Nicco moved closer. “An M110, Knight’s Armament semiautomatic with a bipod. Effective range 800 meters.”
Wagner looked impressed. “You know your weapons.”
“You could say that. Rangers. Six years in the Stand,” Nicco said, using the military’s slang for Afghanistan.
The detective gave a low whistle. “Not too shabby.” He tapped his chest. “Marine Force Recon. Eight in Fallujah.” He gestured to his right leg. “Took a round in my thigh. Still aches in the rain.” He grimaced. “I’d give anything to be back fighting the good fight.”
Nicco felt a thaw in the air. “Know what you mean.”
The two men regarded each other with fresh respect.
“Glad to have you on board,” Wagner said and this time held out his hand.
Nicco took the detective’s hand, found it ridged with calluses. “Thanks.” He inspected the weapon further. “This bad boy’s military issue. A very nice and very expensive toy.”
“Some toy.” Wagner eyed Nicco with a shrewd gaze. “You think your client was the intended victim.”
“Had to be,” Nicco said frankly, wincing when he thought of just how close the shots had come to Scout. “She’s been receiving threats.” Curiosity over the reporter buzzed in his head like an insistent gnat.
“She neglected to tell me that.” Wagner scowled. “Reporters are a pain...” He bit off whatever he’d been about to add.
Nicco grinned. “Tell me about it.”
In perfect accord, they fixed their gazes once more on the weapon. It was the only lead they had to the shooter.
Nicco had been facetious when he’d referred to it as a toy. It was a serious weapon intended to kill with cold and ruthless efficiency.
Whoever wanted Scout McAdams dead was playing for keeps. It was up to him to make sure they didn’t succeed.
TWO
Scout woke up sick to her stomach. Her skin was clammy, her heart racing as though she’d just finished a marathon. Invisible hands tightened around her throat, constricting her ability to breathe. Salt rimmed her skin where she’d sweated through her nightshirt.
Gently, she massaged her neck, trying to loosen the bands that were closing in with every second and prevent an attack that would leave her gasping for air. The effort to breathe had turned her mouth cottony, and she swallowed in a vain attempt to rid herself of the dryness.
She’d thrashed through the night, unable to suck in sufficient air, gasping hoarsely as she fought off unseen assailants. In the end, the bad guys won.
They always did.
Not last night, she thought. The good guys, in the form of one very appealing man, had saved the day. Nicco Santonni. She tasted the words on her lips, found them intriguing and surprisingly sweet.
Enough. She had a job to do, one which didn’t include mooning over last night’s rescuer, no matter how ruggedly handsome he was.
Not even the memory of the good-looking man, however, could banish the aftereffects of the nightmare, including the sensation that she was choking. She swallowed harshly in an attempt to combat it.
It had been a month since she’d had the nightmare but it had returned last night. With a vengeance. Bitter bile rose in her throat. She willed it down.
Breathe.
In.
Out.
She repeated the breathing exercises, slowly inhaling and exhaling, until she could feel the terrifying panic subside. You’re okay. Her therapist’s voice slid into her mind.
I’m okay. She repeated the words until she started to believe them.
Scout turned to her side where she could gaze at the picture of her parents and herself on the day of her graduation from college. We were all so happy. Four years after the picture had been taken, her world had shattered into pieces and she was left alone.
The memory of the night her parents had been murdered a scant year ago pierced her heart, a lethally-tipped arrow that never failed to hit its mark. Someday, maybe, the pain would lessen, but it remained as poisonous as ever. She squeezed back tears of frustration and anger.
When was she going to be able to put the attack behind her, those toxic reminders that she wasn’t normal? They had burrowed under her skin and into her heart with a tenacity that wouldn’t be shaken. She’d dealt with them before. She’d do it again, but, oh, how she wished she didn’t have to.
Prayer was her first and best defense. Lord, I need Your help. I can’t do it on my own. I know that You and You alone have the power to heal me. I give myself into Your hands.
Within seconds, His love washed over her, and the panic slowly edged away. The Lord had not yet banished the nightmares, but He had given her the precious gift of peace when the memories threatened to overwhelm her.
Gratitude for His goodness filled her, replacing the pain with an acceptance that He worked on His timetable, not hers. Impatient by nature, she needed the occasional reminder of His eternal plan and His wisdom.
When the worst of the nausea was under control, she started to get up. Stopped. Big mistake.
She hurt all over. Being thrown to the floor by a drop-dead-gorgeous man may make for good fiction, but the reality was less fun than what romance novels made it out to be. Maybe the pain would take her mind off the nightmare and the memories it had engendered.
She took a minute, another, before trying to move again. Cautiously, she pushed herself into a sitting position, paused, lifted one leg over the side of the bed, then the other.
When the room stopped spinning, she stood. Assessed. So far, so good. Every fiber of her body ached, but at least she was moving. Sort of. She hobbled to the full-length mirror attached to the back of her bedroom door and surveyed herself.
Her second mistake of the morning.
