Focus on the words, the information, came naturally. He’d been absorbing her insights and impressions for days. Relying on them. Working together, they’d saved at least one baby’s life.

  A time or two, as there’d been a pause in information, moments of silence, he’d experienced an uncomfortable lurch. She was looking at the camera, at him, answering questions as they were posed to her. Was reliving time spent with him.

  And yet, she was so far out of reach.

  Agonizingly so.

  As she started speaking again, and he immediately tuned in to every nuance, every word, he brushed aside the sense of longing as nonessential. A residual feeling from being shot.

  He’d be himself once the case was solved. The general caught. And the babies all accounted for.

  Some of the earlier interviews he’d listened to that afternoon had been reminders of what he’d already noted in his reports. Accounts of things accounted for. Validation of his information.

  But the current one—regarding Sharon Luthrie...he hardly remembered the woman. She’d been the officer on McKellips’s payroll. Scott remembered threatening her, leaving her face-planted on the ground. Stealing her car and careening off into the desert.

  He hadn’t remembered her telling Dorian she’d take the baby, as Dorian got into the car. He did as she said so, kind of, peripherally, but not clearly.

  Because of his blood loss, he knew. There were definite holes in that afternoon. Doctors had said he might never remember all of it.

  He’d remembered shooting McKellips, as the man had pointed a gun through his truck window. He’d fired, not so much to save himself from a kill shot—he’d figured he’d already had that—but so that the killer couldn’t escape. He’d needed his team to find out who McKellips was. And more importantly, had needed the killer to lead them to the general.

  He remembered being in mind-numbing pain, fighting to remain conscious, as he waited to hear that Dorian had been found.

  “So, you’re on the floor of the backseat with the baby, and Agent Michaels, Scott as you call him, is leaning through the open partition, with his arm around the officer’s neck—you think, he has a knife, you think to her throat, and he gives the officer an order to stop the car, threatening her life if she doesn’t comply?” Scott recognized the voice coming from somewhere off camera. He’d been listening to it all afternoon. Kelly Chase, Dorian’s psychiatry partner, he’d been told.

  “Yes.” Dorian’s eyes were closed, but she sounded strong. Sure. “That’s right.”

  “What does she say?”

  She didn’t say anything. The thought popped into Scott’s head, as he watched Dorian frown. “Yes, sir.”

  What? Leaning forward, Scott froze for a second as his bandaged chest and arm rebelled against the movement, and, staring at Dorian’s face, watched her mouth move as she said, “He asked, Are we clear? She said, Yes, sir.”

  “And then what?” The offscreen voice came again.

  “She says, I didn’t mean to... I fell in love. Was used.” Dorian’s lids flew open and she was staring right at Scott. “I think. I’m pretty sure that’s what she said. She was saying something about being threatened but Scott yelled Now! and the car lurched to a stop...”

  Holy hell. Staring at the screen, Scott rewound. Needed to watch every nuance of Dorian Lowell’s face. To hear her words, in context, again.

  And then stopped the tape. Reached for his phone. Pushed Speed Dial.

  Sharon Luthrie hadn’t been in it for the money. She’d been in love.

  “Hudson? I need a deep dive on Luthrie’s personal life. Yesterday.”

  Still watching Dorian, feeling her, growing more confident as he studied her stilled expression, he felt the familiar adrenaline coursing through him.

  They were closing in.

  His gut told him so.

  And what it was telling him about his chemistry with the doc?

  That was going to have to wait.

  * * *

  Dorian heard from her IT expert partner, Hudson Warner, late that day that the intricate look into every aspect of Sharon Luthrie’s life had turned up a couple of prior relationships, but nothing in the past couple of years. At all.

  Disturbingly so.

  Along with weekends where she seemed not to exist. No texts, no phone calls, no streaming services or credit cards used. Once in a while, that would make sense. But for almost a year, it was two or three weekends a month. Even her car’s GPS system showed up empty.

  The woman had been in love. And then threatened?

  The likely conclusion, apparently drawn by Scott and passed on and agreed upon by the team, was that she’d been having a secret affair.

  With a married man?

  A woman?

  Two members of Scott’s team were on the ground in Arizona, talking to everyone who’d known Sharon. Hud’s team was tracing her steps immediately before she’d started disappearing for weekends at a time. Glen’s forensics experts were going over McKellips’s home with a fine-tooth comb.

  Law enforcement was combing the mountains and surrounding areas, on all sides of the range, for any sign of McKellips’s team members. The blurred photos on Scott’s phone were all they had to go on, but they at least gave an estimation of skin color, body shape and a decent approximation of weight and height.

  And for all anyone knew, another baby was being stolen, while they all sat in their offices, or worked the field, in relative comfort.

  Eating healthy meals. On time. Sleeping on mattresses in air-conditioned comfort.

  As Dorian ate a late supper of cobb salad and homemade wheat bread in her office with three of her partners—and a police officer stationed at the door while McKenna grabbed a nap across the hall—she kept thinking about Scott.

  Her time with him.

