Finding the Way Back: A Stealth Ops Novel Read online

  “We’re scattered all over the place, and it was the first time we were all together for a non-work-related purpose.” He reached over her shoulder and propped a hand on the Tahoe, which forced her to shift a step back, so her body was flush with the SUV once again.

  “Don’t lie.” It hurt too much. Maybe that’s why she’d never asked him. She didn’t want to force him to lie to her, and for some reason, she knew he’d have to. “Parties. Weddings. You guys have all hung out socially before.” She’d heard about it from some of the guys’ wives at the barbecue last weekend when she’d met everyone.

  “Only Teamguys and their families have ever gone to any of those events.”

  “I’m not family?” Maybe she’d rather him lie. Those words were like a cold bucket of water over her head on an already freezing day.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. You’re everything to me, and you know that.”

  Everything as long as they remained in the tight world they’d created. Their safe haven. But were they playing make-believe all that time by ignoring the very real fact he had a whole other life he kept from her?

  “Before there became an Emily and Liam, she was still included.” She had ammunition to use in her defense now that she’d met some of the wives. Using it didn’t make her feel any better, though. Worse, maybe.

  He shoved away from the vehicle. “Why’d they tell you this?”

  “They didn’t,” she admitted. “I overheard them talking. They were wondering why I hadn’t ever come to a get-together before.”

  “Jesus. I’m sorry.” There was more he wanted to say. She could see it. Feel it. Even read between the lines. But would he say it?

  “I’m not upset about that.” It had more to do with the fact she’d felt left out from whatever truth the spouses all seemed to know. “They were curious, and they couldn’t exactly ask me.” She wet her lips. “I should’ve brought this up right after the barbecue and not now of all times.” God, she was going to tell him what was on her mind tonight of all nights, wasn’t she? “You’ve been keeping this whole other life from me, and I . . .”

  He stepped closer and seized her face with both palms as if he were going to whisper sweet words of love and affection. But he simply stared at her.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Addy.” His eyes closed when he said, “Maybe I kept you away from them because I wanted you all to myself.” He took a breath, and his lids lifted. “When I’m with you, there’s this me. And when I’m with them, there’s that me. And I—”

  “There only has to be one you,” she protested, wishing he understood he had nothing to hide from her. “You don’t have to be someone else when you’re with me. How can you not get that?”

  She understood he compartmentalized when he was in the Navy, but he was a civilian now. His job at Scott & Scott wasn’t as dangerous. It didn’t make sense. It never did. And yet, she’d refused to try and understand out of some ridiculous fear she’d somehow lose him.

  He lost his hold of her to turn his back.

  Shoulders sloped down. Defeat she rarely saw in the lines of his body.

  “We don’t need to talk about this now. I’m sorry. As long as we’re on the same page about the case—”

  “We are,” he responded.

  “So, are you and the president friends? How’d you even get assigned to the case?” She’d meant it as a joke, but when he faced her, there was something in the tight draw of his lips, the narrowing of his gaze, that told her it was true.

  She jogged through her memories, pausing at the night he’d announced he was leaving the Navy. He’d said Luke had an in with the president and could help get him out of the SEALs early.

  “My office has access to some technology even the bureau doesn’t have, and we’ll be able to help,” he explained, his voice even-toned, but it was as if he were fighting to keep it that way.

  “What kind of tech could you have that the Secret Service doesn’t?” she asked, knowing she was taking the bait to guide her away from whatever truth he couldn’t seem to share with her.

  Calloway’s head poked out the front door, and he waved them in. “You two coming or what?”

  Great.

  “Do I really need to work with him?” Knox seized the opportunity to shift the conversation. The man had skills when it came to the art of deflection.

  She held a finger up Calloway’s way. “One sec!” She faced Knox once Calloway shut the door. “He’s not that bad.”

  “He only wanted to date you to get into your pants. You and I both know it.”

  “At least he tried.”

  “What?”

  Damn it. “Nothing.”

  She flipped her eyes to the sky in search of her star. The star Knox had pointed to the night her mother had died and said, “She’s there. Already watching over you.”

  “Maybe I can’t work with you. You might be a distraction,” she admitted when her eyes returned to his. You already are, and I just got here.

  “Since when am I a distraction for you?”

  “Since when are you not?” She turned and started for the building, regretting she’d even waited for him.

  When she pulled open the door, she realized Knox hadn’t followed her.

  His phone was pressed to his ear, and he was leaning against the side of her SUV.

  “She’s taken,” he’d said, almost immediately when introducing her to his work buddies at the barbecue last weekend. He didn’t want her, but he didn’t seem to want her with anyone else, either.

  “Don’t say a word,” she said to Calloway once she was inside the building. He’d been the only one who’d stayed back and waited for her, and he’d probably observed her exchange with Knox through the window. Lovely. “We’re only friends,” she said after they’d gone through security.

  “Sure, and I’m a priest.”

  “You’d look good in the robes,” she teased as they waited for the elevator doors to open.

  “Priesthood would never work for me.”

