Pressing a hand to her chest—where her grief seemed to have taken up permanent lodging—Leila stood and walked around the office. It wasn’t large, but with framed copies of some of her father’s earliest deals, it reflected how hard he’d worked to build this company.
Petrov Armor might not survive. Once news broke about the armor, about her uncle, she’d received letters of resignation from more than a third of her employees. The rest had stayed, but each day they eyed her with uncertainty, looks that said she’d betrayed their trust by keeping the truth from them when news of the faulty armor first surfaced.
The military—their biggest client—had canceled all of their orders. Petrov Armor had taken a hit so big that Leila knew she might have to let go some of the employees who’d stayed loyal, stuck around to fight with her. But she’d made her decision and for now, the board was willing to let her try. She was going to rebuild, prove to everyone that she could go back to the company her father had once envisioned, that he’d worked so hard to build. A place where the mission was to help save lives.
Peering through the open doorway, Leila saw lights on in Eric’s office. She knew Theresa was still here, too, hard at work creating plans for more transparency, more security in their build process. People who would stick by her, stick by the company. People who cared about her, too.
But they weren’t her family. That was all gone now, no one left except her father’s abusive parents, who she’d never contact, and her mother’s family in Pakistan who she’d never met, except over a few brief video chats.
They weren’t Davis. Davis, who’d somehow wormed his way into her heart while he was digging through her company’s darkest secrets.
He hadn’t called. Maybe he’d been too concussed to hear her declaration of love. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered even if he’d known how she felt.
Because he was an FBI agent. And she was just the CEO of a company he’d been investigating. His job was finished here. He was gone.
Even if he wasn’t, could she be with someone who—intentionally or not—had put her in a position where she’d had to kill the only real family she had left?
A shiver racked her body, a sob lodging in her chest. But she blinked back the tears, forced the sob down. She’d already cried for her uncle. Knowing what he’d done, what he’d been willing to do, she refused to give him any more of her tears.
She couldn’t cry for Davis, either. Couldn’t cry for what might have been. Not yet, because that would mean admitting she’d truly lost him, too. And she wasn’t sure she was ready to admit that yet.
“Leila.”
The soft voice speaking her name made her jerk. Realizing her eyes had gone unfocused, she blinked and there was Davis. She blinked again, certain she’d imagined him, but he was still in front of her. Real.
Beyond him, in the dim lights of the space outside the office, Eric gave her a sad smile and a nod. Then, he slipped back into his office and she refocused on the man in front of her.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“I couldn’t stay away,” he whispered back, stepping closer.
There was still a big Band-Aid on the side of his head. Underneath, she knew there were a dozen stitches. But his eyes looked clear, his gaze steady as he took one more step toward her, then reached out and took both her hands in his.
It was something Eric had done in her office not so long ago. But Eric’s touch hadn’t made her heart race, or made hope burst through the pain in her chest.
She gazed up at him, trying to read his intention in his eyes. And yet—did it matter? Had anything really changed in the past week? They’d lied to each other. And she’d killed one of the people closest to her in the world. For him. Could she ever get beyond that?
As he brought her hands up to his lips, closed his eyes almost reverently as he kissed her there softly, she knew: she desperately wanted to.
“I’m so sorry about your uncle,” he said when he lowered her hands from his lips.
The pain he felt on her behalf was in the crinkling around his eyes, in the downturn of his lips, the way he gazed at her. But there was something else there, too, and even though it didn’t seem possible, Leila’s heart beat even faster.
“I never expected it to end like that, Leila. I never expected...” He gave a shaky—could it be nervous?—smile. “I never expected to fall in love with you.”
The words that followed were a jumble she couldn’t quite piece together, about being sorry he’d taken so long to come here, about wanting to start fresh. But all she could hear was the thundering of her own heartbeat in her ears, those most important words repeating over and over in her mind. I never expected to fall in love with you.
“What are you saying?” she finally interrupted him, unable to process too much about the past, needing to know more about the future.
Davis stepped even closer, as far inside her personal space as he could get without physically pulling her into his arms. “I’m saying I can’t let go, Leila. Maybe it’s what makes the most sense, given everything that’s happened, but I can’t do it. I love you. I want to give this thing between us a real shot. No more lies, no more half-truths. The same side.” He turned one of her hands in his, stroking her palm enough to send shivers of awareness over her skin. “I think we’ve always been on the same side, even if it didn’t always feel that way.”
She nodded back at him. They’d always been searching for the same thing: the truth. And they’d found it, even if it wasn’t what she’d wanted, wasn’t the way she’d wanted.
“A new start,” she said, feeling more certain as the words burst from her mouth without thought.
He smiled, tentative but genuine. He shifted his grip on her hand until it was more of a handshake. “Agreed,” he said, an echo of the promise they’d made to each other weeks ago, when he’d first gone undercover in her company.
