by Paula Graves
Pike went to the mats for Blake and Tompkins, Vince had written about two weeks before his death, describing a situation where top brass had given a couple of infantrymen a hard time about a live-fire incident resulting in the death of a villager. Pike had apparently argued forcefully in the soldiers’ defense, pointing out the danger the so-called “innocent” villager had actually posed to the soldiers.
There were other incidents, other words of grudging praise for Evan Pike from Vince. Megan had read all of these letters before, so why hadn’t she noticed the change in her husband’s opinion of Pike? Had his earlier frustrations with the Pentagon liaison so colored her opinion of him that she hadn’t seen the subtle changes in Vince’s mentions of the man?
She set aside Vince’s letters for a moment and picked up the one-sheeter Shannon had left on her desk with a big grin—a typewritten preliminary summary of Cooper Security’s background check on Evan Pike. “Just the job stuff so far,” Shannon had warned as she handed off the information. “We’re still working on his pre-Pentagon life.”
Everything he’d told her checked out so far, including his “divorce,” as he called it, from the Pentagon. These days, Evan was doing some freelance legal consulting for a Defense Department contractor based in Norfolk, Virginia. He currently lived in a modest apartment complex in a community just over the state line in North Carolina.
Quite a comedown from being a hotshot Pentagon lawyer, she thought.
Penance for his perceived sins?
Setting aside the background check, she took the letter from Vince to the scanner and copied it to her work computer, as she’d done for all the others. She replaced it in the shoe box where she stored the letters and pulled out the last one. It was dated four years and three weeks ago—just two days before Vince’s death.
After a few paragraphs of more personal conversation, his letter turned to his life in Kaziristan. She settled deeper into her chair and read as he described a trip to the capital city of Tablis.
People are everywhere. You get used to wide-open spaces out in the wilds, so it’s a shock to be suddenly drowning in a sea of people. The rural parts are so primitive in so many ways that you forget how cosmopolitan Tablis can be. Europeans, Arabs, Kaziris, Africans and Asians all mingle in the streets and bazaars, the air filled with chatter in a dozen different languages. In some ways, I wish you could be here to experience it. In other ways, I’m glad you’re not. It’s a dangerous place. You can’t ever let yourself forget it.
Megan blinked back tears. She wished she’d been there, too. Maybe she could have seen something, heard something—
She released a soft growl of frustration. Madness lay that way. She could drive herself crazy with what-ifs.
She read the rest of the letter, pausing at an odd passage near the end.
You should be receiving a package in the next few weeks. Look for it.
Package? She hadn’t received any packages from Vince that close to his death. What had he been talking about?
Her desk phone rang, so loud in the quiet bullpen that it jangled her nerves. She grabbed the receiver. “Megan Cooper.”
“I had a feeling you’d still be there.” Evan Pike’s low voice rumbled through the phone line. “Still reading letters?”
“Just finishing up,” she admitted. “The only thing I’ve discovered is that Vince had planned to send me a package. But I never got it.”
“A package?” Evan sounded intrigued.
“It might be nothing,” she warned.
“Have you eaten dinner yet?”
Her stomach growled at the thought. “Not yet.”
“I’m a few blocks from your office, at some barbecue joint. Want to join me?”
“No, that’s okay—” Her eyes felt puffy and raw, and with her melancholy mood, she wouldn’t make a good dinner companion.
“So I’ll get takeout and meet you at the office,” he said.
“Pike—”
“You skipped lunch—not healthy.”
“And barbecue is?”
He ignored the question. “Chicken, pork or beef?”
She sighed. “Pork. A sandwich is fine. And slaw. Tea to drink—sweet tea.”
“Be there in about fifteen minutes.” He hung up.
Megan finished scanning the last of Vince’s letters and saved them to her work computer. After putting the physical letters back in the shoe box to be stored in the safe, she copied the scans onto a flash drive and slipped it into her purse. That gave her two copies of the letters besides the actual paper originals. To be safe, she also uploaded a copy to the company’s web archive.
As she returned the box to the small documents safe, she saw headlights flash against the bullpen windows. She glanced at her watch. Evan so soon?
She turned out the lights in the communal office as she left, since she was finished there, and headed downstairs before he set off an alarm trying to get in the building.
But the dark-clad figure standing in front of the main entrance doors wasn’t Evan Pike.
And he was holding a Glock, fitted with a silencer, that made her Ruger look like a toy.
Megan backed into the shadows of the darkened foyer, whispering a quick prayer of thanks that she’d bypassed turning on the lights. The security floodlights outside were bright enough to turn the glass front of the security office into a virtual mirror, hiding her backward scuttle out of sight.
She tugged her cell phone from the front pocket of her purse and dialed Jesse’s cell phone.
He answered on the third ring. “Hey, Meggie, tell me you’re not still at the office.”
“I’m still at the office, and I’m not alone.” She peeked around the corner, wondering why the black-clad intruder hadn’t already tried to enter. She told her brother what she’d seen outside. “I saw just one guy, but I doubt he’s alone. They haven’t tried to come in yet—”
“Maybe trying to bypass the alarm,” Jesse growled. She heard movement on his end of the phone—he was probably already on his way to the door.
