“Believe me, Travis, I understand that kiss was nothing but a diversionary tactic. I meant, what are you doing here?”

His eyes narrowed at his former girlfriend. “Where exactly is here?”

“The middle of my investigation.”

“I believe it was you who ran into me. You really ought to watch where you were going, Ms. Streeter.”

“That’s Major Streeter, Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Now answer me. You followed someone. Which of them was it and why?”

FAITH ON THE LINE:

Two powerful families wage war on evil…and find love

ADAM’S PROMISE—

Gail Gaymer Martin (LI #259)

FINDING AMY—

Carol Steward (LI #2634)

GABRIEL’S DISCOVERY—

Felicia Mason (LI #267)

REDEEMING TRAVIS—

Kate Welsh (LI #271)

PETER’S RETURN—

Cynthia Cooke (LI #275)

PROTECTING HOLLY—

Lynn Bulock (LI #279)

KATE WELSH

is a two-time winner of Romance Writers of America’s coveted Golden Heart® and a finalist for RWA’s RITA® Award in 1999. Kate lives in Havertown, Pennsylvania, with her husband of over thirty years. When not at work in her home office, creating stories and the characters that populate them, Kate fills her time with other creative outlets. There are few crafts she hasn’t tried at least once or a sewing project that hasn’t been a delicious temptation. Those ideas she can’t resist grace her home or those of friends and family.

As a child she often lost herself in creating make-believe worlds and happily-ever-after tales. Kate turned back to creating happy endings when her husband challenged her to write down the stories in her head. With Jesus so much a part of her life, Kate found it natural to incorporate Him in her writing. Her goal is to entertain her readers with wholesome stories of the love between two people the Lord has brought together and to teach His truths while she entertains.

REDEEMING TRAVIS
KATE WELSH

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Acknowledgments

Brian Krawchuk—ex-air force and favorite nephew. Jeff Sweetin, Special Agent in

Charge, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Rocky Mountain Division.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your contributions. Any errors found here

are mine and certainly not theirs.

Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins?

And not one of them is forgotten before God.

—Luke 12:6

Cast of Characters

Travis Vance—He’d lost everything—his college sweetheart, his young wife and daughter…and his faith. But when his old flame returns, is he ready to risk his heart to her—and the Lord—one more time?

Air Force Major Patricia Streeter—Pretending to be in love with Travis Vance was easy—she’d been there before. But telling her heart that this was just an undercover mission to connect La Mano Oscura and the Diablo crime syndicate was another matter!

El Patrón—Who was the leader of La Mano Oscura that the rogue airmen dealt with?

Maxwell Vance—How involved was Travis’s father with La Mano Oscura…and which side was he working for?

Air Force Major Ian Kelly—What secrets did the investigator uncover that left him dead?

Dear Reader,

I was so excited to be asked to join the FAITH ON THE LINE series for Love Inspired. My reason was pretty simple. I fear many of us, sitting in our safe little homes and going to our idyllic churches, forget that there are Christians out there in the line of fire. They go forth into danger, fighting the world’s evils wherever they find them—for us. We need to remember that though many who don the mantle of warrior also wear the mantle of Jesus, they still need our continuous prayers. They face a double foe, the one they can see and another we all battle. Temptation is there all around them and they need our prayers to combat it.

I tried to show that battle as Travis lay in relative safety while taking aim at the men who would gleefully have killed the woman he loved if she were discovered. He prayed first for forgiveness as he contemplated his duty, but then he started feeling very righteous anger as they planned Tricia’s death. Temptation had found its subtle inroad, and Travis felt the darkness engulfing him and he remembered to turn to God. Tricia also faced death, and she too steadfastly turned to her Lord for comfort. My prayer for all who wear uniforms and carry badges of authority is that they remember where to turn in those darkest of moments on the job and in the quiet aftermath.

I love hearing from readers at kate_welsh@earthlink.net, but I regret I can only answer e-mail correspondence, or letters accompanied with a self-addressed stamped envelope when you write through Love Inspired.

Love and blessings,

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

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter One

From the shadow of an abandoned warehouse Major Patricia Streeter aimed her camera. Through her telephoto lens she saw the pilot she’d been following hand over an oversize duffel bag to a dark, swarthy man, then take a briefcase in exchange. The transaction took only as long as it took to shoot five quick images of the two men—evidence in her current investigation.

Captain Taylor, one of seven pilots who called themselves the Buccaneers, opened the briefcase and shook his head, his blond hair glinting in a sliver of sunlight that cut through the alley. “This isn’t nearly enough. What are you trying to pull?” she heard him shout.

The second man turned a bit more away from her. Tricia strained to hear him but she could only see him gesture in a way that said “Calm down.” Then he shrugged as he said something else that was as equally indiscernible.

“Fine,” Taylor snapped. “You’re just a messenger. So message this, pal. You tell your boss he’d better get in touch with mine. He has as much, if not more, to lose than the rest of us. It wouldn’t be a good thing if people found out he isn’t the good guy they all think he is. You tell him this waiting for full payment is making El Patrón mighty angry.” The taller of the two men by far, Taylor grabbed the other man’s jacket. “We’re sick of dealing with his threats! We’re your boss’s bread and butter. He’d be smart to take better care of us. Without the Bucs he has no pipeline, and it takes more than he’s giving to keep that pipeline open. El Patrón wants a show of faith. A bigger one than this.”

The man now in possession of the duffel bag nodded and backed away with another muttered word that scudded through the alley. Patricia snapped a full-frontal picture of this newest subject’s dusky face when he turned toward her.

As the conversation played in her mind, she thought, It was drugs that got you killed, Ian, wasn’t it? Once again Tricia promised her absent friend that she wouldn’t rest until his wife and daughters had justice—until he had justice. Since the meeting was obviously a drop, she decided to change locations and move back to the street where she could see the license plate on the car the dark-complected man drove. Maybe, if she got lucky, she’d even be able to follow him to his boss.

She pivoted, doubled back around the crates and up the side alley. Hunkering down and watching the ground so she wouldn’t trip, Tricia ran swiftly toward the street. And smacked headlong into a wall.

The grunt she heard before the impact sent reverberations down her spine and told her the wall wasn’t built of brick, mortar or steel. It was fashioned of all-too-alive flesh and bones. Ready to take down her opponent, she looked up and into the glittering green eyes of the only man she’d ever loved. The man who’d betrayed her by caring more for his needs than hers. The man who’d turned away from her and married her roommate within weeks of her refusing his proposal. She dropped her gaze to his jaw and found it was as rock solid as that annoyingly stubborn chin of his.

Which meant he was furious.

Furious? What did he have to be furious about? And what was he doing there—in the middle of her investigation? “Travis,” she hissed, “what are—”

Travis Vance’s gaze flicked away toward her quarry, his eyes widening. Then he ground out a low curse, dragged her against him and whirled her around, pressing her back into the cold steel of the warehouse wall. Instantly she became aware of his body heat through her heavy black turtleneck sweater. It disturbed her to be so close to him. Then her vision blurred as his lips descended to hers—lips that were no less furious than the look in his eyes had been.

