Blind Trust: A Military Romantic Suspense (Men of Steele Book 6)

by Gwen Hernandez

  NOVA. Todd had told her earlier it was shorthand for Northern Virginia, the part located in the DC metro area.

  “Oh,” Lindsey said. “I thought your husband worked with Kurt too.”

  “He used to, but not at Steele. He and Dan and Kurt were PJs with my brother.”

  “Ah.” Lindsey had been reduced to single syllables. She needed a chart to keep track of all the connections. “Does your brother live close too?”

  “No, he died in Afghanistan while working as a contractor.”

  Damn. She’d put her foot in it now. “I’m so sorry.”

  Jenna nodded. “Me too, but that’s what brought me and Mick together, so it’s bittersweet.” She patted her little one’s back and forced a smile. “Anyway, I’m happy Tara finally met someone who treats her well. She deserves it.”

  “She and Jeff seem great together.” What else could she say? All of the pairs here seemed like #couplegoals to her.

  “They are. And our boys have become fast friends. Tara just needs to have a baby quick so this one will have a someone close to her age too.” She laughed, righting her clothing as she stood. “I’m mostly kidding.”

  Lindsey wanted to be around to see that. And Alyssa’s baby. And all of the big events for the most important people in Todd’s life. “Fingers crossed,” she said. “Can you point me to the restroom?”

  “Down the hall, second door on the left.”

  “Thanks.”

  After doing her business, Lindsey washed her hands and checked her appearance in the mirror. She didn’t have Tara’s impeccable style, or Jenna’s fresh-faced looks. She wasn’t a pilot like Caitlyn, or a tech genius like Valerie, or a former aid worker like Alyssa. She felt boring and plain next to their amazing accomplishments and incredible beauty.

  But Todd said he loved her. And so far, he’d backed it up with every action. If he’d never gotten scared and pulled away, would she doubt him at all?

  Maybe. But that was on her, not him. And she was done letting guys like Cruz define who she was and what she believed about men.

  The entire group of honorable men outside this room loved their wives and girlfriends and children, and weren’t afraid to show it. They were tough but also compassionate.

  And Todd was one of them. Unique, but with the same characteristics. Like no man she’d ever met before.

  If he said he loved her, she chose to believe him. Nothing could guarantee their relationship would work out for the long term, but she trusted him to give it his best.

  Just as she would. Because she loved him too, and he deserved to know it. Time to stop guarding her heart, to stop running from being vulnerable. So far, opening up to Todd had only brought rewards. Her body flushed as she pressed the spot on her upper thigh where he’d left a light stubble burn.

  How wonderful could things be if she completely dropped her armor and went all in?

  She reapplied her lip gloss and gave her mirror image a nod. Tonight. She’d give him the words tonight.

  Her phone—still the temp phone from Marti—dinged. Mom had been checking in nonstop, and Lindsey felt a twinge of guilt for not returning to LA directly. But she’d wanted Todd to have a chance to square things with Jason. And she’d wanted to meet, and personally thank, his friends for their help and support.

  She checked the phone’s screen to find a message from an unfamiliar number.

  UNKNOWN: Do exactly as I say and I’ll let your parents live.

  Adrenaline punched her in the gut. No one but her parents, Todd, and Marti had this number.

  With jittery fingers, she tapped out a response.

  LINDSEY: Who is this?

  She knew—she knew—but it couldn’t be. Right?

  UNKNOWN: You’re smarter than that, LinLin.

  LinLin. The casual, friendly nickname chilled her, as if she and Megan were just two friends having a normal chat, not…whatever the hell they were now.

  A picture taken through a window of Lindsey’s mom sitting at Tia Ana’s dining table immediately followed the message. A gun barrel and sights were blurry in the foreground while her mom smiled at someone across from her, oblivious to the danger.

  Panic hit Lindsey like a sneaker wave, making her shake so hard she nearly dropped the phone. No no no. She had to warn Mom. Warn everyone.

