by Becky McGraw
Susan’s face heated, as her smile faded. This man was entirely too intuitive. She turned in her chair to put her legs under her desk and sighed heavily. “I’ll be a legend there now for sure. For my legendary fuckup out at the Diamond Bar Ranch, and the fact that I told my boss, the Director of the FBI, to fuck off.” She shook her head. “My father would be mortified.”
“Why would he be mortified? Is he a preacher? A politician?” Slade asked, moving to lift the box down to the floor. He swiped the papers off of the desk onto the floor to sit on the corner of the desk. It looked like he was settling in for a long conversation. It had been a helluva long time since anyone, especially a man, had purposely held a conversation with her, much less started one. This man had and even though the topic he chose was uncomfortable for her, she liked his snarky attitude and he was easy to talk to.
“My father was as far from a preacher as a man could get. And he was about as politically correct as I am. Most politicians hated him,” Susan admitted. She dragged her eyes to her hands. “But he was honest. Upper management in the bureau recognized that and appreciated it. He was SAC of the Dallas FBI office for ten years, before he was promoted to an upper-level management job in Washington.”
He harrumphed. “Same job as you. You following in his footsteps?”
“That was the plan,” she said with a wry smile, then sucked on her popsicle again, before pulling it away. “But plans change. Especially when you don’t have better sense than to quit your federal management job without notice.”
“Is he still in Washington?” Slade asked.
Susan’s eyes flew to his again. No facial flash, or knowing look. He didn’t know anything, he was just asking out of curiosity. Barry Whitmore’s death had been publicized all over the national news ten years ago. A high-ranking federal official drinking and driving with his family in the car made it national news.
The problem with that is Susan knew her father had been sober for fifteen years. The senatorial vote-selling case he was working on at the time had also been well publicized, although his name wasn’t mentioned. Susan and everyone else knew that he was in charge of the investigation, and was very close to making arrests. Fresh out of the academy and wet behind the ears, Susan couldn’t help but think that investigation was connected to his death, and she’d looked around some, but could find no proof, so she’d let it drop.
“He’s dead,” she informed flatly.
Before Slade could expand his questioning, and Susan knew subtle interrogation when she heard it, Dave Logan’s office door flew open. He walked out looking much fresher than he had earlier. His hair was damp and still sticking up in fifty directions, but he’d shaved and was now wearing a tight black t-shirt that clung to every muscle in his broad chest, which were numerous. The olive green, military-style cargo pants hung low on his hips as he strode toward them. His chin dipped a little as his eyes darted to the box on the floor and the scattered papers.
“Don’t y’all have something to do?” he asked gruffly, pinning Slade with a hard look. His eyes darted to the clock on the wall. “Is Dex in yet?”
Slade shook his head. “You know Dex is never here on time.”
Dave’s eyes narrowed. “If he wasn’t so damned good, I’d fire his ass.”
“Dex is Dex,” Slade replied with a shrug. “You need him, so you’re not gonna fire him, and you both know it.”
“No, I won’t, but I will fire both of you if you don’t stop shooting the shit on my time,” Dave grated, as he dragged his gaze to Susan. She shoved what was left of her popsicle into her mouth and clamped down on it. Dave’s eyes fell to her mouth and he frowned. “I have an appointment. Since you apparently don’t have anything else to do this morning, show her where all this stuff needs to be filed, and help her. When I get back at ten I want you, Dex, Mac, and Gray in the conference room waiting for me. We have a new case.” With that Dave turned and strode toward the front door, but Slade’s words stopped him.
“Gray is working on your accounting from the last ten missions, remember?” He turned back toward them, and Slade continued, “Your records suck, and you know it. Those ten boxes of crumpled, barely legible receipts, which are stained with God knows what kind of disgusting stuff, aren’t going to reconcile themselves. We’re under strict orders not to interrupt him. Hell, you’re lucky he hasn’t quit and gone back to the NSA, like I’ve heard him threaten to do a few times lately. The man is a freak over organization, and we’re driving him crazy.”
