Fiancé by Friday

by Catherine Bybee

  Charles moved behind the counter and pulled out a tall stool.

  Oh, great…company. Gwen found the tea and slowly removed the bag from the paper packaging. It became apparent that Charles wasn’t going to open the conversation.

  “Have you heard from Ruth?”

  “She arrived in Florida.”

  Gwen dipped the tea bag, and waited for a more elaborate answer. “How is your daughter?”

  “Happy her mother is with her.” Gwen reminded herself that Neil used to give her such short and precise answers. Their time alone changed that.

  “No one quite replaces our mum when we’re ill.”

  The corner of Charles’s lip turned up again. “One of the things women are good for.”

  Smiling when your back teeth are grinding is impossible. “Are there many women in the service under your command?”

  His smile fell. “A few.”

  “You don’t approve.” She could see it in his face.

  “Women belong in a home fixing tea and not in the wild removing targets.”

  Gwen crossed the room, made sure she had a way out without walking by him.

  “Allowing women in must have been difficult for you to accept.”

  He shrugged. “I’m a soldier. I do what I’m told.”

  “As a major, don’t you do most of the telling?” She blew over her tea.

  Charles’s hand rested on the counter and the index finger on his right hand started a slow, intermittent tap. “There are always people above you.”

  She thought of the picture Neil had shown her of his troop, or whatever it was they called themselves. Friends. “True. And those under you don’t always survive their missions. That must be difficult.” She couldn’t imagine sending troops into battle and learning that some weren’t coming home. The entire concept of war boggled her mind. Didn’t every human want the same things? A happy and healthy family, food, a home? A world in which their children could grow to the best of their abilities and have families of their own? Truly, what more was there to need? Why fight? It made no sense to her.

  “There’s always collateral damage.” His finger tapped a little harder. “A leader can’t dwell on death. Not here.”

  If Gwen were to guess, she’d say that Charles didn’t dwell. In fact, he probably erased the name of the lost and penciled in the next. Cold.

  She’d rather have her Neil, who did think about the men who’d followed him into battle.

  It came to her then, that if a man returned from war unaffected she wouldn’t want to know him.

  Gwen stared at a tree out the kitchen window, and noticed it bending in the wind. The desire to leave the major’s presence turned her thoughts to the outside garden. If not for the muscles in her back that had screamed since she woke, she’d make her excuses and find a flower bed.

  “I would never make a proper soldier, I’m afraid. I have difficulty squishing a bug.”

  “Let Neil stomp the life out of the insects.”

  She allowed a passing grin. No, Neil set the bugs outside the door to fend for themselves.

  “Would you mind if I searched your library again? Seems the book I chose isn’t helping me pass the time.” Actually, she’d noticed a few photo albums Ruth had pointed out and thought it would be helpful to look through them. Perhaps Charles wasn’t always so jaded.

  “Help yourself.”

  “Thank you.” She made as graceful an exit as she could. She was hungry, but not enough to stay in the man’s presence.

  Instead of having his pilot fly him to Colorado, and potentially hand deliver Neil’s enemy to his side, Blake placed a call to Carter from his office in hopes of keeping some of what he had to say private. Once Blake brought his best friend up to date, he started pulling the hard favors.

  “Do you have any contacts at the Pentagon? Anyone who can search out where Neil trained and who with? The men on his team? Anything?” Desperation seeped into his bones. More than the lack of control over everything unfolding, Blake hated the unknown. Where was Neil and where had he stashed his sister to keep her safe? He didn’t even want to consider the diamond ring that was purchased and the meaning behind it.

  “My contacts there are shallow at best,” Carter informed him. “But we both know someone who might be able to get the information we want.”

  Blake squeezed his eyes shut. “Your uncle?”

  “Right.”

  Senator Maxwell Hammond had been in the political game from the time he was in high school. Blake didn’t trust the man. Not that he was a known dirty politician, but Blake believed Max had no problem getting his feet in the mud to get his way. Oh, they washed up before he donned his shoes, but there was always a little dirt left behind. Being indebted to the man was not something Blake would choose.

  What choice did he really have?

  “You sure you’re ready to pull that card?”

  “We need to know who birdman is. Need to find Neil and Gwen. The whole thing is smelling up our life. We’ve given Neil the quiet time he requested and we’ve not heard anything for what…three, four days? Anything could have happened.”

  “What are we asking Max to search for?”

  “Neil directed us to contact the president and use code name Raven. This has something to do with his time in the service. I know Neil spent time on a Colorado base, but there’s a bunch of them, several in Colorado Springs. We need to start there. Did he stash Gwen with one of his buddies? Did he solicit one of his old friends to help? Did he need something to catch this guy that he can only get from a military warehouse?”

  “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

  “It’s all I’ve thought about. That and how much I miss my wife and son.”

  “Do you have the picture from Neil’s room?”

  Blake opened his desk drawer and removed Neil’s file. “Yeah.”

  “Scan it in and send it to me. Maybe someone will recognize him…or someone else in the picture.”

  While they talked, Blake placed the picture in his scanner and made the copy. “Makes me wish I’d had deeper conversations with the man.”

