Secret Assignment (15 page)

She took Gideon’s money, however, and winked at him. “I like her. You should try to keep her around.”

He just smiled and followed Shannon outside. “Your brother is an idiot,” he murmured once they were out on the sidewalk.

Shannon gave him a questioning look. “Beg your pardon?”

“You have no business being stuck in front of a computer all day. You’re about as natural at interrogation as I’ve ever seen.”

She smiled, looking ridiculously pleased by his assessment. “If I call Jesse, will you repeat that?”

He grinned at her, feeling a rush of heady satisfaction at being the person who made her look so happy. “Did your cousins really give you a photo to give to Margo?”

She shook her head. “They did tell me to stop by and see her while I was here, if I could, and let her know they got married. She apparently did a little matchmaking while J.D. was here. I just thought giving her the photo would make her more likely to open up.”

“You’re devious. I like that.”

She chuckled. “They’ll be happy I did. They just didn’t think of it.”

“Well, you did a good job getting information out of her. In fact, I think I know who one of the men is.”

She looked at him, her expression suddenly hard to read. “Yeah?”

“The one Margo called Ray—I think he’s an ex-marine I used to know. Raymond Stephens.”

“You got all that from ‘the fellow who needs a haircut is Raymond’?”

“You know how I told you I saw the man who attacked me at the marina the other day, but I couldn’t quite remember him?”

“Yeah?”

“When she said his name,” he said, “it clicked. I saw his face, clear as day. He isn’t wearing his hair high and tight, of course, but those eyes—I’ll never forget those eyes.” He told her what he could remember about Raymond Stephens. “Angry all the time. Sneaky, too. Vicious when cornered. And he held grudges. I told the major in charge of the training unit that Stephens was going to kill an innocent if we put him out there. A civilian or an ally, or maybe even another marine. So they washed him out.”

Shannon’s brow furrowed. “On your word?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

She shook her head. “And he holds grudges.”

“Exactly.” He dipped his head toward her, lowering his voice. “What if we’re wrong about why they’re trying to sneak onto Nightshade Island? Maybe it has nothing to do with General Ross’s papers.”

She looked up at him, her dark eyes scared. “You think maybe they’re after you?”

“I hope they are,” he admitted. “Then all I have to do is get as far away from here as I can and maybe Mrs. Ross won’t feel as if she needs to leave her home.”

Shannon frowned. “But Lydia had already decided to leave before any of this happened.”

He had said more than he intended. Again. Her charms had worked on him as easily as on Margo at the diner. “Not exactly. There was an incident a couple of weeks ago. Up in Mobile. I’d dropped Mrs. Ross off at a furniture shop while I took the Caddy to a garage for a tune-up. When she left the furniture shop to go to a jewelry store across the street, she was mugged in broad daylight.”

“Oh, no!”

“She fought them off, managed to hold on to her purse, but they pushed her down and scraped her up a little.” He shook his head. “At the time, we thought it was just a random mugging, but—”

“But now you’re not so sure.”

“It was brazen. And until a couple of nights ago, odd.”

“They were dressed in black with masks on?” Shannon guessed.

She really was spooky, Gideon thought. “Yeah. And they disappeared as soon as people came running to her rescue.”

“That’s why you didn’t tell Lydia what the men on the island looked like.”

“I think she guessed anyway,” he said.

Shannon stopped walking and turned to look at him, emotion glowing in her dark eyes. She touched his chest again, her warm palm flattening against his sternum. “You’re good to her. I know she’s happy you’re around.”

He shook his head. “I’m a constant reminder of everything she’s lost.”

“No, you’re a comfort.” She smoothed her hand over his chest, her touch sparking a wildfire in his veins. The midday heat couldn’t touch the inferno scorching his insides as he gazed at her upturned face, overwhelmed with the need to possess her, somehow, to brand her as his. It was an alien sensation, and frightening, but he was helpless against its power.

He lowered his head slowly. Deliberately. Giving her time to protest if she wanted to.

But she rose to her feet, curling her fingers in the fabric of his T-shirt. Closing the space between them, she brushed her mouth lightly against his.

