Game of Fear (Montgomery Justice #3)(15)

A small gasp sounded from the side of the bar.

“Ernie, get out of here,” Gabe said sharply.

The snitch’s eyes widened. “Oh God. I’m dead.” He scurried away as fast as he could on his injured leg.

Glock in hand, Gabe eased around the corner of the building.

A figure in a ski jacket hurried toward the street. Gabe raced after it. He had to know who’d overheard his conversation.

Within seconds, he caught up. Gabe spun the person around, slammed the intruder against the brick wall, then tore off the hood. Auburn hair spilled out over the jacket. “Deb? What are you doing back here at two in the morning?”

“Apparently, getting molested by you.” The frigid wind whipped her hair across her face. She looked deathly pale, despite the fact her cheeks were red with cold.

“Hey, you’re the one lurking outside the bar.” He studied her face. “What’s wrong?”

“I thought I wanted to talk to you. Now I’m not so sure.”

“If you wanted to talk to me, why didn’t you just use the phone?”

She scowled, shifting against him. His body went taut, suddenly aware of the soft curves pressed against him and the strength lying underneath that softness. He cleared his throat and stepped back. Her pupils dilated and his heart skipped a beat. He wanted to peel off his gloves and touch her skin, feel her pulse to see if his reaction was one-sided, but then her face turned to stone.

“I was on my way to the sheriff’s office,” she said. “When you crossed the parking lot . . . well, after all of your brother’s newspaper articles about bad cops and deputies, I was worried about who to trust. I thought . . .” She rushed on, “Look, I know you’re not a cop anymore. At least, I thought you weren’t until that guy—”

Gabe cut her off. “?‘Until that guy’ what?”

She hesitated, more wary now, but not backing down. “I didn’t mean to overhear anything, but then he mentioned an accident on the way to Taos, in conjunction with a mobster. It shocked me. That’s the rescue tonight that got me grounded. Do you think the church bus was sabotaged? And, why would a Russian care about any of this?”

Damn good questions. He had to back her off from this line of thinking. Fast.

“I don’t know, but I’ll make sure the police check into your suspicions.” Yeah, she’d be sure to fall for that line. “It may be a different accident.”

“Do I look like I just got off the bus from the country?”

Gabe swore again. “Okay, I said I’ll look into it. Now, why were you heading to the station at this hour?”

At his question, all her bravado vanished. He’d never seen quite that expression on her face. She looked up at him, worry crinkling the corners of her eyes.

“My sixteen-year-old sister is missing. Ashley left my house about ten, planning to beat curfew, but never made it back to the dorm. The student who lent her his vehicle called me, freaking out that she hadn’t brought the car back. We’ve both tried calling her, but there’s no answer. This isn’t like her. Something is terribly wrong.”




Deb’s face felt half-frozen, but the rest of her body was warm from Gabe pressing against her. For some stupid reason, she felt comforted by the pressure, instead of trapped by someone who might or might not be a bad guy. Despite what she’d seen, her instincts said to trust him.

She would, but only because she’d watched him for a long time. Over a year, in fact.

It had started the night she’d delivered him to the hospital. She’d given him a twenty-five percent chance when they’d loaded the stretcher into the chopper. She’d recognized the gray on his face, had seen it too many times in combat. Then his brother Luke had boarded. The reporter had clung to his brother and willed him back from the brink.

His odds had gone up to forty-sixty in her eyes. She’d still thought he had a better chance of dying than living.

She hadn’t been able to keep things purely professional, though—or completely close off her heart. Those two Montgomery brothers had wriggled beneath her skin like a parasite. By the time she’d landed the chopper at the hospital, she hadn’t been able to ignore them.

They didn’t know, but she’d hung around, outside the waiting room. She’d seen Gabe’s mother arrive, his brothers, an imp of a little girl, and even a sea of SWAT.

The connections she’d witnessed in their family had made her ache. She missed Rick and Ben. Now more than ever. If her brothers had been stateside, she could have picked up the phone and dialed them. They’d have been on the first flight to help her, but they were incommunicado and she was on her own to find Ashley.

“Your sister is missing?” he repeated. “If she’s a student, couldn’t she just have become tired and gone to a classmate’s house and forgotten to call?”

Gabe still hadn’t moved away from Deb, and for the moment, she didn’t care—even though someone this much in her space usually made her skin crawl. “She wouldn’t want the demerits. She’s at the Air Force Academy.”

He raised a brow. “Really? At sixteen? They don’t take people that young.”

“They made an exception for her. Lots of rules and red tape, but the bottom line is she’s wicked smart. Too smart for her own good sometimes. They made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. She and a friend hacked into the NSA for the hell of it. Guess it got the government’s attention. They want her to be some kind of secret-weapon code breaker, I think.” Deb bit her lip.