by Paula Graves
“You Coopers seem like good people to have at your back in a battle.” Evan sounded thoughtful. “I may need some of that help before this is over with.”
“What do you want to accomplish? Proving Vince’s death was murder? You still don’t know who did it.”
“If we tie his death to Barton Reid, we bolster the case against him. So he doesn’t get away with what he’s done.”
“That’s a big if.”
“Someone broke into your house. Someone broke into my motel room. That’s not a coincidence.”
She couldn’t argue, especially when she thought about the man at the grocery store— “Oh!” She looked up at him. “I forgot to tell you.” She described the tattooed man who had seemed to trail her around the store. “I don’t think he followed me home, though. And he certainly couldn’t have been trashing my house. So maybe I just imagined it.”
“What kind of tattoo was it?” Evan asked.
“Something tribal. All black and kind of spiky.” Her experience with tattoos was limited to Vince’s crossed rifles tattoo above his left shoulder blade, and the Marine Corps emblems her brothers Jesse and Wade wore on their left arms.
Evan picked up a nearby twig and traced an image in the dirt at his feet. A crude but recognizable shape took form—a spider, with eight long, spiky legs and two short, sharp pincers. “Did it look like this?”
“That’s it,” she said, her gut coiling in a knot. How could he have known? Unless—
She dropped her hand to the Ruger on her hip.
Evan’s gaze followed the movement of her hand. “I’m not armed,” he said, his voice tense.
“How did you know what the tattoo looked like?”
“I’ve seen it before. Two years ago, Cordero’s men killed an SSU operative, Thomas Phelan.” Evan gave her a pointed look. “You may know Thomas Phelan as Tristan Peterson.”
Megan nodded. “He was one of the MacLear operatives who snatched my cousin’s little boy.”
“He had a tattoo like that just above his left shoulder blade. I’ve also seen photos of the same tattoo pattern on the former SSU operatives arrested in March when they went after your brother and his wife.”
A snapping sound caught Megan’s ear. As she listened for a repeat, she realized the woods around them had fallen unusually quiet, as if the animals and birds had all stopped moving. She and Evan had been sitting here long enough that the woodland animals should have already resumed their usual routines.
Was someone out there, just out of sight?
She casually turned her face toward the noise and listened.
There. Another soft cracking sound.
She looked at Evan. “Just a squirrel, I guess.”
She pulled her shoes and socks on unhurriedly, then reached across and caught Evan’s hand in hers.
His gaze snapped up to meet hers.
“There’s someone out there,” she said so quietly that he bent forward to hear her. Her heart quickened as the heat of his body surrounded her. Up close, she got a good look at the flecks of gold suddenly obvious in his warm green eyes. It took a second to regain her wits.
“What do you want to do?” he asked, his voice as soft as her own. He leaned closer, as if to whisper intimately in her ear. His cheek brushed hers and a shock of raw physical need bolted through her like a mustang freed from its tether.
Her breath hitching, she struggled not to turn her face to his, to feel skin on skin again, just for a moment. To remember what it felt like to be touched by a man, even if that man wasn’t Vince Randall.
But the prickling sensation on her back proved more urgent. “Right now, we’re sitting ducks for whoever’s out there. I don’t care for that feeling.”
“I don’t, either,” he murmured.
She tightened her grip on his hand, finding it warm and slightly rough, as if he did more with his hands than light office work. With a tug, she drew him off the river boulders and down to the sandy bank below, putting the rocks between them and whoever was out there in the woods.
“Now what?” he asked.
She pulled the Ruger out of her hip holster and checked the clip. “I know you said you weren’t armed—”
“I have this.” He pulled a multi-blade knife from his pocket. “And this,” he added, meeting her gaze with a look of apology as he produced a Kel-Tec P32 pistol from an ankle holster hidden beneath the right leg of his jeans.
“We’ll talk about the lie later,” she murmured.
“Are you sure it’s not someone in your family?”
“We’d never have heard them,” she answered with confidence. “My dad taught us how to get around the woods in silence when we were just kids. He was the best I’ve ever seen at it.”
“Did you actually see anyone?”
“No. But I felt him.”
Evan studied her through narrowed eyes as if considering whether to trust her judgment. Finally, he nodded. “If someone’s sneaking around, it’s to eavesdrop or to ambush.”
“Which is it?” she asked.
“Eavesdrop,” he answered after a brief hesitation. “By now, whoever took your stuff has had time to realize what he’s looking for isn’t there. He needs to find out where it is.”
She looked up to find his gaze on her lips. His intentions remained murky, for he held himself as far away from her as their close proximity would allow. But the desire in his green eyes was unmistakable.
Her lips parted on a shaky breath. His eyes darkened in response.
She dropped her gaze to her hands knotting together nervously. “I haven’t heard anything in a couple of minutes.”
“Think they’re gone?”
She wasn’t sure. “I think we should get out of here.”
As he started to return his P32 to its holster, she grabbed his wrist. His gaze whipped up to meet hers and all the heat between them that had begun to dissipate blazed back to life.
“Where do we go?” he asked, his voice a caress.