Bruises bloomed along her shoulders and arms. Angry red now, they’d soon turn blue and purple, then a sickly green and finally a putrid yellow. It could have been worse. She could have a bullet lodged in her shoulder. Or her heart.
Thanks to the quick actions of Nicco Santonni, she was in one piece. More or less.
Her sense of humor got a toehold, nudging a smile out of hiding. Maybe she’d put in for medical leave. At least it would get her out of covering the month of events leading up to the huge ball where Patrice Newtown, the undisputed queen of Savannah society, would present the mayor with a check large enough to build a new shelter for the city’s homeless.
For reasons of her own, Newtown had requested that Scout be assigned to cover a bunch of boring social events. The order had come from the big man himself, Gerald Daniels, the paper’s publisher.
Scout was fighting her way onto the paper’s crime beat one column inch at a time, and, because of a whim of one of the city’s so-called benefactors, she was now relegated once more to the society page. She had as much interest in society doings as she did in learning how to peel an artichoke. Who cared which designer created the dress the mayor’s wife wore to the country club dance or what entrée was served with what wine?
Gingerly, she made her way to the shower, where the hot water temporarily soothed her aches and pains and allowed her to forget, for a few minutes at least, the reason for them. Though she normally skipped makeup, she applied a light dusting of blush and mascara and dabbed concealer beneath her eyes. A critical look at herself in the mirror confirmed what she already knew. She couldn’t erase the shadows under her eyes or the tiny tension lines that bracketed her mouth.
She braced her hands on the bathroom counter, then dropped her gaze to her splayed fingers, staring at them as though they held the secrets to all the world’s questions, but there were no answers there. Within a half hour, she was dressed and out the door, albeit at a slower pace than normal.
After graduating from college and starting at the paper, she promised herself she’d search for the truth. Finding that truth, wherever it lay, had be
en her compass for the last five years. That quest had taken on special significance with the murder of her parents a year ago. She’d vowed then to find the truth behind the murders and bring down those responsible.
At the office, she did a fast read of her emails, deleted most of them and prepared to write the piece on last night’s gala while the events were still fresh in her mind. Not the warm-fuzzy piece Newtown had probably expected, but, hey, publicity was publicity. Then she planned on tracking down Leonard Crane.
She tuned out the chatter of computers, the good-natured ribbing that went on between colleagues, and the constant grumbling about the swill that passed for coffee and concentrated on writing the piece. An hour later, she read it, decided it would do and pushed the Send key.
“McAdams, special delivery.” The office gofer handed her a large envelope with no return address. Cold brushed the back of her neck as she noted that it was identical to the other letters.
“Thanks.” Scout signed for it, slit open the envelope and looked at the message composed with words cut from a magazine and pasted on a sheet of cheap paper. Another threat. Okay. She’d dealt with threats ever since she’d earned her first byline in the paper’s city section.
This was no different.
She read the words aloud, testing them. “Mind your own business. Or we’ll mind it for you.” She pinched her lips together even as she shook her head, as though the slight movement would dispel the unwanted picture the letter etched in her mind.
Scout prided herself on her independence and self-reliance, but right now she wished she had someone to stand with her.
She’d thought she’d found that with her ex-fiancé, Bradley Middleton, but, after wooing her and even asking her to marry him, he’d left her. The experience had soured her on men for the moment. Maybe forever.
Forget Bradley and concentrate on the letter. Only, she didn’t want to think about the letters she’d received over the last month. She had never been one to stick her head in the sand, so why was she doing just that with the letters that were coming with increasing regularity? Nothing she’d done lately was like her, including wasting time thinking about Nicco Santonni.
Now that she wasn’t so shaken from nearly getting killed, she’d put it together. Nicco Santonni. Brother to Sal Santonni, her best friend Olivia’s husband.
It didn’t take much to call up a picture of her rescuer in her mind. Inky black hair a little too long for current fashion, ebony eyes hooded beneath slashing brows and sharply angled cheekbones made for an arresting face. Add to that a body that looked like it was forged from steel and you had a man whom any woman would stop and give a second...or third glance to.
She forced her thoughts away from the handsome Nicco Santonni to her self-imposed mission. Digging into union murders meant investigating the unions themselves. When her mother had begun research for her exposé of Savannah’s labor unions, she’d told Scout that graft was most often the cause of murder in unions. Ironically, that same research had resulted in the murder of both of Scout’s parents.
Six weeks ago, Scout had started going through her parents’ papers. She should have done it months earlier, but after her release from the hospital, she’d been too bogged down in grief and pain to look through their belongings. She’d started with her father’s notes for the university physics classes he taught. The clutter triggered a memory of his self-deprecatory comparison to Disney’s absentminded professor. He was a brilliant lecturer but chronically disorganized in his paperwork.
With a sigh, she’d turned her attention to her mother’s research for her latest true-crime book. It was among those notes that Scout had found information about Leonard Crane and her mother’s belief that he was involved with union murders.
For the last six weeks, Scout had been digging for proof behind her mother’s suspicions. Not for the first time, she wished she had plunged into the investigation earlier.
