Chapter 3
“If this is all settled, we need to get moving.” Logan pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Avery, I need to stop by my place and get some things.” He looked at Devon. “Avery and Sheri will take you out to the house and I’ll be there right after.”
“Like I said before, we’ll get some hot coffee into you,” Sheri said. “Maybe some food. My guess is you haven’t eaten a thing.”
Devon shook her head. “I just jumped right in my car and hit the interstate. But there’s plenty of food at the house.”
Avery shook her head. “We’ll take a look but you need to get some food into your system.”
Devon shook her head. Suddenly her hunger had disappeared. “I don’t know if I can eat anything.”
“Try, okay?” Her lips curved in a kind smile. “We can’t have you passing out.”
“Logan, would you stop by Fresh From the Oven and get a dozen of those muffins with all the chocolate? Devon should eat something and the sugar is good to combat shock.”
“Will do.” He cranked the engine in his truck and pulled out onto the road.
Devon swallowed. “Sheri, when do you think we’ll hear from the Coast Guard again?”
“I wish I could answer that.” Sheri took her hands and squeezed them. “But be prepared. If they haven’t found him after three days, they’ll call off the search. That’s protocol.”
“It’s just that not knowing is a bear.” She nibbled on her bottom lip.
“Come on. Let’s get going and get you up to the house. You’ll ride with me.”
Clutching her purse, Devon climbed into Sheri’s copmobile. As they drove back up Seacliff Road, she sat with her fists clenched in her lap, looking out the windows wondering if the black SUV would appear out of nowhere again.
“They’re gone,” Sheri said, guessing what was on her mind. “For one thing, there’s too much traffic here right now for them to try anything. For another, you and Logan both saw enough of their faces to make them regroup before they give it another shot. By the time they do, you’ll be situated with Logan glued to your side.”
Logan! In her house with her. Right. The thought of that made the butterflies resting in her stomach decide to do a tarantella. She must be crazy to be so affected by the man considering the situation she was in. A man she’d known for, what, three seconds? Damn!
The minute they were inside the house, Sheri headed for the single-serving coffeemaker on the counter, then rummaged in the cupboards until she found the mugs.
“Here, sit.” She nudged Devon toward the table and set a full mug in front of her. “Drink this.”
Sheri had just seated herself with her own mug when Avery arrived.
“Whew! The barbarians are at the gates already.” At the raised eyebrows, she added, “Reporters.”
Every muscle in Devon’s body tightened. “Are they here? Outside?”
Avery nodded. “Two of them pulled up the driveway behind me. Devon, you’ll have to talk to them eventually, but right now you have nothing to tell them. They can spend their time pestering the Coast Guard or asking questions in town. They’ll do both, anyway.”
“Damn.” Devon closed her eyes and took a breath. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up and find out this is all a mistake.”
“We wish. Sheri, can you get that nice young patrolman to come out here and throw some muscle around? Just until I get a new security system in here?”
“On it.” Sheri unclipped the radio from her belt and called in to the dispatcher with what she wanted.
Devon managed a weak smile. “Thanks.”
“Oh, and before I forget…” Sheri reached into her pants pocket and brought out a key ring. “To the house and both boats. The Coast Guard gave them to me for safekeeping. They were still in Princess Devon’s ignition.”
Devon wrinkled her forehead. “So isn’t that a sign he was on the boat and fell overboard?”
“Honey, right now it’s a sign of nothing. Let’s wait until we have more information.”
“Waiting. Right. Something I’ve never been very good at.”
“Once Logan gets here,” Avery added, “we’ll talk about a new sophisticated alarm system. Plus, Logan won’t hesitate to throw some muscle around if need be.” She blew out a breath. “Let me fix myself some of the good-smelling coffee and we can talk.”
She had just finished filling her mug when the landline rang. Devon got up and reached for the instrument, a reflex, but Avery grabbed her arm.
“You don’t know who that is. You wouldn’t be getting calls for yourself at this house, right?”
