Redeeming Travis

скачать книгу бесплатно


She smirked. “There’s no fault. And no geological survey going on. It’s an elaborate ruse to get Hadley and his wing where we can track their movements better. A handful of pilots under him formed a club called the Buccaneers. There are seven members. They bought into a fifties-era F-100 Super Sabre together. They trade weekends taking her up.”

Travis narrowed his eyes. This was getting interesting. “That jet has over a thousand-mile range, doesn’t it?”

“Sixteen-sixty.”

Whistling, Travis grabbed for a notepad so he could take notes. “They could get to a lot of places with it. Tough places to track them to. How’d the Air Force get wise to them in the first place?”

“One of the Bucs reported an odd talk he had with General Hadley. He got the idea Hadley was feeling him out to see if he’d do anything illegal. At the time he thought he was suspected of something. He got indignant and General Hadley accepted his word that he’d done nothing wrong.”

“And that was Hadley’s misstep?”

“The first we’ve heard about. Within the following month, the pilot, Captain Kevin Johnston, started to notice some odd things about his fellow Buccaneers. Like more flight hours on the F-100 than those they logged. They all tried to pass it off as hotdogging midflight but they all also seemed to have a bit too much money to spend, considering the cost of those long flights and the loan payments on the plane.”

She paused and straightened the magazines, then caught his eyes and stopped, guiltily hiding her hands behind her. Then she cleared her throat and continued. “Then Captain Johnston noticed nearly the same number of miles on each flight the other members took no matter where they claimed to have gone on their time off. He put that together with seeing them looking a little too comfortable around the highest-ranking officer at Cascade, General Hadley. Captain Johnston was in basic with Ian so he came here to Peterson and went to him with his suspicions. Ian took it to Lieutenant General Charles Fielding, the base commander. General Fielding put Ian Kelly on it and Ian suggested the geological survey as an excuse to get them all to Colorado Springs where his presence wouldn’t be suspicious and there’d be someone superior to General Hadley. Two months later Ian Kelly was found dead and I was handed the case. I’m trying to nail General Hadley along with the Buccaneers.”

“And for that you think you need my help?”

She glared. “What I need is you out of my way, but I know you too well. You as much as said there was no way you were pulling out of this investigation. If I can’t intimidate you off the case, I have to ask you to join in on it.” She grinned slyly, her eyes wise with knowledge of his character.

It was Travis’s turn to glare. He hated that she still knew him so well.

She crossed her legs, drawing his attention momentarily. He’d always loved her long dancer’s legs. “I can’t intimidate you, can I?” she asked, dragging his attention off her assets and annoying him further.

Not trusting himself to speak, he sent her a wiseacre grin and shook his head.

She grimaced slightly. “Then I guess we’re in this together. And that means it’s on General Fielding’s terms. In that case, it’s your turn to tell me what you have so far.”

Travis sighed mentally. It looked as if they were partners for the duration. And he had to give her credit—she’d told him all she seemed to know. “Ramirez is the name of the guy I was tailing. He’s Venezuelan. Which fits with Sam’s theory and, I suppose, Ian Kelly’s that Diablo and La Mano Oscura are linked.”

“I didn’t find any reference to La Mano Oscura in his notes but I still think he was working on proof of a connection.”

“But the crime scene investigators found that note in his pocket when his body was discovered. It had both Diablo and La Mano Oscura on it. So we knew he must have thought there was a link.”

She nodded. “Ian was the best. He probably got the evidence and was killed for it.”

“So we’ll be a little more careful than he was.”

“And we’ll each have someone to watch our back. That was more than Ian had. He liked to work alone.”

Sensing that she did, too, and hoping to dissuade her from going off on her own when he wasn’t with her, Travis found himself adding, “And it probably got him killed.”

The day after Travis agreed to work with her, they planned for Tricia to meet him at the Stagecoach Café. Since his mother worked there with her old friend Fiona, Travis dreaded this very public meeting they’d set up. They were supposed to act as if they had run into each other only days before—which was quite literally true. The problem was this was to be their first date, which was supposed to explode into a whirlwind romance—which was a big fat lie. It would never happen.

