“That’s yours to keep,” the lawyer informed Ingram. “We have copies.”
Korman fished through the paperwork on his desk and came up with an envelope that clearly had Ingram’s name written in my father’s handwriting across the front. My heart felt as though someone had stuck their hand in my chest and squeezed as I watched Ingram take it from Korman’s outstretched hand.
“He left that to you as well,” Korman said. He snapped the open file in front of him closed then and looked at the two of us. “That should settle everything. If you have any questions, please feel free to call my office.”
“Just like that?” I asked, suddenly overcome with outrage. “He didn’t leave any added instruction for me? No letter?”
“I’m afraid not,” Korman said.
“But he took the time to write Ingram a letter?”
“Don’t be jealous, Bailey,” Ingram said, standing and patting me on the shoulder. “You know you were daddy’s favorite.”
“He was my father.”
“Yeah, well, it looks like I got him in the divorce.”
Ingram walked out of the office then, pausing at the secretary’s desk.
“Thanks for your help, beautiful,” he said, leaning close to her to offer a peck on her cheek. The secretary—a middle-aged woman who probably had teenagers eating her out of house and home—blushed furiously.
I just shook my head.
“Still the charmer, huh, Ingram?”
Again, he ignored me.
I followed him out of the building, grabbing at the back of his jacket as we approached the parking lot.
“What are you even doing here? Who told you about my dad?”
He turned and looked down at me like I was nothing more than a bug on his windshield. “Mr. Korman. Would have been nice to hear it from someone else.”
“Were you at the funeral yesterday?”
“I was.”
“Why?”
He studied my face for a long moment. “I saw your father the day before he died. Did you know that?”
I frowned, wondering how I could not know that. “Where?”
“Austin. We ran into each other at a coffee shop there.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Daddy was out at the cabins on Monday.”
“He was in Austin at ten in the morning having coffee with me.”
“But…how…?”
Ingram shrugged his big shoulders. “He asked me to watch over you if anything should happen to him. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now he’s gone. Makes me wonder what was going on down here.”
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t seem like nothing. How did he die?”
I turned a little, not sure I could handle the intensity of his gaze any more. I scratched at my temple, the memory of the cop saying that they were still checking out the weapon…
“It was an accident,” I said, thinking that if I said it out loud it would make it truer.
“A car accident?”
“No. He was showing a client how to shoot one of the rifles and the gun misfired.”
“Misfired? How, exactly?”
I shook my head again. The cops had explained it to us the night of the accident, but I hadn’t really allowed myself to process the information just yet. It simply didn’t make sense to me.
“The barrel exploded. The cops thought at the time that it might have had something to do with the way the client loaded the gun. Or maybe debris in the gun. Or it could have been some sort of manufacturer’s mistake.”
“Had this gun been used before?”
“I don’t know. I’m not really sure which gun it was. But I doubt it was a new gun. Daddy purchased a couple of new guns last month, but he wasn’t planning on using them with clients until the fall. Not until he had time to fire them a few times himself.”
“So it was likely a gun he’s fired many times.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Ingram turned and leaned back against a dark SUV, wearing that look on his face that used to mean he was thinking something through. It was so odd being with him again, being this close to him. I’d thought often about him since his court martial, but never really believed I’d see him again. He was so angry with me the last time we were together. He never said a word, but I could see it in his eyes. Angry and disappointed. I think it was the disappointment that hurt the most.
“I’d like to see the guns.”
“My dad’s guns?”
Ingram shot me a look that suggested I was the stupidest person he’d ever met. “Yes,” he said very slowly, dragging out the single syllable like it was many.
I wanted to smack him.
“They’re out at the property.”
“I need to see the property while I’m here, so we could kill two birds with one stone.”
I started to argue, my mouth opening just as the dark clouds overhead let go with a huge clap of thunder. And then the deluge began, rain pouring down on us heavy enough to soak my shirt to my skin in seconds. Ingram yanked open the door to the SUV and gestured for me to get in. When I hesitated, he glared at me.
“You’re getting wet.”
Reluctantly, I climbed into the SUV, shivering now that I was out of the rain and the wet turned my clothes into a sopping mess. Ingram climbed behind the wheel and immediately started the vehicle, turning the heater on full blast. I held my hands to the vents, leaning forward a little to get the full effect.
We were moving before I realized what his intention was. For some stupid reason, I assumed he wanted me to just wait in the car until the rain stopped. But that was clearly not what he meant. He was merging onto the highway before I could even form the words of protest screaming their way inside my skull.
“I had a car back there.”
“You didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get into it.”
“I didn’t think you were in a rush.”
He glanced over at me. “I have a life to get back to in Austin.”
I inclined my head slightly. “I heard you’d settled there.”
“Didn’t have much to go back to California for.”
“Why Austin?”
