Master Chief knew three of the panel members already and heartily embraced them.
“That leaves these two to research.”
Rivera raised a hand. “I’ll do that,” he volunteered. “I can reach out to their NCOs and get an honest opinion.”
Carew accepted his offer with relief. “Thank you. Now we need to list all witnesses to the event and any evidence that might prove Lieutenant Mills’s innocence.” She glanced at her watch. “We have fifty-six minutes left.”
“Let’s do this,” Lucas agreed, giving his full attention to the task at hand.
Chapter 6
Charlotte walked from one room to the next in Lucas’s open-concept condominium, intrigued at what she found. The newly constructed building had every amenity one could possibly desire—hardwood floors, a gas fireplace in the living room, granite countertops in the kitchen, and a gas-burning stove. It wasn’t very big, but devoid of furniture, the rooms seemed immense, and her footsteps echoed loudly, emphasizing her solitude.
Poor Lucas. He had to feel robbed. The only furniture apart from a dinette in the kitchen was a cream-colored sectional sofa and a television. Thank God for the built-in shelving throughout. Without all those shelves, Lucas’s books and personal effects would be lying on the floor.
Scanning the shelves in the living room, Charlotte noted with a droll smile how Lucas had categorized his books as either fiction or nonfiction, then shelved them from smallest to biggest. He had a predilection for international thrillers by Tom Clancy and DeMille. Multiple versions of the Holy Bible attested to his faith. But the most revealing artifacts were the framed photos of the people closest to him.
Examining them with interest, she identified the two women hugging him as Justice and Liberty, his sisters. Their eyes and lips betrayed their blood relationship.
Given their friendly faces, Charlotte decided she would like them if she met them in person—not that that was ever likely to happen.
Other frames included photos of Lucas posing with either SEAL team buddies or football buddies. It was hard to tell the difference when they weren’t wearing uniforms. She recognized Saul in one picture, hefting his Remington 700, and Lieutenant Mills in another.
Standing up a small frame that had tipped over, Charlotte realized she was looking at the infamous Monica, posing with Lucas in a portrait that been taken the previous Christmas, given the year printed at the bottom. The petite brunette barely came to the middle of Lucas’s chest. Her turquoise eyes sparkled with happiness, but it was Lucas’s smile of contentment that made Charlotte murmur, “Now there’s a man in love.”
Keeping her job mattered more than doing the right thing.
Recalling Lucas’s words made Charlotte frown. Didn’t he realize Monica was as much a victim in this situation as Jaguar was? She would have lost her job if she’d refused to steal the journal as Dwyer had ordered her to.
With a huff of disapproval, Charlotte left the frame standing up so Lucas could see it and reconsider his judgment, even though she now realized it hadn’t tipped over but had been set on its face.
Touring the lower level one more time, Charlotte realized she would have to empty her parents’ townhouse soon and dispose of the furniture somehow. She’d been putting off the unpleasant task because it was nice to have a familiar place to return to. But Calvin was graduating soon, and her own career in the CIA was about to start. Keeping the historical townhome was impractical. Nor was it right to leave such a lovely home unused.
The sound of a car door shutting wrenched Charlotte’s attention outside where the sight of a seafoam-green SUV parked in the driveway jumpstarted her adrenaline. The pretty brunette walking briskly toward the door was none other than the woman in the photo.
Oh, dear. Did Monica still have a key?
With her wig in the kitchen and no time to put it on properly, Charlotte nonetheless backed in that direction as a key slid into the lock.
Yes, apparently, she did.
Heart pounding, Charlotte slipped out of view just as the door swung open and then closed.
“Lucas?” called a voice from the entryway.
Calling out was just a precaution, Charlotte realized. Monica was confident she was utterly alone. The sound of her heels clicking across the dining room confirmed as much. Frozen next to the refrigerator, Charlotte asked herself what she should do.
Just in case, she picked up the pistol Lucas had left with her. Sudden inspiration had her pulling the cell phone Fitz had given her from her purse. She’d refused to charge it like he’d requested so the phone was dead, but only she knew that.