He wouldn’t let it happen.

Tricia didn’t seem to mind lying to his family, and had in fact insisted on it. But it wasn’t all that easy for him. His mother was going to be sixty-two inches of trouble. The woman had an eye for the lies her children told and always had. He thought he could pull off today, but then to act wildly enamored of Tricia considering their past? Now that was going to be a feat.

Because everything about Tricia just plain annoyed him. From her self-confidence to her uniform, she wasn’t the girl he’d loved. The problem was that somehow she was all the more fascinating for the changes he’d seen in her so far.

If he were completely honest with himself, Travis knew he’d have to admit his real problem with the differences was that she had grown and stretched beyond the potential he’d seen in her. She had been right. He would have held her back.

And that really frosted him.

Pulling open the door of the Stagecoach Café, Travis nearly cringed. Both his mother and Fiona were there, as he’d thought they would be. And they’d seen him. It was too late to back out and call off this hoax of a date.

“Travis!” Lidia Vance called out. “Come back here and sit where I can talk to you, while I fold these napkins.” She rushed to him, braced her small hands on his forearms and tiptoed from her slight height to peck him on the cheek. Instinctively, Travis wrapped his arms around her small round form and hugged her.

“I can only chat for a few minutes, Mom. I’m meeting someone for lunch. It’s a…uh…it’s a date.”

Travis felt his face heat. This was never going to work. As he expected, his mother was more than mildly surprised. Her eyebrows rose as her big brown eyes widened. “Here? You’re bringing a girl here? Is it that nice woman who you met through the auction?”

He almost burst that bubble of hope he’d seen so often in the past and saw again now. She wanted, and he knew even prayed, that he would pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Much as he would like to make his mother happy, he didn’t deserve to go on with his life when his wife and child were dead because of his failure as a husband and father. But for now he’d have to let her think her wish was about to come true. Telling her the truth some day in the weeks to come wasn’t going to be easy.

Pushing away dark thoughts, Travis explained, “I ran into Patty…uh…Tricia Streeter, I mean. We decided to meet for lunch.”

“Tricia?”

He forced a smile he didn’t feel, feeling instead like one of the jack-o’-lanterns that were decorating the town. Cardboard. Fake. A sham. “It was good to see her again. I was…surprised how much.” That at least was true, much to his disgust.

“That’s so nice. You were always such a cute couple,” his mother said, patting his arm. There was a mixture of emotions reflected in her dark, almost all-seeing eyes. Principal among them was delight. She’d bought it and Travis watched his last chance for a reprieve vanish with the blooming of his mother’s delighted smile.

Chapter Five

“Oh. Here she is now,” Lidia Vance exclaimed, beaming a smile at Tricia as she entered the café. “Tricia, it’s so good to see you! It seems so long.”

Tricia fought the urge to turn tail and run. Travis had obviously told his mother about their lunch date. This was such a bad idea. What had she been thinking? Oh right, she’d decided this was the way to trap Travis into this artificial courtship. Big mistake! Now she was trapped, as well, and she went to church with this woman she was bound to disappoint.

“Lidia, we just spoke at church on Sunday,” Tricia said, trying to pretend she hadn’t heard the note of delight and hope in the older woman’s voice.

Lidia beamed. “But today you’re eating with my Travis. Fiona! Come see who’s come for lunch with our Travis,” she called to her friend, and owner of the Stagecoach Café.

Poor Lidia, once again doomed to disappointment. How could she have forgotten hearing Travis’s mother lamenting the life Travis lived when a church member had asked what he was up to these days? Still, thanks to Tricia’s suspicions about Max Vance, she really had no choice but to insist Travis keep their ruse a secret from his family.

She fought the urge to roll her eyes at Lidia’s effusive greeting when her gaze connected with Travis’s. Then she saw that this was harder for him than it was for her and her guilt doubled. Tripled.