  “Deeper with Neil is what exactly? Two sentences in a row?”

  Blake grinned. “Best damn security agent I’ve ever had.”

  “Well be prepared, Your Grace…Neil just might elevate to ‘best damn brother-in-law’ you’ve ever had.”

  “Thanks for reminding me, Governor. Gwen could do worse.” Now that he knew Neil wasn’t nuts, it helped ease the concerns about her shacking up with the man.

  “OK, I got the e-mail. I’ll get on the phone and see what Max can do. Let me know if you hear anything.”

  “You’ll be the second to know behind Dean.”

  They said their good-byes and hung up.

  Blake stared at the photograph, memorizing the faces. They were all big men, as he would expect of marines. One guy had a huge smile on his lips and another held a rifle in each hand with ammunition belts strapped over his shoulders. Two of them had a freshness behind their eyes that reminded Blake of Kansas farm boys. One had his hair so short his ears stood out. Or maybe his ears were just large.

  His cell phone in his pocket rang. He checked the ID before he answered. It was Dean.

  “Hear anything?”

  “From Neil? No. I’m at your place with Neil’s security team. Ken Sands called in a specialist who deals with some of the higher-tech bugs seen in political circles.”

  Blake’s skin started to crawl.

  “Guess what we found?”

  “Neil’s bug.”

  “Seriously high-tech shit, too. We’re talking classified, spy on the president stuff. Sands sent a team over to Tarzana to check the system there. Homicide was just about to wrap up the naked hot tubbers as an accident. I’m going to have them call in the military police and look again.”

  Blake looked at the photo in his hands. “Any ID on the driver?”

  “Not yet. Wish I had a set of prints. All military perso
nnel are fingerprinted, blood typed, and photographed when they go in. The picture we have cleaned up a little, but it’s not great.”

  “Send me a copy. I’ll turn Neil’s place upside down and compare it to any he might have.”

  “You’re thinking this guy knows Neil?”

  “Or someone gave him a detailed description.”

  Dean cussed under his breath. “This reeks.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Raven tucked his car off the road and slept for four hours straight. Didn’t even bother calling in to let his boss know he was in town. There was no way he was going to take Mac on a couple hours of sleep. If anything, he’d wait until Mac was exhausted and he was rested.

  He stepped out of the car and into the cool, moist air of the Colorado Rockies. A few feet away was a tall pine. He pissed on it before wiping his hands on his pants. Gotta love the great outdoors. A nice cabin in the woods away from everyone and everything would be perfect for him and his girl. He could hunt, and she could take care of their home. Once he took care of his little leftover problems, everything would fall back into place.

  His left leg stiffened in the cold, reminding him of the pain he’d suffered. All because Mac didn’t call the shot in time.

  Damn Billy for not stepping over Mac to do the right thing. Billy saw it coming, and weaseled out because of a kid. A stupid fucking kid that would have grown up hating all of them anyway.

  That’s all right. Billy got his. And he got Billy’s girl right before he filled her with C-4 and blew the fuck out of her. That was sweet.

  Raven couldn’t tell his boss that part. Wouldn’t be wise to make the boss think he liked blowing people up. When he came home, he had talked to so many shrinks that he knew exactly what questions they’d ask. More importantly, what answers they wanted to hear.

  Raven made his way back to the car and tossed a handful of sour candy into his mouth.

  After turning on his phone, he called in to see where his assignment had landed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “What if he doesn’t come?”

  Rick posed the question Neil didn’t want to think about. They were going on their third day. He’d taken one of the bugged hand receivers from Blake’s home and was using it as a homing beacon for Raven. All the man had to do was check out the frequency.

  But every hour that passed without the man making an appearance made him crazy. Worse, he didn’t have any contact with Gwen to know how she was holding up in his absence. If Raven were watching, he could be waiting for them to give up and go home. Thus leading him to Gwen. And that couldn’t happen.

  Both he and Rick circled their camp, changing positions often. If Raven was out there, they weren’t going to give him time to settle into any one spot.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Rick said in his ear. “Raven wants to kill us, right?”

  “Ultimately.”

  “But he wants it to look like an accident…like with Billy.”

  Neil peered through his binoculars, noticed a flock of birds taking flight from a faraway pine. He kept his gaze on the activity at the base of the tree, wondering what disturbed them.

  “No one will think I offed myself.”

  “Double for me. So that leaves what? A hunting accident? Traffic accident?”

  “We’re not driving.” A deer stood under the tree, his nose lifted in the air. Neil moved his gaze in the opposite direction of the animal.

  “Where did you park your car?” Neil asked.

  “Oh, damn…you don’t think he’ll blow it up?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  Rick cussed. “Knew I should have just parked it here.”

  “But then he’ll know for sure there are two of us. This way there might be some doubt.”

  “Not going to help my car. I just got a Cat Back system in her. Sweet ride. Fuck. Maybe I should go check on her.”

  Neil chuckled. “Sure…walk into his trap. Good thinking.”

  Rick mumbled another series of curses. “It’s not like I have a bank load of money to replace her when this is done. Insurance doesn’t cover everything.”

