by Cynthia Eden
Gunner tensed. “I...hope so.”
Logan frowned at him. Before Logan could say more, Gunner headed toward the trees. He’d already scouted the area before, looking for the perfect vantage point that the attacker would have used. A spot that would provide him with good cover, but one that wouldn’t put him too far away from the scene. The arsonist would have needed to get to the house quickly, and then be able to rush back and hide when the flames blazed.
Gunner wondered how long the man had stayed there. Had he watched as Gunner ran inside?
He eased through the light covering of brush at the edge of the woods. He made sure not to snap any branches. He didn’t want to create any evidence confusion. His grandfather had taught him and Slade how to slip in and out of any place, without leaving any traces behind.
So far, he wasn’t finding any evidence. No footprints on the ground. No broken leaves or branches. The attacker had been careful.
But if he’d been watching for any length of time, he would have needed to find one spot. One perfect spot to sit and wait and watch. No matter how careful the man had been when he got in the woods, he would have left a sign at his waiting spot. Turned-down grass. A cigarette butt. Something. Most folks couldn’t just wait for a long time in total stillness.
Gunner could. Most couldn’t.
When they’d practiced with their grandfather, going out past the reservation and into the woods that surrounded the land there, Slade had always hated standing still. He’d taken to grabbing a piece of pine straw and braiding the pieces together, over and over, because Slade had needed something to keep his hands busy.
Some watchers smoked to help pass the time. A bad idea, because the prey could catch the scent of cigarettes in the air.
Some chewed gum. Some carried a toothpick.
Slade had twined the straw around his hand, an absent gesture, as he waited—and told Gunner what a stupid idea it was to follow their grandfather into the woods.
Gunner stilled and glanced back toward the house. This was the spot he would have chosen if he wanted to watch Sydney’s home—to watch and not be seen. If he crouched lower, he’d be totally covered by the trees before him, but if he wanted to see, then he just shifted a bit to the left.
He had a perfect view of what had been Sydney’s upstairs window.
He glanced down at the grass around him. It had bent, just a bit, enough to tell him that his instincts were right. The watcher had been here.
Gunner swept the ground with his gaze, looking for some kind of path. He’d been on the road last night, and there hadn’t been any other car on this dead-end street. That meant the watcher had stashed his vehicle some other place. Gunner knew that a highway waited, about four miles back through the woods. The guy would have needed to make a route back to that highway.
Gunner just had to find it.
The watcher was good. Gunner would give him that. It took him fifteen minutes of searching before he found the first broken branch. Sure, that branch could have been broken by a wild animal, but...
There was another snapped branch about ten feet away. Then another three feet.
The man had been in a rush to leave.
It was next to that snapped branch that Gunner stopped, frowning. He bent and picked up the braided pine straw that had been left behind.
He stared down at the straw, not wanting to believe what he was seeing. This threading...
He knew this threading.
When they’d been younger, Slade had tossed away pieces of straw like this dozens of times. His brother had twisted the straw, twined it around his hand, and—
“Gunner!”
He stiffened at Logan’s call and his fingers tightened around the braided pine straw.
“Did you find anything?” Logan was closing in.
Gunner lowered his hand, squared his shoulders and turned to face the other man.
* * *
GUNNER FOUND SYDNEY typing frantically on the keyboard, her fingers flying. Her shoulders were hunched forward, and the light from the computer’s monitor clearly showed the scowl on her face.
Even though the door was open, he rapped lightly. Hal, the admin working right beside Sydney, glanced over at him. When he saw Gunner, the guy’s eyes doubled in size. “A-Agent Ortez.”
“Hal, can I have a minute alone with Sydney?”
Hal jumped to his feet. “Sure thing.” He gave Gunner a very wide berth as he hurried from the room.
Sydney just shook her head and kept typing.
Gunner frowned thoughtfully after the other man. “What’s with him?”
