On Her Master's Secret Service (Masters and Mercenaries #4)(113)

“No. Two things,” Adam said with a grin. “I found the proof. It’s why I sent Jake to Philly. Alex, this is our wedding present to you.”

Jake handed him a thumb drive. “That f*cker Evans taped the meeting. It’s all here. Warren Petty agrees to give him free rein if he takes out Eddie’s mistress. It’s so simple. The minute this hits the tabloids, they’ll demand a DNA test on the samples the medical examiner took from Carmen’s fetus. He can’t run from this. He’s done, man. No White House. No more politics. It’s finished. Adam got a mystery e-mail that led us to where Evans hid the tape. We found it in a locker at an Amtrak station in Philadelphia. I have no idea who sent it to us, but he or she is a f*cking angel.”

He squeezed Eve close. He couldn’t seem to help it. From the moment he’d woken up in the hospital to her lovely face, he hadn’t been able to let her go. He’d slept beside her that night, pulling on her until she’d given up and climbed into the hospital bed with him. He wouldn’t spend a night apart from her. She was his heaven. “Adam can’t run the source down?”

Adam frowned. “Whoever it is, he’s good. I mean damn good, and I’m not so sure it’s a ‘he.’ As a matter of fact, I wonder if it isn’t Kris because I found something else out. You remember how I’ve been looking into the whole thing where Liam’s security card was used?”

They’d discovered the breakin during the Evans case. Alex knew Ian had been pissed as shit and already fired the previous building security, but Adam and Jake had apparently kept to the case. Someone had stolen Liam’s card, duped it, gotten it back to him and infiltrated the building. “Sure. Did you finally get the video?”

Adam pulled up his laptop, flipping the lid open. “Yeah. And even more than that, I found out there was a complaint lodged that evening.”

Alex tightened his hold on Eve. She peered in, her arm around his waist. Her face briefly turned up, a little wink in her eyes. He knew her language.

I love you.

She’d saved him. In every way possible. She was his bridge to the real world. He kissed her cheek. “I love you, too, angel.”

He would do it all again. He would shoot Warren and take those damn bullets because he knew damn straight his sub would take care of business. His woman was fierce.

The video file began to run, showing the time and date stamp. He recognized the hallway that led to the copy room. A slight figure walked down the hall. It was easy to tell it was a woman. She had nice curves and long, dark hair flowed down her back. The image was black and white.

“The complaint was from the floor below us,” Adam said.

“The lawyers?” The law firm of Gledon, McCloud, and Johnson had the floor below them.

“The complaint was about music being played at a high volume,” Jake explained. “Apparently a couple of the younger lawyers stayed late that night, and they had some complaints about the volume we were cranking the music at. The building manager is scared of Ian, so we hadn’t actually received a reprimand. This person says we played Guns N’ Roses over and over for an hour.”

A shiver went up Alex’s spine. Guns N’ Roses? “Sweet Child O’ Mine?”

It was what Ian had played every year, once a year, on the anniversary of Charlotte’s death. He played that one song about a thousand times and drank his weight in Scotch until he passed out and then ignored the problem for another year. What was the chance that someone breaking into their building would be listening to the same song?

Adam looked up. “Yeah. They were annoyed that it was the same song. Over and over.”

Sometimes in an investigation, little things came together, seemingly random events that knitted into a greater tapestry, a complete picture that hadn’t been there before. As Alex watched the tape, the world coalesced into something he understood.

The dark-haired figure walked into the copier room, but not before she turned, looked at the camera and winked. She blew the camera a kiss before disappearing into the copy room.

Oh yes, and they are so totally helpful when you want to get information but you don’t want anyone to know you have it. Really, it’s awesome. So the hard drive on a copy machine actually takes a picture of everything the copy machine scans.

Kristen had been thrilled to tell him how she’d pulled information off the machine.

Kristen knew everything about him and Eve and all the members of McKay-Taggart Security Services.

She’d put herself in front of him, taking a bullet meant for him, because someone wanted him alive. Someone she wanted to please.

Here. She’d put her hand over his, covering her heart. Since the day I set eyes on him. He’s been here. Tell him I did good. Tell him I was good. I was good for him. I was good. He can have a thousand other women, but I was his only true wife.

Kristen was the woman on the tape. She came back out of the room, dancing a little as she stuffed a thumb drive into her uniform. She looked up and winked and smiled. Somehow that smile was beneficent, as though what she was about to do would help the whole world.

Why do I love such an *?

He’d thought the * was Evans, but there was no tie between Kristen White and Evans. In fact, there was no tie between the woman they thought was Kristen and the real Kristen White. Days after he’d been shot, Alex had gotten the report. Kristen White was a nice forty-two-year-old with two kids. She had retired from journalism a year before. Her husband ran a software development company. She didn’t have red hair, but she told the story of a woman who had helped her out of a problem with the Russian mob who fit the description. She’d called her an angel.