He hesitated. It wasn’t like Ingram to hesitate over much of anything. It suggested to me that there was something in Austin he didn’t want me to know about. And, suddenly, like a pail of ice water, it broke over me.
He had a woman back there.
“Never mind,” I said softly.
It was stupid, but the idea that Ingram was with someone new hurt like having a limb ripped off my body. I knew it was over between us—he made it incredibly clear when he returned every letter I wrote to him while he was in brig, when he refused to take my calls, when he refused to see me when I went weekly to the prison itself—but that didn’t keep it from hurting.
I hadn’t been with anyone in the five years we’d been apart. He had no way of knowing that, but it was the truth. And a part of me assumed it was the same for him.
Reality was a bitch.
Chapter 4
At the Compound
David leaned back in his office chair, watching Ricki move around the room—it was his office now, but he still thought of it as his father’s study—talking about this new body camera she was designing for our operatives to wear during situations in which they expected trouble.
“Do you remember when Joss was chased out of Carrington’s house? If she’d had a camera like this, Ash and the rest of you could have done more to protect her later. She wouldn’t have been ambushed again.”
“But how will the operatives know when to wear them and when not to?”
“That’s the thing,” she said, her eyes bright and her cheeks on fire, “they’ll have them all the time.”
David got up and walked over to her, tugging her against his chest. “How?”
She ran her fingers up along the buttons of his shirt. “It’s so small that we could sew it onto their shirts or onto their lapels.
It could go on their jackets or on the frame of a pair of glasses. We could put it just about anywhere and they could activate it with just the touch of a button on their cellphones. Simple.”
“It’s brilliant, babe, but putting it into reality…”
“I think I have a manufacturer willing to work with me. I just need your okay.”
David loved her enthusiasm. He knew that she’d felt a little lost when they first moved to Austin to open this offshoot of his brother’s security firm. He was glad when she grabbed onto this project with such vigor. But he was a little worried that she might not be able to make it into a reality.
He kissed the side of her head. “You have my okay to do anything you want.”
She chuckled a little. “Yes, well, I need the boss’ okay, not my husband’s.”
“You have it.”
She pulled back and looked up at me, her eyes wide with surprise. “Really?”
“Really. Do what you need to do. If this thing works like you say it will, it will definitely make a difference around here.”
She squealed. “Thanks, babe!”
She ran out of the room and David couldn’t help but laugh at her. But as soon as she was gone, as soon as the distraction of her sexy presence was gone, he found himself thinking over the same thing he’d been worrying over before she came in the room. GWS 2 was doing well. They were operating in the black. But there was a certain amount of disorganization that was building up around him, threatening to put his operatives in danger. He couldn’t have the weight of a dead client or a seriously wounded operative on his conscience. But he also knew he didn’t have the experience to fix things himself.
Ash had suggested he call a friend of his from the Army. Kipling McKay. David had put off making the call, but decided that now was the time.
He’d done a little research on McKay. He knew that he was in Afghanistan with Ash back in the day. He also discovered that while McKay was in Afghanistan, his wife and child were murdered and that he’d taken early retirement to come home and attend the trail of the man accused of doing it. However, the man in question had pled guilty and then died in prison only two years into a life sentence.
David felt for McKay. His parents hadn’t been murdered, but he’d been behind the wheel in the accident that killed them. He punished himself for years because of it, refusing to get the surgery that would remove bone fragments from his back and allow him to get out of the wheelchair he’d been in since the accident. It was only meeting Ricki and falling in love with her that finally inspired him to do it. David had felt like being in that chair was just punishment for his guilt. Ricki made him see he had nothing to feel guilty about.
He wondered how McKay was punishing himself.
“Mr. McKay?” he said when his call was answered, “this is David Grayson.”
“Ash said you’d be calling. And I’ll tell you the same thing I already told him. Thanks, but no thanks.”
He hung up before David could speak another word.
This was not going to be easy.
Chapter 5
Ingram
How did I get here? I swore to myself I’d never see Bailey Greer again. I hated her with a passion that I stoked in the brig every day, remembering how it was her testimony that put me there. I’d thought she was on my side—that she would be on my side. She was the only person I’d ever trusted, the only person who was ever there for me the way she said she would be. Yet, she was the one person who had the power to save or break me and she chose the latter.
I glanced at her, trying to ignore the way the rain had glued her shirt to her body, how the cold was making her nipples stand up straight. She was as beautiful as ever. I remembered the first time I saw her, standing in a banquet hall in her dress blues. She had her gold hair pulled back into a severe bun that would have looked nun-ish on anyone else. On her it was beautiful. But everything on her was beautiful.
She was still beautiful. Gold hair, green eyes. So short that I towered over her despite my average height. And curvy, those hips the perfect handhold, her breasts so full that she often bound them to keep them from overwhelming the front of her uniform shirt. I remember the first time I slowly unwrapped them, watching them fall free like candy falling from a broken piñata. I don’t think I’d seen anything quite as exciting before or since.
