Against the Storm1 Read Free Page A

a while. He’ll be gone at least a couple of weeks, maybe more.”
    Jake had come to Houston with Trace after they’d finished a rescue mission with Dev and Johnnie that took them into Mexico. Cantrell, a former marine, mostly freelanced, hiring himself out as a bodyguard for executives who worked for big corporations. He had worked in the Middle East but specialized in South America. Jake did pretty much anything that wasn’t illegal and paid him plenty of money. “That it?”
    Annie handed over three more messages. “One’s a potential client. You’ll need to call him back. And Hewitt Sommerset called.” He was CEO of Sommerset Industries. “He wants to talk to you about that report you just finished.”
    Hewitt believed one of his employees was embezzling funds. The surveillance equipment Atlas installed had proved he was right.
    “I’ll call him right now.”
    “The third message is from Carly. If I were you, I’d lose that one.”
    He scowled, stared down at his ex-wife’s name scrolled on the paper. “Anything important?”
    “The usual. Said she just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”
    Trace crumpled the note and tossed it into the trash can beside Annie’s desk. For some strange reason he was a magnet for needy women. It was no surprise hehad married one. He’d been divorced from Carly nearly four years, something the petite redhead had a way of forgetting.
    Trace walked past Annie’s desk into the main office area. Sol Greenway was working away at one of his three computers. At twenty-two, Sol was Atlas’s youngest employee and a near genius when it came to electronics. Sol handled background security checks, security problems, information retrieval, online forensic services, and just about anything else that had to do with computers.
    In the middle of the office, Ben Slocum and Alex Justice, both freelance investigators, sat behind their desks. Ben had his cell phone pressed against his ear. Alex was cleaning his Glock 9 mm.
    “How’d it go with Arnold Peters?” Trace asked Alex.
    “I took him the photos. His wife was seeing some oversexed football player. Peters took one look, broke down and cried like a baby.”
    “Why the hell do they hire us? They say they want the truth, but what they really want is for us to tell them they’re wrong and everything at home is just peachy.”
    Alex’s grin cut a dimple into his cheek. “Far as I’m concerned, the best thing to do is stay single.”
    Trace thought of Carly and the trail of men she’d ushered in and out of his house while they were married. “You can say that again.”
    Continuing on, he went into his office and closed the door. He needed to return Hewitt’s call. The investigation was over, but Trace liked the guy and knew Hewitt was taking the information hard. The embezzler was his son-in-law.
    Trace had a few other calls to make, but he didn’t personally handle as many cases as he used to. Thesedays, he could pick and choose, and since the weekend was coming up, he would probably give anything new to Ben or Alex.
    Trace imagined himself stretching out on the deck of the Ranger’s Lady in the warm Texas sun, hands behind his head and catching a few rays.
    He smiled.
    Sounded like the perfect plan.

Two
    M aggie O’Connell walked out of her newly purchased town house and headed for her red Ford Escape hybrid parked in front. She loved the car, which got over thirty miles to the gallon, loved the room in the back for the cameras, tripods, meters, lights and miscellaneous equipment she used in her work.
    At twenty-eight, Maggie had achieved an amazing amount of success as a photographer. What had started as a hobby while she went to college as an art major on a partial scholarship had ended up a career.
    Part of it was luck, Maggie admitted. After graduation from the University of Houston, she had managed to snag a part-time job as an assistant to Roger Weller, a renowned Texas photographer—work that gave her an