Secret Assignment

by Paula Graves

  The sensation was disturbing and highly distracting, and he’d damn well better figure out a way to make it stop before he did something that could destroy them both.

  He could feel the blackness inside him. Anger. Hurt. Resentment. And a terrible fear that his father’s words were true. “You’re just like me.”

  He’d had people tell him what he felt was normal, but he couldn’t believe it was really true. Not after seeing in his father’s depravity what that kind of blackness could do to a man’s soul.

  How it could destroy everything—and everyone—around him.

  Shannon Cooper didn’t need the darkness of Gideon’s world encroaching on hers. So he had to stop thinking about her. Stop wanting her.

  He had to figure out a way to protect her from not only the dangers posed by the intruders but also from himself.

  The moon had ducked behind a dark cloud, pitching the island into deep night before Gideon could make out more than a slender shape moving through the tall sea grass. But a glimpse was all he needed to recognize Shannon Cooper.

  And she was heading for the lighthouse.

  Don’t follow her, commanded a voice in the back of his head. But it seemed a whisper compared to the raging of his blood in his veins.

  Drawn by a force too primal to resist, he angled across the beach and headed up the shallow rise to higher ground, hating himself with every step but powerless to stop.

  * * *

  “GIDEON?” SHANNON FLASHED her light up to the top of the lighthouse, where the spiral stairway ended in a narrow landing just outside the service room. The beam of light, filtered through the lacy ironwork of the metal stairs, painted delicate, undulating shadows across the dank stone walls.

  No answer came from above, although she thought she heard soft sounds of movement at the top of the lighthouse. A shuffle of footsteps echoed through the cylindrical space, as if Gideon was moving in the darkness just beyond the reach of her flashlight.

  Odd, she thought. If she could hear Gideon moving around above, why hadn’t he heard her calling him? She was almost halfway to the top when she realized she might not be hearing Gideon above at all.

  She might be hearing one of the intruders.

  Instinctively, she reached for the weapon that should have been tucked in a holster on her hip. But she’d left the GLOCK back at Stafford House, feeling safe—with Gideon out here, keeping watch—to venture out unarmed.

  Stupid!

  Snapping off the flashlight, she reversed course as quietly as possible, moving backward slowly, keeping one hand on the stair railing and her eyes straining to see any sign of movement in the gloomy void above. She’d descended only a few feet when she heard another, less furtive sound than the whispery noises she’d heard earlier. Footsteps, she realized, moving rapidly on the stairs.

  Coming from below.

  Her heart danced wildly in her chest as she froze, uncertain which direction to go. Her hand closed around the flashlight, her fingertip trembling on the switch. One click of the light and she could be certain who was coming up the lighthouse stairs.

  But she’d also reveal her own position, making herself an easy target.

  Up, she decided. She could get to the service room and set off the foghorn. That would bring Gideon running for Stafford House and she could call out to him from the catwalk.

  She scooted up the stairs as fast as she could, not bothering with stealth. Speed was more important. She had to set off the horn before whoever was coming up the steps from below could stop her.

  She hit the narrow concrete landing outside the service room and skidded to a stop, nearly slamming face-first into the door. She pushed it open, slipped inside and closed the door behind her. Her heart pounding, she flicked on the light, swinging it in an arc around the service room, trying to regain her bearings.

  For a second, the figure in the corner didn’t register. Her flashlight beam swept past it before the image clicked in her brain.

  She swung the flashlight back, catching the black-clad figure moving with catlike speed. She jerked back, her hand slamming into the door. The flashlight clattered to the floor, the light disappearing.

  In the sudden, shocking darkness, the intruder grabbed her, his hand flattening over her mouth. His low voice rumbled against her like thunder.

  “Not a word, Shannon. Not one word.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The voice was familiar. Barely.

  There was a snick, and light came on in the service room again, brighter than her small light. The grip holding her in place loosened and she made her move, shooting toward the door.

  He grabbed her again. “Shannon, it’s Damon North.”

  She twisted around to face the intruder. He let go of her with one hand and flashed the light on his face.

  Dark, intelligent eyes shined from a handsome brown face. She’d seen him only once before, nearly six months earlier, but Damon North was unforgettable.

  “I knew it!” she whispered. “When Margo said that one of the four men from the yacht was named Damon—”

  “There’s someone coming up the stairs,” he whispered. “I have to go outside. You have to cover for me.”

  “Why should I do that? What the hell are you doing with those guys?”

  “You know what I’m doing. The same thing I’ve been doing for years.” He didn’t argue further, slipping out the side door and escaping onto the narrow catwalk outside. The light from his flashlight shut off, plunging her into inky blackness again.

  She barely had time to reorient herself to the dark when the door from the stairway opened and someone burst inside, coming in low and fast.

  “Don’t move!” he commanded in an authoritative growl. The familiar voice was a comforting relief.

  “Gideon,” she breathed.

  His flashlight snapped on, stabbing her eyes with its bright beam. “Why did you run?”

  “I didn’t know it was you,” she shot back, her nerves still humming with high voltage.

  “I thought you were running from someone else.”