“Keep it stealthy,” she warned. “If you don’t spook them, we might be able to catch them in the act.”
“Can you get to the walk-in safe without being seen?” The roar of an engine on Jesse’s side of the call told her he was already in his SUV.
“I think so.” Not that she was happy at the thought of holing up like a coward while her family took care of the intruders. She risked another look around the corner. The man in black was no longer there, but she saw the flash of headlights slice through the darkness outside. A car was entering the parking lot.
Evan! She hadn’t called to warn him!
“I have to hang up. I’ll call back.” She hung up the phone and scrolled through her call log—Evan Pike had tried to call her a couple of days earlier, hadn’t he? She’d ignored the call, but maybe his number was still listed—
There. She hit the respond button and waited.
But Evan didn’t answer.
* * *
THE SOUND OF HIS PHONE RINGING seemed shockingly loud in the warm night air. Evan paused in mid-step to fish his phone from his pocket and nearly jumped out of his skin when something whistled past his ear and smacked into the ornamental pear tree five yards away.
He hadn’t heard anything but a faint blatting sound, but he knew what that whistling noise meant as it whizzed by his head. He’d heard the sound too many times in Kaziristan.
Someone was shooting at him.
Chapter Six
Tossing the drinks and the bag of barbecue sandwiches aside, Evan dropped and rolled for cover behind a boxwood hedge lining the walkway in front of Cooper Security.
No second shot came, though his phone kept ringing, giving away his position. He silenced the phone, his breath coming in short, hard gasps. He forced his breathing to slow, as well, trying to tuck himself farther under the boxwood hedge, which definitely wasn’t trimmed to accommodate a man his size.
He waited, listening, his e
ntire body alert. He had known nights like this before, nights when the al Adar raids had struck with fury, if not great power. As a civilian, he’d been pushed to the rear, shielded behind the armed men running toward danger instead of away. It had been a humbling experience.
One he’d hoped never to repeat.
He shifted position so that he could retrieve the Kel-Tec P32 holstered at his ankle. The heft of the compact gun gave him a little shot of confidence, and he scooted closer to the building, hoping for a better angle.
The first flush of reaction eased, clearing his mind.
He needed to warn Megan.
As he reached for his cell phone, it buzzed again, a muted vibration against his hip. He pulled it from his pocket and checked the display. It was Megan’s cell phone number.
He took a chance and answered. “Megan, there are armed men outside Cooper Security.”
“I know.” Her low drawl jolted through him like a bracing shot of whiskey. “Are you okay?”
“I’m pinned near the front door. Can’t see the shooters.”
“Stay put. Jesse’s coming—I’m sure he’ll bring backup.”
“They’ve already shot at me once.”
The tenor of her voice changed. “Are you hurt?”
In any other circumstance, he might take pleasure in her concern. “No, but I’m a sitting duck where I am.”
He heard her soft exhalation. “Which side of the door?”
“Your right.”
“I’m going to open the door. That’ll trigger a loud alarm, which may distract them long enough for you to slip inside. You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” He darted a quick look over the hedge, his grip tightening on the P32. He spotted several black-clad men at the side of the building, gathered near the side wall. “They’re messing with something down the building—”
“Trying to cut power,” she said. “But we have backup power. Opening the door now.”
He heard a rattle as she unlocked the door. The second it swung open, a deafening klaxon pierced the night, sending birds soaring from their perches in the surrounding trees and drawing the attention of the men in black.
Evan dived for the open door and scrambled inside, pushing to his feet. “They’re coming!” he warned.
She locked the door behind her and grabbed his hand, pulling him toward a dark stairwell, her short legs having surprisingly little trouble keeping up with his longer strides. Behind them, the door shuddered with the intruders’ attempts to break the glass.
“It’s bullet-resistant,” Megan breathed, “but it won’t hold against a sustained onslaught.”
Great, he thought.
They raced up the darkened stairway, his feet stumbling on the unfamiliar terrain. Two floors up, they burst into a shadowy corridor lit only by emergency exit lights.
“This way,” Megan said, tugging his hand as she started to sprint down the gloomy hallway. She led him into a central room with a large vault at one end. “Turn around,” she ordered.
He did as she asked. He heard her punching numbers into a keypad in the wall, then a loud hiss, as if a giant vacuum-sealed container had come unsealed.
Megan tugged his arm. “In here.”
Following her into the narrow vault, he found himself surrounded by shelves full of archived materials—boxes of files, stacks of labeled videotapes and compact discs, even a few pieces of what looked like priceless artwork—paintings, sketches, sculptures and statuary.
“You never saw any of this,” Megan warned. “Not where we keep it or what’s inside. Understand? Our clients depend on us for complete discretion.”
He nodded, realizing how narrow the vault was. It wasn’t meant to accommodate more than one person at a time. He could barely breathe without his rib cage brushing Megan’s breasts.