“Well, maybe he’s not a good fit here then. We fly by the seat of our pants around here, and deal with what needs to be dealt with at the moment to get our jobs done. Accounting comes later. If he can’t deal with that then I don’t need him,” Dave growled, shoving a hand through his rumpled hair. “Have his OCD ass in the conference room at ten o’clock. I need him.”
Slade just stared at Dave for a moment with some unspoken communication going on between them, then his shoulders slumped. “I’ll try to have him there, but get more help, Dave. Hire a fucking bookkeeper and quit dumping on him. He’s a forensic accountant, not a bookkeeper.”
Dave threw up his hands and heaved a sigh as he turned and walked out of the front door. Susan crunched the rest of her popsicle off of the stick, and sucked it. She was definitely going to have to buy more popsicles if she was going to work there.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Good, you’re all here,” Dave said, as he walked into the conference room. Dex, Gray, Mac and Slade were sitting on either side of the table. He sat down at the head of the table and slapped his file folder down in front of him.
“You’re late,” Slade accused, tapping his fingers on the table top. Dave looked up to see him lift his wrist to glance at his watch. “I’d fire you if you weren’t so damned good,” his second in command said with a smug grin.
Dave shot his friend a warning look. “I got caught up at the attorney’s office.”
Slade grunted. “All it takes is one excuse. Isn’t that right, Marine?”
“Shut the hell up, Slade. I’m not in the mood for your crap,” Dave growled, opening the file folder to spread the documents inside out on the table. “We’ve got a lot to go over.”
The door opened and Dave looked up to see Susan walk into the office with a couple of Cokes in her hand. She gave one to Dex, then walked all the around the table to hand the other drink to Slade. “Thanks, Snapper,” he said with a wink and a grin.
Snapper? Dave’s eyes zoned in on the red popsicle hanging from Susan’s swollen cherry-tinged lips, and his brain misfired as he tried to process the fact that Slade had just called her a nickname and she hadn’t kicked his ass. She actually seemed to enjoy it, he thought, as he watched her slowly slide the popsicle out of her mouth, so she could return Slade’s smile.
Dave’s jeans got entirely too tight. He shifted in his chair, feeling like he had just walked into an alternate universe or something. A universe where everyone knew how things worked except him. An alien planet where seeing Susan Whitmore sucking a popsicle made his dick want to bust out of his jeans. He cleared his throat and discreetly slid his hand under the table to adjust himself. “If we’re done with social hour, we have work to do,” he growled.
Susan’s blue eyes widened and swung to him. He could see anger simmering there, but instead of blasting him like he expected, she shoved the popsicle back into her mouth and sucked it hard. Dave bit back a groan, and narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you have filing to do?”
“We finished it,” Slade announced, with a glance at Gray.
Lola poked her head into the open doorway then sauntered around the table to sit down beside Susan’s leg. Susan reached down to scratch the dog between her ears, and the big German Shepherd rubbed her head into Susan’s hand, and Susan smiled. “You’re a bad girl, Lola Falana. You were supposed to stay by my chair.” She patted the dog’s head, which totally contradicted the reprimand in her words. “C’mon, let’s go. We have things to do.” To Dave�
��s surprise, the dog followed behind Susan as she walked to the door, like she usually only did with Slade.
Sonofabitch. Something was definitely going on in his office and Dave didn’t like it one bit. The door closed softly behind Susan, and Dave turned on Slade. “What the hell have y’all been up to?”
Shoving his chair back, Slade casually crossed his calf over his knee and took a long sip of his soft drink, before answering. “Just getting the job done, boss.”
Dave ground his teeth. The level of comfort his men had slipped into so quickly with Susan Whitmore shocked the hell out of him, and it pissed him off. He didn’t want them making her too comfortable. She was not a part of their team, and the guys needed to remember that and keep their distance. As soon as Dave could arrange it, she was gone. He’d made that decision this morning after their run-in in the kitchen.
