Shades of Gray by Vicki Hinze

Author:Vicki Hinze
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: BelleBooks, Inc.
Published: 2012-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Jake’s ears popped, then rang.

The walls shook. The bed rocked and, somewhere damn close, glass shattered. He sat straight up in bed, looking for the source of the explosion.

Laura ran into his room. “What happened?”

Jake rolled out of bed and onto his feet. “Sounded like a bomb.” He grabbed his khakis, jerked them on, then pulled out his Glock from the bedside drawer. “Stay here.”

Laura followed him down the hall. “Front of the house?”

“The driveway, I think.” He pulled hard, but the front door refused to open. “I told you to stay put.”

“I heard you.”

And obviously she’d chosen to ignore him. He ran through the house to the back door with Laura hard on his heels. The top half of the door was window. Spreading the lacy white curtains with the barrel tip of the Glock, he looked outside. Nothing seemed out of place. He scanned past the patio table and chairs and swept his gaze down the wooden privacy fence.

“Anything?” Laura asked from behind him.

“Did you plant marigolds near the gazebo?” In the photo he’d found in the dead operative’s hand, she’d been planting flowers near the gazebo.

“Yes. Shortly before going to court. Why?”

The photo had been taken even more recently than he’d suspected. “No reason.” Jake reached for the doorknob. “Stay close to the house.”

She nodded.

Easing outside, he looked down the walkway to the side gate. It was closed. Laura pushed through the waist-high shrubs between the house and sidewalk, slowly moving from the back to the front yard. Her back to the siding, she inched down, looking for the same signs of intrusion he sought: plastic explosive devices. Multiple plants were extremely common.

On the other side of the gate, he looked over the roof, and saw black smoke billowing up into the sky from the driveway area at the far front of the house. He caught Laura’s attention, then pointed.

When she nodded, he went on, making his way past the junipers and flowerbeds to the front corner of the house. “Stay back,” he whispered to Laura. “I mean it.”

“I’m not an amateur, Jake.”

“I know that. You’re not armed, damn it.”

“Okay.” She leaned back against the house and scanned the trees, the neighbor’s roof, the little vegetable garden with its six-foot tomato plants in wire cages.

Jake stepped around a huge oleander, paused, and looked toward the driveway. Laura’s Mustang was on fire, belching black smoke and paint-curling flames. The windows had blown out, flames engulfed the entire interior, and liquid red paint dripped off the frame and ran down the concrete toward the street.

“My car!” Laura gasped, stricken.

Seeing movement off her right shoulder, Jake blocked her, leveled the gun, and took aim.

“Don’t shoot, Major.” A sergeant in an MP uniform walked out from behind the trunk of the old oak that had led Jake to buy the house, his hands raised. “I have a message for you from General Connor. He says for you and Mrs. Logan to get out to the base STAT.”

Jake pocketed the gun in his khakis, noted the man’s name tag, and then grimaced.

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