by Paula Graves
Her shoulders squaring, she pulled out her phone and made a call, typing notes on the tablet computer as she spoke to the person on the other end of the line. When she hung up, she looked up at Evan with a triumphant smile.
“That was Allie Dawson—we used to live two houses away from each other,” she said. “We’re lucky I got her. I probably wouldn’t have gotten this much otherwise. Two are still in the army—Delgado and Raines. They’re both still at Benning. Gates is out. She couldn’t share any further information, of course.”
“But maybe Delgado and Raines will know?”
“Exactly.” Her smile lingered. “Man, it was great talking to Allie again. We lost touch after Vince died.”
He had a feeling she’d cut ties deliberately, out of self-preservation. He’d seen it happen before.
“Allie’s going to meet us at the gate to get us in on visitor’s passes. She said we should be able to catch Rafe and Tyrone when they break for mess.” Megan’s smile faded suddenly.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Her mouth curved in a brief, bleak smile. “I didn’t think I’d ever go back to Fort Benning again.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
She shook her head, her chin jutting sharply. “I’m going. We’re going to see this through.”
But even though her whole body vibrated with determination, Evan could see, in the pain-tinted shadows in her gray eyes, just how much the effort was costing her.
* * *
ALLIE DAWSON WAS AS SWEET-NATURED and pretty as Megan remembered, though perhaps ten pounds plumper. “Still trying to lose weight from baby number two!” she said with a rueful smile as she ran her hand over the remains of her baby bump.
“Two?” Megan tamped down a sense of envy and asked to see pictures, which Allie promptly supplied. While Megan oohed and ahhed over the photos of two undeniably cute tow-headed tykes, she noticed Allie was eying Evan Pike with a speculative gleam in her eyes. She always had been something of a matchmaker, trying to pair up all the single soldiers with girls she knew from town. Now that Megan was unattached, Allie probably saw her as fair game, especially after four years of widowhood.
If she had ever heard of Evan from her husband, she showed no sign of hostility toward him.
“So, what are you doing now?” she asked Megan eagerly. “Still with Homeland Security?”
“I’m working for my brother. He started Cooper Security about four years ago, so he brought me in as an analyst. Now I’m also doing field work.”
Allie’s eyes widened. “Is it as exciting as it sounds?”
“Not really,” Megan answered with a wry laugh. Next to her, Evan shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. Didn’t like girl talk? Most men didn’t, she knew. She herself could take it only in small doses.
Before long, Allie’s lunch break arrived, giving poor Evan the reprieve he’d probably been praying for. “Delgado and Raines usually eat together at one of the main base restaurants,” Allie told Megan, adding a bright wink. “I’ve got a date with my hubby at our favorite Italian place off base.” She walked them out of the visitor center, eliciting a promise from Megan to stay in touch more often.
Fort Benning was like a small city unto itself, with almost every amenity a soldier could hope to find in any small metropolitan area, including an enormous post exchange, banks, a vet clinic, a hospital and even a movie theater. Megan and Evan spent the better part of the next twenty minutes going from one on-base restaurant to another, looking for Delgado or Raines.
They found Rafe Delgado sitting alone at a Mexican restaurant at a table not far from the door. He caught Megan’s eye and blinked with surprise, a grin spreading across his face as he recognized her. But as they crossed to his table, he spotted Evan, his expression darkening to suspicion immediately.
Megan sighed. Evan had expected that kind of greeting from Delgado. It couldn’t be helped.
“What on earth are you doing here, Mrs. Randall?”
“Came to see you and Tyrone. Is he around?”
“He just got his order—Ty!” Delgado waved the tall, rawboned young black man over. Raines’s eyes widened in surprise at the sight of Evan, but he showed no signs of hostility, to Megan’s relief. Raines set his food on the table where they sat and bent to give Megan a kiss on the cheek.
“What are you doing back here in gruntsville, Meggie?” Raines sat across from her.
“I’m looking for a little information.” In vague terms, Megan told them about the package her husband had mentioned in one of his last letters. “Did either of you see anything like that—a package Vince wanted to send me?”
The two men exchanged looks.
“What?” Megan prodded.
“He gave a package to someone in the unit to send out for him, about a day before he was shot,” Raines answered. Delgado, she noticed, was still eyeing Evan with wariness. Probably why Evan was letting her take the lead in the questioning, despite the tense energy she felt radiating from him.
“Do you remember who?” she asked.
“Gates,” both men said at the same time.
“Sarge seemed to think Gates had what it took to be officer material if he’d just put in a little effort, but Ducky wasn’t ambitious,” Raines told her.
“So Sarge tried to jump-start a little fire in his belly,” Delgado added. “Gave him extra duties, tried to instill a sense of pride in accomplishment.” He darted his gaze toward Evan. “Sarge didn’t think leadership should be the rich cat’s domain.”
Evan’s lips flattened with annoyance, but he let Delgado’s pointed barb pass unremarked.
“Did Gates post the package?”
“He said he did.”
“You didn’t see him do it?” Evan spoke for the first time.