“You two come with me,” Fiona Montgomery said, menus in her hand as she rushed up to them. She wore a bright smile on her face and an apron tied about her ample waist.

“Well, that about tears it,” she heard Travis mutter.

And it did. Now they were well and truly stuck for the duration. The addition of Fiona to the day meant their “romance” would be telegraphed through all branches of the Montgomery and Vance families. Fiona meant no harm but she loved gossip and Western Union had nothing on her for speed or efficiency.

“This must be family day around here,” Fiona said, her artificially bright red hair bouncing as she bubbled along the row of tables. “Jake came in a few minutes ago with one of his signature blondes,” Fiona went on. “I’m going to clear my special table for you two while the four of you visit for a minute.” She shook her head and frowned, laying her hand on Travis’s arm and saying in a conspiratorial, low voice, “Try to talk some sense into him. All these women…” She tut-tutted. “It breaks his mother’s heart that he won’t settle down.”

They walked along, passing a few more tables when Travis stopped next to a well-dressed, sandy-haired man who shared one side of a table with a stylish blonde. The man’s blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he shot a crooked grin Travis’s way. “You look a little shell-shocked, pal. Forget about the way those two are, did you?” Jake asked, standing and extending his hand to Travis. “I heard your mother’s delight at this interesting turn of events all the way back here.”

Travis shook his lifelong friend’s hand. “I guess I’m out of practice. This is Major Patricia Streeter. Tricia, I’ve known Jake Montgomery since he was in the play-pen tossing his toys at those of us with the freedom of our parents’ backyards.”

She remembered the stories of Travis’s enviable childhood well. “Is this the Jake you got stuck in a tree with when you were ten or so?”

Jake took her hand, his smile utterly charming. She found herself staring into his arresting blue eyes and said, “Pleased to meet you, Jake.”

“Well, hello, pretty lady. Did he happen to tell you it was his fault I got stuck up there? He dared me to go higher and I wasn’t one to turn down a dare from one of the older kids. It would have meant I was still a baby.” He shrugged. “So I climbed higher. And got stuck. Then Travis knew he’d really catch it if he didn’t get me down, and he got stuck, too. So we both got punished. His mother made us write ‘I will not climb a tree until I’m twelve’ twenty-five times.”

Travis chuckled. “Twenty-five for you. Fifty for me, because I was older.”

Jake never took his eyes off her. It was unnerving. “Where’s Travis been hiding you?” he asked, still holding her hand.

Tricia smiled back, not knowing what else to do, and shrugged. He simply made you look at him by his sheer presence. “At Peterson Air Force Base, I guess,” she said, unsure how to handle his singular brand of attention. At the moment, with his intense eyes staring into hers, she felt like the only woman in the world. Had it been Travis looking at her like that she’d have melted, but she had no interest in a playboy of this man’s caliber.

“Oops. Sorry,” Jake said, and pulled his hand back as if he were afraid it would get bitten off. Surprised and wondering if she’d sent out some unconscious signal, she noticed Jake’s eyes were all of a sudden on Travis. “I didn’t mean to poach on your territory, Trav,” Jake added.

Tricia looked quickly toward Travis and was surprised to see his green eyes glittering with what she could only call jealousy. She felt a little thrill but then she realized he was putting on an act and the feeling evaporated like smoke on the wind. She was nothing to Travis Vance but the woman who had ruined his life.

“Just back off, Casanova,” Travis grumbled, furthering his pretense of jealousy. “Pay attention to your own date. It’s taken me years to find Tricia again.”

My, but he was putting on quite a show for the sake of their investigation. He must be more resigned to it than she’d thought. More resigned than even she was now that it had been put into motion. She only wished it was all pretense for both of them. But as much as Travis had hurt her by turning so quickly—so easily—to Allison, she was still drawn to him and she hated seeing how empty his life had become.

