Crimes of Passion

by Toni Anderson

  “Before I arrived in DC, my office was billed for the ten grand the Arizona US Attorney’s Office gave us. It turns out the USA’s assistant had also cc’d the bill to the State Department. That was all the secretary needed to determine who had provided us with a vehicle. As I mentioned before, all federal vehicles have tracking devices.”

  “Would that have been enough to indict him?”

  “No. He did follow up on the smallpox with the president. He did everything right, while quietly discrediting you and me. Last night I got the judge to authorize a wiretap, but he might have walked if Robert Beck hadn’t betrayed him by ordering the attack on the house while he was still inside.”

  Her eyes drifted closed. She hadn’t been this tired since the first day they met—the longest day of her life. “Are you always this busy?” she asked. “Because every time I’m with you. it’s nonstop. You promised me dates with dinners at restaurants and fun football games. But all I get are explosions, men trying to kill me, and we hardly ever eat.”

  “I’ve got tickets to a football game a week from Sunday.”

  She bolted upright. “You really got tickets?”

  “Of course. I bought the tickets and a five-year-old’s artwork.”

  “I thought you’d made that up. It was an adorable story.”

  “It was pure wooing gold. Wait until you see Katie’s drawing. You’ll be crawling all over me.” Curt’s grin set her heart pounding. He had a new smile, just for her, and it conveyed all the intensity of his feelings as well as a hint of their shared intimacy and a promise for more.

  “Can we really go to a football game? In public? Don’t I need to hide?”

  “Beck has lost his mercenary army. He can’t pay the bills, so his employees won’t take orders from him anymore. It’s one of the nicer things about mercenaries. Zealots are so much harder to stop.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. “So, Mara, will you come with me to the football game?”

  She grinned. “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to take me out to dinner first.”

  EPILOGUE

  CURT AND MARA STOOD ON THE FRINGES of the small graveside gathering in Arlington Cemetery. The remains of Captain Allen Baldwin, the man who’d piloted the F-86 Sabre she’d excavated that last day in North Korea, were being laid to rest at long last, and Mara didn’t want to draw attention away from the man being honored by making her presence known. Weeks had passed since the explosion at the safe house, and the excessive media attention had finally died down, but the press still occasionally followed them.

  Curt held her hand as the flag was carefully folded and presented to the man’s widow. The widow was flanked by her children and grandchildren, several of whom were Mara’s age, reminding her so much of her own family and how her grandmother had longed for a ceremony like this one.

  Someday, perhaps, JPAC would return to North Korea and retrieve her grandfather’s remains, but Mara wouldn’t be on the crew. Nor would Jeannie. Jeannie’s legal troubles were still being sorted out, but it looked like she’d get probation in exchange for her testimony against Beck.

  Mara had seen her, briefly, at Jeannie’s brother’s funeral, which Curt and Mara had flown across the country to attend. Now, here she was, again dressed in black, attending the last of the memorials related to the North Korean deployment and Raptor’s foray into biological weapon manufacture and homegrown terrorism.

  Robert Beck, two scientists, and his four most loyal mercenaries were being held without bond. They had enough to convict them without her testimony, and Mara had no reason to fear any rogue operatives would target her.

  Still, she’d breathe easier when the convictions were handed down.

  The ceremony ended, and they waited for the crowd to disperse before she approached the freshly filled grave. From her purse she pulled a JPAC coin, a grinning skull on one side with the words “Search, Recover, Identify” on the back. She set the coin in the loose soil and whispered her thanks to the man who’d given his life to prevent the US from committing a wartime atrocity.

  The cold December wind cut through her wool coat, and she shivered as they walked up the path toward Curt’s car. Days like today made her miss Hawaii, yet she looked toward the coming mainland winter with a surprising amount of hope.

  They returned to Curt’s condo, where she’d been staying since Beck’s arrest. The press no longer camped outside his building. Life was starting to feel almost normal.

  Inside his home, she kicked off her shoes and walked straight to the fireplace, where she warmed her chilled hands while Curt checked messages. A few minutes later, he approached her from behind and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Just got word, a man has stepped forward with an offer to buy all of Raptor’s assets.”

  She frowned. “Raptor isn’t dissolving?”

  “He says he wants Raptor’s existing government contracts in addition to the various training grounds and compounds.”

  “If Raptor keeps operating, am I in danger?”

  “My source says no. The man is Alec Ravissant. He’s a retired Army Ranger. Sterling reputation. He’s agreed to government oversight and says he’s determined to redeem the organization. The deal won’t go through without a thorough vetting, and so far he looks good.”

  She let out a sigh of relief. The fact that Raptor was in limbo had been weighing on her.

  Curt’s arms tightened around her waist. His hard body warmed her back. “You’re safe.”

  His lips found her temple and he kissed a trail down her neck. She twisted in his arms and faced him. Her mouth met his in a long, leisurely kiss. Eventually she rocked back on her heels and smiled. “I appear to be living with you,” she said. Not the words she’d planned to say, but, with the last funeral over, she no longer had a reason remain in DC. No reason, that is, except Curt.

