Secret Keeper

HER MISSING MEMORIES COULD BLOW THEIR CASE WIDE OPEN

Although a missing Annie Harlowe and her entire family were at the forefront of a Cooper Security investigation, Wade Cooper never expected to stumble upon the half-conscious beauty in his own backyard. Thankfully, Annie had somehow escaped her captors. Unfortunately, she had no memory of the past three weeks. Before long, the memories slowly began to return—and the threats to her life turned deadlier. And although her well-being was becoming more than just an assignment, Annie’s safety remained the battle-scarred marine’s top priority. Still, for a man who’d avoided the risks a relationship was bound to bring, could Wade really walk away once this case was closed? And what could his future possibly hold if he did?

“We’re a pair,” she said with a smile. “You’re all bitter and gimpy, and I’m muddle-headed and weak as a kitten.”

He laughed aloud, as if surprised by her blunt candor. “Bitter and gimpy, huh?” He pushed away from the tree trunk and patted the pistol he had tucked into a waistband holster attached to his jeans. “Well, that’s where the Glock comes in handy. The great equalizer.”

She eyed the gun, realizing for the first time that she’d allowed herself to go out in the woods alone with an armed stranger. Just how desperate had she become to find someone to trust?

Even now, with the possibility of treachery placed firmly in her head, she didn’t feel afraid of Wade Cooper. Every instinct she had told her he was one of the good guys.

But could she really trust her instincts, with so much of her memory missing?

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alabama native Paula Graves wrote her first book, a mystery starring herself and her neighborhood friends, at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. She is a member of Southern Magic Romance Writers, Heart of Dixie Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America.

Paula invites readers to visit her website, www.paulagraves.com .

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

Annie Harlowe—The D.C.-based reporter has no memory of the past three weeks of her life, or what happened to her parents, who had disappeared with her. Now Wade Cooper says she can trust him to keep her safe. But how can she trust anyone?

Wade Cooper—A war injury has left the former marine feeling like anything but a hero, but when a kidnapped woman escapes her captors and needs his help just to stay alive, can Wade rediscover his inner warrior?

General Emmett Harlowe—The air force general was one of three generals in charge of a dangerous peacekeeping mission in a war-plagued country in Central Asia. Are the national security secrets he possesses the reason for his recent abduction? Or does it have something to do with a mysterious coded journal?

General Edward Ross—The late army general kept a coded journal during his last few years of service. Now a whole lot of dangerous people want to get their hands on the journal. What secrets does it contain?

Security Services Unit (SSU)—MacLear Security’s secret unit disbanded when the company fell to scandal. But many of the operatives are still working as mercenaries, with no moral code to guide them besides greed, making them extremely dangerous.

Jesse Cooper—Wade’s brother is determined to figure out the secrets in the coded journal, certain the answer could help protect the country against dangerous forces aligned against it. But how far will he go, what will he risk, for the answers?

Evie Marsh—The daughter of U.S. Marine Corps general Baxter Marsh is convinced her father holds a key to the coded journal. But can she convince her stubborn parent to share what he knows with Cooper Security?

For my fellow Intrigue authors,

who are a fine bunch of writers and an endless source

of encouragement, experience and support.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Excerpt

Chapter One

Stars glittered across the vast wasteland spreading in front of her, blurred by the rain pouring down her face and into her eyes.

No, she thought, struggling for lucidity. Not stars. Couldn’t be stars. Not on the ground.

Water. Must be water.

Water. Water everywhere....

A large, dark shape loomed ahead, slumbering in the downpour. No lights there, she thought bleakly. Just a hulking black nothing that should have been her salvation.

Marsh. The name came to her fuzzy brain, clawing for a foothold. General Marsh. Get General Marsh. General Marsh can help.

But General Marsh wasn’t home.

She stumbled forward, coming to a stop only when she crashed sideways into the rough clapboard siding of the dark, silent house.

Maybe they were sleeping.

Her eyes drifted shut. Sleep. She needed sleep.

Some remnant of purpose slithered like a serpent deep inside her, jerking her back to unwanted consciousness. Her head throbbed in protest, but she pushed to her feet and weaved across the soggy ground to the front of the house.

The porch was wide but low slung, accessible by a couple of stumbling steps upward. She landed with a half tumble and caught herself on the old cane-bottomed rocker sitting by the front wall. Somehow avoiding an ungainly slump to the floor, she banged three times on the door. Cheek pressed against the solid wood, she listened for any sounds of movement from inside.

She heard nothing.

Tears burned her aching eyes, but she blinked them back, telling herself it was only the rain. Harlowes didn’t cry.

She banged her hand against the door again with a sobbing gasp.

No answer.

