by Vicki Hinze
Grant’s expression softened. “They’re not lost, Madison. They’re dead.”
Her heart clenched. “The truth about what happened to them and why it happened is lost. That’s just as bad. Their families deserve to know the facts.”
His mouth flattened to a slash and he stared out the windshield.
“Grant, you have to understand.” Her mouth went ash dry. Weary or not, she forced herself to open old wounds anyway. “When I was on active duty in Afghanistan, I was on a mission that went south. Because of my job, my superiors sacrificed me. You know I was taken prisoner, but there are things you don’t know.”
He knew she’d worked in the intelligence realm, and asked, “Like what?”
She worked hard to keep the anger still simmering inside her out of her voice. “They knew I was alive but classified me killed in action, anyway—to avoid an international incident, I was later told.” She cocked her head. “We can’t admit we have spies out there, you know.”
“That’s standard operating procedure.”
“Except when it happens to you.” The back of her nose burned. “I gave everything and I was disposable. Just one of many, and leaving me behind was expedient—”
“You were treated no differently than anyone else. Everyone in Intel knows that’s the way it works.”
“Exactly. Operatives and agents know, but my parents didn’t sign on to that. They’re not in Intel and they didn’t know. My family should have been told the truth—I believed they would be told the truth—but they weren’t. They were told I was dead.” A hard lump lodged in her throat. Her eyes stung. “For the next eighteen months, I was a POW and they mourned my death.”
“Eighteen months. I knew you’d gotten a Purple Heart, but I had no idea you were held that long.” Grant stilled. Stared at her. “How did they finally get you out?”
Her heart twisted. “Did you not hear me? They did nothing but forget me and leave me to rot in a four-by-six cell.” She hiked her chin. “I got myself out. I watched, waited and learned. They had me working in the kitchen, which included going to market. I studied everything, watched everyone, looking for weaknesses and information I could use. There was one guard who was particularly slow on the uptake. He’d escort me to the market now and then. One day when he did, I spotted an opening, and I took it. I escaped.”
“Totally on your own?”
“Totally.” The bitterness at that surged in her. Mingled with the anger, it proved too strong to fight. “It took me four months to make my way back to the States.
“No one would officially help me, Grant. I didn’t exist.”
“So you had no money, no papers, and yet you managed to get back home?”
“Money can be earned and papers bought.” It hadn’t been easy. Parts of the ordeal had been horrifically dangerous and difficult. Getting out of Pakistan had been a nightmare, and the ship... She shuddered just thinking of the ship. Old and moldy—she was posing as a young man and working as a deckhand—it had been awful. And yet she had prayed through it and made it. “I prepositioned funds and papers but it took time and finesse to get to them. Yet that’s not the point. The point is that for all the time I was held captive and trying to get home—until the moment I knocked on my parents’ front door and my mother answered, my parents thought I was dead.”
Never would Madison forget the ravages of grief in them, their utter shock at seeing her, or their overwhelming relief of her still being alive and coming home to them.
“I can imagine their relief.” He frowned. “You’re cold.” Reaching over, he adjusted the heater to take out the chill. “So what happened when you showed up at headquarters?”
“They gave me a Purple Heart and offered me a promotion with a stateside slot.”
“You kept the medal but departed the fix.”
She nodded. “No way was I staying active duty after they abandoned me. But the medal was different.”
“You’d earned it.”
It’d taken months for her physical wounds to heal. But the emotional ones cut even deeper and some remained raw. “I did earn it, but no.” She let him see the steel in her gaze. “I still believe in the spirit it embodies. I trust that spirit and the medal reminds me that there are others out there like me.”
“That’s why you opened Lost, Inc. To bring the lost home.”
She nodded. Now maybe he’d understand why she couldn’t just drop the Pace and Crane murders.
“I’m sorry you went through that.” Grant clasped her hand.
“Me, too.” She gave him a bittersweet smile. It was a time of trials but also a time that solidified her faith. She’d done the impossible then, and no one knew better than she that she couldn’t have done it alone, though she was still working at not being bitter that God hadn’t spared her from the trial.
“I understand why you want the truth on the murders, Madison, but I believe you already have it. What I still don’t understand is you going out to the Nest.” Grant squeezed her hand. “I mean, what can you learn by staring at the outside of the facility that will prove anything?”
Madison stiffened, and bit her tongue. Speak it in anger, regret it in calm. She’d eaten enough words in her war of wits and wills with him already. “If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t have to go out there, would I?” She left the car.
The slammed car door signaled Grant to follow her.
She opened the office door, turned off the alarm, flipped on the lights and headed upstairs to the kitchen. Hot coffee would be good.
“I’ll do that.” He took the coffeepot out of her hands. “You go get cleaned up before anyone else gets here. Out there all night, you’re probably half-frozen. A hot shower will thaw you out.”
Why did he do that? Just when she wanted to bark his head off, he turned around and did something thoughtful and caring. “Thank you.” She walked to the door, then paused and looked back at him, shrugging out of his coat.
