Exposed Page 2

  Frank pushed up from the lawn chair, putting his weight on his right leg, grasping his cane with the left. Once he was vertical and sure his path was clear of anyone under the age of ten, he made his way to the picnic table, determined to move without hobbling. He’d gone after his physical therapy with a dogged resolve to have a full recovery. Even the hint of a limp implied he wasn’t up to his job as a Deputy Marshal. Not something you wanted witnesses or criminals thinking. Ever.

  At the table he hesitated, trying to decide which end of the bench would work for him when it came time to get up. Suddenly, the lawn chair he’d vacated appeared at the end of the table.

  Luke leaned to one side behind him, giving him that lopsided grin of his. “Gotcha covered, big guy.”

  “You try helping me sit and I’m using this cane for something besides standing,” he warned, but took the seat gratefully.

  A quick prayer from Ben to bless the food, and all discussion about Frank’s leg and Luke’s favor was tabled until after dinner.

  “So, anyone have anything from work they can talk about?” Ben asked, which got him a table full of laughter in return.

  Between the FBI, Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals, the local SWAT team, and Matt’s new position as a detective with the local police, about the only ones who could talk about work were the three nurses in the family—Sami, Katie, and Judy. And with the HIPPA laws, they couldn’t divulge names of patients or doctors.

  “I was wondering if there was any news about that missing intern? Congresswoman Kelly’s daughter?” Mary asked, spooning potato salad onto her youngest granddaughter’s plate beside her. The two-year old wielded her spoon like a ninja before Sami took control of her daughter.

  Jake shook his head as he loaded up his burger. “Not much to tell from our end. We did background checks on both the representative and her daughter, Annabeth, here in town. Since her daughter was last seen working in Washington last month for Congressman Blanton, the FBI is focusing most of the investigation there.”

  “It’s would be a shame if she has to step down from her office, but I understand. A missing child certainly comes before anything else, even serving the public,” Mary said. “Anyone know who will be filling in her seat if that’s what she’s announcing this week?”

  “Her political party holds that seat, so they’ll choose. Probably Bryon Locklear. Except for Representative Kelly’s positive stance on medical marijuana and pushing for new legislation for it, Locklear is closest to her stand on everything else,” Ben said. Then he focused on Luke and Abby. “How about you two? You hear anything about this young girl?”

  The pair exchanged blank looks.

  “Not much more than is on the news,” Luke said. “Young, attractive woman, worked for the Congressman almost a year. Didn’t show up for work one Monday last month. No one has seen or heard from her since. It’s like she disappeared without a trace.”

  “Even though she doesn’t fit the profile, since she’s well educated and from an affluent family, we still ran her picture through the new anti-sex-slave traffic bureau both in DC and here in Ohio, just to cover all the bases,” Abigail said, shaking her head. “No one has seen anyone matching her description.”

  “How is that bureau working?” Matt asked.

  Luke reached for the potato salad. “It’s getting lots of funding from both political parties. No one wants to have it on their record that they supported the late Senator Klein or might’ve been caught up in the scandal associated with him.”

  “Isn’t your friend working for the local bureau up in Cleveland?” Mary asked Abigail.

  “Yes. Brianna decided to quit working in the corporate world and focus on helping stop the sex-slave trafficking going on in that area. She said after what she’d been through, she wanted to stop the exploitation of women.” Abigail smiled. “She’s working closely with Lieutenant Jeffers and the vice squad up there.”

  “Isn’t he coming to the wedding with her next weekend?” Katie asked.

  “We invited them both, so she wouldn’t feel out of place,” Abigail answered, with a conspiratorial grin to her soon-to-be sister-in-law.

  Castello shook his head slightly. Poor Jeffers. When two women started plotting matchmaking for you, your goose was cooked.

  “She’s even got Kirk F. Patrick working for her, part-time,” Frank said, before biting into his brat. Man, could Jake grill up some meat.