She shoved away from the door, swaying toward the porch stairs. As she gripped the slick railing, the world seemed to twirl around her for a moment. Somehow, she made it safely to the bottom step.

But she didn’t see the flagstone hidden in the rain-washed gloom.

Her toe caught the edge of the stone and she pitched forward. She tried to catch herself but her hand slipped on the wet grass and she hit hard, headfirst, on another flat stone.

Pain arced through her with a shower of bright sparkles. She pressed her hand to the side of her forehead and felt warm liquid mingling with the cold rain.

In the low light gleaming off the water, she saw rivulets of darkness spreading over her pale fingers. As she stared at the confusing sight, another drop of blackness splashed onto her palm. She had to wipe it off.

She dug her hands in the pockets of her jeans. The left side was empty, but in the right, she felt something thin and silky stuffed down into the bottom. She pulled it free and found herself holding a scarf.

It belonged to her mother. What was she doing with her mother’s scarf?

She wiped her hand on it and pushed unsteadily to her feet, turning a full circle, taking in the unfamiliar world. There was water behind her. A house in front of her.

Why was she at the lake? Why was she standing in the rain?

A cottony sensation filled her head, as if the contents of her skull were too large to be contained. She shook her head and the world started to spiral around her again.

Okay. No more shaking her head. She started toward the steps but stopped at the base, staring at the dark facade.

Nobody’s home, she thought.

She wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she did.

From somewhere not too far away came a noise. A car door, opening and closing. Footsteps crunching on a gravel drive. Even through the drumbeat of rain, the sound seemed clear and ominous.

Someone was near.

Hide.

She staggered away from the house, away from the lake. The woods thickened behind the lake house, rising toward the lowering clouds overhead. She was in the mountains.

An image of another house filled her mind. A sprawling pine cabin in the middle of the north Georgia mountains, where her parents were waiting.

She had to get there. They needed her.

Why did they need her?

Water slid into her eyes. She wiped it away, blinking at the blurry world around her. She had to get up the mountain.

Heading for the tree line, she stumbled as her feet caught in the underbrush. She caught herself on the trunk of a nearby pine, the rough bark scraping her palms, and somehow remained upright. But only for a few seconds. The next time the tangled vines of the forest floor ensnared her feet, she went down hard, landing on a bed of pine straw and mud.

She stared at the sideways world and saw only an alien landscape, full of mysteries and monsters. She closed her eyes, shutting everything out.

Slowly, blessedly, the world went away.

* * *

H E WASN ’ T GOING TO check the back door. The damned cat didn’t belong to him. It was just a stray cat that hung around the house looking for scraps. Yeah, it came inside pretty regularly these days, but it had lived out in the rain for God knew how long before showing up on the back doorstep. The cat could surely handle a little September rainstorm.

Wade Cooper sank deeper in his recliner and tried to focus on the well-worn Dick Francis novel he’d been attempting to read for the past hour, ever since he got home from a long day at the office. But the moan of the wind in the trees outside conspired with the rattle of rain on his roof to draw his attention to the back door.

Ah, hell. It wouldn’t hurt to take a quick look to see if the scruffy old tom was shivering on the back porch.

Rain blew in when he opened the door, a fine, cool mist reminding him fall had arrived, with winter just around the corner. A couple of years ago, Gossamer Ridge had seen near-record amounts of snowfall for an area that rarely saw the cold white stuff, and forecasters were hinting that another bad winter could be on the way.

Maybe he could coax the cat to stay inside more when the weather got cooler. Maybe feed him twice a day instead of once, and get him some toys to play with—

He stopped himself midthought.

He’s not your cat. He probably has a home and just mooches from everybody else in the area.

Nobody else in the neighborhood had claimed him, but who would? The wiry tom was missing the tip of his left ear and he had extra toes on each foot. Plus, he ate like a horse and stole everything he could get his mouth around. Unfortunately, he’d decided that Wade deserved to be the recipient of his purloined bounty, which meant once a week, Wade took a basket full of the cat’s haul around the neighborhood so people could reclaim the stolen socks, shoes, lawn tools and, on one humiliating occasion, a pair of women’s thong underwear.

“Ernie?” he called to the darkness, peering through the rainy gloom.

There was no movement outside in response.

The hum of his cell phone vibrating on the coffee table gave him something else to think about. He shut out the rain and grabbed the phone. His brother Jesse’s name stared back at him on the display. “Hey, Jesse.”

“Just got in from Georgia. No luck.” His brother sounded tired. Cooper Security had recently joined the hunt for Air Force General Emmett Harlowe, his wife, Cathy, and their grown daughter, Annie, who’d disappeared almost three weeks earlier from their vacation cabin in the north Georgia mountains near Dahlonega. Jesse had spent the last three days in north Georgia, following up the dwindling leads.

