by Susan Cliff
“You little vixen,” he muttered.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure, you don’t,” he said, laughing as he came down on top of her and set out to give her a preview of what three weeks away together might be like.
* * *
THEY BROKE THE news to Scotty the next morning at breakfast. “So,” Nick said tentatively, “what would you think if Mom came with me to Europe?”
Thirteen-year-old Scotty, never at his best first thing in the morning, shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“Really?” Sam said. “You wouldn’t mind? Shelby, Tracy and Angela would be around to hang with you, and Gramps and Celia too. We thought maybe Mrs. Littlefield could come up for a weekend or two if she’s free.”
“Sure, that sounds good.”
Sam glanced at Nick, who seemed equally perplexed by his lack of reaction. They’d expected him to ask to come with them, at the very least.
“Is everything okay?” Sam asked her son.
“Uh-huh.” He finished his cereal and got up to put the bowl in the sink. “I’m going to finish getting ready for school.”
“Okay, bud,” Nick said.
“Something’s up,” Sam said as soon as Scotty left the room.
“I agree. He didn’t even ask if he could miss school to come with us.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“We’ll have to see if we can get him to talk to us before we go—and not in the morning,” Nick said.
“I’ll ask Shelby to make spaghetti for dinner. That always puts him in a good mood.” Sam’s phone rang, and when she saw the number for Dispatch, she groaned. “Damn it. You jinxed me!” So much for getting out of Dodge without having to worry about work. She took the call. “Holland.”
“Lieutenant, there was a fire overnight in Chevy Chase.” The dispatcher referred to the exclusive northwest neighborhood that was home to a former US president, ambassadors and other wealthy residents. “We have two DOA at the scene,” the dispatcher said, reciting the address. “The fire marshal has requested homicide detectives.”
“Did he say why?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Okay, I’m on my way.” Thankfully, she’d showered and gotten dressed before she woke Scotty. “Please call Sergeant Gonzales and Detective Cruz and ask them to meet me there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sam flipped her phone closed with a satisfying smack. That smacking sound was one of many reasons she’d never upgrade to a smartphone.
“You’ll still be able to come with me, right?” Nick asked, looking adorably uncertain.
Sam went over to where he sat at the table and kissed him. “I’ll talk to Malone today and see if I can make it happen.”
“Keep me posted.”
* * *
A RINGING PHONE woke Christina Billings from a sound sleep. Two-year-old Alex had been up during the night with a fever and cold that was making him miserable and her sleep deprived. Her fiancé, Tommy, had slept through that and apparently couldn’t hear his phone ringing either. He was due at work in an hour and was usually up by now.
“Tommy.” She nudged him, but he didn’t stir. “Tommy. Your phone.”
He came to slowly, blinking rapidly.
“The phone, Tommy. Answer it before it wakes Alex.” He needed more sleep and so did she, or this was going to be a very long day.
Tommy grabbed the phone from the bedside table.
Christina saw the word Dispatch on the screen.
“Gonzales.”
She couldn’t hear the dispatcher’s side of the conversation, but she heard Tommy’s grunt of acknowledgment before he ended the call, closing his eyes even as he continued to clutch the phone.
Christina wondered if he was going back to sleep after being called into work. She was about to say something when he got out of bed and headed for the shower.
Nine months ago today, his partner, A. J. Arnold, had been gunned down right in front of Tommy as they approached a suspect. After a long downward spiral following Arnold’s murder, Tommy had seemed to rebound somewhat during the summer. But the rebound hadn’t lasted into the fall.
In the last month, since his new partner, Cameron Green, had joined the squad, Christina had watched him regress into his grief. He’d said and done all the right things when it came to welcoming Cameron, but he was obviously spiraling again, and she had no idea what to do to help him or how to reach him. Even when lying next to her in bed, he seemed so far away from her.
Sometimes, when she had a rare moment alone, she allowed her thoughts to wander to life without Tommy and Alex at the center of it. She loved them both—desperately—but she wasn’t sure how much more she could take of the distant, closed-off version of the man she loved. They were supposed to have been married by now. Like everything else, that plan had been shoved aside to make room for Tommy’s overwhelming grief. It’d been months since they’d discussed getting married. In the meantime, she took care of Alex and everything else, while Tommy worked and came home to sleep before starting the cycle all over again.
They didn’t talk about anything other than Alex. They never went anywhere together or as a family. They hadn’t had sex in so long she’d forgotten when it had last happened. She was as unhappy as she’d ever been. Something had to give—and soon, or she would be forced to decide whether their relationship was still healthy for her. She did not want to have to make that decision.
Only the thought of leaving Tommy at his lowest moment, not to mention leaving Alex, had kept her from making a move before now. She loved that little boy with her whole heart and soul. She’d stepped away from her own career as Nick’s chief of staff to stay home with him and had hoped to add to their family by now. When she thought about the early days of her relationship with Tommy, when they’d been so madly in love, she couldn’t have imagined feeling as insignificant to him as a piece of furniture that was always there when he finally decided to come home.
