Page 5 of Taylor’s Warrior

Charity shook her head. “Nothing beyond some file names. The extensions weren’t familiar, so it’s likely they’re from an in-house system. Given the business KDT is in, I imagine there’s some really sensitive stuff on there, like specifications for military equipment. Does that mean anything to you?”

Taylor felt the color drain from her face. “Oh no. I assumed he’d just grabbed an envelope from the office for convenience. What’s he done?”

Charity set her coffee down on the counter. “Are you okay? You look like you’re about to puke.”

Then she looked how she felt. What her friend had said had rocked her to the core. It didn’t take a great deal of imagination to whip up a horrifying worst-case scenario.

With a weird sense of detachment, she watched Charity take the mug from her hands and deposit it on the counter beside her own. “Tay, I think we’d both better go sit down. That way, I won’t have to haul you to the couch if you pass out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so pale before.”

Still in a daze, Taylor couldn’t respond to her friend’s gentle teasing as she made her way to the long, comfortable couch and dropped onto it like a marionette whose strings had been cut. “How could I have been so naive?”

“Hey.” Charity wrapped an arm around her and drew her into a comforting hug. “Don’t go there. We don’t have all the details yet, but no matter what the full story is, it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything. He’s your dad, someone you should be able to trust, and if he’s gotten involved in something sketchy, that’s on him—not you. You’re not naive—you’re a loving daughter, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Taylor still blamed herself. “He’s avoided my questions for years, and I’ve let him do it. I should have pushed him harder for answers, but I didn’t. I mean… he’s Pops. I’ve looked up to him all my life. He was all I had for years.”

Charity’s arms tightened around her. “First off, how could you have pushed him harder? You can’t talk to him. All you’ve been able to do is write to him, and that makes questions easy to ignore. It’s not as if you knew his address to spring a surprise visit on him. Don’t beat yourself up for something that’s way out of your control.”

Charity made a very valid point. During their earlier conversation, Taylor had explained the process she and her father used to communicate. It involved a series of forwarding services and PO boxes, so all either Taylor or her father knew was the address of the forwarding service at the start of the chain. There was no way either of them could find out even the general location of the other. Taylor nodded, reluctantly acknowledging the truth in her friend’s words.

“Would it help to talk about him?”

Taylor worried her lower lip. “If I start, I might not stop. And I’m sure you don’t want to hear⁠—”

“Tay, just stop right there. I’m your friend. You were there for me through some of the worst times of my life with Ray—I’m here for you now, okay? It’s what friends do.”

After their divorce, Ray Slattery—Charity’s volatile ex-husband—had carried out a series of attacks on her and her business, mostly by proxy. The attacks had escalated, culminating in his hands-on attempt to burn down her coffee shop with both Charity and Nick inside. The two of them had been lucky to survive, but Slattery hadn’t been as fortunate, having been killed by one of his own incendiary devices. Through it all, Taylor had been there to support her best friend.

“If you’re sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure. Why don’t I get us a fresh cup of coffee?” Charity stood.

Taylor managed a halfhearted smile. “I still have some of those chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. I think we could both use one.”

“Oh, you surely know the way to my heart. I’ll be right back.”

Several sips of coffee and half a cupcake later, Taylor felt calm enough to tell her story without letting too much emotion get in the way.

“My mom died when I was really young. I don’t remember a great deal about her now. Once I was old enough to remember stuff, though, Pops was always there. Or as much as he could be—he was always working, so he could keep a roof over our heads and pay all the bills…”

CHAPTER 3

“Have you made any sense of it all yet?”

At the sound of her voice—and more the point, the warm caring in her words—Nick lifted his gaze from the twin screens in front of him and rolled his shoulders. Until that moment, he hadn’t even really noticed the increasing tightness in them, but hell, it was making itself known with a vengeance now.

For the last couple of days, he’d been juggling his time between running the company and examining the financial data in the package from Charles Markham, leading to some long hours at his regular laptop after Charity had supervised the transfer of data from the air-gapped computer.

“There’s something sketchy going on, but the ways they’ve hidden it—or tried to hide it—are very clever. There are missing details, but what I’ve found so far isn’t good.” He flexed his shoulders again.

Determined hands attacked that aching part of his anatomy and dug in, kneading the tortured muscles with surprising strength. “What have I told you about taking breaks?”

Nick looked around and up—as much as he could manage—to catch a glimpse of his wife’s focused expression. “What can I say? Working out what they’re doing and how they’re doing it is a fascinating challenge.”

“And you just love a fascinating challenge.”

Nick shrugged, almost wincing at the needle-sharp shard of pain that shot down his neck. “Tex isn’t the only one.”

“Have you heard anything from Tex yet?”