Page 11 of Her Righteous Protector

Kane grimaced. “This guy, Elias Peterson? He’s been practicing since Clarence Darrow. I think he probably wrote this will with a quill pen. The law firm doesn’t have a website. He has an AOL e-mail address and I can’t find a server in their office,” Kane said with disgust.

Max chuckled. “This must be killing you.”

“It is.”

Max laughed louder when he saw his friend’s teeth grit together.

“Good, you needed a worthwhile challenge. Not everything in the world can be conquered via the computer, young man. Now figure something out.”

The truck stopped and Max and his team got out so that they could climb up the stairs onto the commercial flight to Quetta, Pakistan.

4

Max stared up at the ceiling fan in the hotel bedroom and tried to fall asleep. They’d gotten in really late, so Kostya had checked in with Gideon and Jase who were on his team, and then fallen asleep, but Max hadn’t had such luck. He kept circling back to Meggie Todd. Scratch that, Meghan Lancaster. It had bugged the hell out of him that he couldn’t get a total picture of her in his brain. It didn’t seem right. He remembered her blonde hair, but not the exact shade. Were her eyes hazel, blue, or green?

He picked up his phone off the nightstand and pulled up Jimmy’s social media site so he could pull up some of his wedding photos; hopefully, Meggie’s picture would be there. It didn’t seem right that he couldn’t clearly remember how this woman looked. As soon as he went back through Jimmy’s photos, he found what he was looking for. There she was, two women to the right of Loretta. Meggie.

What a sweet smile.

Max sucked in a deep breath. He zoomed in on the picture.

Her eyes were blue. Then he saw the dimples on either side of her mouth. How could he have forgotten those? Sweet. She’d been sweet. He’d always wondered what she would be like when she finally got her feet under herself. When she got back the confidence that her bastard of a husband had taken away from her. Max had had a faint idea of what she’d once been like, and a hope of what she could be like in the future. He’d even toyed with the thought of being part of her future, but she hadn’t been interested. All in all, he hadn’t been that surprised she’d shied away from any kind of continuation with him. Besides the emotional and physical blows she’d suffered from her husband, she’d made a reference to being estranged from her parents. Meggie hadn’t had a lot of trust left in her; hopefully, that hadn’t transferred onto her son.

“Max?”

Max kept his eyes on the fan and answered Kostya. “Yeah.”

“You’re thinking too loud, it’s disturbing my rest.”

Max chuckled.

“Is it the mission, or are you dropping by the wayside too?”

Max turned his head on the pillow so he could see Kostya’s form on the other twin bed in the hotel room. “What do you mean by the wayside?”

“Hell, even when I let you take Ezio for a few missions, your team managed to corrupt him and he went and fell in love. What is wrong with your team?”

Max heard the sincerity in the other lieutenant’s voice. This time he didn’t chuckle.

“So falling in love is a bad thing?”

“It is for men like us,” Kostya answered. “We’re not made for a soft life to share with women. That’s not who we are.”

This was interesting. “So you’re saying we don’t have feelings?”

“Max, don’t hand me that black and white shit, you know that isn’t what I’m saying. We couldn’t do what we do without having compassion and feelings. I’m saying that we put our lives at risk too often to put a family through that kind of emotional rollercoaster.”

“Is that what Ezio has done by pairing up with Samantha? Seems to me that she was the one putting her life at risk.”

Max waited for a response.

“That is one scary lady. Fearless and scary. Ezio is going to have his hands full for the rest of his life.” Kostya’s voice was filled with admiration.

“Ah, so maybe it’s not all so bad.”

“That brings us back full circle to my question of why you’re thinking so hard.”

“Tell me more about Ebrahem’s family,” Max asked.