  She didn’t need to hear more to read between the lines of what he was trying to say. She kept her mouth shut on the ride up, replaying her conversation with Knox.

  His parents had almost taken a bullet today, and she needed to focus on catching the shooter.

  Rodriguez spotted them after they exited the elevator, and he flicked his wrist, beckoning them.

  They navigated through the maze of desks and agents still working. From what she could tell, most of the so-called bigwigs Rodriguez had been worried about weren’t there, though. Probably already asleep.

  “This is Special Agent Quinn,” Rodriguez made the introduction when she reached him. About the same age as Adriana. Same pantsuit and tight ponytail as well.

  “Hi.” Adriana shook her hand. It was nice to see another woman on the case.

  “Thanks for coming,” Quinn said. “If you two could take a look at all of the latest threats the Bennetts have received that’d help us out.”

  “Didn’t his bodyguards check those out before the rally today?” Calloway asked.

  “Yeah, but maybe they missed something,” Quinn answered and motioned for them to follow her into a conference room.

  “Any leads on Sarah Reardon?” Knox’s deep, husky voice from behind had the hairs on the back of her neck rising.

  “Ah, you again,” Quinn said, facing him, a smile in her eyes. “Where are your friends? Hopefully not getting into any trouble.”

  “They wouldn’t dream of it.” Knox flashed his dazzling smile, his white teeth showing. Dimples popping. His mood now different from the parking lot. Probably an act.

  “And who is Sarah?” She hated that Knox knew more about the case than she did.

  Quinn grabbed a remote off the conference table where a few other agents sat, working on laptops. She pointed at the image on the screen on the far side wall. “Sarah Reardon. Twenty-six. From Kansas City, Missouri. She arrived into Charlotte Douglas at three in the
afternoon yesterday. She flew business class. No one matching our shooter’s height or build anywhere around her seat on the plane. And according to her Uber driver, she rode to the hotel alone. She was here for a work conference.”

  Director Mendez filled everyone in on what had been learned about the gunman, the eleventh floor, and how the agency now believed Sarah’s life was in danger.

  “We’ve uploaded Sarah’s image into our facial recognition program to identify where she may have visited recently. With any luck, we’ll get a hit on where she is now, too,” Quinn said.

  But based on the grim tone of her voice, it was clear Quinn assumed Sarah was most likely dead.

  “Any hits on her credit cards?” Adriana asked.

  “Dinner at the hotel bar last night,” Quinn responded. “That’s it. Nothing since.”

  “What about those other two rooms on either side? When you spoke to the couples—what’d they say?” Knox asked. “They hear anything abnormal coming from Sarah’s room?”

  “They didn’t hear anything other than the screams from outside after the first and second shots. And then the alarm went off and they panicked,” Quinn answered. “We showed them a picture of Sarah. The daughter from the neighboring room remembered seeing Sarah outside her door with a man last night, though. But she said he was only saying goodbye, and he didn’t go inside. But she’s also ten, and she couldn’t give us much to work with. She said the guy had short hair. Blond. Maybe brown. About the same height as her dad, which is five-ten. The girl had been at the vending machine, and she saw them when she went back to her room.”

  “Well, like you said, she’s ten, so, I won’t hold my breath,” Calloway said.

  “Don’t discredit a ten-year-old,” Knox was quick to respond, and his words made her think of Emily and Liam’s nine-year-old daughter. “He could be our shooter, which means he made a soft approach last night. Maybe made himself known to her.”

  “Then made his move today,” Mendez said.

  Knox nodded. “What can I do to help?”

  “How about you work the threats with Calloway and Foster?” Mendez suggested.

  Of course.

  Knox glanced at Calloway and then at Adriana. “Sure.”

  Mendez motioned for them to leave the office and step into a room two doors down.

  She removed her blazer and tossed it onto the couch alongside the round eight-seater table.

  “The first stack contains threats deemed the most critical. They were checked out by Bennett’s team prior to the rally,” Mendez explained. “The other stacks are the ones they deemed non-critical.”

  “That’s a lot of threats,” Calloway commented.

  “Any handwritten correspondence? The Secret Service works with pen manufacturers to embed ink tags into pens to help ID—”

  “We handed those off to Rodriguez when he came up before you arrived. He’s got someone on that,” Mendez answered.

  “Okay. Good.” She smiled.

  “I’ll go make us some coffee,” Calloway said and followed Mendez out of the room.

  Knox pressed both palms to his cheeks and slowly dragged them down his face. “This should be fun.”

  “You sure you want to do this?” It couldn’t be easy reading anonymous comments from people who hated his family, even a dad he wasn’t all that close to.

  “We gotta find the gunman. Hopefully, Sarah’s still alive.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you? Why would he let Sarah live unless maybe he’s keeping her as an insurance plan?” She hated saying it aloud, but it was the truth. The horrible truth.

  He dropped into a seat at the table and clutched the chair arms. “No, you’re right. I don’t believe she’s still alive.” His lids lowered. “But it sucks. I don’t want someone to die because of my dad’s political ambitions.”

