LITMIR.BIZ

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in Weaver. The weather was good, no snow yet, and people were out for a good time.

      Rather than let the orders keep stacking up, she stepped out from behind the bar and delivered several herself and collected quite a few empties on her way back. Some young guy was trying to chat up Hayley and Sam, and her friends looked amused and happily occupied.

      Everything was exactly as she’d planned when Gage had given her the money five years ago to buy Colbys, and she couldn’t help smiling to herself as she went behind the glossy wood bar again and pulled up the next order.

      One root beer. One designer microbrew that she ordered from Montana. The microbrew that she’d begun carrying only because it was Casey’s favorite.

      The combination was what Casey and his cousin Erik usually ordered and she figured now was no exception. She glanced over at the pool tables. Only this time, instead of seeing Casey’s rear end, she saw him leaning against the wall, staring boldly back at her.

      Heat shot through her, and she tore her gaze away from his. She pulled out an icy bottle of root beer along with a frosted mug, filled another with Casey’s beer and stuck them on a tray before going back over to her girlfriends.

      She had a plan and she was sticking to it.

      “Give your neighbor my number,” she told Hayley. She had to raise her voice, because the jukebox was blaring, billiard balls were clacking, and the crowd gave off a general blur of chatter and laughter.

      Hayley’s eyebrows lifted. She glanced from Jane’s face across the room toward the pool tables. Then she nodded.

      Satisfied, Jane washed her sticky hands and reached for the next order.

      She didn’t allow herself any more glances toward the pool tables and the very unreachable Casey Clay.

      * * *

      Even though Casey saw Jane play server several times, she didn’t play server to his party. And when he was called into work just before ten o’clock, he was glad for the excuse to escape. Glad, at least, until he got to his office and spent the next twelve hours studying satellite feeds and reports regarding three agents who’d gone missing in Central America.

      By the next night, the situation had escalated even more, and the next thing he knew, he found himself sitting beside Tristan on a plane to Hollins-Winword’s headquarters in Connecticut.

      Four days later, he was watching two caskets being carried off a plane while rain poured down on their heads.

      “This isn’t your fault.” Tristan stood next to him on the tarmac, looking as grim as Casey had ever seen.

      “Feels like it,” Casey returned flatly. “I was the last one in communication with them.”

      “And their status was still clear,” Tristan pointed out.

      “Was still my watch,” he said. It didn’t matter that there’d been others on shift, as well. Casey was their commander. He was supposed to be the one who could find a gnat on a wall eight thousand miles away.

      “At least we had something to recover. There was a time we wouldn’t have even been able to retrieve their bodies.” Tristan’s boss, Coleman Black, stood on the other side of Casey. Coleman was a hard-looking older man with gray hair and a face lined from sun and responsibility. The only time Casey had ever seen him really smile had been on the rare occasions he was around Casey’s sister Angeline and her husband, Brody Paine. Casey’s brother-in-law was Cole’s son—a rarely acknowledged fact because of the inherent dangers that went along with that—and his visits were extremely rare; Casey could count them on one hand.

      But in his role with Hollins-Winword, Casey had had many more encounters with the agency’s head.

      “Back when your uncle here was a young buck,” Cole was saying, “we wouldn’t have been able to do a lot of the things we can now.” He shook his head as they watched the caskets being loaded into a waiting black hearse.

      “Jefferson’d be the first to confirm that,” Tristan murmured.

      Tristan’s older brother Jefferson had been an HW field agent back in the day. During an especially tricky assignment, he’d landed in a third-world prison; ultimately, he’d escaped, but his partner hadn’t. Even though Jefferson had returned to Weaver to become a horse breeder, had gotten married, had two grown kids and an ever-growing herd of grandchildren, the experience all those years ago still colored his life. When his son, Axel, had followed in his footsteps with the agency, he had not been particularly thrilled.

      “We should’ve been able to do more,” Casey said now. Failure. Grief. Responsibility. It all weighed inside his gut like concrete blocks holding him below water. “Kept those caskets from ever being needed, and we damn sure should’ve found McGregor by now.” The third part of the missing trio was still a big fat unknown. They didn’t know if Jason McGregor’s body was lying in a ditch somewhere, tossed aside the same way Jon and Manny had been. They didn’t know squat.

      “It’s not your fault,” Tristan said again. “You’ve got to have something to go on and we’re flying blind.”

      Cole made a sound Casey figured was meant to be agreement, though with the cagey old guy, it was hard to tell. He clapped Casey once on the shoulder before letting out a sigh and walking out from beneath the shelter of the airplane hangar into the rain toward the hearse.

      “He’s going along to meet the families,” Tristan said.

      “Will he tell them the truth about how they died?”

      His uncle’s lips twisted and he shook his head. “If he follows his own protocol? No. But it never pays to anticipate Cole’s actions too much. The man’s a law unto himself.”

      He turned and gave Casey a long look. Even though Casey was tall, his uncle still topped him by an inch. “I’ve been in your shoes, Case,” he reminded him. “I was never in the field either. Stayed safe, closed up in an office miles—usually countries—away from the action. But we’re supposed to be the guardian angels, making sure those guys taking their chances out there in the field make it safely back home again. And I know only too well that it’s not easy to handle when that doesn’t happen.”

      “I want to know what went wrong,” Casey muttered. “I want to find McGregor.”

      “We will. We’ll investigate.”

      “I know. And I also know that not every investigation bears fruit.”

      The hearse, with Cole inside, drove away. The private airfield where the plane had landed was once again empty.

      “Take my advice.” Tristan nudged him back toward the black SUV in which they’d arrived. “Go back home. Put your arms around that pretty bartender of yours—”

      Startled, Casey shot him a look. “What?”

      “You’re Hollins-Winword, kid,” Tristan drawled, looking vaguely amused. “Nephew of mine or not, you know what that means. There’s nothing in your life that you’re going to keep secret from us.” He climbed behind the wheel of the SUV himself, having dismissed the driver he’d been assigned even before they’d left HW’s headquarters.

      Casey got in the passenger seat and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing away the headache that was forming. “Secrets aside, she’s anything but mine.”

      “Most of us start out thinking that way.” His uncle drove out from beneath the hangar and headed in the opposite direction the hearse had taken. “Regardless, I’m telling you to focus on something good. Don’t take the crap that happened here home to bed with you. When they went off grid, you did everything anyone could have done to find them. You can’t control from a distance what those guys do once they’re on an op. That buck doesn’t stop at your door.” His hands tightened around the steering wheel and he sighed. “It stops with Cole. And he’s been dealing with that reality since before you were a sparkle in your daddy’s eye. McGregor is good

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