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

were different. And Ertonç began to believe that maybe, just maybe, it was up to him to help his people accept that. So Ertonç contacted me and asked me to broker a meeting. As I'm sure you figured out, I bought that burner to keep their conversations off the Turkish government's radar. When I delivered it, Olan was wary, but ultimately willing; Saniye wasn't. She wouldn't speak to him, even after he showed up here following her emergency delivery."

"That was what that phone exchange I noted during the general's interview was about, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

No wonder Ertonç had been unnerved. He'd been soundly rejected by his sole surviving child. "And when I saw you and Dr. Karmandi at the hospital arguing, that was you trying to convince him to persuade his wife to reconsider."

John nodded. "I suggested a formal visit to his hospital. To the public and press—since Germany has a substantial Kurdish population—it would look like a Turkish general making nice with a few Kurdish doctors and patients, including Saniye's husband. While Saniye would see her father breaking through his bigotry and publicly accepting her husband and the father of her children. Olan agreed that if Ertonç was genuinely respectful to everyone during the visit, he'd convince her to meet with her father. Guess we won't need to resort to that now. Not after everything that's happened tonight."

It was true. Father and daughter would now meet. At the sergeant's court-martial if not elsewhere.

The irony of it. LaCroix would be pissed to discover he was the instrument which had brought it about. If Saniye and her father did manage to heal the familial breach, it would be because of him.

As for the breach that had formed between herself and the man sitting across the table from her, that one was growing wider by the second. With each new revelation—hers and his—John's body language grew colder, more remote. Even now, she could feel him pulling away from her emotionally as well.

She deserved it.

But it still hurt.

He jerked his chin toward the evidence bags she'd laid on the table. The one with the yellow sticky was on top. He knew as well as she did whose handwriting was on it. "How'd you get that?"

"I found it in your kitchen, hung up on the outside of your trash."

His stare found hers once more. The molten gray within had coalesced and forged into an unforgiving iron. "Tonight?"

"Yes."

"So, I did hear you sneaking out the back door."

She was fairly certain he noticed the flush staining the base of her neck as she nodded—because she could definitely feel it.

She shifted her gaze until it settled pointedly on the recorder, painfully aware it was still soaking up every sound in the room. Hell, both he and that microphone had to be hearing the pounding in her chest. Lord knew she could.

To her relief, John took the hint and sighed. "Like I said, Evan wasn't supposed to have that address. Not only was it classified, it was stored in just two places. The first was my head. The second was in a file on an encrypted hard drive, to be accessed if need be and only if something had happened to me. That encrypted drive is currently plugged into my computer…at work."

Meaning John wasn't the only one who'd accessed a laptop that wasn't his. But he'd been motivated by the life of a fellow soldier.

LaCroix had not.

Worse, the sergeant had done more than violate a friend's trust. He'd violated the US Army's. The former was inexcusable. The latter, a crime punishable by the UCMJ. It was also enough to send LaCroix to a cell at Fort Leavenworth, even without tonight's events in Vilseck added on.

"And then you headed here."

"Correct. Since it contained proof, I brought his laptop with me. Your sergeant signed it into evidence before we came in here. I was worried for an entirely new reason. I knew if Evan was willing to break into my classified files, he was willing to go all the way. And I knew where he was eventually headed." He flicked his stare toward the sticky. "Apparently, you'd figured it out first. But how the hell did you know he was going to act tonight?"

She reached out to lift the uppermost evidence bag from the table, revealing the one beneath. "It's a receipt from a German florist. According to the timestamp, LaCroix purchased an oversized teddy bear, wrapping paper and a trio of pink latex balloons while you and I were at the hospital yesterday morning. The latter were filled with helium while he waited."

"So, the countdown had begun, and you knew it."

She nodded.

"And that receipt. Was it also in my trash?"

Regan thought about clarifying its precise location, but she didn't. She knew full well that if the receipt had been buried deep inside the can instead of wadded up on the floor—and she'd known—she'd have dug through to retrieve it and anything else that had the potential to help her solve her case. Because lives had been at stake.

The Karmandis were worth it. Sener and his newborn sister were worth it.

But where had their need for safety left her?

"Guess Ev cleaned out more than his laptop history today. Quite the houseguest."

That he was. Somehow, John's guest had managed to clean them out too.

Wrong. She'd accomplished that all by herself, hadn't she?

The thick, roping scar feeding up from John's wrist all the way into his biceps turned stark white as he folded his arms. He leaned back in his chair to study her. "There was no article on Ertonç, was there?"

"No." It wasn't as though she could splice Rachel Pace into a byline, let alone Regan Chase. "But I did give Terry the notes I took during the interview you arranged. He's hoping to use them himself. When this is over."

"Terry." It was statement, not a question. And not about the man, but his rank. Though Terry was also a captain, she hadn't addressed him as such—as she'd done with John. Right