She’d healed from her bullet wound far more quickly than she had the crippling pain of acknowledging that her parents had been taken from her through a hideous act of violence. After leaving the hospital, she’d wandered around in a daze for months. It was only recently that she’d been able to set aside her grief to fix her attention on finding the truth.
She wadded the paper into a ball and then executed a perfect three-pointer into the trash can. Upon reflection, she stood, walked to the trash can, and retrieved the paper.
Why had this threat turned her into a Nervous Nellie? Scout forced a laugh over her uncharacteristic fears. That wasn’t who she was.
Her hometown was a beautiful city, steeped in history and tradition, but it wasn’t without its faults. She had seen firsthand the ugliness that lay beneath the beauty, the violence that destroyed lives and occasionally even took them.
The crumpled paper in her hand yanked her back to the present.
Meticulously, she smoothed the creases from the paper, and glanced at the message once more. Scout didn’t intend on giving up her investigation. Some accused her of being stubborn. She preferred to see it as determination, the same determination that had fueled her ambition to expose the dark secrets of the city since the night she’d lost her parents.
The aftereffects of the nightmare dogged her throughout the day, following her around like a shadow. Much as she tried to shake the feelings, they clung to her like a burr.
After prayer, work was her antidote against the pain.
When her cell phone chirped, she glanced at the number, saw it was blocked. More than once she’d received blocked calls which had ended up giving her valuable information. She picked it up, heard a mechanically altered voice.
“If you want to get the goods on Crane, be at the docks at three fifteen.” The voice went on to give directions as to where she should stand if she wanted to see Crane taking a bribe.
Common sense told her to ignore the tip, which could be a setup, but she couldn’t. She wished she had someone who’d go with her, and her thoughts took her back to Nicco Santonni.
Unwillingly, she acknowledged that he had stirred something in her, an attraction she hadn’t felt in too long, not since her fiancé, a reporter at a local TV station, had dumped her.
Impatient with herself, she pushed Bradley out of her thoughts. She’d already wasted enough time and tears on him. She had more important things to think about.
Like who wanted her dead.
* * *
A relief agent had taken over the detail last night when Scout McAdams had left the ballroom. Though Nicco was primary in the protection unit, no one operative could effectively guard a client twenty-four seven. Usually operatives worked in threes, eight hours on, sixteen off. Because Olivia had asked for Nicco specifically, he’d opted for twelve-hour shifts.
He’d clocked seven hours sack time and had spent the other five finishing the paperwork for which his boss and friend Shelley Judd was a stickler.
“Trying to get on my good side?” Shelley asked when he turned in the expense report she’d been nagging him about for the last two days.
Since S&J had opened an office in Savannah last year, Shelley spent a couple of days there every month. With the arrival of baby Chloe, Shelley didn’t get out in the field as often as she’d like, but she still knew every operation and every assignment.
Nicco smiled at the picture of his hard-hitting boss in her role as mother. Shelley Rabb Judd and brother Jake Rabb, co-founders of S&J, had never known a loving mother’s care. Nicco knew she gave her child everything she’d been denied, most of all love.
The once efficiently streamlined office now resembled a nursery with a bassinet and other baby items spilling over the space. Six-month-old Chloe had definitely made her appearance known.
“Always.” He bent to brush a kiss over the downy hair of the baby nestled at Shelley’s shoulder. “Motherhood suits you.”
Dimples
peeked out in her pixie face. “I’m operating on three hours’ sleep. My shirt has spit-up on it. I haven’t had a decent haircut or a manicure since before Chloe was born. And I couldn’t be happier.”
“I’m glad. For you and for Caleb.”
Shelley and ex-Delta Caleb Judd had endured more than their share of hardship, but they had come out the other side stronger and more in love than ever. Nicco knew a moment of envy for what they shared.
“Thanks. When it happens for you, you’ll think you’ve been hit by a semi and then you’ll wonder how you lived without that special someone in your life for as long as you did.”
Nicco summoned a smile he was far from feeling. He’d already met the special someone Shelley spoke of and she’d died. Happily-ever-after wasn’t in the future for him. Not any longer.
Unwilling to prolong that topic, he turned the subject to his current assignment. As Shelley was friends with Scout, he knew his boss would have a special interest in the job. He filled her in on the little he knew so far.
“I know Scout’s in good hands,” Shelley said. “I also know she won’t make it easy for you to protect her.”
“I’ll make it work.”
“You always do.”
“Got to go.” He pecked Shelley’s cheek.
He had just enough time for a visit to the police station before he was back on duty. At the station, he asked for Detective Wagner and was directed to a cubbyhole of an office.
Upon seeing Nicco, Wagner stood, held out his hand. “Santonni.”
The men shook hands briefly.
“I stopped by to see if you’d learned anything from the weapon from last night,” Nicco said.
“Not from the weapon itself, but ballistics traced the trajectory of the shot and found that it was sighted on Ms. McAdams. If you hadn’t pushed her to the floor...” The detective let the rest of the sentence go unfinished.
High-Risk Investigation Page 2