Dan was up bright and early, eager to get somewhere with this case while Addie slept. He couldn’t believe she’d wanted to make love to him last night and he’d resisted, momentarily, but when she got all growly with him, reminding him of her divorce option, he had obliged. Happily.

He loved her. And he was glad she had been feeling well enough to make love, but he worried that’s why she was sleeping so late this morning—she’d overdone it.

Bridget gave him a warm smile and handed him a cup of coffee. “Is Addie still asleep?”

“Yeah. Where’s Travis?”

“Talking to Stryker out front. They didn’t want to disturb the two of you.” She set a plate of pancakes on the table. “She must have been feeling better last night.”

“Yeah, but you have creaky, damn box springs.” Dan sat down to eat. “Is anyone else joining me?”

“Uh, we noticed on the box springs, but we’re glad she’s feeling better. We already ate. I’m just serving as the kitchen staff this morning until everyone’s happily fed.”

“Thanks, Bridget. What are they discussing? I guess everyone’s been keeping me out of the loop or I would have gotten some traffic on my phone by now.” He took a bite of the pancakes smothered in blueberries, butter, and maple syrup.

“Unless it was an emergency, or you had a need to know right that moment, no one wanted to disturb you. Not when you were…mostly sleeping with Addie.”

“She couldn’t keep her hands off me. I had to do something to help her get back to sleep.”

“It’s true,” Addie said, coming down the stairs. “Boy, did those box springs make a racket, particularly with our sensitive hearing. I hope we didn’t disturb your sleep too much.”

Bridget smiled. “We were on guard duty, so it made life interesting. I picked up some clothes for you at one of the stores. You’re about my size, so they should fit. As soon as you’re feeling better, Dan can take you shopping for some things.”

“Yeah, sure thing. I hadn’t even thought of that. I need to pick up some things from my place too,” Dan said.

“Would you like some coffee?” Bridget asked Addie.

“Yeah, sure, thanks.”

“Sugar, cream or milk?”

“Half and half?”

“Hmm, yes.”

Dan rose to take Addie in his arms and kiss her while Bridget made her a cup of coffee.

“Are pancakes all right?” Bridget asked.

“Yes, ma’am, if they look like Dan’s.”

“Coming right up.” Bridget set her coffee on the table.

“Thanks, Bridget.” Addie kissed Dan back, her arms wrapped around his neck, her breasts pressed against his chest.

He swore she wanted more loving. If they didn’t have this business to deal with, he would have hauled her back up to the bedroom. He led her to the seat next to him instead.

“What’s been discussed while I was sleeping my life away?” Addie sipped some of her coffee.

“Nothing. I just got down here and other than talking about noisy box springs, that’s about all we’ve discussed.”

Addie smiled.

Bridget served her a plate of pancakes.

“They’ve been holding all of my calls so I wouldn’t disturb your sleep last night.”

“I’ll let the guys know you’re up and can come in and talk about any news they have. This place was really quiet last night.” Bridget joined Stryker and Travis outside.

Then the three of them came inside and sat down at the coffee table while Dan and Addie finished up breakfast and then moved into the living room.

“I think we should call your boss and tell him the trouble you’ve had,” Dan said to Addie as they sat next to each other on the couch.

“He’ll say it’s all in my head, or that it’s my fault somehow.”

“There are too many of us involved who know what went down. Don’t mention us. Just let him know your guard detail standing outside your door vanished and you weren’t staying.”

“You talked to my boss. Briggs? Right?”

“Yeah, to get him to tell Leipheimer to let me into your room to see you. He said I had five minutes. I was grateful when I had a lot more time with you. I began to think that either he was a lot more sentimental than I thought or that it was odd. The nurse came to give you a shot, and I asked about the agent serving as your guard, but she said there wasn’t one. And the men coming into the room after that weren’t security guards. What if Leipheimer wasn’t an agent? What if, when he handed me the phone to talk to your boss, I didn’t even speak to Briggs? Just some random guy?”

Stryker handed her a burner phone. “I suspect they know you’re here still. Not exactly where. I agree with Dan. Talk to Briggs and see what he says about this. He might not even realize you’re alive, and were taken to the hospital, or any of it.”

“If they hadn’t wanted me to live, why would someone have taken me to the hospital?”

“Maybe it was someone else? A bystander who called it in? Then what could the ones who want you dead do about it?” Dan asked. “Nothing, until you were alone in a hospital room all drugged up.”

“And the agent outside my door?”

