“What do you mean it made it suspicious? I know Angela, she loved her baby. She was devastated over her son dying.” Jill leaned forward into the monitor. “I don’t know why she left Michigan, but she had a reason, and it wasn’t because she had anything to do with his death.” Law tugged her closer.
“We believe you, Honey,” Law assured her.
“There is definitely something fishy,” Asher said soothingly.
“You’re Law’s brother,” Jill said. “You’re on my side. What about him?” She pointed at Kane.
Kane threw up his hands in defense. “Hey, I’m on your side, too. I’m just trying to put this puzzle together.”
Jill relaxed a little bit and leaned against Law.
“What did the papers say?” Law asked.
“Angela was out of town and arrived home from the airport to find the cops at her house on a hot day in August. Her husband Tim, a lawyer in his dad’s bigshot law firm, had left their son in the back of his car when he went inside the house.”
Jill gasped. “Oh my God, how could you ever forgive yourself after something like that?”
“Then Angela ran away?” Cullen Lyons asked from the other side of Asher.
“She disappeared later that night. When she first got home and realized her baby had died, she collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. They needed to keep her overnight. By all accounts, she was a mess and needed care. But sometime in the middle of the night at the hospital, she just disappeared.”
“Did someone take her?” Jill asked.
“No,” Kane answered. “It happened about an hour after her husband came and visited her. She put on her clothes, took her purse, and walked out. The security cameras caught her walking down the city block and turning the corner.”
“Has her husband been looking for her?” Law asked.
“To begin with, he did. He made a big deal about it, offered a reward and everything. Then the papers got a hold of it. There was speculation about the family, that something was really wrong, what with the baby dying and the mother missing all within twenty-four hours. Before it made national news, his family stepped in and announced that Angela had gone to stay with some distant relatives. After that, things died down.”
“That just so isn’t true. She was living hand-to-mouth as a maid. Now that I know the kind of life she left behind, she was clearly on the run,” Jill told the others.
“Or, she could have been so devastated by losing her baby, that she just had to start over, even if it was hand-to-mouth. Grief can do strange things to a person,” Asher said sadly.
Jill let out a small whimper and nodded.
“Maybe,” Kane said. “But they started an investigation in Detroit on all of this. I want to get my hands on that file and see what the police had to say. I’ll feel more comfortable after I read that information.”
“For sure, Tim Goshen knew that the press release they gave out was a bunch of bullshit. He knew she hadn’t gone to relatives, she was missing. He wants to find her. That’s how he tracked her out here to California, to the grief counseling group, and to you, Jill.” Law said.
“I don’t want to tell him a darn thing. I’m not going to tell him that she went to Arizona,” Jill said emphatically. “If she doesn’t want to tell that man who let her son die where she went, then I’m sure not going to tell him anything.”
“Actually, your friend Angela Smith, aka Goshen, isn’t in Arizona, she’s in Wyoming. Cullen has a buddy who will be talking to her soon, don’t you?” Kane looked over at Cullen.
“Yep,” he said from off-screen.
“How did you find her in Wyoming?” Law demanded to know.
“A month ago, a local doctor in Casper made a request for Angela Goshen’s medical records from her doctor in Michigan.”
“I don’t get it, why would she lie to me about where she was even going?” Jill queried.
“Maybe she didn’t,” Law tried to make Jill feel better. “Maybe she just changed her mind.”
“Cut it out, Thorne.” Kane’s voice was abrupt. “Jill, your friend is definitely running scared and she wasn’t taking any chances that her movements could be traced.”
“But she gave me her cell phone number.”
“But she never answered, did she? Was a personalized message even on the voicemail?” Kane asked.
“No.” Jill’s voice was dejected. Law put his arm around her waist and tucked her in close.
“So, Angela is in hiding from her husband?” Law asked.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Kane said. “Cullen’s friend should have answers from Angela soon, if she is willing to talk, and that’s a big ‘if’. We need to find out why.”
“You really don’t think it’s just because she’s mad and sad?” Jill asked.
“No,” Law, Asher, and Cullen said at the same time.
“Why not,” Jill asked.
“You go,” Law nodded to Kane.
“Why did he give Lesley a false name? Why didn’t he introduce himself as Tim Goshen? Why did he approach you as a member of the HOA? If everything was above-board and all he was, was worried about his wife, he would have been upfront. This smells to high heaven.”
“I don’t like it. My buddy is pretty sure Angela is waitressing at a truck stop on the outskirts of Casper. He’s going to go see her in the morning. Hopefully, it will all get cleared up then,” Cullen said.
“Until then, you need to be cautious and alert, Jill,” Asher said forcefully. He might have been talking to Jill, but his words were really meant for Law.
“She’ll be staying with me from now on until we have this sorted out.”
She pulled away from him. “Oh, I will, will I?”
“Yes, you will.”
She gave him a long look, reached over, and shut off the zoom call. “Let’s discuss this like adults—you know, where you tell me you’re worried about me, and ask me to stay with you?”
He could see that she was almost with him. He smiled.