She grabbed at the fabric of his jacket to shove him away but heard a man’s chuckle. “Get a room, amigo,” the same man said in a heavy Hispanic accent. Then his footsteps receded, followed by yet another set moving off in the opposite direction. Her pilot was headed back to his car.

Angry at being manhandled, Tricia balled the hand not gripping his jacket into a fist and drove it into Travis Vance’s solar plexis.

“Oomph,” he huffed, and stepped back in a hurry, his hand replacing her fist as she shoved him back yet another step.

She stared at him in silence—a silence she couldn’t seem to break—her mind having short-circuited the second her gaze locked with his. How could all the feelings she’d thought had long ago faded be so alive and vital after well over a decade?

He wasn’t even the same person she’d loved so helplessly in college. In Travis’s intense green gaze, where once there had been only vitality and generosity, there was such overwhelming emptiness and bitterness. Oh, his hair still looked as ruffled as ever, but his brow was furrowed from too many years of frowning. Her fingers itched to trace his square jaw and see if that slow grin still pulled his full bottom lip into an expression that could only be described as cocky. But she had an idea his mouth rarely smiled in any way these days and the black hair at his temples was finely threaded with gray. Still, it was clear that time had been kinder to his looks than his soul.

“What did you hit me for?” he asked, still gasping and rubbing his stomach.

It was easy to retrieve her anger. “Don’t try to act so amazed or as if you didn’t deserve it! What did you think you were doing?” she demanded, flexing her hand behind her back. His six-pack abs were certainly as well developed as ever.

“Did I offend you?” He raised his left eyebrow and his lips did the exact thing she’d wished for moments earlier. That cocky grin emerged from the shadow of the past years. “You’ve changed, sweet cakes. Time was you’d have thanked me for saving your cute little—”

“Don’t say it!” she cut in, silencing what she was sure was a word she’d rather not hear. On top of calling her sweet cakes, she’d probably shoot him. The oaf! The creep! The snake! “Believe me, Travis, I understand that the kiss was nothing but a diversionary tactic. I wasn’t born yesterday. I meant, what are you doing here?”

His eyes narrowed. “Where exactly is here?”

“The middle of my investigation. You just blew my chance for that Hispanic guy’s license plate. I’d have known who he is by six tonight if you hadn’t gotten in my way. Maybe even where he was headed if I’d had the chance to follow him.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed but he maintained his smart-alecky air. “Maybe I just happened along.”

Tricia propped her sore hand on her hip. “Why don’t I believe you? You almost gave me away.”

He smirked. That was the only description that fit his insolent, slightly crooked grin. “I believe it was you who ran into me. You really ought to watch where you were going, Ms. Streeter.”

“That’s Major Streeter, AFOSI. Air Force Office of Special Investigations, in case you don’t know. Now answer me,” she demanded. “What are you doing here? You followed someone. Which of them was it and why?”

“I’m doing a little legwork on behalf of my brother and a friend. That’s all you need to know. It’s a free country. And before you try to dissuade me the way you did Sam, I’ll save you the trouble. I don’t have a boss to order me off a case I’ve decided to pursue or to threaten me with suspension.”

She knew he was referring to the fact Sam Vance, Travis’s younger brother, a Colorado Springs police detective, had been ordered off the investigation into the murder of AFOSI’s Major Ian Kelly. Ian’s body had been moved clear across Colorado Springs from Peterson Air Force Base and dumped behind the Chapel Hills Mall but AFOSI DNA evidence proved his murder had taken place on the base, so the Air Force had claimed jurisdiction. And Sam Vance had quietly turned over everything he’d already compiled, but he hadn’t been happy.

It was an awkward situation for Tricia since she attended the same church as the Vances. But she kept getting mental pictures of Ian laughing with his wife and daughters earlier in the summer at a backyard barbecue. He’d deserved so much more than to be executed for just doing his job. She was going to make whoever killed him pay. And no one, not even the former love of her life, was going to get in her way.

She stepped back and stretched to her full five foot nine inches. “You really don’t want to take on the United States Air Force, Travis. AdVance might be an elite name in corporate security and anti-terrorism circles, but compared to the might of the U.S. government, you’re small potatoes. And you’ll lose. Big-time.”

She turned and stalked away. The general was not going to be happy about this when he saw her report. And frankly she couldn’t wait to watch the fallout.

Travis watched Patricia stride off. If he’d asked anyone at school to describe her, they’d have said amiable, shy and maybe even a little guarded. He’d found her appealingly mysterious but vulnerable. And what the air of mystery and timidity hadn’t done to draw him, her long auburn tresses, short straight nose and wide golden-brown eyes had.

Now he found himself absolutely bowled over by all the changes in her. In his mind, she’d stayed the quiet girl of barely twenty who’d broken his heart. Now he knew she’d gone on—without him. She’d changed so much. She had curves where there’d been none to speak of. Her exceptional hair was now cropped short in what could only be called a nonstyle. But the biggest change of all was that the quiet self-contained young woman he’d known had disappeared and become open, candid about her intentions and nearly volatile. He rubbed his stomach. Maybe nearly was a bit too hopeful an adjective. The young woman who’d brought out his every protective instinct was gone and in her place was a warrior in her own right.

Remembering that old Patty and the one personality quirk that had probably foreshadowed all the changes he saw, he listened for the sound of her car. Sure enough, the familiar six-second heavy rev of an engine reached his ears. Ah, the sound of Patty Perturbed. He grinned, wondering if she still drove with the same edgy recklessness she’d had in college.

Travis caught himself smiling and scowled. Unfortunately, he had a whole lot more to wonder about than her driving. Like if he’d lost his mind when he’d touched her—when that same electric spark he remembered so well from college shot through him once again. Like why matching wits with Patricia Streeter had felt so good.

What was it about her?

In those few moments with her in his arms, he’d felt more alive than he had in years. It was as if that first touch had reawakened all the feelings he’d once had for her. As if all those feelings had been hiding deep inside his frozen heart.

He took a breath and huffed it out in an explosive burst. Why had he been so angry when he’d realized who it was he held in his arms? Could all that latent anger be a sign that he hadn’t really gone on with his life when he’d married? Had he been unfaithful to his wife in his heart?

Allison.

Her dark, accusing eyes were burned into his memory. How many times had she charged him with carrying his love for Patty so deep inside that he couldn’t dislodge it? Had she been right? Believing she’d been wrong was the one thing about their doomed marriage he’d been able to take comfort in.

No! He wouldn’t do this to himself. Not again. He had come to love Allison and most especially he’d loved their daughter, Natalie. He could still see them as they’d pulled out of the drive that fateful Saturday morning. Identical creamy complexions and raven-black hair, Natalie, so innocently unaware of the tension between her parents. Allison wearing all the tension in her expression that he was trying so hard to hide from their child. Natalie had waved and laughed with excitement and anticipation of a week at her grandparents’ house on Lake Henry in New York. Allison hadn’t even acknowledged his presence, having refused a ride to the airport.

A week later they’d been gone. A boating accident took all four in a moment’s carelessness on the part of a teen taking his friends out for a spin in his father’s boat. Travis had envied his in-laws their quick deaths. They’d never known the grief and guilt Travis had.