Dan shrugged. “He might have been legitimate, and someone killed him, or he was paid to leave. Or he might have been a fake. I didn’t ask to see his badge. I just assumed if he was standing outside your door acting like a federal agent, that’s what he was. He didn’t ask to see my ID either.”

“You were dressed as a sheriff, cowboy hat and all.”

“Yeah, but see? By wearing the right clothes, we all assumed we knew what the other was claiming to be.”

“All right.” Addie took the phone and called her boss. When he answered, she put it on speaker. “Sir, it’s me, Addie Steinacker.”

“Where the hell have you been? What the hell happened with you as far as picking up the information from the courier? You just pulled another disappearing act? This is the last straw, agent.”

She looked at Dan with an expression that said she told him so. “You know an assailant killed the courier using a dagger on him before the courier reached me, don’t you? I heard his cry and I ran to check it out, afraid the courier was being attacked. He was already dead by the time I reached him. I chased down the assailant and he managed to stab me, but I got a round off and killed him—point blank shot to the temple. Paris and Dirk were there seeing to the courier. The armed assailant had the manila envelope, which I assume contained the information we were after.”

Briggs didn’t say anything.

“Okay, listen, I couldn’t have left there on my own if I’d wanted to. I was completely out of it. Someone had to have called 911 and I was picked up and taken to the nearest hospital before anyone could finish me off.”

“All I know is the courier never showed up. You vanished. The information was gone. There were no bodies at all—no one stabbed, no one shot.”

Stryker was shaking his head. Dan was rubbing her back, but Addie didn’t act in the least bit flustered.

“Dirk and Paris didn’t tell you what happened? Dirk yelled at me to wait for backup, but he didn’t leave Paris with the dead courier to provide backup either.”

“I’ll talk to both of them and check out the hospital where you were staying.”

“Don’t bother. Two faux security officers and a pretend nurse tried to kill me there, but I’m sure you won’t find them either. Or any record of my stay there. I never saw any of it on the news, so I imagine cleaners came and scrubbed the place. Oh, and I suppose you didn’t have an agent named Leipheimer guarding my room.”

“I’ve never heard of him and I couldn’t assign anyone to your room for your protection when I didn’t know that you’d been taken to a hospital, now could I?”

“Either we’ve got a mole on the team, or you’re the one orchestrating this,” she said, still fully in control, holding her temper.

“Or you need long-term psychiatric care.”

“Well, since I’ve found witnesses who can testify to what they’ve witnessed, that theory won’t fly.”

“Where are you now? I’ll have someone pick you up and bring you in. If what you say is true, I’ll put you in a safe house.”

“Thanks.” She hung up on him and handed the phone to Stryker. “I told you it wouldn’t help. He didn’t believe me the last time either.”

“Because he’s involved? Or because these people are covering their tracks so well?” Dan asked.

“Notice how he asked where she was?” Travis said. “If he already knew, he wouldn’t be asking.”

“Unless he’s pretending he doesn’t know,” Stryker said.

“I don’t think he knew,” Bridget said. “I think he was furious with Addie for not bringing in the information, maybe even fearing she had other plans for it. I got the impression he really hadn’t thought she’d been in trouble.”

“I agree with you,” Addie said. “I still can’t completely put my trust in him, but I think the business with the hospital and that he didn’t know the agent who was guarding my room, said a lot. And though he sounds like he’s in denial about the existence of a mole, or that I’d been hurt, I’d bet a year’s worth of wages he’s going to check out the park and see if he can find any evidence of foul play.”

“Will he send someone else out to look for clues?” Dan asked. “If he does, and he sends the wrong person out, they’re liable to find no evidence at all.”

“No. He’s pretty hands on, and in a situation like this, when it’s possible we really have a mole, I suspect he’ll investigate it himself. And check out the hospital too.”

“What if he’s in danger for investigating this on his own?” Bridget asked.

Addie motioned for Stryker to give her the phone and called her boss again. “When you look for evidence that I’m telling you the truth, watch your step. They followed me here, and we had a shootout. None of them lived, that we know of. They’re professional hitmen. These guys mean business and if you’re not the mole, I don’t want to learn you vanished too.” Then she hung up on Briggs again and handed the phone back to Stryker.

Stryker smiled. “If she’s done being your pseudo-wife, Dan, she can be mine.”

“Wow, between all the job offers, and now pseudo-marital offers, I seem to be a hot commodity. You all must not get a lot of excitement around here.”

“You have no idea,” Bridget said.

“You’re hot, all right,” Dan said. “And not on the marital mart. We have a contract.”

