Page 5 of K-9 Confidential

A low huff reached her ears.

Just before an impossible weight landed on her back.

The world tipped off balance as she collapsed forward. Her palms took most of the impact with bits of dirt embedded in the skin. Air exploded from her chest. Ten more feet. That was all that was left between her and the car. Charlie threw her elbow back to dislodge the weight on her back but met nothing but rolls of fat and fur. She tried to roll free. Only the mass of bull terrier refused to budge. She dug her toes into the ground and got a mouthful of dirt for her effort. It was no use. “For crying out loud, what does Granger feed you? I can’t breathe.”

“I warned you not to run. Zeus’s favorite game is jump-on-the-bad-guy.”

Is that what he really thought of her? That she was a bad guy?

“Get this thing off of me.” Her ribs protested every inhale. This wasn’t how she was supposed to die. She’d always imagined her final moments entailed facing off with her father and his army for not only ruining her life but her sisters’. Not suffocating beneath an overweight K9.

“Off.” There was a bit of life in that single word, a kind of affection he’d once used when talking to her. “Now, are you coming back with me to Socorro willingly, or will Zeus have to sit on you again?”

She gasped for breath, rolling onto her back. “Please. I can’t take anymore dog butt.”

Granger centered in her vision. Nothing like the man she remembered all those years ago, and yet at the same time, everything she’d missed about this place.

Zeus penetrated her vision with a near smile as his tongue lolled to one side. And drooled down the side of her face.

* * *

A war hadstarted behind his sternum. One between his personal life and the job he was supposed to do as a counterterrorism operative. Charlie Acker hadn’t just betrayed her family when she’d dropped off the grid. She’d betrayed him and everything they’d done together.

Their secret plan to erode Henry Acker’s immunity, to get her sisters as far from their father as possible, to free the people of Vaughn—it’d all gone up in flames with the pipeline she’d destroyed. He’d put his entire career on the line for her. And she’d merely used him to fake her death. All these years, the evidence hadn’t lined up, but there was nowhere else for her to run now. If Charlie wanted to keep the new life she’d built, she’d have to rely on him.

“You found her.” Ivy Bardot folded her arms over her chest, emerald green eyes dead set on the woman pacing the interrogation room.

It was an observational tactic. Leave a suspect or witness alone and study their behavior. Right now, the amount of tension in Charlie’s shoulders told him she didn’t like being kept in one place. Which meant she most likely hadn’t let herself settle down in one location for long. Maybe a few weeks at a time. Never more than a couple months. Even after convincing everyone she’d died in that pipeline explosion, there was still a part of her that believed she could be found at any moment. And with good reason.

“Scarlett and Jones are searching the safe house as we speak.” Socorro’s security and combat experts wouldn’t let anything slide by them. If Charlie was hiding something in that place, they were going to find it. “She would’ve had to go by an alias all this time. I instructed them to start there. Give us a chance to see what she’s been up to the past ten years. Maybe build a map of her activities.”

“Why do I get the feeling you don’t believe they’re going to find anything?” Ivy’s insight almost seemed supernatural, as though Socorro’s founder could read the minds of her team. No matter what each of them were feeling or denying, Ivy saw right through every single one of them. She was a force to be reckoned with against congress, in the boardroom and her personal life. If that last one even existed.

“Henry Acker raised Charlie and her sisters to clean up after themselves. It’s one of the reasons it’s been impossible for us to pin any of these attacks on him or his army.” Granger took in every movement, every shift from the interrogation room. The longer they left her inside, the higher chance she’d shut down. He had to time this right. Like a countdown on one of the bombs she used to handle, there was always a point of no return. “Based on what I saw of the safe house, she wasn’t planning on staying there for long. No supplies, no more than a couple days of food. I’ve searched that property a dozen times. She wouldn’t have left anything behind that could expose her. Like father, like daughter. She tried to wash it off, but there was dirt under her fingernails and smeared on her face.”

“She dug something up. A new alias? Cash?” Ivy unwound her arms, turning toward him. “You’re thinking she might still be in contact with Acker and his army?”

“I’m not sure.” It would be easy to assume the connection, but he didn’t have any proof. “Charlie has always resented her father’s political leanings. Called him the homegrown terrorist nobody suspected. She faked her death after the pipeline explosion to get away from him. I can’t imagine her willingly participating in his organization again.”

“And how would you know that?” Ivy’s attention attempted to dig deep past his armor. “From what I understood of your time with Homeland Security, you and Charlie Acker were never in contact. You were investigating Acker’s Army from the outside. Or was there something missing from the reports you submitted?”

“No. Just a hunch.” As Socorro’s counterterrorism operative, Granger had spent the past four years helping Ivy build her own personal army to counterSangre por Sangre. He’d risked his life, his morals and his trust in the people he served with, and he didn’t owe her a damn thing. Certainly not an explanation into how little he’d included in his final report concerning the investigation into Charlie and her family.

He shoved through the interrogation room door with Ivy on his heels.

Charlie turned in expectation, instantly neutralizing any hint of the tension she’d let build over the past thirty minutes of isolation at the sight of Ivy at his back. Like the good terrorist she was supposed to be. “Who’s this?”

“Ivy Bardot, Charlie Acker.” He motioned between both women. One a monument of his past, the other his future. Granger slapped a file folder onto the table, and the surveillance photos Ivy had shown him this morning spilled out. “Ivy is the founder and CEO of Socorro. You’re here because we got these from an inside source of theSangre por Sangrecartel.”

Charlie moved—far too gracefully—to pick up the top photo of the file. No sign of distress. Nothing to suggest she was taking this as seriously as they were, apart from the loss of color in her cheeks. Good. She needed to know what kind of mess she’d left behind and just how far the cartel would go to survive. “Who’s your source?”

“That’s none of your concern, Ms. Acker,” Ivy said. “Now I’ve been patient, but I’m afraid we don’t have much time beforeSangre por Sangretraces you back to Socorro, and I can’t risk a head-on attack at the moment. So let’s just get everything out in the open, shall we? You were responsible for the destruction of the Alamo pipeline ten years ago.”

Charlie’s gaze cut to Granger, but he wasn’t going to help her out of this one. Despite her claims of innocence, of arguing with her sister and trying to stop those explosives from going off, evidence never lied. It’d been her blood investigators had collected from the scene. Preserved with that of five others. She refocused on Ivy, pulling her shoulders back. “Yes.”

Surprise pricked at the back of Granger’s neck. Then turned ice-cold in his veins. No matter what the evidence said, he’d wanted to believe her. To believe that she wouldn’t have gone along with Henry Acker’s plan to sabotage the government and everyone he considered a threat. Then again, he hadn’t really known her, had he? She’d been a suspect, then a source. Then something far more. All in the span of weeks.

“I designed the mission. My sisters and I were instructed to set charges at two intervals along the southwest curve of the pipeline outside the town of Bennett.” Slow breathing exaggerated the rise and fall of Charlie’s shoulders, to the point Granger was convinced she was forcing herself to keep her inhales and exhales at an even pace. To prove she was in control. “My younger sister, Erin, took care of the first one. Sage was in charge of setting the second. I was assigned to be the lookout.”

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