  “The kid you have acting as caretaker for your safe house in Cleveland?” Matt asked. “How’s he doing?”

  “Good. Studying Criminal Justice. Between his first year at the Cuyahoga Community College, and all the work Brianna and her bureau has him doing, he’s staying out of trouble. Which is making his grandmother very happy.”

  “Well, it’s good something positive came out of the horrible mess Senator Klein and his cronies had going on. Such a disgrace that a member of our government could be up to something so shameful.” Mary said. “I just wish they’d find that poor Annabeth Kelly, before something terrible happens to her.”

  Frank’s gaze snapped to Jake’s across the table, then to Matt, Luke, and Dave. They all believed the same thing. If no one had seen or heard from her in nearly a month, the likelihood was that she wouldn’t be found alive.

  * * * * *

  “You know Luke wasn’t the only intelligence officer caught off guard at the inaugural ball,” Abigail said, as she slipped into the vacant lawn chair beside Frank. The rest of the clan had gone home, except Jake and Sami, who were busy tucking children into bed. “Every security agency in the capital dropped the ball that night.”

  “Hell, I know that. All the security at that gala, and no one knew what the other one was doing.”

  “Well, we did sort of go in under cover.”

  “Because Luke and Jake wanted it that way.”

  “And in the end, we did get the Army lieutenant who had stolen the SAMS and tried to sell them to the arms dealer, Brinker,” Abigail said, staring at him with those big, intelligent eyes.

  Damn, Luke was one lucky man to have someone as smart as her.

  Frank reached down and scratched just under the top of the brace on his left leg. “Wish we could’ve taken down Brinker, too, the slimy bastard. It was a shame we had to actually be sure he got out of the hotel safely. If anyone deserved to die in there, it was him.”

  “No, we couldn’t let him die, or those missiles might’ve been sold elsewhere. That was our mission, but it did all work out in the end. It took us a month longer, but we got the weapons. And we helped stop the Red Mantle from killing the president.” Abigail pulled one long leg up onto the chair and wrapped her arm around it. Tall for a woman, she could pass for a supermodel. Did, in fact. That was her cover story the night of the ball. It still amazed him how brilliant she was, and how little she really cared for her looks. He’d even heard her tell her future sisters-in-law that Luke was going to be the pretty one in their family.

  And speak of the devil, here he came, all grins, and three bottles of beer in his hand.

  “So, did you tell him what we need?” Luke said, handing them each a beer and pulling another chair closer.

  Frank took a long drink from his bottle. “Having a woman beg for help for you now, wonder boy?”

  Luke laughed. “Like she’d let me. Besides, this really isn’t a favor for just me. It’s for both of us, and Abby came up with the idea first.”

  “In that case, I’m listening.” He couldn’t help giving the tall brunette a half smile and wink. “What’s the favor, Abigail?”

  “Next week at the wedding,” she said, then hesitated, glancing at Luke who took her hand in his and nodded for her to continue. “Well, usually the bride’s father walks her down the aisle, and I since I’m an orphan, I really don’t have anyone to do that for me.”

  A lump settled in Frank’s throat. He swallowed it down and took another drink of his beer.

  “When she was fretting over walking up the aisle alone, I men
tioned that you did a great job of it for Katie and Matt at their wedding,” Luke said, his face serious for once.

  “If you don’t want to, I understand, I mean, you were there for Katie years before she’d met Matt,” Abigail said, then pulled her upper lip between her teeth, like one of Luke’s nieces often did.

  “I’d be honored,” Frank said, his voice a little thick with emotion. The day he’d walked Katie down the aisle to marry Matt was the day he’d become an unofficial member of the Edgars clan. How could he turn down Abigail and Luke when it was so important to them? “Just don’t expect me to make a speech.”

  “Man, I was hoping you’d do a twenty-minute monologue at the reception,” Luke said.

  “Not fucking happening, kid.”