Both men’s gazes whipped up to him, and even Raines showed a hint of careful wariness. “Come on, Pentagon, you know we didn’t babysit each other. People had duties and we expected they did them,” he said.
“Who was the post officer at the time?” Megan asked.
“Corporal Donegan,” Evan answered. “The captain put him in charge of package posting.”
“’Cause he worked for FedEx when he wasn’t on active duty,” Delgado added. “He was a reservist.”
“He’s actually from Georgia,” Raines added helpfully. “Up around LaGrange, I think. I think he’s off active duty now—you might be able to track him down.”
“I have his cell phone number,” Delgado said, digging in his pocket for his wallet. “He said he might want to sell his ’78 Camaro and I’ve been lookin’ for one of those.”
Evan pulled out his cell phone and took the number Delgado gave him. “Thanks.”
Delgado’s expression shifted to curiosity. “Is this just about finding that package?”
Megan darted a quick look at Evan. Meeting her gaze, he gave a small nod. “Did either of y’all ever hear rumors about Vince’s death?”
Delgado and Raines exchanged glances. “What kind of rumors?” Delgado asked.
“That maybe it wasn’t an enemy sniper that shot him.”
Raines toyed with the remains of his lunch. “Nobody in al Adar could’ve made that shot.”
“That’s what I heard,” she said, not elaborating on who’d told her. Their attitude toward Evan had begun to soften to indifference to his presence, at best. She didn’t want to put them back on edge by letting them know that Evan was the impetus behind this interview.
But their gazes went to Evan anyway. “You finally got your head out of your backside long enough to figure it out?”
He inclined his head as if admitting defeat. “I should have listened to the scuttlebutt.”
“You said we were letting grief overcome our good sense.” Delgado mimicked Evan’s neutral accent.
“Why didn’t y’all tell me?” Megan asked pointedly. “I came down here to greet you when you returned home. You could have told me then.”
“For what?” Raines asked. “Pentagon and his buddies had already made the pronouncement. KIA.”
Killed in Action. Just thinking about the words took Megan back to that terrible day four years ago when the notification officers brought her the news of her husband’s death. She’d always known it was a possibility, though in a peacekeeping action like Kaziristan, an accident had been more likely than a bullet to take a soldier’s life.
“We thought it would just drive you nuts, and since we couldn’t prove anything—” Delgado turned a dark glare toward Evan. “You told her? After all this time?”
“There’s reason to believe the scuttlebutt was right,” Megan answered. “I appreciate Evan being straight with me about it and letting me decide what to do.”
“You’ve got new evidence?” Raines looked intrigued.
The quick look Evan gave her underscored her own wariness about giving out too many details. “Just more questions,” she said vaguely. “Enough to warrant taking a closer look. You two were with him on that last patrol. Plus Gates, right?”
“Right,” Raines agreed.
“Nobody else was there?”
Delgado looked at Raines. “There was that guy from supply, brought us the extra rounds—Merriwether.”
“There was another man there?” Evan sounded surprised.
“He wasn’t there during the shooting. Just a little bit before,” Raines answered.
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Dead,” Delgado said bluntly. “Scott Merriwether died in a hit-and-run accident up in north Georgia two months ago.”
Chapter Eight
Evan’s hand flattened against Megan’s back. She tried not to react, but fire danced along her nerve endings where he touched her. “Hit-and-run?”
“Yeah—someone ran him off the road and down a ravine in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Didn’t even call 911.” Delgado sounded disgusted. “Car caught on fire, and apparently he was trapped inside. Not much left by the time someone finally got to the car.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Megan exchanged a look with Evan. He gave a slight shake of his head—apparently he didn’t want to speculate in front of Delgado and Raines. But she had a feeling the subject would come up later—a hit-and-run accident killing one of the witnesses to Vince’s shooting?
Too convenient by a long shot.
“What about Gates?” Evan asked. “Where is he now?”
“Last I heard, working in Nashville,” Raines answered.
“At Butler Construction,” Delgado supplied. “His cousin’s the foreman there or something.”
Evan removed his hand from Megan’s back to type the information into his phone. Cold seeped through to her bones where his hand had been, despite the heat of the day.
“Is there anything else you can tell us? Anything that made you suspect Vince’s death wasn’t an al Adar attack?” Megan asked. “Besides al Adar being bad shots.”
“Vince was spending a lot of his downtime in Tablis,” Raines told her. “Which was unusual, ’cause he used to spend all his downtime sending moony letters to you.”
Megan frowned, surprised. Vince almost never mentioned trips to the capital in his letters home, until that last one. In fact, he’d said he usually avoided the city during off-duty hours. “A bunch of brass throwing their weight around” was how he’d described Tablis.
“We used to rib him about it—told him we knew he was tryin’ to brownnose the brass. Get him one of those Command Sergeant Major buttons on his collar.” Delgado’s smile faded. “But that wasn’t how Sarge did things. I didn’t know what he was up to when he’d go to Tablis.”
Megan glanced at Evan, wondering what he made of the new information. To her surprise, he showed no sign of surprise.
In fact, he looked guilty.
Had he known about Vince’s trips to the capital already? Why hadn’t he told her about them?
