Out of Uniform (Wingmen Warriors 14)

“If I ask him to keep looking for information on your ex, he will search.”

Hope fanned stronger, hotter, burning away the fog of grief clouding her mind. “They’re even coming in on a weekend.”

“They’re already waiting. It’s not that I don’t trust the police. I just believe the more people we have working on this, the better.” He passed her his cell phone. “While we’re driving, you should check your voice mail on the phone at your new place and on your cell.”

She should have thought of that herself. Thank goodness Jacob covered all possibilities, even if this was a long shot. The police hadn’t tracked any calls from Blane’s cell. Still, she might find something else and right now any tiny lead felt vital to her sanity and to her son’s safety.

Phone gripped in her hand, she started punching in the access code she now remembered. How wonderful to have such a basic part of her life back.

And most wonderful of all, Jacob believed her.

He hadn’t given up. He’d navigated the necessary official channels, and now they would strike out on their own. After so long of depending only on herself, this felt surreal. Wonderful. Almost too much.

Too easily she could grow accustomed to this sort of support, then how would she survive on her own again?

Jacob walked with security through the multiple doors closing off the OSI offices from even the protected confines of a military base. If there were answers to be found, he trusted they would surface here.

He would have liked to come here first, but recognized the need to go through official steps beforehand. The police needed as much information as possible. And the time he and Dee had spent speaking with them gave his friends a chance to follow up on their own leads.

Dee’s calls to check her messages hadn’t netted anything but a few telemarketing hang ups and two job offers. Pretty much what he’d expected. But he’d thought giving her something to do would help her feel more in control.

The last door hissed open as the vault door seal released. Inside waited Special Agent Max Keagan, along with a couple of crew friends—Bronco and Crusty. The two pilots, both family men, appeared solemn faced. No doubt envisioning the hell of this happening to one of their children. Jacob hadn’t spent much time with Madison, but the little angel had a way of wrapping her fingers tightly around a person’s heart.

He could only imagine what Dee was going through.

Dee looked around. “I don’t even know how to say thank you. You’ve all gone above and beyond.”

Bronco lumbered up from his chair and offered it to her. “This is what we do for each other. If you’re with Jacob, that makes you one of ours, remember? We take care of our own.”

Special Agent Keagan scrubbed a hand over his spiked blond hair as he clicked through computer keys. He held up a hand in greeting but stayed silent.

Crusty produced a box of doughnuts. “He’s been tapping into some connections at border patrol.”

“In case they went to Canada.” She shook her head as a no-thank-you to the food.

Crusty scooped up a jelly-filled pastry. “Right. There’s camera footage at those stations and satellite photos. We’re still looking into the possibility he hopped a ferry.” He downed half the doughnut in one bite. “Spike’s got all sorts of superspy tricks up his sleeve for narrowing the search.”

Keagan’s fingers slowed. Without turning away from his computer, he waved over his shoulder. “When was the lipstick-on-the-mirror incident? Exact date.”

>The detective nodded to the computer. “Okay now, Mrs. Lambert. You’re who you say you are.”

Startled, Dee glanced up. “Of course I am.”

“Well, ma’am.” The older man scratched a hand along his graying buzz cut. “No disrespect meant, but it wasn’t a given without some kind of confirmation. We have a saying around here. ‘In God we trust—’”

“‘But everyone else is suspect,’” Jacob finished.

Dee glanced from one to the other, both so confident, both with hundred-year-old cynical eyes. She needed to be more like them to survive. “What a way to live.”

The detective clicked the keys and a new image emerged. “Your husband, ma’am?”

Unable to scrounge enough spit to speak, Dee stared at the photo of Blane, blond, wiry and too handsome for words even in a mug shot.

The corner of Jacob’s eye twitched. “Her ex-husband?”

She nodded. Part of her wanted to tell them all this wasn’t happening, deny she’d even met that traitorous toad. She would simply ditch her Deirdre Lambert self. Except she’d already learned the past couldn’t simply be ignored. The past had happened, as she remembered clearly now. Her child’s father would have a criminal record.

What a heritage for her son to carry.