at Tin House getting settled.”
“Yeah, okay. But I would be kinder,” I glared at Savi, “if you gave me something on her.” Frank closed his eyes before he spent the next three minutes giving a tiny rundown of who she was to him.
I headed outside and started to jog down the pathway. The cold wind made me hunch my shoulders. Winter was quickly taking over the crisp nights of autumn. We were warned this winter was going to be harsh, and nights like this proved it.
Once I got to the steps, I swallowed back the urge to turn and head back up to my peak and ignore the rest of the world. It was my little oasis, and no one could touch or take away from me.
The last twenty-four hours had been shit, and the idea of discussing it with some citified- privileged lawyer didn’t sound like a good time.
With a deep breath that felt cold in the lungs, I knocked on the door.
“Come in,” a muffled voice called.
I stepped inside to see a woman bent over a box. I closed the door, and when I turned back around, she was balancing a stack of files.
Wait?
I looked around, confused at who I was seeing.
“I’m here to see Sloane Harlow.” I jolted forward to grab the papers just as they began to slip off the top stack. Slipping my arms under hers, I took the stack and put them on the table.
“Thank you.” She pushed her hair off her face, and I couldn’t help but stare. Her indigo blue eyes latched on to mine. She was shorter than I was, and if she removed her heels, she’d probably only come up to my shoulder.
“Agent Black?”
“Yes, and you are?
“Sloane Harlow.”
“Son of a bitch,” flew from my lips. Fucking Mark.
“Are you calling my mother a bitch?”
“No.” My eyes popped out of my head at the realization that it sounded like I had insulted her.
She smirked playfully. “Good.”
“It’s just, Mark said you were…” I stopped myself again. Why was I talking out loud about this?
“I was what?”
“Just, ah,” I stumbled and felt like an ass. “Nothing. Sorry. He’s just a—”
“A son of a bitch,” she finished for me with a chuckle.
“Yeah,” I chuckled.
“Now that we have that cleared up, why don’t you take a seat?”
“Sounds good.”
Oh, yeah, that was a great first impression. Savi will have a field day with this.
I couldn’t believe that in all the time I’d known Mia, she never once mentioned Sloane. A friend of the family, Frank had said. I wished I’d been prepared for how friggin’ gorgeous she was. What was the catch here? Maybe she was married? I moved my attention to her hand, but there was no a ring.
Divorced? Maybe that was it.
She pulled out a notepad and recorder and started to look around for a pen. Her long, dark, glossy hair brushed across her silky gray blouse, one that was unbuttoned seriously low on her chest. I wondered if it was intentionally that low or if it had come undone. Given her lack of order and the way she was tossing through things, I guessed the latter. I’d bet Frank had thrown this at her pretty quickly. When she bent back over the box, I couldn’t help but notice how tight her skirt was and how it hugged her slim hips.
“Sorry.” She held up the pen. “I promise once I get settled, I’ll be a lot more prepared.”
“No doubt.”
Stop staring at her eyes. Look away. Damn, she was pretty. She was so hot, not just classic gorgeous lawyer hot, but foreign hot. She was a mix of something I wanted to ask, but she beat me to it.
“Hungarian and Latino.”
“Really?” I smiled happily, entertained she had guessed my thoughts. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”
“It’s fine. I get it a lot.” She shrugged like it was normal and settled into her chair. “Do you mind?” She pointed to the recorder, and I nodded for her to go ahead. She leaned forward, and my eyes moved to her slender neck with its thin gold necklace that sparkled in the light. Such a simple piece of jewelry that was incredibly sexy.
“October twelfth, North Dakota, with Recon John Black.” I noticed she didn’t say our actual location, which was a sign she was good at her job, and Frank clearly gave her a crash course on what location we often use as a cover. Info like that would be the end of Shadows if anyone ever got their hands on those tapes. “May I call you John?” I nodded. “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself?”
I shifted uncomfortably, but when her eyes moved to meet mine again, I eased up slightly.
“Ah, I joined the Army when I was seventeen, three tours in Afghanistan, joined the Green Berets, and then was recruited to Blackstone.”
“Seventeen?”
“Yes. I graduated early and joined as soon as I could.”
She scribbled on her notepad and brushed her long bangs out of her eyes. “How long have you been here at Shadows?”
“Um,” I thought for a moment, “seven years.”
Her pen stopped moving. “You moved up in the ranks pretty quickly.”
“A lot of us have,” I said.
She pulled out a file and started to flip through some papers. “So, you were here when Savannah Miller first came to the house?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t aware she would know something like that.
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “Umm, tell me about what happened on your last trip to Mexico.”
“It was a trip.” I slipped into my habit of not sharing anything.
