Aimpoint, Candace Irving [best love novels of all time TXT] 📗

"Just a sec."

Regan stared at that stray sticky as the sound of another round of paper rustling filtered through the connection. Reaching down, she snagged the square, along with the tiny wad of paper in the corner behind it. She could hear Jelly mumbling through the math as she straightened.

"Seven years."

Seven? Regan mashed the wad into the sticky, earning a paper cut as the implications burned in. Seven years ago, John was in the middle of his first tour as an SF officer in Afghanistan, just outside Kabul. She was now all but certain she knew what he'd done to earn Ertonç's trust, as well as Ertonç's intercession with that Afghan warlord—and it was one hell of a favor. The kind that would put a then-colonel and now-general in John's debt for life. But to prove it, she'd need evidence. "Do you have a photo of Inci handy?"

"Just the one in the passport. And since she was nineteen at the time, it's a few years old. She's also wearing a headscarf, but—"

"Text it to me."

Regan stared at the yellow sticky as she waited. A drop of blood from the cut between her index finger and thumb had stained the edge scarlet. She flipped the sticky over and stared at the scrawl on the front. It was an address, located in the middle of the next town over. But the handwriting wasn't spiked like John's. Instead, the rounded numbers and letters resembled the samples Jelly had obtained of LaCroix's.

Was it his?

She tucked the sticky and wad of paper in the front pocket of her jeans as her text app pinged. She enlarged the enclosed photo—and cursed.

"Prez?"

She sealed the phone to her ear. "Sorry. Everything fine." But it wasn't. Headscarf or not, "I know who that is." She'd seen the same woman—then a fourteen-year-old girl—in a family photo with her still-living mother, two older brothers and father hours earlier while she'd been holed up in her room at the Lodge, reviewing everything she had that was remotely related to this case. "That's Saniye Ertonç—the general's daughter."

"The one that drowned?"

"Yup." Only she hadn't. Somehow, seven years ago, John had discovered that Saniye was in love with a Christian Kurd and had faked her death for then-Colonel Ertonç.

Damned if the body language she'd observed these past few days didn't finally make sense—all of it. John and the general on the stage; John and the doc at the hospital. Including the general's preoccupation at the window in the conference room prior to the interview he'd granted her.

Ertonç had been oblivious to both her and the captain that morning. But not the scene outside. The soldier and his son. Only it wasn't the soldier who'd mesmerized Ertonç, so much as the boy and boy's indulgent, watching mother.

Seven years ago, while attending university in England, Saniye had fallen in love with the cousin of her father's enemy. Ertonç had been livid. But she was family; Ertonç wanted his daughter alive—but out of his life. And now that she was the only family member of his left alive, he wanted her back in.

Except, given the body language between John and Saniye's husband in that hospital, the woman didn't want back in.

John was involved in a classified, backchannel negotiation all right. Just not the one she'd assumed.

She'd bet her Rachel Pace cover identity that John had the Army's full support with his negotiations too. Because if it had been valuable to have a Turkish colonel indebted to Special Forces and the Army in Afghanistan, imagine the possibilities in having a Turkish brigadier general beholden to them now.

She was fairly certain she understood the timing too. Namely, why Ertonç had carefully arranged for his official military-to-military visit for five weeks hence, only to arrive earlier this week, on his own dime.

Regan craned her neck, peering out from the kitchen's archway into the dimly lit living room and down the darkened hall.

Both were quiet. Empty.

John was still fast asleep.

Even Brooks would agree that she not only had enough to prove John was in the clear, but also to wake him and confess all before asking him to access that guest room. And she would. Soon. But she wasn't looking forward to it. Not after what they'd done. What John was bound to assume about the case—and her.

"Jelly, you mentioned two kids. A boy and a baby girl. How old's the baby?"

"That I know without checking. She was born six days ago. In the same hospital you visited this morning. Not sure if it matters, but she was early. By over a month. Apparently, there was some kind of placental separation issue. Required an emergency cesarean. In fact, they had to call an ambulance out in the middle of the night to Vilseck. If the doc hadn't realized what was happening, Inci—or Saniye—could've died. Got that from the obstetrics nurse who—"

"Vilseck?" Christ. That was the town on the sticky. "I found a note hung up on the trash. It's in LaCroix's handwriting." It had to be his. She yanked the sticky from her pocket. "Do you have the address for the doc and his wife?"

"Yeah. It's—"

She rattled off the information along with Jelly. It matched. Somehow, the sergeant had not only figured out that Saniye Ertonç was still alive, but that she'd become Inci Karmandi. And he knew where she and her husband lived.

"Rae, we gotta get a tail on LaCroix—now."

"I know." Brooks would finally approve it, too. In a heartbeat. Because while Mira and the rest of that PSU detail were ensuring Ertonç's safety, no one was looking out for the general's daughter and her family. "Call Brooks. Let him know that LaCroix is out and about tonight, but he's not alone. The captain was worried about him so he tasked a buddy with babysitting. They're barhopping—try the one we used for the initial honeytrap. I want that tail nailed to his ass before he returns home." She turned to the island to grab her bag. "I'm