  She released a weak, nervous laugh, thinking about the man out on the catwalk and wondering why she wasn’t telling Gideon all about him. Had she lost her mind?

  Aloud, she said, “This whole mess has us all on edge.”

  Gideon nodded, moving closer. “You okay?”

  Tell him about Damon. Tell him now.

  “I’m fine.” She opened her mouth to tell him about Damon, but suddenly the foghorn sounded, a low-pitched howl of distress.

  “Lydia,” Gideon breathed.

  Shannon’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you sure it’s not a trap?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Gideon said, already racing for the stairs.

  Shannon started to head down behind him, but the sound of the door from the catwalk sliding open stopped her in her tracks.

  As Gideon’s footsteps grew even farther away, she whirled around to face Damon, who had slipped back inside the service room.

  “Are your people here? Is that why Lydia sounded the horn?”

  His lip curled. “They’re not my people. You know that.”

  “I’m not sure I know anything about you at all.”

  “I helped your sister-in-law.”

  “You nearly got her killed,” she shot back. “And you put my cousin’s baby in danger with your stupid undercover games.”

  “The SSU hasn’t disbanded. You know that as well as anyone. I have to cut them out at the root.”

  “And you’re willing to risk the life of an innocent woman like Lydia Ross?” She should have told Gideon. Let Damon see if he could talk him into trust and leniency. “I have to go—Gideon might need me.”

  “It’s not them,” Damon said with confidence. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Not now,” she said flatly, turning and striding out to the stairs.

  “Leave your balcony door open,” he called softly after her.

  She made her way down as quickly
as she could, hampered by the utter lack of light. But she made it to the ground without incident and hurried out into the fresh air.

  A light rain had begun falling while she was inside the lighthouse, and as she dashed across the uneven ground toward Stafford House, she heard the growing restlessness of the Gulf, swelling waves slapping against the shoreline with increased agitation.

  The storm was on its way.

  By the time she reached Stafford House, the foghorn had stopped wailing. She dashed through the French doors and found Lydia sitting on the sofa, looking sheepish and a little bit frail.

  “Are you okay?” Shannon asked, hurrying to her side. Gideon sat on the coffee table in front of Lydia, his expression hard to read.

  “I’m fine,” Lydia said with an embarrassed grimace. “I had a thought about Edward’s journal and I went to your room to look for you, but I didn’t see you. And then, when I looked out on the balcony for you, I saw lights in the lighthouse and, well, I guess I overreacted.”

  Shannon caught Lydia’s hands between her own. “We’re all on edge.”

  “No harm done,” Gideon said in a gentle rumble.

  “Where did you go?” Lydia asked.

  “I saw Shannon heading to the lighthouse, so I went to see where she was going.” Gideon spoke when Shannon didn’t answer right away. His blue eyes turned to her. “What were you doing up there?”

  Now, she thought. Now’s the time to tell him about Damon.

  But a memory flashed through her mind, something her brother Rick had said a few months earlier, when Damon North’s plan to smoke out some SSU assassins had gone badly wrong, putting her brother and the woman who was now his wife in deadly danger.

  “Undercover is hell,” he’d said flatly when Shannon and the rest of the family had expressed outrage at Damon’s actions. “He lives every day as someone he’s not, and he knows that breaking that cover for a moment could mean his death. He has control over little, but he’s got the guts to go out there and take a risk for a good reason. I’m not going to second-guess him.”

  Even Amanda, the target of the SSU goons Damon had been trying to bring down, had agreed with Rick. “I’ve been in that same place. You can’t make everything come out right. Undercover operatives play cynical, wretched games with some of the baddest bad guys there are, because it’s the only way to get on the inside and stay there long enough to do the job. It’s something you can’t understand unless you’ve been there.”

  Damon had asked for her silence. She could give it to him, at least until she heard him out.

  Shannon pasted on a smile. “I thought I saw you moving around up in the lighthouse, so I went to look.”

  That much, at least, was the truth, and it was easy enough to tell without flinching.

  “Wasn’t me,” Gideon said thoughtfully.

  “It was probably my imagination,” she said with a self-conscious smile. She turned her attention back to Lydia. “You said you had a thought about the general’s journal?”

  “Well, two thoughts, actually. Or, really, two people. My husband spent a lot of time during the last days of his life conferring with a couple of old military friends. Generals he’d served with on his last tour before his retirement.”

  Shannon’s skin prickled, remembering the reason she’d gone to the lighthouse in the first place. She wanted to tell Gideon about the three generals, but her encounter with Damon North had upturned her world.

  “You think one of them might know how to break the code?” Gideon asked.

  “I think it would have to be both of them,” Lydia said. “Before Edward died, he told me about a way the field commanders sent top-secret coded messages to them—the cryptographers devised a multipart code that required input from all the parties involved to completely decrypt the message. It sounded hopelessly complicated to me, but apparently with the problem of underlings passing information to those internet leakers—”

  “They’d want a code that only they would understand between them,” Gideon said with a grim nod.

  “So you think to break the code in the journal, we might have to contact the other two generals,” Shannon said, her heart sinking.

