CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They parked outside Chloe’s condo. Dylan hated to admit it, but given how treacherous the roads had been, despite the efforts of the Department of Transportation’s crews, she was glad Steven had done the driving. He’d handled the Jeep on the skids like a man used to driving on icy roads.
“This the place?” Janowski asked, staring up at the converted Victorian.
“Yes. It was built at the turn of the twentieth century and was once a one family home of some industrialist. A few years back it was converted to four two-bedroom condos. Chloe said it reminded her of the old place where Bobby raised us, only more up-to-date.”
“So your sister raised you and Chloe?” he asked as they climbed out of the Jeep.
She shoved her hands into her coat pocket and carefully met him at the front of the car. “After our parents died. Bobby was twelve years older than Chloe, fourteen ahead of me. She quit college, got her associate teaching certificate to teach pre-K for a few years and then finished her BA in teaching all while raising Chloe and me.”
“That’s a good big sister. Steady there.” Grasping her arm as she started across a slick spot on the sidewalk, he kept her steady until they were on an area still covered with snow, but not slick. “The last thing either of us need is a trip back to the ER, this time on a stretcher.”
“Especially with Cardiff covering surgery tonight,” Dylan said and they both laughed.
They carefully made their way up the steps and inside the lighted vestibule.
“Looks like the power’s back on if it was out before,” Steven said as she took the key she had to Chloe’s place and let them inside the security door. “That’s a good thing.”
“Well, yes. If she’s here, then she’s not freezing to death…” She let the statement hang.
“But if it’s not a power outage?”
“Then she better have a damn good reason for not answering Bobby’s or my calls.” And the little niggle of worry she’d been pushing to the back of her brain all day while busy in surgery, suddenly grew into a warning bell.
She led him up the stairs to the second floor where Chloe’s condo took up the right half of the floor. At the doorway, the stopped cold.
It stood slightly ajar.
Dylan reached for the knob, but Janowski grabbed her hand, shaking his head to stop her. Reaching into his coat, he suddenly pulled out a gun, stepping between her and the door. “Stay behind me, Doc.”
Hell yes, she was staying behind him. The man had a freaking gun in his hand.
At some point she was going to have to address the fact that her new co-worker had a concealed weapon, but as she inched her way into Chloe’s apartment and saw the savage chaos of the usually neat and tidy space, she was very glad Janowski was armed.
“Look,” she said, pointing to the alarm system by the door. Someone had pried it open and cut the wires.
Janowski nodded.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered as they moved deeper into the condo.
“I take it this isn’t your sister’s usual decorating style?” Steven asked over his shoulder.
“You mean modern-trashed-by-tornado-and-tagged-with-spray-painted-obscenities? Not Chloe’s thing. If anyone’s place would look like this, it would be mine—well except for the spray paint part.”
He gave her a one-eyebrow lift and half a smirk.
She shrugged. What could she say? Neatness only counted in surgery to her.
“This room is clear. You stay here and I’ll check out the rest of the place. Okay?” he said, all teasing gone from his voice.
She nodded.
The way he held the gun and moved through the condo reminded her of all those action/adventure movies she used to watch with her sister Bobby, especially the ones with SWAT or Navy Seal heroes. Despite the chaos surrounding her, Janowski’s obvious training reassured her that she was at least safe with him here. She just prayed he didn’t find Chloe in one of the other rooms.
“It’s all clear. No one here,” Steven said as he came back in the room, putting his gun back into the holster under his armpit.
Dylan slumped down on the arm of the sofa. “At least Chloe’s not here dead or injured.” She paused, fear gripping her heart. “What if whoever did this has her?” She reached for the bag slung on her shoulder to get her phone only to see Janowski had his out, pushing buttons. “Are you calling the police?”
“No. Someone else you need to talk to.” He held her gaze as the phone dialed in his hand. A deep voice that sounded a little familiar answered.
“What’s wrong, Bulldog?”
* * * * *
The timer on the oven broke the lovely silence surrounding Chloe as she snuggled against Wes. It took several beeps before he moved to leave the bed.
“Don’t go,” she murmured.
“Time to put the steaks on,” he said as she tried to pull him back in the bed.
“We don’t need to eat. We can just stay buried in here ’til all the snow melts.” Given how good sex with him was, the idea sounded better and better to her.
He chuckled as he pulled on his jeans. “Sorry, counselor. Despite what you might’ve heard, man cannot live by sex alone. We need meat.” Reaching down, he kissed her for a few more beeps of the timer then drew the covers up around her. “You stay here. About fifteen more minutes and then dinner will be ready.”