“Okay,” she pressed her lips together, “I see here Blackstone got a distress call to leave at zero five hundred hours, and you touched down at zero nine hundred. Were you in contact with Sergeant First Class Chamness the entire time?”
“No.”
She kept her head down but moved her eyes from the paper to mine.
“When did you hear from him, from the time you left to the time you arrived at your location?”
“Right before we rappelled down.”
“How did he seem?”
“Stressed.”
She flipped through some papers before she leaned back with a heavy sigh.
“I’m not going to pretend I understand anything that goes on when you leave for a mission. But I’m here to help, and from what Frank has shared with me, something isn’t right, and I have a feeling you feel it too or you wouldn’t have gone back after calling in your location at the diner. I know Blackstone has a reputation for keeping things close, and I fully respect that,” she leaned forward, “so if you don’t want to share anything, you don’t have to. I was just hoping for a little more understanding so I know what I’m supposed to be looking for.”
I cleared my throat and tried to push away the uneasy feeling of breaking my brotherhood oath.
“We’re trained to turn that side of us off. It’s not easy for me to sit here and speak to a stranger who isn’t even our JAG and share the details of a mission.”
“I understand that. I’m just trying to help.”
“What makes you think you can help? You’re not part of the military. You just said you have no idea what it’s like on our missions, so how can you have any hope of finding something at all, especially when you have no clue what you’re looking for?” I challenged.
She pushed her pen through her slender fingers as she watched me.
“I’ve never shot anyone, I’ve never wrapped someone in a carpet and pushed him into the Hudson River, nor have I ever sold anyone on the black market, but my job is to find out every single detail that took place when those things happened, and I do. I see things that most don’t. That’s what makes me a damn good lawyer. I understand right from wrong, and what is happening to Blackstone and North Rock is wrong. And this interview with you, Agent Black, is where I am starting, per Frank’s request.” She raised a hand to show peace. “But I can turn the recorder off and start with Lopez or Logan if you’d prefer.”
I rather liked her approach with me. She could’ve just backed off, but instead she played diplomat and showed her intentions.
“How much of this has Frank shared with you?”
“Enough.”
“Does he know something that we don’t?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes softened. “You haven’t shared anything with me.”
True. I took a deep breath and cleared my head. It went against everything inside me, but I opened the door a little.
“We got the call to move out at zero five hundred. We were told North Rock had been monitoring a house at the last known coordinates of their lost team member. He had been separated from the team during their last raid, six days ago.” I paused to clear my throat. “They were in their second position when they were ambushed from the south. Which is odd, considering North Rock, like us, changes their location constantly. They are extremely unpredictable, they barely use radios, and when they do, it’s nearly untraceable. We have our own codes so if anyone is listening, it wouldn’t mean anything to them.”
She didn’t move, she didn’t write anything down, she just listened.
“When we touched down and followed the last coordinates, we either walked into a trap or we were followed. I don’t think I want to know which is the truth. And in case you were thinking it, no, Sergeant First Class Chamness is one of the best God damn soldiers I’ve ever known, next to my family up there.” I pointed to Shadows.
“I wasn’t,” she whispered.
“There was a lot of chaos and times where I lost sight of my team. But when you’re over there, it’s do or die, so we do. It was pouring for most of it, which doesn’t work in our favor because you have to account for slippery gear and ground. I was hit by a bullet, and my gun was cut from me, and then after some hand to hand, I lost my footing and fell backward down a cliff.”
She winced before she jotted down a note.
I shifted in my seat and spent the next hour and fifteen reliving the story. Once I was finished, she stayed in a trance like she was letting the movie I painted finish out in front of her.
“Um…” She suddenly moved and pulled on a pair of blue-rimmed glasses and studied a paper.
“You mentioned earlier, there was a tattoo on the man’s arm you fought with. Can you describe it?”
I stood to grab a marker off the whiteboard ledge and began to draw a spider web with a seven drawn through it.
“Seven spider web,” she whispered to herself.
“Have you heard of it before?” I sat down and watched as she pulled out her phone to Google something.
“Huh.” Her eyes squinted as she read something. “I don’t know yet.”
“But it does sound familiar?”
“Maybe.” She forced a smile. “It’s a possible starting point.”
I wanted to push further, but I also didn’t want to be overwhelming either. Savi’s words echoed in my head.
Her phone went off, and she cursed under her breath then lowered the phone and ignored the call.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Her tone changed a little, almost nervous, or maybe she was just beat from her trip. “Um, I think that’s all for now. Let me do a little more digging, and I’ll see what I can come up with.” I went to stand when she said, “Who was the man you were with? Brick or Brock?”
“Brick?”
“Yeah, is he here? Can I talk to him?”
“He’s not here.” I smirked, knowing this was going to be entertaining. “He’s with the Devil’s Reach.”
“The what?”
