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Jared’s flat stare did nothing to calm her runaway pulse. He stepped aside, allowing her to slide past him into the corridor. She strolled toward her office with deliberate casualness, not looking back, but the twitch in her shoulders told her his gaze followed. Every day she kept the information on the weapons shipments from him, she dug herself a deeper hole.
Her phone vibrated against her sweaty palm.Private caller.Usually, she wouldn’t answer, but desperate hope that it was Lachlan had her pressing the green button.“Hello?”
“Sophia?” The man had a deep voice she didn’t recognize.
“Who’s this?”
“I’m a friend of Lachlan’s. Are you alone?”
The question froze her in her tracks. She looked around. Penny’s desk sat empty, and Jared had been headed in the opposite direction. She whispered anyway. “Who are you? How did you get my number?”
“Nathan Long. I got it from Lachlan. In case something happened to him.” She gasped, but he kept speaking. “I have information to give you. In person.”
He had a drawl.Southern, maybe Texan.His name seemed vaguely familiar. Lachlan had wanted her to stay with his friend when he went to Kabul. “The SEAL?”
“Yes. Did he mention me? I’m flattered.” A hint of humor coated the man’s words.
Now that she thought about it, she remembered Lachlan mentioning a SEAL team involved in the hostage rescue mission. Nathan must have been there. “When can we meet and where?”
“My place, as soon as you can get here. I’ll give you the address.”
Her inner voice waved a big red flag. What if he wasn’t who he said he was, and she was walking into a trap? If the past two weeks had taught her anything, it was that she couldn’t be so trusting anymore. “Let’s meet in a public place.”
“What I have to show you can’t happen in a public place. Look, I swear on my honor and Lachlan’s memory, my sole intention is to protect you and find out who blew up our boy.”
She flinched at his casual reference to Lachlan’s death. And why did he think he needed to protect her? What did he know?
“How do I know for sure you’re his friend?”
“The art gallery.”
“Art gallery?” Now she sounded like a clueless parrot.
“You talked him into buying the painting that now hangs in his living room. He had a picture of you posing with it on his phone.”
The Highlander charging into battle.
“He bought it?” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I didn’t know.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” Nathan replied in a tone dry as the Sonoran desert.
He purchased the painting because she liked it. And yet, he hadn’t told her. She cleared her throat to keep the tremble out of her voice. “Are…were you and Lachlan close?”
Did he trust you?
It took Nathan a moment to reply. “Yeah, we’re pretty tight. Been through some shi—ah stuff together.”
He can’t use the past tense, either. If Nathan had also been through that terrible mission, she knew what “stuff” bonded the two men. She sighed. “Where do you live?”
It might be foolish, but she wasn’t passing up the opportunity to meet someone who could tell her more about Lachlan. She wanted to know so many things about the man she’d been falling in love with and risked her career to avenge.
Nathan rattled off his address. “Come alone.”
She hung up, entered his information into her phone, then called Emily.
“Did you get what you needed to send to my dad?” Emily asked.
“No.” Sophia entered her office and closed the door. “Not yet. Listen, Emily, a man contacted me. Said he was Lachlan’s friend. He has information about Lachlan, and he wants to meet. At his home.”