A plan formed in her head as she peeked through the opening at the woman searching the shelves. Monica had paired a navy skirt with a flattering floral blouse and smart navy pumps. Charlotte liked her sense of style. Finding what she was looking for, Monica issued a groan of annoyance.
“You would put it way up there,” she groused. All at once, she turned her head, presumably to look for something to stand on, and her gaze collided with Charlotte’s.
Shrieking in surprise, she did a tap dance of fear.
Gripping the pistol casually and affecting a Texan drawl, Charlotte approached her. “Can I help you find something, darlin’?”
Monica’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Who…who are you?” she demanded.
“No one important,” Charlotte replied, realizing she couldn’t say Justice Strong because Monica had seen pictures of Lucas’s sister on the shelf, maybe even met her in person. “The real question is, does Lucas know you were planning to come over?” She raised an imperious eyebrow.
“Um, no, not really,” Monica admitted. “But I only wanted to get one thing I forgot to take with me.” Her gaze darted to the vase on the highest shelf. “I’ll leave the key when I go,” she offered with a nervous glance at the pistol.
Charlotte sent her a hard smile. “Nope. I don’t think that’s how this is gonna work,” she declared. “Unless you want me calling 911 right now to report a break-in,” she threatened, holding up the useless phone in her left hand as if about to dial, “then you’ll need to surrender that key right now.”
The suggestion paralyzed Monica momentarily. “Okay,” she agreed. Producing an enormous collection of keys, she riffled through them with fingers that shook.
Charlotte glimpsed a diamond solitaire on Monica’s perfectly manicured left hand and realized, with a sense of shock, that his ex-fiancée still wore the engagement ring she’d taken with her when they’d broken up.
Anger prompted her to add, “How ’bout you take that rock off your ring finger while you’re at it?” she demanded in a no-nonsense voice.
Monica raised a stricken face and blinked at her. “But he gave it to me.”
“Before you betrayed him,” Charlotte pointed out.
“Betrayed him how?” the woman shot back, unsettling Charlotte, who secretly sympathized with her. “By doing what my boss told me to do? I have a career, just the same as Lucas. If Dwyer gave him a direct order, he would certainly have followed through or suffered the consequences. How is my situation any different?”
Fortunately, the impassioned question was rhetorical because Charlotte wondered the same thing. Nor was Monica done venting.
Her jewel-like eyes flashed. “Did he tell you I cheated on him or something? Just because I work in an all-male field, that doesn’t make me unfaithful. I can’t help it if other men try to make moves on me. I’m not about to quit my job because Lucas doesn’t trust me. I’m not the one who betrayed our relationship. That was all him, so I’m keeping the ring!” she added, stamping a small foot.
Charlotte could totally see her point. Nonetheless, she brought up Lucas’s objection. “Following orders doesn’t justify stealing.”
Monica threw her hands into the air. “I didn’t know I was stealing! He told me Master Chief forgot to give him something.”
“So you broke into Master Chief’s office and unlocked his desk to get it
back?”
Monica’s face hardened, but then her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. How do you know so much?”
Instead of answering, Charlotte gestured to the shelves with the gun. “Put the house key on a shelf,” she said, retaining the upper hand.
Monica slapped the key down with finality. At the same time, her gaze flickered toward the top shelf.
“What’s so special about that vase?” Charlotte demanded, keeping her Texan accent in place while belatedly realizing that since Lucas didn’t have one, the real Justice probably didn’t either.
“I bought it, and I want it back,” Monica answered a tad too quickly.
Charlotte stared at her, waiting for more. Her father had taught her silence was an interrogator’s most valuable tool. Most people couldn’t stand the tension it created.
Monica was no exception. “If you must know, the vase was a gift from Commander Dwyer for a job well done, and I want it back for that reason.” A self-conscious blush suffused Monica’s face.
Intrigued, and wishing she could read Monica’s thoughts, Charlotte approached the shelf, stood on tiptoe, and managed to snag the vase without the aid of a chair. Monica watched with mistrust as Charlotte inspected the frosted green vase with a trained eye.