  “It makes sense,” Gideon said. “The other two generals—Harlowe and Marsh, right?” He looked at Shannon, adding for her benefit, “Those were the other two top men heading the Kaziristan peacekeeping mission.”

  “I know,” she said bleakly. “And there’s something you should know.”

  Both Gideon and Lydia looked at her, concern in their eyes at the troubled tone of her voice.

  “I talked to my brother earlier this evening.” Shannon looked at Gideon. “It’s why I went looking for you at the lighthouse. But first, I have to tell you about something that happened back in the spring.”

  It had all started with an attempted assassination. “My brother Rick’s wife, Amanda, is a former CIA agent. And the reconstituted group of mercenaries who used to work for MacLear Security were sent by Barton Reid to kill her because of something she knew.”

  Lydia lifted one hand to her mouth, her eyes widening.

  “Amanda had been captured by al-Adar rebels in Kaziristan a few years ago. She’d seen the face of a rebel leader and could identify him.”

  “Khalid Mazir,” Gideon growled.

  “Yes.” Shannon looked at him. “They kept Amanda’s name out of the papers when that mess went down, but she was the informant who identified him as an al-Adar operative.”

  “Your sister-in-law put Barton Reid back in jail,” Lydia said with growing understanding. “Well, good for her. Never cared for the slimy old bastard in the first place.”

  Shannon smiled at Lydia’s unfiltered words. “No argument from me.”

  “What does this have to do with the three generals?” Gideon asked.

  “That’s another twist in the story.” She looked at Lydia. “My sister Megan was married to a soldier who died in Kaziristan four years ago. We’ve recently learned that MacLear SSU agents were behind his death—Vince had begun asking inconvenient questions about some things he’d seen Barton Reid doing in Kaziristan. He told the wrong person in his chain of command, apparently, and ended up dying for his effort.”

  “My God.” Lydia’s hand flew to her mouth again.

  “We didn’t know he was murdered at the time. We assumed it was a combat death. But last spring, my sister finally learned the truth, although she nearly got killed for it, too.”

  Gideon shook his head. “Your family seems to be made up of trouble magnets.”

  “Sometimes, when you try to do the right thing, that’s what happens.” Lydia reached out to touch Shannon’s hand. “Your sister must have been devastated to learn how her husband died.”

  “She was, but it was better to know the truth.” Shannon took a deep breath, aware that she was about to deliver a similarly devastating bit of news to Lydia about her own husband’s death.

  Gideon’s hand closed over her arm, drawing her gaze to his face. She saw his troubled thoughts shining from his blue eyes. He might not know exactly what she was about to say, but he clearly knew it had something to do with his own suspicions about General Ross’s death.

  She held his gaze, her chin up. Lydia had to know the truth, even if it was painful. “You may have heard about a new witness in the Barton Reid case. He was an army captain who had helped cover up my brother-in-law’s murder. He’d been blackmailed into it and finally turned state’s evidence. He ended up going into witness protection.”

  Gideon nodded, as if he’d heard at least part of the story before, but Lydia looked surprised. “I knew Barton Reid had been indicted again,” she said quietly, “but all this horror about murdered soldiers—”

  “My brother talked to the witness right before he went into witness security. The captain gave him a new piece of information about the case against Reid. It seems the captain overheard Barton Reid talking about the trouble he was having with three generals.”

  Lydia stra
ightened suddenly.

  “The implication,” Shannon added slowly, “was that the generals may have known too much about what Reid was doing. They were trouble.”

  Lydia looked stricken.

  Shannon reached across, placing her hand over Lydia’s trembling hands. “I’m sorry. There’s really no easy way to say this—”

  “Shannon—” Gideon’s voice was low and strangled.

  “Let her talk,” Lydia said quietly, turning her hands to clasp Shannon’s.

  “My brother believes your husband’s crash wasn’t an accident.”

  “He can’t know that,” Gideon said harshly.

  Shannon turned to look at him. “Maybe not, but here’s what we do know. A couple of days ago, General Emmett Harlowe, his wife and his adult daughter were all reported missing.”

  * * *

  ONE OF THESE days, all the sleep he was missing was going to catch up with him, Gideon thought as he hung up the phone and leaned back against the soft cushions of Lydia Ross’s sofa. Lydia had gone to bed, and Shannon was up in her room, trying to catch a few hours of sleep before morning, but he’d been on the phone with old friends from his Marine Corps days who were now working as civilian cops in Georgia, where the Harlowe family had disappeared.

  The facts were sparse on the ground. From what his buddies could tell him, General Harlowe, his wife, Catherine, and their daughter, Annie, made the trip to Pea Hollow, Georgia, where Mrs. Harlowe’s family had owned a small fishing cabin for generations. It had been Mrs. Harlowe’s sister who’d arrived for a planned visit earlier that day and found the place in shambles and all three of the Harlowes missing.

  “There was blood,” Mitch Sweeney had told Gideon, his voice grim over the telephone line.

  “How much?”

  “Enough to be worrisome,” Sweeney had admitted. “Just got off the phone with one of the local deputies who investigated. He thinks it’s possible one or more could be bodily hurt. And here’s another nasty thought—nobody’s actually seen them for about five days. They may have been missing since the day after they arrived.”