by LENA DIAZ,
“You became a cop.”
“Exactly.” He slid his fingers through her hair, enjoying the silky, soft feel of it. “It’s been an interesting career. Rewarding. But I’ve never really fit in. Dillon was right when he said I wasn’t a team player. And Grant was right, too, when he told you I had...issues in Knoxville. What did he call them? Anger management problems? That’s probably accurate. I punched one of my coworkers.”
She surprised him by laughing. “Who hasn’t? I mean, I haven’t. But I’m a woman, and we tend to be smarter than men. We solve our problems without having to hit each other.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
She laughed again. “Maybe it’s a Southern thing. I don’t know. But most of the guys I grew up with, and even the ones who are adults now—like Dillon—have punched other guys at some point in their lives. I don’t personally think that’s a cardinal sin like some people. As long as you can move on afterward, it lets off steam. Guys can do that—get mad at each other, have a knock-down, drag-out fight, then be fine the next day. I don’t know how you do it. But it works. What happened? Your boss threatened to fire you over it, like Grant said?”
“Yeah, he did. If it had been anyone else on the team, he’d have said they deserved it. The guy I punched had just shoved a woman. And I didn’t personally think he should treat one with such disrespect, no matter what occupation she had.”
“Prostitute.”
“Yes.”
“Then good for you for punching him. It’s not like women in that situation do it for fun. Life has usually beaten them down, and they get in a cycle of abuse or addiction. They should be given our empathy and be helped, not criticized or made to feel worse than they already do.”
“You’re a kind woman, and perceptive. Most people I’ve met wouldn’t feel that way.”
“Then they’re idiots. You said if it had been someone else, you wouldn’t have gotten in trouble. Was it the boss’s son?”
“Nephew.”
She snorted. “Jerk. He should be the one who got fired.”
“I didn’t get fired. I quit.”
“Okay, right. You quit. And Chief Thornton hired you. How did that happen?”
“He was in town to visit someone he knew, an old-timer getting ready to retire. I gather they worked together years ago. Thankfully for me, he happened to be in the squad room when the whole altercation happened. Apparently the old-timer felt the way I did about the nephew and what he’d done. He talked to Thornton about me, and the next thing I knew, he’d offered me a job. In Destiny, I’d still be a detective, in my adopted home state of Tennessee, and I’d get to become a part-time SWAT officer, something I’d wanted for years. It was a no-brainer.”
He feathered his fingers through her hair again, still in awe that he was holding her like this. Holding her, loving her, had been more than he’d ever dreamed he’d get a chance to do. If he could change anything, the only thing he would change would be to keep the lights on after she’d fallen asleep in his arms in the living room and he’d carried her to the bed. He would have loved to just lie here all night staring at her beautiful face, seeing the way the light glinted off her glossy blond hair.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m ready for more questions. Fire away.” He smoothed her hair down and waited. “Donna?”
A soft snuffle, like a tiny cat puffing out a burst of air, sounded from her lips. Then she let out a decidedly unladylike snore.
He laughed and hugged her close. She’d accused him of snoring, when she was the one who snored. He couldn’t wait to tease her about it. But for now, he’d have to wait. She really was worn out. They both were, and both needed their sleep.
As he settled down beside her and tucked the blanket around both of them, a feeling of guilt tightened his chest. Things weren’t looking good for him to ever be a cop in Destiny again. Which was fine. He could go somewhere else, as long as it was in his beloved Tennessee. But Donna, well, she’d been born in Destiny and grew up there. Her family was there. He didn’t have to ask her burning questions to know that. He’d been working with her for months and had simply listened. She’d freely spoken about her family, her hopes, her dreams. And all of them centered on living in Destiny. Could he ask her to give that up, to go somewhere else? The answer wasn’t something he even had to think about. She’d be miserable anywhere but Destiny.
Which meant there was zero chance of them having a future together.
Worse, though, than the guilt he felt for basically having taken advantage of Donna in her sleep-deprived state was the realization of how the clock was ticking down for his fellow SWAT team members. They’d been missing for a few days. How many kidnap victims had been held that long and were returned alive and unharmed? He didn’t know the statistics but imagined they were pretty dismal. Tomorrow, he and Donna needed to go full steam ahead and do everything in their power to find their friends. Because it was feeling very much like no one else was looking for them.
The clock was ticking. And it was counting down.
Chapter Thirteen
Being shy had never been in Donna’s nature. Maybe being the oldest of four girls did that to a person. She’d been both friend and mother hen from a very young age, and had never had time to be shy. She was too busy making sure her younger sisters didn’t kill themselves getting into something at school, or after school, before Mom and Dad came home from work. But this morning, she could barely look at Blake without feeling heat rise in her cheeks.
