by Jodie Bailey
“Nothing except your trust, and maybe for you to be a second set of eyes.” He sat back and laid his hands splayed on the table. Several small scars creased the knuckles. “Staff Sergeant Dylan, this theft is different. You saw both of their faces, and the evidence says they’re willing to kill you for it.”
“You saw both of their faces, too.”
He waved a hand in front of his face. “I’ll give you that, but with them making a second attempt on you just now, I’m inclined to believe they think you know something else, too.”
“That’s why you’re operating under the assumption the kid tried to poison my drink, because they think I know more than I do.” Jessica’s fingers tightened around the cell phone. She ought to be afraid, but her mind was too busy trying to function under the surreal information Sean Turner was feeding her. “If you can prove that’s actually something dangerous in my drink.”
“If you’ll let me, I can have it analyzed and know within a few days.” He leaned closer. “There’s more. They were watching your house last night.”
She didn’t even want to know how he knew that. “I still say you ought to be worried about your own well-being.”
“I’m not worried about me.”
The words sent a jolt through her that she didn’t want to acknowledge. She could take care of herself, but knowing someone else had her back untwisted something in her heart, something she’d rather leave alone. She would do well to remember this man only wanted her trust so he could get to the bottom of his investigation. She swallowed the emotion and made her decision. “You’re right. They’re not after me because I saw them. Too many other people did, too.”
Sean arched an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
“It’s probably because I have Channing’s cell phone.” She started to pull it from her pocket.
“You have it now?” At her nod, Sean reached across the table and grabbed her free hand. “Not here.” He stood and scanned the room. “I have to get you back to your battalion. Now.”
THREE
Sean ran his hands around the edge of the nondescript brown door, slowing along the top of the frame just in case anyone was stupid enough to leave something incriminating up there.
Nope. Leaning against the beige cinder block wall beside the door, he scanned the tile floor with a curled lip. Barracks sure were better today than when he’d signed up, but nothing beat an apartment of his own. An apartment he’d barely had time to unpack after moving from Maryland to be closer to his new home base in northern Virginia. They’d shipped him out on this assignment in record time, forcing him to leave his new place in a wreck of boxes and half-empty closets.
Thankfully, after Jessica shared Specialist Channing’s cell phone with him, she’d trusted him enough to let him accompany her to the battalion. Well, she partially trusted him. She might believe he was who he said he was, but she still wasn’t 100 percent convinced her life was in danger.
He’d followed her back to her unit, filling in her commander with the least amount of information he could. Jessica Dylan had already been vetted by his superiors, and they knew she could be trusted. The rest of her unit was still being investigated and had to know as little as possible. There was no way to tell who was involved.
Once he’d obtained permission to be in the building, he’d uploaded the contents of the phone to his laptop while Jessica got clearance from the military police to search Specialist Channing’s room. The phone hadn’t yielded much on the surface, but he had a lot of decoding ahead of him. While Jessica thought the texts were nothing more than child’s play, they nagged at Sean. They seemed more like encryption. The numbers and digits weren’t random. In fact, they were the same pattern in many of the messages. As for the emails? Something wasn’t right there, either. No one had any reason to carry around that many head shots of soldiers.
That cell phone was the key to proving these laptop thefts were related, that the thieves weren’t petty criminals. They’d been mentioned in terrorist chatter, but his unit still felt this was a low-level priority. That’s why they’d sent Sean.
He tapped the phone through his pocket. His last mission had brought him into the unit as a consultant, an operative when a desperate situation called for one. As the man who’d uncovered terrorist activity among their contractors, he’d already been in the know about classified intel. He’d just uncovered everything they needed and shipped it back to his best friend, Ashley, in the States when the terror cell blew his cover and took him. Took him and tortured him, trying to discern what he knew.
When the bad guys went after Ashley, his lifelong best friend... That was almost more than he could handle, though it had helped knowing his buddy Ethan Kincaid was protecting her.
His actions overseas had brought him into the unit full-time. But after what he’d been through, sending him out to investigate this mission was proof his superiors thought he wasn’t back up to speed, not operating at full capacity. If he were in their boots, he’d probably want him to prove himself, as well. He’d been tortured but not broken, though that last part was debatable. His sleep was still sporadic and restless, peppered with nightmares when it came.
He had to be successful here if they were ever going to trust him with his own team, ever stop thinking of him as the poor sap who’d made a key mistake and found himself taken hostage. He had to prove to them and to himself he was fit for this assignment.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs, and Sean straightened and prepared to fight, but it was Jessica who appeared around the corner. She held out the key to Specialist Channing’s room as she got closer. “Captain Alexander said the military police and Criminal Investigations spent a large chunk of yesterday in there, but we’re clear to go in now. We probably won’t find anything. I’m guessing they took every piece of evidence that even looked like it had any bearing on her thievery.”
