“At the very least, it blisters your skin and mucous membranes on contact. Breathing it can result in permanent blindness, or worst case, it reacts with the water in the air to form hydrochloric acid, which causes swelling and blocking of the lung tissue.”
“Death by suffocation,” Bran said.
“I remember the gruesome pictures from Syria, what it did to the children.”
“Yeah. The stuff is brutal and deadly.”
“It’s horrible,” Jessie said.
“I assume you have a file on this, information you’ve collected.”
“I do.”
“I need to see it.” He rose from his chair. “In the meantime, I’m getting hungry. Let’s go see what my housekeeper’s got stored in the fridge.”
The look on Jessie’s face said that after their gruesome conversation, food was the last thing on her mind. Her stomach rumbled as if it disagreed.
She sighed. “I haven’t eaten since I left Colorado. Too much going on.”
Bran sobered as he led the way to the kitchen. There was plenty going on, all right. And none of it good. Helping Jessie Kegan was far more than a protection detail. Whatever was going on involved national security.
If Colonel Kegan had been murdered, the men responsible were as deadly as the chemicals Bran and Jessie were hunting.
From now on—as spec ops soldiers liked to say—the only easy day was yesterday.
* * *
After roast beef sandwiches and a cup of Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup, assembled by her ridiculously hot male host, Jessie retrieved the file she had compiled on the case and carried it in to Bran, seated once more behind the desk in his study.
As he accepted the file, he gave her left hand a pointed glance. “You never married?”
She shook her head, suddenly uneasy. “No.”
“Why not?”
Tension filtered through her but she managed to smile. “Turns out my judgment of men is lousy.”
“Seemed like your folks had a happy marriage.”
“They did. Dad loved Mom and she was crazy about him, too. It nearly destroyed my father when she died.”
“I remember Danny telling me she had a stroke. He talked about what a great mom she was.”
“She really was. She was always there for all of us, kind of the bedrock of the family. I think Dad took her death even harder than Danny’s. Being a soldier, he accepted that his son could be killed. It never occurred to him that Mom would die before he did.”
Bran leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on her face. “So...no husband. No serious boyfriend, either?”
“No. Listen, if you’re finished with the third degree, I’m going to bed. It’s been a rough day.”
His gaze sharpened. “Sorry,” he said, not looking sorry at all and even more curious than before—unfortunately. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“What time?” she managed to ask calmly.
“We leave at six. We can pick up something to eat on the way to the airport.”
“I’ll be ready. Good night, Bran. And thanks again. I really appreciate your help.”
Bran casually nodded, but his beautiful blue eyes never strayed as she turned and walked away. She shouldn’t have let his questions get to her. It was a dead giveaway to a guy as smart as he was that there was more to the story than she was willing to tell.
Far more.
She thought of the man whose brutality had changed her life. Jordan Duran, Jordy, he’d signed his emails, the man who was currently serving a ten-year prison sentence. She didn’t like to think about him. She refused to let him control any more of her life than he already had. As she had learned to do, she pushed his image from her mind and just thanked God she was still alive.
Calm once more, she closed the guest-room door and headed over to the desk, where she’d set up her laptop. For the next half hour, she researched the town of Alamo and the surrounding area, saw that the violent crime rate, which included murder, rape, manslaughter, and armed robbery, was the highest in Colorado, one of the highest in the nation.
As a military brat, she and her family had moved from one end of the country to the other. They had been living at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs when she had graduated high school. Going to the University of Denver, only ninety minutes away, seemed a perfect fit. A little distance, a little room to grow, but still close to her family. During those four years, she had fallen in love with the Mile High City and decided to stay