LITMIR.BIZ

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      * * *

      OH, THAT SMILE on her face irked Parker. He hadn’t found anything during his recon of Rebecca Wallace, award-winning producer, that indicated a romantic attachment worthy of that heart-stopping dress and killer heels.

      He waited until they were gone to move out of the alcove near the stairwell. He was an idiot for confronting her at her door. But he was getting desperate. The bizarre blackmail note had arrived yesterday, claiming media outlets had been notified last week, and granting him five days to make restitution for the gold he and his team stole from an Iraqi family or the men listed at the bottom of the single page would be killed one by one.

      Theo Manning, Jeff Bruce, Franklin Toomey, Matt Donaldson and Ray Peters were more than soldiers. They were friends. The six of them shared a bond forged on several challenging assignments during Parker’s last deployment. Together they’d handled a sensitive intel-gathering mission near the Iranian border. While it might have been easy to learn they’d all served in Iraq, it shouldn’t have been as easy to connect them as part of the same team on that operation.

      While they’d been deployed nearby and, through the course of the mission, had contact with the family listed as the victim, Parker and his team were innocent. None of them were thieves and he in particular had no cause to steal anything, not even back then.

      He’d been ready to write off the note as a sick joke until a reporter called the office, asking for his opinion on soldiers successfully returning to civilian life. His assistant handled those comments on his behalf, as she usually did. While he was debating how to investigate the origin of the blackmail note, he’d received a call on his personal line about his opinion on locally grown terrorists. The timing was too close to be a coincidence. Someone had started snooping, and Parker needed to know who’d set them on this wild-goose chase.

      Working the situation as he might do for a client, Parker scrambled to carefully reconnect with the men named in the blackmail note. He’d debated the wisdom of warning them about the note and the possibility of reporters and instead had suggested a guys’ weekend. He hadn’t seen the point in dredging up uncomfortable memories or causing worry over something that probably wouldn’t amount to anything.

      Then Theo had called back, saying he’d agreed to meet with Bill Gatlin, anchor reporter for one of the top special report shows. It was the red flag Parker couldn’t ignore. He’d spent the day hustling up information on Gatlin, Wallace and the network. If other shows had the blackmailer’s tip, it seemed Wallace’s team had been the first to bite. And Theo’s name had been the first on the list.

      Parker had been given five days—four now—to return gold valued at over a million dollars. No exchange details or contact information had been provided, only an assurance that Parker would know where to bring either the gold or the equivalent in US currency when it was time. Logic and history said making the payoff was a tactical error, yet Parker planned to do whatever was necessary to keep those men alive.

      Having been stonewalled by Wallace’s gatekeepers at the network, he’d given up trying the polite approach. While he appreciated that they hadn’t run the story on speculation and zero evidence, he didn’t have time to play ethics games. He needed the name of the source or some clue he could follow so he could peel back the layers of anonymity and handle the jerk tossing around these outrageous, damaging allegations.

      Parker lingered in the hallway, recalling his cursory searches of Rebecca Wallace and her reporter Bill Gatlin. At first glance, they were both workaholics and married to their jobs. He didn’t know where the reporter was tonight, but he knew where Wallace was not.

      He’d had his boot in her doorway long enough to learn her apartment security amounted to two dead bolts and a chain. Far easier for him to bypass the locks here than get past the systems protecting her office at the network building. He strolled up to her door, pulled his lock-picking kit from the thigh pocket of his work pants and was inside in less than a minute.

      A quick survey of the space told him she was tidy, she spent little time here or she had an excellent cleaning service. He roamed around, appreciating the decor and furnishings. She went for classy and practical, not overdone or overpriced. As a business owner and a building owner, he knew the going rate for a two-bedroom apartment in this area and decided producing for a popular network show must pay well.

      The master bedroom felt more lived-in. Though the bed was neatly made and the closet well organized, the various notes she’d left for herself here and there, along with the overflowing laundry hamper, gave him a sense of her as a more accessible person. He couldn’t blame her for coming off as a prim snob during their tussle at the door.

      The second bedroom she clearly used as a home office and guest room. He searched the desk, found an invitation to a gala that explained the little black dress, but no sign of the lead he needed. If she’d ever brought information on the bogus theft home, it wasn’t here now. Leaving the room as he’d found it, he checked the more common and uncommon places people stashed important information. Nothing. She didn’t even have a briefcase or a laptop here tonight.

      On a sigh, he mentally adjusted his evening plans, knowing the next stop would need to be her office at the network. With his hands fisted in his jacket pockets, he was aimed for the front door when another idea struck. Returning to her bedroom, he found a tablet as well as an e-reader. “Yes!” he cheered softly when he opened the tablet and found her email applications were still open.

      He searched through her inbox and the main folders, grumbling when he found all of his email messages moved to the trash folder. Were the days of professional courtesy gone? At least his assistant had handled the initial inquiry professionally while he was still waiting for Wallace to return his calls.

      Continuing his search, he learned how she organized her files. He couldn’t find a way to access any progress they were making on the story about him and his team, but he could tell it had nothing to do with soldiers returning to civilian life.

      Sitting on the blue suede bench at the end of her bed, he searched through her email folders until he found an email from the previous week with Soldiers Steal Gold in the subject line. Bingo. The email was written in a similar tone to the blackmail note Parker received. While the author of the email didn’t threaten anyone on the show, the names of those involved were the same, and listed in the same order as the note he had tucked into his wallet.

      The allegations in the email were ghastly, making Parker’s skin crawl. His team had worked their mission and followed orders. The implications—with no evidence to back them up—that he and the others were corrupt, brutal thieves infuriated him. The last few lines and the unique closing really caught his attention. The writer, pleading to maintain anonymity, thanked Rebecca and Bill for their kindness and integrity during their visit to the Iraqi village where the theft allegedly occurred. He—Parker was certain the writer was a man—gave the producer’s ego another stroke by claiming Rebecca was the only person who could be trusted to handle this the right way.

      The original email was bad enough, but the instructions she added when she forwarded the email to her reporter hit him like a sucker punch.

      Bill, reach out to the family. Verify their safety and if/when the gold was stolen. If this is from Fadi, why would he insist on anonymity?

      Parker swore. Fadi was a common name. In context with the other details laid out in the email, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that she was referring to the same young man they’d employed as a translator when they were in that area.

      Did Rebecca know who’d sent the tip raising questions and spreading rumors about his team? The way he read and reread the email, she sure suspected the tip on the theft had come from the oldest son of the victimized family. No wonder she’d avoided Parker and refused to give up her source. Hell. He wouldn’t get anywhere with her if she felt some misplaced obligation to cooperate with the person trying to discredit his team.

      Well, he wasn’t leaving empty-handed. He had a better idea of where the tip originated from, which gave him a better starting point than he’d had an hour ago. After his service in Iraq, he had people he could reach out to

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