Unleashed

by Jami Alden

  Yeah, that was what he told himself, but as much as he hated to admit it, that wasn’t even close to the truth.

  The truth lay in the middle of a convoluted mess of emotions he didn’t even want to try to unravel. Starting with the one-two punch of ball tightening, knee weakening lust he’d experienced at the first sight of her, immediately followed by an upsurge of anger he would have sworn was dead and buried.

  “Seeing her again sparked my curiosity.”

  He didn’t have to look at Derek to know he didn’t believe him for a second. To avoid any more prying questions, Danny pushed the button to set another target and slipped his safety glasses and ear protectors back into place.

  Curiosity. Yeah, Danny was pretty fucking curious about a lot of things having to do with Caroline Medford. Starting with how she’d ended up married to the old fart in the first place. Never mind that Medford was good looking—for an old raisin anyway—a successful attorney, prominent on the San Francisco social scene and rich enough to have a mansion in one of the East Bay’s wealthiest communities.

  But he’d never pegged Caroline for a gold digger or a status seeker, even when she’d questioned his choice of West Point for college and his determination to join the Army like his father before him.

  Guys like you don’t join the army. Guys from my neighborhood join the army so they can go to school. Your dad has money. You can do whatever you want.

  She hadn’t understood, at first, his desire to fulfill the family legacy. Four generations of Taggarts, including his father, had served in the military. To him, joining the military wasn’t a last resort, something a man did because his choices were limited. It was the choice of a man who knew exactly what he was getting into and chose to face the challenge to be all he could be.

  Yeah, he’d quoted the Army recruiting poster back to her. So what?

  Caroline still hadn’t understood that—not completely—but she had understood his need to feel like he was doing something useful, worthwhile, on behalf of a cause greater than him, instead of being stuck at home spinning his wheels as his father fell apart in the wake of his mother’s disappearance. She also knew, even though Danny had never voiced it out loud, Danny’s hope that if he went to West Point, followed in Joe Taggart’s footsteps, his Dad might notice something else in his life other than his single-minded drive to find his missing wife.

  But even if Caroline claimed to understand Danny’s decision, she’d never accepted the reality of what it would be like to be an army spouse, especially the wife of someone in the Special Forces. The long absences where she didn’t have any idea where he was or when he’d be back. His need for periods of quiet and decompression when he came back so he could deal with the blood, the violence, and the death on both sides he faced every time he was sent on a mission.

  In the end, no matter what she said about love and loyalty and their plans for the future, Caroline couldn’t hack it. And just like his mother, when the going got tough, Caroline had turned her back on him and walked away for good.

  Good thing she’d done it before they did something really stupid, like actually marry each other.

  Danny leveled his Glock at the target, took aim and squeezed the trigger. The target shuddered on impact and he squeezed again.

  Derek fired off three rounds, paused, and emptied the rest of his clip.

  “Did you find anything good?” Derek asked after they both removed their ear protectors and Danny punched the buttons to retrieve the targets.

  “You know, if I wanted to chitchat, I would have suggested coffee instead of the firing range,” Danny snapped.

  So much for keeping his cool. But Derek’s question picked at a raw spot. Despite all of his research into James Medford’s murder and a careful dissection of his own mother’s life before she disappeared, he couldn’t find a single shred of information or evidence that indicated they’d ever been in the same room together, much less crossed paths in any meaningful way.

  Then again, there was a lot they didn’t know about the last weeks and months in his mother’s life. Gaps of time when they didn’t know what she was doing while they were at school and their father was at work. Mundane details they’d pieced together from bits of information provided by friends and acquaintances, because none of them paid much attention at all to how Anne Taggart was living her life.

  Danny shoved aside the surge of guilt that came with that reminder. He wasn’t going to waste time wallowing, not when there was a chance to redeem himself for every cruel word and thought he’d had for his mother since she’d disappeared.

  “I still think you should help her.” Derek unloaded his gun and packed it in a locking gun case while Danny did the same. Though they both had conceal and carry permits, neither wore their sidearms unless the job called for it.

  “What the fuck. Just because you and Ethan jacked off to visions of Carrie in a bikini before you could get pussy of your own, you have a soft spot for her.”

  “Ethan and I did just fine on our own without having to spank it to images of your girlfriend,” Derek replied in his annoyingly calm voice. “But I think we should help her out. For old time’s sake. Shit, she was going to be part of our family. That should count for something.”

  Danny slammed his guncase on the ground and threw his ear protectors so hard a piece of plastic casing went pinging through the air. He was sick of his brothers pushing, sorry he’d told them even half of what she wanted. “Yeah, and the only reason she didn’t marry in was because she found out I wasn’t the trust fund kid she thought I was. As soon as she realized she’d have to live on my military pay, she said fuck you to the six years we were together, turned around and found herself a sugar daddy to shack up with. So I don’t owe her shit for old time’s sake, and neither do you.”

  Derek opened his mouth to protest but Danny cut him off. “And another thing. She didn’t show up at Mom’s memorial service out of some long lost affection for Mom or for us. She was there because she’s a user, and she wants to use us to help her beat a murder rap.”