  Luke laughed. “Okay, but you have to be in the wedding pictures this time.”

  “Nope. You know I hate photographers, and my job requires I blend into the woodwork,” he said, gladly stretching the unwritten rules of witness protection to include avoiding family photographs.

  “It wouldn’t be a family photo without you in it,” Abigail said, giving him that hopeful look.

  Frank huffed out all the air in his chest. “Okay, but only for you. One.”

  Abigail leaned over from her chair and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Besides, my photographer isn’t like the paparazzi, I promise. You’ll love Sydney.”

  * * * * *

  Sydney Peele dropped her favorite jeans and lightweight sweater in on top of her hiking boots, shaking her head. When she’d agreed to do this fashion shoot for one of the up-and-coming new designers, she’d assumed they’d be doing it in New York, or some other mecca for fashion, like Milan or Paris.

  No, Liv Cartwright wanted something different for her first editorial shoot.

  So instead of spending the week in a city full of posh hotels with room service, celebrity-chef-owned restaurants, and catching a play or jazz group, Sydney was going to be hiking through the muck and mire of a New England spring out in the wilds.

  The sound of her front door opening echoed up the stairs of her townhouse.

  “Sydney, you here?” her brother Ian called. The only person with a key to her house—which she still regretted giving him—Ian had a bad habit of dropping in unannounced, after weeks or even months with no communication between them.

  Great. Just what she needed today. Ian only showed up when he wanted something.

  “Up here, packing,” she yelled loud enough for him to hear over the radio playing Barracuda in the background.

  One of the reasons she bought one of the newly renovated row house townhomes in the Italian Village portion of Columbus was the second-floor bedroom area. After their father died, her mother had moved them into an apartment. It was roomy enough, especially after Ian left home to travel the world, but she’d missed the upstairs bedroom she’d had as a child. It had made her feel like a princess safe in her castle. When she finally decided to make Columbus her home base once more, she’d indulged in a home that provided that feeling.

  Another feature was the small powder room and closet off the kitchen. First thing she’d done was convert the two rooms into one and made it a darkroom. A space where she could develop her non-digital photos. Before her father died, she’d spent many hours in the darkroom with him, learning how to develop negatives into pictures. He’d taught her the safe ways to use and store the chemicals.

  Her eyes shifted to the black-and-white image of an apple tree in full blossom above her bed. It was the first picture she’d taken and developed all on her own. Dad had it framed professionally, and gave it to her on her twelfth birthday.

  Ian’s feet pounded on the stairs.

  She wiped at the tears the memories had elicited. The last thing she needed today was her older brother teasing her about crying over silly sentiments. Focusing on her packing, she grabbed her Ohio State sweatshirt off the bed, and dropped it on top of the other clothes. With her luck it would be a very cold spring up in Vermont.

  “Hey, sis!” Ian grabbed her from behind in one of his notorious bear hugs, lifting her up off the floor.

  “Stop it!” she said, slapping his hands. “God, you smell like a locker room full of dirty jock straps and old uniforms. Put me down, you big idiot.”

  Instead of doing as she asked, he leaned back and hauled her higher, eliciting a scream from her as he roared like a bear. Just as suddenly, he dropped her. She stumbled and landed on her butt.

  “God, you’re such a jerk,” she said, coming up sputtering and glaring at him.

  “I’m not going to ask how you know what a locker room full of jock straps smells like.” A grin split his face beneath the scruffy beard, and he shoved his designer sunglasses onto his head, pushing back the thinning strands of his shoulder-length salt-and-pepper streaked hair. He was dressed in black cargo pants and a khaki jacket, both of which seemed to have a year’s worth of dirt and dust on them.

  “You look as bad as you smell. Where have you been for the past six months?” She went back to packing, knowing her brother wouldn’t really answer her questions. As a freelance journalist, he traveled to some of the darkest, most dangerous areas of the world.