Devon shook her head.
“So it’s either the thugs Logan ran off, or others like them, or a reporter.”
Devon jerked her hand back. “What should I do?”
“Answer it, but hold the receiver so we can both hear.”
She nodded. “Hello?” She frowned when no one answered. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
Avery grabbed the phone from her, still holding it so they both could hear. “Who is this?” Silence greeted them. Finally whoever was on the other end hung up. Avery looked at Devon. “Is that like the call you got this morning?”
She nodded. “Same thing.”
“One thing it tells us,” Shari told her. “Whoever this is, they don’t have your father. Otherwise they wouldn’t be looking for him. And they want him pretty damn bad.”
“Or more than one group is after him,” Avery added, “and these people are pissed. And we still don’t know how the death of Vincent Pellegrino factors into this. It’s too damn coincidental for it not to.”
Devon’s throat was so dry she had to swallow twice before she could get the next question out. “More than one group?”
“Anything is possible,” Sheri reminded her. “If we had some idea what the hell this is all about we might have better answers. And this house is so immaculate there isn’t a sniff of a clue. I hope to hell we can get something off that cell phone.”
“Do you think they’ll come up here looking for him again?” Devon was almost afraid to ask the question.
“That’s always a possibility.” She gave Devon a reassuring smile. “But that’s why you’ll have Logan, plus a lot of other safeguards.”
“If these guys are the same two who were at the marina,” Avery commented, “they sure don’t seem like the kind of friends Graham Cole would have. Apparently Gary didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in two dirtbags asking about one of the town’s leading citizens. Asshole.”
Sheri made a rude noise. “I’m sure Gary didn’t even process that. He’s so clueless he didn’t even know Princess Devon wasn’t in its slip. I don’t know why the owners even keep him on.”
“My question would be how did they know to ask at the marina and what time of day were they there?”
Sheri leaned back in her chair. “Dev, you think you can go ahead now and tell us what happened? I want to know everything, from the minute you got to the house, the calls, whatever you remember.”
Devon did the best she could, trying to remember every detail.
“They scared me shitless,” she said, “but I did the best I could not to let them see it.”
“Smart and with guts.” Sheri squeezed her hand. “We’ll see what we can find when we put out a description. Also, I’ll be checking around town to see if they’ve been asking about Graham. And do it without raising everyone’s curiosity more than it already is.”
“I suspect those two have been keeping a profile so low it’s practically nonexistent, though,” Avery told her. She looked at Devon. “The first thing I want Logan to do when he gets here is a complete security assessment, so he can call me with what we need for your new system. We’ll monitor it from the office. A breech will also send an alarm to Logan’s watch.”
“His watch?” Devon blinked. “It must be some watch.”
Avery smiled at her. “It is. Believe me.”
“This is just a nightmare.” Devon rubbed her forehead. “You talked to my dad’s friends, right? What did they have to say? They might know something, especially Cash Breeland. He was pretty tight with him.” She thought for a second. “Also Earl Flannery. And Roy Parker. He was pretty tight with all of them. I can’t think who else.”
“Spoke to all three,” Sheri assured her. “They were all just as shocked as you are.”
“God. You’d think someone would have a clue.”
“Roy said he seemed a little distracted at their card game last week, but other than that, nothing.”
Devon rubbed her face. She’d been fighting off reactions to everything, but her body was losing the battle. She ached as if she’d been in battle and her insides felt like jelly. She had to pull herself together.
Sheri touched her hand. “It’s okay to fall apart. Anyone who had a day like this would be hanging on by a thread.”
“I guess. It’s just not who I am.” Nor had it ever been. Not even when her mother died, or when her father backed away from their relationship for more than a year. She’d allowed herself the moment of grief, then pulled up her big girl pants and moved forward. She’d always been like that.
“Maybe, but right now you have to give yourself permission to let go.”
Easier said than done.