But that was a long time ago. Before the five years I spent in the brig.
“He said you work for a security firm up in Austin.”
I glanced at her again, my eyes moving slowly over the wet hair that fell in clumps around her face.
“I do.”
“He was glad that you were able to find work after…well, after.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
She was quiet for a long moment. “You never took my calls.”
“Wasn’t interested in talking to you.”
“If you’d read my letters—”
“I didn’t want your excuses, Bailey. You made your choice. I made mine.”
She sat back away from the heater, her arms crossed over her chest. Her jaw was set in that way she had when she was displeased. I didn’t know what she had to be upset about. I was the one on trial for my life and she was the one who got up on that stand and told the court that I was completely at fault.
“He was an ensign assigned to the same ship as I was. But our relationship was just that: I was his superior. I don’t know why he would take it upon himself to interfere in my conversation with Lieutenant Carmichael.”
She knew damn well why I interfered in her conversation with that son of a bitch. He had his hand on her ass and she was pushing at his chest, trying to get away from him. Everyone knew that Carmichael had wandering hands. And I knew that he’d set his sights on Bailey. What I did…the only thing I regretted was that she couldn’t be as honorable as I had been.
I twisted my hands on the steering wheel, watching the miles disappear under the tires of the SUV. I should be on my way back to Austin. I told David that I needed a couple of days, but that I’d try to be back before he had any new cases for me. I had nothing left here. I don’t even know why I bothered to come.
Well, I knew why. I made a promise and, despite my hatred for the woman sitting beside me, I intended to keep it.
I sat back and pulled my cellphone out of my pocket. I dialed the office, pleased when Annie answered.
“Hey, darlin’,” I said, making my voice as smooth as butter, “just checking in. Anything interesting happening around there?”
“Not a thing. Alexander’s still on that lawyer thing, but there’s really nothing else.”
“I might be another day or so. Could you let David know?”
“No problem, Ingram. You take as much time as you need.”
“Thanks.”
“I was sorry to hear about your loss.”
The sentiment touched me a little. I wasn’t used to people caring about what happened in my life. I didn’t know what to say. But Annie was used to that sort of thing, having three sons of her own.
“Keep us updated.”
“Thanks, Annie.”
I disconnected the call and slipped the phone back into my pocket.
“Was your girlfriend expecting you back home tonight?” Bailey leaned forward to survey the heavy clouds still gushing rain over us. “I wouldn’t count on it. We’re expecting a hurricane to make landfall in a day or two. And I’d say, judging by these clouds, it will be sometime tomorrow. Not ideal travel weather.”
“You worried about my safety?”
She snorted. “Why would I be?”
“Sounded like it.”
“I didn’t ask you to come up here with me.”
“No, you didn’t. But now that we’re partners, I guess you’ll have to put up with me.”
“You could sell the land to me.”
“I doubt you could afford it.”
“It’s my land. My business is on it.”
“Yes, but your father left it to m
e. Legally, it’s mine.”
“Morally—”
“You really want to get into a debate about morality with me?”
That shut her up. She stared out the window for a few minutes, watching the rain fall in sheets around us. The weather was getting worse the closer to Galveston we got. I had to go slow, much slower than I wanted to. I wanted this over as much as she did.
The cabins were on the furthest end of Galveston Island. We had to take a couple of small dirt roads to get there. Normally it wasn’t a big deal because they were well maintained. But the rain made them muddy and nearly impassable. If not for the high wheels of the SUV, we might have been forced to turn around.
Bailey jumped out of the SUV before I had it in park, running with her arms over her head to the door of the original cabin. It was a nice place, clearly a place built with money. We’d stayed here a few times before it became a business, sharing the back bedroom for days on end when we were able to get leave at the same time.
There was this one summer we came out here, both of us scheduled to be back on ship in hours, not days. We shouldn’t have come this far, wasting hours that could have been spent locked up in a hotel somewhere. But this place had sentimentality and it was far removed from who we were when we weren’t here.
“You should stay like this always,” I said to her, running my fingertips between her heavy breasts.
“That would be really good. Stand in front of my sailors in the nude. How many of them do you think would listen to a word that fell from my lips?”
“Oh, at least three or four of them.”
She leaned into me, kissed the center of my chest lightly. “Maybe you should be the one running around naked all the time. I think those three or four would get a kick out of it.”
I groaned. “Or maybe we could just go AWOL…go up to Canada and hide out on a nice little ranch for the rest of our lives.”
“And do what?”
“This…”
I kissed her, pulling her petite body beneath mine, sliding inside of her before she had a chance to react. She moaned, pressing her hips hard up against mine. She fit against me like a hand in a glove, her body molding to all the curves of my body. It was as if our bodies were meant to be like this, meant to be one.
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