ANOMALY.MIL (The Conspiracy Series Book One): A Romantic Suspence Novel (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Pike Place Towers

Seattle, Washington

January 13, 12:07 p.m.

The phone rang, and Ansel picked it up on the second ring. It was probably someone calling about his next assignment.
Shit
. He sighed, because he did not think it would be this soon.

"Babineaux."

"What's up, little brother?”
Fuck
, he forgot. “Expecting someone else?"

"Nope, just work stuff."

He flopped down on his couch and swung his size thirteens onto the ottoman, knowing this was going to take a while. His sister was a talker.

"Good, because you have a date tonight, and I already started working on dinner."

He was sure that she had. Cat was one of those annoying morning people who did more before sunrise than you would all day.

"I didn’t know this was a date." He placed his left hand on his bare belly, unconsciously rubbing his fingers over the thin line of hair that ran down the middle of it. "As a matter of fact, you specifically said this was
not
a date, and that you were just asking your photographer over as a thank you for helping you with your latest issue. Come to think of it, I wasn't even aware that your photographer was a woman."

"Oh, shut up," his sister spat, and he could not help but smile. "You know damn well that I'm trying, in vain I might add, to set you up with a nice woman."

"I don't need you to set me up, Cat."

Especially with a nice woman
.

"Oh, are you serious? You're telling me that you're going to marry one of those bimbos you always seem to date?"

"Who says I'm getting married?" Ansel glanced at the crumpled sheets on his bed from the woman who had left not more than thirty minutes ago. "Plus, I like bimbos."

"You like sleeping with them, that's for sure."

"True." He nodded as if she could see him.

But what his sister didn't understand was that he needed sex, and a lot of it, to release some of the tension he built up when people tried to kill him. But how could Cat understand that, when she didn't even know what he did for a living, or that it was dangerous for him to have a relationship. Any relationship.

Even with her.

"Fine. If you come to dinner and keep an open mind about my friend…" She exhaled in a frustrated rush as if it were a huge concession. "I will stop lecturing you about your poor choice in women."

"Are you making Mom's pot roast?"

"Of course. Are you bringing some
good
red wine?"

"Yep. I already bought it," he lied.

"Sure you did," Cat laughed, knowing him better than anyone.

Ansel knew he should limit his contact with sister. But after their parents died, he just wanted to be near family. He had taken this latest post specializing in Asian operations so he could be near her.

Even if the weather sucked.

"What are you up to today?" Ansel asked, steering the subject well away from his love life.

"Other than making you dinner?" He knew she was smiling. "I'm drinking coffee and watching the clouds roll in."

Growing up in Louisiana, Ansel never understood why people from Seattle drank so much coffee, and then he moved here. He supposed you could drink whiskey to warm yourself from the constant rain, but employers tended to frown upon it. So, he drank coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. 

"Sounds like a very productive day," he teased.

"I thought so. And how is the martial arts…market?" she asked, unsure of what to call it.

Ansel smiled, touched that she cared about his fictitious business. Catherine knew that he had been involved in martial arts since they were children, but his sister had no idea how deadly he had become. The lie helped to explain his frequent trips to Asia, and was a subject in which Cat was completely uninterested.

"I got some great new kick boards from South Korea. They really reduce the damage to your joints, so I think they will sell really well in the juvenile mark—"

"Oh, hang on. That's the doorbell." Ansel heard her running for the front door. "I've been waiting on some prints, and I don't want to miss the UPS guy. Can I call you back?"

"Sure."

"Oh God, it's not UPS. It's Mormons," she whispered.  "Crap, they saw me. Oh well, let me get rid of them, and I'll call you right back. Bye, love you."

"Love you t—"
Click.
He rolled his eyes. Cat was always a bit short on manners when it came to him.

Ansel set his phone in the kitchen charger and strolled to his bedroom to strip the sheets off of his king size bed. He normally did not bring women to his home, but this “bimbo” was a regular. A carefree bleach blonde who was and open to everything, which is what they had done last night.

Twice.

He put the sheets on to wash, and then went to take a long shower. He thought about his upcoming mission to Southeast Asia, and mentally listed everything he would need to take with him. His washcloth glided over his left shoulder, and Ansel watched as soap suds collected on the raised ridges of a nasty scar.

"I'm getting too old for this shit," he mumbled.

The job used to be fun. Traveling the world, catching bad guys, sleeping with exotic women. But somewhere along the way he figured out that most of his assignments were bullshit, ordered by some Senate douchebag who had no idea that people died for the intelligence they demanded.

Jaded.
That's what he was. There was a reason Special Forces recruited twenty-year-olds. They’re young, idealistic, and have not been around long enough to see Congress act on things they shouldn't, and fail to act on things that they should.

Right then and there, Ansel made a decision. He was getting out. He had plenty of friends in the security industry, and would have no problem getting a job anywhere he wanted.
But where?
He should just stay in Seattle. His sister was trying to have a kid, and the idea of being an uncle made him smile.

He turned off the water and dried himself, wrapping the towel around his waist while he shaved. Dark whiskers showered the white sink. He washed them away before checking that the three gray hairs he had found the other day had not multiplied. Vain, he knew. But the gray hair just reminded him that he was not married, he had no kids, and with his newfound clarity, he would soon be unemployed.

"What do you want to do with your life, asshole?" he asked, staring into the murky green windows to his soul, hoping to find an answer. He did not get one. "Well, fuck."