“Yeah, but they’re not looking for the same things I am.” He held out his palm for her to lay the key in it, her warm fingers brushing his skin.
The touch telegraphed straight up his arm. There was no doubt Jessica Dylan was a beautiful woman. Her brown eyes were as warm as hot chocolate, and the way that one stubborn length of dark hair kept escaping the bun she’d tried to tame it in made him itch to tuck it back.
Sean shook his head and tightened his fingers around the key, running his thumb down the jagged edge... All things he shouldn’t be noticing about her or any other female. She was a witness in need of his protection, his only ally on this investigation. Nothing more. Getting involved with her was against his personal protocol, and he had more than enough to worry about without dragging another woman into his life. He’d almost killed the last one.
Slipping the key into the lock, Sean eased the door open, muscles tensed for action in case someone had beaten them into the room.
There was no intruder, but the room was a disaster. Clothes strewed the floor. Several pizza boxes balanced precariously on the small desk and soda cans overflowed the trash.
Jessica followed, grimacing at the chaos. “Did our guys make this mess, or was Channing this disorganized all along? I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve never seen a room in as sad a shape as this one.” She fingered a pizza box and watched it slide to the floor. “I mean, I’ve seen messy soldiers before, but this? There are too many inspections for a soldier to leave a room as trashed as this one. And I’m not sure she was here long enough to merit this kind of disaster.”
“You can fault the investigators for part of it.” Sean pulled open a duffel bag and dragged a hand through wads of drab olive T-shirts. “But not all of it.”
“Maybe because this was her temporary housing, she didn’t bother to worry about inspections. She was supposed to ship out in a few days. She just in-processed from Fort Carson a week ago.”
“Still, something’s not right in h
ere.” Sean stopped in the middle of the room and swept the small space. It was a good thing it took more than overflowing garbage to turn his stomach. “What was her rank again?”
“Channing’s a Specialist.” She’d been in a couple of years and was just above a Private in rank.
Sean pulled the duffel open again, sifting through it and a smaller bag on the floor beside it, giving in to a growing suspicion as he did. Shoving a heap of detritus from the twin bed, he dropped the clothes onto it, then went to the closet and pulled out all the uniforms there, adding them to the pile.
Jessica stepped back and watched. “What exactly are you doing?”
“Thinking.” He pulled random articles of clothing from the bottom of the closet. “At any point in your career, especially when you were a young soldier, did you throw out every single one of your uniforms and start over with used ones?” Sean dumped the clothes onto the bed, then pulled a pair of jump boots from the floor of the closet and tossed them into the mix.
“I’d turn in old uniforms to central issue and get new ones, but usually not all at once. Some of it was used, but not much of it. We got new stuff before deployment, but I kept that back home and wore my old gear overseas. Less I had to buy later. Why?”
Sean swept a hand at the clothes on the bed, waiting to see if he was right or simply thinking sideways. “Tell me what you see.”
“A mess.” Jessica twisted her lips, but she didn’t step back and call him crazy the way she had at the food court. Maybe she was warming up to him.
She’d better. It would make this job a whole lot easier if he didn’t have to fight for her trust every step of the way.
After surveying the heap of uniforms for a minute, Jessica lifted an undershirt, then a pair of pants. One by one, she inspected tops and bottoms, setting them to the side and growing more thoughtful with each piece.
She had to see what he saw.
“Sean.” She stepped back, stopping spare inches before she backed straight into his chest.
Her warmth eased through his uniform top, forcing him to open up the space between them before he decided he liked the feeling. It hadn’t escaped his notice that she’d used his first name. It also hadn’t escaped his notice that he liked the sound of it when she did.
Jessica didn’t seem aware of his thoughts. “The gear is right, but the clothes... None of them are new. And none of them are Channing’s.” She turned on her heel, realized how close she stood to him and slid to the side, clearing her throat. “It’s all used, even has other people’s names on some of them, like she picked up every single bit of it at one of those surplus stores right off post. None of it has been issued to her by the Army.” She picked up a patrol cap and ran her index finger along the brim. “This is more than a soldier would need just to travel overseas.”
“Exactly.” Sean nodded. Her observation skills rivaled some of the best he’d worked with. “Something’s going on with your missing soldier, and I’m starting to think we’re right that it’s a whole lot bigger than the data on your laptop.”
* * *
Tossing Channing’s patrol cap back onto the bed, Jessica walked toward the window that overlooked the parking lot. “I don’t know. It seems like a leap to me.”
“A leap?” Sean stepped up behind her but kept his distance.
Good for him. She’d gotten a little too close earlier, and while the man might be a conspiracy theorist to the highest degree, he was every good thing Angie had guessed he was and more.
And that made him dangerous.
Jessica didn’t turn around. “In reality, I’ve got a soldier who has used uniforms and tried to steal my laptop and has now gone missing. I’ve got a mysterious powder in a cup of sweet tea. And I’ve got you.” Only one of those things was a proven threat.
