Chapter Two
The shadow of the Northstar Security Firm building barely reached the parking spot where Egan Maddox sat in his battered pickup truck. Despite the early September warmth inside the vehicle, a prickle of gooseflesh appeared on his forearms as he stared at the headquarters of the elite Washington, D.C., security agency.
On the surface, the single-story structure surrounded by green shrubbery seemed like an ordinary office building. Just a short distance from the nearby rail yard, this building was as unique in its location as in its purpose. Egan turned a critical eye toward the roof where various radio antennae and satellite dishes stood in silent testament to the activity that took place inside.
He’d made a mistake thinking he could simply return to work as if nothing had happened between him and the director, Byron O’Neal. The heaviness in his chest told him he wasn’t ready. Driving away now would rectify that mistake.
As he reached for the ignition, his peripheral vision caught movement. He hesitated, looked at the building again, and spotted a silhouette in O’Neal’s corner window. The director’s uncanny sixth sense must have locked on the instant Egan drove through the security gates. The clamor of the truck’s rusted suspension wouldn’t have given him away. Northstar’s windows weren’t only bulletproof—they were soundproof as well.
Egan let out a breath. He was already here. And he wasn’t a coward. In spite of his uncertain feelings for the man at the window, he owed O’Neal the courtesy of answering his summons in person.
Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades, dampening his shirt, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t here to impress. However, until he got this meeting over, he wouldn’t know why he’d been called in. Especially since he wasn’t due to return to work for another three weeks.
He slid the keys out of the ignition, reached outside the truck’s open window and thumbed the latch on the door. It protested with a screech as he stepped onto the hot asphalt, which had been softened by the late afternoon sun. As humid as it was, the District could really use some of the rain pounding the South this summer. He squinted at the cloudless sky. It didn’t look like they would get any today.
Although the truck was a relic, it had been his brother’s, and Egan kept it purring like a kitten. He wasn’t giving a thief any chance to steal it. He rolled up the window and locked the door, despite the fact that the firm’s perimeter was surrounded by twelve-foot-high razor-wire fencing, guarded around the clock. Northstar maintained security measures that would put the Pentagon to shame.
He took his time crossing the parking lot, not so much in deference to his still healing leg, but delaying the inevitable. When he opened the front door, a rush of air-conditioning greeted him. Five steps inside the foyer brought him to a chest-high counter that doubled as a reception desk and defense barrier offering a message to Northstar’s elite clientele that balanced somewhere between we-welcome-your-business and stop-or-we’ll-shoot. Not sure of his welcome, Egan could almost feel the gun barrel sighted on his forehead.
The guard, Hicks, looked up as Egan approached the counter and offered a friendly smile. “Good to see you again, Mr. Maddox.”
Approaching his late sixties, Hicks stayed as fit as all the agents. A stickler for the regs, he never broke protocol by using the agent’s first name or failing to check ID before allowing anyone to pass into the inner sanctum of the firm.
“Hey, Hicks.” Egan slid his badge across the counter. “How’s the family?”
Hicks took Egan’s ID and discreetly checked it against a list on a computer monitor. “Maggie’s going to give us our first grandchild in December.” The guard’s face beamed with pride.
Egan had felt that way when his little brother was born. The thought stabbed, and he shoved it away and returned the smile. “Congratulations. Boy or girl?”
Hicks grunted. “Maggie doesn’t want to know until it’s here. Figures nature intended it that way. My wife’s already bought every color of baby clothes on the shelves. Liked to nearly break the bank.”
Egan chuckled as Hicks handed back his ID. “Better hide the credit cards.”
Hicks’ expression sobered a little but remained friendly. “Looks like Mr. O’Neal is expecting you and here I am, jawing away. I’ll let him know you’re here.” He slipped his finger below the desk and hit a button. “Go right in.”
Egan didn’t bother to tell the guard that O’Neal already knew he was here. Instead, he said, “Thanks,” and tucked his ID badge into his wallet.
Egan experienced an odd sensation of homecoming as he passed through a second set of glass doors. Along the far wall, the name of the company and its straightforward mission statement stood out in gold lettering: NORTHSTAR—GUIDED BY THE TRUTH.
He grunted and stretched his leg to ease the ache from the green-stick fracture he’d received seven weeks ago while saving O’Neal’s truth. The hell of it was, Egan still believed in that mission statement. He’d completed his last assignment the way it should’ve been handled and, for his efforts, received a two-month leave of absence to recuperate and reevaluate his attitude.
He wasn’t sure of his continued employment after his leave of absence, but having given Northstar seven years of his life, it felt good to be back. Then again, maybe O’Neal was tired of waiting for him to make up his mind and had decided to fire him.