Then, he pulled her closer still, until she was pressed against him. She rose up on her tiptoes, the first smile she’d felt in a week shifting from a small, hopeful thing into a full-blown grin. “I love you, too, Davis.”
“I know,” he answered. “And I promise you this—whatever comes next, we’re in it together.”
Then, he sealed that promise with a kiss.
* * *
TCD agents never sleep! Look for the next book
in the Tactical Crime Division series—
Midnight Abduction by Nichole Severn.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Conard County Justice by Rachel Lee.
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Conard County Justice
by Rachel Lee
Chapter One
Cat Jansen was sitting at the front desk in the Conard County Sheriff’s Office when trouble came through the door.
Rotation had brought her to this day of desk duty in the office. She wasn’t expecting to be too busy, which was one of the reasons she had decided to stay in this county after her mother’s death two years ago.
She had previously worked for a sheriff in Colorado but had left the job to come to Conard City to care for her ailing mother. Cancer was a brutal disease, and all Cat could say for the months she’d spent nursing her was that her mother hadn’t been alone. Then she’d taken a job as a deputy to the sheriff here. Today she busied herself with a day of paperwork and a few relatively minor complaints.
Until the big guy in an Army uniform walked through the door. She took a rapid inventory as best she could. Major’s oak leaves, a stack of colorful ribbons. He pulled off a tan beret as he entered.
His dark eyes reflected cold anger.
More worrisome than rage, the coldness suggested a determination that wouldn’t quit. Oh heck, she thought. What had made this guy look like this?
“Are you the desk officer?” he asked in a deep voice, suggesting a rumble of thunder in the distance.
“Yes, I am.” An imposing man. And whatever had brought him so far out of his way was likely a serious problem.
“I’m Major Daniel Duke. My brother, Larry, was murdered a week ago.”
Well, that explained the steel in his dark eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she replied. “How can we help you?” But she had an idea. Definitely trouble. She could feel it brewing like a building storm.
“I want to know how the investigation is going.”
“It’s going.” She wasn’t permitted to give him confidential details of an ongoing investigation.
“Are you checking into the possibility of a hate crime? My brother was gay.”
A bald accusation phrased as a question. If she hadn’t felt so disturbed and chilled by the look in his eyes, she might have done more than sigh.
“Of course we are,” she answered. “I knew Larry. We’re not overlooking anything, believe me. But in all honesty, we’ve never had a crime of that type in this county.”
“Not yet,” he said flatly.
Which was a point she couldn’t argue. This county evidently always seemed peaceful until something blew up. It wasn’t as frequent as in heavily populated areas, but it still happened.
The major was framed against the front windows, the bright spring sunlight now casting him in silhouette. Not comfortable for her to look at.
She pointed to the metal chair beside her desk. “Sit, please. I’m having trouble seeing you.”
He came around immediately and sat. Now she had a clear view of his face. It had the chiseled appearance of someone in prime physical condition, and sun had put some slight lines at the corners of his eyes. He looked as unyielding as the concrete she suddenly imagined him walking through. She suspected he wasn’t going to hang around just to identify Larry’s body, which hadn’t yet come back from the medical examiner, and arrange a funeral. No, he had other things on his mind.
“I’m not going to leave this town until the murderer is caught.”
“We’ll find him,” she said with more confidence than she felt. So far they hadn’t uncovered any clues. At least none they could yet recognize. Maybe the ME would find something.
“You find him, or I will.”
Whoa. She felt her first stirrings of sympathy sliding away into apprehension. “Let us do our job. You do realize that anything you find probably won’t be usable in court, because you won’t have a warrant. You certainly don’t want to get in our way or get yourself in trouble with the law.”
He didn’t answer immediately. When at last he spoke, his voice was clear, flat, hard. “I don’t care what happens to me. This is about my brother. He deserves justice. The dead should get that. Justice. That’s one of the things Larry believed.”
She saw pain pass over his face, quickly erased, and she sensed that this wasn’t about his brother’s death. Not exactly. Something else was going on here.
She also wondered what could be done about this man. He’d only said he wanted to find the murderer. He hadn’t said he was going to do anything illegal in the process. What were they to do to prevent him? Jail him without a charge?
Never. So they were stuck with this cannon. Whether it was a loose one or not, she had no idea. She did suspect that a Ranger could probably cause more trouble than a typical man on the street.
“You need to talk to the sheriff,” she said, ticking possibilities over in her mind. “If you coordinate your efforts with ours, there may be a way for you to satisfy yourself.”
“Is he here?”
“He’s at a county board meeting.” To discuss funding for expanding the department by a couple more cops, hoping to get funding for a better dispatch situation. Sticking communications over in the corner with the coffee machines was becoming a problem. They needed better equipment, a place to put dispatch out of the line of fire and noise in the front office. She’d been kind of startled when she began working here to realize that the department had been so small for so long they were stacking most duties all in one room. Time to move into the twenty-first century.