  “Now, Sydney. You know I’d tell you if I could, but then—”

  “—you’d have to kill me,” she finished for him, shaking her head at his lopsided grin.

  “You know me so well.” He flopped down on the other side of the bed near the window, casually looking out the curtains to the street below. “Can’t a guy just stop to see his kid sister without a full-on interrogation?”

  A little spark of worry skittered across her nerves.

  Since they were kids she’d been able to read him like a book. All the extra-jovial teasing and too-bright smile meant he was hiding something, and she suspected what that was.

  He was gambling again.

  “How long are you in town for this time?” she asked, instead of prying into the psyche of her brother. Some things even family couldn’t fix. She pulled out her camera bag from the closet and set it on the bed next to the suitcase, two cameras, and various lenses she’d already laid out.

  “Why don’t you just use the digital camera like the rest of the fashion pros?” He lifted the Canon 35mm camera from the bed beside him. “I don’t know why you insist on doing black-and-white shots with this antique. Don’t you have to Photoshop most of your pictures, anyway?”

  “I don’t Photoshop anything. Besides, I like to do some non-digital shots, too. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to develop some pictures without using the computer. That way, if there’s a worldwide computer apocalypse, I’ll still have the shots I wanted.” She snatched back the camera and carefully put into her bag. “Besides, that Canon is my good-luck charm.”

  They both knew why the camera was so important to her. Their father had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday, on September ninth. Two days before he’d flown to New York for a meeting in the One World Trade Tower, where he worked as a freelance photographer for one of the news agencies.

  “And I’m not the only one who goes old-school sometimes.” She pointed to the framed photos on her wall. Black-and-white images of the Alaskan wilderness where he’d spent the last summer. “You took those with the same manual camera Dad gave you.”

  “So, where you heading?” Ian asked, avoiding any talk about his connection to their father. Nearly fifteen years, and he had yet to forgive Dad for leaving them that day.

  “I have a fashion shoot up in Vermont this week.”

  He peeked through her bags, picking at the shoe string of one of her boots. “What kind of fashion are you doing? Mountain men’s newest hunting-gear styles?”

  A laugh burst out of her, because she’d been thinking almost the same thing moments earlier. “The designer is new and wants to ‘make a statement’, juxtaposing her soft urban designs against the harsher elements of nature.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “Man, sounds like you’ve been drinking the pro
paganda punch.”

  “No, just had that exact sentence repeated in my ear and on my computer for the past two weeks by the hot new designer of the month. Apparently, she’s going to brand herself with it.” She folded up her chargers for her various pieces of equipment—phone, tablet, laptop, cameras—and slid them into the pockets of her carryon bag. “So how long are you in town? Please tell me long enough to shower and shave.”

  “Yes. I plan to do that. I was hoping I could crash here for a few days.”

  Sydney fought the urge to heave a sigh. It wasn’t like she didn’t know that was what he wanted. Even before their mother died a few years back, he’d refused to fly to Florida to stay with her, just to avoid any contact with their step-father. Whenever his sporadic visits occurred, he preferred staying with her as opposed to actually spending any money on a hotel. Her place was his first choice, probably because she had junk food in the cupboard, beer in the fridge, and didn’t harass him about settling down to a regular-type job. Not that she could blame him. Until she’d taken part-time positions as a staff photographer for two fashion magazines, she’d suffered the same inquisition every time she went for visits with the family.

  “How many days are we talking?” she asked, as she headed into her bathroom to gather up her travel organizer. Not that she’d need much makeup, but it held her extra toothbrush and paste, deodorant and band aids, all of which she was certain to need for this fun outing.

  “Probably just a few days, maybe a week,” Ian said.

  Grabbing a few extra items—a bottle of pain reliever, her favorite hair brush and the special organic moisturizer that had sunblock in it—she finished loading the organizer and headed back to her bedroom. Ian was messing around with her camera case.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as she tossed the paisley-designed organizer into her suitcase.