“Can you get a cell signal out of here?” he asked doubtfully, looking at the solid construction of the vault.
Megan shook her head. “But this is where Jesse told me to go, so he’ll look for me here.”
“Will we run out of air?”
“Not anytime soon. There’s a vent that pipes in air as long as the electricity holds, and as long as those guys out there don’t cut the auxiliary power—”
The dim emergency lights near the ceiling went out, plunging them into utter darkness.
“You were saying?” Evan murmured, fighting the urge to escape the vault for somewhere less airtight.
She caught his hand, her fingers twining with his. “Wait.”
He heard a soft thud and the dim lights flashed on. Feeling a rush of air across his face, he took a deep breath. “Auxiliary power?”
“Yep.” She still held his hand, he noticed, her small fingers warm and firm between his own. “How did they know to come here?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t talked to anyone since you left my house, have you?” Her tone was urgent.
“I stopped by the marina on the way back to the cabin to pick up some snacks, but I didn’t say anything but ‘thanks’ and ‘see you later.’”
“They came straight here.” Her brow furrowed. “And the only people who know about the letters being here are my family. I didn’t tell anyone else what was in the box.”
“How sure are you that you can trust your other coworkers? I mean, if they saw you with a box—”
“It’s not that uncommon.” She waved her hand around the vault. “We often bring items here to store for clients, so nobody would have blinked an eye.”
“But if they already knew what to look for—”
She tilted her head back to look into his eyes. “I trust the people I work with. They’ve all been through hell and back, in one way or the other. We’ve vetted them all so closely we can probably tell you how many freckles they have and where.”
“So if not someone here at Cooper Security, then who?”
Her gaze narrowing, she let go of his hand. “You knew.”
Anger snapped through him. “So I’m back to being a suspect again? Really?”
She sighed, her breath warm on his neck, eliciting a shudder of pure masculine awareness. “No.”
The klaxons outside, still faintly audible through the thick steel door, silenced suddenly. Megan slid her hand into his again, and he closed his fingers tightly around hers.
“I hope that means your brothers are here.”
“Me, too,” she admitted. She let go of his hand and pulled her Ruger from her hip holster, checking the clip. He followed her lead, making sure there was a round chambered in the P32.
He heard faint noises on the other side of the door. Megan gestured for him to take the left side, while she set up on the right. His breath felt like fire in his lungs, but he willed himself to remain calm and steady.
The door seal popped and air seeped into the vault, cool on his cheeks.
“They’re gone.” The deep voice outside the door belonged to Jesse Cooper. “You okay?”
“Did anyone get inside?” Megan pushed the door out slowly. Jesse and another man stood near the vault door.
“They managed to cut the power and banged the hell out of the front door, but they fled into the woods when we arrived. There’s a whole posse of Coopers after them. J.D. is downstairs trying to figure out how hard it’ll be to restore power.” Jesse looked surprised to see Evan emerge from the vault behind Megan. “That’s your Taurus in the lot?”
Evan nodded. “And if you come across a bag of barbecue sandwiches, that’s our dinner.”
Megan began to laugh, the tone a little uncontrolled.
“Any idea who those guys were?” the other man asked. It was one of Megan’s brothers, Evan was pretty sure—he remembered meeting him at the motel—but the name escaped him.
“Silencers, big guns—almost has to be the SSU,” Megan said. “Any idea how many there were?”
“I saw at least three before I made it inside,” Evan said.
“We counted five running
for the woods,” Jesse said.
“I’m surprised you came in here instead of going after them,” Megan said.
Jesse ruffled her hair, making her grimace. “I told you I’d be here to get you, and I was afraid you’d shoot anyone else who tried to come in.”
Her lips quirked in a half smile, she put her Ruger in its holster and gave her brother a quick hug. “Thanks.”
“They seemed determined to get in here,” Jesse growled. “What do they think you’re going to find in those letters?”
“I’ve been through all of them. The only odd thing I found was that Vince sent me a package I never got.”
“And you didn’t find that odd before?” Jesse asked.
The bleak look on Megan’s face made Evan’s chest ache. “That letter came a few days after the casualty assistance officers informed me of Vince’s death. Those days are a blur.”
“Did he say what was in the package?” Evan asked.
Megan shook her head. “I wonder what happened to it.”
“Maybe that’s a good place to look next,” Evan suggested.
“Did either of you say anything to anyone about the letters?” Megan asked her brothers.
“Just the family. And you know none of them are going to let something like that slip.” The other brother took a hitching step toward Megan and Rick remembered his name. Wade Cooper, a former Marine Corps captain who’d been discharged due to injury. Took a bullet in the knee in a battle three years earlier.
“I think maybe we need to take a listening device detector to my place,” Megan said.
Evan hadn’t even thought of that possibility, but of course it made sense. They knew someone had been in her house earlier that day, long enough to steal the other letters. They could have planted any number of listening devices around the bungalow. Megan had mentioned bringing the box of letters here to the office. A listening device could have picked up that conversation easily.