  “You don’t really think she did it.”

  “Even if she did, it’s not like she won’t get off, not with Rachael Weller covering her ass. That woman could get Pontius Pilot acquitted.”

  “Which brings me back to my earlier question. If you really don’t give a shit about all this, why have you pulled up every piece of information you can find on James Medford?”

  The truth surged, clamoring to break free. He and his brothers were tight; they never kept things from each other, especially something as big as this. But something held his tongue. He didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, not even his own, until he knew whether Caroline was really on to something.

  He refused to think that it had anything to do with protecting Caroline. Or protecting himself. Because he knew the second he let them in on it, they wouldn’t let up on him until he gave in, or they’d go behind his back to help her themselves. Either way Danny would be smack back where he didn’t want to be: way too close to Caroline. “Morbid curiosity,” he said.

  Derek finished packing his Sig away and leveled Danny with a stare that made him want to squirm. Instead Danny turned away and headed for his Jeep.

  Danny slid into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition.

  “For someone so dead set against helping her, you’re sure doing a lot of due diligence.”

  Danny didn’t say anything, and it stuck in his craw not to tell Derek the truth. Maybe he should just call the cops, tip them off that Caroline might have some information. But he knew what would happen. Whatever the cops found would disappear into a black hole of an evidence closet, and Danny wanted to know exactly what Caroline had before it got mired in the legal system.

  That was the real reason he wasn’t going to the cops, and why he wasn’t letting anyone else in on the information. It had nothing to do with the fact that something inside him physically recoiled at the thought of siccing the cops on Caroline again. At t
he thought of cops showing up at her house, questioning her, maybe even getting a search warrant to tear her place apart. Her face would be all over the news, the new sensational angle putting her right back on the front page.

  But he didn’t care about protecting her from that, not at all. The only reason he was keeping Caroline’s revelation to himself was because it was best for everyone involved.

  Derek was silent the rest of the way back to the office. They entered the building and Derek started down the hall to his office, then paused as though reminded of something. “Don’t forget dinner at our place tonight.”

  Danny feigned a look of regret. “Can’t. I have some stuff I need to take care of. Moreno’s helping me with the postmortem on the GeneCor case.”

  Derek glared at him.

  “I wouldn’t miss Alyssa’s lasagne if it weren’t important. They need the report by tomorrow.” Total lie. Danny planned to be working on a case all right, but it had nothing to do with the biotech company that had been a Gemini client for the past two years. He planned to recruit Moreno—the one man in their organization guaranteed to keep his mouth shut and ask no questions—and they were going to start some heavy surveillance and figure out exactly what Caroline Medford had to hide.

  “Garage light just came on.” Ben Moreno’s low voice whispered through Danny’s earpiece. At five-thirty in the morning, the moon was still peeking through wisps of clouds as the sun struggled up over the bay. For the last several days Danny and Moreno had staked out Caroline’s house, familiarizing themselves with her routine. While Danny slouched low in the Lexus he’d borrowed from his dad, Moreno had posed as a member of the gardening crew. He’d managed to get into her garage and put a tracking device on her car.

  Not that they needed it. If the last few days were any indication, Caroline didn’t get out much. She left briefly one afternoon when a cleaning crew arrived. They’d tailed her to a coffee shop where she’d sipped a cappuccino and pretended not to notice the speculative stares and whispers as the other patrons recognized her. She didn’t lead the trophy wife life he’d imagined. No long lunches with friends. No leisurely afternoons at the spa.

  The Caroline he’d known had been outgoing, social, the kind of woman who made a new friend everywhere she went.

  Now it seemed she was a virtual shut-in.

  Danny shoved aside the involuntary tug of sympathy. Caroline had made her choice when she married a much older, wealthy man. If that left her with few friends to rally around her while the DA built his case against her, that was her own damn problem.

  Other than the cleaning crew, her only visitor was a young, pretty redhead who showed up with a little boy in tow and stayed for several hours. Danny knew the young woman was Caroline’s stepdaughter, Kate, and the little boy her son, Michael. Evidently Kate had had no issue with her father marrying a woman who was closer to her own age than to her father’s. Not only did Kate visit two of the four days Danny and Moreno watched the house, she’d been all over the press voicing her support for Caroline. In one of her more memorable quotes she’d said, “Only a complete retard would believe Caroline was capable of killing my father.”

  Despite her homebody ways that made it difficult for Danny to get a good look around and bug her house, she had one regularly scheduled outing they could count on. One they would have missed had Danny not idly checked the tracking device a few days ago before his morning run. Everyday for the past three days Caroline left the house at five-thirty a.m. and went to the Piedmont Hills Fitness Club, where she worked out with a private trainer for at least an hour. She didn’t arrive back home until at least seven-thirty or eight, leaving Danny plenty of time to get inside and look around.

  He stood on the side of the house that faced the neighbor who didn’t have any motion detector lights on his house—he’d already disabled Caroline’s switch yesterday. It was the kind of neighborhood where the houses were big but the lots were small, leaving a narrow gap that provided plenty of shadows for concealment.