Her heart slammed wildly against her breastbone. “Not back to my house. Too many people.” As the words spilled from her mouth, she realized they sounded like an invitation.
How do I get you alone?
His gaze never left hers. “How far is the cabin?”
“A fifteen-minute hike over the mountain.” If she somehow had enough breath left to make the journey.
“Let’s risk it. I don’t think they’re going to shoot at us, and if they do, we’re both armed and have a chance of beating them back until you can get your family here.”
She managed a weak smile. “They’ve handled creeps like the SSU before. They can do it again.”
He smiled briefly, before his eyes grew serious again. “Ready?”
She nodded and stood, taking a quick look around as she made a show of dusting the sand from her jeans. The woods around them weren’t silent, exactly—birds, squirrels and other creatures flitted or crept about, as usual—but those noises were reassuring in a way. Earlier, when she’d heard the twigs snap, she’d also noticed the preternatural silence in the woods around them, nature’s response to an intruder.
She didn’t feel anyone out there anymore. The hair on the back of her neck lay flat and undisturbed.
She reached down, offering her hand to Evan. “Let’s go.”
He took her hand and let her help him to his feet, his fingers lingering against hers a second longer than necessary. Once again, his green eyes went dark.
But he let go of her hand and gestured toward the woods ahead. “Lead the way.”
Her heart still racing like a thoroughbred, she started hiking up the mountain, Evan at her heels.
Chapter Five
“This is my fault.” Evan peered through the curtains in the cabin’s front room. “I should’ve thought it through—”
“Because crazy people generally stalk you?” Megan stood nearby, her hand on the butt of her Ruger. Big gun for a woman her size, but he was pretty sure she could handle it. He kne
w she’d held back on the hike, trying not to push his endurance.
Given how winded he felt, he had no room to feel insulted. “Crazy people don’t generally stalk me,” he denied. “But the past few weeks, I’ve had the feeling I’m being watched.”
“You may be right.” She crossed to the other window and looked out, the midday sun burnishing her hair until it glowed like flames. “What do they want? To shut you up?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure who’s behind it.”
“The tat suggests it’s the SSU.”
“I don’t think it was the SSU following me in North Carolina,” he disagreed, remembering the faces of the men he’d seen trailing his steps back home. Older faces, nondescript but alert. Not making themselves conspicuous but not appearing concerned about being spotted, either. “CIA, maybe.”
Her gaze slanted toward him, glittering with wariness. “CIA seems a little—”
“Over-the-top? I know. And I guess it could have been any of the intelligence services, including the Pentagon’s.”
“Why would they cover up what happened to Vince—if your theory is right?” She shook her head. “MacLear is gone. Barton Reid is under indictment—”
“And for years, MacLear was one of the government’s most trusted security contractors, despite running illegal operations right under their noses. Heads rolled when MacLear went under. How many more will roll if we can prove the SSU colluded with a high-level State Department official to kill a U.S. serviceman?”
“I don’t see anyone out there,” she said finally. “And we’re wasting time holed up here, jumping every time a squirrel runs up a tree.” She let the curtains fall and turned to look at him. “I’m going down to the marina and see if someone down there can give me a ride back to my place to pick up my car.”
“No.” He intercepted her as she headed for the door.
“No?” The fiery look she gave him would have incinerated most men. He felt a little singed on the edges himself. “We’re not partners. You don’t get a say in what I do or where I go.”
He moved out of her way, unable to argue with her point. She didn’t trust him enough to consider him a partner. And considering the things he was still keeping from her, the suspicions about her husband he wasn’t ready to share, he couldn’t blame her for having doubts.
As she opened the door and stepped onto the porch, he said, “At least let me drive you home.”
She paused at the edge of the steps. “Are you going to try to talk me into handing over those letters to you?”
“Yes.”
Her lips curved slightly. “Probably won’t work.”
He arched his eyebrows. Probably? That was progress.
The trip back to her house was filled with silence, but it wasn’t tense or uncomfortable. Now and then Megan gave him terse directions from the marina to the twisty road winding through the woods to her house, but mostly she just gazed through the windshield, a thoughtful look on her freckled face.
He struggled with the urge to watch her instead of the road, to his consternation. He’d never let a woman derail him from his work. He loved women, loved being with them. But he knew better than to give a relationship the starring role in his life. He’d seen what that kind of madness could do to a person. He’d seen the destruction when everything went wrong.
And it always went wrong, sooner or later.
Megan Randall was an attractive woman. Not a beauty—she was a mass of flaws, from her too-snub nose to her freckled complexion, her slight underbite to her flyaway hair. Her personality had its own problems, from her prickly independence to her flash-fire temper.
But he kept finding his gaze gravitating toward her, drawn like a bee to honeysuckle. It was almost a relief to pull into the driveway at the side of her house.
By now, all of the policemen had left; only a single vehicle remained, the Dodge Charger Rick Cooper drove. Megan got out of his car the second he pulled to a stop and strode forward with a jerk of her head, her hair swinging in a red arc. It was all the invitation he was going to get, he realized as she circled toward the back door.