Not because she was embarrassed over what they’d done last night—which was probably what he thought. But because she couldn’t seem to quit thinking about every kiss, every sweep of his tongue across her heated skin, every thrust of his body into hers. And she was so turned on, she was afraid that if she stared at him too long, she was going to jump him—condom or no condom.
So she showered, dressed and then ate her room-service breakfast of toast and juice on the far end of the sectional sofa while he sat at the table, poring over the files they’d brought with them. She could feel his occasional glances and questioning looks. But she was careful to pretend complete fascination with her food rather than face the elephant in the room. If he unsettled her this much after making love, how was she even going to function today? Somehow she needed to turn her thoughts. And what better way to turn them than to work on the case?
He’d spoken on the plane about possibly visiting Sanchez in prison. But she wasn’t confident that talking to a drug lord was worth their time. If he’d ordered the murder and kidnapping, he had no incentive to admit it. And it could be dangerous for Blake and her if he had someone powerful pulling strings for him, and keeping tabs on his visitors.
It could even be the FBI.
On the surface, the feds being in Sanchez’s pocket didn’t make sense. After all, they were the ones who’d spent a couple of years infiltrating his operation to build a case against him. Why would Grant, or his direct reports, do anything to jeopardize all that hard work? And what did it have to do with Destiny’s SWAT team? The connections were there, right in front of her. But she couldn’t quite make them fit. Still, she knew in her bones that they really did fit somehow. She just needed the right information, that one piece of data, to make the picture come into focus. Which meant she needed information about Grant. How convenient that they were in the town where he lived?
She grabbed her phone and surfed the web. She was both shocked and pleased at how easy it was to obtain the information that she needed.
Typically, if a simple Google search didn’t reveal someone’s home address, then social media was the way to go to. People posted all kinds of personal details online, never realizing just how much of themselves they were exposing to strangers who might use those details against them. And Grant, surprisingly, was no exception.
Oh, he was smart enough to have an unlisted phone number and had managed to keep his add
ress unlisted in the usual places. And he didn’t have any social media accounts that Donna could find. Even his wife and kids didn’t seem to have any social media accounts.
But their friends did.
Just a few advanced searches led Donna from Richard Grant to his wife and two daughters via his daughters’ friends, who posted plenty on social media—including pictures the entire world could see. Pictures of birthday parties at the Grant family home, pictures of the girls leaning against a boy’s car in the street out front, conveniently right by a street sign and a mailbox. That was the money shot—giving Donna the exact address of Grant’s home.
She used the map feature on her web browser to zero in on the location for a street view. Her tongue almost fell out of her mouth when she got her first good look at both the property and the house itself. Holy cow.
The agent lived in west Knoxville, in a neighborhood that wound through gently rolling hills, where every home had an expansive, manicured lawn. The subdivision—if you could even call something so grand such a common name—was an eclectic mix of Craftsman bungalows, sprawling Colonial Revivals, Tudors and even ranch homes. Some were large, some were small, all were expensive. A beautiful lake—Fort Loudon Lake—sparkled in the distance. And every driveway seemed to boast a BMW, a Mercedes or some other expensive car she couldn’t even name.
Grant’s home wasn’t mansion-sized like many of the others. But it wasn’t a shack either. It was probably a little over three-thousand square feet. It was one-and-a-half stories, likely with a couple of bedrooms and a bath on the second floor. But it was the first floor that took Donna’s breath away. The facade was made of stacked stone and cedar shakes, with entire walls of fancy windows with boxes overflowing with luscious pink flowers. The grass was deep green and looked as if it had been groomed with a pair of scissors.
“You look like you’re ready to drool,” Blake’s deep voice broke into her thoughts from across the room. “What has you so fascinated?”
“SSA Grant’s home. Ever heard of a neighborhood called Sequoyah Hills?”
“Sequoyah Hills? That’s where he lives?”
“Yep.”
“The average FBI agent makes under a hundred-thousand dollars a year. At Grant’s level, he makes somewhere under two, probably closer to one-thirty or one-forty. How can he afford to live in Sequoyah Hills?”
“That’s what I was wondering.”
He’d crossed the room and was now sitting beside her, looking over her shoulder at the street-level picture of the agent’s home. “You sure that’s his?”
“Positive. It took an enormous amount of dedicated research to find it, but I did.”
“Ten minutes on social media?”
She grinned. “Five. You think he’s on the take? Maybe Sanchez is paying him under the table to look the other way or purposely foul up the trial.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t conclude that based on the house. The bureau knows where he lives. I guarantee they would have made sure they knew where the money came from to buy it. Is he married?”
“He has the required wife and two kids, yes. Daughters—both teenagers.”
“Then either his wife has one heck of a well-paying job, or they got their money the old-fashioned way. They inherited it.”