“You intimidate him,” Sydney said as she kept typing. “The way you intimidate most people you meet.” She exhaled and finally pushed away from the computer and her chair spun so she could face him. She stared at him, giving him a considering look. “I think it’s the eyes. The way they say, ‘Yes, I’ve looked into hell a few times.’”
He blinked at her.
She smiled at him. “But I’m rather fond of your eyes.”
No way were his cheeks flushing right now. Okay, perhaps they were, and he was very grateful for the olive skin that had to hide most of that flush.
Then her smile slipped away. “What did you find out at my house?”
He wasn’t real eager to start sharing that, so he said, “What have you found out here?”
“Here?” Her lips tightened. “Here I’ve found out that it looks like someone used your old access code to gain entrance into the system.”
“Mine?”
“Yes. Your personnel file was accessed, too, but only for a few seconds, not nearly as long as my file and the Guerrero file were.”
His muscles locked. “Someone’s setting me up.”
She nodded. “That would be my thought.” She pushed out of the chair and closed the distance between them. “Now tell me what you found at my house.” Pain flickered in her eyes. “Was anything left?”
“No, Syd, I’m sorry.”
Her chin lifted, the way it always did when she was trying to pull her strength together. “That place...it was my retreat while I was in D.C. My home has always been in Baton Rouge. I’ll get over this,” she said with a firm nod. “I will.”
He believed her, but there was still more to tell. “I tracked through the woods, looking for a sign of the arsonist.”
“And?”
“I might have a lead.”
She sighed. “Don’t play this game. Tell me what you’ve got or I’ll just go straight to Logan.”
“I think it could be Slade.” Harsh words. Words that he hadn’t wanted to say, but she needed to be aware of the danger that could be right beside them both.
Her eyes widened. Not doubling in size as Hal’s had, but still showing her surprise. “What?”
This was where he got to tell her that a few pieces of straw were making him suspect his brother. Flimsy evidence that hadn’t exactly convinced Logan. “He was trained to leave no trail, just like I was. He’s good, but...”
“Not as good as you,” she finished quietly.
“He could never just sit still. He always had to do something to keep his hands occupied. He’d take pine straw, twist it, braid it.” Gunner almost thought of the twisted straw as his brother’s signature. Whenever they’d been kids, and he’d found the straw in the woods, he’d known that Slade had been there. “I found some of that braided straw in the woods near your house.”
“But he had a guard on him. You told me—”
“Logan’s checking with the guard to make sure that Slade didn’t slip away.” Once Logan had questioned the guard, then they’d have a better idea of where they stood. Right now Gunner just had a dark suspicion boiling in his gut.
“You really think Slade would try to kill me?”
Slade had attacked her once. The sight of the bruising on her jaw had enraged him. If Slade thought that Gunner was taking Sydney away from him, well, Gunner wasn’t sure just how his brother would react.
/> The man he’d been years before...no, that guy wouldn’t do something like this. But the guy who’d came out of the jungle, addicted to muerte, he just might.
“What about the man who took the shot at me? Do you think he’s somehow linked to Slade? To the hacking?”
“I don’t know.” All he had were his instincts, screaming at him. “There isn’t enough evidence yet to know what’s happening.” And the fact that she was turning up evidence to implicate him? That was even worse for the situation. “I just want you on guard. I don’t want you ever alone with him.”
She stared up at him. “My personnel file...whoever accessed it knows about the pregnancy.”
The pregnancy could have been enough to push Slade over the edge. Gunner could see Slade hacking in to Sydney’s file, wanting to learn everything about her, but there was no reason for Slade to hack in to the Guerrero file, if he even knew how to hack. “When was that access code of mine used last?”
“It’s one that went obsolete—or should have gone obsolete—over two years ago.”
When Slade had still been around.
The phone on Gunner’s hip vibrated, right at the same time that Sydney’s vibrated, too. Gunner pulled out his phone and read the text. “Tina?” he asked Sydney, sure she’d just gotten the same message from the doctor.