Christina hadn’t told anyone about the trouble brewing between them. In her heart of hearts, she hoped they could still work it out somehow, and the last thing she needed was her friends and family holding a grudge against him forever—and they would if they had any idea just how bad things had gotten. Her parents had questioned the wisdom of her giving up a high-profile job to stay home to care for her boyfriend’s child, especially when she’d made more money than him. But she’d been ready for a break from the political rat race when Alex came along, and she had no regrets about her decision. Or she hadn’t until Tommy checked out of their relationship.
This weekend they’d be expected to celebrate at Freddie and Elin’s wedding, and she’d have to pretend that everything was fine in her relationship when it was anything but. She wasn’t sure how she would pull off another convincing performance for their friends. Tommy was one of Freddie’s groomsmen, so she’d get to spend most of that day on her own while he attended to his friend.
Dangling at the end of her rope in this situation, more than once she’d thought about taking Alex and leaving, even though she had no legal right to take him. Another thing they’d never gotten around to—her adoption of him after his mother was killed. What would Tommy do if she left with his son? Call the police on her? That made her laugh bitterly. She’d be surprised if he noticed they were gone.
Tommy came out of the bathroom and went to the closet where he had clean clothes to choose from thanks to her. Did he ever wonder how that happened? He put on jeans and a black T-shirt and then went to unlock the bedside drawer where he kept his badge, weapon and cuffs.
She watched him slide the weapon into the holster he wore on his hip and jam the cuffs and badge into the back pockets of his jeans, the same way he did every day. Holding her breath, she waited to see if he would say anything to her or come around the bed to kiss her goodbye th
e way he used to before disaster struck, but like he did so often these days, he simply turned and left the room.
A minute later, she heard the front door close behind him.
For a long time after he left, she lay in bed staring up at the ceiling with tears running down her cheeks. She couldn’t take much more of this.
TWO
SAM WAS THE first of her team to arrive on the scene of the smoldering fire that had demolished half a mansion in one of the District’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
“What’ve we got?” Sam asked the fire marshal when he met her at the tape line.
“Two bodies found on the first floor of the house, both bound with zip ties at the hands and feet.”
And that, right there, made their deaths her problem. “Do we know who they are?”
He consulted his notes. “The ME will need to make positive IDs, but the house is owned by Jameson and Cleo Beauclair. I haven’t had time to dig any deeper on who they are.”
“Are we certain they were the only people in the house?” Sam asked.
“Not yet. When we arrived just after four a.m., the west side of the house, where the bodies were found, was fully engulfed. That was our immediate focus. We’ve got firefighters searching the rest of what was once a ten-thousand-square-foot home.”
“Any sign of accelerants?”
“Nothing so far, but we’re an hour into the investigation stage. Early days.”
“Has the ME been here?”
“Not yet.”
“Could I take a look inside?”
“It’s still hot in there, but I can show you the highlights—or the lowlights, such as they are.”
Sam followed him up the sidewalk to what had once been the front door. Inside the smoldering ruins of the house, she could make out the basic structure from the burned-out husk that remained. The putrid scents of smoke and death hung heavily in the air.
“That’s them there,” the fire marshal said, pointing to a space on the floor by a blackened stone fireplace where two charred bodies lay next to one another.
Sam swallowed the bile that surged to her throat. Nothing was worse, at least not in her line of work, than fire victims. Though it was the last thing she wanted to do, she moved in for a closer look, took photos of the bodies and the scene around them, then turned to face the fire marshal. “Anything else you think I ought to see?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
He walked away to continue his investigation while Sam went outside, carrying the horrifying images with her as she took greedy breaths of fresh air. As she reached the curb, the medical examiner’s truck arrived. She waited for a word with Dr. Lindsey McNamara.
The tall, pretty medical examiner gathered her long red hair into a ponytail as she walked over to Sam.
“Fire victims,” Sam said, shuddering.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Hands and feet bound with zip ties.”
“Here we go again,” Lindsey said with a sigh. “Looks like it was quite a house.”
“Ten thousand square feet, according to the fire marshal.”
“I’ll get you an ID and report as soon as I can.”
“Appreciate it.” Sam opened her phone and placed a call to Malone. “I’m at the scene of the fire in Chevy Chase.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Two DOA, bound at the hands and feet, leading me to believe this was a home invasion gone bad. I need Crime Scene here ASAP.”
“I’ll call Haggerty and get them over there.”
“I want them to comb through anything and everything that wasn’t touched by the fire, and they need to do it soon before the scene is further compromised. We’ve got firefighters all over the place.”
“Got it. What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to talk to the neighbors and find out what I can about the people who lived here while I wait for Lindsey to confirm their identities.”
“Keep me posted.”
