Killing Time by Cindy Gerard Read Free Book Online

slumped against the door, he looked exhausted with the weight of Ramon’s memory. “How did you know him?” he asked again with a closed expression.
    “I did a story on him,” she lied. She refused to give Brown the advantage of knowing how she andRamon were really connected. “When he was home recovering from—”
    “Shrapnel from an IED,” he interrupted with a war-worn look in his eyes. “Took a hit in his leg in a skirmish outside Kabul. It sent him back stateside for a couple months.”
    “That’s when I met him. While he was recuperating.” That part was true. “He gave me an interview.” That part wasn’t. What he’d given her was a ring. They’d been married three months when he redeployed to Afghanistan.
    She flinched when Brown pushed away from the door and walked back to the chair. Eyes on hers, he stood behind it, gripped the back with both hands, and leaned on it heavily. “Try again. Active duty Spec Ops soldiers don’t give interviews.”
    He was right. She had to pull it together if she wanted to convince him to believe her. “It was strictly anonymous. I never referred to him by name. It was more of an overview . . . the perspective of a soldier on the ground.”
    “Did you drug him, too, to get him to talk?”
    She expelled a deep breath. “I’m sorry about that.” It was a lie and she’d do it again in a heartbeat. She didn’t have time to be nice. Nor was she particularly inclined.
    She seldom was. Nice wasn’t her thing.
    He considered her with a hard look. “Now you’re sorry? I don’t think so. You wanted your pound of flesh. You’re happy as hell you made me suffer.That’s why you came looking for me, right? To make me pay?”
    She wanted him to suffer, all right, the way she’d suffered after losing Ramon eight years ago.
    It had taken a long time to work through the grief. But she’d finally moved on. Then a month ago the file on Operation Slam Dunk with all of its conflicting information had dropped into her hands . . . and somebody spooky had landed on her ass. From that moment to this one, her entire world had shifted.
    Eight years ago, she’d been told that Ramon had died on a routine training mission. That he’d made a careless mistake that had cost him his life. So all this time, she’d believed a lie that had told her Ramon had not died a hero’s death, but one caused by his own carelessness.
    The OSD file blew the lie to smithereens. The “official after-action report” on Operation Slam Dunk, signed off on by the Spec Ops commander, said that Ramon had died on a reconnaissance mission in Helmand Province. A mission that had turned into a bloodbath when Mike Brown had defied orders.
    And yet, while the official after-action report laid all the blame squarely on Mike Brown’s shoulders, he’d vehemently denied any wrongdoing in his pretrial statements. That denial had compelled her to look deeper.
    Nothing she’d found out said Brown wasn’t guilty. But every new piece of information she’d uncovered raised more questions. Then the shadow had appeared,and her sources had dried up. Someone had been following her ever since, and Eva didn’t have a doubt in her mind that her own life was in danger.
    Just like she had no doubt that her shadow had followed her to Lima. She’d never seen the spook, but so help her God, she could almost smell the guy.
    She jerked her head front and center when Brown snapped his fingers, commanding her attention. “You’re drifting, chica. We were talking about Ramon.”
    She cleared her mind, tried to pick up the thread of their conversation. “Ramon talked to me because he was a friend of my brother’s.” Another lie, but she was determined to stay this course and somehow regain her advantage.
    “How were they friends?” he asked, grilling her the way she’d grilled him. “Your brother in the military?”
    “What does it matter?” she snapped. She didn’t want to go down this path. It left her open to