Aimpoint by Candace Irving (best mystery novels of all time .TXT) 📗

of whiskey on the coffee table. By John's own admission, he only drank when depressed. Very depressed. The bottle was open…and half empty.

She gathered her nerve, and knocked.

Reddened eyes greeted her as the door swung wide.

"Fuck."

Instinct had her slipping her fingers into her bag as she stepped back.

"No!" John's left hand shot out—the one not dwarfing a squat glass of sloshing amber—to snag her arm. "Please. It's not you. I just realized I forgot to call. To reschedule."

Regan eased her fingers from her bag, the 9mm still firmly secreted within as she allowed John to draw her inside the house.

She waited patiently as he closed the door. But instead of facing her as the latch clicked, he turned to cross the room. He stopped beside the coffee table, raised the tumbler in his hand, and polished off the remainder of the whiskey within.

He bent down to set the glass on the table, then straightened and slowly faced her. "It's okay. I just had the one. I'm not drunk."

"I know." His path to the table had been straight and unwavering, the hand he'd used to drain that glass before setting it down, rock steady.

But something was wrong. Horribly wrong. Those dark gray eyes weren't red and swollen from booze, but grief. He'd been crying.

"What happened?"

"What else? Another goddamned bombing in the world. This time, Iraq." His grimace was short and stiff. "Big shock, eh?"

"I've been tied up. I hadn't heard." She slipped the strap of her bag off her shoulder and let it slide down to the charcoal rug beneath her feet.

"S'okay. The fallout hasn't made the news yet."

But it wasn't okay. Not for him. She stepped forward. "Who died?"

"An SF officer. Dan Stoeble. He'd just made major. Fathered his second kid. Not that he'll ever get to hold her."

"Dan was a friend, wasn't he?"

His nod was clipped—and not nearly as steady as his hand had been. "The best."

Her heart clenched as those still-reddened eyes began to shimmer. She stepped closer, reached out. But as the dampness welled up and threatened to spill, he jerked away and spun around. She followed him, reaching up to press her palm into the thick, quaking muscles of his shoulders.

"John?"

He shook his head. "Just—give me a sec." Dragging his air in deep, he lifted a hand to scrub his eyes. His breath shuddered out as he turned back. "Sorry. I'm fine. Today's…brought a bunch of stuff to a head."

LaCroix.

With everything that was going on in John's life, she wasn't sure how she could be so certain. But she was. The CID agent in her demanded she push it. The fellow soldier and woman in her cautioned patience, compassion. Especially the woman.

She listened to the latter.

An eternity seemed to pass as she stood there, silent. Waiting. And then agent, soldier and woman were rewarded with a soft, resigned sigh.

"It's Evan."

"Your houseguest?"

John nodded. "You were right about him."

"I was?"

"The night we met. You told me you were worried about the guy. You were right to be." John gripped the back of his neck as he blew out another sigh. "Ev's messed up. He has been for a while. And he's getting worse."

"How so?"

He lowered his hand. "He's been sounding off about the general."

"Ertonç?"

"Yeah. He headed up the campaign that killed Carys." John shook his head in disgust. "Collateral damage. Christ, I hate that phrase. Always have. Too goddamned innocuous for what it represents." His fingers came up again, this time to scrub at the grief that still tinged his eyes, but he couldn't quite seem to reach it all. He gave up, tucking his hand into the crook of his opposite arm. "Ertonç was a colonel before Operation Peace Spring. He made general after. Right after."

"Wow."

"Yup. Anyway, I thought—hoped—Evan had come to terms with it. But then he learned Ertonç was on his way here."

And that was her opening.

She reached out, laid her hand on John's forearm, atop the coarse, roping scar that fed up into that daunting biceps. "Why is he here?"

John shook his head. "Sorry. Can't say."

Damn. She smoothed the pads of her fingers down the mottled rope, drawing him back to his current, darker dilemma. "You're worried, aren't you? That Evan's going to do something stupid…or deadly."

Silence.

The air was thick with it. Tense.

Telling.

It was now or never. "Maybe…" She slid the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip. "Maybe you should…say something."

"To whom?"

"I don't know. His commanding officer? Yours? CID?"

"Can't." John shook his head, but he didn't step back. "I don't have proof. Just my gut and the drunken spewings of a fellow soldier still racked with grief. It's not enough to risk his career over. A damned stellar career."

"But what if your gut's right? The general's in town." Ertonç was being watched, yes. Protected. But LaCroix wasn't. And he was SF, with all the cold, deadly skills the specialty entailed. The ones he excelled at. "What if Evan's out there right now—"

"He's not."

"You can't be sure."

"I can. I am." A revealing flush tinged John's neck, highlighting the stark white of those twin overlapping scars that tangled down beneath the collar of his matching tee. "I'm having him watched."

Watched. "As in…guarded?"

"Yes." He did withdraw from her then. Physically and emotionally. Or perhaps he was simply withdrawing from himself and what he'd just admitted to doing to a fellow soldier—and friend. He took a step back and turned to the coffee table to retrieve the bottle of whiskey and its cap. "I needed some time to get my head on straight, to toast Stubbs and mourn him, so I asked a buddy to look out for Evan tonight. He'll give me a heads up when Ev heads home. If he heads home. Lately, Ev's been choosing that bar you and I met at over his bed."

Relief filtered in with the reassurance that LaCroix wasn't out there alone. And who better to guard the sergeant than one of his own?

Regan stepped up to the coffee table. To John.

He'd capped the bottle, but he was still