The Final Secret Read online

  “Not bad,” she said.

  He wondered when the balance of power between them had changed. Somehow, Gennie had stepped up and taken charge.

  She mounted the bike and put on her helmet. “I’ll drive. You’re in no condition.”

  Though he agreed, he still felt like a weenie when he climbed onto the back. The helmet Tony gave his usually female companions was purple and sparkly. Noah stuck it onto his head. Could have been worse; could have been painted with twinkle stars and unicorns.

  She started the engine, turned on the headlight and glanced back toward him. “Hang on.”

  Oddly, he hadn’t considered the possibility that she wouldn’t know how to handle a motorcycle. Gennie was the type of woman who could do anything from building a school in Afghanistan to besting him in a physical encounter. Some men would have been threatened by her competence. Not Noah. How could he be ashamed about sitting behind her on the bike when it felt so good to lean against her? He wrapped his arms around her slender waist as she drove.

  As they neared the stable, he tapped her shoulder. “Stop here.”

  He wanted to find out if the horse had been taken from the barn or had come from a neighbor’s house. Though he probably wouldn’t recognize the getaway animal, he could tell if the horses in the barn had recently been ridden. They could arrange for a horsey lineup. Imagining that scene, he chuckled. What’s wrong with me? He’d been attacked and witnessed a brutal murder. Nothing funny about that! Maybe the drug he’d been given was a variation on laughing gas.

  Gennie applied the brake, parked, dismounted and drew her gun. After taking off her helmet, she approached the barn. Since his weapon was gone, he had no choice but to follow.

  In the distance, a police siren screamed. Gennie paused and looked over her shoulder. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “When you work for ARC, you’ve got to be ready for anything.”

  She glared through the dusk. “Do you have a lot of cold-blooded murders on your security assignments?”

  “If we did, we’d lose customers.” Again, he felt a grin creep across his face. Definitely not funny! Slocum’s murder would discourage other clients. “We need to catch this guy.”

  “Because it’s bad for business?” She shook her head and scowled. “Let’s get on with it. Where’s your gun?”

  “It was taken, along with my earpiece and microphone.”

  She handed over her Beretta. Hiking up the pant leg of her jumpsuit, she took a second gun from an ankle holster. Weapons at the ready, they entered the horse barn. There didn’t appear to be anybody inside, which kind of surprised him. Noah would have expected Ruby to assign one of her employees to watch over her precious horses while there were so many strangers in the house.

  “Hello,” he called out. “Anybody here?”

  Gennie flicked the light switch inside the wide barn door. There were three stalls on the right side and four on the left, but only two were occupied. The horses pranced and nickered, agitated. Maybe they didn’t like the sirens that had grown louder as the police and ambulance came closer. He searched the areas where feed and tackle were stored. Still, he found no one.

  “Ruby came out here earlier,” he said. “She wanted to go for a ride.”

  “Do you think she’s working with the killer?”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to him. He shook his head, hoping to jump-start his brain. If he wanted to figure out what happened, he needed to get a lot smarter a lot faster. “Why would you suspect her?”

  “Circumstance,” Gennie said. “You saw a man on horseback, and Ruby was out here with the horses. I don’t think she had much of a motive. Slocum annoyed her, but he annoyed everybody. If being an officious jerk was a valid reason to commit murder, the morgue would be filled with bureaucrats.”

  With a steadier stride, he left the barn. “I didn’t see Ruby at the party.”

  “If she wanted Slocum dead, she could have hired someone to do it and provided them with a horse to make their escape.”

  He returned to the Yamaha and claimed the black helmet for himself, leaving the sparkly purple for her. “We’ll take this trail behind the barn. Try to reach higher ground where we can look for the man on horseback.”

  “In the dark?”

  “The moon’s coming up. We can’t quit now.”

  Her grip on the chrome handlebars showed confidence, but her voice was nervous. “I’m pretty sure that I know who killed Slocum.”