Drawing his pillow up against her, she watched him move about the kitchen through the open doorway. The man had a smooth, efficient and confident manner about him. From the first time she’d seen him late last spring, she’d been unable to truly put him out of her mind.
Suddenly a grey and white furry body appeared on the side of the bed. Rolling over, she scratched the wolf-dog’s head and looked into his blue eyes, so reminiscent of Wes’s.
“Hello, Wöden. Is it starting to smell good out there? Do you think I should get dressed and go help?”
As if understanding what she asked, Wöden walked around the bed wagging his bushy tail, looking much more like an overgrown puppy than a fierce wolf.
“Okay,” she said, grabbing her clothes from the floor where they’d landed earlier. “I get the message.”
A few minutes later, dressed but still chilly from the loss of body heat from Wes and the covers, she stood in front of the roaring fire. On the fireplace mantle sat some framed pictures. One of an elderly couple and a teenage boy, taken about twenty years ago.
“That’s Nana and Poppy,” Wes said behind her as he set plates on the island counter. “They raised me after my mom, Carla, left to go live with her last deadbeat boyfriend.”
“By the smiles on all your faces, they love you very much.”
“They did. Nana died my junior year of college. Poppy not long after I made into the Army Rangers.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you keep in contact with your mother?”
Wes shook his head as he laid the butter and sour cream onto the counter between the plates. “Last time I heard anything about her was from Nana about a year before she died. Carla was living in some sort of back-to-nature commune in the southwest. After Nana died, neither Poppy nor I made an effort to find out anything about her.”
The tenor of his voice told Chloe that conversation thread was done. He’d answer no more questions about his mother. Picking up the other framed picture of a group of men in combat fatigues, all armed and gathered around a sand-colored Humvee-looking vehicle, she carried it over to the counter. “And this is you in where? Iraq or Afghanistan?”
He cut up one steak and put the pieces into a dog bowl on the floor for Wöden, then finished loading their plates with the baked potatoes and steak. Sitting beside her on one of the barstools, he took the picture from her. The lines around his eyes and mouth tightened a bit as he stared at it. His body went still and a faraway look filled his eyes. Where ever he’d just gone, it was painful for him. Chloe waited.
Finally, he set the picture on the counter above the food. “My first tour of duty in Afghanistan.” Without further comment, he began loading up his potato with butter, sour cream and cheese.
Chloe followed suit, enjoying the companionable silence as they ate their meal, complete with a nice Merlot. So many questions about Wes’s time in the military, his dark-ops career, what had happened on that last mission, and if he was still active rolled around in her head, but she’d learned years ago with some of her clients, patience on her part sometimes got her better results than grilling them with questions.
“That’s Steve Janowski,” Wes finally said when his steak was gone, pointing to the bald, shorter, stockier man with a medic symbol on his uniform, standing beside the younger version of Wes. “You know him as Bulldog.”
“The man you have looking after Dylan?” Chloe took a drink of her wine, studying the man in the photo. “He’s a medic?”
“Best there is. Also a surgical PA.”
Understanding hit her. “So he could work with my sister and keep an eye out for danger without tipping her off?”
Wes nodded. “Or anyone else. He’s good at putting people back together, but just as skilled at taking them apart.”
“Who are the other guys?” she asked, leaning back in her chair, sipping on her wine, her hunger pleasantly satisfied.
“On the far left is Justin Renner. We called him Cannon,” he said pointing at a medium-sized, medium-height African American with a saucy grin, holding what looked like a combination rifle and machine gun.
“Cannon because of the big gun in his hands?”
Wes coughed on a strangled laugh. “Not exactly. He got the name for two reasons. First, because he could throw a football like an NFL quarterback, accurate and made your hands hurt when you caught it.”
“And the second reason?”
“Well, a certain part of his anatomy was built like a cannon.” Wes lifted a knowing eyebrow her direction.
It was Chloe’s turn to choke on laughter. “I should’ve known. Put young guys together and you start measuring your manhoods—literally.”
A cheeky smile lifted the corners of Wes’s mouth. He pointed to the lanky redhead next in line in the picture. “The man next to him is Isaac Bridger, aka Snake.”
“Let me guess, he’s built like a snake?” She shook her head, returning the grin.
“Nah. He got the name because he could slither into and out of tight spots without anyone knowing.” Wes scooted out his chair and began gathering up the plates.
She studied Snake’s picture a moment.
“What?” Wes asked.