But he’d deal with that later. They needed to talk about the new case first.
“We have a new case, and you guys are the key players. The others are still working security for the prince’s visit in Houston.”
“Hell, the prince should be up for permanent residency pretty soon, huh? When is he leaving the U.S.?” Slade asked.
“When his wives finish shopping at the Galleria,” Dex answered with a laugh.
“When he finishes greasing the political palms that can approve his request for that new exploratory rig in Eagle Ford Shale,” Gray added.
They could joke all they wanted, but the Saudi prince was paying them obnoxiously well for their security services. If he did apply for permanent residency, Dave definitely wouldn’t have a problem with it, as long as he brought his wallet with him. “The longer he stays, the better for us. Deep Six is making a lot of money from protecting him and his entourage. That prince is paying your salaries,” Dave reminded.
“Protecting him from what?” Mac Mackenzie, the veteran detective and best investigative mind he had on the team, asked with a snort.
“You know as well as I do there’s a lot of tension in the US against Arabs,” Dave replied, sliding him copies of a case summary the attorney had helped him prepare. “He’s just being cautious and I can’t blame him. Now, we need to focus here. Pass those around.”
Dave waited until each man had a brief, and allowed them a minute to scan through it. Mac was the first to lift his eyes. A nerve ticked in his jaw as he summarized, “So because Richie Rich decided to buy his trophy wife a baby so she didn’t fuck up her perfect body producing one the old-fashioned way, we’re going to drop what we’re doing to get their money back?”
“They don’t want their money back. The couple evidently had very specific criteria for their child, and paid for it. They want that baby, even though they’ve never even seen it.” Dave replied calmly. “And we are going to do our best to find it for them, but the surrogate could have taken the baby into Mexico. The fertility clinic is very close to the border, so we’ve got a job ahead of us.”
“Is the surrogate an illegal?” Mac asked sitting up straighter in his chair.
“According to Mr. and Mrs. Glanville, all of the surrogates they were introduced to were foreign. Mrs. Glanville stated, although it wasn’t confirmed, their surrogate, Francesca, was Italian. She thinks the other women they were introduced to might have been Russian.” Dave shrugged. “It’s all big business supposedly, and it must be because this couple is into them for five hundred grand.”
Slade whistled. “I had no idea designer babies cost that damned much money. You’d have to be Richie Rich to afford that, right?”
“They don’t usually,” Gray said. He’d been unusually quiet so far, and very involved with whatever he was looking at on his laptop, but he finally looked up. “I just researched it and they’re usually much less expensive. Choosing the sex of the baby is not legal in the States. That could explain why the clinic is on the border, and why the Glanvilles are paying so much for the baby. Maybe they sent the surrogate over the border for impregnation.”
Dave saw Slade tense. “So this is like one of those breeding farms for purebred puppies, just for humans?” He glanced at the door with a frown, and Dave knew he was thinking about Lola right then, because she had come from an abandoned litter at one of those clinics which was raided. He hadn’t gotten her until she was grown, but that’s what he was told about her background, and it was a sore spot with him.
“That’s pretty much it in a nutshell, but a little more high tech. The couple chooses egg and sperm donors from a genetics catalog, and the lab makes a baby in a dish then implants it into the surrogate to bake for nine months.”
“If the Glanvilles paid all that money for the baby, and the surrogate basically stole the baby, isn’t that theft or kidnapping?” Mac asked. “Why doesn’t the couple report the baby missing?”
Dave was confused about that too, but the lawyer he met with earlier clarified things for him. “They tried to report it and file charges, but according to the police, the baby belongs to the mother who gave birth to it, and that would be the surrogate. Anything beyond that is something that would have to be decided civilly. The couple was only given the surrogate’s first name, and no background information. Now that they’ve threatened the clinic with a lawsuit, they won’t give them any more information on her, so even if the surrogate had committed a crime, the police wouldn’t know where to start to find her.”