He didn’t even blame the kid who’d been at the helm of the speedboat. Since that day he’d had too many moments of inattention at the wheel of his car, which was potentially just as deadly as that boat had been. The only ones to blame for their deaths were God and himself.

God’s failure was obvious. He should have reached out His hand and saved them. That’s all it would have taken, and Travis couldn’t get past that.

And his own culpability? Just as easy to define.

If he’d been a better husband, Allison would have been at home with Natalie and not on that boat with her parents. The separate vacation had been Allison’s way of trying to force him to give up the police force. But he’d been just as determined to remain the person he was. No compromises for Travis Vance. And because he hadn’t been willing to consider a change in career, his wife and child had died.

In the long run, when grief, anger and guilt had all but consumed him, the job hadn’t been important at all. He’d walked away and hadn’t looked back. In fact, AdVance Security and Investigations had grown almost by itself.

His father had asked him to evaluate the security at a friend’s company. Plans for a new product had been stolen. The CEO had wanted to find the leak and prevent it from happening again. Travis did both and got hooked on the available technology and ways to prevent corporate espionage.

And the rest was history. AdVance kept him busy three hundred and sixty-five days a year with several regular corporate accounts and a few special assignments interspersed. This favor he was doing for Sam was just such an assignment.

He climbed behind the wheel of his car, forcing himself to think only about the case. A syndicate called Diablo was operating in Colorado Springs and poisoning the town. They were selling street drugs, not the stylish designer drugs of rich and famous vacationers CSPD was used to dealing with. Consequently the city had exploded with a rash of robberies and murders. Drug arrests and drug-related domestic abuse calls were up, as well.

And it looked as if Diablo had ties to the group responsible for the shooting of Dr. Adam Montgomery, Travis’s childhood friend. They’d caught the guy directly responsible, but he’d been killed in jail before cracking. Sam had been pulling his hair out before and since and getting nowhere fast. Then a break. An Air Force officer with AFOSI was found murdered. Executed really, his body dumped behind the Chapel Hills Mall. And scribbled on a crumpled piece of paper in his pocket was the name Diablo and La Mano Oscura, the Venezuelan drug cartel Sam thought controlled Diablo.

But then the Air Force had swooped in, claiming jurisdiction, saying Kelly had been killed on base. They’d promised to let the CSPD in on anything they found out about Diablo or its possible ties to La Mano Oscura. But Sam wasn’t convinced. If Air Force pilots were involved, who knew if they’d admit it outside military circles? So Travis had offered to “keep his eyes and ears open” but they’d both known what that meant. Travis was on the case.

Travis narrowed his eyes as he put the car in gear and started toward home. Wouldn’t Sam have known the name of the Air Force investigator he’d lost the Kelly case to? He had to wonder if he’d been set up by his well-meaning brother. Well, no matter. He’d had to run into Patty Streeter sooner or later. She’d been in town for at least six months now. His mother had made a point to mention several times that Patty was stationed at Peterson Air Force Base and was a member of Good Shepherd Church. He’d seen them all watching for his reaction, too. He was proud to say that reaction had been negligible. Patty, or as his mother referred to her, Tricia, was in his past.

He chuckled mirthlessly as he turned onto Platte Avenue on his way home to Manitou Springs. Until a few minutes ago he’d actually believed that rubbish.

Chapter Two

Tricia watched in stunned silence early the next morning as Travis’s father, Maxwell Vance, pillar of Good Shepherd Church, approached General Hadley. Today she’d been tailing the general but had thought this trip across town to the Air Force Academy would be routine. Apparently it was anything but routine.

The two men stood talking on the top step outside the cadet chapel. Hadley, short and stocky, reminded Tricia of a nasty bulldog. He was dwarfed by Max Vance, who was almost as tall and rangy as his son. Their conversation seemed amiable and without purpose at first.

Did this mean she was wrong in suspecting the general? Or was the father Travis had so idolized back when they’d known each other mixed up with Diablo, drugs and murder? She knew firsthand that parents could be less than perfect. Tricia also knew they could be on the wrong side of the law. Hers had been.

The thoughts floating through her mind made her shiver in the cool October breeze but it was really the idea of a sinister meeting taking place at the chapel that chilled her to the bone, especially when the atmosphere between the two men changed. As she watched through her telephoto lens, Tricia snapped a shot of the general as he shook his head and stepped back from the other man, looking nervous and as if he were suppressing an angry reaction. Maxwell Vance’s attitude seemed too amiable to have caused such a reaction in Hadley. Especially considering what she knew about the general’s reputation for being cantankerous and gruff.

Why was he hiding his anger and why the nervousness? Even more at odds with his reaction was the fact that, though Vance was an upstanding member of the community, he should be no threat to Hadley.

Then Travis’s father said something else and walked away with a shrug. He sauntered to his car as if he didn’t have a care in the world, flipping his keys around his index finger just as Travis always had. She followed his progress, snapping a few shots till he climbed behind the wheel of his silver Mercedes and left the area. He seemed cool and unaffected by the meeting, but when she scanned back to the top step, she found Hadley still staring after Vance, looking openly tense now. His anger was no longer disguised, either.

She reminded herself the meeting could mean nothing but found herself worried anyway. Max Vance had seemed so very deliberate in the way he’d approached Hadley. Was this encounter linked to Captain Taylor’s displeasure at the drop yesterday? Taylor had demanded the swarthy man’s boss get in touch with his. Officially, General Hadley was Taylor’s boss. Could he be Taylor’s boss in this illegal business, as well? Could Maxwell Vance be the man her Hispanic bag carrier answered to? Had Vance come there in answer to the general’s demand? If so, he’d told the general something he didn’t like hearing.

Her heart suddenly heavy, Tricia felt as if her own hero was teetering on the brink, ready to fall off his pedestal instead of Travis’s. She wanted to reject the notion out of hand but couldn’t because it could endanger the lives of his sons, daughter and wife. She pursed her lips. Whatever the truth was, she had to find it. She sighed. This was just one more reason to find all the Diablo connections on the base and help rid the community of a growing menace.

She lowered the camera and checked her watch. Time to report in with General Fielding. It wasn’t a meeting she looked forward to, but she couldn’t keep a three-star general waiting. Not even with information guaranteed to make him hit the roof over the culpability of Air Force personnel and all the civilian interference she’d run into thus far.

Tricia went back to her office and did a quick and dirty search of Maxwell Vance’s military records. It netted her lots of questions and absolutely no answers. Vance had spent decades in the Army yet he’d retired a lowly sergeant. His family lived too well for his pay grade and they’d never lived at a duty station with him. Max Vance didn’t add up at all.

Two hours later, whether she was ready or not, she walked in and saluted Lieutenant General Charles Fielding standing at attention in front of his desk.

The general kept his nicely appointed office free of all clutter so that the highly polished mahogany desk and bookshelves gleamed in the sunshine that poured in through the windows behind him. Photographs of his late wife and grown son were dotted throughout the room between an odd assortment of mementos. The room somehow managed to look homey and businesslike at once.

“At ease, and be seated, Major,” he said. “And tell me something I want to hear.”