  Nights lying on rock and brush, with her head on his chest. She’d slept better those nights than any since her return.

  All the conveniences of normal life had been stripped away, and she’d found...more.

  Something that lasted when everything else was gone.

  When all that existed was the moment between life and death.

  Certainly, she would have bonded with whoever had saved her. But she hadn’t just connected with Scott over their fight for survival.

  She’d found parts of herself through him.

  Her phone beeped as Kelly and Mariah discussed a shared client and Dorian glanced down to see the Text icon showing.

  Tapped and opened the message.

  A picture of Hunter, eyes open, looking up at his mother, with his father sitting on the bed with them, his arm around them both.

  Blinking back tears, she smiled.

  And knew there was no one else in the world who’d understand the mixture of joy and grief washing through her, except Scott.

  She had his cell number. Not only from remembering it during her times with his phone during their fight for life. But because it had been included on the interoffice memo delivered to every Sierra’s Web partner when the firm had partnered with the FBI on Scott’s baby kidnapping ring case.

  Quietly pushing the contact information she’d entered for him, she forwarded the picture.

  And tried to be content with his returning message.

  Job well done.

  As in, over.

  He’d moved on.

  * * *

  Scott’s team got a lead regarding a political rally Sharon Luthrie had worked a couple of years before, right around the time she’d started mysteriously disappearing for weekends.

  Hudson’s tech gurus followed up with multiple internet searches, including social media services, collecting hundreds of photos from the event.

  They scanned them for facial recognition of Luthrie, and assigned others to go through them one by one with the naked eye, on a physical hunt for any hint of the fallen dirty officer.

  By the time Scott was discharged from the hospital the next morning, and, at his insistence, was taken to the office rather than heading to a hotel with his protection duty, a man had been identified as someone of interest. Several people had turned up photos that contained Luthrie in the background, talking to the man. A political donor, Colin Evart, who’d been known to back several major candidates.

  Judging by some of the expressions on Luthrie’s face, they hadn’t just been discussing business. The way she’d been looking at the unmarried entrepreneur, the smiles in some of the photos, made it pretty clear that she was, at the very least, enjoying their conversations.

  While Scott hadn’t officially been cleared for duty, his unit chief was allowing him to call shots from his desk, as long as Scott agreed to head to his hotel with his detail at lunchtime for a rest.

  Scott sent one of the Bureau’s Arizona agents helping with the case to find Colin Evart and bring him in for questioning. He’d watch, and participate if the need arose, via teleconference.

  Winchester, Dorian’s financial expert partner, had his people looking into money trails. Starting with any monies other than her regular pay that might have been deposited into Sharon Luthrie’s account in the past eighteen months. And following out from there.

  They’d be delving into Colin Evart’s finances, too, as soon as they had legal access to them.

  And then, since Dorian had initiated contact between them, he texted and asked if she’d be up for an interview with Grace Arnold. He knew the expert physician had been in the office every day since her release, working steadily to help find the general.

  Before heading with her detail to whatever hotel they had her stashed in at night. The exact location of her temporary lodging was need to know only, and he had no need to know.

  Not professionally at any rate.

  His phone vibrated in his hand, signaling an incoming text, less than a minute after he’d hit Send.

  Of course, he read.

  Two words. No lines to read between.

  The answer he’d sought.

  And it wasn’t enough. He needed more from her.

  You sure? He thumbed the response back. He was asking a lot—for a victim to face one of her attacker’s known consorts.

  Absolutely.

  I’d like the interview to take place at the Sierra’s Web offices. With Kelly Chase. His thumbs flew quickly from letter to letter. Using Autocomplete whenever possible. As though, if he didn’t get things out with speed and alacrity, he’d lose her. Maybe lifting her out of her environment, and away from McKellips’s influence, will help free up something more.

  He couldn’t ignore the sense of a weight easing away from his chest as he connected with the doc.

  But moved through it.

  Until he saw Dorian’s response. Seeing me might help, too.

  He’d had the exact thought. Had left it unexpressed so as not to put undue pressure on Dorian.

  The way she’d seemed to read his mind, or at least to be on the same thought wavelength as he was, had followed them out of the mountains.

  His relief, though illogical, was palpable.

  And he typed one more time.

  * * *

  I miss you.

  Dorian read and reread the text what seemed like a hundred times, as she waited for Grace Arnold to arrive.

  She responded in kind. And deleted.

  Typed that she hoped he was okay, and deleted that, too.

  As she ate lunch with the partners in the office, brought in by their receptionist who’d been with the firm since its inception, and caught up on the case, she heard that Scott had been sent to his hotel to rest.

  And left her phone alone.

  But when word arrived that he was back at the office, and doing well, she picked up her cell again.

  I miss you, too. She hit Send without a second’s hesitation. She was done fighting with herself about it.

  He’d been brave enough to put it out there.

  She couldn’t ignore the gesture.

  And she couldn’t lie to him.

  Nor could she get him out of her mind as she listened to Kelly interview Grace Arnold late that afternoon. The woman recognized Dorian. Called her dear. Asked why she hadn’t been in church on Sunday. And how her little girl was feeling after that cold.