“If we just had some idea of the what and why here.” Devon braced her elbows on the table and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “Nothing seems to fit. An experienced sailor just doesn’t fall overboard. A high-profile business executive doesn’t just disappear. Men like my father don’t hang out with the kind of people who would run me off the road. God! I just wish I knew what the hell was going on.”
“And we’re going to find out,” Sheri promised her. “We don’t have to rely on just my small department, either. I can hit up the sheriff’s department for additional manpower. But Avery has offered to do anything we need, and I think for this I’m taking her up on it.”
Devon lifted an eyebrow. “Is that okay to do? Mix public and private like that?”
Avery grinned. “We do work for the United States government. I think we can handle Arrowhead Bay.”
They all knew Vigilance had the resources to tap into things that weren’t readily available to your typical police department.
Devon let out a long breath. “Thank you so much.” Not that she didn’t have the greatest admiration for Sheri, but Arrowhead Bay had just a six-person police force. The most difficult things they handled were speeding tourists and bar fights during football games. Surely for something like this they needed more help.
Avery looked over at her sister. “So I’m guessing first on your list is the cell phone?”
Sheri nodded. “You’ve got staff and equipment that is way above anything us ordinary mortals have. But time is critical here.”
“No problem.”
“Good. When we leave here, I’ll run it right over to you.” Avery got up to brew another cup of coffee for herself.
Devon was only half listening. She kept sliding glances toward the front door, tuned in for sounds of Logan’s arrival. Safe! There was that word again, along with secure. Grounded. She’d felt it from the moment he’d jogged over from his truck. All those things. How could she feel that about a man she’d just met? Hadn’t even known more than an hour?
And now she was going to be staying with him in this house, just the two of them. Her hormones seemed to be doing battle for first place with the little ball of fear in her stomach. Crazy, right? But just as inexplicable as everything else in this insane situation.
And then he was there, his presence filling the room.
“Muffins.” He placed a bag from the bakery on the table in front of Devon.
She inhaled the aroma of the fresh muffins, the scents of chocolate and cinnamon teasing at her nose even before she opened the bag. Surprisingly, she discovered she was hungry.
“Yum. That smells wonderful.”
“They cure almost anything,” Avery told her with a smile. “Thanks, Logan.”
* * * *
Logan smiled at his boss. “No problem.”
Then he took a hard look at Devon, seated at the table with her fingers wrapped around a steaming mug of what he assumed was coffee. She was still pale, and the tension surrounding her was so strong it almost vibrated in the air.
Back on the highway he’d been worried about her. For a few minutes, he was afraid she was going to fall apart. Now, however, she looked a little bit better. Her color still wasn’t great but she looked more in control of herself. He had to give her high points for the way she was handling herself. He was glad when Sheri got up, found a plate for the muffins, and set them in front of her.
“Coffee, Logan?” Avery was standing by the coffeemaker.
“Not right now. I want to get the stuff into the house. Devon, what’s the deal with a remote for the garage door? I don’t want to leave my truck sitting outside.”
“There are some in the garage,” she told him.
“Some?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Most people just have one.”
“I know, but my father was obsessed with them. Every so often he’d change the codes. He showed me how to reprogram them and if I was coming to visit, he would give me the new code. I asked him about it once, and he said people coming to the house could clone the remote so he changed the code after every visit.”
And wasn’t that just interesting. People only did that if they had something to hide and wanted to control whoever had access to them. Logan had been through that before.
“What kind of visitors did he have?” Avery asked. “Do you know? And how long did it go on?”
Devon scrunched up her forehead. “Let me see. It started about two years after he built the house, and I haven’t the foggiest about visitors, beyond Cole International people. He never discussed them with me. Why?”
“Because that shows a high level of paranoia. That could be when things took an unexpected turn for him.”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“God.” She swallowed. “Okay, the inside door to the garage is right off the front hall.”
It took him a few trips to bring in all his and Devon’s things from his truck. She pointed him to her room and he chose the one across from it for himself. Better surveillance, giving him a direct line into her room if he needed it.