Sydney gave a nod, then quickly signed off on the computer, securing the machine.
Tina’s text had said that she had blood test results that she needed to share with them, ASAP. She wanted them in the med room.
He knew that she’d been assisting with the autopsy on the man he’d shot at the James Fire Building. Tina didn’t normally handle autopsies, but Mercer had ordered her in on this one because he wanted one of his close staff members with eyes in that morgue. And when Mercer gave an order, few folks ever refused.
Sydney was silent as they entered the elevator. Gunner felt too conscious of her every move. He wanted to talk to her about last night, but since he’d just dropped the bombshell of his suspicions on her, he wasn’t quite sure how to lead into that.
He wasn’t the guy with the smooth lines and easy conversation. He never had been. He actually found it hard to talk to people outside of his team. The rest of the world just didn’t seem to understand him.
Especially women.
When he’d been a teen, there had been one girl he liked, a little blonde with green eyes. But when she’d talked to him, he’d pretty much wound up replying in monosyllables, and she’d started to date his brother instead.
What had her name been? He wasn’t sure.
The elevator dinged. The doors slid open. Sydney walked out, and Gunner realized he hadn’t said a word to her that whole time. Smooth. Gritting his teeth, he followed her into the med room.
Tina was waiting there with Mercer. Mercer had his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back against a filing cabinet.
“Dr. Jamison has found some interesting results for us,” Mercer murmured. Gunner noticed that the man’s assessing stare drifted to him, then returned to Tina.
“It’s the blood work.” Tina pushed a report toward him and Sydney. “I found muerte in the man’s system.”
Muerte. “The same drug my brother was on?” His gaze snapped to Mercer. “I thought you said the drug hadn’t made it to the U.S.”
“That’s what the DEA told me. Looks like they could be wrong about that.”
Sydney whistled as she studied the reports. “These are some extremely high levels. We’re lucky he didn’t shoot up the whole block.”
“The whole block wasn’t his target,” Mercer said quietly. “You were.”
Sydney’s fingers tightened around the report. “Do we know who he is?”
Tina nodded. “I got a hit on his fingerprints. Ken Bridges. He’s ex-army, dishonorably discharged for conduct unbecoming.” She cleared her throat. “He, um, almost beat a man to death while he was on a recon mission. The man was a civilian, completely unrelated to the mission.”
“What had Ken been doing since the army?” Gunner asked.
“Looks like whatever he could get paid to do.”
A gun for hire. Figured.
“The DEA’s getting pulled in on this one,” Mercer said. “They’re going to investigate Ken, break apart his life and follow the trail they find back to the muerte.”
The muerte trail already led to Slade. So he had to ask, “Are you questioning my brother?”
“Any intel that Slade can provide to us about the men who held him and addicted him will be used by the DEA.”
Gunner gave a hard shake of his head. “That’s not what I’m asking.” He’d been blunt with Sydney and with Logan. He’d be no less with Mercer. “Are you going to interrogate him? To see if he’s linked to this guy?”
Mercer’s head tilted as he studied Gunner. “Your brother has been either under guard or in a rehab facility for the majority of his time in the U.S. How is he supposed to have hooked up with a hired gun?”
“This guy’s ex-army, right? Maybe he hooked up with him in rehab. Maybe there was someone there who gave him Bridges’s number. If Bridges was addicted, then he’d probably know guys in that same rehab unit.” It made sense. Mercer had to see that.
“If there’s a link between them,” Sydney said, “we can find it.”
He had no doubt.
Tina was staring at them all with wide eyes.
“You think your brother is doing this? You really think he could be the one targeting Sydney?” Mercer asked as he uncrossed his arms.
“I don’t want to suspect him.”
“Why not?” Mercer asked softly. “He sure suspects you.”
That was the last thing Gunner had expected to hear. He snapped to attention. “Sir?”