  Another memory flashed in his mind. He heard her voice inside his head. “You saw Kenneth Warrick.”

  Avoiding his gaze, she nodded. “He blew me a kiss.”

  “Are you certain it was him?”

  “One hundred percent.” Her jaw tensed. “He looks different, changed his hair color and grew a beard. But I knew it was him. He was entering the wide corridor outside the library. If I’d been faster, I could have stopped him.”

  It wasn’t her fault. There was plenty of guilt to go around.

  * * *

  GENNIE GOT ON the motorcycle and revved the engine. Chasing across the countryside in search of someone like Warrick—a clever planner who had undoubtedly determined the best escape route—was futile. Still, there wasn’t much else they could do.

  “Security cameras,” Noah said as he climbed on behind her. “The general has plenty of surveillance indoors and out. We’ll be able to identify Warrick and track his movements from the moment he entered the house.”

  She wanted to believe they’d uncover proof that Warrick was a murderer, but she couldn’t dismiss her nagging doubts that they’d already lost this game. She’d gone down this road with Kenneth Warrick in Afghanistan and he’d outsmarted the army investigators.

  Carefully driving the motorcycle—which wasn’t designed to be a dirt bike—she eased onto the packed earth trail behind the barn. Jostling along the rugged trail, the headlight bobbed in the darkness, creating small swirly comets. She was hyperaware of the man behind her. His muscular arms encircled her middle. His chest rubbed against her back. This was the closest she’d been to a man, other than her doctors and hugs from her family, since the explosion that tore her life apart. The vibration of the motorcycle engine and the slight pressure of his embrace had an impact on her that she tried to ignore. All her attention should have been concentrated on finding the killer. She’d never liked the pasty-faced Slocum but hadn’t wished him dead. He had more of a grudge against her than vice versa.

  At the top of a hill, she slowed the bike and then stopped. Moonlight illuminated the landscape. Glowing lights from neighboring houses glimmered across open acreage, winding roads and stands of trees. A trickling creek snaked its way through these very expensive properties.

  Noah tapped her shoulder and pointed. “Over there. Do you see it?”

  How could she miss the horse galloping toward them? Without dismounting from the bike, she threw off her helmet and drew her gun, waiting until the rider got close enough to take a direct shot. She didn’t want to risk shooting the horse.

  Gennie squinted into the night. This could be the moment when she finally confronted Warrick. Her trigger finger itched. Could she actually shoot him? Once, she had loved the man.

  The figure on horseback became clear. Gennie lowered her weapon. “It’s Ruby.”

  She and Noah both got off the bike to meet the general’s wife. Gennie wasn’t really into horseback riding but had to admire the black stallion with white socks and a white blaze on the face. A lot of horse, and Ruby handled him easily. Without dismounting, she looked down at them. “What’s going on at the house? Why do I hear sirens?”

  Noah said, “There’s been a murder.”

  “Not Roger.” Her fist covered her mouth, stifling a sob. “My God, please tell me nothing happened to my husband.”

  “He’s fine.” Noah moved closer to the dancin
g hooves of her horse. “The general is fine.”

  When Ruby peered through the night in the direction of her house, Gennie turned around. From their vantage point on the hill, she could see the Haymarket mansion with light pouring from every window and men in uniform patrolling at the perimeter. Red-and-blue police lights flashed from the front driveway.

  Ruby asked, “Was it Murano?”

  If she was faking this reaction, she was doing a good job of hiding her real feelings. Gennie recalled that Ruby had been an actress before she married the general. She spoke up, “It was Dean Slocum.”

  “Slocum? Really?” Again, her surprise seemed genuine. “What happened?”

  Gennie waited for Noah to make the explanation. He was the boss and ought to be in charge. But he’d zoned out again. His reactions were slow and decidedly odd. When he was unconscious and possibly drugged, something had interrupted his usually sensible way of reasoning.