By the time he came back into the kitchen, Devon had a fresh mug of coffee and was making an attempt to eat a muffin. Then he excused himself while he scoped out the rest of the house. What he found—or didn’t find—troubled him.
“You’re right,” he told Avery. “This house could have been wiped by a professional. Something’s way off here.”
Avery had just handed him a mug of coffee when Sheri’s phone signaled. She listened for a moment, shock suddenly freezing her face.
“What is it?” Logan demanded.
“The boat.” The way she looked at each of them made every one of his warning signals go off. “The Princess Devon is on fire.”
Devon’s face turned white.
“On fire? But—But…” She looked up at Logan, who had moved to stand behind her chair, his hands resting on her shoulders. “How? Why?”
“We don’t know,” Sheri told them, “but the Coast Guard has to be notified, and I need to get down to the marina. The fireboat from Almonte County Fire Department is already there.”
“I’m going, too.” Devon jumped up, almost knocking over her coffee.
“No.” Logan tried to push her back into the chair. “You don’t need to be there.”
“Damn it.” She pushed his hands away and leaped up, almost knocking over her chair. “That’s my father’s boat. He disappears and suddenly his boat catches fire? Something doesn’t add up, and I want to know what the hell is going on. Please, Logan.”
“Devon, you’ve got a big target painted on your back,” Avery reminded her. “What if someone did this to draw you out? Besides, you don’t have a car.”
“I don’t care what you say,” Devon snapped. “I’m going. Someone can take me or I’ll walk.”
Avery’s reasonable voice wasn’t going to work here. Logan could feel Devon vibrating like a tuning fork, and he was filled with an overwhelming need to protect her. Which might, considering the circumstances and her attitude, be a difficult job.
“I’ll take her,” he said. He’d rather have her glued to his side than running off even more recklessly. “She’s going, so save your breath. We all need to get moving.”
“Stay. Go. Whatever.” Sheri threw up her hands. “I need to get down there.” In seconds she was out the door.
Devon reached for her purse and turned back to Logan. “Well?”
“Okay.” He held up a hand when Avery opened her mouth again. “Save it. I know when arguing is useless. Would you call the office and get a couple of our techs out here? Have them figure out the most complete security system we can install. And tell them to keep their eyes peeled.”
“Done.” She had already pressed speed dial for the office. “Go ahead. I’ll meet you down there.”
Logan could barely keep up with Devon as she raced into the garage and got into his truck. He had a feeling that if he hadn’t punched the button to open the garage door, she’d have insisted he just drive through it.
“Hurry,” she urged, hands clasped tightly in her lap.
Logan burned rubber backing out of the garage and heading down the driveway. Despite Devon’s urging to hurry, he took care to look both ways and scope out the surrounding area as he reached the road. And a damn good thing, he thought, as he spotted a black SUV almost hidden in the trees across the road. When it pulled out behind them he grabbed his gun from his waist and pushed Devon’s head down.
“Stay like that and don’t move under any circumstance.”
“What’s happening? What—”
“Trouble. Just do me a favor and hang tight. Please.”
He had to give her credit. She shut up and bent way down, just as he’d told her to do, even though he could feel the fear and anger vibrating from her. They hadn’t gone fifty yards before something cracked against the rear of the truck cab, and he knew damn well it was a bullet. Last year he’d protected a very high-profile oilman whose life had been threatened. He’d taken his truck to Tactical Armoring Corporation in San Antonio and had it fixed up inside and out. Now he had bulletproof tires, and a vehicle reinforced against everything up to and including armor-piercing rifles.
He pressed harder on the accelerator, keeping one eye on the road and the other on the side-view mirror. If they could make it to the end of the road and take the turn to the marina, he figured they’d be okay because then they’d be in traffic. He hoped these idiots weren’t stupid enough to engage in a firefight with a bunch of other people around.
A heavy thud sounded against the back of the cab, and Logan knew from the sound it was an armor-piercing bullet. Whoever these guys were, they came well equipped.
