Don’t Look Back Page 2

  He’d loved her until the day he died.

  And Miranda? She’d come to see Dunn the moment her husband was dead.

  Dunn pressed the button and held the phone up to his ear.

  “Dunn?” Miranda’s voice came across the line, the happiness undiminished by the miles between them. “It’s so … wonderful to have you calling me…”

  The joy in her tone made him hesitate.

  There was another first. Miranda seemed to have a talent for giving the men in the Bateson family pause.

  “Dunn?” Miranda asked softly.

  “I’m here,” he replied, battling a very unexpected reluctance to speak his mind. The empire he’d inherited from his father and grandfather was his to command. Yet Miranda was managing to tongue-tie him. It was a novel feeling, one he’d thought himself immune to. “I know you feel the need to do the right thing. But there are some men you should avoid crossing.”

  “You’ve had a call from my son-in-law, it would seem.” Miranda’s voice gained intensity. There was now a core of strength in her tone that made Dunn’s lips twitch. It would seem his father hadn’t been the only parent to pass a solid spine on to him.

  “Miranda—” Dunn began.

  “I am not a coward,” Miranda informed him sternly. But her tone softened as she explained. “I realize you have good reason to doubt me on the matter. Believe me, Dunn, I would have stood up to my father if I was the only one he could lash out at. But he would have destroyed your father and grandfather. I couldn’t allow it to happen to your grandfather. I simply couldn’t stand by and see him become what he considered a failure. My family had the power to strangle your grandfather’s business.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Dunn answered her, enjoying the confidence of knowing he’d built up his business to something Miranda’s family wasn’t big enough to impact. “And I called to talk about you taking your safety lightly.”

  “There was nothing light about it,” Miranda replied. “Carl Davis had your sister kidnapped … even had part of her ear cut off. I will not look the other way when I have the opportunity to show his true colors to the world.”

  “And here I thought my stubbornness came from my Scottish blood,” Dunn grumbled.

  Miranda offered him a peal of laughter that made him smile. Until two years ago, when Miranda’s husband had died, Dunn had had no contact with her. Their relationship was something only spoken of in hushed whispers behind the very tightly closed door of his father’s study.

  Now? He could call her. See her. And honestly, Dunn found himself uncertain how to proceed with their relationship. The only thing he seemed sure of was the fact that Vitus’s call had unsettled him, and there was no way he wasn’t getting involved in the matter.

  “I understand your feelings, Miranda, but Carl Davis is a dangerous man.”

  He heard Miranda draw in a deep breath on the other side of their connection.

  “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have you call, Dunn,” Miranda said.

  Dunn felt his jaw tighten. Oh, yes, his mother had passed on a fair amount of stubbornness to him.

  “You mustn’t worry,” Miranda told him firmly. “I am running for Congress, and one advantage of that is, I have wonderful security.”

  “Carl can cut through it and you know it,” Dunn countered, trying to kill her argument.

  His mother surprised him by replying in a steady and sure tone.

  “Yes, well, I am not nineteen anymore. Carl appears to keep forgetting that. In fact, I am running for Congress to ensure he knows he will have to contend with me. I will not allow that villain to claim victory, not while I have breath left in my body.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” Dunn cut back. “Vitus isn’t a man who gets rattled over little things. He called me. You need to stop making a target of yourself.”

  “What I did,” Miranda responded, “was to refuse to look the other way. It’s what more people should do in order to make this world a better place. Carl was so very foolish to have that conversation at an event I was hosting.”

  Dunn grunted. “No argument there. I don’t see how he can be leading in the polls.”

  “Well, that lead is waning now that he doesn’t have Kirkland Grog using his media empire to push Carl’s ads in the faces of the plugged-in generation. If I hadn’t turned that recording over to Kagan and his teams, Tom Hilliard wouldn’t be closing in on Carl. This election isn’t over yet.”

  And she wasn’t going to back down. Dunn admitted to admiring her grit. “Promise me you will stay with your security escort.”

  “I shall,” Miranda assured him.

  Dunn ended the call and stood for a long moment with the phone in his hand. He wasn’t a man who lingered on calls, but there was an unmistakable twinge of reluctance in him to sever the connection. Beyond the windows of his office, he could see the restaurants and lounges lit up. It was late in the evening, the nightlife flourishing as the nip of fall was in the air.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d stayed and worked while the rest of the world loosened their ties and unwound. He had the success to prove it, too. But money wasn’t everything.

  No, he’d never called his mother “Mom.”

  He hid inside his empire, where the control rested firmly in his hands. He ended up letting out a little scoff as he turned and pulled his jacket off the coatrack.

  He hadn’t been in control of the conversation with Miranda.

  No, she’d gently deflected his warnings and left him admiring her for her integrity.

  Carl Davis had better leave her alone, because Dunn wasn’t planning on letting anyone touch his family.

  Secret family or not.

  * * *

  Her son had called her.

  Miranda wanted to twirl around in pure joy.

  She settled for laughing until tears eased from the corners of her eyes and her security men cast her questioning looks.

  Well, Dunn would enjoy knowing she was surrounded, even if she found it a bit oppressive from time to time.