  If she called the police, what would keep Megan—or whoever was there—from shooting before help arrived? Scanners were easy enough to come by these days. Lindsey knew someone who monitored local police activity through a website, no special equipment required.

  She took a deep breath. The photo might not be live, but based on her mom’s haircut, it was recent. Besides, if someone could get close enough to take this picture before, they could do it again.

  UNKNOWN: Stop thinking. You have 60 seconds to exit the house through the front door alone WITHOUT ALERTING ANYONE to our communication and get into the black car parked three houses down.

  A vise clamped around her throat. There had to be some way Todd and his team could help. Except, they were here, not in LA.

  There was a chance Megan was bluffing, that she wouldn’t harm the people who’d always welcomed her to Garcia family gatherings. But the woman had been willing to have Lindsey killed, and to ultimately do the deed herself. Lindsey couldn’t take the chance with her family members’ lives.

  UNKNOWN: If you warn anyone, I’ll kill them all. But you’re the one I want. 60, 59…

  Oh, God. Lindsey braced her hands on the counter to keep herself from collapsing.

  If she told Todd, he’d never let her leave the house. She’d wanted to lure Megan out of hiding, and she’d done it. She had no idea how the other woman had found her, but she should’ve known Megan would find a way to circumvent all the security Todd had in place.

  Her phone chimed again and she almost dropped it.

  UNKNOWN: 40, 39…

  Fear drove a spike into her chest. She didn’t trust Megan to honor her end of the deal, but if anyone got hurt because Lindsey didn’t take the threat seriously… She couldn’t chance it.

  “Fuck.” One way or another, Lindsey was going to end this. She’d thought she’d be more prepared—and that she’d have Todd by her side—but at least the wait was over.

  Anger made her face hot as she frantically looked in the drawers and cabinets for anything useful and came up empty.

  With only a few seconds to spare, she left a message for Todd and slipped unseen out the front door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “SEEMS LIKE THINGS have improved with Lindsey,” Jason said, snagging a cookie off the table.

  “They have.” Todd could feel heat rushing to his face. “We…talked.”

  Jason laughed at that understatement, but didn’t ask for details. “Good. So, what’s next?”

  “What do you mean?” He was already designing wedding rings in his head, but no way in hell was he going to share that with Jason, even if they were surrounded by some of the best examples of true love he could imagine. Especially since his friend was the only one here without a date. “It’s going to take time to convince her I’m serious.”

  “Are you going to move to LA?”

  Todd frowned. This was the part he hadn’t worked out yet. Outside of his family, the people he cared about most in the world were here in Virginia. But Lindsey had only ever lived in California. Her family and her business were there. He couldn’t ask her to leave all that behind for him. “Why, you trying to get rid of me?”

  Jason grinned. “Always.” He chomped on a huge bite of cookie. “But seriously, I’ve been trying to convince Kurt we need a West Coast presence, and that I can make it happen with my contacts out there. Until now, I wasn’t sure you’d be game to do it with me.”

  Todd looked around. Clearly he wasn’t the only one who appreciated the sense of community here. Could he and Jason form a new team in LA? “You just want prettier clients.”

  His friend snickered. “Plenty of old, white execs in Cali
fornia too. And I’m itching to be in charge of something. I’m going to be tied to a desk for a while, so it’s the perfect time for a change.”

  Todd managed to tamp down the guilt about Jason’s injuries. “I guess I could run recruitment from there if Kurt is game. It’s mostly travel anyway. Training would probably have to be limited to West Coast hires though. I wouldn’t want to be gone all the time.”

  “I think being able to offer people a chance to live on either coast will help with recruitment, which means we’ll need more trainers anyway.”

  “Good point. How about I let you know after I’ve spent some time there?” Todd had moved enough times with the Air Force that he wasn’t intimidated by the idea, but he hadn’t expected to uproot again anytime soon, if ever. Having Jason in LA would make the transition easier, but Todd also wanted to make sure he’d be happy with the decision even if things with Lindsey went south. Plus, while he didn’t relish a long-distance relationship, moving to California too soon might scare her away.