“How the hell are we going to find her then?” Mac asked with a frown.
“That’s for you to tell me,” Logan said with his first smile of the day. “That’s why I pay you the big bucks. You’re our resident Sherlock Holmes.”
“This is all damned weird,” Slade said, then leaned his elbows on the table. “According to Carmen, that facility is on the radar with the feds. She doesn’t know the nature of the case, it’s hush-hush, and they don’t have enough evidence for an official investigation yet, but they’re working on it. Something screwy must be going on out there. Maybe we should wait to see what they do for a couple of weeks.”
It was Dave’s turn to glance at the door. If Susan was still at the bureau, he knew he could’ve at least gotten some information from her on that case. But she wasn’t, and considering the way she’d left, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance of her getting any information from them. Dave didn’t know the new guy yet, her replacement, and building a relationship with that man would take time. They didn’t have time right now. The surrogate mother was foreign, so that baby might be out of the country soon if they didn’t find her right away.
“For the feds to get enough information for probable cause, it could take months, years. By then that baby could be out of the country, since the surrogate is foreign. We’ve got to move on this now. The Glanvilles have hired us to find that baby, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
“What do you need us to do?” Dex asked.
“Before Mac can do his bloodhound act to find the surrogate, we need background information on her. Family history, friends, relatives, places she’s lived would be a good start. You need to hac—um, access their computer system to see if you can at least find her last name. In the meantime, Mac, I need you and Slade to do a little recon out at that clinic. Get Hawk to fly you out there, if he’s not carting the prince around.”
Slade and Mac stood, and Dave pinned Slade with his eyes. “Keep your damned head down and try not to get arrested this time, okay?”
“You know that’s never on my agenda, boss,” Slade replied with a wink. “But keep the bail money handy.”
Dave bit back a groan, and looked at Gray. “Gray, I need you to research their financials. Tell me who the players are, and if anything looks hinky there to you.” After a brief staredown, Gray nodded, so Dave went on. “We’ll meet again Friday afternoon and see where we are.”
Getting up, he followed Slade and Dex to the outer office, and they split off, but he stopped at Susan’s desk, because the damned phone was ringing and she was nowhere to be found. With a frustrated growl he picke
d up the receiver, and stabbed the button to connect the call. “Deep Six,” he snarled.
Susan walked out of the kitchen with yet another popsicle in her mouth, and he shot her a heated glare. Her chin inched up as she walked to the desk and eased her hip onto the corner, listening intently as Dave listened to the caller. Focusing on the man on the other end of the line was very difficult though, because his brain was as frozen as that orange popsicle Susan was slowly sliding in and out of her mouth. One inch, two inches appeared as she slid it almost out of her mouth, before plunging it back in. She stopped to circle her tongue around the tip, and Dave’s breath hitched. She went down on it again, almost taking it all into her mouth, and Dave stabbed the button to put the caller on hold.
“Do your damned job, and find out who that is,” he growled, tossing the receiver onto her desk, before he strode toward the kitchen. He went straight to the refrigerator and opened the freezer to grab the almost empty box of popsicles, before slamming the door shut.
Just as he lifted the lid on the trash, Susan walked into the kitchen. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, moving to grab the box. “Those are mine.”
“Well you’re not going to be eating them in my office anymore!” She pulled the box, and Dave played tug of war with her, until he finally turned away and folded her arm under his to get leverage to pry the box out of her hand. The box came out of her hand, and he spun around to growl, “Go find out who’s on the damned phone!”
“I did! It was a freaking telemarketer! Why the hell did you put him on hold?” she asked furiously.
Dave turned to the trash and stomped the lever to open the can, but just as he was about to drop the box into the trash, an arm clamped across his throat, before a knee punched him behind his right knee. Dave’s legs crumpled, and he wilted to the floor, as the box of popsicles was snatched from him.