Las Vegas Sidewinders: Drake (Book 2) (21 page)

Vomiting was her least
favorite thing in the world and this was the second time it had happened in a
few weeks. Irritated, she stood up and went to the sink to wash her face and
rinse out her mouth. A moment later, Liv came in, her pretty face puckered.

“You all right? What
the hell is going on? Mark is losing his mind in there, talking in riddles, and
you’re in here puking.”

“It’s me they were
after. Not the unit—
me
!” Erin looked at her friend. “Clay tried to have
me killed.”

“What are you talking
about?!” Liv looked concerned. “How the fuck does some loser civilian have
access to our missions?!”

“I don’t know, but that
has to be it.” She was breathing heavily. “God, where the hell is Shay when I
need him? He had to have known something was off—why else would he have taken
that patrol?”

“Could Clay have been
feeding him information?”

“They weren’t really
talking…were they?” She yanked open the door and walked back into the office.
Louie, Mark and Ronnie were waiting for them, all looking concerned.

“I need access to all
of Shay’s communications before he died,” she said abruptly to Louie. “Find
them and get them to me.”

“I don’t know if I
can—”

“Find them! Someone get
the Colonel.” She sat down at her keyboard and started typing.

“Erin, what’s—” Liv
stopped talking as Erin raised her hand to silence her.

“I need everything we
can find on who Shay was communicating with when we were here last time. All of
you get on that. Now. Phone calls made, his email, Facebook page—everything.
Liv, you work on Facebook. Mark, find his emails. Where the hell is Eric?”

“Making him do extra
PT,” Mark murmured. “He’s gained weight.”

“Get him in here.” Erin
was already logging in to the server.

Kate sat on the plane
fidgeting. She’d been completely baffled by Karl’s phone call. Come to Vegas,
he’d begged.
I miss you and our place is such a mess, we can’t organize
ourselves
. What did that even mean? She’d laughed at first, but then his
voice had changed.
You need to come
.
Right away
. But every time
she’d tried to press him for details, he’d diverted the conversation. Next
thing she knew she had an email from a travel agent showing she was booked on
the 8:30 flight out of JFK. She had no idea what was wrong with him, but
something told her it was important and had to do with Erin. They’d only known
each other a couple of weeks, after all. They had plans to spend time together when
hockey season ended, which wasn’t that far away, and he knew she had some
important clients coming to town this weekend. He’d completely ignored her when
she’d mentioned that—twice, in fact. Finally, she’d given up, thrown a bag
together and gotten on the plane.

Karl was waiting for
her when she got to the terminal. She took a moment to appreciate him from
afar. Damn, he was so stinkin’ good-looking she got a hot flash just watching
him stand there. Though she still couldn’t believe that he was interested in
her, she forced herself not to dwell on that. She’d spent most of her 29 years
covering her insecurities by being the life of the party and an aggressive
business woman. Her personal life had always been a mess, but she’d managed to
find success professionally and she had great friends. She’d just given up on
men until now.

She felt her heart skip
a beat when he smiled at her from across the terminal and she practically ran
into his arms. His lips found hers quickly, firmly, a sure sign that he’d genuinely
missed her.

“Hi!” She gazed up at
him. “You’re awfully secretive sometimes.”

His smile faded a
little. “Yeah, well, there’s stuff going on and I couldn’t take a chance
someone might hear us.”

“You mean like our
phones might be tapped?” She raised her eyebrows. “What is wrong with you,
Karl?”

“Come on.” He took her
bag in one hand and her hand in the other, and practically pulled her out of
the airport.

“Hey! My legs aren’t as
long as yours!” she protested.

“Sorry.” He slowed
down. “I just have so much to tell you.”

“I’m confused.”

“I know.” They finally
reached his black SUV and he opened the door for her before putting her bag in
the back.

She sat back and waited
for him to get in next to her. He gave her another kiss, long and deep, before
he started the car and pulled out of the parking area. Finally, he told her
everything they’d discovered.

“I’m going to kill
him,” she growled. “I don’t know how or why, but there is no doubt in my mind
that the little weasel tried to kill either Erin, or both Erin and Shay.
Sonofabitch!” She had never been so furious in all of her life.

“Drake is talking to
the security firm now—he went in to the office to explain just how dangerous
this information is. He’s going to have our apartment and phones checked for
bugs, as well as your place in New York and Erin’s place in D.C.”

“My tenants are still
in my apartment—they have another few days until they close on their new house.
I’ve been staying with friends, so I’m not sure there would be any reason to
check my place.”

“We’ll have it checked
anyway, after the tenants are gone.”

“What does this mean?”
she asked worriedly. “Is Erin in danger?”

“Oh yeah,” he nodded.
“More than ever.”

“Shit, shit, shit!”
Kate threw back her head in frustration.

Erin and the team
worked late into the night recovering all of Shay’s files, the phone records
from three years ago, and everything that could possibly shed light on what
Drake had discovered. His non-work related emails were few, almost all to his
mother, and slowly a picture emerged. Shay had told his mother everything, it
seemed, and Erin forced herself to stay focused as she read his private
thoughts and feelings. One email, written in late July, just weeks before his
death, brought Erin to tears.

What am I going to do,
Mom? I’ve loved her since I was 18. I know she loves me—I can see it in her
face even though she keeps me at a distance. Will Clay ever forgive me if I
take back what was mine? Can you? I love my country, but I love her more, and
every day I wake up and wonder how the hell I’m going to get her out of here. I
have a bad feeling this time—it feels like someone on the inside is working
against me. And then I wonder how I’m going to protect her from Clay… I’m
worried about him. He just hasn’t been the same the last couple of years and I
keep thinking that this is my fault. Maybe I shouldn’t have kept his secrets
all these years. I thought I was doing the right thing, but now that he’s
making Erin miserable, I can’t do it anymore. Tell me what to do… How do I pick
between my brother and the woman I love?