Ansel threw his towel in the hamper with the force of his frustration, before walking naked into his bedroom. He slipped on some boxer briefs, and decided he had better call his sister back. She had undoubtedly called while he was taking his existential journey, and would be irritated with him for not having answered.

Yawning, he picked up the bedroom phone and walked into the kitchen to pour himself some coffee with the phone ringing in his left ear. The answering machine picked up, and he scoffed, annoyed.

"Seriously, Cat. I was taking a shower. And now you're gonna get pissy, because I didn't answer the phone?" he asked, his tone light. "Call me back if you need me to pick up anything else for tonight. Otherwise, I’ll see you at seven with some '
good
' red wine."

Now he just had to figure out where to get it.

Ansel took a large gulp of his black coffee, and was ashamed to admit that he could now tell good beans from bad. These were rich, smooth, and had the caffeine necessary to wake him up after the multiple exertions of last night.

He smiled just thinking about it.

He set the phone down on the white granite countertop. But when he went to pull his hand away, he paused. Ansel picked the phone back up, and pushed a few buttons to scroll down to his incoming calls.

Cat had called at 12:07, but she had not called him back.

"Weird," he mumbled, thinking.

His sister was a firstborn and
all
that implies. She would have called back, even if to tell him she could not talk to him.

Ansel called her house again, and got the machine. Again. He hung up and tried Cat's cell, thinking she might have run to the store to pick up some last-minute items for the dinner party. Voice mail. He was putting on his pants now, while calling Dave at Microsoft.

"Hello." His brother-in-law sounded as pleasant as ever.

"Hey. It's Ansel." His tone was light and friendly, so he wouldn't alarm Dave unnecessarily.

"Hey, Ansel.” He could hear typing in the background. “What's goin' on?"

"Uh, not much," he answered. "I was just trying to reach Cat about what type of wine to bring for dinner, and I can't seem to get a hold of her."

"Oh, it doesn't matter. As long as it’s red, your sister will drink it." His brother-in-law laughed at his own joke.

"Well, I really would prefer to ask her myself?"

The other end of the line went quiet and Ansel closed his eyes, knowing Dave would never believe he cared this much about wine.

"What's going on, Ansel?"

"Nothing, really.” Which was true. “I just called the house, and Cat's cell and—"

"You can't get a hold of her," Dave finished for him. "Why are you worried about her, Ansel?" he asked, too smart for his own good.

"I don't know." And he didn't. "She said she would call me back after she answered the door." It sounded ridiculous to anyone but Dave.

"You're closer," Dave barked, knowing how out of character this was for his wife. "Call me when you get there. I'm leaving now."

Ansel finished dressing, and made the twenty-minute drive to his sister's house in fifteen.

Her car was still in the garage, and he smirked, feeling like an idiot. He knocked on the heavy wooden door, and then tried to think of a plausible explanation for his unexpected visit.

But Cat never came to the door.

Silently, he turned the knob. It was unlocked, and alarm bells went off in his head. He pulled his Glock out of his holster, and carefully pushed open the door. He scanned his sister's cozy living room, but saw no one. A clock chimed in the living room as he closed the door with his right elbow, both hands firmly wrapped around his weapon.

The leather on his well-used tactical boots was broken in, so he made no noise as he silently searched the first floor of his sister's home. The thick black soles were there to protect him from glass and debris. But there was no broken glass, no sign of a struggle, and no sign of his sister.

Ansel allowed his eyes to adjust before approaching the dark staircase. He stepped gingerly on the outside of the bottom tread, having learned from experience that it was less prone to creaking. Ansel knew he was vulnerable, having to cover both sides of the landing, but he had no choice. He was all alone, and his sister was in danger. Halfway up the staircase, Ansel swung around to cover the dark upstairs hallway. It was empty. He continued on, walking backwards up the stairs.

Nothing.

No sounds, no feminine cries.
Thank God
. He had the advantage of being familiar with the house. So, he cleared the rooms one by one, starting from the left.

The last room to be cleared was the master bedroom. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest as he approached. He opened the door, angling his shot, but the bed was perfectly made, as always. No home invasion.
No corpse
. He allowed himself a sigh of relief, then cleared the master closet.

"Catherine!" his brother-in-law yelled from downstairs.

"She's not here, Dave," Ansel shouted back, holstering his pistol out of sight before walking downstairs to interrogate his brother-in-law. "She hasn't called you?"

"No!" Dave ran his hand through his sandy blond hair. "I've been calling her on my car phone the whole way home," he said, on the verge of panicking.

"Okay." Ansel looked down and gave him a job to do. A task to distract Dave's active mind, which was undoubtedly imagining all sorts of horrible things. Ansel's only problem was that he did not have to imagine those things. He had seen them, and he was finding it difficult not to place his sister in the scenes he tried so hard to forget. "I want you to call all of her friends. Maybe she turned her phone off when she went to lunch."

"Shouldn't we call the police?" A glassy sheen covered Dave's dark blue eyes.

It stabbed at his chest, but Ansel had to tell him the truth. "It won't matter. They won't do anything for at least twenty-four hours."
But he would
. "Do you know what article she was working on? Was it dangerous?"

"Dangerous!" Dave scoffed. "She writes a magazine about food and wine in Seattle. How on earth could that be dangerous?"

"There's a lot of money to be made in those industries." Not to mention jealousy and pride. "Did she review restaurants, vineyards, that sort of thing?" He was reaching and he knew it, but Ansel could not bring himself to think about the reason most thirty-two-year-old women were kidnapped, in broad daylight, from their own homes.