LITMIR.BIZ

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wall, Sabriel Mercer, with his dark and dangerous looks, nodded acknowledgment but didn’t speak. Never did unless he had something important to say. Hale Harper, the new guy, was still feeling his way into the group. He was almost as dark and brooding as Mercer. For the life of him Gray couldn’t figure out why Falconer had hired someone with such a big chip on his shoulder. That could only lead to trouble.

      Sebastian Falconer, head honcho of Seekers, Inc., strode in and took his place at the head of the table.

      As Gray reached for an orange-date muffin in a basket with a lacy doily, he chuckled. “You really ought to tell Liv that lace clashes with the macho image we’re trying to build here.”

      “Eat up those blueberries.” Falconer’s features remained stiff and formal while he shuffled papers in readiness for their meeting, but amusement leaked into his voice. “Liv wanted me to mention they’re good for the prostate.”

      Laughter exploded. Skyralov scooped blueberries onto the plate next to his muffin. “Next she’ll issue Kevlar vests every time we leave the bunker.”

      “Back-ordered. Won’t be here till next week.” The corner of Falconer’s mouth twitched in what, for him, passed as a smile. His wife, Liv, had sustained a brain injury a year and a half ago. She couldn’t remember a thing of her life before the accident, but since then, the organizational skills she’d had to learn to cope with her condition had made her an invaluable part of Seekers, Inc. She fussed over them all as if they were family. None of them minded.

      Falconer tented his hands on the table in front of him. “Okay, bring me up to date.”

      Grasping his red suspenders, Kingsley gave the daily security update. Mercer clipped through his usual terse report on the activities of his current tracking cases. Between bites, Skyralov announced he was leaving for Louisiana in an hour to follow up on a tip on the serial marrier who squeezed his brides dry, then left them hanging. An Austin society dame had hired Seekers, Inc. to find the man who’d defrauded her daughter out of her fortune. The mother didn’t care how long it took or how much it cost as long as the “dirty, rotten scoundrel” never enjoyed a penny of her family’s money.

      The screen at the front end of the room went blue, and Kingsley said, “Ready when you are.”

      Falconer reached for the remote that controlled the PowerPoint presentation. “Yesterday afternoon we were hired by our old outfit.”

      Skyralov paused, a spoonful of blueberries hovering just outside his mouth. “The U.S. Marshals Service?”

      Falconer nodded. “One of their WITSEC subjects bolted and they need her back.”

      Gray leaned back in his chair as if that would help him take in the whole situation. “Why are they involving us?”

      “They seem to think one of their own is responsible for compromising her security.”

      Gray gave a low whistle. Admitting that one of theirs was dirty was never easy for the Service. Having worked the WITSEC program in the past, he knew its usefulness even as he saw the possibilities for betrayal. Every good had its ugly side.

      Falconer aimed the remote at the screen and a face popped onto it. “We’ve been tasked with finding Abrielle Holbrook, daughter of Elliot Holbrook of Holbrook Mills in Echo Falls, Mass.”

      Everything in Gray stilled. Though the mirrored lenses of his glasses shielded his eyes from everyone, the gray tint was light enough for him to see every detail clearly. Abbie’s picture filled the screen, and the past he’d worked so hard to leave behind slapped him between the eyes. There in front of him was the image of everything he’d ever wanted. Everything he’d been told he could never have.

      Abrielle Helena Holbrook. A.H.H. Not just her initials but also the sound people usually made when they saw her.

      Abbie was golden—from her honey hair to her honey eyes to her achingly sweet personality. You wanted to hate her for all she had, but you simply couldn’t. He had never met a single person who didn’t like her. Seeing her face on the screen knocked him off center. She was the absolute last person he’d have thought would ever need WITSEC. How could the girl every guy had been in love with and every girl wanted as a friend now be running for her life—not only from the scum who’d forced her into WITSEC but from the program itself? The girl was allergic to conflict.

      “Isn’t Holbrook Mills involved with the Steeltex project?” Skyralov asked.

      “They are,” Falconer said.

      Harper frowned so deeply, his eyebrows met in the center of his forehead. “What’s Steeltex?”

      Falconer clicked the remote, and a picture of a soldier dressed in camouflage came onto the screen. In the next slide, only a miragelike shimmer distinguished the soldier from the brick wall behind him. “It’s a new fabric the U.S. Army is working on. It transmits visual information about color, light and patterns through the fiber to make whoever wears it nearly invisible against any background. Microdots are woven in to locate a downed soldier. The latest model contains conductive fibers in the chest area that can monitor vital functions of an injured soldier. This information can be relayed by wireless signal to a remote location such as a field hospital.”

      The V between Falconer’s eyes deepened. “That project and the safety of our troops out in the field are compromised if Abrielle Holbrook isn’t found in time to testify at her father’s murder trial. Because of the Steeltex project, the trial’s high threat.”

      “Her father was murdered?” Gray’s nerves were running a marathon, but he spoke as casually as if he were relaxing beachside.

      Falconer clicked the next slide forward, flashing a picture of Elliot Holbrook on the screen. Gray-haired, blue-eyed, fair and generous. The man had kept the small mill town of Echo Falls alive when everyone else had given it up for dead. No one was good enough for his daughter. But, then, when you had a daughter like Abbie, how could they be?

      The next photo was of a younger man who’d tried his best to present a Pierce Brosnan 007 image but couldn’t quite cut the right attitude. He wore the better-than-you sneer of the typical bully. “Elliot Holbrook was murdered by his business partner, Raphael Vanderveer.”

      The next slide turned Gray’s stomach. In color that was so vivid it almost looked fake, the James Bond wannabe held a pistol at Holbrook’s head. Smoke puffed out of the muzzle. Red mist sprayed out from Holbrook’s head. Gray recognized the place—Holbrook’s office in the back of the mansion on the hill.

      Mercer’s voice floated from the shadows of the wall. “Where’d that photo come from?”

      “The subject took it.”

      Abbie had photographed her own father’s murder? The fast-food egg-bagel sandwich he’d wolfed down on his way here turned to brick. He hoped to heaven someone was there for her. She adored her father. Her whole world revolved around pleasing him. Losing him, witnessing his murder, would’ve torn her apart.

      “Over the last month,” Falconer said, “information on her whereabouts was compromised three times. Three deputies are dead. After the last attack she disappeared and hasn’t been seen since. The Service is worried about her safety.”

      Six slides clipped by, showing a photo of each of the three men as it appeared on their badges and a crime-scene photo of each of their corpses. Gray’s skin grew cold. His mind couldn’t wrap itself around Abbie having to witness such violence. That was his world, not hers. Hers was all softness and light. She could capture magic with her camera, render a child’s face into a work of art, a family portrait into an intimate revelation of cohesion. The photograph she’d taken of him and his sister at Brynna’s sixteenth birthday party was the only thing he’d taken with him when he’d left Echo Falls. Had she shut down as she had when her mother died? Without her tight-knit group of friends who would have shaken her out of her mental fog? Where had she run?

      “Here’s our subject’s profile.” Dry statistics that couldn’t even begin to describe the life that buzzed around Abbie glared

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