Sam slapped the phone closed and headed for her car to begin the task of figuring out who Jameson and Cleo Beauclair had been and who might’ve bound them before setting their house on fire. If the bodies were even those of the Beauclairs. Cases like this were often confounding from the start, but they would operate on the info they had available and go from there.
Her partner, Detective Freddie Cruz, arrived as Sam reached her car, which she had parked a block from the scene.
“I guess it was too much to hope our homicide-free streak would last until after the wedding,” he said.
“Too much indeed. We’ve got two deceased on the first floor of the west side of the home, hands and feet bound.”
“Do we know who they are?”
“We know who owns the house, but we’re not a hundred percent sure the owners are our victims,” she said, passing along the names the fire marshal had given her. “Let’s knock on some doors and then go back to HQ to see what Lindsey can tell us.”
“I’m with you, LT.”
“Any word from Gonzo?”
“Not that I’ve heard yet.”
“He can catch up.”
Don’t miss Fatal Invasion by Marie Force,
available now from HQN Books.
Copyright © 2018 by HTJB, Inc.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Soldier for Hire by Kimberly Van Meter.
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Soldier for Hire
by Kimberly Van Meter
Chapter 1
“You know how this is going to end, Xander.”
Xander Scott melted against the wall, clinging to the shadows as his former Red Wolf team leader, Scarlett Rhodes, tried to convince him to come out peacefully, knowing full well that wasn’t going to happen.
Naw, everything had already gone sidewise; Scarlett knew he wasn’t going to go meekly to his own destruction but, hey, he gave her props for tenacity. The woman wasn’t known for her soft and fuzzy side—hell, that was one of the things Xander liked about her—but right about now, he wished Scarlett was a little less rigid so she’d listen to what he was trying to tell her instead of hauling his ass in over some bullshit frame job.
“I didn’t do it, Rhodes,” he said, quickly assessing his position within the abandoned building, stalling for time. Scarlett had found him faster than he’d anticipated, zeroing in on his location like a bloodhound, but he knew her tactics, which was his only saving grace, otherwise she would’ve had him trussed up like a Christmas turkey ready for the table.
Well, that and the fact that while Scarlett played by the rules, Xander didn’t.
“Looking pretty guilty from my end. Innocent people don’t run,” she replied, the sound of her changing position pricking Xander’s ears. “But turn yourself in and we’ll talk about it.”
Xander chuckled grimly. Yeah, we’ll talk about it. Sure. “Think about it, Rhodes. It doesn’t make sense. I’m being framed and you know it.”
“Turn yourself in.”
“Screw you, Rhodes,” he muttered, his gaze catching on the dirty window. They were on the third floor. A jump from that height would break bones at the very least. He was partial to his limbs remaining intact. Besides, Scarlett would have all exit points covered. She’d have a guy stationed in the stairwell, at the fire escape and all back doors. Scarlett was nothing if not efficient. “Why would I have any reason to hurt innocent people? Granted, politicians are scum but I had no beef with McQuarry. You’re barking up the wrong damn tree.”
“Cut the crap, Xander. You’re wasting time. You know you’re surrounded. Don’t make this harder than it needs t
o be. If you’re innocent, you’ve got nothing to worry about. But right now, you’re just making things worse by running.”
Xander blew out a short breath, still trying to figure out how he’d gotten to this moment.
One minute he was going day to day—maybe a little rough around the edges, maybe playing fast and loose with a few rules but for the most part, things had been good.
Manageable.
Sure, sometimes he still woke up, drenched in cold sweat, heart hammering like a meth head after a fresh rail, hands curled in fists ready to swing to the death, but who didn’t, right?
Okay, so maybe not everyone had a psych eval that read like a cautionary tale but then not everyone had seen or done the things he had in the service of the good ol’ US of A.
Did he set the pipe bomb that killed Senator Ken McQuarry three months ago at a political rally in Tulsa? Hell, no.
At least, he didn’t think so.
Yeah, and that was the problem. He couldn’t actually remember that day so well.
Sweat popped along his hairline. “You know whoever’s framing me for this has done their homework. They knew I had a background in the bomb squad. I was cherry-picked. A little too convenient, though, don’t you think? I had no motive, Rhodes.”
He was trying to appeal to that stubborn logic locked inside Rhodes’s skull, but the redhead was like a dog with a bone—single-minded and hungry for the marrow behind the crunch. “You know me, Rhodes,” he said in one last attempt to get her to see she was fighting the wrong fight. “I mean, you really know me. Ask yourself if any of this bullshit sounds legit.”
Xander was playing with fire. No one knew about him and Rhodes. They’d both agreed to keep it that way for the sake of their careers.
But he had to play any card he could.
A pregnant pause almost gave him a glimmer of hope until Rhodes said, “Doesn’t matter. It’s not my job to determine if you’re guilty or not. It’s just my job to bring you in.”