“Nothing really. It’s just he looks familiar. You know, like I might’ve run across him.”
A dark look crossed Wes’s features. “Impossible.”
“Why?” she asked, already knowing his answer.
“Because he’s buried in the jungles of South America.” Wes’s face had hardened and his mouth pressed into a thin line.
The last mission. And she knew he was done talking about it—for now.
She looked at the photo again and pointed to the next man, taller than the others, built like a football player and holding a dog. “And him?”
“Bruno Carpachio.”
“What was his nick name? Lasagna?”
He shook his head. “No. With a name like Bruno he didn’t need one. Guy was great at breaking down walls when we needed him, too.”
“And the dog?”
The corner of Wes’s lip lifted. “We found him in an empty house one day. Bruno gave him some of his MRE and the little guy followed us back to camp.”
“Did he get to bring the dog home?”
The whisper of a smile disappeared from Wes’s mouth. “Bruno couldn’t care for him, as he was going into another assignment. Before we returned state side, he gave him to a group of kids. Hopefully they didn’t make him into stew.”
“I hope not, too.” She took another drink of her wine as she watched Wes move about the kitchen, pulling out a box of graham crackers, chocolate bars and marshmallows. The man kept his promise. Apparently, they were having s’mores for desert. “So this new assignment of Bruno’s, was it part of your special operations group?”
“You can’t help being a lawyer, can you?” Wes said, carrying the tray of s’mores ingredients along with two long wire skewers over to the fireplace.
“I’ve always been full of questions. I figure if you want to know something, you should ask.”
Chloe brought both their glasses of wine and settled down beside him on the rug in front of the fire. He handed her the marshmallows and skewers then picked up the poker to stir the fire. Without waiting for instructions, she loaded two marshmallows on the skewers.
“Did you think your curiosity might’ve been what got you into this predicament?” he asked as he set another log onto the fire.
“The old curiosity killed the cat theory Bobby always warned me about as a kid?” she asked, handing him the skewers to toast the marshmallows over the fire. Not wanting to really address his question, she focused on opening the crackers and chocolate bars, layering them on the plate to await the hot marshmallows.
“Your rebellion against an older sister aside. You’ve pushed the limits a few times in these cases. Turning information over to the DA about one of your firm’s clients. Taking on a big conglomerate for your client by investigating their finances and not accepting their offer without question. Finding out about the sporting goods guy to make sure he pays? Yeah, I’d say your questions could’ve landed you in this mess.”
“You left out the domestic abuse case,” she said through nearly clenched teeth. How dare he say she brought this upon herself by doing what was right?
“That would be your crusader gene going wild.”
“My what?” She looked at him with incredulity.
“That gene where you know what’s right and by God you’re going to be sure that justice is done. Bobby has it, too. Don’t know Dylan well enough, but I suspect she shares it with you two,” he said as he pulled the skewer back and blew out the fire on the toasted to near perfection marshmallows.
“You don’t believe people should do what’s right?” She settled graham crackers on top of the marshmallows as he slid them on top of the chocolate bars, sandwiching them together.
“Despite what you and your sisters believe, the world isn’t so cut and dried, black and white. There’s a whole lot of gray out there.” Without further comment, he picked up a s’more and took a big bite, his eyes lit up as if he was in heaven.
As much as she’d love to inform him that she was well aware of the gray areas both in the law and people’s moral compasses, his enjoyment of the dessert and her own sweet tooth won out. She’d indulge in one s’more, then she’d give him her opinion on his opinion on her.
Picking up one of the gooey treats, she sank her teeth into it, letting her eyes close in pure bliss.
A warm breath caressed her cheeks.
Opening her eyes he gaze locked on his, his face mere centimeters from hers, the flame of the fire mirrored in his blue eyes.
“You have chocolate on your lips,” he said, his voice huskier than normal.
“I do?” Her words came out whispery, sort of mimicking the little flutters in her stomach.
“Want me to get it?” he asked moving slightly closer.
Eyes locked on his, she nodded.
He captured her lips with his. A soft kiss. A tasting. His tongue slipped across her lips, capturing the errant chocolate. He moved back, their lips lingering just a second longer before separating. Then he licked his lips.
“Delicious,” he said, continuing to hold her gaze. As he inched closer to kiss her again, his phone’s ring tone broke the near silence of the cabin. “Dammit,” he swore, shoving his body off the floor and striding over to the counter to retrieve his phone.
He turned to look at her, the desire on his face replaced with concern as he answered. “What’s wrong, Bulldog?”