all the time I’d known Mia, she never once mentioned Sloane. A friend of the family, Frank had said. I wished I’d been prepared for how friggin’ gorgeous she was. What was the catch here? Maybe she was married? I moved my attention to her hand, but there was no a ring.
Divorced? Maybe that was it.
She pulled out a notepad and recorder and started to look around for a pen. Her long, dark, glossy hair brushed across her silky gray blouse, one that was unbuttoned seriously low on her chest. I wondered if it was intentionally that low or if it had come undone. Given her lack of order and the way she was tossing through things, I guessed the latter. I’d bet Frank had thrown this at her pretty quickly. When she bent back over the box, I couldn’t help but notice how tight her skirt was and how it hugged her slim hips.
“Sorry.” She held up the pen. “I promise once I get settled, I’ll be a lot more prepared.”
“No doubt.”
Stop staring at her eyes. Look away. Damn, she was pretty. She was so hot, not just classic gorgeous lawyer hot, but foreign hot. She was a mix of something I wanted to ask, but she beat me to it.
“Hungarian and Latino.”
“Really?” I smiled happily, entertained she had guessed my thoughts. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”
“It’s fine. I get it a lot.” She shrugged like it was normal and settled into her chair. “Do you mind?” She pointed to the recorder, and I nodded for her to go ahead. She leaned forward, and my eyes moved to her slender neck with its thin gold necklace that sparkled in the light. Such a simple piece of jewelry that was incredibly sexy.
“October twelfth, North Dakota, with Recon John Black.” I noticed she didn’t say our actual location, which was a sign she was good at her job, and Frank clearly gave her a crash course on what location we often use as a cover. Info like that would be the end of Shadows if anyone ever got their hands on those tapes. “May I call you John?” I nodded. “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself?”
I shifted uncomfortably, but when her eyes moved to meet mine again, I eased up slightly.
“Ah, I joined the Army when I was seventeen, three tours in Afghanistan, joined the Green Berets, and then was recruited to Blackstone.”
“Seventeen?”
“Yes. I graduated early and joined as soon as I could.”
She scribbled on her notepad and brushed her long bangs out of her eyes. “How long have you been here at Shadows?”
“Um,” I thought for a moment, “seven years.”
Her pen stopped moving. “You moved up in the ranks pretty quickly.”
“A lot of us have,” I said.
She pulled out a file and started to flip through some papers. “So, you were here when Savannah Miller first came to the house?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t aware she would know something like that.
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “Umm, tell me about what happened on your last trip to Mexico.”
“It was a trip.” I slipped into my habit of not sharing anything.
“Okay,” she pressed her lips together, “I see here Blackstone got a distress call to leave at zero five hundred hours, and you touched down at zero nine hundred. Were you in contact with Sergeant First Class Chamness the entire time?”
“No.”
She kept her head down but moved her eyes from the paper to mine.
“When did you hear from him, from the time you left to the time you arrived at your location?”
“Right before we rappelled down.”
“How did he seem?”
“Stressed.”
She flipped through some papers before she leaned back with a heavy sigh.
“I’m not going to pretend I understand anything that goes on when you leave for a mission. But I’m here to help, and from what Frank has shared with me, something isn’t right, and I have a feeling you feel it too or you wouldn’t have gone back after calling in your location at the diner. I know Blackstone has a reputation for keeping things close, and I fully respect that,” she leaned forward, “so if you don’t want to share anything, you don’t have to. I was just hoping for a little more understanding so I know what I’m supposed to be looking for.”
I cleared my throat and tried to push away the uneasy feeling of breaking my brotherhood oath.
“We’re trained to turn that side of us off. It’s not easy for me to sit here and