He watched the speedometer creep up to eighty, then ninety, then a hundred. He was sure the men behind them wanted to pull up alongside and try for the windows, but he kept ahead of them with his powerful engine. They were almost to the end of Seacliff Road.
“Hang on. Brace yourself.”
He wrenched the wheel around, skidding into the turn, and then they were on the busy road to the marina.
Traffic forced him to slow down and when he looked in his mirror, he saw the other vehicle had turned off the other way. Smart. They didn’t want people around for what they had to do. He had to tell Avery so they could revisit the security needs. A high-end system might not be enough.
“You can sit up now,” he told Devon.
When the SUV pulled out behind them, she hadn’t freaked, or panicked, or done anything he might have expected. She just did what he told her and left him to take care of business. He was afraid that wouldn’t work at the marina, though, with tension rolling off her in waves.
As they neared the marina the traffic became thicker, and when they turned into the parking lot, he saw a thick cloud of black smoke rising into the air. The place was jammed, and not just with boat owners. Things like this drew everyone in this tiny little town. He managed to squeeze the truck into a narrow space but before he’d even shut off the ignition, Devon was already out. He barely caught her as he leaped out of the truck.
“Hold it. You don’t move two inches without me. Someone just shot at us, remember?”
Every bit of color leached from her face. “They want to kill me.”
He shook his head. “I think they want to kill me and get their hands on you. So for the immediate future, we’re stuck together with glue.”
Two of Sheri’s patrolmen were barricading the gate that opened out onto the docks and doing their best to hold back the shouting crowd. In a moment two men he recognized as Vigilance agents joined them.
“It’s okay,” he told Deacon Broder, one of the Vigilance men. “The boat on fire is her dad’s. Let us through.”
That took a lot of squeezing to get past the pushing and shoving.
“Who are these people?” Logan asked.
“Some of them have boats in the slips near Princess Devon. We told them they can’t go out on the dock yet, but they’re maniacs.”
“Yeah, I can see they’re upset. I’ll get Sheri to calm them down.”
Devon was already running down the dock to where flames licked the air, mingled with the thick black cloud. Logan jogged down to catch her. As soon as he neared the fire he could see that the boat was destroyed. Not even the hull was intact, floating in blackened pieces in the water. A small fireboat was in the water between the docks spraying the Princess Devon and Lady Hannah. Men in board shorts and Arrowhead Bay T-shirts were on the dock with hoses hooked up to spigots, spraying all the other boats in the area.
What a fucking mess.
Sheri was talking to a tall man in a uniform who he assumed was with the Coast Guard. He hated to interrupt her but she had to do some damage control.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Sheri, you need to calm the beasts down back there. Let them know when they can get to their boats.”
She glanced back to the gate and nodded. “Okay. Logan, this is Lieutenant Commandeer Russell Deering of the Coast Guard. He’s our new liaison while we wait to see what search and rescue does or does not turn up. Russell, Logan Malik is a top Vigilance agent. You can tell him anything.”
“Hold on a sec, Sheri.” Logan shook hands with the man and introduced Devon to him. “Could you keep an eye on her for a second? This is her dad’s boat.”
Deering lifted a quizzical eyebrow but nodded. “Sure.”
Logan guided Sheri a few feet away. In concise sentences, he told her about the car chasing them down Seacliff Road and shooting at them.
“I think they were making another try at Devon. If they got rid of me in the process, so much the better.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I just can’t believe how stupid they are to try something with the same vehicle. Although neither of them would win a contest for brains. We all need to be extra alert.”
She nodded. “Did you tell Avery yet?”
He shook his head. “Haven’t seen her but I will.”
“Good.” Then she turned and hurried down the dock to the demanding crowd.
Devon had been doing her best to get as close to the edge of the dock as she could, despite Deering’s best efforts to keep her from it.
Logan grabbed her and pulled her back. “Don’t want you falling in the water.”
