Chapter Fourteen
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“SHEL!”
The sound of multiple heavy footsteps pounding up the stairs reassured Shelby as she sat straight up in bed. The bed moved slightly and a cold nose jammed into her hands, a wiggling dog body clamoring over her lap.
Salisbury. She sunk her hands into his fur and snuggled him tight. He licked her face.
She felt Colton’s energy—immense and forceful, like the Titanic plowing through the ocean—enter her room. “Shelby, what’s wrong?”
“Colton, turn on the light.”
He moved to the bed, as two other people—she could hear the differences in their footsteps—hovered at the door.
Warm hands touched her arm, her knee. “Shelby, look at me.”
Wasn’t she already? “I think the bulb in my lamp is blown. I tried turning on the light, but nothing happened. I…I’m sorry, I freaked a little. It’s so damn dark in here and you weren’t beside me. It felt like when I woke up from the coma.”
“Sweetheart.” He took her by the knees and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Salisbury jumped around, but came back to her lap. “The light is on.”
And…yeah. That’s what she’d been afraid of.
She’d woken to an empty bed. The room had seemed way too dark and she’d reached over and flipped on the lamp on her nightstand. Except nothing had happened. She’d heard the click but was still in the dark.
She’d sat there for several long minutes, blinking, breathing, willing her eyesight to come back. Willing her body to come online and clear her vision. It had always worked before.
This time, nada.
She reached out and found Colton’s face. That face she loved so dearly. The one who hours before had stared into hers and made her believe they could be together again. “Okay. Not the best news, then, since I can’t see a cotton-pickin’ thing.”
He grabbed her hand and held it to his face. “We’ll get you to the doctor.”
“God, no.” She sighed, defeated. “This is one of the side effects from the brain injury. There’s nothing the doctor can do except hook me up to a bunch of stupid monitors and wait. I don’t need that to tell me my brain hiccupped again. My vision should clear in a few minutes.”
Or hours. The last time this had happened, she’d gone a whole day on the fritz. “I’ve had two of these episodes since I came out of the coma. The last one was three weeks ago, so I thought—hoped—I wouldn’t have any more.”
“The brain is so cool, but super funky,” a woman’s voice said. “If I hadn’t studied chemistry, I would have chosen cognitive science.”
Shelby ran a hand through her hair as she smiled toward what she hoped was the doorway. “You must be Sabrina.”
The woman had a light, playful voice. “And you must be the fabulously talented Shelby Claiborne. I’m a huge fan.”
“You are?”
“You’re the hotshot FBI agent who saved my Connor.”
The pride and gratitude in the woman’s voice was as honest as it came.
“Hi, Connor. I assume you’re here too.”
“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “I made fresh coffee.”
“Is it strong enough to kick-start my eyesight?”
“Damn straight.”
Colton squeezed her hand. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call the doctor?”
“No doctors. Just coffee.” At least for now. “I want to go over the case and those files we stole from my office.”
“You stole files?” A smile teased Sabrina’s voice.
Not seeing any of their faces made Shelby a little nuts. She reached for her braid, remembered it wasn’t there any longer. Colton had unbraided it and combed his fingers through it during the night. “That’s a secret that doesn’t leave this house.”
“My lips are sealed.”
After a change of clothes and Colton brushing her hair, he carried her downstairs to the dining room. A cup of coffee was waiting for her and Colton made sure she got it to her lips without spilling any. “Okay, so where are we?”
Sabrina brought her up to date on the wrapper and partial print. Shelby didn’t hold out much hope about that, although the alternate options about who had left it there weren’t great either—kids or a homeless person. Those weren’t solid leads.
While it was unlikely a bunch of kids would hang out in an abandoned house skeleton outside of town to begin with, it was even more unlikely the only thing they’d leave behind was the wrapper from a granola bar. Chip bags, empty beer bottles? Sure. Drug paraphernalia? You bet. But a granola bar wrapper?
Ditto went for any homeless person. “It’s most likely a piece of garbage that blew across the way from one of the neighbors.”