General Fielding was a tall man in his very early sixties who’d given up on hair when it had given up on him. He simply shaved it all off the same way he shaved his youthful face. His most memorable feature was blue eyes that had all the cutting power of a laser when he aimed them at a junior officer. She felt that heat now as she settled into the leather chair in front of his desk.

Tricia swallowed. “I’m sorry, sir. The autopsy report on Ian…uh…Major Kelly showed exactly what the prelim did. He was forced to his knees and shot in the back of the head at point-blank range. His body was moved off base, I would imagine in the hope of throwing suspicion out into the community. The medical examiner turned up no other useful evidence. But Luminol and DNA tests show Major Kelly was killed on the flight line, in hangar four. Sir, there’s a killer somewhere on base with blood not only on his hands but on his uniform, as well.”

“Unless he or she managed to dispose of it when they got rid of the body. It’s Hadley or one of his pilots, right?”

“I’d say so, sir.”

“The Air Force went to a lot of trouble to move Hadley and his wing here where they could be watched. We aren’t in the habit of temporarily shutting down bases, even one as small as Cascade.”

“That story about a geological survey showing a major fault line running under Cascade was brilliant, sir.”

Rather than smile at the comment, the general frowned. “Yes it was, Major. And this idea apparently cost Major Kelly his life. Are you closer to proving who killed him?”

Tricia hesitated. She knew General Fielding felt terribly responsible for Ian’s death, though he’d never say so. “Not yet, sir. But on that front, I tailed Captain Taylor from the Meadow Lake Airport where the Buccaneers keep their F-100 Super Sabre. Taylor went straight to the general after reporting in at the flight line. He left twenty minutes later, however. The general’s secretary wasn’t on duty during that time so he may not be involved. General Hadley’s office door and his desk line up with the outer office door and the approaching hall. The general left both doors open so I’d have been seen if I’d tried to get close enough to hear what was being said. Money was the subject, though. I heard Captain Taylor say something about it. Even though I don’t know the context, it ties in with something I heard later.”

She caught the glitter in General Fielding’s eyes before she continued. “Taylor left the general and went immediately to the warehouses close to the Colorado Springs airport. There he met with a swarthy man and exchanged the duffel bag for a briefcase. I got a few black-and-white shots of the meeting and the exchange. They appeared to argue, but I couldn’t hear all of what was said. I was able to hear Taylor demand more money then tell the subject to give a message to his boss to contact—” She hesitated. “I’d have to say he meant General Hadley, sir, but he didn’t use his name. Right after that I ran into trouble.”

General Fielding shot her his infamous scowl. “What happened?”

“Do you recall the police detective who originally had Major Kelly’s murder case?”

He narrowed his eyes slightly in thought. Charles Fielding truly had a mind like a steel trap. “Vance. He seemed annoyed but he was cooperative.”

“Yes. That would be Sam. His older brother—Travis Vance—is the trouble I ran into. He’s an ex-cop turned corporate counterespionage, counterterrorism expert. He caused me to miss the chance to follow the new subject and the bag. Nor did I get a positive ID on the subject because of him.”

Hoping the general wouldn’t want to go into what happened further, she flipped open her notebook and went over the chronology again. “I can tell you Captain Taylor landed at Meadow Lake at 1730, checked in at the flight line at 1800, met with General Hadley at 1845. He then went to the meeting behind the warehouse at approximately 1900 and immediately passed on the bag that he’d kept with him since he landed. That was when I heard money spoken of again.”

The scowl on the general’s face grew more pronounced when he slapped his desk. “It has to be drugs. I want these men, Major. Your promotion is riding on how fast I get them. Tell me how this Travis Vance stopped you from following up on the subject and where that bag was headed.”

Tricia felt her face heat and made sure her response didn’t sound too familiar. “Vance is not a small man, sir. And I gathered we were spotted when I ran into him.”

“Ran into? Literally?”

She fought the urge to grimace. “Yes, sir. That’s why he had to create a diversion, so we wouldn’t be recognized, but that meant I couldn’t follow the subject.”

“And what exactly did Vance do to create this diversion?”

Tricia gritted her teeth. She’d kill Travis for this. “He kissed me, sir. It…ah…managed to hide our identities nicely. Actually, it worked out quite well because I was able to hear the unidentified subject’s voice. From that little snippet of conversation, I’m pretty sure I was able to determine his ethnic background and social placement.”

“And that is?”

“Hispanic, and I would say at best, lower middle class.”

“And what did he say to help you determine all that in—what did you call it—a snippet?”

Tricia squirmed a bit in her seat. “He called Mr. Vance ‘amigo’ and he spoke in accented English. And—” She hesitated but the general motioned with his hand for her to continue. “He told Travis to get a room, sir. Hardly the comment of a gentleman.”

General Fielding coughed. “I see,” he said at last. It looked to her as if he was actually fighting a grin, but she wouldn’t have sworn to it. Charles Fielding was a real hard-liner so a grin during an interview would be a first, she was sure. What she was also sure of was that the three-star general on the other side of the desk didn’t see half of the effect that kiss had had on her and she sincerely thanked God he didn’t.

It was Tricia’s turn to clear her throat before she went on with her explanation. “As soon as both subjects were out of our hearing, I demanded to know what Travis was doing stumbling around in the middle of my investigation. He made reference to legwork for his brother and a friend. Later, I remembered who that friend probably is. Dr. Adam Montgomery is a member of my church. He was working in Venezuela at a clinic when he interrupted a robbery and was shot. He was flown back here for treatment.”

“I remember that story in the news this summer. It was another doctor who shot him. And he made a second attempt here in Colorado Springs. Right?”

She nodded. “A Dr. Valenti turned out to be the perp. And it was more than one more attempt here. But he was killed in the jail by—” she checked her notes”—an inmate named Jorge Jaramillo. Detective Vance saw the note the crime scene investigators found in Major Kelly’s pocket as the break he needed in his investigation of the Diablo problem here in the city.”

“So he involved his brother rather than make official waves?” the general asked.

“It could be that this is Travis Vance’s idea. Adam Montgomery has been a close friend since childhood. Sir, I don’t see us dissuading him. He’s as stubborn as the day is long. And there’s something else.”

The general frowned. “Something else? Major, you aren’t making me a happy man.”

Sighing, Tricia said, “I know that, sir. And I apologize for disappointing you. A little while ago I was tailing General Hadley. He met with Maxwell Vance at the academy.”

“Another brother?”

She shook her head. “Their father. It could have been innocent but…well, sir, I’m concerned. The general seemed agitated. Mr. Vance was cool and calm.”

“What is your take on General Hadley?”

“I don’t think he’s a stupid man,” she said, not wanting to condemn a senior officer without proof. “And he seems to meet excessively with the Buccaneers…that is with most of the seven pilots who co-own the F-100.”

“It was a lucky break Captain Johnston was more loyal to the Air Force than the other Buccaneers and decided to approach Major Kelly. I shudder to think how long this might have gone on with no one the wiser.”

“Ian—Major Kelly—logged several flights for each of the Buccaneers in the past four months since they transferred here. And Captain Taylor took the duffel bag with him off the flight line to the general’s office, though he did leave it locked in his vehicle during their meeting.”

“Are you convinced of Hadley’s guilt, too? Don’t pull punches. You’re my eyes and ears out there, Major. I want your opinion.”