  His mouth curved in her favorite smile. “You just noticed?”

  She nipped at his chin. “I don’t want to go back to Hawaii.”

  His grip on her hips tightened. “Good, because I want you here. With me. But you should know I’ll go wherever you decide.”

  Tiny bubbles of joy expanded in her chest. She’d expected his response but still liked hearing the words. “I’ve been thinking I could apply for a job at the Naval History and Heritage Command in Anacostia. It wouldn’t be JPAC, but it could be meaningful.” She paused, wondering how he’d react to her next statement. “When I get back on my feet financially, I’d like to find a way to fund a scholarship—to Stanford. I can’t pay it back, but I can pay it forward.”

  His eyes lit. “I think that’s a fabulous idea. I can support you; then any salary you earn can go straight to the scholarship.”

  Emotion flooded her. She kissed him, accepting his offer without words. He let out a guttural groan that told her he enjoyed this method of negotiation.

  She broke the kiss and glanced around the room. “There is one caveat. If we’re going to stay here, we need to do something about your condo.” She pretended to shudder. “It’s a shame Raptor blew up a perfectly nice safe house and left this place intact.”

  He chuckled. “Before you were here, I was never home. Now when I’m home, all I see is you.”

  She grinned. “Good one.”

  “I’m getting good at this relationship thing.”

  She scoffed. “Yeah, it’s been days since you’ve tried to read me like a chessboard.”

  “I can’t help it. That’s how my mind works.” He kissed her again. “There was another message on the answering machine. The White House wants a definitive answer on whether or not we’re going to attend the State Dinner next week.”

  “They really want us there, don’t they?”

  “It would be good PR after what happened to the secretary of state.”

  She frowned. “I’m willing to go. But it won’t be nearly as fun as the pretend one.”

  He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “We can do for real what we talked about.”

  “Sex afterwa
rd was a given.”

  He laughed. “No, I mean put in a token appearance and leave.”

  “We could bail before the first course?”

  “Yes. I have a different appetizer in mind.”

  She grabbed his tie and pulled him to her for a leisurely kiss. With her mouth on his, she backed him toward the bedroom as she undressed him. He was naked from the waist up by the time she pushed him backward onto the bed. “If you bring the champagne, I’ll bring the honey.”

  He tugged on her arm, and she toppled forward, landing on his chest. “Check,” he said. In a swift motion, he flipped her so she was pinned to the mattress beneath him. Hazel eyes alight, he grinned a sexy, confident grin. “And mate.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  FOR MORE INFORMATION on the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the work they do, please visit their website at www.jpac.pacom.mil.

  ***

  THANK YOU FOR reading Body of Evidence. I hope you enjoyed it!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU TO my friend and Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command archaeologist Rich Wills, for answering all my questions about JPAC protocols and describing your experiences working in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. This book wouldn’t have been possible without your insight.

  Thank you to author and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Infectious Disease Specialist Jennifer McQuiston and her colleagues Mary Reynolds and Andrea McCollum for answering my questions about smallpox. Their opinions do not represent the opinions of the CDC, and any factual inaccuracies in this book are my mistake, not theirs.

  Thank you to author and Air Force Reserve public affairs officer AJ Brower, for answering my questions about US Air Force bases and dormitories.

  Thank you to attorneys Steven Burke, Shauny Jaine, and Kenneth Kagan, for answering my legal questions and explaining the difference between case-in-chief and rebuttal, and the rules of evidence for both.

  Thank you also to Courtney Milan for answering random questions about U.S. law and lawyers when I didn’t know what I needed to know. Also, I can’t remember who suggested it, but I must thank either Courtney or Mr. Milan for naming my mercenary organization.

  Thank you to both the plaintiff’s and defendant’s attorneys who selected me to be juror number nine in a civil suit just weeks after I began writing this story. I was utterly grateful for the opportunity to learn about our court system from a juror’s perspective. Thank you also to my fellow jurors, who left me with nothing but respect for our system and pride in how honorable and conscientious our compulsory volunteers are.

  Thank you to all the authors who critiqued this book, with a special shout out to the authors who dropped everything to read for me (sometimes more than once) when I needed it most: Elisabeth Naughton, Darcy Burke, Kris Kennedy, Jill Barnett, Mary Sullivan, Carey Baldwin, Amy Atwell, Krista Hall, Jennie Lucas, and Gwen Hernandez.

  Heartfelt thanks to my blogmates at www.KissandThrill.com for putting up with me on this publishing journey. I’d be nowhere without your support, and your friendship means the world to me.

  Thank you to the Northwest Pixie Chicks for the best annual writing retreat every year. You all inspire me.

  Thank you to the RWA® judges who made this book a finalist in the Golden Heart® contest two years in a row. Those contest finals opened so many doors for me, for which I’m grateful.