  “You can’t look at it that way.” She slid into the chair across the table from him. “But we’ll find whoever did this. We’ll get justice for Sarah.” She pulled a stack closer and began reading over the papers. “Your dad always get threats like this?” she asked a few seconds later.

  “When my dad first became a senator, not everyone was happy about it. We dealt with a lot of bullshit.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Was there even more he’d been keeping from her over the years?

  “Why would I? It was an ugliness I didn’t feel like sharing.”

  “But this is me—”

  “Pity,” Knox snapped out. “I didn’t want it from you.”

  Was he kidding? Pity. She knew a thing or two about that being the kid of a mom who was shot and killed. She’d struggled to even touch candy for months because her mom had been buying it for her moments before she’d died. “I’m not—”

  “You are.” He softly sighed. “Besides, we met my senior year in high school. Dad got elected when I was thirteen. Threats had become so normal, at that point, I probably didn’t even think about it anymore.”

  She’d been a sophomore when they’d met. He’d been this shining light—this popular basketball all-star.

  She hadn’t thought he’d noticed her, but one party changed everything.

  Her fingers feathered lightly over the inside of her right wrist—to her one tattoo.

  His brown eyes, flecked with gold, snatched her focus and held on tight. Sitting across the table, he held her captive at that moment.

  Time encapsulated them, and they were no longer in the room, but back at the party the night they first met. To the night they shared their only kiss.

  She took a steadying breath and blinked back to the present. Knox still held her eyes, the same look on his face he’d given her that night when she was fifteen.

  But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Most days, he still saw her as that girl—someone he had to protect.

  “I lied back then,” she said as if he’d been walking down memory lane along with her and could follow her line of thought.

  “Lied about what?”

  “When I told you the night we met that I had experience.” Heat touched her neck and worked north. “I hadn’t even kissed a boy.”

  He arched a brow as if waiting for her to continue.

  “You were my first kiss.” The admission felt good after keeping it from him for going on twenty years. Guess she had a few secrets, too.

  “I know.” He smiled, and the tightness he’d been holding in his face dissolved.

  “You could tell? Was it that bad?” The warmth of embarrassment heated her skin.

  He leaned back in his seat and let go of the paper he’d been holding. “Of course not.”

  “So?”

  “Remember when we went camping the summer after my sophomore year at Duke? We were fairly shit-faced, and you admitted it to me.”

  “I would’ve remembered that.” She hadn’t been that drunk, had she? She remembered wanting him that night, though.

  “Well, you said it.” His pupils absorbed some of the brown of his eyes, and it had her skin pebbling.

  “I, uh, don’t know why I brought up the kiss.” Or anything else tonight for that matter. She closed her eyes, heat still in her face—hell, everywhere. A warmth in places there shouldn’t have been, especially not now.

  “Did you know I used to walk out of my way to get to my seventh-period class so I could catch a glimpse of you at your locker?”

  Her palms slipped beneath the table to her lap. “What?”

  “You’d transferred a week after school started—the designated new girl—and there was something about you. I was drawn to you. I tried to stay away from you, but then at the party after seeing you drop that idiot to the ground who came on to you, I couldn’t help myself.”

  Maybe Knox was wrong earlier, and there was indeed a full moon tonight. “Yeah, I was a kid on scholarship.” Attending a school for the richer-than-rich. “I didn’t fit in.”

  Calloway strolled into the room, balancing three cups of coffee between his hands, killing the momen
t. “Ready to get started?”

  Story of her life when it came to Knox. Fate had done everything in its power to prevent her from crossing the friendship line every time an opportunity arose.

  Knox took the coffee Calloway extended and tipped his head in thanks. Things were less awkward between them than she’d anticipated, which was good. Knox didn’t see Calloway as a threat to her safety, which meant he probably didn’t really see Calloway at all.

  Knox shifted his focus back to the threats in front of him. He’d hit the reset button. She needed to as well.

  “What’s your father’s story, anyway?” Calloway asked thirty minutes later.

  “You don’t know my background? What kind of agent are you?” Knox asked in a light, semi-playful voice. Another surprise. Had Calloway spiked his coffee?

  Calloway knew Knox’s background. It was their job to know. So, he was either making small talk or fishing for the kind of info an agent wouldn’t find in a file.

  “Well.” Knox shifted a few papers off to the side into the elimination pile. “My dad served in the military, met my mom in D.C. while she was working for the State Department, and then after he got out of the service, he inherited some money.” He scratched at his neck. “He invested in a few early dot com start-ups. The nineties and the Internet . . . got lucky. He later decided to serve his country again, but this time in politics.”

  “How’d your mom feel about him first running for senator?” Calloway asked.

  “My dad was going to run for office when I was younger. Nine, maybe? My mom was against it.” He gripped the chair arms, clearly not comfortable about digging into his past. “Couple of years later he ran for senator, anyway. I guess she decided to support him.”

  “And you never liked the life, I take it? Is that why you quit med school and joined the Navy?” Calloway asked.

  Knox straightened in his seat. “I needed to do something different, and I’m not a fan of politicians.”

  “Including your dad?” Calloway probed.