“The Harlowes couldn’t have disappeared into thin air.” Wade sank into his chair again, grimacing at the twinge in his bum knee. “Their cabin wasn’t that isolated, was it?”

“It’s pretty far off the beaten track,” Jesse admitted. “Nearest cabin is over a mile away. The last time anyone remembered seeing any of them was August nineteenth. That’s several days before they were reported missing.”

“No surveillance cameras in the area?” Wade asked.

“The police have checked every place in a fifty-mile radius.”

“Have you tried talking to General Marsh again?”

Jesse’s grim silence was an answer in itself. When he finally spoke, it was in a low growl. “He won’t take my calls.”

“Surely he’ll take Evie’s.”

“I don’t want to put her in the middle between the company and her father,” Jesse said firmly. “I hired her for her accounting skills, not her relationship to Rita. And definitely not because of her father.”

Wade thought his brother was being overly sensitive, given his tumultuous past relationship with Marsh’s eldest daughter, Rita, but he knew better than to push him. Jesse had his own way of doing things, and arguing made him dig his heels in that much more firmly. “I could try calling him myself,” he suggested.

“Do you think it would get you anywhere?”

Wade doubted it. He might not have the baggage of a failed engagement with Rita the way Jesse did, but it wasn’t likely the general would talk to him, either. The family lived less than a quarter mile away, along the lakeshore, but they were hardly friendly neighbors.

Still, there were lives at stake, the missing Harlowes included. It was worth a try. “I won’t know until I give it a go,” he answered Jesse’s question.

“Well, don’t try it tonight,” Jesse warned. “The general’s one of those early to bed, early to rise types. And New York’s an hour ahead.”

“New York?”

“Oh, right. I didn’t mention that. Evie said the general and his wife are in New York City with Rita. Trousseau shopping.”

Ouch. “Rita’s getting married?”

“Yeah. Some N.Y.U. professor she met when he was doing lectures at Emory. They hit it off and now she’s gotten a job as a history lecturer at some high-priced private prep school in Manhattan.”

Jesse hid it well, but Wade knew his brother still had some unhealed scars from his broken engagement to Rita Marsh, even though the relationship had ended years ago. Wade supposed Rita’s upcoming marriage might make a few of those old scars bleed again.

Poor idiot.

“I’ll email you the phone number. You can try him in the morning,” Jesse said. “I’ve got to check with everyone else and see where we are on the rest of the caseload. Talk to you later.”

Wade hung up and stared at his outstretched leg. It looked almost normal now, only the slightest bulge in the knee joint betraying the grievous injury that had nearly cost him his leg. Several surgeries and a knee replacement had spared him the fate of all too many of his fellow Marines. Though, considering how well some of his old military buddies were doing, artificial limbs and all, he had begun to wonder if the efforts to keep his leg had been a fool’s errand.

The torn muscles, tendons and ligaments, along with some nerve damage, meant the leg would never be the same. He’d had to leave the Marines, unable to meet the fitness requirements anymore.

Jesse had taken him on at Cooper Security because he was a Cooper, not because there was much he could offer the company in his current state. He wasn’t brainy like Isabel or cagey like Rick. He didn’t have a special skill set like Shannon’s computer genius or the analytical skills of his sister Megan. Before his injury, he’d been a bear of a man, strong and athletic, able to outrun and outfight anyone who challenged him.

All that was gone now.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

He pushed to his feet, ignoring the pain in his leg, and headed for the back door again. He might not be Super Marine anymore, but he could stop grousing about what he couldn’t do and go get a poor, wet old tomcat out of the rain.

The rain had stopped while he was talking to Jesse, but a damp fog remained, curling around his neck like phantom fingers. He shook off a little shiver and called out the door. “Ernie!”

This time, at the sound of his voice, a gray apparition appeared out of the dark woods, streaking across the backyard and coming to a stop at the edge of the patio. Now sheltered by the metal awning, the cat took his time stalking across the concrete patio, his bushy gray tail twitching in the air.

He came with another gift, Wade saw with dismay. It looked like a red and gray scarf.

It was only when Ernie got closer that Wade saw red splotches on his pale gray muzzle, as well.

Ernie laid the gift at Wade’s feet and purred softly.

Wade grimaced as he bent to pick up the scarf, his bum knee growling with pain. He let his good leg take most of his weight as he shook out the wet scarf. The drops of water that hit the patio at his feet were stained red.

Lifting the fabric to his nose, he sniffed. The metallic odor of blood hit him hard.

“Ernie, are you hurt?” Draping the scarf over the back of one of the outdoor chairs, he picked up the cat, even though he knew Ernie didn’t like being handled. The cat wriggled but let him examine his red-stained muzzle without scratching or biting. The red came off easily, and Wade could see no sign of any injury to the cat.

