Fiance by Friday (30 page)

“When do you think you’ll return?”

“A few days at most.” And because he had to give her something should he not return, he added. “If I’m not back in a week…Chuck will contact Blake.”

The smile she wore fell. “You’ll be back.”

Or die trying.

Blake stood beside his best friend Carter and watched through the mirrored glass while Dean and Jim interrogated the poor teen with a crush on Karen. Not ten minutes into the questioning, Blake knew they were looking in the wrong place.

“He’s not our man.”

Carter shook his head. “I agree.”

Juan finally caught on to the problem in the next room and started to get upset. “Is someone trying to hurt Miss Jones? Is that what you think I’d do?”

“We don’t know, Juan. Why don’t you tell us?” Jim asked.

“She’s like our mom.”

“A mom?” Dean asked.

“OK, maybe not a mom. More like a hot aunt, but she’s like family. If someone’s trying to hurt her you should be out there protecting her instead of talking to me.”

Blake turned away from the mirror. “We’re one step ahead of you, kid.”

Carter shook his head. “Waste of time. Maybe we’ll get lucky and catch this guy on a monitor once they’re up and running.”

“What a cluster. Wish to hell Neil was here.” Then he would have one less thing to worry about.

Dean walked out of the interrogation room and into theirs. “It’s not him.”

“We figured.”

“Are you ready to go through Neil’s things?”

Blake hated invading his privacy like that, but what choice did he leave? He ran a hand through his hair.

“Gotta be clues somewhere as to where he is,” Carter said.

Blake pushed out of the room. “Let’s get this over with.”

Dean walked them out of the station. “I’ll be along in an hour. I have a couple of leads I want to follow up on first.”

On the way back to Malibu, Blake gave Carter some good news. “Samantha’s pregnant.”

Carter swiveled in his seat and removed his sunglasses. “No shit.”

“We’ve been talking about it for a while.” Blake pulled onto the freeway and merged into the crowded California interstate.

“Sounds like you’ve done more than talk about it.”

Blake smiled, remembering the not talking nights with his wife. “Morning sickness is kicking her ass. I wanna get all this shit wrapped up and get back to her, Carter. It’s the only reason I’m going ahead with searching Neil’s personal space.”

“I get it. Neil’s a private guy. But when you run off and think a murderer’s on your tail there’s no telling what’s going on. Neil wouldn’t expect you to sit back and do nothing.”

“He’d expect me to trust him.”

Carter placed his sunglasses back over his eyes. “If anything was panning out to suspect foul play toward Gwen or Neil then it would be a hell of a lot easier to trust the man.”

Back at his estate, Blake and Carter let themselves into Neil’s home. The house was a guest quarters that mimicked the main house in style and structure. The sparsely furnished inside space suited the needs of a bachelor. One room was dedicated to monitoring the main house and Gwen and Karen’s place in Tarzana. The other was a bedroom with the bare minimum of furniture. Although the small kitchen had everything it needed to feed a family, the only things that looked used were the refrigerator and the microwave.

There was a leather couch and a recliner along with a flat screen television hung on the wall of the living room.

“Where do we begin?”

“I’ll start in his office,” Blake told Carter. “You look in his bedroom.”

Carter headed around the corner and into Neil’s room. “What are we looking for exactly?”

“Anything personal. Pictures. Addresses to a friend, family.”

“Aren’t his parents dead?”

Blake sat in Neil’s chair and opened the top drawer of his desk. “Yeah…but I remember him talking about a grandmother.” The drawer held the usual suspects. Pens, notepads, old bills, and receipts for miscellaneous items.

“If Neil thought someone was after him, I don’t think he’d lead whoever that is to his family.”

“True, but the grandmother might know where Neil would go to keep Gwen safe and capture the bad guy.”

“You think that’s what he’s done?”

“He sure as hell wouldn’t run forever.” The next drawer held files of equipment purchase dates and software updates. There were employee files in print, which Blake wondered about. Why print out any of these things? Why not keep them on a computer hard drive?

As his mind moved in that direction, he turned on the computer monitors and waited for them to power up. The wall of monitors lit the room with images throughout the Malibu house and Tarzana. Blake clicked on the main screen and shifted between images. Each one that he highlighted opened the audio of the room it was in. Inside the Malibu house, Mary was in the kitchen humming.

The phone on Neil’s desk rang, and Blake reached to pick it up. “Hello?”

“It’s Dillon, Mr. Harrison. I noticed someone on Neil’s channel watching. Is he back?”

“No. It’s just me.”

“Oh. Any word yet?”

“None. Nothing from your end?”

“Nothing. Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Harrison.”

Before Dillon hung up, Blake stopped him. “Wait, Dillon. Before Neil left…was there anything going on that struck you as odd? Something unlike him?”

“He…he was a little more edgy. Not sure that isn’t his normal, though. He always worked long days and didn’t ask me to take over much while you and Mrs. Harrison were away.”

None of that sounded out of character for Neil. “Any luck on finding the bugs he talked about?”

“I wish I did. There was definite interference at the Tarzana house. It didn’t feel right to me.”

“Like it was planted.”

“I wish I could say that for certain. It just wasn’t right.”

Everything felt odd. “Thank you, Dillon.”

“No problem.”

Blake hung up the phone and continued to search the desk. There wasn’t anything personal there. Just piles of work-related invoices and bills.

