Out of Time Read online

  Kate tried to hide it, but Scott could see her muscles tense. “Why would I have heard from Colt? He and I have nothing left to say to one another.”

  Scott doubted that Kate believed that any more than he did. “I thought he might have tried to apologize.”

  “Apologize?” she scoffed. “You know him better than that. Colt doesn’t apologize; he attacks. He’s been doing it since he was a kid. What’s that adage they use in football? The best defense is a good offense.”

  It was a military adage as well, known as the strategic offensive principle of war, and it summed up Colt to a T.

  Scott looked at the tired face that was so like his own and tried to think of what to say. In retrospect, it was amazing that it had taken them so long to figure out that they were related. The resemblance between them was pronounced. His hair was a darker shade of blond, maybe, but they had the same color blue eyes, straight noses, and similarly shaped mouths.

  But despite their parents’ knowing each other when they were younger, it had never occurred to him that her father could have been the man his mother had the affair with until Colt had angrily referred to them as “Ken and Barbie Country Club Edition.” Suddenly Scott had seen what he’d never noticed before. The odd nonsexual closeness he’d felt instantly with her suddenly made sense. A later blood test had confirmed what by then he already guessed: Kate was his half sister.

  Scott wished he could say something to make it better for her, but Kate and Colt were going to have to figure it out on their own.

  If they figured it out at all.

  “Do you know where I can reach him?” Scott asked.

  “I have a number, but you’ll probably get ahold of him faster if you go to McNally’s. My guess is he’s been spending the past week with his head in a bottle and listening to Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’ on the jukebox, which is the only song that ever seems to be playing there.”

  She was probably right but Scott left a message for him anyway, telling him to call him back and that it was important.

  He was going to call it a night but decided to finish going through the various social media accounts of the dozens of Facebook friends on Natalie’s account. He was lucky it wasn’t hundreds. The account had been active for only about a month before she’d apparently decided better of it.

  He wasn’t surprised. No social media was Spy 101. Operators in Team Nine weren’t supposed to have any—even accounts under false names or aliases. Ghosts couldn’t leave a footprint.

  About an hour later, Kate pushed back from her chair. “You almost done? You might not need it, but some of us actually have to sleep a few hours a night.”

  They had been burning the midnight oil. “Almost.” He’d gone through the names alphabetically and was almost finished. “I just have a few more names.”

  Kate rolled her eyes, as if she’d heard that one before. “I’m going to get some coffee. But we’re shutting it down in an hour. Your shoulder needs rest even if you don’t.”

  His wound was healing just fine, but he knew better than to argue with her. Last time that had forced him to sit through her changing the dressing—again. Which, as she didn’t have much nursing skill and insisted on following instructions off the Internet, was a prolonged experience.

  He was on the last name of his list when she came back in the room. A few minutes later, he jolted up in his chair. “Bingo!”

  Kate looked over. “I take it you found something?”

  Scott turned the screen that he’d been working on toward her.

  Kate had shared the office in the town house with her former fiancé, Sir Percival Edwards, and there were two desks built into an L shape that each housed top-of-the-line computers and multiple screens. His desk had two; Kate’s had three.

  “Look at this,” he said, indicating the picture he’d found on Jennifer Wilson’s Instagram account.

  Kate looked back and forth between the two smiling faces. It was the same smile Natalya had with her sister in the Minnesota picture. With stilettos and a slinky black silk dress replacing the hat, scarf, and fuzzy pink mittens. “Which one is she?”

  Even though Kate had seen a picture of Natalie, he wasn’t surprised she’d asked. The two women looked enough alike to be sisters. They were both knockouts, although Jennifer was curvier, shorter, and had more brown in her dirty blond hair. “The one on the left,” he said.

  Kate squinted at the photo. “Where was that taken? It looks familiar.”

  “You’ve probably been there. It’s the Treasury Bar on the Hill.”

  That was one of the reasons he’d jolted. He’d recognized it right away, too. It was the same bar where he and Natalie had first met.

  Kate nodded. “This Jennifer Wilson could be a good lead.”

  “More than that. Look at the date the picture was posted.”

  He zoomed in so she could see it easier. A moment later she gasped. “May the twenty-fourth!”

  He nodded. “The night before our mission, and a couple days before Natalie was killed.”

  Jennifer Wilson might have been one of the last people to see her alive.

  “And look at this.” He scrolled through the pictures. “It’s the last picture she posted, and before that she posted almost daily.”

  Kate looked at him. “You think she knows something?”

  “I’m going to find out.”

  He’d planned to go to Minnesota to talk to Natalya’s family, but tracking down Jennifer Wilson had just become priority number one.

  * * *

  • • •

  Natalie wanted to scream, but it was another primitive instinct that took over. The urge to survive. To avoid death. To fight.

  She turned and tossed the bag toward the man who’d come up behind her. She knew he’d reflexively try to catch it, and she intended to use the moment of surprise to her advantage with a swift kick to an area that would give her the moment she needed to get past him.

  He caught the bag with a surprised “oof” and she was about to proceed to part two of her escape plan when she noticed the uniform.

  The color slid from her face. The man who’d snuck up behind her wasn’t Mick or a Russian hit man; he was a policeman. Noticing the badge, she corrected herself. Not a policeman, the sheriff, who happened to be a dead ringer for Tom Selleck circa Magnum, P.I. He even had a mustache, although his wasn’t 1980s bushy but trimmed much shorter.

  She was relieved, but only for a moment. When you were on the run, hiding for your life and the lives of everyone you loved, with only a fake ID to protect you, a policeman was almost as bad as a hit man. What did he want?

  He realized he must have frightened her by coming up behind her. “I’m sorry for scaring you. I was parked around front when I saw the car pulling into the garage.”

  Natalie took a deep breath, trying to recover her composure. Act normal. Don’t panic just because a cop showed up out of nowhere.

  She smiled as if embarrassed. “You startled me, that’s all. What can I do for you?”

  She held out her hand for the grocery bag that she’d tossed to him, but he shook it off. “I’ll carry it for you. I’m Brock Brouchard—the county sheriff. We had some reports from neighbors of lights on in the old farmhouse and assumed it was teenagers or squatters. I was in the area so I thought I’d check it out.”

  The sheriff smiled. He didn’t have the Magnum dimples, but even without them, he was a good-looking man in the rugged outdoorsman kind of way. Her mom would say he looked like the Marlboro Man, which was basically how she referred to every ruggedly handsome man.

  “Not a squatter or a teenager,” she said. “Just a renter.”

  “Do you mind if I see proof of that?”

  She knew he had no right to see it, but she also knew that it would get rid of him faster if she just did as he asked. But her heart was pounding l