“I looked through your paper file on the serial killer,” Colton said. “I didn’t see anything we didn’t already know. There were no interviews or photos of me or any other guy who matches my description. If you give me your password, I can hop onto your computer and tell you what’s on that USB.”
“You stole a paper file and a computer one?” Sabrina asked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a spy, Bells.”
Colton chuckled.
Shelby heard papers shifting around, then Connor’s voice. It held a definite edge. “So you think there’s a connection between this killer and my rescue mission?”
“That’s correct,” Shelby said. “Two of them have direct ties to Colton outside of Mission Liberate Green Frog as well. I believe the third crossed paths with him at some point, but I have no direct link to him and your rescue.”
“So I’m the common denominator,” Colton said. “As well as a suspect.”
“You’re a suspect?” Sabrina’s chair creaked as she sat back abruptly. “Is that true, Shelby? The FBI thinks Colton is a serial killer?”
Did they? She couldn’t remember. It had obviously crossed her mind and the evidence was damning enough for Theo to think the same thing.
But she was still trying to wrap her brain around all three men being on Connor’s rescue mission. “Wyatt Evers wasn’t on our taskforce in Baghdad.”
The heavy silence that followed made her skin itch. She could see Colton and Connor in her mind’s eye exchanging a weighty glance.
“What aren’t you guys telling me?”
“Wyatt Evers was not part of the rescue taskforce,” Colton said.
He was lying, but why?
“Sorry, I…” Connor didn’t finish the sentence but a thought tickled her brain.
“Colton, the day you arrived, Theo had my file, and your picture was in it, that’s how he recognized you. What happened to that?”
“Maybe after you cleared me,” Colton said, “he removed it.”
Maybe, but she was starting to think a bunch of her work on the case had simply disappeared. Colton was lying to her, her case file was incomplete…what was going on here? “That’s probably the photo I showed to Lori that day. Not to incriminate you, to try to find the link between you and her husband. You said earlier that you crossed paths, but you never did tell me how.”
“On one of my rotations back to the States, I trained him.”
And ho-boy, Colton’s voice had gone almost frigid.
“And?” Shelby asked, shrugging her shoulders.
“And what? The guy was as smart as they come. Accurate, tough, passed every test with ease.”
Salisbury jumped into Shelby’s lap. Connor’s voice dropped a notch. “I was never on a team with him. What did you train him for?”
The temperature on Colton’s side of the room dropped another ten degrees. Shelby was going to need a sweater in a minute.
“Some sniper shit, that’s all.”
But that wasn’t all. If only she could see his face.
Did she need to though? The ice in his voice was enough to freeze them all out.
“Colton, you’re no longer a SEAL, nor do you work for the government. If we’re going to figure out who killed these men, we need to know everything.”
His chair scraped back and he took his frigid body temp with him as he left the room. The heavy silence that followed was filled with awkwardness.
Shelby plastered on her best smile and sent it Connor and Sabrina’s direction. “Thank you both for being here.” What a hodge-podge team they made. “I’m sorry I’m not more help. My memory is…”
A hand covered hers. Connor. “Don’t sweat it. I have blanks in mine too.”
Colton returned, his physical presence like a lightning bolt to her senses. Even if she couldn’t see him, she felt him. Every inch of him. It was like getting hit with a live wire each time he was near.
“I’ve got your computer.” She heard the thunk of her laptop on the table as Colton resumed his seat. “And the USB. Tell me your password.”
Her throat tightened. If anything, the Bureau, and especially Theo, had drilled into her the need for confidentiality. Secrecy.
Her reaction made her silently laugh. She’d already violated some pretty hefty protocols and rules, what was one more? “Born2RunSB.” She spelled it out, so he would know where to capitalize and that she’d replaced the word ‘to’ with the number.
“Born To Run?” Sabrina asked. “That’s a Springsteen song, right?”
The woman was probably only a few years younger than Shelby, but the reference suddenly made her feel old. “It was a song Colton used to play all the time. Sometimes he sang it to me.”
Colton’s embarrassed silence was better than the ice bullets he’d been shooting off earlier, but Shelby still felt a bit guilty.