  Of course, she knew he was speaking the truth. Carl Davis had sold his soul in his bid for power. It wasn’t her first encounter with his sort though. Her grandfather could have given Carl lessons on dirty dealing and getting ahead by underhanded tactics.

  She was going to show her family there were other ways to get votes. In the era of connectivity, it was her firm belief there was a market for someone who spoke the truth and refused to make deals behind closed doors.

  Her father would have laughed.

  Her late husband, too.

  But she was more concerned with how her granddaughter would look at her. Carl Davis had played the Washington game, played it hard and without a shred of remorse for those he trampled on his way to the top.

  Was it dangerous to give evidence against him? She wasn’t a fool; Miranda knew the stakes. She’d lived too long beneath the thumb of her husband, Jeb Ryland. Kept her mouth shut for the sake of her daughter. Jeb hadn’t shown his true colors until after she’d conceived. It had been a different time, when a powerful man like Jeb could make it impossible for Miranda to see her daughter. So she’d played the loving wife, learned her role, performed as expertly as any Oscar-winning actress.

  Jeb was gone now. Miranda leaned forward to check her lipstick as her assistant signaled it was time to go out and make an appearance.

  No, she wasn’t a coward, and she’d take what fate handed to her.

  * * *

  There was a challenge in making a clean hit.

  One Pullman enjoyed the rush of.

  He spent a lot of time studying his targets, learning their habits so he’d be able to hit them like a ghost reaching up from the grave. No one would see it coming until it was far too late to stop him from claiming his victim.

  Political figures were hard though.

  Of course, that was why it paid so well.

  Miranda Ryland was actually a little easier than most. Sh
e had a soft heart and an affection for charity projects. Pullman watched her as she got out of her black-windowed town car and walked straight into the mass of people waiting for her to join them at an outdoor festival. Her security escort was doing their best, but Miranda was too naive to realize she’d set them an impossible task by stepping so far out into the open.

  Pullman had a camera on his shoulder. The press pass swinging from a lanyard around his neck was stolen from a guy no one would find in the trunk of his car until it was too late. Pullman put his eye to the lens of the camera, seeing the crosshairs of a scope inside the very cleverly disguised camera. The gun didn’t have the range his rifle did, but in the crowd, he’d have plenty of opportunity to escape when the blood hit the pavement and everyone panicked.

  Miranda was going full speed into the crowd, her security men turning to look both ways as they tried to maintain position. The excited crowd was pressing in, reaching for their candidate as Miranda smiled and tried to shake every hand extended.

  He lined up the shot and pulled the trigger.

  The noise was soft, the bullet flying toward the target. The seconds between pulling a trigger and impact were always the longest. Pullman was still exhaling when Miranda jerked, her body drawing tight and then falling out of sight.

  The screaming started.

  A wall of people came at the press. Pullman turned and ran because that was the only thing to do in a stampede.

  Run or be trampled.

  Of course, he wanted to run and didn’t stop until he was around the corner. He ducked into an alley to rip off the press pass and tuck it into a pocket. He’d dispose of it later, somewhere far away from where the investigation would be happening. Pulling a hat from another pocket, he put it on and stuffed the camera into a backpack he’d had in the other pocket.

  When he emerged onto the street, the security camera wouldn’t connect him with the man who had gone into the alley. People were running past him, coming down the alley from the festival. He looked around, doing his part to appear flustered by the alarm.

  In truth, he was perfectly at ease. Moving across a few city blocks before disappearing into traffic.

  Power struggles were always bloody. From the Vikings to the White House. Pullman didn’t feel sorry for any of those who made a grab for control, and the reason was simple. No matter how brightly they smiled, their hands were dirty, because there was only one path to the top.

  Over the bodies of your competition.

  * * *

  Her husband wasn’t always with her.

  Damascus had known who Vitus Hale was when she married him, and he’d understood that she was attached to a classified underground lab complex where she studied infectious diseases. As a result, they were often separated by their work.

  Damascus enjoyed the time she had with Vitus in her bed. He moved back and forth between their home and the nest where his brother, Saxon, was transforming a Cold War–era missile silo into a state-of-the-art communications hub. Somehow, they carved out enough time for one another, and she was grateful for the life they’d built in spite of the odds.

  He shifted beside her, making her open her eyes and squint at the bedside clock. “Is Cassy fussing? It’s not time to feed her yet.”

  Not that her breasts seemed to care. Just thinking about her baby was enough to start the milk moving. Damascus let out a sound of frustration because even if her baby wasn’t hungry, she was getting up.

  Vitus was taking a phone call. Damascus didn’t give it too much of her attention because he worked with Shadow Ops. Which loosely translated into a cloak-and-dagger sort of life she was used to.

  “Your mother is alive,” Vitus muttered in his low tone.

  Damascus froze, turning around from where she was looking at their sleeping daughter while trying to decide if the baby was hungry or not.

  “Told you that up front, princess, so you know the important stuff first,” he continued. “Miranda was shot a little more than an hour ago during an arts festival on the West Coast. She’s in surgery.”