Someone knocked on the door and Travis and Bridget headed for it together. Stryker, Dan, and Addie pulled their guns out.

“Just Yvonne and Rick,” Travis said.

Dan waited to holster his gun until they were inside the house and Travis had locked the door.

“Any news?” Dan asked.

“Have we ever,” Yvonne said.

Bridget got everyone fresh coffee as they settled in the living room.

“I talked to my boss,” Addie said, updating them on that front. “He didn’t know I’d been stabbed or taken to the hospital. Only that I’d vanished and the courier had too. He’s going to investigate it.”

“Sounds like there’s really a breakdown in your department,” Rick said.

“Yeah, and we have some shocking news. Your mother, Alicia Shields, is your boss’s boss,” Yvonne said.

Addie’s jaw dropped and tears sprang into her eyes. She couldn’t believe her mother had been so close to her as far as the job situation went, yet had never reached out to her.

“Then we need to get hold of her and tell her what’s going on. If Briggs didn’t have anything to do with your injuries, then surely, Alicia hasn’t either,” Dan said.

“I wonder if that’s why I was selected for this task force,” Addie said. “Maybe that’s why I was even hired on at the Bureau. Both my father and mother were agents.”

“And because she trusts you,” Yvonne said, then sipped her coffee.

“Why not get hold of you then and let you know that she knows you’re working on the task force?” Stryker asked. “And, hell, why wouldn’t she know what’s going on with you? You’d think she’d have an eye on you.”

“Briggs said contracting out to a ‘civilian’ to serve as my husband wasn’t his idea.”

“Then it was your mother’s idea?” Dan asked. “Who all did she have on the list of names for possible candidates?”

“They were all former military—Special Forces. I turned down the first dozen because I was looking for—“

“Me,” Dan said, sitting up taller.

Everyone laughed.

“You were number thirteen on the list. Then Hal, Stryker, and Chase were listed after that. Even Leyton was on the list.”

“I can’t believe I was on the list and you didn’t reject him first. Or that my brother was on the list too. Though back then I didn’t even know he was my brother. Were the others cougars?” Stryker asked.

“No. Dan was the first on the list who was a cougar.”

“She still would have chosen me over the rest of you guys,” Dan said, looking as serious as could be.

“I wasn’t on the list?” Travis asked.

Bridget punched him in the shoulder.

He laughed.

“What I want to know is why your mother would have set this up for you to have a pseudo husband who wasn’t an agent,” Yvonne said.

“I think we have our answer already. Either your mother, or someone else higher up, suspected there was trouble in the Bureau and wanted to get someone who was highly combat-trained, but also who wasn’t part of the Bureau, to watch over Addie in the event there is a mole,” Dan said.

“We have a number for Alicia Shields. It’s a private number, so she might not answer it, if she doesn’t know who’s calling,” Rick said.

“She might not take the call even if she does know who is calling,” Addie said, annoyed with her mother for dropping out of her life, even if she thought she was protecting Addie and her father. If she pulled Addie in to do this job and now Addie’s life was in danger, that didn’t make any sense.

“Why would she pick potential pretend husbands for you who weren’t cougars?” Yvonne asked.

“She knew I wouldn’t accept any of them, probably, but no one else would know that.”

“Once they knew who it was, he would be in as much danger as you,” Travis said.

“Only when I was injured and dropped into his life again.” She squeezed Dan’s hand, loving him for being so patient with her.

Dan got a call from Ricky Jones, one of the boys Hal had taken in to work on his ranch, who was a fairly newly turned cougar and former informant for his wife while she was working to locate animal traffickers.

“Yeah, Ricky, what’s up?”

“Hey, Sheriff, Kolby and I were looking over the crime scene. Yeah, yeah, I know we’re not supposed to be over at your house, but no one’s paying any attention to it while they clean up the mess the shooters made of it and replace your back door and—”

“Did you find something?” The kid was a great kid, and he wanted to be in the same business as Tracey and now Hal were. When he was older, Dan was sure he’d do a super job. Getting to the point of the matter was always an ordeal with Ricky.

“Yeah, you know, there isn’t any yellow tape showing a crime scene, but my brother and I used our noses to search all over the place and we found a piece of paper half buried by leaves. You know, people just tromped all over the place, removing bodies, and just made a mess of everything and so it’s no wonder no one found it.”

“The piece of paper? What did it say?”

“It had a name on it. The grass and leaves were damp and so you know, the note was damp and the ink is blurred but I could still make it out and all that was on it was a name: Alicia Shields.”