“He’s up to his bull neck, sir.”

“Then you get out there and nail him. I want an airtight case. If he killed Ian Kelly, I want a front seat at his execution. What about Maxwell Vance? Is he Hadley’s contact with Diablo?”

Once again her training helped Tricia keep from wincing at the thought, but her conscience forced her to add a qualifier. “I couldn’t say, sir. He is, however, a respected member of the community as well as my church.”

“I seem to remember hearing about a certain nationally known preacher who had his hand in the till not that long ago, so I don’t think church attendance proves anything.”

“But my church is—”

“Not my concern,” General Fielding growled. “Leave your faith in God and in your fellow man at that front gate, Major. You have a job to do and I expect you to do it sans religious blinders. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, acknowledging the order, but at the same time planning ways to share her faith with a man she’d seen as a father figure from their first meeting. He really didn’t understand what faith in God could mean.

“Now, what about his sons?” the general said. “If their old man is up to no good, are they? Or would they try to cover for Maxwell Vance if they learned he was?”

Tricia stiffened. “Absolutely not, sir,” she said, a little outrage showing on behalf of both brothers.

That arching eyebrow climbed his forehead a notch. “You seem very sure of that. Members of your church again?”

“Detective Vance is, yes. He’s a soloist with our praise choir. But he’s trying to find out more about Diablo himself. And as far as I know, Travis Vance hasn’t darkened the door of a church in ten years. But I do know these two men. They’d never break the law.”

“I think you’re letting personal issues cloud your judgment. I do, however, see your point about Travis Vance causing problems if he’s out there on his own and in the dark about what it is you’re up to. And I don’t want anyone destroying evidence, so here’s what I want you to do….”

Chapter Three

Travis pivoted left, keeping one foot firmly planted then faked back, trying to get away from his attacker. It was a successful move, but his opponent was a cagey, free-thinker from way back. In a blink, he was there blocking Travis’s path. His standard five-second window of opportunity was nearly up, so he faked left, then whirled right. He took his shot and buried the opposition.

“Score, little brother. Twenty–sixteen. Age and experience win out once again.”

Sam was bent at the waist, sweat soaking his shirt in spite of the cool October temperature. “I’m just out of practice,” he huffed. “Too much rich food, I guess.”

“I’ll remember to thank Jessica,” Travis said, grinning as he snatched up two old towels they’d left on a bench near the driveway.

“I’ll get you next time, big brother.” Sam stood straight and winced as he caught the towel Travis tossed toward him. “Or the time after that. How come you just get harder to beat? You’re older. You’re supposed to fall apart and this is finally supposed to get easier.”

Travis grinned. “In your dreams, bro. So, are you going to pretend you didn’t know Patricia Streeter was the Air Force investigator who took over your murder case?”

“Why should I?” Sam asked, apparently a bit amazed by the question. “You’ve been telling Mom for months Tricia was ancient history. Is there a reason I should have mentioned it?”

For a long moment Travis could only stare at Sam. Caught, he could neither press his brother for his reason for keeping silent nor could he protest the fact that he had. Not without revealing the embarrassing truth that he’d been carrying a secret torch for his ex-girlfriend for years—right through his marriage to Allison.

He shrugged, reaching for nonchalance. “No. I just thought you might have thought to mention it in passing. She hasn’t changed much. Still drives like they gave keys to a lunatic let loose from an asylum.”

Sam gave Travis a sidelong look. “That’s funny. I thought she’d changed a lot. I remembered you bringing home a skinny, long-haired, tomboy who played the guitar.”

Travis scowled. “And your point is? Now she’s a skinny short-haired tomboy who plays with guns. Not much of an improvement, if you ask me.”

“When I had to hand over the case, the chief promised me she’s a top-notch investigator. I somehow doubt she was playing when she got that sharpshooter’s medal she wears on her dress uniform.”

“But then I didn’t see her in uniform. Or maybe I did. She had on a black turtleneck and Air Force-blue slacks.”

“She’s a conservative dresser. She usually attends church in her uniform. She sometimes wears a golf shirt and blue slacks when she volunteers at Galilee Women’s Shelter. But Jessi says Tricia stepped back from her volunteer works since taking over the case. I gather Ian Kelly was a special friend of hers.”

Travis hated the shaft of jealousy that shot through him. How could he be jealous of a dead man or his relationship with an old girlfriend? He pushed the thought away because it didn’t bear thinking about.

“Yeah, well, I’m out of here. There’s a shower waiting at home with my name on it. Let’s go, Cody,” he shouted, and gave a sharp whistle. Bounding out of the backyard came his best friend and almost constant companion. Three-year-old Amy followed, looking a bit forlorn.

Amy was Sam’s stepdaughter. Travis and Sam’s wife, Jessica, had a lot in common. They’d both lost spouses in accidents, but she’d been luckier. Her daughter had lived. His hand went instinctively to the small gold initial ring he wore on a thick sturdy chain. The ring that lay at the base of his throat had been his third birthday gift to Natalie. He rarely took it off.

It had been hard for Travis to even look at Amy Mathers at first, though the little blonde and his dark-haired daughter, Natalie, looked nothing alike. It was the shy but bright look in her eyes that sharpened his loss into such painful clarity whenever he came in contact with her. Yet like a moth to flame, he was drawn to her just the same.

Amy ran up to him and he found himself instinctively squatting down to her level. “Cody left his ball,” she announced.

Sure enough when Travis looked down, clutched in Amy’s hand was Cody’s slimy, muddy ball. Her dress was no better than the ball from a messy game of doggy catch. “Uh-oh, Mommy’s going to have my head for this one,” Travis said.

Sam scooped Amy up and the little blonde hugged him around the neck. “You can get dirty all you want. Right, Amy?” he said, his tone so full of love it made Travis’s throat ache.

Nodding vigorously Amy added, “Cody can stay?”

Sam shook his head. “He has to go now, but he’ll be back.”

Amy turned toward Travis, her bottom lip trembling. “Cody can’t stay?”

Travis groaned. “Aw, Sam. Get the kid a dog, will you? Every time Cody and I come over I feel guilty leaving with him.”

“You want a doggy?” Sam asked the apple of his eye.

Amy’s big blue eyes went round as saucers. Her blond ponytail bobbled as she somehow managed to hop up and down while still in Sam’s arms. “Can I, Daddy? Can I?”

Sam shot Travis a helpless look.

Travis held up his hand. “Don’t even try to put this one on me. You asked the kid. And let’s face it. If she called you Daddy in the same sentence with ‘Can I have the moon?’ you’d start calling NASA to see if there was a way to get it for her. I’ll catch you later, bro. Have fun explaining a puppy to your busy wife,” he said, and turned, snapping his fingers for Cody to follow.

“So, Cody, my boy, I’d say it looks as if you’re going to have another playmate soon.” He, of course, said this loud enough for his dumbfounded brother to hear. Sam was fast learning that fatherhood took practice, and with a three-year-old suddenly bursting into his life, he was going to have to speed up his learning curve…fast.

“Go home,” Sam yelled.