  “Sure, no pressure,” Jason said. “I don’t even know if Kurt’s going to agree. He’s reluctant to expand into an unfamiliar market, and wants to keep the small, family feel we have right now.”

  That was one of the things Todd liked about Steele most. “If you have the contacts, you could start your own business. Maybe Kurt would be willing to invest. At the very least, you could refer clients and potential recruits to each other.”

  “Maybe.” Jason wiped his fingers on a napkin, a faraway look in his eyes. Did his injury have him rethinking his future, or was there more going on?

  Todd had been so busy with his own shit lately that he had no idea. He made a mental note to question Jason more next time they were alone.

  Across the deck, Dan caught Todd’s eye and gestured him toward the back door.

  He glanced around. Lindsey had only been inside for a few minutes, but he was so far gone he missed her already. He’d grown used to having her in his sights twenty-four/seven, and it made him itchy not to know where she was. Not in a controlling, stalker-ish kind of way, just a love-struck kind of way.

  She’d been beautiful when he’d first met her, disheveled and covered in dirt, but in that floaty red dress, she lit him on fire. All evening, he’d been envisioning undoing the long line of buttons one by one to reveal her bare skin.

  He stood, mentally pushing away the image before the direction of his thoughts became obvious to anyone looking. “Be right back,” he said to Jason, and walked toward Dan.

  “I got a call from the perimeter guards,” Dan said, meeting him halfway. “Lindsey just walked out the front door and got into a rideshare.”

  Minutes after leaving the house, Lindsey sat in the front seat of a black Honda Accord, gripping her knees and watching the tree-lined road ahead, street lights punctuating the darkness at regular intervals. Surely Todd realized she was gone by now. He had to be going out of his mind.

  I’m sorry.

  Next to her, Megan drove in silence, a gun in her left hand pointed at Lindsey as she steered with her right. Before exiting the neighborhood onto this four-lane road, Megan had directed Lindsey to dump her purse and phone out the window. Todd couldn’t track her and ride to the rescue, which meant she was on her own.

  So, she needed a plan to get away. Crashing the car always worked in the movies, but she’d have to wait until Megan was more distracted. Right now, her old friend’s finger looked poised on the trigger. In fact, Lindsey had no idea why she hadn’t just killed her already.

  Taking a deep breath to steel her nerves, Lindsey asked, “I’m here. Tell your goon to leave my parents alone.”

  “Don’t worry. Unlike me, Cruz doesn’t have the balls to actually shoot anyone.”

  “Cruz?” A combination of betrayal and relief washed through her. The man was an ass, but he was also nothing but swagger.

  Megan laughed without humor. “Give the man enough blowjobs and he’ll do anything for you. I swear, I don’t know why he stuck with you for so long.”

  Lindsey wished he hadn’t. “Why didn’t you just keep running? You could’ve disappeared, started over.”

  “Because I need more money.” Megan raced through a yellow light. “Thanks to you, my accounts have been frozen, my brother is gone, everything I worked for is gone. I’m a fugitive, for God’s sake.” Her voice turned bitter, getting louder by the second. “But you… Your life’s just peachy, like always. You float along in your safe little bubble of loving parents, a good business, and a growing bank account, and no matter what shit gets thrown at you, somehow you come out better than before. Cruz cheated on you—”

  “With you,” Lindsey couldn’t help reminding her.

  Megan shrugged. “Not just me. He was an asshat of the first order, and you would’ve figured it out soon enough.”

  Lindsey’s head spun. Why had she wanted to fix things with that man so badly?

  “But you dumped him, and your new boyfriend is even hotter.”

  And a thousand times better, but she didn’t think that would help her case, especially since she had Megan to thank for bringing Todd into her life. The whole thing was so twisted.

  “I took you to Montana to die, and yet here you are, alive and well.” Megan’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the steering wheel. “You ruined my life, and now you have a lunch date with Brandon fucking Marlowe.”

