That was until the coup de grâce—well technically I hadn’t been finished off…but still, it was the final blow that had led me to Maryland—the gun to my head. But there had been one other strange occurrence.
“I think someone broke into my apartment, too,” I told Gabe. “I wasn’t home. And I don’t know for sure because I couldn’t find anything missing, but the mail I had stacked on my counter was moved. Of course, I could just be paranoid and maybe I don’t remember moving it but something felt off.”
I watched as the muscle in Gabe’s jaw jumped and his lips flattened to two thin lines.
“Anything else?”
“No.”
With a nod, Gabe stood and asked, “You ready to go to the office?”
Closed down tight.
That was Gabe. Hot then cold.
Smiling and teasing then stoic and distant.
His moods shifted so quickly I had a hard time keeping up.
Why did I want to keep up?
“Yep. I’m all set.”
“We’ll leave in five.”
Then he moved away from me as fast as he could without it looking like he was running.
I stayed where I was and forced myself to think about my day and what lay ahead instead of dwelling on a man who very obviously wanted nothing to do with me. It was a difficult task seeing as my natural inclination was to examine his every word. Pick apart his expressions. Get to the bottom of why Gabe was so closed off.
My thoughts went to Anaya and how angry she was at me. Surprisingly she wasn’t mad I’d looked into what was happening in Timor-Leste. No, she was over-the-top pissed I hadn’t told her what I was doing and asked her for help. I had a good reason for not involving her—Kyle and Maxine. She had a family. She was happy. I had none of those things. But the one part of the conversation that stuck out the most was what she told me about Gabe. “Stick with him, no matter what.”
I knew I was grasping for straws but I couldn’t help thinking there was a deeper meaning behind her statement. Obviously, my friend wanted me safe and Gabe and the rest of his team could make that so. But it was the way Anaya had specifically singled out Gabe. And she’d gone from yelling at me to softening her tone.
Most days my inquisitive mind was what helped me excel as a reporter. However, the downside was my brain never shut off. I never stopped thinking. And that got me into trouble.
Hours later I was sitting in Garrett’s office checking my email on a borrowed laptop when Garrett broke the silence.
“The account in Dili belongs to a John Smith.”
“That’s a fake name if I ever heard one,” I groused.
“Is there a reason you looked into Paul Solberg?”
Kaylee’s father. The change of topic had me glancing up from my email to find Garrett staring at me.
“Mr. Solberg spent a lot of time in Washington. And he had lunch with senators and congressmen. He has a lot of high-powered connections. I mean he pulled in a lot of favors to have a SEAL team go to Timor-Leste to rescue Kalee. I guess I just needed…” I drew in a lungful of air and rushed out the rest. “I needed to make sure.”
“Make sure Paul Solberg was clean?”
“Yeah.”
The admission made my heart hurt. Deep down, I was certain that Mr. Solberg would never harm Kalee or put his beloved daughter in danger. At least not on purpose. Neither did I believe he’d be involved in anything criminal. But he was the CEO of a large corporation with several subsidiaries. Some of those businesses were in the defense industry and so was Abrams. He had a lot of employees and I didn’t trust that one of them hadn’t turned to the dark side. Before I handed my information over to…well, I hadn’t even figured out which agency I would turn to, but before I did, I wanted to make sure that Mr. Solberg was in the clear.
And if I had found Solberg Industries caught up in this mess, what would I have done?
The answer to that still plagued me. I wanted justice but if I’d found something shady in one of Mr. Solberg’s businesses I would’ve killed my investigation immediately. For Kalee. I would’ve deleted everything if it meant protecting my friend from knowing the truth. Luckily, that was not what happened and Mr. Solberg and his businesses were squeaky clean.