Travis turned and saluted his brother with a chuckle, then took off at a jog, dribbling his lucky boyhood basketball down Goldmine Lane. Cody ran ahead then doubled back to run alongside him until some woodland creature got his canine interest and he took off at an energetic run.

Tricia climbed out of her car, tugged her uniform jacket into place and squared her hat. There, she thought, armor in place, she was ready to beard the lion in his den.

Travis must be at home or Sam wouldn’t have given her the code when she called and asked for help getting past the gate at the entrance to the gated community. Besides, sitting in the drive were Travis’s two questionable vehicles—both she was sure he considered vintage. One of them brought back too many memories so she forced her gaze away to knock on the door to his pueblo-style house. No one answered, however. It looked as if all that mustering of courage would go to waste.

Not one to waste anything, even energy—nervous or otherwise—she looked around. She was curious about how Travis lived these days, this man whose life she’d once thought was too far removed from the one she’d known. So Tricia stepped back to analyze what she saw, rather than just leave.

She looked back to the driveway, her eyes drawn to the dark green 1969 Firebird, and the memories rolled over her. Glorious ones. The night he almost single-handedly took the college’s basketball team to the state championships. The day she’d aced the first final in her major. Then devastating ones. The morning on the way to school when they learned two friends had been killed in a car accident. And most especially the night he proposed, when she’d tried to put him off, ending their relationship almost by default.

Tricia shook her head. The past was past. There was no shame in having made mistakes as long as you made up for them—or at least tried. She’d hurt Travis by turning him down so clumsily. He’d hurt her by turning to Allison. Now she was going to make sure he and his family were protected from his father’s folly even if not exactly on her terms. Thinking of the general’s terms, she turned her mind back to his house. She needed to size up her opponent.

Travis’s deep terra-cotta-colored house looked a bit forlorn. There was a rock garden that artfully tumbled away from the walk to the lawn but both lawn and garden were sadly neglected. There were the craftily placed pots scattered on the steps and in the entranceway but those were as empty as the house.

The hollow slapping sound of a bouncing ball and the deep woof of a large dog drew her attention. Tricia turned and looked down the hill in the direction of the noise. It was Travis jogging along the street while he dribbled a basketball. Her heart ached at the sight as she walked back down the drive to meet him. How many times had she seen him like this in her memory…in her dreams?

Reality was different, though, because a huge German shepherd galloped happily along at his side. Travis laughed at the dog’s antics but a frown took over his expression the second his gaze fell upon her. He stopped in his tracks at the foot of the drive, the ball falling to the ground and rolling behind him into the street.

The dog immediately trotted to her side and sat, smiling up at her, encouraging affection with his big brown eyes and a raised paw. “I wondered if we could talk,” Tricia said to Travis as she automatically stooped to shake the dog’s proffered paw. Rather than focus on Travis’s thunderous expression, Tricia gave the dog a chance to sniff her hand before petting his soft fur. He very nearly purred.

The dog—not Travis.

Travis was the one who growled, “This is a gated community. How’d you get in?”

“Actually, I called your brother and he gave me the code to the gate.”

“I’ll have to remember to thank him. I can’t imagine that he thought we’d have anything to talk about.”

She shrugged, trying for nonchalance as she straightened, her hand resting on the big dog’s head. She didn’t want Travis to think she wanted this partnership General Fielding had outlined. Though she did indeed want it because it would mean she’d know he was safe. And if she refused to examine that particular reason, using instead the excuse that she liked his mother and worried that his father had put Lidia Vance in danger, then so be it. She could stay up nights worrying and thinking about only so many problems at once.

“I thought you were interested in Diablo. The increase in Colorado Springs’s drug problems. La Mano Oscuro,” she challenged him.

His eyes widened almost imperceptibly then his frown deepened. “Talk to Sam. They’re ultimately his problems,” he said, and turned away to retrieve the ball.

The basketball continued to roll down the hill. It got quite a distance with Travis walking after it at a leisurely pace. It had to be a delaying tactic considering that Manitou Springs was built entirely on hills. He would be a year before he caught it at that pace.

Finally, the ball got stuck beneath a parked car. He kicked it free and all the while, Tricia stood her ground in the middle of the driveway, watching his loose-hipped saunter as he came back up the hill. She saw through his act, though. He wasn’t as composed as he pretended. Of course, neither was she, but there was every chance he didn’t know that.

Travis finally glanced back at the driveway and looked surprised to see her still standing there. He didn’t know she could no longer be easily scared away. His expression turned thunderous and he confirmed his mood with his next statement, “You forget how to take subtle hints? Go away. I do not want to see your face. That too subtle for you, Patty?”

She didn’t blink at the name she’d left behind along with her major insecurities. “I prefer Tricia now. You should know that if we’re going to work together on this.”

That slow wiseacre grin replaced the frown on his craggy features. “Work together? Us? As in you and me? You’ve been out in the mountain sun too long, babe.”

Even in college before putting up with the Air Force’s own special brand of chauvinism, she’d hated to be called “babe.” “Look, Travis, let’s stop dancing around each other,” she snapped. “I’ve learned some things you’d give your eye teeth to know. I can save you months. And you may have information I need. You want to know who was ultimately responsible for the shooting of Adam Montgomery. I remember he’s an old friend. I understand that because I want to find the people responsible for Ian Kelly’s murder—my friend. And I think we both want to put a stopper in the drug pipeline running into Colorado Springs. Now, invite me in like a good boy, and we’ll learn to share.”

“I guess I don’t understand why you’re so willing to cooperate with me all of a sudden.”

She sighed. “Because General Fielding ordered me to. He’s a little touchy right now about his people nearly getting killed. And whether you want to admit it or not, you got in my way yesterday and one or both of us could have been killed in that alley.”

Travis stared at her, clearly weighing his options. “Fine, but don’t get too comfortable. Just because I’m listening, doesn’t mean I’m agreeing to anything. I work alone.”

He wasn’t the only one with options to weigh. If he found out about all of General Fielding’s stipulations regarding this joint venture, he’d bolt the door with her on the outside. And no way was she sharing what she suspected without his word that he’d work with her. She had a killer to catch, a drug pipeline to stop and a promotion to win. She couldn’t risk him getting in her way again, and the only way to prevent that was to know where he was and what he was up to. And that meant working together—closely.

“You agree to work this with me, or I don’t take another step.” Then she took a chance that the years had left that basketball-center ego of his intact along with that cocky grin he still had. She set her lips in a challenging smirk of her own and added, “Or are you afraid to work with me?”

His eyebrows climbed, furrowing his forehead even more, then his frown slid into a grin again. A grin she was quickly coming to believe was an artifice to hide his true feelings. Maybe it always had been.

“Me? Afraid of you? Oh, please,” he said, his eyes rolling just a bit. “Fine. We’ll work the cases together since you seem pretty certain that this is all linked. Besides, I don’t want you getting in my way again.”

He pivoted lazily and walked up the drive. When he reached the base of the steps, he turned. Neither she nor the dog had moved. And she wouldn’t. Not until she got an invitation. Not after that remark. She would get in his way?

“You coming?” Travis all but snarled.

Tricia wasn’t sure which of them he was talking to, her or the dog. But since it looked like the only invitation she was likely to get, she started forward.