  Lindsey hadn’t realized Megan harbored so much animosity toward her. It clearly had been building long before Lindsey started digging into Meg’s clients. “You ruined your own life by taking dirty money,” Lindsey said. “I was trying to protect you because I thought you were being taken advantage of.”

  “Yeah? Well, your boyfriend killed my brother.”

  Bile rose in Lindsey’s throat. Todd’s actions had been warranted, but any death still horrified her. “In self-defense. Pete killed Todd’s cousin for no reason at all. His own wife. And he did it in front of their son. Your nephew. That was straight-up murder. There’s no comparison.”

  Silence.

  Megan’s gun hand twitched. The muscle in her jaw tensed.

  But she didn’t shoot.

  “I almost forgot how fucking righteous you are.” Meg’s voice had dropped into a menacing calm. “An answer for everything, and you always have to be right, always perfect. Fuck anyone’s feelings or what they want as long as you win the argument.” She glanced over in the darkness. “If you had just listened to me when I asked you to quit digging into my customers, you could’ve avoided all of this. We’d still be happy.”

  Megan’s criticism hit a little too close to home. It was something Lindsey needed to work on. Not because assholes like Cruz told her she should lighten up, but because she didn’t want to hurt the people she cared about just to prove she was “right.” She’d excelled in school, but that wasn’t a model for life.

  Still, she had been correct about the illegal origins of some of Megan’s income, even if she’d been blind to her friend’s willing participation in the scheme. Investigating the shell companies after Megan asked her to stop might have made Lindsey a bad friend—even if her intentions had been good—but she couldn’t condone laundering money for murderous drug cartels and gunrunners to help pay off dirty cops. No one got the friend pass for that.

  And while Lindsey would have preferred to avoid the horrifying events in Montana, she had no regrets about meeting Todd.

  She just had to survive to see him again.

  “I agree,” she said. “I have plenty of flaws to work on.” Lindsey scanned their surroundings for inspiration. “But I can’t undo what’s happened.”

  Megan finally looked at her. “No, but you can give me money.” She breezed through another traffic light as they entered a busy commercial district with huge strip malls and a mess of roads. “Your money. Your parents’ money. Todd’s money. All of it.” In the red glow of the dashboard, her nostrils flared. “I will not go back to hustling for my dinner, and I will not go to prison. If I
don’t get the money, I will kill you.” Her voice rose, hard and savage. “And I’ll make it my life’s mission to hunt down everyone you care about. Every family member, every friend. My life can’t get any worse, but revenge might just make me feel better.”

  Lindsey stared at this woman who’d once been her friend, as they drove toward a large mall and slowed for a red light. Had she ever really known her?

  A small part of Lindsey empathized with Megan’s pain. The rest of her was pissed and poised to fight. She balled her hand into a fist and waited, holding her breath. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  The car came to a stop and Megan glanced left to check for cross-traffic.

  Now.

  Lindsey yanked the gun from Megan’s hand and punched her in the thigh, where she’d stabbed her just days ago.

  Megan cried out in pain. “Fuck.”

  Lindsey shoved open the passenger door and ran toward the gas station convenience store on the street corner.

  “Stop!” Megan’s feet slapped the asphalt, and the car’s open-door warning dinged relentlessly behind them.

  Lindsey stumbled, but kept going, not daring to look back. Lungs on fire, she slammed open the store’s glass door. She turned to look for a deadbolt, but found only a keyhole.

  Outside Megan limped closer, only ten yards away.

  Lindsey called to the cashier, “Can you lock the door?”

  The tough-looking, gray-haired woman behind the counter looked up, eyes wide. “Don’t shoot!”

  “Oh.” Lindsey lowered the gun she’d forgotten she held. “No, I took it from her. She kidnapped me.”

  The woman hesitated, reaching for a lanyard around her neck.

  “Please, hurry. And if you have one of those emergency buttons—

  The door chimed.

  Megan shuffled inside and pointed a gun at the cashier.

  “No!” Lindsey raised the weapon in her hand, aiming for dead center on Megan’s chest.

  She pressed the trigger. Click. Shit, was the safety on?