Lethal Exposure. Elisabeth Rees

She had come a long way since those bleak days after Ian had died, and she didn’t want to let this situation send her back there again. Jack had been her rock in the weeks after she’d been given the tragic news. He did the school runs, took the girls to swim practice, filled the refrigerator with groceries and maintained the routines that she wasn’t strong enough to bear. All the while, she stayed in bed and grieved. But gradually she had emerged from her cocoon and reentered the world, taking it one day at a time, using her faith in God to try and come to terms with her loss. She closed her eyes for a moment and asked God to give her the power to repel any dark forces that had infiltrated her wonderful family home.

      “Hey, Bec.”

      She looked up to see Jack standing in the doorway, almost filling it completely with his broad shoulders. He held a hammer in his right hand and leaned with his forearm on the door frame. Her heart fluttered a little, and she pushed the feeling down. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact time when her belly had started doing somersaults whenever he entered the room. It had happened so slowly that by the time she realized what was happening, it was too late.

      He was wearing blue jeans and a crumpled linen shirt, clearly picked up from the floor in his haste to dress and rush to her aid. His brown hair was unkempt, but he never really bothered to style it anyway, preferring a more natural look. Emily and Charlotte often teased him about being a surfer dude, and he took it in good humor. The girls loved going to the beach with him, and he had taught them both how to bodyboard pretty well. His hair was starting to show traces of gray, but his body was still as lean and firm as that of a man half his age, kept fit by his regular surfing trips. There were signs on his face of his thirty-eight years: brown eyes that crinkled at the corners, a brow that creased when he frowned and laughter lines at the sides of his full lips. His goatee and sun-browned skin added to the laid-back look. The overall persona he projected was one of gentleness and a carefree nature, totally at odds with what she knew about him, about his past as a tough navy SEAL, uncompromising in his pursuit of justice.

      “You saying a little prayer, huh?” he asked, seeing her hands clasped together, elbows perched on the table. “Sorry to interrupt.”

      She lowered her hands to the table and rubbed her palms on the smooth surface. “It’s okay. I’m not sure that God hears me these days, anyway.” She gave a little laugh to make it sound like a joke, but Jack knew her too well.

      “I don’t profess to know much about God,” he said. “But I know how devoted you are to your faith, and that makes you special to Him, I guess.”

      She smiled. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

      “I’m willing to keep an open mind on that score,” he said. “But it’s pretty hard to believe in someone I’ve never seen.”

      “You don’t see God,” she laughed. “You feel Him.”

      “Okay, then,” he said, walking to the table. “It’s pretty hard to believe in someone I don’t feel, but you feel Him, so I’m assuming He won’t abandon you when you need Him most, right?”

      He already did, she thought, before angrily pushing the thought from her head. It wasn’t God’s fault that Ian was taken from her, and she tried not to blame Him. But she couldn’t deny the fact that she was clearly meant to be alone for the rest of her life. When she’d married Ian, she had made a lifelong commitment, and she couldn’t imagine breaking it, even though he was now gone. That was the hardest part to accept—the knowledge that she would not be sharing her life with a man she loved.

      “You want some coffee?” She pushed back her chair to go to the sink. “The sun will be up soon, and you’ll be wanting to get to work, I guess.”

      He put the hammer down on the table and stood close to her by the kitchen counter. “I can go days without sleep,” he said. “Besides which, being the boss of my own company has a lot of perks. Someone will cover for me.”

      She busied herself making coffee. After Jack left the SEALs, he set up his own car dealership, and it was no surprise to anyone that it became a huge success. Jack’s easygoing, personable nature made him a big hit in their small town of Bristol, Florida, and he quickly built up a chain of dealerships across the Panhandle. He bought a house just a few blocks away and had supported Rebecca in so many ways until she felt well enough to return to her job as a newspaper photographer at the Liberty News in Blountstown. The Liberty News’s owner and editor, Simon Orwell, had been an ambitious young journalist when she worked alongside him during Operation Iraqi Freedom. When she decided to retire from overseas work after marrying Ian, Simon had been overjoyed to snap up her services as the paper’s primary photographer, and he often used the prestige of her name as leverage to scoop the best stories for the front page. These days she was more likely to take pictures of fluffy kittens than soldiers with guns, but she adored every minute of it.

      Jack leaned on the counter in her large Shaker-style kitchen. She loved the simple, clean lines of her cabinets, with potted plants dotted here and there to bring the natural world indoors. It was one of the rooms in the house untouched by the intruder. The rest of the downstairs was in total disarray.

      She felt Jack’s hand on her shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

      She let her shoulders drop. “I was really terrified, Jack,” she said quietly. “I’ve been to war-torn locations across the world, and I let something like this scare the life out of me.”

      He put both hands on her arms and turned her around before pulling her to his chest. She breathed in the familiar, spicy scent that he wore. It made her feel calmer, more reassured. She wrapped her arms around his waist, and they stood in silence for a while. She normally preferred to keep an appropriate emotional distance from Jack, but she was too tired to keep up her guard.

      “It’s okay to be scared,” he whispered. “It doesn’t matter how tough you are. You did the right thing to call me.”

      At that moment, the sun’s first rays appeared over the horizon and lit up the room with a warm, yellow glow. It was another beautiful winter’s day in Florida, and she gave thanks for the dawning of this new day.

      She looked up at his face. “Thank you.”

      He smiled back. “Any time.”

      She turned back around to make the coffee. “So, what do we do now?”

      “Where are the photographs of the artworks from the Al Faw Palace?” he asked. “If we intend to take this line of inquiry further, we’ll need them as evidence.”

      She poured boiling water onto the fresh coffee grounds in her French Press, and a strong, earthy smell revived her jaded senses. “They’re in my desk drawer at the Liberty News office.”

      “Ah,” Jack said, taking the cream from the refrigerator. “That explains why the intruder didn’t find what he was looking for.”

      “We don’t know what he was looking for yet, Jack,” she reminded him. In her heart, she knew he was probably right, but she didn’t want to believe that she was the only thing standing in the way of a criminal and stolen art worth millions of dollars.

      “We should go to Blountstown and get them,” he said. “This morning.”

      Rebecca poured two coffees from the pot and added Jack’s usual cream and sugar without needing to ask. As she was stirring the cup, she thought of how much emotional and practical help he had given her since Ian’s death eighteen months ago. In all that time, he had never once asked for anything in return, and here she was leaning on him for support yet again. It was a pattern that didn’t seem to end, and a feeling of guilt niggled away inside her. A man like Jack should have been snapped up by an eligible lady a long time ago, but she had never known him to even have a date. She didn’t want to be responsible for condemning him to a single life. Once this situation was all cleared up, she resolved to spend less time with him and cut him free from his bonds of duty to his best friend.

      Jack looked over at her, lost in her own world. “A penny for your thoughts.”

      She