  “The murder happened in the library,” she said, filling the gap. “Noah was there. He was attacked and stunned. When he regained consciousness, he saw Slocum with his throat cut. The murderer was escaping on horseback, which is why we’re here on the motorcycle. Have you seen anyone else riding tonight?”

  “I haven’t.” Ruby stroked her horse’s black mane. “What did the horse look like?”

  “Chestnut brown,” Noah said.

  “And the rider?”

  “I couldn’t tell,” he said. “There wasn’t enough light.”

  She leaned down to stare into his face. “That means you were the last person to see Slocum alive, and, if I’m not mistaken, you have a damned good motive for wanting the captain dead.”

  Ruby’s words were a blow to the gut. Gennie didn’t want to suspect Noah, didn’t want to believe that once again she was falling for a bad man, a murderer.

  Chapter Six

  Standing on the trail behind the Haymarket mansion, Gennie watched the general’s wife ride toward the breaking chaos at her house. She and Noah should also return to the crime scene, but she didn’t want to go anywhere. Questions swarmed inside her head. Before she made a move, she wanted answers.

  “Let’s go.” Noah donned the black helmet and patted the seat on the Yamaha.

  “Where?”

  “To continue the search,” he said.

  He had to be kidding! She shook her head and asked, “What did Ruby mean when she said you had a motive?”

  “We can talk later. Right now, we’ve got to find the killer.”

  His sense of urgency was odd and unnecessary. Except for the activity at the Haymarket mansion, the surrounding landscape was serene. The waxing moon hung low in the sky. A barn owl circled overhead, a hound dog bayed and a truck bounced along a winding road through this widespread area with the monster-sized houses and five-to-ten acre lots. There was more traffic at the edge of these properties, and if Gennie had to guess, she’d figure that the man on horseback had hightailed it to the main road and used that route to disappear from sight.

  “He’s long gone,” she said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “He’s had plenty of time to ride to a corral where he could leave his chestnut horse that you only saw from the back and couldn’t really identify.”

  “There’s more we can do. If we head in the direction of the road, we can question people along the way.”

  At the edge of the rugged trail, she found a knee-high boulder and sat. “An investigation needs to happen, but we aren’t the ones to do it. The police will take over from here. Or the feds. Or the general might call in military cops.”

  “Jurisdiction is going to be a bitch,” he agreed.

  “In the meantime, you owe me an explanation.”

  He yanked the helmet off, left it on the motorcycle seat and came toward her without a single stumble. In the past few moments, his balance had improved, and his spine had straightened. It was too dark to read his expression, but she guessed that his eyes were steadier and more focused. Whatever drug he’d been given was wearing off.

  Beside her small boulder, he sank to the ground and leaned his back against the stone with one leg straight out and the other bent at the knee. His upper arm touched her left thigh. She had very little sensation in the quadriceps at the front of her thigh but her hamstring was improving all the time. The slight pressure of his biceps felt so good that she adjusted her leg and subtly rubbed against him.

  “You might have noticed that many of the ARC employees are former military.” His voice was low and calm, as though he were talking to himself. “It’s no secret that I have great respect for the discipline and training that goes into shaping the troops.”

  Of course, she’d noticed. One of the reasons she wanted to work at ARC was their reputation for welcoming members of the armed forces. What did this information have to do with a motive for wanting Slocum dead? “Go on.”

  “You might also have wondered—given my preference for military-trained agents—why I’m not a veteran.”

  “I never really thought about it.”

  When he tilted his head to look up at her, the pale moonlight highlighted his cheekbones, the straight line of his nose and his stubborn jaw. The tension in his face told her that Noah had suffered a wound—a deep emotional injury—and had not yet recovered. She had an urge to comfort him, to lean down closer to him and whisper reassurance. But she held back, aware that it would be too easy for her to slide off this rock and into his arms.

  “I wanted to enlist,” he said. “My older brother—ten years older than me—was an Army Ranger, and I couldn’t wait to join him.”