  “Haven’t you been working?”

  “Here and there. Nothing steady. Being in the marines is a hard life to follow with a paper-pushing job. Ya know?”

  He did. “Let’s get through this first. I can always use another set of eyes.”

  “Private security?”

  “Might sound boring, but it seems the people I work with always have someone after them.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No pressure. Job’s yours if you want it.” Having Rick on his team would be like having a brother on his side.

  “Might not have a choice if this fucktard blows up my ride. Damn it, I should have thought of that.”

  Neil took a few steps out of his hiding spot and looked around.

  Nothing.

  “I’m going toward camp. Start a fire and see what the smoke attracts.”

  “Copy that.”

  Neil zigzagged through the trees until he reached camp.

  He’d already oiled up leaves to make more smoke than fire. He lit them, and piled green wood on top. Once assured that the smoke wouldn’t die out the minute he stepped away, Neil backtracked.

  “Remind me never to camp with you.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Errr, cowboy…didn’t think you cared,” Rick teased.

  Neil couldn’t help but laugh. Before his laugh faded a large crash sounded north of their perimeter.

  “What the fuck?”

  Neil’s skin prickled. “Stay down.”

  Everything calmed. “It’s a diversion.”

  Exactly what Neil thought. “Where’s your car?”

  “Ah, fuck!”

  Yeah, that’s what Neil thought, too.

  On the bright side, it was game on.

  The photo albums could have been any home in America. Backyard picnics and holiday affairs and several pictures of Ruth, Charles, and their daughter Annie vacationing in national parks. Some of the early pictures indicated that Charles used to smile. At some point, the pictures became snapshots of their life void of any emotion.

  What Gwen didn’t find was any pictures of Annie and the man Ruth described as her husband. Even though Charles didn’t approve of the union, there had to be some kind of relationship. Even a strained relationship would have found its way around a Christmas dinner table.

  Finally, Gwen gave up on the photo albums sitting out for her to search through and she decided to see if there were any other pictures tucked into the shelves of Ruth’s books. She started with the photo she knew was there. The couple looked happy enough. The man kept a possessive arm around Annie and she smiled for the camera. Recognition tickled the back of Gwen’s mind, which made her itch in a strange way.

  She removed books from the shelves, looked behind them, and then replaced them. She did this one shelf at a time until she came upon another photograph. Annie was younger, but she sat in a pub with a man in uniform. Not the same man, Gwen noted. She replaced the photographs and kept looking.

  She was about to give up her search when she noticed several books pushed out away from the rest on the shelf. Sure enough, behind them was another picture. This one wasn’t in a frame, or cared for with any honor. Gwen unfolded the picture and instantly recognized it.

  The same picture sat in Neil’s wallet only this one was a larger copy. It was easier to see the faces of the men who were deployed on that ill-fated mission.

  She scanned the faces knowing something significant was in there. Otherwise why would it be hidden among the books and not framed and on a mantel?

  Neil attempted a smile and just seeing a picture of him warmed her a little. Her eyes traveled back to one particular face several times before she realized what it was she saw.

  She found the hidden picture Ruth had told her about a few days before and removed it. Sure enough, the man in that picture was one of Neil’s men. Did Nei
l know that Annie dated one of his men?

  Gwen took the pictures to the desk in the room, and eyed the door. She considered closing it, but thought that might look suspicious. Instead, she closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the house. The central air-conditioning unit kicked on with a hum. In the kitchen was the faint sound of the refrigerator. Beyond that was the sound of a television. Probably something Charles was watching.

  She opened her eyes again and peered at the photographs.

  Ruth had said Annie had given up on the man because he’d changed after returning from overseas. It’s possible the mission Ruth spoke of was the one that affected Neil so profoundly.

  If Gwen remembered correctly Charles was extremely unhappy with the breakup…wanted his daughter to give up her husband Andrew and find a military man.

  Gwen’s head started to ache. “How upset were you?” she whispered to herself. She hated damning the man who’d only been kind to her. Creepy, but kind.

  On the desk next to her was a phone. So close it practically called out her name. A call to Eliza, just to say she was alive…and maybe she could find out a thing or two about Major Blayney. And wasn’t she safe here if indeed Charles was her protector? And if he wasn’t…then she wasn’t safe at all.

  Gwen tapped her finger on the desk, inched her hand toward the receiver, and then pulled it back. She jumped up from the desk and returned the pictures. Her feet nearly made it to the door of the room when she abruptly turned and grasped the phone.

  There wasn’t a dial tone.

  She clicked the on button several times.

  Nothing.

  Her palms started to sweat.

  “I have a meeting in thirty minutes but I think you need to hear this now.”

  Blake held his breath as Carter spoke. “Well don’t keep me waiting, counselor.”

  “The picture of Neil’s troop came up with a few unusual hits. Not one of the men in the picture is still in the service. Look at the thing, Blake…all those guys were young. Most men go in for life.”

  “I know Neil said he lost some of his men in battle.”

  “Right. Three died in a classified ‘training accident.’ Could be anything.”