RunningScaredBN (39 page)

Fire burned in extraordinary eyes of aqua blue. “Do you feel shame for your stupid questions?” she sneered.
 

Undeterred, the reporter continued, “You’re testifying today. What will you tell the court?”

Shoulders straight, expression resolute, she said fiercely, “That my sister was taken advantage of. She was not a prostitute. And that she most definitely did not kill Frank Braden.”

She turned her back to the camera and strode rapidly away.
 

A smug smile tugged at the reporter’s mouth. “To recap, the trial of Alice Callahan, who is accused of murdering local businessman Frank Braden, will resume this morning at ten o’clock. And as we just heard, today’s testimony will include Kathleen Callahan, the accused’s sister. Considering what we’ve learned so far, one can only speculate what today’s revelations will be. Reporting from Cook County Courthouse, this is April Majune.”
 

Eli clicked off the television, but it didn’t matter. The image of Kathleen Callahan’s captivating face stayed etched in his mind. The husky, musical tone of her voice was a sound he knew he’d never forget.
 

Returning to the kitchen table where he’d left his laptop, Eli opened it and entered the names Callahan and Braden into a search engine. He had heard nothing about the trial. Dallas and Chicago were hundreds of miles from each other. And having no love for the media and their shenanigans, he usually avoided the news, local and national, as much as possible.
 

A lengthy list of hits appeared. Eli clicked on one and skimmed the information. The more he read, the more intrigued he became. Exiting out of one site, he scrolled down until he came to the name Kathleen Callahan. Clicking on that one, Eli stared hard at the photograph of one of the most striking women he’d ever seen. This shot had been taken at a happier time in Kathleen’s life. Though still not smiling, there were no tension lines around her mouth, no shadows beneath her eyes.
 

His gaze moved to the text, and once again he became immersed, unaccountably fascinated, so deeply engrossed that when his cellphone rang, it took him several seconds to identify the sound.
 

He headed back to the bedroom and grabbed his phone. When he saw the caller’s name on the screen, and then the time, he winced. Dammit, he was never late.

“Hugh?”

“Eli, everything okay?”

“Yes. Sorry. I know we were supposed to meet downstairs. I—” Making a split decision, Eli said, “Listen, there’s been a change of plans. Come up to my room and let’s talk. I need to move some appointments around.”

Thankful that his assistant wasn’t one to ask needless questions, Eli ended the call and then immediately pressed a speed-dial number to one of his most trusted friends.

“Justice. Eli. You have any information on a case in Chicago involving the murder of a Frank Braden?”

Grey Justice wasn’t often taken by surprise, but Eli could hear it in the man’s voice—his British accent always became a little crisper. “Frank Braden? Chicago? Not that I recall. Is it something I should check out?”

“Yes. I’d—” He’d what? What was he going to say? That he’d seen a beautiful woman on television, looked her up on the Internet, and was now obsessed with knowing more? Hell.

“The case sounds like something you’d be interested in.” Eli winced at the lameness of his answer.

“Is that right?” The slight amusement in Justice’s tone told Eli that he hadn’t fooled his friend in the least.

Eli relayed the basic facts. Grey Justice and his people could find out everything about the case within a matter of a few clicks. And even though Eli’s interest in Kathleen was definitely personal, what he’d told Justice was true. This case sounded perfect for the Grey Justice Group.
 

“Let me look into it,” Justice said. “I’ll get back to you.”

Eli returned the phone to the desk and stared out at the Chicago skyline. He had no explanation for what he was about to do. Impulsiveness had been beaten out of him long ago, and damned if he could begin to formulate a reason for his actions. Never in his life had he had such a visceral reaction to a woman. Something about Kathleen Callahan called to him, compelled him to know more. Despite all the scheduling problems, the headaches he was about to cause, Eli refused to not see this out.
 

Get
Whatever it Takes
here!

Can’t get enough romantic suspense? Turn the page for a sneak peek of Cold Evidence, the sixth book in Romantic Suspense Author Rachel Grant’s exciting Evidence series.
 

COLD EVIDENCE

The frigid waters of the Pacific Northwest are about to get hot…

The only thing Navy underwater archaeologist Undine Gray fears more than facing former SEAL Luke Sevick is never scuba diving again. But when a dive on a Cold War-era US Navy submarine ends with an accidental explosion, she’s terrified of going into the deep, forcing her to beg the most experienced diver she knows to take her back to the bottom of the cold Salish Sea.
 

Luke wants nothing to do with the woman who destroyed his career a dozen years ago but finds it impossible to turn his back on her plea. Caught off guard by an attraction he doesn’t want to feel, he’s eager to be done with this mission of mercy. But when they dive on the wreck, he only gets sucked in deeper. Someone has been digging on the Navy sub…and it appears the explosion that almost killed Undine was no accident.

To find the truth, Undine must navigate murky waters and the unexpectedly hot undercurrents swirling between her and Luke. Worse, divers are searching for something lost in US waters during the Cold War, and they’ll do anything to keep Luke and Undine from finding it first.