Carter walked into the room with a picture in his hand. “Found this.”

It was an 8½ by 10 photograph of what looked like Neil and some of his marine friends.

“Neil looks thicker. I didn’t think that was possible.”

Carter laughed. “You ever see this before?”

“No. He doesn’t share that part of his past. Except that one time in the bar.”

“You think these are the guys that died?”

Blake took the photograph and looked at each face. His gaze popped over to Neil’s and another one that looked familiar but he couldn’t place. “Could be. Not all of them died. Just a few.”
But which ones?
“Have you thought of calling in a favor and finding out what the Raven thing is all about?”

Carter leaned against the desk. “There are plenty of secret missions done every year overseas. The military doesn’t take it kindly to have their top-secret missions blabbed about to just anyone. Although I’m the governor, I’m one of those ‘just anyones’ at this point. If we’ve exhausted all our resources, and haven’t heard from Neil or Gwen, then I’ll make the call. I don’t want to stir up more trouble and have Neil on the tail end of a court martial because he’s overly paranoid. We owe him that much.”

Blake agreed.

“Knock, knock?” Dean let himself into Neil’s house.

“We’re in here.”

Dean fanned himself. “Damn tired of the heat,” he said. “You guys find anything yet?”

Blake handed the picture to Dean and shrugged. “A picture and a bunch of bills.”

“I keep forgetting how big Neil is,” Dean said.

“Not a lot riles him.”

Dean dropped the picture on the desk. “Well, we got a break.”

Blake sat taller. “What?”

“Looks like Neil broke down and used a credit card.”

“Where?”

“Colorado Springs.”

“I thought Karen said something about Canada,” Carter said in obvious confusion.

“Well unless they flew to Colorado, in which case we would have known about before now, they weren’t anywhere near the border.” Dean’s smug smile didn’t sit well with Blake.

“What are you
not
saying?”

“Wanna guess what Neil used his credit card on?”

“Hotel?” Carter asked.

“Car rental?” Blake suggested.

Dean shook his head.

“Ammunition?”

Dean smiled and stared at Blake. “A very large, very expensive, diamond ring.”

The blood in Blake’s head dropped once again. “What?”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Before Neil left the base he confiscated, stocked, purchased, or otherwise pilfered anything he and Rick would need to catch Raven and hold out while waiting for him. The marines taught him everything he needed to know about surviving on his own and capturing a criminal. The only difference was not knowing with whom he was dealing.

Maybe Rick could shed light on that. Between the two of them, they’d work it out.

Still, as Neil made his way up the mountain, he kept an eye on his rearview mirror and worried about what he’d left behind. Chuck would take care of her. Gwen was safe. His wife was safe.

The smile on his face spread.
His wife.

He made it to his camp long before the sky darkened. He parked his car far from the campsite to set up his second base, and to map out his fallback location. A knoll overlooked his planned spot of execution, the perfect watch point for either him or Rick.

Neil sat there now with a pair of binoculars and scouted. Within an hour, he noticed a figure working his way slowly toward camp. In less than a minute, Neil knew it was Rick. He waited until Rick walked the perimeter of the camp and doubled back to his car. As Rick returned to the site, Neil worked his way down the hill, keeping himself hidden.

Neil moved behind his friend and didn’t make a sound.

“I was wondering when you’d join me. Thought you’d stay up there all night,” Rick said without turning around.

Rick had always been good at detecting the enemy, or in this case a friend sneaking up from behind.

“How did you see me?” Neil moved in front of his colleague and extended his hand.

“I showed up an hour before you did. Moved from the knoll to the fallback by the creek and waited.”

Neil laughed. Rick had executed the same moves he had.

“Good to see you.”

Neil agreed. They spoke for a few minutes about the drive, the weather…any damn thing but why they were there.

“We have work to do if we’re going to get this guy,” Neil finally said.

“Any idea who we’re dealing with yet?”

Neil shook his head, frustrated. “Wish I did. Think he’s military.”

“And knows about Raven.”

“Or maybe he was told about Raven.”

Neil didn’t like that scenario. “Which suggests a second party is on to this.”

“They’re either a party to it by calling the shots from somewhere else, or we have two guys on our tail,” Rick said and nodded toward the tent. “We setting up here for the night?”

“Part of it anyway. No use getting comfortable.”

“Don’t think comfortable is possible until we catch this guy.”

Neil set his pack aside and shrugged off his coat.

“You really think there are two people involved here?”

“I think we need to consider the possibility. It would have taken some work to make the drop on Billy. Even if a woman was involved. Not a lot shook him.”

“We need to get inside this guy’s head if we’re going to win this,” Rick concluded.

“I survived the Middle East. I’m not dying in my backyard.” Not when he suddenly had so much to live for.

“What about your girl?”

“She’s safe.” And for reasons he couldn’t, or didn’t want to identify, he didn’t elaborate as to where she was to Rick.

“I still can’t get over the fact you have one.” Rick’s signature smile spread on his lips.

“Me either.”

Rick snorted and swatted Neil on the back. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t sleep without a woman at my side.”

Neil hesitated. “I know the feeling.”

“It’s gotten better. But the memories never really leave me. I think it hit us all like that, which is why we all left.”

“Mickey stayed in,” Neil reminded him.