Operation Power Play. Justine Davis
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done the moment he’d said it, but somehow trying to correct it to Sloan’s aunt seemed as if it would only make it worse.
“Sloan?” Rafe asked.
“Sloan Burke. The niece,” he said, hoping the short answer would suffice.
Rafe went very still. Brett felt the change as much as saw it.
“Cutter led you to Sloan Burke? The Sloan Burke?”
Whatever was coming next, Brett didn’t want to hear it. But he knew he had to ask. “The Sloan Burke?”
“Wife of Chief Petty Officer Jason Burke?”
Brett absorbed it like a punch to the gut. He’d been right. She was married. The involuntary and instantaneous recoil at the words told him just how foolish he’d gotten. And in such a short time it was almost embarrassing. What the hell was he thinking?
“I don’t know,” he managed.
It shouldn’t have meant anything. She was a woman he’d spoken to for maybe fifteen minutes and seen a couple of times before. It meant nothing. He wasn’t in the mood or the market for anything more, hadn’t been since—
“About thirty-five now?”
“I... Yes.”
As if he’d just remembered he had it, Rafe pulled out his phone and began to key in a search. After a moment he selected one of the results, tapped the screen again, expanded an item and finally held it up for Brett to see.
It was a photograph. Of Sloan. Sitting at a table, in front of a microphone, rows of people sitting behind her.
Something stirred inside him, not because she was lovely in that picture, because in fact she was not. Her hair was pulled into a severe knot at the back of her head, she looked pale, and above all she looked tired. Exhausted.
She looked fragile, and it made his stomach knot.
She’s married, he told himself. It was none of his business. He scanned the other people in the photo, wondering if one of the men was her husband. And how he could have let her get to this point.
“What is this?” he asked finally.
“Sloan Burke,” Rafe said, in a tone Brett could describe only as admiring, “is a crusader. Of the best kind. Ask anyone who’s in the service or has been, and I’ll bet he’s heard of her. And if she needed help, anyone who’s been in boots on the ground would come running.”
Rafe glanced at the image again before he blacked out the home screen and slipped the phone back in his pocket.
“Quinn, Teague and me included,” he said, then added, “She’s exactly the kind of person Foxworth was founded for.”
Brett told himself he would be better off not asking. Not knowing. He would just do this little thing, maybe help straighten out a paperwork glitch, and then slip back into his quiet, unrippled life. And Sloan would go back to hers, with her husband.
He asked anyway. “What’s the story?”
Rafe fell silent. Studied Brett again, silently. At last he said, “You sure you want to know?”
I’m sure I’d be better off if I didn’t. “Tell me.”
One of Rafe’s dark brows arched upward, and Brett knew he hadn’t missed the indirectness of the answer. But after a moment he seemed to decide.
“All right. But come on inside. I’m going to need fuel. How do you feel about leftover pizza?”
“Like we’re related,” Brett said drily, then chuckled as Cutter jumped to his feet.
“So does he,” Rafe said. “Let’s go.”
Brett followed the two toward the main Foxworth building, telling himself he still had time to change his mind, to run before he found out something about Sloan that would make it even harder to walk away.
How the hell had he gotten into such a tangle so fast?
Even as he thought it, Cutter looked back over his shoulder at him. He couldn’t even blame the dog. Cutter had only led him there, after all. He was the one who had jumped in with both feet.
And apparently left his common sense behind.
Brett slipped Cutter the last bite of pizza, more bread than anything. The dog took it delicately, glanced at the table as if to make sure there was none left, then settled down for a nap with a happy sigh.
“Got what you wanted, dog?” he asked with a wry grin.
“He’s good at that,” Rafe said.
“So he wanted me, and/or Foxworth, involved in this. Which means...what?”
“That it’s likely more than it looks like on the surface.”
Brett sighed. Somehow he’d known that would be the answer. Steeling himself, he finally asked.
“So what’s her story?”
“Jason was a navy SEAL. Killed in action in Afghanistan a few years ago.”
“He’s...dead?” Brett hated that, after the shock, his first real feeling was relief. That it was followed instantly by pain for what Sloan must have gone through didn’t ameliorate his first snap reaction. This was an American hero they were talking about, and it shamed him that this was his gut reaction, even if it was more about Sloan than her husband.
Rafe nodded. “Officials put out a report on what happened. Sloan knew it wasn’t true.”
“How?”
“Burke had told her what was really going on. They’d talked on Skype the night before, and she had the truth. And had recorded the convo, as she always did. Just in case.”
Just in case. Three words that made some marriages different than all others. Military marriages. And police marriages.
Brett sucked in a deep breath. “What did she do?”
“She did it right. Jumped through all the hoops, worked her way up the chain of command. But when she hit the top, the brass wouldn’t budge from their official version. So she went to the politicians. Started here, all the way up to the governor. Got nothing.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Brett said with a grimace.
“I think she hoped the governor at least would listen. He was newly elected then but under a cloud, and she thought maybe he’d want to establish his legitimacy with something big.”
Brett’s brow knit. “I remember that. His opponent just gave up.”
Rafe nodded. “Evans wasn’t a professional politician, and Ogilvie’s party machine came at him hard. Rumor was he had some sort of breakdown. He pulled out and just vanished. Left the state entirely.”
Politics, Brett thought with a grimace.
“So...what happened?” he asked. “With Sloan, I mean.”
Rafe studied him for a moment, and Brett wondered uncomfortably what he was seeing. “She widened her net. Figured it would take a politician to fight politicians. Finally found the right senator, one from Jason’s home state who had served himself, to step in.”
“Then that picture, that was at some sort of official hearing?”
“Very official. On Capitol Hill. Her testimony was the tipping point. She was like a force of nature. Every service guy I know was glued to it. They all knew she was fighting for the truth. For one of their own.” Rafe let out a compressed breath. “She showed more nerve and courage under fire than all of those suits and most of those top-of-the-heap guys