  Huge thanks to my agent, Elizabeth Winick Rubinstein at McIntosh & Otis, for pushing me to be a better writer and for believing in me. Your support has meant more than I can say, and without you, this book would be so much less.

  As always, thank you to my family. Everything I do, every word I write, is for you.

  ***

  THANK YOU TO the men and women of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command who work in difficult and often uncomfortable conditions to bring our lost servicemen and women home.

  Lastly, thank you to all the men and women, past and present, who have served in the US armed forces.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Four-time Golden Heart® finalist Rachel Grant worked for over a decade as a professional archaeologist and mines her experiences for storylines and settings, which are as diverse as excavating a cemetery underneath an historic art museum in San Francisco, survey and excavation of many prehistoric Native American sites in the Pacific Northwest, researching an historic concrete house in Virginia, and mapping a seventeenth century Spanish and Dutch fort on the island of Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles.

  She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children.

  ***

  If you’d like to know when my next book is available, you can sign up for my new release e-mail list at www.Rachel-Grant.net.

  You can also like my Facebook page at

  www.facebook.com/RachelGrantAuthor

  or follow me on Twitter at @RachelSGrant.

  I’m on Goodreads at www.goodreads.com/RachelGrantAuthor,

  where you can see what I’m reading and post reviews.

  ***

  OTHER BOOKS BY RACHEL GRANT

  Concrete Evidence (Evidence Series 1)

  Body of Evidence (Evidence Series 2)

  Withholding Evidence (Evidence Series 3)

  Grave Danger

  HER SANCTUARY

  TONI ANDERSON

  Copyright 2013 Toni Anderson

  Cover by Killion Group Inc.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9918958-2-3

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This story was originally published by Triskelion Publishing in 2006 and then The Wild Rose Press in 2009.

  For more information on Toni Anderson’s books, check out: http://www.toniandersonauthor.com

  Grandad—a true romantic.

  John Edward William Mepham.

  I miss you.

  15th November, 1920 ~ 7th February, 2012

  ONE

  New York City, March 31st

  Elizabeth Ward eased back the blinds and peered into the quiet street that ran alongside the apartment building. Rain streaked the windowpanes, drops running together and fracturing in the orange glow of the streetlights. A dark-colored Lincoln crouched like a shadow next to a squat, black and silver hydrant. Her former colleagues from the FBI’s Organized Crime Unit sat in that car. Watching. Waiting. Her so-called protection.

  Betrayal burned the edges of her mind like battery acid.

  The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed five times, making her jump.

  Five a.m.

  Nearly time.

  Her fingers gripped the edge of the window frame. Night’s gloom clung to the red brick of the Victorian tenements opposite, its weak edges and cold breath eating into what should have been springtime.

  A drunk wove his shopping cart down the back alley, searching for a safe spot out of the killer wind. Even Midtown’s exclusive neighborhoods were scattered with down-and-outs, hunched behind dumpsters, curled up between parked cars. A community of desperate souls, listless, gaunt, and stinking like the dead.

  She envied them.

  She wanted to be that invisible.

  Swallowing past the wedge in her throat, she counted to ten and slowly inhaled a lungful of air. She’d done her j
ob, and done it well, but it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

  She sat at her computer in the darkened room and signed in to an anonymous email account. Wrote two messages.

  The first one read, Terms of contract agreed. Proceed.

  There was more than one way to skin a cat.

  Her teeth chattered, but not from cold. A rolling shake began in her fingertips and moved up through her wrists—whether from rage or fear she didn’t know. She clenched her hands together into a hard fist, massaged the knuckles with her interlocked fingers, grateful for the unyielding gold of her signet ring that bit into her flesh.

  Pain was a good reminder.

  She pulled her shoulders back, typed carefully, Beware the fury of a patient man.

  Baiting the tiger, or the devil himself.

  Bastard.

  A tear slipped down her cheek, cold and wet. She let it fall, blanked the searing memories from her mind.

  Elizabeth logged off. Reformatted her hard-drive, erasing every command she’d ever received, every report she’d ever sent. Letting the computer run, she headed into the stylish bathroom of the apartment the FBI had leased for her undercover alter ego and prepared for the final chapter of her New York life. She leaned close to the mirror and put in a colored contact lens.

  One eye stared back, frosted iced-blue, the other looked eerily exposed, its pale green depths shining with fear. With shaky fingers she put in the second lens and made up her face. Heavy foundation hid the dark circles under her eyes and translucent powder covered her rampant freckles. Blood-red lipstick and thick black eyeliner dominated her face, making her look harder, bolder.

  “Hello, Juliette.” She knew the old fraud better than she knew herself.

  Blush emphasized cheekbones sharp enough to cut, and mascara elongated her thick lashes. She pinned her hair back into a neat bun, tight to the nape of her neck. Pulled on a wig that was similar to her own dyed, red hair, but cut shorter into a bob that swung just beneath her chin.