  She remembered seeing someone in the brush at the edge of her property, after Kelly prompted her with a description of the incident. Said that she’d fed those folks.

  Spaghetti and meatballs. Fred’s favorite.

  Dorian knew the questions were establishing a groundwork for Kelly to work from—a level of lucidity—as the psychiatrist determined the best way to proceed to extract the information the team so desperately needed from her.

  Grace was the only person they knew of who’d had dealings with Chuck McKellips. The only one who could lead them closer to the killer’s crew.

  Other homesteads interspersed throughout the area, roofs Scott and Dorian had seen on camera from atop the mountain, had either been vacant, or the owners had claimed ignorance of the mission and its work. The agents had not been completely convinced that no one knew anything, but it had been very clear that no one was going to say a word.

  Could be they were all on McKellips’s payroll.

  “How did you meet Chuck?” Kelly’s question came casually, without a word of warning to Dorian.

  “Chuck is a nice boy. He helps me.” Grace, sounding as kind as Dorian remembered, smiled.

  “How long have you known him?”

  “I’m sorry, honey, known who?”

  “Chuck.”

  “Oh, Chuck...such a nice boy.”

  “Have you known him since he was a boy?” Kelly wasn’t lightening up on the woman at all. Maybe not her usual method, but this time, a member of her family, her firm was involved.

  “A boy, yes. Such a nice boy.”

  And on it went. Kelly let Grace guide the conversation to a point. Following the woman’s mental wanderings. But always bringing them back to Chuck McKellips.

  Half an hour into the conversation, Grace said, “This is fun, and so nice of you all to invite me for tea. And... I’m afraid I have to excuse myself. I need to go.”

  “Go?”

  “To the ladies’ room,” the woman said, wiggling in her seat, clearly agitated.

  Understanding how quickly the need to pee could hit, particularly at Grace’s age, with lessened ability to hold on, Dorian stood. “I’ll take you.”

  They’d had no tea. Had been sitting on couches in Kelly’s office, with McKenna just outside the door, and as Dorian headed down the hall to the single-use bathroom reserved for clients, the bodyguard followed just a step behind her. Waiting with Dorian as the older woman disappeared inside.

  Before there’d been any chance for the confused old woman to have completed her business, the door opened. “I’m sorry, dear, my zip is stuck. Can you help me please?”

  With a glance at McKenna, Dorian reached for the front closure on the woman’s pants.

  “Oh, my, missy, we can’t do that here. Not with gentlemen in the house...”

  Afraid the woman was going to wet herself, Dorian stepped inside and closed the door, with the hope that, with them alone, she could get Grace to chat more freely. Scott was counting on her to make the difference. Nothing the woman said would be admissible, but once Scott got the “in,” he’d find whatever proof he needed. She had no doubt about that.

  And Sierra’s Web would be right there with him, delivering whatever he asked of them.

  Grace walked to the sink, not the toilet, leaning against it to turn on the water.

  “Let me help with your zipper,” Dorian suggested gently, from just behind the woman, preparing for a flood on the floor.

  Tile, that would be more easily cleaned than the carpeted hallway and offices.

  Grace turned, slowly, revealing the revolver, with a silencer, held steadily in her grip. “It’s all your fault. Stealing that kid. I’m old. It’s my time. I’ll die, all roads point to me, and they’ll never know what’s still going on right under their noses.”

  For a split second, Dorian was working, a doctor with a patient having a psychotic break.

  Until she saw the steely, hate-filled look in Grace Arnold’s eyes.

  Chapter 27

  Scott was sitting at his desk when his cell phone rang. A second later, his desk phone pealed, as did those of his team members just outside his office.

  Adrenaline pumping, he answered the cell. He’d seen the screen. Sierra’s Web. His link to Dorian.

  And was standing before he even saw every one of his team members up and rushing toward him.

  Tommy got to him first. “I’ve just arranged a private jet for you,” he told Scott, who was nodding, his one usable, free arm holding his phone. Whether the Bureau picked up the tab, or Scott would be billed for it, didn’t matter a whit to him.

  With the call ended, he dropped his cell into his left hand inside the sling and loosened his tie. Feeling the air cutting off at his throat.

  “She’s expected to be fine,” Tommy said, hurrying beside him as his detail, getting briefed, followed closely behind.

  “She has a bullet in her leg.” He bit the words out. Could hardly sustain the fury—and panic—racing through him.

  He’d lost friends. Comrades. Both soldier and agent. He’d lost Lily in a different way. And nothing compared to the despair roiling through him.

  “I talked to Glen,” Tommy was saying as they rode down in the elevator. From what Scott had gleaned, as soon as they’d heard shots, every partner in Sierra’s Web, as well Dorian’s bodyguard, had rushed the bathroom to find Dorian bleeding and semiconscious, and the old woman, Grace Arnold, dead.

  Kelly had been climbing into the ambulance with Dorian, when Hudson and the others had all called every number Scott had given them as contacts.