One Tough Marine. Paula Graves

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      So—mercenaries? Private security operatives? If they were working in an official capacity, they wouldn’t have had to sneak around. They’d have simply taken her into custody.

      Abby paused at Mrs. Tamburello’s door, taking a moment to slow her rapid breathing. She didn’t want to scare Stevie. It was going to be bad enough taking him back to their trashed apartment. She knocked on the door and stepped back, smoothing her hair and praying she looked calmer than she felt.

      Mrs. Tamburello opened the door with a harried smile. “I was about to call you to see where you’d gotten to,” she said, waving Abby inside the warm apartment.

      “Mama!” Stevie met her before she’d made it two feet inside, wrapping his little arms around her knees. She swung him up into her arms, squeezing him tightly, her pulse pounding in her head. He smelled like peanut butter and chocolate milk. She fought the urge to cry again.

      “Traffic was crazy,” she murmured against his silky hair, smiling apologetically at Mrs. Tamburello. “Was he a handful?”

      “Not at all.” Mrs. Tamburello flashed Stevie an affectionate smile. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you, Stephen?”

      Stevie nodded, his gray eyes solemn. “I maded kitty.”

      Mrs. Tamburello chuckled and retrieved a piece of paper from the coffee table. It was a scribble of bright colors, vaguely in the shape of…something. The oranges and yellows suggested her two-year-old son had tried his hand at capturing Mrs. Tamburello’s scruffy yellow tabby in crayon.

      Abby took the drawing from Mrs. Tamburello and shifted Stevie to her left hip. “Thank you, Mrs. Tamburello. I’m taking the next couple of days off, so you’ll have an extra-long weekend.” Remembering the words of her captors, she added, “Maybe you should drive up to see your sister in Temecula.”

      Mrs. Tamburello smiled, obviously pleased that Abby had remembered that detail about her family. “Perhaps I will. She has a brand-new grandbaby, you know.”

      “Yes, I know,” Abby said, hoping she’d take the suggestion. The two men in her apartment meant business. Abby didn’t doubt they’d hurt Mrs. Tamburello to make their point.

      She dug in her pocket for Mrs. Tamburello’s salary for the week, adding an extra ten. Guilt money for putting the woman in danger, she supposed grimly as she made her way back down the stairs with Stevie clinging to her back like a little monkey.

      He eyed the mess in the living room for half a second before tugging at her hair from behind. “I hungwy.”

      She swung him over her shoulders into her arms, looking into his big gray eyes. The quizzical look on his sweet face brought back a rush of poignant memories.

      Large, gentle hands, cradling her face. A deep, warm voice, still lightly graced with the liquid drawl of his native South, whispering words of comfort and passion.

      Realization washed over her, producing relief and dread in equal parts. Luke. Of course. If anyone had known Matt Chandler’s secrets, it had been his best friend, Luke Cooper. But was Luke even in San Diego anymore? The last she’d heard, almost a year ago, he’d resigned his commission from the Marine Corps shortly after he returned from overseas. Maybe one of her old friends from her Marine wife days would know where to find him.

      “Tell you what, scooter,” she said to Stevie, her voice settling into the familiar Texas twang of her youth, “how about we go to McDonald’s for dinner?” While Mama makes an important phone call, she added silently.

      Stevie patted her face with delight. “McDonald’s! McDonald’s!”

      Promising herself to buy him yogurt instead of fries, she lowered him to the floor and led him outside to her car.

      MALKIN SECURITY International was one of San Diego’s most prestigious security firms, with a reputation for complete discretion and a track record of successful security operations in over fifty global hot spots. Their proximity to four Southern California military bases was no coincidence; they recruited heavily from the Marine and Naval bases and air stations in the area when they were looking for new employees.

      Luke Cooper had worked at MSI for almost a year now, ever since he hung up his combat boots for life as a civilian. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as the recruiting brochure had made it out to be, but if he’d wanted a nonstop adrenaline rush, he’d have stuck with the Marine Corps.

      And working at Malkin also afforded him a certain level of personal security he couldn’t afford to do without these days.

      His current assignment had come to an end late that afternoon, when he had turned over all of his investigative materials to the police department in Rancho Santa Fe. They’d taken into custody a relentless stalker who’d been terrorizing a banker’s nineteen-year-old daughter, and Luke had earned MSI—and himself—a hefty bonus for providing actionable evidence for the legal proceedings.

      The girl had been nice enough, if pampered within an inch of her life, and the stalker had been escalating well past annoying into dangerous territory. Plus, Luke had been able to spend a lot of time at the banker’s ranch, escorting the daughter on rambling horseback rides. As far as security jobs went, he’d seen worse.

      At least nobody was shooting at him this time.

      He filed the last of his paperwork around 7:00 p.m. and took a moment to scan the newspaper he’d bought that afternoon on the way into the office. For the past week and a half, there’d been rumblings that federal investigators were close to an indictment against a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization for illegal arms trading.

      The articles had yet to identify the NGO by name, but Luke had a pretty good idea. The investigation of Voices for Villages had been the last thing he’d been working on before his retirement from the Marine Corps.

      Still nothing official, he noted, folding the paper and tossing it in the trash. As he took the employee exit stairs down to the parking deck, he wondered what the snag was in making the case against Voices for Villages. People had died getting the evidence that implicated the NGO in a deadly drugs-for-arms racket.

      He reached his car, a gunmetal-gray Ford Mustang, unlocked it and slid behind the wheel. It ran like a dream and turned more than a few female—and male—heads when he drove down the streets of San Diego, but recently he’d been thinking about buying a truck. Most of his brothers drove trucks back home in Chickasaw County, Alabama, he remembered, smiling. He guessed his kid sister, Hannah, did, too, now that she’d married a cowboy.

      Guilt tugged at him, erasing his smile. He’d missed Hannah’s wedding last year, although his mother had made sure to send him a couple of flash drives full of pictures from the event. He’d told his sister he was too involved in a case to leave San Diego even for a few days, but it had been a lie. There wasn’t a case in the world that could’ve kept him from watching his baby sister get married.

      Only Eladio Cordero could do that.

      He shoved away the thought of Cordero with brutal determination. There wasn’t anything he could do about Cordero’s threat until the South American drug lord finally decided to make his move. If U.S. law enforcement or the Sanselmo authorities could have located the elusive thug, he’d be dead already. Worrying about it only kept him from focusing on the things he had to deal with day to day.

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