“Devil’s Reach Motorcycle Club in Santa Monica.”
She leaned back in her chair and looked up at me. She nibbled on the top of the pen cap. “Let me guess. He was there on business?” Her eyebrow arched, and I couldn’t help but smile at how sexy her brow looked behind her glasses.
“Something like that.”
“I’d like to meet with him.”
“I highly doubt Frank will let that happen.” I smiled then stood and checked the time.
“Mm, we’ll see,” she muttered.
I liked that she wasn’t scared of Frank or the fact that Brick was with a motorcycle club.
“Oh, John?” She stopped me when I got to the door.
“Yeah?”
“Can you get me clearance to get a hotel room in town?”
Huh?
“Frank said I should talk to you about getting the all-clear to leave.”
Interesting.
“You don’t like it here?”
She crossed her legs, which drew my eyes to her long, slender calves that led my gaze to her black matte heels.
“It’s just that I don’t want to impose, and I like to be able to come and go as I please.”
My hand dropped away from the door handle, and I leaned my hip against the windowsill. It would be better she learned now than later.
“Frank tossed this at you last minute, right?”
“Something like that, yes.” She pushed off her chair and started to gather her paperwork.
“If this case is something, which my gut is telling me it is, you’re best off here and not in town.”
“I appreciate the concern, John,” she clicked off the recorder, “but I’ve been living in Washington for a very long time and have dealt with some pretty scary people, and I’ve been okay.”
Then why are you here?
I rubbed my chin and thought about another angle to take with the conversation.
“The people up in that house,” I nodded toward the main house, “have seen all kinds of ugly, and though you might think you’ll be okay, I’d appreciate it if you’d humor them by staying.”
She stopped what she was doing and seemed to hear me. “Okay,” she nodded, “I respect that.”
Good.
I glanced at my watch. “Dinner is at six.”
“I’m not really that hungry. I think I’ll just stay here and get myself organized.” Her hands twisted together. Poor thing was very uncomfortable. I actually felt bad for her, but I also knew Savannah wouldn’t have it.
I smiled. “One thing you should know about this place, Sloane, Savannah is relentless. Unless you want her bringing the whole cavalry down here, you’d best be there at six.”
“Okay,” she held her hands up in defeat, “I’ll see you at dinner. And, John?” I looked over my shoulder. “I’m sorry for your friend.”
The painful knot returned when I pictured the rookie’s lifeless face. Though I didn’t know the kid, it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
“Me too.” I headed outside and up the path.
The house smelled of peppercorns and baked potatoes when I entered the living room. I could hear Savannah in the kitchen singing her heart out to a country song. Cole and Mark were in deep conversation by the fireplace, and Mia was rocking Tabby to sleep.
I sometimes felt like the odd man out without a family of my own, but I just had to look around me, and I knew I had the best of both worlds. I was free as a bird to climb my mountains and do what I wa
nted. I knew warmth and love were all around me, and that was all I needed. Besides, I also got to play wild games with their little squirts.
“Have you washed up for dinner yet, Uncle John?” Livi popped out of nowhere like she often did.
Damn her father. Their games of hide and seek meant she knew all the hidey spots in the house.
“Not yet.”
“Surely you’re not wearing that to dinner. We have company.”
I looked down at my dusty pants and fisherman sweater and then over to my little-lady niece, who was less than impressed.
“There’s a lady guest in the house. You should brush your hair and at least change your shirt.”
“She’s right,” Savi chimed in from the kitchen.
“Fine,” I grunted and headed for the stairs.
“Oh, and Tripper ate Dell’s radio again!” Savi called after me.
“Maybe he should put it away next time,” I muttered back.
Chapter Four
Sloane
I pushed open the huge wooden entry door of Shadows’ main house. The sounds of voices had me curious. Who was all here? I recognized one voice I knew, Frank’s laugh as it rang out. Good, he was still here.
I was used to being around people I didn’t know. I was brought up in a constantly busy, constantly changing yet controlled household given who my father was, but I wished my mother was here to make small talk. I really should call her and let her know I was getting settled.
“Ms. Harlow,” Daniel flashed me his famous smile and escorted me to the bar, “you look lovely.”
“Thank you, Daniel.” I caught my reflection in the window. My navy-blue sweater hung off one shoulder, paired nicely with my white jeans and thigh-high black boots. The one thing I did love was fashion. Since most of the time I worked in a courtroom, I was excited I didn’t have to wear my usual business attire.
“What would you like to drink?”
Mark rubbed his hands together as he strolled up next to me, and another man joined him. “Would you like to try the famous Marcus Martini?”
“Or maybe a Tail of the Devil?” the smaller guy chimed in.
“Um…” I looked at Daniel, but he just shook his head like this was the norm.
“Both?” I joked.
