Page 13 of Shadow Games

Rowan sighed. “I took him a transcript of what Ken had bitched about over the past three years. Bad OPS, bad commanders. Men he hated working with. I have recordings of all of it.”

“Damn,” Wyatt breathed. “Did he talk about me?”

Rowan nodded. “He laughed about getting you washed out.”

“That fucker.”

The server returned with their ice waters. She set them down with a smile, then left.

“So, how did you get these recordings?” he asked her.

“I just recorded it when he would get drunk.” She shrugged. “If he wasn't on an op, then he was at home, usually drinking. Sometimes other teammates would come over, sometimes not. Anyway, I could tell our relationship was going downhill and I started recording things. I knew everything I recorded would be stored directly to the cloud. But I also made transcripts of it. I was kind of holding onto it for leverage in case he didn’t sign the divorce papers.”

“That was pretty damn smart of you.”

Rowan shrugged again. “I was looking for a way out and he was being a dick about letting me go.”

“I'm sorry about that, by the way,” Wyatt told her. “I know you had big hopes for your marriage.”

Yeah, she didn't want to talk about that right now.

“He also had a logbook he kept track of things in. But I haven't been able to find it.”

“It wasn't in the house?”

She shook her head. “Not that I found.”

“So where else would he have put it?”

“I'm not sure,” she said, lips pursed. “He could have burned it for all I know.”

And that was the hardest part of this whole thing. There were people chasing her. She assumed the cartels, but in reality, it could be anyone trying to get his logbook for any reason. “He had a lot of names in there,” she admitted. “I took pictures of several of the pages, but not all of them. He came home early one day and almost caught me.”

Wyatt's brows quirked. “That could have been bad.”

“You're telling me?” She laughed lightly. “We've been separated for almost a year, and he’d refused to sign divorce papers. I moved out here six months ago to be closer to my dad. Got a job. But for some reason two weeks ago he called me and wanted to meet. He sounded kind of desperate. So, idiot that I am, I went. Drove all the way to Columbus, about a two-hour trip one way. He made noises like he missed me, but it didn’t seem to ring true. He told me he was heading out to see his parents in Jersey. I told him to tell them hi, and I left. He gave me a bag of my stuff from the house and before you ask, yes, I looked. His logbook wasn’t in there. Then, last week, his CO called me and told me they’d found his body in the parking lot of a bar in Texas. He’d been shot in the back of the head.”

She blinked, still unable to believe he was gone. The man had driven her batty, but no one deserved to die like that.

“My question is, how the hell did he get to Texas so fast, and why had he gone there in the first place? I talked to him in Columbus on his layover, then he went to New Jersey to see his parents. He was very levelheaded. Didn’t seem like he was being hunted or anything. And he apologized to me for the way he treated me during our marriage. He told me as soon as he returned to Coronado, he was going to sign the divorce papers.” She held out a hand. “Then they found him dead a week ago. In Texas.”

“So, you had no other contact with him in the intervening time?”

She shook her head. “I did not. I got a message from my former mother-in-law that they'd had a great visit. And that she'd been sad to see Ken leave. She said she thought something seemed to be weighing on him, though.”

“How did you feel when they told you that?”

She looked down at the table, scratching at a stain. “Sad. Years ago, we had potential. But it had slowly been worn away. There was so much distrust. Every time he returned from a deployment, he would go through the house looking for evidence of another man. From day one, he thought I was cheating on him. I never did.”

The server arrived then, setting their plates down in front of them. “Ketchup is on the table. If you need anything, just wave me down.”

Rowan attacked her omelet. It was steaming and the mushrooms tasted so good. Running for your life apparently burned a lot of calories. It also helped that she knew she was safe now. As ridiculous as it was, Wyatt had always made her feel at ease.

“So, what is your plan now?” Wyatt asked her, picking up his sandwich.

“I think I need to head to New Jersey and talk to his parents,” Rowan said thoughtfully. “When he stopped here, he didn't give me anything important. I looked through the bag several times. It was a few old sweaters and a couple of books. There were a couple of pieces of old jewelry. I'm not even sure why he took it on the plane with him and hauled it across the country. He could have put it in a damn postal box and it would have been so much cheaper. I can only think that he stopped here in an attempt to tell me something. Like maybe if something happened to him, go to his parents. They have a farm out there and he used to love it as a child. That's the only thing I can think of. I don't dare get on a plane and go back out to Coronado to look more deeply.”

“Well, if there's nothing to find at the New Jersey farm, I might be able to pull some strings to get us to Coronado without going through airports.”

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