HelenKay Dimon - Traceless

Connor made a noise between an exhale and a groan as he took the seat next to her. “What?”

“The years before you met me.”

He balanced his elbows on his knees and let his hands hang down between his legs. A thumb rubbed along the calloused palm of his other hand.

“They don’t matter.”

The temptation to reach out and skim her fingers down his back kicked strong. The months apart had taken a toll on Jana. She missed holding him, making love with him. The simple things like cooking breakfast together and laughing over a movie.

Sitting close, smelling his familiar scent, brought it all rushing back in a punch of longing so powerful she almost doubled over from the force of it. But she forced her mind to hold on to the conversation and his voice to remain steady. “Because?”

“I didn’t have you.”

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Award-winning author HELENKAY DIMONspent twelve years in the most unromantic career ever—divorce lawyer. After dedicating all that effort to helping people terminate relationships, she is thrilled to deal in happy endings and write romance novels for a living. Now her days are filled with gardening, writing, reading and spending time with her family in and around San Diego. HelenKay loves hearing from readers, so stop by her website, www.helenkaydimon.com, and say hello.

To Michelle Gorman—this one’s for you!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Extract

Chapter One

Jana Bowen looked at the numbers again. The black ink blurred and she rubbed her eyes to bring the columns back into focus. When that failed she leaned back in her metal desk chair and ignored the groan of the rusted back legs.

The charity didn’t have a lot of money and prided itself on using a low percentage of the donations for administrative costs. Still, if her butt inched any closer to the floor her backache would become permanent. She vowed to head out tomorrow and find a new chair somewhere in the desert of Southern Utah.

With the scaling red rocks and miles of untouched land, this area of land on the edge of Zion National Park near the border of Arizona possessed a raw beauty. She’d ventured here, far from the calm of her historic Annapolis home, in search of peace.

Hooking back up with her former employer, Boundless Global, she spent her days running education programs and arranging for the shipment of vaccines to countries in desperate need of them. Getting lost in the mess in the office files the first day, she now spent her extra hours cleaning up paperwork. The work provided a needed distraction from her train wreck of a marriage and the man she missed more than she ever thought possible.

But right now she had a bigger puzzle on her hands than Connor Bowen. She turned to the charity’s executive director and her friend of many years, Marcel Lampari. “The paperwork isn’t matching up.”

“Still too many boxes?” He stood on the other side of the open main room lined with tables and covered on every surface with boxes and paperwork.

The building they used for their headquarters had been designed as a chapel decades before. Abandoned and far from anything other than brush and the rock canyons nearby, the four-room structure was donated to Boundless and quickly restructured to fit desks with computers and the command center for U.S. operations. The vast majority of the staff worked in countries receiving aid. Only Marcel and a few full-time employees worked from here, overseeing donations, a large group of volunteers and distribution chains. With her stepping in, that made four of them in the church office on a regular basis.

She took on the tasks of matching up shipping manifests and double-checking invoices after her initial review and filing led to inconsistencies. Marcel didn’t have the time, and the staff member assigned to the job had relocated to another state, leaving the position in limbo until someone permanent could be hired.

It was mind-numbing monotony that filled the void. Or that was the theory. Since leaving Connor she’d found nothing eased the pain of missing him.

She concentrated on numbers and information contained in boxes on a form in front of her but the math just didn’t work. “I’m up to three mistakes in the Nigeria shipments.”

This couldn’t be a simple math error. After getting an anonymous email from someone in the distribution chain, she’d begun poring through the files. Every third shipment was off. Exactly the third shipment and by exactly four crates. The paperwork at the receiving end didn’t match the shipping information and the mysterious boxes disappeared as strangely as they had appeared.

“Maybe the trucking company is piggybacking someone else’s shipment on ours then offloading it.” Marcel tucked the pen behind his ear as he always did and flipped through the documents on his clipboard.

She doubted Marcel’s explanation but she went along because it was easier than thinking about a worst-case scenario—one where someone was playing with the shipments. “I’d like to think people wouldn’t cheat a charity.”

“Let’s not panic.” He walked over and stood on the opposite side of her small desk. “It could just be that someone can’t add.”

“It’s possible, but over and over?”

He made a face and pretended to count on his fingers. “Numbers are hard.”

She had to laugh at that. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Marcel didn’t ruffle. It was one of the things she admired about him. In his late forties, his hair had long ago gone salt and pepper. He was long and lean and the perfect mentor, having spent most of his life in war-torn areas. She admired his dedication and ached for him over the recent loss of his wife of more than twenty years in a horrible car accident.

In his grief, he dove into his work. When Jana’s life fell apart seven months ago from Connor’s mix of smothering protection and workaholic tendencies, she showed up unannounced on Marcel’s doorstep. He let her stay, because who could turn down free labor? She guessed he also recognized a fellow damaged person when he saw one.

“Why don’t you get some rest? We can figure this out tomorrow.” He dropped his clipboard on top of the stack of files in front of her. “We’ll call around and get some answers.”

Not the most subtle it’s-time-to-head-out signal, so she got the message. “You’re right.”

“Let’s go.” He snapped his fingers. Probably being one of the few men who could do it and get away with it. Had something to do with his slight French accent from his childhood and the soft delivery.

“I have to lock everything up.” She turned to the side and tapped the top of the safe. “I’ll head out in a second.”

He frowned at her. “A windstorm is kicking up, so don’t wait too long.”

She glanced at her watch. “Ten more minutes.”

By the time she looked up again, night had fallen and the sky outside the window across from her was dark. The wind rattled the old building and whistled through the beams. She winced as she calculated whether she’d missed her opportunity to get back to the garage-turned-bunkhouse for the workers.

The banging started a second later. A fist pounding and the faint sound of a male voice.

She got up. “Marcel?”

The door slammed open before she made it to the other side of her desk. The song she’d been humming screeched to a halt in her head and a wave of panic washed over her as two men dressed all in black burst inside. The last of her reality jumbled as her gaze slipped from the masks that hid all but their eyes to the guns in their hands.