He felt the world around them spinning into nothing, and it scared the hell out of him. As he started to pull away, she tightened her grip on his T-shirt and kept him close.

Their gazes locked. In her dark eyes, he saw an echo of the desire pounding in his own chest, and he was lost.

He bent his head again, his mouth slanting hard and hungry against hers. He sidestepped, pulling her with him until they had left the main sidewalk and slipped into the shadows of a narrow footpath between two buildings.

Salt air danced across his skin as she kissed him back, rising on her toes so she could wrap her arms around his neck. He dragged her against him, turning until her back flattened against the warm concrete block wall behind her. His mouth slid away from hers, moving down the curve of her jaw to nip lightly at the sensitive skin on the side of her neck.

“Get a room, geezers!” The voice, high-pitched and sarcastic, hit Gideon like a bucket of ice water. He stumbled backward, away from her, until his back flattened against the opposite wall.

A couple of teenaged boys ran away from the footpath, laughing wildly.

Shannon stared at him across the footpath, her eyes drunk with passion. She looked beautiful and vulnerable. So small. So fragile.

He’d walked away from their first kiss, not wanting to talk about it. And she’d let him.

He didn’t think she would let him just walk away this time.

But to his surprise, she composed herself right in front of him, unhurried and giving a fine show of being unaffected. She straightened her blouse where his exploring hands had shifted it out of place and finger-combed her dark hair away from her face.

“Let’s go find Lydia,” she said, and walked out of the narrow alley, leaving him no choice but to follow.

Chapter Eleven

Lydia was in a happy mood at dinner that night, sharing tidbits of news she’d heard from her friends at the hair salon. To Shannon’s eyes, she looked a decade younger. Maybe leaving the solitude of Nightshade Island would be good for her after all. At least Shannon hoped so.

As usual, she retired to her room early, leaving Shannon and Gideon to lock up for the night. Shannon put away the supper dishes while Gideon checked all the locks. Returning, he perched on one of the breakfast bar stools, watching as she put the last clean cup in the cabinet. “Looks like we’re going to get some rain tonight.”

“I thought the tropical storm was still a few days away.”

“Only two now,” he said. “And it’s big enough that we’ll see some feeder bands roll through tonight and tomorrow.”

“You look worried.”

“I can’t shake what we talked about earlier. What if I’m the one bringing this mess raining down on Nightshade Island?”

“I don’t think it’s as simple as a grudge,” she said with conviction, although she couldn’t tell him the central reason she’d come to that conclusion, not without potentially putting someone in grave danger.

Gideon hadn’t been the only person who’d recognized a name today.

“So you really think it’s something in the general’s collections?”

“I think we’re on the right track, connecting those guys to MacLear. There are too many clues that add up—the Melville/
Ahab’s Folly
connection, the commando-style infiltration of the island, AfterAssets’s connection to Salvatore Beckett—”

He nodded. “I did think, once I remembered Ray Stephens, that he’d have been a prime prospect for the SSU. Skilled, physically brave and utterly lacking a moral compass. Fits the bill.”

“So now we have to figure out what they want.”

“Have you come across anything in the general’s papers that raised any flags for you?” He sounded genuinely curious.

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure,” Gideon admitted. “General Ross told me his suspicions about MacLear’s possible involvement in Ford’s death. But he also hinted the danger might not be over. He asked me to stick around to help him protect Mrs. Ross when he had to be away from the island.”

Shannon leaned closer. “You think he was murdered, don’t you?”

“The police can’t say for sure that the crash wasn’t an accident. It’s just—the rate of speed the car was going when it crashed makes no sense. If anything General Ross was an overly cautious driver.”

“Maybe he fell asleep and lost control?”

“Maybe, but not likely. He prided himself on his alertness.”

She shook her head. “No tampering with the brakes?”

“The brake lines were intact, but that doesn’t mean someone didn’t bleed out the fluid of the brakes. There was almost no fluid in the chamber after the wreck, but the forensic mechanics couldn’t be sure that didn’t happen in the wreck itself—he drove into the bay, so any fluid from the cracked brake fluid chamber would have washed away.”

