Torn Loyalties. Vicki Hinze

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СКАЧАТЬ at her. “How did they finally get you out?”

      Her heart twisted. “Did you not hear me? They did nothing but forget me and leave me to rot in a four-by-six cell.” She hiked her chin. “I got myself out. I watched, waited and learned. They had me working in the kitchen, which included going to market. I studied everything, watched everyone, looking for weaknesses and information I could use. There was one guard who was particularly slow on the uptake. He’d escort me to the market now and then. One day when he did, I spotted an opening, and I took it. I escaped.”

      “Totally on your own?”

      “Totally.” The bitterness at that surged in her. Mingled with the anger, it proved too strong to fight. “It took me four months to make my way back to the States.

      “No one would officially help me, Grant. I didn’t exist.”

      “So you had no money, no papers, and yet you managed to get back home?”

      “Money can be earned and papers bought.” It hadn’t been easy. Parts of the ordeal had been horrifically dangerous and difficult. Getting out of Pakistan had been a nightmare, and the ship... She shuddered just thinking of the ship. Old and moldy—she was posing as a young man and working as a deckhand—it had been awful. And yet she had prayed through it and made it. “I prepositioned funds and papers but it took time and finesse to get to them. Yet that’s not the point. The point is that for all the time I was held captive and trying to get home—until the moment I knocked on my parents’ front door and my mother answered, my parents thought I was dead.”

      Never would Madison forget the ravages of grief in them, their utter shock at seeing her, or their overwhelming relief of her still being alive and coming home to them.

      “I can imagine their relief.” He frowned. “You’re cold.” Reaching over, he adjusted the heater to take out the chill. “So what happened when you showed up at headquarters?”

      “They gave me a Purple Heart and offered me a promotion with a stateside slot.”

      “You kept the medal but departed the fix.”

      She nodded. “No way was I staying active duty after they abandoned me. But the medal was different.”

      “You’d earned it.”

      It’d taken months for her physical wounds to heal. But the emotional ones cut even deeper and some remained raw. “I did earn it, but no.” She let him see the steel in her gaze. “I still believe in the spirit it embodies. I trust that spirit and the medal reminds me that there are others out there like me.”

      “That’s why you opened Lost, Inc. To bring the lost home.”

      She nodded. Now maybe he’d understand why she couldn’t just drop the Pace and Crane murders.

      “I’m sorry you went through that.” Grant clasped her hand.

      “Me, too.” She gave him a bittersweet smile. It was a time of trials but also a time that solidified her faith. She’d done the impossible then, and no one knew better than she that she couldn’t have done it alone, though she was still working at not being bitter that God hadn’t spared her from the trial.

      “I understand why you want the truth on the murders, Madison, but I believe you already have it. What I still don’t understand is you going out to the Nest.” Grant squeezed her hand. “I mean, what can you learn by staring at the outside of the facility that will prove anything?”

      Madison stiffened, and bit her tongue. Speak it in anger, regret it in calm. She’d eaten enough words in her war of wits and wills with him already. “If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t have to go out there, would I?” She left the car.

      The slammed car door signaled Grant to follow her.

      She opened the office door, turned off the alarm, flipped on the lights and headed upstairs to the kitchen. Hot coffee would be good.

      “I’ll do that.” He took the coffeepot out of her hands. “You go get cleaned up before anyone else gets here. Out there all night, you’re probably half-frozen. A hot shower will thaw you out.”

      Why did he do that? Just when she wanted to bark his head off, he turned around and did something thoughtful and caring. “Thank you.” She walked to the door, then paused and looked back at him, shrugging out of his coat.

      Tall and broad shouldered, he was in great shape and obviously had kept up his physical training regimen. Her stomach clutched. Looking at him did crazy things to her. It always had. From the very first time she’d laid eyes on him, without a word or an ounce of effort, he’d begun chipping away at the protective barriers she’d studiously built around her heart. She resented that but seemed helpless to stop it. Still, she was determined. Caring about a man she couldn’t trust was absurdly foolish, and she was not a foolish woman.

      She shoved back the black hoodie covering her hair. Long silver-blond strands fell loose down her back. “Are you ever going to tell me why you really followed me?”

      “I did tell you.”

      “No, you gave me a line about me being edgy and you being worried.”

      His square jaw tightened. “It wasn’t a line.” He draped his coat on the brass tree, poured water into the coffeemaker, flipped the switch and then turned to answer her. “I followed you because I don’t want you to end up dead.”

      What exactly did he mean? He’d followed her to the Nest, but he hadn’t interceded. He’d waited in her car. So where did he sense danger to her? His expression had never been more sober or serious, or more closed, giving nothing away. “You agree with me, then? You think Commander Talbot and Vice Commander Dayton are involved in a cover-up, too?”

      Grant frowned and hedged. “I think if you get caught spying on the Nest, you’re going to get shot.”

      Madison frowned back at him. “How can you ignore Talbot and Dayton when you know they’re trying their best to blame someone at my agency for the security breach?”

      David Pace and Beth Crane had been reporters for WKME, a local TV station. Separately, three years apart, they’d gone to Talbot to confirm tips from sources they’d been given about the Nest. The facility buried in the woods in the center of a military installation so highly classified that even those assigned to the base didn’t know the Nest was there—that Nest. Talbot had denied David Pace’s and Beth Crane’s tips and in short order, both had been murdered. But their tips had been accurate. And that meant someone definitely had breached security.

      “I’m not ignoring anything or anyone.”

      But he was. Commander Talbot was up for a congressional appointment. Vice Commander Dayton was up for Talbot’s job. A security breach by someone under their command could ax those promotions. In short, Talbot and/or Dayton needed a scapegoat and they intended to find one at Lost, Inc.

      “They have to look at everyone in your agency, Madison, and you know it.”

      Lost, Inc., was a logical, rich target. Everyone working for her was former military and had served at least one assignment at the Nest. None of them would breach security, but as they were no longer under Talbot’s or Dayton’s command, any one of them would serve the purpose of taking the fall and keeping the commanders’ СКАЧАТЬ