“You skipped the part where your missing soldier pulled a gun on me while her buddy approached you with a knife.” Sean’s voice was way too matter-of-fact.
She hadn’t forgotten; she just wished she could forget. Refusing to talk about it seemed to be the easiest way to make that happen. “Okay, that, too. But that’s all. It seems localized to me.” Jessica finally risked turning to face Sean.
He was sitting back against the small desk in the room, arms crossed over his chest. “You forgot the whole reason I’m here.”
To be a pain in her neck? “What reason is that, Staff Sergeant?”
His jaw tightened slightly at the use of his rank, but he didn’t comment on it. “Chatter. We picked up specific chatter for this unit, for your specific computer. Chatter from known terrorists.”
Okay, so there was that. Jessica sank to the edge of the second twin bed. “You really think terrorists were after my laptop? There’s nothing on there they can use. No troop movements. No intel. No battle plans. Only thing on there is records and personnel data.”
“I think terrorists are after several laptops. Remember, yours isn’t the first. It’s only the one we were able to get a jump on.” He tipped his head to both sides, stretching his neck. “Give me a general idea. If I went on to your laptop today, what would I see?”
“It’s in my office, and you can go through it all you want. Channing pitched it when I was chasing her. But I’ll have to sign you in. You’d need my ID card because the laptop has a common access card reader on it.”
“You haven’t lost your ID have you?”
“Really?” Jessica smirked, then pulled her ID out of her thigh pocket and held it up between two fingers. “I’ve been around too long for that. And even if they had my ID card, they’d have to get my password to go along with it. I’m sure, if they’re the hackers you seem to think they are, they could gain access, but once in there, the most interesting information they’d get for their trouble is my calendar, some general emails, and...” No. Please not that.
“What?” Sean straightened, dropping his hands to his sides. “What would they be after on that laptop?”
“With the right information, they could get access to the DD-93s for the unit.”
“That’s not good.”
Jessica dug her fingernails into her palms. No, it wasn’t. The form DD-93 was the Record of Emergency Data. It contained contact information for soldiers’ next of kin if the worst happened. “There are names and addresses on there. If someone got access to that information, they could locate any soldier’s family they wanted.” Just the year prior, a local group had terrorized soldiers’ families on post in an attempt to bring the men home early. But terrorists? With that information, they could wreak havoc on families and tear down the morale of the entire military.
She consciously relaxed her fingers. “The good news is, they didn’t get my laptop.”
“But they got your first one...and others from other bases.”
“True, but to get access they’d have to know log-in information and passwords for the system and—” she wrinkled her nose “—to be honest, that’s risky. It’s got to be something else. They could hack that database without calling attention to themselves by stealing laptops. Access can come from any computer, not just a government laptop.”
“It’s something to think about. Anything else?”
“General information about soldiers. Honestly, whatever you think is on there is what’s on there. Your basic information for each of our men and women.”
She’d wasted half of her afternoon dealing with Sean Turner and his theories. He kept spouting things she didn’t even want to think about and, with her body aching and her mind fogging from lack of sleep, it was better to just be an ostrich, to stick her head in the sand, and pretend everything was normal. “I have to go meet a spouse at the Soldier Center. She lost her ID card and needs someone to hold her hand through the process.”
“Isn’t that the Family Readiness Group’s job?” Sean waved a hand toward the door for
Jessica to go ahead of him.
“Normally, but I know the soldier, and his wife felt better calling me than her point of contact. I think there might have been some friction there at one point.” She glanced at her watch as she walked out the door, keeping her distance from Sean Turner. This was one favor she was glad to do, especially if it got her out of his presence. “I’ve got to be over there in half an hour. And then I’m going home to pretend today never happened.” She was hosting the college girls from her church for dinner and Bible study tonight. Their chatter and company would be the best thing to happen to her today.
“Let me come with you.” Sean pulled the door shut and locked it, then held the key out to Jessica. “I’m not really comfortable with letting you out of my sight after what’s happened the past couple of days.”
Jessica took the key and pocketed it. “Just when I’m starting to think you might not be so crazy after all, you go and sound like a stalker.”
“I’m just saying—”
She held up her hand and headed up the hallway ahead of him. “And I’m just saying. I’m going to the ID card facility and home. Not much can happen between here and there.” Well, it could, but she could take care of herself. She’d spent the past ten years proving that, and she’d have to keep proving it if she was going to go Green to Gold, from enlisted to officer.
Sean was going to argue. Jessica just knew it. But before he could, the trill of a cell phone echoed off the cinder block walls.
“Dylan, wait.” Sean’s voice halted her.
Jessica stopped and turned.
He was holding up Specialist Channing’s cell. “It’s ringing.”
“Answer it.” Whoever was calling could know exactly what was going on, could hold the answers that would put Sean Turner on the road and out of her life for good, before she noticed yet again how blue those eyes of his were and how well he wore his uniform.