“What would be the motive?”

Gideon glanced toward the stairs, as if worried about being overheard. He lowered his voice. “If the general knew something damaging to someone high in the food chain, which is definitely the impression I got, whoever’s behind these intrusions could’ve burned Stafford House to the ground and not removed the threat as long as the general was alive.”

A shudder of foreboding rippled up her spine. “So if we find whatever secret the general was hiding—”

“We could be targets, too.”

She wondered if Jesse had any idea what he’d sent her into. She couldn’t imagine he had; she’d been asking for a field case for over a year now with no luck, Jesse turning her down on cases far less dangerous than her trip to Nightshade Island was turning out to be.

“Maybe you should go home,” Gideon said quietly.

She snapped her gaze up to his. “No.”

“This isn’t what you signed up for.”

“No, but I’m capable of handling it,” she said, wishing she sounded more confident. “I do have training, and you can’t be here with Lydia twenty-four hours a day. But maybe we should bring more Coopers into this investigation.”

She could see from Gideon’s scowl that he wasn’t crazy about the idea. “Calling in reinforcements may scare the bad guys off.”

“And that would be a bad thing because?”

“Because maybe they decide to bide their time and go after Lydia and her treasures when neither of us are there to protect her.”

“What’s the alternative—luring the bad guys here?”

“No, but I don’t want this to follow Lydia to her new home. It needs to end here and now.”

He was calling Lydia by her first name regularly now, she noted. Coming to terms with actually feeling a connection to someone else? “Okay. I agree.”

His expression softening, he laid his hand on her shoulder, his touch gentle. “I know this isn’t what you expected when you came here. I’m sorry it’s turned into such a mess.”

“I’m glad I’m here. I want to help.” She laid her palm against the center of his chest, knowing it would serve as a potent reminder of the kiss they’d shared earlier that day.

He gazed at her uncertainly, hunger blazing in his eyes. After a moment, he slid his hand around the back of her neck and tugged her to him, nuzzling his nose in her hair. “You make me crazy.”

She couldn’t hold back a smile, lifting her face to look up at him. “That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

He released her, his hand lingering at the base of her neck before dropping away, leaving her feeling bereft. “I’ve been thinking, if what the general knew was explosive enough to get him killed, maybe he wrote it down somewhere. Like, say, a coded journal.”

“I might be able to find an e-book version of that cryptography book I have at home. It could help.”

He nodded. “I’m going to go do my nightly patrol. Go get some rest. It’s been a long couple of days. Lock up behind me.”

She walked him to the door. “Be careful.”

He managed a tired smile. “I always am.”

After watching from the porch until he was out of sight, she went back inside, locked the door behind her and pulled out her cell phone. Climbing the stairs to her room, she called her brother.

Jesse sounded tired when he answered. “What’s up, Shan?”

“A lot.” She tamped down a sense of guilt at making the call to her brother behind Gideon’s back. “But let’s start with a question I’ve asked before. Why did you really send me here to Nightshade Island?”

There was such a long silence on Jesse’s end of the line that Shannon wondered if she’d been disconnected. But he finally spoke. “Has something else happened?”

“Not in the last few hours. I’m more curious about why you’re not surprised that the SSU may be involved with whatever’s going on here on Nightshade Island. I know Rick’s told you about AfterAssets, hasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“The connection to Salvatore Beckett and the timing of the company’s creation don’t give you pause?”

“Of course they do.”

“Am I a sacrificial lamb here?”

“God, Shannon, what do you think I am?”

“A secretive bastard, for one thing,” she snapped. “You sent me here knowing something was going on, but you didn’t bother to tell me. Why?”

“Because I didn’t want you overtly snooping around and getting into trouble.”

“Why didn’t you send Isabel or Rick or one of the other field operatives?”

He was quiet a moment before answering, “Nobody would suspect you of being a field operative.”

Great. Just great.

“It’s getting dangerous here. Gideon doesn’t want me to call in the cavalry, but I thought I should at least give you the option.”

Jesse’s long pauses were beginning to unnerve her. When he didn’t speak right away, she added, “What haven’t you told me?”