Torn Loyalties. Vicki Hinze
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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’ promotions safe.
Serial killer Gary Crawford had supposedly killed David Pace. Beth Crane had been deemed the victim of a home invasion until Crawford’s apprehension, when he’d confessed to killing them both. But Madison wasn’t buying it. Serial killers confessed to everything to embellish their legacy and incite fear in others. Beth Crane and, three years later, David Pace had exposed the security breach by asking Talbot for confirmation of the Nest’s existence, and Madison was sure that’s how they’d ended up dead. “You know no one here would—”
Grant leaned back against the counter, and crossed his arms. “What I know is that if you get caught out there spying, you’ll lose more than your career.”
The finality in Grant’s tone signaled he was finished talking about this, and so was she. How could she convince him with no more proof than her instincts? Her challenge was that simple.
And that complex.
* * *
Madison showered, then dressed in black slacks, a teal sweater and flats. She left her hair down, applied lotion to her wind-chafed skin and then returned to the kitchen.
Grant sat at the table drinking a cup of coffee from a camouflage-print mug. He cast her a weary, pensive look but said nothing.
Her favorite Minnie Mouse mug sat on the counter beside the coffeepot—he noticed and remembered everything about her, even her preferred coffee mug—and she filled it, then joined him at the table. Did he remember details about her because of professional or personal reasons? His profiling training or a genuine affection for her? Unsure, she sipped, then said, “You’re pretty steamed at me, aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “I’m worried. I want you to promise me you’ll stay away from the Nest.”
“I can’t do that.” She wouldn’t even stay away if she trusted him with all her heart. “I’ve made my reasons clear. I’m stalled on my case until I find new information or until Talbot releases the satellite images under the Freedom of Information Act.” Hopefully, he’d do that before she died of old age. She’d requested them two months ago, during the Christmas cruise she and Grant had taken with a group of friends.
Grant knew as well as she did that those images of David Pace’s exploded car would prove whether or not it had been placed where it had been found before or after the explosion, which would prove whether or not David Pace had been in it when it had blown up. His medical file was sealed. Why? Right after Gary Crawford’s arrest and confessions, she’d received a tip that Pace’s body hadn’t been burned. Why that tip? Why to her? People didn’t take those kinds of reporting risks without reason.
Grant lifted a hand. “The man died from natural causes. An embolism. You saw the coroner’s report.”
“So did you. It was a lie. It had to be a lie, or the embolism had to be induced.” Grant couldn’t be buying into that report. “There were no signs of anything like that in his medical history—nothing that points to there being any problem. He was young and healthy.” And Grant