Marta Perry - Heart Of The Matter

“Hey, Amanda.” Kelly Ryan’s smile included all of them. “You’re expected. Go on up.” She thrust visitor badges across to them.

“Is anyone free to take our intern on a tour while we’re in with my father?” Sensing a rebellious comment forming on C.J.’s lips, she went on quickly. “I’d like her to gather background color for the articles we’re doing. Okay?”

C.J. subsided.

“Sure thing. I’ll handle it.” Kelly waved them toward the stairs.

They headed up, leaving C.J. behind with Kelly, and she was still too aware of Ross, following on her heels. Drat the kid, anyway. Why did C.J. have to suggest something like that? It wasn’t as if she didn’t feel awkward enough around Ross already.

Ross touched her elbow as they reached the office. “One thing before we go in. This is my interview, remember.”

“How could I forget?” She just managed not to snap the words. She’d like to blame C.J., but the annoyance she felt wasn’t entirely due to the intern’s mistaken impression.

She shot a sideways glance at Ross and recognized what she felt emanating from him. Tension. A kind of edgy eagerness that she didn’t understand. What was going on with him?

They walked into the office. Her father, imposing in his blue dress uniform, rose from behind his desk to greet them.

Under the cover of the greetings and light conversation, she sought for calm.

I don’t know what’s going on, Father. I’m not sure what Ross wants, but it must be something beyond what he’s told me. Please, guide me now.

Her gaze, skittering around the room as the two men fenced with verbal politeness, landed on the framed photo on her father’s desk. The family, taken at the beach on their Christmas Day walk last year. It was the same photo she had on her desk. Somehow the sight of those smiling faces seemed to settle her.

She focused her attention on Ross. He was asking a series of what seemed to be routine, even perfunctory, questions about her father’s work and the function of the base.

“The Coast Guard is now under the Department of Homeland Security,” her father said, clearly not sure Ross knew anything about the service. “Our jobs include maritime safety. Most people think of that first, the rescue work. But there’s also security, preventing trafficking of drugs, contrabands, illegal immigrants. We protect the public, the environment and U.S. economic and security interests in any maritime region, including lakes and rivers.”

This was her father at his most formal. He could be telling Ross some of the kinds of stories she’d heard over the dinner table since she was a kid—exciting rescues, chemical spills prevented, smugglers caught. Why was he being so stiff?

A notebook rested on Ross’s knee, but he wasn’t bothering to write down the answers Daddy gave. Maybe he was just absorbing background information. She often worked that way, too, not bothering to write down information she could easily verify later with a press kit.

But that didn’t account for the level of tension she felt in the room—tension that didn’t come solely from Ross. Her father’s already square jaw seemed squarer than ever, and his lips tightened at a routine question.

“I don’t see why you need information on our local contractors.” He bit the words off sharply.

“We’d like to show how much money the base brings into the local economy.” Ross’s explanation sounded smooth.

Too smooth. She’d already sampled his interview style, and this wasn’t it. As for her father…

Ordinarily when Daddy looked the way he did at the moment, he was on the verge of an explosion. No one had ever accused Brett Bodine of being patient in the face of aggravation.

There was no doubt in her mind that he found Ross’s questions annoying. But why? They seemed innocuous enough, and surely that was a good angle to bring out in the articles.

“So you’ll let me have the records on your local contractors?” Ross’s expression was more than ever that of a wolf closing in for a kill.

She braced herself for an explosion from her father. It didn’t come.

Instead, he tried to smile. It was a poor facsimile of his usual hearty grin. “I’ll have to get permission to release those figures.”

He wasn’t telling the truth. Her father, the soul of honor, was lying. She sensed it, right down to the marrow of her bones. Her heart clenched, as if something cold and hard tightened around it.

Her father, lying. Ross, hiding something. What was going on?

Please, Lord.

Her thoughts whirled, and then settled on one sure goal. She had to find out what Ross wanted. She had to find out what her father was hiding. And that meant that any hope of keeping her distance from Ross was doomed from the start.

Ross paced across his office, adrenaline pumping through his system. Lt. Commander Brett Bodine had been hiding something during their interview. He was sure of it. His instincts didn’t let him down when it came to detecting evasion.

Too bad those instincts hadn’t worked as well in alerting him that his so-called friend had been preparing to stab him in the back to protect the congressman.

He pushed that thought away. He’d been spending too much time brooding about what had happened in Washington. It was fine to use that as motivation—not so good to dwell on his mistakes.

This was a fresh case, and this time he would do all the investigative work himself. He wouldn’t give anyone a chance to betray him.

He’d have to be careful with Amanda in that respect. All of her wariness with Ross had returned after that interview with her father. Was it because of Ross’s attitude? Or because she, too, had sensed her father’s evasiveness?

He didn’t know her well enough to be sure what she was thinking, and he probably never would.

Pausing at the window, he looked out at the Cooper River, sunlight sparkling on its surface. A short drive across the new Ravenel Bridge would take him to Patriot’s Point and its military displays; a short trip down-river to the harbor brought one to Fort Sumter. Everywhere you looked in the Charleston area you bumped into something related to the military, past or present.

The Bodine family was a big part of that, apparently. Brett Bodine’s attitude could simply be the natural caution of a military man when it came to sharing information with the press. Ross didn’t believe that, but it was possible.

He’d have to work cautiously, checking and double-checking every fact. Still, he couldn’t deny the tingle of excitement that told him he was onto something.

Once he had the list of suppliers that Bodine had so reluctantly agreed to provide, he could start working from that end of the investigation. Finding the person who was paying the bribes would lead inevitably to the one accepting them.

Sliding into his chair, he pulled out the folder containing the anonymous notes and the transcript of the phone calls. He hadn’t felt this energized in over a year. This was the real deal—he could feel it.

He’d just opened the folder when a shadow bisected the band of light from the door he always kept open to the newsroom. He looked up. It was Amanda, with an expression of determination on her face.

“I’d like to speak with you.”

Closing the folder, he leveled an I-can’t-be-disturbed stare at her. “This isn’t a good time.”

Instead of backing off, she closed the door behind her and advanced on the desk. “It’s important.”

“Not now.” He ratcheted the stare up to a glare.

Her gaze flickered away from him. Good, intimidation still worked. Amanda believed that her job depended on his goodwill.

Whether it really did, he wasn’t so sure. Cyrus seemed to have a soft spot for her, for some reason. But as long as she believed it, she’d do as she was told.