The dog shot ahead then toward the front door, the plume of his tail wagging jubilantly. “Traitor,” Travis muttered to his canine companion who ran happily past his perturbed master.

It was nice someone was happy with the situation, she thought, and asked, “So, what’s your dog’s name?”

As she entered an open, tiled foyer, the name “Cody” on Travis’s lips barely registered in her brain. Her mind was suddenly ambushed by the flashes of insight the house gave her into his barren life. She could swear her heart actually ached for him.

The rooms before her had wonderful dark wide planked floors that stood out in perfect contrast to the cream color on the rough, adobe-look walls. Unfortunately, that was the only good thing she could say about the two rooms that flowed off the foyer.

She looked around at the emptiness the rooms reflected and wondered how he thought she might make herself too comfortable in such an utterly soulless place. The walls and windows were bare while the living room and dining room areas were lined with card tables. She counted a dozen tables in all and one desk. Strewn with numerous files, each table held folders of a different color. Stacked underneath most of the tables were boxes also filled with the same color files. There was also an industrial-sized shredder in the corner opposite the Spanish-tiled fireplace.

It was, she realized, exactly what it looked like. A disaster of an office with a nod given toward organization. This must be the life center of AdVance Security and Investigations. Which meant he ran the company the way he did everything—alone.

“Oh, my,” she said, in control of her thoughts if not her mouth, “I don’t think you need to worry that I’ll get too comfortable in here.” She walked to the first table and picked up a folder. “I’ve seen jail cells in Third World countries that were more homey than this place.”

“Yuk-yuk,” he said. “I don’t have to please anyone but me. And this pleases me. And—” She heard his footsteps moving quickly toward her and, as she whirled to face him, he snatched the folder out of her hand. “I know where everything is.” He dropped it back on the table. “Don’t touch my stuff. Besides, that’s confidential. And don’t go getting any ideas about messing with my filing system. I remember how you like to organize. So what’s this about information?”

Tricia spotted the kitchen that lay beyond a half wall. It had two counter stools pulled up to a breakfast bar that was set into the half wall between the dining room and the galley kitchen. She walked to the bar, pulled out a chair and sat.

“Why, thank you, Travis. I’d love a nice hot cup of tea. Suppose you tell me what you’ve learned while you fix it for me.”

“I said I’d participate. I didn’t say I’d feed you. That comes under the heading of ‘too comfortable.’”

“Oh?” She fiddled with a drawing he’d left on the counter. It was done by a small child and showed a tall man and a dog running. Only the dog smiled. Travis and Cody, no doubt about it. She imagined the budding artist was Amy Mathers, his brother Sam’s stepdaughter.

“What’s ‘oh’ supposed to mean? Women never say ‘oh’ in that tone when it doesn’t mean a whole lot more.”

“It means that I thought the offer of refreshments fell under the heading of civilized.” She looked pointedly at the kitchen beyond where he now stood. Wall-to-wall dirty dishes, several empty bread wrappers and three scraped-clean peanut butter jars. It was anything but civilized. “Decorated by Neanderthal Interiors?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.

“I like my kitchen the way it is, too. Come on. We’ll talk in the den. It’s neat so it won’t put your female cleaning hormones into overdrive.”

She followed when he gave her no opportunity to protest. “Sit,” he ordered when she entered the small room.

His idea of neat and hers were worlds apart. Stack after stack of magazines and newspapers from all over the world took up about a third of the floor space and the end tables and coffee table. There was also a medium-size TV, a wall of bookcases stuffed haphazardly with books, a futon and an old beat-up leather recliner. The room fit his personality: rumpled, grumpy and brooding.

She chose the futon and, after picking up and stacking several of the newspapers and magazines into a neat pile, she sat in the newly cleared space.

“You’re already driving me crazy and we haven’t been working together five minutes,” he said, raking his hair off his forehead. “So tell me what all you’ve figured out about Ian Kelly’s murder.”

“He was killed on the flight line.”

“Then it really was about Air Force business.” Travis leaned back in his seat. “Sam thought it was something to do with this influx of drugs that are driving him and the rest of CSPD crazy. In that case, I don’t see what I can do for you.”

She couldn’t very well blurt out that his father was looking pretty good as the kingpin of Diablo, the syndicate she thought was the Colorado Springs arm of La Mano Oscura. She was nearly sure the proof of the connection between the two organizations had been within Ian’s grasp but couldn’t confirm it yet.

“Five or six of our pilots look good for the runners. One of them is the guy I was following yesterday. We can’t afford to trip over each other again.”

“And how on earth do we explain our being together all the time, or haven’t you and your general thought that far?”

Tricia swallowed, and crossed her legs carefully to hide her nervousness. “Well…er…the general has decided on a way to handle it.”

Travis raised one eyebrow. “And what is the general’s brilliant idea?”

“We’re inseparable because—” she tried to make her expression as neutral as she could “—we’re dating again.”

Chapter Four

“What did you say?” Travis bellowed.

And Patricia Streeter, the girl who’d broken his heart and sent his life into a tailspin didn’t even blink at his outrage. Instead she sat back, crossed her long legs once again and settled into the soft cushion of the futon.

“I said we’re supposed to be dating. We have to act as if we’re crazy about each other. You’ll go where I go, I’ll go where you go. Officially, I’ll take leave to give us the time to decide if I want to get out of the Air Force to be with you or if you’ll be following me to my next duty station.”

“And they say I’m crazy,” he muttered, and caught himself raking his fingers through his hair again. Why was it he kept blowing his cool with her? She just plain unnerved him. That’s all there was to it. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. To be near her. See her all the time. It wasn’t going to happen.

But if he didn’t and something happened to her…

Travis had seen the crime scene photos of Major Kelly. The thought of seeing Patty like that… He shook his head. No, she was Tricia now. Major Streeter. That was even better. This woman bore little resemblance to the pretty coed he’d loved to distraction. But it occurred to him that, even with all that had happened and all the years that had passed, none of it mattered. Not in the face of the stark fact that she was searching for the person or persons responsible for Major Kelly’s murder, and that by working the case alone she could very well end up as the major had.

He felt himself start to hyperventilate and jumped to his feet to pace across the room then back to his chair. The idea of those men catching her. Of what they might do to her if they did. South American drug cartels were ruthless, and he’d lay odds the guy he’d been tailing the day before was South American. And Sam thought La Mano Oscura could be involved with Diablo. So it stood to reason the Air Force pilots she was after were probably linked to both organizations. It was the only thing that made sense. But proving it? Stopping it? That was another matter.

And why was she so determined?

Jealousy, hot and angry, reared its unreasonable head once again. “You must have been pretty crazy about Kelly to put yourself in this kind of danger to avenge him,” he growled. “You really think anyone will believe you’re with me only a couple weeks after his death?”

Her lips pressed into a firm line. “Don’t try to make more of this than it is. I said Ian was a friend. He, his wife and daughters made me feel like one of the family when I was transferred here. They deserve justice. I want the man or men who killed him. So does General Fielding. It’s my job and it could mean a promotion for me, too. Those are my reasons.”

