Jessie waited while he disabled the alarm, then reset it to perimeter only. When he turned, she could feel him close beside her, big and male, vowing to protect her. He was former army Special Forces, a Delta operator, just like her brother, one of the most capable and deadly men on the planet. For the first time in days, she felt safe.
“The guest rooms are down the hall,” Bran said. “Each has its own bath. Follow me.”
She took a look around as he led her beneath the modern glass chandelier in the granite-floored entry. Ten-foot ceilings, hardwood floors, stunning views of the city, big sliding glass doors that opened onto a terrace.
“Your place is lovely.”
“Thanks.” He flashed another grin. “Long as my brother Reese keeps the family business making money, I can afford it. Besides, I’ve lived everywhere from a tent in the middle of the Afghan desert to a hammock in the Colombian jungle. I figured it was time for a change.”
She smiled. “I’m betting the Stingray is yours, too.”
“Recent addition. I’ve barely had time to try it out.”
Jessie felt a pang of guilt. “And now here I am, dragging you off to Colorado, into what could turn out to be a very dangerous situation.”
He sobered, walked back and caught her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “I owe your brother my life. In giving it to me, he lost his own. There is nothing his sister or anyone he cared about could ever ask of me that I would not do.”
Her throat tightened. She thought of how much she missed Danny, knew how much her brother had admired and respected Brandon. “I’m glad I came to you. When I left Colorado, I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but now I am. Thank you for helping me.”
“The only thing I’ve done so far is sweep a pile of glass off the floor of my office. You can thank me when this is over.”
Jessie just nodded. Now that they were safely inside his condo, Bran took the handle of her suitcase and tugged it down the hall into one of the guest rooms. The bedroom furniture was modern, dark wood throughout, the bed covered by a pale blue silk comforter, trendy lamps on the bedside tables, a desk, and two pale blue chairs in a small seating area.
“You have very good taste in interior design,” she said.
He tossed the carry-on up onto the bed. “Afraid I can’t take the credit. A friend helped me.”
A friend. The way he looked, there was no doubt what kind of friend. “Female, I imagine.”
He just shrugged those wide shoulders. “Women have a knack for that kind of thing.”
In today’s world, it was a sexist thing to say, but she almost smiled. She had lived with her dad and brother. She knew how military men thought. Since they also tended to be caring and protective, it wasn’t a problem for her.
“Some women, I guess,” she said. “I was never good at that stuff myself.”
“That why you took up writing?”
“Investigating and writing. I like the challenge of digging into mysteries and solving them.”
Bran’s features turned serious. “That’s good because we’re going to need your skills and mine to figure out what the hell is going on in Colorado.”
Jessie stayed silent. Because Bran Garrett was right.
THREE
Bran sat down behind the desk in his home office. He booted up his computer, a top-of-the-line iMac Pro with a twenty-seven-inch, 5K, P-3 widescreen color monitor. The room was filled with state-of-the-art equipment, some of it stuff he rarely used and was still getting a handle on figuring out.
While Jessie got settled in the guest room, he used the time to Google Colonel James Daniel Kegan.
Bran had met Danny’s father several times over the years, a good-looking, distinguished man with very straight posture, a slightly ruddy complexion, and a mane of silver-streaked dark red hair. He had always been cordial, if a bit formal due to his superior rank, but he had clearly loved his son.
Bran had gone to see him several months after Danny’s funeral, which he’d been unable to attend. He’d been in the hospital at the time, recovering from injuries he had suffered in the same Afghan firefight that had killed his friend.
He glanced down at the pages of links, began clicking through them. The colonel had graduated West Point and gone on to achieve a sterling military career. Several articles talked about his outstanding record, his service in the Gulf War, in Iraq and Afghanistan, about the medals he had won, including a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart.
It was hard to imagine a man like that stealing chemical weapons.
Bran found no articles on the theft, which he had expected, since the information would have been highly classified. The public would not be happy to learn that military-grade weapons had been stolen and not recovered.
He looked up information on the US Army Alamo Chemical Depot, responsible for the safe and secure storage of chemical weapons stockpiled in Colorado, one of only two such installations in the country.
He glanced up as the soft fragrance of flowers drifted toward him, and saw Jessie walking into the study. He told himself the little kick he felt had nothing to do with the way her fiery, red-gold hair fell in soft waves to below her shoulders. Or the way the long-sleeved T-shirt she had changed into hugged the swell of her breasts, just the right size to fit his hands.
Bran jerked his gaze away and turned back to the computer screen. Unfortunately, Jessie rounded the desk and stood close behind him to peer over his shoulder.
His groin tightened. Not good. This was Danny’s sister, not a woman he could trifle with and just walk away. She was special to Danny, which made her special to him.
“I see you’re digging up info on the depot,” she said.
“Yeah. I know it’s there to destroy the country’s stockpile of chemical weapons, but that’s about it.”
“In a nutshell, they’ve got fifteen thousand pounds of mustard gas, in seven hundred and eighty thousand recovered munitions. Last I checked, there were approximately fifty thousand 155 millimeter projectiles, three hundred 105 millimeter projectiles, and a hundred four-point-two-inch mortar rounds.”
Impressed, he turned in the chair to look at her. “Anything else I should know?”
“The actual destruction of the weapons is contracted to a civilian corporation, Weidner Engineering. They have fourteen hundred employees assigned to the project. Year-to-date they’ve destroyed over 365 tons of munitions at a cost of over a billion and a half dollars. Of course that doesn’t account for the stuff that’s gone missing.”
“How much?”
“That, I don’t know. As an outsider, it isn’t that easy to find out.”