Considering the possibility of a formal dismissal, Egan bypassed the open office space and headed for the conference room. If O’Neal was lowering the axe, Egan preferred to keep the incident private—unlike the last time he and O’Neal butted heads. That day, nearly everyone in the building had seen what an ass Egan had been.
The hallway leading to the director’s office was empty. Why wasn’t O’Neal standing there waiting for him? Maybe Egan was mistaken, and it hadn’t been O’Neal’s shadow he’d seen in the window. He almost turned around to leave but stopped himself and entered the conference room, instead. Neutral ground was always a good tactic.
The room hadn’t changed during his absence, not that he’d expected it to. Sinking into a cushioned chair, he rested his palms on the expensive cherry wood table. Other than the lab, the conference room exhibited the only obvious extravagance Northstar indulged in. Most of the firm’s profits were funneled into the latest surveillance technology and generous salaries.
Regardless of the circumstances surrounding his absence, he’d been on the receiving end of O’Neal’s generosity during his convalescence. He no longer knew where he stood with the director, but Egan would never dispute that Byron O’Neal knew how to take care of his people.
“Egan.” Allison Richards, one of Northstar’s uber-talented lab techs, peeked into the conference room. The hall lighting gleamed off her long, dark braid that swung over her shoulder as she stuck her head around the doorway. “There you are.”
“Hey, Allison.”
She smiled and walked into the room, her slender arms stretched out in greeting. “I see you’re getting around without the crutches.”
She seemed pleased to see him and that dulled some of his anxiousness. He stood and gave her a quick hug. “Yeah. Not running any races yet, but I’m back on my training schedule.”
“Good. Then I won’t feel badly about taking your money after the Super Bowl again this year.”
Egan couldn’t help but smile. One of the things he liked about Allison was how she hid her brilliant, deductive mind under a geeky demeanor. When she’d announced she was running the office football pool, most of the agents had been lulled into thinking she knew nothing about the game—to the tune of about a hundred dollars. “Your secret’s out. It won’t be as easy next time.”
“Just you wait and see.” She smiled warmly.
First Hicks and now Allison. Both seemed glad to have him back. Maybe that homecoming feeling was a good omen.
“Byron asked me to find you.” She nodded toward the end of the hall. “He’s waiting for you in his office.”
Or not.
He followed Allison to the director’s office. Seeing the solid oak door conjured up a memory that still burdened him more than his argument with O’Neal. After all these weeks, the encounter with O’Neal’s daughter, Kellee, continued to haunt him. He scrubbed a hand over his face as though it would erase the way he’d coldly used her to get back at her father.
“Egan?” Allison’s probing voice broke into his self-recrimination. “Byron’s waiting.”
He gave her a sidelong glance. She frowned, proving that he hadn’t hidden his feelings as well as he’d thought. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door without knocking and entered.
O’Neal stood but didn’t offer his hand as Egan closed the door. “Have a seat, Maddox.” He gestured toward the visitor’s chair.
Egan glanced down and noticed the chair’s crooked armrest, a reminder of his volatile outburst during his last visit to this office. He wondered why O’Neal hadn’t replaced it. Looking at it every day had to remind the man of their final words.
Shoving aside the unpleasant memory, he sat and waited for the director’s opening gambit. Instead, O’Neal turned and faced the window.
Approaching retirement age hadn’t slowed the director a bit. Tall, lean, and with as much energy as any of his agents, he managed the elite private security business more like a coach than an owner. Today, his shoulders looked more rounded and the hair on the back of his head more gray. The director turned and stared at a picture on the credenza. Worry lines bracketed his mouth.
Egan looked at the picture. It was the one he’d taken not long after joining Northstar.
Katherine O’Neal, Byron’s wife, had invited Egan to join their family on a picnic in Rock Creek Park. In the picture, O’Neal lovingly draped his arm over his wife’s shoulder. Kellee and her brother, Riley, were crowded beside their parents, laughing as Egan snapped the photo. He’d felt welcome, almost part of the family. It was the last family picture before Katherine had been killed seven years ago.
The director lifted his gaze. For an instant, defeat filled the old man’s face, and the pit of Egan’s stomach went ice cold. Then, the director’s eyes got that candid glint Egan was so accustomed to and locked on like a laser.
Egan held his stare. Silence hung between them like an impenetrable curtain.
Finally, O’Neal cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming.” His gaze strayed to the photograph again.
The unexpected courtesy had Egan mentally backpedalling. He swallowed. “Your message sounded…urgent.”
