into the mix.
Which brought him back to Tony, who’d clearly seen that picture taken at Big’s and decided—rightfully—that Adam wasn’t worth his time.
It was for the best.
But now, this morning, as he was skimming a news article about the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, he came upon a phrase that made him flash both hot and cold as the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
…
similar to last month’s attack, in which two Navy SEALs were killed and three others were wounded
.
No. Please, God, no …
He googled Tony’s name with his heart in his throat, and the first things that came up looked like some kind of qualifying lists for charity runs. Adam clicked a link, and yes, apparently Tony ran half-marathons—thirteen-point-one miles, holy shit—in his spare time.
He’d also—according to his hometown paper, the
Shoreline Times
—graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College. A picture showed a younger and significantly more slender Tony—his middle name was Michael—grinning broadly at the camera, with light and life dancing in his pretty eyes. There was a picture of him, as well, with much shorter hair, dressed in his Navy uniform, with an announcement about his acceptance into the SEAL’s BUD/S training, another announcing his graduation from the grueling program and his acceptance into Team Sixteen.
And Adam didn’t know much about the Navy—other than that the uniforms could make damn near anyone look hot. But he
did
know that the average Ivy League college student didn’t
enlist
in the Navy upon graduation. It was bizarre. Maybe—
maybe
—they became an officer, but to just sign up as a grunt …?
Who did that?
Tony, apparently.
Adam back-paged to his original Google list, scanned down it, and …
Oh, sweet Jesus, there was an obituary. For Anthony Michael Vlachic, again from the
Shoreline Times
, and he clicked it with dread churning his stomach, praying that Tony had a grandfather or father with the exact same name, but the link took him to a page that was blank.
“No,” he said. What the fuck …?
But then a message appeared:
Please excuse our construction dust. The page you requested is temporarily off-line as we update our website
.
“Shit!” He reached for his phone, flipping through his address book, because there was only one person to call at a time like this.
Jules, with his FBI agent status, would be able to find out what Adam needed to know.
Except the last time he and Jules had collided, the FBI agent’s good friends, Cowboy Sam and Wonder-Woman Alyssa, had deleted both Jules’s and Robin’s phone numbers from Adam’s phone. And he hadn’t inputted them again—at least not yet.
Except now, when Adam went into his computer contact file, he couldn’t find Jules. Or Robin, for that matter. Which was beyond strange, since he
knew
he’d had a record of both their work and cell numbers, along with their home landline up in Boston.
But their page had vanished—or rather, it had been erased.
Perhaps even by Tony, when he’d spent the night at Adam’s. Sure Adam was a light sleeper, but Tony was a freaking SEAL, trained at moving stealthily. He could’ve gotten out of bed in the night, gone into the living room where Adam’s laptop was sitting in plain sight …
Or maybe Tony had had nothing to do with it. Maybe Sam had made a discreet phone call, even before Adam had left Boston back in December, and one of his spooky friends had slid in through the crack under the door and done the dirty work for him.
Sam was a real son of a bitch. But he was also a son of a bitch who knew Tony and was still tight with the SEALs in Team Sixteen, and therefore a great source of information.
Adam googled
Troubleshooters Incorporated, San Diego
, and followed the link to the security team’s website, where there was plenty of contact information. He punched the main phone number into his phone and …
It was picked up after only one ring by a woman.
Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler