Virginia Vaughan - Deadly Christmas Duty

Melinda laughed then called off the dog. “Ranger, get down.”

The dog did as he was told and hurried across the room to curl up in a doggie bed.

She motioned toward the bathroom down the hall. “You can use this one. I’ll use the one in the master bedroom.” She disappeared into a back room and closed the door behind her.

It felt good to wash the soot and grime from himself and change into clean clothes. It was like a renewing after the battle, and it always made him feel better. He only wished he could wash off the guilt and shame he felt over his sister’s disappearance the same way. His heart had broken when he’d received the news. He should have been here watching out for her instead of halfway around the world.

Again, the sting of failure pinched at him. Why, God? Why do You keep allowing such terrible things to happen? He’d been asking that question for most of his life and he still hadn’t received an answer.

Once he was finished cleaning up, he waited for Melinda in the living room. A small Christmas tree stood in the corner, decorated with mostly handmade craft ornaments and strings of popcorn. Photographs lined the room of a little boy in different stages of growth, some taken with Melinda and many more without. This must be her son, Ramey. He couldn’t help noticing there were no pictures of a husband or father in any of these.

“That’s Ramey when he was four years old,” she stated from behind him, referring to the photo he was staring at of her son with a soccer ball.

“He’s a handsome boy. How old is he?”

“Thank you. He’s six now.”

“I notice there are no pictures of his father. Are you divorced?” That was the most likely reason a woman didn’t display photos.

“Actually, I’m a widow. My husband died in a boating accident before Ramey was born.”

That seemed odd. Widows generally had photographs of their husbands displayed, but Melinda didn’t have even one picture that he could see. Still, it wasn’t his business. “My condolences.”

“Thank you. It was a long time ago.” She tugged a strand of hair behind her ear then glanced at the clock. “I told Susan Campbell I would pick up Ramey by four o’clock.”

“We should go, then.” He led her outside and opened the passenger door for her. She directed him toward the Campbells’ home, where he parked at the curb. As she got out of the car, a blond boy rushed out the door and jumped into her outstretched arms.

He enjoyed watching them together. There was no hesitation in the boy’s face or actions, nothing like he or Nikki had felt at seeing their folks. They’d never known what mood they would find their mother and father in from day to day, or what imagined slight they might have done to them. On a good day, the yelling and hitting would be minimal, but on a bad day... He pushed away those memories, preferring to focus instead on how happy this child seemed to be to see his mother.

She walked to the door and spoke a few words with a woman—Susan Campbell, no doubt—who handed her a booster seat and a bag. She walked the boy to the car. “Ramey, I’d like you to meet Mr. Cason. He’s a friend who’s helping me with something. Can you say hello?”

The boy grinned up at Noah, again his face open and welcoming. “Hi, Mr. Cason.”

Noah knelt and shook the boy’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Ramey. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Are you going to marry my mommy?”

“Ramey!” Her face flushed and she shushed him. “Don’t ask things like that.”

Noah found himself grinning at such an innocent exchange. “It’s okay. Your mom and I are friends, Ramey. That’s all.”

The boy shrugged and accepted that, then crawled into the back seat of the car as Melinda set up his booster seat and buckled him in.

“I’m sorry,” Melinda whispered once he was secured. “He shouldn’t be asking that. He’s just not used to seeing me with a man.”

“No problem,” he assured her. He wasn’t insulted. In fact, he liked that she didn’t parade men in front of her son. He’d been captivated by her beauty from the moment she’d glanced up at him and he’d taken in her narrow face and delicate neck framed by her long, dark hair. But it was the smile that played on her face as she watched him that he’d noticed first. She was quick to smile, and he liked that. Now his opinion of her was growing just from this small exchange. She was a good mom, and that said a lot about her in his eyes.

He stopped that line of thinking before it got out of hand. He couldn’t go down that road with Melinda. He’d been through too much, seen too much, to ever deserve a woman like her. What would anyone want with a washed-out Navy SEAL who’d gotten his teammates killed? He was glad Nikki had befriended her. They’d always dreamed of having a normal life, and it saddened him to know she never got that fairy-tale life she’d longed for. Instead, she’d married a man just like their father, and had paid the ultimate price for it.

Noah had buried himself in work, first as a SEAL and now as an operator for the Security Operations Abroad, acting as covert security for CIA agents in the field. If he could remain busy, he could forget what a tragedy his home life had been, and the dreams of normalcy that never came true.

Melinda met with Chief Peterson later that evening and answered as many questions as she could about finding the backpack containing the device beneath her desk. All she knew for certain was that it hadn’t been there before she’d gone to meet her friend Robin for lunch.

“How certain are you that it wasn’t under your desk before you left?” he asked her for what seemed like the fifth time.

“Very certain,” she reiterated. “I told you that I dropped a pen earlier in the day and it rolled under the desk. I had to crawl under there to retrieve it. The backpack wasn’t there.”

He jotted a note on his notepad. “What time was that?”

“I’d been at the office for about two hours, so around 11:00 a.m. I left at noon and when I returned, I noticed my door was closed, but the latch wasn’t pulled all the way shut. Dawn usually closes and locks it if she leaves the office and I’m not there. I assumed she’d just forgotten or had been in a rush.”

“So, Dawn was still at the office when you left it?”

“Yes.”

“But she was gone when you returned?”

“That’s right.”

He made another note then looked up at her. “Did she know where you were going or when you would return?”

“I told her before I left that I would be back by one.” She didn’t usually have Saturdays kid-free unless she was working, so she’d taken a rare opportunity to meet her friend for an extended girls’ lunch. In fact, Robin had been persistent that Melinda take the time to meet her. At first, she’d worried her friend had bad news to share, but their lunch had been about catching up.

“When was the last time you spoke to your assistant?”

She was about to say right after the bombing, then she realized she’d only left a message. “My phone was damaged in the explosion so I borrowed a phone and left her a voice mail telling her what had happened.”

“But you haven’t spoken to her since you left the office at eleven?”

“That’s right. I thought she might call me on my house phone, but I haven’t been there for much time since it happened.”

“How did she seem when you left her? Was she nervous? Anxious? Oddly quiet?”

She saw where this line of questioning was going, and she didn’t like it one bit. Dawn was a sweet young woman with a bright future ahead of her. Plus, she’d been a great assistant and a friend. Melinda trusted her with her most sensitive materials. “She was fine. Her normal self.”