O’Neal nodded slowly. “Yes.” His face looked as if it was carved from dull granite. The man wasn’t simply getting older, he was old.
Not knowing what else to say, Egan waited. No matter how he felt about the man now, Egan credited Byron O’Neal with saving him from a journey of alcoholic self-destruction. Because of that intervention, his brother’s death was no longer an open wound. Egan would never forgive himself for Rory’s death, but he was learning to cope with his loss.
At that moment, he realized why he’d come after O’Neal’s phone call. Why he would always come. As much as the two of them disagreed on certain things, he owed the man. Perhaps more than he could repay in this lifetime.
O’Neal sank heavily into his chair, the leather protesting with a small squeak. “I’ll come straight to the point, Maddox. I need your help.”
Egan barely controlled the whoosh of relief. Although he didn’t need this job, he didn’t want to fail here as he’d failed in the Navy. However, he wasn’t quite ready to give O’Neal the satisfaction of knowing how anxious he’d been. “I haven’t made any decision about returning to work yet.”
O’Neal pursed his lips. “I’m not twisting your arm to come back to Northstar. Although, Lord knows, we could use you. Whatever you decide is completely up to you.”
“Then what do you need?”
Clasping his hands together, O’Neal leaned forward on his desk. “This request is unusual and must be handled delicately.”
Egan narrowed his eyes. “Delicate isn’t my forte. You, of all people, know that.”
To say his last assignment to retrieve a couple of AWOL seamen hadn’t gone well, was an understatement. As a former Navy SEAL, honor, courage, and commitment had been his creed for too many years to go easy on the young men once he found them. One of the sailors was the son of Congressman Folk, a prominent California congressional representative. Egan had broken Ensign Folk’s nose after he’d attacked Egan with a crowbar. The politician had somehow kept his son’s misconduct off the books and threatened Northstar with a lawsuit.
Even though the kid had broken Egan’s leg, Northstar’s rules of conduct involving clients compelled O’Neal to reprimand his agent for “acts unbecoming.” O’Neal had suspended Egan from active field operations to recover and to rethink his attitude.
Egan felt O’Neal had compromised the firm’s integrity. He blew up during the post-op debrief—grabbing the nearest chair, breaking off the armrest, and then quitting his job. O’Neal had rejected Egan’s resignation and insisted on a two-month leave of absence, instead.
“I’m asking for your help as a personal favor.” O’Neal’s strained voice interrupted Egan’s thoughts.
Egan raised his eyebrows.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” O’Neal continued. “And all expenses will be covered.”
Egan’s gut tightened again. As his employer, the director didn’t need to ask for favors. Most favors didn’t require monetary compensation. “What exactly are you asking me to do?”
O’Neal took a deep breath and held it. His face looked ashen, his eyes full of desperation. “Kellee is missing. I need you to find her.” The raw announcement came out in a rush.
Egan’s memory of his last encounter with Kellee punched him in the solar plexus. Hard. How he’d treated her, what he’d said…
Questions about what had happened to her swirled in his head, but he held his tongue. O’Neal would deliver the details. It was what the man did, day in and day out, preparing his agents for missions.
“No one has heard from her for two days,” O’Neal said heavily. “And this morning, a man was found dead in her apartment. There was blood everywhere.”
“Apartment?” The question came out harsher than Egan intended. “I thought she lived with you?”
The director slowly shook his head. “She moved out.”
A band across Egan’s chest seemed to squeeze all the air from his lungs. “Is the blood Kellee’s?”
O’Neal swallowed. “Too soon to know.”
No wonder the director looked like he’d aged twenty years.
Icy sweat slid down Egan’s spine. He stood and reached for a pen and notepad on the desk. “I’ll head over now. What’s the address?”
“Panama City, Florida.”
Egan’s head whipped up. “Good God, man. That city was right in the path of Hurricane Igor!”
O’Neal slapped his palm over the notepad. “Damn it, Maddox. Don’t you think I know that? I’ll give you the details if you’ll stop barking at me.”
Egan tried to wrap his head around O’Neal’s news. “So, she left town?” He didn’t want to ask, but he had to know. “Because of what I did?”
O’Neal grimaced. “I wish I could blame you. But, no. I didn’t want her to train as an agent, so I sent her down there to get away from Northstar.”
“She’s too young to be an agent.” O’Neal should keep his only daughter away from dangerous assignments Northstar typically handled.
“She’s twenty-five, two years older than Riley was when he started.”
Egan swallowed. Riley—Byron’s son, and second-in-command of Northstar. He must be frantic about his missing sister. Stepping away from O’Neal’s desk, Egan’s SEAL training took over. “Give me the details.”