“Not to worry,” Jake said, grinning again. “I was just trying to figure out if Lidia and Aunt Fiona were barking up the wrong tree. Glad to see they aren’t. You deserve some happiness, Travis. Nice to meet you, Tricia.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce us, Jake?” a sultry voice asked from behind Jake.

Jake blinked and stepped to the side, then looked down at his pouting companion, clearly having forgotten her. “Oh. Uh…sorry. Cheri Wilson. This is Travis Vance and his friend, Tricia Streeter.”

Jake’s date wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you hate wearing that uniform? It’s so unfeminine. So are you a secretary or something like that at the Air Force base, Ms. Streeter?” Cheri’s catty tone wasn’t lost on either man, Tricia noticed, and neither looked particularly happy at the subtle but out-of-the-blue attack.

Tricia wondered if her response would surprise Travis. It would if he didn’t realize yet how much she’d changed. In college she would have backed down and let the prettier, richer, smarter girl win the encounter by default. But the new Tricia stuck up for herself. “That’s Major Streeter and I’m an investigator with the Air Force Office of Special Investigation. Travis, I think Fiona has that table ready. Perhaps we should leave Jake and Cheri to their meal. It was wonderful meeting such an old friend of Travis’s, Jake. Perhaps we’ll run into each other again.”

She heard Travis mutter, “Not if I have anything to say about it, you won’t.” For a split second, Tricia felt another little thrill but then Jake laughed, having heard, as well, and she was again sure Travis’s jealousy was all part of an act.

After Fiona seated them and took drink orders, she bustled off and Tricia cautioned, “I thought this was just supposed to be our first date. Your reaction to Jake was a little bit of overkill, though I commend your acting ability.”

“Well, I don’t commend yours,” he snapped. “What was all that starstruck staring into his eyes supposed to be about? The premise is that you’re here with me, beginning a wild romance, remember?”

Tricia refused to rise to the bait. She was good at her job and she wouldn’t let him undermine her confidence in herself or in her ability to do whatever was necessary to get her job done. “I have a job to do but I’m not dead. Jake’s a very attractive man. Tell me more about him.”

“He’s dangerous to women and he doesn’t even know it. That’s what makes him so dangerous. Women from two to ninety-two fall under his spell with no effort on his part. He’s left a trail of broken hearts starting from grade school, through high school and college right up to Cheri over there.”

“She looked pretty happy to me. Not very nice but pleased with herself as we moved away.”

“But what she doesn’t know is that she just overstepped the invisible boundaries of one of his relationships.”

Fiona came up and dropped off their drinks. “Are you two ready to eat? If not, I can come back later. I don’t want to intrude.”

Travis smiled indulgently and shook his head. “Let’s just let Mom feed us. She knows what I like and Tricia spent a few weekends at our house when we knew each other before. Mom never forgets anyone’s eating habits.”

“Okeedokee,” she said, scribbling on her order pad and flitting away.

“She’s a real character,” Tricia said.

Grinning Travis nodded. “Yeah, a real menace. Uh-oh. Looks like Cheri just flounced out ahead of Jake. Another one bites the dust.”

“So her jealous act really did earn her the boot. What does Jake do for a living, by the way?”

“He’s with the FBI. A computer expert.”

“Hmm. Maybe at some point we’ll be able to tap him as a resource.”

Travis pursed his lips and nodded, thinking deeply for a long moment before saying, “Yeah, maybe. I have in the past. When I first got into corporate espionage I needed to learn about computers and Jake taught me a lot. He’s a whiz.”

“If we need to call in a whiz then we’ll know who to call.”

Lidia bustled up with a tray laden with Italian delights. “I remembered how much you liked my manicotti and braciole when you visited. Made fresh this morning. Here you go, dear.”

“Thanks, Lidia. I can’t believe you remembered that after all these years.”

“A mother never forgets.”

“I thought that was ‘A Vance never forgets,’” Travis teased, then looked down at his plate as Lidia set it in front of him.