“Maybe. I’m not convinced that he isn’t dirty,” she said.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t dirty. I just don’t think this is about money. He’s too smart to flaunt ill-gotten gains in public.” He waved toward the house on her screen. “And I’ve been looking into him this morning, too. He’s squeaky clean, the very image of the perfect FBI agent. Literally the only thing questionable that I’ve been able to find is this Sanchez trial postponement and the way he’s treated you and me. Something happened recently that is weighing on him, forcing him to make some questionable decisions. We need to figure out what that recent event or situation is so we can follow the trail to whoever is holding our friends.”
“Our friends? Not my friends?”
He let out a deep sigh. “Our friends. I miss them, and I never thought that would happen. Even Dillon, if you can believe it.”
“I believe it. I’m not even surprised. I knew we were all growing on you. It was just a matter of time until you realized it yourself. Back in the chief’s office, when Grant was asking about our impressions of the ransom note, you said ‘that’s not how we talk.’ You didn’t say I talk. You said we. That’s when I knew you were one of us, part of the team. You just hadn’t realized it yet.”
“You got all that from the word we?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe you’re right,” he admitted. “But right now, we need to focus on bringing our friends home.”
“Which is why we’re checking out of the hotel and taking a road trip.” She turned to face him. “We’re going to break into Grant’s home.”
* * *
THIS TIME, IT was Blake’s turn to be so shocked that his mouth literally fell open, just as Donna’s had done in the chief’s office, when Grant basically accused them of lying.
To be fair, they were.
He cleared his throat and scrubbed his face as if the lunacy of her statement could be wiped away just as easily. Nope. She was standing in front of him, a determined look on her face, fully prepared to argue her outrageous point. And it was definitely outrageous.
“Why?” he asked. It was all he could manage at the moment.
“Because he’s wrapped up in this somehow. And it’s not like we can ask him any questions. A guy like that, no question he’s got a home office. And where there’s an office, there are files and to-do lists and calendars and any number of things that might provide a clue that will make all of this make sense.”
“So you want to go to prison?”
She rolled her eyes. “We won’t go to prison if we don’t get caught.”
“Sure, right. Because it would never occur to a supervisory special agent to have a security alarm at his home, with security cameras. And nosy neighbors who have to know he and his family are out of town. Yeah, sounds like a brilliant idea.”
She crossed her arms. “That’s the goal. Do you want to hear my plan?”
“By all means. Enlighten me. How do you propose we do this without attracting attention, getting caught on film, or getting caught, period?”
“First, stop being sarcastic. It’s not helping.”
“Forgive me. What was I thinking?”
Her eyes narrowed.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Tell me the plan. I’ll hold my snarky comments until the end.”
She shook her head but continued. “One of the jobs I had while working my way through college was at a security company. They were an alarm system builder and distributor. You know how vegetable canning factories stop the lines and change the labels? Same product but they swap the outside of the cans for different brands?”
“Actually, no. I didn’t realize they did that. Sounds like it should be illegal.”
“I agree, but it isn’t. Or, at least, it wasn’t back when the security company used that example to help me understand what they did.”
“They manufactured systems for other companies to sell and distribute under their own brands?”
“Exactly. I was one of their 1-800 operators who answered questions from prospective clients about the various components in the systems they sold. All the information was in the computer system, of course, so I just punched in their questions and up popped schematics and common questions and answers. But to make sure we knew the systems well enough so that we didn’t sound like we were reading it off a screen, we were constantly in training. They demonstrated the systems, how to arm them, disarm them, ways to override them. Are you following?”
“Unfortunately, I am. You think you’ll recognize the features of Grant’s alarm syst
em and be able to disarm it.”
“I’m ninety-nine percent sure that I can, yes. The company that I worked for distributed alarms to ninety-nine percent of the market. Even if we get caught on camera, once we’re inside, I can erase us from the system. No one will ever know we were there. In and out, no muss, no fuss.”
“What about the neighbors?”
“It’s just past typical morning rush hour. Most of them should be at work. But even if they aren’t, all we have to do is act like we belong. Park in front, instead of down the block. Walk up to the front door as if we have every right to be there. As long as we don’t act suspicious, no one will pay us any attention.”
“Too risky. Someone could call the cops, especially if one of the neighbors is house-sitting. There are too many variables.”
“We could stop at a uniform store and get some coveralls and tool belts, make it look like we’re there to fix something. Everyone needs home repairs. We could walk around the outside of the house, pointing up at the roof, pretend we’re figuring out the best approach to fix something. Actually, I really like that. We could get in the backyard that way without raising suspicions. And disabling the alarm out of sight of the neighbors is much less risky.”
“No.”
She put her hands on her hips. “No? Come on. It’s a great plan. It’s low risk the way I’ve thought it out.”
“Absolutely not. We are not going to break into SSA Grant’s home, and that’s final.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I can’t believe you talked me into breaking into a federal agent’s home.” Blake shook his head in disgust.