Chapter Two

      As Rick passed through Maryville, heading east, he checked his phone to make sure it was still working. He’d left a message earlier to let Jesse know about his change in plans, but so far, his brother hadn’t called back for any details.

       Not that Rick had any details to give him.

       Thurlow Gap didn’t even show up on the map he’d looked up on his phone, but the drawling local who’d answered the phone the second time gave him directions from Knoxville. He’d also shared what he knew about the woman who’d answered Rick’s earlier call. She was a freelance artist named Amanda Caldwell. At least, that was the name she was going by now. But after hearing her voice on the phone, Rick knew better.

       She was the woman he’d known as Tara Brady.

       Tara had been a dry-witted, leggy blonde working out of the U.S. embassy in Tablis, Kaziristan. He’d been in the Kaziristan capital supporting a joint force investigating allegations of American citizens of Kaziri descent fighting with anti-government rebels north of Tablis.

       Tara had never told him she was CIA, but he knew it, and she knew he knew it. It should have kept their interactions limited and circumspect—mercs and spooks didn’t get involved.

       But he and Tara had.

       Their affair had been brief but torrid. Lingering glances led to stolen moments of intimacy, then a few nights of frantic, amazing sex in a flea-bitten hotel on the outskirts of the city. He’d never fallen for a woman so fast or so hard in his life.

       But of course, it had to come to an end.

       He put the memories out of his mind and concentrated on the winding drive east through the rolling foothills of the Appalachian chain. Ahead, the expansive cloud-tipped peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park spread before him in hues of jade, turquoise and sapphire.

       Tara loved mountains. She’d hoped one day to cross the Timrhan Mountains, the craggy, unforgiving border between Kaziristan and Russia to the north. He’d laughed at her bravado. She’d told him not to underestimate her.

       That had been their last night together.

       He reached the Thurlow Gap city limits around four-thirty. Though the sun was still high in the sky, nightfall hours away, the town already looked buttoned up for the evening. The gas station was still open, but the only person around was a buxom woman behind the cashier’s counter near the front window.

       Rick refilled the Charger’s tank before approaching the woman—people often responded more openly to nosy questions if you asked them while handing them money. He added a package of cinnamon breath mints to the tab and asked her if she knew Amanda Caldwell.

       “Who wants to know?” the woman asked in a whiskeyed rasp, eyeing him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.

       “I’m an old friend. Rick Cooper.”

       The woman’s brow creased further. “Can’t say she ever mentioned you.”

       “She called me earlier today, but I didn’t ask for her address. I was in the area so I thought I’d drop by to visit.”

       “She don’t get many visitors.”

       Not surprising, Rick thought. “No significant other?”

       The woman gave a loud snort. “Hell, the girl don’t even have a dog keepin’ her company.”

       He couldn’t quell a glimmer of satisfaction at the woman’s words, though shame followed fast on its heels. What right did he have to wish her a life of solitude? When his hand was forced, he’d chosen a mission over her. She’d made a similar choice. Things between them ended abruptly, and apparently she’d never looked back. He hadn’t, either.

       At least not that he’d ever let anyone see.

       His coming here to talk to Tara—Amanda—wasn’t personal, even now. He just wanted to know why a CIA master spy like Alexander Quinn was pulling his strings where she was concerned.

       The clerk inclined her head. “Come to think of it, I reckon maybe she’d like seein’ an old friend, at that. Especially a good-lookin’ fella like you.” Her lips quirking, she lifted a sun-leathered arm and pointed down the road. “She lives in a house a few blocks down Dewberry Road. On the left. The house is set back a bit, but you really can’t miss it—she has a big black mailbox with the number 212 on it.” She winked at him. “Tell her she can thank me later.”

       Rick smiled and thanked her, heading out to his car. As he slid behind the wheel of the Charger, his cell phone rang. It was Jesse. He considered not answering but finally thumbed the connector. “Hey, Jesse.”

       “Why the hell are you heading north?”

       “I can’t tell you that yet.”

       “You can’t tell me?” Irritation edged his brother’s drawl.

       “Not yet. But it’s important or I’d be on my way back to the office.” Rick started the Charger.

       The pause on Jesse’s end was thick with annoyance. “You may be family, but that doesn’t mean you can keep pushing the envelope quite so hard, Rick.”

       “And you know as well as I do that some things happen we have to deal with on the q.t., Jess. This is one of them. I’ll explain everything later, okay?”

       Jesse sighed. “Stay in touch.” He hung up.

       Rick checked to see if he was safe to pull out. A black Toyota Land Cruiser turned into the gas station and pulled up at the pump behind him, leaving him in the clear.

       As he waited for traffic to open up enough for him to take a left onto Dewberry Road, his gaze drifted back to the pumps, where a sandy-haired man wearing a black T-shirt and black trousers unfolded himself from the Land Cruiser and reached for the pump handle. He met Rick’s glance briefly before his gaze settled on the gas pump’s fuel gauge as it rang up his purchase.

       Something about the sandy-haired man dinged