“How about if I tell you that I’m really worried about you, and I really, really want you in my bed at night?”
She wound her arms around his neck. “That works.”
Chapter 10
“So, is this hot pocket, cross-legged thing a thing?” Law asked.
Jill looked up from her position on the floor as she was about to take a bite from her pepperoni hot pocket. She hadn’t heard Law coming in from the garage, probably because she had her earbuds in and cranked up to one hundred and one.
Come to think of it, that was not the wisest move in the world since her dad was darn near deaf. She pulled out her earbuds.
“Did I just hear a wise-ass comment about my eating habits?” She grinned up at Law as he swooped in for a kiss.
“Honey, a hot pocket might be a habit, but it’s not really eating. MRE’s are better eating.”
“What’s an MRE?” Jill asked.
“Meal-Ready to Eat. It’s the shit that the military puts into little plastic packets for us to eat in the field. It’s a hell of a lot more nutritional than what you’re eating.”
Jill felt her smile getting bigger. It was so sweet when he proved he cared. For the last four nights, he had cooked dinner because he knew that she was on a heavy deadline. Was it any wonder that she felt the way she felt about him?
Love. Admit it, Keiler, it’s love.
“What?”
“What do you mean what?” Jill asked.
“You’re looking at me funny,” Law said. “Is something going wrong with your project? Are you going to miss your deadline?”
She sighed.
“Honey, you’re kind of scaring me. You’re biting your lip again.”
She shut her laptop and untangled herself from between the couch and the coffee table and stood up. “I need another kiss.”
“Glad to deliver.” He pulled her into his arms, and soon she was lost in the magic of Law’s touch. The man could kiss. When he finally
lifted his head, he gave her a long look. “Wanna tell me what’s wrong?”
She looked up at the ceiling.
God, give me strength.
“I have never met a man as good, honest, and honorable as you. Did you know that?”
Every muscle in his body tightened beneath her touch as his eyes darkened.
“Where’s this going, Jill?”
“Oh, God, I’m doing this wrong.” She clasped his face in both of her hands and stared into his eyes. “This time, I’m going to break the macho code. I need you to know that I love you. Right here, right now. No flowers, no candlelit dinner. Just a cold hot pocket on a plate. I’m in love with you, Lawson.”
She stared up at him and didn’t see one sign of a dimple.
“It’s okay, I don’t need you to say it back. But I just had to say it to you, because you’re wonderful, and you had to know that someone just loves you to death.”
Still no dimple. She drew back her hands and felt the need for an antacid. Maybe he was right, maybe she needed to start eating better.
“Dammit, you’re biting your lip again. Stop it, Honey.”
He trailed his thumb over her bottom lip and she forced a smile. What had she been expecting, after all? She took a silent breath. “Do you want to go out for dinner? Maybe that seafood place you like so much,” she suggested.
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so.”
“Italian?”
His arms wound around her. “Nope.”
“Uhm, Mexican?”
He smiled. She saw two dimples. “I think maybe we’ll go out to a candlelit dinner sometime around midnight tonight. Or tomorrow night.” He drew her closer. “We absolutely have something to celebrate.”
She sucked in more air. “We do?”
“Absolutely. When the woman I adore tells me she loves me, I definitely want to celebrate.” He pulled her even closer and Jill melted against the hard length of his body.
Law placed a tender kiss on her cheek, close to her ear. Then he whispered, “I love you too, Jill. I thought you knew that.”
She shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again.
“Well, I’m glad you cleared that up,” he chuckled.
He feathered kisses all along her jaw until he reached her lips. Once again, Jill lost her mind as Law’s taste and touch took her to an entirely new universe. She felt dizzy, and then she was laughing when she realized he had carried her into his bedroom.
Yes, life in Law’s arms was amazing.
“I can’t fucking believe it. We finally find Angela, and now her husband has disappeared?” Law thought he might be losing his damned mind.
He looked at his brother and Kane. They had flown in from Virginia that morning on military transport. He hadn’t been expecting them at Camp Pendleton. Somehow, Kane had managed to commandeer one of the briefing rooms for Law to have his freak-out in private.
“You need to keep your shit together,” Asher coached.
“Where’s Cullen? Shouldn’t he be here?”
“He went over to your house as soon as we disembarked. He has Jill covered.”
“Well, la-dee-da. She’s at work. So you all screwed the pooch on that one. Explain this to me again. In words small enough for me to understand, because this is some convoluted fucked-up shit.” Then he yanked his cell phone out of fatigues. “Scratch that,” he said as he held up his index finger and pressed in Jill’s number.
Dammit, it went to voice mail.
“Honey, it’s Law. Call me immediately. It’s important.”
He glared at the two men in front of him. “Continue.”
“At long last, Jamison tracked down Angela. She’d quit waitressing. She’s been working as a cook out on a ranch and taking care of a widower’s two kids. He knew that she wanted to stay hidden, so nobody on his ranch let out a peep that she was there. It took Jamison the last four weeks to find her. When he did, he almost got the shit beat out of him for his trouble.” Kane and Asher laughed.