Travis stared at her then nodded, feeling like a prize fool for his anger. They’d been apart for years. He’d had a wife and a child. He pushed away those thoughts. He couldn’t think about Allison or Natalie now. He had failed to protect them, but maybe in protecting Tricia he could make up for his failure just a little.

“You like anyone for Kelly’s murder?” he asked, pretending a calm he still didn’t feel. “The pilot you were tailing, maybe?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.” She looked even more troubled. “Maybe someone higher up.”

“How high is high?”

“Possibly as high as a brigadier general. George Hadley is his name. We transferred him and his wing to Peterson where they could be watched. They were stationed at Cascade.”

Travis remembered reading something about all that a few months back. “The base the Air Force is afraid has a major active fault running under it?”

She smirked. “There’s no fault. And no geological survey going on. It’s an elaborate ruse to get Hadley and his wing where we can track their movements better. A handful of pilots under him formed a club called the Buccaneers. There are seven members. They bought into a fifties-era F-100 Super Sabre together. They trade weekends taking her up.”

Travis narrowed his eyes. This was getting interesting. “That jet has over a thousand-mile range, doesn’t it?”

“Sixteen-sixty.”

Whistling, Travis grabbed for a notepad so he could take notes. “They could get to a lot of places with it. Tough places to track them to. How’d the Air Force get wise to them in the first place?”

“One of the Bucs reported an odd talk he had with General Hadley. He got the idea Hadley was feeling him out to see if he’d do anything illegal. At the time he thought he was suspected of something. He got indignant and General Hadley accepted his word that he’d done nothing wrong.”

“And that was Hadley’s misstep?”

“The first we’ve heard about. Within the following month, the pilot, Captain Kevin Johnston, started to notice some odd things about his fellow Buccaneers. Like more flight hours on the F-100 than those they logged. They all tried to pass it off as hotdogging midflight but they all also seemed to have a bit too much money to spend, considering the cost of those long flights and the loan payments on the plane.”

She paused and straightened the magazines, then caught his eyes and stopped, guiltily hiding her hands behind her. Then she cleared her throat and continued. “Then Captain Johnston noticed nearly the same number of miles on each flight the other members took no matter where they claimed to have gone on their time off. He put that together with seeing them looking a little too comfortable around the highest-ranking officer at Cascade, General Hadley. Captain Johnston was in basic with Ian so he came here to Peterson and went to him with his suspicions. Ian took it to Lieutenant General Charles Fielding, the base commander. General Fielding put Ian Kelly on it and Ian suggested the geological survey as an excuse to get them all to Colorado Springs where his presence wouldn’t be suspicious and there’d be someone superior to General Hadley. Two months later Ian Kelly was found dead and I was handed the case. I’m trying to nail General Hadley along with the Buccaneers.”

“And for that you think you need my help?”

She glared. “What I need is you out of my way, but I know you too well. You as much as said there was no way you were pulling out of this investigation. If I can’t intimidate you off the case, I have to ask you to join in on it.” She grinned slyly, her eyes wise with knowledge of his character.

It was Travis’s turn to glare. He hated that she still knew him so well.

She crossed her legs, drawing his attention momentarily. He’d always loved her long dancer’s legs. “I can’t intimidate you, can I?” she asked, dragging his attention off her assets and annoying him further.

Not trusting himself to speak, he sent her a wiseacre grin and shook his head.

She grimaced slightly. “Then I guess we’re in this together. And that means it’s on General Fielding’s terms. In that case, it’s your turn to tell me what you have so far.”

Travis sighed mentally. It looked as if they were partners for the duration. And he had to give her credit—she’d told him all she seemed to know. “Ramirez is the name of the guy I was tailing. He’s Venezuelan. Which fits with Sam’s theory and, I suppose, Ian Kelly’s that Diablo and La Mano Oscura are linked.”

“I didn’t find any reference to La Mano Oscura in his notes but I still think he was working on proof of a connection.”

“But the crime scene investigators found that note in his pocket when his body was discovered. It had both Diablo and La Mano Oscura on it. So we knew he must have thought there was a link.”

She nodded. “Ian was the best. He probably got the evidence and was killed for it.”

“So we’ll be a little more careful than he was.”

“And we’ll each have someone to watch our back. That was more than Ian had. He liked to work alone.”

Sensing that she did, too, and hoping to dissuade her from going off on her own when he wasn’t with her, Travis found himself adding, “And it probably got him killed.”

The day after Travis agreed to work with her, they planned for Tricia to meet him at the Stagecoach Café. Since his mother worked there with her old friend Fiona, Travis dreaded this very public meeting they’d set up. They were supposed to act as if they had run into each other only days before—which was quite literally true. The problem was this was to be their first date, which was supposed to explode into a whirlwind romance—which was a big fat lie. It would never happen.

He wouldn’t let it happen.

Tricia didn’t seem to mind lying to his family, and had in fact insisted on it. But it wasn’t all that easy for him. His mother was going to be sixty-two inches of trouble. The woman had an eye for the lies her children told and always had. He thought he could pull off today, but then to act wildly enamored of Tricia considering their past? Now that was going to be a feat.

Because everything about Tricia just plain annoyed him. From her self-confidence to her uniform, she wasn’t the girl he’d loved. The problem was that somehow she was all the more fascinating for the changes he’d seen in her so far.

If he were completely honest with himself, Travis knew he’d have to admit his real problem with the differences was that she had grown and stretched beyond the potential he’d seen in her. She had been right. He would have held her back.

And that really frosted him.

Pulling open the door of the Stagecoach Café, Travis nearly cringed. Both his mother and Fiona were there, as he’d thought they would be. And they’d seen him. It was too late to back out and call off this hoax of a date.

“Travis!” Lidia Vance called out. “Come back here and sit where I can talk to you, while I fold these napkins.” She rushed to him, braced her small hands on his forearms and tiptoed from her slight height to peck him on the cheek. Instinctively, Travis wrapped his arms around her small round form and hugged her.

“I can only chat for a few minutes, Mom. I’m meeting someone for lunch. It’s a…uh…it’s a date.”

Travis felt his face heat. This was never going to work. As he expected, his mother was more than mildly surprised. Her eyebrows rose as her big brown eyes widened. “Here? You’re bringing a girl here? Is it that nice woman who you met through the auction?”

He almost burst that bubble of hope he’d seen so often in the past and saw again now. She wanted, and he knew even prayed, that he would pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Much as he would like to make his mother happy, he didn’t deserve to go on with his life when his wife and child were dead because of his failure as a husband and father. But for now he’d have to let her think her wish was about to come true. Telling her the truth some day in the weeks to come wasn’t going to be easy.

Pushing away dark thoughts, Travis explained, “I ran into Patty…uh…Tricia Streeter, I mean. We decided to meet for lunch.”

“Tricia?”

He forced a smile he didn’t feel, feeling instead like one of the jack-o’-lanterns that were decorating the town. Cardboard. Fake. A sham. “It was good to see her again. I was…surprised how much.” That at least was true, much to his disgust.

“That’s so nice. You were always such a cute couple,” his mother said, patting his arm. There was a mixture of emotions reflected in her dark, almost all-seeing eyes. Principal among them was delight. She’d bought it and Travis watched his last chance for a reprieve vanish with the blooming of his mother’s delighted smile.

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