DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(2)
And then there was David.
Ash and David grew up in Austin, Texas where their father was a longtime member of the Texas legislature. They were a close-knit family, one of those that politicians often parade out in public with big smiles on their faces. The only difference was, it was true in their case. When Ash graduated college with a degree in political science and decided to join the Army, his parents couldn’t have been more thrilled. The dream was that he would one day follow in his father’s footsteps. David, too, was serving his country. After college, he joined the FBI.
And then things changed.
Their father was elected to Congress. There was a celebration that ran late into the night on Election Day. Ash couldn’t be there because he was deployed, but he managed to speak to his parents for a few minutes via satellite phone. If he had known it would be the last time…
David was driving the car. Dad was too tired, and he’d had a few too many to drink. And Mom, well, she just didn’t drive. The car hit a patch of black ice. It was Austin. In November. Not a common occurrence, but it was known to happen. The car flipped. Mom was declared dead on the scene. Dad lingered a few days, the press thick outside the hospital, waiting with baited breath. And David crushed his lower spine. Bone fragments were removed and his potential recovery was optimistic. However, they missed a few, and the inflammation caused paralysis from his upper thighs down. The doctors thought they could restore movement, maybe allow him ninety percent mobility, but he refused to undergo the procedure. He said the risk wasn’t worth it.
Ash thought it was guilt. And guilt he understood.
“Listen up!” Ash called, as he made his way through the room, a handful of file folders in his hand. “Assignments.”
Like good soldiers, his people immediately gathered around the conference table. Donovan in jeans and a t-shirt, dark circles under his eyes. Kirkland looking dapper in slacks and a silk button-down shirt. Joss stood off to one side, still in the wetsuit she wore each morning to conquer the waves on her surfboard. David was always last to join them, moving efficiently in his fiberglass wheelchair.
“Kirkland, you’ll be working with Detective Warren today, tying up loose ends on your stalker case. He’ll meet you downtown at noon.”
“Hope he plans to buy me lunch.”
There were a few titters around the table, but they disappeared when Ash looked up again.
“Joss, there’s a doctor at Cedars-Sinai who’s having some trouble with an ex-husband. I’d like you to go over there, keep an eye on her for a day or two.”
She nodded, as she stepped forward to take the file he held out to her. She stepped back again, glancing through the file as Ash continued the meeting.
“David, you should keep working on those background checks. We need those by tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” David said, snapping a weak salute that made Donovan reach over and smack his shoulder.
“And Donovan…you’re behind on your paperwork. You need to spend the day getting caught up.”
Donovan groaned. “Really, can’t David or Rose do that for me?”
“The paperwork has to be done by the operative himself. You know that.”
“What’s the matter, Donovan? Intimidated by a simple little computer?” David asked.
“Shut up,” Donovan said, feinting a punch at David, laughing when he flinched. “You may be in a wheelchair, but I’m not afraid of kicking your ass.”
“Boys,” Rose said from across the room.
“Sorry, Miss Rose,” both David and Donovan muttered, their hands properly tucked into their laps.
Ash hid a chuckle behind a cough. Somedays he didn’t know what he’d do without Rose. He’d hired her to be the office manager, to take care of the administrative crap he didn’t have the patience to deal with, but she’d become something more than that, almost like a mother figure to this rag tag band of misfits.
“Okay, people. You have your assignments. Go do your jobs and don’t get dead.”
Ash watched them leave, then he went to his own desk, his thoughts going to the same place they always seemed to go to on quiet mornings. Or busy mornings. Or lazy afternoons. It really didn’t seem to be any particular time. She was always on his mind.
He pulled a file folder out of his desk drawer, one that was so thick and so worn at the edges that it was obvious it was opened often. The top sheet was a picture that he shouldn’t have, one that wasn’t supposed to exist. Her name was Alexandra, but she liked to be called Alexi. She thought it sounded exotic. And exotic went a long way toward describing her. Despite a mundane Midwestern upbringing, she’d reinvented herself in the military. She was a lot like Joss, tough but feminine, strong but gentle. Tall, with dark hair and haunting, golden-brown eyes, she was beyond words. Ash tried to describe her, but he always failed. There was just something about her that wormed its way under his walls and made him feel things he never thought he would.
She was his fiancée. Only no one knew it but the two of them.
Alexi was CIA. They worked multiple missions together in Afghanistan. The last was a recon on a corrupt politician that went wrong. They got separated. He made it to the extraction. She didn’t.
It was two years now that she’d been missing. He’d gone over their plan, over all the things that could have happened to her, but every lead died out. As far as the United States government was concerned, Alexi was dead. However, Ash couldn’t believe that. He knew how talented she was. He knew what she was capable of. For her to have been killed on that mission, her body never found, someone had to have gotten her unawares and taken advantage of her distraction. And that just didn’t happen with Alexi. She was not distractible.