Tall and broad shouldered, he was in great shape and obviously had kept up his physical training regimen. Her stomach clutched. Looking at him did crazy things to her. It always had. From the very first time she’d laid eyes on him, without a word or an ounce of effort, he’d begun chipping away at the protective barriers she’d studiously built around her heart. She resented that but seemed helpless to stop it. Still, she was determined. Caring about a man she couldn’t trust was absurdly foolish, and she was not a foolish woman.
She shoved back the black hoodie covering her hair. Long silver-blond strands fell loose down her back. “Are you ever going to tell me why you really followed me?”
“I did tell you.”
“No, you gave me a line about me being edgy and you being worried.”
His square jaw tightened. “It wasn’t a line.” He draped his coat on the brass tree, poured water into the coffeemaker, flipped the switch and then turned to answer her. “I followed you because I don’t want you to end up dead.”
What exactly did he mean? He’d followed her to the Nest, but he hadn’t interceded. He’d waited in her car. So where did he sense danger to her? His expression had never been more sober or serious, or more closed, giving nothing away. “You agree with me, then? You think Commander Talbot and Vice Commander Dayton are involved in a cover-up, too?”
Grant frowned and hedged. “I think if you get caught spying on the Nest, you’re going to get shot.”
Madison frowned back at him. “How can you ignore Talbot and Dayton when you know they’re trying their best to blame someone at my agency for the security breach?”
David Pace and Beth Crane had been reporters for WKME, a local TV station. Separately, three years apart, they’d gone to Talbot to confirm tips from sources they’d been given about the Nest. The facility buried in the woods in the center of a military installation so highly classifi
ed that even those assigned to the base didn’t know the Nest was there—that Nest. Talbot had denied David Pace’s and Beth Crane’s tips and in short order, both had been murdered. But their tips had been accurate. And that meant someone definitely had breached security.
“I’m not ignoring anything or anyone.”
But he was. Commander Talbot was up for a congressional appointment. Vice Commander Dayton was up for Talbot’s job. A security breach by someone under their command could ax those promotions. In short, Talbot and/or Dayton needed a scapegoat and they intended to find one at Lost, Inc.
“They have to look at everyone in your agency, Madison, and you know it.”
Lost, Inc., was a logical, rich target. Everyone working for her was former military and had served at least one assignment at the Nest. None of them would breach security, but as they were no longer under Talbot’s or Dayton’s command, any one of them would serve the purpose of taking the fall and keeping the commanders’ promotions safe.
Serial killer Gary Crawford had supposedly killed David Pace. Beth Crane had been deemed the victim of a home invasion until Crawford’s apprehension, when he’d confessed to killing them both. But Madison wasn’t buying it. Serial killers confessed to everything to embellish their legacy and incite fear in others. Beth Crane and, three years later, David Pace had exposed the security breach by asking Talbot for confirmation of the Nest’s existence, and Madison was sure that’s how they’d ended up dead. “You know no one here would—”
Grant leaned back against the counter, and crossed his arms. “What I know is that if you get caught out there spying, you’ll lose more than your career.”
The finality in Grant’s tone signaled he was finished talking about this, and so was she. How could she convince him with no more proof than her instincts? Her challenge was that simple.
And that complex.
* * *
Madison showered, then dressed in black slacks, a teal sweater and flats. She left her hair down, applied lotion to her wind-chafed skin and then returned to the kitchen.
Grant sat at the table drinking a cup of coffee from a camouflage-print mug. He cast her a weary, pensive look but said nothing.
Her favorite Minnie Mouse mug sat on the counter beside the coffeepot—he noticed and remembered everything about her, even her preferred coffee mug—and she filled it, then joined him at the table. Did he remember details about her because of professional or personal reasons? His profiling training or a genuine affection for her? Unsure, she sipped, then said, “You’re pretty steamed at me, aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “I’m worried. I want you to promise me you’ll stay away from the Nest.”
“I can’t do that.” She wouldn’t even stay away if she trusted him with all her heart. “I’ve made my reasons clear. I’m stalled on my case until I find new information or until Talbot releases the satellite images under the Freedom of Information Act.” Hopefully, he’d do that before she died of old age. She’d requested them two months ago, during the Christmas cruise she and Grant had taken with a group of friends.
Grant knew as well as she did that those images of David Pace’s exploded car would prove whether or not it had been placed where it had been found before or after the explosion, which would prove whether or not David Pace had been in it when it had blown up. His medical file was sealed. Why? Right after Gary Crawford’s arrest and confessions, she’d received a tip that Pace’s body hadn’t been burned. Why that tip? Why to her? People didn’t take those kinds of reporting risks without reason.
Grant lifted a hand. “The man died from natural causes. An embolism. You saw the coroner’s report.”
“So did you. It was a lie. It had to be a lie, or the embolism had to be induced.” Grant couldn’t be buying into that report. “There were no signs of anything like that in his medical history—nothing that points to there being any problem. He was young and healthy.” And Grant knew as well as she that inducing an embolism was a military tactic. Carrying out a kill order? Emergency termination? She shuddered.