On the other hand… “He’s actually a great singer.” Why not make his embarrassment complete? “I always loved hearing him sing Amazing Grace on Sundays when I could actually get him to church.”
Colton cleared his throat as if begging her to stop, and said, “The file is open. What am I looking for?”
That was the thing. She didn’t know. “Just start reading to me.”
THE EARLY MORNING was so quiet, so peaceful. Hard to believe they were sitting at Shelby’s dining room table discussing murder.
Through the windows, Colton could hear the last of the late fall locusts and other night insects winding down as the sun broke the horizon. Inside the room, with the blinds and curtains drawn, it was still dark enough they needed the overhead light.
It killed him to see Shelby staring blankly at the far wall as he read through the stolen FBI file on her laptop. Various official internal memos, a few phone interviews, notes about the deceased men’s backgrounds and families. Large blanks with only a few details about their military careers. Bulleted points about what the three had in common.
All Navy. All from Oklahoma. She’d flagged that two of them had definitely been connected to Colton, with a question mark about Evers.
“We should review the night of the mission,” Shelby said, her hands cupped around her coffee cup. “Mission Liberate Green Frog.”
Sabrina deposited a plate of toasted bagels on the table. “I’d like to hear that story as well.”
The smell of the warm bagels made Colton’s stomach growl, yet, the thought of rehashing the night of Connor’s rescue made his neck tighten. He glanced over at his friend, who looked a bit green around the gills as well.
Ditto not wanting to talk about that night.
“I’m not sure what good that will do us, Shel,” Colton said.
“It will do me good.” She accepted a bagel from Sabrina and munched on it. Salisbury, previously asleep in her lap, sat up and sniffed. Even though she couldn’t see him, she knew what he wanted and, sucker that she was, broke off a piece to feed to the dog. “All I ever had after the mission was a single Bureau report with a vague Navy addendum regarding Connor’s extraction. If we could pinpoint everyone whom Bard and Edmonton interacted with that night and what happened immediately before and after the mission, it could lead us to the killer. We don’t have the official JSOC reports but we can rebuild the timeline ourselves since the three of us were there.”
The mission reports were all classified by the Department of Defense and not even the FBI had access to the final, all-encompassing report. Colton didn’t doubt Beatrice could get her hands on it if she sent Rory hunting, but he didn’t want to ask her to. Dangerous waters there, and he’d already asked for so much.
Connor’s bagel sat untouched. “I’m not sure I can add much to your information.”
Shelby looked down and Colton wondered what she was seeing behind her sightless eyes. She’d admitted she didn’t remember why she’d divorced him. Was it possible she forgot that night? What went down?
Heaven help me. That would be an answer to his prayers, wouldn’t it? For her to never remember?
“We’ve got to start somewhere.” She squirmed in her seat and handed the rest of her bagel to Salisbury. “Since neither Connor nor I remember much, we’re relying on you, Colton.”
At least she was admitting to not remembering. In a sick way, he was relieved.
The dog jumped down, his nails clacking on the floor as he headed for the living room with another piece of bagel.
Colton kicked back in his chair. He could make quick work of bringing both of them up to speed and avoid the details that would help no one. “The taskforce involved my SEAL team, Shelby, and another Fed named Calisto, our helo pilots, and Dr. Edmonton.”
“Before we took off, we practiced a dozen times, didn’t we?” Shelby said. She continued to stare at the table and Colton could see her straining to remember. “You hated having us to account for—me and Juan Calisto. You didn’t believe we should go on the raid.”
She had that right. “Direct orders were for you two to go along to manage Quan once we nabbed him. My superiors assured me you both had the training and could handle yourselves in a firefight.”
“But you didn’t believe it.”
He believed the Feds were well trained—he knew Shelby had worked her ass off to prepare for the mission. Plus, her and Calisto’s job hadn’t been to engage the enemy, only handle the asset once he was in custody of Colton’s SEAL unit.
It had looked good on paper, but as every SEAL knows, the bad guys never follow script.
At his silence, Shelby’s blank gaze rose to his face. “That’s not it, is it? It wasn’t about my skills or training. You just didn’t want me there.”