Settling in his chair, O’Neal looked up. “I called in a marker with a friend and got her a job with Collins Services, a private investigation agency.”
“Doing what?”
“Whatever they had available,” O’Neal said.
“You didn’t dissuade them from taking her on as an operative?”
“No.” O’Neal sighed. “I figured she needed a little space—to work for someone besides me. I hoped in a few weeks she’d see she wasn’t cut out for this line of work, come home and find a different career.”
“But you didn’t tell her that, did you?” It wasn’t a question. Egan had been around the O’Neals long enough to know their family dynamic was like a rubber band. Sometimes relaxed, sometimes stretched, and sometimes it snapped back with a bite.
O’Neal shook his head.
“You must have seen the news about the storm. Surely, you tried to contact her.”
“I called all day. I couldn’t get through. We know her phone is on, but she’s not picking up.” O’Neal rubbed at a spot between his eyes. “When we couldn’t reach her after the storm passed, I called Collins. He had no idea she was missing—he thought she’d taken downtime to come home until the storm was over. Then I called the local police. When they checked the apartment, they found a man. He’d been stabbed to death.”
“So, the blood is probably his,” Egan said, hoping none of it was Kellee’s. “Do you know who he is?”
O’Neal’s mouth opened, then closed. He shook his head. “Riley’s down there now, working with the police on an ID.”
Egan picked up on O’Neal’s hesitation. The man was withholding something. And Riley…What must he be going through? When Egan had lost his only brother—He stopped the thought. This wasn’t about him. He focused on Kellee.
“Do you think her disappearance is related to a case Collins was working on?”
“I don’t know.” O’Neal shrugged. “She might just be displaced after the storm, but—”
Egan didn’t want to think about what O’Neal left unsaid. A person missing after this last hurricane wasn’t unusual. Thousands of people had been evacuated. She may have left on quarrelsome terms with her father, but not contacting her family wasn’t typical of the Kellee O’Neal he knew. Factor in a dead man at her apartment…and the blood…the situation looked grim.
O’Neal was obviously setting up two fronts. Riley would follow leads on the dead man. Egan’s job—locate Kellee. Was it a rescue or recovery assignment? Did O’Neal think she was already in a body bag? Egan balked at the thought.
“She’s not dead,” O’Neal said as though he’d read Egan’s thoughts. “She’s alive. I can feel it. I need you to find her.” He placed his elbows on the desk and rested his forehead in his palms.
The only other time Egan had seen the director like this was when his wife died. To this day, Katherine’s murder remained Northstar’s single unsolved case.
“I’ll find her.” Egan knew this was something he could do to repay his debt to this man and ease his own guilt.
“Thank you.” O’Neal lifted his head and looked him directly in the eyes. “That’s not all I need from you.”
Asking him to find his daughter wasn’t enough?
“Once you’ve found her, I want you to go underground. That’s why I called you. It’s what you’re good at. You must make her disappear.” O’Neal opened a drawer and took out an envelope. “Here’s some cash. Buy a prepaid cell phone. More than one, if you have to. There’s a number in there. Memorize it. When you find Kellee, call once. After that, no more contact. My daughter doesn’t exist.”
“Isn’t this a bit extreme? If she got tangled up in a case down there, surely we can take care of it once I bring her home.”
“Please, Egan. Do this for me.” Byron O’Neal’s pleading seemed completely out of character.
Egan swallowed his questions. He couldn’t begin to guess at O’Neal’s agenda, but he could locate Kellee and hide her for a few days. Like O’Neal said, it was what he was good at. “How will I know when to bring her home?”
“You won’t. Once I know you’ve located her, I’ll have an all-clear signal ready to pass along to you.”
“Why all the secrecy?”
“I’m not at liberty to explain. I’m sorry. Please believe me when I tell you, I don’t think it’s safe to bring her home right now.”
“You’re asking me to find your daughter and keep her safe, but you’re blindfolding me and tying my hands.” Egan couldn’t keep the disapproval out of his voice. “This is just like the last assignment. Who am I supposed to hide her from?”
O’Neal hesitated. “Everyone.” The older man leaned back in his chair with a sigh that seemed to deflate him. “I know it’s a lot to ask, Maddox. I believe you’re her best chance at coming out of this alive.”
Egan’s fist found the desktop before he even realized he’d swung it. “Out of what alive? Tell me something, for God’s sake!”
O’Neal’s eyes flashed with familiar fire. His lips thinned and gaze narrowed. “All I can tell you is what my gut says—this isn’t about a case Kellee worked. I believe my past, and hers, has finally caught up with us.”