focus on the case. He needed to find the people behind the stolen chemical weapons and clear the colonel’s name. Once he’d done that, she could go back to Denver and he could go back to Dallas, to the life he’d had before. Jessie would be safe from him, and he would be safe from temptation.
He’d dish out retribution to Duran/Cummings when the time was right.
Determined to stay focused, he grabbed one of the white terry cloth robes hanging on the bathroom door and slid it on, walked out of the bedroom into the living room.
“I need the rest of my clothes,” he said to Jessie, who sat at the dining table. He ignored the flush that rose in her cheeks, rummaged through his carry-on, grabbed a rust-colored Henley and a pair of clean underwear, and walked back into the bedroom to put his jeans back on.
When he came out again, room service was busily setting breakfast on the dining table. It smelled delicious. He looked at Jessie, noticed sunlight glinting on the ruby strands in her long blond hair, the soft blush in her cheeks, and felt a tightening in his groin. Inwardly he cursed.
Looked like he’d be taking a lot more cold showers before this was over.
SIX
Jessie fidgeted in her seat as Bran pulled up to the main gate of US Army Fort Carson. The base was the home of the Fourth Infantry Division, among various and sundry other units including the Tenth Special Forces Group. Bran flashed his retired military ID, and the solider at the gate looked for his name on the admissions list.
“You phoned ahead,” Jessie said to him.
Bran just shrugged the muscled shoulders that were now imprinted in her brain. “10th Special Forces is here. I know some people. I called a few I thought might be able to help us.”
“I should have figured,” she said. She had called and set up meetings at the ME’s office as well as her father’s military counsel. Apparently, Bran had made a few calls of his own.
“I see here you’ll be checking a weapon,” the soldier said.
“That’s correct.” It was illegal for anyone to carry on base.
“Drive straight to the armory. Do you know where that is?” The guard was short and stocky, in combat boots and military fatigues.
“I’ve got someone here who knows her way around,” Bran said, tipping his head toward Jessie.
But it had been years since she had lived on the base. She’d come back to Colorado Springs for her father’s funeral, then returned to Fort Carson a month ago when she’d started her investigation. At the time, she’d hit nothing but a string of dead ends. Back in Denver, she’d kept working the case, making phone calls out of her apartment, digging up facts on the internet. Now she was back at the base.
The guard waved Bran through and, following Jessie’s directions, he drove the SUV down O’Connell Boulevard.
They made a quick stop at the armory, where Bran left his unloaded Glock, then climbed back into the vehicle. He was wearing a dark brown tweed blazer with his jeans and Henley. He looked good. Sexual awareness trickled through her, making her stomach flutter. Too damned good.
“I trained at Fort Bragg,” he said as the big SUV rolled down the road. “Never made it to Fort Carson.” He glanced at the soldiers marching on the parade ground as they drove past. “Looks like a good place to be stationed.”
Jessie shrugged. “Good as any. The population is around fourteen thousand, a town in itself. The scenery is better than most, the weather’s good, and there are lots of outdoor activities.”
The landscape was mostly flat and arid, but the area around the base was ringed by rolling hills covered with juniper and sage. Snow-topped mountains rose in the distance not far away. The end of October temperatures remained in the low sixties, but at night it dipped into the thirties.
Jessie directed Bran to the Army Community Hospital, where the medical examiner’s office was located. He parked in the lot and they walked into a three-story tan building, part of the base medical complex. Jessie had never met the doctor who had done her father’s autopsy. She had spoken to him on the phone, but had gotten mostly a recitation of what had been in the report.
Bran held the door open for her, and they walked up to the front desk, where he spoke to the female soldier behind the counter.
“Captain Brandon Garrett, First Special Forces Operational