LITMIR.BIZ

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Not since her anniversary had gone by last month. He supposed maybe it had to do with seeing Emmett again, because Emmett belonged to those days. Days when he had been a lot younger and a lot more hopeful.

      And foolish.

      “So, where do we start?” he asked as he preceded Emmett into the hallway and his cousin closed and locked the hotel room door behind them, slipping the rectangular key card into his pocket. “Do we check in with the locals?”

      Emmett knew that he was referring to the local police and not just the people who might have possibly witnessed something. He shook his dark head. “Not until it’s absolutely necessary.”

      Collin understood perfectly. “Meaning, not until they stumble over us.”

      “Something like that.” A hint of a smile crossed Emmett’s lips, but then it was gone the very next moment. He led the way out into the parking lot and his car, a beat-up old Chevy that traveled as much on faith as it did on gasoline. “I thought we might go see Ryan Fortune. I want you to meet him. I’ll bring you up to speed on what I know on the way.”

      Collin nodded, folding his six-foot frame into the passenger side. “Sounds like the start of a plan.”

      The headaches were blinding now.

      So much so that Ryan Fortune had been forced to finally admit to Lily that he was going to be felled by a death sentence.

      His death sentence.

      There’d been no getting around it. His darling Lily was far too much of a loving wife not to notice that something was horribly wrong and had been getting more so now for months. At first she’d suspected that all this secrecy had to do with another woman’s designs on his affections. When he’d discovered that, he’d known it was time to tell her the truth.

      So he’d sat her down, taken her hands in his and finally told her, as gently as possible, about the inoperable brain tumor that was stealing him away from his family years before he was ready to go.

      They’d held each other and cried. There was nothing else to be done.

      Sixty was old when you were in your twenties. But from where he was standing, it was way too young to call it a day. Or a life.

      But Ryan had no power, no say in the matter. He could only make what was left of it as meaningful as was humanly possible. For himself and, far more importantly, for those he loved.

      The irony of it made him smile.

      He’d stand a lot better chance of succeeding in his goal if these damn headaches didn’t keep insisting on interfering. Of course, if there had been no headaches, there would have been no tumor and no need to press on with such fervor to see that certain things were completed before his end. Such as his charity work.

      And so he pushed on, taking life on like a contender and trying to make it all seem as if it was business as usual. Which meant not putting anything off until tomorrow, because tomorrow, for him, might not even exist.

      It was a bitter pill to swallow. Daily.

      Thinking himself past the pain, Ryan tried valiantly to concentrate on what Emmett Jamison was asking him. He’d only known the young man a short time, but was extremely impressed with Emmett, not to mention extremely grateful. It was Emmett who had put his life on the line, saving Lily from what he now knew had to have been certain death. His Lily had been kidnapped not for money, but to torment him. And the ultimate torment would have meant losing her forever. He might have done just that, if it hadn’t been for Emmett. He owed the man a great deal. More than he could ever hope to repay. He wished he could do something to help Emmett find his remaining brother and bring him to justice. But there wasn’t much he could do.

      “I really don’t know what more I can tell you, Emmett. I never knew Christopher, couldn’t even help to identify his body when they dragged it from Lake Mondo.”

      He addressed his words to both Emmett and the cousin he’d brought with him. The latter was a tall, muscular young man of about thirty-five or so, if he was any judge. The man’s weather-roughened face only added to his rugged appearance.

      Ryan hadn’t been surprised when Emmett told him that his cousin was a career military man. Collin looked the type. It took very little imagination to envision him sliding down a rope out of the sky like some sort of commando.

      He was familiar with the bearing. The young man was quiet, polite, but there was an air of immortality about him. Navy SEALs, the Rangers, all those Special Ops people had the same air. They had to. If they began to believe in their own mortality, in their own demise, they couldn’t accomplish the incredible missions they undertook or face death the way they did, with bravado and a go-to-hell attitude.

      Who knew, Ryan mused, if life had turned out differently for him, maybe he would have gone into that sort of work himself.

      With all his heart, he certainly wished he could tell death to go to hell at the present moment.

      “I realize that, sir,” Collin said politely, his voice soft, in direct contrast to the swiftness with which he could mete out punishment when called upon to do so. “But my cousin—” he nodded toward Emmett “—tells me that you had several dealings with Jason. And it’s Jason we’re tracking.”

      Collin wasn’t giving away any secrets. Jason, the cold-blooded killer of his own brother and the woman who had been posing as his wife, needed to be brought back to face the justice he thought he’d eluded. Jason had used his inherent cunning to take advantage of whatever situation had presented itself to him, whether it involved talking one or both of the two men driving him to the maximum security prison into lowering their guard, or perhaps believing him when he offered to bribe one or both. Collin didn’t know what had happened. No one did, because the only three people who could provide the answers were either dead, missing or in a coma.

      So right now Collin was pinning his hopes on Ryan Fortune, the unwitting target of Jason’s unspent wrath.

      “Jason,” Ryan repeated, shaking his head.

      Collin exchanged glances with Emmett, not certain how to read the older man’s expression. There was no fear in Ryan’s voice and no anger, both of which were emotions that he would have expected. Instead there was sorrow, something he didn’t quite grasp in this context.

      A self-deprecating smile slid along Ryan’s lips. He thought of the poor young woman, Melissa, who’d made a rather embarrassing and shameless play for his affections. As if he’d ever leave his Lily after what he’d gone through to finally marry her. Melissa’s far-from-innocent flirtation, he told himself, should have been his first clue, his first warning that something was decidedly wrong with Jason. But even so, a man couldn’t be blamed for what his wife did, and vice versa. And Ryan had always liked to believe the best of everyone. But sometimes, it appeared, a person had no best.

      “A man hates to discover this late in the game that he is such a poor judge of character,” Ryan confessed to the two strapping young men in his living room. “Jason, I’m afraid, is the perfect chameleon, being everything I thought the job needed. A go-getter from the second he walked into a room.”

      It had all been a ploy, a weapon Jason Jamison, who’d called himself Wilkes at the time, had used to get close to him. The intricacy of the plot overwhelmed Ryan now that he looked back at it. It was something he’d expect to find in an entertaining movie, not something he’d actually discover himself living through.

      “I thought he was the perfect executive in training for my nephew’s company,” he continued. Ryan still found it difficult to refer to Fortune TX, Ltd. as Logan’s, though his nephew had succeeded him as CEO. Ryan now acted in an advisory capacity. That was how his path had crossed Jason’s. And all by Jason’s design. “All the times I talked to him—and there were more than a few—I never once saw anything in his eyes to indicate that he hated me so much.”

      “He’s a textbook sociopath, sir,” Collin told him kindly. “He didn’t intend for you to see. Until he’s within the reach of his

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