But that didn’t answer her immediate problem. She tried to lighten things a bit. “He said he’d be gone an hour nearly an hour ago. Given it’s the supervisors and it’s about money, it may become a longer wrangle.”
His nod was short, sharp. The cold steel in his gaze hadn’t lessened a bit. Okay, then...
“I’ll wait.”
She figured determination was bone-deep in this man. He had come here on a mission, one he considered righteous. Short of being given official orders, he wasn’t going to be derailed. She hoped the sheriff would be able to find a way to steer him. From her position, there was little she could do or say without her boss’s approval anyway.
“Larry,” she said finally.
Those eyes became even sharper. “What about him?”
“I knew him. Only for the couple of months he was here, but we met in Mahoney’s bar one night. He was enjoying a scotch, and I went in there to eat a ham sandwich, maybe have a beer. I sat at the bar near him, and we fell into conversation.”
He waited.
“I liked him immediately. Nice man, but I probably wouldn’t want to be the target of one of his investigative pieces.”
The faintest of frowns flickered over the major’s face. “No one would.”
“Anyway, we hit it off. He told me he was a journalist and that he was here on sabbatical to write a book. He even laughed, saying every reporter had a book in their bottom desk drawer. He never said what he was writing about. Did he tell you why he came to the back of beyond?”
“No.” His expression shut down again.
“I saw him a lot while he was here. He liked Mahoney’s—said it was his nod to Hemingway, whatever that meant. Do you know?”
He shook his head. “Probably a literary reference. A few years ago, he joked to me that you couldn’t drink your way into a novel.”
She felt a smile ease the tension in her face. “Well, he wasn’t trying to drink his way into anything. He appeared to like the atmosphere, even played darts with some of the regulars. Never a heavy drinker. We talked whenever we ran into each other, sometimes meeting at the diner for lunch. I’ve known a few reporters, and they’re never wallflowers. He’d started making friends around here.”
“That’s Larry, all right.”
She suspected this man didn’t find it easy to make friends. But maybe she was wrong. Too soon to know, except that while she wouldn’t like being the subject of Larry’s investigation, she would hate being the subject of this man’s ire.
“He started having card games at his place once a week,” she went on. “He invited me, but I’m not into cards, so I didn’t go. Maybe six or seven guys attended. Never any problem from our perspective. Which I suppose means they were reasonably quiet and didn’t get disorderly. Not much of an analysis on my part.” She tried another smile. “We’re looking into those friends.”
“Good.”
“You never know what kind of resentments might come out of a card game. Especially if they were gambling, but since Larry invited me, I doubt it.”
“He was never a gambler that I know of. At least not that way. He gambled a whole lot in other ways.”
Cat wondered if she’d just told him too much about the friends. About the card games. Dang, this man’s mere presence was making her talk too much, maybe reveal too much. Everything about him demanded answers.
She had just decided to pick up some paperwork in order to truncate this conversation by comparing written reports to digital. Gage hated the duplicate work, both on computer and paper, but like it
or not, the duplication was useful. Papers couldn’t be manipulated as easily as a computer file, but a computer file was more readily accessible.
Just as she was probably about to mortally offend the major, the sheriff walked through the door.
“How’d it go, Sheriff?”
“High school wrestling match. Partial success.” Gage Dalton was a tall man with a face scarred by burns. Long ago, when he was a DEA agent, he’d been the target of a car bomb. He still limped from his injuries, and even now some of his movements exhibited pain.
She spoke again before he could pass. Major Duke was already rising from his chair. Gage wasn’t going to escape this, either.
“Sheriff, this is Major Daniel Duke, Larry Duke’s brother. You need to speak with him.”
Gage raised a brow on the unscarred side of his face. “Come with me, Major. My office is open.”
The two men disappeared down the corridor, and Cat expelled a long breath, only just then realizing she’d been holding it. Tense. Lots of tension surrounded the major.
The dispatch desk crackled to life with a call. “Burglary at 1095 Elm Street. Need backup and forensics.”
Cat wished she were able to answer the call. She had a strong feeling she wouldn’t escape the major.
* * *
A HALF HOUR LATER, as she finished up comparing reports, Gage called from the hallway.
“Cat, could you come in here, please?”
Oh God, she thought. She glanced at the dispatcher, an elderly crone who smoked like a chimney under the No Smoking sign. She had learned quickly that Velma was a fixture who must be respected. A couple of deputies had told her that the only way Velma was going to leave her job was toes first. Cat had learned that Velma mothered them all.
“Good luck,” Velma said in her smoke-roughened voice.
Secret Investigation (Tactical Crime Division Book 2) Page 20