broken into Athena.”
He considered that for a moment. “Can’t argue with that,” he agreed. “It’s too far out, too isolated, and there wasn’t enough to steal—except maybe some hard-to-fence lab equipment and computers—to make it worthwhile.”
She smiled, grateful he had so quickly seen the facts. His eyes widened, and she thought she heard him suck in a breath.
“Whatever brought on that smile, tell me so I can do it again. And again.”
Alex fought down the heat that threatened to rise in her cheeks. He always managed to do that to her. He was so…blunt, sometimes, about how much he wanted her, and wanted her to feel the same way. It was such a change from Emerson Howland’s cool, unaffected manner. It was taking her a while to adjust, to trust that it was real.
She pushed thoughts of her former fiancé away, along with any effort to respond to Justin’s unexpected request. She knew she was going to have to quit putting it off soon, but now was not the time. She had too much on her plate right now.
“There’s new evidence,” she said.
He seemed reluctant to accept the change back to the original topic, but at last nodded at her to go on. She told him about the letter. And again he wasted no time with trying to explain things away.
“So she knew someone—or maybe plural—was after her. And those supposed accidents were just failed attempts.”
She nearly smiled at him again, but stopped in time; she wasn’t ready for another round of dealing with his ardency just now.
“Exactly,” she said.
“How long’s the list?” he asked.
“Of suspects? Lengthy. I was thinking I’d start with the ones here.”
“Here? You mean in D.C.?”
She nodded. “There are a few of them who didn’t want to see Athena even exist, let alone succeed.”
“Which it has, and then some. It’s a force to be reckoned with these days.”
Athena Force. The new nickname they’d chosen for their expanding group of crime-fighting Athenians echoed in her head. The warmth of belonging to such a stellar group—and of having Kayla, one of her closest friends—back in her life, filled her.
“Given the circumstances and that a lot of those people are still here, that’s where I’d start,” he said.
“But?” she asked, hearing the unspoken qualifier in his voice.
“In the end, I think most cold cases are solved at the scene, or in the place most closely connected to it.” He shrugged. “That’s why I kept going back to Athena over and over again after Kelly died. It was the only connection to her death that I was sure of.”
She’d already had the feeling that she was going to end up back in Arizona. It all seemed to come back to that. As before, Athena seemed at the center of the storm. Marion had to have known she’d be stirring up things when she’d begun the academy for young women, but Alex wondered if she’d ever imagined just how much. Or how far and for how long the ripples would spread.
So, she’d be going back. She hadn’t expected to be investigating another murder so soon, but when it came to her beloved school she’d do whatever had to be done. Any Cassandra would.
“Anything I can do to help?”
At Justin’s words she snapped back to the present. She appreciated the offer, but this was Athena, her home and her problem. Or theirs, she amended. She figured she’d end up calling on some of her fellow Cassandras before this was over and done. And Allison, of course. She was first on the list.
But she’d leave the door open, she thought.
“Not yet,” she said.
He nodded as if he understood.
And perhaps he did, Alex thought. He seemed to understand a lot. Perhaps it was just his innate knowledge and acceptance of the concept of loyalty. She knew he had it; the man had spent half his life pursuing the truth about his sister’s death. They’d been closer than most siblings, the barely legal Kelly having fought hard to keep her teenage younger brother with her after their parents had died. And Justin had never lost his determination to see through the last and only thing he could do for his beloved big sister.
Would he be that dedicated and loyal to anyone he loved?
She brushed away the question she wasn’t sure she wanted answered just yet. But she was going to have to deal with it soon. They were growing steadily closer, and she was going to have to make up her mind just how close she wanted to get to this man who was both a teenage dream come to life and a threat to her adult peace of mind.
But for now she had to focus on Athena. And a decade-old murder.
“I’ve moved on, Ms. Forsythe. Long ago.”
Was there a bit of extra emphasis on the Ms.? Alex wondered. Was that General Stanley’s way of releasing a lingering distaste for what, at the time, he felt had been forced upon him?
It made no sense, really. Marion had been one of the military’s greatest supporters, and to kill her over something like this would be an exceptionally grievous case of cutting off their own nose.
She pondered her next words. She’d taken the week off work, hoping in that time that she could at least get a feel of how difficult investigating Marion’s death was going to be. She’d already made a flight reservation to Phoenix for a couple days from now, based on what Justin had told her, so she was pushing to either clear the people who were here in D.C. or pry a direction to look out of one of them.
“How do you feel about Athena now, sir?”
She made her tone respectful, both because of his two-star rank and because she wanted answers more than she minded giving a verbal bow to the man. She had tremendous admiration and respect for the military—“land of the free because of the brave” summed it up for her—so it wasn’t difficult for her to speak carefully to this veteran.
“If you’re looking for a rash quote to spatter across the front pages, you’ll have to go elsewhere,” he said.
He sounds defensive, she thought.
“Why would you think that?” she asked, still careful to keep her voice level.
“Because you’re a graduate of Senator Gracelyn’s invention.”
She hadn’t mentioned that, but she supposed it wouldn’t take a genius to figure it out. And she couldn’t help but notice that for someone who insisted he’d moved on, he certainly seemed touchy about the subject.
But what she noticed most was that despite his obvious feelings about Athena, he referred to Marion Gracelyn by her proper title and with the respect it was due. That, and her gut was telling her this man hadn’t been involved. She’d learned to trust her gut.
“If you feel so strongly about it,” she said, not caring quite as much now about being tactful, “why did you