“Okay, so there’s a funny story somewhere,” Law growled. “Get to the point, besides the fact that Angela now seems to have a protector.”
“The point is,” Asher drawled, “that Angela finally feels safe enough to talk. She told Jamison some interesting shit. The night her son died, her husband came to see her in the Detroit hospital. He said, that he had always wanted her all to himself, and now she belonged just to him.”
Law felt his blood run cold.
“She can’t possibly think that her husband purposely killed his own child.”
“It gets worse,” Asher said. “Angela told Jamison that there was always something odd about the way her former fiancé died. It was a boating accident with his best friend, who was…” Asher let his voice drift to a stop.
“Wanna guess?” Kane asked.
“Tim Goshen?” Law asked.
“Give the man a cigar,” Kane nodded. “Yep. Then Tim goes in and comforts Angela over her fiancé’s death, and two months later, they’re married. She told Jamison she had always felt rushed into the wedding. And she knew for sure that Tim had been mad about her getting pregnant.”
“But still, killing your own child?”
“The last thing Tim said to Angela at the hospital, right before he left, is that if she didn’t want something to ever happen to another child, she better have her tubes tied while she was in the hospital.”
“Fuck,” Law hissed.
“Exactly.”
“No wonder she ran. The man is a psychopath.”
“And he wants her back. He’s obsessed. So far, he’s only tracked her to Southern California and to Jill. He went back to Detroit after the whole break-in attempt at Jill’s house, but there was some mismanagement of funds at his law firm recently. Tim’s under investigation. He was due to be deposed four days ago. He didn’t show.”
Law’s phone rang. It was Jill.
“Baby, where are you?” he demanded.
There was a pause before she answered. “I’m here at the office, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. What’s wrong?”
Law scrubbed the back of his neck. “Stay there, I’m going to come pick you up.” He forced a smile into his voice. “I have two pieces of good news. First, you get to meet my brother Ash in person, he’s in town.”
“And the second?”
“Cullen’s friend found Angela. She’s okay. I should be at your office in about a half-hour. Will you be ready to leave by then?”
“Will you be ready to tell me the bad news then?” she countered.
“I’ll lay out everything as soon as we all get home,” he sighed.
Again, there was a pause. “It’s going to be all right, Law,” she said. God, there she was trying to comfort him. What was this world coming to?
“That’s my line, Honey. And yes, it will be.”
Chapter 11
Since the three Navy SEALs from the Night Storm team were near San Diego, they had to report into Coronado. Kane and Cullen did some training with the Midnight Delta team, but Asher just took some leave to spend with Law and to get to know Jill. That lasted for a week, before the three of men had to head back to Virginia. Even after Kane had left, he and Law’s teammate, Clancy, had worked together remotely and they still couldn’t find hide nor hair of Tim Goshen. It was eerie.
Law wanted to bring Angela back to San Diego to act as bait, but her Wyoming rancher wasn’t about to allow that. All and all, he couldn’t blame him. He was going crazy at the thought of Jill being in danger.
The one good thing in all of this? He’d heard stories about some of the women that his SEAL friends had gotten involved with, and many of them had not stayed put when they should have. Meanwhile, Jill had allowed him to put a tracking device on her phone, in her laptop bag, and on her car. She might be just going to and from work and waiting for him so that they could go to the grocery store together, but she was taking this shit s
eriously. It gave him a lot of peace of mind. Still, when he got called for another set of war games, he desperately wished that he could put her in a steel vault somewhere.
“Law, I promise to stay locked up behind your Uber Cyber Spyware Security. I refuse to be a redshirt.”
He laughed out loud at that. They watched the original Star Trek with him and knew that the guys in the red shirts were most likely to die on a mission. He loved this woman. He loved her. He was not going to let one silky hair on her precious head be harmed. Not on his watch!
When he’d left her at his house it was with a five-day supply of frozen meals that he’d cooked and made sure that there were no Hot Pockets anywhere to be found. Those things were murder on the cholesterol, and anything he could do to keep her out of harm’s way, he was all for. After all, she was the one who’d spent a shit ton of money on motorcycle leathers for him. It went both ways.
“I sure appreciate you taking on all this extra work, Jill,” Natalie’s smile was wide on the computer screen.
“It’s so not a problem. I’m glad you understood why I needed to do all of this documentation from home and away from the office distractions.”
“Sweetie, I’d set you up on the beach in Hawaii if you can get this done in time for our roll-out. You are amazing, especially after Beatrice botched it. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”
“I will,” Jill told her boss right before shutting off the Zoom call. She looked at the flowchart on her document and winced. It still wasn’t right. Jill reached over to the plate to pick up her food.
“What the?!” Her fingers were sticky with zucchini, red sauce, bell peppers, and cheese instead of nature’s natural food group—a pizza roll in a pocket. She’d forgotten she’d warmed up one of the meals that Law had cooked for her. Heck, it required a fork and everything.
She got up from off the floor and went into the kitchen to wash her hands before she dripped tomato sauce all over her print-outs and keyboard. She looked over her shoulder. Scratch that, her papers were already dripping in red.
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