“For pity’s sake.” Grant lifted his cup. “You talked to the coroner.”
“No, I didn’t,” she disputed him. “I tried to talk to him, but the coroner refused to take my call or to meet with me. His assistant referred me to the public report, informed me that the case was sealed, and then she totally shut down. Why would the case be sealed unless he’s hiding something?”
“Oh, gee, I don’t know. Maybe because Crawford was a serial killer working for Homeland Security and that knowledge would undermine public trust in the entire agency? Remember, Homeland Security sealed the file, not the local authorities, and Crawford hasn’t yet been tried for his other victims’ murders. Or maybe the coroner just didn’t want to waste his time on a closed case when he has a ton of open ones to work on.” Grant dropped his voice. “Or it could be that the coroner has known you all your life and he’s trying to keep you from putting yourself in the crosshairs of people who will hurt you.”
“That sounds as if you think there might be some validity to my theory.”
“I’m trying to be fair. The case is closed. Crawford did confess to both murders. The coroner did sign off on the Pace report. But if on the outside chance you’re right about this—and I don’t believe you are—then for this conspiracy and cover-up to work, the coroner would have had to sign off on a false report, and I don’t think he would.”
“Under normal circumstances, I’d say no.” She’d known the man her whole life. He’d given her and her best friend, Maggie Mason, pony rides at the annual town festivals when they were children, and when they’d tried smoking cigarettes as teens and had gotten sick and gone to the morgue to save him a trip to pick up their bodies, he’d assured them they weren’t dying—but if he caught them smoking again, they’d wish they were. “Yet these circumstances are not normal. With Homeland Security involved... They, or the commander, could have pressured him.”
“Through Homeland Security, the commander might have exerted influence,” Grant conceded. “But it’s highly unlikely.”
Grant defending his former commander wasn’t surprising. She well recalled her own defensive posture right up until the moment she realized she’d been abandoned. “It’s not impossible.”
“No, it’s not impossible.” Grant sipped from his mug, then set it on the table and reached for her hand.
She laid it atop his and he curled his fingers, pressing their heated palms. “Madison, what if you’re right? Say Talbot or Dayton were involved in the murders and cover-ups. Say they did exert influence and the coroner did forge the report. Would people with the power and authority to do those things hesitate to kill again?” Grant gently squeezed her fingertips. “Don’t you see that by pushing this, you’re putting yourself in danger?”
His hand trembled. She loved that, and wished she didn’t. “I know—”
“Have you forgotten that just for investigating a classified project to which you once had authorized access, you can be declared a security threat—and the charges will stick? They can declare you a domestic terrorist and detain you indefinitely.”
“That’s absurd.” She grunted. “They can’t—”
His expression turned flat. “Check recent legislation. They can and will.” He clasped her arms. “Forget this, Madison. Please. You know the lengths they’ve gone to since inception to keep the Nest off everyone’s radar. If the security breach and your two murders are connected...” He swallowed hard, clearly conflicted. “Do you think for a second they wouldn’t stop you from exposing them by any means necessary?” He rubbed at his neck. “Good grief, the entire government’s behind them.”
Whether or not the people in most of those positions knew it, the government was behind them. And the measures taken to hide the project had been extraordinary. The need-to-know loop on the Nest was ext
remely tight. “I know all this, okay?” He cared. He might have to spy on her, but he also cared. It showed clearly whenever he got emotional, and right now Grant Deaver was extremely emotional. She softened her voice. “The bottom line is I believe they’ve buried the truth on two civilian murders. I believe it, Grant. And if they did and I do nothing, and the need arises, they’ll murder again. How many have to be lost before—”
“For the tenth time, the victims in this case are not lost, they’re dead.”
“The truth about them is lost,” she repeated, stroking his arm.
His mouth flattened. “Nothing you discover will bring them back. Their family members have buried them, mourned, and they’re healing, Madison. Think of Ian,” he said, speaking of Beth Crane’s husband, who worked for Madison at the agency. “Don’t rip open the wounds when all it’s going to do is put him back to square one mourning all over again.”
Grant was right, of course. It was for that very reason she hadn’t said one word to Ian about her investigation. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, especially Ian when he was finally healing, but letting the truth be obscured was fundamentally wrong. Even Ian would never settle for letting someone—anyone—get away with murder.
Grant lowered his gaze from the ceiling and his voice dropped to a hush. “Look, I know how important finding the lost ones is to you. Even when everyone else gives up, you never do. I admire that about you. But this with the Nest... You’re in trouble with this—if you get caught, the kind of trouble that’ll make your POW days seem like a walk in the park.”
“I’m aware of the risks. But my safety isn’t my main concern.” She looked him right in the eye, let him see the truth. “I’m right about this. I know it. Can you just trust me?”
“I do trust you. My trust in you has never been an issue.”