  He caught a glimpse of Caroline as she backed the silver Mercedes out of the garage. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her face pale and strained in the glow of the streetlamps. Nothing like the siren in black who’d shown up at the church nearly a week ago.

  But still pretty enough to make him feel like he’d been kicked in the chest.

  Danny shoved the thought aside. He needed to stay focused. The last thing he needed was to fuck up because he was distracted and end up with the cops all over the place. Caroline pulled into the street and paused a second as she reached up to press the garage door control. Like most people, she drove off without bothering to see if it closed.

  Or to make sure no one used the opportunity to sneak into her garage.

  Crouching down, Danny ran the few steps to the garage and slid under the door before it fully closed. In the back right corner was the door that led to the house. He held a flashlight between his teeth as he quickly overrode the alarm. Next he picked the deadbolt, going smooth and slow. If anyone ever cared to look, they’d never find evidence the lock had been tampered with.

  “I’m in,” he whispered into his collar where his mouthpiece was clipped.

  “I’ll let you know if anyone approaches, sir.”

  Danny rolled his eyes at the formality. Back at the office or out at the bars, Moreno called him Danny or dickhead or whatever the hell he wanted. But when they were on the job, Moreno reverted back to their days in the Special Forces, when Danny had recruited Moreno straight out of Ranger school at the tender age of nineteen. Even though Moreno had been nearly a decade younger than everyone else on the team, he’d turned into one of the best small arms and hand to hand combat specialists Danny had ever worked with. As annoying as Danny sometimes found Moreno’s acknowledgment of rank, it worked to his advantage at times like these. When Danny said their surveillance of Caroline was confidential and off the clock, Moreno hadn’t so much as blinked in curiosity.

  Danny found himself in the kitchen, predawn light washing the room in gray. Lots of granite and stainless steel, including a professional grade cooktop that didn’t look like it had been used in a decade.

  Danny shook his head. What a waste.

  He moved through the kitchen, pausing at a built-in alcove that held a phone and a small desk. Mail was neatly stacked and separated, organized into piles of bills, magazines, and catalogs.

  His lips pulled in a half smile as he had a sudden flashback of Caroline, in his old room in his parents’ house in Atherton, trying to put all of his papers and books and other random crap into some semblance of order. He’d lured her over under the guise of helping him with his math homework. Even though she was a year behind, she kicked his ass all over the place in honor’s calculus.

  Caroline had arrived at seven p.m. sharp, just like they’d planned, her calc book tucked under her arm and a mechanical pencil clutched in her fist like a weapon. She was different from any girl he’d ever dated, cute creampuff cheerleader types who brandished Daddy’s credit cards at the mall like it was a competitive sport.

  Caroline was quiet, headdown, a scholarship kid who pulled straight As and didn’t do any extracurriculars because she worked as a waitress five nights a week. Danny hadn’t even noticed her until she’d ended up in front of him in honor’s calc. The first day of class he asked to borrow a pencil since all he could come up with were pens.

  She’d turned around at his shoulder tap. One look at her face, olive skinned and faintly exotic, and Danny had felt something twist deep in his gut. One look at the full curve of her breasts pushing against the front of her white uniform shirt, and he totally forgot what he’d wanted from her in the first place.

  “Did you want something?”

  Her dark eyes were narrowed in a glare, but a flush darkened her cheeks. She’d caught him staring at her rack.

  He searched his suddenly blank brain, trying to remember what he wanted when all he wanted was to kiss her full pink mouth right th
ere in the middle of second period.

  She started to turn away.

  “Pencil,” he’d managed, pointing at the one in her hand like he was a caveman. “You have one I can borrow?”

  She’d rolled her eyes and muttered something about dumb jocks. Danny tried not to take it personally. Just because he was a fullback and captain of the football team didn’t make him a brainless meathead.

  Then again, he had been caught staring and drooling over her chest.

  She held out a red number two, but snapped her hand back before he could take it.

  “You better give it back to me after class,” she warned with a hard look in her dark chocolate eyes. “It really pisses me off when people borrow,” she made little airquotes around the word, “stuff when they have no intention of giving it back.”

  “I swear,” he said, smiling stupidly in response to her glare. Like a stupid cliché, his fingers brushed hers as he took the pencil. Heat shot straight between his legs, generating a boner so fierce and persistent he’d had to walk out of class holding his backpack in front as he pretended to rummage around looking for something.

  Caroline didn’t seem to notice. Which made her all the more intriguing.

  Danny didn’t consider himself particularly sensitive or intuitive when it came to girls, but somehow he knew if he was obvious enough to ask her out on a date he’d get shot down. His brother Ethan, already a stud in the making as a sophomore, advised Danny to appeal to her brainpower.

  “Chicks love it when they think they’re helping you.”

  “She will be helping me,” Danny reminded him. Going into finals he had a C–, unacceptable in his, and more importantly, his father’s view.

  “Good. Get her over to help you with a problem set, and once you get done with the math, ask her to help you solve an even bigger problem.” Ethan’s lewd grin and rude hand gesture made them both laugh.