But the blood seemed fresh. Had he caught a mouse or a squirrel before he committed his latest act of theft?

“Let’s get inside, boy.” He opened the door, and Ernie scooted inside. The cat waited patiently for him to pour food and settled in front of the water heater, munching the kibble from an old plastic bowl Wade had designated for the cat’s use.

Wade went back outside and picked up the scarf. Taking another sniff, he caught a whiff of perfume mingled with the blood. The scarf itself was pale gray silk, more decorative than useful.

His gaze drawn to the woods from which Ernie had emerged, Wade started limping across the yard to the edge of the tree line. “Hello?” he called into the dense darkness beyond.

There was no answer.

As he peered into woods, he felt something rub against his leg. Ernie had rejoined him, staring up at him with luminous green eyes. He must not have pulled the door completely closed.

“What did you find out there, boy?”

The cat sniffed the air and padded quietly into the woods. He went about five feet and stopped, looking back at Wade.

Was the bloody feline trying to lead him somewhere?

The cat continued forward. Wade followed.

The undergrowth grew more dense, vines and fallen limbs twisting around his ankles, making the trek into the woods unexpectedly perilous. For a man who’d grown up in these woods, who’d once considered them as much his home as the old brick and clapboard farmhouse where his father still lived, feeling alienated from his old playground was disconcerting.

It was the leg. The weakened muscles, the artificial joint, the constant sensation of feebleness—Wade felt as if he were dragging around an alien limb, one that could turn on him in an instant given the opportunity.

Panic rose like cold fingers up his spine. He quelled the feeling with ruthless determination and upped his pace through the woods, ignoring the faint quiver low in his gut.

Ahead, Ernie had stopped near a broad-trunked oak tree. The cat moved cautiously around the tree, his tail flicking with curiosity. Wade caught up and circled the tree, as well.

The first thing he saw was a pale, blood-streaked hand. Small. Female.

Dark hair splayed out across the ground, wet from the rain and, in places, from blood, as well. Her face was half buried in the loamy mixture of old, dead leaves and newly fallen ones that carpeted the forest floor.

Wade started to kneel, grimacing at the sharp pain in his knee. He adjusted position, bending from the waist instead, and felt her throat for a pulse.

The woman moved at his touch, a quick, almost violent recoil. She turned wild, dark eyes toward him, though he didn’t think she was actually seeing him. Blood coated one side of her face from a long gash near her hair line that was still oozing blood.

“I don’t know anything,” she gasped, slapping his hands away.

“Shh,” Wade murmured, reaching into his pocket for his phone. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“I don’t know...anything....” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she was out again. He punched 911 into the phone and checked her pulse again. Steady, if too fast. But her skin was icy to the touch. If she wasn’t already going into shock, it wouldn’t be long.

Wade shrugged off his jacket and laid it across her, tucking in the edges while he told the 911 dispatcher the situation. The injured woman made a low groaning sound, deep in her chest, but remained utterly still.

He couldn’t make out much about her in the dark, other than a general description: female, youngish, dark hair and dark eyes. There was something vaguely familiar about her, though he was pretty sure he’d never met her before.

The 911 dispatcher offered to stay on the line with him, but he told her he was going to call his cousin Aaron, a sheriff’s deputy. He lived close by and might be able to beat the paramedics there.

Aaron answered on the second ring. “What’s up, Wade?”

Wade explained what he’d stumbled onto. “Not sure what happened to her, but I think this could be a crime scene.”

“On my way,” Aaron said.

True to his word, Wade’s cousin arrived within five minutes, ahead of the paramedics, swinging a bright flashlight as he moved toward Wade through the woods. “Wade?”

“Over here!” Wade waved him over.

Aaron hiked through the underbrush with ease, his long legs eating up big chunks of real estate at a time. He carried a large blanket in one arm and had his Smith & Wesson M&P 40 in his weapon hand. Behind him, his wife, Melissa, followed in his wake, struggling to keep up with her big husband’s long strides.

Reaching Wade’s side, Aaron aimed the flashlight beam toward the woman. Her eyelids crinkled when the bright light hit them, and she groaned again as she turned her face toward the ground to block out the light.

“That’s a good sign, believe it or not,” Melissa said, crouching beside the woman. She checked her carotid pulse, just as Wade had. “Ma’am? I need to take a look at you. Are you awake?”

Wade kicked himself. Why hadn’t he been checking her over, trying to keep her awake? Had the damned Kaziri rebels shot all his good sense out of him when they nearly took off his knee?

You can’t crouch beside her. You can’t kneel. Better to let someone able-bodied take over the hero business, right?

“Wade?”

Wade looked up at his cousin, tamping down his irritation with his own weakness. “Yeah?”