Raines glanced at his watch and gave Megan an apologetic look. “We’re due for a staff meeting in ten minutes. We’re going to have to book it to get there. If I think of anything else, I’ll email you.” He pulled a small spiral notebook from his shirt pocket. “What’s your address?”
Megan gave him her email address, then gave him a hug. “Tell Adele I said hello. Give her the email address—I’d love to stay in touch.”
Delgado gave her a clumsy hug as he left, too. “Hope you find what you’re lookin’ for, ma’am.”
She fought against a flood of emotion as she watched Vince’s men walk out of the mess hall. Evan’s hand brushed against her shoulder, making her quiver.
“Anybody else you want to talk to?” he asked quietly.
She turned to look at him. “You knew about Vince’s trips to Tablis.”
His expression shifted from sympathy to guilt. “Yes.”
“You didn’t think you needed to mention that to me?”
He looked around the restaurant, which was filling up with a new group of soldiers. “Let’s talk about it in the car.”
* * *
MEGAN KNEW HER WAY AROUND the area better than Evan did, so he let her drive out of the base. She didn’t ask any more questions as she navigated them through the checkpoints to leave the base, to Evan’s surprise. In fact, once they were back on the highway, it took her another fifty miles of driving before she spoke to him again, snapping the escalating tension filling the air between them.
“Would you like to explain why you didn’t mention Vince’s trips to Tablis?” she asked, her voice tight with anger.
“I wasn’t sure it was relevant,” he answered, which was only part of the truth, but he didn’t think she’d forgive him for the whole truth. And after the prickly reception he’d received from Delgado and Raines, he had a feeling he’d need Megan’s full cooperation to get anything out of Donald Gates.
At least, that was the reason he gave himself. Any other reasons he might have for wanting to stay on Megan Randall’s good side weren’t relevant, were they? He’d come to Alabama to get the truth about Vince Randall’s death, even if the guy had done something to bring it on himself.
Making friends with the widow wasn’t part of the plan.
“Not relevant?”
“Lots of soldiers went into Tablis. It was the closest thing to civilization you could find in Kaziristan at the time. There were good restaurants, actual bars with actual drinks—”
“Vince wasn’t a drinker. His parents were both alcoholics and he never touched the stuff.”
“I don’t know why he went to Tablis. Maybe he was looking for a nice anniversary gift for you.” He looked at her. “That might be all the package was.”
She looked away from the road a second. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“We’ll find Donald Gates and ask about it,” he said. “Then we’ll worry about what it might mean.”
“What about Merriwether’s accident? Could it have been something else?”
“Accidents happen. I mean, I didn’t even know Merriwether was in the area that night. Hell, I couldn’t pick out Scott Merriwether in a lineup. I didn’t have much contact with his unit. It’s not that likely anyone else would be gunning for him at this late date.”
“That’s two deaths among the five people there that night.”
“And three who are alive,” he countered.
Her only response was to look back to the road. He tried to gauge whether or not she was formulating another argument. Her chin was jutting stubbornly, but a quick glance in the rearview mirror later, her expression changed completely, her brow furrowing and her hands tightening on the steering wheel.
Evan looked behind them and spotted a large black SUV bearing down on them at an alarming rate. “What the hell?”
“Brace yourself,” Megan warned, and suddenly the rental car whipped across the road and turned down a crossroad that seemed to head straight into the woods, the movement so fast that his shoulder slammed hard into the passenger door, despite
the seat belt holding him in place.
He twisted to look over his shoulder. The SUV had made the same move, though it had lost a little ground.
Megan was gunning the Ford down the narrow two-lane road, the woods flying past them little more than a green blur. “What if this is a dead end?” he asked, gripping the dashboard to keep from pitching forward as she braked into a hairpin turn.
“It’s not,” she answered tersely, her gaze lifting to the rearview mirror again. She muttered a curse. “When I say brace yourself, I mean it this time.” She slammed on the brakes and the Ford fishtailed, tires shrieking on the blacktop. They ended up facing the large black SUV, which was forced to brake before it slammed into them head-on.
As the big vehicle swerved left to miss them, Megan gunned the Ford’s engine and bolted past them, heading back up the road in the direction from which they’d come.
“They teach you defensive driving skills at Homeland Security?” Evan asked, his pulse hammering in his throat.
“No, but it’s one of the things we offer at Cooper Security.” She whipped the Taurus down an even smaller road that intersected with the side road. Evan darted a quick look behind them during the turn and saw the SUV was still hidden by the sharp curve they’d taken just before the sudden left turn.
Megan peered through the windshield, her eyes narrowed.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“There.” She pointed to a dirt road turnoff. She slowed into the turn and almost immediately whipped over onto a grassy clearing. She eased the Ford around in the narrow space until the nose pointed toward the road. She cut the engine and jumped out of the car, darting into the woods.
Evan followed her out. “What are we doing?”
“Grab tree branches—big as you can find. For camouflage.”
He hoped they’d have time to cover the car before their pursuers figured out where they’d gone. “Just the right and the front,” he suggested. “The woods will hide the rest.”