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