Chapter One

Strait of Juan de Fuca, Northeast of Neah Bay, Washington

September

Undine Gray fluttered her fins, swimming slowly upward to the decompression stop with one hand gliding along the anchor line. She spotted her destination, a bucket tied to the line, and floated up the last five meters. She and her dive partner, Yuri, had each deposited a book in the pail for reading during the twenty-minute decompression stop.

She set her dive computer to alert her when it was time to ascend again. Now that she was within radio range of her team on the dive boat above, she pressed the button on her full-face radio-equipped mask. “Undine to
Petrel
, had to abort dive due to trouble with my tank. At decompression stop now. Send oxygen. Over.”

“Sorry to hear that, ’Deen. It checked out before you dove,” Jared said and added a few curses before he released his radio button.

“I know. Not your fault. Over.” But it was a serious problem that her fifteen minutes of bottom time had to be shortened to less than five. Given the depth of this dive, the surface interval required meant she wouldn’t be able to dive again until tomorrow. They’d just lost an entire day from their tight schedule. Maybe she shouldn’t be so pissed at Yuri. “Yuri’s tank was fine. He refused to abort. I ordered him to surface—this goes against every protocol he agreed to—but with my tank leaking, I couldn’t afford to waste a minute arguing and had to leave him. He said he’d locate the datum we dropped yesterday and hook up the permanent buoy line, then surface. He should reach the decompression stop in five minutes. Over.”

“Gotcha. I’ll talk to Yuri. If he pulls something like this again, he’s fired,” Jared said. “Over.”

“Good. That’s what I told him. Removing the full-face mask to switch to pure oxygen. Going radio silent. Over.”

“See you on deck in twenty, ’Deen. Over.”

She slipped off the full-face mask with the built-in radio and regulator and fitted the pure oxygen regulator attached to the boat via a long hose over her nose and mouth. Then she donned her regular dive mask, cleared it, and blinked the salt water from her eyes. With twenty minutes to kill and no longer in the dark deep, she switched on her flashlight and plucked a book from the bucket and chuckled at finding a Tom Clancy Cold War-era spy novel. Surely her Ukrainian dive partner had already read all of Clancy’s books by now? But then, compression-stop reading was more about passing the time than getting engrossed in a novel, and once a paperback book had been immersed, there was no letting it dry out to read on land. Perhaps she should have brought an old favorite as Yuri had, instead of a new romantic suspense novel; then she could just reread favorite scenes as she waited for the nitrogen buildup to release from her bloodstream.

Five minutes in, her computer beeped, reminding her that Yuri should have joined her at the decompression stop by now. A glance into the dark depths revealed no faint glow from below, and unease settled in her gut. Yuri had said he would ascend after he located the anchor base for the permanent buoy. If he didn’t find it within five minutes, he’d promised to abort and surface.

She gripped the mask with the built-in radio. After a moment’s hesitation, she switched back to her scuba tank so she could talk to Yuri. At this in-between depth, the radio should reach both the bottom of the strait and the boat on the surface.

She cleared the mask, then said, “Yuri, man, where are you? Over.”

Silence.

The team on
Petrel
would have heard her, but they wouldn’t muddle Yuri’s response by chiming in.

She glanced at her air tank. Dare she risk descending again? Yuri could be injured or stuck. If she descended again now, she would be pushing her tank to the limit. But there was an oxygen line at the decompression stop. She didn’t need to save air for that.

“Yuri?” she said again. “Say something. Anything. If you need help, I’ll come get you, but I don’t have enough air to mess around. Over.”

The weather had been calm today, and the slack tide provided the perfect window. This should have been a piece-of-cake bounce dive even though it was deep, but her gauge indicated a too-rapid loss of air when she’d reached one hundred and ninety feet. She’d had no choice but to abort. She had over a thousand hours of bottom time—more than most divers twice her age, and far more than the middle-aged salvage specialist, but he refused to acknowledge her expertise because she was Stefan Gray’s daughter, and he wasn’t a fan of the marine biologist who’d gone Hollywood to fund his research institute.

One thing Yuri didn’t understand was her father might be a celebrity underwater explorer, but the man was a scientist first, last, and always, and he was probably the most experienced and knowledgeable scuba and technical diver on the planet. As his daughter, she knew diving almost better than she knew walking. Her screwing up a dive was akin to Neil Armstrong’s kid not being able to find the moon in the night sky.

Yuri’s refusal to ascend with her was a small, stupid rebellion, and now it was one that could cost both of them their lives, because she had to go after the old fool.

She addressed the team on
Petrel
. “I’m going to find Yuri. Send Loren down with a tank for me. If Yuri has to ascend quickly, I’ll inflate his buoyancy compensator vest, but I’ll stay down so I can decompress. Radio the Coast Guard. We might need an airlift to a hyperbaric chamber for him or both of us. Over.”

“Copy that, Undine,” Jared said. “A NOAA vessel isn’t far off our starboard. Maybe they can provide assistance. Loren is radioing them and alerting the Coast Guard we are a team of Navy contractors with a civilian diver who has failed to—”

His words cut off. A second later, the line in Undine’s hand went slack. She pulled on the rope as she looked upward. A giant flash lit the surface, piercing the dark water above her head. A wave pulsed downward, sending Undine spiraling through the gray depths.