So yeah, she might not remember that night in detail, and couldn’t see his face to check for lies, but it wasn’t hard to guess that he hadn’t wanted his wife in the middle of a skirmish in enemy territory. “A safer bet was for you and Calisto to stay back at the safe house and let us bring Quan to you.”
“Which is kind of a moot point now,” Sabrina interjected. “Quan was shot and killed, right?”
Colton nodded, seeing the whole scene play out as if it had happened the day before. Did Shelby remember her part in all of it? “When we flew in, we had two helos. We made it into the compound, secured Connor and started the extraction. We got Connor into the first Pave along with several members of my team and Dr. Edmonton, the physician who accompanied us to work on Connor.”
He bit off a piece of bagel but it tasted like cardboard as he chewed. He tossed the rest onto his plate. “Snowman, one of my squad, was with me, Shelby, and Calisto in the second Pave. One of Quan’s men materialized from the compound as Shelby and Calisto were preparing to load Quan inside. They were in the middle of cuffing him and putting a bag over his face when the gunman emerged. Snowman returned fire but Calisto was hit and fell into Quan. Quan grabbed Calisto’s gun, and started shooting.” Shelby was paying rapt attention. “Lt. Moore, our STS pilot, jumped out to help neutralize Quan and the shooter filled him with bullets while Quan fired wildly at all of us.”
“So you killed him,” Shelby said. “Snowman picked off the gunman, I helped Calisto into the helo, you saved Moore, and we took off.”
Colton rubbed his head. The pressure inside it was a thing of beauty.
Sabrina sat forward, her eyes wide. “Who flew the helicopter?”
“I did,” Colton said.
Her eyes grew even larger. “You’re a pilot and a sniper? Plus you sing Bruce Springsteen songs and rescue dogs. A real renaissance man.”
“Colton received his wings at age seventeen,” Shelby said. “He’s been piloting small engine aircraft for nearly half his life.”
“It wasn’t my specialty in the Teams,” he admitted, “just a skill I dusted off to get us out of enemy territory before we all ended up dead.”
“But I seem to remember there was another man, a terrorist?” Shelby asked, her forehead pinching. “Your mission was rescuing Connor. Ours was Quan, but there was something else. Someone else in the other Pave.”
Connor shot Colton a look. They both were under orders to never tell anything about that man. “Not to my knowledge,” Colton lied. His phone rang and he jumped up, happy for the distraction. “I’ve got to take this.”
It was Rory. “I’ve got some interesting trivia on your shoe.”
Colton headed into the kitchen, hoping like hell Shelby didn’t decide she needed to know what had happened to the second ‘terrorist.’ “My shoe?”
“The print you sent. Took me forever to figure out what type it’s from because that outline doesn’t match anything in my database.”
The man had a shoe print database? “What about it?”
“It’s a hybrid dress/casual shoe made only by a small-time designer in Paris. They’re special order and pretty expensive. Not many of them around.”
Men in Oklahoma didn’t wear expensive designer shoes from Paris. Especially not those in Good Hope. “Can you trace it to the designer and find out who bought them?”
“If I had the actual shoe, yeah. I don’t even have a full print.”
“Right.” Snipers and serial killers weren’t known for their taste in expensive Parisian footwear. “It probably doesn’t belong to our killer anyway. An investor maybe looking to revive the subdivision or a visitor took a stroll and left it behind.”
“One more thing, that ghost file I found on your mission?”
“Drop it, Rory. It’s not important.”
“Hey, no skin off my nose, kid, but I thought you might like to know that Beatrice just activated Zeb to pay you a visit.”
Ah, shit. Not the old spymaster.
“I wanted to come myself once I saw the mention of that extra passenger you brought back on your mission to rescue Irish, but you know Beatrice. She won’t let me out of her sight. So heads up. Zeb’s on your trail.”
He chuckled and hung up.
Colton sighed and tapped his phone against his leg. Of all the damn luck.
He should just come clean. All of it. Clear his conscience. Tell Shelby the truth that she was bound to remember eventually, and to fill her in on why Wyatt Evers had ended up dead.
He was heading back into the dining room to do just that when the east wall blew apart.