Debra & Regan Webb & Black - Heavy Artillery Husband

She gasped, her eyes wide and sad. “The CID didn’t back you up?”

“That was before the treason charge.” He knew she was thinking about the lives lost on that last busted mission. “Cooperating with the drug lord was a test to earn the trust of the criminals CID wanted to net. What I didn’t realize at the time was that by passing that test I put you and Frankie in danger.” He hitched his shoulders against the impossible burden. “Smoothing the way for that drug shipment earned me a rare invitation to Hellfire, an elite circle of retired military personnel that CID had been trying to dismantle for more than five years.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “They named themselves after a missile?”

He nodded. “They’re cocky. Considering what they’ve gotten away with and how they’ve managed to line their pockets, they’ve earned the moniker. As a general willing to cross the line for personal gain, I was a shoo-in. Once I was in, my real goal was to identify the Hellfire leadership and gather evidence against them.”

“Which meant working with them in the short-term,” she said quietly.

“Yes.” He swallowed the lump of guilt in his throat. Good men had died for bad reasons that day. Undercover or not, he’d been ready to serve time as a penance. “And it eventually led to the treason charge.” He cracked his knuckles. “There was a bank account in the Caymans that would’ve made you blush.” His stilted laughter didn’t hold any humor. “Doing bad things for the right reasons is no excuse. I should’ve found another way.”

The CID special agent running his part of the operation assured him there hadn’t been another way, but he would carry those terrible memories forever. On his feet again, Frank paced to the door and back, his mind lost in that cursed patch of dirt and the acrid scents of burning fuel and explosives roiling through the desert air.

With both hands fisting helplessly at his sides, he forced himself to tell her the rest. “We figured out after that fiasco, I wasn’t the only CID recruit. Another team was tracking the drug shipment. Somehow Hellfire learned the shipment would be seized and used the opportunity to blame it on me.”

“Moving illegal drugs is a crime, yes. That doesn’t explain the treason charge.”

He rubbed one thumb hard into the palm of his other hand. “Hellfire scrubbed the op rather than risk exposure. As Hellfire’s newest member, I took the rap for the whole deal, letting the real traitors get away clean, their drug money gushing again like crude oil from a new well less than a week later.”

“Frank, if what you say is true, it wasn’t your fault.”

Of course it was. He looked down to find she’d moved too close, her hands holding his. He wasn’t worthy of her sympathy. Reluctantly, he shifted out of her reach. “The treason charge was manufactured just to ruin me, in case I was inclined to flip on Hellfire.”

“I didn’t want to believe you’d sold information about troop movements and weapons in Kabul, but who else could have leaked those facts?”

Only another general and his cronies, Frank kept to himself. As an analyst, she would’ve assessed and reported on the intel provided. That was the trouble. With Hellfire railroading him and manipulating the intel, the only possible verdict was guilty.

“I had to do something. Behind bars, I’d never get to the bottom of this, if they even let me live. My CID contact, Special Agent J.D. Torres, came to see me after the verdict and we devised a plan to fake my death. Once I escaped, I knew enough to keep gathering evidence against them without worrying that they’d go after my family.”

“And yet here we are, almost a year later.” She sank back into the chair.

“Yes.” His worst nightmare coming true in full color and in real time. “Based on what I learned during my brief time within Hellfire, I’ve been piecing parts of the puzzle together. I’ve learned how the drugs come into the country and I know the top three players in the group. I even managed to stop a drug shipment last month.”

“That’s progress, I guess. What did Torres have to say?”

He recognized that look. She was shifting gears, playing devil’s advocate. He was about to preempt that move. “Torres was the only person who knew about me. I reached out to him to turn in my latest report and let him know where I stashed Hellfire’s drugs for the CID to clean up. He didn’t respond. I discovered he died in a single-car wreck last month. He’d gone missing more than forty-eight hours before police found the car torched, just off his normal route to and from work. Taking that shipment managed to get another man killed and put you and Frankie in the crosshairs.”

“How can they possibly know you were responsible?”

“Process of elimination,” he replied. “I’m the only one who understands how the money and drugs move through their sick, private retirement fund. I can’t be sure when they learned I’m alive. They must have tortured Torres to discover how we stayed in contact.”

“They threatened Frankie and me to draw you out?” She closed her eyes, her fingers sliding the pendant of her necklace along the chain. “How did they tell you?”

“It was a private message on a social media account. They sent me a picture of you, then followed that with the kill order.” When she let loose a string of Italian curses for Hellfire, he couldn’t have agreed more. “I can’t quit now. If I don’t stop them, who knows how many more people will get hurt or die while they get richer?”

Her gaze was distant, thoughtful, as she resumed her place at the very edge of her chair. “I felt someone watching me in Chicago.”

“Yes,” he said with a nod. “I’ve been shadowing the man they put on you since you arrived this morning. I had to move fast before the sniper could set up the shot.”

“So you pulled me out of harm’s way.”

“It almost worked perfectly.” His heart had stopped when they’d forced her off the road. “I’m not sure why they ran you off the road, unless they wanted your death to look like an accident.”

“What about Frankie?”

The edge of panic in her voice slid as deep as a blade between his ribs. “I’m hoping this fiancé of hers can watch her back, but the sooner I wrap this up, the better for everyone.” Once he eliminated Hellfire and knew his girls were safe, he could think about what to do with the rest of his lonely life.

Sophia nodded, her face pinched as she laced her fingers together in her lap. There had been a time when they’d faced bad news hand in hand. He never should have kept any of this from her. “Is he a good man?”

She lifted her gaze to meet his, blinking as she tried to put his question into the proper context. “Aidan? He’s the best. Did you know he was a Colby investigator?”

“Yes. I did a background search on him.” While Frank respected Victoria Colby-Camp and her agency, this was his baby girl’s life on the line. “I sent him a death threat today.”

“You did what?”

“Well, I sent it to him, but it was aimed specifically at Frankie,” he clarified, realizing too late he’d only made things worse. “I wanted them on alert. I couldn’t blurt out what was really going on. I needed them to react quickly, not ask questions.”

“Oh, Lord.” Her expressive eyes rolled to the ceiling. “Here I was, trying to figure out how to clue her in that you’re alive and that we might need her help.”

“We can’t do that. We can’t tell her anything.” Panic snapped and clawed at his heart. “The more she knows about me, the more danger she’s in.”

Sophia’s sound of frustration mimicked an unhappy grizzly bear. “If I don’t kill you before this is over, she will. Trust me on that.”