He moved the rental car over, so that it sat behind Megan’s car instead of her brother’s, and cut the engine. He hurried after her, catching up at the door.
They found Rick in the kitchen, on his phone. He looked up at them, his dark eyebrows lifting. “She just got back. Yeah, safe and sound. Talk to you later.”
“Were you about to send out a search party?” Megan asked, her voice tinged with resignation.
“We were considering it,” Rick admitted. “It was Jesse’s idea—I kept telling them you were a big girl and could take care of yourself.”
“I bet.” Megan gave him a little shove as she walked past him toward the cabinets. “Who cleaned up?”
“Isabel and Shannon came by to check on you, and they figured the last thing you’d want to see was a mess waiting for you when you got back. Where’d you go?”
“Walked Pike home,” she said with a wry look at Evan. “Then he drove me back here. You want to have lunch with us?”
Trying to feed him again, Evan thought, smiling.
“Thanks, but Amanda and I were planning to try that new Thai place in Borland for lunch, so I’ll be shoving off.” He nodded politely to Evan, although Evan could tell that he wasn’t any more inclined to offer his trust than his sister was.
He waited for Megan to tell Rick about their experience with the hidden stalker in the woods, but she let her brother go without saying a word.
“You’re not going to tell him about what happened at the creek?” he asked her once Rick was gone.
“We didn’t see a stalker. I can’t say for sure there was anyone out there.” Her bulldog chin jutted stubbornly.
“You mean you don’t want your family putting you in a cage somewhere to keep you safe.”
“Would you?”
“No,” he admitted. But it might be nice to have someone who gave a damn. “Listen, I know you were just being polite with the lunch invitation—”
Her lips quirked. “Afraid to try more of my cooking?”
“Should I be?”
“Probably,” she admitted with a laugh. “Vince didn’t marry me for my culinary skills.” Her laughter faded, and her expression darkened. “I’m going to take a look at the letters.”
Excitement darted through him. “Today?”
She nodded. “I don’t remember anything odd in them, but I haven’t reread the last few letters he sent before his death.”
That was surprising, he thought. “Why not?”
“Too painful a reminder, I guess.” She looked as if she had just admitted a shameful weakness.
“If it’s too painful now, I can—”
“No,” she interrupted sharply. “I’ll read them. They’re personal and I’m not ready to share them with anyone else.”
“With me, you mean.”
“With anyone.” She shook her hair away from her face. “Man, this place is quiet without Patton around.”
“He seems happy here.” Evan went with the change of subject even though he wanted to press the point about the letters. Megan wasn’t the sort to be pushed, so trying to nudge her back to the subject would do him no good. “You’ve even managed to train some manners into him.”
“He’s a smart boy. He’s been a godsend these past four years.” She sighed. “The lunch invitation stands. I’m not such a bad cook I can’t grill a cheese sandwich.”
“Why don’t I take you out somewhere for lunch?” he suggested. “As a thank-you.”
Her brow furrowed. “For what?”
“For agreeing to look at the letters.”
She shook her head. “I’m doing that for myself, not you. If someone did murder Vince, he needs to pay before he kills some other soldier who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Evan wished he thought Vince was as innocent as Megan clearly believed. But in his experience, innocent people weren’t us
ually targeted for assassination. Vince must have known something he shouldn’t, and since none of his superior officers had mentioned his coming to them with suspicions, he must have kept quiet about what he knew.
Vince’s unit had worked side by side with MacLear contractors. Had he made a deal with the devil?
“I was serious about taking you to lunch,” he said aloud. “Anywhere you want.”
“I’m not hungry. I want to go read those letters.”
“Okay.” He started toward the door. “You’ll call me if you find anything?”
“I will,” she said.
He turned in the doorway, reluctant to leave her alone, and not just because he knew there were people already in Gossamer Ridge who showed no compunction about breaking and entering at will. “You’ll be careful, right?”
The look she gave him would have made a lesser man wilt, but he stood his ground. Finally, her expression cleared and she nodded. “I’ll be careful.” She patted the Ruger holstered at her hip. “Plus, armed.”
He took some comfort in the thought.
He left her house and headed back toward the lake, planning to stop at the gas station food mart near the turn-off. But halfway to the crossroads, he found himself passing the graveyard where he’d first seen Megan earlier that morning. Had it been such a short time ago?
He pulled the Taurus off the road and got out, entering the tiny cemetery through a wrought-iron gate that creaked loudly as he opened it. He found Vince Randall’s gravestone quickly, as there were only a handful of graves.
No flowers, he noted with surprise.
He crouched by the stone. “What were you into, Randall? Is it something that’s going to come back to haunt her, too?”
The grave remained silent.
* * *
NIGHT HAD FALLEN, VELVETY BLUE, outside the large windows of the agents’ bullpen. At her desk in the corner, Megan looked up from her husband’s letters and saw she was the only one left in the room. The growl in her stomach reminded her she’d skipped lunch and, so far, dinner.
But she’d made it through most of her husband’s letters from his last deployment, and one thing had become clear: Vince’s opinion of Evan Pike had changed considerably over the final few weeks of his life.