  When he looked away from her, Gennie had a bad feeling about where this story was headed. “Your brother’s name?”

  “Josh, he was my mom’s pride and joy, especially since our oldest brother got in a lot of trouble and died from a drug overdose before his eighteenth birthday.”

  “I’m sorry.” Unable to hold back for one more second, she placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. Though her gesture was meant to be kind and friendly, she felt a sizzle when she touched the fabric of his white shirt.

  “His death nearly destroyed Mom. After 9/11 Josh enlisted in the army, and she was terrified of losing another son. She wanted him to take desk duty, but that wasn’t his style. Josh stood at the front line of every charge and volunteered for every dangerous mission. I’m guessing you knew soldiers like him.”

  “I wasn’t one of them.” Though prepared to face combat, she preferred building rather than destroying. “But I stand in awe of the Rangers and the other elite teams.”

  “What about you? Any siblings?”

  “A baby brother, he’s a musician and lives with his girlfriend in Brooklyn.”

  “You’re easy to talk to.” He patted her hand, which still perched lightly on his shoulder. “When things settle down, we could spend some time together, maybe go to dinner.”

  “I’d like that.” Her verbal response was automatic and appropriate, but her visceral reaction to the fact that Noah had asked her for a date was a flare of excitement that she quickly buried in the back of her mind. This wasn’t the time for any kind of happy dance or silliness. Not only were they dealing with a murder but he was confiding in her.

  “I don’t like to talk about my personal stuff,” he said. “It surprised me that Ruby knew so much.”

  Ruby’s insider knowledge was no surprise. The general’s wife had a talent for ferreting out bits and pieces of gossip and gathering details. She and Slocum shared that skill, and Gennie had often seen them with their heads together, giggling. “Ruby knows everything. She would have made an outstanding secret agent.”

  “I’m not hiding anything. I just like to keep things private,” he said. “Twelve years ago, Josh was killed in action. Mom made me promise I wouldn’t go into the armed services. That’s why I didn’t become a Ra
nger.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I kept that promise, even after Mom died a few years ago.”

  She didn’t point out that a couple of years ago he would have been knocking on the door to thirty—a little old to start a career with the Rangers but still possible. “Do you still want to go into the military?”

  “I’m happy where I am.”

  “Weren’t you a cop before you joined ARC?”

  “Yeah, well, Mom wasn’t happy about that particular career choice, and it wasn’t a great fit for me. I never made detective. When the opportunity arose at ARC, I grabbed it. Dear sweet Anna Rose was a big part of convincing my mother that I wouldn’t be in danger. She was mostly correct. In my years with ARC, I’ve only had five serious injuries to members of my team and the people we’re protecting. Slocum is the first fatality.”

  She’d almost forgotten how they got started on this conversation in the first place. “How does your family history connect to Slocum?”

  Noah adjusted his long legs and rose to his feet. “Josh and another member of his platoon died in a covert action. They were operating under bad intelligence, given to them by Captain Dean Slocum.”

  Damn! Talk about a secret! “That’s one hell of a motive.”

  He pivoted, crossed the trail and stood where he could look down at the mansion. “If I believed that Slocum had purposely caused Josh’s death, I would have killed him years ago, but that’s not what happened. Slocum was careless. He made a mistake.”

  “And you can’t kill somebody for being incompetent.”

  “No matter how tempting.”

  She joined him on the path. The noise and lights from the general’s mansion exploded in the still Colorado night. To the west, she saw the outline of the foothills rising into higher peaks, and thought of Noah’s handsome two-story cabin. Living in the mountains made sense for a guy like him who had a surprising depth and a need for solitude. “It takes a wise man to accept and forgive a personal tragedy.”

  “I’ve accepted,” he said. “But I’m no saint. I don’t forgive Slocum or anybody else, from the ranking military authorities to the insurgent bastards. I won’t seek revenge but I will always feel the pain of losing my brother.”