“He’s right,” Deering agreed. “Sorry about your boat, ma’am. But I do need you to stand back from the slip. That fire’s not out yet and sparks are still flying.”
Devon did as he asked, backing right up against Logan. She had her arms wrapped around herself as if shielding her body from the cold, even though it was in the nineties. She stood there, rigid, unmoving, just watching. Logan didn’t give a fuck who was watching. He wrapped his arms around her, heartened when she didn’t try to move away, and pulled her against his body. It was as much to give her warmth as it was to protect her.
He was busy every minute scanning the crowd, looking for the two men from this morning or anyone like them. He recognized some of the people. After all, he’d been living in Arrowhead Bay for two years. He was more interested in strangers, anyone who looked like they didn’t belong. With all the snowbirds that was a little more difficult, but his eyes were trained to pick up nuances in stance and body movement. He also relied on his well-honed instincts. They hadn’t failed him yet.
And all the time he was hyperaware of Devon’s very appealing body pressed against his.
Deliberately he put all thought of her body out of his mind and concentrated on the here and now.
He was still convinced the fire was to draw her out of the house. Maybe they hoped in the crowd they could snatch her. Of course, it occurred to him whoever was behind this could hire a couple of locals to grab her, too. He was pretty sure they didn’t want her dead until they found out where her father was. He’d be overly careful whenever they were out of the house.
At last Russell Deering, who had been watching and checking on things, walked back over to where they were standing, a look of sympathy on his face as he spoke to Devon.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the Princess Devon is a total loss. Lady Hannah can probably be salvaged but she’ll need a lot of work.”
“Do you know how the fire started?” Logan asked.
“Not yet. But we’ll have a crew looking at what’s left of it as soon as the fire is completely out. Miss Cole, we’ll get a report to you as quick as we can for your insurance company.”
“Insurance?” She tensed in Logan’s arms.
“Yes. You’ll need to file a claim for both boats.” He looked at Logan, then back at her. “I know we have search and rescue out looking for your father. We still don’t have any new information for you. We’re still searching, but I’m sorry to say I’m not hopeful.”
Devon drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thank you for keeping me informed.”
“I want to go on board Lady Hannah,” she told him as soon as Deering had walked away.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. There are still sparks flying everywhere so the danger of fire isn’t really over.”
She bit her lower lip, a habit that tended to make him hard as a spike. “Do you think it will be all right sitting here like this?”
“Yes. There are too many official figures and too much of a crowd around here today. They might not even let you on it right now. Tomorrow would be better. You have the keys Sheri gave you, right?”
She nodded.
“Then I think we should go home and come back tomorrow. All you’ve had to eat today is a muffin and you don’t want to get sick. Plus, I want to get you out of this crowd as soon as possible.”
She shuddered. “Yes. All right. But—”
“But what?”
“What if they’re waiting for us on the road?”
“Here comes Avery.” He tilted his head at the figure walking down the dock. “We’ll get her to send a follow car with us.”
“A follow car for what?” Avery stopped next to them.
“A black SUV popped out of the trees across from the house and tried to shoot us off the road.” He gave Avery a half grin. “Just in case they’re waiting to try again, we need someone to follow us and cover our asses on the way back to the house.”
“Okay. Good thing we’re light on assignments this week. The crew is at the house working on the new security system. I told them to bring everything they could think of with them so they could get started right away.”
“Good deal. Then I’ll go ahead and take Devon home. Maybe I can even get some food into her.”
“Everyone wants to feed me,” she snapped, “but I don’t have an appetite.”
“Doesn’t matter. You eat so you don’t get sick. Come on. You’ll only upset yourself more standing around here.”
When he took her hand to lead her off the dock, he was pleased she didn’t pull it away.
I’m just holding on to her for her protection.
Yeah, he could tell himself that all he wanted but he knew the real truth. And in the intimacy of the house he wasn’t sure what would happen. He had a hard and fast rule—never, ever mix business and pleasure. But as a fellow Marine once told him on leave, rules were made to be broken.