But Mercer was pointing toward the door. “Let’s finish the rest of this conversation upstairs, Gunner. Dr. Jamison, good work. Sydney—”
“I want to be a part of that upstairs conversation,” she said, voice tensing with a demand.
The ghost of a smile curved Mercer’s thin lips. In his mid-fifties, Mercer still had the tough edge of a man half his age. “Since it’s your life, I rather suspected you’d request just that.”
Then Mercer walked toward the door.
Gunner glanced at Sydney, wondering what the hell she had to be thinking about this turn of events. His brother thought he was the killer?
And I think it’s him.
But the real question was...who did Sydney trust? Which brother did she think was there to protect her, and which was there to kill her?
Chapter Nine
They didn’t go to Mercer’s office. They went into an interrogation room, and that fact put Sydney on edge.
She glanced toward the two-way mirror. Was someone watching them? What in the world was going on?
As far as she was concerned, there was no way that Gunner was a suspect, and Mercer had better stop treating him that way.
“Gunner, you understand that I have to explore every avenue in this case.” No emotion broke through Mercer’s words. “You’ve been a fine agent here, and I have nothing but respect for the work that you’ve done.”
Sydney couldn’t stand it. “So why are we in interrogation?”
Mercer glanced over at her. He and Gunner were both seated. She was pacing like mad. “Because procedure has to be followed, and I don’t want this situation coming back to bite me later,” Mercer told her quietly.
She stopped pacing.
“So let’s get through this as quickly as we can.” Mercer looked back at Gunner. “Do you know a woman named Sarah Bell?”
Sydney frowned. The name meant nothing to her.
“Sarah.” Gunner seemed to be testing the name. Then he nodded. “I knew her, a long time ago.”
The door opened then, and Mercer’s assistant, Judith, hurried into the room. She handed Mercer a file. “Thank you,” he told her, inclining his head.
As Judith left, Sydney was pretty sure the other
woman flashed her a look of pity. Of pity? What was up with that?
“How long ago?” Mercer asked.
“I was eighteen. She was...I think sixteen at the time? Sarah Bell...she was killed in a fire.”
“Yes, she was.”
Mercer opened the file and pushed some grainy black-and-white photographs toward Gunner. “I pulled the arson reports on her fire. The M.O. that the arsonist used, it’s the same as the one that was used at Sydney’s place.”
Sydney grabbed the nearest chair and sat down—hard. Then she strained to see those photographs. The charred remains of the house had her swallowing a few times. Then she saw the newspaper reports that had been printed off and included in that manila file.
Family Perishes in Blaze.
“Sarah Bell and her parents all died in the fire,” Mercer said. “Unfortunately, the arsonist was never apprehended.”
Gunner leaned forward. “You think I had something to do with this?”
“Your grandfather passed away a week before that fire. His passing...when he was the only one to ever provide stability to your life...it had to leave you feeling lost.”
“I wasn’t lost.” Flat. “I had my brother to take care of. He needed me.”
“He needed you, but you wanted Sarah Bell?”
Now another picture was pushed forward. This one appeared to have been taken from a yearbook. A young girl with curly blond hair and sparkling green eyes. In the picture, she smiled, flashing dimples.
“I never dated Sarah Bell.”
“Are you sure about that?” Mercer pressed. “Because your brother said you were sweet on her back then.”
Gunner started to respond, then stopped.
The tension in the room ratcheted up. He had cared for Sarah.
“She was a nice girl,” he said. “She never seemed to care that my clothes were old or that I had to work two jobs around my school schedule. Sarah...she was good to everyone.”
“I heard she wasn’t so good to you.”
“That’s what Slade said?” Gunner asked. Sydney saw a muscle flex along his jaw.
A nod from Mercer. “He said she rejected you, and you didn’t handle that rejection so well.”
Gunner laughed then, but the sound made goose bumps rise on Sydney’s arms. “Slade was the one who dated her, not me.”