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Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and checked the caller ID. It was her producer, Mason Sheffield. She sent the call to voice mail. She didn’t want to talk to him right now. He’d agreed to give her this time off even though he wanted her on the embassy-bombing story and following up on Rizzo’s colleagues. But as big as that story was, this one would impact her life forever. She’d interviewed countless families of victims of crime and listened to them talking about their loved ones and their longing to see justice done. She realized she wanted that, too. Besides, the Ricardo case was stalled until more members of the secret CIA security detail came forward or were outed as operatives. She knew there were other reporters following leads to their whereabouts, but she couldn’t think about that now. This case, proving her identity and finding out who murdered her birth mother and who left her abandoned and alone as an infant, was her main focus now. She’d been alone for too long. It was time to discover who she was once and for all.
She walked into the hotel and nodded at the desk clerk who’d checked her in the previous evening. He was a humorous man and had recognized her from her show. Had he tipped off everyone in town that she was staying at his hotel? Could that explain her eerie feeling of being followed?
She got into the elevator and willed it to close before anyone jumped in with her. No one did and she breathed a sigh of relief when the doors slid shut. She rode it to the third floor then got off. Her room was at the end of the hall, but she stopped after only a few steps. The hairs on her neck stood on end again as she saw the door to her room was open. The elevator closed behind her and dinged, startling her. She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart. She could call hotel security or the police, but how silly would she feel if it was only housekeeping refreshing the towels? No, she was allowing her imagination to run wild and that sense of being watched to control her. Still, as she moved down the hallway, bracing to confront whoever was there, she wished she had something to defend herself with. Her iced coffee wasn’t going to stop anyone. Why hadn’t she ordered it hot? She inched toward the open doorway and heard noise coming from inside.
Someone was definitely in her room!
She pushed open the door and spotted a figure clad in black digging through her suitcase.
“Who are you?” she called.
The intruder turned her way, his face covered by a mask. Before she could move, he ran toward her, shouldered past her and knocked her backward into the wall. She screamed as she fell, her coffee spraying into the air. She pulled herself up in time to see the intruder burst through the door to the stairwell, then he was gone.
She quickly crawled to her feet, scooped up her cell phone and dialed 911. When the operator came on asking for her emergency, Dana replied, “Someone broke into my hotel room.”
“What’s the address, ma’am?”
She walked into her room, ready to give the address of the hotel, when something else grabbed her attention. On the wall, she’d pinned up her notes about the case, the newspaper article she’d found in her mother’s belongings, the letter from the preacher and the note left with her when she was abandoned as a baby. Plastered on the wall beneath that in big, black, spray-painted letters were the words Go Home.
“Ma’am, are you still there? I need to know where you are.”
She rattled off the name of the hotel then, before hanging up, whispered, “Please hurry.”
* * *
I’m not ready for this.
Quinn Dawson parked his cruiser in front of the hotel and got out. He was tired, emotionally and physically. He’d often moonlighted as a reserve deputy for his father whenever he wasn’t on assignment overseas providing covert security for the CIA as part of the Security Operations Abroad, or SOA as they referred to the company, and his father thought doing so now would be good for him, but Quinn wasn’t so sure. He was still reeling from the attack on the embassy and the grief of losing his best friend in the fight that ensued. He wasn’t sure he was up for battling crime in his own hometown.
He entered the hotel lobby and was greeted by Milo Sherman, the night clerk, who handed him a room key and pointed to a woman sitting in a chair at one side of the small lobby. He sized her up as he headed her way. Even if she hadn’t been staying in the hotel, he’d have known she wasn’t a local because of the high-end heels she wore. And if he’d seen those long legs before, he would have remembered.
She sat with her head down and her long blond hair hanging over her face, but the sight of her when she glanced up at him nearly sent him falling backward and hightailing it out of the hotel. He checked that response and maintained his cool, recognizing her long thin face, soft brown eyes and the subtle curve of her lips.
Dana Lang.
He’d never met her before, but he knew her. She was the reporter who’d interviewed one of his teammates, Rizzo, and plastered his name and face all over the world. When a frenzied mob bent on destruction and murder had attacked an embassy compound in Libya six weeks ago, Quinn, Rizzo and the rest of their group had orchestrated a counterattack and rescued eighteen Americans. Unfortunately, five people had died in the incident, including two operatives, one of them Quinn’s best friend, Tommy Woods. The encounter itself had stirred up a storm of controversy, reignited by Rizzo Ricardo’s proclamation that he’d been there and participated in the rescue, and that his government had left them all to die. The press, led by Dana Lang, had jumped on his story and catapulted him to stardom in a matter of days. They’d also pressured him to name his other teammates. So far, Rizzo had held out, but Quinn suspected it was only a matter of time before his own name became associated with the incident as well. And being outed as a former Delta operator and current SOA member would not only put his life in danger, but could also end his career. Now, this reporter was here in his hometown. Had Rizzo given up his name already? He took in a sharp breath and braced himself for the barrage of questions he was certain was about to blast him.
However, when she stood and pulled back her hair, he saw the redness in her eyes and the way her hands shook as she held one out to him. Was it possible this wasn’t a ploy to draw him here after all?
“Thank you for coming, Deputy. My name is—”
“Dana Lang. I know who you are.”
She gave him a gracious smile he was certain she used for fans of her show. He’d never said he was a fan.
He nodded, deciding it was better not to draw attention to himself in case she hadn’t yet realized who he was. She couldn’t have known tonight was the night he’d finally conceded to his father’s urgings and decided to work. “Can you tell me what happened?”
She nodded and took a deep breath, and as she began talking, he could see her hands quiver. She was shaken up. That couldn’t be faked. “I was returning to my room when I noticed the door open. When I entered, someone was in there going through my belongings. I said something and he turned to look at me, then pushed past me and ran down the hall into the stairwell. He knocked me down as he fled.” She motioned to her stained blouse. “That’s how I spilled iced coffee all over me.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“No, and I didn’t get a good look at him. He was tall and thin, but his face was hidden by a ski mask. And when he ran toward me, I was too startled to really get a good look.”
“What was missing from your room?”
“Nothing.”
“He didn’t take anything?” That surprised him. Most break-ins were burglaries. Had she interrupted him before he could find anything of value?
“Not that I can tell. My belongings were scattered, but I don’t think anything was missing. I had my cell phone and wallet with me and I didn’t bring anything valuable, so there wasn’t much for him to take. But he did leave something. A threatening message spray-painted on the wall.”