Page 145 of Defenders of Jawhara

Trent froze. What the hell? He already knew she’d been engaged—it hadn’t gone well. But she still dreamed about the guy? Pissed now, he tightened his hand around the key fob. Yeah, well, he wasn’t in this for a forever after. He headed back to his place, this time leaving the door unlocked so he could slip the key fob back into Chloe’s pocket.

When he came in, he saw Travis staring at his phone and grinning. “Care to share?” Trent tossed the key fob to Travis.

Travis caught it one-handed and put down his phone. “Nothing urgent. I’ve got an idea on that password.” He worked fast, pulling up access to the Guardian’s network. He typed in the key fob number, and then a password. He grinned. The network opened for him.

Arms folded across his chest, Trent frowned. “Okay, how’d you know her password?”

“Easy, really.” Travis cracked his knuckles. “Her first horse was named Beanie. She won a few barrel racing contests with him, so he must have been good. Had to be either Beanie or her mom’s name—which was Sally—but mom died when Chloe was a kid, so I figured horse mattered to her more.”

“Not her dad’s name?”

“Dad’s something of a disappointment. Got a rap sheet on him—a few DWIs, local bar fight stuff.” Travis gave him a smug smile. “And you’d know this and more if you’d bothered to do your job and checked into her.”

Trent pulled up a chair. “I know enough. Now, let’s see if we can find anything interesting on these damn Guardians.”

10

“Nada. Zilch. Nothing!” Travis leaned back from the computer. “Looks like the Guardians are just who they say they are. We’ve wasted the night.”

The dawn was starting to lighten the room. Trent got up and stretched. “No way are these guys legit. I know there’s more—they just have a great front. But I can’t hang on to Chloe’s tablet all day.”

With a nod, Travis started to shut it down. Trent caught his hand. “Wait. That file. The one with only numbers for a file name. That strike you as odd?”

“Right now, the only thing that I’d like to strike me is a large pot of coffee.” He opened the file.

Trent scanned down the document. It seemed like a lot of other memos, but this one was addressed to an individual outside the organization and talked about “action against McFall Enterprises” and some vague deal-like terms. A series of numbers were noted across the bottom of the file.

“That name mean anything to you?” Trent asked.

Travis shrugged. He closed out of the Guardian’s network and turned to Trent’s laptop. Doing a search on the name, he said, “Looks like it was a lumber company. Went out of business last year. It’d been targeted by some environmental groups for logging in old-growth forests.”

“Sounds like the Guardian’s type of target.”

Rubbing his unshaven cheek, Travis nodded. “Yeah, but something doesn’t add up. Look, they got a huge contract to clean out trees from a burned area, then they went under before doing the work. The contract went to a competitor.”

Trent straightened. “Let me guess—the guy on the memo, his name was Harold Givart. Competitor was—”

“Givart Industries. The Guardians aren’t just eco-terrorists, or even do-gooders. They’re selling their sabotage skills to the highest bidders.”

Trent nodded. “That’s what it looks like, but we need a paper trail. We need to see money change hands.”

“And find out who is paying them to go after Jewel Oil.” Travis stood. He handed the tablet to Trent. “This puppy isn’t going to get us there. My bet is Chloe’s access is limited. If she’s on the up and up, she won’t have access to financial records.”

“No, but we can get those from their offices. They’ve got to have a server room on the premises.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Travis slapped Trent’s shoulder. “I’m heading for that coffee and sleep. You can get that tablet back, no problem?”

Trent gave a snort. He let himself into Chloe’s place, left her tablet on the table, and moved into her bedroom to check on her. Her face had relaxed in sleep and the lines of pain that had creased her brow had eased. She’d tossed off her covers, so he slipped the key fob into her pocket and kissed her on the forehead. She stirred but didn’t wake.

Outside her bedroom, he glanced around. She’d bought a few things yesterday—flowers, a vase, some dishes, but there was still so little of herself here. Granted, it had only been a couple days. Was she still thinking about Wyoming? Did she want to move back there with her dad?

What was her old man like? He’d read his file, but he couldn’t have always been that way. He headed back to his place, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and fired up his laptop. PJ had sent him an email, asking him to call her via video chat—she was working with Brock and Keira in Jawhara, trying to keep the royal family safe while he and his brother were trying to stop the saboteurs at this end. He’d learned the hard way that you ignored PJ at your peril. She not only knew where all the bodies were buried, she’d put a few of them in the ground.

He launched their encrypted video chat app and called her. PJ’s face popped up on his screen and her voice came through the computer, raspy and warm, a touch of humor in her tone. “About time you called. I thought the waves had lured you out.”

“Nope. Low tide. That would be a waste. How’s it going over there?”

Her voice dropped, turning serious. “Not so good. Two more oil wells were targeted yesterday, and this time they did a better job with the damage. Managed to blow up the main valve on one and infiltrate the computer monitoring system on the other. They’re trying to cap the first well as we speak.”

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