Turning it upside down, she pried a plastic covering off the bottom and stared in astonishment at what lay beneath.
She showed the hardware to Monica. “You know what this is?”
The woman shook her head.
“It’s a bug. Dwyer asked you to bug your fiancé’s house. Were you aware of that?”
Blood actually drained from Monica’s lovely face. It was clear to Charlotte she’d had no idea.
“He’s probably listening to this conversation right now,” Charlotte realized, unsettled by the possibility. Hopefully, he would not connect her to being the recovered Charlotte Patterson.
Without another word, she smashed the butt of her pistol into the device, hopefully hard enough to disable it. Sadly, in the process, the vase cracked down the side and fell into two pieces.
“Please let me go,” Monica pleaded, frightened by Charlotte’s sudden ferocity.
Looking at her, Charlotte considered her options. She could keep Monica there until Lucas got back and let him deal with her, or she could deal with the situation herself. Considering the bug, that choice seemed to make the most sense.
“Tell you what,” she said. “You find yourself a piece of paper and a pen. Write down what you just told me about Dwyer ordering you to break into Master Chief’s office and about him giving you this vase. Then I’ll let you leave with the ring.” Lucas had said he didn’t care about it anyway, she reminded herself. And the vase would be evidence.
Monica slid a possessive glance at the rock on her left hand. “Okay,” she finally agreed, in a voice strained with emotion. “But what if Dwyer fires me? I’ll never get another job in Spec Ops.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Charlotte assured her. “Dwyer is the one who’s going to lose his credibility. Believe me, you don’t want to go down with him.”
Eyeing her with consternation, Monica thought for a moment. Then, fishing in her oversized purse, she produced a pen and notepad.
Five minutes later, Charlotte held a handwritten statement of what Dwyer had requested of his secretary and what he’d given her to put in her fiancé’s home. Escorting Monica to the door, she suffered a twinge of her conscience for not allowing Lucas to handle the matter of his ex’s intrusion himself.
As she watched Monica slip into her SUV, Charlotte could see why Lucas had been drawn to the woman. She was delicate and beautiful, the kind of woman who summoned a man’s protective instincts, the kind a man wanted to cherish. Moreover, in Charlotte’s opinion, she deserved to be forgiven for her sins. That was the Christian thing to do, wasn’t it?
Perhaps once Lucas saw Monica’s handwritten confession, he would find it in himself to forgive her. Then the two would get back together again, just in time for another holiday season.
Struck by her sudden solitude, Charlotte considered the vase she was still clutching. A chill enveloped her as she realized she had quite possibly revealed her whereabouts to The Entity. If Dwyer had been listening in—or would listen at some later point to a recorded conversation—he would certainly want to know why a woman in Lucas’s house knew so much about what had happened in Spec Ops. If he asked Monica what the woman looked like, wouldn’t he immediately guess she was Charlotte Patterson, wanted by The Entity? After all, how many six-foot-tall, redheaded women were there in Virginia Beach?
Swallowing a whimper of uncertainty, Charlotte turned toward Lucas’s kitchen and found a plastic garbage bag in which she placed the vase. To be extra certain, she put it in the refrigerator so, even if the bug still worked, it wouldn’t pick up the next conversation she had with Lucas.
“I got a bad feeling,” Saul muttered, as they approached Lucas’s condo.
Lucas shot him a startled look as he turned into his driveway. “We were gone for an hour. What could go wrong?”
If anything, the day was off to a great start. Lucas had left the pre-trial hearing feeling more optimistic than before about Jaguar’s odds of proving their commander was a liar. Between Saul’s promised testimony and that of Jaguar’s psychiatrist, Dwyer didn’t stand a chance of substantiating his fabrication that Jaguar had tried to kill him.
Nonetheless, heedful of Saul’s premonition, Lucas parked his truck swiftly and chased Saul to his front door. Before he could unlock it, the door popped open and there stood Charlotte, not wearing her wig.