Blinking back tears,
she searched for a response from Jan. It came a day later.

You’ve been taking care
of your brother for years, my darling boy. It’s time for you to do what’s
right. For you and for Erin. I’ve been trying to get Clay to see someone, to
deal with his anger and his mood swings. So far he’s been resisting, but I
think something happened at work last week. The one thing he holds on to is his
success as an attorney, so maybe this will force him to get some help. In the
meantime, keep your head down and take care of yourself. Two more months and
you’ll be home and we can figure this out. Give my love to Erin. Mom.

It occurred to Erin
that she hadn’t noticed anything “wrong” with Clay. Yet his mother and brother
had both seen something in him that she hadn’t. Of course, she was busy with
her career and he was busy with his; sometimes weeks would pass before they
actually spent an evening together. The signs had been there, though. His
moodiness and increasing lack of interest in sex should have been a red flag.
She’d thought he was just focused on work like she was. She’d known he didn’t
really love her, though. That had become clear within their first year of
marriage, but she’d been too stubborn to do anything about it. She’d just
wanted to stop missing Shay.

Forcing herself to stay
on track, she continued reading the emails between mother and son, until one of
the last ones, on August 16
^th
. He’d written to her the day before he
died and he’d read her response before going to bed that night.

I think you and Erin
should go away somewhere, instead of coming home. Take some time to figure out
what you want. You need to take Clay out of the equation. He’s not going to be
rational when he finds out about you and Erin. I think he suspects something is
going on, and he’s been downright hateful. Shay, he scares me. He’s so angry
and irrational. I want you to be careful when you come home. Anyway, I have to
get ready for the gala tonight, so I’ve got to run, but stay safe and remember
what I said. I love you. Mom.

His response the
following day was brief, but poignant.

I’ll be out on patrol
for the rest of today, but we’re going to have to talk more about this. Believe
me, there’s nothing I’d like more than to take Erin away somewhere. I have to
find a way to broach the subject—it’s not easy in our situation. I’ll talk to
you in a few days. Love, Shay.

For a long time, Erin
didn’t move. Clay was mentally ill and almost no one had noticed until it was
too late, not even his wife. Shay hadn’t realized how serious it was until
after they got married, and even then he didn’t realize the extent of it. Jan
had realized it sometime while they were in Afghanistan, but she had no way of
knowing just how crazy he was. Erin wasn’t sure either, but she had a gut
feeling Clay had somehow been reading his mother’s email. That was the only way
he could have known about the patrol that day. The only other option was that
someone on her team was capable of doing something so heinous, and she refused
to believe it. Shay had hand-picked this team. He trusted them implicitly and
Erin did too.

Sending an email to a
contact at the NSA, she asked him to see if there was any way to find out if
someone had been logging in to Jan’s email from another location. Until they
had some kind of proof, she didn’t know what else they could do. She
desperately needed to know what else was in that package of information Drake
had gotten, but she had to be careful how she asked for it. The idea that Clay
was somehow tapping Drake’s phone was terrifying, and she had a bad feeling
about all of this. Deep down, she was more afraid for him than for herself.

Suddenly
claustrophobic, she pushed back from her desk and stepped outside into the
chilly night air. Rubbing her arms to get warm, she thought about Drake and
wondered what he was doing. Was he safe? If Clay had access to Jan’s email, he
might know that she’d gotten remarried. Would he try to hurt Drake just to hurt
her? Had he really been trying to kill her? Reality was, he might have been
trying to kill Shay. Or they were completely wrong, he was just an asshole with
bipolar disorder, and this was still about Al Qaeda and terrorism.

Realizing she was
exhausted, she leaned against the building and took a few deep breaths. She had
to be stronger than this, she thought to herself. This was her mission, her
chance for redemption, and her mind was back home with Drake instead of focused
on what she had to do. She needed to warn him, but she didn’t know how. He was
big and strong, but he would never suspect someone might come after him with a
gun or a bomb, or some other terrifying thing. They had no idea what Clay was
capable of, and although she didn’t have any proof, she knew that he had to be
responsible for everything that had happened. She couldn’t know whether herself
or Shay—or maybe both of them—had been his target, but she believed Clay had
been behind that IED explosion.

It was almost midnight
here, which meant it was just after noon in Las Vegas. Was Drake on the road
today? No. He was home. If there had been a practice or a morning skate, he
would probably be done by now. Without a second thought, she headed into her
office and pulled out the sat phone. She called his cell and waited
impatiently.

“Hello?” He answered on
the first ring.

“Hi.” She was almost
breathless she was so anxious to hear his voice.

“What are you doing up
so late?” He was still at the arena, heading out to his car after practice.

“Working.”

“You okay?”

“I’m exhausted,” she
admitted. “But we’ve made progress.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Yeah.” She paused.
“I’ve been thinking about our living situation.”

“Yeah?”

“There are some things
you should probably take from my place and move them to Vegas.”

“Like what?” He could
hear the stress in her voice, and slowly became aware she was talking about
something else entirely.

“You know all that
silly stuff in my nightstand? If I come straight to Vegas from here, I’d like
all that to be there.”

The stuff in her nightstand?
He swallowed hard. She
was talking about her gun. She wanted him to have a gun. She was worried about
him and he couldn’t ask her why. Dammit!