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

grill Ava. Not even going to try to lie. We both know she won't say a word.

Back soon—J

Jelly's tactic was sound. But since Brooks wouldn't agree—especially with his current, added, ire toward her fellow agent—she took the time to walk the note over to her shredder. She fed the hungry beast and headed for her desk.

With the basics of her cover already churning through her brain, she phoned Public Affairs next.

Unfortunately, Terry Vaughn wasn't in.

She left a message for the stalwart captain who'd covered for her brilliantly on several missions before—albeit on posts other than Hohenfels and nearby Vilseck, including a war zone.

After hanging up her second call in twice as many minutes, Regan turned her attention to her laptop. She fired up the computer and clicked through the security protocols to access LaCroix's official Army record. She'd need to study his entire career history, as well as his performance evaluations, before she finalized her cover details with Terry anyway.

But this particular file would have to be absorbed quickly.

In light of the unusual timing of the sergeant's most recent stateside call to Platt's phone, the stakes had been raised even higher than those she'd just conveyed to Brooks.

Several pages into LaCroix's personnel record, they shot into the stratosphere.

Sergeant LaCroix wasn't just the real deal. He'd all but crafted it.

And it was born of C4, det cord and so much more. Before Special Forces had tapped LaCroix on his shoulder to invite him into the hallowed brotherhood, he'd been a sapper. But not just any sapper. LaCroix was so good at constructing both complex bombs and simple, impromptu explosives, he'd been tasked with teaching his fellow combat engineers at the Army's Sapper Leader Course at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

Whatever his pending target might be, it appeared the man wouldn't even need a brick of C4 and handful of blasting caps to obliterate it.

Ice crackled along Regan's spine as she read one particular write up.

Sergeant LaCroix is an outstanding soldier and unsurpassed as a sapper. Though young, he possesses an uncanny and unparalleled ingenuity in crafting field-expedient explosives. I have the utmost faith in Sgt. LaCroix's ability to link up with any indigenous force to which he's assigned and quickly teach them to rig bombs with whatever's on hand. If the materials don't exist, Sgt. LaCroix will create them—and the results will be devastating.

The enemy will never see him coming.

The evaluation had been filed six years earlier. Since then, LaCroix had completed the SF Q Course and donned the vaunted green beret. As Special Forces, he'd gone on to serve four more tours in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, where he'd undoubtedly honed those innate, deadly skills of his to a terrifying proficiency.

And there was Hohenfels.

If LaCroix was up to no good, he had plenty of places right here in his own backyard to prepare for it. Far too many for CID to search.

Hosting the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, the forty thousand acre Army installation was the second largest combat maneuvering facility for US troops in Europe. Hohenfels' often unforgiving topography was riddled with thick forests and deep, often inaccessible ravines—wet and dry.

And that wasn't the worst of it.

With the JMRC training roughly twenty-two hundred soldiers a day—sixty thousand last year alone—the installation's instructors and students chewed through a staggeringly large supply of munitions.

A staggering supply to which a trusted, outstanding sapper-turned Special Forces sergeant first class with an uncanny and unparalleled ingenuity in crafting field-expedient explosives would surely have been entrusted with near-unfettered access.

Brooks was right about one thing. Dicey didn't begin to cover this case.

She had to find a way to get close to LaCroix, and now. Because if they didn't have an entire team of savvy, adaptable agents trailing behind the man, twenty-four seven, ready to take him down before he managed to place that bomb, they'd never find it.

Not until it was too late.

2

Regan took a sip from her drink as she glanced at the mirror dominating the wall behind the counter of the off-post Bavarian bar. Between that oversized reflective surface and the etched-glass belly of a perfectly positioned grandfather clock across the room, she had a clear view of tonight's quarry: Sergeant First Class Evan LaCroix.

This was supposed to be the meet.

Their meet.

And yet, the sergeant was still glowering into his stein of beer, as he had been for most of the night. Despite her CO's backhanded phrasing, Brooks had been dead on about one thing. After three years as an MP and four more with CID, this was nowhere near her first time dangling from the proverbial hook. But it was the first time her target was more interested in his booze than in the bait.

Irritatingly, his friend wasn't.

From her vantage point, Regan caught the latest lingering assessment from LaCroix's behemoth of an escort. She ignored it, just as she'd ignored every other stare from the interloper since his arrival ten minutes earlier.

Instinct warned her she wouldn't be so lucky with the local off her right, doggedly edging closer until he'd reached the padded stool beside her. "Kann ich Ihnen ein Getränk kaufen?"

Regan infused her brow with wholesale confusion as she turned toward the twenty-something beanpole. "I'm sorry; I don't speak German."

Liar. She might not be fluent, but she'd picked up enough to know when she was turning down a drink.

Fortunately, the beanpole bought the brushoff and melted away.

Thank God.

Relief churned right back into frustration as Regan aimed another bouncing glance at the ornate grandfather and its reflective belly. She'd swear LaCroix was avoiding her. Worse, the colossus beside him was still sizing her up.

She was certain when the hulk leaned over to say something to the sergeant, then nodded—toward her.

LaCroix glanced up from his phone and stared at her for all of two seconds, before jackknifing to his feet.

Shit. Had she been made?

Scratch that. She relaxed. Her cover was intact.

That wasn't recognition biting into the sergeant's flushed features. Hell, LaCroix's attention wasn't even focused on her. He was glaring at his phone again. As