“Was someone here?” Saul demanded as Lucas shooed her back inside and shut the door behind them.
“Yes.” Surprising Lucas, she thrust a piece of paper at him.
“What’s this?” Dismay pegged Lucas as he recognized Monica’s perfect cursive.
“Read it,” she invited both of them. Saul leaned in, and they both read the note in silence.
“Holy crap,” Saul swore, looking up at Charlotte in amazement.
Lucas said nothing. Conflicting emotions kept him tongue-tied as he pictured Charlotte and Monica conversing in his house.
“She saw you with your wig off,” he realized, glancing at Saul, whose incredulous look turned suddenly wary.
“I didn’t have time to put it on,” Charlotte told him. “She surprised me, zipping in here after using the key she still had, which I got back for you, by the way.”
Withdrawing it from her pocket, she thrust it into this hand. “You can thank me later,” she added, spinning away and stalking into the dining room.
“Wait,” Lucas called, chasing after her. Both Charlotte’s prickly behavior and the fact that Monica had seen her without her wig unsettled him. “Where’s the vase she came for?”
“Right here.” Spinning away, Charlotte collected the bag of shattered hardware and brought it back to them. “Here’s what’s left of it.”
“What the—?” he began but Charlotte held up a finger to her lips and opened the bag so he could see the vase that used to be on the top shelf. It was clearly damaged. He recalled Monica bringing it home from work one evening, full of summer lilies. She’d set it on the table as a centerpiece for the get-together he was planning with his teammates.
Drawing it out carefully, though it was cracked down the middle, Charlotte turned it over and showed them the underside. “Check it out,” she whispered.
It took Lucas several seconds to realize what he was looking at. Surprise vied with betrayal as he took it out of Charlotte’s hands to inspect it more closely. Monica had brought a bug into his house!
“I think I’ve disabled it, but you should check before you say anything more,” she told them softly.
He examined it and nodded, satisfied that it was dead.
“It’s a high-end VOX, or voice-operated transmitter,” Charlotte added, though he already knew what it was. “It probably uses a UHF band, which can broadcast several miles. L
ike Monica said in the note, Dwyer gave it to her,” she added grimly.
The ramifications were clear. Lucas handed the vase to Saul. “It was on the table the night Jaguar talked about his disappearance.”
Saul’s hazel eyes narrowed. “Then Dwyer heard everything he said that night.”
“What did he say?” Charlotte asked.
Lucas raked a hand through his hair and thought back. “Jaguar told us he believed Lowery had turned on him in Carenero and left him for dead. We thought it was crazy talk, but it turned out he was right. Jaguar must have confronted Lowery about the unauthorized emails because Lowery struck him in the face with the butt of his rifle, cuffed him, and left him in a building The Entity was about to blow up.”
They all regarded the mangled transmitter with horror.
“So Dwyer overheard Jaguar’s suspicions,” Charlotte surmised slowly. “And soon after that, Lowery supposedly killed himself?”
“Right,” Saul said.
Lucas contemplated Monica’s role in the subterfuge they’d uncovered. “I can’t believe she helped Dwyer spy on us,” he grated. Any lingering affection he felt for Monica vanished.
“Dwyer gave it to her as a gift,” Charlotte insisted, “apparently to commend her for her hard work. She said she didn’t know about the VOX, and from the look on her face, I believe her.”
“Hard work?” Saul snorted.
Charlotte rounded on him with a look of indignation. “What are you implying? Just because she’s a secretary that doesn’t mean she doesn’t work hard.”
Saul set his jaw and kept quiet.
“None of that matters now,” Lucas interrupted, then held up the confession Monica had written. “This is what matters. We want to impugn Dwyer’s reputation—this ought to do it. Not only did he ask her to steal, but he used her to put a bug in my house. And here it is,” he added, gesturing to the vase Saul still held. “We need to get this to Jaguar’s lawyer ASAP. She’s got to call Monica and prepare her.”
Every Secret Thing Page 8