  Damascus felt the blood draining from her face. Vitus caught her by the bicep, taking her weight as she dragged in a ragged breath. “How … how badly was she hurt?”

  Vitus didn’t want to tell her. Damascus could see the way his expression tensed up. She knew him too well, had seen him when he was working a mission and understood the way he distanced himself from the harsh realities of the world he worked in.

  She drew in a hard breath and turned toward her baby. “I have to go … to California and be there…”

  Vitus caught her, clamping her against his hard body. She struggled, trying to push free. “Don’t tell me I can’t, Vitus. She’s my mother!”

  “The gunman is still at large,” he said, his tone hard.

  “But—” Damascus argued.

  “She’d never forgive me if I allowed you to go near her with Cassy while whoever shot her is still out there. Miranda would want you and Cassy safe more than she’d want you with her.”

  Tears were escaping from her eyes, wetting the thin T-shirt her husband wore. He was right, and she hated it so very much at that moment.

  But she didn’t hate him. Vitus held her tightly as she broke down.

  * * *

  Special agent Thais Sinclair didn’t take time off.

  She pressed her lips into a firm line as she contemplated her phone, but left it on the table next to the lounge chair she was lying in.

  She didn’t surf social media, either, which left her peering through her sunglasses at the sparkling surface of the pool at the resort where she was staying.

  Her section leader, Kagan, had ordered her to take some time off.

  Thais let out a little sound of frustration, but that was going to be the extent of her argument because Kagan was her boss. Oh, she wasn’t taking time off because he’d told her to … no, it was far more about the fact that Kagan had earned her respect. He’d told her to let her thoughts settle. She could either do it his way or balk and end up having him order her to stand down.

  So she was lying in the sun, doing absolutely nothing important. She really didn’t have much of a choice, but keeping her dignity had value.

  Still … she worked with Shadow Ops because she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts.

  You mean your ghosts …

  “Please tell me your lips are pressed like that because your boyfriend is now an ex-boyfriend.”

  Thais knew who was talking to her. The guy had been watching her for the better part of a half hour and seemed to think he’d found the right time to make his play.

  She stood, with all the grace and poise her mother had reared her with and which she learned to perform because of how much she’d feared her father.

  No … “sire” was a better word than “father.” He’d preferred “master of the family,” but she wouldn’t think of him in any fashion that might please him.

  Thais offered the guy waiting for her response a few words. “I don’t do boyfriends,” she said. She liked men with balls, and he at least had more than the other men watching her from around the sitting area.

  He wasn’t her type though.

  Too tame.

  The guy grimaced. “Don’t tell me you’re a taco girl…”

  Thais plucked her meager belongings off the side table and dumped them into her bag. She offered the guy a shake of her head, restoring his hopeful grin.

  “I just don’t do domesticated men,” she muttered.

  “I can be alpha, baby,” he said, stepping up to her challenge. “Just give me a chance.”

  Thais only gave him a glance before she moved away.

  An alpha didn’t wait for a chance to be handed to him.

  You’re just in a bad mood …

  That much was very true. Thais contemplated herself as she took the stairs up to the floor her room was on. She enjoyed the slight burn in her thighs from the climb. She was stripping down as she closed the door behind h
er and headed for the Jacuzzi-style tub the suite offered.

  At least Kagan had put her in a nice place for her required cleansing time off.

  She turned on the water and took a moment to consider the offering of spa body washes sitting on the countertop. Thais selected one and popped the little plastic top off so she could smell it.

  Slipping into the tub she enjoyed the way the cold water sent goosebumps up her legs. In the midday light, the bathroom lacked something, a mood she discovered herself longing for.

  Don’t …

  The warning was swift and cutting. Thais didn’t temper her inner voice, either. What she shied away from was a memory of a night when she’d indulged in a bath, when she really shouldn’t have allowed her secret fetish to be witnessed.

  You knew he was watching you …

  It was the truth. She’d known Dunn Bateson was likely watching her. In fact, she’d enjoyed thinking she had the Scot’s complete attention.

  Such a dangerous game she’d been playing. One that had come back around to extract a toll from her when she’d encountered him again.

  She knew better.

  Much, much better.

  Emotions were best left far away from her life. It was a lesson she’d forced herself to memorize in order to survive.

  As if on cue, her phone started to chime. She reached for it, swiping her finger across the screen as she used her foot to turn off the water so she could hear.

  “Your vacation is being cut short.” Her section leader’s voice came across the line. Kagan was a cut-to-the-chase sort of man. He was all business, and Thais like that facet best about his personality.

  “Suits me,” she muttered. “I’m ready for assignment.”

  “Even one involving Dunn Bateson?” Kagan asked bluntly.

  There was another facet of her section leader’s personality, only this was one Thais wasn’t nearly as fond of. Kagan knew too much. In his job of heading up Shadow Ops teams, Kagan noticed things she went to a great deal of effort to conceal. Even if she did enjoy knowing Kagan didn’t miss details. That was exactly the sort of section leader every agent needed watching out for them.

  On a personal note though, she didn’t particularly care for the way he knew Dunn Bateson might be a soft spot for her.