Betrayal of the Dove - By Capri Montgomery Page 0,12

companies on the best way to improve their safety and security, that would take a lot of time, research on the company, its structure, its enemies—inside and outside the company, and he wasn’t sure that could really be done part-time while still ranching. Although if it could he had rationalized that he could be making money while building his ranch to whatever his ranch could be built into. Right now it was just a big ranch style house and a lot of property that he hadn’t fully put to use. His mother would have called it a waste since he hadn’t used much of the land after he purchased the place ten years ago. His father would call his entire life a disappointment. He never wanted him to join the military. He was a staunch pastor who had strict rules and beliefs on what his son should and should not do. He definitely didn’t think he should go into the military. The government was evil, war was evil and God was going to cure it all. That may have been the case, but while they waited for God to cure the ills of the world they still had to protect themselves. He joined up so he could protect this country, maybe he even joined up to get away from his family, but whatever his reason, his father was never more disappointed of him than he had been the day he told him he was going into the Navy.

Why he decided to take this job, providing security for a store in an upscale Scottsdale area, wasn’t something he fully understood. He didn’t have to do the job. When Valencia called she had asked if he knew somebody who was good and who could provide the best security at a not so expensive price. He could have called on a number of friends, called in favors and been done with it, but listening to Valencia talk made him think maybe, just maybe, he should take the case himself. It wasn’t the information on Thomas McGregor that moved him. It was the little details she had given him about Alyssa McGregor. Irish temper, Italian passion for pasta and the strong determination of a black woman. He was intrigued with just those few words, but what got him the most was what Valencia hadn’t said. The words she had left out made him want to know more. He wanted to know why this woman had moved so far away from her family, a family that by all accounts, seemed tight knit. He wanted to know why she had opened a store on the Row if she couldn’t afford security. The shop owners in that district of town had money. They either came from it or they built it through investments. There weren’t any poor owners on the Row and he knew that. He wanted to know what made this woman think she could break the class barrier and build a successful business there. Valencia had told him some things about Alyssa’s character, her family, her business, but she hadn’t told him how gorgeous Alyssa was. The woman was a goddess.

When he walked into the store he hadn’t expected what he saw. He could have done some research on her, maybe even found pictures, before he walked into her store, but he hadn’t. His first order of business had been to do a little more research on what had been going on that made her want security there. He figured he could do the rest of the research later—and he still would, just so he could see how secure she was with her identity on-line. He wanted to know just how much information was out there about her because it would help him do his job better.

When he started researching the robberies he had to play catch-up. He knew about the first robbery, but then he had gone out of town for the family visit from hell before the second and third robbery took place and he hadn’t paid much attention to local news when he returned home. Visiting his father had a way of sucking the life out of him piece by piece and when he came home he just didn’t feel the need for more depressing news. That last robbery had escalated into something more and he knew that the guy would probably continue to escalate. The high he got from each time would make him need to do it again and each